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 to 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 my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Remember, this is one of the three departments I run with a free hand to manage as a I see fit.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of “Just Saying.”

So today, as a towering management figure, I open the Good Quotes Department…again.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “Administrators of school districts and public universities across the country will soon welcome thousands of new teachers and professors to orientation sessions.  And then those administrators will have to leave the room so unions can recruit new members.

“The on-boarding process has become a key battleground for the country’s government unions.  For decades, labor could count on collecting hundreds of millions of dollars annually from public employees from the moment they were hired.  Even workers who didn’t want to join had to pay special fees akin to union dues.  That changed in 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. Afscme that these involuntary payments violated the First Amendment.

“With the unions suddenly having to make the case for paying dues, access to new hires became crucial.  Some unions had already worked out deals to let their recruiters speak at orientation sessions, but plenty hadn’t. Sympathetic politicians responded by giving unions new privileges to help pressure workers into joining.  Lawmakers in New York provided unions “mandatory access” to orientations sessions, something management could previously deny.  Other states passed similar measures.  Central California’s Mariposa County made attendance for the union pitch mandatory.

“Unions are now taking things a step further:  Getting public employers to agree to let them speak to new hires without anyone from management present.  The New York City Department of Education, the nation’s largest public school system, has held official orientation events for new teachers at United Federation of Teachers headquarters since 2015.  But in 2018 the city agreed to let the union address new hires attending mandatory orientation “without any agent of the DOE present.”

COMMENT:  When the Janus decision came down, I celebrated.  Because public employee unions would have to compete for members and potential members would have the ability to say “yes, I join” or “no, I don’t join.”

In turn, that also would have meant that public employee unions wouldn’t have a guaranteed nest egg of money to make election contributions.

Now, it appears that unions, again, have found a way around the new law.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:  “If there’s one thing a top-notch grifter knows how to do, it’s exploit a crisis.

“So it is that Donald Trump has transformed the F.B.I.’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home from a potentially debilitating scandal into a political bonanza — one that threatens to further divide a twitchy, polarized nation.

“His formula for this alchemy?  The usual:  Playing on pre-existing grievances among his followers — in this case, the right’s bone-deep suspicion and resentment of federal authority.

“If you thought members of the MAGAverse were jacked up on Deep State conspiracy theories before, just wait until they spend several more weeks consuming the toxic spin-sanity that Trump and his enablers have been pushing out like black tar heroin.

“Once Trump donned his trusty cloak of victimhood, which by now must be threadbare from overuse, the Republican response to the search was predictable:  His base roared in outrage, a display of blind fealty featuring threats of lethal violence against their savior’s perceived persecutors.”

COMMENT:  This post was written by one of my new favorite cmmentators, Michelle Cottle. 

She gets Donald Trump just right by calling him “grifter in chief.”

His narcissistic response – everything revolves around him – leads me to continue wondering why so many Republicans in this country still tolerate his over-the-top actions.

FROM NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL WRITERS:  “Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation.  The disturbing details of his post-election misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the January 6 committee, leave little doubt that Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people.

“The president, defeated at the polls in 2020, tried to enlist federal law enforcement authorities, state officials and administrators of the nation’s electoral system in a furious effort to remain in power.  When all else failed, he roused an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers.”

COMMENT:  No one should be above the law and that includes Trump.  For all of his actions – lying incessantly, provoking an insurrection, and declining to turn over classified documents (plus many more) – Trump deserves to be tried and, I say, convicted in a court of law.

What appears above are only excerpts of the New York Times editorial.  In full length, it is well-written and well-researched, worthy of being read in full.  And it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Trump deserves oblivion.