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.

Given my years as a state government manager and a lobbyist, I know something about government budgeting in Oregon, which I have labeled “opaque.”

The federal government is even more difficult, if only because of its size. If we needed more information about an unreliable congressional budget process, we got some recently in a post by James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal.

Here is part of what he wrote under this headline:

‘We’re Talking About a Couple Billion Dollars’

Did Speaker Pelosi just admit that most infrastructure funding won’t fund infrastructure?

Freeman wrote this:

“A favorite Beltway pastime is to sell voters on the idea of building roads and bridges and then quietly allocate much of the funding to alternative energy start-ups and other economic marginalia. Usually, taxpayers have to wait years after the enactment of an infrastructure plan to learn just how little infrastructure they got for their money.

“But now it appears that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from California, is doing taxpayers a modest favor by outlining the misspending to come from Washington’s next big deal.” [Which is a reference to an infrastructure that, at one point, appeared to be possible, but appears to have receded from view because Congress and President don’t know how to deal with each other.]

In a recent news conference, the Speaker, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (the Democrat from New York) and other Democratic colleagues, committed to more “infrastructure” spending.

When Pelosi delved into the types of projects that might receive funding under her plan, she mentioned roads, bridges, mass transit projects and broadband Internet connections, as well as water and sewer systems and “all of the things that have enormous needs.”

Then Pelosi added, “We’re talking about a couple billion dollars.”

This, Freeman avers, “may sound like a refreshingly modest spending request by Beltway standards. The problem is that the Speaker and her Democrat colleagues have already agreed that the overall bill should cost one thousand times that amount.

“If Pelosi means what she says, the next infrastructure bill will be even less efficient at funding roads and bridges than the 2009 stimulus plan she enacted along with by Schumer and President Barack Obama.

A Huffington Post article in 2014 cited a report from the Obama White House as the source for data on how the more than $800 billion in stimulus money was spent:

The author of the Post article said this: “I was curious how much of the stimulus plan went to these transportation infrastructure projects. Toward the back of the report, there’s a chart that gives the number: $30 billion.

“First, how did the headline goal of the stimulus — rebuilding infrastructure — become a small footnote? Because, as Obama subsequently discovered, “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.

“The approval process for any significant project (a new road, or power line, or pipeline) approaches a decade, and often longer. An impenetrable legal swamp stands between America and a modern infrastructure.

“Second, if not infrastructure, where was most of the stimulus money spent?

The author found that, “among other boondoggles, clean energy subsidies received more than twice as much as transportation infrastructure and various benefit payments to individuals and state governments consumed much more.”

By discussing “a couple billion dollars” at her news conference, Pelosi now appears to be promising that far less than one percent of the next infrastructure plan will be funding infrastructure.”

This reminds me of what happens in Oregon government budgeting. I defy anyone to confirm that allocations end up funding the state purpose – no matter what legislative leaders say to the media.

Three things happen, as I have stated before – supplanting, sweeping and sojourning.

In the first case – “supplanting” — assume that “new money” from some source arrives in Oregon to fund a specific program. The money goes to that program, then “original money” that was intended for that purpose, is taken away. It’s “supplanting.”

In the second case – “sweeping” — money specifically targeted for one purpose (and taxpayers are advised of this “commitment”) – is “swept” away for another purpose, one that aligns with legislative leaders’ pet programs.

In the third case, which I label “sojourning” (in order to preserve alliteration), money goes to an intended purpose, but only stays there for a certain period of time, then is re-allocated elsewhere, again in line with the priorities of leaders – and with no confirmation to taxpayers.

What you end up with is an opaque process. No one knows where the money really is, so it becomes almost impossible, as well, to judge the effect of state spending.

Which is one reason why I am toying with voting in favor of referring a new, huge state business tax to voters – because I will have no way to confirm that all the new money goes to the intended purpose, which is to fund K-12 schools.

Government at all levels – local, state and federal – suffers from the same opacity.

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.

It seems like it will be an eternity before we get to the 2020 presidential election.

It is not likely to be a statesman-like process as we select the next president and, at the moment, I fervently hope it will not be Donald Trump.

Here are some perceptions about the process so far.

Democrats continue to practice the art of personal destruction. Former vice president and senator Joe Biden is ahead in the polls, so the rest of the Ds go after him, trying to soften him up for the D primary.

Of course, their action – typical for a disorganized political party – is to give aid and comfort to the one they want to beat in the general, Donald Trump.

Republicans continue to rally around Trump who exhibits none – exactly none – of the attributes we expect in a president.

He builds walls, not bridges.

He demonizes all immigrants.

He separates immigrant children from their parents, with little chance of ever finding restoration.

