My third pet peeve in government

I recently posted about a progressive Facebook friend who is displeased with SA’s mayor, Ivy Taylor. She also is displeased with her redneck in-laws who, despite their antipathy toward welfare, are not above keeping a cow on their acreage to avoid paying any significant property tax.

While I’m not judgmental re: people who energetically try to avoid taxes, I have previously blogged about my disgust with the farm/ag exemption.  The ag exemption, along with the obscene pension plan that state legislators have provided themselves, are strong evidence of the corruption involved in government.

To my list of pet peeves in government, I am adding a third item – long-term capital gains. These gains are currently taxed at 15% for most people, which is a compromise between some people arguing that these gains should be untaxed and others arguing that these gains should be taxed the same as ordinary income.

I agree with the latter position, but even if I understand the compromise, I don’t understand why the tax code would allow an estate to transfer to its heirs capital assets not only without assessing a tax on its capital gains, but also with its cost-basis increased to its current market value. What uncorrupted legislator would think that makes sense?

For some reason, I’ve never heard this grotesque policy discussed, let alone discussed. Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago upon hearing that President Obama is proposing to seek a middle-class tax cut that will be paid for by assessing a capital-gains tax on inherited property.

I look forward to hearing how the Republicans argue against this proposal. Mitt Romney is opening his campaign with an emphasis on helping the middle class, and I would love for him to adopt this proposal.

A sales-tax revival

An article in yesterday’s NY Times reported that the sales tax is taking on increased importance in several states across the nation.  The movement is being led by Republican governors in LA, NE, and KS, and although Democrats traditionally oppose the sales tax because it can be regressive, the article suggests that the experience of these states might have federal implications when Congress finally attempts to effect tax reform. 

According to Times reporter Richard W. Stevenson, “Taxing consumption has the potential to lift economic growth by encouraging more savings and investment. But the shift could also increase inequality by reducing taxes predominantly for the wealthy, who spend a smaller share of their income than middle- and lower-income people.”  If these states experience relatively more economic growth, the states with high income taxes will be pressured to move in the same direction in order to prevent residents and businesses from voting with their feet. 

The Times article contained the following nuggets of sales-tax info:

• Nationwide, sales taxes account for about 46 percent of state revenues, and personal and corporate income taxes for about 42 percent.  (Considering that many big states, like TX and FL, don’t have a state income tax, I am surprised that 42% of state revenue comes from an income tax.  Too bad for CA and NY.)
• States with relatively low income tax rates like Louisiana, which raises about $3 billion a year from its personal and corporate income tax system, can more easily shift toward a sales tax-only system than states with much higher rates, like New York or California.  (NY and CA are facing hard times.)
• Louisiana already has the nation’s third-highest sales tax, after Tennessee and Arizona. Combined state and local sales taxes average 8.84 percent, according to the Tax Foundation.  (We’re at 8.25% in San Antonio.)
• And just as President Obama has raised income tax rates on upper-income families, Democratic governors including Martin O’Malley of Maryland, Jerry Brown of California and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts have supported or put in place income tax increases on the wealthy.  (Watch out for people like Phil Mikelson voting with their feet.)
• Nearly all other wealthy countries have some version of a national consumption tax.  (I suspect their consumption tax is in addition to, not in lieu of, an income tax.

I’m a long-time fan of shifting from an income tax to a consumption tax, although, as I’ve previously blogged there would be a danger of rich people figuring a way to avoid paying taxes.  Further, as Mitt Romney warned in his book No Apologies, there would be a danger that our economy would be significantly disrupted as people reacted to a dramatic change.  Both of these dangers, however, could be ameliorated by a gradual shift from one tax to the other.

Good luck, LA, NE, and KS.

Pew research on young voters in the presidential election

Based on Ann Coulter’s surprising revelation, based on Pew research, that young whites (18-29) preferred Romney over Obama in this year’s presidential election, I decided to go to the horse’s mouth for further information.  According to Pew: 

• Obama won the young vote – 60% to 36%
• Romney won the young white vote – 51% to 44%
• Obama won the young Hispanic vote – 74% to 23%
• Obama won the young black young – 91% to 8%
• Romney won the young white male vote – 54% to 51%
• Romney won the young white female vote – 49% to 48%
• Obama won the young black male vote – 80% to 19%
• Obama won the young black female vote – 99% to 1%.

The media loves to talk about the gender gap, but rarely discusses the racial gap, even though the racial gap is much larger.  And when the media does discuss the racial gap, it seems like the issue is usually framed about whether whites can bring themselves to vote for a minority, never the reverse.

