Category: people

Following screening of “Revenge of the Electric Car” Oliver Kuttner, CEO of Edison2, joined David Slutzky to talk about wheeled transportation.
Lets manufacture Kuttner’s car here. Take that pipeline money (pushing water up hill) and invest it in a company that understands conservation.

PBS NewsHour executive editor Jim Lehrer was in Charlottesville speaking at UVA’s Miller Center about his book, Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain.

Over a twenty year period Lehrer talked to all the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates with three exceptions about their debate experiences.
Lehrer arranged the interviews well after the moment of decision, the elections, had passed. He said, bottom line “They loved talking about it, they were like a bunch of bus drivers sitting around talking about driving… in fact Bill Clinton, if he had his way, he’d still be talking about it.”

Lehrer said “George H.W. Bush was the most fun to interview because he hates this stuff.” Bush senior evidently not afraid to stray from politically correct answers. Lehrer recounted Bush’s response regarding the watch incident.

Lehrer fielded 40 minutes of questions from the audience.

q: Of the debates you’ve moderated, which candidate do you think gave the best performance?

Communicating in the world of today

Lehrer mentioned local boy Th. Jefferson. in relation to the first amendment. Later in his remarks, Lehrer wondered whether Jefferson could be elected now. Stronger than wondered…

Thomas Jefferson would have played hell getting elected as president of the United States if he were running now because…

Gerald L. Baliles, 65th Governor of Virginia, former Chairman of the board of PBS and current director of the Miller Center closed out the question period pointing out that the Miller Center and the NewsHour both started 36 years ago and that both are dedicated to civil discourse.

Despite having eaten dinner with Jim Lehrer in the room for twenty years there are lots of things I didn’t know about him. He has written many books and he is a bus enthusiast.

Moviemaker, poet…

We don’t grow up saying that we are going to have to devote some part of our time to our civic duty. We grow up thinking that we are going to…have a job, we are going to have recreation, we are going to have some time to sleep and rest and make a go of it.

We are not taught that there is something missing here. We have to have, not just our own personal freedoms, you know, we have a lot of personal freedoms, you can buy what you want, eat what you want, get the music you want, travel where you want, date who you want, marry who you want, divorce who you want, and get into a five-thousand pound vehicle and go three blocks to the store to buy Chiclets if you want, that is personal freedom, that is not civic freedom.

Civic freedom comes off of a definition of freedom by Marcus Cicero, the ancient Roman lawyer over two-thousand years ago. He defined freedom the best way I’ve ever heard it. He defined freedom as participation in power, and how much do we have by that definition, at the local city hall, state capital, national capital, world trade organization, NAFTA…what kind of participation?

Societies that call themselves democracies, they can (behave?) ninety-eight percent of the time thinking as long as they have personal freedom, and if you don’t demand civic freedom, that is the real test of a democratic society.–Ralph Nader (UVA, 9/13/2010. Terrible acoustics. If you discern missing or incorrectly transcribed words, let me know)

Civic Freedom