Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Voters slap down four school budgets that bust prop tax cap

Newcomb Central School District cafeteria (NCPR file photo)

Newcomb Central School District cafeteria (NCPR file photo)

Voters in the North Country sent a clear message to school districts that tried to exceed the state property tax cap.  The answer was a resounding No.

The vast majority of the region’s budgets came in under the cap and passed handily.

But four of the region’s school systems — in General Brown, Minerva, Newcomb and Tupper Lake — asked voters to go beyond the roughly 4-5% hike allowed by state rules.

In order to do so, those schools needed a 60% super-majority.

But in two out of the three districts, Minerva and Tupper Lake, a clear majority of voters rejected the idea, according to reports in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and the Glens Falls Post Star.

In Newcomb, meanwhile, a majority of voters approved the higher budget, but not by the margin required.

At General Brown Central, where the district sought a 9.9 percent tax levy increase, WWNY-TV reports that a majority voted for the budget, but it fell short of the 60-percent needed to exceed the state tax cap.

All four districts will now have to rework their budgets, cutting more dollars from programs, salaries and other costs.  They are expected to put their revamped spending plans to a vote next month.

Tuesday’s vote appeared to signal an unwillingness on the part of voters to accept substantial spending increases, even when district leaders made a strong argument that more dollars were desperately needed.

Tupper Lake school superintendent Seth McGowan argued earlier this spring that the district faced a risk of insolvency.  “We have plugged all the holes in the dam, battened down the hatches, and we have been under tremendous pressure. Now the levy just broke.”

That view was echoed by Tupper Lake district board chair Dan Mansfield.

“Now we’re at the point where we’re talking about surviving, actually surviving with a viable school that can graduate students and meets the minimum requirements by law,” Mansfield said in March.

But in Tuesday’s vote, according to the Enterprise, Mansfield was voted out of office.

Was NPR’s portrayal of NY Sen. Gillibrand sexist?

 

US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. File Photo: Mark Kurtz

US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. File Photo: Mark Kurtz

Ailsa Chang’s NPR profile of New York Senator — and former North Country congresswoman — Kirsten Gillibrand is getting panned on-line and apparently edited by NPR’s on-line crew.

Chang’s report cast Sen. Gillibrand as a soft-voiced woman, whose strength was demonstrated most poignantly by her courage during pregnancy.

Chang also notes that Gillibrand was once described as one of the “hottest” lawmakers in Washington.

All of this at a time when Sen. Gillibrand is taking the lead in opposing sexual assault and bias in the US military.

The coverage has drawn fierce criticism on-line.  Here’s a sample:

Wow, this story really takes me back to the 1970s … and not in a good way. I find the sexist language highly offensive: “girlie voice,” “petite, blond and perky,” “hottest member of the Senate,” indeed!

And another jab:

I am extremely shocked that this article even made it to this section of the website. This article is full of sexist garbage that really just minimizes Senator Gillibrand’s work. You would never hear about a male senator being described this way.

According to Jezebel.com, NPR significantly edited the piece after it was placed on-line, pointing out that “in the edited version of the piece, those descriptors [of Gillibrand] have been tapered down.”

The story still includes questions like this one, taken from Chang’s script:

Gillibrand essentially operates as a single mom during the work week because her husband’s job keeps him in New York City during the weekdays. Friends marvel at her multitasking skills — she manages to get home early nearly every night to cook her two sons dinner, get them bathed, read them books and put them to bed.  But is this woman the stuff presidential candidates are made of?

So what do you think?  Reasonable questions about a rising politician who happens to be a woman?  Or questions asked of a woman — and adjectives applied to a woman — that would never be applied to a male politician?

What are the Great American Scandals we ignore?

President Barack Obama speaks on April 10, 2013 about the FY 2014 proposed budget. Image: Video still from whitehouse.gov

President Barack Obama faces the first serious scandals of his presidency.  Are they the right scandals? Image: Video still from whitehouse.gov

I’ve been as captivated as anyone by the sudden burgeoning of scandal in Washington.

