The Short Late 2009 Christmas Letter

It was a houseful at Christmas, from Great Grandma Dee, 95 this past August, to little Olivia, my first grandchild, four months old last week.

Sister Barb and brother Ken were here, and all the children and grandchildren.

Heather’s in St. Paul, where she’s now a “3rd year,” (final semester fall ’10) at William Mitchell College of Law. Along with coursework, she’s been busy with Law Review, working as a faculty research assistant, and with the Minnesota Housing Preservation Project.

Courtney was promoted to Major, US Army in January at West Point, New York (United States Military Academy) where she’s teaching history and completing her PhD dissertation. Husband Major Dave Short is the Executive Officer of the Center for Enhanced Performance, also at West Point. Olivia Paulette Short was born August 18. “Little O” chatters, giggles, and grins, except when some basic life function – like food or sleep – is required.

Ashley lives Chicago, where he is writing – poetry, fiction, concert and album reviews – and doing readings of his writing, while considering a fine arts program within which to refine those talents. There has been an occasional music performance with a friend’s band, a bit of photography, and regular work at a Loop bookstore.

Jeannie’s mother has moved into assisted living in Pueblo, Colorado. I made two trips there during 2009.

I’ve continued my own writing over the past year, editing two sports car racing-oriented web sites, and working on other projects that (hopefully) will see the light of day in the coming year.

God Bless us, every one!

The Game(s) that Shouldn't be Played

Today Alabama plays Florida. I’ll be watching, but it will be the game that shouldn't be played. Nor should Texas and Nebraska play head-to-head with the elimination from consideration for a national championship on the line.

Doing so in either of those cases is analogous to pairing Duke and North Carolina in an ACC basketball championship game, then baring the loser from March Madness. That approach would kill the NCAA basketball tourney and likely lead to its replacement by a bewildering patchwork of meaningless invitational games, just as we have in football.

Yes, the Bowl season is nearly upon us again, and I find myself disinterested in most of them. I assume I’m not alone in that; a clash between the Big Ten and Big 12 sixth place teams can’t possibly be of anything other than local interest, can it?

If Texas plays Florida – or Alabama – for the more-mythical-than-ever national title, the BCS apologist will claim it validated the whole sorry put-up show because the two best teams played in the one big game. But that’s the point to me – it’s just one big game with all the other games irrelevant, even the other exalted BCS bowls. In the meantime the anticipation of that matchup – if it happens – is already being undermined by more than one article making the SEC championship game between the Gators and the Tide the real national championship game.

It should be clear that we needed to freeze it right here – before this weekend, before any of those “conference championships” the ones that exist for the same reason the bowls do and no other – money. This past weekend a year from now needs to be when regular season football stops by mandate. No conference championships, no cheap, boring bowls between team no one wants to see in placed few would otherwise want to go.

This is the point where we freeze the BCS standings, seed the top 32 and play 31 games over five weeks to determine a national champion. Everybody knows all the arguments about academics and such are nonsense; Division II is starting its “December Madness” right now. Are we to believe that St. Olaf is less concerned about academics than Miami (the football factory in Florida, not the institution of higher learning in Ohio)?

I counted 34 bowl games in the list on CBS Sports’ web site. Certainly three of those are losers enough (or unnecessary duplications, like the Insight bowl in the Phoenix metro, with the Fiesta just days later).

The elimination of conference championship games will shorten the season by one week, leaving lots of time for a five-round playoff. There are nearly seven weeks between the last of the Big Ten games on November 21, the weekend before Thanksgiving. That’s plenty of time to play five rounds.

Concerned about too many games? Most teams will play no more games than they do now. If you’re concerned about such things, drop one in the regular season. Eleven is quite enough, isn’t it? In that case, the national champion and runner-up would each play 16 games. Florida – and Alabama – will play 14 games this year. Could the Gators have skipped that game against Charleston Southern – the football equivalent of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Make it ten regular season games. Florida doesn’t really have to be the principal in a public square execution of Florida International, do they?” The combined scores of those two games? Florida 126, Road Kill 6. That’s so ridiculous, you’d be accused of making it up if it hadn’t actually happened. All the way to a national championship, then, it's a fifteen game season, just one more than 68 bowl teams will play this season.

The other advantage is that 36 of those 68 teams will end their seasons at ten and return to their studies, something they are (hopefully) better at than playing football.

That’s the way it is, on the verge of another bowl season. Now it’s just about time to settle in for that “can’t miss” game. The Gators and the Elephants in the SEC Championship. This fan will be watching, and consoling himself with the memory of the Rodent’s ass-kicking of the Tide at the Music City Bowl, and the fun Jeannie and I had in Nashville’s downtown honky tonks.

Geezo-beezo, Wackie's back! (But without the humor.)

Jeannie and I had season tickets to Gopher football in 2004 and 2005. We watched the highest scoring, best-running team in the nation, maybe the best ever, with Marion Barber III and Lawrence Maroney sharing the backfield.

We counted first downs, we laughed, we cried, we watched a team than won more often than it lost. A team that took back the Little Brown Jug after twenty years or so, that was a perennial bowl team (not BCS), a team we followed to Nashville to watch beat the Crimson Tide. There were seven bowls in eight years.

None of that was good enough for the whiners, some of whom sat around us in the dome, unhappy with everything they saw, stuck in another era.“We need a new coach,” they whined. “Ok, but who are you going to get,” we asked? “Mike Grant,” was the answer. “What,” we asked? They wouldn’t be that dumb, we thought. Grant is a middle-aged high school coach, even if he is Bud Grant’s son.

The University didn’t hire Grant. They were able to do worse – much worse. They hired an ex-high school coach. One who was last a head coach twenty years before, and then of a nondescript parochial school for a-less-than-notable four years. And Punky Brewster is a “geezo-beezo” blowhard in the best tradition of another unsuccessful Gopher coach, Jim Wacker (rest his soul).

Punky managed to start his Rodent “career” with the worst record in Gopher history (1-11)claimed his 7-6 record in 2008 as a “turnaround,” and then fired his assistants and threw out his much ballyhooed “spread offense.” (How’s that working for you Wolverine fans?)

“It’s the Metrodome,” they whined. So, here we are, with “The Bank,” the shiny new “TCF Bank Stadium” on campus, where the Rodents are now 1-2 with a sloppily-played loss to the Badgers.

As an excuse for poor attendance that won’t wash. A little rain today, there were those empty seats again, and along with it, perhaps not a “sea” of (Badger) red, but a damn big lake.

