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Balance and Fairness
I was listening to the County Council’s public comment period the other day and found myself reminded of a story all of us heard when we were kids.
Remember the Little Red Hen? She worked diligently with her chicks to sow the soil, plant the wheat, take care of the shoots, and finally harvest the crop to make lovely loaves of bread. Her forest neighbors didn’t give a fig about what went into the long and arduous process, but they still expected to eat the bread. They even felt that they were entitled to it if you can imagine that. The Little Red Hen, as we all know, advised them to take a flying leap on a rolling donut. She and her chicks enjoyed the bread that they had earned very much. The salivating neighbors were not happy at all but they had no power to force the Red Hen to do their bidding so she and her chicks lived happily ever after and they did not.
The old childhood allegory, with which I have taken some liberties, would never have occurred to me without the message served up last week during the public comments that property owners are essentially children " children who must have strict limits placed on their freedom of action and who must be disciplined.
“We have to say NO,” more than one person opined. We have to draw the line. Nancy Reagan was right. We just have to say NO. (Actually, Mrs. Reagan wasn’t specifically mentioned but she and her mantra were there in spirit).
A prevailing sentiment " actually stated aloud more than once during this council session and others " was that property owners will “do whatever they want” if we don’t regulate them. They will actually behave as if they owned their land, houses, garages, driveways, and grass. Hard to believe.
The supposition is that property owners can be absolutely relied upon to exercise their selfish impulses and make a mess of everything, destroying the creatures of the sea, the eel grass, and salmonid habitats, creating bad shade, and erecting eyesore structures all over the shoreline, thus offending the public’s sensibilities and leaving a legacy of anthropogenic carnage the length and breadth of San Juan County. Government, in the form of new rules and regulations, must save the day.
Here are some of the problems that logically crop up with this kind of analysis:
• Anyone who has lived in San Juan County for more than a month or two (or anywhere else, for that matter) knows that putting more regulatory power in the hands of government is generally a boneheaded move. Dozens of examples are readily available to demonstrate this point but I’m going to take a big gamble and assume that you can think of a few hundred on your own. Where efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and timeliness are concerned, government is a few Bradys short of a bunch.
• The words, pristine, gorgeous, and magnificent are frequently expressed in connection with SJC. Experts from all over the country and the world describe our island county as a paradise. National Geographic says tourists should come and visit. The New York Times put SJC on its list of top attractions. We are doing a good job keeping our environs in good shape.
• Virtually no analysis or study or fragment of the Best Available Science (which is not the best available, in my opinion and others) has explored and reported on why current regulations are not working, what specific advantages will accrue from recommended new regulations, how property owners are at fault for problems we don’t have, and so on.
• The idea that a couple of dozen vocal members of a few environmental groups have overarching expertise on science and the environment that accords them moral ascendance over the Fifth Amendment is, how shall I say it, preposterous.
• Equally nuts (or inappropriate, if you prefer the current bureaucratese) is the practice of patronizing one’s fellow citizens with the egregiously overbearing language of false possession. “WE are actually quite generous in what WE allow OUR property owners to do with their land.” If WE let them choose their own qualified professionals to establish the need for buffers, the people they hire might have the property owner’s interest at heart, not the public’s. (WE may need to educate OUR environmentalists about property rights).
• “Balance” between the property owner’s rights and the public’s rights could be getting out of hand. If the property is well-maintained, meets zoning requirements, and is not doing any harm to the environment, the owner has no obligation to balance anything with the public’s wants or desires.
Returning to our storied hen and her chicks, I think the metaphor is apt. Thousands of people in San Juan County did not invest everything they had in a dream, only to have a small cadre of “environmentalists” successfully scramble for power they do not deserve on the basis of rationales they have not established.
A speaker or two at the Council meeting last week said that people should not assume that there are guarantees attached to their dreams. If the laws change and the governing authority now says you cannot build your home where previous laws allowed, that’s too bad.
The Council has momentous decisions to make. Issues of balance; issues of rights; issues of fairness. Issues having to do with dreams.
(Janice Peterson is a former college professor at Santa Barbara City College in the field of communication, with emphasis on public speaking, argumentation and debate. Janice tries to be a useful member of the community and a willing volunteer. )
Keeping The Ship Afloat
“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” This profound notion comes to you courtesy of Publius Syrus, one of the late great Greeks, who noticed that in happy times almost everyone loves the head of state. When things get rocky, however, the public hones in on those who once basked in the sunshine of invincibility and exposes them to painful scrutiny.
