New York and Texas Values

By Bruce L. Brager

Credit: Bruce L. Brager

Ted Cruz calls Donald Trump too much the product of New York values to be a good Republican nominee. Trump's table thumping appeal to the basest of instincts, and arrogance, is not enough. Cruz is right; there are distinct differences between New York City and Texas.

In Texas people sneer at those who are different, and happily throw the poor to the wolves. Here we have homeless people dodging rats. We sneer at everybody. We pack heat, carry guns, but bought illegally and concealed. Create your own joke about Texas guns and sensitivity about manhood. Was it actually harder to carry a gun in Texas 1870 than in Texas 2016?

In Texas they try to keep people from voting. New York has been more into ballot stuffing and "vote early and vote often." Texans like to drive very fast. In much of New York City you can walk faster than drive. New York liberals apologize too much. Being a Texan means never having to say you are sorry. But it apparently also means don't discuss certain topics — gun control, religion, politics, as my sister was warned by a friend in Texas she was visiting. But no mention about Friday night high school football, the holy of holies down there — the friend is a transplanted Yankee.

New York changed countries twice in the past - Dutch to British, British to United States. Starting in 1820, Texas went from Spanish, to Mexican, to independent, to the United States, to independent, to Confederate, to the United States. All in just over 50 years.

The Dutch bought the island of Manhattan for $24 worth of goods from a tribe of Indians. Indians never claimed ownership of land, so New York City got started by land fraud. Books have been written about Texas oil fraud. Of course, the story, perhaps urban legend, is that the Brooklyn Bridge was first "sold" before it was even finished. This is probably not true. William Marcy "Boss" Tweed was involved in the bridge, but only for a while. This is probably why the bridge nearly doubled its initial cost estimate — about $7 million to about $13 million. Tweed once put in a bid to build a court house for $100,000. The final cost was $13,000,000. Remember, this is all in the money of 1869-1883. Top that, Texas oil people.


Credit: Jon Sullivan, public-domain-image.com

In New York, we like jeans, boots and funny hats. In Texas they like jeans, boots and funny hats. On my first trip to Texas, changing planes in Dallas, one of the first people I saw was dressed like I would expect, from boots to jeans, to suede vest to Stetson hat. I think I saw one other person dressed that way in Texas, sitting under a speaker at a rural outlet mall. The speaker was playing music: Paul Simon, not George Jones. But they also know good music down there.

In New York you ask for rye bread and you get rye bread. In a Texas truck stop you might get told that the bread is dry. (The bread was dry, they told the truth, in a manner which brought to mind the west Texas desert.) Asking for a scotch and soda, hold the scotch, did not even work. In New York we know what club soda is.

Credit: Bruce L. Brager

East coast baby boomers actually have a soft spot in in their hearts for the "Wild West" including Texas. One of the programs I watched as a kid I called the Long Ranger. People ask if I mean Lone Ranger. No, I reply, this was a show about a very tall lawman. Lone had a "faithful Indian companion" (try that today) named Tonto. Tonto called Lone kemosabi. The joke is that after he retired to his ranch, Tonto warned a guest near his barn not to step in the kemosabi.

In Texas they name baseball teams after law enforcement agencies. In New York we name baseball teams after people from New England.

In Texas, public transport exists only technically. In New York City, the subway is a great motivator for walking all but the longest distances.

In Texas, you can be walking in a small town, dark out, where the weather makes you wonder why there is so much traffic in a July evening. It is actually almost November. They don't even know proper late fall weather. Actually, this winter in New York neither did we. The recent snow storm missed a record by 1/4 inch or so. A Texas Blue Norther would not come so close yet miss the record.

New York, a blue state, sends more tax dollars to Washington than it gets back. Texas, a red state, gets more tax money from Washington than it sends. Texas has the state guard to defend itself against Federal overreach. The state guard is about 150 years old, formed for those who did not want to join the militia or the Confederate volunteer service. Patrolling rural Texas, unless you ran into a ticked off group of Comanche, was a lot safer than joining Hood's Brigade for the Battle of the Wilderness.

