Representative Jim Butler (OHD-41)— picture taken at Panera’s at Town and Country

Last Friday, January 10, I met for coffee with Republican Jim Butler, my Ohio House District 41 representative. And, after what was a generous amount of time for discussion, I was surprised that we kept going. We had an extended talk and a lot of agreement.

My goal in meeting Mr. Butler was not to get all the details of his votes in the Ohio House that I disagree with, but, to attempt to develop an understanding with Mr. Butler that might be a basis for working together to accomplish goals that we both agree with.

In his last campaign (2012) Butler raised about $240,000, and his Democratic challenger, Carolyn Gentry, raised about $60,000. Regardless of his unpopular vote on SB-5 — eventually repudiated by the voters as Issue 2 — and regardless that Ms Gentry was an exceptionally strong challenger, Butler still won with almost 60% of the vote.

As of last Friday, no Democrat had taken out a petition to challenge Butler — the deadline for completing the petitions is February 5 — so, it is possible Butler will remain unopposed. Butler thought it unlikely. As an active Democrat and a Kettering ward leader, I indicated to Butler that I would support a Democratic challenger.

In our discussion, I sought to find agreement with Butler on the big picture idea that key to a successful future for this district and this nation is a successful democracy. I quoted David Matthews, President of the Kettering Foundation, from his book, Reclaiming Public Education By Reclaiming Our Democracy that, to improve education, there must be a more engaged, more informed, more active public — that, in short, to improve education we must improve our democracy. I stressed that, in general, to meet the challenges of the future, we need to develop a level of citizen awareness and participation that simply is missing now. Mr. Butler agreed.

A search for articles pertaining to “democracy” on DaytonOS, reveals democracy and public education to be the focus of many of my posts. My POV is that in order to meet the challenges of the future, public education must be transformed and that the transformation that is needed is of such a magnitude that it will be possible only when a community of energized and active citizens work together to advance a shared vision. See here and here.

I told Mr. Butler that he — and everyone in public life — could gain public support by taking actions that advance a non-partisan approach to building democracy. Below is an excerpt of a letter (revised) that I gave to him at the start of our meeting:

Representative Butler:

 At a Kiwanis Club meeting a few years ago, I asked the group to contemplate Lincoln’s words, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” that,  “government of the people, by the people and for the people should not perish from the earth.” I asked each person to write down a number from zero to 100 indicating, in his or her opinion the degree to which our government meets Lincoln’s standard. The average was 40%.

40% is a failing grade. There’s a lot of evidence that citizens feel that government is operating a level much lower than what they find acceptable. I am suggesting here four areas for you to develop that would positively engage citizens. Four areas that I would like to offer my help. These areas are non-partisan; they transcend the usual right / left, and conservative / liberal divides:

• Transparency — providing the information that would make it easy for voters to understand your work as representative, your votes, your analysis.
• Dialogue — welcoming questions about your work as representative and responding in detail.
• Planning for the future — providing opportunities for education and in-depth discussions about the big challenges of the future.
• Community Building — helping to develop and to support networks of citizens who can work, communicate, plan and problem solve together.

I have some specific projects in mind that speak to these areas that I hope you will support, and that I will soon describe in detail.

Sincerely, Mike Bock

Mr. Butler shared a lot of good ideas and enthusiasm in all this. He is an influential person in our community and I’m encouraged to believe that he will positively respond to any good idea that will advance these four areas. I left the meeting challenged to put together a proposal that we can both support.

Previous Articles of Interest:

• Republican Senator Lehner and Representative Butler Defend Ohio’s SB-5 At Kettering Town Hall Meeting
• Caroline Gentry And Jim Butler — OHD 41 — Will Have Lincoln-Douglas Type Debate At KHS On Friday, Nov 2
• Our Community’s Success Depends On Whether Residents Can Be Persuaded To Behave Like Citizens
• Grassroots Dayton: “Sowing The Seeds Of Democracy”

Jim Butler, Representative for OHD41 — including Riverside, Oakwood, Kettering, and Centerville.

In a recent DDN article, “Lawmaker’s Military Claims Questioned,”reporter Laura Bischoff quotes several military officers who charge that the biography of representative for Ohio House District 41, Jim Butler, exaggerates and misrepresents his military service.

The disputed sentence in the House biography of Butler is this: “Representative Butler served in the United States Navy as fighter pilot, flying the F-14 Tomcat.” But according to Bischoff, “Butler said that after nine months of training flights on the F-14, a medical condition became apparent and he was grounded from flying in 1999 and then medically discharged the following year.”

The F-14 pushes the physical capacity of every pilot to the maximum and the fact that Butler was grounded from the program for medical reasons, I’m sure, was a big disappointment to this outstanding individual who had graduated in the top 10% of his class at the Naval Academy. Butler has every right to be proud of his military service, proud that he “received his wings,” proud that he trained on the F-14. It must hurt to read in the DDN that some military people think his bio claims too much. Bischoff quotes four people connected to the military:

• Retired Navy Capt. Jack Kennedy of Columbus, speaking of Butler — “Calling himself a fighter pilot – it’s a little bit of an exaggeration.”
• C. Douglas Sterner, curator of the Military Times “Hall of Valor” database and author of an upcoming book titled “Restoring Valor” — said Butler’s claim to be a “fighter pilot” title may mislead the public.
• State Rep. Connie Pillich, D-Cincinnati, who spent eight years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and reached the rank of captain, said the military trains its members to be precise in describing duties and titles — speaking of Butler said, “He could have said ‘naval aviator,’ which we all understand is a prestigious position with rigorous training standards.”
• Jay Sumner, who served in the U.S Navy for eight years on active duty and 18 years in the reserves said about the Butler biography — “I just think it’s disingenuous to portray yourself beyond what you really did. Generally speaking, in these days and times when people are getting killed in the military, the tolerance for over-exaggeration or over-boasting isn’t what it used to be.”

