Support Our Troops? The Shameful Reality. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution opposing the President’s Iraq surge plans. The resolution finally forced members of Congress to take a stand. Although I applaud that this step, the reality is that this Congress will need to go farther and address funding the war that is their only real leverage on the president.

But there is something that Congress can do immediately that will have a more personal effect on the troops and their families. Congress can do something about the deplorable conditions at our nation’s military hospitals. In a terrific piece of investigative reporting, a two part series in Sunday and Monday’s Washington Post described how injured and maimed Iraq veterans are being slowly forgotten at Walter Reed Hospital. The Post calls Walter Reed “a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction (where) the wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks…”. The article describes a bureaucracy that is overwhelmed, understaffed and insensitive to our veterans.

There aren’t enough counselors to support the veterans and their families. Another soldier who had his uniform cut off by medics in Iraq who were trying to save his life, is unable to get a uniform to wear to the ceremony where he is to receive his Purple Heart. When he tries to get a uniform, he finds that the Army bureaucracy has lost his paperwork and won’t issue him one because it has no record of his ever having been in Iraq.

Worse, some injured soldiers have to fight for disability pay because the Army claims their injuries resulted from pre-existing conditions. This must add immeasurably to the stress these veterans and their families face. Without sufficient disability pay, many face a lonely and frightening future. They rightly wonder how they will survive when they can’t work.

It’s shameful that these soldiers face living with permanent disabilities when many suffered their injuries because they didn’t have the proper equipment to protect them against roadside bombs. But it is a national disgrace that the reward for their sacrifice is that they now have to fight a military bureaucracy for the disability payments that would at least enable them to live without fear of financial ruin.

Congress may not be able stop them from going to Iraq, but at the minimum, it is Congress’ obligation to make sure that our veterans receive the benefits and care that many will need for the rest of their lives. This will require more funding and more oversight of how the military is dealing with our veterans.

One step each member of congress can take immediately is to “adopt” injured soldiers from his or her district and make sure that each one of them gets the services and disability payments that they desperately need.

Unlike the non-binding resolution, this is an issue that requires no debate.

Labels: Congress, Iraq, military

  2:32 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post

Getting Things Done - The Towson Redevelopment Project For followers of politics and urban renewal, one of the best books written is Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” about New York’s Robert Moses. Moses is credited, and criticized, for shaping the physical New York that we see today. To Caro, Moses destroyed the fabric of established neighborhoods to build highways and bridges. At the same time, he built beautiful community swimming pools, created recreation facilities, parks and parkways. For better and sometimes worse, most of the major improvements that you see in the New York area today are a result of Moses’ vision and ability to get it done.

What is really extraordinary about Moses is how quickly he was able to get projects completed. Some projects took just three years from planning to reality. In today’s political environment, it is rare to see projects go from the drawing board to completion without years of review and delay. Not for nothing is the World Trade Center site still a hole in the ground.

Moses was ruthless in the exercise of power. Moses didn’t care about “process”. Like our own William Donald Schaefer, Moses cared about results. He was impatient and with only a few exceptions, was unyielding to community opposition to his plans. But Moses got it done and for the most part, the city of New York is a much better place for his efforts.

The other evening I attended the unveiling of plans to revitalize the center of Towson. County officials handed out an impressive brochure that depicted imaginative design ideas to make Towson more attractive for people to live and play, and for business. In speeches by public officials, much praise was given to the inclusive process that resulted in the designs.

That’s all well and good, but then I asked one of County’s staff people assigned to the planning process what the timetable was for implementing the ideas in the brochure. He laughed and replied that there was no timetable, and that even if there were, it wouldn’t be met. First, there is no money to turn these plans to reality. Second, more community review is required. With no timetable and no money to get it done, it will be difficult for investors and business people to make commitments to the area. The process may be terrific, but it’s hard to be optimistic that these plans will be implemented, at least in a reasonable time.

The Towson redevelopment project clearly needs a Robert Moses or a William Donald Schaefer. And so does the city of Baltimore.

Baltimore faces an important election this fall. At the risk of being labeled a Yankee fan (I like Derek Jeter, not the Yanks), I think the city of New York can provide a model for Baltimore. There, an accomplished businessman, Michael Bloomberg, has turned that city around. Business is booming, crime is down and schools are getting the money they need.

Labels: redevelopment, Towson

  11:49 AM •  0 Comments • Links to this post

Taking It Easy in Annapolis? Maryland’s annual state of the state message usually takes on a special significance with a new governor as we wait to see the tone he will set. Controversy in Martin O’Malley’s first speech to the General Assembly was as absent as Bob Ehrlich. It was a low key affair. In contrast with Ehrlich’s hectoring, O’Malley called for civility and cooperation between the governor and the legislature. The fact that there was little to argue with in O’Malley’s workmanlike budget made Speaker Mike Busch and the obstreperous Senate President Mike Miller unusually agreeable.

But is that a good thing for the state? Maybe legislators were tired of fighting with Ehrlich and needed a breather. Civility may be a good thing for cocktail parties, but it isn’t a necessary prerequisite for getting the people’s business done. We pay these guys, women included, to come up with new ideas to solve the state’s problems. It’s in the clash of ideas that progress is made. And if everything is so hunky dory, maybe there aren’t enough controversial new ideas being floated in our capital city.

It’s not as if there aren’t problems that need to be addressed. With all the talk of a structural deficit, there was no attempt made to deal with it in this session. The state’s strong tax revenues, mostly from the hot real estate market, allowed the Governor to dip into the flush rainy day fund to pay for increased school construction and transportation projects.

As Dan Rodricks pointed out in Thursday’s Sun, O’Malley barely mentioned Baltimore in his address. But the problems of bad schools, drugs and crime haven’t changed in the month since O’Malley turned over the city to Sheila Dixon (more on that in another column).

While O’Malley called for civility, another new Democratic Governor, Eliot Spitzer immediately started a fight with the state legislature over his proposals to cut property taxes, radically re-structure New York’s health care system and provide health insurance coverage to 400,000 uninsured children. Unlike O’Malley, he addressed the education needs of his state’s largest city, New York, with his plan to direct unprecedented amounts of new money to the neediest schools.

When I first started in the investment banking business, the bank I worked for proposed to cut its fees to win some business in order to establish itself in a new market. When asked why, my boss explained to the Vice Chairman reviewing the deal that it was a “loss leader”. To which the Vice Chairman replied: “Loss leaders are just losses.”

They may be getting along great in Annapolis, but time doesn’t wait. Civility may be the new administration and legislature’s loss leader. But delaying action is a just a loss for our uninsured and uneducated children and other problems our state faces.

Labels: Governor, Maryland, O'Malley

  6:17 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post