Categories
Today

Treaty with Japan, Dalai Lama flees, anti-poll tax riot in London

On March 31, 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.

On March 31, 1959, the Dalai Lama fled the Chinese military suppression of the revolt in Tibet, crossing the border into India, where he was granted political asylum. Thirty years later, in 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his nonviolent campaign to end the Chinese domination of Tibet.

On March 31, 1990, an anti-poll tax rally in London led to the city’s worst riots in a century, with 113 people injured, including 45 policemen, and 340 people arrested. The violence erupted after 70,000 people took to the streets in protest of the new government levy.

Categories
Thought

Dalai Lama

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall

Between a Rock and Our Rights

It’s heart-breaking to read the daily accounts of the Syrian government shelling neighborhoods and snipers gunning down protesting citizens in the streets. Syria, sadly, is hardly the only place where speaking one’s mind or seeking political change can be met with threats and violence.

Sometimes the brutality comes from the government itself. Sometimes the acts of intimidation and bloodshed come from extra-legal gangs acting in concert with those in power.

Thank goodness we live in a country where one doesn’t have to fear violence for one’s political beliefs and activities.

Or do we?

Like many cities and states in our land, Colorado’s public employee pension system is woefully underfunded, $21 billion behind, putting taxpayers and/or retirees in grave jeopardy. In addition to the financial problem is a serious lack of accountability.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton sits on the board of the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA). But when he asked for some basic information about benefits, the board refused. Stapleton complains that “it seems their objective is for all board members to operate in the dark and act as a rubberstamp for their executives.” He’s filed a lawsuit seeking the information.

Luckily, Colorado citizens have access to the initiative petition process. Recently, Carol Baum and Karen Stauffer filed initiatives to reform PERA, including requiring greater transparency. Last Friday, they attended the first hearings to finalize their measures.

That’s when the threatening phone calls began. And then on Sunday, Karen Stauffer’s car window was smashed out by a large rock.

Something is rotten in Denver. Tyranny is wielding its most powerful weapons: fear and intimidation. The only antidote is courage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Howard Zinn

“If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.”

Categories
Today

New England Restraining Act, 15th Amendment, Seward’s folly

On March 30, 1775, King George III formally endorsed the New England Restraining Act, requiring New England colonies to trade exclusively with Great Britain and banning colonists from fishing in the North Atlantic.

On March 30, 1870, the 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution. One day later, the first African-American male voted in New Jersey.

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward signed a treaty with Russia purchasing Alaska for $7 million. Despite the price of approximately two cents an acre, the purchase was ridiculed in the press as “Seward’s folly.”

Categories
Thought

Sam Walton

“There is only one boss: The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Categories
Today

Sam Walton born, Frankfurt captured, Calley convicted

On March 29, 1918, Walmart founder Sam Walton was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.

On March 29, 1945, Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army captured Frankfurt, Germany. Patton’s troops then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets.

On March 29, 1971, Lt. William Calley was found guilty of premeditated murder at My Lai by a U.S. Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Though investigators of the massacre produced a list of 30 people who knew of the atrocity, only 14 were charged with crimes, and all eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley.
Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. He was paroled in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.

On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat soldiers left Vietnam.

Categories
education and schooling folly

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Schools

Sticks and stones break bones, but words hurt more subtly. Old-school advice was that, growing up, one had to grin and bear it, let a few of our psychological wounds scab over, and get on with life.

But that is not “new school” wisdom. Nowadays, moved by a perhaps overweening sense of kindness (or politicized fear) educators tend to prohibit certain words, the better to protect some folks from taking offense.

The New York Post reports that, in a “bizarre case of political correctness run wild,” the people in charge of public schools have

banned references to “dinosaurs,” “birthdays,” “Halloween” and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests.

That’s because they fear such topics “could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.”

Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays aren’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism.

Even “dancing’’ is taboo, because some sects object. But the city did make an exception for ballet.

The “educrats” say such exclusions are nothing new, and I believe them. They’re inevitable when you have a government-run school system that “services” a wide diversity of “clients.” The only real solution is to stop having the government run the schools. If you must support education with tax money, give vouchers to poor people. That would let a diversity of tutors and schools compete for parents’ and students’ attention . . . perhaps sometimes by catering to fears of dinosaurs, Halloween and dancing.

Odd, though, in one sense: If you really want not to “evoke unpleasant emotions in the students,” you could stop making them take tests. For most kids, tests are the most unsettling, truly horrifying aspect of schooling.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Dwight D. Eisenhower (died March 28, 1969)

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

Categories
Today

Parliment adopts Coercive Acts

On March 28, 1774, the British Parliament adopted the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts aimed at restoring order in Massachusetts and punishing Bostonians for the Tea Party, in which the Sons of Liberty boarded three British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of tea—valued at nearly $1 million in today’s money—into the water to protest the Tea Act. Rather than abandon Bostonians to a kind of martial law, the other colonies rushed to the city’s defense and began to discuss British misrule, leading to the First Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia in September 1774.