Go, Go Gadget, Jackie

It probably wasn’t much of a surprise to my wife, Jackie, when I asked her team of doctors if they would show me the used knee parts that they replaced during her surgery next week as sort of proof that the work was done.  Sure, it may have the ring of some kind of crazy New Yorker attitude, but how will we really know?

Back in the days when I used to actually do all my own car work, I would spend hours trolling places like Circle Auto Parts or any other kind of junk yard I could find.  I would even stop and check out vehicles that had become blackberry thickets, because you never really know where you might find that one part you have been looking for.  And in truth, I found many parts to many of the old cars I owned that way.

This was back in the day when you could use a soda can (ok, it might have been another type of beverage), to fix a broken or wearing thin muffler pipe.  I used to carry pliers and a couple old coat hangers just for that purpose.  And the coat hangers got double duty for the times I had to bend them into all kinds of pretzel shapes to open a car with the keys locked inside.

I remember one time spotting a wrecked Ford that had a four-speed transmission.  It happened to be the same year and model as my car, which had a broken automatic transmission.  The guy sold it to me for $75, including the drive shaft, which I knew would be longer than the one in my car because the transmission was longer.

Did it work? Yes, of course it worked, although I had to cut a hole in the floor board for the shifter.

But parts changes on human beings are a bit different.  So maybe just checking her new scars would be OK and I should not worry too much about the parts being replaced.

And so you have it. I have totally regressed to 1976 and will have my very own Bionic Woman in the matter of about a week.  Sure it won’t be the same as Lindsay Wagner’s character on that ancient sitcom, but heck we all have dreams, don’t we?

I can’t imagine Jackie running at 60 mph, but it will be nice to have her getting around without being hobbled by first one knee and then the other.  Certainly, it’s just a joint and not some kind of leg augmentation.

For what it’s worth, she did ask if she could get compressors and extenders for the knees.  You see, as a Librarian in the Richmond School District, she often has to reach way down to put a book on the bottom shelf and in turn reach way up to put a book on the top shelf.  She’s pretty much set with the in-between stuff.

There’s a lot that these people can do today, but I think “Go, Go, Gadget, Jackie” may still be a few years away.  Still, it will be fun to have a fully functional Jackie back in the house. The past few years, as she withstood the pain and put up with the knee locks and the times she fell down without help from an area rug or Snuggs, our guest Great Dane, has been hard on her.  And, lately, I think things had gotten worse.

She is amazing to me.  To have put up with the pain in her knees as long as she has is incredible.  The only bigger pain in the house is, well, maybe I should plead the fifth right now. Still, it’s a huge turnaround from the person who it seems a short time ago was wrestling with the idea of getting her knees replaced.

The way I hear it is that you’ll know when it’s time to get your knees replaced.  Jackie has had problems with her knees for nearly six years.  Last year, we went to see the doctor, because they told her she probably had some torn cartilage.  They took an X-ray and we showed up to see the doctor.  He said the good news was she did not have torn cartilage.  But the bad news was she didn’t have any cartilage.

Now, a year later, we are on the cusp of getting this taken care of.  Sometimes, you just have to wait for the timing.  And, really, no doctor, I don’t want to see the old parts.

When is a conflict not a conflict: when you announce it just before you vote

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

HL Mencken

As I sat in the audience at the latest Colonial Heights City Council meeting, I listened as five Council members declared possible Conflicts of Interest in several different matters that were being voted on as part of the city’s Consent Agenda.  Before the start of the voting procedure, the council members each in turn declared that a husband or wife was a member of a group that was involved in some action they would be voting on.

There’s an old legal saying about Conflict of Interest that it might behoove council to pay attention to.  It’s said that in matters of Conflict of Interest the parties should “avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest”.  What that means is that if it smells like a potential conflict of interest one ought to avoid it.

Not so with our City Council.  They believe by making a statement in public recognizing the potential conflict of interest that they can then go ahead and vote on matters that involve a potential conflict of interest.  While that statement may satisfy their own qualms and perhaps the letter of the law, it doesn’t really satisfy the ethical fact that they have a conflict of interest.

Why not just bow out of those measures?

Is it such a big deal to hold your vote outside of the one or two agenda items than it is to announce the potential conflict and yet vote anyway?  Not to me.

For the most part, what they were voting for didn’t really matter, if you consider pay raises and other issues minor.  And in the scheme of the city, they are minor.

