Republican logic and rhetoric: Ornstein and Mann say (1) the Republicans lied wholesale throughout the fall 2012 campaign and (2) the mainstream media was too worried about the appearance of impartiality to cover that story. Mark Hemingway's rebuttal (in The Weekly Standard) of Ornstein and Mann uses a curious strategy. Hemingway notes that Politifact, an important national fact-checker, found that Republicans lied about three times as egregiously as the Democrats did. He then uses this point as evidence that O&M are wrong--see, the story was covered--, ignoring that Politifact is corroborating the first half of O&M's claim. So Hemingway gets us to focus on one exception to the second half of O&M's thesis, and denies the whole first half, which he dismisses as an ideological disagreement rather than a case of outraged empiricism--which is exactly the core of what's at issue. This will presumably keep him in good standing with Republicans, but it also makes him complicit in their dishonesty. We have had five years--or 200+ years--of this. In 2008 the most disheartening thing about Barack Obama's campaign was his readiness to throw truth under the bus. But most of his speeches and ads were mostly true--while half or more of Senator McCain's weren't. (See FactCheck and Politifact. Lots of "Pants on Fire" lies.) Again this year, judged by a standard of truthfulness, the President's campaign earned no honors. And again the Republicans were worse, far worse. I don't see what to do about it except not to do it and try to persuade others not to do it. Cite sources (real sources). Make concessions where appropriate. Don't demonize; stick to the record and the facts and the issues. "In war, truth is the first casualty" is an insight of millennias' standing. Too much of our politics is now conducted by the abysmal standards of war. There are many unanticipated and unrecognized consequences.

GSP website

Granite State Priorities= gspriorities.org

Granite State Priorities overview

We live in a state where (a) poor people pay an effective tax rate as a percentage of income four times as high as rich people; and where (b) the public sector is losing ground every day--our public schools are being devalued and underfunded; our higher education system is being underfunded; our public safety employees as well as our teachers are being criticized as though they were selfish people on the take from those who work hard; our environmental resources--Great Bay, our rivers, our ocean--are being gradually degraded; our neediest citizens, of whom there are many, are seeing diminished support systems that were not lavish in the first place. Meanwhile we continue not to tax estates, no matter how large, not to tax income, no matter how large. Instead the entire public sector is demonized, services are reduced, and people's property taxes continue to rise irrespective of their ability to pay them. Last year in my town (Exeter) dozens of people were threatened with eviction from their homes, many of them mobile homes, for non-payment of property taxes. This state of affairs is called The NH Advantage. Horsefeathers. NH's advantages are its people and its natural resources. These real advantages are under attack, typically under disguised attack.

NH needs revenue reform, and that is how GSP aims to address the issues we are thinking about today. We aim to change the conversation, so that it is less dominated by mythology and manipulation, and instead is characterized more often by transparency and information. If we are successful, the state will reconnect its tax bills more closely with the ability to pay them; we will sustain a public sector that performs many critical functions; and we will recover a sense of freedom that includes more than the right to self-defense and the right to stiff the community at tax time. Living free can mean and should mean not just the strength and capacity to defend ourselves and not just healthy self-reliance but compassion, fairness, and the ability to look beyond the present moment. If you want to live in a state with strong public schools, a state where communities are prepared to manage their own wastes, so that Great Bay can recover instead of becoming a clone of the Chesapeake, a state where people with disabilities can find help and all people can access a functional court system, a state where employees are not vilified for defending their own as well as the community's interests--in short, a state where freedom means more than resistance to tyranny and the right to shoot intruders in your home--take a look at gspriorities.org, and think about how you can join us in rebuilding the real NH advantage. We need letters to newspapers, emails and phone calls to legislators, some money, some help with the effective use of electronic media. "We" at the moment means the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the northern NE District of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Friends Service Committee, the League of Women Voters, the National Education Association, the State Employees Association, Every Child Matters--and an increasing number of citizens at large. Join us.

a novel to hang onto

I read C.E. Morgan's All the Living with two classes of eleventh graders this term, and my high regard for this book was reconfirmed by their discussions and essays. Not that everyone loved it; but only deep imaginative engagement could have produced the essays that explored it.

Tribute to Mudslide

Tribute to Mudslide (for Charles Pratt) Mr. Loomis was already in Sag Harbor with his wife, the writer Hilary Mills, and their 8-year-old chocolate Lab, Mudslide. The New York Times Without pretense or vanity the name says that all three are unspeakably wonderful; it pushes back against the malevolent chances and grim certainties of the world. Does Mudslide hurtle drunkenly down the bank like an otter? If present at a disaster would he help find victims under the fallen hillsides? As a chosen name it proclaims: here is anarchic energy restrained, disciplined, domesticated. Mr. Loomis, newly retired, is 84, Ms. Mills' age not given. In naming they do not overlook love's daily melding of effort and gift, forgiveness and delight. As though knowing that mud is hard to wash off or vaccuum, Mudslide too must honor the customs of the house much of the time. May he do so gladly, and may it be so with his people, and with us.