Time to Think

The Politics of Hurricanes By Hank Silverberg Everything is politics these days. Since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, much has been written about the response of  the federal government to natural disasters. Has Congress allocated enough money? Was the response quick enough? Did those in high office show enough concern about the victims? These are all legitimate questions for the press, the public, and the government itself to review. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has been restructured several times since Katrina left hundreds of people stranded in the New Orleans Superdome without proper supplies or facilities during the 2005 disaster.  And both the Bush and Obama Administrations responded much better to subsequent storms. But somehow the current administration can’t seem to do so without bringing its bizarre view of the world into it. As Hurricane Florence approached the east coast th...

See the USA By Hank Silverberg I don’t travel as much as I would like. But when I do, I enjoy a good road trip by car because you see more of the countryside. When I have the time, I get off the Interstates and take back roads, though I discovered this weekend I don’t like driving narrow two-lane mountain roads with up and down” S” curves and no guard rails.   A family wedding in New England took me  through nine states. I had traveled most of the route several times before.   The view from the Delaware Memorial Bridge is still spectacular, but I have seen it many times. We were hoping to see a few new things on this trip, and we did.   For example. In the Garden State (NJ), which is anything but a garden if you see it only from the Turnpike, can surprise you. We took a back route through central Jersey neighborhoods to get away from a major traffic jam near New Brunswick.   I had worked this ground as a reporter for WCTC radio early in my career, so...

The American Worker By Hank Silverberg It’s Labor Day. Thousands of Americans have been on the road for the last unofficial weekend of summer. They may have been at the beach, or in the mountains. Or maybe they just stayed in the back yard with the barbecue grill. For most Americans it’s a day off. Labor Unions were the major force behind Labor Day. It was a day set aside to honor the American worker, many of them immigrants who had built railroads, skyscrapers, roads and automobiles during the height of the Industrial Revolution, and turned the United States into a world economic power.  The first official national Labor Day came in 1894, by which time 30 states had already established the day to celebrate the American worker. It was the era of the robber barons, who reaped the benefit of other people’s labor. They often accused labor organizers of being anarchists or communists and sent thugs to break up their organizing meetings. (Workers on  DC M...

The Art of Politics By Hank Silverberg The United States has lost some of its best artists in recent years, and it doesn’t appear we will be getting any new ones soon. Wait! Before you start listing great painters, musicians or writers, let me clarify. I am talking about those who practice “The Art of Politics.”  (The U.S.Capitol) Done the right way, political discourse and decisions have always been art. You come up with a good idea, float it around the political circle and the public, seek input, and redraw it based on the views of colleagues and constituents. We’ve had some wonderful political artists in our history. Ben Franklin comes to mind. There was Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ted Kennedy. Yes—they were partisan many times. But in the end, they compromised for the good of the country. (Sen. John McCain)  I write about this now because we have lost one of our current political artists this week— Republican Senator John McCain, of Arizona. I i...

Raining on the Parade By Hank Silverberg When I was a 15- year-old High School student in Connecticut, my father was learning to walk with canes and would soon be confined to a wheelchair. He was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis, an illness eventually linked to a chest wound he received on February 20, 1945 on the sands of Iwo Jima,  just two week after his 20th birthday.  He was getting some help from the local VA hospital and that inspired me to volunteer there. During the spring of 1970 I ran a 16 millimeter movie projector in a hospital ward of the V-A. Th ere was no internet or cable TV so those movies were what passed for entertainment and I think they were appreciated. The men there were all confined to their beds. Some of them were veterans of World War One or World War Two, but many had just come back from Vietnam and were not much older than me. Most of these men did not speak much. A few asked me how old I was and where I went t...

Unite What’s Right By Hank Silverberg   There they were again--Nazis, skinheads, white supremacists--standing in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House waving the flag and calling it a “white civil rights movement.” Your first reaction should be, “What?”  For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, you will find this one a bit different.   It has to be.  For more than 200 years, with some notable exceptions, the white, protestant, elite has ruled America. But the majority of people in America stopped being white years ago. There are hundreds of millions of people who know that and believe it makes us a stronger nation. The folks with the Swastikas and Stars and Bars represent a small minority who don’t get it.  In fact, after all the media coverage and all the rhetoric, only about two dozen people came to the “Unite the Right” rally at Lafayette Park this past Sunday. They were far out numbered by a variety of count...