Voter Fraud

Voter fraud is in the news again.  It seems that several models of electronic voting machines are susceptible to being hacked, perhaps throwing the election to the other unqualified and much despised candidate.  While this is not really the topic that I want to discuss, I do have a suggestion:  Unplug the machines from the internet and manually add up the reports from each machine.   Tallying the final results will take longer, but trust me, this is not an election where anybody is desperate to hear the results. 

There is all kinds of voter fraud.  In 2004, Florida determined that at least 100,000 of its registered voters were also registered to vote in other states (chiefly the states of New York and Georgia).  While it proved impossible to get an exact number, the states cooperated and determined that some voters had indeed registered in both states.  And for decades, the number of registered voters in Mississippi exceeded the state’s population.  Today, it is estimated that 1.8 million deceased people are registered to vote in the upcoming election.

And just a few minutes ago, I heard of a new—and weird—form of voter fraud.   Several states have such a lengthy early voting period, that by the time this blog post is online, voting will have already started in several states.  The problem is that--regardless of when you vote--you must be alive on Election Day for your vote to be valid.  And with an early voting period of two months, there are a predictable number of people who won’t still be around on Election Day.

Personally, I don’t think that any of this adds up to a significant number, and I’m not worried about it.  When you get right down to it, I’m not worried about any form of voter fraud: I just do not believe that it is a significant problem.  This is a leap of faith for a Texan;  in the Lone Star State, as I was growing up, I was heavily steeped in the lore of “Landslide Lyndon” and a few of his friends.  El Paso once had an election in which the number of votes cast was three times the number of registered voters!

While I am sure there are still isolated cases of voter fraud, they probably do not favor any one political party, but rather, statistically cancel each other out.  (Of course, if it is done well, you will never know the voter fraud occurred.)

The problem is that quite a few people are convinced that voter fraud actually is a problem.  There is not much in the way of proof available, but that is not the problem.  If people actually believe that American elections are in any way corrupted, then we do indeed have a problem. 

Every American should have the right to believe that his vote is important and that his vote matters.  Today, the issued that probably upsets the most voters, however, is not how much voter fraud might be occurring, but the issue of voter identification.

Somehow, this issue has deeply divided this country.  While you have to show an ID to board a plane, check out a library book, or buy pain or cold medication from a pharmacy, in almost half the states of the US, no identification is necessary at the polls. 

I understand the arguments against voter ID, and at least part of me agrees.  I don’t like showing an ID, and perhaps getting an ID might put a hardship on some people, but I thought I might share a little information on the subject that I found surprising.

Mexico has required a government-issued ID card since the 1990’s.  And Mexico adopted the cards for a simple reason:  their citizens no longer believed their elections were fair and honest.  Mexico had a long tradition of electoral crooks known as Mapaches, or raccoons, who went about stuffing and stealing ballot boxes.  The new ID has been widely accepted by the citizens and helped foster a feeling that democracy works in the country.

Interestingly, several Latin American countries started using voter ID as a means of insuring that the votes of minorities were included.  This view is polar opposite of what many who oppose voter ID in the United States believe.

As far as I have checked, every country in North and South America requires an ID of some form, with a photo.  The only country that does not is the United States, where thirty-three states have some form of identification requirement.  The laws in five of these states are being challenged in federal court.

In several countries, Argentina is an example, voting is mandatory.  When you vote, a notation is made on your ID card.  If a policeman examines your card and notices that you did not vote, you can be fined.  The system is not perfect, especially in poorer countries.  The poor in countries like Bolivia have a difficult time establishing their identity, but the country is making progress in fixing this problem.

Not only does all of Europe require an identification card to vote, but it seems to be true all over the world.  In the entire world, the only country I can find, other than the United States, that does not require an identification card before you can vote is the Philippines.   If you are voting there, you do not have to show an ID, unless an election official asks to see it.

I found a few countries that would allow provisional voting without an ID, giving you time later to prove citizenship.  And several countries would allow two or more citizens with proper identification to sign an affidavit testifying citizenship for a third party.  But, I found no country that would allow people to vote without a form of identification.

Other than United States.

Observations From a Bench

For obvious reasons, my doctors have me walking a lot more than I used to.  Walking without a destination is boring, yet when I actually walk somewhere, everyone yells at me.  The other day, I walked to the local mall, but was too tired to walk home.  When I called The Doc, my wife, for a ride home, for a little while it looked like I was going to have to live at the mall.

“Are you trying to die?”, she asked.  “Why are you pushing it?”  Actually, it took a while before she said this, for most of the trip home she wouldn’t talk to me.

Of course I’m trying to die early.  That’s why I have spent the last ten years eating what I call "the goat puke diet".  If fish and chicken are honorary vegetables—and I believe they are—then I have been a vegetarian for a decade.  In a desperate attempt to lower my cholesterol, I no longer can remember what steak or milk taste like.  In the end, it didn’t matter, genetics won out over a diet that was better suited for a compost pile than my digestive system.

