HenryBriggsColumn

I’m “old school,” meaning I’m old and so is the schooling I had. I get bemused smiles and disbelieving eyebrows when I talk about the rarity of cheating or lying during those days. 

“Oh sure,” people seem to say, “and everyone did their homework.” 

One day when I was in high school and well before computers, Bombo an old guy (at least in his 50’s) and favorite uncle, father, and friend, took me to his work on the Trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It was a cavernous area, with a ceiling several stories high overlooking a floor crowded with people and kiosks featuring specific groups of stocks. Traders would walk up a specialist and call out a price and share amount to buy or sell, sometimes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The two might bicker until they agreed on a price. Then the specialist would yell “Sold!”, jot down the details on a palm-sized note, and pass it to someone inside the kiosk. That was it. No signed contract, not even a handshake. Bombo told me these verbal agreements were sacrosanct. If either party broke the agreement, he was not allowed on the floor – ever again. Their word was their bond (and stock in trade). It was the glue that connected thousands of investors to sellers and had been that way since the founding of the Stock Exchange.

Bombo had a long and successful career, fueled by these verbal agreements.

Seems quaint, doesn’t it.

Then, over the next few decades, Bombo’s generation’s way seemed to fade. Lying in business became accepted as  “just business.” Legal lying – by omission or parsing of words – became rampant. Over twenty years after President Nixon’s exit for lying about Watergate, President Bill Clinton, when grilled in front of a grand jury about sex with Monica Lewinsky (which the whole world already knew about), famously countered with: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

Raising kids in those years, I started to wonder if the idea of integrity had become old school.

I decided to tell them why integrity works better than the alternative. I pointed out that, if they cheated on an exam instead of learning the course material, they’d be in trouble the next year when they needed to know that material for follow-on courses. I noted that, if they lied to a friend, what was to stop the friend from lying to them? And if they did that to everyone, why wouldn’t everyone do it to them? In which case, how could they – or anyone – count on anyone? 

Today, as the media replaces the word “lie” with more politically correct euphemisms (“misinformation”, “disinformation”, “false”, and “untruth”), and as I compare Hitler’s Big Lie about Jews to a presidential candidate’s Big Lie about immigrants (Haitian immigrants eating pets, FEMA paying for illegal immigrants instead of disasters, foreign countries emptying prisons and pouring illegal immigrants into the US and the like), I think about my day with Bombo and an incredibly successful trading system functioning solely on personal integrity.

Seems quaint, doesn’t it.

 When I was raising kids I was the Fact Checker and would frequently be brought into an argument to decide who was right. Usually it involved one of the kids being ill-informed about something like, say, Santa Clause.

“He comes down the chimney with presents!”

“No, he doesn’t! He’s too fat! And the presents are too big!

“You’re so stupid! He can shrink! ”

“Yeah?! He can’t shrink the presents! And you’re stupider!

“Yes he can! He can do any thing he wants! Stupider-Oopider!”

Or something like that.

Then I would calm them down with: “You’re both wrong. And if you keep it up, Santa will just skip our home. I know Santa. He doesn’t even need chimneys. Because he’s Santa!… And he doesn’t like fighting, especially at Christmas.”

See, that was my Fact Check.

As they grew older, I taught them to fact check on their own. All they had to do was learn facts from books or school or myriad other sources. 

And then the inevitable happened.

Me: “Eat your egg.”

Kid: “I don’t like the yellow part”

Me: “That’s where the protein is. You need to eat it.”

Kid: “Can I give the yellow part to the dog and just eat the white part?”-

Older kid: “- No, Dad. Most of the protein is in the white part.”

Me: “Wha-a? 

Older kid: “I asked my teacher after you told me that last year. She said 60 percent of the protein is in the white part. and only 40 per cent is in the yolk…Dummy Dad!” 

I got Fact Checked by my own kid!

As kids grow up, their teachers become fact checkers, along with their parents. When they leave school for the great land of adulthood and need help in separating grown-up fact from fiction, you know who become their Fact Checkers? Journalists.

Finding the facts and reporting them is THE job of journalists. One of the earliest examples in this country was Paul Revere who, on a midnight ride along with John Hancock, Samuel Adams and 38 others, reported loudly from Boston to Lexington: “The Regulars (British) are coming!”  

With few exceptions fact checking has motivated journalists ever since. Think of Walter Cronkite’s Viet Nam story, Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate story, and Woodward’s new book, WAR, which reports that Trump secretly sent Covid test machines to Putin during the pandemic (when American hospitals couldn’t get them) and has stayed in touch with him since the 2020 election.

Journalists find and check facts, then report them to us. They’re critical to democracy because voters need true facts to make good choices.

