Christmas Gift!

As far back as I can remember, in my family, Christmas Gift! was the traditional Christmas Day greeting. My sister, Cissy, was the family master at this and usually "got" us all (i.e., she would say it before I could say it). It was how we answered the phone in those pre-caller ID days, just in case it was my grandmother or first cousins on the line. It is also one of the family traditions that has carried on to this day as I received an email just after midnight last night from my brother with "Christmas Gift!" as the subject. Since he had sent it to me and our first cousin Mary, I replied all so that I could say I "got" someone. Then I went to Facebook and left it as a message on the pages of Mary, her daughters and her niece and nephew (since her brother is not on Facebook, I guess I'll miss him).

Christmas Day 1959 just after the measles broke and I decided I finally wanted to play with my Christmas presents


This was just one of the many and varied traditions we had for Christmas Day. Another tradition that I have managed to sustain all these years is a Christmas Day breakfast of steak and eggs. This year is no exception as I have already eaten the breakfast a bit ago. I think the only year I have missed having steak and eggs on Christmas Day was 1976 when I was in Basic Training at Lackland AFB.

While my mother and sister were both always doing the heavy Christmas decorations, I have tended to not continue that tradition. I have plenty of ornaments for those occasional years where I do put up a tree. One year, one of my cousins made and gave me an "angel" for the top of the tree. She told me the angels tended not to last as they were made out of sugar and the mice would eat them. I used the angel that year then wrapped it in plastic from the dry cleaners. I passed this angel on to the daughter of this cousin earlier this year as a remembrance of her mother who died suddenly 20 years ago. Then as I went through my sister's things after her death, I made sure I saved the tree top angel she had made in kindergarten and had set on top of our family trees as we grew up then on her trees over the years.

Christmas Day 1962 with my new bike

Some traditions last decades, others only for two or three years but all make Christmas unique for our individual families. Sometimes, it is life intruding that breaks the traditions. Many of us can recall Christmases where a family member is lost right in the middle of the season. In my family, it was the year a first cousin died in a car accident a week before Christmas. He would have been 21 on Christmas Eve that year. Remembering the pain of that Christmas, we can get some sense of the anguish being felt by the families of folks in Newtown, CT and Webster, NY today.

Pictures were always a big tradition in my family. This picture from 1980 is the last year we were all together on Christmas. I have been scanning in a lot of Christmas pictures from over the years and have uploaded them to Facebook. They do make a good record for the family.

And because I can:

Let's Play With Some Numbers, Social Security Edition

Boy howdy, but did I make a mistake this morning. I made the mistake of allowing myself to become distracted while I was "multi-tasking" and surfing the cable channels at the same time I was checking my emails AND getting a phone call. All of a sudden, I realized I was on MSNBC and listening to Moanin' Joe where the topic of the day appeared to be whining about how those dastardly libruls just wouldn't get with the program and worship at the altar of Pete Peterson (as Joe declared he does.)

Then I saw someone by the name of Rick Stengel talking about how "entitlements" needed to be cut in order for everyone to show how "serious" they are with the "fiscal cliff."

Of course, everyone that was on that show this morning (it included Harold Ford, Steven Rattner, Michael Steele, Disco Dave, Tweety, and Chuck Todd) as well as everyone on all the various talking head shows watched by the Beltway Village Idiots Courtiers are people who will never have to worry about living on Social Security as the only thing keeping them from poverty and homelessness, so they are all fine with most any and all changes being discussed. After all, they are all Very Serious People, often wrong but never in doubt. Why, we could almost call them all "economists" they are wrong so often.

A couple of years ago, I wrote this post, "Let's Play With Some Numbers" as a "what-if" about the mythical person working the mythical full time, minimum wage job and what that person might be able to afford as far as a place to live, and associated costs.

Why is this pertinent?

Well, the current average monthly Social Security payment (for October 2012) is $1,237 per month which works out to be $14,844 per year. This will go up to $1,261 in 2013. Where I had my mythical full time minimum wage earner paying FICA/Medicare taxes, other taxes (and some healthcare costs) and missing work on the "Big 6" holidays (New Years Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) before getting into the actual available funds to pay bills (lowering the income from $15,080 by $2,570 to $12,510), the mythical average Social Security recipient pays $99.90 per month for Medicare Part B starting at age 65, going up to $104.90 for 2013.

