Summary: As the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season cranks its way into the repetitive foreplay of the 2019 pre–primary season, poll numbers for Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are looking progressively less promising (all puns fully intended) then they had earlier this spring. On the other hand, Joe Biden’s poll numbers have quickly established him as the prohibitive favorite; at this stage, despite the fulminations of Sanders and his redeless followers, the primary is very much Joe Biden’s to lose.
What Biden brings to the fight, that Sanders has never been able to muster, is the sheer insurgent joy of a well thought fight. In short, Biden brings a kind of Cavalier joie de vivre that Sanders, the Cromwellian Roundhead, is entirely incapable of mustering. To the extent that joy cometh in the morning (Ps, 30:5), Biden still has the advantage.
---------------------------------------------------
Frankly, it’s hard to tell whether the Democratic 2020 presidential primary, which is now underway much too far in advance, has started to resemble a pilgrimage, a gladiatorial contest, or an orgy.
The backbiting, the dirty tricks, the hit pieces, and the sheer nastiness of the primary season all put us in mind of the Democratic primary season of 2016. The Democrats, like the Bourbons of the ancien régime in France, have lived down to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s mordant witticism that “Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublié,” they have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing.
In the learned nothing and forgotten nothing department may be found particularly Bernard Sanders and his redeless, pugnacious, always-ready-for-a-fight online followers, the so-called Berniebros whose penchant for attacking other candidates or other social media commenters soon became common fodder for watercooler discussions among the American left. Joan Walsh, writing in The Nation, asserted in May, 2016, that “Bernie Sanders is Hurting Himself by Playing the Victim.”; the same month, Harold Meyerson, writing in The American Prospect, warned about “How the Bros Are Undermining Bernie.”
Three years on, the Bros seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Neither has Sen. Sanders. Just recently, this February, in fact, the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman, making “The Case Against Bernie Sanders” observed, as numerous other commentators had done, that the Vermont Senator’s “humorless dogmatism” was undermining his campaign.
If many Democrats fear that Joe Biden is “too old,” or too gaffe-prone to be president, they overlook the fact that Biden is nevertheless noticeably happy in this battle. There is an insurgent, effervescent joy that Joe Biden has brought to this campaign that Bernard Sanders seems utterly incapable of mustering.
Recently, a Biden-supporting queer friend of mine suggested that Joe was rather like the William Hurt character in Kiss of the Spider Woman, playing opposite Raul Julia in the classic scene in which Hurt’s character, imprisoned for being queer, offers Julia’s character, the imprisoned revolutionary, a morsel of avocado. Raul Julia’s character rejects the proffered avocado with the observation that “what life offers... is the struggle.”
In many ways, the difference between the effervescent Joe Biden and the humorless, dogmatic Bernard Sanders can be perfectly summed up by the exchange between the two characters in that scene in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Put another way, harking back to mid-17th century England, the Biden effort comes across with much more a Cavalier sensibility, effervescent, possessed of a sense of joie de vivre, and above all, capable of smiling, laughing, and shrugging off the occasional gaffe.
By contrast, Bernard Sanders, together with his followers, his proverbial Bros, really does come across as grim, prim, dour, sour, doctrinaire, dogmatic, pious, self-righteous, and, da capo al fine, utterly humorless. The entire Sanders campaign has been framed like some kind of Leninist exercise by which aspirants for admission to Komsomol were assigned to write essays on the evils of capitalism and the inevitable triumph of Marxism-Leninism. The whole Sanders effort, in short, resembles nothing so much as an attempted Soviet Mosfilm cover of Ninochka, the 1939 MGM film starring the unforgettable Greta Garbo as a no-nonsense Soviet diplomat.
Mosfilm would have made a pig’s breakfast of Ninochka. Comedy did not go over particularly well in Stalin's Soviet Union.
But even worse, the Sanders effort has come to resemble that of Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads, determined to impose upon the United States the same kind of pious, self-righteous, priggish regime that Old Noll, his Roundheads, and his Major Generals imposed upon Great Britain and Ireland from the execution of King Charles I 1649 until the triumphant return of King Charles II in 1660.
Yet, America neither needs nor desires, nor will it accept, a political dispensation where joy is banished and where it’s Lent in America. Jimmy Carter, an otherwise thoroughly decent and honorable man, learned this lesson to his great political sorrow in 1980. During the Carter years, there was a Lenten sensibility in America. One small example will suffice to make the case: in 1977, under pressure from the Carter Administration, American auto manufacturers ceased production of convertibles because they were ostensibly unsafe.
In less than three months after the administration's ukaz, a thriving after market had sprung up to convert hard tops into convertibles. European manufacturers continued to produce convertibles, most notably the MGB, the swan song of Morris Garages of Abington, Oxfordshire. American consumers were not happy at being stripped of their choice to buy convertibles by what they perceived as a hypertrophied, schoolmarmish government bureaucracy determined to deprive them of all their joie de vivre.
Similarly, in the 1961 mayoral campaign in the city of Los Angeles, under then-Republican incumbent Mayor Norris Poulson, homeowners throughout the city were required to segregate their garbage, much as California homeowners are required to segregate their garbage today. The trash segregation policy proved unpopular, and Poulson was challenged for the mayoralty of Los Angeles by former Democratic Congressman Sam Yorty. Among the planks in Yorty’s platform was an abolition of the garbage segregation requirement. Resentful San Fernando Valley residents put Yorty over the top, knocking Norrie Polson out of office. When Yorty was elected, it was said by Angeleño political wags that Sam Yorty had been swept into office on a wave of garbage.
While it may actually have been a bit much to say that Sam Yorty was really swept into office on a wave of garbage, and equally a reach to suggest that Ronald Reagan was swept into office in a convertible with the top down, it would nevertheless not be too far off the mark to suggest that the Carter administration’s pressure on the then big four automakers to discontinue convertible manufacture, added to the administration’s less than adroit handling of the Iran hostage crisis, may have played a part in Reagan’s victory in 1980,
Suffice it to say, however, that Ronald Reagan understood the temper of America in the early 1980s. His “it’s morning in America” campaign was nothing short of brilliant. It beat Fritz Mondale’s Carter administration redux messaging all to hell. Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders seems to have bought, hook line and sinker, into the Carter/Mondale “it’s Lent in America” messaging. After all, joy cometh in the morning. Ps. 30:5
It may very well be that Joe Biden’s sunny, effervescent, youthful approach to his campaign is part of the reason why Sanders seems to be slipping in the polls. The American public wants a happy warrior; not a hectoring scold.
As long as Bernie Sanders continues to act the part of the superannuated shtetl Stalinist scold, the loudmouth Leninist, the bloviating bourgeois Bolshevik, the man devoid of a sense of humor who sparks no joy, he can expect to be trounced in the primaries, particularly among the women of color who, as I’ll discuss in my next post, will be so enormously consequential in the Democratic primaries of 2020.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand, Esq. Is an attorney, former City Councilman, and Democratic loudmouth who lives in Cathedral city and practices law in the adjacent jurisdiction of Rancho Mirage (where they only have white chocolate). He appreciates, from personal experience, how important women of color are in the political life of the Democratic Party. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Democratic Party.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Monday, May 13, 2019
TIME TO LOWER THE SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT HAMMER ON FACEBOOK
Summary: calls for the breakup of Facebook are coming more often and faster than we had a right to expect. Facebook represents an almost textbook example of the kind of monopoly power against which Sen. John Sherman (brother of the Gen. Sherman who redeveloped the hell out of downtown Atlanta in 1864) inveighed so strongly back in 1890. Facebook’s well-nigh unilateral control over speech and viewpoints, as well as its evident desire to control the political discourse of the United States, makes it a prime candidate for Sherman Act intervention. It’s time to take Gospodin Zuckerberg’s toys away from him and have him sent to his room with no supper.
What conclusions can be drawn from an analysis of the following official text from Facebook?
"We base our policies our Community Standards on input from the people who use Facebook around the world, as well as experts.”
First, let us hone in on the word “experts.” That tells us that Facebook uses a particular group of motivated individuals, usually outsourced in countries of the East Bloc. In short Facebook’s so-called experts are, in all likelihood, motivated East Bloc trolls who consider themselves to have an obvious dog in our American hunt.
“We base our policies are community standards on input from people who use Facebook around the world.”
Second, let’s take that phrase apart. “We base our policies are community standards....” What outsourced East Bloc individual, not fluent in English, composed this ridiculous fragment? Again, it’s obvious that Facebook outsources its moderation and community standards enforcement to countries in the East Bloc. They also probably outsource a substantial portion of their moderation to countries in South Asia, particularly India.
At all events, Facebook’s so-called community standards are based upon the “community standards” of illiberal non-American countries. When moderators apply the “community standards” of Bangalore, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Warsaw, or other countries east of Calais, we may expect a significant level of disrespect for American canons of free speech.
Facebook’s well-nigh unitary control of a great deal of speech in our public spaces ought to cause us significant concern for the future of free societies. Facebook’s suppression of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s calls for the platform to be broken up, together with Facebook’s ill concealed preference for Bernard Sanders and its ill concealed de facto undeclared campaign contributions to Donald Trump ought to cause us considerable agita about the extent to which one monopolistic organization can affect both our politics and our freedom.
When Facebook applies the “community standards” of Bangalore, Budapest, Berlin, or Bucharest to conversations in Palm Springs, Palo Alto, Petaluma, or Pasadena, or even Pocatello, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg scoffs at the idea that Russian intelligence may have been gaming his platform to influence the 2016 presidential election, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg permits the platform to live stream 17 minutes of the mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg looks the other way while agents of the Burmese state stir up on his platform genocidal violence against the Rohingya, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg shades the truth to the United States Congress, and then works assiduously to convey an impression that our representatives are too old and too out of touch to understand the dynamics of his platform, something is very wrong.
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes suggested that the time was at hand for Facebook to be broken up, to required to spin off the Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, and to be barred from further platform acquisitions for at least three years. In short, it really is time to bring down the hammer of the Sherman Antitrust Act on an organization that, in 2019, represents virtually a textbook example of the evils against which Sen. Sherman inveighed when he carried his initial legislation back in 1890.
The representatives and senators who voted for the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 were not nearly so old and out of touch as Gospodin Zuckerberg might have been pleased to describe them had he been alive when the antitrust bill was under consideration by Congress. The 51st Congress knew full well how dangerous monopoly power could be. They had the fortitude and the hardihood to take on industrial exponents of monopoly power. We should expect similar things from the 116th Congress. It’s well past time to lower the hammer of the Sherman Antitrust Act on Gospodin Zuckerberg and his dangerous monopoly, as well as to send Gospodin Zuckerberg to his room with no supper.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a lawyer who lives in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. Mr. Marchand practices law (on the theory that the more you practice, the more you’ll get it right) in the next-door community of Rancho Mirage. His disdain for Facebook is the product of his strong views on monopoly capitalism, and also of his disdain for certain candidates ostensibly running as Democrats in the 2020 election cycle.
What conclusions can be drawn from an analysis of the following official text from Facebook?
"We base our policies our Community Standards on input from the people who use Facebook around the world, as well as experts.”
First, let us hone in on the word “experts.” That tells us that Facebook uses a particular group of motivated individuals, usually outsourced in countries of the East Bloc. In short Facebook’s so-called experts are, in all likelihood, motivated East Bloc trolls who consider themselves to have an obvious dog in our American hunt.
“We base our policies are community standards on input from people who use Facebook around the world.”
Second, let’s take that phrase apart. “We base our policies are community standards....” What outsourced East Bloc individual, not fluent in English, composed this ridiculous fragment? Again, it’s obvious that Facebook outsources its moderation and community standards enforcement to countries in the East Bloc. They also probably outsource a substantial portion of their moderation to countries in South Asia, particularly India.
