An alien, never having experienced earth as you know it, walked into our world out of a Brazilian jungle wearing only a loin cloth and carrying some wood.
He took a look at some of our magic – lighters, cell phones and such, turned around and walked right back into the jungle to be seen no more.
Enough said, some events speak for themselves.
Richard Kimball
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The Founders, feared authoritarian government above all else, thus constructed a firewall against any possibility of an authoritarian government. Amongst those few who still know, it was the separation of powers splitting power between the three legs of a stool, that gave government balance and prohibited anyone leg from attaining absolute power over the people.
“If you got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will fallow,” a forecast that hung in the Nixon White House now cemented in a Congress where their leg of the stool has mortified into water fetching lackies.
Trump now goes for the second leg that bars absolute control.
Today, Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance condemned the judiciary, attacking their legitimacy, the final pillar of the separation of power’s protection against an authoritarian.
As the Vice-President said, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” While Musk added, judges who oppose him should be impeached.
When the people finally get it, don’t expect Democrats to defend you. As Hakeem Jefferies, the House Minority Leader suggests, we need to wait for the pitches we can hit or Martin, the Democratic Parties new leader, who says we need to find more billionaires to keep up with the Republicans.
This is WAR, and opposition has yet to find a leader to enter the field of battle believing that The People can govern for themselves.
Richard Kimball
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In a normal world someone standing at the apex of political power going to prison for 11 years would saturate the news. After all, Bob Menendez was charged with leading foreign-policy, and overseeing billions in foreign aid, the sale of arms to foreign powers, holding confirmation hearings, NOT the cash discovered stuffed in his boots and pockets or the gold bars anointing him with his nick name.
I have witnessed such sliminess at every level both as a Congressional staffer, State Senator, Corporation Commissioner, a non-profit leader, and as me.
Sometimes the payouts were enormous from those willing and able to dip the largest shovels into special interest public projects.
While others just getting started get their beaks wet with offers of free trips, premium seating or just some movie tickets. I loved movies, and although I refused all others, I went to see a few free films.
It is a cycle, little known, little written about, but contagious with those elected. You grow a big head; think you are somehow worthwhile and more deserving than those that voted for you.
Richard Kimball
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As the word penis came out of her mouth, I would have willingly stretched out underneath an elephant turd and hoped its owner would take a step on it.
When a widowed mother asks a 13-year-old Catholic boy to take a seat “for the BIG TALK,” low organs will crinkle up into raisins frantically looking for somewhere they won’t exist.
It was some years earlier that my older brother Bobby, flatly stated, “Dad put his penis in Mom’s pussy and because of that I came out.”
“NO, NO! Say it isn’t so!”
Richard Kimball
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The announcement was casually made in front of our living room mirror as Mom stroked my two-year-old hair, “We are going to get this cut.” The shock was instant. I was going to be “cut.” Cutting hurt and I had no reason to believe cutting my hair would be any less painful than cutting off fingers or toes.
My protests, apparently laughable, were ignored, and I was unjustly packed into the family’s Packard and off we went.
Entering the shop there he stood, as sinister a sight as any little boy had ever seen. He just stood motionless looking down at me. Recognizing my fear, that grim-faced, slick-haired, spectacled little man with the tiny mustache and stiff white shirt grimaced and looked up at my mom. I was doomed.
My terror was splayed open for all to see as I took in the various fluid-filled jars containing combs and cutting devices, along with assorted objects plugged into electrical sockets behind him. And the chair, OH GOD that chair, what was it? Huge with various handles and levers and a long leather strap swaying at its side. I lost it!
Dismissing a child’s fears as simple childishness is so convenient to an adult who has long forgotten the traumas of their own first-time childhood horrors: the time you first got the needle at the doctor’s office, wobbled and crashed that first two-wheeler attempt, the dark that came at night, when you first rode The Hammer at the State Fair, or just the creaking noises in the closet when all were asleep. . . and a hundred other childhood traumas.
Most adults could easily revisit those fears by trying a bungee jump or first sky dive, taking a quick dip into a frozen lake or maybe a bit of harmless water boarding – all would likely do the trick and give a taste of what we have forgotten about first-time events. And you will never have so many first-time events as you did as a child.
Anyway, I stood in front of the barber butcher, and he was going to cut me. For some incomprehensible reason the person I trusted most in life, picked up a box, placed it on the torture device and stuck me to it – then let the butcher have his way with his sharp pointy objects. My fear was intense and real. My mother, like all mothers, knew such fears absurd, but mine also had the presence of mind to see an opportunity for posterity and documented the event.
Richard Kimball
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I was sitting in my highchair looking out the window at my dad’s Packard when she set a bowl of soup in front of me. It had to have been the Campbell’s kind. I could see the bits of drowned vegetables and occasionally flaking cubes of chicken, but what caught my eye was the teensy weensy, perfectly round, shiny bits of oil that floated on the top. I wanted to know what they were but was not yet far enough along in life to manage an inquiry. I was still having enough trouble managing a capture with my spoon.
