Democrats--And All Of Us--Should Worry About the "Killer Bs"

What--or rather, who--are the "Killer Bs"?  And why should Democrats--indeed, all of us in this country--worry about them?

They are four of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary for the 2020 presidential election.  In the order in which they entered the race, they are:  Bernie (Sanders), Beto (O'Rourke; no relation, by the way), Buttigieg (better known as "Mayor Pete," which is somewhat easier to pronounce), and, very, very recently, Joe (Biden, landing after a perplexedly long period of circling the field).

The application of the "B" part of the label is too obvious for even this much of a comment.  The "Killer" part, however, may not be.

These four men (with the emphasis on "men") control, according to recent polls, garner support, in a field of 20 candidates and counting, including a significant number of well-qualified women and candidates of color, from approximately 70 percent of respondents.

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, which I do more easily than I like to admit, I'm not sure I gave that last point enough emphasis.

Less than three years after the first woman nominated for the Presidency came within a few thousand votes of actually winning it, and less than 11 years after the county elected its first African-American President, the political party that made all of that history is apparently content to ignore, and perhaps even reverse, all of that history in favor of the one form of "political correctness" that has always dominated and poisoned our politics as well as virtually every aspect of American life:

The version that favors white Christian men.

This seems to be based on some sort of irrational fear of losing this demographic cohort as part of the Democratic base.  But this fear is an utterly irrational one.  That demographic fled the Democratic party decades ago.  And it's not coming back, no matter how many finely-buttered words the killer Bs offer on the subject of "economic anxiety."

These voters primarily live in red states, where they have regularly voted for Republican candidates at the state and local levels.  Candidates that, once elected, have worked night and day for the sole purpose of comforting their donors (many of whom live elsewhere), and afflicting the very people who put them in power in the first place.  Candidates who, in the process, have driven the economies of their states into ruin, and the blue residents into other states where it is possible to vote for sane public policy.  Ever wondered how, or why, this kind of political insanity works?

I'm sorry to have to say it this bluntly, but I might as well:  race is the key.  It always has been.  I sometimes fear that it always will be.

And I also fear that the Killer Bs are too in love with the idea that, because they are white men, and also Christians except in Bernie's case, they somehow have some kind of magic power to persuade their demographic cohort in red states and elsewhere to join with women and people of color to build a common vision of our nation's future.  Biden, in particular, suffers from this self-delusion.  As a long-time Senator from Delaware, his entire career has been built on the reach-across-the-aisle fantasy that always ends up with Democrats selling out their values for the sake of enacting bad Republican ideas.  The Hill-Thomas Supreme Court hearing fiasco is but one example; Biden's opposition to busing and support for mandatory sentencing laws are others.  It was only when he became Obama's "wingman," and backed the policies of a progressive President, including the Affordable Care Act (now almost as sacred as Medicare), that Biden developed a following among progressive voters in his party.

White men voting for T**** didn't cost the Democrats the Presidency in 2020.  Progressive voters buying into the Jill Stein delusion, with perhaps a little help from Vladimir Putin, did a lot more damage to Hillary Clinton's campaign.  But Hillary did the greatest damage to herself, by not working harder to shed her well-earned corporate image and appeal to progressive voters.  That failure is best summed up in two words:  Tim Kaine.  When I heard that Hillary had picked him as her running mate, my immediate reaction was "uh-oh."  I knew that she needed to go bold, and she showed with that choice that she was going to play safe instead.  Trump's nomination on the Republican side and Bernie's insurgency should have combined to tell her that safe was not an option.  Unfortunately for all of us, that didn't happen.

And, from the looks of things right now, it may not happen again.

We can't afford to let the Killer Bs kill our democracy by re-electing T****.  Right now, I have no idea how to stop that from happening.  I feel trapped by their failure to understand that, right now, the country is engaged in a cold war that has the potential to become a hot one.

Look at the events of the past week.  Our "President" doubled down on his support for white nationalists.  Yet another racist attack on a synagogue followed, with a senseless tragic death as a result (as well as several wounded, including the rabbi).  And, after a few token words of "sympathy" for the victims, T**** flew off to a self-fellating rally in Wisconsin in which he accused Democrats of murdering babies.

The Killer Bs are looking for a common ground with Republicans that no longer exists.  They are aspiring, on the other hand, to lead a party whose base consists of (added emphasis again) the majority of the people of this country:  women and people of color.  That's where the votes are.  And that's where the future of the country lies.

If any of the Killer Bs want my vote, they had better act on that simple truth, and make sure every one of their actions and words reflect it.

Starting right now.

