James Crabtree

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The 2008 Texas American Legion Boys State

A week from today I’ll be checking in to the Texas American Legion Boys State program. It will be my third straight year to serve as a senior counselor in what I truly believe is the best leadership program for high school males in America today. It is for that reason that the counselors all give up a week of vacation time to take part and receive no pay for the program.

Comprised of close to 700 boys from around the state that have just finished their junior year of high school, Boys State is a unique week long program in which the boys learn about government, civics, and leadership in a “learn by doing” atmosphere. Since it was created in the 1930s as a counter to the fascist youth camps that were gaining in popularity, Boys State has been an incubator for future leaders that have gone on to success in government, business, and the military. Some examples include Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Huckabee, Tom Brokaw, Michael Jordan, and Neil Armstrong. The program is now hosted every summer in 49 states and thousands of boys attend free of charge thanks to sponsorships from their local American Legion posts.

I was fortunate to be my school’s selection for Boys State in 1993. I was already a political aficionado that enjoyed volunteering on campaigns, reading The Almanac of American Politics for fun, and watching C-SPAN. Still, Boys State taught me more about politics and government in just one week of practical experience than an entire semester of high school government did in my senior year. In a very real sense it helped make me the person I am today.

The boys that come to Texas’ Boys State are leaders in their schools. Each one has been nominated by their teachers and counselors and is ultimately selected by a local Legion post. For many of them it is the first time they’ve been away from home by themselves. They will meet boys from across the entire state that come from all walks of life. By the end of the week however most have formed bonds that will last a lifetime. In some respects it is like boot camp because every boy wears the same Boys State t-shirt and boys from the same school are split up so that there are no preformed groups or alliances.

The program is held every year during the first full week of June on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Large assembly halls and auditoriums are used throughout the sprawling campus for the program. The vast UT intramural fields host the various Boys State sports competitions in the afternoons. The world’s second largest dormitory, the massive Jester Center, is where each boy will share a dorm room with another boy. It’s likely the first roommate he’s ever had. 40 boys will be placed together on a floor in Jester and will be named as a “city.” Amongst the 40 boys half will belong to the Nationalist party and half will belong to the Federalist party. Each party is purely fictitious and it is up to the boys to create their own platforms, chose their own party leaders, nominate their party candidates in primaries, and ultimately square off against the rival party in a general election. With each party having the exact same number of members, getting the cross over votes is key to victory. Boys can run for any office from Governor to justice of the peace and everything in between. Very quickly the boys see how the process works in gathering signatures to be placed on the ballot. They are forced to give speeches in front of hundreds of their peers. They learn how to campaign, how to form coalitions, and if elected they get a taste of how to pass legislation. In fact, the only difference between Boys State and real life in the accelerated one-week process is that there is no money or mudslinger as in real campaigns. Besides that, it’s the real deal. The boys even face run-off elections in the primaries amongst the top two voter getters if no one breaks 50% of the vote. The days at Boys State are necessarily long with everyone getting up at 6am to go to breakfast and with most nights not ending until 11pm or later because of party conventions and speeches. Throughout the entire process everyone seems to have fun. The pound for pound energy at the party rallies and assemblies at Boys State passes anything you will ever see at a real political convention.

One of the highlights during the week is the vast number of dignitaries that come to speak to the boys. For most of the boys it’s the first time they’ve ever been to Austin and it’s a thrill when many of the statewide elected officials not only speak to them, but also answer their questions and sometimes even eat dinner with them in the cafeteria. Boys State also routinely has speakers that have been P.O.W.s, business leaders, and even one that served as the CIA station chief in Moscow. His talk is always one of the favorites.

On the last day of the program the boys conduct a parade from the UT campus to the Texas Capitol. The Austin police block off N. Congress Ave. and the Boys State color guard and band (the band is made up of Boys Staters and is routinely one of the best I’ve ever heard) lead the way. Once at the capitol the boys are able to visit the offices of their state reps and senators and tour the building. Those that have been elected to the Boys State House and Senate sit on the floor of the Texas House and Senate in the same chairs and desks used by the members of the Texas Legislature. They will debate mock legislation and cast votes.

Politicians, like Whitney Houston, are forever lamely saying that the children are our future. Well, at Boys State you get to see some of our future leaders as young men and if you spend some time around them you will feel better about our nation’s future. If only we had more programs like Boys State I think we’d have less to worry about.

Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, has announced her candidacy for California governor next year. That state is a wreck and has been made worse by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s inability or refusal to take on the powerful organizations that have driven the state deeply into the red. Last week voters in California overwhelmingly defeated five propositions that would have raised taxes and fees. Their message was clear to the politicians in Sacramento that they’ve taken enough of their money and need to live within their means.

Last week The Weekly Standard ran a good cover story on Meg Whitman. If you don’t know her its pretty likely you’ve heard of her company, eBay. “When she arrived in 1998, eBay had 30 employees, $4 million in revenues, and 300,000 registered users. When she left in 2008, it had 15,000 employees, $7.7 billion in revenues, and nearly 300 million registered users worldwide, more than 12 million of them in California.”

