For More on the 4th District Race for Syracuse Common Council

A good, short piece on this race by Tim Knauss today in the Post-Standard.  If you'd like to hear more from the candidates directly in a substantive and lively half-hour conversation, see their recent appearance on the Campbell Conversations, which you can find here.  This is probably the most interesting and competitive race at the Common Council district level.

Three Syracuse Common Council Surprises

I had the pleasure of moderating the Syracuse Common Council candidate forum last night (Tuesday 10/25) at Nottingham High School, sponsored by Parents for Public Schools, the League of Women Voters, La Liga, and Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse (ACTS).  Many of the Council candidates participated--11 in all. 

I was surprised at least three times during the evening.

First, I was surprised by something several of the candidates told me after the event--that there have not been any similar all-candidate, city-wide forums.  Some individual district candidates have done their own events, but generally, the public has had very little opportunity to hear from the candidates directly.

Second, and made more surprising by the first surprise, it appears that this forum will not get coverage in the Post-Standard.  The photographer was there, but I did not see a reporter, and an email today to one reporter suggests that it will not get covered.  Hopefully I'm wrong about that.

Third, and perhaps most surprising of all, was the response I got to an extemporaneous question I posed to those candidates who had opponents. 

Noting that elections were about choices for the voters, I asked them, when it comes to education policy, what the most important difference was between them and their opponents. 

Most of them really struggled to answer this, and in four cases, the response was that they didn't know enough about their opponent's positions to draw a contrast.  They wanted to talk about their own general qualifications instead.  I have to admit, I've been in this business for 30 years and I was stunned.  If you  don't know enough about what you and your opponent stand for to make a distinction, how do you run?  Do you leave this essential contrast to the voter to figure out without any information?  On election day you can only pull one lever (or in the at-large race, two out of four).

As it turned out, the one candidate who was most eager to answer the question had no opponent and volunteered something about his recent visits with education groups.  Another incumbent highlighted that she had prior experience on the council.  Ok, but that's still not the contrasting information I need as a voter trying to sort this out.

The two candidates who were willing and able to talk about their differences, civilly I would add, were Howie Hawkins and Khalid Bey, the candidates for the fourth district seat.  On that note, I'd encourage readers interested in city elections to check out their Campbell Conversations "debate" on WRVO, which you can find here, and where they develop these differences at greater length.

Of course, when it comes to incomplete information things can get worse, and they did not too long ago in my own voting district East of Syracuse, when, in a school board election, there were only as many candidates as spots to fill and there was ABSOLUTELY NO policy-relevant information provided about the candidates.  And according to the school district, there were no public forums. 

(Voters sigh here.)

The Strange and Intriguing Political Death Spiral of Ann Marie Buerkle and Dan Maffei

Despite getting increasingly disgusted with some of the political rhetoric I've been hearing and reading (see earlier posts on this), I still love the way that politics creates strange ironies and paradoxes.

Here's one I've been pondering a bit recently:  Given likely redistricting outcomes, Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle desperately need each other. 

Why is this a paradox?  Because, based on watching the two of them debate and listening to what they have said publicly about each other--and not said--I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that they are not the best of pals.

But in considering possible redistricting schemes here in this area, their best--and perhaps only--chance of winning back or keeping a congressional seat in 2012 is if they can run against each other.

New York must give up two congressional districts, and pundits have identified the Syracuse area as ripe for getting carved up and merged into other existing districts, at the same time that those other districts are re-shaped.  There are several political reasons that this is the likely outcome--the subject for another blog perhaps.

But if this carving up were to happen, Ann Marie Buerkle would most likely be pitted against incumbent Richard Hanna in a Republican primary.  Hard to see her winning that match-up.  Hanna is a well-liked, bona fide moderate Republican.  Moderate Republican still fits this regional area well--just ask Joanie Mahoney for instance. 

The other scenarios have her running against a series of incumbent western Democrats, and given the politics of geography, those would be tough races for her (assuming she got the nomination).  The final more remote possibility is that she would take on Democrat Bill Owens, and in that race she'd have both geography and ideological positioning working against her.  Owens has established himself as a more moderate Democrat.

Dan Maffei has a similar problem, perhaps an even more severe version of it.  It's very hard to imagine him beating any of the aforementioned Democrats in a primary--and in some cases I doubt he'd even be likely to challenge them.  He'd be facing the same tough geographic politics, for one thing. 