Without a free and unfettered press there is little to spotlight lies. Italy learned that from Mussolini. Germany learned that from Hitler. Russia learned it from Stalin and is relearning it – again and again – from Putin. Lies destroy democracies as surely as diseases destroy lives.

For decades CBS News was called the Tiffany Network because of its sterling reputation for truth, earned by Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt, Eric Sevareid, Roger Mudd, and others.

Then they nearly threw it all away when they promised not to fact check their broadcast of the Vance-Walz VP debate. Luckily the two journalists who anchored the broadcast defied their bosses. Nora O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan calmly and firmly fact-checked Vance’s lies, twice. And when he started to whine like a school boy caught cheating on an exam, they temporarily cut his mic.

A few days later CBS News’ 60 Minutes, the most watched news show in the country, also stepped up. In introducing this week’s show, which was to consist of two interviews, one with Trump, one with Harris, Scott Pelley announced that Trump had backed out, refusing to be fact checked. Pelley firmly stated that fact checking is what journalists do and 60 Minutes wasn’t going to stop just because Donald Trump – or anyone else – demanded it. 

As a result, for the first time since 1968, 60 Minutes interviewed just one of the final two Presidential candidates. Bill Whitaker  asked tough but fair questions of Kamala Harris. And he fact-checked her, LIVE, while Trump retreated into his cocoon of truth-deprived fans.

It’s what journalists do.

There has been a lot said about Project 2025, a 920 page handbook from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

In 2022, Trump said: “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

Two years later, in the debate with Harris, he said “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. I have not read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.” 

140 of the experts who worked on Project 2025 came from the Trump Administration, some very high up.  

Project 2025 has four stated goals:

1) dismantle the administrative state 

2) restore the family as the center piece of American life

3) defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders 

4) secure God-given individual rights to live freely

I’ll write about the other three in upcoming columns, but the first one, “Dismantle the administrative state” piqued my curiosity. I didn’t even know what an “administrative state” was. 

A little research showed that the administrative state is all those government departments whose names are familiar, but whose work is too dense for most of us to understand: The Department of Defense, The Justice Department, the Department of Interior, The Department of Education, and so on. There are 15 in all. The Administrative State is, it turns out, most of the government.

Back when the country started there were around 3.9 million people and no departments.  Apparently Washington, Jefferson, and the others didn’t feel they needed them. 

Then, in 1887, with the US population nearing 63 million, President Grover Cleveland decided the country was getting too big to handle alone. So, his administration created the first department, The Interstate Commerce Commission.

The Administrative State is not new.

In 1946, population now 141.4 million, President Harry Truman formalized and expanded the administrative state with the Administrative Procedure Act, which set procedures for Executive Branch Agencies to follow when making rules. 

As with any big, politically run democratic organization, the administrative state is not very efficient.  Think what happens when you try to argue with the IRS, get anything through Congress, or just change your voting district.

In fact, democracy has never been efficient.  Books and movies have been written about just that, especially comedies (Wag the Dog, The Candidate, Dave).

Winston Churchill, who led England through the terrifying days of WWII, famously said, “…democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

The most efficient form of government is a dictatorship. No waste there, at least in the opinion of the dictator. Of course, no form of  government is scarier or more brutal. We all know that Hitler killed 6 million Jews, but few know he killed 7 million others, too. Over 20 million Russians are estimated to have died under Stalin, and over 45 million under Mao Zedong.

Which brings us back to Project 2025 and the Administrative State.

Project 2025 proposes making the government more efficient by shrinking it. They want to eliminate the Department of Education, privatize the National Weather Service, the Transportation Security Administration, the National Flood Insurance Program and others, overhaul The Department of Justice, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Affairs, and dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Maybe the biggest change to the Administrative State is the “Unitary Executive Theory” which proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy (aministrative state) be controlled by the Executive Branch, in other words, the President. 

Today, government employees can’t get fired except for cause. So employees have worked during and through assorted administrations. That’s kept a rudder under the boat no matter which party was at the helm. 

Consider, instead, huge groups of government employees fired because of their political affiliation and replaced by workers loyal to the President. Experience, gone. Acquired knowledge and skills, gone. Institutional history, gone.

For the next four years, consider something scarier: these loyalists making rules that allow the President to radically change the government… including rules for electing a President.

Which may be what Trump considered when Sean Hannity of Fox News asked him about becoming a dictator,  “No, no, no … other than Day 1.” 

Which may be why, when Trump recently implored Evangelicals to vote, he said, “And again, Christians, get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore…”

Before you really get scared, remember Trump denied any involvement with Project 2025. Personally, I believe him.

OK, kidding…

Did I mention that the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship?

(Remember: you vote alone, your vote is private, no one has to know who you voted for.)

Pundits across the spectrum have been complementing Harris for baiting Trump in last Tuesday’s debate. 

