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.

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 headline on this blog makes it seem like I know more than I do about the U.S. and the Czech Republic.

I know just enough to be dangerous.

Still, as I write this, I am sitting in Prague where my wife, Nancy, and I will be spending another day or so before heading four hours away by bus to Nuremberg where will board our ship for a river cruise on the Danube.

We are on a line called Scenic, which began as a land-tour operation in Australia, then expanded to river cruising in Europe. One of the good things is that – and this could be true of more lines than Scenic – once you pay your will you are done.

Everything is covered, including wine and tips.

Should be a fun and rewarding experience where we will see a lot history, as we have done in several previous European river cruises, including on the Rhine, Mosel and Senn.

On the Senn, one of the highlights was a visit to the D-Day battlefields where we saw so many graves that, I suppose, to call the visit a “highlight” is not altogether accurate, given the gravity of so many graves.

This time, here in Prague, on a four-hour walking tour of the city with our guide, I gained a couple of quick perceptions:

1. It was raining here yesterday, which is not an unusual occurrence in Prague. The Czech Republic is surrounded on all sides by various mountain ranges, so, in a way like Oregon, rain is a fact of life.
2. It is possible that the United States and the Czech Republic have one other unfortunate fact in common: The countries are led by a crazy person.

In our case, of course, it is Donald Trump who continues to confound, not only in the U.S., but also around the world with his erratic behavior that, for me, conjures up the image of a TV entertainer who has no idea what he is doing in the nation’s highest political office.

In the case of the Czech Republic, the culprit is Milos Zeman, now more than 80 years old who appears to have a good chance to continue leading the Republic.

He has a fondness for alcohol, so much so that our guide told us, in one TV shot of his performance as president, he was seen tottering toward the door of the meeting room without any ability to find it.

Our guide told us he roles with an iron hand in a country that is “a republic,” which is better, I guess, than communism. Like Trump, he also appears to have a yen to get close to Russian premier Vladimur Putin. Some in the Czech Republic worry that, with at least a personal lead toward the Russian, Zeman could enable a Russian takeover of the Czech Republic – again – or, at least, more Russian influence.

Perhaps that is an overstatement and, of course, I don’t know much about all of the political to-ing and fro-ing in this country.

Our guide, who said she risked a bit by getting into politics – and, also, religion – did say the country is roughly 50-50 split between wanting a Republic, which could be described as a democracy, and communism, which could build a bridge to Russia.

Here is the way my wife described the issue in her first-day travelogue of our trip — a description that brings a major political issue down to earth:

“Our guide is probably 45 years of age, so was a child in the Russian-control years and revels in freedom to travel and to share opinions. She is worried that the current president’s coziness with Putin will bring back too much Russian influence.

“Her mother, on the other hand, is 73 and, while she endured hardships (months of no toilet paper, queuing up for food, worrying about KGB spies, etc.), is fearful of spending older years without the expected government support of communist years.

“Our guide thinks the country is divided 50/50 over whether communism or current freedom is better. We would not have expected that.”

Here is what the New York Times wrote in 2018 after Zeman won his second term in office.

“After an election campaign centered on questions of civility in politics and the Czech Republic’s place in Europe, voters decided to stick with President Milos Zeman and his often-caustic brand of populism that has stoked resentment toward Muslim immigrants and ruptured the country’s relationship with its allies to the west.”

So, politics is askew in the Czech Republic as it is in the U.S.

Further, we also did not know in advance that the Czech Republic is basically an atheist society, which has been true since the Russian years. That is true even though there are wonderful old churches, with high steeples, all over the city.

More from Prague and the Danube if I think or more to write.

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.

Here’s a far-fetched idea.

How about those who represent us in today’s political system – as well as us, as voters – work together to solve the country’s problems?

Possible?

Should be.

Probably not.

This notion crossed my mind as I listened a few weeks ago now to Attorney General William Barr announce release of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a report about possible collusion with Russians to affect the 2016 election.