In addition, despite the fact that he has run as a self-styled moderate, and also that he has some votes and positions to bolster that claim, I do not think he is solidly perceived to be particularly moderate, and perception is what counts in an election.  That would hurt him in a primary race against Bill Owens, for example.

But where that problem would really hurt him is in a general election against Richard Hanna.  Just like Buerkle, he'd be running against a well-liked bona fide moderate, and again, it's hard to imagine him winning that match-up if he's carrying any liberal baggage.

Of course, things can rapidly change in politics.  But the way it seems to be shaping up, the best hope either of them has is a re-match with the other.

Finally, A Political "Debate" That Worked

If you have any interest in the city of Syracuse, you might want to check out my recent Campbell Conversation program with Howie Hawkins and Khalid Bey, available on WRVO's website or through the Campbell Institute's website.

Perhaps the most intriguing local race this November is the match-up in the fourth City Council district between Democrat and Working Families Party candidate Bey and Green Party candidate Hawkins.  Hawkins has run for many seats in the past, including governor and U.S. Senator, and not come close to winning, but the last time he ran for city council he garnered about 40 percent of the vote.  This race may be his best shot.  The seat is typically held by a Democrat.  In this lively conversation, the two candidates describe the specific new initiatives they would propose to the Council, the most important differences between them, and the biggest challenges facing the city.  In individual questions, Hawkins addresses how he’d try to be effective as a third party member on a Council dominated by Democrats, and Bey explains what phrases on his personal website like “Egyptian and Taoist alchemy” mean for his own personal development, and how he’d try to work in a bi-partisan manner if elected. 

[update:  The personal website providing that information appears to have been taken down since the interview.]

It's tough to get at meaningful substance in a short debate with political candidates, but in this conversation, I think the listener can walk away with a pretty good read on what each of them would emphasize in office, and what the most important differences are between them.  You can also begin to get a more general sense of how they think and who they are. 

One thing that helped the effort is that it seemed clear to me that these two candidates had some measure of respect for each other, and may even like each other.  This seemed to contribute to their general lack of defensiveness and caution and the absence of silly caricatures of what their opponent stood for.

Give it a listen and see what you think.

Getting Real on Global Warming

This week on The Campbell Conversations I’m talking with Dan Grossman, a freelance environmental journalist who has frequently appeared on NPR and the BBC, and has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Scientific American.  He’s won a host of prestigious awards and been funded by many highly respected organizations—among them the Peabody award, the National Science Foundation, and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.  In our conversation he puzzles over the enduring controversy surrounding global warming, despite the clear scientific consensus on it, and he describes some of the problems that scientists have in communicating their findings to the public.  Along the way he relates some of the more interesting people he’s encountered in his adventures—I found the story about using sawdust to try to save glacier ice particularly interesting.

What I was most struck by, however, was Dan’s forcefulness in putting on the table the extent of change—and even sacrifice—that, according to him, is required to really address global warming.  He notes that even among his friends and colleagues, who are tuned in to global warming as a problem, there is a false sense of consciousness about what it will take to change it.  This is a politically tough position to adopt, and you do not hear it frequently expressed by candidates.  So his puzzling left me puzzling—over how to introduce those difficult conversations into meaningful political discussions.  I don’t have a ready answer for that.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

(Note:  I am on distribution lists for a variety of political organizations and no one's hands are clean.)

I just received a mass email from Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the two independents in Congress.  It starts like this:

"Republicans hate Social Security because it has been an extraordinary success and has done exactly what it was designed to do. It is the most successful government program in our nation's history and is enormously popular."

Personally, I am not a big fan of the attacks on Social Security, and I have found some of them to be completely off-base, but this just doesn't help things.  Until we stop talking this nonsense about those with whom we disagree, we are going nowhere politically. 

This has got to change, all around.  In this game of chicken, will someone grab the steering wheel please?

Hollow Judicial Elections?

This November we'll reprise the curious American tradition of electing judges.  Most other western nations, such as Britain, use nonpartisan or bipartisan panels of legal experts to recommend or fill these posts.  On balance, I think this is probably the better way to go, despite its apparent non-democratic character.