When I attended my granddaughter’s class a few months ago in Woodinville, Washington, it was her turn to present a report to the call on a president. It turns out that her assignment was Rutherford B. Hayes who was described as the worst president in U.S. history.

Hayes now has a competitor for that title – Trump, whom I say, wins hands down.

One bright spot has emerged in all of the recent to-ing and fro-ing over the next presidential election.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg gave the first major foreign policy speech of the primary season a few days ago.

According to the Washington Post, Buttigieg deserves high praise for his willingness to devote a full speech to the topic, to speak for more than an hour, to cover not simply major themes but to hit issues affecting each continent, and to direct even-handed criticism at both Democrats and Republicans.

While other Ds talk about huge tax increases, establishing a so-called “green economy” (which would bankrupt the country), and moving down a path toward socialism, Buttigieg illustrated his credentials for the nation’s top job – credentials that rely on preserving democracy.

He provided an emphasis on responsible leadership with use of force only as a last resort; a commitment to alliances that make us stronger; a connection between American values and prosperity; and the U.S. role in the world.

He structured his speech around the three key components of his foreign policy thinking — our values, our interests and our alliances.

The Post said, “He is no left-wing isolationist. He said quite plainly that ‘the world needs America more than ever,’ and, while declaring the country in need of a new foreign policy, he showed he has smartly sifted through past experience and extracted lessons both good and bad.

Did Buttigieg’s speech answer all of the questions imbedded in U.S. foreign policy? Of course not.

But, as the Posts concluded in its report: “A candidate who can identify, not to mention analyze, the rise of illiberal regimes as a threat to our interests and can find Sudan and Algeria on the map, let alone speak intelligently about them, deserves praise.

“A candidate willing to explain that immigration is a national security issue because we want and need the talent of those seeking to come here to help innovate and contribute to the economy should get credit.

“A Democrat forcefully defending the good that the United States does in the world deserves encouragement. He set a high bar for other candidates. Let’s see how they match up.”

As we head toward the 2020 elections, I am hoping to find someone – I don’t care about political party – who has a decent chance to unseat Trump. It appears to me that Buttigieg deserves a further look.

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.

Why is this sometimes-esoteric subject an issue for me – the issue of non-compete contracts that make it difficult for high-level professional talent to jump without warning from one employer to another?

Well, my background relates to public policy issues at the Capitol several years ago when I represented the Oregon Association of Broadcasters (OAB). [The assocation is still represented by my old firm, CFM Strategic Communications.]

At that time, a state senator who was a former broadcaster decided, without consultation with the industry, that he should propose doing away with non-competes. He did so at the behest of a union, the American Federal of Television and Radio Artists.

Removing non-compete agreements, he contended, would occur without regard to the fact that broadcast stations often had invested millions of dollars to promote on-air talent.

Better, I contended at the time, for policymakers to recognize the investment and allow broadcast stations to allow non-competes for a limited amount of time, say three years.

We eventually found just a bit of middle ground to preserve the use of non-competes for broadcasters, but with some restrictions.

All of this came to mind recently when I read a column in the Wall Street Journal under this headline:

Your longtime doctor moves. Will you lose that physician because of a non-compete clause?

The piece reported problems for patients when a physician moved from one practice to another without information being provided about the move and patients left to scramble to find a physician with whom they had a relationship.

Here is an excerpt from the piece:

“A physician had decided to change jobs, but her contract included a non-compete clause that prevented her from working for a competitor within 10 miles for a year after she left. A non-solicitation agreement also meant she couldn’t tell patients where she was going. If they asked, she would need to tell them to search online for her.”

The WSJ reports that it’s not clear how often doctors sign covenants, the contract clauses that limit where they can go or what they can say after leaving a job, says David Clark, a partner at Epstein Becker & Green, a law firm in New York.

Laws vary by state — both in what’s allowed in physician contracts and what is enforceable. In some states — including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware and Colorado — health-care systems can’t legally enforce contract provisions that prevent health-care employees from working for competitors.

Other states — including Texas, New Mexico, Connecticut and Tennessee — allow them with various limitations on how restrictive they can be.

As was true for the broadcasters I represented, hospitals and clinics justify non-compete contracts as a way to protect the investments they make in physicians, says David Meltzer, an economist and primary-care physician at the University of Chicago.

He imagined a scenario in which a hospital spent a lot of money to hire a prominent surgeon, supplemented by expenditures in support staff and advertising, only to have the surgeon soon leave the practice for a competitor down the road.

“There is a reason why these exist,” Meltzer says. “It’s not just a ridiculous control mechanism, necessarily.” And, from my point of view, the competitors should be required to make the same type of investment in physicians they hire, not just steal from another provider.