So, I’m walking a lot.  Actually, it is only a little, unless you too have had a bypass.  If you have had one, then you know what it's like to climb Mount Everest--at least if you laid it on its side.  (And flattened it a little).  While it might be strange for a person who lives in a mountainous state to say this, I currently believe that hills should be made illegal.

I have learned the exact location of every bus stop bench within two miles of my house.  As far as I can tell, there are far too many buses and far too few benches.  I have yet to see a bus drive by with more than four passengers, so it is rather obvious that the town is running a transit system at a huge loss.  Naturally, I have a suggestion:  For the next month, they should take the names of all the bus passengers, then sell the buses and just buy those few riders who actually use the service their own cars.  With the balance of the savings, the city should purchase more benches.

Actually, I have not yet encountered anyone sitting at one of the benches who was actually waiting for a bus.  The benches are being used by joggers, by skate boarders, and by a whole gaggle of elderly people who have been sent out to walk in the hot New Mexico sun.  People like me. 

Sitting on a bench alongside a busy street is a surprisingly good place to pass the time while thinking deep thoughts.  Deep Thoughts.  It is also a great place to wheeze and try to cough up a lung from the exertion of having walked a whole block. 

Evidently, the economy in southern New Mexico is slowly improving.  John D. MacDonald, the prolific author, once postulated that the best way to gauge the economy of an area was to plant yourself and observe traffic.  Count the number of cars that need body work or obvious repair.  I don’t remember what a passing score was, but in my decidedly non-scientific experiment, I only saw one car in need of serious body work, and it belonged to the local police department.

I’ve also observed that no one knows what bike lanes are for.  My walk was in the middle of the day, so this may explain why I saw absolutely no one riding a bike.  Bike lanes were used by people as a turn lanes, by the phone company for parking, and by that dented police car's occupant to give some poor soul a ticket.  If you actually tried to ride a bike in the "Bike Lane", you’d probably get run over.

Nor would I try to use any of the marked crosswalks.  One of those is directly in front of my house, and in the thirty years that I have lived there, I think I have seen someone stop for a pedestrian in it twice.  If someone did actually stop, most likely it would be to lure someone out so they could run over them.  Several of the cars seem named for this kind of violence:  Dodge, Probe, Ram, Diablo, and Fury.  Then again, if car names indicated how they would be used, the Hummer would have been a lot more popular.

Why are most of the people who are out walking "for their health" smoking cigarettes?  And why do they invariably flick the butts into other people’s front yards?  Are they mad at the people who don’t smoke?  I personally think that if you catch someone flicking a cigarette butt into your yard, you should be allowed to run over them with your car (but I might be a tad anti-social because of the lack of oxygen to my brain from walking too far).

By now, you must be wondering exactly why I have spent so much time sitting on this bench when I am supposed to be exercising.   Shortly before I decided I needed a long rest, that dented police car stopped in the bicycle lane and the policeman inside got out to talk to me.  He was very nice, very polite, and quite obviously thought I was very drunk.  It seems that I had not been walking too straight a line down the sidewalk.  It didn’t take very long to convince him that I was just stupid and not drunk, however.

He didn’t offer me a ride home, unfortunately!

The Forgotten War

In the news this week is a 12 year-old suicide bomber who murdered over 50 people, mostly women and children, at a wedding in Turkey.  Another young would-be martyr was captured in Iraq.  The likelihood that ISIS would continue to use children to fight its war has many of the talking heads on the nightly news making wild statements on how the United States should fight this new threat.

I certainly do not have an answer, but I would like to point out that this is not the first time our country has faced this problem.  A little over a hundred years ago, in a war no one remembers, we faced the same dilemma. It was in a war properly called The Philippine Resistance—an offshoot of the Spanish American War of 1898.

After suffering military defeats in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the Spanish Government sued for peace on July 26, 1898.  After two weeks, an armistice was signed on August 12, the day before Americans entered the city of Manila in the Philippines.  The entire war had only lasted a little less than 4 months and while 5,462 of the 274,000 men who served in the war had died, only 379 had died in battle.  The rest had died of malaria, typhoid, dysentery, or yellow fever.

By several measures, this was not much of a war, but the peace protocol specified that Spain would give up Cuba and the United States would annex Puerto Rico and occupy Manila pending final disposition of the Philippines.

A Peace Commission eventually drafted the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898.  The treaty, however did not specify what to do with the Philippines, as The Commission itself was divided over the issue.

Note.  If you are ever on Jeopardy or some other game show and you are asked for the name of the treaty that ended some obscure war, just answer either the Treaty of Paris or the Treaty of Ghent:  You have about a 50% chance of being correct.