She stood behind me that morning, all round and dressed in white, but black. Her name was Essie, our maid and cook. My mother did not have her help often and I do not remember much about her other than the chicken she fried, great chicken my older brothers later assured me. Chicken that our mother, the German antithesis to fine dining, could never duplicate.
A year or so later, I visited Essie’s house. She lived in a home very unlike our own. My mother was bringing her some Christmas gifts, and I happened to be in the back seat.
We lived in a big house. I didn’t know it. We lived in the nicest neighborhood. I did not know it. As we turned onto Essie’s street the houses became tightly jammed, any half-dozen of which could have easily fit into our front yard. As best I can recall, there were no driveways, and the yards were all barren dirt with a few broken toys, flat balls and scraps of various objects scattered about. Inside, where doors would be, there were hanging sheets and there was one stuffed tattered chair. The walls were unpainted with one wall having a large chunk of missing plaster which commanded my attention because I could not imagine the purpose of the wooden slats that were now exposed underneath.
Above all, I remember that Essie had a family; this was a very big surprise. It never occurred to me that she would be a wife, have children, a home, a life. Essie was just our maid.
I did not feel sorry, have any sense of pity, I was not old enough to know such things. I only recall being confused, wanting to leave and being happy that my parents chose not to live that way.
I would not see those kinds of living conditions again for 15 years, not until I stood in the dump three of my college buddies and I could afford and used to eat, sleep, drink, and smoke dope.
Richard Kimball
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It was a grand Thanksgiving feast. I had rented two enormous side by side beach houses able to bed a party of 20 along with my two dogs. My wife and I prepared a fabulous meal with all the standard sides of Potatoe, asparagus, muffins, cranberry’s, some of those God afoul jarred pearl onions and topped by the most scrumdiddleumpcious pumpkin and pecan pies. All centered of course by a turkey.
The turkey was my one and only responsabilty…..well along with the stuffing and giblet gravy I would make from its various entrails.
The bird I found was just magnificent. A 24-pound Butterball, 28 pounds if you count the crumbs, mushrooms, sausages, onions, garlic and seasonings I stuffed up its private quarters.
My meticulous care had me basting it with butter every half hour or so. Five hours later I had achieved golden perfection.
But I was not done. The succulent, dripping deliciousness of my bird needed to sit for a bit before the devouring commenced. So, I had a plan: Everyone on the beach for a few spectacular celebratory firework rockets I had planted in the sand.
Everything was perfect, planned for maximum effect and joy.
Then we went to eat.
I am not sure who first noticed it, but I do recall the looks on Madison’s face (my golden retriever) and that on Jefferson’s (my border collie). They were expressions of the utmost joy and appreciation.
The slimy slick had crossed the kitchen floor a dozen times as they had competed in obvious efforts to both play with and devour my golden perfection.
Since that wonderful Thanksgiving pizza day, I have always given some turkey thanks to my dogs first.
Richard Kimball
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Well, the day has come! Are you nervous? Are you looking forward to it finally being over, or like me, feeling anxious about what cometh?
For me, likely on some “enemies list”, well, I’ll be catching a plane into the Mexican Sierra Madres early in the morning and as I joke with my Trump supporting friends and family, I’ll be taking with me my old rusty Red Rider and a can of shot.
Could be that I’m just going on a vacation but I’m a bit relieved that I am. To parody the Woody Alan joke, “I’m not afraid democracy will die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”
My two simplistic takes on why this has all come to be:
Public education has been under successful attack for decades, with civics education rendered almost non-existent resulting in the first measurable declines in civic knowledge and history, even as it must be clear to the most challenged amongst us that after thousands of years of bumbling, our country brought a democracy anchored in public awareness that exploded human freedom, knowledge and advancements throughout the globe making us and much of the world the brain blowing success that we are.
Discussion of public education, where we once led the world and now lead the decline has been non-existent for decades.
So very many politicians, over the years have been manipulative, twisted truth, hollow promised this and that never to bees, that it bores the now cynical masses.
Along comes the jester, who magnifies the manipulations, lies and promises to such an entertaining, dreamy, cartoonist level that it imprisons the attention of every media news outlet and in turn each citizen, “What the Hell” many think, “He’s different!”
Anyway, I can be found crouching amongst the boulders high in the Siera Madras with my trusty Red Rider thinking of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and a couple of World Wars when America survived much worse.
Richard Kimball
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Back 40 years ago, when I was a State Senator and had something meaningful to say about abortions, I was a knee jerk. That is to say, I believed it was none of my business, even on the Senate issue I am currently recalling (should a teenager seeking an abortion be required to tell her parents) I was a NO as long as the rules set by Row vs. Wade, (the wisdom of its day) were applied.
Now a half century later, knowledge (wisdom) has adjusted somewhat. And now, as then, I turn to those in the business of knowing for a knowing of what to believe and a what to do.
Most involved in prenatal medicine believe there’s clear evidence that a fetus – a developing baby in the womb – can’t feel physical pain until after the 24th week (6th month) of pregnancy. But many others say it’s possible for a fetus to feel pain as early as 12 weeks (3 months) into its development.
