It’s déjà vu all over again, and again and again, do we need a debt ceiling?

Below is my column as submitted from the December, 2013 Sturbridge Times Magazine, Page 22. It's something odd from moi, showing love to a politician I never voted for.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend

The words of Polonius to his son, Laertes, resonated with me almost before I ever heard them.  Raised by a mother who embodied thrift, debt was to be avoided and feared. 

Polonius might not be the most apt guide.  He also said, “brevity is the soul of wit” but was quite the windbag.  Mom, however, I cannot gainsay.  She would quote the Danish courtier always and my experience with loans and mortgages only reinforced caution. *

Sadly, as evidenced by the latest fiscal contretemps, not too many congressmen and presidents had similar maternal experiences.  To characterize our government’s addiction in borrowing to finance its largesse as spending like a drunken sailor is to slander the relative natural frugality of the men who go down to the sea in ships three sheets to the wind.

Was it ever thus?  The United States has almost always had a national debt, and managed it with more or less hands on congressional oversight.  In 1917 we entered a world war and who knew what that would necessitate?  So in the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 discretion was granted to the government to spend as it would.  That bill, however, set a limit.  Federal shopping could not exceed a set amount.  The debt ceiling was born.

Since then, through thick and thin and with admirable discipline, our nation has never exceeded the debt ceiling.  The admirable discipline does not mean reining in spending, but making sure the legislative ceremony of raising the limit has been observed steadfastly.  Still, our financial house did not seem horribly out of order.

Raising the debt ceiling is sort of like when the credit card company sends out a letter telling you they have raised your credit limit.  It comes with one of those “you’ve been so good about paying us, you deserve it” notes.  What it really means is “you’ve been so good about paying us, now, we’d like to see you pay us more.”  I do hope no one in this country is under the impression that the issuer is doing this because they want to help anyone but themselves.

The question is begged, however, if they always raise it, why even bother with a debt ceiling?  The word “ceiling” implies there is a point at which you stop. 

So is the bickering over the debt ceiling just much ado about nothing, as it defies gravity no matter what?  Is it time to just abandon it?  Obviously, this is a case for the Long Hill Institute for Economic Policy.  After a miniscule amount of deliberation, an opinion was rendered.  They referenced the story of an ill run railroad.  The trains never left or arrived on time.  Though mostly tardy, occasionally a train would leave ahead of when it was supposed to.  Complaints abounded and as it was a monopoly, users had no alternative.

Finally, the president of the line deigned to speak with the riders.   He was condescending when one angry questioner asked him why the railroad even bothered to publish a timetable when no train ever arrived or departed on time?  The president replied that that was proof of its tremendous value.  “Why,” he thundered, “How would you, my riders, ever know the train was late if we did not publish a schedule?”

The Long Hill Institute uses this parable to make the point that having to observe the ritual tethers us to reality.  

The late Senator Dirksen said in the sixties that billions of dollars added up to real money.  We are in trillions zone.  Some might say there is no problem.  In Dirksen’s time we collected much less in taxes then we do now, so it’s covered.  People who take that argument have a point, but is this a function of inflation?  After all, taxes collected are in money that is worth less.  Inflation is a whole other question that keeps economists’ minds from suffering idleness.

At what point is it too much?  Better we should have to at least look at the question periodically rather than sweep it under the rug, or maybe a national debt of 100 septillion dollars is the sign of a healthy economy?  That would certainly be the logic of those who view not raising the debt as fiscally irresponsible.

*Hamlet was not the only Shakespeare she referenced.  Oft the words of Lear, “Sharper than a serpent’s tongue an ungrateful child” were directed at me.

Say it ain't so, Mike!

Below is my column as submitted from the March, 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine, Page 18. It's something odd from moi, showing love to a politician I never voted for.

There is only one thing worse in life than to have one’s heroes exposed as less than noble.  It is a personal disaster to hear that someone you never felt warm and fuzzy about does something that forces a reappraisal.

Sadly, Michael Stanley Dukakis has done that to me.  I could never warm to the man.    It’s part of my class warrior persona.  You always got the feeling that the Duke was talking down to you and telling you that you had to take the bad tasting medicine because it was good for you.

The Duke, on his rise seemed over promoted.  There was the No Fault Auto Insurance that he successfully steered through the General Court.  Was that the panacea as promised?  For all one knows, it might be the best of all possible worlds.  We do still pay a lot for car insurance here.