Even President McKinley was unsure of what to do with the Philippines.  (Privately, he later admitted that he couldn't find the country on a White House globe the first time he looked.)  While some Americans railed against America's growing Imperialism, others saw Asia as a fertile market of millions waiting to buy American goods.

Still others saw a chance to "save the heathens" of Asia by extending missionary activities. 

McKinley finally reached a conclusion.  As he explained to a gathering of missionaries:

And one night late it came to me this way—I don't know how it was, but it came:  (1) that we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly and dishonorable;  (2)  that we could not turn them over to France or Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable;  (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4)  that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.  And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.

Even for a politician, that’s quite a statement.  It neatly summarizes all of American Imperialism.  We took the Philippines for:

1.  National Honor

2.  Commerce

3.  Racial Superiority

4.  Altruism

When Spain pointed out that, technically, America had no claim by right of conquest, since American troops had actually occupied Manila the day after the armistice, we settled the point by giving Spain $20 million in compensation.

The final treaty added Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to American territory.

The Treaty of Paris did not make everyone happy in the United States.  Most Democrats, and some Republicans were against it.  Occupation was not democratic, it countered American traditional isolationism, and it could easily involve us in foreign entanglements.  Some in the military even pointed out the impossibility of defending a possession so far from home—a prediction that would prove true 40 years later.

Some worried about how such an alien culture could be blended into the American way of life.  As one elected racist said from the Senate floor, "Bananas and self-government cannot grow on the same piece of land."

Eventually, a consensus formed that the best way to save the Philippines was to take them.  The treaty was ratified on February 6, 1899 by a margin of 2 to 1.

The same month, Rudyard Kipling published the poem, The White Mans Burden.  Without satire, he calls the American people to a new duty:

Take up the White Man's burden—

Send for the best ye breed—

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captive's need;

to wait in heavy harness

On fluttered fold and wild—

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

President William McKinley issued a proclamation on December 21, 1898, declaring United States policy towards the Philippines to be one of "benevolent assimilation" in which "the mild sway of justice and right" would be substituted for "arbitrary rule." 

By this time, America’s task of helping his "little brown brother" had taken a strange and violent turn.  We had forgotten to ask the Filipinos if they wanted our help.  They didn’t, and were resisting militarily.

It is ironic that before we could impose a colonial rule to help the Filipinos, we had to fight a war in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 to crush a Philippine nationalist insurgency.  Filipino insurgents were already fighting the Spanish for independence when Dewey's fleet arrived. 

Dewey's victory was due in part to the attack on Manila by Aguinaldo.  The Filipino patriots believed that they had been promised independence for their efforts and felt betrayed by the terms of the Paris treaty. 

Dewey demanded that the Filipinos leave Manila.  Aguinaldo agreed, but retreated only as far as the suburbs where defensive trenches are dug.

Aguinaldo declared the Philippines to be an independent republic in January 1899 and, in response to McKinley's proclamation, issued his own.  In it, he said that "violent and aggressive seizure" by the United States was wrong and threatened war.  Hostilities broke out on the night of February 4, 1899, after two American privates on patrol killed three Filipino soldiers in a suburb of Manila.

America fought back immediately, aided by shelling the Filipino trenches from US naval ships in the harbor.  For months, the Filipino forces tried to fight back using conventional warfare, effectively committing suicide, because the Filipinos lacked the arms, the artillery, and the training. 

The Filipino troops, armed with old rifles and bolos, and carrying anting-anting (magical charms), were no match for American troops in open combat, but they were very effective in guerrilla warfare. 

General Ewell S. Otis was appointed commander of the US forces there and military governor of the Philippines.  The war started well for the US, as Otis pushed the rebel forces from Manila and its suburbs.  When Aguinaldo's government sought an armistice, Otis insisted on an unconditional surrender.

General Otis might have been able to crush the rebellion early had he not been faced with a problem that was totally new to American warfare.  How do you fight an enemy and win the people over at the same time?  Or as my generation would later ask, “How do you win the hearts and minds of people you are fighting?”

At the same time, America began instituting civic reforms.  The American army began building new infrastructure for the Philippines:  New roads, schools, hospitals, bridges, railroads, telegraph lines, and telephone lines.  Disease, especially smallpox, cholera, and plague practically disappeared.  Slowly, there were an increasing numbers of Filipino collaborators.    

Aguinaldo fought back as he ordered the establishment of decentralized guerrilla commands in each of several military zones.  More than ever, American soldiers knew the miseries of fighting an enemy that was able to move at will within the civilian population in the villages.  "Pacified" ground only extended as far as a soldier's Krag rifle could shoot.

The guerrillas would not attack unless they were sure they could win and if  chased, they hid their weapons, went home and pretended they were the friendliest natives on the island—But if they captured an American soldier, he would be horribly tortured. 