Today 93% of abortions were done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% were done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% were performed after 21 weeks.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG), say that a fetus isn’t capable of feeling pain until at least 24-25 weeks.
The conclusions say these lifelong experienced, in what I know nothing about is:
Today 93% of abortions are done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% are done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% are performed after 21 weeks.
The lack of consensus is as confounding for me, as it is for the “experts.”
Bottom line: Where do you draw that line between life’s urge to fornicate and the growing life that results?
It has become harder for a thoughtful someone, anyone, even me who is careful not to step on an ant not to sympathize WHEN two bodies share the resources of one. WHENEVER that is!
How about you?
Richard Kimball
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Comments closed Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy |
For some of you receiving this email, we may not always agree on politics, but I always respect your opinion and reasoning and your right to disagree with me and think differently about things. Many people don’t know, but I have deep Republican roots on my Mom’s side. My Grandmother Peggy Hurley was good friends with Barry Goldwater and served as an alternate delegate for him at the 1964 Convention. Nana’s house was covered in GOP inspired memorabilia. There was an elephant piggy bank, elephant coasters, elephant coffee mugs, GOP ashtrays, lighters, plaques, hand towels, coins, you name it, the house was a GOP museum. I’m sure some of you can relate… My grandmother was the kindest, smartest, most loving person you would ever meet, and she was also a proud, right wing Goldwater Republican. So, I understand and respect traditional, Old Republican Party values like: hard work, free markets, individual responsibility, self-determination, lower taxes, less regulation, less bureaucracy, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, etc.
If you are a Republican reading this, I’m not trying to convert you into a Democrat and I think that having a strong, principled Republican party is a necessary component of a stable democracy here in the U.S. In other words, we (all of us) need the Old Republican Party back. The problem is that the Fake Republican Party under Trump is trying to undermine democracy as we know it and if Trump succeeds, we won’t have any policy issues to argue about.
So, I have made a few videos in hopes that I can help shift the paradigm back to what it used to be and persuade maybe just a few undecided voters to reject Trump and vote for Vice President Harris. And if you are a Republican, then maybe it’s just this once because the times call for it.
If you agree with what I’m saying about Trump and you think that someone else would benefit from seeing the videos, please feel free to forward or post them. Also, if you are interested, the long version on my Youtube channel is more persuasive, but fairly long at 20 minutes.
Thank you,
Pat DeConcini
Attachments area
Preview YouTube video Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
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but Tom Matthews was the Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth wannabe clipping Trump’s ear. Had he been an inch closer to center, what would have happened?
Would MAGAS go supernova and attempt to dismember all the fantastical goblins Trump has fingered in the “Dark State?”
Would one of the Trump wannabes grab his banner and carry forth or would they just feed on one another?
Would the Republican Party be regained by lifelong conservatives riveted on reducing spending but for military protection?
Would the ebbs and waves of politics return to that world of responsible give and take that has so continuously inched America and the world forward toward fairness?
I don’t know, but it is my guess that Trump is the one Gorilla Glue that holds MAGAS from each other’s throats.
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedTime to revisit my Nov 25, 2022 post.
Won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Created the Internet — Yes, he pretty much did.
Devoting his life to stop the Global Warming that is frying the future.
Actually, won popular vote for president but didn’t tear the country apart to gain power.
Very young, by current presidential standards.
Good enough for me.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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We are what we choose to listen to, and what we choose is what we like to hear, and those we like to hear need to dumb down each story for the few seconds they will have of our attention spans – always simplistic and blood boiling.
A kind of witch’s cauldron of mob creation, all illustrated now on college campuses and created by a media stuffing the sub-human attacks, first on Oct. 7th and then the horrific response.
Ask any of those college demonstrators or perhaps your own children what it is all about, and I guarantee you they will give you simplistic answers anchored in resent events and nothing on the long agony that began before Israel itself.
I have no cure for the hatred, other perhaps than restarting civics education in our schools.
I just wish we could push back the clock to 1947 and given them Wyoming instead. (Please NO hate mail. It is just a joke………………I think?.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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When last did any of us have an intelligent thoughtful conversation on a political issue?
I once lived on politics. At parties, dinners, or gatherings of any sort I so enjoyed the give and take of anyone foaming forth with political opinion. I enjoyed it most when secretly agreeing, I would take an opposing view and put the greatest value when my view of things had been changed. Nothing engages more than that moment in an argument when you realize you are wrong.
My wife referred to it as my “party games.”
It is such no more. Most have simply become what they choose to listen to and what they listen to is what they want to hear.
Political discussion has devolved into angry, simplistic argument, regurgitating this self-serving media source or that. Who speaks loudest, most fervently often feels victorious but only hardens what might be a less demagogic, respectful opposition. Views are never changed.
You can look back over the past decades and witness how thoughtful conversation evaporated into slogans, or in today’s vernacular “narratives” successfully punching their way into the public mind, like easy to grasp, quickly satisfying Big Macks.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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Comments closedWebsters dictionary – Foundations a: funds given for the permanent support of an institution —
FOUNDATIONS
I never go to sleep angry when I can stay awake all night pissed off. Any perceived injustice, rightly or wrongly, broils my brain into the wee hours. The “what was said, could have said, should have been said” pummels through the hours till exhaustion sets in.