Punky got his hand slapped for recruiting violations this week, and had to suspend two players for undisclosed transgressions. Football players were reported to be involved in a campus altercation mid-week. As much as I love football and the Gophers, it’s the ultimate futility to recruit thugs that lose. Northwestern loses because it doesn’t recruit human flotsam. What’s Brewster’s excuse?

Wacker was 6-16 after two seasons, Brewster was 8-17. The “Brewster era” is now 11 – 19. All we can hope for is an early end to this "era," because Rodent football is going nowhere…in a shiny, new $200 million stadium.

Never Forget

We have, of course.

There’s no other way to explain an administration that we knew (or should have known) would

• support the oppressors rather than the too-short breath of freedom in Iran
• attack our intelligence services and dismantle those things that have kept us safe
• treat our friends in Israel as the enemy
• embrace the very Islamic extremists who attacked us
• threaten to prosecute those who kept us safe
• treat terrorism as a “law enforcement matter,” the very policy that brought on 9/11/09
• call terrorist acts “man-caused disasters”
• refuse to secure our borders

Appeasement has become the official policy of the United States. Iran has responded in exactly the same way as did Adolf Hitler’s Germany after the Munich conference – arrogantly continuing down the path of distruction.

The word “torture” has lost all meaning, having been expanded to encompass just about any coercive interrogation, even those that do no physical harm.

In a campaign it was expedient to mouth platitudes about the “terrible extension of combat tours.” Once elected, it’s easy to extend those combat tours once again. In a campaign it was easy for the new administration and the congress to say they would expand our combat troops to reduce the stress of repeated deployments on those who serve. Once elected, it’s easy to forget those promises.

All we learned – or should have learned – has been forgotten.

On the Yellow Brick Road

Olivia Paulette Short, nineteen inches long (tall?), six pounds, five ounces, a wee child born in the wee hours of August 18th at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where her mother (Major Courtney) teaches history and her father (Major David) is executive officer of West Point’s Center for Enhanced Performance.

Those are the particulars. Oh. As you can see, she had a bit of hair and is a very good looking kid. Her father drove the wrong way through the Washington Gate at the Academy getting to the hospital. A “wrong way,” or “rebel” imprinting?

Passages. Milestones. The Yellow Brick Road of life.We went off to kindergarten, were Boy or Girl Scouts, went to camp, became teens, went on our first date. Leaving high school behind was literally a “commencement,” the first big one. There were teen jobs, hoeing weeds out of sugar beets or lifeguarding. Or something else.

College. War. Jobs, good and bad. Weddings, kids, now the first grandkid.What’s special about grandchildren? We had kids, we loved them, and they followed the Yellow Brick Road as we did, the same but different, of course. So will Olivia, with whatever is different for her, and about her.

I think what is special is that grandparents can comprehend their own mortality. Our grandchildren are our immortality, we know that. Our children come too early in our lives for such an understanding.

Children were loved and challenged. The results of that nurture (tough love, sometimes) are clear in their success.

Now they have to do the same – or better – for Olivia. Grandparents? We can dote, we can hope, now we can even see decedents far beyond the middle of this century.

But as much as we fit that stereotype of grandparents we are not who will set Olivia on her own Yellow Brick Road. Only Courtney and David will do that. It’s an awesome responsibility.

They're Not Serious

They’re not serious in Washington. Just so we understand each other, I am very much for an overhaul of the USA’s health care system. I’ve paid huge amounts for insurance. I’ve fought those companies for coverage. I’ve been left without insurance after losing a job. I’ve lost a lot to medical costs.

I’ve been classified as “uninsurable.” For those of you who don’t know, that means that no company will insure you no matter how much you might be willing to pay. The various “extensions” required by law operate in a very small window of time in which most won’t be able to meet the very high costs. If you lose insurance after 55 and before Medicare, you’ll likely fall into this group. The list of things they’ll refuse on is the litany of what’s wrong with most of us after middle age.

We have “rationing” on the basis of cost already. When Jeannie got sick, her regular physicians disappeared (they would only practice at the private hospital, not the Monterey County hospital). No one can convince me that any so-called “socialized” system would be any worse than what we have. But in Washington, they aren’t serious. First, they are politically afraid (or too closely aligned) to take on an out-of-control private health care insurance industry that “cherry picks” the risks, leaving the sick outside the system to fend for themselves.

Second, Congress (the largest concentration of lawyers outside of “Boston Legal” and just as funny) refuses to touch the windfall of out-of-control malpractice legal actions. It’s not just “bloated awards,” it’s thousands upon thousands of nuisance suits that are cheaper to settle than to defend. Like the obstetrician sued over stretch marks. (One of those “believe it or not” things.) It's not even in question that doctors are forced to practice “defensive medicine” giving nearly endless and expensive "just in case" tests to stay out of court. The cost of treatment can’t fall while that’s the case, whatever Obama’s nonsense about reducing “waste and inefficiency.” (I spent most of my working life dealing with those issues in organizations public and private, including implementing computer systems to support greater efficiency. I can tell you flat out that it’s unlikely to return anything near the hype, it will take huge up-front investment, and the returns will take years to materialize.) If "corruption, waste, and inefficiency" in Medicare and Medicaid is so rampant, why hasn't this administration made it a priority to root it out? I'm forced to conclude it isn't there, at least not to the extent the president claims to justify the laughable idea that we can deliver his idea of "insurance reform" for free.

Further, there is the direct cost of malpractice insurance. (There they are again.) In Florida, not atypical, physicians in general practice pay $50,000 per year in insurance premiums. Think about that. $50,000. Add to that office costs, continuing training and education requirements, medical and office equipment, a nursing staff, and administrative staff. All that paid by you when you walk in the door for your ten minutes with the nice guy (or gal) in the white coat. Of course it’s expensive. What if that malpractice-suit-associated cost were to drop, even just half, to something “reasonable,” like $25,000 per year? It’s the ONLY cost that really could be immediately reduced by laws clamping down on frivolous suits and by capping bloated awards. The lawyers, not the injured patients get most of the money anyway.But the Congress and the President refuse to touch any of that.

Like I said. Not serious.

(It goes on and on. Our drug costs pay for the research for the whole globe - while other countries cap those costs, legislation has even prohibited our government from negotiating lower drug costs. So the American consumer picks up the lion's share of the tab for everyone else. See? Not serious.)

The Military History of the United States (short version)

Today was two hundred thirty-three years since ratifying that Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of Great Britain. That's humorous when written out. Who now thinks of London as the seat of a tyranny? Other than Iran, that is.

Before that was the French and Indian war, and after that the United States Legion, our first “standing army,” commanded by Anthony Wayne in 1792. The Navy was born in 1794, and the marines chased pirates onto the shores of Tripoli in the first and second Barbary Wars.

