OP-ED: NO FINER MEMORIAL by John P. Flannery

Uncle Charles Flannery and the author

 I remember as if it were yesterday my Mom crying, a soulful wound torn open upon hearing that my Dad’s brother, Charles, died of internal bleeding because years earlier he’d been shot in World War II. 

President Woodrow Wilson’s promise that World War I was the war to end all wars didn’t prevent World War II.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WWII, said, “There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.”

We could therefore erect no finer memorial to our war dead than to rededicate our nation to peace.

Eisenhower, in his farewell address in 1960, told the nation, “We must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”  It is past time for us to reconsider his advice.

Our wars since World War II have been about property – the differences by and between communism, socialism and capitalism.  Also about ethnicity – over nationality, color, religion and region. 

The nation state now caught in the congressional and executive cross-hairs is Syria.

We insist our wars are honorable because we are fighting for individual freedom but those we would “save” all too often recoil at the definition of “freedom” we seek to impose.

We are hard-pressed to claim the high ground for freedom when the recent observable evidence, since 9-11, is that we distrust our citizens, frisk them, tape them, follow them, kill them with drones, kill innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and imprison innocents in Cuba without any formal charges or evidence.

Now we are ramping up to weigh in to Syria’s civil war, to spend funds we don’t have, perhaps even to add our own men and women to the 80,000 dead and million already displaced.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham want us to create safe zones for the Syrian rebels, arm the rebels, train them, conduct targeted air strikes, and deploy scud missiles.

Days ago, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted 15-3 to arm and train these rebels. 

We are going to arm rebels that may include al Qaeda terrorists.  Radical Sunni preachers recently issued a call to jihad to support the rebels, spurring an influx of rebel fighters. 

Abu Sakkar, rebel leader of the Omar al-Farouq Brigade, should give us further reason to oppose intervention.  Abu cut out the organs of a dead Syrian soldier including his heart and liver, and bit down on one organ in a gruesome snuff video he filmed, while addressing the Syrian soldiers loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying, “I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.” 

Virginia State Senator Richard Black has called upon the United States to “end its intervention in Syria.”  I agree.  Senator Black cited the cannibalizing of the soldier as one of several good reasons, and published reports that we were training and equipping the rebels.

Is there any hope for peace?

There are peace talks tentatively set for June.  The rebels have, however, interposed a speed bump on the road to peace, demanding, as a precondition, that the Syrian President resign.

A step toward a worthy memorial to our war dead is to work for peace without war-like intervention. 

This would build on what President Barack Obama said last week in a speech at the National Defense University. 

The President proposed that we turn toward peace, given we have and are ending our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, after spending over a trillion dollars on these wars, after losing 7,000 Americans, after damaging many others irreparably. 

The President thought it time that we respect President James Madison’s warning that, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” 

Acknowledging we still had to confront a “lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates,” the President said, we must now supplement our military efforts and fight “to win a battle of wits, a battle of ideas.”  Eisenhower had similarly recommended “intellect and decent purpose.”

Robert G. Kaiser, a Washington Post editor, wrote that “the modern version of [congressional] culture is hostile to creative problem-solving.”  He said, “In the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body,’ there is little deliberation.”

We have to do better, because if we are not smart enough to make peace, then we may only make war, and thus shall we dishonor the memory of those war dead who served so this nation might be preserved and protected at peace.

COLUMN: WHO CARES FOR THE ILL IN AMERICA? by John P. Flannery

I was Republican Senator Orrin Hatch’s special counsel when he was chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources; I was especially proud to hear Hatch’s statement last June commending the states to participate in the expansion of Medicaid, to cover adults earning 138 percent of the poverty level, thus providing needed health care for those who were ill who couldn’t afford to care for themselves. 

An income level of 138 percent works out to about $14,856 for an individual and $30,656 for a family of four.  Compare those levels to your income and expenses, and those you may know who could be helped by this legislation.

In Virginia, this provision would cover 400,000 more Virginians, create 30,000 more jobs, bring $21 billion in federal funding over several years into our state.

Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly, in neighboring Fairfax County, put it this way, if we opt in, our state shall receive “$17 in federal funds for every state dollar it spends on its Medicaid expansion program.”

For three years, the federal government pays for extended Medicaid benefits; the state only picks up more of the cost in the later years climbing to 10 percent in 2021 and beyond.

Senator Hatch said, “No state can afford to opt out.  There’s no state in its right mind that wouldn’t take the money because they’re going to have all those additional people they’re going to have to care for.”

Twenty Five States and DC have opted in for those reasons; candidates for office and office holders who had reservations about the program, after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), came around.  

For example, Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer gave a January state of the state message endorsing Medicaid expansion.  New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie announced his support in February.  Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott announced his state will participate at least for three years; he ran for Governor of the State in strong opposition to this Medicaid program and anything having to do with ACA.

But here in Virginia, we’re slow to the mark. 

For starters, in Loudoun County, our motto is “we byde our time,” and that’s a fine motto but actually “byding” our time in this case costs Virginia billions in lost Medicaid funding.  If we don’t get the funds, we lose the funds to someone else.

Nevertheless, our Loudoun County Board of Supervisors opposed Medicaid.  You’re right, if you’re asking what does our Board have to do with it?  Apparently, Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) just couldn’t stand it ideologically, and she proposed a resolution to oppose expansion by our General Assembly; Ms. Volpe doesn’t “believe” the federal government will actually pay the funds.  No proof of that.  No facts.  It’s just her “belief.”  Our Board is now on record in opposition to these Medicaid funds and the care and jobs that come with the funds.

Our Republican State Senators opposed Medicaid expansion as well.  Senator Dick Black, who represents part of Loudoun County, explained, in defense of his opposition, how he personally contributed funds to a single Medicaid family (sounding empathetic – you know - like he really cared).  But then Senator Black Heart threw the girls in that family under the bus, criticizing them for spending $50 on plastic caps for each of their teeth to guard against tooth decay.  Black said a 50 cent tooth brush and paste was good enough when he was a kid.  Presumably, he considered the cost of these plastic caps to be wasteful Medicaid spending.  Black didn’t go even further to extoll the virtue of General George Washington’s false wooden teeth that so tortured our first President.  I suspect if Washington were here today he’d embrace the advances of modern dentistry that Senator Black apparently decries.

Our Governor and our Attorney General (now running for Governor) oppose extending Medicaid and have, as far as it appears, reneged on a last minute deal that everyone (wrongly) assumed would mean our General Assembly would approve these Medicaid funds – for the good of the people – after some “slight” delay.   Our Governor says we misunderstood what this agreement meant.  I know what it meant.  It was a dodge to agree to get his transportation bill passed.

You may fairly ask, what these opponents of Medicaid are thinking?  Truth is they really are not “thinking.”  Their ideological chimera confound what’s in the people’s best interest.

In the swampy political terrascape that is Washington, DC, the Congressional Budget Committee Chair, Congressman Paul Ryan, back from his unsuccessful run for Republican VP, is doing his best to make even worse the plight of those who are poor, disabled and elderly Medicaid enrollees from middle class households. 

Instead of the feds helping the states, Ryan wants to shift Medicaid entirely to the States, and here’s the rub, the apparent reason is to give the states an opportunity to cut back, and even eliminate Medicaid.

If the Governor of Virginia hasn’t found his senses by the time you review this comment, write, call, fax him and let him know that delaying and certainly losing billions of dollars, jobs and health coverage is not a sound government policy for our Commonwealth.

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COLUMN: “Tebow Bill” passed by House Reps; Intercepted by Senate Dems by John P. Flannery

 

Tebow point to God

Home school advocates are suffering buyer’s remorse and lately demand the right by legislation to select ala carte services from the public schools that they, by homeschooling, have pronounced unworthy to educate them.

Home school parents want the right by law for their home school students to play on the athletic teams of the schools that they have chosen to avoid.