Beyond broadcasters, I encountered this issue in my representation of health care interests, this time a cardiology practice.

The issue arose because the cardiology practice had invested thousands of dollars to entice a group of cardiologists to move from another state to join the practice here in Oregon. As they arrived, the practice invested more money in facilities, services and staff to help the new cardiologists succeed in their new location.

Then, as it happened, the new cardiologists decided summarily to leave for a new location down the street.

My client took the new cardiologists to court in an effort to preserve the non-competes, as well as to preserve the investment they had made in enticing the new physicians to come to Oregon where they could practice successfully.

Well, the judge in the case issued a confounding ruling that I felt went beyond his appropriate jurisdiction. Rather than ruling on the efficacy of the non-compete agreements, he said the community would benefit from expanding health care access by allowing the physicians to move because, inevitably, they would be replaced by the original hiring practice – my client – and, thus, there would be more cardiologists in the region.

A bad ruling, I thought. His jurisdiction was not the spread of health care services in the region. His jurisdiction should have been limited to whether the non-competes were fair and reasonable. But, we were stuck with the decision to the consternation of my client – and me.

The moral of all this is that, in various instances of high-priced and high-value professional positions, non-compete agreements make absolute sense.

I wish policymakers – both in the Legislative and Judicial Branches — would recognize the rationale and the value.

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 Washington Post ran a column this morning that prompted me to think about the question in the headline to this blog: Whether ethical behavior and conduct by public officials matters any longer to voters and whether journalists can contribute to how the public views ethics.

Huge questions as we grapple with rampant unethical conduct from the president and Congress – conduct which seems to matter less and less to those who vote.

Generalizations are inadequate here because “what the public thinks” varies by individual. Some want ethical behavior on the part of those who represent us in local, state and federal governments. Others don’t seem to value ethics, preferring, instead, that officials take actions in accord with their biases ethics be damned.

In addition to Washington Post story, which I recount below, this issue – ethical behavior and conduct — matters to me for at least two reasons in addition to my own support for ethics.

First, I am privileged to serve as one of nine members of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, which started in the Watergate era in Oregon (1974) and continues to hold public officials and lobbyists accountable for abiding by ethics laws and rules.

A second reason is that I am serving on a committee formed at the behest of Oregon Common Cause, which is working to suggest improvements in ethics at the federal level, some of which might be based on what works or could work in Oregon

Walter Schaub, the retired director of the Federal Ethics Committee, made a telling point a couple months ago when he appeared, via Skype, at one of our ethics committee meetings.

He contended that, given all of the years since the Watergate scandal, ethical behavior and conduct has receded from public view in contrast to the mid-1970s when it was top-of-mind for many due to the reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for the Washington Post. Today, he said other issues dominate so much that public officials bear little responsibility for their ethical behavior or mis-behavior.

In her column, the Post’s media writer, Margaret Sullivan, suggested that, given various cultural changes in the country, journalists are no longer able to monitor federal ethics in the way Woodward and Bernstein did when, for the Washington Post, they reported the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Sullivan attributed the change in the environment to several factors:

• “As the anniversary of the Watergate scandal’s beginning comes around again investigative journalism’s effectiveness is weakened. The reporting may be every bit as skilled, but the results are greatly diluted because so much has changed in the nation, including its media.”
• “During the Watergate era, there were three networks. Now, cable news, talk radio, thousands of websites and social media create a polluted firehose-blast of information mixed with disinformation. The cacophony is very hard to break through.”
• “Back then, what was said on those three networks — often fed by revelations from Woodward and Bernstein — was largely believed. Much more than now, there was a shared set of facts.
• In the Watergate era, “straight news was not relentlessly countered by bad-faith propaganda in the style of Fox News’s Sean Hannity” and, I add, those like him who function more as a cheering section for President Donald Trump than journalists.
• “News came to citizens from sources they trusted — including their local newspapers. While many editorial pages supported Nixon almost to the end, front pages all around the country were telling people what was happening, blow by blow. Those papers are no longer a major news source in many places. Facebook, though, is.”

In Sullivan’s piece, Columbia University Journalism School professor William Grueskin says today’s situation is not only about how the media has changed.

“The press can do only so much,” he said. “Without an independent judiciary, plus a Congress that’s invested in a genuine search for truth, rather than covering for the president, even the most intrepid journalism can slip into the void.”

