April 17, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

Undecided? Uninformed? Blame us; we deserve it

In less than a week, Pennsylvanians will go to the polls for the state’s annual primary. In this area, there’s not much at stake for Republicans, but Democrats have some big choices to make.

The much-covered and analyzed contest between Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will dominate the news.

It did this week when Obama “gaffed” while speaking to San Francisco voters. In the event you have paid no attention to the media in the last week, Obama said that he believed (paraphrasing here) that rural Pennsylvanians have been embittered by their poor economic circumstances and are thus driven to cling to religion, guns, racism and anti-immigrant sentiments.

His opponents, both Clinton and Republican nominee John McCain, were quick to pile on with charges of elitism. Since Obama’s remarks, reaction to them by Clinton and excuses for them by Obama, have been on the front page of nearly every daily American paper (Look! They even made the opinion page of a little community weekly!). They have been over-analyzed on the talk shows; Meet the Press had a round table of four party analysts who dissected the comments (as if party analysts were capable of giving objective analysis).

At the heart of the analysis was this question: Will those remarks affect the primary in Pennsylvania? I’m not naïve enough to believe they won’t or shouldn’t, but it’s hard to believe there aren’t better things to focus on in the run-up to a major national election for the nation’s highest office. But instead of policy on the front page, we get polemics. Instead of honest responses on healthcare reform, we get horse race information and so on.

Should voters choose Clinton because Obama said something that seems elitist, or because they agree with her position on compelling all Americans to purchase health care and to make that health care more affordable? Should they vote for Obama because Clinton can’t remember (or fibs about) the specifics of a trip to Bosnia in 1996, or because they believe he has the better judgment about the ongoing war in Iraq?

The great chicken or egg first debate of journalism — are papers shallow because their readers are or are their readers shallow because papers are — certainly applies. In our modern times of newspaper panic (the Internet is coming!) and a sagging economy, it’s hard to fault the news business for trying to sell papers. And there’s not much that’s sexy or interesting about position papers (particularly when one could argue that presidents aren’t really responsible for legislation, but that’s another sleepy policy story…).

The media has this information. And informed voters will find it, even if it’s on page A12 (and papers do a far better job on policy than their television counterparts). But more reporting could be done to look into policy statements. Analysis of their feasibility could be offered to readers. I’m not concerned about who unemployed Scranton steel mill workers believe is elitist. I’d like to know what the Democrats propose to do about Al Qaeda in Waziristan. About what they want to do to make sure regulations are in place to prevent the kind of loose lending practices that greased the wheels of the mortgage crisis and credit crunch. And just how the president can tackle real heath care reform.

Papers, including this one, can and should do a better job of offering voters real debate on issues and refrain from being set up by campaigns to act as a messenger service for personal attacks. We need to help you decide. Not to endorse a candidate, but to give you the information you need. That’s our job and we need to do it better.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Free Will and Brand Loyalty in Homo sapiens
by HUGH GILMORE

I bought my first computer in 1988, an Apple MacSomething, and have bought 10 computers since then, all Apple MacSomethings. Now, in 2008, my wife, my son and I each own an Apple MacDesktop and an Apple MacLaptop, for a total of six working Apple computers.

If the Apple MacMarketing department swooped down to photo-op our daily life, any of the resulting snapshots might seem to be a testimonial to how devotedly our family has chosen Macintosh computers.

The truth, however, is simpler and eleganter (sic).

 Back in the early 80s, Apple’s marketing department grabbed the slogan: “An Apple for the Teacher” and rushed into America’s schools offering free computers and training programs to the districts and discounts to teachers who wanted to own one. I was teaching English at Haverford High School then. As with every trend that has steamrollered me after I naysaid it, (starting with the Beatles and continuing with YouTube — both of which I now love), I declared personal computers to be a passing fad. Certainly nothing I’d ever find useful.

Then I was assigned to teach the Creative Writing class at Haverford and the rule was, Whoever taught Creative Writing had to learn to use a computer. Somewhere, somehow, a deal had been struck that all of the students would create and submit their work via computer. In fact, the class was conducted in “The Computer Center.” So I learned to use a computer.

Correction. I learned to use an Apple Macintosh computer.

Correction. I learned to use the “word processing application” of an Apple Macintosh computer.

