The Election

Current polling shows that neither major party — National or Labor — will have a governing majority in Parliament. So, another coalition government looks likely if not inevitable. As it turns out, the “king maker” after the upcoming election may be the Opportunity Party. To the extent I still have your attention, dear reader, you may be joining me in my disorientation.

Who or what is the Opportunity Party? A minority party that appears from a quick scan of its web site to be comprised of center-left, highly-educated and young members. Reflecting what I perceive to be the new face of New Zealand, it is lead by Qiulae (Q) Wong, who is — you guessed it — young, competent and highly-educated. Its platform pursues five broad priorities: healthy oceans, abundant energy, breakthrough economy, clean politics and tax reset. Given what appears to be an IQ minimum to join, the Opportunity Party doesn’t expect to win a governing majority and expressly states its willingness to negotiate and compromise with other parties. Opportunity is the party of my dreams. Add Mark Carney and you get heaven on Earth.

According to current polls, Opportunity has a good shot at crossing the 5% threshold that will, under New Zealand’s MMP system, send some of its leaders to Parliament. Proportional representation has its dark side, the rise of the AfD party in Germany for example. The Opportunity Party shows a silver lining. I am anxious to see what develops.

Housing

In a feature article (paywalled, I regret to say) the Financial Times discusses, “How New Zealand’s biggest city solved its housing crisis.” To make a long story short, Auckland simplified its land use regulatory regime and reformed zoning to encourage population density (building up not out, so to speak). Auckland is a growing, vibrant city, so housing still isn’t cheap. That said, there is a lot more of it than when the reform process started and, according to the article, much less talk of shortages these days, particularly for new arrivals and the young.

And So

Both of the foregoing news items show what happens when you have a political system that works. The US will move in this direction when and if it ditches its tired, sad two-party system that consists of lunatics manipulated by cynical “professionals” to elect candidates representing a minority of the population with no incentive to work with those who don’t 100% agree with them. We will only move this direction if and when We the People demand it. I’m not holding my breath.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has just conditionally approved a federal trust charter for World Liberty Trust, an entity 38% of which is owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members.” World Liberty Trust is being formed for the express purpose of issuing stable coins, crypto tokens backed by US Treasuries. The new trust company, if approved, will perform three functions that are important to the current Administration:

• Enriching the You Know Who Family

• Undermining the established structures of finance and government

• Providing a needed purchaser for the waves of Treasury debt that must be issued to finance the tax cuts of the Big Beautiful Bill and the Unconstitutional War in the Middle East. (I know: Emoluments Clause, Impeachment. Put such fevered thoughts aside)

If you liked the You Know Who Family “settlement” with the IRS (like the OCC, an arm of the Treasury), you’ll love World Liberty Trust.

As a trust company World Liberty Trust probably doesn’t require FDIC Deposit Insurance. Another de novo financial institution, Erebor Bank, NA, does. Erebor is not for you and me, dear reader. Rather, as stated in the OCC’s letter of conditional approval, it “will be a full service insured national bank that plans to target its products and services to technology companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that utilize virtual currencies.” So common folk like you and me are not invited (try the link to the bank’s web site above for a laugh.)

Erebor is in the process of raising $1.5 billion start-up capital from Silicon Valley backers. This stampede is a response to the demise of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the tech bros pet bank, which failed because of a pathetic misunderstanding of the market it was serving. SVB was taken over by First Citizens, a real bank headquartered in the real world that has apparently cleaned house and instituted real risk management. This is intolerable to the bros, who (just ask them) are operating on a whole other level. Erebor draws its name from a fantasy world in The Hobbit. QED.

It is of at least passing interest that the OCC’s conditional approval letter was addressed to Erebor’s counsel, Wendy M. Goldberg, Esq., of the law firm of Skadden, Arps. Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. As you may recall, Skadden Arps was prominent among the law firms that infamously settled claims made against it by You Know Who about DEI and related issues of cultural significance. Draw from this factoid what you will.

In pondering these developments, I realized that I had lost track of who, exactly, was in charge of the OCC and FDIC these days. A quick review of the agencies’ web sites revealed the following:

Jonathan V. Gould is the current Comptroller of the Currency. Mr. Gould’s publicity photo presents him in the bloom of youth. The web site bio on him notes:

Prior to becoming Comptroller of the Currency, Mr. Gould was a partner at the law firm Jones Day. He previously served as the Senior Deputy Comptroller and Chief Counsel at the OCC and twice served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, including as its chief counsel. He has spent the bulk of his career in the private sector as a consultant and lawyer, advising banks and other financial services firms on regulatory matters and risk management.

In a recent press release, on de novo chartering, the Comptroller bemoaned the difficulties raised by regulators for start-ups, leading to (violins please) a loss of innovation and choice in the industry. Having dispensed what he felt to be the the necessary gibberish, the Comptroller then gets to the point:

Entities that engage in legally permissible activities, including those involving digital assets and other novel technologies, should have a path to becoming a national bank. America and the OCC are once again open for business. (Emphasis added)

In my jaundiced view, Mr. Gould is an industry shill whose entire career has involved trips from K Street the halls of Congress and back and then to the agencies. This isn’t new. One predecessor from ancient times. John Hawke, blended a brilliant DC practice with outstanding government service. That was then, this is now. I knew Jerry Hawke and Jonathan Gould is no Jerry Hawke.

So what about the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation? The Federal Deposit Insurance Act provides for a five-member board to oversee the corporation, with no more than three members having the same political affiliation. As is now common in the You Know Who Administration, the corporation itself is non-compliant. Its current board membership consists of: Chairman Travis Hill; Comptroller Jonathan Gould; and Russel Vought, Acting (please don’t laugh) Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, when he’s not doing his part-time job as Director of the Office of Management and (feel free to laugh) Budget.

Chairman Hill, who took office in January of this year, is another tender youth whose career experience is described as follows on the web site:

Prior to his terms on the Board of Directors, he was Deputy to the Chairman for Policy from 2018 to 2022 and, before that, served as Senior Advisor to the Chairman. In these roles, he oversaw and coordinated regulatory and policy initiatives at the agency and advised the Chairman on regulatory and policy matters.

