BILL’S BACK YARD...

Even after many years of taking pictures on the familiar bike ride from my house to the beach, I still expect every time to discover new ways of seeing my part of the world.  I decided today to try to capture a sense of the world widening as I rode west along a bike path on the north side of the San Diego River. 

For the top image, looking east with the river on the right of the bike path and Mission Bay on the left, I took two pictures and stitched them together with Photoshop. Turning slowly to the left, I took three more pictures and stitched them together to make a wider panoramic view of Mission Bay below.

The third panoramic picture is basically the same view from a different part of the path.  Click on the picture you'll see it larger.  The La Jolla hills rise in the background beyond the bridge on Mission Bay Drive and the community of Pacific Beach.  Mission Beach begins where the bay opens out into the ocean. The opening of Mission Bay out into the Pacific Ocean is exaggerated in the next panoramic image.  The extreme wide angle distorts everything.  

Below, looking west, the breakwater separating the river and Ocean Beach from the bay and Mission Beach, the wide angle lens makes everything seem wider than it really is. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/us/politics/at-irs-unprepared-office-seemed-unclear-about-the-rules.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130519&_r=0

The story of how the I.R.S, scandal developed reveals, to use a bit of the Congressional committee's favorite phrase, there is no “smoking gun.” When I first learned of the problem, I overreacted. So did others.  Examining their overreaction, if they deal with it honestly and call it what it was/is, politicians may lead the country to needed improvements in I.R.S. laws and procedures. If they deal with it honestly, Republicans may get some credit. If they continue to react as if the problem is a new one and/or that it was caused by President Obama, they will lose any credibility they might gain from having alerted the nation to the issue. 

The I.R.S. guidelines which organizations follow when applying for and being granted tax exempt status should be reexamined by a bipartisan commission of citizens.  Whenever an organization which has been granted I.R.S. 501 (c) (3/4 or 5) status strays from its mission of promoting the common good and serving causes of social justice, its tax exempt status should be withdrawn. All organizations, including Churches and schools, which now enjoy tax exempt status should be reexamined periodically.  Obviously, the current I.R.S. organization will have to be reconfigured and the staff must be expanded. The flood of applications for tax exempt status handled by a seriously understaffed Cincinnati office was the basic cause of the problem which many of us, led by eager media, rushed to call “the I.R.S. scandal.” The fix isn’t going to be popular. The change to correct the problem will cost a lot of money and will take a long time, but it is worth doing.  Tea Party groups and all other organizations demanding smaller, cheaper government must know they can’t have it both ways. Good government with appropriate leadership and reasonable oversight isn’t cheap. 

Obviously, overstaffing government agencies is wasteful and inefficient. Deliberately understaffing is also wasteful and inefficient and has the effect of crippling government. I continue to believe the American system of government is a good plan, perhaps the best in the world when it works the way it is designed to work. In the last decades of the Eighteenth Century when our system was first created, there were flaws in the original design, like condoning and regulating the institution of slavery and granting only white men the right to vote. Periodically the design itself has had to be revised. Re-examination of old laws and amendments should be expected.  Traditions and myths are useful and can be good glue to bind pieces of a culture together.  However, when traditional ways no longer make sense in a new, enlightened age, and when myths are believed to be narratives of the way things literally were at one time, the people who perpetuate them weaken and perhaps eventually destroy the very institutions they say they are trying to protect.  

Out past Jupiter thirty or so miles

my Earth

is a speck and beyond that where

I wonder

are the answers to whom or what

do we owe

this amazing magnificent universe

with birds

singing and cicadas crawling out

of ground

after a long seventeen-year sleep?

And why...

...why here or in any other galaxy

should love

between any two or more creatures

be thought 

offensive to Whomever or Whatever

sparked life

into dark matter and darker energy

and protons

together with neutrons and electrons

and minerals?

Don’t trust soothsayers with answers

bigger

than their questions and doubt.

This is Dorothy's House...

Not the Wizard of Oz's

Dorothy... 

but a Dorothy even more adventurous

than the one from Kansas.

...and those guava blossoms 

are blooming on Dorothy's tree...

and appropriately there is a band playing

in a bandstand by a railroad station

just down the road.

...And back at home

my hummingbird chicks are quickly outgrowing

the nest their mother made.