The point of all this is that a mythical person collecting average Social Security benefits is in roughly the same position financially as the mythical person who works a mythical full time minimum wage job. My WAG is that for every person who is collecting Social Security and also has the benefits of a defined pension, 401K, or robust savings, there is another person who is relying solely and completely on Social Security and Medicare to stay alive. With the Great Recession having taken its toll these past few years, I imagine there are many people just trying to hold on until they reach age 62 and can start collecting something. I imagine there are many more, like myself, who have had to cash in their 401k/IRAs early just to try to stay alive for these past few years.

So let's remind the Beltway Village Idiots Politicians, Pundits, and Courtiers that there are real world consequences when they so blithely toss around "cut entitlement spending" as a "solution to the deficit." As Mr Pierce puts it so eloquently, "Fck the deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money."

And because I can:

Veteran's Day 2012

I am a Veteran. I served in the United States Air Force from 10 December 1976 to 9 September 1982. After basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio TX (yes, I spent Christmas and New Years in basic,) I did technical school for my future career field at Shepherd AFB in Wichita Falls, TX. My Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) was 67251. In English that means I was an Accounting Specialist. I spent 15 months at Wurtsmith AFB, MI paying bills for the commissary. This means I was doing bookkeeping for the on base grocery store. Wurtsmith was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base with a squadron of B52s and a squadron of KC-135s. My barracks was about 100 yards from the flight line and it got pretty noisy when a squadron of fully loaded B52s and a squadron of fully loaded KC-135s were queued up for take-off.

I went from Wurtsmith to Hickam AFB, HI after two short, cold, rainy summers and one long, cold, snowy winter. When I got to Hickam on 20 September 1978, I was assigned to the commissary accounting section once again. In Michigan, we had been a roughly $500K in revenues commissary while in Hawai'i, we had $2.5M a month in revenues. Yet, even though revenues were 5 times in Hawai'i what they had been in Michigan, the paperwork volume was probably less than a third increased since it was most all of the same vendors or types of groceries, just larger quantities. However, in Hawai'i there were four of us doing the work where in Michigan there had been two of us. When I got to Hawai'i and was told my work assignment, I was also told it was because the section was "behind." When I saw what the definition of "behind" was, I laughed as in Michigan that level of "behind" would have been considered caught up to current day. It also pointed out the difference between the staffing at a "Major Command" base (Hickam was the home of the Headquarters Pacific Air Forces) and a northern tier SAC base. In SAC, the funds went to support the flying mission. As an example, my first calculator in Michigan was an older, hand cranked machine that I literally burned up within a month. And yes, I do mean burned up. I was running a column of figures and the machine did catch on fire. After this, I was given a new calculator. If I remember correctly, it was a Monroe Litton model 2410 and was the newest machine in the office. When I got to Hawai'i, everyone had Monroe Litton model 2420 which all had digital displays.

After 18 months in Hawai'i, I was moved over to the "Accounts Control" office where I was responsible for the accounting database, liaison with the data processing center, and worked with folks in every part of the accounting system from Base Supply to the Consolidated Base Personnel Office. I worked with the Headquarters command Accounting Office and Responsibility Cost Center Managers across the base. In order to be promoted within the USAF beyond the rank of E4 up to the rank of E7, we had to take tests on our knowledge in our career field. The first time I tested for E5, the test had two questions (out of 100) that were directly related to my work with another 10 being peripherally connected. The next time I tested a year later, 75 of the 100 questions were directly related to my work. When I got my results, I was number 3 USAF wide on the promotion list (though I did not get promoted until the end of the cycle since I had less time in grade as an E4 than others)

I had gotten out of basic training early due to having had ROTC in high school and college. I left basic on a Friday and on Monday I was admitted to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland and had oral surgery on Tuesday morning to remove four impacted wisdom teeth. In Hawai'i, I had gallbladder surgery on 30 July 1982, spent the next month on convalescent leave for the surgery and an infection that developed, got off convalescent leave on 30 August, out-processed the base on 31 August and left Hawai'i on 1 September 1982 for a final nine days of terminal leave and discharge. I pretty much began and ended my AF career with surgeries.