At all events, Facebook’s so-called community standards are based upon the “community standards” of illiberal non-American countries. When moderators apply the “community standards” of Bangalore, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Warsaw, or other countries east of Calais, we may expect a significant level of disrespect for American canons of free speech.
Facebook’s well-nigh unitary control of a great deal of speech in our public spaces ought to cause us significant concern for the future of free societies. Facebook’s suppression of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s calls for the platform to be broken up, together with Facebook’s ill concealed preference for Bernard Sanders and its ill concealed de facto undeclared campaign contributions to Donald Trump ought to cause us considerable agita about the extent to which one monopolistic organization can affect both our politics and our freedom.
When Facebook applies the “community standards” of Bangalore, Budapest, Berlin, or Bucharest to conversations in Palm Springs, Palo Alto, Petaluma, or Pasadena, or even Pocatello, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg scoffs at the idea that Russian intelligence may have been gaming his platform to influence the 2016 presidential election, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg permits the platform to live stream 17 minutes of the mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg looks the other way while agents of the Burmese state stir up on his platform genocidal violence against the Rohingya, something is very wrong.
When Gospodin Zuckerberg shades the truth to the United States Congress, and then works assiduously to convey an impression that our representatives are too old and too out of touch to understand the dynamics of his platform, something is very wrong.
In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes suggested that the time was at hand for Facebook to be broken up, to required to spin off the Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, and to be barred from further platform acquisitions for at least three years. In short, it really is time to bring down the hammer of the Sherman Antitrust Act on an organization that, in 2019, represents virtually a textbook example of the evils against which Sen. Sherman inveighed when he carried his initial legislation back in 1890.
The representatives and senators who voted for the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 were not nearly so old and out of touch as Gospodin Zuckerberg might have been pleased to describe them had he been alive when the antitrust bill was under consideration by Congress. The 51st Congress knew full well how dangerous monopoly power could be. They had the fortitude and the hardihood to take on industrial exponents of monopoly power. We should expect similar things from the 116th Congress. It’s well past time to lower the hammer of the Sherman Antitrust Act on Gospodin Zuckerberg and his dangerous monopoly, as well as to send Gospodin Zuckerberg to his room with no supper.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a lawyer who lives in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. Mr. Marchand practices law (on the theory that the more you practice, the more you’ll get it right) in the next-door community of Rancho Mirage. His disdain for Facebook is the product of his strong views on monopoly capitalism, and also of his disdain for certain candidates ostensibly running as Democrats in the 2020 election cycle.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
MAJORING IN MORAL ROT: THE UNIQUE AND TRUMPIAN PHENOMENON OF THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SCANDAL
Summary: Nothing reveals the moral rot at the heart of Donald Trump’s America quite is much as the ongoing college admissions scandal, in which well-off, well-connected, sophisticated parents of aspiring, college-bound teenagers sought through criminal means to game the college admissions system for their children. Not only will this impose upon those children a lifelong, emotionally stunting, and at least somewhat deserved, stigma, but it will also lead to “reforms” that will inevitably fall the hardest upon students whose families are not white, well-off, or well-connected. As is often said in workplaces around the country, shit flows downhill; expect the proletariat to be punished for the peccadilloes of the princes.
--------------------------------
Cathedral City, March 26, 2019 – The moral rot at the heart of Donald Trump’s America was never more starkly exemplified or revealed then it has been by the ongoing college admissions scandal. The outlines of the scandal are tolerably well known to most of the American public. A not insubstantial number of individuals, many of them household names in the entertainment industry, sought to game the college admissions system to ensure that their children could secure places at what the charging documents in the scandal refer to as “selective” or “highly selective” institutions of higher learning such as USC, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or any of a number of institutions that have historically served as the default education factories for the so-called best and brightest among us.
Some of the institutions in question, such as scandal plagued USC, which just today brought on board a new president, have long had reputations for being little more than football factories with a few academic departments attached to its athletic apparatus. Throughout Southern California, USC students have historically had a reputation for hubris, and USC alumni have garnered a similar reputation for feeling deeply entitled. The disdain in which USC is held, even by alumni of not dissimilar institutions, including Vanderbilt, from which I graduated, is commonly expressed in the question and answer form of “who is your favorite college football team?” To which the answer is “anybody who’s playing USC.”
Nevertheless, despite the scandals swirling about its campus, USC continues to remain one of the premier higher educational institutions in Southern California. And in many ways, USC, together with its crosstown rival UCLA, symbolizes the meritocratic paradigm that has come to symbolize America’s omnipresent, but poorly disguised, class system. In theory, possession of a degree from a prestigious university, UCLA, USC, the Ivies, or even, God help us, Vanderbilt (if you happen to live below the Mason-Dixon line) has been a ticket to upward mobility in American society. Go to college, do well, and you can expect to write your own ticket. Certainly, there are more options available to someone from Cal, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UT Austin, Northwestern, or the University of Chicago then are usually available to the graduates of the local community college or state college. Though groundbreaking work of great genius may come from single mother’s undergraduate child attending, say, Cal State Dominguez Hills, the fact remains that in general, the “selective” or “highly selective” institutions of higher education in this country tend to be the beneficiaries of a self-sustaining chain reaction, as it were, which attracts the “best and brightest” because it has always attracted the “best and brightest.”
Therefore it should not be surprising that admission to such institutions should be highly sought after, and that the process of securing shortcuts or preferences in that admissions process should ineluctably become monetized. Now, it is no secret that the college admissions process in this country has become dysfunctional; the playing field has become unequal.
Time was, during that long ago period when I myself was navigating the badly charted waters of the college admissions process, that aspiring students were evaluated on what amounted to a triad of factors. One of these, admittedly not always the most important, was one’s academic performance. The second factor was one’s performance on standardized tests. I have no doubt that my very superior performance on the verbal component of the SAT went a long way toward compensating for my somewhat indifferent academic record. A 780 verbal, even from an Irishman of the Hibernian diaspora who had followed in the footsteps of James Joyce and made the tongue of the conqueror entirely his own, undoubtably covered a multitude of secondary academic sins. The final set of data points evaluated by college admissions staff was the applicant’s extracurricular activities. Obviously, being on the high school football team was, pace Joe Biden, “a big fuckin’ deal,” but other extracurricular activities were also scrutinized.
However, in the nearly 40 years since I navigated the jungles of the college admissions process, that process has become more and more skewed in favor of the white, the well-off, and well-connected. When I was a high school senior, a 4.0 grade point average was considered the highest attainable. Today, grade inflation has resulted in GPAs of 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and similar nonsensical numbers. Applicants with a “mere” 4.0 should abandon all hope of entering an “elite” school. Similarly, standardized test scores have undergone similar inflation. Today, a student with less than a 1470 on his or her SAT is at a significant disadvantage in the post-secondary admission process. When I was applying to college 38 years ago, an overall score of 1300 on the SAT was not only highly recommending, but it automatically placed one in the top 10% of the California state aggregate.
Extracurricular activities have also become similarly inflated. When I was applying to college, during the foggy days of the Reagan administration, extracurricular activities, as distinct from high school sports, might consist of something like the debate society, working on a political campaign, or the astronomy club. Now the scions of the well-off and the well-connected are expected to produce the kind of prodigies of leadership and entrepreneurship that my generation had tacitly conceded to people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Now we find that anything short of, say, establishing a thriving hospital for legless lepers in Lesotho just doesn’t cut it with the admissions staff of a “highly selective” university.
It’s hardly surprising under such circumstances that not only would middle and working-class children feel deterred from even applying to a school that expects their applicants to have a 5.0 grade point average, a perfect 1600 SAT score, and to be the founder of that thriving hospital for legless lepers in Lesotho.
Even children of well-off, well-connected parents from the so-called Hollywood elite, to say nothing of their helicopter parents themselves, would necessarily feel a little bit insecure given the expectation of so many admissions offices that only the paragons of paragons are worthy of admission. After all, even the daughter of a movie star, or the athletically mediocre son of an influential political fixer might find somewhat daunting the prospect of trying to establish that health care provider for legless lepers in Lesotho.
So what do the helicopter parents of the political or entertainment demographics do to assuage their, and their children’s, insecurities about the prospects of obtaining that meritocratic education that may be the only thing standing between them and a host of “horrible” outcomes? For many well-off, well-connected, parents, the road to collegiate criminality tends to be paved with an aggregate consisting in equal parts of class insecurity and the clawing fear of looking back to see that their poorer past, their less famous past, their less influential past, is gaining on them.
In many ways, there is actually something almost admirable about the motivations of the parents involved in the scandal to cheat on behalf of their children. Among the Japanese population in Hawai’i, there is a phrase, kodomo no tame ni, “for the sake of the children,” which has become a shorthand to explain the fears and the motivations of the Nikkei of the 'āina for their children. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” St. John 15:13. To that extent, the parents caught up in this scandal are perhaps more to be pitied than censured.
The moral rot of the whole sorry episode inheres, however, in the casual acceptance of the notion that it is morally permissible to game the system to secure a preferential option for one’s own child at the expense, not only of other children, but of one’s own child’s autochthonous sense of self. In a meritocratic society, such as that which America theoretically is, self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-realization and self independence are critical components in the maturation process of any human being. How can these be present when our young adult’s first autonomous achievement, that second great rite of passage after receiving a driver’s license, is attained not on one’s own merits, but because of the illicit intervention of one’s parents, assisted by a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization working together in a criminal enterprise and conspiracy?
For parental intervention and other artifacts of gaming the system are often easily detected within a student body. When I was an undergraduate, the better part of forty years ago, we tended to divide the student body into two broad categories. Because I was an interdisciplinary East Asian studies major, I shorthanded these two categories as the “mandarins” and the “gentry.”
The mandarins, of which I was one, tended to flatter ourselves that we had perhaps secured admission to the institution on our own merits. We had had sufficiently impressive academic performance and extracurricular activities to pique the interest of the admissions office, and we had performed well enough on the high-stakes standardized tests that the admissions office had been willing to swallow hard and check the yes box on our applications.
In that regard, we were somewhat akin to the traditional Mandarin class of Imperial China, which was selected from among successful takers of the Chinese Imperial Civil Service Examinations. Like the mandarins of Imperial China, we had tested our way into the system, and unless we really screwed things up, we knew that a degree from the institution to which we had secured admission was almost inevitable.
The gentry, for whom we mandarins felt a certain measure of disdain, unless we were having sex with them, (for a bit of whoopee covers its own multitude of sins,) tended themselves to fall into three subcategories. The first were the legacies, those whose parents were themselves alumni of the institution, or, in some cases, whose parents were members of the faculty. The second were the jocks, the kids whose value added to the University inhered not in their brains, but in their brawn, and in the amount of revenue they could draw to the institution and its athletic programs. The third group of gentry consisted of the wealthy dimwits whose presence at the institution could only be explained by their parents having made substantial contributions to the institution itself, after the fashion of Fred Trump or Charles Kushner greasing the skids for Donald and Jared to the University of Pennsylvania or Harvard, respectively. We mandarins especially disdained this last category of advantaged dimwits; we despised them for much the same reason our faculty despised them, because they lowered the curve and cheapened the value of the Vanderbilt degree.
Now secrets travel with astonishing speed on a University campus. What is on Monday a closely held secret in the Chancellor’s or president’s office will be known to the reporters of the student newspaper by Wednesday, and may very well find itself published by Friday. WikiLeaks has nothing on the average college campus; student journalists are astonishingly good at rooting out what the administration and faculty do not want them to hear.
Consequently, universities are like sieves. There is no doubt, therefore, that in very short order the identities of the students whose parents committed the crimes charged in the indictments that are at the center of this scandal will become known to their peers all over campus. And when that happens, the effects will be terrible to behold. The children of this scandal can expect to find themselves targeted not only by the faculty and administration of their institutions, but also — and more damningly — by their peers. They may very well be shunned, called out publicly, or even run off the campus. At all events, they will be seen as tainted, unworthy, and beneath contempt. Thanks, mom and dad.