AN UGLINESS HAS CREPT UP, SLITHERED IN,  INSINUATED ITSELF...

When Washington, D.C., was home to my family for awhile, I liked the people and the city. I had a fair number of friends representing both political parties high up in several branches of government, and they were by-and-large good honest folk who were intent on serving the country with integrity.  There have always been a few people of questionable integrity on both sides of the aisle in Congress and in state governments, but mostly in the past our nation has been blessed with good leaders whose first priority was protecting, preserving, and strengthening the American Nation. When I lived in Washington, I knew Senators and Members of the House from both parties who mingled at picnics and school functions, who listened to each other’s stories and laughed at each other’s jokes.  In those days Washington was becoming a world-class city, a destination for people from all over the world who wanted to feel the pulse of the future, to be sure the earth was alive and loved and well protected.  The people elected or appointed to serve in government lived well, but the majority of them were very much like most other middle class citizens.  A few had time to work their way up the ladders of state and federal governments because they had inherited wealth... they didn’t have to work for a living, and therefore had the time to work at getting elected.  They were civil, and they wanted to be civil servants.  They knew the significance of the combination of those two words: civil and servant. 

The civility of the nation’s capital has metamorphosed into a chaos of scandals and snarls. The goal of government as the basis for a safe civil environment where all citizens are served equally has slipped and been replaced by determination to wound leaders of the other party.  If Marco Rubio, for example, has a snow balls chance in hell of making it onto the list of candidates for the presidency in 2016, he must prove and validate his credentials as a true hater of the black President Barack Obama and the female former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  He must be careful not to be seen fraternizing with anyone in “the other party.”  He must have the support of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party or won’t be selected  to represent it in a national election.  He and others in Congress must not cooperate with “the enemy,” which is defined as the Party of Democrats. He certainly must not taint himself with any good word or nod to Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer or to any legislation they propose. In the present political climate in America and with the Republican leadership he obviously believes he must actively find ways to discredit and weaken the President. Deliberately weakening the president of the United States weakens the Office of the President of the United States which weakens the United States.  Deliberately sapping the strength of the United States by subterfuge is close to treason. The gentlemen and ladies of Congress and in the Media who participate in the campaign to weaken the country should be called to account at least by citizens who vote, if not by the judiciary. Wearing the flag as a lapel pin is not an act of patriotism, and wrapping oneself in the flag does not excuse perfidy.

I took a little time off from watching my hard-working little mother hummingbird as she tirelessly made trips from fields of flowers to feed her chicks. What a marvel she is.  On the way to and from my Thursday stint at the Museum of Photographic Arts, I got the following pictures with my cell phone.

It’s been easier today to ratchet down my disappointment (In an earlier Blog post this week I called it “outrage”) that the IRS last year targeted with “requests for additional information” some conservative organizations applying for 501 (C) (4) tax exempt status. Some of the most vocal aggrieved paragons of virtue in the conservative camp have been squealing about the unfairness of it all.  I continue to feel that those within the IRS who are responsible for the targeting should be called to account for aiming just at conservative not-for-profits.  The entire 501 (c) (4) category should be re-examined and all organizations that enjoy that designation, both liberal and conservative, should be required to prove their programs do not violate the requirement that their agenda remain apolitical.

The biggest squealers:

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell has been apoplectic in his expression of outrage, suggesting that the President should consider resigning as “the honorable” Richard Nixon did over Watergate.   McConnell whose net worth was $27 million in 2010 has never had a private sector job.  He came to the Senate in 1985.  

Darrell Issa took time from his raging about what he considers to be the President’s shortcomings generally and Benghazi specifically to express his outrage over IRS mistake.   Mr. Issa is the richest member of Congress with a net worth of around $450 million.

Pat Robertson, a humble pastor cum theologian, takes every opportunity to blame President Obama for everything from weakening American families to national betrayal of the Constitution. His net worth is over $30 million.  His Christian Coalition enjoys 501 (C) (4) IRS status. This guy whose opinions on homosexuality, politics and the coming of  the Mark of the Beast are expressed daily on his “700 Club” television program. He said yesterday that the problem of “the straying man” in marriage is basically the fault of the woman in the relationship.  A man can be expected to stray “because he is a man,” Robertson explained. His advice to a woman whose husband had strayed was to make herself “prettier” and make her home a place from which her man would be less inclined to stray.