The Need To Fight For Climate Change

I read the New York Times online now, and only subscribe to the Sunday edition of the hardcopy paper because doing so is still cheaper than paying directly for online access without a physical subscription.  When I do get the Sunday paper, I find it challenging to read more than a few articles in an entire edition--and often, my life is otherwise busy enough that, even at that pace, the papers can stack up a few weeks at a time.  But I've made an exception for last week's edition of the Sunday Times Magazine, which is entitled "The Climate Issue."  I've just read the first few articles in it, and am planning to read the rest of the issue over the course of next week.  I recommend that you do the same, if you can get a copy or find a way to access it online.

Does it say anything new about the subject?  From what I've read so far, I would say that the answer is no.  Then again, I've read as much as I can about the subject over the past thirty years, so there may not be that much that is new for me to absorb.  But what I have absorbed makes me not only convinced of the seriousness of climate change as an existential threat to human life on Earth, but despairing over the inability of our political system to facilitate any level of debate over how to address the problem, and save ourselves from ourselves.  For make no mistake:  we are both the problem and the solution.

That climate change is both a problem rooted in the actions and inactions of the human race, and is accelerating at a rate that gives us little time to address it successfully, is beyond any doubt.  But what is also beyond any doubt is the level of denialism sponsored and facilitated by the financial interests whose current modes of money-making would be threatened--in some cases, perhaps, even destroyed--by any serious effort to tackle the problem.  Had these efforts not been successful to date, we could very well have solved the problem by now.

But they have been successful, in part because they've adapted to the rate at which the available evidence has been accumulating against their cause.  Step 1 was to deny that there was any problem in the first place.  Then, as evidence began mounting that there was a problem, they said it was too small to worry about it.  Then, as the effects become too large to ignore, they conceded that there was a problem, but said it was unlikely that humans were its cause.  Finally, and more recently, they have actually begun to concede that there's a problem, that humans are the cause, and that something needs to be done--but that the solution is to spur entrepreneurial activity by way of having more babies.  In effect, there's nothing that the end of the world might do to us that the right combination of capitalism and social conservatism can't cure.

In plain English:  anything but a big-government solution.  And this is where the level of their dishonest lobbying descends to ad hominem levels.  The "big government" solutions to which they object (some of which, like a carbon tax, actually have roots in conservative thinking) are, in their view, just a proxy for a socialist, one-world takeover of our country.  Even though there's no evidence of this alleged conspiracy, they keep pushing it anyway.  And, thanks to forty years of public policy that has put the majority of our nation's wealth in their hands, they have no reason to think that they can't keep on pushing it.

What makes this effort especially insidious is the fact that, as the articles in the Times climate issue illustrate, the financial interests fighting the efforts to solve the climate problem have known all along about every aspect of it--its causes, its likely effects, and its potential cures.  Not for the smallest measurable instant has that knowledge in any way deterred them from their efforts to keep on lining their pockets by spreading ignorance and fear among everyone else.  There's a simple reason for this:  they've been working on ways to profit on the misery they're helping to create.  For them, the changing planet simply creates new and, perhaps, more lucrative ways to exploit everyone else.  And not the least of these ways is the greater likelihood that even the most basic essentials of life--air and water--will become so scarce that people will be willing to do and give anything to have them.  Far from being a disaster for global capitalism, in other words, climate change will enable its takeover of the entire planet.  Perhaps forever.

If you have any doubts about this, then take a look at this story from the magazine, about how the Pinkertons stand ready to be a police force for the brave new world that those who push back against climate change solutions would like us to accept.  Or this story, about how they are in fact ready to profit off of the destruction of our world.

But then, take a look at this story, about how people in a small Peruvian town are using the court system to fight back against this perfidy.  And understand that it is only through efforts like this that disaster for everyone--or almost everyone--can be avoided.  Understand that there is no glide path out of this dilemma.  Understand that, ultimately, there is no savior from the effects of climate change except for the one you see in the mirror, in mirrors all over our dying planet.

Climate is the problem, but global capitalism in its present form is the real enemy.  Fight it.  Today, tomorrow, and every day until we can be sure that the planet, its riches, and its opportunities are saved for everyone to enjoy.  Which is why I will leave you with the closing paragraph from the lead article in the Times' climate issue:

It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths. They are self-interested to the point of violence, possess a vibrant disregard for laws and social mores, have an indifference to the rights of others and fail to feel remorse. A psychopath gains a person’s trust, mimics emotions but feels nothing and passes in public for human (with a charming Twitter feed, say). The psychopath is calm, calculated, scrupulous — never more so than while plotting murder. There can be no reasoning with a psychopath; neither rational argument nor blandishment has a remote chance of success. If this indeed is the pathology that we are dealing with when it comes to the climate impasse, then we should be honest about the appropriate course of treatment. Coercion must be the remedy — exerted economically, politically and morally, preferably all at once. The psychopath respects only force.