Prior to joining the FDIC, Mr. Hill served as Senior Counsel at the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where he worked from 2013 to 2018. In this role, he participated extensively in the drafting and negotiating of numerous bipartisan bills. Before working at the Senate, Mr. Hill worked as a policy analyst at Regions Financial Corporation from 2011 to 2013.

In my view, thin beer. But, you may think, Sheila Bair, who guided the FDIC through the Financial Crisis, was a Republican staffer whose only banking experience had been as a teller. Again, that was then and this is now. I know Sheila Bair and Travis Hill is no Sheila Bair.

So, the enabling statute be damned! The OCC and FDIC are perfectly aligned, for which read, “No pesky Democrats or other vermin on the FDIC board.” Whether there is quorum for the conduct of business at present is a question I will leave to experts like Todd Phillips. The fruits of alignment are obvious and troubling.

All of this is particularly galling to me as a former bank supervisor who sponsored, or tried to, innovation in the banking industry. The innovations I was seeking were to bring unbanked people into the financial system and increase competition in lending to small business. I was sometimes aligned with the aforementioned Jerry Hawke and Sheila Bair and sometimes not, but, whatever the situation, I had no doubt that all of us were pursuing the public interest as we saw it. This is not the case now and our country is worse off for the change.

The silver lining of our current situation is that You Know Who, abetted by the Supreme Court, has laid the foundation for sweeping change at the OCC and FDIC should the next President believe in a government that serves the public. Until then, Senator Elizabeth Warren, as always, is on the case. She needs help from all of us.

Elections

For the second time in our trips to New Zealand, we will be there during the country’s national elections. The current coalition government has held together for an entire three-year term, with no “snap elections,” which attests to Prime Minister’s Christopher Luxon’s leadership ability, or at least to his patience. The price the Prime Minister has paid for his governing coalition is putting up with two other party leaders who don’t always agree with him or each other and who have never seen a microphone that wasn’t calling on them to “speak for the government,” notwithstanding their junior positions.

A cursory review of the current Kiwi political scene suggests that the Prime Minister has had enough of his partners. Among other things, he has recently floated the idea of a national referendum to repeal MMP, the proportional representation system that, along with his party’s inability to win an outright majority, has left him in his current predicament. Formerly an executive of a multinational business, the Prime Minister clearly longs for something like corporate democracy. Good luck with that.

The Prime Minister’s sour mood is probably also fed by the fact that tax cuts have neither paid for themselves nor led to a flowering of entrepreneurial dynamism in the Kiwi economy. Housing is still expensive and the youth are still fleeing for higher pay in Australia and beyond (has the Prime Minister did in his youth). Luxon’s greatest strength is the weakness of those who oppose him. The Labor Party is a shadow of its former self and still haunted by its handling of the Covid crisis. Other minor parties dilute the vote for change, so don’t count out Luxon’s chances of staying in office.

While politics in New Zealand is not exactly a cricket match, I expect this campaign to be like the last one: relatively civil, relatively substantive, and blessedly short. Stay tuned.

Covid

Speaking of the Covid 19 crisis, The Royal Commission appointed during the Ardern administration to assess the government’s response to the crisis and suggest improvements for the future has just issued its second and final report. The second report was commissioned by the National government to expand the inquiry and ensure that the Royal Commission didn’t whitewash the performance pf the Labor Government in office during the pandemic. It is, like its predecessor, lengthy, technically detailed, and even-handed. It doesn’t point the finger of blame as such but does point out details of the government’s development and implementation of a response to the pandemic that could have been better. I have separately linked here a short video on the final Commission’s conclusions. It is adult and responsible. When I compare these two reports to the US Congress’ refusal to authorize a bipartisan Covid Commission and the recent persecution and character assassination of Anthony Faucci, it makes me want to scream.

Visas

When Liz and I discuss our time in New Zealand with friends, we are often asked whether we are going to move there. Short answer — at least from me — no. We could — and you could too, dear reader — but for a price. The Kiwi “golden visa” can be acquired for the paltry sum of US $2.9 million (at today’s exchange rate) invested in Kiwi businesses and charities or twice that sum in bonds or other passive investments. It is naively thought that golden visas will supercharge New Zealand’s economy. The more likely result is that they will drive up housing costs and change the current pace and quality of life generally. This reminds me of nothing so much as the influx of Yankees and Midwesterners into North Carolina in the 1980s and after. It was difficult to know how to respond to a new arrival who would say to me, “It was so nice when I moved here, but now everything has changed.” Yes, well …

If the wished-for wave of cash does boost the Kiwi economy, my bet is that it will be through new businesses started by Indian and Chinese immigrants. Our stays in New Zealand are on Auckland’s North Shore, which has the highest concentration of Asian immigrants in the country. They are a dynamo, based on strong family structure, hard work, and insistence on academic achievement. If and when the economy grows, they will be in the forefront. The prospect of Asian dominance is in the back of the minds of the locals. I know this because Winston Peters, Foreign Minister and head of the New Zealand First party (a junior coalition partner), in his most recent Trump imitation, told a member of Parliament with a Chinese surname that he ought to — I am not making this up to — “go back to your own country.” Peters is crazy like a fox, so the insult was politically motivated.

There is, by the way, another visa for long term residence in New Zealand, the so-called “granny visa,” available to the parents of citizens or permanent residents. It’s a five-year renewable visa, with requirements of financial capacity and health insurance. The application is available online in English and Chinese.

There is good news from my perspective on the immigration front. The tech bros have discovered a potentially better bolt hole to ride out the apocalypse they are creating: the Argentine pampas. I hope this is true. Via con Dios muchachos!

And goodbye to you dear reader. Back soon with more and other.

Business Progressivism Redux?

Writing in the Financial Times, Mr. James Fontella-Khan discusses New York Mayor Mamdani’s “pro-business push.” No, you are not hallucinating, nor am I. The businesses His Honor seeks to help, through the good offices of Lina Khan, leader of the NYC Economic Development Corporation, are small ones — mom and pop operations. Under a new program called Open, the objective is to “slash red tape and increase support for small business.” My law school classmate Phil Howard, who has been banging the overregulation drum for over 30 years, must have fainted when he heard the news. Whatever other bones you or I may have to pick with Mayor Mamdami, this looks for all the world like progress. With a little more time and experience, His Honor may move into “business progressive” territory. I can dream, can’t I?

