Michael Putney The Miami Herald

July 11, 2012

Michael Putney
The Miami Herald

RE: Even if the wheel is rigged it’s still the only game in town

Mr. Putney,

I am shocked, shocked by your column telling me that people in power like to stay in power. Further, some of their methods, sub rosa in their conception, may be, how to say this, are not Kosher in their practical application.

[From 1916 to 1980 the Regular Hudson County Democratic Organization had the Row A slot on the voting machine. As soon as the boys in the Court House had decided which name went where they had the signs printed. Of course it was done in a union shop. Why would you ask? After the signs were printed the drawing would be held for the ballot spots.]

The right to vote4 includes the right not to vote.

I don’t know about “lives of quiet desperation” but voters, when confronted by the perpetual banal venalities of public life, sometimes say, “Why encourage the bastards?”

[I was most happy to read yesterday of the arrest of the head of the Broward Teachers Union – Teachers? Union? Madness – on the basic “steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes” charges. Petty theft, grand theft, bribery, double billing, unauthorized expenses, illegal political contributions, white envelopes – just like the old days! I say happy because the Union predecessor of the alleged perpetrator was indicted, arrested, arraigned, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison where he still is for trying to play “Hide the Salami” with an 11 year old. That’s progress of a sort, isn’t it? Incidentally, the child molester got a $140,000 going away present from the Union. The crook got $170,000 to grease the wheels, so to speak, when he goes inside.]

You say that an opinion written by Secretary of State, she of the 2000 election brouhaha, disenfranchises one party when it does not have a candidate in the primary election. The winner of the other party’s primary is declared the winner or the uncontested election. All in all I think it is a marvelous idea. Cutting back on general elections is the quickest way to cut back on our exponentially expanding carbon footprint. Somewhere in Inuit country there is a mother polar bear tearing up a pod of baby seals. If she could she would thank somebody. Since she can’t she won’t. Gaia does however.

Yet again I am shocked, shocked that the Incumbent Protection Act is so blatant. “I’m on the bus. Ring the bell” is the battle cry that motivates politicians almost as much as an open-ended Grand Jury.
[Bayonne sensibilities precluded a phalanx of class A uniformed police officers at the polling place. Instead there were class A uniformed firemen – there were no firefighters then – who formed a gauntlet at the polling place. As you entered you were exhorted not to let the side down. “Row A All the Way” may not sound like a modern day version of Horatius at the bridge but it worked just as well. Just to reinforce it you were handed a palm card. Palm card? Send a SASE.]

You say that Secretary Harris is a bit of a dim bulb. I don’t know if she is in the same dull knife category as Vice President Curly Biden. I do know that she never was one heartbeat away from throwing the RESET button away and tossing one into the men’s room in the Kremlin.

I had a seminar leader, American Historian Eric Goldman, who said that not only was Lyndon Johnson the smartest politician he ever met; he was the smartest man he ever met. He told of being at a reception in the White House with a dozen other Historians. Johnson worked the room by engaging each of the guests with comments and questions on the main points of their various theses.

Whatever Katherine Harris didn’t know, whatever her score would be in a Jeopardy contest, there are no long black marble walls with 58,000 names on it in Tallahassee.

At least that war ended.

The other one, the one on poverty that started 48 years ago, is still going strong. Having overtaken the dust up between Athens and Sparta, it is closing in on the fight between the English and the French that was begun in 1755 and ended at Waterloo. Next up will be Rome and Carthage.

God spare me from smart people.

But there are two reasons why I write this morning.

#1 – My Texas ladies spent an extra day at the resorts in Orlando so my time is free until noon.

#2 – How often do I get a straight line, off speed, chest high balloon ball like the one you served up today?

In 1975 I testified at a Department of Interior hearing on off shore drilling, the shore in question was the New Jersey shore. The Outer Continental Shelf sub-committee convened in Trenton to hear testimony. It was, to use a word only found in crossword puzzles, a “raree”. 6 apes with hammers, an old Underwood typewriter [shades of Alger Hiss], and about half of the OED would have produced The Wasteland
before anything coherent came out of that. I’ll be running back punts for the Dolphins on Sunday afternoons just after I say Mass on Sunday morning before a barrel of oil came out of that group of mountebanks.

I was in my environment.

After my opening statement and some sparring with individual committee members the Department’s attorney began to ask me some questions. My immediate thought was that Allan Funt – and when was the last time you heard that name? – was filming this for later viewing. So condescendingly dumb was this boob that I had to bite my tongue. The most common hitting mistake made when eyeballing a Casaba melon coming at you below 70 MPH is over swinging. Truth be known it was role reversal. It was I who led the attorney. He entered “the upturned neck awaits the ax” abattoir with a 2 minute lecture that began with “Let me tell you what the Law says” and ending with “That’s what the Law says”

I said that if that was what the Law said then Mr. Bumble covered that quite well.

You mentioned some time ago that you decided against pursuing a PH.D in English Literature in favor of basic reporting. You are in good company. Norman Podhoretz, a pen pal from the last century, said that the best thing that ever happened to him was getting drafted. If he hadn’t he would have gotten a Ph.D. and been consigned to a small New England college. There he would have pursued both Punch and Judy with increasing vigor. His Draft Board intervened.

As President of the Irish Catholic Commentary Fan Club I can say the above without breaking any rules of confidentiality.

One last thing.

Would I branded with a scarlet R if I were to point out that getting “a big black voter turnout” has been the most successful business scam that Jesse Jackson has ever had? Every 4 years he gets to speak at the Democratic Convention. Every 4 years he gets a DNC credit card and the same marching orders: Register African-Americans who will Vote Row A All the Way. Every 4 years he comes back and says it’s time for a booster shot. Every 4 years everyone winks and nods and clamps on every open lactating teat available. In Hudson County once you were registered you stayed registered.

I had an uncle who died in 1956. His devotion to Row A All the Way was such that he voted until 1971.

Death be not proud