2016 Sept 2^nd

Public officials, governors, attorney generals, vice presidents and even presidents are sometimes venal. This ethical fault is understandable in a society such as ours, which equates worth with money. A big league pitcher’s contract pays him over 16 thousand dollars a pitch. He might be worth it and his negotiating to get that income doesn’t mean the man is venal. Venality happens when people are bribable, when they accept money for favors.  Consider that four of the last seven governors of Illinois, three of them Democrats, are in prison for various felonies. Rod Blagojevich, the most recently incarcerated, was apparently trying to sell President Obama’s old senate seat. Mr. Blagojevich has started a rock band in prison. Perhaps he is preparing for a new career.

President Nixon’s Vice Presidential selection, Spiro T. Agnew, resigned his office rather than face charges for taking bribes. The current Attorney General of Florida, Pamela Bondi, accepted a 25 thousand dollar campaign “gift” from Donald Trump and then declined to push for his prosecution on fraud charges in the case of “Trump University.” Ms. Bondi is outraged that anyone should imply a connection between these events and, of course, it’ quite possible there wasn’t any.

Not all the actions of public officials are controlled by greed, some are simply to increase their status and stifle dissent. Richard Nixon is the prime example. His “enemies list” and Trump’s angry tweeting at anyone whose comments offend him have much in common. Neither man could handle anyone who disagreed with them without becoming irrational.

The case of Florida’s Governor Rick Scott is curious. Several politicians are in denial about global warming. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma has gone so far as to write a book calling global warming a hoax. (The Senator’s background in the physics of climatology is obscure… no, it’s not obscure, it is nonexistent.)

Governor Rick Scott is fighting global warming in a unique way; he has decreed that the phrase “global warming” and the phrase “climate change” are not allowed to appear in any government material. I assume that Governor Scott believes that this will make the reality of global warming and the attendant rise of the sea levels in Florida moot. It won’t. What it does is to make any attempt to compensate for the problem incredibly difficult.

This is a kind of magical thinking not uncommon in pathology. Some mental patients have been known to write “Bed” on a slip of paper, place the paper on the floor and then lie down on it and go to sleep.

The Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has presented his constituents with a dilemma. LePage has challenged a legislator to a duel and said he hoped to shoot the man “between the eyes.’ Then he said that he would resign as governor; then he said he would never again speak to the press. So where has this stopped? It hasn’t stopped; LePage has anger issues now that cannot be addressed outside of a mental institution. It seems unlikely that LePage will see the inside of any such establishment, and so good luck to the people of Maine.