That’s it. And, were it not for the fear of being tedious, I could refine the statement of my limitations as a “word processor.” I can write, cut, paste, choose fonts, and print. Only. The rest of the computer’s 70,000 tasks, tools, whatever, I don’t have time to learn — not much advanced on Gutenburg, except, maybe on a good day I’m faster at the basics than he was.

So, that’s how I came to learn “to use” a computer. That summer I had compelling personal reasons for wanting to write and decided to buy a personal computer.

 I needed to shop around, compare, contrast, analyze and decide what was the best kind of computer for me to marry. Did I do that? No. When I made my purchase, was I a knowledgeable consumer? Not hardly. I had been trained on an Apple Macintosh computer. I had overcome my weird disinclinations, lunks, jerks, twitches, and mental gear slippages to “master”  an Apple keyboard. Where do you suppose I went? Yes, the Apple store.

So, is it fair to say I “chose” an Apple computer? And have continued to “choose” Apple computers down through the mini-eons of computer evolution since? Obviously not.

Am I happy with my Apple MacSomething?  Yes, deliriously so.

Would I be happier with some other kind of personal computer? We’ll never know.

I went to use a library card catalog one day not long after I’d bought my Mac. The catalog was gone, replaced by a computer. Okay. I took the “mouse” in hand and moved the indicator dash to where I wanted it and clicked. Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I dragged the little blinking dash all over the screen, trying this and that, and then clicked. Nothing. I was so frustrated, I asked a librarian. As you know, most librarians are teachers, but some are thugs who lie in wait hoping someone will exasperate them. That’s the sort I asked for help that day. Like a “Three-Card-Monte” dealer, she flashed impatiently through the screens too quickly for me to follow. I could not figure what she was doing differently than I was. We got results, but in a way that assured I’d be her co-dependent forever.

She left, her face flushed, her humiliation quota achieved for the day. Okay, fine, she’d helped me find a book I wanted. But now I had another book to find. I decided to forgo Round Two with her. I asked a student sitting near me. She came over and showed me. I still didn’t get it. I tried it. No good.

She laughed, “No, it’s a right click.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Look at the mouse. It has a right click and a left click. Some commands are right click and some are left.”

I looked. I’d never seen such a thing. A cloven mouse. I hadn’t even noticed. Apple mouses in those days were a single, smooth piece of plastic that you pressed down on, like a telegraph key. This thing had halves. Heavens to Betsy!

I thanked her. I now knew the principle, but decided to engage in a lifelong learn-no-more program. My Apple MacMouse works fine. See what I want? Click it. Done. No thinking. I learned it once. I don’t want to unlearn it. I don’t want to learn any more than I need for today.

And that’s what I mean when I say the Marketing and Advertising people at MacApple would be perpetrating a huge fraud if they came to take my picture in order to promote their business. Sure, the photo would show me smiling as I pecked away at my MacKeyboard. But the picture would lie if used to illustrate a sociology or philosophy text and was captioned, “An example of free will among Homo sapiens.”

Free will was never involved. They, the MacPeople, got to me early and got to me when I was vulnerable and I’ve been with them ever since. I love hearing that “serious” computer people love IBMs or Microsoft-based Pcs, while “wackoffs” enjoy Apples. I did not choose to be in such a minority.

I was, as they say in the animal behavior biz,  “imprinted.”

Reachable, sort of, at hughmore@yahoo.com.

Opinion: April Surprise
by Ed (I may be part of the mortgage crisis, but I ain’t no convict)Feldman

Ladies and gentlemen, the chickens have come home to roost, the “smoking gun” has turned into a “mushroom cloud,” and the case that I and others have been investigating for more than three years has cracked so wide open that the only mystery is: How many will fall into the abyss?

As you can read on the front page of this newspaper, Thomas “Chip” Butler, former president of the trustees of the Chestnut Hill Community Fund, was sentenced to jail, followed by home confinement, community service, and fines for willful failure to file tax returns.

I will not duplicate the details, available elsewhere, of Mr. Butler’s case, although I do possess the court documents. I will instead explain how directly and how deeply this event impacts the community, the Chestnut Hill Community Association, its board of directors, the Chestnut Hill Community Fund, and the controversies that I have reported on in these pages.

