Stupor Committe: the results are in!

What to do? What to do?

It seems like our elected representatives can’t figure out how to handle “budget gone wild.” It seem painfully obvious to any of us who are out here having to foot the bill for their lack of insight or intestinal fortitude. I know, in my house, when the money runs out bills don’t get paid. When bills don’t get paid, we have to find other sources of income or savings to offset the costs i.e. pay the bills.

How easy it must be to simply tax an already burdened public with additional taxes.  Not in my house. There’s only so much I and my wife can do to bring in more money, so the only way to balance the scales is by cutting down on “services” like television, Internet, cell phones, telephone and such like.  We have to content ourselves with less than what we might like.

Not so in our Federal government.  There it becomes a simple matter of making the masses pay more and more.  Who cares that our government bills are so loaded with pork they make Smithfield Farms look like a bit player in the hog market? Certainly not the Senate or House of Representatives; it seems the only thing they are concerned about is carving 30 pounds of meat off a 10 pound turkey and when the bird runs out they turn to you and me.

So, with all that in mind, it seem funny to me that we would have a “super committee” made up of a bunch of these geniuses trying to come up with some way to save a measly $1.2 trillion over 10 years.  Putting them in charge of such a thing is like having Jerry Sandusky running your local day care center.  They have already wasted our money, how can we expect them to do anything that would be beneficial.  Their idea was simply to increase taxes.  Got a shortfall in the budget?  Go to the source and find ways to scrape the public rind even finer.

Thanks but no thanks.  The government for many years now has proved that they are incapable of making solid fiscal decisions.  Part of what they are after wit this super committee is funding yet another of President Obama’s stimulus plans.  Which when you think about it is sure to be at least as effective as the last stimulus.  If the Super Committee really wants to help the country out, they ought to look at ways to stop spending.

In my budget, it’s very simple. Take a look at our spending.  What are must haves? They go in a column on the left.  What are “don’t needs?” They go in a column on the right.  What are nice to haves? They go off to the side to be deliberated on once we figure out how the other changes will enhance (or not) our bottom line.  The point being, without taking on more jobs, we have to assume our income level is going to be whatever it is.  I don’t have the ability, or temerity, to tell my boss, ‘Hey, I need a raise!’  That would likely have a much different result than the one I want, and in fact could put me in even more dire straits.

The simple answer is to stop spending.  You, the Federal government, already get enough of our money. By example, we are hounded by taxes far worse than our forefathers, who 11 score and 15 years ago dumped England over what by comparison would be trivial taxes. Their argument then, “No taxation without representation” could well be uttered now.  Do you really think we are well represented by our current Federal politicos?  I don’t think so.

Most of us know that when you don’t have any money, or when money is in short supply, things have to change.  You cut down to one-pack a day or one six-pack a week.  You make sure there’s enough milk to feed the baby, and enough money to pay rent, water and sewer, and the power bill.  In short, you sacrifice to make ends meet.

But not our Congress; they simply try to find ways to get even more blood out of the stone. One of the proposals being bandied about is to cut down on exemptions for charitable donations.  Right, like that might make a difference because it’s not technically a tax. But from my perspective, it will end up costing me more in my taxes.  My donations to charitable organizations likely won’t change if they eliminate that deduction, but how much of my money goes to the government will. The real problem is that our stable is full of self-indulgent horses; they need to be turned out and replaced with new stock.  True political reform starts with the voters, not with the elected officials.

Sticking out with a sore thumb at the Potato Drop

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.  It wasn’t in the game plan, and certainly wasn’t in the back of my mind. During my seven-year stint in the military, I probably made thousands of parachute landing falls, and well over a hundred live parachute drops from moving airplanes with no problems whatsoever.

So, to say I was surprised to find myself being driven to Southside Regional Medical Center early Saturday morning, holding a Boy-Scout kerchief against my bleeding and obviously broken thumb would have been an understatement.  That it would happen during a charity event was even more surprising. How many times have I climbed in and out of tractor trailer beds I can’t even begin to count?  This time seemed no different than any other, but the result was much different.

It seems funny that something like a broken thumb would happen to me. I am not typically clumsy and don’t normally put myself into situations where I might get hurt. But after bouncing off the pavement at the Wesley United Methodist Church parking lot around 7:30 a.m., I had no doubt that my thumb was broken.

Truthfully, I don’t even remember falling off the back of the truck.  One minute I was in the trailer and the next I was up and walking toward the audience of potato packers. A minute later, I was loaded into a car and on my way to the emergency room with my hand raised, and a small trickle of blood coursing down my forearm.

All of that was outside of the original game plan.  The game plan was to unload some 20 pallets of potatoes, and move them to a staging area where they could be broken down into smaller lots for food banks and feeding programs throughout the Tri-City Area.  This was the second year in a row that the United Methodist Men's groups from Wesley, Ivey, and Highland were putting things together to help the needy and hungry in the area.

