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Scott Walker, Rick Santorum in Manchester, N.H.
Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, John Kasich, and others were in Manchester, New Hampshire on Monday to campaign in advance of a candidate forum hosted by the Union-Leader. I went to the Walker and Santorum events.
Walker met voters at Theo’s Pizzeria. I was seated at a booth with two brothers, Alex and Mike, who had driven to New Hampshire from New York. Alex is a college student and seems slightly more engaged politically than Mike, but both are enthusiastic and eager to meet Walker. Alex wonders how these candidate events work, and — as an old hat by this time — I obligingly explain how I’ve previously met Perry, Fiorina, Carson, and Kasich, though I do have to admit that I moved to New Hampshire from New York City only last year. (I grew up in Maine!) We’re joined by Ricochet’s own James of England before Walker arrives, and we quickly fall into a discussion about the Supreme Court. Alex voices his concern that conservative causes will suffer if the next Supreme Court justices are appointed by a Democrat in the White House.
When Walker arrives, he thanks everyone for coming but otherwise doesn’t make a speech before beginning to work his way around the restaurant. We’re in the last booth in his path, but after he speaks to the people next to us, he abruptly turns toward the exit. We all look at each other and pile out of the booth. Alex and Mike reach Walker first, and have their picture taken with him. James and I struggled through the crowd and accost him, as politely as possible, at the door. “Can we have a picture, please?” I ask. “Uh, yeah, sure,” says Walker, looking at the door, pizza box in one hand, a brown paper bag in the other hand. James hands his phone to Walker’s assistant.
If the primary were won based on the photography skills of a candidate’s assistant, Walker would lose. I was also not impressed that he skipped our booth — it would have taken him only a few minutes to finish the meet-and-greet and say hello to those of us who were last in his path.
James and I arrive early at The Founders Academy, a charter school in the industrial park by the airport. The school staff welcomes us in, and explains that no one from the campaign has arrived yet and that indeed the event has been pushed back by half an hour — but in the meantime won’t we please have a seat and by the way would we like an ice cream bar? I prove unable to say no, and happily consume a second ice cream as well. Looking around the lobby, I spot prints of Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, and John Trumball’s Declaration of Independence. A few other people start to arrive, including Alex and Mike.
“Weren’t you at the Walker event?” asks a man who introduces himself as David. He’s here from New York on a political-junkie tour. He’d been to a Bernie Sanders rally the night before. “I’m not a conservative,” he says. “But I’m open. Bernie was incredible though. He was so substantive!” David likes Walker. “We were in the first booth so he talked to us. He was really nice. I’m here with my husband, and I introduced him as my husband, and Walker didn’t miss a beat, just shook our hands and continued talking to us. I’m not sure I dare do that with Santorum.” He laughs.
David makes introductions to me, though: “This is my husband, David.” I must look confused, because he laughs again and says, “We’re both called David.”
I laugh, too. “Well, that makes it easy!”
“Yeah, so we’re really in the middle,” says David I. “Our liberal friends think we’re Tea Partiers, wouldn’t you say?” David II agrees. “And your boss, who is a real conservative Republican,” says David I, “he thinks you’re a communist.”
“Well, here’s a good measurement,” says James. “Abortion at 21 weeks. Yes or no?”
“Oh, well I believe in choice.” Says David I. James presses the issue by asking about partial-birth abortion, but David I demurs “I really haven’t thought about it.”
Santorum arrives and shakes everyone’s hands and we all head to the school library. There are about 15 people present, and I think that most of us heard about the event only at the Walker event, and otherwise would not have come.
Santorum is a sincere man. Nothing he says sounds rehearsed (which is not to say he’s unprepared). He sits at a table in the library and speaks about education policy. It’s broken. Why? Government involvement is a major factor. We have an educational system that really hasn’t changed in 150 years, he says. The breakdown of the family is a bigger factor, though. He urges every one to read Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Robert Putnam’s Our Kids. “One’s a libertarian and the other’s a liberal,” Santorum says ruefully. Putnam writes that it’s more important for parents to read to their children in the first four years of their life than to pay for four years of college, Santorum notes. He says that regardless of race, people who grow up in intact families are more likely to succeed, but children in single-parent homes have just a 3 percent chance of reaching the top 20 percent of income earners.
That’s not to say that single mothers are bad parents, he adds. He favors local control because then there will be accountability. I ask him about the federal Department of Education. He says he wouldn’t outright abolish it because he does see a need for some federal funding for special-needs children. Alex asks him about college tuition. Santorum says he has a son enrolled in community college. “If you can’t afford $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year to go to college,” he says, “then don’t go to a school that costs that much.” Also, not everyone needs to go to college, he says. “I see young people coming out of college no better prepared for a career than before they went to college.”