And the guerrillas began to attack the collaborators, calling it "exemplary punishment on traitors to prevent the people of the towns from unworthily selling themselves for the gold of the invader." 

Inevitably, the American soldiers began committing atrocities of their own. 

In May 1900, General Arthur MacArthur replaced Otis and with a much larger army, MacArthur cracked down.  Guerrillas would be jailed or executed.  Patrols were kept out longer, forcing guerrillas to run longer.  MacArthur also used an old Indian-fighting technique:  he hired thousands of Filipino scouts and police. 

MacArthur, with the help of a new civilian government under Judge William Howard Taft, began building a new civilian government that was a model of efficiency and fairness.

Aguinaldo was captured on March 23, 1901, by a force of Philippine Scouts loyal to the United States and was brought back to Manila.  Convinced of the futility of further resistance, he swore allegiance to the United States and issued a proclamation calling on his compatriots to lay down their arms.  When Aguinaldo made the public announcement, he was wearing a black bow-tie, a symbol of mourning.  Aguinaldo vowed to continue to wear the black bow-tie until the Philippines were granted their independence. 

On September 1901, guerrillas in one of the last remaining uncontrolled provinces wiped out a US infantry company in Samar.  This was the largest military defeat since the death of Colonel Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  America was shocked and demanded retaliation. 

The troops ordered by General Smith to "pacify" Samar were also ordered to take no prisoners.  "I want you to kill and burn, the more you kill and the burn the better it will please me.  I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.  The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness..." 

When the officer leading the detail asked for clarification as to exactly who was capable of bearing arms…his commanding officer answered that this meant anyone over the age of 10 years old.  To this day, historians argue about exactly how many Filipinos were killed during the pacification of the island.

Today, the attack and the retaliation are collectively referred to as the Balangiga Massacre.

By the Spring of 1902, organized resistance was pretty much over.  On the 4th of July, 1902, President Roosevelt declared that the insurrection was over and the United States had been victorious.  No one argued the point with him.

The war the Americans called the Philippine Insurrection lasted nearly three years and claimed the lives of 4,234 US troops and 16,000 Filipino soldiers.  By the end of the war, another 220,000 civilian Filipinos had died, largely from famine and disease.  Both sides committed horrible atrocities.  The monetary cost of the war was $400 million, an amount more than 20 times what had been paid to Spain in 1898.

Following the suppression of the insurrection, the US established a colonial administration in the Philippines.  American teachers, nurses, engineers, and doctors flocked to the Philippines to "modernize" it and English was made the official language.  In 1908, we opened the University of the Philippines to train an elite to implement political democracy and to prepare the Philippines for independence.

This preparation was still underway when WW2 started and the Philippines were seized by the Japanese.

Aguinaldo was finally able to remove his black tie on July 4, 1946, when the US finally gave the Philippines their independence.  

The Lighter Side of a Heart Attack

Okay, it has been a month, and seriously, I'm doing fine.  I'm now doing so much better that I hardly even need a nap after putting on my pants in the morning.  The drugs regularly make me think I am Hercules, only to discover that putting on my socks is a task fully equal to cleaning the Augean stables. 

Heart attacks, and the resulting quintuple bypass procedures, are probably not that much fun normally, but I had great docs, good drugs, and some awesome hallucinations.  If you couple this with the fact that I have absolutely no medical knowledge whatsoever (meaning I misinterpreted every single thing that was happening around me), some of the events, in retrospect, are rather funny.

By the time I was safely in the ambulance, both the oxygen and the nitroglycerin were working fine, and strangely, I was feeling pretty good.  I was strapped to a gurney, and for some reason, I started giggling.  As the ambulance left the university Employee Health Center (which the trolls that pass as administrators at Enema U did indeed close down while I was in the Cardiac Care Center) I suddenly got a text from my brother about something he was doing.  This struck me as hilarious, so I used my phone to take a selfie so I could show him what I was doing.  At right, is the only self photo I know of taken by a guy having a heart attack.

If you know the geography of Enema U, you can probably tell that the ambulance is actually driving away from the hospital, heading due west, instead of east.  I pointed this out to the driver, who informed me that he was following GPS instructions.  They were very nice people, who undoubtedly helped save my life that day, so it would be rude of me to point out that the $500 bill I received from the ambulance company includes charges for mileage.  Oh, well!

I don't remember much of the rest of that day.  Lots of people earnestly explained things to me that I understood not at all.  I agreed to anything that was asked of me, confident that my wife, The Doc, understood all the things that I could not comprehend and would prevent them removing anything I might need later.  What do people who aren't married to surgeons do when they go to the hospital?  Whenever somebody asked me a question, I answered, "I had a boo-boo."  Then I would listen to my wife talk for five minutes straight while I understood not one  single word.  This didn't seem to matter to anyone, since usually the only substantive thing people asked me, repeated endlessly, was, "Can you tell me your birthday?"