It is a rare opportunity when you get to say exactly the right words you wish you’d said, that your fury requires. Rarer still, when after saying it, you aren’t absorbed with regret and kicking yourself in the ass in the light of day.
Such is the case in an interview I gave The Chronicle of Philanthropy, published for charity leaders and foundation executives:
Question: “Is the civics work these foundations are funding doing some good?”
Answer: “Not necessarily in governance. They want a Big Mac, a quick satisfaction kind of solution to problems: Fund a program and will voters show up? Fund a program and will special interest influence disappear, etc? If you can’t strike quick gold that can be easily measured and valued, someone at the foundation that supported it isn’t going to look good.”
Question: “But you apply to foundations for grants?”
Answer: “Yes, but I constantly struggle with grant writing language that makes us appear like the champions of the latest foundation fad, when the reality is that we don’t really care what the fad is; we just mold our language to adopt it. What Vote Smart cared about last year, cares about this year and will care about next year is just one thing: That voters have the facts to make wise choices regardless of their political view and that we stay so pristinely clean that everyone could take our data to the bank. If you are going to toss power out to the mob you’d better make sure the mob knows what it is doing.
Civics grantees become contortionists who twist their needs into the never-ending new language and new ways to serve whatever the latest foundation fads are. That is the game.”
Question: “If you don’t want the money for the latest fad why ask for it?”
Answer: “Fall out. With every grant for some new project there is at least some fallout that helps us with our primary goal, our reason for being. It might be in the overhead, it might be in the volume. For example: If a foundation thinks the public cares about or should care about campaign finance information which we provide but know they aren’t asking about, what the Hell, we can still be their man. So, we don’t poopoo the project they want us to implement, we simply play Father Knows Best, give them what they want and we get the grant knowing the personnel or equipment the grant pays for will be un-used or under-utilized and thus available for other worthwhile endeavors. Sometimes all of this twisting gets pretty batty. For example, one foundation wanted to fund bi-lingual researchers to handle new immigrant callers to our Voter’s Research Hotline. That is fine with us even as we know every Spanish-speaking immigrant interested in voting research can easily get by in English, but if we let the foundation do what it wants, we get two more researchers with nothing to do, who can help us with the research and answer those phones.”
LOOK OUT, HERE IT COMES!
I THINK THE WORD “DROPPING” IS WHAT DID IT!
Question: “Why not ask for what you need?”
Answer: “We do, but all proposals need to be put in a pretty package. Some concerned people at foundations know the game and they know you know the game, but because they support what you do, will help you convince their own board with advice. Usually choosing the right words, just the right colored wrapping paper and bow that a foundation board will find attractive.
If you ask boards directly for help with your REAL year-in, year-out needs you will hear: “We do not fund existing programs,” or “We don’t provide general support,” or “We do not provide sustaining support,” or” Our new president is interested in changing directions.”
As I mentioned, few foundations will fund good government organizations or what they call “GooGoo” efforts. This is often true when a big foundation changes presidents. New presidents or boards want their own moment in the sun and will not build a reputation on the fresh droppings of their predecessors no matter how fertile those droppings may have been. Of course, that behavior makes building anything substantial or sustainable in civics education unlikely.”
Question: “What is wrong with foundations investing in new innovative ideas?”
Answer: “Nothing, if it is successful and that success continues to be nurtured, but civics success rarely is. Big foundations get bored if there are not instant results, a kind of “been there, done that, move on” mentality. Their attention span is like kids at recess. They will play for a while, and if not quickly ahead pick up their ball and go home. They do this in part because civic non-profits cannot prove success. Vote Smart cannot prove that it is enabling better self-government because of its work. It is simply reasonable to assume that if a people are going to self-govern, it would be nice to make sure they have access to abundant, accurate, relevant information.”
Question: “But don’t they start a lot of good programs?”
Answer: “They sure do, and we have many of them. We have a Reporter’s Resource Center, a K-12 Education Program, and Inclusion Programs for minorities, low-income and youth, Vote Smart at your Library Program, Congressional Snapshot programs for newspapers and radio. We have had publications for journalists, schoolteachers, and new immigrants, some printed in Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese. All these programs were created at the behest of some foundation, all successful, used and needed by the end users. All of those foundations that funded those programs knew at the outset that those programs had little chance of becoming self-supporting because the users had no money and almost every foundation eventually got bored or changed leaders and pulled their funds to do something else.
“By 2010, you could walk through our offices and see volunteer after volunteer struggling to sustain the remnants of such efforts or visit our archives and see them boxed up. Efforts that ate substantial portions of our funds and enormous amounts of staff and volunteer time. It is very disheartening to a volunteer-based non-profit like Vote Smart when so many of our resources are consumed by foundations that have junked their notions onto the shoulders of our students and volunteers.”
Question: “Some think commercial interests can and will provide all of this information.”