It would seem possible that, with release of the report, at least in a redacted version that was in line with statutory authority, the release would mean the end of occupation or preoccupation with the Mueller report.

No.

Democrats didn’t get what they wanted, potential criminal charges against Donald Trump, but they are not inclined to stop their hunt for a way to bring Trump down through investigations.

In many ways, I wish them success for, in Trump, we have the nation’s worst ever chief executive, someone who tries to lie his way out of every dilemma he faces, most of them of his own making.

Here’s the way the Washington Post, Dan Balz, one of the most experienced journalists in Washington, D.C., put it the other day:

“The Trump presidency long has been an exercise in normalizing extraordinary behavior, with President Trump repeatedly stretching the limits of what is considered appropriate conduct by the nation’s chief executive. The report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III puts into high relief the degree to which President Trump has violated the norms.

“The principal focus of the special counsel’s investigation was on questions of criminality. But there is more than the issue of what rises to the level of criminal conspiracy or criminal obstruction when judging a president and his administration. These are questions that go to the heart of what is acceptable or normal or advisable in a democracy. On that basis, the Mueller report provides a damning portrait of the president and those around him for actions taken during the 2016 campaign and while in office.

“The 448-page document is replete with evidence of repeated lying by public officials and others (some of whom have been charged for that conduct), of the president urging not to tell the truth, of the president seeking to shut down the investigation, of a Trump campaign hoping to benefit politically from Russian hacking and leaks of information damaging to its opponent, of a White House in chaos and operating under abnormal rules.”

So, the Mueller report, far from exonerating Trump, described him in accurate terms. According to Balz, “President Trump repeatedly stretched the limits of what is considered appropriate conduct by the nation’s chief executive.”

An understatement!

Still, Democrats would be better off if they would get about the business of governing. That would be the best way to hold Trump to account, defeating him in 2020.

If the Ds just head off into further investigations of Trump, however they would be warranted given his abhorrent content, what they could do is fuel Trump supporters to elect him again. Perish the thought of four more years in the Oval Office.

So, with all of us dominated by bad news every day, is there a chance for public officials in the Nation’s Capital to work together? That’s the question I asked at the beginning of this post and I suspect the answer is a hearty and unfortunate no.

I wish we could return to a time when Republicans and Democrats found a way to disagree agreeably.

No longer and all of us, as citizens, are worse for the descent into the political abyss.

 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.

This could be a long list – Americans President Donald Trump has criticized because they don’t agree with him.

But, for me, two of the most perplexing involve true American war heroes – the late Senator John McCain and the retired Special Forces officer, William McRaven.

On this Memorial Day, far better to honor their service.

Trump, who has no military service of any kind – he selfishly managed to avoid any obligation – has no standing to fire off criticisms of two military veterans who played major roles in preserving freedoms in the United States of America.

You can argue about Trump until you-know-what freezes over, but, if you were to defend Trump’s diatribes against McCain and McRaven, you would illustrate your own insensitivity, as well as failure to grasp history.

Trump’s criticism of McCain are well-documented.

I have no idea why Trump felt it necessary to say the McCain deserved no credit for his military service because “I (Trump) like people who weren’t captured.”

That McCain survived incredible torture at the hands of the Vietnamese and returned home to run for and win a U.S. Senate seat is the stuff of legend. Whether you agreed with him on policy issues or not, he was a true American hero.

The same can be said of McRaven, once the longest-serving Navy SEAL on active duty. He played key roles in thousands of dangerous missions abroad, including commanding the one that cost Osama bin Laden his life.

McRaven, who is retired, has warned that the greatest threat to American democracy he has seen during his decades in national security comes not from a rogue regime or a terrorist group but from the caustic rhetoric of Trump.

“An attack on the press or an attack on the Department of Justice, or to imply that there are dirty cops at the FBI or to ignore the intelligence community.  Trump’s conduct really undermines our institutions,” McRaven told USA TODAY in an interview about his memoir, ‘Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations.’ “And that,” McRaven said, “makes me fearful of the future direction of the nation.”