David I asks what Santorum thinks of the idea of making community college free for students. “I’m not in favor of free things,” Santorum answers. “In general, people value things more if they have skin in the game,” he says.
James asks about religious schools, and says he’s read Our Kids and notes that Putnam wrote about the significant affect of school prayer and religious activity on education outcomes. Santorum is in favor of school vouchers, “or whatever you want to call it,” so that parents can send their children to whatever school they want. However, he’s wary of using government strings to get people to do things that conservatives think are good, when “we complain all the time about liberals doing the same thing.” He notes that he was a principle author of the welfare reforms of the 1990s, which involved grant blocks to the states so they could make their own decisions.
“I knew they were going to do things in New York that I wouldn’t like,” he says. “And, in fact, their welfare rolls barely went down at all. They did a little. But in Wisconsin, under Tommy Thompson, the welfare rolls went down 93 percent.” But at least if there’s local control, there’s more accountability. So how will he change the education system? The bully pulpit, he says. He contends that Obama has used the bully pulpit to shape the national debate on “climate change.” And he’ll do the same on education.
I ask him what he’ll do if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, either before January 2017 or after. “Well, if they get one before then, there won’t be much to do,” he says. He’ll have to put a lot more thought into that, he says. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do if they haven’t gotten one yet.” He’ll tell them the deal’s off. “You can’t negotiate with terrorists. And that’s what they are. The greatest terrorist nation in the world. You can’t negotiate with them. You have to tell them what is acceptable to you, and then be willing to back that up with action.”
Alex wants to know why, in Santorum’s opinion, the other P5+1 nations agreed to the deal. “Well, the Europeans, they’ll do what ever the United States does. We lead them, for good or bad. We lead. The French were even publicly against the deal, which amazes me. The French! But they can’t go against us, and they can’t go against their public. The Europeans are a defeated people who don’t have the will to fight anymore. If we don’t lead, no one will take our place, except for evil.”
James asks whether Santorum has a short list of possible Supreme Court nominees. “I have a short list of people whom I’d trust to help me make that decision,” says Santorum. “I wouldn’t trust just myself on that.”
When James presses the issue, Santorum says, “I’m a little busy right now, believe it or not. I’ll wait until I’m president to make those decisions. I’m a one-thing-at-a-time person. I like to put my socks on first, then my shoes—not my shoes and then my socks.
Afterwards, James and I ask for a picture. Santorum’s communications director, Matt Baynon, absolutely destroys Walker’s assistant in the photography department.
Attending John Kasich’s New Hampshire Town Hall
John Kasich is in Wolfeboro, N.H., for a town hall meeting at the Brewster Academy boat house overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee. “Isn’t this beautiful?” He asks. “We love you,” says an older woman sitting in the front row. “Thank you,” says Kasich. “It’s always good to have your aunt in the crowd,” he jokes.
He’s standing surrounded by about 150 people who are sitting in chairs arranged around him. “Boy, this really is theater in the round,” he observes. Kasich has a slick operation. When I arrive he’s out front being interviewed by the media. He has guards with earpieces and sunglasses. There are stage lights in the room. The whole thing is being recorded.
Kasich is pronounced “kay-sick,” not “case-itch,” in case you’re wondering. “I used to be a big star on Fox, anyone remember that?” he deadpans before ticking off his other accomplishments.
He met President Nixon when he was an 18-year-old freshman in college: “They said I could have five minutes with him in the Oval Office, I took 20!” He was the only Republican to defeat an incumbent Democrat in 1982, when he ran as a Reagan Republican at a time Reagan wasn’t all that popular (“This was before the recovery started”). He was a member of the House Armed Services Committee for six years, he chaired the House Budget Committee in the 1990s, and was the author of the balanced budget. He left Congress after 18 years to work in the private sector (Lehman Brothers). He ran for and was elected governor of Ohio in 2010 and turned a multi-billion dollar state deficit into a surplus.
Vince, an elderly gentlemen standing next to me, asked whether Kasich thought McConnell and Boehner were doing a good job and whether the three branches of government were corrupt. Kasich’s answers were, essentially, yes and no. “He just lost me with that answer,” says Vince.
A woman near us seems to be dissatisfied with Kasich’s response to her own question: Should Planned Parenthood be defunded? Kasich says there should be reforms. The woman repeats, “defund!” Kasich says he’s pro-life, then talks for a few minutes. “He didn’t answer my question,” the woman mutters.
She and Vince talk quietly to each other through the next question, which was about the “military industrial complex receiving billions of dollars.” I miss most of the answer, but Kasich says someone has to build our weapons, and we need more weapons. We need to rebuild our nuclear fleet. Earlier in the meeting, when Kasich was recounting his meeting with Nixon, he had said he met Nixon for a second time in 1987, and the former president had advised him, “Pay attention to foreign policy!”