The President has relinquished a bit of his legendary hope and glory and the Congress is collectively reviled. The country is wallowing in a fever of disgruntlement and Throw The Bums out fervor. Each day seems to bring new revelations of odious behavior on the part of our leaders… and on the part of those in the 1% of Americans with bloated bank accounts. (Not surprisingly, quite a few of the one percenters are members of Congress). The Occupy Wall Street activists detest the ultra wealthy, albeit discriminately as they apparently exempt rock stars, extravagantly rich movie actors, a certain documentary film maker, and other favored few.
Locally, we are playing out fault-finding scenarios of our own but compared to the nation as a whole, San Juan County is an island of good will and neighborliness. We are conflicted over the Critical Areas Ordinance update, the fairness or unfairness of increased environmental regulation, the absence of reliable wireless communication, and the ubiquitous solid waste issue. Real estate sales are down, many small businesses are suffering, and some resistance to contributing more of our dwindling personal resources to traditionally popular causes like the Land Bank is surfacing.
We aren’t taking to the streets (except for a few Friday afternoon occupiers) but we are drifting toward a winter of some discontent.
Typically, it has taken me more than 250 words just to get to the point of this column. I hope the lead-in makes some sense to readers. Here we go.
With the conclusion of our last election came new issues to ponder for the next year or so. We are about to begin the process of evaluating our Home Rule Charter. You mandated the Charter Review when you adopted the Charter in 2005. What do you think about it? (if you think about it).
The Charter approval brought some major changes to County governance, including the following:
• Changed the legislative authority from 3 commissioners elected with partisan affiliations to 6 nonpartisan council members.
• Changed district boundaries from “whole islands” to combinations of precincts with “nearly equal” populations. (The recent redistricting has improved the numerical equality).
• Changed nomination and election of council from county-wide, at large, to nomination and election by district.
• Established the position of County Administrator, appointed by the council.
• Established a salary commission to determine salaries for council.
• Empowered citizens to propose laws by initiative and mini-initiative and the referendum.
This isn’t a complete list but it covers a lot of the major changes. The charter adopted by the voters was written by 21 “freeholders” elected by the citizens. The charter review will be undertaken by 21 recently elected members of the Charter Review Commission. We will serve for a year and submit any recommendations agreed upon to the voters for consideration in November of 2012.
Interest in the Charter Review Commission has been subdued so far but it is bound to heat up. A few letters to on-line and print media have suggested changes in the Charter and there will be many more. County residents have asked: Is 6 a good number for council members? Was 3 better? Would another number make more sense? Should the council members be nominated and/or elected at large rather than by district? Should the county administrator be elected rather than appointed? Should partisan elections be restored? What specific provisions of the charter need revision/clarification? Is the initiative and mini-initiative process working to our benefit? How about the referendum? What haven’t we thought of yet that would be legal and desirable under the Revised Code of Washington?
If you have no frustrations at all with the way government works in San Juan County, and understand comprehensively the charter’s elements, you must be an exceptionally optimistic and knowledgeable person. Good for you. (Who ARE you?)
For the rest of us, this is a golden opportunity to get back into an intriguing process, look at how it has worked, and carry on a dialogue between vastly different people, all of whom have been selected by their neighbors to serve as Charter Review Commissioners. The meetings will be public and the process transparent, with plenty of trials and tribulations to go around.
The commissioners will have to listen to others, know when to shut up (a personal challenge, sad to say), recognize that honorable people disagree, treat conflict as a constructive force, and stay away from peripheral or irrelevant disputes.
Regarding this last one, the Commission will need to watch out for the impulse to blame the Charter for everything. If your council representative is, in your opinion, a stinker, don’t blame the Charter, elect a new council member. If you feel dismissed and mistreated by a representative of County government, ask yourself, “Is this a charter problem or a personnel problem?” The Charter Review Commission will be focusing on structure, function, and process, not personalities (I hope).
If there is anything people love to gripe about, it is government. Too big, too little, doing too much, not doing enough, inefficient, full of fat heads, too complex, too wrapped up in bureaucracy, expensive, ponderous, corrupt, and other badness we sprinkle with obscene adjectives, shouted and exclamation pointed for added effect.
How can we profitably analyze local governance and suggest ways to make it better?
The Charter Review Commission should be a good experience. Be a part of it. Come to the meetings. Express your ideas! Make it work! Help keep the ship afloat.
I’ll check back from time to time in this space to let you know if I’m still sane.