McRaven’s service in daredevil missions includes the following: Intercepting Somali pirates, freeing American missionaries held hostage in the Philippines, interrogating Saddam Hussein and recovering long-frozen military remains in British Columbia.

Of course, Trump denigrates all of this, hammering both McCain and McRaven because they didn’t or don’t agree with him.

Trump’s behavior and conduct is all the more incredible to me as all of us, as Americans, look forward to celebrating Memorial Day on Monday. This is a time when we should respect the sacrifice of all those who served with distinction and honor.

That includes McCain and McRaven.

I’ll take their character any day over Trump, the buffoon who thinks he rises as he ridicules.

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.

At first blush, it may sound a bit juvenile.

Leaders of the Executive Branch in Washington, D.C. won’t subject themselves to questions, in public, from legislative staff.

The Members of Congress, if they were summoned to the White House or to a federal agency’s headquarters, would expect to speak to the top person – either the president or the agency director – not lower-level staff.

All of this came to mind late this week as I was reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal by columnist James Freeman. It appeared under this headline:

Nancy Pelosi Backs William Barr

The Speaker agrees that senior government officials don’t answer to staff

Freeman added: “It’s not easy keeping up with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s shifting position on the conduct of President Donald Trump. But at least for the moment the California Democrat seems to be in agreement with Attorney General William Barr on a key question regarding our co-equal branches of government.

“President Trump abruptly blew up a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday, declaring that he could not work with them until they stopped investigating him and lashing out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi for accusing him of a cover-up.

“After Trump walked out, Pelosi turned to other Democrats there and recounted a story about how Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt had each brought people together to solve infrastructure problems.

“Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, was in the room. ‘Respectfully, Madam Speaker,’ she asked, ‘do you have a direct response to the president?

“Pelosi said she was responding to the president, not members of his staff.”

There!  The co-equal branches point.

Pelosi’s position is in direct conflict with the House Judiciary Committee where the incendiary chair, Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, wants Attorney General William Barr to submit to questions from Judiciary staff, not just elected members of the committee.

Barr, properly, said no.

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson described the conditions set by the committee’s chair as “unprecedented and unnecessary.”

“Congress and the executive branch are co-equal branches of government, and each have a constitutional obligation to respect and accommodate one another’s legitimate interests. Chair Nadler’s insistence on having staff question the attorney general, a Senate-confirmed cabinet member, is inappropriate.

Wall Street Journal reader Greg Woods put it this way in a letter to the editor:

“Imagine for a moment that the House invites the leadership of the Senate over to discuss pending legislation. When the senators arrive, they find only staff waiting for them. They would no doubt walk out the door in a huff. The way Congress acknowledges that the Executive Branch is a co-equal branch is by following this simple rule: Staff meets with staff, and principals meet with principals.

“Nadler’s violation of this rule isn’t just an insult to Barr, it is a constitutional insult to the Office of the Attorney General, implying that Congress has supremacy over the executive branch. If Barr does meet with the Judiciary Committee, and Nadler allows a staff member to ask questions, Barr should direct a member of his staff to replace him at the table and direct that staff member to answer each question with: ‘I am not authorized by the attorney general to answer that question.’”

This resonates with me as a former member of the state government Executive Branch in Oregon. I thought then and think now that the branches ought to be – and appear to be – co-equal. The Executive Branch runs government programs and relates to the Legislative Branch.

Mutual respect. Each deserves it from the other.

Many years ago, sitting at the witness table as the deputy director of the Oregon Economic Development Department before a legislative committee, I often had to endure hard questions from legislators. No problem, as long as the goal was policy, not personality.

For me, it never got as bad as it did for one agency head, a friend. He was at the witness table where he was subjected to over-the-top negative questions, including about his personality.

At one point, he had enough. He stood at the table and said, “I don’t have to take this s_____ from anyone,” and stalked out of the room.

I was one of the agency directors in the back of the hearing room and, with others, I nearly rose to give the one who walked a standing ovation. Plus, he was credible enough that he survived the episode.