Justice Gorsuch Restates the Obvious — Thank God!

In a recent interview, Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed the obvious truth that the United States was not founded on “one race or one religion.” Obvious, that is, to anyone who has read and understands our history and Constitution. This is, sad to say, a higher bar than it should be. His Honor’s remarks were in response to the recent writings of Monsignor J. D. Vance, who does not appear to have done the reading. Maybe he skipped Con Law at Yale.

Justice Gorsuch made further blinding statements of the obvious in the interview:

We have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion, everybody has a freedom of religion, everybody has the freedom of speech, we are all equal under law…Now, you can not agree with those ideas, fair enough…Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind.

Amen to that. A saving grace of the Federalist Society remake of the federal courts is that many of those placed in judicial office under the You Know Who administration were well educated and principled, at least enough to prevent the worst excesses of the clown show. I know before hitting the publish button that I will get flamed for impliedly including Gorsuch among them but, according to Coke’s treatise, you gotta work with what you got.

I am hoping against hope that this interview is a penitential act by His Honor for the Presidential immunity decision. The test of contrition will come when Vance refuses to certify his own defeat in the 2028 Presidential election (we know Al Gore and he’s no Al Gore). Until then, I remain thankful for small blessings and hoping against hope.

Coda

That’s all for now dear reader. I will now return to thinking about third phase of life, AI, and the structure of government after You Know Who. You are spared for now. Count your blessings.

Thirty Years Give or Take: Finis

With encouragement and a lot of help from my friends at the UNC Law School Center for Banking and Finance, I am working on a second installment of my work life memoir, Thirty Years, Give or Take. This year’s installment will be about my attempts to regulate payday and mortgage lending. It will be a compilation and revision of posts previously published on this site together with some additions and corrections. Once completed, that will be it for my take on the Financial Crisis. It’s sobering that “my crisis” is now more than a decade behind us and has been succeeded by (depending on your definition) two or three others. As my life partner, muse and editor asked recently about the memoir, “This is it, right?” Yup.

World Cup

Once every four years, I get “World Cup fever” and this year is no exception. I know that soccer (football to purists) is not for every taste but to me it’s mesmerizing in the same way that the NBA of my youth was (think classic games of the Bob Cousey Celtics or Bill Bradley / Clyde Fraser Knicks). Finesse, ball control, movement without the ball. Like live action chess. While a lot of play this year was pretty ragged, and there were a thousand wails of unfairness (as usual), the best team won. Spain exemplified the factors I mentioned above. Beautiful play. If they had a scorer like Haaland or Mbappe, it wouldn’t have been close. But if Spain had Haaland or Mbappe, I guess it wouldn’t be Spain.

And so, the World Cup is now over, leaving me with vistas of free time. For what it’s worth, I think the US was (with a couple of exceptions) an excellent host country. FIFA’s corruption and venality, the pathetic Super Bowl-style halftime presentation and even You Know Who couldn’t mess it up. Soccer is a beautiful game and this year’s World Cup was great. BTW, in future, keep an eye on Japan, the one country on Earth that can emulate the Spanish system. This year they were knocked out by Brazil in a heartbreaker. They will be back, mark my words.

Summer Reading

When not working on the memoir or watching the World Cup, I have been reading. Here is what I found worth the time (and not):

Fiction

• Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet. A closed room murder mystery from Renaissance Italy, told through a chain of letters (Samuel Richardson call your office). It is a delight to read and instructive as well.

• Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper. Very high-class trash about the Vatican City of high-class trash: Los Angeles. Raymond Chandler meets Nathaniel West. Very well written, so a forgiveable guilty pleasure.

Nonfiction

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. A totally engrossing tale about truth and lies and London. Although it’s nonfiction, London Falling reads like a novel. Keefe is a master.

“Reality” (the Netherworld between Fiction and Nonfiction)

• This category I include two works about You Know Who. As is the case with much else about him, it’s hard to know where “reality” ends and “fantasy” begins.

• Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. After spending a couple of days of my life working through this book, I don’t know much more about the first year of You Know Who 2.0 than I did when I started. One or two interesting insights — for example, that both the authors and Himself think that he would not have achieved the level of “power” he now wields if he had been re-elected in 2020 — but other than that, not much that a reader of the news doesn’t know already. If you are a You Know Who obsessive who wants to know the names of each person in the room when stupid and destructive decisions were made, this book is for you; otherwise, take a pass.

• Rasputin Swims the Potomac by Ben Fountain. This surreal presentation of the campaign of an unnamed President (literally “redacted” in the text) for a third term is satire of the very darkest kind. Fountain is a terrific writer who has the rhetorical patterns of You Know Who down cold. Not for every taste, but a terrific read with a serious subtext.

Sir Sam Neill — RIP

In a previous post, I have written about Sam Neill, New Zealand’s only true movie star and a personal favorite of mine. Having survived cancer, Sir Sam has just passed away from other causes after a full if too-short life. He will be missed. May he rest in peace.

That’s all for now. Back soon.

Gathering at a friend’s house was a joy with a dollop of sadness too. We were cancer survivors and current patients (patients is an oxymoron if you’ve had to spend time seeking a diagnosis). We all have suffered loss. But wait, there’s more. Baby Sofia, 12 months, was enjoying the smiles and hugs with her parents. Joe had a lengthy phone conversation with our younger son about coleslaw- types of slaw, how to dress up a hotdog with it, where to buy the best. Who knew? It was fun and life giving to both; Joe’s gift to our hosts.

We watched the tall ships sail up NY’s Hudson River. And shared our stories of seeing the tall ships in the past. We touched on Taylor Swift’s wedding too. Well, I did as I have enjoyed the story. However, I cede real partying to the youth.

Home, we watched France play Paraguay in the World Cup. France was cool, literally. Paraguay played hot and frenetically. Cool won. There’s a reason eminence gris cannot be translated. C’est cool.