We fought that same island empire less than forty years after that declaration. They burned the White House. We rebuilt it. We were putting a dome on the capitol building during the Civil War. Oddly, more enmity between the combatants' descendents lingers from that war than any other. Perhaps not so oddly – family fights are the most intense, aren't they?

Those iconic commanders of our Civil War – Grant, Lee, Longstreet, and others – first “won their spurs” as young lieutenants and captains in the war with Mexico in 1848. We got California out of that deal. It's not certain whether that's a good thing or not.

Just before the turn of the 19th century, we “Remembered the Maine,” and fought Spain to liberate Cuba after Teddy charged up San Juan Hill, and the Philippines after Commodore Dewey's American Asiatic Fleet sunk a small Spanish squadron of obsolete ships in Manila Bay. We kept the latter for ourselves for nearly 50 years. You know how the former turned out. Somewhere in there we “helped out” some folks who wanted to separate from Columbia, and ended up with a canal – and the Jungle Warfare School at Fort Sherman where I swam with cayman in the Rio Chagres more than a half-century later.

Wilson stayed out of “the war to end all wars,” for while, then the British liner Lusitania – also capable of being an armed ship – sailed from New York with contraband gun cotton. A U-boat pounced off Ireland, and the colonies were in the big war. Pershing was put in charge of something more than chasing Pancho Villa around northern Mexico. This is the first war from which I knew a decorated veteran, Captain Theodor Slen, who was awarded a Silver Star and Croix de Guerre at Cantigny. Judge Slen was not only along with Pershing in Mexico, he was at the meeting in Paris in 1919 that launched the American Legion. He died July 4, 1986.

The interlude after that war to end all wars was barely twenty years. We tried (sort of) to stay out of the next one, too. It didn't work then, either. An uncle I would never know died in North Africa. Echo Co. 1/506th PIR became famous; I commanded it a little more than twenty years later.

Just a half-decade later the first North Korean nutso started the “conflict.” Honest, that's what it was called back then, “the Korean Conflict.” I knew lots of guys who fought in Korea. Some would serve with me in another war about fifteen years later. Two of my kids have since served in Korea, both officers in the United States Army, one Air Defense Artillery, one Field artillery. Randy Murph died there in 2001, piloting an F-16.

Vietnam. I've written about that – about the heroes and the ones lost.

After a few years there was Desert Storm, and Bosnia.

Somewhere in there we had a ship and two embassies blown up, then the Trade Center for the second – fatal – time. After knocking off the Taliban – for a while – with a few CIA and special forces guys and a camel or two, we crushed Saddam in a few weeks – son-in-law David was there, shooting down Scuds. A couple of years later they hung Saddam, just to make a point.

We're still hanging around both places.

Afghanistan. Alexander took his army through the Khyber Pass in 326 BC. The British had the First Afghan War (1839), the Second Afghan War (1879), and the Third Afghan War (1919). The Soviets invaded in 1979. It was the beginning of the end of that empire. Come to think of it, it was pretty much the end of the British Empire, too. This may be “the right war,” but it's not a good place.

There. The military history of the United States in about 700 words, with a few personal observations. Beat that, Courtney.

Visiting Pueblo

A week after Memorial Day I traveled to Pueblo, Colorado for the first time since December, 2007.

Jeannie grew up in Pueblo, graduated from high school and college there, later owned and ran a business there. She's buried there, next to her father, and near her aunt and uncle, who passed away – one after the other – this past December and January. We knew Carl and Olga would go that way, Carl caring for – and doting on – the life-companion who for these last few years no longer knew him.

Only Irma Jean, her mother, is left, well into her eighties and alone, everyone gone. She has her cats – Karsty and Morris – both having started with Jeannie before moving to her mother's at different times and for different reasons. Irma Jean also has whatever wildlife – birds and feral cats – that she can (must) feed each afternoon at “the blueprint,” Pueblo Blueprint, Jeannie's father's business from just after World War II until he killed himself in 1978 at the age of sixty. Jeannie came home, then, from teaching, to help, and stayed until we married in 2004. The business was purchased by friends who welcome Irma Jean's daily ritual: play solitaire on a computer, feed the animals, have a can of soda, drive home. Those friends are a godsend, unselfish, they worry about her, help her when they can.

I took Irma Jean to dinner at Applebee's. It's a little awkward, what we have in common is Jeannie; Jeannie is gone.

I visited Jeannie in the early afternoon, and talked to her. I told her Shanahan was gone from her Broncos, and the young quarterback, too. That I was in Phoenix now. I couldn't stay in Salinas without her. Said I drove to Taos, was there overnight. It has changed not at all (that I could see) from the time we spent there a decade ago. Small talk. That I miss her.

I returned through Angel Fire, New Mexico and the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial there, high in the mountains east of Taos, another place we had visited together.

So many memories. Bitter-sweet. A few short years together.

“Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day , never to return..” - Laurence Sterne, from Tristram Shandy, circa 1765.

Memorial Day 2009 - War Story

Here at Peninsula Pen Memorial Day will always have a special place. Previously, I’ve written about Memorial Days past, about heroes I’ve known, and about some I’ve never met.

Saturday, I published a link to an audio essay. Though the soldier “on the other side of the Wall” was a poignant image, it was the part before – the “P38, claymore mine, C ration cans in a sock” – that captured my attention.

Combat is slogging, back-breaking, sweat-running-into-eyes kind of work. It’s been said to be “long stretches of boredom punctuated by terror,” and so it is. Years later, you remember both, or rather, snippets of both. Now over forty years later, I’ve begun to revisit those days. The reasons are complex, but they certainly include a US Army Major – my daughter – teaching military history at West Point, and Jeannie, whose passing has forced me to confront my own mortality, and to cherish memories of my days – good and bad. Now remembering that long-ago war is easier than the constant and much more recent memories of great love and companionship. So maybe this is why old soldiers start remembering.

I’ve made contact with a buried past. There have been the “thank you for your service,” mostly sincere, I think, but often from those who cannot understand, and are not really interested. There’s no reason they should be, of course.

A few weeks ago I ran across a document amongst my papers, a copy of a recommendation for award of the Medal of Honor that I prepared (or rather completed) on behalf of Sp4 Allan J. Lynch for action on December 15, 1967. The Battle of Tam Quan, fought on the Bong Son plain in December, 1967 between the 1st Cavalry Division and the 22nd Regiment (NVA); the contact on the 15th near My An (2) was the last major engagement of the battle, which had begun on December 6, with the sighting from the air of a radio antenna.

