Urgent Need for a Course Change

                A commentary                 

                By J. F Kelly, Jr.

                If one is looking for a stable, lifelong career, politics may not be the best choice unless, of course, one lives in a country with a system that allows one to become president for life. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned after just three years in office, during which he delivered on his promise to get Brexit done, is among the latest politicians to fall from grace. While his center-left governing practices after campaigning as a far-right conservative disappointed his conservative colleagues, what finally did him in apparently were the scandals, character issues and chaotic behavior. Does that remind you of another former head of state with similar hair styling, physical proportions and impulsive manner?

                In the United Kingdom, a parliamentary monarchy, when enough people feel that things are going badly at the top, parliament can respond with a vote of no confidence. Mr. Johnson survived one of these, but he couldn’t survive the mass defections, about 50 of them, from his own party, some of whom had urged him to resign. So, the search is on for a successor and Mr. Johnson will remain in power until one is named. He will be a lame duck.

                Here in our democracy, we already have what will essentially be a lame duck as president for the second half of his term, especially if Republicans win big, as expected, in the mid-term elections. He will be far too old to run for re-election to the rigorous job of president. Many believe that just completing his single term during these turbulent times will be a major challenge for the visibly ageing president. But short of a voluntary resignation, removal from office for physical or mental disability under terms of the 25^th Amendment, or by impeachment followed by conviction in the Senate, he will remain in office until January of 2025 despite a woeful 39% approval rating.

                Only 14% of Americans surveyed in a recent poll feel that the country is headed in the right direction. That leaves a huge majority that believes the ship of state is sailing in the wrong direction. As every mariner knows, if a ship is sailing into dangerous waters, a course change is urgently needed before disaster occurs. Some 85% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction but Mr. Biden refuses to change course. (1% apparently didn’t have a position on the matter. Ah, to be so carefree!) Does that 14% know something that we don’t? I doubt it.

                This administration is failing Americans. How? Let me count the ways. First and foremost, we are not getting what Mr. Biden promised. He campaigned as a moderate and a uniter. But he is governing far to the left of center and we are more divided than ever. People are frightened over a growing epidemic of crime and violence, especially in Democrat-controlled cities. Democrat-appointed prosecutors are choosing what laws they wish to enforce and are allowing criminals to go free. The police have been demonized and demoralized. Mr. Biden refuses even to acknowledge these failures on the part of local government and blames violence on guns.

                The southern border is out of control. There is really no other way to describe it. Drugs are flowing across the border but Mr. Biden says the border is closed. His appointed border czar, Vice-president Kamala Harris, is clueless about how to deal with this chaos except to study the root causes of illegal immigration. But any fool already knows what they are: crime, gang violence and poverty. We have the same problems in our cities. We can study them here.

                The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was an international embarrassment, resulting in the death of three U.S. service members, leaving behind thousands of Afghans who aided us in the fight against the Taliban, the collapse of the Afghan government and the loss of the freedoms we won for Afghan women. The country has since reverted to chaos.

                The president’s continued war on fossil fuels prevents this country from fully benefitting from being the world’s largest producer and net exporter of oil and clean natural gas and from providing more aid to our allies in Europe in weaning themselves off Russian energy. This U.S. war on fossil fuels will do almost nothing to prevent climate change as long as China, India and other emerging nations continue to use fossil fuels as they must for decades to come. On his first day in office Mr. Biden closed the Keystone XL pipeline and froze new drilling on federal lands. The price of gasoline is forcing many Americans to choose between gas and food. Restrictions on fracking and pipeline construction in Democrat-controlled states and delays in permitting needed refinery and export facility construction discourage further investment by oil producers to increase capacity. The president blames them anyway for the price of gasoline, even as his administration seeks to put them out of business.

                Inflation is raging, led by gasoline and fuel prices causing enormous harm to Americans. Mr. Biden blames this on a distant war in Ukraine instead of his own profligate spending on Covid relief. He now is forced to plead with Middle East producers to increase production and recently ordered American gas station owners to “(b)ring down the prices you are charging and do it now,” sounding like a dictator. Attempting to control inflation by drastically shrinking the money supply will almost certainly result in a recession which will cost Americans jobs and more economic misery.

                Mr. Biden refuses to order the Justice Department to arrest demonstrators who are violating the law by demonstrating at the homes of Supreme Court Justices and he himself used inflammatory language in describing the court as “extremist” and “out of control” and the justices’ behavior as “outrageous.” Does he actually believe that the Supreme Court of the United States should be controlled?

