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Offering gifts and hopes this holiday season

Published 12.21.2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel As this is the season of giving and sharing, I wish to publicly share the following holiday gifts and warm wishes for the new year to some specific recipients. To project managers of the Marquette Interchange reconstruction or anyone else supporting this multiyear mess : I give a hand-selected bag of high-caffeine coffee that will speed up the work (whether or not it is ahead of schedule now). May all the inconvenience caused by the next state highway project take place no closer to me than Plover but no further from you than your favorite grocer. To all Wisconsin men and women in the armed forces who won't be home this holiday season: I offer my gratitude for your service and prayers for a safe trip home. For those who want to give more than good wishes, go to the state Department of Veterans Affairs Web site: dva.state.wi.us/supportourtroops.asp or call (800) 947-8387. There are a number of ways to get gifts to our service me...

With business speakers, courtesy wins

Wikipedia image S upposedly, our most common fear is public speaking. Yet some experienced speakers, overly comfortable at the stump, blithely deliver presentations with so little regard for their audience, one wishes they’d contract this phobia and never speak publicly again.  And yet many other speakers, who are utterly paralyzed by the prospect of giving a speech in public, are the ones we ought to hear from. Sad irony . Fortunately, most public speakers are conscientious enough to adhere to a few intuitive rules and share their knowledge, views, etc. in a responsible manner. Only simple courtesy and common sense are required.  Back in 1992 retired U.S. Admiral, Stanford University professor and Ross Perot running mate James Stockdale began to speak at a vice presidential debate by asking, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?”  That opening was greeted with laughter and later parodied on TV and I laughed too.  At that moment, Mr. Stockdale sounded like a slight...

Unity among the divided

Published: Oct. 5, 2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel There was a time when we didn't require hyphens to describe our citizenship - we were all just Americans. There was a time when no one, not a head of state or a popular rapper, would have the temerity to call the president of the United States a devil or a racist. There was a time when no one, Republican or Democrat, would go to an opposing party's Milwaukee offices to slash car tires on election day. Times have changed. Yet there are still bright moments for those who believe we have some collective principles as a people. If you ever felt moved after someone you don't care for takes a public stand to defend you, you'll know what I mean. Something triggered that feeling recently. Consider the words uttered on national television Sept. 21 by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). Rangel is a highly visible politico, a street fighter with a law degree who never minces words for his base on the left (some would say far left)...

Learning to save lives

Published September 13, 2006 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Normally, I find medical matters as interesting as a gossip column about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. So with some trepidation, I trudged off to learn about cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other first responder techniques for medical emergencies. CPR conjures a TV image of someone blowing air into the mouth of a victim and performing a series of rapid thumps on the person's chest using the heel of a hand. With that in my mind, a dozen or so other middle-aged guys and I convened at our local church hall for evening instruction. We were joined by two experienced emergency room nurses and a number of flaccid, half-bodied mannequins strewn across the floor. The program, which was conceived to train church helpers (in our case ushers) about emergency procedures, has been in place for some time. The techniques have been used on more than one occasion after a parishioner turned victim during Sunday services. Ironically, my ...

Religion in sports? Amen

Published: Aug. 15, 2006 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The first thing I noticed was the likeness of Reggie White and a crucifix in a half-page spread. Hundreds of miles from home, I found the prominent article about the late Green Bay Packer in a national newspaper a welcome sight. The second thing was the not-so-humble headline: "Reggie's (whole) story." Unsure how one can reveal the "whole" anything in one opinion article, I grabbed my hotel copy of the July 31 USA Today. The article was timely because White would be posthumously inducted into Pro Football's Hall of Fame that week. So what was the startling news, I wondered? Reading the first paragraph about White's "regrets" of preaching while in uniform, I began to anticipate some bombshell admission made just prior to his death. Maybe someone discovered a tape White recorded before his short life ended in 2004. I prepared to have the image of a man whom I admired not only fo...

The destruction of Arthur Andersen

On March 22nd, 2002 I published this letter on the Op-ed pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: " The recently announced blanket indictment of Arthur Andersen is not appropriate or beneficial for anyone. With the comprehensive nature of this indictment, the Department of Justice has chosen to imperil an 89-year-old institution and the livelihood it provides for tens of thousands of innocent Andersen employees, including around 650 Wisconsinites. How will former Enron Corp. employees receive "a bit of solace" - as the March 15 editorial "First blood in Enron debacle" put it - if other blameless people join their ranks? Two wrongs never make a right, and the indictment of the whole Andersen organization by the Department of Justice, for incidents that Andersen itself reported to the department, is already drawing suspicion in the court of public opinion. Stay tuned. " Post Script: On May 31st, 2005, the United States Supreme Court unanimously t...