Many New Yorkers back then preferred draft rioting to fighting Robert E. Lee. We successful oppressed our Native Americans much earlier than they did in Texas.

Finally, in New York we have Wall Street greed. Texans have oil industry greed. Texans once said "drive fast, freeze a Yankee." We don't even have to drive slowly to bankrupt a Texan. The beloved free market is doing that for us.

Credit: Bruce L. Brager

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All opinion pieces reflect solely the views of the writer(s) and do not reflect the opinions or views of CAB News Online.

I Won the Lottery

By Bruce L. Brager

I won the lottery, the really big lottery, the really, really big lottery. I had to split my winnings with my sister, who co-bought the ticket. But call me one of the winners. I took my winnings in cash. I have to admit, though, that I blew my winnings on Thursday, starting right after collecting the cash. I should have consulted a tax attorney and an investment advisor. I should have calculated my tax obligations to the Feds, New York State and New York City. Instead, I went on a spree.

My winnings paid for two cans of soda that day, since the ticket was for a grand total of $4. I had considered taking a penny and a half or so for the next 29 years, but decide to go for broke. At least, though, since I bought the sodas at different places, I obeyed the traditional warning of “don’t spend it all in one place.”

Living in New York, if able and rich, I could spend a whole lot more than $2 in one day. I can walk to Sotheby’s auction house for a Van Gogh or two, then over to Billionaires’ Row on 57th Street for a nice penthouse in which to put the paintings. With a little skill, and not too much planning, by the end of the day I could have blown several hundred million. Van Goghs are nice wall hangings, though. They also let people know you have a whole lot of money. I suppose I could have invested the winnings. Not in the stock market this month – that is another story about how to make a small fortune by starting with a large fortune – but in a new ticket for the next drawing. However, the $40 million prize seemed like chump change.

This was actually my eighth lottery win. A few were noteworthy. I won $100 once from Washington PBS, for my twenty dollar fee. When my next paycheck arrived I had $50 left in the bank. Another time I entered for a giveaway at Sebago, after buying a pair of their classic loafers. I won another pair. Once I might have picked the wrong time to show fiscal restraint. I bought a one dollar scratch off ticket one Friday at lunch. I won $2. I bought another, and won $3. Then I made my mistake. I stopped playing and bought a diet soda. That diet soda might have cost me $50,000. Of course, if my mother had not thrown out my baseball cards, I would not have needed the money.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, they say. But they also say it can let you pay for the shrink to discuss your unhappiness. A cousin-in-law of my mother once made $50,000,000 in the insurance business, insuring places in the inner city – that is another essay. His wife needed psychiatric help to deal with suddenly being rich. My mother told me she was willing to risk the problems of a lot of money. Of course, the cousin probably needed further help when her husband got caught lying on financial statements. My own family’s penny ante à la Bernie Madoff.

Jimmy the Greek once said that the safest way to play in a casino is to budget for entertainment, and when you have spent that, say goodnight and leave. Easy to say; hard to do. What, for example, do you do if you win? You might well win. The odds favor the house, but if no one wins no customers come.

My own reluctance in gambling in a Casino is the common emotional lure of easy money, despite the logic of preplanning and placing limits. I am not 100 percent sure I can place limits on myself. Probably yes, but not certainly. The danger with gambling is the idea that just one more big score will settle the score, so to speak, and enable to the player to at least break even.

Perhaps I should not put so little faith in myself. Maybe, probably, I can allocate, say, $20.00 for entertainment. If I lose, decide it was a learning experience and say goodbye. If I win, pay myself back, and more, than go on from there. Gambling’s attraction would seem more to more potential, rather than the immediate effects of alcohol or drugs. So, with a little care – on occasion I can show care; I did not buy a ticket with my winnings -- an hour in a casino might be fun. Just remember I am a tourist out for a little relaxation, and a writer out for a few ideas. I am not James Bond taking on Ernest Blofield. To coin a phrase, I have to know when to walk away, as well when to hold, fold, and run.