Other conclusions from the Pew research: (a) the racial gap persists, but lessens, with young Americans, and (b) young black males are not nearly as enamored of President Obama as young black females obviously are.

Candy Crowley’s fact-checking of Obama’s Rose Garden statement

In reviewing this year’s presidential election, many pundits have suggested that the first debate was the most significant ever, even more significant than the Kennedy/Nixon debate in 1960.  This year’s debate in Denver was a game-changer because by most accounts, Obama, who was cruising toward an easy victory, was dreadful, whereas Romney, who had been successfully demonized by negative ads during the summer, gave a tour de force. 

Following the first debate, Romney’s momentum was palpable and the contest between Obama and Romney was a horse race.  But the momentum didn’t last, and there are two competing partisan explanations for why:

• The Democrats claim that the Romney momentum simply ran out of steam because the underlying fundamentals of the race couldn’t sustain it.  Obama’s subsequent debate performances put the race back on its pre-debate trajectory.
• The Republicans claim that the first-debate momentum could have been built upon in the second debate if CNN moderator Candy Crowley hadn’t inappropriately and unfairly interjected herself into the candidates’ discussion of Benghazi.  And even with his momentum blunted by Benghazi, Romney could have prevailed in the election if Chris Christie, Romney’s keynote speaker, hadn’t given Obama a platform for shifting the focus from the economy to his handling of a national disaster.

According to an article in the NY Times, Chris Christie is currently working feverishly to regain the favor of vast swaths of Republican activists and donors who are incensed – “A few days after Hurricane Sandy shattered the shores of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie picked up the phone to take on a different kind of recovery work: taming the Republican Party fury over his effusive embrace of President Obama….  Mr. Christie has been explaining himself to Republicans ever since. His lavish praise for Mr. Obama’s response to the storm, delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign’s final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the party holds that it influenced the outcome.” 

The role of Christie in the election of Obama will continue to play out in the future, but Candy Crowley’s role in that election is likely to escape further analysis.  Before moving on, however, I wanted to know the facts, and to my good fortune, I stumbled across an article on DailyKos.com that provides many the details.  To summarize:

1. During the second debate, Romney charged that Obama misrepresented the Benghazi attack for two weeks as being prompted by a YouTube video when it was actually a terrorist attack by al Qaeda.  This charge was critical because (a) it supported Romney’s assertion that Obama liked to blame America first, and (b) it belied Obama’s assertion that al Qaeda had been decimated.
2. Obama responded that Romney’s charge was false because Obama had immediately in a Rose Garden statement characterized Benghazi as a terrorist attack. 
3. When Romney said Obama’s claim was not true, Crowley decided to be an on-the-spot fact checker in the following exchange:

• ROMNEY: I — I think interesting the president just said something which — which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
• OBAMA: That’s what I said.
• ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?
• OBAMA: Please proceed governor.
• ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
• OBAMA: Get the transcript.
• CROWLEY: It — it — it — he did in fact, sir. So let me — let me call it an act of terror…
• OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy? 
• CROWLEY: He — he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take — it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.

In the exchange, President Obama snarkily suggested that we get the transcript, but Candy didn’t have time for that, so instead she paraphrased what the transcript said.  But fact-checking and paraphrasing are done at a moderator’s peril, and a review of the following transcript confirms that Candy had ventured where she shouldn’t have gone:

THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning.  Every day, all across the world, American diplomats and civilians work tirelessly to advance the interests and values of our nation.  Often, they are away from their families.  Sometimes, they brave great danger.

Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.  Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith.  We are still notifying the families of the others who were killed.  And today, the American people stand united in holding the families of the four Americans in our thoughts and in our prayers.

The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack.  We’re working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats.  I’ve also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world.  And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.

Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths.  We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.  But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence.  None.  The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.

Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya.  Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans.  Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had died.

It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save.  At the height of the Libyan revolution, Chris led our diplomatic post in Benghazi.  With characteristic skill, courage, and resolve, he built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries, and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya.  When the Qaddafi regime came to an end, Chris was there to serve as our ambassador to the new Libya, and he worked tirelessly to support this young democracy, and I think both Secretary Clinton and I relied deeply on his knowledge of the situation on the ground there.  He was a role model to all who worked with him and to the young diplomats who aspire to walk in his footsteps.

Along with his colleagues, Chris died in a country that is still striving to emerge from the recent experience of war. Today, the loss of these four Americans is fresh, but our memories of them linger on.  I have no doubt that their legacy will live on through the work that they did far from our shores and in the hearts of those who love them back home.

Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks.  We mourned with the families who were lost on that day.  I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed.  And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi.

As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it.  Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.  Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America.  We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.  And make no mistake, justice will be done.

