Speed Gibson

Minnesota has 87 counties. California, with twice the area and many time the population has only 58 counties. It would appear we have too many.

History, geography, and especially agriculture were all factors that resulted in the current configuration, but it's out of date. The days of limited, slow car travel and communications are over. It was important for farmers to be near their county agent for advice, for example. Today, eMail and cellular phones provide even better support.

Therefore, we should be able to consolidate counties, reducing the fixed overhead. For example, in the southwestern corner, Pipestone, Murray, Rock and Nobles counties could be merged into a new larger county; let's call it Worthington County, after the largest city in this area.

An area this size, roughly the size of an average California county, and far less population than Hennepin County, should be very easy to manage. For those needing to drive to the county seat (Worthington most likely), would log at most 60 miles more, no trouble at all in a modern car, and again, that's the maximum. As it happens, Cottonwood and Jackson counties could also be added on this basis.

Metro counties are not immune either. Hennepin is big enough, but Ramsey could merge with Anoka, for example. And throughout all of this, nothing says the current lines cannot be moved. All told, I believe Minnesota could come down to as few as 20 counties, but 30 would be very workable.

Politically, it's a tough sell. The folks in the county seats to be eliminated (Pipestone, Slayton, and Luverne in my example) will object, though a large portion of the snowplows and other intrastructure would likely remain. But with the larger size and budget of the new county, services should improve. Functions that none could previously afford may now be plausible.
Better still, these new counties could take on some duties now managed by the state government.

Finally, with a much smaller count, we might actually know where those tornado warnings are when they list all of those existing counties you swear you never heard of.

Air America, the new liberal talk radio network, the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh, is a flop. A really big flop considering all the up front money and research spent trying to understand and avoid past failures like Mario Cuomo. Judging by election results which show a roughly divided populace, there should be no trouble coming up with, say, ten million regular listeners. Rush Limbaugh has over twice that many.

Yet even one million listeners seems all but out of reach. I think the reason is that regardless of our conscious persuasions on the issues, the brain itself, the sub-conscious if you will, rebels. You’re at your child’s junior high band concert. You’d like to think what they’re playing is passable, not bad for the eighth grade you tell yourself. But however proud you may be of your child’s contribution, your sub-conscious mind headed for the exits long ago.

And so it is here. The sub-conscious of the vast majority of adults will not abide what it perceives to be misleading or unimportant. Thus, I submit that however much a liberal might want to listen to Al Franken for at least an hour a day, down below the brain is yawning, annoyed that you aren’t contemplating something more serious.

You dream of “single payer” health care for everyone, listening intently to an advocate on Air America or National Public Radio. You like everything you hear, even grin or laugh at anyone claiming it won’t work. You nod approvingly when you think of the United States finally joining the rest of the “civilized” world. But again, down below, your sub-conscious being relatively devoid of nuance, sees it for what it is: trading an HMO bureaucrat for an HHS bureaucrat, a net loss.

Said another way, you have to work much harder to be a liberal, having to override your common sense and life experience that your sub-conscious mind embodies. You prefer things that make sense, but since you can’t be seen reading National Review, you do nothing.

That’s why when there is a free market, conservatives rule. Talk radio, cable news, non-fiction books, and the Internet are all now dominated by conservatives. Ann Coulter’s book Slander details many such examples. It’s only where the liberals can monopolize their power, such as with newspapers and Hollywood producers, that they have any advantage.

Liberals keep saying that their message just isn’t getting out. Actually, it is, but it isn’t getting past its toughest critic – the rational mind.

I am almost certainly in the minority, but I say let's abolish most of the absentee voting going on in this country. I wouldn't have said this myself as few as five years ago, but the 2000 election brought great visibility to a problem that has been growing for many years before that. That problem is voter fraud. If we lose control of the voting process, as all but happened in Florida in 2000, our democracy is clearly at risk.

Absentee voting is a process ripe for abuse if the volume is so high that these votes cannot be authenticated within the usual time frames of an election. It should only be used where necessary, the only exception being the military and invalids.

But what about snow birds, who reside in Minnesota but spend their winters down south? I say no. They can vote if they wish by arranging to be home on Election Day. The law requires that you have a reasonable opportunity to vote, the same as any other resident. It does not follow that the process be optimized for your vacation plans. It is those plans that "deprive" you of the privilege of voting.

What if you are out of the country, on business? Again, my answer is no. The key decision you made was taking a job with such travel requirements. Yes, you'll miss an election or two, maybe many. It happens; it's a choice; it's your choice.