Mourning the Fallen on Memorial Day Celebrating the Living on Veterans Day
625,000
405,400
116,500
58,000
36,500
The total of these five figures is 1,241,400, about 43,500 fewer than the population of Dallas, Texas. The impact of numbers washes over us without meaning if they do not attach to something real. These numbers can be read in the language of searing loss.
Lines from a poem by W.H. Auden profoundly and in very few words, express grief we have all felt at the loss of someone beloved:
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
One million, two-hundred forty-one thousand, and four-hundred Americans died in the top five of our most destructive wars, The Civil War, World War II, World War I, Vietnam, and Korea. We have lost thousands more of our best and brightest in other wars, including more than 6,000 since the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001.
Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. We can do nothing for them beyond honoring their memory and wondering what the future might have been if they had lived.
Veterans Day, established at the end of the First World War, honors the living. Commemorated originally as “Armistice Day,” it originated at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. 93 years later, we set aside the 11th day of the 11th month in the year, 2011 as an occasion of gratitude and respect for those who have served in the armed forces.
Frank Buckles, the last U.S. veteran of World War I (who lied about his age to join the army in 1917), died on February 28, 2011, ending America's living connection with the Great War. He was 110. Veterans who served in World War II and subsequent wars will be honored this week, including the several who live in San Juan County.
WWII vet Howard Schonberger writes for the San Juan Journal and actively supports the American Legion’s “Honor Flight” program. Noble Starr is our most recent honoree for the flight to Washington, DC to visit the Memorials and meet with other WWII veterans. He enjoyed spending time with Bob Dole. I met Noble a few weeks ago and heard about his years of service to his country. I listened to his son describe his father’s experiences in the war and refer to him as, “my hero.”
As this column is being written, preparations are underway locally to honor Roy Matsumoto, World War II veteran, and another of our heroes. Roy was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal this week in Washington, D.C. He was born in Laguna California to immigrant parents in 1913 and sent to an internment camp during the war. Eager to prove his loyalty to the country, Roy enlisted in the military and became a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service. Roy and his fellow Nisei soldiers intercepted radio transmissions, volunteered for reconnaissance and covert intelligence missions, and persuaded enemy combatants to surrender.
Too little space remains, but at least one modern day veteran must be acknowledged as a representative of the men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On October 23, 2010, Marine Corporal Chris Billmyer, just a few weeks into a tour in Afghanistan, nearly died in an IED blast. He lost both legs and severely injured his right arm. A year later he faces more surgery and rehabilitation after a very hard time that seems to have done nothing at all to dampen his enthusiasm for life. When asked recently how he copes with his injury, Chris said,
"It's tragic, but you can't let it stop you. You have to keep going. I could sit here all day and cry and sit inside and do nothing, but what does that accomplish? Nothing. After a while, life is going to move on and everyone's going to do their own thing, so you still have to make a name for yourself and you still got to do what you have to do. I just might have to do it a little differently. Go with the flow, go with the flow."
We have troops with Friday Harbor ties serving now in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thomas G Bauschke
Nicholas Casamassa
Justin Dennis
Joseph Gerkovich
Dominic Giannini
Jamie Guy
Roccay LaRock
Colby Leed
Christopher McMaster
Daniel C. Riley
The members of the American Legion Auxiliary send packages to them once a month. On the first Saturday of every month, you can visit volunteers at Marketplace and say hello. They have a display of photographs and information. You might want to pick up some snacks or a magazine or something else to send along to our troops.
Think of a way to say Thanks.
Look For It Only In Books, For The San Juan County Of Yesteryear May Be Gone With The Wind
Remember Gerald O’Hara ranting at Scarlett in Gone With the Wind?
“…, land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”
Nicely said, although the part about lasting gets bad press these days. We hear solemn opinions all the time about “stewardship.” We are just caretakers of the land. The land will go on after we’re all dead.
True enough, but I would like to see my land by the water and my little house stay in the family as long as our descendants care to continue their stewardship. This is as it should be. But this is not likely as it will be if others who berate me for my selfishness have their way.
Imagine this scenario from the post war era. Scarlett wants to rebuild her plantation with today’s regulations. It couldn’t happen. No buffers between the charred house and the endangered hairy rattleweed grove down by the swamp, excuse me, “wetland.” Dozens of historical artifacts in the ashes that need to be protected for future generations. From the looks of it, at least 75% of the legally nonconforming Tara burned to the ground, so there would be no rebuilding on the old site. A whole lot of delineating to do. Talk about Reconstruction!
