Government by edict = chaos

The following column appeared Friday in the Finger Lakes Times newspaper in Geneva, NY

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Government by edict = chaos

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

Even the most die-hard Trump fans are having trouble keeping up with the blizzard of executive orders, commands, edicts and late-night tweets coming from the new president.

It looks like he’s trying to fulfill all of his campaign promises in the first few weeks. Then retire to Trump Tower or perhaps go build a golf course somewhere.

Media outlets have detailed out the national roller-coaster ride of the past two weeks: the startling, ill-thought-out order to ban Muslims, the on-again, off-again meeting with Mexico’s president and disturbing changes to the National Security Agency.

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There are plenty of other examples.

It’s government by edict. And it’s predictably causing unnecessary governmental, political and judicial chaos.

These bursts of government-by-decree also add to the dread that the Electoral College and a minority of voters have put a virtual dictator in office, one that acts unilaterally and often erratically on a daily basis.

It should not come as a surprise.

The nation installed a self-proclaimed, ultra-wealthy businessman at its helm, someone used to barking orders and having them obeyed by subordinates without question.

The new president was never schooled in the art of compromise or even consultation. All the normal rules of governing — like asking experts for advice — are pretty much thrown out the window.

And in the case of the experts currently being installed in positions of federal responsibility at all levels, many are clearly sycophants who are certainly not going to challenge the boss, no matter how off-the-wall an idea he espouses or tweets.

The nation has had presidents with business backgrounds before — Herbert Hoover comes to mind immediately. But in the case of Donald Trump, we have a president who reports only to himself and perhaps family members. In his decades of business dealings, he has never been beholden to shareholders, boards of directors or other interested parties who might ask pesky questions about business operations.

Like casino bankruptcies.

But the United States isn’t a privately held family business. It’s a democracy.

And if you want to apply the business model to national governance, then we are all shareholders in this enterprise, a going, growing concern since 1789.

We all have a huge stake in this nation/company. Our future — even our lives — depend on it.

But the buck is about to stop with Congress.

The burden for protecting our huge stake falls largely on the U.S. Congress to exercise its authority under the U.S. Constitution, part of the three-way system of checks and balances that any junior high school student should be able to recite on demand.

Ditto that for the judiciary branch — the U.S. Supreme Court.

The president’s edicts are only as powerful as these other two branches of government allow them to be, evidenced already by court rulings declaring Trump’s ban on Muslims illegal, pending a thorough legal vetting that should have been conducted prior to last weekend’s immigration nightmare.

But a bigger part of the burden falls on Congress.

Although Republican members of the House and Senate are generally either cheerleaders (or silent) about Trump’s first two weeks of pronouncements, they had better get ready to exercise their power to sensibly control the current government-by-chaos.

Finger Lakes GOP Congressman Tom Reed has a particularly crucial role as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. That committee looks at health care, trade, tax policy — and Social Security.

Reed has made plenty of promises to citizens in town hall meetings since 2010 about protecting veterans, retirees, Social Security recipients and people on Medicare.

It remains to be seen if he has enough courage to fulfill his promises if a presidential edict takes a swipe at lowering — or wiping out — any or all of these benefits.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.

Reuter's Editor offers news coverage philosophy

EDITOR'S NOTE: In a message to staff Wednesday, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote the following about covering President Trump the Reuters way. It's something all media organizations should probably consider - and not just about the incumbent president.

  The first 12 days of the Trump presidency (yes, that’s all it’s been!) have been memorable for all – and especially challenging for us in the news business. It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” or that his chief strategist dubs the media “the opposition party.” It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.

So what is the Reuters answer? To oppose the administration? To appease it? To boycott its briefings? To use our platform to rally support for the media? All these ideas are out there, and they may be right for some news operations, but they don’t make sense for Reuters. We already know what to do because we do it every day, and we do it all over the world.

To state the obvious, Reuters is a global news organization that reports independently and fairly in more than 100 countries, including many in which the media is unwelcome and frequently under attack. I am perpetually proud of our work in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia, nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists. We respond to all of these by doing our best to protect our journalists, by recommitting ourselves to reporting fairly and honestly, by doggedly gathering hard-to-get information – and by remaining impartial. We write very rarely about ourselves and our troubles and very often about the issues that will make a difference in the businesses and lives of our readers and viewers.

We don’t know yet how sharp the Trump administration’s attacks will be over time or to what extent those attacks will be accompanied by legal restrictions on our news-gathering. But we do know that we must follow the same rules that govern our work anywhere, namely: 

Do’s:

--Cover what matters in people’s lives and provide them the facts they need to make better decisions.

--Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open another one.

--Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

--Get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.

--Keep the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles close at hand, remembering that “the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Reuters shall at all times be fully preserved.”