The point: Developing sound policy on pressing problems requires mutual requires branch to branch. It also requires top leader-to-top-leader contact buttressed by staff-to-staff contact.

It would be good if all of us would remember this key approach to operating in an ever-changing political world that sometimes is not marked by mutual respect, but by the politics of personal destruction.

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.

This post will indicate one important fact: I am old, so remembering the past is part of what I do each day.

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing during the Vietnam War? I am old enough to remember, though, in the spirit of full disclosure, I never fought in that far-off country as many of my peers did with sacrifice and distinction.

I thought of Vietnam today when I read a story in the Wall Street Journal under this headline:

Climbing Hamburger Hill 50 years after the Vietnam War’s brutal, haunting battle

It was the story of a man, Paul Shemm, who went to Hamburger Hill in Vietnam to try to understand the battle which was fought essentially for nothing – just a hill – that claimed so many lives on both sides and, thereby, illustrated, for many, the futility of war.

Here are excerpts from the WSJ story:

+ “Hamburger Hill is one of the most famous battles of the long Vietnam War. It inspired a movie and congressional hearings, symbolizing, for some, the incredible bravery of the American infantry in Vietnam and, for others, the futility and waste of the war.

+ “Where exactly on this hill had the battle been fought all those years ago? On May 10, 1969, the U.S. Army’s most decorated unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 187th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, known as the Rakkasans, spent 10 days taking this hill against a deeply entrenched enemy. Every year the veterans mark the anniversary of the battle in Fort Campbell, Ky., and this year it’s the 50th.

+ “’Returning to the site of an incredible battle — is a rediscovery, it is a journey to remember our friends who did not come home,’ wrote Mike Smith, 70, who was a private first class with Delta Company’s 2nd Platoon.

+ “For most of your vets, they are really emotional when revisiting the sites where they were stationed and operated,” he said, adding that some were still bitter about the war after all these years.

+ “The U.S. troops didn’t stay long, and the hill was soon abandoned, an outcome that became the focus of congressional hearings featuring Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who called the battle ‘senseless and irresponsible.’

+ “Fifty years after the battle, Hamburger Hill, now at peace, belongs to those who fought and died there.”

This crunching story about Vietnam underlines two concepts for me:

• Take time to understand history, including wars, in the hope that doing so reinforces the futility of shooting at each other.

On this count, I wish I would have spent more time talking to my late father about his service in World War II, which could be justified on the basis of getting rid of a tyrannical dictator, Adolph Hitler, whose mission was to kill off the Jewish race. Failing to talk adequately to my father about this, though we had a great relationship, one I am thankful for every day, was missed opportunity for me.

• Make a concerted effort to honor and respect those who have served the country in wars – and that includes Vietnam, as well as the most recent conflicts in Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of my good friends in Salem these days is Ricky Love, a retired military veteran who left the service as a colonel after infantry service in Iraq and Afghanistan where he led battalions of servicemen. In war zones, he was a real leader who risked his life every day just as those who served under him did. Well done, Colonel!

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’d be much more apt to support tax increases if the Oregon Legislature would pay attention to getting the most bang for the buck out of current programs.

I could say the same about Congress, but, way out here in the West, it appears to be a useless errand.

So far, an emphasis on what I call “performance-based budgeting” is sadly lacking or perhaps even non-existent in Oregon. The best indication is that, since Senate Bill 964 passed in the 2011 legislative session (it was a bill proposed by my firm’s client, Youth Villages, that would install a performance-based system in foster care contracts), nothing – NOTHING – has happened. So, a law on the books is being ignored, with no penalty for the inaction.

In an earlier post, I argued against what I called “the three S’s” of current budget processes, which I described this way.

Supplanting: This is what occurs when new money comes into state government to fund a specific program or programs, then legislators take “general funds” out from behind the new money, thus neutering the purpose and effect of the new.

Sweeping: In some ways, this is more egregious than supplanting because, when it occurs, it violates the will of the taxpayers who provided the money in the first place.