I always politely answered, "Yes."

I think I was sedated pretty good:  my last clear memory before the operation was wondering why the room was so cold, then they told me they were about to start the operation.  "Remember," I told no one in particular,  "I haven't paid anybody's bill yet."  Then I lost a day.

The Cardiac Care Unit was actually rather pleasant, people there were excellent and took great care of me, and the hallucinations were fantastic.  At no time did I believe that any of the weird shit I saw was actually real, but I was highly entertained.  Lots of things in the room kept moving: there was a menagerie of furry animals, and people who weren't actually there came to visit (Mary Wolf, frequently).  At one point, I vividly saw Captain Morgan walk through the room.  I have no idea what those drugs were, but I finally understand the meaning of "Better Living Through Chemistry". 

The hallucinations persisted for a while, even after I got home.  For some reason, one particular book seemed to constantly leave a bookcase and move around the bedroom.  Finally, it was so distracting that I had to ask The Doc to hide the book to make it behave.  She thought it was hilarious that the book turned out to be Gregory Maguire's "Lost".  If you have read the book, this is a little creepy.

I had the best student nurses.  I really mean that!  This must have been their first week and they treated me like I was made of eggshells.  They spent at least half an hour putting the telemetry lead patches on my chest.  It was obviously their first attempt at this, since even I could tell that they were placing them wrong (each round patch had a picture on it indicating where it was supposed to go).  I kept mum as they put each patch in the wrong spot, but later, the nurse and I had a good laugh about it.  I wonder what the EKG would have reported if they had actually run it with the leads on weird.

Every experience should be a learning experience, and this has been no exception.  I've learned that hospital food is designed to make you leave the hospital as soon as possible.  I can now prove that late night television is much worse than daytime television.  Most important, I now believe that medical marijuana should be legal and nitroglycerin should be sold in vending machines, but prune juice should require a doctor's prescription.

I'm much improved and I'm home now, but—unfortunately—I'm off all the good drugs now, while they wait for..."something" to stabilize (ask the Doc—she knows!).  In some form of karmic fulfillment, the only drug I am currently taking is...rat poison.  Well, they call it Warfarin, but I lived on Galveston Island for seven years and they used it there to kill wharf rats on the docks. 

I'd look into this, but I'm afraid I might find out it is something my wife arranged.

While I wouldn't actually recommend a heart attack, I can still testify they are more fun than some of the faculty meetings I have suffered through.  Those seemed unreal, but unfortunately weren't hallucinations.

The Pastry War

Mexico has long had a love/hate relationship with France.  Most people are aware that the French invaded Mexico in the 1860's and imposed a puppet monarchy, which resulted in a lengthy and bloody war before Mexico eventually regained its independence.  Less well known is that there was actually an earlier violent French invasion, known as the Pastry War.

After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico was far from stable:  in its first twenty years, there were twenty presidents—most of whom seized power by force.  Additionally, every new president faced the same hurdle—raising enough money to pay the army that had brought him to power, 

In one year (1800), Mexico produced prodigious amounts of silver—so much so that Mexico was the economic engine that ran the Spanish Empire—but during the decades of wars for independence, the men had been pulled from the mines to fight.  The abandoned mines quickly flooded and caved in.  It was almost a century before the mines regained the production levels they had reached during colonial times.

Note.  A visitor from another planet comparing the two dominant countries of North America would have easily predicted which country was destined for greatness.  Possessing great natural resources, vastly larger in territory, one country was clearly more advanced.  Her cities were much larger, had more cultural amenities, and a more integrated society.  Mexico was clearly ahead, and when you factored in the slaves of the United States, had a higher per capita income.  Unfortunately, independence brought stagnation and decay to Mexico.  Less than 50 years later, Mexico lagged far behind the United States.

Desperate for cash, most of the incoming presidents were forced to use the same sources of revenue: forcing loans from the wealthy elite of Mexico—especially foreigners still residing in the country.  Naturally, these loans were almost never repaid.  These individuals would protest to their respective governments, who in turn, would protest to the Mexican government and demand repayment.  Unfortunately, constantly changing administrations, fluctuating exchange rates, and a chronic shortage of funds in the Mexican treasury meant these claims were rarely settled.

In 1828, the shop of a French baker, Remontel, in Mexico City was emptied by the hungry Mexican Army.  Remontel protested to King Louis Philippe of France, who demanded 600,000 pesos in repayment.  Today, this is a meaningless number, but take my word for it:  the French King was asking for a vast fortune.  The average daily wage in Mexico at that time was no more than a single peso per day.  They must have been really good French pastries.

The claim, of course, was not settled.  In the interim, Mexico had another series of presidents, including Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, who—after defeating the defenders of the Alamo—had lost Texas at the Battle of San Jacinto:  Mexico was hardly in the position to repay any of her debts.