Until this month, the Obama administration seemed to skate almost effortlessly above the morass that eventually sucks up most White Houses, from Richard Nixon’s Watergate to Ronald Reagan’s Iran Contra to Bill Clinton’s Whitewater-Lewinski mess.

Those accusations that did get lobbed at Mr. Obama — from Solyndra to death panels to the Fast and Furious probe — were often more politics than substance.  They just didn’t seem to resonate outside the AM talk radio culture on the right.

But now we have a little bit of blood in the water for everyone to target.

Liberals are furious about the Justice Department’s probe of Associated Press reporters — a probe that included tapping phone records and monitoring contacts with sources.

Conservatives are furious about Benghazi, which involved a deadly security lapse in Libya that left four US officials dead.  The White House’s handling of the attack was, at the very least, muddled and unfocused.

When a fuming Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is demanding answers from a Democratic president, you know it’s not pretty.

Finally, there’s the scandal that everybody wants a piece of — the IRS’s probe of conservative (and apparently, also, liberal) groups to determine whether their political activity violated their tax status.

Mr. Obama has acknowledged that the behavior was outrageous and has forced out a top official, but this one is likely to percolate through the summer.

So as we wade into the pool of muck that Washington DC loves to create for itself, I thought it would be good to highlight five other scandals that probably should be getting talked about — around the watercooler, if not in congressional hearings.

1.  The epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in the US armed forces.  This is making headlines and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is making noises about re-educating service members.  But some lawmakers, including New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, think we need a more major overhaul of the military’s justice system.  In the House, the response has been more ho-hum.  “The House Armed Services Committee hearing into the scandal was sparsely attended and top military officials left before victims’ testimony,” reported NPR’s Here & Now.

2.  US drone attacks on civilians around the world.  Yes, unmanned drones have killed top Al Quaeda leaders and are a potent weapon.  But they’re also killing a lot of civilians (roughly a thousand by conservative estimates, including as many as 200 children) and four US citizens have been killed by drone strike without a trial or any kind of legal process.  “Farmers are on their way to tend their crops when a missile slams into their midst, thrusting shrapnel in all directions,” reported CNN.  “A CIA drone, flying so high that the farmers can’t see it, has killed most of them.”  If a foreign military or spy plane were operating over our air space, blowing up our farmers, I think we would at the very least want a big public discussion about it.

3.  The Great African American Depression.   The overall unemployment rate in the US is on the mend, dropping to 7.5%.  But the truth is that for whites joblessness is a comfortable 6.1%, while for blacks it’s a community-ravaging 13.2%.  That’s just about exactly the same unemployment rate as in 1937, during the Great Depression.  Blacks are most likely to be stuck in long-term unemployment.  One liberal group found that the unemployment rate for young black men who don’t finish high school tops 50%.  “This is an emergency, this is a catastrophe [but Washington is] not rating it as a catastrophe,” said the report’s editor, Craig Gurian, in an interview with conservative news site The Daily Caller.  Seems like someone should be grilling the White House about this.

4.  Guantanamo Bay.  The US is holding roughly 166 people in our detention center in Cuba.  No one is suggesting that high profile terror suspects be released.  But by some estimates as many as half of the detainees have been cleared for release by US intelligence and military agencies.  To be clear, none of these inmates have received any kind of independent judicial process.  Yet even the national security personnel in charge of their fates have determined that they should be let go.  Yet the Obama administration, which promised to fix this mess, continues to hold them, without trial or due process or much explanation.  Imagine how we would feel if a foreign country decided to hold more than a hundred of our citizens indefinitely, even after their own officials had determined that there was no valid reason to do so?

So there’s my back-of-the-napkin list of other things I’d like to see the White House press corps shouting about next time they gather with administration spokesman Jay Carney.

Yes, let’s get some answers on Benghazi, the IRS and the AP phone taps.

But let’s also talk about some of these other issues that raise equally troubling questions about foreign policy judgment, civil liberties and economic fairness.

How about you?  When you think “scandal in Washington” what are the issues that you think should be at the top of the list?  Climate change?  Gun control?  Abortion?  Chime in below.