Consider this example. What legislators have done in recent years is levy a tax on commercial health insurance premiums to create a repository of “state money” that can be used to garner federal matching funds under Medicaid. To support the premium tax, legislators said the money would go to help put kids on insurance if their families could not afford it on their own.

What happened?

Without much, if any, hesitancy, legislators said they intended to “sweep” the money to fund other programs, thus not keeping faith with assurances made to taxpayers.

Sojourning: I stretch to get to this “S” as a way to indicate that, in many cases, new money “sojourns” in its intended place for only two years, if that, then becomes just general money for use wherever legislators want to deploy it. Thus, the money sojourns in its location only temporarily.

Avoiding these traps would involve something which does not occur now – transparency in budgeting processes.

Taxpayers would know where state tax money goes and whether it stays there to keep faith with the purposes for which the money was raised in the first place.

On top of this, legislators should install “performance-based budgeting” in all programs, just as was enacted in SB 964. Require managers to announce the outcomes the programs will achieve with assigned dollars and, then, if the outcomes are achieved, allow the programs to remain in place or even grow.

But, if the programs fail to achieve outcomes, give them one warning, then, if outcomes still are not produced, terminate the programs.

If the “three S’s” went away and if performance-based budgeting existed, I would be far more willing, as one taxpayer, to give state government more money for important government programs.

Now, the risk is that tax payments become “just money” and it is business as usual for government, not business designed to produce results. So, for me, no new taxes until budget processes improve.

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 may be a surprise to learn I know anything about what often is a very complicated policy subject – the use of non-compete employment agreements to make it more difficult for high-level employees of one company to jump to another.

But, I learned a lot about the policy several years ago when I represented the Oregon Association of Broadcasters (OAB) as its lobbyist at the Capitol in Salem.

All of this came to mind this week as I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal that contained these paragraphs:

“Quitting a job for a better offer is a time-tested method of securing a pay raise, improved working conditions or both.

“Now a national backlash is building against employers that make such movement harder with non-compete agreements that bar departing employees from taking jobs with industry competitors for certain periods of time. That’s good news for workers, because eliminating barriers to job-hopping could help stir the kind of wage growth workers haven’t seen since before the last recession.

“Employers have long used non-competes to protect company secrets and intellectual property, applying them primarily to high-earning professionals such as business executives, scientists and lawyers.”

Well, I don’t know about the “phrase” good news. Perhaps for some workers, but not for executives of major companies trying to protect their organizations’ future.

For broadcasters in Oregon – and me as the organization’s lobbyist –the issue arose in 2009 because the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) – a union — came to the Capitol to oppose OAB non-compete agreements.

No one knew why AFTRA showed up because it was not usually involved in Salem, but the union got support from then-Oregon Senator Rick Metsger, a former TV broadcaster who almost was able to work his will on a bill to bar non-competes.

No one, including Metsger, seemed to care about the rationale for non-compete agreements as they had been negotiated by OAB member stations.

The OAB’s rationale was this: After television and radio stations had invested heavily in promoting top talent – including television anchors – they ought to be able to protect their investment by requiring the talent to stay around at the same station, at least for a period of five years.

This made eminent sense, given the investment.

But, to legislators, fueled by Metsger, it didn’t matter.

We almost lost the battle until we proposed the following language, which, in the 2009 legislative session, made into law in the form of an amendment to ORS 653.020. Sorry, this is pretty detailed language, but, then, so is the issue.

“(c) The employer has a protectable interest. As used in this paragraph, an employer has a protectable interest when the employee:

“(A) Has access to trade secrets, as that term is defined in ORS 646.461;

“(B) Has access to competitively sensitive confidential business or professional information that otherwise would not qualify as a trade secret, including product development plans, product launch plans, marketing strategy or sales plans; or

“(C) Is employed as an on-air talent by an employer in the business of broadcasting and the employer: (i) In the year preceding the termination of the employee′s employment, expended re-sources equal to or exceeding 10 percent of the employee′s annual salary to develop, improve, train or publicly promote the employee, provided that the resources expended by the employer were expended on media that the employer does not own or control; and

“(ii) Provides the employee, for the time the employee is restricted from working, the greater of compensation equal to at least 50 per cent of the employee′s annual gross base salary and commissions at the time of the employee′s termination or 50 per cent of the median family income for a four-person family, as determined by the United States Census Bureau for the most recent year available at the time of the employee′s termination.”