At nightfall the fireworks began. We went out on the balcony and watched them fly. Most amazing, was the outpouring of staff from the grocery store across the way. Standing in the parking lot, their shouts of joy were a gift to the ears. They are from everywhere, as are all of us who live in the US. We are all immigrants living in an old democracy. But our democracy is like most of our heritage, 57 varieties. We may be an old democracy but we have a big smattering of teeny bopper, a little cool and a lot of salsa.

Let’s celebrate this, not try to force people to live in a past that never existed. The dream is in the future, not the past. Good luck Taylor and Zoran and Coco and all the young ones out there moving us into the future. Three cheers to new horizons!

Barry’s post, as always, is a riot, but at the end of it he gets serious:

What makes America great — prepare for a searing insight — is Americans. I don’t mean American politicians; I mean everyday, hardworking, generous, friendly, decent Americans, who I believe greatly outnumber the idiots. I mean the people who hold the door for you, and say “thank you” when you hold the door for them, and buy Girl Scout cookies even though they already have some at home, and never butt in line, and will lend you their jumper cables, and will take the trouble to lower a log gently to the ground instead of dropping it because there might be critters inside, and will take time out from bottle-feeding a dozen baby raccoons to schlep 50 miles in the rain so they can take custody of three baby woodpeckers, and all the other millions of small but good things that millions of Americans do every day. Which is not to say we can’t be better. But I sincerely believe — and I’m a professionally cynical old guy of 79 — that we’re pretty good.1

From this professionally cynical old guy of 76, amen to that!

So, what does this have to do with the Declaration of Independence? That when the Founders made the famous statement that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” they were referring to the same folks as Dave. Everyone — not “some,” “the educated,” “those who agree with me” — all. This implies to me a duty to look at our fellow citizens — all of them — as equals and to try our best to see through the static of politics, social media and the like, to the core of who they are and to a common humanity where we can meet.

But, but, but, they —the other — are impenetrable, watch Fox News, have ludicrous political and social beliefs, etc, etc, etc. Stop it! You and I, dear reader, have the benefits of education, ability and success. We were trained to be leaders, so let’s lead. The first step is to get off our high horses and out of our bubble, to genuinely listen (not the staged "diner interview” stuff), and to seek what is good and true and human. It is not and will not be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

And so, dear reader, I wish you and yours a happy and safe Independence Day. May Nature’s God, the Supreme Judge, bless us. All of us.

Amen.

Trump v Slaughter

The first of the two cases, Trump v Slaughter, involves a suit by former Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter to retain her seat on the Commission. Shortly after his election in 2024, President Trump removed Commissioner Slaughter and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, both Democrat appointees. He did not state a cause for dismissal; he “instead told them their ‘continued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration's priorities’ and that they were removed “pursuant to [his] authority under Article II of the Constitution.’”1 The FTC’s enabling statute provides that commission members serve for a term of years subject only to dismissal for listed causes. Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya were clearly dismissed at the President’s discretion.

Commissioner Slaughter sued for reinstatement and won in the lower courts. POTUS appealed to SCOTUS. The Court decided in favor of the President, overturning precedent from the New Deal Era protecting the independence of FTC Commissioners. This should come as no surprise. Pursuing its campaign on behalf of the “unitary executive,” the Court found, as it has in cases from the first Trump Administration involving the CFPB and FHFA, that the “for cause” limitations in the agency enabling statute unconstitutionally infringed on the President’s power under Article II to “see that the laws are faithfully executed.”

Trump v Slaughter differs from the CFPB and FHFA cases that preceded it in that the FTC is governed by a multimember commission. The agency’s web site, in describing its governance says:

The Commission is headed by five Commissioners, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, each serving a seven-year term. No more than three Commissioners can be of the same political party. The President chooses one Commissioner to act as Chair.

The website also shows that the Commission currently has only two members, both appointed since the 2024 election and both Republican. Since the FTC doesn’t have a full complement of commissioners, or even a quorum of the statutory requirement, it occurs to me that any actions taken by the agency are ultra vires and that it couldn’t hurt to argue the point if you were in litigation with the agency. Adverse parties to the CFPB did so for years.2

This assumes, of course, that the FTC is actually doing anything. A debatable proposition.

Trump v Cook

The second, and more highly covered case, is Trump v Cook, which involves President Trump’s attempt to dismiss Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, in this case for cause. The cause in question is the alleged filing of documents with a mortgage lender that stated the property in question was to be her permanent residence, which was not the case. Governor Cook was dismissed on the basis of an allegation of mortgage fraud, without a hearing or other opportunity to explain or present evidence. She sued to stop the music and got a stay. The suit before the Court was an appeal of a refusal by lower courts to lift the stay.

Governor Cook won in the Supreme Court, a narrow decision that did not vacate the stay and returned the case to the lower courts to consider the due process issues. A prolonged wrangle will probably follow, but I don’t like her chances long term. She will get a hearing or comparable procedure, present evidence that what she did was not mortgage fraud and does not impair her ability to serve. The President, after a nanosecond of consideration, will say, on Truth Social no doubt, that “COOK IS A CROOK” and will dismiss her. If she sues again, my guess is she might win in the lower courts but will lose at SCOTUS. Her best hope is regime change.

Some Semi-Informed Thoughts

Reading (well, ok, skimming) the two decisions, particularly Trump v Cook, brought a lot of thoughts to top of mind.

It brought back an old witticism from my banking commissioner days. Most commissioners served term for years, subject only to dismissal “for cause.” The joke among us was that dismissal could happen “cause the Governor doesn’t like me.” This is pretty much the world federal regulators will live in in the future.

The “primary residence” issue on Cook’s mortgage application made me wince. In my days policing the mortgage market, a number of scams were based on just such a “mistake.” That said, if every person who has made the primary residence undertaking to buy a second home were criminally prosecuted, we wouldn’t have enough prisons to hold them.

The distinction between the Federal Reserve and FTC (and by extension other agencies) was weak. Justice Thomas’ dissent in Trump v Cook did a good job, I thought, blowing up the so-called “long tradition” rationale for insulating the Fed from political interference. And he pointed out that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, as distinct from the Reserve Banks it oversees, is an agency with substantial regulatory responsibilities that include supervision of bank holding companies and state member banks comprising most of our financial system.

In reading the rationale for Fed insulation in Trump v Cook, I thought of another agency that was similarly insulated to protect it from interference: the CFPB. I couldn’t help thinking that in Trump / Roberts / Federalist Society world, money gets protected, people don’t.