But, despite the announcement caveat, it would be in their self-interest to simply avoid the conflict.  It’s not like abstaining from that vote would change the outcome.

While I appreciate the candor of those people identifying the conflict, it is incredible to think that they would act without bias.  Do you really think you could vote against something that might include a raise for your spouse?

It’s hard for me to swallow the idea that someone, not just city council, could declare the conflict and then go ahead and vote anyway.  That, in my opinion, does not meet the “avoid even the perception” of a conflict of interest.  A conflict is a conflict and just because you acknowledge it the acknowledgement does not make it go away.  You still have a potential conflict of interest.

What would it mean to simply step aside for the vote?  All of the matters that were on the consent agenda were approved unanimously.  Even if all five council members had a conflict with the same exact item, the matter would still have passed.

It’s a small city.  There are few people out there who have enough interest in city government and for running for council office anyway so there are abound to be some conflicts of interest. I can accept that.

Most political scholars will tell you that a perception of conflict of interest is just as damning as a real conflict of interest.  It may in fact be worse, because it is the kind of kindling that fires the rumor mill.  As the council members, one after the next, declared their potential conflict of interest, I started to wonder why they didn’t just step out of that particular approval.  It’s a simple thing to do really.  And in the end, it presents a very transparent view of the council’s actions.  Deep down inside, I know for me, it would be difficult to vote against something that would benefit my spouse or my children, but then some people have a higher threshold for perception than I do.

Election Season Merry-Go-Round

Our General Election process so far looks like it will have all the fire and fanfare of a cheap who dunnit novel.  Do we really not know who the players are going to be?

None of the so-called pundits thought Donald Trump would end up being the presumptive nominee, but to me it was pretty apparent from early on.  He would complain about the numbers of people involved in the process, I think they started with 17, and grumble that the size of the group stunted his ability to drag in more support.

But to some extent, the numbers may have been helpful, too. After all, as they said, Trump has his 30-35 percent support group that is pretty reliable.  Not so for the others, and the number of choices other than Trump, split the remaining 65 percent up enough to make his portion supreme.

At least, that was the argument until the potential nominees started to drop out.  Again, the pundits announced Trump’s undoing.  Surely, now with only five candidates running, someone can garner enough support to dump Trump.  But it didn’t happen.  And it didn’t happen because all of the “new found” voters didn’t coalesce to one or the other candidate and leave Trump behind.

They call it the winnowing process, and winnow it did.  It winnowed right down to two candidates and a cling on.  The contest, at the point following Wisconsin, truly appeared to be a two-horse race with an old nag running as a pace setter.

For a week after Wisconsin it appeared as if Ted Cruz might actually have a chance to upset Trump.  That is until New York.  Trump, as the papers said, romped in his home state.  Cruz said something to the effect of, well it was his home state.  But the size of the beating was a harbinger of what was to come in the ensuing week, when Trump blasted through the ACELA primary winning Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware by more than 50 percent, and taking every voting district along the way.  Cruz made his last stand in Indiana, but the writing was already on the wall and despite his pulling all stops he lost in catastrophic fashion ending his campaign and John Kasich’s campaign as well.  Thus we end up with the presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump.

On the other hand we have Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.  The ironic thing here is that her competition, Bernie Sanders, was supposed to be disposed of long ago.  But it now looks like he will stick around to the convention.

Make no mistake about this, Hillary will likely win because the Democrats have about 500 Super Delegates, who actually get to decide who the presumptive nominee is going to be.  All things being equal, those 500 delegates provide more than enough swing to change the vote.  They are pretty much all lined up behind Hillary, which gives her a hard to overcome lead.  But if they lined up instead behind Bernie, guess who would be in the lead?

There are other reasons that Bernie should stay in the process.  While it may be a forgone conclusion that Hillary is the chosen one, there are still a few players out there who might make it a touch more difficult for her.  No matter what you say, Bernie is popular.  He has pulled in a bunch of votes and has touched home with the younger voters.

But Hillary has other issues that may end up determining the nominee, despite garnering more delegates.  There is that FBI investigation into her server and the specter of the whole Benghazi mess continues to linger.  Her extraneous baggage can have a huge effective on electability in the long run.  If she can find some way to drop it or get around it she would likely be a lock for the presidency in the upcoming election.