Don’ts:

--Never be intimidated, but:

--Don’t pick unnecessary fights or make the story about us. We may care about the inside baseball but the public generally doesn’t and might not be on our side even if it did.

--Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We need to do that in the U.S., too.

--Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of any news organization anywhere.

This is our mission, in the U.S. and everywhere. We make a difference in the world because we practice professional journalism that is both intrepid and unbiased. When we make mistakes, which we do, we correct them quickly and fully. When we don’t know something, we say so. When we hear rumors, we track them down and report them only when we are confident that they are factual. We value speed but not haste: When something needs more checking, we take the time to check it. We try to avoid “permanent exclusives” – first but wrong. We operate with calm integrity not just because it’s in our rulebook but because – over 165 years – it has enabled us to do the best work and the most good."

'She the people' movement has launched

The column below was published earlier today in the Finger Lakes Times newspaper in Geneva, New York.

A direct link to the column in the newspaper can be accessed by clicking here: Write On column.

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'She the People' movement has launched

By Michael J. Fitzgerald,

Finger Lakes Times columnist 

The word “historic” gets thrown around way too often.

But last Saturday’s Women’s Marches — held in hundreds of U.S. cities, and in cities across Europe, onward to Asia and the South Pacific — earned that appellation.

Decidedly.

If you were one of the millions of women and men marching on the streets in Seneca Falls, Albany, Ithaca, New York City, Washington D.C. or anywhere else, it’s likely you will long remember what you heard, saw — and felt.

It was an emotional day for the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to protest the election of Donald Trump and to show their rejection of his mixed bag of announced regressive policies.

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Events were punctuated by speeches (ranging from fiery to tearful), inspirational chants, music and amazingly clever signs, banners and costumes.

And every march/demonstration featured an ocean of pink pussy-eared hats, a visible slap aimed at the demonstrated misogyny of the new U.S. president.

While it would be easy to focus on the sheer numbers of people as a measurement — the usual historical yardstick — the history more likely to be remembered in coming decades (and perhaps commemorated one day) will pinpoint Jan. 21, 2017 as the historic day an unlikely coalition of political, social and cultural entities set aside their differences and came together.

It was amazing to witness.

Environmentalists, women’s rights groups, ethnic and immigration organizations, labor unions, the young, the old, the gay, the straight, families — even police and fire fighters in a some places — stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a demonstration of support for progressive ideas. Progressive ideas like support for human rights, environmental rights, immigration rights, workers’ rights ...

Not radical ideas at all.

There also was plenty of disdain for the dark, isolationist vision of the nation Trump sketched in his brief inaugural address the day before.

This coalition is unlike any other witnessed in decades, united in solid rejection of Trump’s oft-stated, short-on-detail campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

Many of the speeches at the marches — and letters to the editor and op-ed articles published in the days since — heartily promote the idea that America is a great nation right now. But that greatness can only be maintained — and made stronger — by encouraging racial harmony, welcoming immigrants, considering progressive ideas and respecting the environment, all concepts generally rejected by Trump.

Since the Women’s Marches, pundits quickly started bleating that it’s a long way from organizing marches and protests — even ones as massive and international in scope as Saturday’s — to effecting true political change.

They have a point.

It will be hard and often heartbreaking work.

But among the shouts, chants, speeches and songs there was plenty of dialogue among participants in the marches about the need to organize, to elect candidates to office at every level and to use every political and social lever available to ensure that America doesn’t slide into a Trump-induced dystopia.

Ironically, the best salesmen for political change will likely be the new president and the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.

Already there is a fast-rising tide of citizen consternation over the proposed dismantling of the Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — as citizens watch as Trump and complicit GOP legislators prepare to strip more than 20 million Americans of health care coverage.

If you add in the specter of GOP schemes to drastically slash Social Security and Medicare benefits you have a trifecta of clumsy, backward thinking that should horrify voters and perhaps promote a political revolution.

Several newspapers' front pages last Sunday featured photos of the march with a huge headline, “She the People.”

Historic. That’s the right word for it. And perhaps the right leadership too.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.

Words to live by from Washington, D.C.

By Abigail Bok

  I spent the past weekend in Washington, D.C., with my sister-in-law. 

   After seeing coverage of Inauguration Day and hearing President Trump’s remarks, we were moved on Sunday to visit several of the city’s temples to the USA’s civic religion: John F. Kennedy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. 

   Here are some words to live by, drawn from each stop on our pilgrimage:

 John F. Kennedy:

   “We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -

the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Abraham Lincoln, from the Gettysburg Address:

   “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Martin Luther King Jr.:

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

   Let us seize on this moment in our history to crystallize in our minds what our true American values are, and stand tall to fight for them.

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Abigail Bok is a Point Richmond, Calif., writer and author 

of An Obstinate, Headstrong Girl

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