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  America 250                                #385 By Hank Silverberg Over the next few months there will be celebrations across the country to commemorate the 250th birthday of the United States. This is certainly something to celebrate. Our form of government, revolutionary in 1776, has survived rapid, often uncontrolled growth, a bloody Civil War, the racial inequality that still stains our ideals, corporate greed that divides us by class, and political turmoil that seems to crop up again and again every 30 years or so.   (Washington reconstructed boyhood  home at Ferry Farms I thought about all this as my wife and I visited Ferry Farm in nearby Stafford County, Virginia. Though most people think of Mount Vernon as Washington's home, it was Ferry Farm where he spent his childhood. He lived there until he was 22 years old with his mother and four siblings. His father died when George was...
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  Loss of Faith in Journalism                  #384 By Hank Silverberg  Who, what, when, where, why, how. Those are the questions all journalists are taught at the beginning of their career. I have always added another H for "How much" to my reporting, because a dollar figure was often attached to many stories.  But beyond that a reporter's job, above all else, is to tell the truth as best you know it.  Both the Radio,Television, Digital News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists have a code of ethics emphasizing the truth, along with fairness.  But somewhere along the line, "truth" part seems to have gotten lost. A mentor of mine, the late Jim Farley, used to instill in his reporting staff "Get it first, but FIRST get it RIGHT". And that too seems to have gotten lost with the prevalence of the internet, "influencers" and social media posts. Being the first to post on line has drowned out reporting ...
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 Gerrymander                                                                                                         #383  By Hank Silverberg   Commentary It all started back in 1812. Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, at the request of his political party, ironically called the Democratic-Republican Party, signed a bill that redrew state legislative districts to give them an advantage in the next election. The districts were bizarre, with one of them looking very much like a salamander. Gerry didn't like the whole thing, and actually called them "highly disagreeable," but he signed the bill anyway prompting the Boston Gazette to coin the term Gerrymandering. Gerry lost his re-election bid, even though his ...
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Fly Me To The Moon                        #382 By Hank Silverberg  My heart skipped a beat as I watched the Artemis II spacecraft lift off from Cape Canaveral this past week. I was immediately taken back to that 13 and 14 year-old kid who watched the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions of the 1960's and early 1970's. There was hope that by this time in the 21st century we would see the final frontier not as an expensive mission to beat the Russians to the Moon and keep the Cold War--cold, but rather as a mission to expand man's knowledge of the universe and take us where no human has gone before.  This past week I kept thinking about Apollo 18, 19, and 20, which were cancelled by the Nixon Administration. There were a number of reasons, but mostly it was the price tag that lead to the decision to scrub the missions, some of which were headed to the dark side of the Moon.  When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in July...
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The United States of America                   #381 By Hank Silverberg  Commentary As many as nine million people took to the streets this past weekend in the latest round of "No Kings" protests. The movement has not taken very long to attract large crowds across the country, making it one of the largest protests in U.S. history.   The White House reaction? Before the huge protests in dozens of cities and towns across the country, there was a claim from the White House that the protestors "hate America".  As the protests were happening, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Newsweek,  "the only people who care about this Trump Derangement Therapy Session are the reporters who are paid to cover them."  She couldn't be more wrong. So let's take a closer look. What is America?  America, from its very beginning, was a place where diversity was common.  White Europeans take all the credit, but Co...
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