The Trump / Roberts / Federalist Society crowd should be careful what it wishes for. The same broad Presidential powers Trump has achieved will be available to his successors, including — horrors! — a Democrat. Let us remember that the New Deal case protecting an FTC Commissioner that has just been overruled frustrated the intentions of one Franklin D. Roosevelt.

So, what did we keep and what did we leave behind? We kept most of our art, which looks great in our new place. And we kept new Orange County friendships and fond memories. We left behind life in a genuinely diverse community, quick access to terrific hiking trails, and a small regret at not selling to a young family.

And now, for the rest of the story, here’s something/someone- Liz- completely different (thank you Monty Python).

We made the move at the end of May. It felt like we were the Flying Walendas with perhaps a net below...The move was stressful and fun. The fun came from giving lots of usable furniture and household items away. I loved the photos people sent to us of dogs on a chair or cats in a basket on a sofa. New life to old furniture. Our younger son took what Joe calls ‘the Love seat’ for his wonderful friend, Kate. All of this gave us the momentum we needed to do this thing. And a special shout out to our neighbors in Chapel Hill, Jim and Rita, who made the most delicious dinner for us the night before the move.

Open eyes, open hearts- our new motto. We went to a newcomer’s get-together last week and our impressions are pretty similar. First impressions are that our condo community has some really welcoming people. Some go to other homes at the beach or elsewhere. Lots have grown children and families nearby. Everyone is courteous. We are all on the same ship (I’ve been calling it the Good Ship Lollipop) just trying to be our better angels, or sailors.

Our new place needs work. There is no oven, a first in my many experiences of owning a home. I told a friend it could have been a deal breaker or an opportunity and I chose the latter. The same goes for a ‘garden tub’ in the bathroom which, I suppose, I could clamber into but not out of. Joe is willing to put up with the mess of construction till it gets shipshape (aren’t I being nautical).

To end this, I quote Ambassador Shirley Temple:

On the good ship Lollipop
It’s a nice trip, into bed you hop
And dream away
On the good ship Lollipop

So, while the sun is shining and friends are still happy to see us, everything does seem sweet! Or as the Kiwis say, ‘Sweet as.”

Elizabeth Marion, a recent college graduate, and Joseph A Smith, Jr, a fledgling lawyer, met in Manhattan in 1978 as coworkers at a downtown law firm. A lunch in the bowels of the World Trade Center was our first date. One thing led to another, and we were married in 1979. While it doesn’t seem like only yesterday, the memory stays fresh for me. The trip this year was a celebration of our 47th anniversary. While special, any trip to the Big Apple is for us a return home.

The City today is, of course, vastly different from what it was in 1978. We lived there briefly at the end of a near-bankruptcy when pessimism about its future was common currency. The good news about this precarious situation was that Manhattan was relatively affordable for us working folks. The other news was that it was expensive enough to discourage family formation. So, off to the suburbs for us (another story for another time).

Today, by contrast, New York is a rich and bustling city. While there is renewed “decline” talk, based on the election of a democratic socialist mayor and associated trash talk by billionaires miffed at the prospect of having their mansions and penthouses surtaxed, a walk around town suggests that someone didn’t hit the send button on the decline email. Like all great cities, New York is in constant renewal. The song of the jackhammer greets you everywhere you go as infrastructure and building upgrades proceed apace. The “ICE memo” hasn’t reached Manhattan either; the language spoken by virtually all of the construction workers there is — wait for it — Spanish. Add to this cacophony the number of languages heard on strolls up Fifth Avenue or through Central Park and you know that New York is one of a handful of world cities that leave the others behind.1

The City is a cultural treasure trove. Our recent trip included visits to or attendance at:

• The Raphael exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, extraordinary not only for the monumental works themselves, but for a library of beautifully presented preparatory sketches that were, themselves, great art. As if that weren’t enough, in the next gallery over was an exhibit of cathedral architectural drawings that was mind blowing. And that’s only a portion of one floor. The Met is, in a word, overwhelming.

• The Gainsborough show at the Frick. Worth seeing, but only as an appetizer to the Frick permanent collection, which is sublime. Where else can you see an El Greco hanging over the fireplace of a massive living room?

• A performance of the Handel and Haydn Society, a wonderful chamber orchestra, at Carnegie Hall. The concert was in Zankel Hall, one of the smaller recital halls of the main facility. Absolutely perfect acoustics and a full and enthusiastic house for Bach and Teleman.

Our culture feast has left me with fond memories and a couple of more general thoughts. The first is that no part of it would have been possible without the massive accumulation of wealth by a few people who then used it to create cultural institutions (often with their names attached) that enrich all of us. One cheer for capitalism?

The second is that it is now clear to me what seniors, in the final phase of their lives, are good for: support of the arts. In each of the cultural venues mentioned above, the majority of the fee-paying audience was over sixty. Because of our interest — and our money — arts institutions and deserving artists can support themselves. So, Boomers, let’s get out there and support the arts!

As for the out-of-sorts billionaires, I have a feeling that the trash talk will subside and they will remain. With all due respect to Miami, Dallas or Austen, nothing compares to New York. And, while I’m not an expert on construction, I think mansions and penthouses are kind of hard to move. New York landmarks and a New York state of mind are, yes, only in New York.

“Get up here right away.”

“What’s up?”

“Someone’s broken in. The cops are here.”

“Oh.”

So, I got on the subway and hightailed it uptown. Sure enough, our door had been kicked in, and the place was a mess.

The cops were drinking coffee and giving condolences. We had renters’ insurance, so one of them said I should inventory my stuff to see what had been taken. He could put the missing items on his report, and I could make an insurance claim for my loss.

I went up to my bedroom and looked over my belongings. It was clear that someone had rifled through them and hadn’t found anything worth stealing. This hurt my feelings a bit, but I am a truthful man, so I went down our very hip spiral stair and told the officer that nothing had been taken.

He looked at me like I had three heads. “You sure?” “Yeah.” “Hmm. Well, okay.”

