Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 11, 2011

13

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 11, 2011 

HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn

I was probably the only 
kid in my first-grade class 
who knew the names Jerry 
Voorhis and Helen Gahagan 
Douglas. All the more 
remarkable, as they were 
both Californians, and I 
grew up in Washington State.

All I knew of Jack Kennedy 
was that he had a funny 
accent, people worried he’d 
take orders from the Pope, 
and friends said his dad paid 
people to vote for him. It was 
also clear in my neighborhood that Richard Nixon 
would rightfully become our next president.

My dad told me how Nixon won his first 
Congressional seat by smearing incumbent 
Jerry Voorhis as being connected to Communist 
groups, took it back after the election, then did the 
same thing in his red-baiting campaign against 
Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (D-CA) for the U.S. 
Senate (“pink down to her underwear”). Alone 
among the grown-ups I knew, Dad counted on a 
Kennedy victory, because “Nixon’s a crook; always 
has been and always will be.”

Years later when President Nixon declared on 
television, “I am not a crook”, I felt as if he was 
responding directly to my dad, who turned out to 
be right all along.

I’m not sure when my dad first talked politics 
with his own father (whom I never met). Nearly 
a century ago, my grandfather travelled between 
the towns of Port Angeles, Forks and Clallam 
Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, servicing and 
selling “power plants” - gas-powered generators 
providing electricity to un-connected households. 
Thus could a light bulb be hung outside the back 
door, illuminating the path to the outhouse should 
nature call in the middle of the night.

Those household visits were not solely 
commercial; they were opportunities to sit with 
families and talk politics. The Masonic Lodge and 
Oddfellows Hall were not just for meetings; they 
were venues to debate President Hoover’s faith in 
Wall Street vs. the promise of a Democratic New 
Deal.

When I was in fifth-grade, I told Dad of 
classmates sporting badges proclaiming, “If I 
were 21 I’d vote for Barry”, while I was the only 
one with an “LBJ for the USA” button. Dad said it 
reminded him of when he was my age, and went 
to his own father with his concern so many kids 
came to school wearing “Landon sunflowers”. He 
told how his dad assured him Alf Landon hadn’t a 
chance against President Roosevelt, as he was now 
assuring me Sen. Goldwater would be swept away 
by President Johnson.

Four years later, Dad took a friend and I to the 
Seattle Center to hear Vice President Hubert me 
Humphrey. (I shook his hand.) FDR had a “New 
Deal”, and HHH campaigned for a “New Day” 
with the same themes; an emphasis on working-
class American families, and help for those who, 
for whatever reason, had been left behind.

(I remember his campaign pamphlet on Foreign 
Affairs. While attention was then on Vietnam, 
Communist China and Soviets in Eastern Europe, 
Humphrey suggested we instead focus on the 
Middle East, where, in his view, the gravest threats 
to world peace might originate. That view never 
gained much traction.)

My dad at first held an LBJ-view of the Vietnam 
War; it was a mess, but we couldn’t just leave. The 
government there was imperfect, but we had to 
stay until their own forces were capable of doing 
the job. (Sound familiar?) I skipped high school 
classes to attend anti-war moratorium marches.

The debate at the kitchen table was over 
staying to ensure the survival of a U.S. ally, or 
not sacrificing any more young Americans for 
a corrupt government unsupported by its own 
people, What I remember most was that years 
later Dad told me I’d been right and he was wrong. 
That’s a hard thing for anybody to admit about 
anything - especially from father to son.

Dad said he’d always thought of himself as 
having been raised “middle-class”, until he was 
sent to Chicago after enlisting in the Navy to 
join guys from all walks of life, from all over the 
country. There he realized his family’s income, 
relatively, had been more at the lower end of the 
spectrum.

Later he became successful in business, 
enjoying fine restaurants and travel with my mom. 
There was never self-consciousness about “class”, 
though, or a feeling that doing well for oneself 
permitted less concern for others.

Dad relished needling the bankers and brokers 
he dealt with by displaying the Paul Conrad 
cartoons from the Times I sent up after moving to 
Los Angeles. They couldn’t understand how one 
in Dad’s position could be so critical of President 
Reagan, so he’d explain; “A defense contractor 
swindles millions of dollars from the government, 
and it’s no big deal. But a kid gets a subsidized 
carton of milk at school that he’s not entitled to, 
it’s a major crisis.”

I thought of Dad taking me to see Bill Dana 
introduce Hubert Humphrey when I took my 
own son, then age five, to join a raucous crowd in 
South-L.A. as Whoopi Goldberg introduced Bill 
Clinton. (As soon as he came on stage, we knew 
that he knew he was going to be president.)

My son, my dad and I each followed different 
career paths, but I wonder if there’s something 
genetic in political affiliations. Years ago after 
picking my son up from pre-school, we’d become 
accustomed to those at the bottom of off-
ramps holding “Homeless - Please Help” signs. 
Sometimes, though, the sign would be held by 
a young woman, and sometimes that woman 
would have children with her. Then, my son 
would turn to me with frantic questions: “Do 
they go to school? What are they going to eat? 
Where are they going to sleep tonight?” My 
son had friends at school, and a warm dinner 
and comfortable bed to come home to. But he 
remained concerned for those who didn’t. Just 
like his grandpa.