The reason?  The information that a citizen can gather about the candidates is horribly thin, and thus these races usually turn into name-recognition contests or party-affiliation affairs--funded by private donations--in which voters have no real clue what they're doing.

The judicial candidates don't help matters.  They are loath to associate any kind of pattern of decision-making with their party affiliation, and they all tend to run on the following platform:  I'm honest, I'm tough on criminals, and I'm caring toward families.  As if their opponents are running on a platform of lying, promoting crime, and beating up children. 

The candidates will also share photos of themselves with their spouse, two children, and a dog.  (Why never a cat?  I guess because, at the end of the day, you can't trust a cat.  Actually, I have a cat you can trust, but to be honest he's pretty dumb.  I digress.)

Even with the advent of the Internet, it's tough to find out anything substantive about the candidates.  Tom Buckel, a local candidate for State Supreme Court Judge, comes close, however.  He's got some information on his website about how he intends to limit the influence of campaign contributions, by pledging to recuse himself from cases where contributors are involved.  He's also posted his "judicial philosophy," but this is in essence a commitment to be fair, reasonable and competent.  It's not a set of issue positions.

To gather the information that one would need in order to made a good decision among the candidates, a voter would have to know the candidates personally, or spend time with them as they reason through legal conflicts and react to legal challenges, or read the things that they've written before they announced their candidacies.  That's just not realistic on a mass scale. 

But none of this is meant to suggest that it doesn't matter who occupies these positions.  They are crucial for a healthy society and a functioning democracy.  And the races are not tweedle-dee versus tweedle-dum.  It's just that our method of making the choice does not promote democratic aims.

I think I'll try to get at least one set of judicial candidates on The Campbell Conversations this fall, to see if it's possible to have a substantive discussion in which the candidates will meaningfully disagree with each other.  It will be an interesting experiment, if nothing else. 

Until then, look for the Labrador Retriever.

Changes to The Campbell Conversations Airing Schedule

The Campbell Conversations on WRVO will now be a stand-alone program airing at 6:30 p.m. on Fridays and 4 p.m. on Saturdays.  As before, it will also be available as a podcast through WRVO's website.  WRVO is going through some staff reallocations and for now it has discontinued its "Weekly Edition" program, in which The Campbell Conversations had been embedded.  I'm excited that the program will now occupy an evening "prime-time" slot.

Please also note that for the upcoming program this week--my interview with Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle--the full interview will air at 4 p.m. on Saturday, and a somewhat shorter version of the interview will be broadcast on Friday morning during NPR's "Morning Edition," at 6:35 and 8:35.  The interview will not air Friday evening--that change becomes effective the following week.

If you are a listener to the program, I thank you for your support!

Remembering the Personal Loss of 9-11

On this week's Campbell Conversation interview--moved from its normal spot to the Morning Edition broadcast for Friday, September 9--I'm speaking with Mark Morabito.  Mark lost his wife, Laura Lee Defazio Morabito, in the September 11th attacks--she was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, one of the two planes flown into the World Trade Center.  In this interview he remembers the day and looks back at the 10 years that have passed--and how that event, and that loss, have affected his own life.  What is a vivid historical event for most Americans is a wrenching personal loss for him.  He talks about how some of his political views, as well as his views about life and death, have changed, and he also describes how he plans to mark 9-11 this year.

I left the interview thinking about this combination of an immediate personal loss and a historical event that remains vivid for those old enough to remember it, but which is also receding in time.  And I was reminded of a moment several years ago when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. visited our Syracuse campus to give a speech about the environment.  Along the way he referenced John F. Kennedy’s presidency and his memories of that era.  He then began a sentence with “When my uncle was murdered…,” which stopped me cold, and in that second reframed my sense of the Kennedy assassination—what had been a historical event captured on amateur film became a crime victim’s personal story. 

I imagine that dealing with that paradox will follow the families of the victims of 9-11 throughout their entire lives.

Inequality's Mountains

This week on the Campbell Conversations I'm talking with Pat Driscoll, the operations director for Syracuse’s Say Yes to Education Program.  Three years ago, Say Yes was rolled out with great expectations--words like “transformative” were used to describe the hoped-for impact of this program that blends an extensive in-class and extra-curricular support network with the ultimate promise of free college tuition.  Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, for example, appears to have hung her hat--and perhaps her re-election--on this program.