Moving forward a couple of hundred years, some modern-day would-be buyers (also an endangered species) tried to purchase a waterfront house in my neighborhood about a month ago, an old house in need of work. There were the usual inspections, evaluations, and due diligence dutifully explored. A number of experts poked around to evaluate the site and, lo and behold, there was a suspicion of artifactual remains, maybe even a midden.
When the tab exceeded $10,000 with no end in sight, the hopeful buyers gave up and abandoned the dream. One more house in an already depressed market that didn’t sell. One more transaction unable to meet the labyrinthine regulations we have now, with the almost-buyers wondering what might befall them with the worst of the new buffers and setback recommendations.
We are “visioning” in San Juan County. I always thought vision was a noun but it is now a verb too, as in, “Let’s dialogue and vision together so we can imagine what the shoreline should look like in the future.” Apparently, not so many residents visioned a shoreline free of homes and docks, and quite a large number offered the opinion that homes and docks are fine, so a letter or two appeared in the local media to complain about the way the vision turned out and urge more politically correct visioning.
This approach says that what you think (if you are correct-thinking) is as important or even more important than what the property owner thinks. Your vision is the “Community” vision. No one has yet explained why one aesthetic viewpoint is more entitled than another but there has been some interesting discussion. It was told to me that a town hall meeting on Orcas got into some fractious conversation about property rights when someone asked someone else, “How much of your land do you actually need to use?” and he answered, “That’s none of your business.” I wish I had been there to applaud too.
A number of local residents have given testimony at public meetings to decry the “shortsighted personal gain” for which defenders of property rights are willing to “sacrifice the future.” One man quaked with fury at those who believe that dollars are more important than their children’s future; i.e. those who disagreed with him.
The weirdness in these self-righteous proclamations is that all the demands for more regulations have not been accompanied by the identification of problems in our pristine waters, let alone problems caused by the good stewards occupying their shoreline property.
I do have a suggestion for residents who have publicly declared their support for more regulations. Go ahead. Do it. Get a demolition permit and tear down your nonconforming shoreline house. Build a smaller house way back from the water where people who are offended by the sight of a home can’t see it and you can barely see the water. Establish 300 foot no-touch buffers on your property. If you have a bulkhead, rip it out. Same for your dock or pier. Get rid of your grass. Give away your pets to someone who doesn’t live in our County.
Another hypothetical scenario: Let’s say that I propose to do an inventory of your neighborhood. I would walk just beyond your owned or rented property line with my clip board. I would make note of all your unsightly yard items - old lawn mowers and the junk most of us have laying around - count all the plants around your house and make diagrams of the indigenous and non-indigenous shrub locations, make some guesses about the permeability of your grass, and look carefully at your house, its color, the quality of upkeep, and then come knocking on your door or call you on the phone.
I would inform you (no, I would “educate” you) about new rules needed to govern the plot of land on which you sit. New house color, different plants, etc. If you told me to get lost, I would say, “You are just a selfish property owner/renter. My Friends and I have a lovely vision of this neighborhood. When we cook up the newest batch of regulations, we will make your home legally nonconforming.
This is sort of like “grandfathering,” I might say, but maybe not. If your house burns down, you will not be able to rebuild it in the same location. If you want to sell your house, its value may be lower than it was. A buyer may have trouble getting a loan because of the “nonconforming” label. And…(better pay close attention to this one) if your house is unoccupied for two years, the County can legally demolish it. YIKES! Here we are in the midst of an ugly economic downturn, and you have a piece of property and/or a house on the shoreline that you can’t sell. If it sits unoccupied for two years, you can kiss the house goodbye if the County were to enforce this provision.
For those of us in the here-and-now, like me, whose homes already carry the legally nonconforming label, there is even more cause for concern. According to Alexander Mackie, a Seattle land use attorney, in the long term, it is likely that all nonconforming shoreline structures will be phased out. The phrase, “legally nonconforming” carries with it a “legal presumption that the structure will revert to a conforming use over time. That is, it will go away.”
Why does anyone in San Juan County want to burden homeowners with the “legally nonconforming” label? The Shoreline Master Plan doesn’t call for it. In fact the statute specifically balances environmental protection with recognizing and protecting property rights for single-family residences and their appurtenant structures.
Here’s the biggest irony in my opinion: Most of the pro-regulation, anti-property rights rhetoric bases its central rationale on doing what’s right for future generations.
If these overreaching activists have their way, future generations will be living on the mainland and taking a ferry to our islands for eco-visits. They won’t be able to afford to live here.
The unfortunate message to people who disagree with the relentless advance of unnecessary regulation could be, “Frankly, my friends, I don’t give a damn.” I hope that does not turn out to be the case.
Are We Tyrannized By Experts?