Fortunately, this language recognized the specific circumstances of broadcast executives who often made huge investments in on-air talent. Why lose the benefit of that investment?

Over Metsger’s opposition, the compromise passed, saving genuine non-compete agreements, though with several conditions as listed.

Given the Wall Street Journal coverage – and the passage of bills barring non-compete agreements around the country – watch for this issue to re-emerge in future legislative sessions here in Oregon.

Further, what this shows is that, even back in 2009, many Oregon legislators couldn’t care less about perspectives from business. Today, my sources at the Capitol, lobbyists with whom I worked before retirement, tell me things are still the same, if not worse.

Many legislators, not only won’t consider perspectives from business, they won’t even listen.

At some point, probably in the next recession, which is inevitable, those “don’t consider and don’t listen” perspectives will come back around to haunt Oregon, still a state that depends on personal and corporate tax revenue to survive.

So, legislators, I say listen and consider business perspectives.

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.

In this country, I would hope that Donald Trump’s outlandish conduct in office would earn him no support and he would not win, perish the thought, another four-year term in the Oval Office.

As I have posted [reviously, that may not occur unless Democrats are smart enough to nominate someone to run against Trump who can appeal to the vast middle in America. That means not heading to the far left as so many avowed D presidential candidates have done.

And it means that Democrats should not tear each other down, which, of course, is their current style. Polling says Joe Biden is up by a bunch, so the Ds go after him.

Winning also means finding a persuasive way to convince Americans that Trump does not get singular credit for economic gains. Surely, he will claim such credit.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how so many Americans – including a number of my friends – can tolerate Trump’s behavior.

• He ridicules migrants and poor people.
• He gropes women, then boasts about it.
• He lies at every turn as if he believes – which he may – that, if he says something, it must be true. [The Washington Post Fact Checker reports that Trump has passed the 10,000 mark in lies.]
• He has no respect for the norms and conventions of the Office of the President, which, for me, makes it hard to do what I have done in the past – respect the office even if I don’t respect the person who holds it. Trump has trampled on the office during his three years there.
• He ridicules anyone who has the guts to disagree with him because, of course, he is always the smartest person in any room.

Still, the “infomercial president” may find a way to come out on top unless Democrats behave more smartly than they often do.

To change the subject just a bit, but it is still on the general point, here is my definition of politics, which may indicate either or both of two things – I am of the old-school when political activity was a purposeful and substantive activity, and I have a lot of time on my hands in retirement:

• Politics should be about solving pressing public policy problems.
• Politics should be substantive…you have your ideas, an opponent his or her ideas, and you find a way to meet someplace in the middle.
• Politics should still be about the importance of a “good idea,” not just more talk.
• Politics should be respecting your opponent, even though you disagree with him or her.
• Politics should not be about calling the other side names and, figuratively, yelling on the street corner to indicate how smart and loud you are.
• Politics should be about finding the “public interest,” not just one or more special interests.

I thought of this list recently as I was under consideration for a temporary Executive Service position with the State of Oregon. I was honored to be considered, but I said no for at least one reason. Those involved in government, especially in Washington, D.C., but also in Oregon, practice the art of personal destruction.

I did not want to risk being subjected to this kind of diatribe, which, I know, in Oregon has disrupted the lives of appointed officials who were trying their besst to serve Oregonians.

Not for me.

But, if we could support a list such as the one above – or a better one if you have one — we’d have better elected officials on both sides of the political aisle, as well as better officials in appointed positions.

Too bad we cannot get back to this kind of real politics.