While I was on active duty, I was able to use the Vietnam era GI Bill to complete a degree in Computer Science. I knew many people in various career fields who completed college degrees while in the service. Many co-workers completed both a bachelors and a masters degree and a few even got their doctorates while serving. I met people from all over the country while I was in Michigan and in Hawai'i both.

So what is my point with all of this? It is to remind folks that the veteran is the man or woman you grew up with, attended high school or college with. We're the person who grew up down the street from you or that you saw everyday at the drug store or fast food joint. Most of us had a variety of reasons to sign our names and take the oath of enlistment. We weren't and aren't making a big production of our service. We mostly served and came home, no matter the time. My older brother was in the USAF for four years, got out, got married then re-enlisted for I think another eight years. He got out the second time, finished his degree, got commissioned in the Air Guard, transferred to the Army Reserve and retired a few years ago from the Reserves at the rank of Lt. Col. My first cousin Mary, served in the US Navy where she met her future husband who was also in the Navy. Her nephew served in the US Army as a photographer. My oldest first cousin served 20 years in the Navy. One of his sons served in the Marines, including a stint as an embassy guard. Yet another first cousin served in the Navy for four years in Georgia where he met his future wife and settled down. My father was in the Army Air Corps during World War II and one of his best friends from the Weather Squadron they served in was my godfather. Dad's oldest brother served in the Marines I believe during WWI and died while Dad was overseas in WWII, most likely due to residual effects from mustard gas.

All of us served just as hundreds more from my hometown have served and millions more from all the small towns and cities across the country. I was fortunate enough to not have to deal with any wars during my time although when we were going through alert exercises in Michigan, we would joke (dark humor abounds) about just how much would be left above ground if what we were dealing with was real.

For most of us, we served, we came home, and we got on with our lives.

And because I can:

And Now from the Department of Y'all Should Really Just STFU

During this year's silly season aka the stretch drive to the November elections, I have been watching the self immolation of various Republican campaigns around the country with a bit of fascination. The topic of rape and incest as exceptions allowing a woman to have an abortion has caused great consternation amongst the chattering classes. From Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" to Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's "pregnancy from rape something God intended" (a variant on Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan's rape is just another "method of conception") to Oregon Washington US House candidate John Koster's "the rape thing" to Wisconsin State Rep. Roger Rivard's "some girls rape easy," the topic of rape and abortion has been making headlines across the nation. But as Mr. Pierce notes, these sentiments are not the exception but:

...close to the mainstream of Republican thinking on the subject of abortion, which it is. (It is precisely the position maintained in the Republican platform, which did away with the exception for rape and incest with much fanfare down in Tampa.)

And of course, we also have Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon chiming in to continue the "short ride" tradition first offered us by Senator Joe Lieberman as supporters of amendments allowing hospitals to refuse to provide emergency contraception for rape victims.

Rape, to me, is one of the three most heinous crimes going, along with Domestic Violence and Child Sexual Abuse. These crimes often go unreported, in many instances because the victim is not believed and is made to feel victimized repeatedly after reporting the crime. I loved my father deeply but I remember him telling me that he had served on a rape trial jury one time probably 30 plus years ago and they found the defendant not guilty because "she was asking for it" and that response always has bothered me.

I am a late middle-aged white male and the odds are pretty good that I will not be raped in this lifetime. But as the NY Times reported back in December:

Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

With that information, I can confidently say that I would wager that more than a few of my female relatives, friends, and acquaintances have been raped or assaulted. I don't know who or how many nor do I want to know as that pretty much fits the definition of a "Nunya." And this is why I decided I needed to speak out about these idiot statements about rape. As heinous as rape is, the main point to remember about all of these statements is the desire to limit a woman's freedom of choice, freedom to terminate a pregnancy or not. At this point, rape is a symptom, not the underlying problem. The underlying problem is the on-going, seemingly never ending desire for a bunch of old men to control what women do with their bodies. By even discussing "exceptions" that would "allow" an abortion, we lose sight of the primary issue and that is:

no one should be allowed to tell a woman what she can and can not do with her own body.