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All opinion pieces reflect solely the views of the writer(s) and do not reflect the opinions or views of CAB News Online.

Alas Poor First Amendment, I Knew it Well

By Bruce L. Brager

A few months ago I was riding the New York City Subway. I saw a man with a hat with a saying on the hat. The saying read “The Second Amendment, the original homeland security.” My guess, from the NRA logo on the hat, was that he was not referring to the National Guard (the first part of the Second Amendment, remember) and its valuable role as part of the American military establishment. What he was doing was expressing his views, a basic part of the American culture, in a place which might not be sympathetic to them. Criticize his views if you want, but don’t mock his right to express his views. Of course, in the proverbial New York City, no one else might have noticed.

Too many cases, unfortunately, exist where people do not react properly to views they oppose, even extreme views. The man with the hat may strike some people as an extremist. Many people these days seem to feel people should not say, or display, controversial things. But too much mocking, too many calls to muzzle the ideas, and some clown may get a martyrdom he or she does not deserve.

A few years ago, Don Imus, the famous “shock jock,” lost his radio show for referring to a New Jersey college women’s sports team with a racist term. Another fool made a martyr. The twist here is that the then-governor of New Jersey, John Corzine, was injured in an auto accident on the way to an emergency meeting over the incident, over what were basically hurt feelings. This would never happen with Governor Christie. He would be caught in a traffic jam his aides staged.

 A rich entrepreneur in California once came under fire for comparing the Nazi hatred of Jews to the unpopularity of the rich 1% in this country. Talk about overblown and tasteless analogies. This is how he ended a letter to the editor complaining about the unfair press the rich are getting. He made some arguable points, about the assault on free speech from the left. But he goes on to compare critics of the rich to the Nazis. His particular example, Kristallnacht, seems to say that this open act of the Holocaust was showing public hatred of the Jews. This program was actually government organized. Don’t muzzle this guy, though, let him look like a fool, and point out many flaws in his argument. (How much actual violence was directed against the rich during the Great Recession?) Don’t make yourself look foolish responding to an idiot. Let fools argue against themselves.

A recent episode in Kansas is astounding, even under today’s bizarre college behavior standards. A female Kansas college professor, a white woman, is the target of student wrath for using her First Amendment Rights, and the academic freedom she thought she had. At least one graduate level education student seems to believe that questioning whether racism really exists—when the professor seems to have actually said she has not seen it on a particular college campus—is perpetuating racism, not to mention demeaning, insensitive, etc, rather than just plain wrong. This sort of thing makes me shudder for the future of the First Amendment and freedom of expression in this country. The amendment protects all of us by allowing people to say racist, demeaning, insensitive, and downright stupid things. The n-word, which the professor used as a general example, not a directed insult, is never appropriate. However, her never having seen racism and saying so, was seen as more offensive.

Her students now want to have the professor fired for hurting their feelings. I shudder for future students of these teaching students if they want to express a thought with which their teacher disagrees.

And then there is Donald Trump.

Have we all forgotten that the First Amendment was designed to protect unpopular, unpalatable, views? This is still the best way to encourage the free debate which is part of an effective democracy. Some crazy ideas later are accepted. Voting rights for women was quite controversial at the start, almost as way out as the abolition of slavery. It is not the dumb ideas of celebrities and, alas, political leaders that are worth supporting. It is the right of people to make fools of themselves. Because when you permit public stupidity, you also permit free debate, the free exchange of ideas that may even produce better ideas. And, maybe some dumb ideas might not be so dumb.

If we ever have the misfortune to get another constitutional convention, I expect to see the part of the Second Amendment about the right to bear arms put in the preamble, and the First Amendment to read “Congress shall make no laws abridging freedom of speech, unless someone finds the speech hurtful.”