I am not a big fan of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren – she is not a centrist, but more a believer in big government– but a comment she made in a media interview the other day is worth repeating. She recounted her three takeaways from reading the Mueller Report (which, I add, is more than many of her colleagues in Congress did who talked on and on about the report, but, media report indicated, did not read it in full):

“Part one, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 elections for the purpose of getting Donald Trump elected. Part two, then-candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. And part three, when the federal government tried to investigate part one and part two, Donald Trump as president delayed, deflected, moved, fired, and did everything he could to obstruct justice.”

Warren added: “If he were any other person in the United States, based on what’s documented in that report, he would be carried out in handcuffs.”

I reflect on all this as a former reporter for a daily newspaper in Oregon. That makes me one of those who likes newspapers, especially those these days that have retained, (a) solid writing, (b) labels for distinctions between news and opinion, and (c) a commitment to hold government accountable for performance.

As all of this crossed my mind this morning, the Washington Post Fact Checker column reported that Trump has now passed an incredible total of lies and exaggerations in the last three years – more than 10,800.

If you were to tabulate lies and exaggerations from Members of Congress – both Democrats and Republicans – the total would likely be in the same orbit with Trump as both sides spent more competing for attention from their bases that doing the hard work of good government, with a set of ethical commitments.

From my soapbox out West, I think the solution here is for members of the public – especially those who vote – to return to a time when ethical behavior and conduct mattered. If that happened, there would be no way for public officials to avoid a higher standard of ethics.

I am not holding my breath.

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 blog headline above also was the headline in a piece in the Washington Post by columnist Eugene Robinson.

As good a writer as Robinson – and he does know how to use words well – he is not one of my favorite columnists.

Still, in a Washington Post piece, he succeeds by going after President Donald Trump as a master of ‘ignorance on top of ignorance,’ even if he, Trump, utters only a few words.

He displayed his ignorance on several occaisons as he toured Europe, including the United Kingdom, over the last few days.

I paid a bit of attention to this because, coincidentally, I was in Europe around the same time as Trump was, though never – fortunately for me — in the same place. As the day of D-Day dawned, June 6, my wife and I were on the way home after a 10-day river cruise down the Danube.

So, upon my return home, I reviewed a few of the comments about Trump, including those from Robinson, as news coverage of Trump’s visit to a D-Day site in the area of Normandy dominated newspaper space and air waves.

To be fair, it could be contended that Trump did well, for a change, when he made this comments at a commemoration of the D-Day Invasion of Europe by allied forces in the start of ridding the world of one of its most deadly despots, Adolph Hitler.

According to the New York Times, standing on a sun-drenched bluff in Colleville-Sur-Mer, France, overlooking the Normandy beaches (an estimated 10,000 soldiers sacrificed themselves to a savage fusillade of gunfire thus opening the way for Europe’s liberation in 1944), Trump declared, “We are gathered here on freedom’s altar.”

Seventy-five years after the D-Day invasion, the president, who has called into question America’s alliances around the world — including with countries that fought with the United States in Normandy — pledged fidelity to friendships “forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war, and proven in the blessings of peace.”

It was Trump’s only reference to the importance of the Atlantic alliance, in a speech that dwelled, probably appropriately, on the service of D-Day’s American veterans. Dozens of them were seated behind him overlooking the white grave markers of fallen comrades, and Omaha Beach beyond.

Speaking gravely, with few of the ad-libs that usually pepper his speeches, Trump recounted stories of heroism and suffering, often in graphic terms. The veterans not only had vanquished Nazi tyranny, he said, but built the American century.

“To the men who sit behind me and to the boys who rest in the field before me,” Trump said, “your example will never, ever grow old, your legend will never tire, your spirit — brave, unyielding and true — will never die.

“To all of our friends and partners: Our cherished alliance was forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war and proven in the blessings of peace. Our bond is unbreakable.”

Of course, Trump didn’t stop there.

As solid as his comments were about the D-Day, he went beyond them to violate inter-country norms by advocating for a premier candidate – Boris Johnson – to replace the outgoing Theresa May.

He also met with Prince Charles to hear the prince advocate for international action to control climate change.

Here is what columnist Robinson wrote:

“It is not unfair to point out that President Trump, on many important subjects, is just an ignoramus.

“A vivid illustration of this unfortunate fact came this week in London, when it was revealed that Prince Charles, a knowledgeable environmentalist, had tried to educate the president on climate change — and utterly failed.

“I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” Trump told the ‘Good Morning Britain’ program. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because, with extreme weather, you can’t miss.”

“Good Lord,” Robinson wrote, “it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.”

Robinson also wrote tariffs: “Who bears the cost of tariffs is another topic about which Trump has views that are both unshakably settled and spectacularly wrong.