Republican Delegate Rob Bell, from the 56^th District, Albemarle County, authored what he called the “Tebow bill” to force every public school in the Commonwealth to allow homeschoolers to compete on public school teams even though they don’t attend the school. 

The first fair concern is that Bell has widely characterized his proposal as the “Tebow bill” after the home-schooled Denver Bronco’s quarterback, Tim Tebow, who struck kneeling, fisted praying poses on the playing field when he scored.  

Bell plays to that large fraction of the home schooling movement therefore that schools at home to avoid being taught, among other things, modern science that contradicts their fundamentalist beliefs that the Bible is to be understood literally and not as metaphor or allegory.  Bell says he is a “committed supporter of home schooling.”

How ironic that we have the Delegate from Albemarle advocating homeschooling.  No doubt he’d tell us he’s an “originalist,” and would have us all follow the founding fathers “original” intentions. 

Bell’s historic neighbor, Thomas Jefferson, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates headed a committee in 1776 to revise the laws of Virginia. 

After the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is known for his “bill for establishing religious freedom,” advocating a separation of church and state.  Bell disregards that stance.

Another initiative Jefferson cared deeply about was his “bill for the more general diffusion of knowledge.”  Jefferson was celebrated for his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” circulated in 1781.  Among his “Notes,” Jefferson proposed to divide every county into small districts “and in each of them to establish a school for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.”  Some students supported by public expense would afterward either teach or receive scholarships to study at the College of William and Mary.  In 1796, Virginia passed a bill supporting public education.  Jefferson wanted more and wrote John Adams in 1813 that he hoped public schools would become “the keystone in the arch of our government.”  Jefferson is oft-quoted for his sentiment that "a nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.”

Bell who would be our Attorney General thinks he knows better than Jefferson what the Commonwealth needs.  Bell disregards Jefferson’s stance on public education as well.

In the House of Delegates, Bell’s wrong-headed bill, in contravention of principles espoused lifelong by Jefferson, passed with the support of our local Delegates, Randy Minchew and Joe May.  

We can rightly score them critically for supporting a religiously inspired initiative that is antagonistic to our public school system.

This bill also ignores the reality of what it means to play on or support a school team.

You have either played on school teams yourself in High School, or had a sibling who did, or a child or spouse who did, or you’ve coached a team in some sport or other.  So you know how it really works.

Let us consider Loudoun Valley, a public high school in Purcellville.  We could consider other Schools of course.   This school’s mascot is a Viking.  Book covers, jackets, t-shirts, sweatshirts, team uniforms are emblazoned with this symbol.  Nor is it easy to criticize the school for academic performance.  Valley satisfies the standards of learning and has quite respectable SAT scores and terrific placement for its graduates.  The students attend class together and a fair number participate in softball, lacrosse, golf, volleyball, track, girls’ cross country and gymnastics teams that have all performed well in competition.  They have a well-regarded marching band, the Marching Vikes, comprised of music students.  One of the inspiring messages for competition at this school, as at any other, is their “school spirit” born of invocations by parents, teachers and students about how they all belong to this community of Viking students, how they know each other, care for each other, are friends, who study together, date, dance, share lunch, and attend extracurricular activities all together.  Yet, some representative group from this community participates on the Viking teams, and they are supported by their friends on the team, cheer leaders who know them, student reporters who write about them, year book editors who memorialize their wins and losses, and their Viking fans.

Who wants to play on a team for a school that your parents or you believe is antithetical to your beliefs and unworthy of your attendance?  But isn’t that what Bell and his cronies would foist on our public schools here in Loudoun and across the Commonwealth?  I believe so.

Fortunate for us, what the House of Delegates passed was then killed in the Senate Committee on Education and Health on Valentine’s Day. 

It should come as no surprise that State Senator Dick Black, a member of that Senate Committee, fought to pass Bell’s bad idea.  So, the ill-considered pass by the House was intercepted at the line of scrimmage in the Senate.  Before the next play, let your elected representatives know they are not representing you or our children when they introduce and fight for laws that Jefferson spent his life opposing.