A Tale Of Two Theatres; Or, The Death Of Innovation In Real Estate

When one thinks of Birmingham, Alabama, theaters may not be the first thing to come to mind; instead, one is far more likely to think of its role in the civil rights movement, which is of course notable all by itself.  But Birmingham is, like a growing number of cities across the country for something else that has a bearing on civil rights:  the restoration of its remaining historic theaters to theatrical use, incorporating in the process references to the roles that these buildings played in enforcing legal segregation between whites and blacks.  Thanks to the help of city government, and community members, some of these buildings have already come back to magnificent life, while others are slated to share their fate.

You can read about this in detail here, thanks to the BBC, which found the proverbial "local angle" in the name the Alabama city shares with its British counterpart.  What was especially interesting to me was the story about the Lyric Theatre, in part because it had spent decades between its early glory days and its more recent restoration largely in a state of abandonment--that is, when it wasn't being employed as either retail space or as a porn theater.

To put it another way, the Lyric could easily be a distant real estate cousin of the similarly-named Lyric Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York, along with eight other theaters on the block.  They too had their early days of glory.  They too fell into alternative and frequently disreputable uses.  And all of them have, thanks to the intervention of the city and state, been restored to their former theatrical glory, right?

Well, only partially right.  Of the nine theaters on the block, five are now being reused for theatrical purposes, while another has found live as an event space frequently featuring performances, and yet another has become the lobby for a multiplex.  As for the remaining two, one was largely torn down, with its facade incorporated into a branch of Madame Tussauds.

And the final one, appropriately enough named the Times Square Theatre?  For literally years now, it has remained untenanted, because the New 42nd Street Corporation, the entity that controls all nine buildings, has been determined to turn it into retail space, on the grounds that its stage house is too close to the street for soundproofing purposes.  Personally, I have always found this to be a highly dubious rationale: the building's architectural cousin, the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street, should theoretically suffer from the same limitation, yet that hasn't stopped it from being used regularly for many of Broadway's most memorable productions.  You can make your own judgment about the similarity of the buildings here and here.

And yet, in spite of this, the historic fabric of the building is about to be diced into pieces, thrown into an architectural blender with more modern (i.e., more "blah") elements, and resurrected as space for one or more transient retail tenants which will, presumably, fill the New 42nd Street's coffers.  However, as an architectural and functional travesty, this almost pales in comparison to what is being done to the Palace Theater on West 47th Street, which is being jacked up 30 feat from its present location so that new retail space can be built underneath it.

I'm not kidding, folks.  As New York Post columnist Cindy Adams might put it, only in New York, kids, only in New York.  You can read about this dual travesty in stomach-churning detail here.

So what, you might say?  The buildings will still exist, and the retail uses will add more economic vitality to New York's theater district, right?

Wrong.  Somebody forgot to tell the geniuses who came up with these plans an important point:  bricks-and-mortar real estate is dying.  At all price points.  Even at the discount level.  Even the businesses that profit off of dying retail enterprises see no future in it.  Take a look.

That's my point in partially titling this post about the death of innovation in real estate.  Developers seem to have no ability to imagine how empty spaces can be reused.  Artists, on the other hand, have always been able to come up with creative uses for abandoned spaces.  I can think of one word, appropriately New York-related, that sums this up:  Soho, a former industrial neighborhood in lower Manhattan where artists turned abandoned factories into lofts and gallery spaces.  Now Soho has become a luxury neighborhood, one that includes high-end retail outlets.

It is not just the cultural future of cities that lies in the arts; it is their economic future as well.  Empty spaces should be filled with artistic enterprises that create new value, especially in an era when retail has become almost entirely a virtual enterprise.  This is all the more so when the space in question, like an abandoned theater, was designed for artistic purposes in the first place.  That purpose should be celebrated and maximized, not shoehorned out of the way by real estate people lacking in vision and imagination.  If only the Times Square Theater could have been reused in a way that truly celebrated its artistic past while providing creative opportunities for commerce, that would have been a win-win scenario.

I suspect that, in a few years, the theater will go back to being abandoned as reality-based retailing continues to decline.  Perhaps then, the win-win scenario could become reality.

Take Them? Why Not? We NEED Them!

Sometimes, even a "counter-puncher" can punch himself in the face.  Especially if that "counter-puncher" happens to be named D****** T****.

I'm referring to His Orangeness' recent trial balloons regarding transporting refugees via bus to U.S. cities that have designated themselves as "sanctuary cities," without any formal acknowledgement of their legal status, or any other due process that might subsequently protect them against harassment, or worse, by government or private actors.  In his warped view, this will somehow teach the governments of these cities, as well as their political supporters, not to oppose T**** on any aspect of immigration policy, lest they suddenly be inundated by people he has described as "animals."