Let us hope the examples that make the news, particularly from higher education, are not typical, that we have not raised a younger generation hyper-sensitive, self-indulgent and narcissistic, with no sense of history. This detracts from them being able to solve the real problems facing the United States and the world today.

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All opinion pieces reflect solely the views of the writer(s) and do not reflect the opinions or views of CAB News Online.

Je Suis Annoyed

By Bruce Brager

Read history, folks. Maybe . . . maybe. . . you might learn something. Maybe not, but we can always hope. On rare occasion, people learn from experience, even world leaders.

Julius Caesar was once held captive by Mediterranean pirates. The United States fought the Barbary pirates, successfully, to the shore of Tripoli. Putting it mildly, the problem of piracy in this area took a long time, and different methods, to solve. By today’s standards, I am sure Romans would have questioned Caesar going after the pirates – or declared that we need to respect the pirate culture. Jefferson, in keeping with practice of drawing a line the sand to let your enemies know how far they can safely go, and letting know what to expect, would have pledged not to send ground troops. There would have been no dramatically successful Marine landing party. The Marine Corps hymn would have ended up “From the halls of Montezuma to (eight musical beats with no lyrics).

The modern use of “line in the sand” sets the line up as a limit at which point we have to take action. This cleaver idea tells our enemies what they can do safely. Throw in the idea of proportional response; we make it even easier for the bad guys to know what they can get away with. It is not very useful to effectively let an enemy know what we are going to strike no matter what the enemy does – see Saddam Hussein and our second Iraq War. Respond logically, but not recklessly. However, it is equally bad to rule out any method of striking at enemy, short of the big bad three, first use of nuclear weapons, use of chemical or bio weapons. There are many, many arguments against using massive ground forces to strike ISIS. Not the least of which is getting involved in a 1,000 year old quagmire for something that is not, at least not yet, an existential threat to this country. But I really wish Obama would stop announcing what he is not going to do against ISIS. He sometimes shows a reluctance to use force reminiscent of Jimmy Carter. Funny thing is -- when he uses force, he uses it well. This was not true of Carter.

Maybe we should take a lesson from the Mafia in dealing with more regional enemies. Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Behave -- you have a good friend. Misbehave -- you have a deadly enemy. A credible threat to kill someone if they take some action usually prevents action. Add it to a carrot and success becomes more likely. The problem with ISIS is that threatening lethal force against people who seem to welcome lethal force may not accomplish much. The best stick is cutting off their recruitment. Give people an alternative to hopelessness and terror. Don’t label them rabid dogs.

We get several things wrong with the “line in the sand” from the Siege of the Alamo. First of all, it probably never happened. Second, those who wanted to stay at the Alamo crossed the line. The real lessons are the many errors of Mexican commander Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Laying siege to the Alamo gave too much military importance to the post. It gave the Texans time to declare independence and start forming an army. Murdering the few Alamo prisoners made a military defeat into the political victory for his enemies. Santa Anna’s leisurely pursuit of Sam Houston and his army showed an arrogant underestimation of a more dangerous enemy, out to take vengeance for the Alamo and the 400 prisoners murdered after the Battle of Goliad. Santa Anna’s mismanagement culminated in the carelessness which led to his major defeat at San Jacinto. Good thing our leaders never make any of these mistakes.

If we fast forward a few years, we see Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordering the militarily unnecessary firing on Fort Sumter, providing the far more politically astute Abraham Lincoln the excuse he needed to move against secession. His moves against secession, which Davis provoked, eventually led Lincoln to move against slavery.

We don‘t fight terrorism by adopting the same policy against terror victims that was used against Nazi victims in the 1930s. Keeping desperate people from reaching freedom is grotesque. Millions of people died because our political leaders lacked the guts to try and change the xenophobia of the American public. A lot of Americans died anyway when the war came.

 Listen to the collection of clowns known as the Republican leadership on carefully admitting Syrian and Iraqi refugees. I guess they believe that is better to let thousands die than risk one or two bad guys, admittedly really bad guys, getting past our normally excellent border controls.