In those days, I could put everything I owned into two suitcases. The aggregate value of all of it — as confirmed by the West Side’s finest burglars — was roughly zero.1

As time passed, I began accumulating stuff, first to furnish an apartment of my own and then, with Liz, to furnish and decorate the seven (soon to be eight) places in which we have lived during our life together. I am now the proud owner, jointly and severally, of a lot of stuff.

In our latest move, Liz and I are significantly downsizing, so stuff has to go. What do we do with it? What to keep, what to toss? In thinking through this process, I have been guided by The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson, an unsentimental and practical guide to getting the accumulated clutter of your life sorted so others don’t have to do it for you — or after you. The book is also, for what it’s worth, a hoot.

So, what am I doing about my personal stuff? Let’s go by categories, in ascending level of difficulty.

Clothing

Following Ms. Magnusson’s good advice, I have started with the easy stuff: my clothing, which falls into roughly three categories:

Business Attire from my prior life. Having already done some work on this category, I still have three business suits, ten or so “dress shirts” and thirty or so ties. I wear my best suit to some formal events, funerals mainly, and the rest I haven’t worn for years. Same for the shirts and ties. Given trends in menswear toward “dress casual” (for which read “slovenly plus”) I’m not sure I will ever need the two lesser suits and 90% of my ties again. So, I’ll wait to see whether the church we are returning to in Raleigh still is dress-up. If not, at least one suit (and related shirts and ties) will go.

Clothes I wear sometimes. I have “casual wear” sufficient for a short cruise or trip to someplace where I want to look at least modestly presentable. Out of three sports jackets, one should probably be jettisoned but that’s minor. A particular subcategory of interest is the numerous Orvis checked shirts that Liz has seen fit to buy for me, some of which I wear, most of which I don’t. I have thought about taking up fishing to justify this part of my wardrobe but that would increase clutter. So, disposal of some of these shirts to come.

Clothes I wear every day. In general, I have a dozen or so sports shirts and pounds of tee shirts. I also have a lot of “knock about” pants that attest to the adage, “old khakis never die, they just fray away.” And a drawer full of sweaters in various states of decline. These are the clothes I wear most days. Think “dressed by COSTCO.” The half-life of this category appears to be near infinity, and its residual value is less than zero. A trip to the dump awaits a portion of it yet to be determined.

I have footwear that fits in all of the above categories and am, in fact, a bit short here. I’m not ready to give up and do the “old guy in sneakers” routine, so I wander hither and yon furtively looking at what other men are wearing.

Books

Books do furnish a room, as the saying goes, but we are moving to a place with fewer rooms, so some of our books have to go. Getting rid of my portion of the excess has been easier than I had feared. I am keeping some books about the 2008 financial crisis and a few autographed volumes with sentimental value, but I have jettisoned everything else. What has been surprising has been how few volumes my bookish friends wanted to take off my hands. Their rooms, as is turns out, are fully furnished. Thank heavens for the Chapel Hill Library and its bookstore, unquestioning takers of what I am leaving.

My Office

Furniture is not my department, except for the desk, chair and bookcase in the room in our current place that serves — poses, might be a better word — as my office. It will be replaced by what Liz playfully calls my “Easy Bake” desk, a small expandable table that works fine and fits in our new and smaller quarters.

The mental furniture of my “office” also included my academic diplomas and professional licenses, the former of which are ancient and the latter now retired with me.2 After a long period of pondering, I scanned all of this mental furniture and, with one exception, shredded it.

These disposals were harder than clothes and books, causing something of a twinge. The bookcase survived Hurricane Floyd, but the memories remain. I can part with it because I have found it a good new home. I couldn’t part with my Davidson diploma, on sheepskin, in Latin and signed by its author, Professor John McGahey, a genuine scholar and lovely man. Sorry kids: you’ll have to deal with that one.

And so, the museum of my past has been dismantled.

Letting Go

The initial post on this site was entitled I Used to Be Somebody. Who Am I Now? Letting go of my stuff is shedding what remains of my prior life and acknowledging the realities of my new one. Guided by two wise women — Liz Smith and Margaretta Magnusson — the transition, while daunting, is turning out to be challenging and fun. Living comfortably with less is my new goal. It is, as the saying goes, a process.

Margareta Magnusson went to Valhalla earlier this year, no doubt with her affairs in order. If Swedish Death Cleaning is indicative of who she was, she died at peace after a full and happy life. I for one am working toward a comparable end. One’s reach should exceed one’s grasp, no?

My latest (and last?) passport photo, taken by Karsh of Walgreens, was sobering. Exuberant lad that I am, I’ve decided to make a game of it. So, here’s the offer: NAME THIS PICTURE. BEST CAPTION WINS A PRIZE! (MAYBE)

Just to start the fun off, I’ll suggest a few:

1. Yes, dear, you do get the face you deserve.

2. In youth, he looked like a Greek God, now …

3. Your mother and I were waiting for you to turn 50 to discuss this.

DON’T DELAY! ENTER TODAY! WINNER GETS ESTEEM AND ACKNOWLEGEMENT OF MASTRY OF THEIR DOMAIN!

And now back to regularly scheduled programming.

Departure(s) is, according to its cover, “A Novel,” and it does include “a story — or a story within the story” but it is much more than that. It is also a memoir (Barnes’ third), a meditation on decline and mortality and a tribute to friends who have died. Come to think of it, that pretty well defines many if not most novels. In what I guess is “metafiction,” Barnes refers to the narrator of the story as “Jules,” so I will too (sometimes).

The “story” in Departure(s) is about a couple — “Stephen” and “Jean” — and their relationships with each other and Jules over decades. At the outset, Jules sets the stage:

The three of us met at Oxford. At which words I pause. Many years ago, in my novel Flaubert’s Parrot, the narrator gave a list (with which I largely agreed) of subjects which should be banned from fiction … Proscription number 4 began, ‘There is to be a twenty-year ban on novels set in Oxford or Cambridge’ … [At the end of that period] I renewed it for another twenty years. (p.29)1

It just so happens that the self-imposed “ban” on university fiction ends right before publication of Departure(s), so Jules is off the hook. After reading “the story,” I wish the ban had been permanent. Stephen and Jean are over-educated narcissists with the emotional intelligence of not very well-adjusted teenagers. Their on / off relationship is one of the foundations of Jules’ meditation on other topics, but the other topics are vastly more interesting to me than Stephen and Jean.