Either way, I think we can expect to see Hillary vs Donald in November.  And, judging by the primaries, it ought to be one entertaining election.  In the end, as the Merry-Go-Round churns who knows who will end up with the gold ring?

Certainly it won’t be the political pundits.

Believe half of what you see; none of what you read

In a world that is constantly changing we can no longer be sure the news we hear is the “news” and not someone’s version of the news.  Certainly the media has fallen a long way away from “just the facts, Ma’am” to quote Dragnet’s Detective Joe Friday.

It’s not the world of Walter Cronkite any more.  The media has moved from simply providing the unfettered truth to adding in their own spin.  After all, the American public has always been a load of fools, hasn’t it?  Come on now, look at the people to your right and left, surely someone among them, or maybe two, has to be a member of what the infamous Baltimore Sun editorialist H.L. Mencken called the “booboisie”.

A recent Associated Press story by Carole Feldman and Emily Swanson suggests that as many as 94 percent of the population do not have a lot of confidence in the media.  Personally, I think the figures are skewed a bit and the percentage should be somewhat higher, like 99 percent.  But who am I to say?  A part time journalist.

So my thought is for you take a look for yourself.  Read the papers or the news on the Interweb?  Probably the Internet is more honest than a lot of stories in the funny papers, right?

Feldman and Swanson, in their article, say “Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they read on social media.”

In part of this statement, I think they are dead accurate.  The Americans have little trust in the media.  They would like to tie the “why” to social media, to some degree; but I think the problem isn’t that much of an outlier.  I think the problem with the media is the media itself and not any of the so-called social media junk.  Twitter never wrote a front page story in the New York Times, or an article in the Times-Dispatch, The Progress-Index, or the Hopewell News.

I would say an editorial, but then editorials are supposed to be biased and as such really don’t rise to the same level of dishonesty or, as we have learned the term, “misspeaking”.  Misspeaking in my dictionary is a euphemism for lying.  Anyone who steps up to correct a statement they make that turns out to be false, would love to just say “Sorry, I misspoke.”  Who, especially a member of the media or a politician, would ever be able to keep their status if they simply said the truth, “Sorry, I lied”?

Sure admitting the truth is a hard thing to swallow. For a politician, it may hurt for a news cycle or two, until the booboisie or maybe just a general run of homo simpleton’s forget that ever happened.  Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t.  But the public, in general, has a short memory and is very willing to forgive.  Especially if the perpetrator is your perpetrator. Still, a lie is a lie, right?  It’s not someone “misspeaking”.  Misspeaking implies a sense of accident.  I accidentally said something that was untrue. Sort of like calling a car crash and accident, which implies no one at fault.

Perhaps these people weren’t aware of the fact that they were conjuring up something.  Perhaps, and I know this is a stretch, but maybe it was something from a dream or something that they really, really, really wanted to happen but didn’t but makes the story better.

In truth the media likely hasn’t changed very much.  Mencken, who I quoted earlier, wrote when Warren G. Harding was the president.  He had a lot to say about the American way, and its news vehicles.  For instance, this is how he defined the media of his day “A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”

Mencken would have absolutely adored the current political climate.  The battles between the candidates running for office would have provided a person who said, “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance” a field day writing about our politics.

Probably none of this applies to you, dear reader.  After all, we are part of that portion of society that simply sits, points a finger, and giggles, right?  And then again, as the column writer, I guess that makes me a member of the media and we pretty much covered how much faith you can put into something the media publishes.

For the Greater Good--Yeah Right

Alas poor Lloyd, I knew him well.

It seems that the state, by way of the Department of Transportation, has once again come back to nab more land from the Goddard family in order to construct the be-all and end-all Interstate 95 exit at Temple Avenue, otherwise known as “Operation Whirligig.”  We the people would have to be pretty naïve not to think that this wasn’t “in the books” when whoever designed the former Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike back in the early ‘50s drew up the plans for the ridiculous interchange that local citizens have lived with over the ensuing six decades.

Back in those days, the mighty, mighty VDOT wrested control of most of the Goddard dairy farm, knocking down silos and scooping out well-fertilized pastures along the way simply because the property lay in the path of this great innovation for highway traffic.  Yippee, VDOT must have said as they paid a pittance in putting the family business to rest by underpaying for the land. I am sure that it seemed like a good deal at the time, but in reality maybe not so much.