As I noted above, I am a late middle-aged white male. I'm even less likely to become pregnant in this lifetime than I am to be raped. I have no authority or need to tell a woman what she should do. If a woman is raped, becomes pregnant, and decides to carry the baby to term, BRAVA! That is what choice is all about. It is her choice and her choice only. Just as terminating any pregnancy or having a child is the woman's choice and the woman's choice alone.

Such a simple concept yet so very difficult for so many to understand.

Update: Fixed state for John Koster. H/t Teddy Partridge

And because I can:

This is the "new normal"

The ADP Report on private sector jobs came out today and showed an increase of 158K jobs. David Dayen at the FDL News Desk discusses this report and the Bureau of Labor Statistics report that will be issued tomorrow morning (Friday, November 2):

Plug this all in and what have you got? The consensus forecast calls for an increase in 125,000 jobs. That would be an increase from last month’s increase of 114,000, but below the increases in July and August (August and September will get revised in the report). This generally matches what we’re seeing in the ancillary reports, and shouldn’t be a number that would arouse joy or sadness in either Presidential campaign. However, with the volatility of last month’s topline unemployment rate, derived from the household survey, I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it increase from the current level of 7.8%.

Either way, it’s a preliminary report, and we probably shouldn’t put as much weight on it as we will, especially with the political implications headed into the election.

While the Weekly report of initial unemployment claims was lower than expected (economists surprised!), even this moderately good news is not all that great.

The reality for many millions of us among the long term un and underemployed is the good jobs just are not there. At the end of August, Catherine Rampell of the NY Times had an article headlined "Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds." As I noted in this post, it was very similar to an earlier post from April '11 I had written that was based on a Washington Post article. Both the Times article and the Post article were based on reports from the National Employment Law Project.

Sunday in the NY Times, Steven Greenhouse had this article on how employers in retail and hospitality industries use (and abuse) part time workers:

But in two leading industries — retailing and hospitality — the number of part-timers who would prefer to work full-time has jumped to 3.1 million, or two-and-a-half times the 2006 level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In retailing alone, nearly 30 percent of part-timers want full-time jobs, up from 10.6 percent in 2006. The agency found that in the retail and wholesale sector, which includes hundreds of thousands of small stores that rely heavily on full-time workers, about 3 in 10 employees work part-time.

...snip...

A 2011 survey of 436 employees at retailers in New York City, as diverse as luxury establishments on Fifth Avenue and dollar stores in the Bronx, found that half of the city’s retail workers were part-time and only one in 10 part-time workers had a set schedule week to week. One-fifth said they always or often had to be available for call-in shifts, according to the survey, which was overseen by researchers at City University of New York.

...snip...

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said companies benefited from using many part-timers. “It’s almost like sharecropping — if you have a lot of farmers with small plots of land, they work very hard to produce in that limited amount of land,” he said. “Many part-time workers feel a real competition to work hard during their limited hours because they want to impress managers to give them more hours."

What? Could someone have actually spoken a truth here? The modern day wage slave, complete with sharecropping as the ideal.

While CNN has an article this morning attempting to paint the rosy glasses scenario on how the jobs are not all part time minimum wage, even they have to acknowledge the reality of the lower wage since 24% of the "new" jobs are in hospitality and retail:

It's true that the economy has added a lot of low-paying jobs over the last two years. Restaurants and bars, which pay a median wage of just $9 an hour, have accounted for 15% of all the jobs created in the recovery. Retailers, which pay a median $11 an hour, make up another 9%.

The Cincinnati Enquirer on Monday reported on the long term un and underemployed for Ohio:

According to the government, 780,000 Ohioans are underemployed or unemployed, a number that does not include persons working more than 35 hours. The report does not compile local underemployment numbers.

...snip...

More people are working multiple part-time jobs, a practice Pautke cites as the only means of increasing the person’s take-home pay.

And this point goes back to the job scheduling practices noted in the NY Times article above - it is rather difficult for a part time wage slave to work those two or more part time jobs if/when the employers want the "flexibility" to schedule the work shifts the day before.