Answer: “Could be, but we can still hope that in the thousands of years of human existence we might have learned that putting all political power, which is what access to information is, in the hands of for-profits is a dangerous thing to do. They are “for profits,” and serving the bottom line is their reason for being, not We, The People. Foundations often make righteous efforts to combat special interests’ influence, while leaving voter education to those same interests who so clearly twist and manipulate information to scare voters into behaving the way they want them to in a voting booth.”
Question: “Why do you think voter turnout is so low in the U.S.?”
Answer: “It is hard to get energized choosing between your jerk and their jerk. People aren’t stupid. They know that no one can win public office without playing the game and that playing the game requires one to become damaged goods and far less honorable than voters want and should expect. The wonder is why the people take it, why they do so little to encourage and support honorable citizens they know to run and then protect them from this unseemly mess.
Let us say you and I run against each other for governor. You want to be real, do the right thing. You spend your days talking to voters, maybe in workplace meetings, churches, schools, and neighborhoods telling people why you are running, what you think, listening to what they think, sharing ideas about how to best represent them. It’s a real give and take, learning, getting to know them and they you, all that good useful stuff.
At the same time I spend all my time raising big money from the wealthy, corporations, labor unions and other large professional associations who will want access to me if elected.
In the end I will have money, you your passion for good. I will make you look foolish and I have the money to do it. I will bombard you with trashy ads all designed to humiliate you. I’ll embarrass you in front of your family and friends and there will be nothing you can do to defend yourself, because you did what was right, honorable and helpful to all, instead of what the system requires you to do, if you want to win.
That is why so few honorable people run, people you know, people in your own community, people who have spent lifetimes doing good. They aren’t going to run, it is just ugly, and they are not going to subject themselves or their families and friends to the process.”
——
This interview was never published, I presume because an old friend I worked with in Senator Mondale’s office conducted it for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and wanted to protect me.
When he told me I was angry, so like I said, I let it broil my brain into the wee hours and when I got up, I published it to foundations myself.
OOPS!
(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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The Daisy Commercial
We handled 211,000 Voter’s Research Hotline calls that 1992 Election, with many times that number of calls not able to get through at all. You would think I could do the math and listen to reason.
If we grew as the numbers suggested and I thought we would and mostly did, we would need a room big enough for a thousand phones.
Scott Langley, a young genius grad student who volunteered in our IT Department, gave a lot of thought to our dilemma, when he was not thinking about Gundula, a drop-dead gorgeous brainiac intern from Germany. Unrecognized by me, the love affair, unrequited I think, forecast a number of future Vote Smart trials. Life with the young!
Scott approached me one afternoon and suggested that we create a web site, put all our researched data on it and let people review it for themselves.
Like many of an older generation I dismissed this innocent naive young pup. “No way Scott, isn’t gonna happen” I firmly ruled. “It took the telephone a hundred years to saturate 97% of American households. Everyone has access to a phone, you do not need to know how to type, you do not need to have an education, you do not need an expensive computer, you just need to be able to dial. Hell, you do not even need your own phone, you can just go to a pay phone on any street corner and dial our 1-800 number. Forget it.”
I successfully fought Scott and his growing number of young web site intern advocates from burdening us with some real progress. Finally, they got so irritatingly bothersome that I chucked a couple thousand dollars at them just to shut the Hell up.
I do not really know how they did it, I didn’t pay much attention. In hindsight, they put in a few bazillion extra hours and then asked if they could go live and announce our data was on the “Vote Smart Web.”
You have to understand here that this is back in the early 90s, no one had such a website, not news organizations, universities or anyone else.
“Jesus Christ! OK, OK, get out of here,” I bellowed.
Some weeks later, Scott and his little gang surrounded me and handed me a single white sheet of paper. It turns out that they had in those weeks more inquiries for our data on the Vote Smart Web than we had in the prior three years over my cherished phoneasaurus.
We attracted a great many more users of our factual data, which attracted some curiosity from other foundations.
Foundations do not often fund good governance efforts, or what they called “googoos,” largely because it is difficult to measure success in governance or in our case, making smarter voters. In fact, there was considerable evidence that American voters were becoming dumber.
Anyway, those foundations willing to give a pittance of what they have, saw some pretty solid evidence of our success with those we could reach. We could show a lot of people trying to use what we had done, quite a few that would send in contributions to help, and actually generating more volunteers and interns willing to work for free than we could afford to accommodate. Most importantly to foundations, we were a new group and thus a new find for some foundation staffer that wanted to look good in a board meeting.
Most major foundation staff had an attitude: all had the power (dollars) to lord over non-profit startups, they knew it, and insisted that you knew it too. Having a humble, subservient hang-dog demeanor was the rule for all non-profits. Even as the staff of large foundations existed on the droppings of some dead person’s pile of success from long ago. As consequence, a lot of groveling was involved.
My discussions with smaller foundations, where the source of their funds was often still breathing and happy to meet with me, were very different, always fun, and included lively conversations where I could harvest new knowledge and ideas.
Russ Hemingway, a 78-year-old with rugged good looks, created a foundation that supplied millions to congressional candidates. Because of his political bent, I would not accept money from him but that was not all I was after. Firsthand experiences on how things got to be such a mess could be as valuable as cash in hand.