How Benghazi will test Republicans

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify at at a Senate hearing on Benghazi in February 2013. Photo: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify at at a Senate hearing on Benghazi in February 2013. Photo: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Creative Commons, some rights reserved

Let me outline what we know so far about the attacks on US embassy staff last September that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

First, it’s a big deal. There are strong indications — and the US State Department’s own internal review concludes as much — that security for US personnel in Libya was lax and requests for additional protection were bungled.

“Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department (the “Department”)resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” that report concluded.

We also know conclusively that in the hours and days after the attack, the Obama administration worked aggressively to contain political fall-out from the attack, which occurred in the final months of the 2012 presidential campaign.

A former State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, sent an email arguing for changes to official talking points, arguing that the original language would “be abused by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not paying attention to agency warnings so why would we want to seed the Hill.”

It also appears that probes of the Benghazi attacks carried out so far left some significant questions unanswered. There is a strong and reasonable argument to be made for further investigation, despite protestations from some on the left.

We absolutely need to know who was responsible for that lax security and, if the military response following the attacks was less robust and aggressive than it might have been, why that happened.

At the same time, we very much need congressional leaders — who are serving a vital oversight role — to place enormous daylight between themselves and the crazy anti-Obama fringe that exists on the right. So far that hasn’t occurred.

Senior Republican officials and lawmakers have compared what happened in the days following Benghazi to Watergate and to the Iran-Contra Scandal, and suggested that it might be grounds for impeachment of Barack Obama.

They’ve begun fundraising on the issue, launched political advertisements and dialed Fox News’ 24/7 agitprop machine up to 11.

This isn’t just AM talk radio nonsense.

It’s a dangerous distraction from Congress’s constitutional duty to provide a check on and a degree of transparency into the workings of the executive branch.

It may well be that the Obama administration deserves some significant level of condemnation for what happened in Libya. But if this devolves into another Whitewater-style-stained-blue-dress political witch hunt, it will be disastrous.

Fortunately, there are indications that House Speaker John Boehner is taking a personal leadership role in this matter. That’s a good thing.

He should make it clear that this isn’t a fundraising opportunity, or a chance to give Mr. Obama a black eye. It’s not an opening to establish solidarity with far-right tea-partiers, as Politico suggested.

It’s certainly not a way to distract the public’s attention from the GOP’s own struggles and shortcomings.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party entered this moment in history with a major credibility problem. There have been too many crazy conspiracy theories and end-times exaggerations.

Conservatives have shouted fire in our national movie theater so many times since Mr. Obama came to office — and been factually wrong so many times — that they have a serious task ahead establishing their own gravitas.

If the nation hopes to reach any kind of meaningful outcome, the rhetoric needs to be dialed down and a great deal more objective, factual evidence is needed.

Republicans like to claim that where foreign policy is concerned, they’re the grownups in the room. This is an opportunity for them to prove it by providing a clear-eyed, sober assessment of what happened and why.

Is rampant Democratic corruption Andrew Cuomo’s problem?

With word of Senator John Sampson’s arrest on corruption and embezzlement charges, it’s impossible to ignore the sense that New York’s Democratic Party is in need of a serious intervention.

Yes, Republicans have been vulnerable to the temptations of sleaze, but consider the Democratic perp-walk list over just the last five years:

Senator John Sampson, Senator Malcolm Smith, Senator Pedro Espada, Senator Efrain Gonzalez ,Senator Shirley Huntley, Senator Carl Kruger, Senator Hiram Monserrate, Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, Assemblyman Nelson Castro, Assemblyman William Boyland, Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio, Assemblywoman Diane Gordon, New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook, Comptroller Alan Hevesi, and Governor Eliot Spitzer.

That’s a long list of men and women, many in positions of highest leadership and authority within the state’s Democratic Party, indicted or convicted or resigned because of illegal behavior — and again, this is in the last half-decade alone.

Our Albany correspondent, Karen DeWitt, is reporting that there is new information about other Democratic lawmakers who may be in the cross-hairs for Federal investigators, because they were secretly recorded by Sen. Huntley, who wore a wire.

