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OPINIONOPINION

Mountain View News Saturday, September 21, 2024

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

STUART TOLCHIN

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

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Patricia Colonello

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CONTRIBUTORS

Michele Kidd

Stuart Tolchin 

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Audrey Swanson

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Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee


PUT THE LIGHTS ON

MAJOR MISTAKES AND BLUNDERS

No, this is not the new name of my column. Even though I am certifiably 
an expert at both mistakes and blunders! What’s the difference between 
a mistake and a blender? (Oh my bad, not a blender, a blunder.) Mistakes 
and blunders refer to actions or deci-sions that are incorrect. Is there a 
significant difference? If you’re not sure read on!

 Well, a mistake is, most often, an unintentional error or incorrect action. A blunder is 
a gross error or mistake resulting usually from stupidity, igno-rance and/or carelessness 
(my specialty). A blunder is also character-ized by its potential for significant negative 
consequences.

Example Number One:

Here’s a demonstration of the difference between a mistake, a blunder and the results of 
the actions. Right before the Titanic steamed out of Southampton on its fateful voyage, 
management replaced its second of-ficer with a more experienced officer.

The original second officer forgot to hand over to his replacement, the keys to the locker 
that contained the ship’s binoculars. For your consid-eration… therein lies the mistake.

The replacement second officer determined the safety of the ship was not worth breaking 
the lock to get at the binoculars to distribute to the lookouts. After all, this was the 
unsinkable Titanic.

Historians tell us the reason the Titanic sank was the iceberg wasn’t no-ticed in time 
to avoid a collision. A pair of binoculars might most certainly have saved the ship from 
sinking. That qualifies as a blunder.

Example Number Two:

In 1173, construction began on adding a white marble bell tower to the cathedral complex 
in Tuscany, Italy. After 5 years efforts the builders fin-ished only three stories of the eight-
story structure because the building project was interrupted by an ill-timed mistake: A war 
between two neighboring Italian cities. (Think of Pasadena declaring war on Burbank).

Well, the war between the two cities halted construction for almost 100 years. In a way it 
was a good thing construction was delayed because the marble tower started to tilt. And 
the chief engineer, Giovanni di Simo-ne attempts to fix the tilting edifice backfired and 
caused it to tilt even fur-ther. And tilt and tilt and on it went.

And according to writer Sarah Pruitt, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is still tilt-ing and tilting 
to this day.

Example Number Three:

Now, most historians believe Columbus actually knew the earth was round. The ancient 
Greeks knew the earth was round as did educators and sailors in Columbus time. 
Christopher’s big mistake was twofold: One, he was way off on the size of the ocean he 
was about to cross. And two, that there existed a landmass between Spain and Asia (That 
would be us).

When Columbus hit the Caribbean he thought the islands were off of the Asian continent 
and so named the islands the West Indies. To his dying day, Columbus insisted he had 
reached Asia. If he had realized his mis-take, our continent might be called “Columbia” 
and we would all be Co-lumbians. Nope, that honor goes to another Italian explorer who 
mapped much of the new world. That sailor’s name was Amerigo Vespuc-ci…where we get 
the name America from. (I really wish we were named Vespuccians).

Mistake Number Four

Pilot Clyde Corrigan earned the nickname “Wrong Way Corrigan”. In 1938 Wrong Way 
flew his plane from California to New York. He applied to fly across the Atlantic but was 
turned down and told to fly back to Cali-fornia. His story about what then took place? He 
says he took off in cloudy weather and insists he got mixed up and ended up in Ireland. His 
punishment? In addition of pejorative nickname, he was also suspended for two weeks.

Mistake Number Five: (I’ve saved the best for last!)

The Wicked Bible. In 1631 Royal Printers Robert Barker and Martin Lu-cas printed a new 
edition of the recently translated King James Version of the Bible. They missed a one little 
word typo in Exodus 20:14. (They left out the word “not”.)

No big deal you say? You be the judge. The 1631 updated version of Exodus 20:14 read: 
“Thou shalt commit adultery”.

I’m certain it’s not a good idea to commit adultery. Tomfoolery yes, adultery no.

 OFTEN MORE LEADS TO LESS

No, I’m not just talking about golf although we all know 
that the more strokes you take the worse you have done. 
No, I’m not talking about weight, although we all know 
that as we age the heavier we get, the less healthy we 
probably are. Speaking of health in terms of diabetes 
and blood pressure, the higher the number the more worrisome it is. No, I 
am not even talking about age although it is horrible to imagine that if the 
ex-President is re-elected, he will be serving as President in his eighties. If 
for some reason he is unable to carry out his duties for whatever reason as 
determined by a two-thirds vote by both the House and the Senate then the 
Vice-President will continue as acting president.