The “child’s advocate” seems satisfied with Kasich’s answer to her question about pre-K education. “I’m for it.” He says. “Not universal, but for those who can’t afford it. We didn’t need government assistance to send our children”—he means he and his wife, not he and the woman in the crowd — “but we did. So I support it. The proof’s in the pudding.” He asks her to give her card to his people afterwards.
One man has an extended colloquy with Kasich about entitlement programs. “In the state of Florida, there was a study I read, they were spending more on fraud then on benefits,” says the man. Kasich says you have to try to reduce fraud, but there’s no line-item in the budget for it. You have to go find it. And eliminating fraud will not save the programs. There have to be structural reforms.
Kasich points out that he had put forward, back in the ’90s, a plan to reform social security. Younger people would have started at a lower pay out, but they would have had the option to invest a portion of the funds in private funds. “Of course no one voted for it,” Kasich says. The man in the crowd seems to be supportive of social security, but he then suggests that the program should be optional. “I’m not in favor of that,” says Kasich.
Afterwards I ask the governor, “What if Iran gets a bomb? What are you going to do?”
“Well, we don’t want it to get to that point obviously,” he says, adding that we would need to put the sanctions back in place. “If it gets to that, we’ll have to respond.”
“Militarily,” I say.
“Not necessarily,” he replies, looking me in the eye. Is he trying to figure out which way I lean on the question? “We don’t want to broadcast that we’re going to go to war.” If we do that, we have to go over there. There are lots of ramifications.
“We don’t want Iran to drop a bomb on Israel,” I say.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “We’re very clear” that Israel must be defended.
“I’m the father of two Marine combat veterans,” says a man over my shoulder. “Our current president is decimating the military. This man will rebuild the military!” He shakes Kasich’s hand.
“He’s a politician,” says Vince afterwards. “All these politicians. He was in Washington 18 years. He’s part of the problem. He thinks there’s no corruption in Washington? We don’t need more politicians.”
But many of the attendees, wearing “Kasich is for US” shirts and stickers, are enthusiastic for the governor of Ohio.
Disclaimer: All quotes are from memory.
Ben Carson Is Not Interested in Politics
Ben Carson is not interested in politics. “People ask me,” he says to the assembled crowd at a town hall meeting in Barrington, New Hampshire, “what made you interested in politics after such a wonderful career in medicine?” He pauses slightly. “I’m not interested in politics; I’m interested in saving this country.”
His career in medicine has shown him that health is the most valuable thing we have. If you give someone the choice, “you can have a hundred million dollars, but be a quadriplegic, or you can have perfect health and no money, I think the choice is pretty obvious.” That’s why Carson speaks out against Obamacare. America is an incredible nation, founded by incredible people, to be of the people, for the people, by the people. Government is intended only to facilitate our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Carson says. Obamacare reverses that by making government the giver of things. If we accept the government’s ruling the most important thing we have — health — then we’ll accept anything.
There’s hope, though, he says. He has a soft voice and his eyes are half-closed as he stands calmly in front of us. One senses that his would be the temperament you want in a surgeon. “Thomas Jefferson predicted this,” he says quietly. “He was a great man. He said eventually the people would become less vigilant and the government would expand to control everything we did. But just before that, people would wake up and take back control. I hope that this is that time. If this is not that, then it’s over.”
I’m back at Turbocam for the second town hall in as many nights. The crowd is only slightly smaller than the one for Carly Fiorina the night before and, to be fair, it’s currently pouring rain outside. I recognize a handful of faces, but the majority are new.
I’m sitting next to a retired couple. He’s a veteran. She’s seeing Carson for the second time today, having attended a breakfast with him this morning in Exeter. I ask them if they know Ricochet, but they don’t. He reads National Review every day online.
On the other side of them is another veteran who served in the Navy during Vietnam. “It wasn’t too dangerous, though,” he comments. “The South China Sea was only about 60 feet deep. Of course, it’s probably higher now due to climate change.” The vet sitting next to me scoffs. “There’s no such thing. I read in Newsmax this morning that a Nobel physics prize winner said climate change is all a crock.” The other vet seems unconvinced. “Nobel Peace Prize?” He asks. “Physics,” replies my neighbor. “And anything Obama says is a lie.” The Vietnam vet shifts uncomfortably. “OK,” he says. A few rows away I see a woman with a crew cut wearing khakis and a vest. If one were to follow stereotype, it would not be unreasonable to presume she is a lesbian. The crowd is overwhelmingly white, but this is New Hampshire after all.
“The jihadists want to destroy us,” says Carson. “And the pundits and the politicians are trying to divide us. We don’t need them. We need each other. Listen, if I were in charge, and I were trying to destroy America, I would try to divide people and rack up debt and cause the deterioration of our military, and allow our enemies to flourish.” The crowd chuckles, anticipating what’s coming. “Hey, that’s what I would do if I were in charge and trying to destroy America. Any similarity to what’s going on now is just coincidence.”