Whitman gets it when it comes to capitalism and the role of government. “I was president and CEO of eBay for 10 years,” she said. “And eBay reinforced two important Republican concepts with which I had been raised.”

Finally, she seems to understand better than most politicians how technology can improve lives. Here’s her example of how dated California’s government has become.

This should be a fun race to watch in 2010.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with politics, but I think you will enjoy it nonetheless. The other day in downtown San Diego, P.F. Chang’s restaurant, the San Diego Padres, and the Omni Hotel came together to pull off a publicity stunt fundraiser that I have never seen before. They had pro golfer Briney Baird 375 feet above street level atop the nearby Omni Hotel to take aim at a large bullseye that was placed in Petco Park’s right field. Baird succeeded in hitting 8 of his 10 shots into the bullseye from over 230 yards away. By doing this he won free chicken lettuce wraps for everyone at P.F. Chang’s and $25,000 for the great Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, an organization that aides sailors, Marines, and their families who are confronted with financial hardships.

The footage of the shots comes around the 6 minute mark of this video. It is also amazing that all of his shots had hang times of between 11 and 13 seconds.

There are few programs on television that I enjoy more than C-SPAN’s airing of the British House of Commons and the Prime Minister’s Questions. I love the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the leaders of the opposition parties. The fact that the leader of the nation is forced to weekly defend his actions before the members of parliament is healthy for democracy. I think people in both parties in our nation could agree that our presidency has become enclosed in a bubble from which the president reads from teleprompters and only holds occasional press conferences in which he decides what reporters to call upon. Would we not be better off if we had this sort of direct exchange in our system, too?

C-SPAN airs these segments live early each Wednesday morning and rebroadcasts them on Sunday evenings. I have posted above the most recent exchange last week between the beleaguered and failing Gordon Brown and the Tory leader, David Cameron. Labour has suffered a series of embarrassing gaffes and defeats of late and all polls indicate that the Conservatives are set to win back their majority for the first time since 1997. Brown has now even had members of his own cabinet publicly distance themselves from him. The exchange between Brown and Cameron this week is great political theatre. Watching them volley back and forth from their respective dispatch boxes is politics at its best. Enjoy.

Everyone needs heroes in life and Jack Kemp was one of mine. I first learned about him when I was a young high school student and I was drawn to his sense of optimism, his love of the American entrepreneurial spirit, and his ability to campaign on conservative issues and win. Yesterday Jack Kemp died from cancer. I’ll mourn his passing. It was just a month ago that I re-read his 1979 book titled “An American Renaissance”. The book outlined many of the plans that Reagan would later implement in the 1980s with large tax cuts, a building up of our military, and a sensible turn away from the failed policies of Jimmy Carter and the malaise of the 1970s. More than any other elected official, Kemp deserves the credit for paving the way for Reagan’s 1980 landslide and the booming success our country enjoyed throughout that decade and into the 1990s. Kemp was one of the most unlikely politicians, but he was also one of our best.

Kemp was elected to congress in 1970 from a Buffalo, NY area district that had voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey just two years previously. The incumbent Democrat had tried to run for the US Senate, but when he failed to win the nomination he wanted to return to his old seat and found that the Democratic machine was not going to place him back on the ballot. The subsequent in-fighting amongst the Democrats in the district gave Kemp the opening he needed to pull off an upset victory. By stressing his blue collar roots (his dad started off as a truck driver in Los Angeles) and his background as a star football player (he led the Buffalo Bills to championship titles in 1964 and 1965, was a five time all-star, and the AFL MVP in ’65) he was able to garner votes from those that had never voted for a conservative Republican before. It would be his only close election in the 18 years he served in congress.

By the late ‘70s Kemp had emerged as the leading elected official to call for tax cuts and less regulation. His Kemp-Roth bill was signed onto by every Republican in congress and called for a 33% cut in all income taxes across the board over a three year period. Pres. Reagan later signed the bill into law and at first it was derivisevly called Reaganomics. That term disappeared as the economy began to improve. What Kemp and Reagan understood was that cutting taxes would spur a moribund economy that under Carter and the Democrats had suffered under double digit inflation and double digit unemployment – stagflation. Pres. Kennedy had cut marginal tax rates in the early 1960s and Kemp pointed to their success as his blue print. A rising tide lifts all boats and no one did more to convince the American public of that than did Kemp and Reagan. In fact, in 1980 at the Republican National Convention there was a strong push by the delegates to have Kemp picked as Reagan’s running mate. Reagan was a soul mate of Kemp, but he feared that a ticket comprised of two Californians (Kemp was born and raised in L.A.) ,and in which one was an actor and the other an athlete, might not provide enough balance to the ticket. Is there any doubt Kemp could have been elected president in 1988 if he had served as Reagan’s vice president? As it was Kemp did run in 1988, but he did not have the institutional support that Vice President Bush received and though running an aggressive race he was never close to gaining the nomination.