Yet as much as the children of scandal will themselves be damaged by the public exposure thereof, the true collateral damage will fall on those who have to apply to the next entering class of freshmen, as well as upon those displaced students whose meritorious places in a given freshman class were occupied by students who didn’t secure admission honestly, but who instead gained their places through dishonest, criminal means. In the grim, zero-sum game that is the academic admissions process, the admission of the unqualified student whose parents gamed the system on his or her behalf necessarily means that a more qualified student does not gain admission to the institution.
Because one of the inevitable outcomes of this scandal will be that the institutions affected, even if only to salvage their own damaged amour propre, will institute a series of so-called reforms, ostensibly designed to ensure against cheating and trying to game the admissions system. Unfortunately, as with so many so-called reforms, the "reforms" of the college admissions system will fall most heavily upon middle and lower income families.
Indeed, it is virtually inevitable that lower and middle income families will be hardest hit by any “reforms” set in train to salvage the wounded amour propre of embarrassed institutions. The unintended consequence of any of these foreseeable “reforms” will play into the already classist nature of the existing college admissions process. The playing field will continue to be skewed because middle and lower income families cannot usually be expected to possess the wherewithal, either in terms of the means or the sophistication, to be able to game the system as effectively as their better-off, better-connected competitors in the admissions process. After all, who is better capable of gaming the system to a child’s advantage, the wealthy studio executive from Brentwood, or the single mother barista from Boyle Heights? Who is better qualified and better positioned to be victorious in the inevitable academic admissions “arms race” that will follow?
Of course, even those of us who were mandarins among our student bodies should not deceive ourselves. Even a studio executive’s child from Brentwood might very well have the academic chops and the test scores to be a Mandarin. After all, mandarin status also tended to be dependent, even 40 years ago, on attending the “right” high school. The industry kids, the college administrator’s child, or the Suffragan Bishop’s niece from Harvard-Westlake, the prestigious Los Angeles private high school which was my own secondary alma mater (class of ‘81) ineluctably stand a better chance of being able to navigate even a truly meritocratic system than do the barista’s child, the nurse’s kid, or the parish priest’s nephew from Boyle Heights’s Roosevelt High.
The demographic that can send its kids to Harvard-Westlake will tend inevitably to be better educated, better-off, better-connected, and more skilled at gaming the system, even in noncriminal ways, than will the demographic whose children attend Roosevelt High. And when the “victimized” institutions named in the charging documents institute their “reforms” to address the gaming of the admissions system, they will be attempting to return to the status quo as it existed before the scandal broke, a status quo that still advantages the white, the well-off, and the well-connected. Unfortunately, while they may not appreciably change the game for the graduate of Harvard-Westlake, the “reforms” can foreseeably be expected to make the college admissions process even more difficult for that barista’s child, that nurse’s kid, or that parish priest’s nephew coming out of Roosevelt High.
The college admissions system has become so dysfunctional, so weighted in favor of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected that it has started to resemble a Democratic Party caucus mobbed by supporters of Bernard Sanders. As much as caucuses themselves are racist, classist enterprises that tend to advantage of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected, and will continue to do so, until caucuses are replaced by truly democratic closed primaries in which every member of a given party may vote, but only members of the party may vote, the college admissions process can be expected to continue as an enterprise that advantages the children of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected, who attend the “right” high schools, live in the “right” neighborhoods, and undertake the “right” kind of extracurricular activities.
The instant scandal has done nothing but expose the moral rot at the heart of Trump’s America, the ravening insecurities of the parents who tried to game the system, and how they were emboldened by the Gilded Age ethical lapses of Trump, the Republican Party, and the administration, and the venality of so many people throughout the college admissions industrial complex. Every time in this country that we confront an educational crisis, the haves and the have mores find soft landings, while the proletariat are invariably punished for the peccadilloes of the princes.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand, Esq. grew up in Los Angeles, where his status as the son of a public arts administrator and a university official, together with his domicile in the Hollywood Hills and his Zelig-like neighborhood propinquity to Superior Court judges, well-known entertainment industry personnel and recording artists was enough to help get him admitted to the prestigious private high school now known as Harvard-Westlake. That, together with what was then considered a recommending score on the SAT, was enough to get him into Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, from which he graduated in three years as part of the class of 1984. He cheerfully admits to having been one of the mandarins. The views set forth herein are his own, not those of any institution with which he may have been affiliated, or of the Episcopal Church in the diocese of Los Angeles, and are not to be construed as legal advice.
--------------------------------
Cathedral City, March 26, 2019 – The moral rot at the heart of Donald Trump’s America was never more starkly exemplified or revealed then it has been by the ongoing college admissions scandal. The outlines of the scandal are tolerably well known to most of the American public. A not insubstantial number of individuals, many of them household names in the entertainment industry, sought to game the college admissions system to ensure that their children could secure places at what the charging documents in the scandal refer to as “selective” or “highly selective” institutions of higher learning such as USC, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or any of a number of institutions that have historically served as the default education factories for the so-called best and brightest among us.
Some of the institutions in question, such as scandal plagued USC, which just today brought on board a new president, have long had reputations for being little more than football factories with a few academic departments attached to its athletic apparatus. Throughout Southern California, USC students have historically had a reputation for hubris, and USC alumni have garnered a similar reputation for feeling deeply entitled. The disdain in which USC is held, even by alumni of not dissimilar institutions, including Vanderbilt, from which I graduated, is commonly expressed in the question and answer form of “who is your favorite college football team?” To which the answer is “anybody who’s playing USC.”
Nevertheless, despite the scandals swirling about its campus, USC continues to remain one of the premier higher educational institutions in Southern California. And in many ways, USC, together with its crosstown rival UCLA, symbolizes the meritocratic paradigm that has come to symbolize America’s omnipresent, but poorly disguised, class system. In theory, possession of a degree from a prestigious university, UCLA, USC, the Ivies, or even, God help us, Vanderbilt (if you happen to live below the Mason-Dixon line) has been a ticket to upward mobility in American society. Go to college, do well, and you can expect to write your own ticket. Certainly, there are more options available to someone from Cal, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UT Austin, Northwestern, or the University of Chicago then are usually available to the graduates of the local community college or state college. Though groundbreaking work of great genius may come from single mother’s undergraduate child attending, say, Cal State Dominguez Hills, the fact remains that in general, the “selective” or “highly selective” institutions of higher education in this country tend to be the beneficiaries of a self-sustaining chain reaction, as it were, which attracts the “best and brightest” because it has always attracted the “best and brightest.”
Therefore it should not be surprising that admission to such institutions should be highly sought after, and that the process of securing shortcuts or preferences in that admissions process should ineluctably become monetized. Now, it is no secret that the college admissions process in this country has become dysfunctional; the playing field has become unequal.
Time was, during that long ago period when I myself was navigating the badly charted waters of the college admissions process, that aspiring students were evaluated on what amounted to a triad of factors. One of these, admittedly not always the most important, was one’s academic performance. The second factor was one’s performance on standardized tests. I have no doubt that my very superior performance on the verbal component of the SAT went a long way toward compensating for my somewhat indifferent academic record. A 780 verbal, even from an Irishman of the Hibernian diaspora who had followed in the footsteps of James Joyce and made the tongue of the conqueror entirely his own, undoubtably covered a multitude of secondary academic sins. The final set of data points evaluated by college admissions staff was the applicant’s extracurricular activities. Obviously, being on the high school football team was, pace Joe Biden, “a big fuckin’ deal,” but other extracurricular activities were also scrutinized.
However, in the nearly 40 years since I navigated the jungles of the college admissions process, that process has become more and more skewed in favor of the white, the well-off, and well-connected. When I was a high school senior, a 4.0 grade point average was considered the highest attainable. Today, grade inflation has resulted in GPAs of 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and similar nonsensical numbers. Applicants with a “mere” 4.0 should abandon all hope of entering an “elite” school. Similarly, standardized test scores have undergone similar inflation. Today, a student with less than a 1470 on his or her SAT is at a significant disadvantage in the post-secondary admission process. When I was applying to college 38 years ago, an overall score of 1300 on the SAT was not only highly recommending, but it automatically placed one in the top 10% of the California state aggregate.
Extracurricular activities have also become similarly inflated. When I was applying to college, during the foggy days of the Reagan administration, extracurricular activities, as distinct from high school sports, might consist of something like the debate society, working on a political campaign, or the astronomy club. Now the scions of the well-off and the well-connected are expected to produce the kind of prodigies of leadership and entrepreneurship that my generation had tacitly conceded to people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Now we find that anything short of, say, establishing a thriving hospital for legless lepers in Lesotho just doesn’t cut it with the admissions staff of a “highly selective” university.
It’s hardly surprising under such circumstances that not only would middle and working-class children feel deterred from even applying to a school that expects their applicants to have a 5.0 grade point average, a perfect 1600 SAT score, and to be the founder of that thriving hospital for legless lepers in Lesotho.
Even children of well-off, well-connected parents from the so-called Hollywood elite, to say nothing of their helicopter parents themselves, would necessarily feel a little bit insecure given the expectation of so many admissions offices that only the paragons of paragons are worthy of admission. After all, even the daughter of a movie star, or the athletically mediocre son of an influential political fixer might find somewhat daunting the prospect of trying to establish that health care provider for legless lepers in Lesotho.
So what do the helicopter parents of the political or entertainment demographics do to assuage their, and their children’s, insecurities about the prospects of obtaining that meritocratic education that may be the only thing standing between them and a host of “horrible” outcomes? For many well-off, well-connected, parents, the road to collegiate criminality tends to be paved with an aggregate consisting in equal parts of class insecurity and the clawing fear of looking back to see that their poorer past, their less famous past, their less influential past, is gaining on them.
In many ways, there is actually something almost admirable about the motivations of the parents involved in the scandal to cheat on behalf of their children. Among the Japanese population in Hawai’i, there is a phrase, kodomo no tame ni, “for the sake of the children,” which has become a shorthand to explain the fears and the motivations of the Nikkei of the 'āina for their children. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” St. John 15:13. To that extent, the parents caught up in this scandal are perhaps more to be pitied than censured.
The moral rot of the whole sorry episode inheres, however, in the casual acceptance of the notion that it is morally permissible to game the system to secure a preferential option for one’s own child at the expense, not only of other children, but of one’s own child’s autochthonous sense of self. In a meritocratic society, such as that which America theoretically is, self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-realization and self independence are critical components in the maturation process of any human being. How can these be present when our young adult’s first autonomous achievement, that second great rite of passage after receiving a driver’s license, is attained not on one’s own merits, but because of the illicit intervention of one’s parents, assisted by a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization working together in a criminal enterprise and conspiracy?
For parental intervention and other artifacts of gaming the system are often easily detected within a student body. When I was an undergraduate, the better part of forty years ago, we tended to divide the student body into two broad categories. Because I was an interdisciplinary East Asian studies major, I shorthanded these two categories as the “mandarins” and the “gentry.”
The mandarins, of which I was one, tended to flatter ourselves that we had perhaps secured admission to the institution on our own merits. We had had sufficiently impressive academic performance and extracurricular activities to pique the interest of the admissions office, and we had performed well enough on the high-stakes standardized tests that the admissions office had been willing to swallow hard and check the yes box on our applications.
In that regard, we were somewhat akin to the traditional Mandarin class of Imperial China, which was selected from among successful takers of the Chinese Imperial Civil Service Examinations. Like the mandarins of Imperial China, we had tested our way into the system, and unless we really screwed things up, we knew that a degree from the institution to which we had secured admission was almost inevitable.