The program has had past success elsewhere in targeting smaller numbers of children within a school, but it’s never been applied to an entire school district.  I was curious to know whether it's realizing its promise, three years on.  The question is particularly timely, as the program is slated to be financed solely by the city  in 2013, and it would then account for ten percent of the entire school budget.  Given the layoffs we've already seen in the school district, it's likely that continuing this program will mean fewer traditional teacher lines.  I explore that question with Pat, and we also discuss just what makes the program so different from previous efforts to overcome the educational challenges that disadvantaged students face.

This interview left me thinking about those challenges--and just how steep they are for the children growing up in poor neighborhoods.  Study after study has documented the rise in inequality over the past 30 years, and the backpedaling in real terms for those living in the bottom half of the income distribution.  Housing patterns have also become more segregated during the same time period.  All of this further concentrates educational problems in certain school districts and certain schools.  I wonder whether any program rooted in the educational system, however broadly framed, can effectively address the challenges.  If the program ultimately fails to demonstrate significant measurable improvement, it may be more a testament to the difficulty of the task than a breakdown in design and implementation.

What's Good for the Goose....?

This week I'm talking with Syracuse's newly appointed Aviation Commissioner, Christina Reale (she had previously been serving in this post in an interim capacity).  Her position entails the overall management of, and planning for, the Syracuse airport--and there have been a lot of recent press stories related to the airport.  We discuss the plans for the airport's renovation--and the financing for that renovation--as well as the decision to change its governance structure from being city controlled to operating under an independent regional authority.  We also discuss the airport’s long-term fiscal health, the pricing at the airport (for both concessions and flights), the growing role of women in aviation management, and the large-scale changes in passengers’ airport experiences, post 9-11. 

I left this conversation thinking about the twists, turns, and ironies in political arguments.  The argument in favor of an independent regional authority, which the Syracuse mayor strongly supports, is almost precisely the same argument that the Syracuse School Board has made to remain independent of the mayor's office--that having an independent body with one focus (either the airport or the school system) will lead to better decision-making and better management than a structure in which there are many competing objects of attention.  But also note that the new regional airport authority will have a majority of seats appointed by the mayor, so perhaps this is a middle ground of sorts that might ultimately be followed for the school board.

The Silver Lining in the British Newspaper Hacking Scandal

...That is, beyond the obvious silver lining if you're a supporter of the Labour Party, as the association between David Cameron (and Andy Coulson) and Murdoch can only help Labour (note that Blair and Brown courted him as well, but it's the timing that matters in this case). 

What I have in mind here, however, is something less obvious and admittedly, much smaller beer (to use a British phrase). 

Had the plans for the full acquisition of B-Sky-B gone through, News Corp would have had to shed its Sky News channel, in order not to run afoul of the British rules and expectations about impartiality in broadcast news.  Indeed, this move was part of the plan for the acquisition. 

Sky News provides essentially the only real alternative to the BBC's main streaming news channel (aside from CNN), and is a quality product.  But it doesn't make money--it's run instead as a "loss leader" by Murdoch, and is cross-subsidized by other lucrative satellite channels, in particular sports (and even more specifically football).

Having it taken over by another independent entity would have certainly gutted the operation.  So if Sky News is spared, the Brits get to keep one additional quality news channel.

The Dual Masters of a Newspaper

Tomorrow on the Campbell Conversations I’m talking with Tim Atseff from The Syracuse Post-Standard.  Prior to his recent retirement, Tim had worked 46 years for the paper (yes, 46), starting off as a copy boy and working his way up through the art department to become a managing editor, before creating and editing three regional magazines published by the paper’s parent company—Central New York Magazine (sometimes called The Good Life), CNY Business Exchange, and Central New York Sports.  In this interview, he looks back at his time with the paper, and reflects on the new economic challenges the industry is facing.  He also discusses the highpoints and lowpoints of the paper’s performance, its coverage of the Destiny project and its political endorsements, and the business models for the new magazines he created. 