In 1838, the French King issued an ultimatum:  either Mexico would pay her debts, or France would take military steps to enforce repayment.  During their early years, most Latin American countries derived their tax revenues almost exclusively from import duties collected at port cities.  Foreign countries, seeking to recover debts, could simply seize port cities and confiscate tax revenues until the debt was recovered.

Seizing ports and tax revenues evolved into a convenient excuse for European countries to attempt to seize New World countries.   This was the same excuse France used when it imposed Maximilian on Mexico a generation later.  In 1916, the United States seized the customs houses of the Dominican Republic to preempt European countries from doing the same thing.  For decades, the US Marines collected import taxes, dividing the revenue between debt repayment and tax revenue for the island nation.  While the Dominicans were unhappy about the occupation, they did note that the half revenue they received was substantially more revenue than they had received when their own people had run the customs houses, themselves.

When Mexico still refused to settle the debt, France sent a fleet to capture Veracruz, Mexico's main port.  The port was protected by a massive fortress, San Juan de Alua, on an island in the harbor.  An imposing structure, it had withstood pirate attacks for centuries.  Unfortunately, this was a different age and the fortress was no match for the modern artillery of the French fleet.  The fleet's exploding artillery rounds quickly ignited the fortress' magazines, making the attack one of the first examples of the futility of stone forts against naval gunnery—which was noticed by military leaders around the world.

France rather quickly captured the entire Mexican navy, bottled up all the ports, and cut off all trade in and out of Mexico while it demanded repayment of the debts.  Mexico tried to smuggle goods into the country, and was forced to land ships as far away as Corpus Christi, Texas and bring the goods overland. 

In the battles of Veracruz, Santa Ana returned from retirement, becoming something of a hero after he was wounded and lost his left leg after having his horse shot out from under him.  This set the stage for his role in the Mexican-American War, just seven years later.

Eventually, both sides tired of the conflict, so Mexico agreed to pay the 600,000 pesos and France agreed to stop the embargo.  Naturally, Mexico borrowed the funds. 

A Twofer?

It sounds childish and naive today, but there once was a time not that long ago when most people generally believed and trusted their government.  The notion that elected officials would actually lie to the public would have been rejected by almost everyone. 

I'm not sure, but perhaps this was because—to my generation, the postwar baby boom generation—the government was run by the Greatest Generation:  the people who had defeated the Nazis in World War II.  It was a generation that was easier to trust.

On more than a few occasions, I have teased Professor Grumbles for his ignorance of economics.  A movie enthusiast, all the good professor knows about economics is what he picked up from watching Frank Capra movies:  a fantasy world where all the business men are evil Mr. Potters and banks exist only to cheat the working man and to foreclose on widows and orphans.

Truthfully, in my own way, I am just as guilty as Professor Grumbles, for while I know better, I still want to believe that every politician is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  I want to believe that no matter how corrupt the candidate, once the election is over, the weight and importance of the job will descend upon the newly-elected and a change will take place whereby he becomes worthy of the high ideals I want to believe exist—if only because they are the things worth believing in.

Unfortunately for me, it was difficult to live through the Sixties and hold on to such childish notions.  Even for a poor dumb ol' country boy, it was hard to escape reality during a decade that was all but engineered to be the end of innocence.  Whether it was the Vietnam War, the Peace Movement, or an increasingly aggressive press, this was the generation that became all too aware of what the nightly news called the "Credibility Gap."

As a child, I must have been dumb as a post, for I think I was the last teenager in America to realize the truth, but eventually, even I wised up.  One day in school, there was a mandatory viewing of a drug film—part of the endless campaign against the evils of marijuana.  I wish I could remember the name of the film, but the plot was easy to follow.  A sailor fell in with evil companions while on shore leave and smoked a dreaded marijuana cigarette.  Months later, the sailor was back on duty aboard an aircraft carrier, where his job was to help provide radar data so planes 9could safely land.  During a violent storm and at a crucial moment, the sailor suddenly experienced the dreaded marijuana flashback, resulting in the fatal crash of the fighter plane onto the deck of the carrier.

All over the room, people suddenly sat up and looked at each other—a marijuana flashback?  A twofer?  How do you get two hits for the price of one joint?  Hell, at that point, I had never tried marijuana, but even I knew that was bullshit.

For me, that was the first crack in the dam.  Once I started doubting, however, it wasn't long until I began to doubt everything in government.  By the time Watergate was over, I was the full-fledged curmudgeon who writes this blog today.

There was one last attempt by the young, in 1972, to reestablish ideals.  The youth of America helped select a Democratic candidate who, in retrospect, could not possibly be elected.  Their enthusiasm highjacked the primary process and dismayed the party regulars who, after suffering a major defeat, changed the delegate selection rules to insure that such political antics would be impossible in the future, thus guaranteeing that elections would be far from free and far "better" controlled.