The gentry, for whom we mandarins felt a certain measure of disdain, unless we were having sex with them, (for a bit of whoopee covers its own multitude of sins,) tended themselves to fall into three subcategories. The first were the legacies, those whose parents were themselves alumni of the institution, or, in some cases, whose parents were members of the faculty. The second were the jocks, the kids whose value added to the University inhered not in their brains, but in their brawn, and in the amount of revenue they could draw to the institution and its athletic programs. The third group of gentry consisted of the wealthy dimwits whose presence at the institution could only be explained by their parents having made substantial contributions to the institution itself, after the fashion of Fred Trump or Charles Kushner greasing the skids for Donald and Jared to the University of Pennsylvania or Harvard, respectively. We mandarins especially disdained this last category of advantaged dimwits; we despised them for much the same reason our faculty despised them, because they lowered the curve and cheapened the value of the Vanderbilt degree.
Now secrets travel with astonishing speed on a University campus. What is on Monday a closely held secret in the Chancellor’s or president’s office will be known to the reporters of the student newspaper by Wednesday, and may very well find itself published by Friday. WikiLeaks has nothing on the average college campus; student journalists are astonishingly good at rooting out what the administration and faculty do not want them to hear.
Consequently, universities are like sieves. There is no doubt, therefore, that in very short order the identities of the students whose parents committed the crimes charged in the indictments that are at the center of this scandal will become known to their peers all over campus. And when that happens, the effects will be terrible to behold. The children of this scandal can expect to find themselves targeted not only by the faculty and administration of their institutions, but also — and more damningly — by their peers. They may very well be shunned, called out publicly, or even run off the campus. At all events, they will be seen as tainted, unworthy, and beneath contempt. Thanks, mom and dad.
Yet as much as the children of scandal will themselves be damaged by the public exposure thereof, the true collateral damage will fall on those who have to apply to the next entering class of freshmen, as well as upon those displaced students whose meritorious places in a given freshman class were occupied by students who didn’t secure admission honestly, but who instead gained their places through dishonest, criminal means. In the grim, zero-sum game that is the academic admissions process, the admission of the unqualified student whose parents gamed the system on his or her behalf necessarily means that a more qualified student does not gain admission to the institution.
Because one of the inevitable outcomes of this scandal will be that the institutions affected, even if only to salvage their own damaged amour propre, will institute a series of so-called reforms, ostensibly designed to ensure against cheating and trying to game the admissions system. Unfortunately, as with so many so-called reforms, the "reforms" of the college admissions system will fall most heavily upon middle and lower income families.
Indeed, it is virtually inevitable that lower and middle income families will be hardest hit by any “reforms” set in train to salvage the wounded amour propre of embarrassed institutions. The unintended consequence of any of these foreseeable “reforms” will play into the already classist nature of the existing college admissions process. The playing field will continue to be skewed because middle and lower income families cannot usually be expected to possess the wherewithal, either in terms of the means or the sophistication, to be able to game the system as effectively as their better-off, better-connected competitors in the admissions process. After all, who is better capable of gaming the system to a child’s advantage, the wealthy studio executive from Brentwood, or the single mother barista from Boyle Heights? Who is better qualified and better positioned to be victorious in the inevitable academic admissions “arms race” that will follow?
Of course, even those of us who were mandarins among our student bodies should not deceive ourselves. Even a studio executive’s child from Brentwood might very well have the academic chops and the test scores to be a Mandarin. After all, mandarin status also tended to be dependent, even 40 years ago, on attending the “right” high school. The industry kids, the college administrator’s child, or the Suffragan Bishop’s niece from Harvard-Westlake, the prestigious Los Angeles private high school which was my own secondary alma mater (class of ‘81) ineluctably stand a better chance of being able to navigate even a truly meritocratic system than do the barista’s child, the nurse’s kid, or the parish priest’s nephew from Boyle Heights’s Roosevelt High.
The demographic that can send its kids to Harvard-Westlake will tend inevitably to be better educated, better-off, better-connected, and more skilled at gaming the system, even in noncriminal ways, than will the demographic whose children attend Roosevelt High. And when the “victimized” institutions named in the charging documents institute their “reforms” to address the gaming of the admissions system, they will be attempting to return to the status quo as it existed before the scandal broke, a status quo that still advantages the white, the well-off, and the well-connected. Unfortunately, while they may not appreciably change the game for the graduate of Harvard-Westlake, the “reforms” can foreseeably be expected to make the college admissions process even more difficult for that barista’s child, that nurse’s kid, or that parish priest’s nephew coming out of Roosevelt High.
The college admissions system has become so dysfunctional, so weighted in favor of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected that it has started to resemble a Democratic Party caucus mobbed by supporters of Bernard Sanders. As much as caucuses themselves are racist, classist enterprises that tend to advantage of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected, and will continue to do so, until caucuses are replaced by truly democratic closed primaries in which every member of a given party may vote, but only members of the party may vote, the college admissions process can be expected to continue as an enterprise that advantages the children of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected, who attend the “right” high schools, live in the “right” neighborhoods, and undertake the “right” kind of extracurricular activities.
The instant scandal has done nothing but expose the moral rot at the heart of Trump’s America, the ravening insecurities of the parents who tried to game the system, and how they were emboldened by the Gilded Age ethical lapses of Trump, the Republican Party, and the administration, and the venality of so many people throughout the college admissions industrial complex. Every time in this country that we confront an educational crisis, the haves and the have mores find soft landings, while the proletariat are invariably punished for the peccadilloes of the princes.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand, Esq. grew up in Los Angeles, where his status as the son of a public arts administrator and a university official, together with his domicile in the Hollywood Hills and his Zelig-like neighborhood propinquity to Superior Court judges, well-known entertainment industry personnel and recording artists was enough to help get him admitted to the prestigious private high school now known as Harvard-Westlake. That, together with what was then considered a recommending score on the SAT, was enough to get him into Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, from which he graduated in three years as part of the class of 1984. He cheerfully admits to having been one of the mandarins. The views set forth herein are his own, not those of any institution with which he may have been affiliated, or of the Episcopal Church in the diocese of Los Angeles, and are not to be construed as legal advice.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
NOTRE DAME D’ANGOISSE
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee....
-Traditional Marian devotion in the Latin Church
Never ascribe to wickedness or malevolence what can be accounted for by negligence, incompetence, or stupidity.
-Hanlon’s Razor, variously attributed, in various forms
O, Solomon, I have surpassed thee!
-Justinian, at the dedication of the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople, December 24, 563
À toutes les Gloires de la France. (To all the glories of France)
-inscription on the architrave over the portico of the Palais De Versailles
Summary: It has been two days now since a fire in the ancient roof timbers of Notre Dame de Paris did what has been described as “catastrophic” damage to the 850-year-old Cathedral of Paris, located on the Île de la Cité, the iconic, or may we say the cardinal, church of France, of ancient France, of Catholic France, of France the conservator and curator of our common Roman civilizational heritage. As the embers cool, and personnel from the national government, the regional government, and the city government of Paris can venture in to the charred, yet still holy space to take stock, we may begin to acquire a sense of the extent of the terrible loss to the civilization of the Greco-Roman West. Yet at the same time, this calamity may have recalled France to her Gallican Catholic identity.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The French word for anguish is “angoisse.” Monday, the entire world received a gut check and a lesson in helpless anguish. As we watched from our devices of every kind, we can see an existential disaster unfolding before us as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris lit up in flames that could be seen all over the Cité and through much of adjacent Paris.
Watching a precious symbol of Paris and of France burn, powerless to do anything to stop the flames, hoping against hope that the Paris Fire Department, les pompiers braves, would be able to knock down the fire, groups of Parisians, come together in that kind of horror you just can’t turn your eyes from, spontaneously began to sing the words of the Ave Maria, one of the oldest Marian hymns of the Latin Church:
Je vous salue, Marie,
pleine de grâce:
le Seigneur est avec vous;
vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes,
et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles,
est béni.
Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,
priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs,
maintenant et à l'heure de notre mort.
Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Watching Parisians watching the beating heart of their city in flames, knowing that neither we nor they could alter the progress of the catastrophe, was enough to move to the tears the least tender; and to impel to prayer the most incredulous, and to cause many of us participating vicariously in the disaster from half a world away to fall out of touch with our own composure. Like those of the watchers on the banks of the Seine, our hearts, too, were fractured by what we had seen.
But now, two days later, as the last of the embers dies, and as various French officials begin to enter the damaged, yet still sacred, space dedicated to the Holy Mother of God to try to ascertain the extent of the damage, it falls to us to follow the lead of the Paris Public Prosecutor, who is satisfied at this time that the evidence points to the fire having been an accident. Or, to apply the words of Hanlon’s Razor, (an offshoot of Occam’s Razor) we should never ascribe to wickedness or malevolence what can be accounted for by negligence, incompetence, or stupidity.
Notwithstanding the free-bubbling conspiratorial afflatus emerging from certain malodorous corners of the Internet, we should not lay this catastrophe at the door of ISIL/Daesh, other Islamic jihadists, or even at the door of right-wing provocateurs from the front mationale seeking to fabricate on the Île de la Cité some kind of 2019 iteration of the Reichstag fire.
What do we think? What do we know? What can we prove?
Until and unless substantial further information is developed that would permit us to envisage the hypothesis of some kind of malevolent actor having been involved, we should perhaps draw a first approximation conclusion that if any human actor was involved in this disaster, the conflagration may have been the result of nothing more and nothing less then an overheated power tool coming into close proximity with one of the 800-plus-year-old roof timbers in the so-called forest in the attic above the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral.
After eight centuries in an attic with little to no climate control of any kind, the so-called forest above the ceiling of Notre-Dame should have been a nightmare of any member of any fire service anywhere in the world. Ancient, tinder dry, possibly riddled with rot, and essentially inaccessible to first responders, the roof timbers of Notre-Dame de Paris were, to use a cliché almost as old as the timbers themselves, a disaster waiting to happen.
And happen it did. Notre-Dame is one of the most important churches in all of the Roman West. Not only is it perhaps par excellence one of the quintessential Gothic masterpieces of the High Middle Ages, as well as being one of the great repositories of French art and culture, but it is also, in virtue of its chapter’s custodianship of such relics as a piece of the True Cross and of the Crown of Thorns which, in tradition, encircled the “sacred head, sore wounded” of our Suffering Savior, an integral part of the Deposit of Faith of the Latin Church, that is to say, the Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, and Protestant churches of the West.
Notre-Dame is not merely a sacred space, but a space rich with historical associations for France and for Europe, as well as for the United States. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French by Pope Pius VII. On August 26, 1944, the Cathedral was the venue for a Te Deum service giving thanks for the Allied liberation of Paris from four years of Nazi occupation. Though German snipers within the Cathedral attempted to disrupt the service, they were not successful. The sheer physical courage that day of Gen. Charles De Gaulle, who, notwithstanding the bullets, made his way unflinchingly up the center aisle of the nave to his seat in the choir has become one of the glories of France that will never be forgotten.
And because Notre-Dame is so integral to the life of Paris and to the life of France, it was hardly surprising that Pres. Emanuel Macron should have announced on the very evening of the fire that the great church would be rebuilt. Already, French billionaires and millionaires, The Very People whom that Tiresome Little Man Bernard Sanders loves to belabor, are stepping up to commit hundreds of millions of euros to the reconstruction effort. Almost €1bn has already been pledged.
We may not know how long the reconstruction will take, but whoever is President of the French Republic when the work is done, may be excused a little frisson of pride, and even the temptation to look up at the soaring vaults of the nave, or to step out from the south transept, take a short walk to look at the rebuilt spire and roof of Our Lady’s church and say quietly the words of Justinian when the rebuilt Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople was re-consecrated in the year 563: “O Solomon, I have surpassed thee!”
Yet, to the extent that the 850-year-old Cathedral church of Our Lady of Paris is reconstructed, the reconstruction cannot be allowed to be “true to period.” Yesterday’s conflagration ought to be a reminder to officials of the French Republic, which is the owner of Notre-Dame de Paris, that 21st-century technology must be deployed to serve the needs of a 12th-century Cathedral.