Other units had carried the early December battles with the 22nd and its 8th and 9th Battalions, which had then, after a big scrap with the 8th Cavalry on December 10th, dropped from sight except for sporadic contacts with small elements. Radio intercepts identified the regiment’s headquarters on the 14th, and the officers of Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry were called from and outdoor showing of One Million Years B.C. to our LZ English orderly rooms. I never have seen the rest of the campy Raquel Welch classic.

Colonel French, the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry’s commander, had insisted the battalion now got the call for its Company C, which would lead the attack. There was a reason for that. Charlie Company – and the battalion – had a bone to pick with the 22nd Regiment that had attacked in the dark of night during the previous year’s Christmas truce. That battle is recounted in S.L.A Marshall’s Bird: The Christmastide Battle. Two platoons of the Cavalry company along with two under-strength artillery batteries – a total of 150 men – hung on at LZ Bird in the Kim Son Valley against the onslaught of 800 North Vietnamese Regulars. Staff Sergeant Delbert O. Jennings (now deceased) was a Medal of Honor winner that night. Now, a year later, we’d leave a well-earned firebase break to join C company in taking down the 22nd once and for all.

Contemporaneous records provide the background. This part of the battle of Tam Quan was fought at My An (2), Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Vietnam, on 15 December, 1967. Terrain, a large village surrounded by rice paddies and small, numerous, heavily grown hedgerows considerably restricting visibility. Enemy force exceeds a battalion in size. He is well equipped with recoilless rifles, light and heavy machine guns, and well supplied with ammunition. His position is carefully chosen and well fortified. Enemy morale is high. Company D’s morale is high after brief stand down (on LZ English), but the company is extremely under strength; just 85 infantryman are flown into battle on UH1B “Hueys” on that early morning in December.

I’d been in country for less than a month, and met newly-assigned 2nd Platoon Leader Lt. Roy Southerland at that officer’s call that night on English; he’d be dead before then next day’s sunset. Donald Orsini, a brave and talented OCS officer who had enlisted in 1956, was our Captain when we flew in a brace of Hueys in the morning to a blocking position, then at midday were sent on a march to an attack position we never reached, contact with the 22nd occurring first. In a square formation – two platoons abreast, two in trail – Lt. Southerland’s 2nd Platoon was left-front and took the brunt of the initial contact with the enemy. My 3rd Platoon was right-rear and unscathed; on order, we pulled back a bit to establish a perimeter for medivac, supply, and support.

After the initial contact, 1Lt. Southerland and Sp4 Lynch moved forward, toward the platoon’s point element, which had gone down in the initial fusillade. As they did so, Lt Southerland was killed by enemy fire (posthumously awarded the Silver Star), but still Lynch continued, dashing over fifty meters of open, fire-swept ground, to the aid three of our wounded, who he moved to safety in the enemy’s trench line, which he then cleared and defended from repeated attack.

Over the next three hours the company made repeated attempts to reach Sp4 Lynch and his comrades, without success, even when finally assisted by the arrival of armored personnel carriers of the 1st Battalion, 50th Mechanized Infantry. On one of these last attempts, Captain Orsini, who had personally directed the battle from the front, including the numerous attempts to reach Lynch’s position, was wounded.

(Orsini was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and would retire as a Lieutenant Colonel, then pass away after a 14-year battle with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1998. Captain Richard Kent, a West Point graduate who had been serving as the Battalion’s S4, took command when Orsini was evacuated. Kent – who joked that his only important experience at West Point was his membership in the Jewish Men’s Choir – one of our Company’s best and most popular commanders, was wounded south of Quang Tri on February 1st 1968, and retired as a Colonel. He was telling the truth about the Jewish Men’s Choir, I looked it up in the West Point Library in July 2008.) Sergeants William E. Gorges and Rudoph H. Ford were also awarded the Silver Star for heroism that day.

Finally, with the company – and the other elements of the 1/12th – continuing to take casualties, Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA) gunships were called in, firing scores of 2.75 inch rocket salvos to our front, culminating with strikes by Air Force F-100 Super Sabres. That remains one of the most vivid memories of that tour – laying on my back in that small defensive perimeter to watch a bombing run come in straight over the top of us, the pair of bombs released hundreds of meters behind us as the jet began his pull-up, the two black, finned projectiles seeming to float, silently on parallel paths toward, then over us, seemingly just clearing our heads, then that lazy silence rent by deafening thunder, the ground shaking and dirt thrown up and on us, one soldier screaming, restrained by his buddies. Then, for the first time, it was quiet.

Sp4 Lynch had remained in the enemy’s midst, protecting his charges, first from the counterattacks of the North Vietnamese infantry around him – he killed at least five – then as best he could to shelter them from our own artillery and air strikes. Five hours after the battle had begun, after the last of the air strikes, he made three trips to carry each of the wounded to cover seventy meters to the rear of the position in which he had defended them. Seeing to their comfort, he then returned to the company’s defensive perimeter and led a rescue party forward to finally extract the three wounded soldiers.

The Battle of Tam Quan officially ended at midnight December 20th after a final battle for the 2/8th Cavalry, and 1/50th Infantry (Mechanized) near An Nghiep. US casualties during the Battle of Tam Quan were 58 killed in action and 250 wounded in action. In the 1st Brigade After Action Report, estimated casualty figures for the 22nd NVA Regiment casualties are listed as 650 killed in action. According to the Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division, General Tolson, “the Battle of Tam Quan had a much greater significance than we realized at the time. In that area, it pre-empted the enemy's Tet offensive even though the full impact wasn't then realized. As a result, that part of Binh Dinh Was the least effected of any part of South Vietnam during Tet.”

The battle on December 15, 1967 between the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, and the 22nd Regiment of the North Vietnamese Army at An My (2) in Binh Dinh Province, cost the lives of these 21 American soldiers:

B Company

SGT Juan S. Ozuna, Wapato, WA Vietnam Memorial Faces From the Wall (scroll)
SP4 Willie French, Pittsboro, NC Vietnam Memorial
SP4 Ronald L. Klausing, San Diego, CA Vietnam Memorial

C Company

SFC Robert Levine, Jamaica, NY Vietnam Memorial
SFC James E. Lynn, Kenosha, WI Vietnam Memorial
SFC John D. Roche, Bay City, MI Vietnam Memorial
SSG David P. Jewell, Owensboro, KY Vietnam Memorial
SGT Richard J. Boeshart, Sioux City, IA Vietnam Memorial
CPL Steven Matarazzo, Montgomery, NY Vietnam Memorial
SP4 Wayne D. Ryza, Houston, TX Vietnam Memorial Virtual Wall
CPL Michael D. Sander, Oakland, CA Vietnam Memorial
PFC James J. Koprivnikar, Cheswick, PA Vietnam Memorial