So why, dear reader, am I writing about Departure(s)? Because of its other unifying themes: managed decline and mortality. On these topics, Jules has a great deal to say.

A section of the book entitled “MANAGEABLE” begins with a discussion between Jules and one of his doctors about the rare blood cancer resident within him:

‘So I suppose it isn’t curable?’

‘No,’ she replied straighforwardly, ‘It isn’t curable, but it’s manageable.”

It would be managed first by drawing a fair amount of blood from me, and then by chemotherapy … in daily oral form. Until the condition stabilises? I asked. No, for the rest of your life … It probably won’t kill you, unless there is a further mutation. But otherwise you shall die with, rather than of, the condition. (p.45)

Jules later speculates, “Incurable yet manageable’, that sounds like … life, doesn’t it?” (p.65) As a matter of fact, yes. Although I don’t (yet) have to deal with an incurable illness, this is precisely the way I think about my own life. My regimen of medications and lifestyle adjustments are essentially preventive maintenance. I’m aging but am doing so in relatively good health and with the inevitable decline slowed but not stopped. Don’t know about you, dear reader, but managed decline beats the known alternatives for me.

A second theme in Departure(s) also resonates with me: mortality, contemplated through memories of colleagues, friends and rivals over a long and brilliantly successful literary career. As Barnes puts it:

the ‘little band’ to which I belonged when I came to literary London half a century ago has been thinned over the decades by the deaths of its older members — also by expatriation, laziness, crankiness and froideur. The rest of us are now beginning to die out. I learned the other day that Martin Amis is refusing further treatment for throat cancer … The treatment … failed to save another member of our band, Christopher Hitchens, whose death was witnessed by Martin eleven years ago. In what was clearly a farewell email to me, he wrote: ‘My health is parlous, as you may know, but morale not too bad.’ I applaud his courage … recalling that he once told me how life was ‘thin stuff’, compared to literature. I didn’t — and don’t — agree, but maybe this makes dying slightly easier. (pp. 128, 129)

As you may recall, dear reader, Barnes and Amis were among the brightest lights of a group of young writers who came to prominence in the 1980’s and were forces in literature for decades thereafter. You may also recall that they were rivals, ultimately bitter rivals, in their prime. So, their final correspondence, if a bit bloodless, is touched by grace. The same can be said for Jules’ remembrances of former colleagues and, frankly, his first wife: they sound like tributes at lifetime achievement awards ceremonies rather than loving appreciations.

Except for the further adventures of Stephen and Jean — who make a hash of it — love isn’t mentioned much in Departure(s). The one passage I can recall which does mention it involves Jules’ visit to a female member of the ‘little band’ who has cancer and has ordered the treatment stopped:

I told her that I had always loved her and we kissed goodbye … the next day a mutual friend went to say goodbye and [the now deceased friend] characteristically reported to her: ‘Jules came and told me he loved me — though not in the f****able way of course.’ (p.147)

Ah, the literati. They live on a higher plane, you know.

Barnes mentions in Departure(s) his membership in an organization called Dignity in Dying and speculates on his death being a victory over his cancer, which will die with him. It occurred to me that he may be about to pull the plug on treatment. According to the redoubtable Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, Barnes is five years past his “die by” date and should let Nature take its course.

I hope he doesn’t take this counsel. He is formidably intelligent and articulate, still has all his marbles, and is productive. He notes, for example, that after giving a “last interview” several years ago, he published another book and so is having to give a second “last interview.” John McPhee is still at it at 93; no reason he shouldn’t keep going as well.

At the close of Departure(s) Barnes bids a fond farewell to his readers, abjuring and profound statements on life’s meaning. Rather:

I prefer an image of a writer and reader on a cafe pavement in some unidentified town in some unidentified country. Warm weather and a cool drink in front of us. Side by side, we look out at the many and varied expressions of life that pass in front of us. We watch and muse. (p. 159)

Beautiful and subtly profound. There is no good reason for these musings not to continue. Jules should take advice from another brilliantly successful person in a very different field: It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Our two years in Chapel Hill have been a learning experience. While it has been great to live in a genuinely diverse area, to meet a lot of extraordinary people who live here, and to hike on trails we love, there have been drawbacks.

We bought too much house: a two-story town house that was bigger than the house we left in Raleigh. The two of us rattling around in a place meant for four or five, with stairs that have tripped up one of us (guess who), seems both excessive and unnecessary.

And, keeping up with our friends in Raleigh, across the Research Triangle, always seems to require driving during rush hours or late at night. The idea of repotting was a good one; our execution left a bit to be desired.

So, we are moving back to Raleigh. We have bought a condo that is on one level and is half the size of our current place. It is within easy walking distance of the house we left two years ago and easy access to shopping, dining, and the friends we left behind. It will make out of town travel easier — lock and leave — and should ease the transition to “senior living” when and if. We’ll see.

The new challenges that confront us are downsizing for real and keeping up with the friends we have made in Chapel Hill. These are high-class problems, for which I am grateful.

The old challenges — life extension v. delay of death, meaning and purpose as an elder — remain. I have done some recent readings on these topics and will share them along with adventures in downsizing over the next few posts. After that, perhaps, a few thoughts on reconstruction after the current Administration has departed.

As always, I appreciate your interest in Ruminations and hope you will join me as I feel my way forward from here.

Although I’ve left the pilgrimage as a topic, it hasn’t left me. I’m still ruminating on justice, mercy and healing, guided in part by a sometime Buddhist, with whom I sing:

Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in

Peace.

The same cannot be said for the people brought to this country in chains of enslavement. The term “chattel slavery” is apt: they were treated like property. Their tribal and personal identities were taken from them. They were bought and sold, ruthlessly worked and beaten. Their families were torn apart without a second thought. In the reign of terror that followed the Civil War and went on through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, subjugation continued, enforced by violence and denial. In a very profound sense, we as a nation have lost our brothers and sisters in chains.

The final shrine of the pilgrimage — the Legacy Sites sponsored by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery — addresses this loss. There are three sites:

• The Legacy Museum, which presents in staggering detail, the scope and extent of the slave trade and its effect on the economy of our entire country. The enslaved were the engine of the cotton economy and were financed and insured in New York.