Unsurprisingly, especially since T**** is the one proposing this, the legality of this proposal is dubious at best, and (more likely than not) non-existent at worst.  In fact, officials within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have apparently been discouraging him for some time from pursuing it.  This, along with other reasons, probably goes some distance toward explaining T****'s recent purge of several of his top DHS appointees, most notably the Department's Secretary, Kristjen Nielsen, who have spent much of the past two years testing and frequently exceeding the boundaries of both their legal and moral authority to satisfy their boss' need to use immigrants--and refugees in particular--as a political whipping post.

But now that Stephen Miller, the architect of T****'s crueler anti-immigrant policies, is now poised to be the sole whisperer in T****'s ear on the subject, all gloves and bets appear to be off.  The limits will no longer be tested, or even merely exceeded.  Instead, they will be smashed to pieces, transforming the United States--the nation of the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breath free--into a pariah in the community of nations, and (far worse) the author of an incalculable amount of human misery.

On the other hand, with regard to his proposal for sanctuary cities, maybe that's not entirely the case.  In fact, assuming that it doesn't involve massively unacceptable violations of national and international law (a generous assumption), perhaps there's a case for letting him proceed with doing it.

Let me explain.

T**** has also said recently that no one, documented or undocumented, refugee or otherwise, can be allowed into the county, because he has arbitrarily made the decision that the country is full.  To borrow a reference to his alleged favorite holiday, Christmas, there is no room for the stranger and sojourner at the inn of America.

Well, that's what he believes.  And, like much of what he believes, it's 100% wrong.  The fact of the matter is that there are large portions of this country that have been largely abandoned by their former residents, and that can hardly be called cities or towns in any meaningful sense.  They are largely collections of real estate and infrastructure that once housed productive activities and meaningful lives--and could do so again, with a modest amount of governmental effort and investment.  Immigrants would do the rest, if they could just be allowed into the country and be given the opportunity to do what they have historically done in cities and states all across the U.S..

And, in the process of doing this, they would not only boost tax revenues at both the state and federal levels, they would create jobs that would put less fiscal stress on social programs at both levels.  This recent article from the New York Times fairly summaries the value of immigrants to the decidedly "empty" stretches of the American landscape.

The article mentions Baltimore as one city that his experimented with policies designed to encourage immigrants to move in and participate in the rebuilding of struggling communities.  As a native and nearly lifelong resident of the Baltimore area (including city neighborhoods), I can testify from personal experience that it is very far from being "full."  Within the boundaries of the city itself, there is a large number of vacant blocks for which there are no current plans other than demolition, and the vague hope that someone with money will come along and decide to translate all of the resulting vacant lots into some sort of urban paradise. 

Of course, anyone familiar with Baltimore's current struggles with public safety and integrity within the city government can guess as to how much of a fairy tale that hope is, actually.  On the other hand, maybe the huddled masses currently massing at our southern border are the potential authors of that fairy tale.  What if they were the one with the potential to make it come true?

And what if calling T****'s bluff on his "sanctuary city proposal was not merely good fiscal and humanitarian policy, but a vehicle for scoring political points as well?  It's painfully clear at this stage that T****'s political appeal rests fundamentally on his lifelong intolerance toward people of color.  What greater form of payback could there be for Democrats and their supporters than forcing him to act on his dishonest words, and let the results provide all of the rebuttal to them that is needed?  After all, a lot of the "empty" areas of this country are in so-called red states--the ones that have been abandoned by blue residents tired of living with decades of failed Republican policies.  The ones left behind have been led to believe that immigrants have "stolen" their jobs.  But what if they had the opportunity to see immigrants created new businesses and jobs, both for themselves AND for their new neighbors?  Is it too much to hope for the possibility that, if immigrants are given the chance to show what they can do, they can effectively make their own case to even the most intolerant of audiences?

Perhaps that is too much to hope for  I have to admit that two-plus years of life under T**** has done a lot to set back my sense of what might yet be possible in the American experiment.  But I'm determined to not let it be set back any further.  And, as a nearly lifelong Democrat and a partner in an immigration law practice with my wife, nothing would make me happier than to see a "counter-puncher" punch himself in the face with his own ignorant, racist bravado.  After all, Trump started with everything, financially speaking, and found new and novel ways to turn it into nothing.  As this Times article illustrates, those with nothing often have not only the greatest incentive, but for that very reason also have the keenest insight, on how to create value.  Perhaps those "animals" could teach T**** a thing or two about capitalism.

Actually, I don't think he's teachable, any more than he's a real capitalist.  Otherwise, by now, we'd have seen his grades as well as his tax returns.

Go ahead, D******, and make my day, as well as the day of thousands of people who still believe in the promise of this nation, even in the face of your ignorance, your bigotry, and your insufferable ego.  Bus them in, and knock yourself out in the process.

After all, at least one newspaper in your home town is begging you to do it.