D Company

1LT Roy E. Southerland, Morristown, TN Vietnam Memorial
SGT Robert L. Flores, Parker, AZ Vietnam Memorial Virtual Wall
SP4 Ramon Cortes-Rosa, Hialeah, FL Vietnam Memorial
SP4 Charles W. Hicks, Butner, NC Vietnam Memorial
SP4 Omar Lebron-Domenech, San Sebastian, PR Vietnam Memorial
CPL James Tierno, Jackson Heights, NY Vietnam Memorial

HQ Company

CPL Richard A. Choppa, Hubbard, OH Vietnam Memorial Virtual Wall
CPL Riley C. O'Neil, Kansas City, KS Vietnam Memorial Virtual Wall
PFC Richard M. Proscia, New Hyde Park, NY Vietnam Memorial

I located Allan Lynch in April of this year and sent him the copy of the award recommendation I had kept since preparing it in the fall of 1968.

In writing this today, I’ve found that official citations for awards substantially deviate from other descriptions of the battle including the those given in eyewitness statements attached to the recommendations for award. I’m not sure why that should be; perhaps the Division’s Awards & Decorations clerks had a word limit and lapsed into habitual phrasing?

Second, few of the soldiers who died at My An (2) in December appear anywhere on the web except in lists of casualties. The Vietnam Memorial Wall records each of their names on Panels 31E and 32E. Each has an entry at the Memorial’s web site, each entry has three pages, one with basic personnel information (HOR, DOB, Marital Status, etc.), the second recording the details of the soldier’s death, and one to be used for personal comments and pictures. I’ve linked the second of those pages above. Where I found other information (Virtual Wall, Washington State’s Faces From the Wall) the link is also provided. Take a few minutes to visit their pages.

Memorial Day 2009 - 1

On this first day of the Memorial Day Weekend, here is a poignant audio essay.

This is the first Peninsula Pen entry for this Memorial Day, 2009. Uncharacteristically, the essay at the link is not my work, but there is enough in it that resonates (with me, anyway) I think it deserves attention.

Extortion

In criminal law, extortion is "the crime of obtaining something such as money or information from somebody by using force, threats, or other unacceptable methods."

Bonds, in law are "a document that legally obliges one party to pay money to another."

In finance bonds are more specifically defined as "a certificate issued by a government or company promising to pay back borrowed money at a fixed rate of interest on a specified date."

Senior debt is "a bond or other form of debt that takes priority over other debt securities sold by the issuer."

Investopedia tells us that “in the event the issuer goes bankrupt, senior debt must be repaid before other creditors receive any payment.” That’s the law. (Unless the court approves an ‘end run’ using Section 623, but though related, that’s a other topic.)

With the Chrysler corporation facing it ’”settle or go bust” deadline, President Obama made ‘hedge funds’ the villains. Hedge funds hold bonds. The Chrysler bonds they held were ‘senior debt’ instruments. Lest there’s any confusion here, those bad boy 'hedge funds' include Oppenheimer Funds and Fidelity, who manage a lot of 401k’s and pension funds. If they managed yours, the President was talking about you – and ultimately, his “committee” (the ones that managed the Chrysler bankruptcy filing) took your money and gave it to the UAW, which has “junior” debt, entirely derived from the monetization of their (bloated) retiree health care entitlements (benefits you probably don’t come close to).

The “big debtors” who folded so quickly? All TARP recipients. (Go back and read that definition of extortion again.)

Dan Calabrese at paints a painful picture of what this all means to “real people” at http://www.northstarwriters.com/dc280.htm

This week, with GM next under the “settle or go bust” gun, the Obama Administration and GM have offered the holders of $27 billion of ‘senior debt’ a bit of cash along with common stock equivalent to 10% of the ‘new GM’ while handing the UAW 39% for cancelling $10 billion of the debt owed the retiree health care trust fund (the ‘new GM’ would still owe another $10 billion to the fund). The ‘offer’ is ‘non-negotiable,’ says the Administration.

So, if you’re the UAW, the Administration's committee of career (Geitner) bureaucrats hands you the second largest stake in the company (the US gubm’t takes 40%) for what? Helping to sink the company in the first place?In the coming weeks, be prepared to hear Mr. Calabrese’s Teresa Waller again villianized by the President as “greedy Wall Street,” but please remember that she is a 58-year-old with a bonds in a 401k who can no longer look forward to retirement anytime in the foreseeable future. Evil indeed. Now, go back and read that definition of extortion one more time.

Memory isn't just a song from Cats

I spent two very enjoyable hours today with an old friend. Chuck was my roommate in a Jacksonville, Alabama, apartment while at Fort McClellan in 1967 immediately before two young Lieutenants were sent to Vietnam, I to the 1st Cavalry Division by way of Panama, and Chuck by a more direct path to the 25th Infantry Division.

Ft. McClellan was OCS (Officer Candidate School) and OTD (Officer Training Detachment) for the no-longer-existent Women’s Army Corps, and a pretty good assignment for a pair of young (barely legal) officers. “The Club” at McClellan allowed all of the young women assigned to OTD and OCS. That made the bar, which overlooked the pool, and had a fresh oyster-bar happy hour, one of the great watering holes of the western world. All I got from that was a phone number for Elizabeth (all I can remember after forty years) and in trouble back in Minnesota (for nothing but the number - the story of my life). Chuck got a wife of forty plus years and counting.

My friend is the same person. The quick smile, all the mannerisms immediately recognizable. We age, but we really don’t change, do we? We shared stories about weekend jaunts in Chuck’s MG to Panama City, poker games, and, well, other things. Some things happened differently than I remembered; some the same.

We did useful work while we were at it, of course, running training committees and ranges for the Advanced Individual Training (AIT) Infantry Brigade. I went off on TDY (that’s bureaucrat for “temporary duty”) to the Benning School for Boys and brought back “reaction shooting,” while Chuck became a bit of an expert with fragmentation hand grenades. Hugh did other things. Glen was hard to miss in his shiny new canary yellow on black 396 Chevelle Malibu SS 4speed.

We shared some of our Southeast Asia experiences, but that wasn’t most of our conversation. We weren’t avoiding it, we just had other things to talk about. We laughed at his answer to his wife’s question about Oliver Stone’s Platoon, “Did you really swear that much?” “No...More.”