San Juan County wants to know the answer to this question because we have more experts offering advice than a plague has locusts.
There must have been a time when communities figured out solutions to their own problems and managed to survive without the ubiquitous (and well-paid) consultants, but that era is no more.
Since we are paying thousands of dollars to people who come from far away to give advice on environmental regulations they will have no responsibility for implementing, and be long gone before we start living with the consequences, it behooves us to look at this, some would say, invasive species.
I should note that not all specialists come from foreign lands like King County or Olympia. We have home-grown experts right here in SJC, most of whom seem to be in very nearly uninterrupted and enthusiastic agreement with the imported variety.
So, to get on with it, first, and very importantly, an expert knows something you don’t know.
The expert is in possession of data and research that is collected, collated, and used as a substance from which to reason. We hope so anyway.
Many experts have letters after their names like Ph.D, B.A., M.A., and B.S. although many of them lack a J.O.B. (The original quotation on the degrees and the J.O.B. came from Fats Domino) except for the good grace of governmental bureaucracies who seem to require an endless supply of assistance from people who will write huge, poorly organized reports using terminology no one understands.
Research conducted and published by experts must be “peer reviewed” but at times this seems to mean, “We all got together and traded our papers around.” They use buzz words like synergy, holistic approaches, suites of recommendations, interfaces, and drilling down.
They connect the dots. They worry that if SJC is not sufficiently compliant with the desires of “Ecology” (the un-elected Olympians who are telling our elected officials what to do) we might be off-ramped. OMG!
Some contemporary experts (quite a few, in my opinion) like to pretend that they are special because of their expertise. In my 30 years as a college teacher, I saw quite a bit of this but it was generally harmless, and confined to the time-honored custom of intimidating students.
When experts start making pronouncements about virtually everything in our lives and expect us to uncritically follow their dictates, the inquiry and advocacy associated with research findings deteriorates and we run into sad situations like the controversy surrounding global warming.
Those who disagree are labeled “anti-science” by Paul Krugman, and global warming skeptics are identified as “this generation's racists” by Al Gore, who is, incidentally, growing more strident and publicly profane with every passing day.
It could be downright dangerous to put too much power over our lives in the hands of experts.
Sociologist Harry Collins highlights the perpetual war between those who can “talk the talk” but cannot “walk the walk” in suggesting that “experts are fallible and too much power corrupts. In the last resort, all decisions have to be made through the machinery of democratic politics if we want to preserve a society like ours.”
History records the results of unrestrained devotion to expert opinion.
In the 30’s, many medical experts thought mental illness could be cured with lobotomies, in the 50’s homosexuality was thought by many to be an inherently violent aberrant condition.
It has been contended that Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, Silent Spring, was almost singlehandedly responsible for the ban on DDT, a false alarm that caused millions of deaths from malaria. Derek Freeman claimed that Margaret Mead’s famous studies on Samoan culture were based on misunderstandings and hoaxes. Paul Ehrlich predicted in a 1969 article titled, “Eco-Catastrophe” that by the end of the century, the U.S. population would be under 20 million, and our life expectancy would be around 40 years - due to pesticides.
A particularly relevant foul-up from the experts occurred in Olympia with the Department of Ecology’s claim that the rain was washing about 11 million gallons of oil -about the size of an Exxon Valdez spill- into Puget Sound every 2 years. It turned out the data were flawed and the correct amount was one hundredth to one thousandth of what DOE reported.
Collin Powell had something to say about the ascendance of experts: “Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.”
I submit that inbred science is a problem in San Juan County, where we are grappling with an extremely powerful network of organizations who are guided by a central motivating purpose: Impose more regulations on the people. This is despite the fact that the hundreds of pages in the so-called “Best Available” science have failed to produce a problem to be solved.
It is a strange crusade against people who, from everything I have seen, are excellent stewards of the land,.
Property owners have done a good job. The urgency to impose bigger buffers, restrict the construction of docks and piers, eliminate bulkheads, expand the permitting process, make more property “nonconforming,” and introduce more requirements for experts to come and scrutinize our land (at the expense of the owner or potential buyer) is incomprehensible to me. It is groundless.
It begins to look like a self-perpetuating and never-ending process designed to support favored environmental advocates through grants, appointments to consultancies, expert roles as mandated archeologists, wetlands experts, etc. as well as other paid consultants that cost property owners thousands of dollars to no justifiable end.
On Tuesday I watched the representatives from the Washington State Association of Counties outline the latest suggestions on dealing with the agricultural component of the CAO. It was amazing. Shall we opt in? Shall we opt out? The County Council members were flummoxed and frustrated, as well they should have been.