“China is paying the tariffs he imposed, Trump claims. Companies in Mexico will pay the tariffs he threatens, he promises. Yet, that simply is not how tariffs work.

“Tariffs are taxes, paid by the U.S. firms that import Chinese, Mexican and other foreign products. Those companies pass along those costs to American consumers, in the form of higher prices for foreign-made merchandise. In other words, the money that Trump claims is flowing into the treasury doesn’t come from Beijing or Mexico City. It comes out of your pocket and mine.”

Robinson avers that “the president is often wrong but never in doubt, a know-it-all on subjects about which he knows nothing. He is not, for example, any kind of expert on horse racing. Yet when Maximum Security was disqualified in last month’s Kentucky Derby, Trump immediately sent out an authoritative-sounding tweet:

“The Kentucky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough and tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby – not even close!”

Political correctness? About a horse? “What’s wrong with the man,” Robinson asks.

“Even more dangerous than Trump’s ignorance is the near-impossibility of changing his mind about certain things. It’s one thing to stick to one’s guns. It’s another thing to stubbornly resist fact and reason — especially when the stakes are so high.”

I have developed in recent years my own list of words to describe Trump, most of them of the derisive type, which he richly deserves, as he believes that what he says illustrates, which is far from the truth.

I won’t list my words here, but Robinson goes one better by saying that “only Trump can pack this much ignorance into a few words.”

I wish I would have thought to write or utter those words.

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.

I thought of the question in the headline on the last day of our Danube River Cruise that is due to end in Budapest, Hungary.

Along the way, my wife and I visited several sites in Germany which called to mind, again, the evils of the Nazi role in World War II, which, of course, started with Adolph Hitler’s vision to take over the world.

So, I thought, Hitler committed war crimes that should have subjected him to a trial along with many of his minions (see below). U.S. President Donald Trump also has committed crimes, though not in war, at least not yet.

Why not subject him to a political crimes trial?

I supposed you could call that impeachment. The risk is that, however much he has earned impeachment, subjecting him to it would tend to cement his re-election to another four-year term. All the so-called “Trumpians” would really to his cause.

Still, who knows? An impeachment trial might produce enough facts that even, (a) the Senate would have to consider going along with the House to convict, and (b) American voters might even learn that Trump is evil enough to avoid casting ballots for him again.

On our river cruise, one of mid-trip stops was at what is called “The Documentation Center” in Nuremburg, hard by the Zeppelin Field where Hitler held rallies to call thousands of Germans to support his vision.

Of course, it is possible that few German citizens knew at the time that Hitler’s vision called, not just for restoring the German economy after World War I and its aftermath, but for exterminating an entire race of the people, the Jews, which he nearly managed to do, killing more than six million of them.

A number of Hitler’s aides were called to account in a War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg just after the war. Twelve of them were sentenced to death and many others to long prison terms. It’s unfortunate that Hitler could not join them, for he had committed suicide in his “bunker” as the war ended, thus avoiding a fate that would have shown his evil to the world.

He deserved a War Crimes trial and a death sentence, which he managed to produce at his own hand.

So, you may ask, what has Trump done – or not done – that warrants a political crimes trial?

Here’s my list:

• He has not defended human dignity.
• He has not called on Americans to respect other peoples and other races.
• Rather, he has sown discord and dissension at every turn.
• He has denigrated immigrants, labeling all of them to be criminals not deserving a new chance in America.
• He has considered women to be objects for whatever he wants to do with each of them.
• He has ridiculed anyone who doesn’t agree with him, including, incredibly, U.S. war heroes such as the late Senator John McCain and Seal Team leader William McRaven.
• He has refused to negotiate with Congress on anything, believing that his way always in the right way.
• He has refused to recognize middle ground. Either his way or the highway. So, compromise be damned.

Given all of the uncertainty of a Political Crimes Trial for Trump, perhaps the best approach would be limit him to one term in office. Let’s hope for that outcome in 2020 regardless of whether he gets what he deserves, which is the trial.

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.

To say that Trump goes overboard is an understatement.

He did so again yesterday when he had the temerity in Europe to suggest that “Britain should go for a no-deal Brexit with the European Union and refuse to pay the agreed upon” money in the divorce bill.

I write this as I am sitting on the Scenic Amber, our river cruise ship as we travel down the Danube toward Budapest.

Now, what I know about Brexit could be written on the head of a pin – or least summarized in Wall Street Journal and Washington Post newspapers, which I read daily.

But, the following Trump comment says volumes:

In negotiating deals when it comes to Brexit, Trump said, “If they don’t get what they want, I would walk away. If you don’t get the deal you want, then you walk away.”

That is not negotiating.