Those recorded by Huntley include “Senate Democratic colleagues Eric Adams, Jose Peralta, Ruth Hassel Thompson and Velmanette Montgomery, along with a City Councilman Ruben Wills,   the former spokesman for the Senate Democrats, Curtis Taylor, and Melvin Lowe, identified in the court papers as a former political consultant and associate of State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.”

All of these people are innocent until proven guilty, but there’s a lot of blood (and a lot of sharks) in those waters.

Which shouldn’t come as any surprise.  There have been signs of trouble percolating out of Albany for years.  This from the New York Daily News:

[John] Sampson’s tenure as leader was characterized by chaotic sessions, bloated payrolls and an almost never-ending stream of controversies. It was eventually revealed that under Sampson’s command, the Senate overspent its budget by at least $7 million.

A state Inspector General’s report in late 2010 blasted Sampson and other Senate Democrats for steering the multi-billion-dollar contract to operate a racino at Aqueduct to the politically connected Aqueduct Entertainment Group.

Some Democrats will argue that this is a bipartisan issue, that systemic reforms are needed that will keep all of Albany’s politicos from burying their snouts in the corruption trough.  Fair enough.

But it is increasingly difficult to ignore the sense that a Tammany Hall style culture now pervades the state’s Democratic Party, and it is even more difficult to ignore the fact that Andrew Cuomo has done nothing to restore order to the party that he leads.

Granted, from 2006 until 2010, Cuomo was obligated to follow a largely non-partisan track as state Attorney General.

But even in that role, it’s hard to imagine that calls for tough anti-corruption reforms within the Democratic movement would have been considered out of bounds.

As governor, meanwhile, there is little evidence that Cuomo has taken the steps necessary to purge the Democratic machine of those who would dip their hands in the till.

He has also failed to implement the kinds of internal checks and balances that might have identified and eliminated problem candidates, or create competitive primaries to challenge entrenched politicos.

Instead, he has distanced himself from the Democratic Party, attempting to portray himself as a kind of post-partisan governor, floating above the grime of Albany.

I’m not sure that works anymore.  Strong leadership starts at home and within your own movement. The Cuomo family is deeply identified with New York’s Democratic culture and right now that culture appears increasingly toxic.

It’s also worth pointing out that Democratic corruption appears to be thwarting the will of average voters in the state.

Over the last five years, New Yorkers have cast their ballots in such a way as to create a Democratic majority in both chambers of the legislature — only to have their desires thwarted by Democratic bungling and malfeasance.

This means that laws, policies and programs that a majority of New Yorkers support are being derailed, not by sincere and ethical Republican opposition, but by crooks within the governor’s party.

If Cuomo steps up to the next political level, his record in New York state will almost certainly include this spreading of stain of indictments, wire-taps, and money changing hands in alleyways.

He’ll either be seen as a guy who ignored the swamp in his own backyard, or the guy who moved decisively to help clean it up.

NY’s biggest teachers union throws in against testing

Saranac Lake Middle School students take the state standardized English language arts test in April 2012 in the school’s gymnasium. Photo: Chris Knight via Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Last week we reported that parents in some of the North Country’s local schools are pushing back against the increasing reliance on standardized testing in New York State. In fact, they’re boycotting the third and eighth grade testing still underway this week. Last week, the kids took the English portion of the tests; this week it’s math.

Chris Knight followed up that story in The Adirondack Daily Enterprise with the news that the Saranac Lake boycott of the English test drew 54 students – double what organizers had expected.

Reportedly, thousands joined the boycott statewide. Now it seems the state’s largest teachers union is piggy-backing on the parent concerns, and throwing its weight in with an ad campaign and a petition. New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) has its own oar in the water on this,  as test scores are now to be used in teacher evaluations. (Here’s a press release from NYSUT stating the organization’s position on state testing.)