The process for updating the Critical Areas Ordinance is out of control. The tyranny of the “experts” must stop. I believe you and I can have some influence on the process.
The most fundamental unit of a democratic society is the individual. We need to stand up for ourselves. We need to tell the “experts” and their supporters to get off our backs, we need to tell anyone who will listen that this is not a partisan issue, this is a community issue, a neighborhood issue; we need to tell the County Council that the pressure from the “experts” in Olympia is intolerable.
We need to tell the “experts” that the citizens of San Juan County are doing just fine. We have CAO regulations that appear to be working. STOP making things worse.
Question Authority!
The original attribution on this sterling idea usually goes to Benjamin Franklin: "A free people not only have the right to question authority, they have the responsibility to do so." An addled Timothy Leary advised the same thing 200 years later. One of the first exemplars to set generations of young people (starting with my own) on the path to better living through chemistry, Leary was not a big fan of personal responsibility, so Franklin’s great notion will be the focus here.
We have a whole lot of authority to question as we leave the first decade of the 21st century - more of it popping up every day in fact. In 1760, when Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia, the population of British North America, excluding Native Americans, was about 1.6 million. Today it is over 300 million.
Although the arbiters of the societal networks of our distant past were powerful, there weren’t a huge number of them. The British Parliament was hanging on by its fingernails in the restive colonies, and the ultimate 18th century challenge to authority, the American Revolution, was a ways off.
Not surprisingly, our modern world of diverse peoples, cultures, political views, and religious beliefs (or lack of them) has changed us. Our increased dependence on technology has at once emboldened us and tested our resilience in the face of electronic advances we cannot begin to understand. Our innate desire for personal autonomy, freedom of action, and individual success suffers a daily assault from the massive encroachment of government and other forces on our lives.
I believe we are more intimidated, more bewildered, more beholden to and threatened by authority, perceived or actual, than ever before. Perhaps we should be more cautious about who has the right to boss us around and to what extent, who has a vested interest in controlling the lives of others for the sake of power and personal aggrandizement, and who dwells in the shadowy parallel universe of the “quangos”. Yikes! Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? It is.
A quango is a quasi nongovernmental organization that is financed by the government (taxpayers) yet acts independently of the government. In Britain, the uproar against quangos recently forced over 200 of them out of existence but many remain, as do their expanding numbers of U.S. counterparts.
Quangoland’s reach is broad, starting at the very top with the executive branch and the proliferating agencies, czars, and assorted other bureaus and bureaucrats appointed, NOT elected. President Obama has dozens of czars to monitor and control what’s going on with drugs, the environment, global warming hot topics, the Sudan, science, and many others. As you might suspect, there is a regulatory czar. Tremendous power and not much oversight.
We have hundreds of quango-like agencies at all levels of government. One article explored for this column said no one knows how many governmental agencies there are. 159 new bureaus and commissions were created for the federal health care program alone.
Is this authority we should question? How about all the environmental/science �" related quangos? If you have ever questioned the algorithms of the Al Gore global warming theses, you know the contempt reserved for deniers. Gore said the debate was over years ago. It might be a good thing that the nay sayers spoke up. Some of the global warming science has been exposed as corrupt and incorrect, satellite photography has revealed significant errors in the computer modeling data, and in yesterday’s news, allegations that the scientist who first reported polar bears dying due to climate change is under investigation for falsifying those reports.
We should question the authority of the Department of Ecology (DOE), not only for its overbearing regulatory zeal but for its errors. One of the most appalling examples of bad science came out of DOE’s revelations that “so much oil washes into Puget Sound that it equals an Exxon Valdez spill every two years.”
It turns out that DOE”s embarrassing mistakes in preliminary studies wildly overestimated the amount of oil that reaches the sound in storm water. When you consider all the political hoopla over the issue, all the frantic lobbying in the hallways of the Capitol, all the angry phone calls and emails that poured into legislators’ offices, it becomes an astounding story. DOE started owning up to the problems two years ago, but the Legislature never knew and the debate went on.
Oil’s contribution to the volume of toxic pollutants in Puget Sound is now thought to be somewhere between one hundredth and one thousandth of what was estimated four years ago.
We should question the authority of our state government, which is needlessly oppressive in many respects. A recent study at George Mason University ranks Washington number 40 of all 50 states in personal freedom. The study commented on unnecessary restrictions in land use planning and recommended repealing or amending the Growth Management Act.