As a young man Russ had been Adlai Stevenson’s (a Democratic presidential nominee beaten by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s) Campaign Manager. Of all the wisdom he pumped into my brain this unknown story is amongst the best. Adlai was campaigning from the back of a caboose somewhere in the mid-west on what was called a “whistle stop tour” when Russ saw the first political television commercial ever produced. It was done by Eisenhower. Rushing to catch up with the train, Russ told Adlai he had to get off that caboose and go cut a commercial, that Eisenhower was talking to millions in their living rooms on these new televisions while Adlai only a few hundred at each stop. Adlai refused to get off the train, saying, “If we are to advertise ourselves like boxes of cereal, democracy will die, for you could not win the Presidency without proving you were unworthy of the job.”
Russ, the “young pup” of his day, eventually broke Adlai down and they did cut a silly commercial with some woman singing “Vote Stevenson, vote Stevenson, a man you can depend on-son……!”
Candidates quickly caught on to the new power of simplistic mass massaging soon enough. A few years later Lyndon Johnson cut one of the most effective political ads ever aired. It was anchored in the height of the Cold War. In 1964, Goldwater had responded to a reporter questioning whether he would ever consider using a nuclear weapon with, “It is just another weapon” and he would not lay his cards on the table in front of our nation’s enemies. A pretty stand answer that had been given by our other leaders for almost 20 years. But this was right after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Americans had been digging holes in their back yards to hide from the end of the world. Johnson saw his chance and created what was called the “Daisy Commercial.” It filmed an innocent little girl in a pasture counting the petals on a daisy while a nuclear bomb explodes in the background, and Goldwater saying, “It is just another weapon.” Its point: Goldwater is crazy and if president, would start a nuclear holocaust should conflict with Viet Nam escalate.
The commercial was incredibly successful even though Johnson paid to play it only once. It was played over and over as a news story on all the networks, and started a media feeding frenzy that Goldwater would not survive. Johnson would not even have to play his grossly unfair back up commercial, one no one saw, where he unfairly imagined Goldwater with the burning crosses of the Ku Klux Klan.
Over the coming years our board meetings would take place at the Capitol Building or in various congressional offices in Washington, where most of our founding board resided. Little ever changed from the original concept of collecting factual data and laying it out in free, easy-to-access categories.
And, of course, the three basic rules to protect Vote Smart’s integrity were scrupulously maintained: 1. Board members with political reputations had to join with a political enemy. 2. We accepted no funding from any organization that lobbied, supported, or opposed candidates or issues. 3. All staff signed up for a two-year election cycle or whatever remained of one, and was paid only Peace Corps-style wages—just enough to subsist on.
My foundation groveling became modestly successful, raising a few hundred thousand dollars during each of a half dozen election cycles.
To give you some idea of how we attracted foundation support: A most promising grant was given so we could test our programs in disenfranchised communities with low civic involvement. We selected a few dozen precincts around Atlanta and San Francisco and saturated them with Vote Smart programs while staying completely out of other similar precincts. When the election ended, I asked a wonderfully supportive good friend, prominent professor, and survey specialist, who I asked to join our board, Dr. Brent Steel to do a survey. Using a team of students making calls he went back into those precincts to see if any impact could be measured. To our happy surprise we found that those groups receiving our programs got excited about their ability to impact governance and each of these precincts measured a 5% higher “confidence in government” rating than those not receiving our programs. As Brent reported, in the world of civic engagement in a single election season, that is huge movement. But then, as happens with large foundations, their board leadership changed and neither they nor any other foundation was interested in continuing what had been a previous board’s idea.
After some years of such foundation behavior my anger with large foundation arrogance would boil over in an interview, I gave a publication for foundation executives called The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The interview would scald Vote Smart for years to come.
(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org
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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
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Kimball with nieces
1960s
“Can I please have a bicycle, or a doll house, or a football, or a tea set, or a baseball glove, or some skates, or a bow and some arrows, or a cap gun with holster, or a pair of ballet shoes, or a basketball, or a jump rope, or some marbles with agates and steelies, or a swing set, or a play house, or a Pogo stick, or a ping pong table, or a Barbie doll, or a chemistry set, or a couple of Nancy Drew mysteries, or a BeeBee gun, or a Hula Hoop, or some swim fins, maybe some monkey bars—- I just want to do stuff.”
2023
“I just love my room.” 59% of girls and 86% of boys ages 10 to 17 are asking Santa for video game-related gifts this Christmas.”
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org
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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
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Nothing is more dangerous than the illusion of knowledge. Political preachers cast out their spurious nets each day to capture more devotees and then suffuse them with hatred toward any that disagree.
It is the poison in our democracy and what can lead to the intractable Hell in the Middle East.
Israel has known no peace, nor is it likely to ever know peace surrounded by political preachers whose mantra is “death to the Jews.”
As consequence, Israel does what it does or dies!
And so it goes, more terrorists created than killed.
