Archive - January 2016

The Peace Corps’ Office of Inspector General (IGO) today is directed by a woman named Kathy A. Buller. The IG Office does not report to the Peace Corps Director, though they work in the same building and I am told Kathy and Carrie are friendly. You might they are “equal” though, as we know, some are more “equal” than others. Ms. Buller has a reputation, I’m told, of wanting to increase her own status in DC by being a touch SOB. (Not surprising, knowing government career types.) The IG Office has few friends. (Where is the famous Charlie Peters and his gang of Evaluators from the early days of the agency? We need them again. Everyone loved Charlie! ) IG employees get a lot of flak. And there are plenty of stories about them.  When I was in DC several years ago I heard about another IG, another woman, and . . .

  It’s been a year since the U.S. and Cuba began normalizing relations. Tourism, business and cultural exchanges are booming. And there is another curious benefactor of those warmer ties – Ernest Hemingway, or at least, his legacy. The writer lived just outside of Havana for 20 years, and that house, called the Finca Vigia, has long been a national museum. But years of hot, humid Caribbean weather has taken a toll on the author’s thousands of papers and books. A Boston-based foundation is helping restore those weathered treasures, and who better to lead that effort than the original dean of home repairs: Bob Vila, of public televison’s This Old House. He tells NPR’s Carrie Kahn that he has a personal connection to Cuba. “I’m American-born Cuban,” he says. “My Havana-born parents emigrated during the latter part of World War II, and I was born in Miami, raised there and partially . . .

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” was the question asked of Senator Joseph McCarthy by army lawyer Joseph N. Welch during the infamous Army-McCarthy Hearing of 1954. A question most Americans might asked today of that loathsome and insufferable Republican candidate Donald John Trump. It is not a question, however, that will be asked by the news media or 24/7 cable networks. They see Trump’s raging’s as an easy and quick way to increase ratings and revenue. The pundits say Trump speak of the ‘rage’ in blue collar America, but, in truth, Trump represents nothing and nobody.  Like the Wizard of Oz, there’s nothing behind the curtain. Donald Trump is an empty suit.  He will not win a primary or collect more than a handful of delegates in this campaign season of 2016.  He will, however, try and leverage the ‘support’ he allegedly has to ‘make a deal’ with . . .