We should question the authority of organizations that attempt to compel others to follow their personal agendas for solving environmental problems not even shown to exist. We should question “Best Available Science” which is flawed in countless respects. We should challenge the “expertise” of scientists who approach analysis with bias and use technical terminology (sometimes invented for the occasion) to tyrannize others . We should question the authority of all people who seek to restrict freedom without cause.
Euripides said, “Man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.” It was a good point in the 4th century BC and it’s just as smart today. We should question authority. It is our right and our responsibility.
Lean on Me
The handwriting on the wall appears the same but a closer look shows that the Class of 2010 has been replaced by the graduates of 2011. A future bright with possibilities beckons, and for the first time in the life of every San Juan Island 17 year-old, the Fall term will offer formal education as a compelling and daunting option rather than a necessity. It’s a heady feeling to know this singular freedom.
For the classes of 2015 and 2017, the middle and high school journey continues, and the back-to-school sales will arrive on schedule. As happy as all of the junior scholars are this week to trade homework for summer, when they are called back in a couple of months, they will be excited to begin again. Such is the reality that nourishes their friendships, and their intuitive need for growth and learning. (And -hard to believe- summer gets boring).
I expected the two graduations I attended this week to be heartwarming and slightly tedious re-enactments of timeless rituals; long speeches punctuated by 15 seconds of fame for each student as the certificates were handed out and the parents jockeyed for position to take pictures of the shining moment.
They were not tedious at all. They were wonderful.
A small musical interlude: Early in the proceedings, the middle school graduates scrambled off the stage (in a surprisingly orderly fashion) to collect their instruments and reassemble to await the band leader’s signal. We expected Pomp and Circumstance or its like. Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” was better by far and likely selected by the musicians themselves. It should be a lasting memory for Janet Olsen that they played so well and have such obvious affection for their retiring maestro.
The FHES graduates sang (Lyrics by Bill Withers)
for us:
Lean on me, when you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
‘Til I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on
A more responsive chord has never been sounded in the hearts of adoring families, We help you carry your load, you can lean on us, we all need somebody to lean on. And in sentiments added by FHES Principal Gary Pflueger, you can depend on us. You can trust your families. Trust yourself too.
As all public speakers should know and too few demonstrate, the words spoken should be audience-centered. If the listeners pay no attention, the speech is a bust. Who could imagine a tougher audience than a bunch of 12 year-olds?!
Mr. Pflueger said all the right things. He had “test” questions to ask about prime numbers, and language arts, and science. The kids were rehearsed on some (but not all) of the answers and obligingly spoke up on cue. One spelled the word, “promotion.” They listened. He told them they could come back. Their teachers would always be ready to help. He made Friday Harbor sound like the magical place it really is. A safe place.
Two teachers spoke on related themes, taking inspiration from two popular authors, Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. “Oh! The Places You’ll Go” captures hope, reassurance, and optimism for the future, using verse to concede that the world can be a scary place.
“With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.”
Silverstein’s poetry talks about the “What If”s” in life that we don’t like to talk about and often avoid:
“Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightening strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow tall?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?”
Some of the graduates presented their own brief speeches about the value of friends, parents, and teachers. They were well-prepared, funny, and serious. One said, “When I was in kindergarten, I thought I was smarter than the teacher. In sixth grade, I know that I’m not as smart as my kindergarten teacher.” Good insights with only 12 years of life experience.
These occasions are important in the life of a child. It speaks well for them that the classes of 2015 and 2017 carried themselves across the stage with dignity, grace, and hardly any noticeable jitters, to receive their certificates and diplomas. It speaks well for their families that they are so devoted to their kids and supportive of the schools. It speaks well for the teachers that they are so respected and loved.
At the close of ceremonies at FHES, the two long rows of 6th graders turned their backs to the audience and commenced to blow up brown paper bags. They turned around all together, smacked their sacks, and ended the occasion with a bang.
Mr. Pflueger pronounced the sixth graders officially promoted and wished them well. We wish him well too.
Privacy: Endangered or Extinct?
The CEO of Sun Microsystems got me thinking about privacy. He said, “You already have zero privacy. Get over it. It made me wonder about all the different kinds of privacy we’ve lost and the few little pieces of solitude and separateness we might still have left.
We all know about demographics. “Socioeconomic groups, characterized by age, income, sex, education, occupation, etc., that comprise a market “ says one dictionary. That market part was a key realization in my brand new family back when JFK was in office and hardly anyone knew about his close friendship with Marilyn Monroe. The press recognized a zone of privacy for the president.