The president of the CHCF trustees is, by definition, the most trusted person in the Chestnut Hill community organization. His or her responsibility is to oversee the money in the fund, as well as carry out the most important fiduciary tasks that the CHCA assigns. The dollar amounts that Mr. Butler had control over during his tenure ranged from several hundred thousand to more than a million.

He had supervisory control over the CHCA securing loans. He was to hold meetings and report to the CHCA on them. He also was given the responsibility of selling the CHCA owned property in 2006.

In the matter of loan management during Mr. Butler’s tenure, Maxine Dornemann, then president of the CHCA, secured a loan for $50,000 from a bank never before used by the CHCA. She signed the document as “president” of the Community Fund. She did not hold that position.

In the matter of holding meetings of the trustees and reporting to the CHCA, in the years of Mr. Butler’s tenure, he did neither. If meetings were ever held, no minutes were kept, no reports made.

In the matter of the building at 8431 Germantown Ave., Mr. Butler sold the property to Richard Snowden during an ongoing bid process. He did so before all offers were obtained, contrary to the expressed directions he was given at a special CHCA meeting, during which he gave assurances to CHCA officers that the building would not be sold until further consultation had occurred.

You may remember all these stories because I’ve told them before on these pages. Old negative Ed, stirring up the pot. Sure, they said, there was financial sloppiness. Sure, the trustees were casual. Sure, Richard made a call and charmed old Chip into selling him the property.

And sure, as attorney and board member Walter Sullivan said at a board meeting, “Maybe Maxine broke a rule, but she certainly didn’t use the money to go to Cancun.” And as board member Richard Becker said at a meeting, “We’ve always had conflicts of interest here.” Good old Chestnut Hill!

These conflicts were accepted, and they were never investigated. And I, for one, always thought the obvious: “If they do all this openly, what are they doing secretly?” 

The CHCA Oversight Committee sought to find the answer to that question. As stated in my recent piece in this newspaper, that committee found plenty. But to reach the ultimate financial truth, an unqualified audit needed to be conducted, not only of the CHCA, but also of the Chestnut Hill Community Fund during Mr. Butler’s tenure.

As I have also reported in these pages, that audit was continually blocked by board votes and by Jeanne Hemphill, the current president of the CHCF trustees. The Oversight Committee was disbanded by a board vote one year before its term was to have ended. Those of us who had found wrongdoing were called “negative.” We were outnumbered. We had no allies.

Mr. Butler has found us those allies. They are the federal district attorneys and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. They uncovered the facts in the Butler case and successfully prosecuted him.

They uncovered facts that even I did not suspect: that while Mr. Butler oversaw hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money, he was attempting to defraud the federal government out of more than a $100,000 of theirs; that at the time he transferred title of a building to Snowden, he knew he owed this money to the government. 

Up until last week, even I, the most suspicious person on the Hill in matters pertaining to the CHCA and the fund, did not suspect what I suspect now. Because now, no suspicions can be discounted.

Simply put, if your chief financial officer was convicted and jailed for trying to cheat the government out of that much money, would you want to ask him a few questions? Would you want to audit the work he did for you? Even more simply put, if Mr. Butler thought he could get away with fooling the IRS, with all of its investigative resources, how much did he fear the inquisitiveness of the CHCA? Or did he?

When the Oversight Committee got too close, it was disbanded. But surely now that these new facts have come to light, the CHCA board will be eager to adopt the recommendations of the Oversight Committee, to conduct an unqualified audit, to reconstitute the Oversight Committee itself.

Guess again, Rube! The Executive Committee refused to do any of that last Thursday night. Instead, they defended Mr. Butler and continue to block any audit or investigation.      

I’ll put this last part most simply of all. CHCA board members are protecting a convicted financial scofflaw against an internal investigation into the possible misuse of their, and your money.

And, most instrumental in blocking an audit that would have uncovered any possible misconduct by Mr. Butler, are the current trustees of the Chestnut Hill Community Fund. I am forwarding all these names, along with the others who blocked our investigation, and the Oversight Committee’s report, to those U.S. attorneys involved in the Butler prosecution. I would like to thank all of you who helped make this moment so gratifying. I feel very positive about this because it is the right thing to do.