In his successful run for governor, the bumper stickers read, “Mike Dukakis Should Be Governor.”  The tone of the campaign was that the messiah would relieve us from the scourge of the usual hacks.  The man was almost too good for us.

In his first term, he was celebrated for taking the MBTA to the Corner Office.  If it was an attempt to connect with the common man by an uncommon man, it did not work.  An electorate that had not forgot his broken “lead pipe guarantee” of no tax increase put him on hiatus for a term.

Back in office, he would tout the short-lived improvement in the state economy as the “Massachusetts Miracle.”  He hoped it would get him across the Potomac, but his presidential candidacy in a literal sense “tanked.”

There would be another call for new taxes as he entered the lame duck zone.  The governor would promote the still controversial Big Dig and would leave a bad taste in our region for supporting a prison in New Braintree that smelled of a sweetheart deal.

His ambition was immense, but so was his desire to make a difference.  A controversial English politician who experienced it said, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” True enough, Mike left office unloved and unlamented.

His post-electoral life is sweet.  Few remember that he could not get elected dogcatcher after his last term.  The Duke has his academic sinecure and enjoys the plaudits of his class.

Contrast Dukakis with another Massachusetts pol, the late Congressman John Joseph Moakley.  You remember him.  Well, you probably don't.  He was not flashy and though he had a long career, his congressional accomplishments escape my mind.  His constituents probably don't remember them either.

His big claim to fame was that he defeated Louise Day Hicks.  If you remember her, you are either a politics nerd or you are giving away your age.  She had opposed forced busing when chairwoman of the Boston School Committee.  Louise was crazy enough to think that the idea of putting kids on buses and shipping them off to neighborhoods not their own in an ethnically fractious city was absurd.  She was delusional enough to believe that her opposition could lead to a successful political career.

All the great and good got behind Joe to defeat Hicks' congressional re-election bid.  Joe said nothing.  It was better for him not to.  He won and went on to an extended tenure as a mediocrity in the nation's capital.

I was reminded that he was still alive shortly before his death.  A new federal courthouse was to be named after him.  On WBZ news one morning, I heard it mentioned and one of the solon's flacks was asked about it.  I can never forget his comment, “Joe, in his own humble way, this was the only building he wanted named after him.” 

The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse is an ornate architectural monstrosity.  Maybe it's not on the scale of the pyramids, but Joe was no Amenhotep.  When looking at it, one would not say this is the memorial to a humble man.

On January 31 The Boston Globe reported that it was proposed that South Station be named The Governor Michael S. Dukakis Transportation Center at South Station.  No news there.  As noted above, structures are named after public figures.  Usually a man who, in the words of Macbeth,  “struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”  There may be a couple of geezers left who remember Maurice Tobin of Tobin Bridge fame, but who the heck is Leonard Zakim of the Zakim Bridge?*

It was Michael Stanley's reaction that shocked me.  He said No.  Had I a pacemaker, the battery would have shorted.  This may not be unprecedented, but who has years to research it?  One should not cavil at the act.  Even if his reasoning might not be mine, it's still a noble sentiment and it pains me to say, a humble gesture.

So Governor Duke, you have my admiration, but I will never forgive you for making me give up my resentment.

*I looked him up once and completely forgot who he was a minute later.  All I remember is that he was, in the words of the late Jerry Williams, “not a bad guy.”

Book with ridiculously long name unveils very uncomplicated truth about D.C.’s bad influence

Below is my review of This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capitol that appeared on Page 6 in the February 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capitol

By Mark Leibovich

Public Affairs, 2013

Blue Rider Press, 400 pages

List: $27.95 Amazon: $18.58

Book review by Richard Morchoe

This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America's Gilded Capital is a brutal look at the nomenklatura who rule us.  The author, Mark Leibovich catches the denizens in the act of schmoozing, peddling influence, securing sinecures and book deals and getting on TV or mentioned in the press.  All too often, it is done at the expense of the rest of us.

Mr. Leibovich should know.  He’s done time in D.C., first at the Washington Post and then for the New York Times.  He is currently chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine.

The author sets the tone on Page 1, “Tim Russert is dead, but the room was alive.”  It was the memorial service to celebrate the deceased, and, not coincidentally, a networking opportunity.  You might remember Tim; he was the long-time moderator of Meet The Press.  In 2008, he was on Time Magazine’s 100 most influential list.  He was big, and then he was gone.