The interview left me thinking about the dual roles of a newspaper—on the one hand a profit-driven business that happens to supply information as its product, and on the other a public-service institution that’s uniquely responsible for providing its community the civic information it requires in order to function democratically.  Both roles were evident in the way that Tim talked about his experiences over the years.  Clearly there are inherent tensions between the two—had there been more time, I would have liked to explore the paper’s coverage of Destiny in more detail, for example.  A former colleague of mine now teaching at Harvard, Tom Patterson, has argued that the profit-driven role leaves the American media poorly suited to fill its public service role (see his book Out of Order, among others).  I don’t have a ready substitute in mind, though in the broadcast world I am a big fan of the BBC (and of course NPR!).  The “Beeb” or “Auntie,” as the BBC is often called, provides several TV channels and a variety of quality radio stations, along with a really fine website.  I think the British citizens get pretty good value for their license fee.  But I continue to ponder the American conundrum.

Yes, there are Internet-based outlets and there are other news publications in Syracuse, and there are of course broadcast outlets, but there really is no competitive alternative to The Post-Standard for the kind of product it supplies--as Tim points out in the interview.  So given its civic role, in some important respects the paper, despite being privately owned, is a unique public institution, and we need it to act like one if it is going to fill its role properly.  It's not clear how well that fits with a business model.

Like Blue Ribbon Commissions? Then Why Not Consider the Real Thing -- The House of Lords

Check out this week's Campbell Conversation from London (my work there has been the reason for the posting hiatus), in which I talk with one of Britain's leading experts on the structure of its political system--its "constitution" (the country has no codified constitution in the American sense).  He's Philip Norton, a Member of the House of Lords.  You can find the interview here.

Lord Norton offers many interesting observations about the myriad of political changes and reforms the country has either made or seriously considered over the past 15 years.  In some ways, the changes bring certain aspects of Britain's system closer to ours.

One such proposed change is to make the House of Lords into an elected chamber, versus the appointed body it is now.  Norton persuasively argues that from the perspective of high-quality policy-making and clear democratic accountability, the Lords fill an essential role that would be ruined by elections, and that an elected Lords would introduce new problems for democracy.

It's a provocative and thought-provoking interview, and given the American penchant for enlisting blue ribbon commissions when the political challenges get toughest, it contains some counter-intuitive suggestions for improving our own democracy.

Somehow, Even More on J-E

In the opening of his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte--a work about the 1851 French coup d'etat by Napoleon's nephew--Karl Marx, remarking on Hegel's observation that history tends to repeat itself, quipped that "He forgot to add:  the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." 

What about the third time? 

Now the new superintendent of J-E is embroiled in a scandal regarding a contract and an apparent relationship with the director of operations.  This was the superintendent who took what I thought to be a too aggressive and overly closed-off approach toward public comment in the wake of the strong reactions against the board's dismissal of several administrators.

In a separate set of recent Post-Standard stories, it was also reported that there are state-level investigations into actions that occurred while these administrators were in place--the subject of my recent and now missing blog post (see below).  The most significant inquiry seems to be the state AG examining the treatment of student records.  It looks like the outcome of these investigations may suggest that the original decisions of the board were justified, but we'll have to see.  I had wondered about something like this months ago, and wrote as much--things just didn't make any sense otherwise.

But back to this latest development.  Everything has been under microscopes for months.  What was the thinking in drawing up and approving that contract, especially given the other matters suggested by the paper?

The other day I had written--in the now-missing post--that it will likely take a very long time, and some expert outside help from people J-E residents trust, in order for the community to recover from the past year.  Double that now.

Lost Post

I posted something on the Jordan-Elbridge saga the other day, and mysteriously, it is now not here.  Did anyone see it, or did it never appear?  There have been other smaller-scale strange happenings using this basic blog tool.  I will investigate.

A Radical Proposal to Unchallenged Republican County Candidates -- A Real Debate Versus a Campaign

Yesterday's Post-Standard reported that the three top county-wide incumbent elected officials are not likely to face any Democratic Party opposition next fall, and may not even have minor party opposition.

In each individual case there are good reasons why a serious potential Democratic candidate might decide to sit this cycle out, and there are some good overall reasons for this as well.  Some of them are related in the story, which you can find here.  Serious, quality challengers tend to pick their runs very carefully.

My purpose in writing about this is something different, however, and it relates to the small-d democratic concern that the story points to--is it good for our system to have people running unopposed?  The short answer of course is no.  But if it proves to be true this fall, this feature could offer a silver lining--which I propose here as a challenge to the incumbents as well as thoughtful critics in the community.