The Albany Times Union reports this sympathy with the parent boycott comes despite the union’s public agreement on using the test scores in teacher evaluations, which dates back to Feb., 2012, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo brokered agreement between teachers unions and the state Education Department:

New York State United Teachers President Richard Iannuzzi stood on stage with state Education Commissioner John King to announce the hard-won plan. Leaders of the state’s two powerful unions had finally agreed that the tests were a valid method of assessing teacher success when paired with other measures…

Iannuzzi hasn’t recanted, the TU reports, and NYSUT has a lot of issues on its to-do list besides testing. But at the same time, the union’s website includes an account of its president’s visit to Rome, in Oneida County, under the headline: Iannuzzi: Over-testing a communitywide concern:

Iannuzzi said that the state’s obsession with standardized testing  — which Rome Teachers Association President Rob Wood called “a set-up for failure — has brought together teachers and parents like never before. NYSUT has led a very public campaign against the over-emphasis on tests, even though the new curriculum has not yet been taught in many cases.

There’s a handy “Too Much Testing?” petition for parents and educators to sign at the union website. And an account of a meeting of union members in a six-county area in Central new York focuses on the impact on students:

The auditorium was silent listening to the account of a gifted student – an incredible thinker – who burst into tears at the words, “Pencils down,” because she hadn’t had time to finish the last essay. Minutes later, she was still “walking down the hallway with tears streaming down her face. And she’s 8.

The Central New York meeting comes during the run-up to a major NYSUT “rally for education”, on June 8, in Albany.

How the mighty (corrupt) have fallen

Is this the best you got? Malcolm Smith is allegedly at the center of a New York corruption scandal. Photo: NYS Senate

While traveling this week in Costa Rica, I’ve been following the unfolding narrative of New York’s own banana republic-style politics.

The allegations are sweeping and, let’s be frank, juicy.

Former senate majority leader Malcolm Smith, a Democrat from Queens is said to have helped funnel roughly $100,000 to various Republicans in an effort to buy the GOP line on the New York City mayoral ballot.

Real estate developers are involved.  The FBI had an undercover agent and an informant working the beat.

The FBI even went for the pop-culture reference in describing the affair, calling it “Malcolm in the middle.”

Now before I get to the nut of my reaction to all this, some boilerplate stuff.

First, Smith and his fellow travelers are innocent until proven guilty.  Second, public corruption is serious in New York.

That said, it’s impossible to avoid the sense that Albany and New York City wheel-greasers have lost a lot of their storied mojo.  I mean, New York is a state that helped invent corruption.

Democrat Boss Tweed ran Tammany Hall for decades in the 1800s and some estimates of his total take run as high as $200 million.

“It’s hard not to admire the skill behind Tweed’s system,” wrote William Tweed biographer Ken Ackerman.

“The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box. Its frauds had a grandeur of scale and an elegance of structure: money-laundering, profit sharing and organization.”

As recently as half a decade ago, Republican deal-maker Joe Bruno was accused of using his majority leader post to funnel more than $3 million to his private enterprises — a Federal rap he managed to beat.

Which brings us back to Malcolm Smith, a guy whose tenure as head of the state Senate will be remembered not for corruption but for sheer, muddled incompetence.

This is a guy who parlayed electoral victories statewide — not to mention a chance to gerrymander the state Senate into Democratic hands for a generation — into chaos and humiliation.

This is the guy Republican operatives and real estate wheeler-dealers (allegedly) chose to get into bed with?  A guy whose scheme was to buy himself the mayor’s office — as a Republican?

Sad.

It’s also kind of pathetic the scale of corruption at play here.  If the Federal charges turn out to be true, these guys and gals sold their reputations, their livelihoods and perhaps their freedom for paltry wads of cash.

Boss Tweed would be embarrassed.

But in all seriousness, there are some silver linings here.  These indictments suggest that anti-corruption efforts are working, derailing alleged conspiracies before they metastasize.

They also suggest that the smart money is staying away from these schemes — especially when a guy like Malcolm Smith is purportedly in the middle.

Arrests and allegations in NY corruption sweep

Former state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith is at the top of a list of politicians arrested today in a federal probe of corruption in New York politics. The AP reported Smith’s 6:30 came at  this morning.

Our Albany correspondent, Karen DeWitt is chasing the story as it develops, and we’ll have her report in the morning.

This afternoon, The Albany Times Union reported US Attorney Preet Bharara detailed…

an elaborate chart detailing the alleged vectors of money and favors — with, he noted, “Malcolm in the middle” — quoted from many of these statements before calling the case yet another sign of “the public corruption crisis in New York.”