We had been doing the potato drops in the past through the Society of St. Andrews, which would facilitate the drops by coordinating between the farms with excess potatoes, and the church groups that would disburse them.  For a couple years, we were unable to get potatoes, and it became apparent to us that the fuel costs were keeping us from completing this great mission event.  That’s when we decided to ante up the $2,000 to offset the fuel costs. Amazingly enough, once we provided the funding the potatoes became available.  In addition, we also had to rent a fork lift and pallet jack in order to unload the truck.

That’s pretty much where my day began.  At 5:1 5 a.m. I found myself in the back of the truck, working with the forklift operator as we started to unload the spuds.  We got the first five or six pallets off, and then started to have to use the pallet jack to move the pallets into range of the lift.

We were very careful during this process, as we didn’t want anyone to get crushed with the load of potatoes or stuck between the lift and a hard place. We took our time, and eventually wheeled the last pallet to the fork lift area.  By that time, the fork lift operator knew exactly what to do and the last pallet was taken off with ease.

One of the three of us working the truck sat on the edge and pushed himself toward the ground.  In hindsight, I should have done the same. But I thought I could step on the edge, swing my foot around, and catch it on a step about midway toward the ground. Everything seemed to work right in my mind, until I realized that my plant foot opted not to stay planted. Quicker than an eye-blink, I realized I was falling parallel to the ground, so I reached out with my left hand to sort of cushion the fall. I didn’t realize at the time that my thumb would take the brunt of the cushioning, but I did a short time later as I could feel the pressure building up in my glove.

Some have said that I was just interested in getting out of bagging 40,000 pounds of potatoes, and I am not saying that they aren’t right, but the bagging exercise was completed in record time, with everything separated and carted off before 10 a.m.  When I got back from the hospital, around 10:30 to get my car, I noticed the lot was clear and a stack of pallets stood in the grass at the back of the lot. Next time, I think, I’ll let someone younger help unload the trailer.

PSU College Board of Trustees Make the Right Moves

It seems a shame that a man like Joe Paterno, who has done so much good for an institution like Penn State, will now be remembered for what is beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most reprehensible college football scandal of all time.  When word hit the street about Jerry Sandusky’s actions with young boys, it was almost too astonishing to believe.

But what was even more beyond belief was how the school officials handled the situation.  Paterno did the absolute minimum when he was told of the offenses that one of his graduate student coaching assistants witnessed.  He went to the AD, Tim Curley, and the college’s senior vice president for finance and business, Gary Schultz, and told them about the allegations.  That in itself should have started, at the very least, an internal investigation to find the truth.  But instead, Curley denied ever hearing about such allegations, and both he and Schultz have now been charged with covering up the abuse allegations.  Both men have since resigned.

Late Wednesday night, as word of Paterno’s firing started to filter into the mainstream news, JoePa uttered his dismay at the turn of events, he said “I wish I would have done more” back then. But he didn’t, and by not following up on the reported abuse, and by not demanding an investigation, he jeopardized the reputations of both the college and his football program.  Of all people, JoePa should have known that this incident wasn’t simply going to go away.  Not following up on it turned into the exact beast he feared, and now he and the rest of the administration have to pay.

He offered to resign following the end of this football season.  But in the end, that was not to be. Wednesday the Penn State University College Board said “"We cannot begin to express the combination of sorrow and anger that we feel about the allegations surrounding Jerry Sandusky.  We hear those of you who feel betrayed and we want to assure all of you that the Board will take swift, decisive action."

Swift and decisive happened later that night when the board called JoePa to tell him his services as head football coach were no longer needed. They also canned university president Graham Spanier.  It’s mind boggling to me that people would even be concerned that those two were fired.  Paterno knew.  There is no question that he knew about the allegations, nor is there any question that he did the absolute minimum in terms of handling the matter.

The bigger question is how could he have lived with himself over the past 12 years knowing that this kind of evil, and Sandusky’s treatment of those eight kids is nothing but evil, existed at Penn State?  Not just that, but the entire incident took place through the college and the football program.  Sandusky was a trusted coach.  He played on that trust when he developed his program The Second Mile. He systematically used the program to provide himself with more and more victims.  His actions, as outlined in the grand jury’s indictment, are beyond horrible.  Just reading them is bad enough, to know that they are likely true boggles the mind.

So what should JoePa have done? After contacting the police about this alleged crime, he probably should have called the AD and the school president and let them know that he felt compelled to call the police.  He should have thrown Sandusky under the proverbial bus, and let him fend for himself.

But that’s not what happened. He should and probably will agonize over his inaction for the rest of his life.  He had his chance. Things like this don’t just go away.  There’s an old Chinese proverb that states you can’t wrap fire in paper, and that is apparently what this group of school officials tried to do.

Not being an attorney, I can’t really say at which point JoePa did all he was legally bound to do. But I do know a bit about ethics, and he certainly didn’t follow through on this the way he should have.  How would he have acted had the victim been one of his children?  Does one really have to go that far to understand the enormity of this crime?  Sandusky was hit with 40 child abuse charges.  At what point do we start to think that there may be a little fire with all that smoke?