We’re responsible, he says. “We vote people in and vote people out. We must use the brain that God gave us to make intelligent choices. We cannot be more concerned about the soccer game or Dancing with the Stars than about the debt.”
We have $18.4 trillion in debt. To put that in perspective, if we were to pay $10 million a day toward the debt, it would take more than 5,000 years to pay off. “We cannot continue to put people in office who are more concerned about the next election than the next generation.”
Italy, he notes, faced a path similar to Greece’s. In Italy, they raised the retirement age and reduced payments to retirees by 40 percent. “That’s painful,” he acknowledges. “The longer we wait, the more painful it will be. And, you know, there’s a thing called sacrifice.”
America has the most powerful economic engine in the world. But we have the highest corporate tax rate. “How will that cause our economic engine to start up? It won’t. It will make corporations move overseas.”
Carson suggests a corporate tax holiday of six months to encourage corporations to repatriate overseas money. “That would be a gigantic stimulus to the economy.” The only caveat, he says, is that he would require 10 percent of the repatriated money to be spent on creating jobs. “I grew up poor,” he says. “A lot of poor people” — he doesn’t say all or even a majority — “are willing to work hard but they don’t see opportunity. We don’t have to give them the ladder, but we can help them to be able to realize their opportunity.”
He thinks there are too many government regulations and would like to get rid of the “vast majority” of them. That doesn’t mean he’s anti-government. “Our Founders were wise, and they said,” — and here he paraphrases from Federalist 51, which in full is — “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
He’d like to reform the tax code, too. “I like God’s tithing plan.” In other words, a flat rate. “If you make $10, you pay $1. If you make $10 million, you pay $1 million.” Some people may think that’s not fair. “Yes, it is.” Rather than try to tax the millionaire more, he says, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to make it possible for him to make $20 million next year? Then he’ll pay $2 million in taxes.
What frightens him most is our failure to play a leadership role in the world. Others will fill the gap, and they will not be as benign as we are. We should use every resource to destroy the jihadists. “Our goal should not be to contain them, but to destroy them.” And he’s a dove, he says. “But a pragmatic dove.” He didn’t support the Iraq invasion because he didn’t think it was a national security issue. But Islamic jihadism is such a threat.
We are responsible, he says, repeating an earlier theme. The baton of liberty is in our hands. We are all Nathan Hale, who, when he was about to be hanged by the British, said, “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.” We must be willing to stand for what we believe in. “We are the only thing that will provide freedom to those who come after us. If we don’t do it now, it’s too late.”
A woman asks him if he thinks that judges should be elected. He says he doesn’t know but thinks appointments are too political. “Judges do not have the right to create law.” We need a forceful legislative branch to counter that. When people back off of their responsibilities, other will always fill the gap. He doesn’t want to change the Constitution. “Congress has the power to countermand laws that have been created by judges.” They need to do so.
He’s asked about immigration—illegal immigration. “We have an illegal immigration problem,” he says. We have to secure the borders: southern, northern, and oceanic. We don’t have to use a fence everywhere. We have many assets. What we don’t have is the will. For those already here, he supports a guest-worker program. If they want to be citizens and vote, though, they have to go to the back of the line. One way to reduce illegal immigration, he notes, is to improve Central American infrastructure. But he doesn’t mean through government assistance. There are American companies in Cameroon right now setting up farming infrastructure—and reaping the benefits. Let’s make it easier for American companies to do business in Central America. They’ll create jobs there, and, as a result, there will be fewer illegal immigrants in America.
Kath Allen, New Hampshire chairwoman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, asks Carson about Social Security. “It’s a big Ponzi scheme,” he says. “We’re going to run out of money.” We should offer people the opportunity to opt out of Social Security for a tax credit. For people younger than 55, we need to gradually increase the age at which you can receive benefits. “Also, if we fix the economy, a lot of these entitlement programs won’t be as big a concern. So it’s important to get our economic engine running again.” When I speak to Allen in the parking lot afterwards, she doesn’t seem satisfied with his answer. “Social Security is not an entitlement,” she says. She wants to raise the cap on taxable income and thinks it’s unfair to raise the age at which you can receive benefits.
The final question asked of Carson in the town hall is about gun rights. “There’s one thing I’m not clear on,” asks a gentleman. “Where do you stand on the Second Amendment?” Carson says, “Earlier in the campaign, when I wasn’t quite as savvy—I’m more savvy now, have you noticed?—I was asked about the Second Amendment, and I didn’t realize that with media types you have to answer the question first with ‘I support it completely.’ ” Instead, he started his answer earlier in the campaign by saying he worried about guns in the hands of mentally disturbed people, and that in densely populated areas—cities—there was a higher risk of gun violence. The Second Amendment’s an incredibly important part of our Constitution, Carson emphasizes now. “Daniel Webster said, ‘Tyranny will not happen in America, because the people are armed.” We need guns to protect ourselves from foreign invaders, and from tyrannical government. He supports it completely.