It is juvenile behavior. It’s the “take your toys and go home when you don’t get what you want” idea.

Trump fancies himself a supreme negotiator.

He is not.

He is a dictator.

I can hear him saying, “I want what I want and I am going to get it whether you like it or not.”

No wonder leaders in Congress have difficulty negotiating with Trump.

Some say it is like “negotiating with jello. Poke it one way and it pops out the other way.”

Let’s say that, in “negotiating” with Trump, you establish a tentative agreement somewhere in the middle. You get something. You give something.

For Trump, this agreement represents only a new floor. He then ups the ante as he tries to get what he wants, no matter what the other side wants.

That’s not negotiating. It’s just another sign that Trump is not up to holding the top political job in the U.S.

I wish he would shut up in the United Kingdom. Too much to ask, you say. No doubt. But at least that’s half-way around the world and not at home where what he says would tend to matter more because a variety of folks pay attention him,

In the U.K., not so much.

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.

Startling.

Appalling.

Abominable.

Grotesque.

Come up with your own word.

I came up with these after visiting the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, Germany, which is near the Zeppelin, a field Hitler used as a Nazi rallying point to spread his gospel of hate back in the late 1930s.

On our river cruise on the Danube, we were told here that the field and the Documentation Center exist to help make sure Germans and the rest of the world don’t forget the atrocities of Nazism and, thus, with memory, don’t repeat them.

From 1933 to 1938, the National Socialist Party in Germany held its rallies in Nuremberg. Remains of huge structures still bear witness to how Hitler formulated a propaganda machine to spread his gospel of hate as he emerged from an orifice above the huge crowd to salute “Heil Hitler” and expect salutes in return.

Some call the Documentation Center a “museum,” but that term is a bit inaccurate because the word museum could conjure up positive images. This exhibit is not positive; it provides a horrific glimpse into the gross misdeeds of a despot, Hitler – misdeeds that almost exterminated an entire race of people, the Jews, and misdeeds that many Germans today want to remember so such an atrocity never happens again.

The last exhibit in the Center is a summary of the Nuremberg trials, which found 12 high-level Nazi officers guilty of atrocities that resulted in the death penalty, plus found a number of other officers guilty of crimes that produced long prison sentences.

The executions were carried out in Nuremberg, but, unfortunately, the acknowledged #2 Nazi, Herman Goering, escaped execution at the last by swallowing a cyanide pill that no knew he had somehow obtained.

Of course, the architect of the holocaust – Hitler – escaped standing trial for his crimes when he killed himself in a bunker just after Germany had lost the war. There has been a dispute as to whether Hitler actually killed himself or, instead, somehow escaped. Our guide said most Germans believe he succeeded in committing suicide, which, if you think about, was a good way for him to go – perhaps not what he deserved in the sense of the fitting character of an execution, but, still, an ignominious end.

I have been in Germany a couple times in the last few years and, each time, my mind races along to draw comparisons between Hitler and Donald Trump.

For me, the parallels are stark, though there is at least some distance between the two. Hitler was guilty of genocide and Trump is not. I also hesitate, other than through this blog, to talk to some of my friends about this because they appear to revere Trump, believing he is the answer to the future of the our country.

I don’t believe that, so here are the parallels I see between Hitler and Trump (and, for this use, I use present-tense verbs, which pertain to Hitler as if he were here today, as well as to Trump who, unfortunately, is here):

• Each exalts himself and “his race” by denigrating others.
• Each practices gross dishonesty as a stock in trade; truth is no barometer.
• Each produces propaganda to extend their message to the masses.
• Each expresses no value for human life. For Hitler, it was exterminating Jews. For Trump, it is blaming immigrants for everything, though they are not guilty as Trump contends – most of them just want a better life.
• Each had no relevant experience for the top political job in their countries — Germany and the U.S.
• Each appeals to the worst instincts in people, fomenting hate and atrocity, not goodwill and collaboration.

Both Hitler and Trump rose to power by contending that their country had to rise again. To Hitler, it could have been “Make Germany Great Again,” as a way to recover from the devastation of World War I and the post-war subjugation of Germany by those who “won” the war.

To Trump, his pet slogan is “Make America Great Again.” For the life of me, I have no idea what he means by those words because, for me, his policies do not make America great again, though they do represent a rallying cry for his supporters. But that’s all.

Both Hitler and Trump manipulate the media for their own ends. Hitler used a movie documentarian to make a propaganda film about his vision of Germany that managed to send his message, first delivered at the Zeppelin, out broadly to the German people, even if millions of Germans were not able to join the 500,000 persons who crowded onto the field.