This is the "new normal" for far too many workers. So somebody please explain to me where all those jobs are from the "job creators?" Businesses in multiple industries are posting record profits (here, here, here, here, here, here) yet there are still millions of people in long term un and underemployment, people wanting to work, people with skills asking only for an opportunity to earn a decent wage with fair benefits.

And because I can:

The Vortex of Stupidity, also known as Washington, DC

I sometimes think that there has to be a crest to the levels of stoopid coming out of Washington, DC but obviously, I am wrong. Just the past two days, Dean Baker at his blog Beat the Press refuted three different pieces of so-called "conventional wisdom" by different members of the Beltway Village Idiots Pundits, Press, and Politicians in good standing.

First up was his having to counter a column from Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post. Pearlstein says:

Europe is a different story. The bubble years allowed much of Europe to avoid making the kind of structural changes necessary to put its social welfare system on a sustainable fiscal path and reform its labor and product markets. The euro crisis — which is both a banking crisis and a sovereign debt crisis — has forced Europeans to begin addressing those issues.

Baker points out however:

Of course this is completely wrong. The countries with the well developed welfare states, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands are doing fine. The countries that are in crisis, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, have the least developed welfare states among the older EU countries.

Next up we have a WaPo0 opinion piece decrying the "looming short fall in public pensions." Baker points out here:

The pensions are underfunded in part because policymakers would not take seriously those of us who warned that pensions were making overly optimistic assumptions about stock returns before the market crashed. Returns have been well below expectations in the dozen years since the peak of the stock bubble in 2000.

The other reason is that some politicians, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, think it is really cute to not make the state's required contribution to the pension fund. Not surprisingly, if states get into the habit of not contributing to their pension fund, as has been the case in some states, then pension funds will be underfunded.

However it is more than a bit bizarre that we should therefore ripoff the workers who are counting on these pensions. Suppose state and local governments contract with construction companies for road work or hospitals to treat poor people. If the governments don't put aside the money to pay these contracts would we then think it makes sense to tell the contractors and hospitals to get lost?

Finally, today Baker goes after NPR and Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist of the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, who thinks that the biggest problem we face is "the deficit":

Wow, isn't that impressive. So Europe, China and the rest of the world will be really impressed if the United States throws even more people out of work as long as it reduces its budget deficit! That's interesting, had it not been for NPR I never would have known people in the rest of the world thought this way.

As one of the 25 Million plus long term un and underemployed Baker mentions in his post, I would like to quote the inimitable Mr Pierce, "Fck the deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money.

David Dayen at FDL News today (Monday, October 22) covered a survey on the wage gap between federal workers and their private industry counterparts. Not so surprisingly, the public sector workers are paid far less than private sector jobs requiring comparable levels of skills and education:

If you compare organized federal employees, many of whom have college degrees, to unorganized service-sector and retail workers, then yes, you will find higher wages in the public sector. But if you do an apples-to-apples comparison between public employees and their private-sector counterparts in related fields, you will find that the public sector is significantly undervalued.

...snip...

You cannot lump together those who clean up the National Mall and those who work on scientific breakthroughs at the National Institute of Health, compare them to the “average worker,” and come up with a legitimate pay scale for federal employees. You have to go sector by sector and find the appropriate comparison in the private sector. And when you do that work, you see that federal employees are underpaid. This has an impact on millions of hard-working Americans, who are forced to take less than their skills would bring them back in the open market, because of a foolish tendency toward austerity and the demonizing of public workers.

Over these past few years, we've all seen many articles decrying the "generous pensions and salaries" of public sector workers, whether teachers, fire fighters, EMTs, or police at local levels or scientists at the NIH, NASA, JPL, EPA, or any other federal agency you wish to name.

My question is why?

One of the themes to emerge from this year's presidential race has been Mitt Romeny's "infamous" speech at a private fund raiser last May, calling 47% of the US basically moochers and freeloaders because they don't pay federal income taxes or they receive some level of federal benefits be it Social Security, VA or the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) among others.