The roof trusses, installed 800+ years ago and constructed of oak and chestnut, gave good service across eight centuries, but the fire danger implicit in the use of wood structural members for such a building as Notre-Dame, which was and will be again, God willing, an active church, after all, militates in favor of rebuilding the roof using non-flammable lightweight steel alloy struts and trusses. Moreover, the authorities should envisage the hypothesis of installing an inert gas or water vapor system in the attic as a fire suppression strategy. Sprinklers should not be used lest the weight of water collapse the vaulting and send it tumbling down upon worshipers a hundred-plus feet below.
However, as much as Notre-Dame and the other great Gothic cathedrals scattered across France represent a large part of the glories of France, they are also in need of examination and possible retrofitting against the now manifest danger of fire. Whether one is speaking of Albi, Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges, Chartres, Laon, Lyon, Noyon, Orléans, Reims, Rouen, St. Denis, Senlis, Sens, Strasbourg, Tours, or any of numerous other Gothic edifices within The Hexagon that is France, one is necessarily speaking of structures that may well have scores or even hundreds of years of deferred maintenance.
Notre-Dame, with its ancient wooden roof, is not dissimilar to the Hōryuji temple complex in Nara, Japan. Indeed, the wooden buildings in the Hōryuji complex are said to be among the oldest still existing wooden structures in the world. One of them, the Kondō, constructed in the third quarter of the seventh century, suffered severe fire damage in 1949, and was reconstructed. The damage to the Kondō, and that to Notre-Dame de Paris, stands out as a reminder to us that civilization in both the Sinosphere and in the Greco-Roman West is an ongoing work, an act of faith in ourselves and in our capacity to leave lasting achievements to our posterity.
If we have wept for the damage to the church dedicated to the Holy Mother of God, it is because, as participants in the civilization of the Greco-Roman West, we believe that our Greco-Roman civilization is worth cherishing. When the great bells in the towers of Notre-Dame tolled to mark the Liberation of Paris in 1944, or the terrorist outrages of September 11, 2001, they reminded us that we belong to the great enterprise of civilization.
If the catastrophe of Notre-Dame helps to remind the French, the people of the Francophonie, and the people of the civilized world that France, Christian France, Catholic France, civilized France, France même, remains an integral part of the radically inclusive Christian civilization of the Greco-Roman West, then perhaps we may take a minute pearl of consolation from a charred and distinctly rough oyster, as France, even if only for a fleeting moment, comes again in contact with her Gallican-Catholic identity.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a lawyer and former Cathedral City city councilmember. He lives in Cathedral City and practices law in neighboring Rancho Mirage. Like so many people with Francophone names, he mourns for Notre Dame de Paris, but as a Christian, he believes that by the power of the Resurrection, Notre-Dame, God willing, will be again the beating heart of Paris and of France.
-Traditional Marian devotion in the Latin Church
Never ascribe to wickedness or malevolence what can be accounted for by negligence, incompetence, or stupidity.
-Hanlon’s Razor, variously attributed, in various forms
O, Solomon, I have surpassed thee!
-Justinian, at the dedication of the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople, December 24, 563
À toutes les Gloires de la France. (To all the glories of France)
-inscription on the architrave over the portico of the Palais De Versailles
Summary: It has been two days now since a fire in the ancient roof timbers of Notre Dame de Paris did what has been described as “catastrophic” damage to the 850-year-old Cathedral of Paris, located on the Île de la Cité, the iconic, or may we say the cardinal, church of France, of ancient France, of Catholic France, of France the conservator and curator of our common Roman civilizational heritage. As the embers cool, and personnel from the national government, the regional government, and the city government of Paris can venture in to the charred, yet still holy space to take stock, we may begin to acquire a sense of the extent of the terrible loss to the civilization of the Greco-Roman West. Yet at the same time, this calamity may have recalled France to her Gallican Catholic identity.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The French word for anguish is “angoisse.” Monday, the entire world received a gut check and a lesson in helpless anguish. As we watched from our devices of every kind, we can see an existential disaster unfolding before us as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris lit up in flames that could be seen all over the Cité and through much of adjacent Paris.
Watching a precious symbol of Paris and of France burn, powerless to do anything to stop the flames, hoping against hope that the Paris Fire Department, les pompiers braves, would be able to knock down the fire, groups of Parisians, come together in that kind of horror you just can’t turn your eyes from, spontaneously began to sing the words of the Ave Maria, one of the oldest Marian hymns of the Latin Church:
Je vous salue, Marie,
pleine de grâce:
le Seigneur est avec vous;
vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes,
et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles,
est béni.
Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,
priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs,
maintenant et à l'heure de notre mort.
Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Watching Parisians watching the beating heart of their city in flames, knowing that neither we nor they could alter the progress of the catastrophe, was enough to move to the tears the least tender; and to impel to prayer the most incredulous, and to cause many of us participating vicariously in the disaster from half a world away to fall out of touch with our own composure. Like those of the watchers on the banks of the Seine, our hearts, too, were fractured by what we had seen.
But now, two days later, as the last of the embers dies, and as various French officials begin to enter the damaged, yet still sacred, space dedicated to the Holy Mother of God to try to ascertain the extent of the damage, it falls to us to follow the lead of the Paris Public Prosecutor, who is satisfied at this time that the evidence points to the fire having been an accident. Or, to apply the words of Hanlon’s Razor, (an offshoot of Occam’s Razor) we should never ascribe to wickedness or malevolence what can be accounted for by negligence, incompetence, or stupidity.
Notwithstanding the free-bubbling conspiratorial afflatus emerging from certain malodorous corners of the Internet, we should not lay this catastrophe at the door of ISIL/Daesh, other Islamic jihadists, or even at the door of right-wing provocateurs from the front mationale seeking to fabricate on the Île de la Cité some kind of 2019 iteration of the Reichstag fire.
What do we think? What do we know? What can we prove?
Until and unless substantial further information is developed that would permit us to envisage the hypothesis of some kind of malevolent actor having been involved, we should perhaps draw a first approximation conclusion that if any human actor was involved in this disaster, the conflagration may have been the result of nothing more and nothing less then an overheated power tool coming into close proximity with one of the 800-plus-year-old roof timbers in the so-called forest in the attic above the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral.
After eight centuries in an attic with little to no climate control of any kind, the so-called forest above the ceiling of Notre-Dame should have been a nightmare of any member of any fire service anywhere in the world. Ancient, tinder dry, possibly riddled with rot, and essentially inaccessible to first responders, the roof timbers of Notre-Dame de Paris were, to use a cliché almost as old as the timbers themselves, a disaster waiting to happen.
And happen it did. Notre-Dame is one of the most important churches in all of the Roman West. Not only is it perhaps par excellence one of the quintessential Gothic masterpieces of the High Middle Ages, as well as being one of the great repositories of French art and culture, but it is also, in virtue of its chapter’s custodianship of such relics as a piece of the True Cross and of the Crown of Thorns which, in tradition, encircled the “sacred head, sore wounded” of our Suffering Savior, an integral part of the Deposit of Faith of the Latin Church, that is to say, the Roman, Anglican, Lutheran, and Protestant churches of the West.
Notre-Dame is not merely a sacred space, but a space rich with historical associations for France and for Europe, as well as for the United States. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French by Pope Pius VII. On August 26, 1944, the Cathedral was the venue for a Te Deum service giving thanks for the Allied liberation of Paris from four years of Nazi occupation. Though German snipers within the Cathedral attempted to disrupt the service, they were not successful. The sheer physical courage that day of Gen. Charles De Gaulle, who, notwithstanding the bullets, made his way unflinchingly up the center aisle of the nave to his seat in the choir has become one of the glories of France that will never be forgotten.
And because Notre-Dame is so integral to the life of Paris and to the life of France, it was hardly surprising that Pres. Emanuel Macron should have announced on the very evening of the fire that the great church would be rebuilt. Already, French billionaires and millionaires, The Very People whom that Tiresome Little Man Bernard Sanders loves to belabor, are stepping up to commit hundreds of millions of euros to the reconstruction effort. Almost €1bn has already been pledged.
We may not know how long the reconstruction will take, but whoever is President of the French Republic when the work is done, may be excused a little frisson of pride, and even the temptation to look up at the soaring vaults of the nave, or to step out from the south transept, take a short walk to look at the rebuilt spire and roof of Our Lady’s church and say quietly the words of Justinian when the rebuilt Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople was re-consecrated in the year 563: “O Solomon, I have surpassed thee!”
Yet, to the extent that the 850-year-old Cathedral church of Our Lady of Paris is reconstructed, the reconstruction cannot be allowed to be “true to period.” Yesterday’s conflagration ought to be a reminder to officials of the French Republic, which is the owner of Notre-Dame de Paris, that 21st-century technology must be deployed to serve the needs of a 12th-century Cathedral.
The roof trusses, installed 800+ years ago and constructed of oak and chestnut, gave good service across eight centuries, but the fire danger implicit in the use of wood structural members for such a building as Notre-Dame, which was and will be again, God willing, an active church, after all, militates in favor of rebuilding the roof using non-flammable lightweight steel alloy struts and trusses. Moreover, the authorities should envisage the hypothesis of installing an inert gas or water vapor system in the attic as a fire suppression strategy. Sprinklers should not be used lest the weight of water collapse the vaulting and send it tumbling down upon worshipers a hundred-plus feet below.
However, as much as Notre-Dame and the other great Gothic cathedrals scattered across France represent a large part of the glories of France, they are also in need of examination and possible retrofitting against the now manifest danger of fire. Whether one is speaking of Albi, Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges, Chartres, Laon, Lyon, Noyon, Orléans, Reims, Rouen, St. Denis, Senlis, Sens, Strasbourg, Tours, or any of numerous other Gothic edifices within The Hexagon that is France, one is necessarily speaking of structures that may well have scores or even hundreds of years of deferred maintenance.
Notre-Dame, with its ancient wooden roof, is not dissimilar to the Hōryuji temple complex in Nara, Japan. Indeed, the wooden buildings in the Hōryuji complex are said to be among the oldest still existing wooden structures in the world. One of them, the Kondō, constructed in the third quarter of the seventh century, suffered severe fire damage in 1949, and was reconstructed. The damage to the Kondō, and that to Notre-Dame de Paris, stands out as a reminder to us that civilization in both the Sinosphere and in the Greco-Roman West is an ongoing work, an act of faith in ourselves and in our capacity to leave lasting achievements to our posterity.
If we have wept for the damage to the church dedicated to the Holy Mother of God, it is because, as participants in the civilization of the Greco-Roman West, we believe that our Greco-Roman civilization is worth cherishing. When the great bells in the towers of Notre-Dame tolled to mark the Liberation of Paris in 1944, or the terrorist outrages of September 11, 2001, they reminded us that we belong to the great enterprise of civilization.
If the catastrophe of Notre-Dame helps to remind the French, the people of the Francophonie, and the people of the civilized world that France, Christian France, Catholic France, civilized France, France même, remains an integral part of the radically inclusive Christian civilization of the Greco-Roman West, then perhaps we may take a minute pearl of consolation from a charred and distinctly rough oyster, as France, even if only for a fleeting moment, comes again in contact with her Gallican-Catholic identity.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is a lawyer and former Cathedral City city councilmember. He lives in Cathedral City and practices law in neighboring Rancho Mirage. Like so many people with Francophone names, he mourns for Notre Dame de Paris, but as a Christian, he believes that by the power of the Resurrection, Notre-Dame, God willing, will be again the beating heart of Paris and of France.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
A WELCOME, OVERSTAYED
By: Ivan A. Lopakhin, special to Cathedral City Observed
Summary: Julian Assange, the problematic houseguest of Ecuador’s London embassy, finally outstayed his welcome and was expelled from the Embassy this morning. The process of British justice against the WikiLeaks cofounder has creaked into motion, while on both sides of the pond, conspiracy theorists and irate supporters of “Democratic” presidential wannabe Bernard Sanders are whipping themselves into a frenzy and waxing wroth against Her Majesty’s Government, and against the American intelligence communities. For votaries of the cult of personality that is the Sanders campaign, this morning’s news cannot have been welcome.
