Now, we think she is an excellent choice for our currency. A brave woman who took great risks to save others. A person admired by folks across the political spectrum. Yes, Harriet Tubman was an ideal choice for the first portrait change on US currency since Andrew Jackson displaced Grover Cleveland in 1928. But a funny thing happened on the way to Harriet Tubman’s immortality on the $10. A couple of funny things, in fact.One was the mega-hit Broadway play about Alexander Hamilton. Surely someone so famous, who could inspire a great musical, should not be removed from our currency.
By John Shaffer A few months ago the Obama Administration let the word out that they were planning to put a woman on the ten-dollar bill. After all, Alexander Hamilton was never President and he died over 200 years ago, so given that a woman was going to be on a bill, who else should she displace? And we heard also that the Treasury Department had polled for favorites, and Harriet Tubman, a former slave whose work on “the Underground Railroad” led several hundred slaves to freedom, was the top choice. The interesting thing was that the Treasury did not announce that “Harriet Tubman” would be on the $10 – they announced that “a woman” would be on the $10. Essentially, the decision first was made was made to honor a woman on the ten-dollar bill – not to honor Harriet Tubman in her own right, but as “a woman.”
Now, we think she is an excellent choice for our currency. A brave woman who took great risks to save others. A person admired by folks across the political spectrum. Yes, Harriet Tubman was an ideal choice for the first portrait change on US currency since Andrew Jackson displaced Grover Cleveland in 1928. But a funny thing happened on the way to Harriet Tubman’s immortality on the $10. A couple of funny things, in fact.One was the mega-hit Broadway play about Alexander Hamilton. Surely someone so famous, who could inspire a great musical, should not be removed from our currency. By John Shaffer The celebrated bank robber Willie Sutton famously was asked why he robbed banks, and he responded with a truism, "Because that's where the money is." That thought came to mind after we read a piece on the budget of the federal government, and it applies to most of the states, for that matter. The best description of the budgets might be "out-of-control," and it is those out-of-control, over-spending budgets that lead to the massive debts that most states, many cities and counties and the US government have amassed, with no end in sight.
The solutions most often proposed to solve the budget crisis involve raising taxes, or trimming the military, or highways, or meat inspection or other functions of government- and that leads us to the "Willie Sutton" reason that no end is in sight - because the solutions never go "where the money is." With the vast majority of the budgets devoted to massive expenses such as benefits, pensions and health insurance, why are the only places the budgets are cut are the tiny places, such as the library or the senior center or closing a roadside rest or a park? Obviously, it’s because the “big things” in the budgets are considered "off limits." – Yep, normal services are cut, offices are closed and inspections are curtailed or parks and monuments shut down or highway rest stops closed or building projects delayed a year or two. A lot of pain is inflicted, but the tiny cuts don’t bring us any closer to solving the problem. In fact, those tiny cuts can’t bring us any closer to solving the problem, because that’s not “where the money is.” Some states, such as Illinois and California, are faced with devoting a large chunk of their budgets just to pay pensions for retired employees. Pennsylvania may not be too far behind. By John Shaffer It started when the city government of Charlotte, NC, passed an ordinance which allowed people to use the public restroom of their choice; in short, a man could "identify” as a woman and use the ladies room – no matter if others using the room might feel uncomfortable. This was developed as a way to assure the rights of “transgender” people. However, most folks would agree that people should be able to use a public restroom without fear that someone of the other sex will be using it at the same time. With that purpose in mind, the North Carolina legislature passed HB 2, which, according to the Charlotte Observer “prohibits cities from imposing bathroom regulations on private businesses and mandates that people in government-owned buildings use the restroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate rather than the one in which they would be most comfortable.” If Charlotte had mandated a third, uni-sex bathroom for folks who don’t want to use the traditional men’s or women’s rooms, no one would have been placed in a situation in which someone of the opposite sex might intrude unexpectedly. The drafters of the Charlotte law were thinking of “transgender” people; the state legislature was thinking of folks who did not want their families exposed to the opposite sex in a public restroom. This is the type of argument that reasonable people can argue about, as long as they respect the position of the other side.
By John Shaffer For a topic that supposedly was “settled” back in 1973 when the US Supreme Court decided that the issue ultimately was a matter for the federal government (and not the states) to decide, abortion has knocked for a loop the campaigns of the front runners in both parties. First, Donald Trump, for whom no issue seemed important enough for him to have paid any attention to it prior to his campaign for the White House, agreed with an interviewer’s premise that “the woman” should face punishment for having an abortion. No credible pro-life candidate, spokesman, legislator or social critic holds that position. Therefore, and quite understandably, Mr. Trump’s ignorance allowed abortion rights advocates to use his words to club the entire pro-life movement. Mr. Trump realized how much damage he had done - not to the pro-life position (which he cares about, if at all, strictly for its political usefulness to him, rather than out of any profound objection to abortion) – but to his own candidacy, so he uncharacteristically backed down and tried to take it all back. His shallow grasp of the issue left him flummoxed; it should go without saying that any candidate should be alert to the near-certainty that his words are going to be studied and parsed and deconstructed and interpreted, so he should be darn sure that he doesn’t speak carelessly about matters he is unfamiliar with. Of course, that would restrict Mr. Trump’s words to reality TV, beauty pageants, the life of the rich and famous, and ways of enriching himself at someone else’s expense.
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