After Vietnam Chuck finished college at Wisconsin, earned a PhD at California, Berkeley (where he was a right winger) then took a job with the DOE’s National Labs in Idaho Falls, Idaho (where he was a left winger). That reminds me a bit of daughter Courtney, a US Army Major who got her baccalaureate from Columbia University (yes, that Columbia). The place you occupy on the political spectrum is very much geography-dependent.

This meeting was Chuck’s doing, he found me on the web, and planned his bird watching expedition with a stop here. I thank him for that. Though we spent only a few short months together at McClellan, the affinity is greater than I would have expected these many years later. I hope we don’t now lose contact.

(This has been a month of contacts from and with friends and aquaintences in my past, from Vietnam to Iowa. There will be more here.)

The "right war?" Or not?

The Bush Administration has been pilloried for its naïve acceptance of US – and Israeli, and Russian, and French, and – intelligence reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Subsequently, those whose span of attention extends beyond today’s price of gasoline have learned that Saddam himself perpetrated and supported that charade to appear stronger than he really was to friends and foes alike, dismissing out-of-hand the danger that it might invite an attack from the United States. After all, fatal attacks on a US warship in the Mideast (17 dead, 39 injured), on US embassies in Africa (223 dead, 4085 injured), and a bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 (6 dead, 1,042 injured), had gotten little response from the US administration, and all of that directed against “safe” targets. Certainly the dictator could assume – regardless of occasional bluster to the contrary – that an apparently powerful nation-state was safe from direct attack. The occasional small-strike-irritant in enforcement of the “no fly” regime, but nothing that might threaten his grip on power.

Those assumptions were reinforced by the prevailing policy among western democracies that attacks were crimes, not acts of war, so the laws (and rights) which applied to the perpetrators were the same used to prosecute convenience store holdups.

Given all that, the administration’s invasion of Iraq was initially more applauded than not by the likes of the New York Times' Thomas Friedman and our current Secretary of State. All “blood under the bridge,” (to mix a metaphor). We haven’t been very doctrinaire here in Peninsula Pen, nor have we been particularly angry…at anyone. But we are interested.

Now we’ve got a flat-out war between the Taliban and the Pakistani government (such as it is, or ever was). Barack the Pres. was fond of saying while running for office that we were “fighting the wrong war.” He often reminded us in soaring rhetoric that George Bush had not captured bin Laudin, that he’d failed to prosecute the “right war,” the war in Afghanistan. He told us that Obama “would go after Osama.” He made much political hay, especially when he told us he’d attack the Taliban in Pakistan – if that’s where they were. Well, here we are.

It’s perfectly clear the Taliban are in Pakistan. Really, that’s never been in doubt. Only two things really are. First, was the Bush administration right to pursue its Afghanistan/Pakistan aims carefully, even weakly? The Soviet Union's experience from December 1979 to February 1989 should strongly inform the answer, and current events provide the rest of what we need to know.

It seems clear now the bravado of the campaign has morphed into today’s tentative policy – as of course it had to. The previous administration was careful not to carry the fight in such a way that it might endanger the government of a nuclear power. Has this one been too quick to suggest pursuit of wider goals? Has that contributed to the widening of the conflict we now see? Could this end with a nuclear armed Islamic Republic – not in Iran, as expected, but in Pakistan? What happens if Pakistan falls to the fanatics, while the fanatics to their west achieve their weapons goals?

We know that the current United States government will “talk to them.” What happens after that?

Now what? Nothing again?

They’re fighting wind turbines in Eastham and Milford, Massachusetts, and in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. There’s a petition against a Florida Power and Light wind turbine farm. Such sentiment is widespread; it contributed to the 53% drop in renewable energy investment in the first quarter.

T. Boone Pickens has abandoned – for now, anyway – his wind farm project in the Midwest plains.

Ford passed Toyota in auto sales in April; it’s a fact that small cars don’t make a dime for their builders – Toyota’s Prius included. The mantra that “Detroit hasn’t built the cars we want to buy” is pure falsehood. The fact is that they did build the cars we wanted to buy – pickups and SUV’s – and that seems to be the sin of which they are now accused.

Coal-fired generation is under attack from the Sierra Club to the White House. Congress and the coastal states have combined to block offshore oil drilling. Drilling in newly discovered gas fields in Pennsylvania and New York is encountering local opposition.

California Senator Diane Feinstein announced her opposition to solar power development in the Mohave desert. Other opposition to desert development (anywhere) means any significant solar contribution to the electric grid unlikely in the near future.

Congress has managed to kill all attempts to settle on a safe storage site for nuclear waste, and states have legislated bans – and renewed previous bans – on nuclear plants, Minnesota being the most recent.

The US has steadily reduced the amount of water-generated electricity, and there are lawsuit filed at any hint of a new damn. Recent rulings in favor of the Salmon constituency in the Northwest threaten the shutdown of the mega megawatts there. There’s a powerful movement to abandon the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

You can argue all you want for or against nuclear, wind, and solar power; for and against hybrid vehicles. My question is different, though. If, as a practical matter, there are enough of us against each alternative, so nothing gets built, what then?