This was a painful lesson for the country to learn, and the generation that lived through this period was changed forever.  The very idea of believing in an honest government became standard fodder for talk-show comedians.  A new, and far more cynical age, was upon us.

And politicians did their best to perpetuate the loss of trust.  In swift order we had presidents who, though they promised not to lie, swore they couldn't remember details under oath, or lied to grand juries.    And no one expected anything different from them:  they were simply validating what we already believed about them.

Which brings us to this election cycle.  Once again, a disaffected youth vote selected a presidential candidate who, though perhaps unelectable, nevertheless reflected ideals that were worth believing in, even it they were both naive and impractical.  Millions flocked to support a candidate for the first time in their lives..and the rules established forty-four years ago immediately stopped this campaign cold. 

Millions of voters learned that the election was rigged, that winning the most votes didn't necessarily produce the most delegates, and that the entire process was a sham.  A candidate favored by the status quo has been selected—regardless of the will of the people.  Though there is ample proof of the effort to subvert an election, no one currently is facing criminal charges.

Once again, an entire generation has been taught that being idealistic and naively innocent  carries the high price of disillusionment.  Another generation has been taught to distrust both our government—and those who aspire to run it.

A Mouse Tale

The two mice crept out of the warehouse on a dark night, watching the eastern sky over the harbor.  In a few minutes, the moon would rise.  The larger of the two mice moved a little slower and though you couldn't see it in the dark, his whiskers were decidedly gray.  As they moved down to the piers, the pair of mice moved silently, but once they had reached the water's edge, the larger of the mice finally spoke to his companion.

"We must be very still while we wait; it is dangerous to be out in the open, even though it is still dark.  When the moon rises, we could be seen. "

"Then why are we here, grandfather?", asked the smaller mouse.

"I want you to SEE!  The life of a mouse is hard, but it is bearable as long as you know that you will be rewarded in the next life.  To truly believe, however, you must see for yourself."

"What will I see, grandfather?", asked the younger mouse.  "What is out here?"

The young mouse's grandfather forgot his own warning, and with a loud voice, answered, "We came to see proof of the next life, for there are signs.  Long after a day of hard work and when the moon is full, you can see angels flying--the angels of mice flying in the sky.  It is a message of hope for all mouse-kind!"

The younger mouse said nothing in return, for while he loved his grandfather, he certainly did not believe his wild stories of an afterlife, and of a heaven for mice.  He was here only for the chance to be outside of the warehouse.  The warehouse that before tonight had been his entire world and he would pretend to believe in anything for a chance to finally see life outside of that building.

Now as the moon slowly rose over the harbor, the two mice could make out the bay, see the waves on the water, the dark shapes of a few distant ships tied at piers.  The larger mouse motioned to his grandson to stay still, for now that the moon had begun to light up the harbor, it was too dangerous to even talk.  The younger mouse mouse occasionally looked sympathetically at his grandfather as the older mouse stared intently upward into the cold night sky, straining to see something in the inky blackness.

The younger mouse had just about decided that it was time to get his grandfather back in the warm warehouse where he would be safe--when suddenly his grandfather gave a soft shriek and stiffened.

"Look!", he whispered.  "Look!  There's the angel!"

The younger mouse stared up into the night and was shocked.  There was something in the sky.  It swooped and swirled, soaring up and down in the night sky.  Then suddenly, the moonlight broke through the clouds and clearly illuminated the dark object.  It was an angel, an angel in the shape of a mouse!  And it flew through the sky, gracefully turning and twisting in the air.  Then, the clouds moved, and as the moon disappeared behind them, the angel vanished in the night air.

For several long minutes, the two mice neither moved nor spoke, then the grandfather broke the stillness.

"Now you understand," the Grandfather said to his grandson.  "Now you can believe for yourself--you've seen the sign."

The smaller mouse was too shocked to even answer.  He didn't know what to think, but his whole world had changed in just a few minutes.   His grandfather's stories were true!

As the two mice quietly left the pier and made their way back to the safety of the warehouse, an old wise rat watched them from the top of a dock piling.  He had been watching them the whole evening, enjoying their religious vigil, had seen them watching the angel, and heard every word the pair had said.

"Stupid rodents!", he muttered.  "Only mice can see a bat and start worshiping angels."

A Heartless Decision

Thirty years ago, my father had a cherished belief in the efficacy of peppermint candy to cure a long list of ailments.  Heartburn, stomach aches, shortness of breath—you name it—a penny candy was the cure.  Of course, my father was just a poor dumb ol' country boy who left West Texas by way of the CCC and World War II.  

Even after he had a triple bypass in his fifties, he still believed in those little peppermints, saying, "while they couldn't hurt they might help."  There were several on his nightstand the night he suffered his fatal heart attack at age 70.