But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers.  These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity.  They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity.

We grieve with their families, but let us carry on their memory, and let us continue their work of seeking a stronger America and a better world for all of our children.

Thank you.  May God bless the memory of those we lost and may God bless the United States of America.

The transcript reveals two critical facts – (1) in the fourth paragraph, President Obama clearly indicates, albeit indirectly, that the Benghazi attack was prompted by the YouTube video, and (2) in the tenth paragraph, as he is wrapping up the statement, the President declares that no act of terror will ever shake the resolve of our great nation.   

Although you can argue either way with respect to whether the President in his statement called Benghazi an act of terror vs. a spontaneous response to a YouTube video, it is shocking that a moderator felt she should declare President Obama the winner in this exchange and bring it to a close. 

Ulimately, however, Mitt Romney bears some responsibility because he still had a third debate for clarify his winning points and, inexplicably, he declined to do so.  To this day, I’ve not heard the inside scoop on why the Romney campaign decided to not press this issue in the third and final debate.

Incidentally, the Daily Kos article pointed out that the Romney campaign might have been confused by the official White House release of the Rose Garden statement (attached below), which referred indirectly to the You Tube video, but did not include any reference to an act of terror.  Apparently, President Obama expanded greatly on his prepared remarks in actually delivering the Rose Garden statement, and I agree that the Romney campaign in listening to the statement might have missed the act-of-terror reference buried at the end of the statement.  

Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya’s transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward. 

More on Romney’s gifting

A few days ago, I blogged about Romney catching flak for the “gifting” comment that he made.  And, although you might think the Benghazi and Petraeus scandals would have pushed the gifting story to the sidelines by the weekend, the Sunday talk shows this morning revealed that the media still want to get a few more miles out of it.  . 

According to some media pundits, the story shows how out of touch Romney and the Republicans are.  Instead of recognizing their loss and trying to fix their obviously failed message, the party is “doubling down” on its failed message, according to pundits.  No one points out that Romney’s comment was not a public, forward-looking message; rather, it was a private post-mortem of his campaign to his big donors.    

The more mean-spirited pundits suggested that Romney was confirming himself as an out-of-touch loser who doesn’t know when to go away even while they conceded that Romney has been in seclusion except for this leaked conference call/post-mortem with major donors.  That is the definition of hypocrisy.      

One additional comment about gifting – as I previously blogged, providing favored treatment to your coalition of supporters has been standard operating procedure as long as America has existed, and for the media to call Romney a sore loser for stating that fact reminds me of the guy in Casablanca saying that he was shocked to find there was gambling going on in a back room.  Don’t tell me that President Obama didn’t reward the UAW with the GM bailout.  In fact, he did, and they repaid him in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Another fact – one of the best examples of people voting against their interest is the white middle class.  Several liberal friends over the years have asked me why the white middle class refuses to endorse tax hikes on the rich.  They can’t understand why voters would reject a tax increase that would not indirectly affect them. 

My response is that some people are more principled and less selfish than others.

The Obama campaign’s academic dream team

According to a NY Times article, President Obama employed an academic dream team of sociologists to develop cutting-edge campaigning tactics.  One of those tactics was described as follows:

• Obama volunteers also asked people if they had a plan to vote and if not, to make one, specifying a time, according to Stephen Shaw, a retired cancer researcher who knocked on doors in Nevada and Virginia in the days before the election. “One thing we’d say is that we know that when people have a plan, voting goes more smoothly,” he said.  Recent research has shown that making even a simple plan increases the likelihood that a person will follow through, Dr. Rogers, of Harvard, said.

The article went on to smugly note – “Consortium members said they knew of no such informal advisory panel on the Republican side. Efforts to contact the Romney campaign were unsuccessful.”

Well, if the Times had asked me, I would have told the reporter, as I have previously blogged, that the Romney campaign in Ohio was employing the same tactic on sporadic voters that the article described as cutting edge.  No wonder people get an inflated view of Obama and his campaign.

The eve of the 2012 presidential election

On Sunday afternoon, I posted the following comment on my Facebook wall:

• Couldn’t watch the political news all day today. I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach that the American voters are more impressed by Obama’s ordinary performance with Sandy (thanks, Chris Christie) and less concerned about his abysmal performance with Benghazi (thanks, mainstream media).

Since then I’ve regained a bit of my optimism by listening to pundits on FOX News.  Although Intrade.com continues to give Romney only 2-1 odds, there are a plethora of signs that the voters are declining follow the guidance of the mainstream media and will turn out in record numbers to elect Romney.