                This is a partial list of failures but there are more to come because Mr. Biden is clearly not a leader. He is not proactive and reacts to problems only when prodded and then often not wisely. A weak campaigner, he won election in the twilight of a lackluster career which included no executive experience except running a committee largely because Donald Trump managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by his boorish manner and stupid tweets. If we can manage to survive until 2025, hopefully both parties will by then be able to come up with candidates who actually are qualified by intellect, experience, temperament and age to hold the most powerful office in the world.

July 26,2022

Defending the Constitution

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                When Democrats lost the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections, President Barack Obama famously reminded Americans that he still had his pen and phone. He proceeded to use both to rule by executive order and by empowering federal agencies to carry out his agenda. The problem with executive orders, however, is that they often have a short lifespan since a subsequent administration may overturn them. Empowering a federal agency such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do his bidding in promulgating his Clean Power Plan, on the other hand, was expected to ensure eternal life. But that may not be so easy anymore, thanks to a Supreme Court decision.

                The objective of the Clean Power Plan was to roadmap the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. It empowered the EPA to prescribe a system of emissions reductions which imposed costly technological requirements on the process of decarbonizing energy production. But in a decision that should sharply limit the authority of the executive branch to empower agencies to exercise such power, the Court, by a 6-3 decision, ruled that the EPA had overstepped its authority by issuing regulations with widespread economic and political consequences without clear authorization from Congress to do so.

                Said Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the majority, “A decision of this magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”  According to the Constitution, elected legislatures constitute the branch of government responsible for enacting laws, not the executive branch or the agencies they sometimes empower and whose members are unelected appointees. The people’s elected representatives in Congress, the state legislatures and local elected councils who are responsible to the people they represent are the ones elected by those people to write the laws they want to live under, not unelected bureaucrats.

                Climate warriors, naturally, have their hair on fire over this rude setback to the war on fossil fuels. President Joe Biden went so far as to say that “the ruling was a devastating decision that aims to take our country backward.” Does he really mean that the Supreme Court, whose members are sworn to defend the Constitution, actually aims (his word) to take the country backward? What the Court was actually doing was defending the constitutional requirements pertaining to separation of powers just as it did in ruling in his administration’s favor in ending the remain in Mexico policy of the preceding administration.

                The decision also should send a clear message to both elected branches of government, to wit: start doing the job you were elected to do. The executive branch needs to do the hard work of trying to persuade Congress to legislate its agenda. If they fail, they cannot usurp the power of Congress by using agencies or judges to legislate their agenda. And Congress needs to craft legislation to address the nation’s needs consistent with the Constitution. That inevitably will require compromise. Instead of spending much of their time running for re-election or higher office and posturing, they need to produce laws, not wait until the last minute and then produce a massive omnibus bill written by staffers that no one has time to even read, let alone understand.

                Climate warriors warn that Congress doesn’t have the technical knowledge to enact laws regulating climate emissions. Maybe that’s a good reason to proceed cautiously and avoid draconian mandates and restrictions that can harm people and the economy which Congress is supposed to actually know something about. Agency bureaucrats, probably not so much.

                Mr. Biden’s continued harsh rhetoric directed at the Supreme Court is troubling. In response to the Court’s ruling in overturning Roe v. Wade, he described it as destabilizing. Fair enough, but that response was not nearly harsh enough to suit his progressive wing, so he went on to criticize “the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court in overruling not only Roe v. Wade but eventually challenging the right to privacy.” He later referred to the Court as an “extremist court driving the nation backwards”, aligning himself with 9 Democrat governors who won’t accept the Court’ decision.

Overlooking the president’s odd ordering of words, it strikes me that it was rather outrageous of him to accuse the justices of outrageous behavior for just doing their job in protecting the Constitution. By “eventually challenging the right to privacy” he was apparently referring to the concurring opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas that if the legal underpinnings of Roe v. Wade were wrong because the Constitution was silent on abortion, then so were the legal underpinnings of other so-called rights not specified in the Constitution such as same sex marriage and contraception. However, no other justice joined in his opinion and Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority decision, went to some length to emphasize that these rights were not involved in this ruling.      