 The author quoted a friend, ““We’re all obituaries waiting to happen,” Henry Allen, my former Post colleague, once wrote.  “At the same time, the city of Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.”” 

It should be a bit of surprise to some that this is such a good read.  After all, it’s about the class of people who were student government nerds in high school.  Leibovich writes well and enjoys the subject.  Also, love or hate these people, they influence our lives out of all proportion to their intellects and abilities.

There are many stories and tidbits about those who bless or infest (as you wish) the D.C. ether.  For personal reasons, I enjoyed his quotes about Chris Matthews, that apply to a whole class as well,

“In his book about the media’s conduct during the Monica saga, Bill Kovach, the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, anointed Matthews as part of a “new class of chatterers who emerged in this scandal…a group of loosely credentialed, self interested performers whose primary job is remaining on TV.””

 “After leaving Tip O’Neill’s office, for example, Chris Matthews got himself a column for the San Francisco Examiner.  He was even named the Examiner’s Washington Bureau Chief, though he was the only one in Washington for the Examiner and it had no footprint beyond being the Bay Area’s sleepy afternoon newspaper.  But the affiliation and title helped Matthews get on TV.”

Matthews will stick like a barnacle and be on TV even after his memorial service.

There are also profiles of relative unknowns.  Chapter 8 is given over to Kurt Bardella.  Bardella is refreshing if only because he was not guilty of any “I’m here for the kids” schmaltz that most people in politics give as the reason for their “service.”  Kurt was a hard charging press aide to Representative Darrell Issa.  So hard charging that he got into trouble for his zeal.  His errors got him fired and would have been career ending in a real environment.  Bardella worked the TV and publicity circuits and was back on staff with the Congressman.  It’s not easy to be a complete failure in D.C.

Mr. Leibovich has a way with a euphemism and if you don’t chortle often, you are probably in the care of an undertaker.  On page 139 he calls David Gergen a “politically versatile talking head.”  If you have at all followed politics from the Reagan administration on, you realize he essentially tabbed Gergen as a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession.

On the BP spill debacle, “Washington becomes a determinedly bipartisan team when there is money to be made.-sorry I mean a hopeful exemplar of Americans pulling together in a time of crisis. “

Are there any problems with the book?  Almost none of us have any real experience with Washington, so it is near impossible to raise objections.  Fortunately, on Page 35, Mr. Leibovich serves up a high hanging slow ball of a blunder that is easy to blast out of the park.  In discussing the Mitchell-Greenspan power couple he wrote,

“Andrea was in the midst of a rough moment because a lot of people were blaming her husband, Alan Greenspan, for the financial collapse.  His free-market, Ayn Rand-influenced policies while running the Federal Reserve were not looking good now.”

Anyone remotely familiar with Rand’s writings knows she was a sound money gal and Greenspan’s pumping moolah out of the Fed would have been anathema to her. On page 38 he observes,  “Washingtonians love the “So-and-so is spinning in his grave” cliché.”  Mark made Ayn revolve at warp speed.

His snarky and continuing reference to Romney as Mittens, with the Greenspan comment might indicate his boat has a slight list to port.  Still, he had no problem skewering Team Obama over their holier than thou attitude as all too many of them had no problem monetizing their service when they had the chance.

Leibovich’s work makes plain that Planet D.C. will always stand apart and be alien to the nation.  As soon as the rep, senator or staffer arrives, they go native and are forever separate from what they nominally represent.

In the November 2012 issue of this magazine, your reviewer proposed the nation’s capital should be moved to the cold, desolate hills of Wyoming.  This Town has convinced me that that is not only correct, but also desperately urgent.  A new beginning is called for.  If not in a remote, inhospitable terrestrial region, another galaxy.

Now more than ever.

So how did all this valentine stuff come about?

 Below is an article I wrote on the history of Valentine's day for the February 2014 Sturbridge Times Magazine, see page 14. 

In this country, there are unofficial holidays we enjoy that are fun, but other than the names, the ancient roots are obscure.  Oh, we may know Saint Patrick’s was a holy man, but his sanctity is rarely celebrated on March 17.  Halloween was the pagan New Year that Christianity took over to observe deceased saints, though one would hardly know it these days.

So it is with the 14th of this month.  As children, we learn about it in elementary school as notes are given and received.  Candy is a big part, especially those little hearts with messages like “be mine.”  As we grow up, a young swain forgets the day at his peril.  One should not begrudge the florist or restaurant owner his or her living, let alone the employees, but why does all this happen?