All the things strangers could find out about us through public records -innocently minimal as they were in the sixties - offered entry to our private lives.
Our mailbox was a destination for ads pushing diaper services, insurance policies, work-at-home jobs for moms, invitations to open bank accounts, entreaties from the March of Dimes, toy catalogs, grocery coupons for double Green Stamps, and so forth.
We were miles and years from our 2011 demographic. Our mail is credit card applications, reverse mortgage information, news from AARP, opportunities to donate money, pleas to rescue my alma mater from financial hardship, entreaties from the March of Dimes, and similar items to show that it is not hard to read the demographics on the wall. Although none of this is really much of an intrusion, I have to say that the raffle tickets for a free cremation from the Neptune Society do burn me up.
And then there is electronic communication, a source of concern way back in 1974 for Chief Justice Earl Warren when he said that “it constitutes a great danger to the privacy of the individual.”
Computers and Internet access have revised the quaint expectations for privacy we once enjoyed. Identity theft is common, our electronic mail boxes attract spam that makes you marvel at the extent of depravity in the world, and we all buy security to keep viruses and scams at bay. Facebook sells our personal data and Google is alleged to know more about us than we know ourselves. The product of an online Google search hardly resembles the library experience so many of us have traded for the ease of one-button information shopping.
We always suspected that search engines prioritized search lists according to fees paid but recent revelations suggest that the hit list is ranked according to our own site-surfing preferences. Visit left leaning political sites like moveon.org and you get a different Google result than if you plug in the same inquiry with a logged history of clicking on conservative sites like drudgereport.com. Remember the Simon and Garfunkel lyric? “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Our computers are making it easy for us to reinforce what we already know and ignore new or opposing ideas. Computers are Alice’s Restaurant. You can get anything you want, but there’s a price tag.
A ubiquitous invasion of our private space, maybe the creepiest, is electronic surveillance. Retailers often post signs to warn hopeful shoplifters that they are being watched, but there are cameras keeping an eye on us elsewhere as we go about our business. Who has not seen the footage of a child being led by the hand away from a shopping mall by a stranger? Later, the tragic ending is known and the networks keep showing the video over and over.
Public exposure that could lead to the apprehension of monsters makes us proud of our technology, as well it should, but the widely cast net captures the innocent as well as the guilty in a society that photographs and records our every move. The auto teller watches as you conduct your transaction, the lens clicks as you drive through a school zone; We are, as William O. Douglas said, “entering the age of no privacy -where everyone is open to surveillance at all times…”
For film and television stars, privacy is a near-impossibility whether they are entitled to it or not. Jennifer Aniston’s dog died a few weeks ago, a personal loss that attracted oddly disproportionate media attention. Reporters followed her everywhere. Drunken, drug-addled movie stars who end up in jail get more press exposure for their mug shots and sordid escapades than U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps the families of young heroes are glad to be let alone in their grief but you have to wonder about the messages we are implicitly sending to a media driven by the public’s preferences. We are treated to explicit details of Paris Hilton’s vacuous life, but most of us haven’t a clue who sits on the Supreme Court or the president’s cabinet. We want to know everything there is to know about the private lives of people who have little or no consequence to us but nothing about those who lead us or give their lives for our country.
We talk a lot about transparency and that’s a good thing as it concerns shady political activities moved out of the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms into the sunshine, but a new transparency is emerging in other places where private lives are coming more into public view.
“Reality” programs, which began in the early seventies with the Loud family, Pat, Bill, and their children, depicted very personal revelations on this PBS documentary series that had at least a veneer of educational intent.
The current crop of reality programming does not pretend to have educational merit; entertainment is the sole aim. Whether this trend is bad or good, it is undeniably popular and may offer disturbing evidence that what we once thought of, to lesser or greater degree, as private and off-limits to the general public is now fair game for the videographer, the Googler, Facebook, and all the “social media.”
A potential consequence of public exposure to personal life is the transformation of life into theater - performance art if you will - and the blurring line between what we covet as the province of our most intimate friends/family and what everyone on the street has a “right” to know. This is as close as I can come to explaining how troubling it is that privacy is declining. Losing privacy diminishes us.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, says that “if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
That is a chilling statement. It is saying, “Come right in,” when Big Brother comes knocking.
I am very lucky to live on the water. I can sit outside and watch seals, eagles, sea birds and other creatures who have absolutely no interest in me or mine. It feels safe, protected, and private. A small boat slithers into my serene view of Mosquito Pass. Two people with clipboards and serious expressions are staring at the houses in our cove and counting mooring buoys. It’s the Friends of the San Juans!
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