Kemp then spent the next four years as Pres. Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. During that time he preached the need for capitalism and entrepreneurialism to lift up the nation’s poor. He pushed hard for urban enterprise zones and dared to campaign for Republicans in areas where the party had long since given up hopes of winning. In 1994 he crisscrossed the nation for many of the Republicans that would win the first GOP majority in the House since 1954. I was among many that were disappointed when he chose not to run for president in 1996. At the time the political wisdom was that a candidate must raise $30 million dollars to run for president and with the max donation capped at $1,000 Kemp told people that running for president resulted in constantly asking for money all of the time. He said it was like “filling a bathtub with a teaspoon.” Later that year, after having first supported Steve Forbes’ campaign, Kemp was surprised to be picked as Bob Dole’s running mate. He reveled in the campaign and to many conservatives he was the star of the ticket.

I met Jack Kemp when I was 19 years old and working for the Republican Party of Texas. Unable to afford the cost of attending a fundraiser he was headlining in Dallas, I asked if I could volunteer to work the event in order to meet him. I was lucky that they said yes. At the time I was just starting a cable access tv show I produced and hosted in Austin called “The Starboard Side.” After the event was over I got to speak with Kemp for a few moments. He was a class act and he even agreed to film a promo spot for my show right then and there. I turned on the camera and Kemp, with his ebullient nature smiled at the camera and completely unrehearsed said, “Hi, I used to be Jack Kemp. No, I really am Jack Kemp and you’re watching The Starboard Side with James Crabtree. Don’t forget The Starboard Side.” A few weeks later I received a signed photo from the event of the two of us together. It still hangs on the wall in my den today. Jack Kemp was one of my heroes. I know I won’t forget him.

On May 9th Austin, Texas will vote for a new mayor. Thus far the race has been very low key and turnout is projected to be only around a miniscule 10% of the registered voters. The residents of the city may be sleeping through this campaign, but this election, as in all elections, has consequences.

Cities do not grow inevitably. Our nation has many once great cities that have withered and declined over the years in large part due to apathy and mismanagement. One of the leading candidates for mayor in Austin, City Councilman Brewster McCracken, seems to understand this fact. He has now run a television advertisement in which he points to the stark decline of St. Louis, MO as an example of how a once great and leading city can fall. This naturally provoked an angry response from some residents of St. Louis (as seen in the news clip above), but they seemed to completely miss his point. If Austin and its civic and political leaders do not focus on the aspects that lead to a growing and prosperous city, then what happened to St. Louis and many other cities could happen here as well. Can anyone dispute that St. Louis is literally less than half the city it once was?

I have read and studied a good deal about St. Louis. My father-in-law and his entire family were born and raised there. To say that St. Louis is today a shadow of what it once was is not an understatement. For the best review of what the city once was and what it is now we will turn to the incomparable Almanac of American Politics -

That section of The Almanac sums it up far better than most politicians would like to admit. Growth and prosperity do not just happen. A city must ensure that it provides good basic services such as police, fire, roads, parks, water, and sanitation. It must ensure that it creates a business friendly environment. It must keep down property and sales taxes. It must also be certain to avoid the enticing boondoggles that too often sucker in politicians that are playing fast and loose with taxpayer dollars, such as Austin requesting a million dollars from the federal stimulus bill to build a disc golf course. Cities must realize that they are in competition with other communities and when crime and costs rise too high citizens and businesses vote with their feet. Austin cannot afford to let that happen, and it cannot let its hubris and “Keep Austin Weird” vibe obscure this fact from its voters. Kudos to Councilman McCracken for understanding those facts.

Recently President Obama announced that he would order members of his cabinet to come up with $100 million dollars that could be cut from the federal budget. That sounds great until you see a representation of what $100 million dollars looks like out of our bloated runaway budget. The video above is a case of seeing is believing.

Posted above is a highly educational video that Israel recently released about Operation Cast Lead, their most recent campaign against Hamas. Even though it is under six minutes in length, you will gain a better understanding for how Hamas, a militant Islamic terrorist organization, operates by using innocent civilians as human shields. You will see how they use tunnels to smuggle arms and explosives into their region and you will better be able to visualize the tough situation in which the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force must operate. Most of all, you will see how the citizens of Israel live under the constant threat of attack from those that wish to kill them. It is not an understatement to say that you can learn more from this video than you can from most of the media coverage.

The bottom line is that Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East and they are surrounded by nations that wish for them to be literally wiped off the face of the earth. One doesn’t have to know much about history to know that the Jewish people have been persecuted since virtually the beginning of recorded history. Time after time Israel has been the small, beleaguered nation that has had to fight wars to preserve her very life.

Now Israel is faced with not only terrorist groups such as Hamas, but also by the nation of Iran, which has repeatedly promised death to Israel and is now developing their own nuclear weapons. Israel must additionally deal with an American president that believes that Iran can be negotiated with and yet has not met personally with the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The enemies of Israel well know however that Israel will not hesitate to protect herself. In the 1980s Israel conducted a daring and highly skilled bombing strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facility before he could use it against them. Does anyone doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel will do the same once more if Iran’s threats grow too near? When that moment comes America must be prepared to stand by our ally once more. God forgive us if we do not.