 Happy Father’s Day - and Happy 88th Birthday, 
Dad. 

The Truth About The Budget


One of my favorite quotes is from Winston 
Churchill when he was asked to comment on the 
truthfulness of a fellow member of parliament’s 
comment. Sir Winston knew the fellow had 
lied, but he also knew that to call him out 
directly, given British traditions in parliament 
at the time, was unacceptable. So, when asked 
about this particular politician’s statement, 
Churchill explained that “the gentleman had 
committed a verbal inexactitude”. Fortunately, or 
unfortunately, I am not Winston Churchill, and we 
do not live under the same traditional constraints. 
So when I’m asked to comment on what most 
politicians in D.C. are doing about our financial 
crisis, I call it like I see it. They’re lying to us, and 
I for one am damn tired of it.

Consider first the whole context in which 
the deficit problem is being discussed. Most 
politicians would have us believe that it is a tax 
issue. The economy is in a tailspin, they say, 
revenues are down, and we have to raise taxes to 
make up the difference. It has a believable story 
line if only because the economy is in a drought. 
But to blame the deficit on the economy is to mix 
up cause and effect. As the always-prescient 
economist, Walter Williams, recently pointed out, 
if you go back to 1960 you would find that even 
considering the effects of inflation tax revenues are 
23 times greater today, but government spending 
is 42 times greater. And that includes the effect of 
the current recession! The deficit is not a revenue 
issue. It is a spending issue, and any politician 
who says differently shouldn’t be trusted to sell 
used cars, let alone represent voters.

But political lies also come in more subtle 
flavors than bold-in-your-face vanilla. There are 
multiple shades and gradations we need to worry 
about. Consider the very language with which 
Congress classifies the spending it authorizes. 
Politicians speak in terms of “discretionary” and 
“nondiscretionary”, knowing the normal human 
reaction to that is to assume that nondiscretionary 
can’t be changed. The lie here is that all 
congressionally authorized and presidentially 
approved spending is discretionary. All of it can 
be decreased at will. It just takes willpower.

The term nondiscretionary spending is applied 
to any program passed by Congress in which 
spending is calculated by some formula written 
into the law. For example, if Congress passes a 
law stipulating that zoos should receive payments 
equal to 1% of the federal budget each year for 
the next 10 years, then after the first year, that 
spending is said to be nondiscretionary. After all, 
it’s on autopilot and no further action is needed. 
In fact, unless Congress acts to specifically stop 
this spending, it must occur over the full 10 years 
whether there is enough tax revenue or not. 

Politicians do this purposefully so that they 
won’t have to vote each year on potentially 
unpopular or wasteful programs. It is ever so 
much easier to simply throw up your hands and 
say that some boondoggle is “nondiscretionary” 
than it is to vote each year 
to continue the waste.

The other reprehensible 
verbal inexactitude 
popular in D.C. is to label 
a spending program as 
an “entitlement”. The 
word entitlement strongly 
implies a legal right to 
receive something which 
is rightfully due you. 
Thus, when politicians refer to Social Security 
or Medicare as “entitlements”, they manipulate 
us into believing that somehow the recipients are 
rightfully and morally due these benefits, and that 
to decrease them in any way would be immoral. 
Consider for a moment where Congress gets the 
money for these entitlements. In every one of 
these programs, if one American is given the right 
to receive a dollar in benefit, there is some other 
American somewhere who is obligated to pay that 
dollar out of his or her own pocket. This simple 
truth escapes notice because most of us hear the 
word entitlement and are distracted by the implied 
moral mandate. 

Most recipients think of Social Security and 
Medicare as benefits they’ve “earned”. In this, we 
really can’t blame them. They’ve been fed that lie 
for most of their working lives. The truth, sadly, 
is that they never were banking the payments they 
made into the system for their own account. Their 
payments in went right back out to some other 
previous recipient’s pocket. Social Security and 
Medicare have always been “transfer” programs 
designed to take money from Paul in order to pay 
Peter. Now Paul has retired and wants his share. 
The problem is that the system was never sound 
– it’s always been a ponzi scheme – and now it’s 
falling apart. There just isn’t enough money in the 
system (or anywhere in America for that matter) 
to meet the promises made by politicians. 

The good news is that America is waking up to 
the reality of our country’s financial system and 
that there are practical ways to fix the problems 
that generations of political lies have created. 
There’s an old saying, “fool me once, shame on 
you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Living in 
the most advanced and interactive democracy in 
history, we, the voters, have amply opportunity to 
demand an end to the lies. We can’t be afraid to 
call a verbal inexactitude a lie, and the sooner we 
start doing it, the better off we’ll all be. 

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a 
freelance writer and has spoken to several civic 
and religious organizations on cultural and 
moral issues. He lives in the Los Angeles area 
with his wife and 3 children and is active in the 
community. He can be reached at gregwelborn@
earthlink.net.


The Bush Era Tax Cuts Ten Years Later: 

Something To Think About 

Data From The Non Partisan Center On Budget and Policy Priorities