Fair enough; she did bait him. Yes, that got him angry.  And, yes, his anger pushed him into inane and ludicrous responses.

But it was her responses to Trump’s bullying and bloviating that defined the night. She gave him bemused smiles, the kind a parent gives a six year old who wants to drive the car. She raised her eyebrows and chuckled at his “Haitians eat dogs and cats” line. She rolled her eyes at his claim of winning the 2020 election.  

By 20 minutes into the debate, Trump was full bore into his macho mode: piling lie onto lie, ignoring the moderators fact checks, and blowing past his time limits. 

Through it all, Harris stayed calm. After each of his outburst, she efficiently skewered his arguments and then poked his macho, the most memorable poke inviting people to a Trump rally so they can see the crowd leave early out of boredom.

Where Hillary Clinton reacted to Trump’s bullying with nervousness, Harris reacted with patient amusement. Where Biden reacted with “C’mon Man!”, Harris just laughed. 

Then, in the time honored way of dealing with bullies,  she punched him in the nose. She told him world leaders were laughing at him. She told him military leaders called him a “disgrace”. She called him “weak”. She noted he inherited a fortune, then declared bankruptcy 6 times. And then she  reminded everyone that he was fired by 81 million voters. 

In response, Trump insisted his rallies had more people than Harris’, immigrants have destroyed the fabric of the country, inflation is the worst we’ve ever had, and bragged about overturning Roe v Wade and winning the 2020 election…same old, same old. He was irritated, red in the face, clearly flummoxed.

Trump left the stage immediately after the debate without so much as a glance at Harris or the moderators. Where did he go? To the cuddling arms of his Fox family:  Bret Baier, Jesse Watters, and his favorite Uncle, Sean Hannity.

There is nobody more alone than a bully who’s lost his macho.

It was a master class, not in baiting, not in fact checking (it was refreshing seeing reporters actually correct him in real time), and not in succinctly worded arguments, although all of that happened. No, it was a master class on exposing Trump as an insecure child who aspires to  be a macho bully.

It’s a unique strategy, perfect for this campaign: a mature, intelligent woman draining the macho from a school yard bully.

I looked up this morning and it is the end of August! Unbelievable!  

One minute I’m relaxing, just lounging in the sun and thinking… about thinking… or a trip to somewhere to visit someone… or something,… the bathing suit is still new… the grass is still summer green…the sunburn is just beginning to turn to tan…

And then I look up… AND!…only days until work, traffic jams, short days, slush, and flu, covid, RSV vaccinations!

What any North Easterner, especially a retiree, knows is: the only way to extend August beyond 31 days is to move to Florida.

Which is what this savvy retiree did 10 years ago. In Florida, you don’t have to worry about winter, because winter in Florida is like the best of summer at the Jersey shore.

And you don’t have to worry about leaving your adult kids, because …Duh! Blue skies and pearly white beaches! You won’t be able to keep them away! 

I found a warm, friendly Florida community. The people who sold me my house moved all of two houses away. They threw a neighborhood pizza party to introduce me to the neighborhood and I continued it as an almost monthly ritual. 

Another neighbor, a congenial Conservative, and I would meet for dinner once every week or so and talk politics, with respect and even humor. We discussed policies, not personalities. And we agreed on basic issues more often than not.

And there was Cowboy Susan, a member of Mensa who was licensed to hunt alligators, a 100 ton boat captain who had climbed Mt. Everest, a Karate expert who fundraised for large charities as well as single, aging neighbors. 

The pizzas were great; the sense of community was greater.  and the kids visited…well, once or twice.

Then Trump hit the state like a hurricane on steroids. We still had the pizza parties, but conversations were reduced to golf, fishing, tourist traffic, and… golf, fishing, tourist traffic,..

Then the pandemic hit. No more visits from my kids. No more trips up north to see them.Then Governor DeSantis got into a snit with Disney over comments Disney employees made about him. Then came the banning of books (thousands and counting). Then came the rewriting of history to avoid making white students sad.  

As the 2020 election neared, “Woke” became an all purpose insult. The few Biden signs in the community were plowed over by teenagers in a golf cart. 

That’s when I began to wonder: Did perfect Florida weather justify living in a state that picked fights with one of its biggest money-makers, banned books, and rewrote American history? 

I lived in a 1922 house that had survived multiple hurricanes, but would I survive continually rising insurance costs? 

On the other hand…winter suntans were still cool, pizza parties were still fun, Mr. Congeniality and Cowboy Susan were still one-of-a kind friends. And there were always those blue skies and pearly white beaches… 

But why didn’t the kids visit more often, once the pandemic ended?

And that’s when it occurred to me: They had lives of their own up North. They were too busy. 

By the end of August this year, I had sold the 1922 house and returned north. Why? I tell people it was living in a DeSanitized state, but that is only partially true.