Modest Memories - Four Chardonnays

This is a column more about memories than about wine. If you’ve achieved the Age of Memory (that’s well after the “Age of Majority,” the “Age of Consent,” and – for those who ever achieve it – “The Age of Reason”) you may find something of use here. The other day, I was at a store here called Total Wine & More, a liquor store and wine shop with a huge stock; an adult beverage “big box store”. Max, with whom I occasionally play Texas Hold ‘Em, works there, saw me, and asked if he could help. Well, I was more or less “window shopping,” but pressed, remembered my white wines were pretty well depleted. I’ve bought some fine wine in my time, a cosmopolitan collection including some very good California (a Chateau St. Jean Sonoma County Reserve Chardonnay we bought was given a 98 by Wine Enthusiast and priced accordingly; for those who appreciate a fine mostly cab blended red, the same vintners Cinq Cepage is exceptional ), but I’ve also said that any fool can find a good $50 wine. It’s much more difficult to find a good $10 wine. Anyway, there I was, uncertain, having been asked, “what chardonnay do you like?” Good question, and one I usually answer by describing something with definite fruit, some complexity, but not overly “oaked” (the flavor of a wine strongly influenced by its aging in “French oak barrels.”) French chardonnay – or white burgundy –is rarely so aged, stainless steel barrels being preferred to “American style” oak barrel aging. It occurs to me I can’t readily come up with the name of a wine I like, chardonnay or otherwise, though I’ve liked many –and disliked just as many – over the years. I’m not a “wine snob.” I can curl up with a book and a glass of “Two Buck Chuck,” and be perfectly happy. That’s Trader Joe’s house brand Charles Shaw, and lest any of you look down your patrician nose, Shaw's 2005 California chardonnay was judged Best Chardonnay from California at the Commercial Wine Competition of the 2007 California Exposition and State Fair. The Charles Shaw California chardonnay received 98 points, a double gold, and accolades of Best of California and Best of Class. In California Trader Joe stores, it really is just two dollars a bottle. Right there, in Total Wine & More, it occurred to me that I did remember some wines I liked – or rather some places and events of which a wine was part. Sometimes it was a “house wine” at a favorite bar or restaurant. Perhaps this wine warehouse had them - they did - and perhaps I would still like them - I did. So here are the memories and the modest wines to go with them. In 2001 Jeannie and I were covering the American Le Mans Series at Sears Point Raceway, just a few miles south of the historic town of Sonoma and on the edge of the Carneros Appelation that lies across the southern end of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Not far from the track is Gloria Ferrer, an elegant winery set back on a hillside. A large tasting room is set up like a wine bar, with a deck that provides a spectacular overlook of the vineyards. It was perfect for Yokohama’s introduction of the PTG BMW M3 GTR. Drivers Auberlen, Jönsson, Stuck, and Said, along with team owner Milner with the media and series dignitaries. Satch Carlson, my motorsports columnist icon, was there, the only time I met him. The next day there would be a good race with a memorable GT finish. But at Gloria Ferrer there was chatter and champagne, and there was chardonnay, too. The memory is of the event, not the wine. Perhaps a taste would bring it back? At $16 the 2006 Gloria Ferrer Carnaros Estate Chardonnay was too pricey (I’m not one who considers a $20 wine “a value buy”), but serendipitously, half bottles of the 2005 were on sale for $5 at World Market nearby, putting the Ferrer at the top of our price range, $10 for a full bottle. This wine lies squarely between an oak/butter California chardonnay and the stainless-fermented French style. It might have the best of both, with fresh aromas grapefruit and green apple, a weighty palate and crisp finish. When cold, the oak and acidity is prominent, but as the wine warms and breaths, it gains more fruit and brightness. A very pleasant wine that earned its laurels (the 2006 won a gold medal in LA and an 91 rating from Wine Enthusiast). There are two bottles of Gloria Ferrer’s Royal Cuvee champagne in the cellar. Further up the “Valley of the Moon,” through the quaint little town of Sonoma, is Chateau St. Jean. In the years we visited Sonoma for races or other business, we did our best see the wine country. We drove over to Napa, we sampled the many wonderful restaurants, and we visited wineries. Our close acquaintance with Chateau St. Jean came about in this way, but it started with a gift. My sister and her husband gave me a subscription to “Wine Enthusiast” and in one issue, I think it was about 2004, its top picks for Chardonnay ( Reserve Chardonnay Sonoma County) and for Merlot (Reserve Merlot Sonoma County) were both St. Jean. We visited that next summer, and bought both to be shipped home. Neither of those wines is cheap (inexpensive) enough to be included here. The “regular” Chateau St. Jean Sonoma County Chardonnay is, however. A note here. A wine labeled “Sonoma County” or “Monterey County” must derive most of its content – 75% - from grapes grown in those counties. The same, on a smaller geography, applies to “appellations,” a recognized growing area with certain conditions and characteristics, though in these smaller appellations the minimum is 85%, and if an individual vineyard is named, 90% of the grapes must have been grown there . “Carnaros” is one of these. California wines must be composed of wine exclusively vinted from grapes grown in the state. So a visit to a winery and a tasting is one of those “memories,” but more so because it’s associated with many other Sonoma adventures, from one of which we returned with a bear named Murphy. I found the current Chateau St. Jean Sonoma County (not Reserve) at Total Wine & More for $9, and tried it. Aromas were spiced peach and pear; the wine is medium-bodied with a round smooth texture. The spicy fruit flavors are rich, yet the finish is crisp, tart and dry.With that first taste memories of wonderful times came flooding back. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not a big deal to line up a tasting and pick something out at the local booze store if there’s never anything associated with the drinking of it, whether a place, an adventure, special friends – or all of that. A few years later we moved to the Monterey Peninsula. I was first there long before that, in 1966, and again in my first marriage from 1968 to 1970, when we discovered the Sardine Factory that became in 2006-07 our “neighborhood bar.” Though it’s a place where it wouldn’t be a big surprise to run into George Lucas or Norman Schwarzkopf, the Sardine Factory is a place where you’re always welcome, whomever you are – or if you are no one at all. Banter with head bartender “Big Mike” Kilpaczyk can run from economics to sports, and when regulars are on hand – which is often, to stories of forty years on “the Row.“ Mike and his friends might chuckle over the time Rod Steiger joined the staff in singing “Happy Anniversary” to a celebrating (and surprised) couple, or Clint Eastwood brought his own sandwiches while filming “Play Misty for Me” (with scenes at that very bar). Tiger might be in the house, or Paul Anka. The Sardine Factory has a world famous wine cellar (It won the 2006 Best Wine List in America award from Restaurant Hospitality Magazine), and that attention to quality extends to its house wines. For a chardonnay, the house was Jekel Vinyard’s Montery Gravelstone. The Jekel has a nice honey color and fruity bouquet. There’s a little acid zing when it first hits the tongue. The oak is subtle – hardly there – the wine is dry and delicate. The 2007 won a gold medal in a San Francisco Chronicle competition. Jekel’s 2006 chardonnay is $8 at Total Wine. This might be my favorite. More about the Sardine Factory from my friend Murphy here. Another haunt - Jeannie's favorite - was the Mission Ranch, near San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo Mission. We rarely got past the piano bar with jazz pianist Gennady Loktionov. The bar menu is reasonable, including an excellent hand-ground hamburger; they’ll even let you split it. You can sit by the fireplace, or at the bar, and later at the piano (no food at the piano). Gennady is there with jazz from 8 PM until the sing-along at 9 featuring talented locals, and sometimes your proprietor (this is Clint Eastwood’s place). If Clint does stop in, the bartender will pour the boss’ favorite, which also happens to be the house chardonnay, Lockwood Vineyard Monterey, $9 today at Total Wine & More. A 88 point wine in 06, it features flavors of ripe nectarines and peaches, a racy acidity, and a more definite, but not unpleasant, underlay of oak. The Lockwood chardonnay is a very good wine that we enjoyed at the piano or the bar many times. More about the Sardine Factory and other Monterey Peninsula attractions from Murphy here. Over the past decade, Jeannie and I covered the American Le Mans Series. Founder Don Panoz is known in part for his Chateau Elan properties and the vineyards and wineries associated with some of them. The cellar still has a Chateau Elan Merlot labeled for the 50th Anniversary of the 12 Hours of Sebring. Daughter Courtney took a bottle of Chateau Elan's Petit Le Mans-labeled American Chardonnay home from that race in 2007, as did we. It's a wine we can also recommend, described by the winery as a "full-bodied Chardonnay with a crisp, fruity and robust buttery character." So there are four chardonnays, $10 or less, plus Chateau Elan's American Chardonnay, and the “Two Buck Chuck.” They’re all good to me, especially so since they’re my memories. But as much as you might enjoy them, perhaps you should ask what that good white is at your favorite bar or restaurant. It’s likely pretty inexpensive when bought at a wine store, and it might also be a highly regarded wine. You already know you like it.