• The National Memorial for Peace and Justice names the over 6,000 known victims of lynching and the locations of their murder.

• The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park contains artistic representations of the enslaved, replications of the quarters in which they lived, and narratives of their travails.

I don’t have much in the way of visuals for this post. The Legacy Sites discourage the taking of pictures. Visitors have to put down their cameras and smartphones and just look and listen. Once you have seen what these sites have to offer, you cannot unsee them. Like those who saw the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, we are blessed and burdened with a memory that won’t leave us.

Having visited the Legacy Sites, we haven’t lost our brothers and sisters in chains. We know who they are and where they are.

Bridges played an important part in the pilgrimage to Selma and Montgomery. For me, bridge building began with the van ride south. To start, I only knew a handful of people, yet in the nine hours together we built bridges with laughter, stories, and songs.

Lisa Frost Phillips’ somber reading aloud from Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America built a visceral bridge to the past, to the monuments to Jonathan Daniels and the many people whose names we cannot carry across the bridge of remembrance but whose souls we can carry.

The Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma was our literal crossing, a chance to walk in the footsteps of the heroes and martyrs across that bridge of sorrows and hope.

The food ways we experienced were also bridges into the lives of people in the Deep South. From Mary and David, mama and grandson of Deepwood, “The Soul Food Diner of Lowndes County,” we received an invitation to share a part of their lives. Soul food indeed.

The three legacy sites of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery were powerful bridges, inviting us to touch pain, to reach into the wounds of the world. This is how healing and reconciliation could begin.

And finally, Kate Wisz’s beautiful beads with the bridge as anchor slip gently in my pocket to help me remember the bridges to the past and hope toward the future.

I am deeply grateful for my relationship with Lissa Broome and the Institute over the years and am particularly grateful for the outstanding job done by Sarah Michelle Campbell and her colleagues on the Institute journal editorial board for their patience and professionalism in the preparation of the linked article.

Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Martyr

In Hayneville, the county seat, there are two markers bearing witness to the murder of Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopal seminarian who came to Alabama 1965. Daniels led efforts to integrate Episcopal churches and participated in civil rights demonstrations. He was arrested for his civil rights efforts and jailed for six days. After release, he was shot in cold blood outside a store where he had bought soft drinks, taking a bullet for a young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worker. The marker pictured below tells the tale in detail.

There is a second memorial to Daniels in Hayneville, across the street from the first, in the Courthouse square.

It is notable, in that it was given by an organization affiliated with Virginia Military Institute, Daniels’ alma mater, whose students fought for the Confederacy. Times have changed, it seems.

Theo Calloway, Lynching Victim

The Courthouse square in Hayneville has another historic marker, this one acknowledging the lynching of Theo Calloway.

Calloway was a young African American man scheduled for trial for the murder of a white man. He claimed that he had acted in self-defense. Hours before his trial was scheduled to begin, on March 29, 1888, Calloway was taken from jail and lynched in front of the Courthouse. His body was riddled with bullets. His family, when they arrived for the trial, was forced to behold their son and brother and to “retrieve his mangled corpse.”

Viola Liuzzo, Advocate and Sister to the Oppressed

On our way back from Selma to Montgomery, we stopped at a memorial to Viola Liuzzo.

Ms. Liuzzo was known to me, as her murder on March 25, 1965, was big news. I was a 15-year-old boy then, so my memory of the event is cloudy. Until corrected by recent fact checking, I had conflated her murder with the killings of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in Mississippi, which occurred nine months earlier.

Who was Viola Liuzzo? According to the National Park Service essay about the site, she was:

a 39-year-old mother of five from Detroit, [who] was deeply moved by the televised images of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, where peaceful marchers were attacked by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Determined to make a difference, Liuzzo left her family behind and traveled to Alabama to join the voting rights campaign, believing deeply in the cause of justice and equality for African Americans.

Driving from Selma to Montgomery with a young SNCC activist, she was pursued by a carload of Klansmen, shot and killed. The memorial we visited is on a roadside site that I suspect is near where the murder occurred. Frankly, it’s in the middle of nowhere.

In the civil rights saga, it seems to me that Viola Liuzzo has gotten a bit part. She merits one scene in the movie Selma and you would miss her shrine if you weren’t looking for it. A scurrilous smear campaign against her at the time of her murder may have something to do with her relative obscurity.

Honor Roll of the Dead

What can and should a pilgrim make of all this?

First, that although Jonathan Daniels, Theo Calloway and Viola Liuzzo were very different people, they were united in their assertion of the equality of African Americans with white people before God, the Constitution, and the law. For these “radical” views, they were murdered with impunity by people who hated them and what they stood for. The perpetrators were never brought to account for their wrongdoing.

Second, that they have not been forgotten.

While a plaque cannot undo the lynching of Theo Caldwell, the fact that it is located directly by the Lowndes County Courthouse is a public acknowledgement of who he was, what happened to him, and how unjust and horrible it was. In a state in the Deep South, this acknowledgement is close to an apology; a first step toward justice today, I hope.

The Episcopal Church has declared Jonathan Daniels a martyr, celebrating him on August 14 of each year. Included in the prayers for that day is the following:

O God of justice and compassion, you put down the proud and mighty from their place, and lift up the poor and the afflicted: We give you thanks for your faithful witness Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who, in the midst of injustice and violence, risked and gave his life for another; and we pray that we, following his example, may make no peace with oppression; through Jesus Christ the just one, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Do I hear “Amen?”

While the Catholic Church did not raise Viola Liuzzo to martyr status (she was a Unitarian Universalist at the end of her life), she is a saint and martyr in my book. Along with Jonathan Daniels, her life is a rebuke to white people who saw the atrocity of Bloody Sunday and shook it off rather than doing something about it. And to us today, when we see injustice and remain silent.

As for the attacks on her reputation, they matter not. To me, she joins Dorothy Day in the pantheons of saints with dirty fingernails. I have it on good authority that:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled …

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven …

Matthew 5: 6, 11. [RSV]

Viola Liuzzo’s okay. She rests with the just and the righteous. I dearly hope she’s praying for the rest of us.