Aside from the horse-race perspective, my feelings are stronger than ever that America needs for Romney to win the election.  As usual, pundit Charles Krauthammer articulates my opinion better than I can.  In his Sunday column, he predicted that 2012 will be a transformation election, like Reagan’s in 1980 and FDR’s in 1932.  ObamaCare will either be ratified or rejected.  More importantly, re-electing Obama means that America will continue down its current path to a European-type welfare state, whereas electing Romney means that American voters want to return to more individual responsibility. 

Earlier in this campaign I rejected the doomsday scenario described by many conservative pundits because I believed America will have another opportunity to change course in four years.  Upon further reflection, however, I am concerned now that the pundits are correct because four more years of Obama might have American on an evitable path to becoming like GM except there will be no one to bail us out.

Cary Clack makes a positive case for Barack Obama’s re-election

Cary Clack was a liberal columnist for the San Antonio Express-News until he resigned that position about a year ago to become the communications director and senior advisor to Joaquin Castro, the Democratic candidate for my congressional district, the 20^th.  It seems that most political flacks this year emphasize negative campaigning, but earlier today, Clack made the following positive case on Facebook for re-electing President Obama:

• Oct. unemployment rate at 7.9% with 171,000 jobs created and 84,000 more jobs added to the August and September figures. He kept the country from going into a depression; 800,000 jobs a month were lost when he took office; 33 straight months of job creation with more than 5 million new jobs; the stock market has more than doubled; he saved the auto industry and one million jobs; 30 million Americans will have health insurance at a boon to PRIVATE insurance companies; consumer confidence is at a 5-year high; housing starts are at a 4-year high. Yet this country is worse off under President Obama?

As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, so perhaps we should take a closer look at Clack’s statistics:

1. October unemployment rate at 7.9% while 171,000 jobs created and 84,000 more jobs added to the August and September figures.  Clack conveniently fails to note that the unemployment rate increased from 7.8 in October and that the rate is higher than when Obama took office in January 2009.
2. He kept the country from going into a depression.  The Great Recession ended in June of 2009, before the Obama stimulus had taken effect, so clearly nothing Obama did prevented a depression.
3. 33 months of job creation with more than 5 million new jobs.  The statistics from Obama administration seem to have a flexible starting date.  Sometimes the starting date is Obama’s inauguration, others (like this one) start a few months later, and others are blamed to George Bush to this day.
4. The stock market has more than doubled.  Funny how Obama attributes the doubled price of gas to the fact that prices were so low in 2009 due to the Great Recession; however, when it comes to the doubling of the stock market, there is no reference to the fact that stock prices were abysmally depressed in March of 2009. 
5. He saved the auto industry and 1 million jobs.  This is urban legend.  The auto industry (but not the auto unions) would have done better under a managed bankruptcy, at less cost to the federal government.
6. 30 million Americans will have health insurance at a boon to PRIVATE insurance companies.  The federal government is about to founder under the weight of its various insurance/welfare entitlements, and it simply cannot afford ObamaCare at this time.
7. Consumer confidence is at a 5-year high; housing starts are at a 4-year high.  Of course, consumer confidence and housing starts should be higher as the economy recovers.  The questions are whether the Obama recovery has been too tepid and whether Romney can shift the recovery into overdrive.

Based on Clack’s statistics, I think the Obama campaign might be better served if it quit talking statistics and reverted to its previous tactic of trying to demonize Mitt Romney.

The Romney campaign in Ohio

Although I only spent seven hours volunteering for the Romney campaign in Ohio, I learned the following about how a highly organized, well-financed campaign is run on the ground (not the advertising):

1. A detailed analysis of every voter’s historical voting record is invaluable.  The Romney campaign knows when each voter has bothered to vote in the past several years.  In Ohio, the voters must self-identify as Republican, Democrat, or independent, but in other states the same information can usually be determined by noting whether the voter participated in the Republican or Democratic primary. 
2. Based on this voting analysis, the Romney campaign can identify reliable Republican voters, unreliable Republican voters, and swing voters, and then handle them accordingly.  Reliable voters can be taken for granted (at least at GOTV time), unreliable voters will be the focus of the Get out the Vote (GOTV) efforts at the end of the campaign, and swing voters will be subjected to informational/persuasive approaches.
3. Creating a network of volunteers is essential.  The volunteers are deployed primarily to make door-to-door or phone contacts.  Campaign rallies are a prime location for finding volunteers.