Carly Fiorina in New Hampshire
Carly Fiorina has faith in people. Everyone has God-given gifts, she tells those of us gathered at Turbocam’s manufacturing plant in Barrington, New Hampshire. That means everyone in the world has potential. “So why is our nation better?” Here you have a right to fulfill your potential. That right comes from God. She notes that she started her career as a secretary, answering the phones and typing memos. Only in this nation, she says, could she go from being a secretary to the CEO of a major corporation.
She thanks Turbocam for hosting us and for giving her a tour of their facility. Before Fiorina spoke, a representative of the company addressed the crowd briefly (they are a “a global turbomachinery development and manufacturing company that specializes in 5-axis machining of flowpath components”). Turbocam is proud to help the community. “Say we have a product that costs 90 cents to build, and we sell it for $1,” he says. “We’ll give 1 or 2 cents to charity, say to build a new park. But that’s not the only way we improve the community. Of the 90 cents it cost to build that product, 50 cents went to salary. And our employers then spend that in the community.” Their website also highlights the efforts of the company’s founder and CEO, Marian Noronha, to end slavery in Nepal.
Fiorina notes that Turbocam, like HP, started out as a small business. “We’re at a point where the things in this country that give us the opportunity to fulfill our potential are being crushed by government,” she says. “We are destroying more business than we are creating.” And it’s not big businesses that are being destroyed, she says. Big businesses can afford to do business with big government. “That’s called crony capitalism.” There are more than 70,000 pages in the tax code, she says. Small business owners tell her they’re filing their taxes late because they can’t understand the rules, and sometimes their accountants can’t understand the rules. At the same time, the IRS has announced they won’t be answering everyone’s questions because they “don’t have enough money.” Have you ever noticed, she says, that government always needs more money? Why is that? The TSA has a 95 percent failure rate. They want more money. The VA is unable to serve all our veterans. They want more money.
People sense there is a permanent political class in this country. “Ever notice that there are all these great ideas during campaign season,” for reforming entitlements, protecting the border, etc., but that “nothing ever gets done?”
One recent example of something that did get done came after the VA scandal broke. There was a tremendous amount of public pressure. Within weeks congress passed a law, and President Obama signed it, which made it possible to fire top level staff in the VA. “Only one person got fired,” she notes ruefully. “But it shows that pressure works.”
Returning to her faith in the people, she says if she’s president she’ll take her message directly to the people. “I’ll give a talk in the Oval Office, and I’ll say, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to fire federal employees who don’t do their jobs? Take out your cell phone—press 1 for yes, 2 for no.’ ” The crowd cheers. “Do you think federal employees who watch pornography all day should be fired? 1 for yes, 2 for no!”
Hillary Clinton must not be president, Fiorina declares. “Not because she’s a woman, but because her ideas are wrong.” Also, Clinton has no record of accomplishments.
There is a difference between being a leader and a manager, she says. She discusses her time at HP. Managers work within the existing structure. Leaders push the boundaries. Yes, she got fired. That’s because she was willing to do things that might be unpopular with the board but that she believed were best for the company. She notes the various ways in which HP grew during the time she was CEO.
If she is president, she will make two phone calls on her first day. The first will be to Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him the United States will support Israel. She says this will be important not only for the relationship between the United States and Israel but also for our relations with other allies — allies whose leaders are currently thinking “If the US won’t stand up for Israel, why would they stand up for us?” We need to support our allies, she says. Egypt is fighting ISIS. We need to help them. Jordan’s King Abdullah has asked us for specific materiel. We need to send it to him.
Her next phone call will be to Ali Khamenei. “Arguably, he won’t answer the phone—but he’ll get the message. And the message is this: I don’t care what agreement you’ve made with Barack Obama. There’s a new agreement. You will open every nuclear facility to inspection, or we will freeze all your assets and make it impossible for Iran to do business internationally.” This will send a message to Iran, and to all of our enemies. “I would not call Vladimir Putin,” she says. “We’ve done enough talking to Putin.” She would immediately renew missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. She would arm the Ukrainians. And she would aggressively send American troops into the Balkan states to perform military exercises with them.
Fiorina speaks for about 40 minutes, pacing slowly in front of the crowd, microphone in hand, without notes. She’s a good speaker. Really good. The crowd nods, laughs, cheers along with her.