People miss out on voting every election, perhaps due to a sudden illness or accident. Maybe a mother is giving birth a week prematurely. Maybe your car broke down on the way to the polls. It happens; it's unfortunate, but it' s not the end of the world.

It sounds harsh, but such rigor removes a major opportunity for cheating. Removing same day (motor voter) registration would also close a major flaw in today's system. If everyone has to register ahead of time and vote locally, supervised by their own townspeople as election judges, fraud gets significantly more difficult.

We may not get every possible vote, the exceptions the result of personal choice and happenstance. But we will also avoid many fraudulent votes. Only the military and invalids should be allowed to vote by absentee ballot, and their procedures may need tightening as well.

This requires us to make a social contract with our fellow voters. We understand that while the polls are open to all, we all might not make it every election. Rather than grumble about how we could have voted by absentee ballot, we "take one for the team" knowing our small sacrifice prevents easy voter fraud.

The new book "Unfit for Command" openly refutes much of Senator John Kerry's service in Vietnam. To date, virtually nothing the "Swift Vets" allege has been refuted, which if their claims were false, would be easily done. Mr. Kerry need only authorize the release of his military records. Make that the full release of his records, as we're still waiting for the full release of his medical records that he promised on Meet the Press earlier this year.

The mainstream press has all but ignored the substance of these charges, other than to note Kerry's recasting of his favorite Cambodia story, given its many errors in detail. It's starting to seep out now, but strictly following the Democratic Party talking points, attacking the sources, not disputing the charges. Chris Matthews, at best a political pundit before, now is merely a hack, a Democratic hack to be specific given his equally unfounded and vicious attacks on the veterans.

Compare this non-coverage of well-documented charges to the earlier coverage of the unsupported charges regarding President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, that he was "AWOL" for a time. Every release of an addition document refuting the charge only brought more questions from the mainstream press. One particular press conference was a frenzy of "well OK, but what if .." scenarios that would acknowledge the new evidence without exonerating Bush.

This is a teachable moment, that any claim that the mainstream press (all but 1 cable network, 2 newspapers, talk radio, and the blogosphere) does not have a significant leftist bias is null and void. There have been many studies that assert this, culminating with the best-selling book Bias by veteran CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg. There are claims to the contrary, of a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" that make the media conservative in nature, but no evidence is ever provided.

So if someone denies that the media is not even unintentionally biased to the left, realize that there are only two possibilities: that someone is either ignorant or lying.

As I embark on a week’s vacation with temperatures well below normal, it seems a good time to discuss the threat of global warming. You’ll note I didn’t put those words in quotes. The planet may indeed be getting warmer. But let’s go beyond the normal level of discussion and engage in some actual critical thinking.

Question 1: Is the Earth getting warmer? Such a question needs clarification. How is this measured? Over what period of time? The weather has many cycles, day and night, winter and summer, El Nino, perhaps the eleven year sunspot cycles. But what we’re talking about here is long term, more on the order of many decades at least. We are not talking about millions and billions of years, when as the sun grows, the earth will literally be fried.

So is the Earth getting warmer in this stated timeframe? It may well be, which is to say it also may not be. The difficulty lies in our ability to measure average temperatures and the relatively brief amount of historical data available, little more than 100 years’ worth. The accuracy of the earlier historical data is also suspect, given the technologies available at the time. But the data would suggest a warming trend, though some of the most recent research seems to suggest otherwise.

For the sake of argument, let us postulate that some warming is taking place, though probably less than some have claimed.

Question 2: What’s causing this? The standard answer is the increased accumulation of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, largely caused by the burning of coal and oil.

Carbon dioxide levels have risen, making the atmosphere better able to retain the heat from sunlight. This, too, may well be, but here there are so many other factors that could be far more significant. That atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising was known decades ago, but at that time, the fear was global cooling, leading to another ice age. The scholars of that era clearly saw other factors as more serious even then.

One such factor is the sun itself. We have only acquired the ability to measure the sun’s output in the last 20 years or so, and some of that data suggests the sun itself is getting warmer. The sun may have some sort of cycle, like its sunspots, and we’re in an ascending slope of that cycle.

Another factor is volcanic activity that thrusts millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere. Major eruptions have clearly affected the weather worldwide.
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Finally, consider clouds. We have no working models or theories that predict overall cloud cover and densities. Do clouds actually form more readily when the Earth warms, as some data suggest, as a natural correction? God only knows for now.