Now, this is really scary. If for some reason the vice-president is also unable 
to discharge his duties the next person in line to assume the office pursuant 
to the Succession Act of 1792 as modified by the 25th Amendment is the 
Speaker of the House of Representatives and then next in line is the President 
Pro Tempore of the Senate. Now, you may ask, who will be the President 
Pro Temp of the Senate? Assuming, which I do not want to do, that the 
Republicans prevail, the President Pro Tem of the Senate will be the longest 
serving Senator belonging to the same party as the former President. All 
right so who is this Republican Senator? It is none other than the Republican 
Senior Senator (and I do mean “Senior”) Charles E. Grassley who is presently 
91 years of age.

 Can you imagine the chaos in the Country if some tragedy, natural 
or otherwise, eliminated the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the 
House and in the midst of this confusion a man in his early nineties has the 
responsibility of running the country? I believe there should be age limits 
applying to elected office and Supreme Court sitting Judges. The absence of 
these restrictions is so frightening that I don’t want to talk about that either.

The actual subject of this article entitled OFTEN MORE LEADS TO LESS 
is the recently released Book entitled NEXUS written by Yuval Noah Harari. 
After seeing the author interviewed I prevailed on my wife to drive me to 
the almost only bookstore still remaining in the area, and I bought the book. 
The full title of the book is A Brief History of Information Networks from 
the Stone Age to AI.

The major point of the book is that information has led to the accumulation 
of power, but POWER IS NOT WISDOM. In fact, too much information has 
led to an existential crisis facing our species which we humans named Homo 
Sapiens ---(the wise human) are now on the verge of being annihilated by the 
misuse of our own power which has busily created technologies that have the 
potential to escape our control and enslave us. The author asks why are we so 
good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at 
acquiring wisdom? He does not believe this result stems from some fatal flaw 
in our nature which tempts us to pursue power for its own sake even though 
as a species we do not know how to handle that power. The main argument 
of the book is that “humankind gains enormous power by building large 
networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us 
to use that power unwisely.”

The remedy suggested is to be wary of the controlling networks not by 
acquiring more information but by recognizing our own inner feelings and 
the feelings of others. It is hard work to talk and care about other people, 
but this work must be done. We have the choice to be wise humans which 
requires awareness and compassion rather than more information. The 
concluding sentence of the book emphasizes that the decisions we all make 
in the coming years may be the beginning of a hopeful new chapter in the 
evolution of life. 

We need to be brave enough not to conform but to be a wise human and to 
strive for wisdom rather than control. Time will tell. 

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THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SUCKS

DICK POLMAN

HOWARD Hays As I See It


Half a century ago, 
the famed presidential 
biographer James 
MacGregor Burns voiced 
this warning about the 
Electoral College: “It’s a 
game of Russian roulette, 
and one of these days 
we are going to blow our 
brains out.”

 We’ve since done that twice. 
Popular vote loser George W. Bush marched 
us into a disastrous war in Iraq, based on 
lies about non-existent weapons of mass 
destruction. But he was just the appetizer. 
The execrable entree was popular vote loser 
Donald Trump, who’s still wreaking havoc 
and plotting an authoritarian restoration.

 I’m well aware it’s a waste of time 
to rail against the insipid way we pick our 
presidents – we’re obviously stuck with 
a process that was rightly denounced by 
the American Bar Association decades 
ago as “archaic, undemocratic, complex, 
ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous” – but 
this is my quadrennial complaint. And it’s 
been stoked anew by all the re-minders that 
the Harris-Trump contest will be decided 
by a mere seven of the 50 states.

 If life was fair and democracy was 
real, all votes would be created equal. That’s 
how it works in most western nations, 
where the candidate with the most votes 
wins. What a simple concept.

 Instead we have this ridiculous 
contrivance, a remnant of the racist pow-
dered-wig era, which currently gives 
the voters of Pennsylvania, Michi-gan, 
Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and 
North Carolina more clout than all other 
voters everywhere else.

 At last check, 65 percent of 
Americans feel the way I do (according to 
the pollsters at Pew), and it’s easy to see why. 
The injustices are endless – more so than 
ever, thanks to our deep red/blue divide. If 
you’re a Demo-crat living in, say, Alabama 
or Texas or Oklahoma, your presidential 
vote is worthless. If you’re a Republicans 
living in, say, California or New York or 
Illinois, your presidential vote is worthless. 
A blue voter in red Indiana said it well this 
week in a tweet: “It’s pretty pathetic that I 
know ahead of Nov 5th my vote won’t count 
because of the Electoral College. Oh, I will 
definitely vote but the Electoral College will 
make me silent. I hate our system!”