A Kid's Milestone

Kids. We love em, no matter what. We think ours are the smartest, best looking, fastest, strongest, most talented - all of that or some important part of it. Most of us anyway.

I’m no different, and I’ve written about each of them before in this blog. Heather’s been to Hollywood to Chicago, and now in law school. Ashley has been from Drake to Chicago – to music and letters – by way of Korea.

This blog entry is about Courtney, though. Courtney Aimee (Kjos) Short was promoted to Major, United States Army, at West Point, New York on January 9, 2009. Courtney was born in Madison, Minnesota, June 16, 1977. She graduated from Eagan High School in Eagan Minnesota. She shares with her siblings a talent for, and love of, music and acting. In addition to school productions, choir, and declaim, credits include Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, Actor’s Theater of St. Paul, and a role in the movie Rachel River with Craig T. Nelson and Pamela Reed.

Courtney set her sights on the big city even before she was a teen, then made it happen, earning a degree from Columbia University, while enrolled in ROTC at Fordham University. Her persistence was tested by hours of commuting between the Upper West Side and the Bronx.

Commissioned in Air Defense Artillery in May 1999, she served in Korea, and then at Ft. Bliss, Texas, where she earned a Master’s degree in Management from Webster University while completing a range of command and staff assignments.While at Bliss she was offered the opportunity to compete for appointment to the faculty in the Department of History at the US Military Academy, accepted, and upon selection earned her Master’s in History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In 2004 she married Captain David Short, now also at West Point, Executive Officer of the Center for Enhanced Performance (and also pending promotion to Major). Courtney is expecting the couple’s first child in the fall.

The following is from the USMA faculty bio

Schools and Degrees

B.A., Barnard College, Columbia University, 1999

M.A., Webster University, 2005

M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008 (ABD)

Disciplines

Military History

American History

Modern Japanese History

Specialties

World War II Pacific

Race Theory

Research Interests

Wartime Occupation of Okinawa

Okinawa Cultural History

Courses Taught

HI 301: History of the Military Art

HI 302: History of the Military Art

Cadet Academic Counselor

Branch

Air Defense Artillery (Patriot Missile)

Duty Assignments

- Fire Control Platoon Leader, Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Suwon Air Base, South Korea

- Battery Executive Officer, Alpha Battery, 2nd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Bliss, Texas

- Assistant Battalion S-3, 2nd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Bliss, Texas

- Assistant Brigade S-4, 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Fort Bliss, Texas

- Battalion S-1, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Bliss, Texas

- Battery Commander, Alpha Battery, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, Fort Bliss, Texas

- Small Group Instructor, Officer Basic Course, Directorate of Training and Leadership Development, 6th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Fort Bliss, Texas

Don't Expect Much Stimulus

“The Economic Stimulus” (caps intentional) has of course become a regular topic on CNBC, Fox, and CNN, and in the pages of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. With some disagreement, it seems to me to be fairly widely assumed that the legislation in congress will actually stimulate the economy. What squabbling there is appears to be around the periphery: More tax cuts, or less? What’s pork and what’s public works?

But will it actually do anything at all? About 40% is in tax cuts, including forbearance of some increases that the new administration and congress would otherwise like. Does extending something that already exists – still temporarily – stimulate economic activity “on the margin” (meaning new)? Economic evidence suggests it does not. Much of the rest is the tax cut plan Obama stumped for in the recent campaign, including payroll tax (that box labeled “FICA”) cuts of $1,000 for “middle class families” (for Republicans, that’s “non tax-payers”). But what did we learn in the 2008 check distribution “stimulus?” It wasn’t spent, and won’t be, unless there’s a change in the psychology of the U.S. consumer – which there hasn’t been. The kinds of change that have been shown to actually be stimulative in the past (the Kennedy and Reagan cuts) are reductions in marginal (which means the higher ones) tax rates, politically unpalatable to the current administration and congress.

If there isn’t much to be gotten from the tax cuts, then what about spending, “infrastructure” and otherwise? Stimulus aside, increased spending on roads, bridges, power lines and such isn’t a bad idea. In fact, it’s long overdue. Pork has gotten an undeserved bad name recently, in part because our electorate can seemingly only grasp the simplest of concepts and the shortest of sound bites. Such spending is the traditional provenance of government in support of commerce and the general welfare in ways that directly funding UAW jobs is not.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office (by congressional rule, staffed by appointees of the majority) reported only $26 billion of the $355 billion “investment” part of the package will be spent in 2009, and by the end of 2010, that will still total just $110 billion. In closer-to-home terms that’s just $230 per U.S. household in 2009 and $750 in 2010.

Much of the rest of the proposed spending is concentrated in increasing and accelerating “transfer payments” between governmental units. The problem is there may be no net increase in actual expenditures. For instance, the legislation contains $142 billion in various education payments to individuals, states and localities. That’s undoubtedly good for education (we’ll suspend disbelief and assume here that all education spending is good), but in large part it will simply replace cuts already planned. State budget cuts will be about $100 billion in 2009, and local government units will cut more still. So increased government spending in education, medical payments, and other areas in mostly will just replace cuts elsewhere. There’s no stimulus in that.

Historians generally agree that similar programs in the New Deal of the 1930’s had only a marginal impact on economic activity, as unemployment, 25% at its peak in 1933, took four years to decline to 15% in 1937, the spiked back to nearly 20% in 1938. Only World War II finally ended the malaise.

The American electorate believes “all will be well” – or at least clearly improving – in about six month’s time. There is nothing on the current (or historical) record to suggest that expectation is realistic.

Even so, government does need increase investment in a renewal of the underpinnings of our economy. There’s even argument to be made for fundamental change in delivery of medical care, and improved public education. In economic terms I remain a Keynesian – nothing would be worse now than government trying to avoid deficits.

None of that will pull us out of this global economic malaise, however. Mostly, that will just have to run its course, while governments (hopefully) follow the Hippocratic oath and “do no harm.”