The intellectual bus stops here as we are largely in speculative territory here. But again for argument’s sake, let us postulate that carbon dioxide et al is indeed the cause of the stipulated increase in global temperatures.

Question 3: Is global warming better or worse for mankind?

Why, bad, of course, we are told. The polar ice caps will melt, flooding coastal areas and cities around the world. This will be gradual of course, not a tidal wave or flash flood, at most about three feet by the year 2100.

The increase in temperature in we are talking about is an average, but not uniform. Most of the observed increases are the result of warmer nights and warmer winters, not still hotter afternoons in the tropics. I’m for that!

Finally, carbon dioxide is part of the carbon cycle of life. We ingest carbon and hydrogen, inhale oxygen, exhaling water and carbon dioxide. Plants do the reverse, and there is no question that the plant kingdom is responding to these higher levels of carbon dioxide. This is in fact critical to supporting our population levels.

So the only bad news is the sea level rise, at most a very manageable 3 inches per decade, and some say much less. This is not a crisis by any means, especially given the many positives. But again for argument’s sake, let’s assume it is.

Question 4: Can we fix it?

Those who embrace the Kyoto treaty assume so, that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will make things go back the way they were. This is an unwarranted assumption.

Many physical processes are not reversible, particularly thermodynamic processes. If you stroke a piece of iron with a magnet, it acquires some magnetism of its own. Stopping the process does not make the iron revert to its prior, non-magnetic state. Similarly, if you melt an ice cube, putting the water in the freezer does not re-assemble the water into its original cubic shape.

We have no models or theories that can begin to assure such an outcome. The “damage” may already be done. To severely cut our standard of living, which will no doubt entail casualties and personal trauma, requires a much, much higher expectation of success, especially for a problem that eludes quantification and analysis.

Question 5: What should we do?

Mostly, be an adult. Evaluate the situation, the choices available, and the costs of each choice. This last step is seldom performed by environmentalists. They felt it was important to ban DDT even at the cost of millions of malaria deaths. DDT is powerful; that’s what makes it useful. But it can be handled safely, just like so many other substances.

Until we truly understand the problem and the alternatives, we have no moral right nor any moral obligation to impose Kyoto or similar constraints on a free people. Like so many other evils of our age, the cure is likely worse than the disease.

When I went to high school, there was no such thing as pre-Calculus. Now, it's everywhere, even in major universities.

I took Geometry, Algebra, and Trigonometry in grades 10, 11, and 12 respectively, which was apparently enough to get me into college as a math major. I had no trouble with the full two years of Calculus required. My high school hadn't skipped over anything. And yet, now we have this seemingly essential high school course called pre-Calculus.

Forty plus minutes of Yahoo and Google could not deliver a working definition of pre-Calculus. I did find some outlines and lesson plans, and guess what? It's all about Geometry, Algebra, and Trigonometry! Usually, there was one more topic or week at the end devoted to a peek at calculus or at least a limit of an infinite series to ponder. I got the same peeks in high school Algebra and Trigonometry, incidentally.

So what's going on? I think it's another fancy title schools use to impress their students' parents, who in turn brag to their friends how their children are taking pre-Calculus! Especially if they're in a program where the kids are bussed to a nearby community college to take this class. If I'm right, soon their will be pre-Algebra, i.e., Arithmetic, and the middle schoolers will travel to the high school to take it.

This is just one more brick in the wall of educational dysfunction. Indeed, my Internet search did find a couple of outspoken educators who disliked the scatter-shot approach that pre-Calculus seems to embrace, as opposed to the traditional focused study of each topic. It's like ecology; where you dabble in a little of everything. You take geology, botany, chemistry, biology, weather, zoology, and so on, but master none of them. You can only claim a general knowledge of how these facets might integrate, whatever that's worth. That can be a big problem with calculus. It is a rigorous discipline, so shortcuts tempt you along the way that work for now that ultimately hinder you later on.

In an educational world awash in grade inflation, politically correct history, normed tests, C honor rolls, multiple Valedictians and Salutarians, GPA's at 4.6 and above, what's one more euphemism?

I saw Ember Reichgott-Junge "Face Off" with David Strom of the Minnesota Taxpayers League this morning on KSTP-TV's "At Issue" program, hosted by Tom Hauser. They spent a couple of those minutes debating tax policy, where at one point Ember proudly proclaimed that a Kerry Administration would repeal the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000 per year, making it possible to cut middle class taxes even more.