                Accusing the highest court in the land of outrageous behavior and claiming it aims to take the nation backward is inflammatory in the current environment and unworthy of a president who calls himself a healer. The words themselves are dangerous given the sharp divisions and anger over the decision, resulting in threats against the justices and illegal demonstrations at their residences. Presidents may disagree with Supreme Court decisions but accusing the Court of outrageous behavior is a step too far.

Teaching Children Is Hard Work

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                As a college undergraduate, I majored in education and earned a B.S. degree. Upon graduation in 1952, I accepted a position as a fifth-grade teacher in an inner-city school in New Haven, Connecticut, signing a contract for the less-than-princely sum of $2,700 a year, or about $28,000 in today’s dollars. Even back then, when teachers were even more underpaid than they are today, that salary ranked at the very bottom of the starting pay scales for teachers in Connecticut, probably because of the abundance of teachers produced by the local teacher’s college.

                Salary wasn’t much of a concern to me, however, because the Korean War was upon us and I would soon be departing on leave of absence from my teaching duties to report to the Navy for officer training and active duty. I was one of only two male teachers at the school where I taught and it was sort of mutually understood that I would get to deal with some of the school’s more difficult disciplinary problems. On my first day, the principal advised me that “we’re all members of the Connecticut Education Association (CEA) here” which I assumed meant that I should be, too. I declined the subsequent invitation and, as far as I know, was the only non-union member on the faculty.

                Orders to report to Navy Officer Candidate School came after only two months of teaching but it was time enough to convince me that I didn’t have the patience needed to teach children. I have the greatest respect for teachers who do because, although teaching young children certainly can be very rewarding, it is very hard work and requires patience. I believe that there should be a special place in heaven for those who do it well. Patience was not my strong suit in those days.

After a two-year tour of sea duty, I spent a year ashore teaching communications and cryptography to prospective Communications Officers and I discovered that I did very much enjoy teaching young adults and, frankly, it was a lot easier than teaching children. Disciplinary duties were not normally part of the job, there were no issues over what we could or couldn’t teach and no contentious meetings with parent groups or school boards. It also paid better. As a junior officer with prior enlisted service, I was making over twice as much as I did as a public-school teacher and there were no union dues. 100% of my working day could be spent teaching, testing or preparing for class. What a deal!

 I stayed in the Navy for a 30-year career and resigned my public-school teaching position and the tenure that came with military service. The Navy bought me a master’s degree in management, sent me to the Harvard Business School Program for Management Development and the G.I. Bill paid for most of a doctorate in education. I had the privilege of commanding three ships and a naval research and development center that conducted research and development in, among other things, training and education. Upon retirement, I was hired by a bank and became a senior vice president and Director of Training and Development. I spent a semester teaching MBA students Organizational Behavior. I finally finished my working career teaching ship handling, seamanship and navigation to naval officers at a ship simulator facility at Naval Base, San Diego.

                I recount this bit of ancient, personal history to make a simple point. Teaching children is very hard work; much harder, I think, than teaching adults. As a director of training and development, I interviewed a number of job applicants who were public school teachers looking for positions in industrial training. The reason for wanting a job switch seemed to be that they were simply burned out. I invariable told them that what they were doing teaching children was probably more important than what we were doing teaching adults although that had its challenges, too, including the need for a solid grasp of the subject matter being taught and preferably some real-world experience in applying it.

 I read recently that approximately 300,000 public school teachers and staff left teaching positions between February and May in 2020, which constituted a 3% drop in the teaching workforce, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. A more recent National Education Association (NEA) poll found that 55% of teachers surveyed said they would quit earlier than originally planned, up from 37% in 2021. The leading reason: stress and burnout. If we experience a serious shortage of public-school teachers, it will mean larger classes and more probably more stress.

                There are many factors causing this stress including returning to classrooms after lengthy Covid-related closures, debates over mask requirements and other protocols, issues over what should or shouldn’t be taught, parental protests, disruptive behavior in the classroom and, of course, school shootings. There were 249 of them last year and 150 so far this year. Who wouldn’t be stressed?

                I think teachers get far too much blame for the problems being experienced in public schools. I believe many of the problems teachers face are directly due to a failure in parenting. As any teacher knows, parents or guardians need to be involved in a constructive and supportive way in their children’s education, much of which occurs in the home. Preferably, there should be a male parent in the home to model and teach appropriate male student behavior. It should not be left up to the teachers to teach their children discipline and respect for others and for authority. Children from homes where education is valued and parents are involved in a constructive way and provide, as best they can, a home environment conducive to learning invariably do better in school.

July 7, 2022