Because I reported to the Romney campaign eight days before the election, it had recently shifted to its GOTV.  Because I feel that telephone calling is intrusive, I volunteered to do the door-to-door campaigning.  The Romney campaign gave me a list of voters in a neighborhood who usually voted Republican, but voted infrequently.  My job was (a) to put a door-hanger on every door in the neighborhood and (b) to actually knock on the door of the infrequent Republican voters and ask them two questions that were designed to make it more likely the person would eventually vote.  The two questions were:

• Are you planning to vote early, absentee, or on Election Day?
• If you are voting on Election Day, will you be voting in the morning, afternoon, or evening?

I also had a tertiary responsibility to let the voters know that Ohio Governor John Kasich and Ohio Senator Rob Portman would be speaking at a rally at our local headquarters in two days.   My campaign boss, who moved from KY to Columbus four months earlier, said that she wanted to pack the rally, not only to generate excitement and commitment, but also to enlist new volunteers for the last few days of the campaign. 

Obviously, this sort of organization is effective in generating more votes for the candidate.  But the problem is that it is really expensive (especially when you add in the advertising), which means that candidates must sell a part of themselves to people with money.  America would be better served if there were public financing of campaigns, with the candidates having only a modest budget that would not finance this type of overkill.

Road trip – Ohio and Franciscan University

Although I just returned from an exhausting one-week stay in NYC and an even more exhausting rotator-cuff surgery, two circumstances conspired to get me on the road again before I had expected:

1. My son Jimmy, who is attending Franciscan University (“academically excellent, passionately Catholic”) in Steubenville, Ohio, was coming to the end of his first season of rugby.  Like the “blind man in the bleachers,” I had never seen him play, so why not do it now?
2. My man Mitt Romney was in a really tight presidential race, and it sounded like the voters of Ohio would provide the decisive electors, so why not spend a few days volunteering for Romney in Ohio.

I hemmed and hawed about taking the trip for a couple of day, but when I called the Romney folks in Columbus on Tuesday and they offered to provide me a bed, I decided the stars were aligned. 

I hit the road on Thursday morning (on the radio – Beck, Rush, Hannity, Levin, Miller), drove through the night, and arrived in Columbus Friday afternoon.  But instead of stopping by the Columbus campaign office, I decided I would rather watch Jimmy’s 4-6pm rugby practice, so I kept driving to Steubenville and arrived just in time to watch some practice. 

After practice, Jimmy’s team met for a prayer session and then had their pre-game supper.  Jimmy and I finally got together around 9pm and spend a couple of hours driving around Steubenville, which has to be hillier than San Fran (though I’ve never been there). 

While driving around, Jimmy and I talked about life and his life.  He seems to be supremely happy at Franciscan as he is surrounded by kindred spirits – i.e., passionately Catholic.  And these kids are palpably different.  As I wandered around the campus asking for directions to the rugby field, I was struck by how openly “happy, cheerful, and friendly” the kids were.  And, like Asian immigrants, these kids did not have the cockiness, brashness, or outsized ego that you commonly notice in many college kids. 

The fact that Jimmy is flourishing with these kindred spirits raises the question of how important diversity is.  The liberal advocates of affirmative action say it is critical for America’s future leaders to be exposed to people of all types – rich & poor, liberal & conservative, black, white, and brown, gay & straight, etc.  Yet, most people don’t dispute that all-black, all-girl, or all-religious schools have a record of turning out outstanding graduates.  

When I asked Jimmy about whether he was concerned about studying in a cocoon of religiosity or not being exposed to dysfunctional people, he responded that Franciscan Univ. was active in working with the hundreds of struggling people in Steubenville, many of them literally right across University Boulevard.   

In addition to being “passionately Catholic,” Franciscan University is also “academically excellent,” and Jimmy seems to have bought into that, too.  I remember making that same transition my freshman year in college – going from a high-school student who studied a course simply because it was on my schedule to someone who studied because he wanted to learn that subject. 

Jimmy and I talked briefly about something called “the gentleman’s C,” which used to predominate private schools until admission to professional schools became so competitive.  Although I suspect that the gentleman’s C still exists in religious schools like Franciscan, Jimmy is still too new here to know.   Personally, I don’t know how to reconcile the practical need for exemplary grades against the ideal of learning for the sake of learning, and maybe these idealistic kids can school me on that.  

My initial impression of Franciscan reminds me of the creepy brother-in-law in Field of Dreams who initially wanted to sell the ballfield, but eventually was converted to believe the field was magical, and that is when he told Kevin Costner to hold onto the field at all costs.  I’ve come to believe that Franciscan is the spiritually right place for Jimmy.

Because I’ve enjoyed this time with Jimmy so much, I extended my Steubenville stay to a second night and then a third night and won’t get to Columbus until Monday morning.  Then I hope to be able to blog about the groundswell of support for Romney. 

Keeping my fingers crossed.