Glenn Beck has risen from humble Southern beginnings to become a major, though unelected, conservative American voice.  He was worth  $105 million In 2011.   Beck founded the non-profit organization Mercury One.

Rush Limbaugh, whose net worth is around $350 million, has added the IRS issue to his long list of reasons he has for saying President Obama is leading America to ruin. 

Poor Michelle Bachmann’s net worth is just $3 million. She had plenty to say about the IRS problem.  She begins by saying the President should do the honorable thing and resign.

By the way, I do know that Democrats as well as Republicans who manage to get elected to Congress soon after getting to Washington slip quickly upward and out of the category of “average” American.

colibrí

CELEBRATION!

What a relief!  I was afraid I had done irreparable damage to the little jelly bean-sized eggs outside my window when I soaked the nest before I knew it was there; but we now have chicks, alive and well... and a very attentive mother.  Hatching happened sometime between last Thursday and yesterday.  The chicks are already filling almost all the space in the nest, so I’m guessing they are at least three days old.  

It’s the miracle of birth that nature demonstrates in all species.  How can it be possible that the chicks we have today, small but much larger than those tiny eggs, could have grown so much in such a short time?  These baby hummingbirds will leave the nest in three weeks.  The mother gets no help from the male. She even built the nest with no help from him.  Maybe that’s why hummingbirds don’t mate for life. 

She lets me get close enough to take pictures when she is sitting on the nest. Today when I got these pictures she tolerated me.  Of course, as in all romantic relationships, I like to believe she likes me almost as much as I like her. I’ve noticed that when some other people walk past the nest, she flies away, and when I walk past she doesn’t.  That’s enough for me.

WE ARE ONE TREE

Warts and All

Hard to figure sometimes...

Before launching into my reaction to the “Gotcha Game” in Washington, I must make clear that I consider the alleged targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny by I.R.S. officials to be reprehensible... beyond the pale, actually, in these times of economic instability in our country.  Republican congressmen Darrell Issa of San Diego and Jim Jordan of Ohio are appropriately outraged.  I agree with their outrage.  So does the President of the United States agree. A dozen Republican senators, including Orrin Hatch (Utah), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Church Grassley (Iowa), and Rand Paul (Kentucky) also agree with their outrage.  They have sent a letter to I.R.S. Commissioner Shulman saying, “We have received reports and reviewed information from nonprofit civi organizations in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas concerning recent IRS inquiries perceived to be excessive.”  They went on to say, “It is critical that the public have confidence that federal tax compliance efforts are pursued in a fair, even-handed, and transparent manner--without regard to politics of any kind.  To that end, we write today to seek your assurance that this recent string of inquiries has a sound basis in law and is consistent with the IRS’s treatment of tax-exempt organizations across the spectrum.”  I Agree.  The President of the United States agrees. 

Slack-jawed McConnell went on to say to reporters, “We can’t count on the administration to be forthcoming about the details of this scandal because so far they’ve been anything but.”  

When, I wonder, can we count on these and other members of Congress to turn their attention to governance and social justice issues that are obviously impeding the growth of our economy and weakening the social fabric of our country.  Of course, turning the I.R.S. into a political department of government would do great harm to the nation. Former Commissioner, Ron Shulman, under whose term (completed in November 2012) the targeting occurred, was appointed in 2008 by President George W. Bush. He made clear in a hearing last year that the I.R.S. has been and should remain a non-political department.

We all should be appropriately disappointed and distressed that targeting occurred.  People responsible for it should not keep their jobs.  Appropriate amends should be made to aggrieved not-for-profit organizations. We can then hope that members of Congress will finally begin to work together to solve the nation’s problems as diligently as some of them have been working to weaken rather than strengthen the efforts of the duly-elected Obama Administration to lead our country into a bright future.

Back Home in San Diego
thinking about what I especially like about California:

...waves of tawny grasses rolling silently across golden hills;

...the way cottonwood leaves tremble in the slightest breeze;

...poplar trees bending reverently in an afternoon wind;

...sheep grazing in a vast field;

...a lake alive shivering.

FAMILY

THE REUNION

Live Oak... The way I remember it... The way it is.

You figure it out!