----------------------------------------------------
A little bit before 11 this morning, London time, just as bankers in The City, bureaucrats in Whitehall, barristers at the Inns of Court, and Billingsgate fishwives were preparing for their Elevenses, British police, acting at the express request of the Ecuadorian Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, entered Ecuador’s embassy in Knightsbridge, hard by Harrods, and seized the person of WikiLeaks co-founder and doubtless Russian asset Julian Assange.
The explosion of anger from the Sanders left in the United States was immediate and utterly predictable. However, while American Sanders “progressives” may be waxing wroth and spinning ever more Baroque and Byzantine conspiracy theories, it is significant that there has been relatively little reaction from the Kremlin or the intelligence apparat of the Russian State. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, an experienced KGB case officer, knows when to cut his losses and burn an asset.
While there may not be a lot of schadenfreude within the confines of the Moscow Kremlin, there is certainly some palatable schadenfreude among Hillary Clinton loyalists and supporters of the Democratic National Committee. After all, Gospodin Assange, whose Russian connections are an open secret, positioned himself as an eager adversary of Hillary Clinton. Indeed, so obvious was Assange’s misogynistic disdain for Hillary Clinton, that it was impossible not to infer that he was acting on behalf of Donald Trump, the Russian state, or both.
Indeed, after the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016, many angry Sanders supporters, drifting ineluctably in the direction of Donald Trump and the Russian state, looked to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to vindicate their failed cause. The comment threads of nearly every article concerning Hillary Clinton, Bernard Sanders, or WikiLeaks, contained either predictions that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks would sooner or later bring down the Clinton campaign and “expose” how the primary election process had been “rigged” against Bernard Sanders.
Indeed, the #neverHillary and “Bernie or bust” movements, with the active, knowing, complicity of Gospodin Zuckerberg and Facebook, eagerly and uncritically disseminated both Trump campaign talking points and disinformation from WikiLeaks, treating the latter as if it were gospel. Never once did the #neverHillary or “Bernie or bust” cultists ever once undertake any due diligence whatsoever. Instead, they eagerly repeated what Gospodin Assange chose to release.
Now, of course, the Sanders intransigents, the Japanese-holdout-on-Pacific-island-sore-losers, the followers of the Bernie personality cult, have begun to fabricate a congenial, if cynical, mythology of Assange as some kind of “journalistic martyr for freedom of expression.”
Never mind that Gospodin Assange has never, not even once, disclosed any material embarrassing to the interests of the Russian State, or to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself.
Never mind that in his ill-advised interview with Gospodin Assange, Bill Maher extracted a promise from Gospodin Assange that Gospodin Assange would secure and release Donald Trump’s tax returns, a promise Gospodin Assange ostentatiously did not keep.
Never mind that Gospodin Assange sued the very Ecuadorian State which had offered him asylum and refuge, and smeared feces on the walls of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Never mind that Julian Assange has never been a credentialed journalist, and that he has never written a single article for any journalistic outlet.
Never mind all that. The gullible and easily manipulated votaries and fellow travelers of the Sanders left, foolish people who managed to make Joe McCarthy look good, will whinge and wail, ball and squall, and sling snot and spittle in their outrage that Julian Assange, wanted on charges of bail jumping, rape of an underage minor, and criminal computer hacking, in three separate countries, will finally be brought to account for the brazen way in which he has thumbed his nose at the Royal Government of Sweden, at Her Majesty’s Government in the UK, and at the American people.
The Komsomoltsy of the Bernie Sanders cult and the foolish followers of Gospodin Trump should perhaps stop waxing wroth and start worrying about what Julian Assange may have to say should he decide either to start cooperating or instruct his followers to try to burn down the world in some kind of Götterdämmerung orgy of Assange–ish narcissism. For what Assange knows and may be prepared to make public could very well be more than enough to destroy both Donald Trump and Bernard Sanders.
Karma, it seems, is ineluctable.
-xxx-
Ivan Arkadyevich Lopakhin, who posts occasionally in this blog is, like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, a hybrid. Of Russo-American parentage, he has been a critic and gadfly of the governments of the Russian State since he was a Young Pioneer and aspiring Komsomolets in Leningrad. Since his widowed mom brought him back from the Soviet Union to Southern California, Ivan has been a devoted American, surfer, husband, father, and occasional yente for American companies wanting to risk doing business in Russkiy Otechestvo. The views set forth herein are entirely his own.
Summary: Julian Assange, the problematic houseguest of Ecuador’s London embassy, finally outstayed his welcome and was expelled from the Embassy this morning. The process of British justice against the WikiLeaks cofounder has creaked into motion, while on both sides of the pond, conspiracy theorists and irate supporters of “Democratic” presidential wannabe Bernard Sanders are whipping themselves into a frenzy and waxing wroth against Her Majesty’s Government, and against the American intelligence communities. For votaries of the cult of personality that is the Sanders campaign, this morning’s news cannot have been welcome.
----------------------------------------------------
A little bit before 11 this morning, London time, just as bankers in The City, bureaucrats in Whitehall, barristers at the Inns of Court, and Billingsgate fishwives were preparing for their Elevenses, British police, acting at the express request of the Ecuadorian Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, entered Ecuador’s embassy in Knightsbridge, hard by Harrods, and seized the person of WikiLeaks co-founder and doubtless Russian asset Julian Assange.
The explosion of anger from the Sanders left in the United States was immediate and utterly predictable. However, while American Sanders “progressives” may be waxing wroth and spinning ever more Baroque and Byzantine conspiracy theories, it is significant that there has been relatively little reaction from the Kremlin or the intelligence apparat of the Russian State. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, an experienced KGB case officer, knows when to cut his losses and burn an asset.
While there may not be a lot of schadenfreude within the confines of the Moscow Kremlin, there is certainly some palatable schadenfreude among Hillary Clinton loyalists and supporters of the Democratic National Committee. After all, Gospodin Assange, whose Russian connections are an open secret, positioned himself as an eager adversary of Hillary Clinton. Indeed, so obvious was Assange’s misogynistic disdain for Hillary Clinton, that it was impossible not to infer that he was acting on behalf of Donald Trump, the Russian state, or both.
Indeed, after the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016, many angry Sanders supporters, drifting ineluctably in the direction of Donald Trump and the Russian state, looked to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to vindicate their failed cause. The comment threads of nearly every article concerning Hillary Clinton, Bernard Sanders, or WikiLeaks, contained either predictions that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks would sooner or later bring down the Clinton campaign and “expose” how the primary election process had been “rigged” against Bernard Sanders.
Indeed, the #neverHillary and “Bernie or bust” movements, with the active, knowing, complicity of Gospodin Zuckerberg and Facebook, eagerly and uncritically disseminated both Trump campaign talking points and disinformation from WikiLeaks, treating the latter as if it were gospel. Never once did the #neverHillary or “Bernie or bust” cultists ever once undertake any due diligence whatsoever. Instead, they eagerly repeated what Gospodin Assange chose to release.
Now, of course, the Sanders intransigents, the Japanese-holdout-on-Pacific-island-sore-losers, the followers of the Bernie personality cult, have begun to fabricate a congenial, if cynical, mythology of Assange as some kind of “journalistic martyr for freedom of expression.”
Never mind that Gospodin Assange has never, not even once, disclosed any material embarrassing to the interests of the Russian State, or to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself.
Never mind that in his ill-advised interview with Gospodin Assange, Bill Maher extracted a promise from Gospodin Assange that Gospodin Assange would secure and release Donald Trump’s tax returns, a promise Gospodin Assange ostentatiously did not keep.
Never mind that Gospodin Assange sued the very Ecuadorian State which had offered him asylum and refuge, and smeared feces on the walls of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Never mind that Julian Assange has never been a credentialed journalist, and that he has never written a single article for any journalistic outlet.
Never mind all that. The gullible and easily manipulated votaries and fellow travelers of the Sanders left, foolish people who managed to make Joe McCarthy look good, will whinge and wail, ball and squall, and sling snot and spittle in their outrage that Julian Assange, wanted on charges of bail jumping, rape of an underage minor, and criminal computer hacking, in three separate countries, will finally be brought to account for the brazen way in which he has thumbed his nose at the Royal Government of Sweden, at Her Majesty’s Government in the UK, and at the American people.
The Komsomoltsy of the Bernie Sanders cult and the foolish followers of Gospodin Trump should perhaps stop waxing wroth and start worrying about what Julian Assange may have to say should he decide either to start cooperating or instruct his followers to try to burn down the world in some kind of Götterdämmerung orgy of Assange–ish narcissism. For what Assange knows and may be prepared to make public could very well be more than enough to destroy both Donald Trump and Bernard Sanders.
Karma, it seems, is ineluctable.
-xxx-
Ivan Arkadyevich Lopakhin, who posts occasionally in this blog is, like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, a hybrid. Of Russo-American parentage, he has been a critic and gadfly of the governments of the Russian State since he was a Young Pioneer and aspiring Komsomolets in Leningrad. Since his widowed mom brought him back from the Soviet Union to Southern California, Ivan has been a devoted American, surfer, husband, father, and occasional yente for American companies wanting to risk doing business in Russkiy Otechestvo. The views set forth herein are entirely his own.
Friday, March 1, 2019
SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING IN PALM DESERT: Was There a Plot to Pack the Council in Cathedral City?
Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans
-Prince Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, some time Imperial Chancellor of Germany, predicting the cause of the outbreak of the Great War
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
-W. Scott, Marmion (1808),Canto VI, stanza XVI
“Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy.shame on you for change of mind!”
-Jean Benson, former Palm Desert councilwoman, Facebook comment, February 28, 1919, on the Cathedral City city Council’s decision to call a special election for District 1.
Summary: A snarky series of Facebook comments from former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may very well have exposed further evidence of a plot to pack the Cathedral City city Council. Benson’s comment, lamenting the Council’s decision to call a special election, and implying that there had existed a contrary consensus, may very well constitute probable cause to believe that criminal violations have been committed, and that at least two of the members of the Cathedral City city Council committed them. Jean needs to think seriously about shutting her yap and lawyering up. Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may have blown the lid off a real scandal.
Great wars and crises always seem to begin with small, foolish things. Germany’s Iron Chancellor, not Angela Merkel but Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, predicted, in 1888, the famous “Dreikaiserjahre,” that the next general European war would begin as a result of “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” Just two and half decades later, Bismarck’s prediction was borne out on that thrice-cursed day of Vidovdan, June 28, 1914, when teenaged Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, setting in train of the series of events which led to the outbreak of the Great War.
Similarly, a tweet describing the self-immolation of a merchant in Tunis triggered the events of the Arab spring, a sociopolitical phenomenon which has yet to play itself out.
On a more local level, it was an indiscreet exchange of emails between Cathedral city Mayor pro tem John Aguilar and former Mayor Stan Henry which exposed, and led to the foiling of, an apparently well laid plan to appoint Mr. Henry to serve out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Gregory Pettis.
The particulars of what we may call the “Plan for Stan” are not yet fully known. That information will only be developed if the Riverside County District Attorney’s office undertakes the investigation so critically necessary to determine whether there may have been criminal wrongdoing connected not only with the “Plan for Stan,” but also with Mayor Pettis’ death itself.
That there may have been criminality involved in the “Plan for Stan” might have been nothing more than a conspiracy theory even 24 hours ago. However, in an ill considered Facebook post, former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may have inadvertently provided evidence that the “Plan for Stan” was in fact the result of a carefully orchestrated, violative-of-the-Ralph M. Brown Act, plan, scheme, and artifice to foist Mr. Henry, a resident of District 3, on to the resistant residents of District 1. This would be not only a conspiracy to violate the Brown act, but to perpetrate a voter fraud, and a violation of California law requiring elected representatives to live in their constituency.