A young man, still in college, asks her what can be done to reach out to young people. “Most college students are not on our side,” he laments. She suggests talking not about politics directly, but about things that college students care about and that affect them. Ask them if they realize that their student-loan interest rates are high because the student-loan industry was nationalized as part of Obamacare, and that, as a result, there’s no more competition. Do they realize that the government charges them several times the interest rate that the government pays on its own debt? Do they think that’s fair? Do they understand that when there’s competition, prices go down? Do they recognize that in the technology sector there’s tremendous competition, and prices are continuously dropping?
“A lot of us here in New Hampshire support the Second Amendment,” says another man. “What’s your position?”
“Well, I’m pro,” she says. It’s about as simple as that. The crowd cheers. “Frank is a gun owner. I’m not a very good shot, but if need be, I could protect my family.” The crowd drowns her out with applause. She notes that whenever there is a mass-shooting, for instance recently in South Carolina, politicians rush in to use it to their advantage. But South Carolina has gun control laws, some of the same laws that President Obama and others have called for. They don’t work. “Look at the states and cities with the worst gun crime. They have the strictest laws.”
“What role, if any, should the federal government have in education?” asks a woman who is a teacher in Virginia.
“Well, here are some facts,” says Fiorina. “Over the past 50 years, federal spending on education has increased”—and here she uses a statistic that I can’t quite remember, but let’s just say “exponentially.” And education has not improved. Test scores are down. “There is no connection between federal spending and quality of education. The truth is the secret to a good education is a good teacher and two parents. That’s it.” She remembers the Chicago teacher’s union strike a few years ago. The president of the union had been quoted as saying that teachers cannot be held accountable for the performance of students in their class, because most of those students are poor and come from broken families. “The Democrats are wrong on this issue,” says Fiorina. Everyone has potential, and our schools are failing to provide our children with the ability to realize their full potential.
“Hi, I work for Ricochet.com,” I say, shaking her hand. “We’d love to have you back on the podcast some time.”
“Oh, any time,” she says. “I did the podcast not too long ago, actually. Yeah, I liked it”
“Yeah, was it during CPAC?”
“I think it was the First in the Nation Leadership Summit here in New Hampshire. Listen, talk to my press secretary, Anna.”
Anna Epstein gives me her card. “Any time,” she says. “Carly really enjoyed being on the podcast before.”
Helping the Families of the Mentally Ill
On June 4, Representative Tim Murphy (R., PA) re-introduced the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act. He has been trying to get the bill passed since December 2013. It has received significant bipartisan support, and now has 77 Republican and 38 Democrat co-sponsors. My representative Frank Guinta (R., NH) is a co-sponsor. Last month, my wife traveled to Washington, D.C., with E. Fuller Torrey’s Treatment Advocacy Center to lobby for it.
I knew something was wrong when my wife started shaking uncontrollably. “We told you this would happen!” she managed to say into the phone, her voice breaking. It was a few years ago, in late in November. A state social worker had just called her to inform her that her brother had stopped taking his medication for schizophrenia. He had disappeared. No one had any idea where he was.
Indeed, she and her siblings had told them this would happen, repeatedly. Her brother — who is, I must stress, a most kind and generous man when he is not in the throes of a psychotic breakdown — had been in a court-ordered state guardianship for several years. That meant that his treatment team could monitor his medication; if he stopped taking it, they could immediately put him into the hospital before he spiralled out of control. He had done so well in the guardianship that his team decided he didn’t need to have a guardian any more. But the reason he was doing well was because of the guardianship.
His family strenuously objected to the plan to dissolve the guardianship. Based on more than 40 years of experience with his illness, they feared their brother’s well-being would be endangered. The state social worker, who had known my brother-in-law for about a year, and saw him perhaps once a month, disagreed. She wrote to them confidently, ignorantly:
He has been capable of making his own decisions and shows insight into his illness. He is a good advocate for himself, and has not needed someone else to serve in that capacity. … Your brother is not “falling through the cracks”; he is building his own foundation, which is solid. He will continue to receive the services that he is receiving; the good care he gets and the support will remain in place, even if the judge grants your brother’s petition.
She was wrong. He immediately fell through the cracks. Within a few weeks of the guardianship’s dissolution by the Probate Court, he stopped taking his medication. This is a common occurrence among those who suffer from severe mental illness — part of the affliction is that they do not believe they are mentally ill. Sometime after that, he disappeared. The social worker, who had coached him in how to get the guardianship dissolved, had by then moved on. She had blithely done her damage; now she was going back to school for a master’s degree. I shudder to think of the havoc she will wreak throughout her career.
But it gets worse. The social worker did incredible harm to my brother-in-law (and sowed discord between him and his family, telling him that they were “giving him a bum deal” and “stigmatizing” him), but she was not ultimately responsible. The court based its decision on the recommendation of the psychiatrist. Unbeknownst to us, the psychiatrist who recommended that the court dissolve the guardianship had also recommended that William Bruce be released from a psychiatric hospital several years earlier.
