PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering is one of two departments I direct. The other is the Department of Pet Peeves.

In both cases, I am the director with complete authority to move the departments along paths I deem appropriate.

So, here is the latest of installment of work by the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

On hill.com: Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) appears to be conducting himself in relation to Donald Trump just as Republicans conducted themselves when Barack Obama was president. Opposition at every turn.

“Schumer and former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada.) blasted Senate Republicans throughout President Obama’s presidency for obstructing his agenda. But just over three month’s into Trump’s first term, Schumer’s playbook looks similar to the one Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used against Obama eight years ago.

“It’s a flashback to 2009: Keep the minority unified and use every opportunity to slow down the president’s agenda.”

Comment: If this is the way of government these days, there is no cause for optimism that middle ground solutions will emerge.

Also on hill.com: President Trump showed his typical disregard for normal political convention when he said a “government shut down would be good for America.”

“The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We … either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”

Comment: As usual, Trump engages in overstatement, though, I suppose, a shutdown would have the effect of curbing Democrat attempts to grow government ever bigger.

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: “The cursing pols, the anathematizing abortion advocates, the screeching students—they are now the face of the progressive left.

“This is what America sees now as the face of the Democratic Party. It is a party blowing itself up whose only hope is that Donald Trump blows up first.

“He may not be lucky in all of his decisions or staffers, or in his own immaturities and dramas. But hand it to him a hundred days in: He’s lucky in his main foes.”

Comment: Noonan has it right, again. Democrats – the party principals at least, if not the rank and file – will hew more and more to the left, leaving many in the rest of the country behind.

Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal: “As team Trump digs into taxing, spending and health-care reform, it’s learning a vital lesson of Washington. Once a government benefit is given, it can never be taken away. If young people have been overcharged by ObamaCare so middle-aged people can be undercharged, then the solution is to undercharge young people too. The taxpayer — usually visualized as a hedge fund manager — can always pay more.

“There may be much to regret in President Trump’s temperament, his non-mastery of detail, his estrangement from the facts. Not without utility, though, is his generalized disdain for the major media, the most reflexively anti-reform institution in American life. Both major parties look like hotbeds of freethinking in comparison.

“The media are a major factor in the outcomes we get. Large spending commitments are willed into being without willing the tax revenues or economic growth to pay for them. Social Security and Medicare are in a $70 trillion hole. Unfunded pension and health-care liabilities of the states and localities are at least $2 trillion. Federal debt has doubled to $20 trillion in less than 10 years. GDP growth has fallen by half. In our next recession, annual deficits could quickly surge to $1 trillion.”

Comment: Jenkins is also right, especially in regard to one of his points – once a government benefit has been dispensed, it almost impossible to remove it. Finding balance in the Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare) is only the latest example.

In the National Review: “America has a “’smug liberal’ problem,” according to David French in the National Review. “Liberal dogma is rapidly becoming a secular religion, a ‘faith’ that conspicuously omits any requirement that one love his enemies. Christians have long struggled to keep one of Christ’s most difficult commands, but many leftists don’t even try.”

Comment: Yes, another comment decrying the motives and actions of the left? Alas, there is nothing that commends the right either. What we need are centrists, nearly lost souls in the current ways of government.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The Department of Pet Peeves is open again. I am its director and I have full and complete authority to run the department as I see fit.

Call me a dictator.

This time, my pet peeve revolves around language.  It is using nouns as verbs. Doing so grates on my hearing.

One example that occurs very frequently today is the word “helm.” It is a noun, meaning, in nautical terms, the “wheel or tiller by which a ship is steered.” A more general definition is this: “The place or post of control.”

But is it a verb? I say no. Just use a word that means the same thing such as “steer” or “lead.”

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, when I looked up the word helm in the dictionary, there was a secondary definition that used the word as a verb. But I say no.

Or, how about the word “golf.” It means a sport, such as in “the sport of golf.”

But, one fairly common usage, says that you can “golf your ball.” Again, I say no. Use a word like hit or strike. Not golf.

Finally, an example that grates even more on my ear. The word is catalyst. I have a friend who surprised me one day a few years when he used the word “catalyst” as a verb as in “to catalyze.”

Even worse than others because it ads the letters “ize,” or in this case, “yze” to a word.

There is almost no example where adding “ize” is a good idea.

Nor is the word “catalyze.” Find another replacement.

I have been a writer for many years, dating back to high school when one of my dreams was to be a sportswriter when I realized I would not be a professional athlete. Well, that dream morphed into an early role as a general role for a daily newspaper, The Daily Astorian, and then morphed again into working for government (always with an emphasis on writing) and then again into working as a contract lobbyist (again with an emphasis on writing).

So, forgive me if I focus on what to me is the proper use of words. Leave nouns as nouns. Don’t make them into verbs. Find other useful options.