Our final case study for fighting ISIS, and most other major problems, is looking at Lincoln. He had to put up with alleged experts criticizing every idea he had. He showed patience, the willingness to try new ideas and new methods – most famously the Emancipation Proclamation (made permanent in the 13th Amendment, near the end of his administration).

One big irony, for Democrats at least, is that we actually can learn from George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Reagan learned from his dangerous foreign policy errors and ended the Cold War. Bush, in the last year or so of his term, learned from his economic errors and, with the aid of the Democrats in Congress, started saving the economy. Maybe the many experts who criticize virtually every method of doing virtually everything should put their talents to coming up with solutions, usually more than one, to our many problems.

Historical circumstances tend not to repeat the same way. But the lessons do repeat: the lessons of thinking, of leaders having the courage of their conviction, of leaders having convictions. I believe Napoleon III said show me which the people going so I may lead them. If not him, a whole lot of modern “leaders” might have said the same thing.

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All opinion pieces reflect solely the views of the writer(s) and do not reflect the opinions or views of CAB News Online.

Have Americans Become Stupid? The Web Thinks So.

By Bruce L. Brager

An article on a web news service says a man has sued McDonald’s for “unreasonably dangerous” materials in a chicken product. Bone fragments certainly qualify as dangerous, but the term “unreasonably dangerous” gets me. I guess there is reasonable danger in what we eat.

 A bartender was shot at in Montana. The reason -- he used Clamato instead of tomato juice in a cocktail. The aggrieved patron killed the bartender’s dog in the incident. He is charged with attempted murder and animal cruelty. The reason the patron gave was that clam juice violated the Jewish laws of kashrut, kosher. Clams are banned for an observant Jew. Murder is also banned, and a lot more prominently -- “Thou shalt not kill.” Change the facts a bit, and you have a country song – he refused my Clamato and then he killed my dog. My sister was on a jury a few month ago, which hinged on a man who lost his girlfriend, and in the resultant fight with the new boyfriend his dog got killed by a car. He stole my woman and then killed my dog. Pity the car was not a pickup truck.

I once got a spam e-mail from a dating service for people seeking to have an affair. I have heard of Ashley Madison. Of course, a whole lot of people now have heard of Ashley Madison. I suppose it is part of the capitalist tradition to try and make money from bad things that people. Something like half of all marriages fall apart, so why not make a few bucks from bad behavior? The country music industry has been doing it for years. I have been a fan of country music for years for the melodies not the subject matter (to paraphrase an old John Anderson song).

A recent web ad promises females over 18 several thousand dollars a week for working as a personal entertainer; professional in public, impressive in private. I am sure the ad is looking for singer-songwriters. Well at least it specifies over 18; not all such ads do. In case you are interested, this was in the writing gigs section, not the full time lady of the evening section. Not the plot of the country song, this ad, more of an episode of Law and Order: SVU. Writers may sometimes feel they are getting screwed, but this is rather different.

“Legal” and “legitimate” appear regularly, usually attached to ways to make a lot of money quickly. Add “trust me” and all but absolute idiots will not trust you. There are ads for handwritten documents, which ask for handwriting samples. Right. Send a sample of your handwriting to a reply box. Be sure to include your social security number and a few passwords. For those who say that people are not stupid, see the last paragraph.

There has been this person in Yonkers, advertising on a web site for young people to handwrite stories, or film him exercising, or watch him present a play for teenagers. He always asks for the applicant’s age. He (I suppose this could be a she) got flagged and the ad taken down.

Finally, there is the swingers club in Nashville that wants to reclassify itself as a church so it can move to the suburbs. No this is not a country song, though it might make a good one. One suspects there is a fair amount of laying on of hands, and shouting “praise the Lord” going on.

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All opinion pieces reflect solely the views of the writer(s) and do not reflect the opinions or views of CAB News Online.