You most likely will not have heard of William Bruce before. My wife writes today at National Review in an article about the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act:
Joe Bruce has told his story a number of times, including before Congress, but the brute facts bear repeating: His schizophrenic son [William] was discharged from the psychiatric hospital against the advice and repeated pleas from the family, who warned doctors that they did not feel safe and that their son needed ongoing treatment, including supervision and medication. The psychiatrist, social workers, and “patient advocates” disagreed, believing that they knew better than the family. William Bruce was released, put on a bus, and given enough money to pay for a hotel room for two weeks. Two months later, he returned home and murdered his mother with a hatchet. Naturally, no one on William Bruce’s treatment team — all of whom were government employees — was held accountable for their fatal error in judgment.
By chance, one of William Bruce’s psychiatrists happened to treat my own brother, also severely schizophrenic, a few years later. This psychiatrist advocated before a judge that my brother be released from the court-ordered guardianship under which he had been living, and under which his condition had markedly improved. My family pleaded and nearly begged the psychiatrist, arguing that more than four decades of experience had shown us that without ongoing supervision and consistent medication, my brother would soon stop taking medication and head quickly downhill. We had seen it happen dozens upon dozens of times, watched as he cycled between psych wards and jail, unable to hold a job or keep an apartment for long. More than once he had come very close to dying, sometimes endangering others, as when he led police on a high-speed car chase on a crowded coastal route. Our arguments fell on deaf ears. My brother was judged by this psychiatrist — who had so grievously misjudged William Bruce — as ready to be “free.” He was competent, the psychiatrist said, to make decisions in his own best interest. He had a “good understanding” of his illness, we were assured. We simply did not appreciate how “smart” he was, one young social worker (who had never seen my brother in a psychotic state) scolded us sternly.
Several days after that harrowing phone call, my wife received another call. Her brother had been found. Somehow, no one knows how, he had travelled 300 miles north from his group home. The police found him wandering on the street without a coat. This was on or about November 30th, and the temperature was below freezing. He was so deep into his psychosis that according to the police, he was no longer speaking English. He would spend the next 18 months in a maximum-security mental institution.
The social worker had written to my wife’s family, prior to the guardianship being dissolved:
The legal mandate is for the least restrictive measures to be utilized. Taking someone’s rights away is very invasive. Your brother would be capable of making his own decisions and remaining with the treatment that is currently in place without a guardian. …
We are also morally and ethically obligated to do what is in the best interests of the client. This is not always what they want, or what their family wants. We need to ensure that our client’s rights are not violated, and one of [his] rights is to petition the court to have the guardianship dissolved.
What a fool. She was wrong. He was not capable of making his own decisions and remaining with the treatment without a guardian. It was not in his best interest to put him in a situation where he was wandering the streets of a remote northern town, without a jacket, incapable even of speaking English. How were his rights protected by setting him up for failure, leading to his forced hospitalization for over a year? Luckily, the court has put my brother-in-law back into a guardianship. Naturally, there has been no acknowledgement that removing the guardianship, which endangered my brother-in-law’s life and the lives of others, was a mistake (the same judge presided over the removal and the reinstitution of the guardianship).
Murphy’s bill would, among other things, make it easier for families to be involved in the treatment and ongoing care of their loved ones. My wife’s family and the Bruce family are not the only ones whose pleas have fallen on deaf ears. My wife writes:
Creigh Deeds, the Democratic state senator from Virginia whose mentally ill son stabbed him multiple times before committing suicide in 2013, recently testified before Congress in support of the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act. In particular, he described the role that privacy laws played in obstructing treatment for his son:
HIPAA prevented me from accessing the information I needed to keep him safe and help him towards recovery. Even though I was the one who cared for him, fed him, housed him, transported him, insured him, I was not privy to any information that could clarify for me his behaviors, his treatment plan, and symptoms to be vigilant about. I did not know his diagnosis, prescription changes, and necessary follow-up. I had sought to have him hospitalized earlier, so he was wary of my having any information. So I was in the dark as I tried to advocate for him in the best way I could with the best information I had.
We hope that Congress will pass the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act.
Rachel Dolezal Is a Black Woman
Rachel Dolezal is a black woman who happened to be born into a white body.
A prominent civil rights activist in the United States is facing investigation after her parents accused her of falsely passing herself off as black.
Rachel Dolezal, 37, has been the head of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, or NAACP, in Spokane, Washington, since January. But her parents have now told US media that Ms Dolezal is in fact white – and has spent several years deliberately misleading the public and her colleagues about her race.“She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” her father, Larry Dolezal, told Buzzfeed. “We’re puzzled and it’s very sad.”