But why is it so fashionable to trash people who have earned pensions, earned veterans benefits or Social Security or have used the EITC because of low wages? Shouldn't we be asking why there are so many people earning such low wages that they don't even pay a minimum federal income tax? I know for myself, I would dearly love to be earning a salary that would have me paying federal income taxes. Reuters offered this analysis on Friday (October 19):

The number of Americans not owing federal income taxes has been growing since the mid-1980s, and the increase largely stems from expansion of these two tax credits - championed by Republicans from conservative economist Milton Friedman to former President Ronald Reagan.

I want to work in my chosen field, earn a decent wage with benefits and pay my fair share of taxes. Instead, we see the "champions of industry" threatening employees with lay offs should President Obama be re-elected.

Right now, I'm a bit surprised we don't see more news articles like this one from the AP last Sunday (October 14) about a man attempting to rob a bank of $1 so he could be sent to a Federal Prison. How bad must it be to want to rob a bank so that you can get sent to prison. My guess is the three hots and a cot and health care sounded mighty appealing if the option was starving on the street.

And because I can:

George McGovern, RIP (A Personal Reflection on a Political Hero)

George McGovern, a political hero of my early adult years has passed away at age 90. It was obvious from news reports early last week of McGovern being admitted to hospice and being unresponsive that this was only a matter of time. Yet there is a pain to this.

I first became aware of Senator McGovern in 1968 when he entered the Democratic presidential race after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in an attempt to assure that Kennedy's legacy was kept in the light. By the time 1972 came around, I had been following Senator McGovern's career closely. I forget the exact circumstance but as far as I can remember, I had signed up as a volunteer for McGovern at some point early in my sophomore year at Western Kentucky University. The information was shared with McGovern people around the state and one night in April '72, I got a call from my mother. She had received a call from Steve Slade, a junior high classmate of mine who was attending Eastern Kentucky and was the McGovern coordinator for our home county of Harrison Co. Steve asked her if I would be willing to be a delegate on the McGovern slate at the county caucuses that weekend. She took his number and called me and passed along the request. I called Steve and said yes but that I would not be able to attend. Harrison Co was allotted 10 delegates to the District Convention but Steve and I were the only McGovern delegates running. The then governor of Kentucky (future Senator) Wendell Ford was a traditional Democrat and was supporting an "uncommitted" slate as part of the party apparatus moves to block McGovern. I was told later that I was matched against the wife of the local state senator and received 10 votes to her 30. Steve also lost by the same numbers. Steve appealed his loss to the District convention the next weekend and was eventually seated since he had received more than 20% of the vote (the threshold to trigger proportional representation that year). I elected to not appeal. My father had not been aware that I was on the McGovern slate and was a bit perturbed when he got to the caucus that Saturday morning to discover my name. As he was a state employee, he didn't want to annoy the powers that be so left without voting but he let me know later his annoyance at not voting and not wanting to upset him further, I chose not to push the issue further.

While this was going on, I was volunteering at the McGovern offices at WKU while most of the rest of the folks were at the Warren County caucuses. IIRC, the McGovern slate in Warren Co took the majority of the caucus votes and delegates to the District convention so it balanced.

That fall, I continued to volunteer with the McGovern campaign doing some door-to-door canvassing. At the time, I was also a member of the WKU ROTC department, on an ROTC scholarship so that made for some interesting discussions in and out of the classes. Election day that year was a cold, rainy day in Bowling Green and I stood outside a voting location from 7AM until 4PM (polls were open 6AM to 6PM local time). I remember this one young woman campaigning with me who stated that she and her parents were all voting for McGovern because "Nixon had gone communist" by visiting "Red" China (as it was commonly known in those days). By 5PM, I was at the McGovern headquarters in Bowling Green and watched the networks call Kentucky for Nixon at 5:01 local (Central Standard) time when we still had an hour of voting. About the only election consolation we had was in the US Senate race, Democrat Dee Huddleston defeated former Governor Louie B. Nunn by nearly the same margin in the state that Nixon had defeated McGovern. Small comfort that as I wound up getting drunk that evening.

While George McGovern lost the Presidential race in 1972, his career encompassed so much more. One of the "pre-obits" I read this past week when his condition was first announced stated that he was one of the last of the "Prairie Populists." He was a war hero, having been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross during WWII, who championed peace. I was and am proud that I cast my first presidential vote for Senator McGovern.

Godspeed Senator. RIP