The TU’s Capitol Confidential bloggers have much more, including excerpts from the long complaint filed by Bharara. Here’s one,  Queens City Councilman Dan Halloran, speaking with an  FBI agent:

“That’s politics, that’s politics, it’s all about how much. Not about whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can’t do anything without the f—ing money.”

And here’s the New York Times story: Lawmakers Charged in Plot to Buy Spot on Mayoral Ballot

The War of 1812: a monumental scuffle

As a rule, conservative governments seem less inclined to spend tax dollars on art. Their feeling seems to be: let the private sector make art happen, if art needs to happen at all.

So, curious eyes are affixed to the Harper Government’s push for a new War of 1812 monument. It is set to be unveiled on Parliament Hill, sometime in 2014, marking the end of that war, 200 years ago. (That’s soon, folks.)

The National Capital Commission announced a design competition. Applicants artists had to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The amount awarded would be $787,000.

Initially, there was to be a two-part juried selection process. Acording to this report from the Globe and Mail, a jury of experts did narrow a field of 34 submissions down to 6. The 6 “finalists” were expecting to have their designed displayed to the public before further jury selection to pick a winner.

But suddenly, that was all cancelled, with scant explanation. There are now just two designs in the running, and the final selection will be made by “the government” (undefined in terms of persons involved).

This has ruffled some feathers, not to mention crushed the hopes of artists suddenly tossed out of the competition. (Some of whom say they have heard no defensible reason for getting the boot.)

As for the two designs left standing, they were unveiled Wed. 3/20, as detailed by the Ottawa Citizen:

Brian Cooley’s maquette includes 20 figurines spread out on a long rectangular block; Adrienne Alison opted for a tightly knit group of seven facing outward on a rough circular mound.

Cooley explained that the more complex display also comes with higher costs and that he plans to cast the bronze statues in China should he be selected to complete the pre-Confederation war statue.

As you can imagine, saying a Canadian monument would have to be cast in China to make the budget is generating some criticism.

Personally, I was most amused by the design instructions, as recounted by the Citizen. Talk about limiting artistic expression:

Each proposal was required to represent seven groups: the British Army, the British Navy, the Provincial Marine, the English-speaking militia, the French-speaking militia, First Nations and Métis.

An easy, natural grouping able to satisfy each constituency, right? (Well, no. Already some are complaining this leaves women out. As usual.)

Meanwhile, writing in Maclean’s John Geddes says have a War of 1812 monument, if one must. But for pity’s sake, don’t cram it into the statues already on Parliament Hill as if this belongs there too. As Geddes says:

What you will not find on the Hill is any monument (apart from a rather discreet row of plaques to fallen police offers) that fails to fit with the theme of Canada’s political history. These are central figures of our democratic saga. Other aspects of Canadian history are rightly memorialized elsewhere.

Note: the War of 1812 fails the “Canadian political history” standard by way of happening before Canada was a nation and as a large, group event, not a single historic/political figure.

Meanwhile, the War of 1812 happened in the U.S. too, though that might be missed by the less-robust level of commemoration.

No worries, though. If War of 1812 monuments are needed, many already exist.

Take a visual stroll through some, courtesy of a U.S. site “Our flag was still there“, where the U.S. Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard mark the bicentennial of the war that gave the young nation its future anthem. Existing monuments connected to the War of 1812 range from Ireland to British Columbia, with one in Little Rock, Arkansas (find out ‘why Arkansas?’ by clicking on that site).

I like this description, from Surrey, B.C.

A monument commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, the Peace Arch straddles the U.S.-Canadian border in Peace Arch Park. The arch, built by Sam Hill, is 67 feet tall and flies the colors of both countries from its crown. On the Canadian side the arch is inscribed ‘Brethren Dwelling Together In Unity’ and on the U.S. side it reads ‘Children of a Common Mother’. The inscriptions stand to indicate the long-lasting peace experienced by the two nations after the Treaty of Ghent was signed.

Lasting peace. Now that’s worth commemoration.