Again, this is a matter for the Public Integrity unit of the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.
Ms. Benson’s incontinent Facebook comment read:
“Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy. [ S]hame on you for change of mind!” (emphasis added)
Aside from demonstrating Ms. Benson’s utter, hubristic, and arrogant disregard for the constitutional rights of constituents to petition for redress of grievances, and to instruct their representatives, it also displays what we in the legal profession refer to as “guilty knowledge.” By saying “shame on you for change of mind,” Ms. Benson has raised the inferential possibility that there was indeed a carefully orchestrated “Plan for Stan” developed either by Mr. Henry or on his behalf, possibly by former mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and her right wing, conservative claque of loyalists and fellow travelers, presumptively in the aid of laying foundation for a DeRosa comeback.
At all events, Ms. Benson’s post, like so many of the tweets from Mr. Trump, like so many of the damned foolish utterances of Mr. Trump’s mouthpiece Rudy Giuliani, and like Mr. Aguilar’s “butt dumb” emails that gave the game away, will not serve to shorten any potential DA or unofficial investigation of this process; as former Trump campaign advisor and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has put it, in the context of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, they will only serve to lengthen such investigations.
Now while defenders of Ms. Benson may point out that she’s well north of 90, people don’t usually age out of arrogance and hubris. Ms. Benson has a reputation for having a sharp tongue, and equally for being a close friend and something of a loyalist of Kathleen Joan DeRosa. Thus, the first question that anyone should ask seeking to get to the bottom of what is now fairly obviously a conspiracy to violate the rights of the residents of District 1, is: what did Jean Benson know and when did Jean Benson know it? Where did she come by her information? What was decided out of public view, by whom, and what minds were changed?
For by suggesting that there existed some consensus, of which Ms. Benson had been aware, which was departed from to her evident annoyance, Ms. Benson has suggested the existence of not only a conspiracy to violate the Ralph M. Brown Act, but an actual, knowing, and deliberate violation of the Act itself. To the extent that there exists probable cause to believe that a Brown Act violation has occurred, Ms. Benson may very well be either a material witness or a co-conspirator. She may want to think carefully about shutting her arrogant yap and lawyering up.
Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may blow wide open a criminal conspiracy to stack the Council in Cathedral City. Let and investigation be opened and let it go wherever the evidence takes it.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand lives in Cathedral City and practices law in Rancho Mirage. He has been a member of the legal profession for 30 years as of this spring, and has little patience for bumbling, fumbling, ill-informed laypeople who think they are qualified to practice law. The views contained herein are his own, and should not be construed as legal advice.
-Prince Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, some time Imperial Chancellor of Germany, predicting the cause of the outbreak of the Great War
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
-W. Scott, Marmion (1808),Canto VI, stanza XVI
“Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy.shame on you for change of mind!”
-Jean Benson, former Palm Desert councilwoman, Facebook comment, February 28, 1919, on the Cathedral City city Council’s decision to call a special election for District 1.
Summary: A snarky series of Facebook comments from former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may very well have exposed further evidence of a plot to pack the Cathedral City city Council. Benson’s comment, lamenting the Council’s decision to call a special election, and implying that there had existed a contrary consensus, may very well constitute probable cause to believe that criminal violations have been committed, and that at least two of the members of the Cathedral City city Council committed them. Jean needs to think seriously about shutting her yap and lawyering up. Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may have blown the lid off a real scandal.
Great wars and crises always seem to begin with small, foolish things. Germany’s Iron Chancellor, not Angela Merkel but Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, predicted, in 1888, the famous “Dreikaiserjahre,” that the next general European war would begin as a result of “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” Just two and half decades later, Bismarck’s prediction was borne out on that thrice-cursed day of Vidovdan, June 28, 1914, when teenaged Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, setting in train of the series of events which led to the outbreak of the Great War.
Similarly, a tweet describing the self-immolation of a merchant in Tunis triggered the events of the Arab spring, a sociopolitical phenomenon which has yet to play itself out.
On a more local level, it was an indiscreet exchange of emails between Cathedral city Mayor pro tem John Aguilar and former Mayor Stan Henry which exposed, and led to the foiling of, an apparently well laid plan to appoint Mr. Henry to serve out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Gregory Pettis.
The particulars of what we may call the “Plan for Stan” are not yet fully known. That information will only be developed if the Riverside County District Attorney’s office undertakes the investigation so critically necessary to determine whether there may have been criminal wrongdoing connected not only with the “Plan for Stan,” but also with Mayor Pettis’ death itself.
That there may have been criminality involved in the “Plan for Stan” might have been nothing more than a conspiracy theory even 24 hours ago. However, in an ill considered Facebook post, former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may have inadvertently provided evidence that the “Plan for Stan” was in fact the result of a carefully orchestrated, violative-of-the-Ralph M. Brown Act, plan, scheme, and artifice to foist Mr. Henry, a resident of District 3, on to the resistant residents of District 1. This would be not only a conspiracy to violate the Brown act, but to perpetrate a voter fraud, and a violation of California law requiring elected representatives to live in their constituency.
Ms. Benson’s incontinent Facebook comment read:
“Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy. [ S]hame on you for change of mind!” (emphasis added)
Aside from demonstrating Ms. Benson’s utter, hubristic, and arrogant disregard for the constitutional rights of constituents to petition for redress of grievances, and to instruct their representatives, it also displays what we in the legal profession refer to as “guilty knowledge.” By saying “shame on you for change of mind,” Ms. Benson has raised the inferential possibility that there was indeed a carefully orchestrated “Plan for Stan” developed either by Mr. Henry or on his behalf, possibly by former mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and her right wing, conservative claque of loyalists and fellow travelers, presumptively in the aid of laying foundation for a DeRosa comeback.
At all events, Ms. Benson’s post, like so many of the tweets from Mr. Trump, like so many of the damned foolish utterances of Mr. Trump’s mouthpiece Rudy Giuliani, and like Mr. Aguilar’s “butt dumb” emails that gave the game away, will not serve to shorten any potential DA or unofficial investigation of this process; as former Trump campaign advisor and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has put it, in the context of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, they will only serve to lengthen such investigations.
Now while defenders of Ms. Benson may point out that she’s well north of 90, people don’t usually age out of arrogance and hubris. Ms. Benson has a reputation for having a sharp tongue, and equally for being a close friend and something of a loyalist of Kathleen Joan DeRosa. Thus, the first question that anyone should ask seeking to get to the bottom of what is now fairly obviously a conspiracy to violate the rights of the residents of District 1, is: what did Jean Benson know and when did Jean Benson know it? Where did she come by her information? What was decided out of public view, by whom, and what minds were changed?
For by suggesting that there existed some consensus, of which Ms. Benson had been aware, which was departed from to her evident annoyance, Ms. Benson has suggested the existence of not only a conspiracy to violate the Ralph M. Brown Act, but an actual, knowing, and deliberate violation of the Act itself. To the extent that there exists probable cause to believe that a Brown Act violation has occurred, Ms. Benson may very well be either a material witness or a co-conspirator. She may want to think carefully about shutting her arrogant yap and lawyering up.
Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may blow wide open a criminal conspiracy to stack the Council in Cathedral City. Let and investigation be opened and let it go wherever the evidence takes it.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand lives in Cathedral City and practices law in Rancho Mirage. He has been a member of the legal profession for 30 years as of this spring, and has little patience for bumbling, fumbling, ill-informed laypeople who think they are qualified to practice law. The views contained herein are his own, and should not be construed as legal advice.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
HOW THE COUNCIL MAY HAVE SAVED ITS OWN BACON
Summary: Last night, the Cathedral City city Council did the right thing and abandoned its butt dumb plan to appoint an at-large councilmember to fill out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Greg Pettis. The appointment plan, apparently cooked up by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa and her loyalists, and apparently inadvertently exposed by Mayor pro tem John Aguilar, envisioned the Council appointing former mayor Stan Henry, not a resident of the constituency, to fill out Mayor Pettis’s unexpired term. As word got out that this seemed to be a “done deal,” voters in the district 1 constituency in question and throughout the city rose up in righteous indignation. Last night, the Council felt the chill wind of Wintry Disapproval, and retreated from its butt dumb plan, opting instead to call a special election limited to candidates and voters in District 1.
Cathedral City, February 28, 2019 -- Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas once observed that “[i]n politics more than in anything else, the beginning of everything lies in moral indignation.” Last night, in abandoning its butt dumb plan to appoint an at-large member of the Council to represent District 1 and fill out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Greg Pettis, the Council bowed to the moral indignation and Wintry Disapproval of the residents of District 1 and of the larger electorate of Cathedral City. In doing so, the Council may just have saved its own bacon.
Most revolutions begin with small things. The Xinhai (Hsin-hai) Revolution, which led to the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911-1912 began with the inadvertent explosion of the package bomb in the Yangtze Valley City of Wuhan. The Arab Spring began with a small merchant immolating himself in the city of Tunis, and our own American Revolution, our protean national liberation struggle that has become the model for all which followed, began when a bunch of pissed off farmers at Lexington and Concord stood up to a landing party composed of Royal Marines. As John Parker, commanding the Minutemen on Lexington Green said, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
The residents of District 1, like the Minutemen on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775, three days after Easter, confronting a plan to impose upon them a councilmember from outside their own district, felt the moral indignation that is the heritage and birthright of every American whom any government proposes to tax without representation. The city Council’s butt dumb, apparently done deal to appoint Stan Henry to Greg Pettis’s seat would have left District 3 with double representation, while bereaving District 1 of any voice or representation whatsoever on the city Council for the next 20 months. The residents of District 1 weren’t having it.
As the situation developed, there emerged evidence to suggest that this was a plan that had been cooked up by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa and her political cronies. DeRosa, who for ten bitter winters served as the worst mayor in Cathedral City’s history, showing the same kind of Trumpian, Outer Boroughs, bridge-and-tunnel pettiness, vindictiveness, thin-skinnedness, and sheer nastiness as The Donald himself, mixed with an almost sexual desire for power and a political comeback, induced her cronies to start beating the drums for an appointment of Stan Henry to the Council. DeRosa, clever enough to know that her name in this community is still mud induced car salesman Andy Jessup to belabor the Council with a lengthy email extolling the ostensible virtues and qualifications of Mr. Henry.
The apparent target of one of these emails was Mayor pro tem John Aguilar, who first came to the Council as an appointed protégé of former Mayor Pettis. Mr. Aguilar apparently, either out of foolishness or deep fatigue (don’t you think he looks tired?) did not appreciate the dangerous position into which he was about to place himself, and emailed Mr. Henry with a series of missives which created an unmistakable and ultimately undeniable impression that Mr. Henry was a shoo-in, and that his appointment to the Council was an inevitability. What is more interesting is that Mr. Aguilar apparently sent these emails from his municipal email account, and that he attempted unsuccessfully to delete them after discovering that a Public Records Act request have been filed demanding their production.
That is in and of itself actionable criminal misconduct, and also demonstrates the existence of what in the criminal law is referred to as “a consciousness of guilt.” In plain, non-Vulcan English, that means that to all intents and purposes, Mr. Aguilar had not just dropped, but had hurled, a big malodorous turd into the municipal punch bowl. It was a foolish, ill-considered, and potentially criminal act. The email was itself a public record, and California law frowns with Wintry Disapproval on destruction or falsification of public records. Worse for Mr. Aguilar, it does not matter that the attempt is not successful. The crime is complete at the time the attempt is made. What Mr. Aguilar did was not just dumb, it was butt dumb.
By engaging in such conduct, Mr. Aguilar not only exposed himself to potential investigation by District Attorney Mike Hestrin, he may also have exposed himself to a further investigation by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and possibly by the Legislature itself. At all events, Mr. Aguilar has exposed himself as a political lightweight with no sense of optics and no understanding of the often exquisitely complex compliance mandates under which public officials are supposed to govern themselves. At all events, Mr. Aguilar fatally tainted the whole appointment process.