The only alternative would take years of flaunting our humanity while expunging the hideous with selective attacks, thus cleaving the population from Hamas and the politics of hate.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org
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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
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Isn’t what it once was!
One incorruptible source for the facts. A source void of opinion or interpretation that both the right and the left could turn to in absolute confidence for the documented records on those who govern or wish to replace those who do.
Detailed biographical, educational, financial and voting records, comprehensive public comments made, and evaluations by dozens of conservative and liberal groups were available to anyone caring enough to gather them. All could easily be made searchable by name and issue of interest.
Like a bat to the head, it struck me: a candidate could be forced, with or without their cooperation, to provide a detailed application of employment, just the way all people must do—only better.
Hell, I thought, voters wouldn’t have to listen to all the self-promotional nonsense milking the people’s emotions. Voters could clearly see what candidates had done in the past and then know what would be done for them or to them if elected. Frustration would no longer be a citizen’s only alternative; they would mob such a system.
In February 1988 I left my grass hut and by March the Internal Revenue Service received an application for a new non-profit called the Center for National Independence in Politics.
An absurd meaningless name for sure! Such things can make sense after passing a barber shop called SNIP and when out of oxygen during a challenge match of racquetball with an older brother. That is exactly how I came up with an acronym before I came up with an actual name. I wanted something that would fit the logo I had in mind:
That is to say, I made some mistakes. Although my idea was a great one, it had a bit of slop stuck to it.
With just a few former campaign volunteers who still had faith in me we could test the idea in a couple of states. That, and finding some prominent people of both major parties to back up the work and you had the makings for a cure to all the choreographed chicanery of then-day American Politics. Everyone in politics knew this cancer was now eating away at the heart of our democracy.
Yes, this would work, I was certain of it. I was excited, I had something to do, something important to do. I felt like I had seen the Holy Grail off in the distance. All I had to do was go get it and bring it home to a needy nation. So, I caught that train and headed home.
As it would turn out, I had little trouble finding the Grail. Bringing it home would prove difficult, and once it arrived a few million instantly used it. But as I would discover, the other 200 million or so just wanted to enjoy whatever their version of a Barco Lounger, beer and a football game was.
Back home I had to find some means to earn a bit of money that didn’t take much time so I could work on CNIP. Substitute teaching and teaching a few classes at a community college would be perfect, only it required a college degree. So, I took my Mexico walkabout to visit the Dean of the Languages School at the University of Arizona. It seems that my crude, largely street slang Spanish impressed him so much that he passed me out of my two-year language requirement on the spot. So, twenty years after entering the University as a wholly irresponsible young man I got my degree. When I mentioned it to my mother, she was not so much surprised as she was in disbelief. I think many mothers always see their children as they were when young. In her mind she still saw her children as the nitwits we would forever be, and in my case not without some reason.
The only thing pressing on my mind when I returned from Mexico was my need for an office to work on my idea and some place to live. Either one would also serve as the other. I purchased an old liquor warehouse which had been on the wagon run from Mexico to Tucson in the 1800s. It had 12-foot ceilings, thick adobe walls and was located in a poor neighborhood, filled with down on their luck men smelling of malt liquor, and bottom rung strung out prostitutes. It was all I could afford, but I loved it. At the same time, I started doing that teaching work to pay some bills.
Being a substitute teacher was perfect. As it turned out substitutes don’t do anything, certainly no teaching. You were expected to show a film or whatever time-consuming monotony had been assigned by the absent teacher to keep them busy. Most often I simply sat in the back of a class writing letters and stuffing envelopes to everyone I could imagine might help me with my vision, while National Geographic played on a screen or kids wrote reports, usually on one of three things: What I did with my summer, what I got or gave for Christmas, what I plan to do with my summer, all depending on the season.
As a result, I got some money to eat on and a lot of time to map out a strategy to bring home the Grail.
Education, the staple of human advance, is in large part due to teachers. After all, next to parents and perhaps peers, they have the greatest impact on child development and each generation’s ability to achieve bigger, better, and cheaper. I always got great support from teachers’ unions. Like all special-interest, labor or corporate unions, teachers want more money. But it wasn’t until I became a teacher that I experienced how ruinous our lack of support for teachers had become. Teachers are no longer supported or have any standing in their communities. With funding often anchored to attendance, schools are more dependent upon students being in the classroom than they are teachers being there.
Classrooms are stuffed, not with teachers (outgoing money), but with students (incoming money). As a result, students are now in control and teachers suffer the slings and arrows as if responsible for every imagined social ill.
Public schools are often built and managed like prisons. They need to keep students (money) in. Substituting back at my alma-mater, Tucson High, where my father was student body president, it was easy to notice all the new fences and locks. The administration told me that it was to keep the unwanted (drugs, weapons and such) out. But that was not actually true. It was instantly clear to all that fences couldn’t keep anything out, but it could keep students in. That was the point, the administration wanted to keep its students inside, their funding depended upon it. Even if they ditched all their academic classes, which a good number did, they got funding if they were at school in any sort of organized class. So, for those that did not want to learn any geometry or what a constitution was, or even how to read it, the administration had a day long GYM class where the willfully ignorant could play basketball and other games all day long.