Again, what struck me was the pride with which she said this. I am to be happy that someone else's taxes are to be raised. I am going to be better off as a result. And since that someone else is already rich and therefore won't suffer at all, society as a whole will be better off. In other words, that someone else is over-compensated for what he or she does. Ember has no idea how such people make their money, but she is nonetheless certain that they are paid too much. She also seems unaware what a huge portion of our income taxes these people pay even now.

In America, we who would pay less frequently rub elbows with those who would pay more, no doubt much more than we know. It is entirely possible that the manager in the white shirt in a McDonalds that waited on you is a millionaire. Or the woman sitting next to you at a high school play. The fellow sitting next to you at the Twins game. The plumber that installed your new water heater. In America, you just don't know, if you even care. For the moment, you are equals. You both want Torii Hunter to catch that fly ball tailing away from him, and you're both just as happy when he does.

But what if they knew that you had voted for and urged on candidates exposing yet another round of tax hikes on the "rich" as defined by the Democratic Party. And you knew that they knew? You're no longer quite as equal, if you have any conscience at all. You feel a little guilty now, and perhaps you should, for sending back a steak in that rich owner's steakhouse. After all, if you really needed that money, what are you doing eating out at a nice restaurant?

Taxes don't have to be flat percentages to be quote - fair - unquote, as there is no way to objectively define fair. But a tax system already so heavily supported by high-income earners can hardly be made even more fair by further skewing it.

So please, Ember, spare us this pretense of nobility in raising taxes. Don't forget that taxes are not exactly donations; they are collected by force.

Talk show host Dennis Prager, attending the Democratic Party Convention in Boston last week, was obviously disgusted by the speech given by twelve year old Ilana Wexler, who used the opportunity to upbraid the Vice President. (Peter Jennings, that means Dick Cheney, not John Edwards.) Ilana said that he deserves "a long time-out" for using a naughty word overheard in a private moment, though why Mr. Kerry's use of the same word in a public interview was acceptable she did not explain.

Prager then made a rather direct generalization of the two major parties. "There's an adult party, and there's a children's party in this country, and this is the children's party. Some of these people really are ... wonderful and sweet ... [but there] ... are very many people left of center who are children. They have not grown up. They feel very strongly, but they are still children, and that's why they think that it's so good to hear from a twelve year old. Because in their hearts, they know that they don't know anything more, and have no more wisdom than a twelve year old."

This is pretty harsh stuff. When I heard this, I all but dismissed it. Not because it is a broad generalization, and therefore has many exceptions; Prager stipulated that. What bothered me was that I know so many of these exceptions, wonderful, sweet, caring, and intelligent people. It was too broad a brush. It can't be true, even in a general way.

But as I thought further about this over the next couple of days, sadly, I think Prager has it about right. How can otherwise sensible adults tell me that they think I should see Fahrenheit 911, that it would educate me or at least challenge me with some good questions? This requires a total suspension of intellect. A significant number of Democrats have no more use for Michael Moore than I do, yet there are at least that many that think that Michael Moore is making a significant, valuable contribution to political discourse. Because they're children.

Then there's the "anyone but Bush" crowd, whom neither Kerry not Edwards will chastise. John Ashcroft is evil, Condi Rice over-rated, Dick Cheney is really in charge, George W. Bush is stupid, they say, all without proof. The Patriot Act is regularly derided, yet no one has a single example of how it has curtailed anyone's civil liberties. Senator Diane Feinstein and several other Democrats support the Patriot Act, but that doesn't count for some reason. Because they're children.

Bush lied, they say. Proof? Well, he knowingly misled. Proof? Well, he should have known better. Proof? Well, he was going to invade Iraq regardess. Proof? Well, you just don't understand what's going on here. It's the old "if I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand it anyway" canard.

How do you know that there "really aren't" any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq? Because we went in by force and looked for them, and we still might find some. Saddam had kicked out the inspectors, who were already considered inept by many of both parties. All intelligence available throughout the world agreed on this point of Iraq having and building WMD's. The US, Great Britain, Russia, the U.N., other Mideast nations, even France all believed the same thing, and Saddam certainly acted accordingly.

But now, we somehow have independent knowledge available without attacking Iraq that there were no WMD's. That the Democrats would put themselves in the rhetorically awkward position of proving a negative is one thing. But to claim prescient knowledge obtainable no other way but by force, is, well, childish.

It would be fair to say that a number of Republicans are childish, too, those who extol Michael Savage possibly. But this is a Republican Party molehill compared to the Democratic Party's mountain. I may revisit this, but for now I'm truly sad to say that Dennis Prager could well be right. I just don't know why.