Common sense tells you this matter was serious.  Common decency required Paterno and his cronies to do the right thing.  That they didn’t do the right thing is nothing short of a condemnation of the school, the football program, and the people involved in the cover up.  It would seem to me that everyone in this mess deserves what has happened and what is bound to happen over the next year or two as the authorities sort out the mess.  In the meantime, the PSU Board of Trustees has done exactly what needed to be done, and their actions were indeed “swift and decisive.”  We can only hope that the court case that comes out of this is also swift and decisive.

We wish you had done more, too, JoePa

OK, sorry JoePa, but you can’t weasel out of this one with some kind of lame excuse about notifying the chain of command.  Not only are the reports about former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky reprehensible, simply passing the information along without checking up on it, is the equivalent of sticking one’s head in the sand.

That such a thing could happen at an institution like Penn State is remarkable enough.  But the cumulative actions of the three people in position to take the right and proper action at the time is, in my opinion, criminal.  Due diligence on the part of Penn State’s revered football coach, Joe Paterno, should have included following up on the allegations, and demanding that there be some kind of investigation.

Is he so dumb as to think that such things wouldn’t eventually come out?  There appears to have been ample evidence, and credible evidence at that, concerning Mr. Sandusky’s deviant behavior.  No fewer than eight witnesses have already come forward and talked to the Grand Jury. The grand jury offered up 40 charges against Sandusky.  And the prosecutor fully expects more victims to come out of the wood work as this case moves along to trial.

So for all you Penn State fans who think that Coach Paterno is beyond reproach in this matter, stop and take a look at what happened.  JoePa did not look out for the kids, he did not look out for himself, he did not look out for the university, and he did not look out for his football program.  Given the magnitude of the allegations, and the incredibly egregious nature of the offenses, how could anyone fail to grasp how this would play out when it became public knowledge?

There is really only one way to save grace in the face of such staggering revelations.  Step up and take the hit. Get out in front of what was destined to become a media frenzy, acknowledge what happened, and get the investigation rolling with the full support of the University and University officials.  Will it keep your good name from getting smeared? Probably not, but it shows how seriously the university, and the Penn State Football program, and Joe Paterno, take such allegations.

Instead, university officials took the low road.  Joe Paterno, according to testimony heard by the grand jury, told the AD, Tim Curley, and the college’s senior vice president for finance and business, Gary Schultz, about the allegations.  Curley denies ever hearing about such allegations, and both he and Schultz have been charged with covering up the abuse allegations.  Both men have since resigned.

That something went seriously wrong in the reporting procedure is obvious.  That there was a cover up, or at least an attempt to cover things up, hoping that nothing would come of the allegations, is also obvious.  Either the proper authorities were informed or they weren’t.  What they chose to do instead was try to wash their hands, they either denied they were told or said that no one told them the extent of the allegations.  There wasn’t much quibbling over what had happened according to the Grand Jury indictment.  It was very explicit, and I am sure that the graduate student, who spoke with Joe Paterno on a Sunday, the day after witnessing the event, didn’t quibble over what he saw. It was not, as some have tried to say, just some minor touching incident.  But even if it had been just that, it still should have been investigated.

Needless to say, handing the problem over to two other PSU administrators and not taking the time to bother to follow up is wrong-headed. The only way to preserve even the slightest dignity was to hold an investigation, discover the facts, and nothing but the facts, and then summarily throw the guilty party under the bus.  Instead, the administration tried to pretend nothing happened. They diminished the extent of the incident and tried to play it off as if it were accidental touching between a man and a boy “wrestling” in a shower.  Sorry, but I can’t even write that sentence with a straight face.  It wasn’t “wrestling” according to the testimony.

For me, JoePa is just as guilty as Curley or Schultz. It was his program on the block; don’t tell me that he wasn’t concerned.  He may have played along with the game, may have thought that Curley and Schultz had things under control, but the reality of it all rolls right back to him. He should have insisted on an investigation, and at the end, depending on the results, proffered charges and wrote the kind of letter that the College Board did:

"We cannot begin to express the combination of sorrow and anger that we feel about the allegations surrounding Jerry Sandusky.  We hear those of you who feel betrayed and we want to assure all of you that the Board will take swift, decisive action."

It’s tough when a man of such stature is painted by such an odious scandal.  In the year that JoePa set the record for most wins by a D1 college coach he finds his comeuppance in the scandal to beat all scandals.  How the school officials, JoePa included, operated in this situation is just another example of the deteriorating moral convictions that seem to run rampant in our society today.  Call him collateral damage if you will, but the only way to start the healing is to remove all aspects of the cancer. Unfortunately some good must go in order to ensure all of the bad is removed.  The only honorable thing to do at this point is to resign.  The football season is nearly over; maybe it should be your last.