Official campaigns have become overly guarded, packaged affairs, with the adversaries more worried about not screwing something up than with convincing people to sign on to a coherent and bold set of policy ideas.  The candidates rarely engage each other intellectually.  In other words, we've come a long way from Lincoln-Douglas.

Since this time around the incumbents literally can't lose, why not take this opportunity to have some real conversations in the public interest on the issues that relate to each position?  What I have in mind are a series of debates, or rather let's just call them spirited, authentic discussions, in which the incumbent would pair off with someone in the community who has a view different from the decisions the incumbent has made and the path he or she has followed.  They don't necessarily have to be directly opposed, just different.  This discussion could then lead to a broader discussion of the macro-level ideas and values that guide their more specific policy positions--what H.W. Bush used to call "the vision thing."

So, for example, a retired judge might debate District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick about evidence and disclosure rules, which could in turn lead to a discussion about philosophies of criminal justice and the best ways to reduce crime.  Or County Executive Joanie Mahoney might debate someone from the suburbs about the proper relationship between the city and the towns, which could lead to a broader discussion about consolidation and the meaning of political boundaries.  Personally, I'd love to see a debate on the role of party, party discipline, and the nature of executive leadership.

Would this still seem risky to an incumbent?  You bet--what if they "lose" the debate?  But if it were set up in the right way, and the participants approached it in the right spirit, I think it's possible to avoid this trap.  The media would have to help out with this part, and it may require an act of great restraint by the paper and other outlets not to report the events as zero-sum games.  But we remember the Lincoln-Douglas debates not because of who "won" them, but because of the importance of the questions, the process used, and the substantive quality of the entire argument.

Incumbents:  What do you think--are you game?  And are there people out there who are up to the challenge?

Can't Anybody Here Play This Change?

I get a lot of partisan communications and solicitations for donations, from all sides and through all mediums.  It comes with the territory.  The messages almost all of them contain are absurd caricatures of their adversaries, and it will come as no surprise to anyone that I've seen no evidence of a tone-down or a fact-up since the "change I could believe in" election of 2008.  Policy has moved, but not politics. 

But I received one such piece the other day that's particularly notable for the irony--hence this post.  It happens to be from the Democrats.  Senator Charles Schumer and Democratic Party Headquarters, on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, sent to a misspelled version of me an alarmist warning about the "Radical Right's" imminent takeover of the U.S. Senate.  The Cracker Jack prize inside the envelope was a notepad with the following line printed at the top of every sheet:  "Stand with President Obama for Lasting Change:  Silence GOP Lies." 

Really?  That's the change we can believe in?  Like I'm going to jot down a note on that and leave it for a work colleague or the UPS guy.  I wonder what the actual President Obama would do with this.  My last thread of civic faith says he tears it up--that's what I did.

The Wisdom of Crowds?

Following the killing of Osama bin Laden, there's been much discussion about the morality of the spontaneous celebrations that broke out in several American cities, most notably New York and Washington, DC, the two cities most closely associated with the 9/11 attacks.  I too had an immediate reaction when I saw the crowds cheering, but my thoughts went not so much to whether it was wrong--or just bad form--but rather to whether it was wise.  Others have since made this point, but I'm sure this footage is being viewed, re-viewed, shared, and stored by some we'd rather not have seen it.  While I understand, empathize with, and even share the impulse that led these folks into the street, a second chance to think on it beforehand would have served us well down the road.

The footage also led me to wonder what the British were doing.  They too have much reason to celebrate bin Laden's death, but they also have much more experience living with terrorism.  I wrote several London friends and colleagues, and none reported hearing of or seeing any kind of public celebrations.

Looking at the pictures of the crowds and observing their youth, I'm left wondering how much of this was a social media celebration--a strange and more trivial bookend of sorts to what we've seen in the Arab Spring.

And circling back to the title of this post, it also bears noting that most of us didn't take to the streets.  In the new media age, however, that basic fact is just context.

Honoring All Our Heroes

My colleague and friend Terry Newell let me join a worthy effort he is helping to organize to make sure, as a nation, we properly honor federal civil servants who die in service to our country.  Shockingly--at least to me--we currently have no policy regarding this.

Please see our Post-Standard opinion piece on the issue, which you can find here.