 The system was concocted by 
the founders. They had to cut a deal with 
the southerner slaveholders who feared 
domination by the more popu-lous North. 
James Madison, the chief architect of the 
Constitution, later wrote that many of the 
founding fathers liked the popular-vote 
concept, but the slaveholding states did not 
– because they had fewer voters than the 
slave-free states. The deal, which gave us 
the Electoral College, en-sured that smaller 
rural states would have disproportionate 
clout. They get the same number of U.S. 
senators (two apiece) as the big states, and 
that inflates their electoral votes.

 Madison himself wasn’t happy with 
the Electoral College rules; he blamed “the 
hurrying influence produced by fatigue 
and impatience.” They left us massive 
disparities all over the map. One random 
example tells the tale: Wyoming, with 
581,381 people, gets three electoral votes 
(two senators and one House member), 
while Pennsylvania, with 13 mil-lion 
people, gets 19 electoral votes (two senators 
and 17 House mem-bers). Do the math. In 
Wyoming that’s 193,000 people for each 
elector; in Pennsylvania that’s 684,210 
people for each elector. These injustices, 
replicated nationwide, violate the principle 
that all votes should count the same.

 It was outrageous in 2020 that Joe 
Biden defeated Trump by a decisive seven 
million votes – but still would’ve lost if 
only 44,000 votes in three swing states had 
swung the other way. It was outrageous in 
2016 that Hillary Clinton outpaced Trump 
by three million votes – but lost only be-
cause 77,000 votes in 3 swing states went 
the other way. And this kind of injustice 
goes both ways: Lest we forget, way back 
in 2004, a switch of just 59,388 votes in 
Ohio would’ve handed the presidency 
to Democrat John Kerry – even though 
President Bush beat him in the national 
popu-lar vote tally by 3.5 million.

 Here in 2024, it’s the same old shell 
game. Conditioned as I am to our system’s 
absurdities, I assume that Kamala Harris 
could bury Trump in the national vote and 
still flunk the Electoral College. I assume 
that un-less she wins by at least four percent 
nationwide, she’s toast.

 The will of the 
people should 
determine who 
gets the nuclear 
codes. That’s fairer 
than the Electoral 
College, which 
was fervently 
denounced back in 
2012 as “a disaster 
for democracy.”

 That surfaced 
in a tweet. The guy 
who typed it was 
Donald Trump.

As president, Donald Trump was “not a fan” of crypto, 
saying it was “based on thin air”. Shortly after leaving 
office, he called it a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to 
happen”. But fast-forward to last July and candidate 
Trump calls for creation of a “strategic national bitcoin 
stockpile” and the United States becoming “crypto 
capital of the world”.

 

Now comes World Liberty Financial - renamed from 
“Trump DeFi (decentralized finance) Project” - under 
the leadership of Don Jr., Eric and Barron Trump (about 
whom his father boasted, “knows this stuff inside 
out”). Also behind the project are individuals with considerable digital 
marketing backgrounds in products like colon cleanses and “Date Hotter 
Girls LLC”. (The colon cleanse guy, Chris Herro, described himself as 
“dirtbag of the internet”. He’s handling “data & strategies” for the new 
firm.)

 

Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance recently said you “have to create sto-
ries so that the American media actually pays attention”. But this is stuff 
you can’t just make up.

 

One can see advantages in the project, though. For an oligarch seeking 
favors from a new administration, laundering funds through crypto 
can be done more discretely than through Trump hotels, golf courses - 
or funneling assets from a sovereign wealth fund into Jared Kushner’s 
pro-jects.

 

Trump’s campaign would rather we focus instead on issues of more se-
rious concern; like immigrants eating pets, students having gender-
altering surgeries at school and whether or not Kamala Harris had ever 
actually worked at McDonald’s. (As I’m writing this, candidate Harris is 
speaking on affordable childcare for working families - as if that might be 
a more widespread concern than pet-eating immigrants.)

 

As for Stu’s column, he commented on L.A. Clippers owner Steve 
Ballmer’s observations on the precarious balance between capitalism and 
democracy. I was reminded of an interview some years ago be-tween a 
conservative radio host and one of Germany’s wealthiest indus-trialists. 
The host asked his guest if he resented his country’s onerous taxes - taking 
such a big chunk of his income to pay for social programs (healthcare, 
education, family leave, housing, anti-poverty, etc.) - com-pared to what 
those taxes would be here in the U.S.

 

The host was surprised by his guest’s answer that no, he didn’t mind paying 
those taxes - “Because I wouldn’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”

 

Something to think about. But for now, I’m wondering if they’ll get to 
the bottom of V.P. Harris’ employment history at McDonalds. And why 
Trump thinks less than two months before an election is a great time for 
his family to launch a crypto firm.


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