I always wanted to be sent to the schools where substitutes often refused to go. They were always in troubled neighborhoods where broken homes and alcoholism were common. At 6’ 4” and 260, I could look intimidated and had no problem being assigned to the toughest schools. Had I been a petite gentler soul, as most teachers were, . . . well, I don’t know how they could do it and my respect for them grew enormous.
In one, I was assigned 8th graders for a week who had to take their class in a portable classroom that had been erected out on the playground because of overcrowding. As typical, I started the class with roll call. Also, as typical with students hitting their first teen years, they quickly recognized a “substitute-free day” and were a little unruly—many sitting with their backs to me on top of their desks, blurting out some form of “here” when their name was called. When told to sit down some objected that they did not need to listen to me and one simply refused and told me to “fuck off,” to the laughter of a few of his friends. I asked again and got a “go fuck yourself.”
The inevitable slip was written out, he was shown the door and directed to go to the principal’s office.
For the next 40 minutes I wavered between abandoning a classroom of unrulies and running outside to stop the “go fuck yourself” student from pelting the portable with bricks. Just as the bell ending class was about to ring, the air conditioning unit took a direct hit and began to smoke. As I unplugged it the bell rang, students streamed out the back door with me quickly following to find the vandal. Seeing me coming he ran around the unit with a couple of his friends. As I chased them, they ran back into the classroom through the front door trashing all the papers and desks and back out the rear door as I entered.
As I cleaned up, my next class entered. Each student looked at me and immediately took their seats – might have had something to do with my countenance. I went on with my day.
At this miserable day’s end, I stood at the one and only exit to the school and saw my thirteen-year-old, “go fuck yourself,” vandal approaching. I stood in his path and said, “You need to come with me to the principal’s office.”
As I blocked his escape, making a path to the principal’s office, his only road, he began a torrent of expletives and descriptions of me that were evidence I was with a prodigy. He was, without question, a young and highly skilled linguist. The unending vulgarity cascading from his mouth was a real marvel to behold. During our walk to the principal’s office, I became a “fucker, mother fucker and a fucker’s fucker,” along with being a “queer, bastard, homo, and shit faced cock sucker,” sprinkled with occasional requests to “suck his dick” or “lick his balls.”
Through the school’s halls and breezeways to the administrative offices we went.
The school’s principal came out to investigate the disturbance. When I told her what had happened, she became annoyed, said, “I have no time for this now,” and exited the building. The smiling little snot quickly followed her lead.
In my portable the next morning there was a note, “Report to the principal’s office immediately.” As I entered her office, seated across from her was the couple that had bred the little snot, all claiming that I had twisted the little darling’s arm when I walked him.
With an apologetic, hopeful smile the principal said that such behavior was not tolerated at the school and that she had called me in to prove it so. Then with a glare at me she spat, “Your services are no longer required here Mr. Kimball, pick up your things and go.”
Did she know me? Did she hate my politics? Or was she so unsupportive of all her teachers? Stunned, and more than a bit confused I stammered out a quick defense, saying that I never twisted any arm, or acted angrily at all. Halfway through the principal’s repeated order to leave, another teacher entered the room, then another, and another until the room was jammed with a dozen or so. They, too, were angry and ready to unload. For a moment I thought it was at me and I had re-entered some other unworldly Twilight Zone.
But it wasn’t at me that the teachers focused their anger, they had the principal in their sights. They had apparently heard I was being discharged and were now surrounding her desk.
It turns out that my focus the afternoon before was so riveted on keeping the little snot on the road to the office that I never noticed all the teachers up and down the hall who had come out to investigate the little angel’s torrent of obscenities.
The principal was still seated at her desk and now a bit flustered herself when the commentary flew from one mouth, then another and another.
“You are not firing this man!”
“I have never witnessed anyone subjected to such disgusting abuse as Mr. Kimball was.”
“He never got angry or even raised his voice at (whatever that snotty, con-to-be’s name is).”
“He was completely calm, unbelievably calm, never touched that kid.”
“Did you go see what that kid did to the classroom, to the air conditioning unit?”
And then my favorite:
“He took that horrid abuse with a dignity that was as awe inspiring to me as it should have been to (the snot’s name again).”
In the middle of this most amazing and gratifying release from the Twilight Zone, someone said, “Hey, they’ve gone!”
The snot and his breeders had vacated the building.
Most importantly, the Grail: In those classes I found that I was very good at signing and stuffing envelopes. In fact, even 30 years later I still held two Grail seeking records: One was my ability to sign 1000 letters in 20 minutes, the other was to fold, seal and stamp them by the time Johnny Carson went off the air.
(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org
or
Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
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Gaetz mocking Covid on House floor
For decades I have been arguing about the power of ONE. I argue with “doubt I will vote” citizens: “A vote is like a little hard chunk of power, if you don’t use it, it doesn’t disappear it just makes everyone else’s chunk more powerful.”
And as a long forgotten influential once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
WOW! What more proof is needed than Matt Gaetz.
Even the slimiest can do it!
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org
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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
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