Like Hitler, Trump also doesn’t know how to tell the truth about anything. Instead, Trump relies on propaganda, apparently believing that, if he says something, it must be true. The Washington Post Fact Checker column has counted an incredible tally of more than 10,000 lies since he took office and Fox News, with Trump’s steadfast support, continues to parrot his views as if they are gospel.

Perhaps it is good for me to be in Europe, including in Germany, in the sense that, being here, reinforces my commitment not to settle for Trump’s supposed “doctrine” in my country, given the history of what Hitler did to Germany and, in fact, the rest of the world – and what I feel Trump is doing to “my” country.

I sometimes wonder how the German people convinced themselves to submit to Hitler’s atrocities. It is likely that many of them were either ignorant or brainwashed.

I refuse to be subject to the same frailties – submitting to a tyrant, Trump, who leads this country down a path that, for me, resembles what Hitler did in – and to – Germany. Trump’s vision for America is not my vision for America.

So, I hope Trump is a one-term president. We might not survive a second four years.

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.

Issues of socialism came to mind this week, though I never lived under such tyranny.

What prompted thoughts of socialism involved our ground tour guide in Prague, Czech Republic, where my wife and I spent three days on the way to a river cruise on the Danube.

The guide reported that her mother, still alive in Prague at the age of 73, yearns for a return to the socialist state in the Czech Republic. The reason? She feels that collective action, not individual action, would protect her in her old age.

Her daughter, the guide, relishes the ability, in a non-communist state, to be able to think for yourself, discuss subjects, and practice creativity. All are banned in communism.

Socialism also came to mind as I read a piece by author Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street under this headline:

Socialists Don’t Know History

Young people don’t remember the Soviet nightmare. But what’s Sanders’s excuse?

Epstein continued:

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. I can’t help but mumble this famous sentence from Karl Marx’s ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ whenever I hear about the socialist wing of the new — and distinctly not your father’s — Democrat Party. Socialism caused the deaths of more than 100 million people under Lenin, Stalin and Mao, but young progressives (I dislike that word to describe someone who wants to change because the change support surely does not represent “progress) in the U.S. want to give it another go.”

As the headline says, Epstein gives some of the young people a pass because they did not see or live through the history of previous socialists movements, such as in Russia or the Czech Republic.

But he gives no pass to Senator Bernie Sanders who fancies himself, again, as worthy of being president as he stands on a platform of socialism.

It is hard for me to fault the woman in Prague who worries about her future.

It is not hard for me to fault Sanders – and others like him – who believe that government is the answer to every problem.

Epstein wonders if Sanders, who proudly calls himself a “democratic socialist,” actually is practicing a real political dogma. “Democratic socialist,” Epstein avers, is much like “military justice” or “good kosher meal,” — an oxymoron. Under socialism the state always takes priority over the people. “Unfortunately,” as Win McCormack writes in the New Republic, “no self-identified socialist regime in the world — all of which have been installed by professional revolutionists in the Marxist-Leninist tradition — has ever been the least bit democratic.”

More from Epstein:

“Many Democrats who are looking to socialism are not old enough to remember the more than 70-year-long socialist horror movie called the Soviet Union.

“Throughout history under its various regimes, in its pursuit of a spurious utopian equality, socialism has produced no great art, profound thinkers or enduring science. It has been death on entrepreneurship. Yet it is an idea — or, more accurately, an ideal —that refuses to die. The socialism currently advocated by a segment of the Democrat Party brings to mind another famous sentence, this one by George Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’”

Notice the phrase above – “It (socialism) has been death on entrepreneurship.”

One of the virtues of capitalism is its emphasis on the power of effort, energy, verve and “entrepreneurship.” Without complimenting myself too highly, those were exactly the phrases that we – myself and two partners – claimed when we started our firm, CFM Strategic Communications, about 30 years ago.

Without entrepreneurship and the freedom of individual action, we would have been dead in the water.

Besides the all of the “e’s” – energy, effort and entrepreneurship – we also benefited from one of my previous bosses, an Oregon congressman, called being “a fiscal conservative with a conscience.”

That is part slogan, of course, but it also represents a commitment to help those who happen to be less fortunate than you, even, as in our case, we started and ran a business. As a firm, we supported a variety of good causes, including representing some worthy clients on a pro bono basis.

So, I say, tell Bernie Sanders and his ilk to acknowledge the lessons of history and disavow socialism. No chance, you say. Probably right.

But, if those who favor capitalism would behave smart when it comes to a “social conscience,” we would see huge benefits from the commitment and would not follow down a negative path advocated by Sanders and others running for president from the left.

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.

If you need something to convince you that the Holocaust is a true fact, then visit the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague in what is called the “Jewish Quarter.”

