Right out of college I was looking for work and taking short-term gigs in the process while living at home, in the middle of no-where. I traveled back to my alma mater’s stomping grounds for a round of interviews and got two offers.
One was to be head of PR at a major summer festival, a year-round job that paid very little and on the off-season, transitioned to planning for next season while doing administrative work. The other, for 75% more pay (still very little) would drop me into the deep end in the statewide political sphere, working as an analyist for the Speaker of the Assembly.
That was on a Friday. On Monday I became a policy wonk. At first I was filling in for the insurance committee analyst who was on maternity leave. I must have done OK because they only kept me on after Session, paying me to shift between information support and odd projects until a committee came up that I could staff.
The hirers, my former bosses all those years ago, saw something in me that I wasn’t able to see for myself. That I could dive into the deep end and swim, learning esoterica about whatever subject I was confronted with. Luckily or unluckily, the committee that came to me was governmental operations. I didn’t get to dive into a single subject, like banking, tourism or real property taxation.
No, not me. I had the largest committee without a complementary staff such as Ways and Means and Judiciary. I had 750 bills to shepherd, more than twice the normal committee, and this was pre-computer. We wrote out bill reports by hand for transcription by a clerical staff and tracked all bills by hand. I had to become an expert on legislative ethics, fire and safety codes, crime victims, non-professional business licensing (financial advisors, estheticians), civil and human rights, veterans’ affairs, cable television franchising, qualified immunity for police officers, land sales, let’s just say it was the “grab bag” committee.
I loved delving into policy. A couple of years into it, a lawyer from the bill drafting staff said, “no problems with this major piece of legislation you wrote, I have no changes. Did you know you’re the only analyst who writes your own bills?” Huh?
Last night Joe Biden gave a masterful press conference in which I learned a lot about the wars in both Ukraine and Gaza. Only someone with such history and policy/political expertise could have explained the intricacies of our negotiations on the world stage to achieve peace. If voters want to know a bit about what is needed to achieve successful diplomacy, they can’t ask for a better example.
I’ve my own theories about the student protests pre-graduation and think they may have been averted if they knew more about the historical situation. I do believe the U.S. is now on the right track using world pressure to get a cease-fire, prioritizing food and aid, and going through the steps for a two-state solution.
All the information I got back in the day came from nightly news and daily newspapers, including NYTimes, WaPo and local papers. One morning I got in to work super early, dropped my stack of papers by my desk and got to work immediately. My boss walked in and asked what I was doing. I told him I had too much work to spend time on the daily news. No, he said, that’s my job. Read the news, then get to work! Good lesson.
Now our information comes from so many and so few sources. Voters have to read a panoply of new sources to judge for themselves what is true. I always look at who wrote the article, what it’s published in, and what the writer/publication has to gain from spouting this point of view. If one only gets news from TikTok or Facebook, they have very limited information and it may be skewed misinformation or disinformation from un-trusted sources.
Being a good citizen isn’t easy. Last night I learned that we won’t grant 2,000 lb. bombs as part of our assistance packages because they cannot be used in urban environments as they cause unnecessary damage to innocent civilians. Who knew outside of current policy wonks and military officials about that granularity of information?
Next time your neighbor says there’s a pedophile ring coming in across the street from the barbershop, don’t accept it as gospel. Check it out. I get notices about public hearings on certain types of new businesses (after stopping an after-hours biker bar) and it turns out not to be the case. I’m not happy with what moved in, as it seems sketchy, but no-one’s ever there. I got it from the horse’s mouth, my barber, across the street. Get your news from reputable sources, read up on the issues, and vote! Dee
Cooking with Dee 