When the Council met last night to determine whether to appoint someone, this blogger and a number of other individuals within the community, including Cindy Uken of the Uken Report, and Casey Dolan of Cactus Hugs, as well as local activists Simeon Den, his husband Peter Palladino, Lynne O’Neill, Alan Carvalho and his husband former councilmember Shelley Kaplan, and a number of other morally indignant residents, had sounded the alarm.
The general gist of our “polemic” was that the Council needed to abandon any appointment and call a special election, limited to voters and candidates in District 1. We packed the Council chamber. After nearly 2 hours of public comment, which hit the Council like a cast iron skillet upside its collective head, and with the Council looking stunned that the apparent “shoo-in Stan” plan was threatening to create an enormous political crisis that might subject each of them to a recall, and might subject the city to lawsuits whose defense would exceed in cost the maximum amount a special election could be expected to cost, councilmember Ray Gregory, who had already seen the light, offered a motion to call a special election for District 1 limited to electors and candidates from that district.
After several agonizing seconds, during which it appeared that the motion might die for want of a second, Mr. Aguilar, finally understanding that Mr. Gregory had thrown him a lifeline, seconded the motion, though not before chastising supporters of an election as “thugs” who had presumably cooked up their objections to his plan to shoo-in Stan Henry solely to hurt his feelings.
Now from my own experience as a former councilmember of eight years, I know that as a general rule when one seconds a motion, unless one seconds it “for the purposes of discussion,” using those so-called magic words, one has in effect committed to vote in favor of the motion. Either Mr. Aguilar lacked the experience to understand that, or he was truly seconding the motion and conveying an unmistakable tell that he intended to vote in favor. In the end, the Council saved its own bacon and voted 3-1 in favor of the motion.
Councilmember Ernesto Gutierrez, a nasty, Trumpian little piece of work, a small fingered vulgarian, known for his bush league behavior, his fealty to The Donald, his dislike of the queer nation, and his conviction that women should not enjoy reproductive choice, voted against the motion. Already, community activist sources are telling me that they are preparing to lodge recall paperwork against Mr. Gutierrez at the earliest legal moment, i.e., on the 91st day after Mr. Gutierrez was sworn into office (see, e.g., Elections Code § 11007).
The apparent theory of any recall against Ernesto Gutierrez will be that his “no” vote on calling a special election is 1) a violation of his Article XX constitutional oath of office, 2) a violation of democratic norms, and 3) evidence of his possible participation in a violation of, or conspiracy to violate, the Ralph M. Brown Act, which denounces private meetings by representative bodies.
Mr. Gutierrez and the rest of the Council need to be reminded that we do not work for them, but that they work for us. Last night may have represented a distinct and palpable change in the political power dynamics of Cathedral City. Activated residents are no longer prepared to tolerate the presence of the Council that ignores the manifest and evident will of the electorate. It is reasonably safe to infer that the three councilmembers who voted in favor of the special election had had the fear of God put into them that they might be the targets of a recall had they gone ahead and appointed Stan Henry to the Council. Mr. Gutierrez apparently has yet to learn that lesson.
At all events, however, the shift in the power dynamic on the Council, and between the Council and the community hopefully betokens the emergence of a Council that will be more responsive to its respective constituencies and to the community as a whole. We have come a long way from the 10 sour, dour, gray, Leonid Brezhnev-like winters when the city languished under the lackluster leadership of bridge-and-tunnel Kathleen DeRosa. We cannot afford to go back. Our future is progressive, and we must make it clear that we expect, nay, demand progressive representation on the city Council. Moreover, we must make it very clear to our elected representatives that they will pay a heavy political price for crossing us again. We’re prepared to be “thuggish” and to put an awful lot of hurt on the delicate feelings of city councilmembers who ignore their constituents and attempt to inflict upon them the horrors of taxation without representation. The revolution continues.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand, Esq., is an attorney who lives in Cathedral City and practices in Rancho Mirage. He served for eight years as a member of the Cathedral City city Council. The views contained herein are his own, though he has probable cause to believe that they are shared by a substantial number of voters throughout Cathedral City.
Cathedral City, February 28, 2019 -- Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas once observed that “[i]n politics more than in anything else, the beginning of everything lies in moral indignation.” Last night, in abandoning its butt dumb plan to appoint an at-large member of the Council to represent District 1 and fill out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Greg Pettis, the Council bowed to the moral indignation and Wintry Disapproval of the residents of District 1 and of the larger electorate of Cathedral City. In doing so, the Council may just have saved its own bacon.
Most revolutions begin with small things. The Xinhai (Hsin-hai) Revolution, which led to the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911-1912 began with the inadvertent explosion of the package bomb in the Yangtze Valley City of Wuhan. The Arab Spring began with a small merchant immolating himself in the city of Tunis, and our own American Revolution, our protean national liberation struggle that has become the model for all which followed, began when a bunch of pissed off farmers at Lexington and Concord stood up to a landing party composed of Royal Marines. As John Parker, commanding the Minutemen on Lexington Green said, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
The residents of District 1, like the Minutemen on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775, three days after Easter, confronting a plan to impose upon them a councilmember from outside their own district, felt the moral indignation that is the heritage and birthright of every American whom any government proposes to tax without representation. The city Council’s butt dumb, apparently done deal to appoint Stan Henry to Greg Pettis’s seat would have left District 3 with double representation, while bereaving District 1 of any voice or representation whatsoever on the city Council for the next 20 months. The residents of District 1 weren’t having it.
As the situation developed, there emerged evidence to suggest that this was a plan that had been cooked up by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa and her political cronies. DeRosa, who for ten bitter winters served as the worst mayor in Cathedral City’s history, showing the same kind of Trumpian, Outer Boroughs, bridge-and-tunnel pettiness, vindictiveness, thin-skinnedness, and sheer nastiness as The Donald himself, mixed with an almost sexual desire for power and a political comeback, induced her cronies to start beating the drums for an appointment of Stan Henry to the Council. DeRosa, clever enough to know that her name in this community is still mud induced car salesman Andy Jessup to belabor the Council with a lengthy email extolling the ostensible virtues and qualifications of Mr. Henry.
The apparent target of one of these emails was Mayor pro tem John Aguilar, who first came to the Council as an appointed protégé of former Mayor Pettis. Mr. Aguilar apparently, either out of foolishness or deep fatigue (don’t you think he looks tired?) did not appreciate the dangerous position into which he was about to place himself, and emailed Mr. Henry with a series of missives which created an unmistakable and ultimately undeniable impression that Mr. Henry was a shoo-in, and that his appointment to the Council was an inevitability. What is more interesting is that Mr. Aguilar apparently sent these emails from his municipal email account, and that he attempted unsuccessfully to delete them after discovering that a Public Records Act request have been filed demanding their production.
That is in and of itself actionable criminal misconduct, and also demonstrates the existence of what in the criminal law is referred to as “a consciousness of guilt.” In plain, non-Vulcan English, that means that to all intents and purposes, Mr. Aguilar had not just dropped, but had hurled, a big malodorous turd into the municipal punch bowl. It was a foolish, ill-considered, and potentially criminal act. The email was itself a public record, and California law frowns with Wintry Disapproval on destruction or falsification of public records. Worse for Mr. Aguilar, it does not matter that the attempt is not successful. The crime is complete at the time the attempt is made. What Mr. Aguilar did was not just dumb, it was butt dumb.
By engaging in such conduct, Mr. Aguilar not only exposed himself to potential investigation by District Attorney Mike Hestrin, he may also have exposed himself to a further investigation by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and possibly by the Legislature itself. At all events, Mr. Aguilar has exposed himself as a political lightweight with no sense of optics and no understanding of the often exquisitely complex compliance mandates under which public officials are supposed to govern themselves. At all events, Mr. Aguilar fatally tainted the whole appointment process.
When the Council met last night to determine whether to appoint someone, this blogger and a number of other individuals within the community, including Cindy Uken of the Uken Report, and Casey Dolan of Cactus Hugs, as well as local activists Simeon Den, his husband Peter Palladino, Lynne O’Neill, Alan Carvalho and his husband former councilmember Shelley Kaplan, and a number of other morally indignant residents, had sounded the alarm.
The general gist of our “polemic” was that the Council needed to abandon any appointment and call a special election, limited to voters and candidates in District 1. We packed the Council chamber. After nearly 2 hours of public comment, which hit the Council like a cast iron skillet upside its collective head, and with the Council looking stunned that the apparent “shoo-in Stan” plan was threatening to create an enormous political crisis that might subject each of them to a recall, and might subject the city to lawsuits whose defense would exceed in cost the maximum amount a special election could be expected to cost, councilmember Ray Gregory, who had already seen the light, offered a motion to call a special election for District 1 limited to electors and candidates from that district.
After several agonizing seconds, during which it appeared that the motion might die for want of a second, Mr. Aguilar, finally understanding that Mr. Gregory had thrown him a lifeline, seconded the motion, though not before chastising supporters of an election as “thugs” who had presumably cooked up their objections to his plan to shoo-in Stan Henry solely to hurt his feelings.
Now from my own experience as a former councilmember of eight years, I know that as a general rule when one seconds a motion, unless one seconds it “for the purposes of discussion,” using those so-called magic words, one has in effect committed to vote in favor of the motion. Either Mr. Aguilar lacked the experience to understand that, or he was truly seconding the motion and conveying an unmistakable tell that he intended to vote in favor. In the end, the Council saved its own bacon and voted 3-1 in favor of the motion.
Councilmember Ernesto Gutierrez, a nasty, Trumpian little piece of work, a small fingered vulgarian, known for his bush league behavior, his fealty to The Donald, his dislike of the queer nation, and his conviction that women should not enjoy reproductive choice, voted against the motion. Already, community activist sources are telling me that they are preparing to lodge recall paperwork against Mr. Gutierrez at the earliest legal moment, i.e., on the 91st day after Mr. Gutierrez was sworn into office (see, e.g., Elections Code § 11007).
The apparent theory of any recall against Ernesto Gutierrez will be that his “no” vote on calling a special election is 1) a violation of his Article XX constitutional oath of office, 2) a violation of democratic norms, and 3) evidence of his possible participation in a violation of, or conspiracy to violate, the Ralph M. Brown Act, which denounces private meetings by representative bodies.
Mr. Gutierrez and the rest of the Council need to be reminded that we do not work for them, but that they work for us. Last night may have represented a distinct and palpable change in the political power dynamics of Cathedral City. Activated residents are no longer prepared to tolerate the presence of the Council that ignores the manifest and evident will of the electorate. It is reasonably safe to infer that the three councilmembers who voted in favor of the special election had had the fear of God put into them that they might be the targets of a recall had they gone ahead and appointed Stan Henry to the Council. Mr. Gutierrez apparently has yet to learn that lesson.
At all events, however, the shift in the power dynamic on the Council, and between the Council and the community hopefully betokens the emergence of a Council that will be more responsive to its respective constituencies and to the community as a whole. We have come a long way from the 10 sour, dour, gray, Leonid Brezhnev-like winters when the city languished under the lackluster leadership of bridge-and-tunnel Kathleen DeRosa. We cannot afford to go back. Our future is progressive, and we must make it clear that we expect, nay, demand progressive representation on the city Council. Moreover, we must make it very clear to our elected representatives that they will pay a heavy political price for crossing us again. We’re prepared to be “thuggish” and to put an awful lot of hurt on the delicate feelings of city councilmembers who ignore their constituents and attempt to inflict upon them the horrors of taxation without representation. The revolution continues.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand, Esq., is an attorney who lives in Cathedral City and practices in Rancho Mirage. He served for eight years as a member of the Cathedral City city Council. The views contained herein are his own, though he has probable cause to believe that they are shared by a substantial number of voters throughout Cathedral City.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)