And whoever designed the exit ramp there ought to be ashamed.  Maybe during those days Colonial Heights thought making an exit ramp into the city that was as convoluted as could be would cut down on the riff and the raff trying to stop here. Maybe they thought the horrible, no good, darned dirty interchange would keep the residents safe from the intrusion of real life travelers.  Who knows really, but by today’s standard it was very bad planning.  Tag onto it the way CH has become a shopping mecca, the number of transient vehicles, and the huge work population and it’s easy to see why something has to be done at the interchange.

No one in their right mind denies the inadequacy of the current interchange.  Despite the city’s numerous attempts to make the interchange safe, it still ranks as numero uno in terms of accidents per year, netting more than one a week according to 2014 statistics.  No one, not even Mr. Goddard, would deny that, well, something needs to be done.

So with that backdrop we have the seven acres left of the Goddard family’s original 97 acre dairy farm.  And, like the rest of the farm, the property sits squarely on top of the land VDOT says it needs to build its wondrous whirligig (Google “round about,” no not the song by Yes).

Down to a paltry 7 acres now, the Goddard property is among the largest pieces of land in the city.  And, in all honesty, VDOT doesn’t really want all seven acres. In fact, they are only negotiating for five acres.  Five acres leaves a measly two acres left for the Goddard dairy farm.  The two acres are for all intents and purposes useless because they will back up on the newly extended exit/entrance ramp roads.  Who would want to live there?  And the city has it zoned as commercial property to boot.

VDOT has made an offer for the property, but as one might expect its opening salvo is not necessarily what Mr. Goddard would like them to pay for five acres and his ante-bellum home.  No indeed.  So he is refusing to go quietly into that good night by not taking VDOTs measly offer and slithering out of sight.  But let’s be real.  This is the family property that dates back to the turn of the last century.  When this deal is done, and it will be done mark my words, the specter of the Goddard Dairy Farm will be just that.  A ghost; a remnant of the past, or in current lingo, History.

In order to take control of the property so that they can get their whirligig project on the road, VDOT, or probably more likely some State Attorney, will draw up eminent domain documents to take the land.  Yes, take the land.  Eminent domain, or the taking of a citizens’ property, has been around since biblical times, when King Ahab of Samaria offered Naboth compensation for Naboth's vineyard.  The problem with this is who gets to set the value for the property.  It is likely not the person who owns the property.

And so we go to valuations.  But how can anyone value the Goddard land fairly.  As it stands, it probably isn’t terribly valuable.  Look at the city’s assessment history, notably wrong in almost every respect.  Typically assessments are 10 percent lower than the actual value, since they are developed using data that is at best a year old and often closer to two years old.

So VDOT would like the property valued as low as possible.  And their attorneys and eminent domain workers will do what they can to keep a cap on the total price.  But truth be told, the whirligig won’t happen without that key piece of property.  The extended and widened on and off ramps run smack dab through the Goddard home, and the whirligig itself sits right at the edge of the property.  What kind of value do you think that has?  The Goddard property is the keystone parcel that will make the whirligig go round.

The property should be valued at highest best use.  Highest best use is not what the state would like to pay.  The state is more interested in lowest worst use.  Take into account that without that piece of land the project is dead in the water.

Let me assure you, the state is going to take this land.  No question about that.  The question is an ethical question about how the Goddard family ought to be compensated.

For me, the term “fairly” comes to mind.  Of course, fairly has a different meaning to both parties.  But let’s start with it being the highest best value of the land.  It is THE key piece of real estate for a project that many residents don’t want.  Secondly, why only take the five acres?  Why not just take the rest of the property, the additional two acres, and maybe make a park or something out of it?  It’s really a slap in the face to take all but two acres of land with questionable use once VDOT completes its project.

The main thing, I think, is that we don’t like to see our citizens handled so callously.  The Goddard family likely didn’t want to end their farm back when the state took it for the turnpike, and yet they did.  Call their sacrifice made for the betterment of the people. But here the state is again, knocking down the door to take what’s left.  Maybe it’s just me, but fair compensation ought to take in the value of the property as the key ingredient for the Temple Avenue exit.

Everyone knows the property is going to become the states.  Why not just pay the family and be done with it.  It’s a one-time deal, at least this time, and then it will be over.  Perhaps it will notch the cost of the interchange a bit, but why does the state insist on taking advantage of its citizens?  I’m not sure what is fair concerning the price of the land, but I am sure the state’s initial offering is not going to be very fair.