David Esrati on his web-site expresses outrage — “Dayton Daily News Writer Laura Bischoff – Pretends To Be A Journalist” — and unleashes such an intemperate personal attack on Bischoff and the DDN that he comes across sounding a bit unhinged. He writes:

Unfortunately- they’ll let any fool sit down in front of a computer at the Dayton Daily news and write crap. No lives are at stake, and if you make a mistake, no one dies and you don’t crash $38 million worth of avionics and propulsion systems. … The only thing that needs questioning is why did she (Bischoff) write this bullshit article and why did it appear in the newspaper?

Frankly, if you want to talk about dishonor- questioning this naval officer’s résumé in public, when there is no legitimate basis- is the true dishonor.

The editors of the Dayton Daily News owe Mr. Butler a public apology.”

The focus of Esrati’s wrath is on Bischoff’s first paragraph where she says: “Butler trained on the F-14 but received a medical discharge from the Navy before he ever landed one on an aircraft carrier or received an assignment to a fleet. So does that still make him a ‘fighter pilot?’ ”

Esrati says, that since Butler piloted fighter jets, then, of course, he was a “fighter pilot.”

About referring to himself as a “fighter pilot,” Bischoff quotes Butler as explaining, “I never would want to brag or anything like that, but it’s an easy way to communicate that when I flew in the Navy I flew a fighter jet.”

This claim of being a “fighter pilot” seems an exaggeration to the four military people quoted in the Bischoff article. But, to me, I think Butler has a point and the term “fighter pilot” is simply an easy way to communicate that Butler had the wonderful opportunity and the great experience of flying a military fighter jet.

But, it seems to me that the disputed statement in the bio — “Representative Butler served in the United States Navy as fighter pilot, flying the F-14 Tomcat” — does not align with the facts. For Butler to refer to himself as a “fighter pilot,” I believe is fair. But the question raised by the DDN article is whether Butler’s biography — posted on the Ohio House web-site — misrepresents his military service. If the facts are that Mr. Butler withdrew from the F-14 training program, never completed his training, never was certified to pilot the F-14, then this bio is misleading.

I’m thinking that Butler is sensitive to implying a level or type of service that is incorrect and, now that this matter has been brought to his attention, that he would want to revise his web-site so that there would be no chance for misunderstanding.

I’m wondering, however, with Esrati, why this matter of Butler’s biography is now emerging. I’m thinking that someone who had something to gain alerted Bischoff to this story, and that the person with something to gain is probably a fellow Republican in the Ohio House. Butler, according to a Columbus Dispatch article from mid-summer, is a possible candidate for Speaker of the House. This position may be hotly contested, and maybe someone is trying to knock Butler out of consideration. Here is an excerpt from the Dispatch story:

Rep. Cliff Rosenberger was still four months shy of being born when Rep. Ron Amstutz joined the state legislature in 1981.
Thirty-two years later, the upstart and the veteran are squaring off to become the next speaker of the House.
Rosenberger, 32, and Amstutz, 62, have emerged — at least at the moment — as the top candidates to replace Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, when he must depart the House because of term limits at the end of 2014.
A formal leadership vote is more than 15 months away, and things could change. GOP Reps. Jim Butler of Oakwood, Louis Terhar of Cincinnati and Kristina Roegner of Hudson, for example, are among those mentioned as showing interest in the top job.

In this short presentation to the South of Dayton Democratic Club, I analyze the Dayton Daily News opinion article written by Kevin Kelly, the Dean of the University of Dayton’s School of Education and Frank DePalma, the retired Superintendent of Centerville Schools, and I repeat most of what I wrote in my post: Put Away The Duct Tape, Public Education Needs To Be Rebuilt — Guided By New Principles. My point is that public education needs to transformed so that it changes direction.

In their DDN article, Drs. Kelly and DePalma defend the current system and essentially argue that we need more of the same, only with harder tests and requirements. They defend the key principles guiding the current system: 1) purpose of the current system is to transmit an established curriculum, 2) the merit of schools and teachers can be determined via the results of objective tests, and 3) to improve schools means to improve the scores on these objective tests. My point is that an education founded on such principles ignores many of the aims for education that traditionally a democratic nation has agreed is important to pursue and that reform leading to higher test scores ignores the fact that our current system is built on principles that in the big picture are inadequate. Rather than reforming schools, we need to transform them.

To reform, means to be more efficient in accomplishing the aims of the system. But if the aim of the system is wrong, then reform is not the answer. The problem is, regardless of how much the test scores improve, public education will still be failing to accomplish what it needs to accomplish. To transform, means to create a new system that will be focused on accomplishing a purpose very different from the old system.

The difference between “reforming” and “transforming” is a powerful insight. To plan for the future — Public Education In 2030 is the book I keep talking about writing— would require a compelling vision of what is possible. In my previous article, I took a stab at defining the principles of a new system, but in this short speech I didn’t develop these principles but instead simply tried to show a way of thinking that will encourage discussion about what new directions public education should be considering.