How do you rate on the phone etiquette meter?

Wikipedia photo I have fumed about this issue for years. It’s called phone etiquette.  When one calls someone else, one is invading their office, their home, or their peace. One is an invader, perhaps a friendly one, but nonetheless an invader in the strict sense of the word. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon the invader, to identify himself/herself first.  Key point: callers should identify themselves first. As a boy, I was raised to answer our home phone thus: “Maddentes’ residence, John speaking, may I ask who is calling please?" OK, I don’t answer the phone that way any longer; and I don’t ask my children to do that either, however, I still identify myself first whenever I am calling someone else. It is the minimum courtesy one ought to expect.  This issue applies to work or home life. My daughters get phone calls from school mates and as soon as I answer, the caller usually begins by saying something like “Hi is (insert name) ther...

A blockbuster book on Enron

F or a definitive account of the whole Enron matter, grab a copy of Conspiracy of Fools (Broadway Books) by Kurt Eichenwald, a New York Times Reporter, based in Dallas. At over 700 pages, you won't exhaust this book quickly, but you'll have difficulty putting it down. Unlike creators of the TV movie "The Crooked E" (with questionable casting of Mike Farrell as the late Ken Lay) or authors of the well-titled, but shallow account Final Accounting by Barbara Ley Toffler and Jennifer Reingold. (Yes Ms. Toffler it's true, partners at professional services firms must sell work) -- Mr. Eichenwald delivers more substance. Ken Lay, Wikipedia Eichenwald manages to avoid easy stereotypes of all the major players in his meticulously-researched tome.  He writes with the verve of a mystery novelist, so you can't turn the pages fast enough, even though you know how the narrative ends. This detailed account confirmed some of my early impressions about the primary...

A Post-Katrina view minus the revisionism

A fter a national catastrophe like Katrina, some voices are bellowing about indifference to the poor and racism, while a grieving nation fumbles to make sense of it all.  Some criticism is out of control.   Let's decry an inept response to a natural disaster, hold accountable and prosecute decision-makers who controlled resources that could have helped more of our southern citizens. We can blame those who could have executed a more efficient evacuation from what Columnist David Brooks described as, “the most anticipated natural disaster in American history.”  Let us do all this but in the process let us also reject empty political charges that amplify the harm of the hurricane. Contributors on the editorial pages of my local newspaper ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ) could not resist the temptation to tar the Bush administration's actions with a recent piece entitled, “ A racial rift sadly revealed ” (Sept. 9, 2005).  Reactionary rap singers have cal...

Brokaw & Co. still in denial

Published July 12, 1996, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Perhaps it's just too much to ask, because few prominent journalists will publicly break ranks when asked to comment on the "B" word. The issue of media "bias" surfaced again. And once again, it was drowned by the voices of the renowned. At a recent National Press Club luncheon in Washington, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw's responses to hard questions about the Fourth Estate did little to foil skeptics. Public television's Jim Lehrer's rejoinders to the same questions were entirely different. You had to believe one man or the other. The fodder at this event was a well-publicized survey suggesting that 89% of U.S. journalists voted for Clinton in 1992. Asked to comment on the survey, Brokaw dismissed the familiar charge of industry bias by providing an equally tired reason why he feels it just is not so. Echoing most of his colleagues from print to broadcast and sea to shining sea, he mused, ...

Views on domestic surveillance

C ivil liberties, including the right to privacy, are critically necessary in a truly free society.  On the other hand, civil liberties should not automatically supersede national security concerns without the application of rigorous and transparent reasoning by parties operating in the collective interests of the people. By using the term "civil liberties" in this post, I am writing primarily about the right to privacy guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. National security only trumps the right to privacy when the party imposing security measures (e.g. the U.S. Government) is truly functioning in the interest of the people it is imposing such measures upon, to protect them from those who would do them harm (e.g. Terrorists).   That is the circumstance we are faced with today.  Some of the current clamor on domestic surveillance ignores the greater risks and evils we face. For example, with enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act i...

Remember that speech Pat Buchanan made in 1992?

Published: Nov. 20, 2004, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel More than 12 years ago, Patrick J. Buchanan spoke these prophetic words during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Houston: “My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” Immediately afterward, Buchanan was roundly denounced as a polemicist and even scorned by members of his own party. Some called it a hate speech; others groused about the political fallout and later blamed him for George H. W. Bush’s failure to win re-election in 1992. Whether or not you agree with his politics, Buchanan had the foresight and fortitude to call attention to philosophical warfare that was real then and remains so today. Since Nov. 2, anal...