That is where I am writing this blog, the second on our river cruise trip to Europe, which began with land tours in the Czech Republic’s largest city and progresses tomorrow to Nuremburg where we are scheduled to board our Scenic Cruises ship for a trip down the Danube.

Regarding the Holocaust, I don’t need convincing. I am Holocaust believer, not a Holocaust denier.

Visiting the Pinkas Synagogue today was a sobering experience.

Aaron Meshulam Horowitz, a prosperous merchant in his day, built the synagogue in 1535. But, today, the focus of the synagogue is its walls. They are inscribed with the hand-written names of 77,297 names of Czech Jews sent to the gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Yes, 77,297.

It is a number that, in some ways, could pale in comparison to the six million Jews who were exterminated by Adolph Hitler and those who followed his incredible orders. But, there is no way for the pale to remain if you even take a stab at noting the names on the walls.

Real people.

Real deaths.

Real cases of children watching their family members die.

Real verification of Hitler’s plan to exterminate a complete race of people.

Here are my wife’s comments on our Synagogue visit:

“There has been a Jewish community in Prague since the 10^th century. During the 12^th century, it was deemed that Jews and Christians had to live in separate areas, so an area of Prague was walled off for them.

“In the 16^th century, there were 11,000 inhabitants. As Jews could only be buried in their own area, an unkempt cemetery reveals the different levels of the dead — as many as 15 deep.

“Various eras brought prosperity, including in the 1890’s when walls around the area were torn down and there was great wealth for Jews, some of whom built amazing Art Deco mansions (which now house designer shops).

“When the Nazis came to power, it was a different story. Jewish leaders had to organize groups of 1,000 at a time to be sent out of the city. We don’t know if they knew where people were being sent. Before the groups were shipped out, they had to hand over any money, jewelry, and the keys to their homes.

“Some were sent first to a ‘model camp,’ Terazin, designed to show the world that the Nazis were humane. Children were given school and art and drama lessons — before being sent to their deaths at other camps.

“A total of 8,000 children were sent to Terazin. Only 240 survived. One of the rooms in the Pinkas Synagogue museum is covered with children’s drawings of camp life — with their birth and death dates. Most we saw died between 10-14 years of age.”

On a couple previous visits to Europe, including to Germany, I have come face-to-face with fact of the Holocaust. Face-to-face in the sense of being where the Holocaust literally occurred.

Three years ago in Germany, I first came to a perception that, in many ways, President Donald Trump reminds me of what I know about Hitler, which mercifully is not as much as many scholars. Still, Hitler was the generator of the Holocaust.

He rose, at least in part, by promising to exhalt the economy and race of Germans after World War I. One of his ways of doing do was to exterminate an entire race of people, the Jews. He made progress on the almost-too-hard-to-comprehend task by eliminating six million members of the Jewish race, including the 77,297 Czech Jews.

In what I only hope may not be a similar way, Trump has risen, at least in part, for his attack on immigrants – those from other countries, including and especially Mexico, who want to embark on a new life.

He appears to believe, in contrast to America’s long history of welcoming immigrants, to believe that all of them are criminals. No. For the most part, they are individuals, often with families, who want a chance at freedom.

No doubt, the visit to Pinkas Synagogue will stick with me for awhile. Good. Good in the sense that grasping more of man’s incredible inhumanity to man will underline the admonition to avoid continuing to go down a path of personal destruction, as if you are better than someone else.

As I was writing this blog, I learned that the Oregon Legislature passed a bill to require Oregon schools to teach about the Holocaust. Good for the Legislature.

According to a story by the Associated Press, ten other states require some level of genocide education in schools; now Oregon joins those ranks for the 2019-20 school year.

Meanwhile, a recent poll found that one in five American millennials surveyed were unfamiliar with the Holocaust.

Some say those awareness gaps carry consequences. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitic incidents at K-12 schools in this country quadrupled from 2015 to 2017.

One of the most notable anti-Semitic propaganda movements to develop over the past two decades has been the organized effort to deny or minimize the established history of Nazi genocide against the Jews.

In the United States, the movement – known as “Holocaust Deniers” — has publicized itself primarily through editorial-style advertisements in college campus newspapers. The first of these ads claimed to call for “open debate on the Holocaust;” it purported to question, not necessarily the fact of Nazi anti-Semitism, but whether this hatred resulted in an organized killing program. A more recent ad has questioned the authenticity of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

So, I say, forget the deniers. Deny the deniers.

Instead, remember the Holocaust. It is a sad chapter in world history that dare not be repeated again lest we end up with future Pinkas Synagogues with names of those who died because of man’s inhumanity to man.