It goes way back, really way back.  We know of the Roman fertility festival called the Lupercalia.  Undoubtedly, the celebration long predated the Latins, but they enjoyed it with gusto.  From the 13th to the 15th of February young men would whip young women with the flesh of sacrificed goats.  At the end there would be a lottery to pair up the boys and girls for a year with marriage possibly ensuing.  Hey, not every society can come up with speed dating.

Christianity would replace Paganism within a few short centuries after Christ.  The West took up the new faith easily enough, but the people were attached to many of the old ways.  The excesses of the Lupercalia could only offend the theologically advanced of the new dispensation.  The masses would have to be weaned away from the ancient practices.

Something the church did not lack was an abundance of martyrs.  One that died for love could fill the bill in co-opting the pagan holiday.  Valentinus was the man for the job.  He was a priest at the time Emperor Claudius was persecuting the faithful.  Against an imperial prohibition, the cleric married Christians and was jailed for it.  

Valentinus would talk with his jailer’s daughter, eventually converting her.  In his last letter, he told her to stay strong in her faith and signed it, “your Valentinus.”  The next day on February 14th 270 A.D. he was martyred.  Whether fact or legend, Pope Gelasius established his feast day in 496 A.D. noting the saint was among those “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God."

In the post-Roman age, Saint Valentine’s Day was celebrated here and there, but was not a major event.  The Lupercalian overtones continued, with doves, known for fidelity becoming symbols.  In Hamlet, the doomed Ophelia in her madness sings of it.  

The Calvinist Reformation was not kind to the day.  The Puritans who came to New England treated it almost as they did Christmas, which, while not a hanging offense, was near anathema.  In spite of that, some vestiges remained.  The stern Puritan, John Winthrop, who would become governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, while still in England wrote in a letter to his wife that he hoped she was his valentine.

It would take about a couple of centuries for the holiday to attain widespread popularity.  For this we owe a debt to the postal system in the Mother Country.  In 1840 the British restructured rates, dramatically lowering the cost of mailing a letter.  The penny post made it much cheaper to be romantic.

As they did to promote the acceptance of Christmas as a commercial holiday, merchants promoted Valentines Day through newspaper advertising.  

America was in thrall to almost everything English.  Anglophilia being in vogue, when London had its opulent Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, it would be necessary for New York to copy it.   In 1853, Gotham would put on a similar, if not more sumptuous display with its own Crystal Palace.

Well, if we could do as well as the Brits in the field of proto world’s fairs, we could be even more commercially romantic with Yankee ingenuity, and we had just the gal to do it.

Esther Howland pioneered the American Valentine.  She had graduated from Mount Holyoke when it was an academy and returned home to her parents’ house afterward.  Dad owned a stationery store in Worcester.  Esther saw an English paper lace valentine and said she could do better and proceeded to.  Her salesman brother took samples on a trip and came back with $5,000 in orders and an industry was born.

The third floor of the family home was converted into a valentine’s card factory.  The cards sold for from a few cents to ten dollars.  Esther knew about branding, the back of each was embossed with a red H.  By the 1860s her company was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, a vast sum in the day.

Esther never married.  She sold her business to take care of her parents. The buyer, George C. Whitney Company, continued to make the valentines in Worcester until 1942.  

There is a local connection.  A couple of lovely portraits of her parents are on display at the Fitch House in Old Sturbridge Village.

The association of chocolate and the day is even newer than the mass produced valentine.  This is because until the second half of the 19th Century, chocolate meant a beverage, and not a confection.  In fact, there was no chocolate in chocolate cake in the same sense there is no coffee in coffee cake.  The recipe for chocolate cake from a famous cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, had recipes without any cocoa.

  

With the invention of a process known as “conching” chocolate could be made into candy.  In 1868 Richard Cadbury came up with the heart shaped candy filled box, connecting chocolate to the holiday.  

We have come along way since the Lupercalia, or have we?  A young couple from ancient times or prehistory transported to the present would not understand.  Then again, they would not comprehend much about our times.  It is doubtful they would think the day interesting or fun without the raucous festivities.  Until, of course, they had some chocolate.

Tom Kelleher of Old Sturbridge Village consulted for this article. The Village is holding Be Mine: Chocolate and Valentines on Saturday, February 8^th and Sunday the 9^th.