Now, for the last couple of weeks, his overly edjumacated son has had his own problem with heartburn.  For those of you who are familiar my diet, this probably comes as no surprise, and more than a few of my friends will find it hilarious.  Yes, I occasionally indulge in some "spicy" foods.  Yes, I use Tabasco Sauce as a salad dressing and just recently learned that paprika was more than a colorful garnish designed to make deviled eggs look good.

I would feel this weird pressure on the middle of my chest, but as soon as I ate one of those chewable antacids, the heartburn would miraculously lift.  I got better immediately.  I started carrying a few in my pocket and I kept a bag on my nightstand.  If this sounds familiar, I should point out that mine were flavored strawberry, not peppermint.

Which brings us to July 13 of this year.  New Mexico gets a lot of its tax money from the sale of oil and gas from public lands, and the receipts from this are dramatically down.  We also have a small problem with declining numbers of students graduating from high school.  Somehow, this came as a surprise to the university, which kept expanding programs, erecting new buildings and allowing administrators to multiply and consume resources like grain house rats.  Raises stagnated, enrollment dropped, standards fell, but somehow, we managed to pour millions and millions into a bloated athletic program.  The university was safe because the administration could count on the Board of Regents' annually voting in a tuition raise.

Until the Board of Regents didn't,  Suddenly, the university was facing millions in budget cuts, and the powers that be quickly decided that none of the cuts would come from Athletics.  Well, they did cut the Equestrian Team—despite having just built them a new indoor arena.  This will seem odd to most people who probably believe that riding horses is an outdoor event.  (I seem to remember a King of France and his son, who rode horses inside the Louvre:  perhaps this is the role model for our administration,)

During the televised announcement of the budget cuts, while I and most of the faculty and staff on campus were watching with dread, some very large woman wearing stilettos stood on my chest.  I began sweating profusely (and not just because the university had already begun cutting the air conditioning to my windowless office).  I scooped up those antacids and began chomping away.

But, there was no relief.  Somewhere about the seventh antacid, I began to realize I was in real trouble.  For some reason, I was confused, and I could feel my IQ dropping.  I wandered out in the hall, carefully locking my office door behind me and made my way outside into a scorching New Mexico heat.  I knew where I was going:  just across the street was the Health Center, where both students and employees could go for medical treatment and referral to specialists.  These people had been acting as my primary care physicians for years, and I liked and trusted them.

A lot of what happened then is now a little fuzzy, but I remember standing in the middle of a street for a while wondering if I shouldn't just get in my pickup and drive home to my wife, The Doc. Finally, I made it to the door of the clinic and discovered it was closed for an hour, while the clinic held its employee meeting.  The staff inside was learning, to their horror, that the university was closing the employee side of the clinic and might farm the student half of the operation out to some commercial Doc-in-the-Box company who would run the place for profit.

One of the nurses in the clinic saw me standing out in the heat and came over to the door to tell me the clinic was closed for an hour.  I have this sneaky feeling I looked like a homeless schizophrenic wandering around looking for food. 

I remember thinking how it would be so much easier to just sit on the porch and wait rather than trying to recross that street, but before I sat down, I turned to the young woman and spoke through the glass door.

"Chest pain." I said simply.

And that was all it took.  The people in that clinic saved my life.  Lots of people moved quickly, and I have a little trouble remembering everything.  My blood pressure was off the wall, they gave me oxygen, they put me on a gurney, they started an IV, they called an ambulance, and they put a tiny little nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue.

Nitroglycerin is the best drug in the world!  To my ignorant medical mind, I think we should all be carrying it.  It is WAY better than candy for a heart attack!  Within seconds of that nitro tablet dissolving under my tongue, the evil woman wearing a stiletto stepped off my chest.

Yes, I had a heart attack, and within 24 hours, I also had a quintuple coronary bypass.   The prognosis is excellent, and I should eventually recover and return to work.  But, when I do, the employee health clinic will no longer be there.  The people who stopped listening to the news of their being laid off long enough to save my life, might very well be gone. 

Even while I could barely think, I knew I could trust those people:  I knew they were my only hope.  I knew the doctors and nurses to be an invaluable asset the university should be proud of.  Their loss, if the move continues, would be a deep tragedy.

I have been writing this weekly blog for a little over seven years, and in that time, I have pretty much allowed the readership to grow—or not—on its own.  Today, the nonsense I write each week is read worldwide by between 45,000 to 60,000 people, depending on what I write about.  This week, do me a favor:  Mail this to someone...or even a couple of someones.  Complain a little bit, and suggest that the university reconsider shutting down such a valuable resource.  The Employee Health Clinic has already saved my life.  Maybe the next time they help someone, it will be someone useful.  You know...like a coach?

The university can find the money and it can reverse this decision.  After all, while I was in the Cardiac Care Unit of the local hospital, the administration decided to keep the Equestrian Team.