Sure, her parents say Rachel Dolezal’s actually of “Czech, Swedish, and German” descent, making her whiter than white, but that’s just her cis-race. Who are we to force her to accept society’s arbitrary rules? Race is not a black and white issue. It’s far more nuanced than that. If she says she’s black, then she’s black.
There are those who will seek to belittle Dolezal for her courageous transition from white to black (wtb), but we should celebrate her, just as we celebrate Caitlyn Jenner for her transition from male to female (mtf). Already, Dolezal’s been on the receiving end of hate, just because she identifies as black:
Dolezal said she found a threatening package in the NAACP’s post office box in February, KXLY reported. The city of Spokane later sent out a press release that the package contained racist messages and death threats. The city statement reiterated that it was the ninth hate crime Dolezal had experienced.
The police, of course, are not taking these threats seriously, typical of the rigid cis-race hegemony.
Dolezal claims to have received a number of threatening letters and pictures of lynching in the NAACP’s P.O. box — but the letters did not have date stamps or barcodes, according to the Spokane Police Department. The only way the letters could have been placed in the mailbox would have been via someone with a key or a USPS employee. Police said they have ruled out postal employees as suspects.
Trans-race, it’s the new trans-gender!
Rick Perry’s Fighting Spirit
Rick Perry’s fighting spirit is in strong shape, he says when asked by my wife. We’re standing in someone’s yard in Meredith, New Hampshire, and Perry is making his way through the crowd of approximately 50 people, shaking hands and speaking directly to each person. The event starts at 1PM, and he’s arrived promptly on time. As new residents in the state, my wife and I were somewhat perplexed when we arrived to see that the event was not taking place in some auditorium, or even a parking lot, but on a quiet residential street in — I know I just wrote this at the beginning of the paragraph but it bears repeating — someone’s back yard. This type of thing does not happen in New York.
Perry talks with us for several minutes—telling us he’s energized, that during the last campaign he was coming off of back surgery—then begins to turn away to the next person. But I’m not quite done and say, “I hope you’ll use that energy to go after Democrats, not others on our side.” He turns back says, “You know, you’re right—and I’ve talked with Jeb, and with Marco, and several of the others about that. And Carly. Carly was born in Texas, did you know that?” He goes on to sing Carly Fiorina’s praises. “Oh, she’s smart,” he says. “You know, she was at the head of HP when I was governor.” He talks about California businesses moving to Texas. “I’ve been on the other side of the negotiating table from Carly,” he says. “She’s good.” Finally, he moves on to the next couple.
We find ourselves standing between Mike Thornton, Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, and Brad Thor, the New York Times best-selling author. Marcus and Morgan, the Luttrell twins, are over by the back, along with several other veterans. Marcus appears to have brought his dog with him.
Then Perry gets up on a plywood and cinder block stage in front of the garage and speaks passionately about veterans and national security. Echoing his announcement speech, he talks about visiting the American cemetery in Normandy. “All 9,000 graves, white crosses and stars of David, they face west, towards America, towards the country they fought to protect, the country they’d never go home to. And it struck me, that they sit in silent judgement of us. And what we need to ask is, are we worthy?”
After Perry speaks, he takes some questions. A veteran in the crowd asks, “Will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance?” Perry turns and faces the flag and we all recite as one. Another man, who says he’s from San Diego, asks a multi-part question about border security. Perry’s answer is multi-part. He talks about the length of the border. Talks about his use of the National Guard during the summer of 2014. “Look, everyone who’s running will tell you, ‘I will secure the border.’ ” Even Barack Obama says, “ ‘we’ve increased the number of border agents.’ And that’s technically true, but he didn’t even know that his own agents are 45 miles north of the border in an apprehension deployment.”
What’s needed, says Perry, are strategic fences in urban areas, plus assets in remote areas including aerial drones, rapid response teems, and agents “in the water.” You can increase the number of border agents, he says, but if they’re in the wrong place, then it doesn’t matter. We need them “in the water” he repeats (meaning the Rio Grande). His detailed, nuanced response on border security and immigration (“It’s pointless to have a debate on immigration reform until we secure the border”), made me think Ann Coulter might be willing to reassess the dim view of him that she expressed in the Ricochet Podcast last week.
Then Perry takes pictures with everyone who wants one. One of his young aides, while politely trying to get Perry to head towards the cars—they have to be in Concord at 4PM for another barbecue—takes pictures using phones that have been handed to him. Then they get into their Suburban and leave precisely at 2:30.
We left feeling energized. I’m not sure that Perry will be my candidate in the New Hampshire primary, but I was quite impressed by him. He is truly a skilled retail politician, as others have described him.
I look forward to meeting other candidates.
Watch Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress this morning. You can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lELXynhbS84
In addition, here’s his AIPAC speech from yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSh4tsSh2Ts