I’ll leave you with yet another of the quiet monuments that can be found here and there.

This one dates from 1963. It’s just a simple boulder, near Upper Canada Village and the Battle of Crysler’s Farm National Historic Site in Morrisburg, Ontario.

 

 

Can Americans handle conservative (and even ultra conservative) art?

The History Channel says there was no intention of connecting “Satan” to President Barack Obama, calling the idea “utterly ridiculous.” (Photo: History Channel)

So let me say right at the start that this isn’t a “trend” story.  There is no evidence  that “the arts” are producing more conservatives, or more ultra-conservatives.

But with the proliferation of right-of-center media outlets and the viral nature of the internet, we have interesting new windows into the world of ring-wing art and artists that might have flown under the radar in earlier generations.

Right now “The Bible” on the History Channel is drawing attention for its glowing and sometimes racy re-interpretation of, well, the Holy Book.

It’s a spin on Scripture that includes a Barack Obama look-alike in the role of — wait for it — Satan.  The series has been a hit.

Meanwhile, there’s a fascinating dust-up in the Pacific Northwest, where sculptor Charles Krafft was “outed” recently by a local weekly newspaper for embracing white nationalism and Holocaust deniers.

“I think he’s been demonized excessively,” Krafft said, referring to Adolph Hitler in an interview with public radio’s Studio 360.

“I’m not trying to resurrect National Socialism or Hitlerism, but my opinion of the man has changed considerably since I began my revisionist investigations.”

Krafft is a hugely respected artist, clearly a bright, thoughtful guy and a mainstay of the arts community in his region, whose work — including a Hitler-themed tea pot — has been collected by museums nationwide.

In the past, his fascinating explorations of Swastikas and other National Socialist symbolswere viewed as irony or transgression.

A work by Charles Krafft. Irony? Or some other form of political expression. (Photo: CharlesKrafft.com)

Now?  Not so much.

But his fringe-conservative views have sparked consternation and hand-wringing and Krafft’s entanglement isn’t unique.

Long-time “alt-folk” musician Michelle Shocked has drawn heavy fire recently after emerging as a vocal born again Christian and reportedly telling her audience that God “hates fags.”

“I live in fear,” Shocked said, “that the world will be destroyed if gays are allowed to marry.”

A similar controversy has long embroiled one of the country’s most respected and beloved writers.

Orson Scott Card, whose “Ender” series is a mainstay for young readers and sci-fi fans, has been vocal for years with his aggressively anti-homosexual views.

Card has written at length about the idea of an actual war embroiling the United States, pitting conservatives against liberals.

 

Orson Scott Card’s novel about an armed war between liberals and conservatives is described as a “disturbing look at a possible future” for America.

In a commentary written for the Mormon Times, Card seemed to embrace the idea of armed resistance if same-sex marriage is legalized.

“Marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy,” Card wrote. “I will act to destroy that government and bring it down.”

Those views forced DC comics to shelve plans to have Card pen a story for their Superman line of comics, and have also complicated plans for a Hollywood movie based on “Ender’s Game.”

As a side wrinkle, there is also a fascinating urban myth-style screed circulating that purports to share the anti-big-government views of Bill Cosby.

“I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.”

Turns out the conservative tirade — which also targets Muslims and climate change activists — is a hoax, that lives virally via email and Facebook.

I think it’s fair to say that these kind of right-wing views are more shocking in the art and media world than comparable views on the left.

HBO acknowledged that the head on a pike in “Game of Thrones” looked uncomfortably like former President George W. Bush (Image: HBO)

(HBO did get in a spot of trouble when their “Game of Thrones” series included an image of George W. Bush’s severed head.)

But artists across the political spectrum have long been eccentric contrarians, embracing behavior and lifestyles that jar convention.

And I think it’s also probable that a lot of artists with right-leaning views keep them under tight wraps, for fear of facing the kind of backlash that has embroiled Krafft, Card and Shocked.

So what do you think?  When an artist you like stakes out a political position you disagree with — perhaps even a political position you find morally indefensible — do you stop reading his books or seeing her movies or buying his sculpture?