I was saddened to learn about the soon-to-be closing of Lord & Taylor, in part because it was one of my mother's favorite New York department stores, and in part because it joins a long list of other now-departed Fifth Avenue retailers (Bonwit Teller and B. Altman, to name but two) that represented what was left of a more stylish, and much more personalized form of retailing that began in the 19th century, endured for much of the 20th century, and now seems to be definitively winding down to a close in the 21st. For us, the storied names of these shopping palaces are little more than nameplates. But, once upon a time, there were actual people behind the nameplates, people whose tastes and marketing skills, along with a highly competitive marketplace, gave those nameplates the value that at least some of them have managed to retain long after their namesakes have vanished from our midst.
It's easy to blame the disappearance of Lord & Taylor (actually, downsizing the number of outlets) on the prevalence of shopping via the Internet, which gives shoppers an unlimited amount of range and convenience. And there's no question that Internet shopping traffic has had a major adverse impact generally on traditional bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. For me, as for others, it would be somewhat hypocritical to complain about this too much. I lament the vanishing of traditional book stores, but I also buy books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. In many respects, the Internet is the proverbial better idea, and shopping is a major aspect of our lives that reflects that fact.
But it's not hypocritical to note that, in the pursuit of convenience, we've lost an important part of our social lives as well. Stores like Lord & Taylor used to be not just places to shop, but to spend time with family members and close friends. Most of these stores had restaurants, which became places to extend the social aspect of shopping. These days, you're lucky to find as much as a McDonald's in a Walmart (and "lucky" may depend on how you feel about fast food).
In any case, convenience plays a large role in the disappearance of the Lord & Taylor-type stores. Physical elegance and social contact mean less to modern shoppers than they once did; getting goods quickly, and as cheaply as possible, are what matter most. But there is another factor as well: debt. During the 1980s, when economic expansion was fueled not by tax cuts, as is commonly believed, but by massive amounts of public and private borrowing, the ownership of many former "carriage-trade" stores such as Lord & Taylor was consolidated through mergers that were funded by massive loans These loans, unfortunately for everyone, proved to be so large that they stores themselves could not generate enough revenues to service the debt and generate profits for the new owners.
This fact, combined with a reduction in the variety of merchandise available in each of the stores, slowly led to the closing of many of the individual stores, which by this point had become little more than nameplates. Once upon a time, you could reasonably guess where an item had been bought just by looking at it. But, as time passed, that was less and less true. Macy's no longer needed to tell Gimbel's anything; they were both selling the same merchandise--and, as a result, only one of them has survived to this day.
The problem of debt strangling our economy is by no means limited to retail. In addition to its other problems (climate change and the spread of autocracy), the world economy is forced to chow down on servicing a level of debt that now stands at $247 trillion. A level of debt that has its roots in the go-go '80s--when, economically (to borrow a Stephen Sondheim lyric from "Follies) everything was possible and nothing made sense (then or now). There is clearly no way out of this financial trap except debt forgiveness. What is needed now is an international conference to work out the terms of this, on a global basis. Perhaps that can actually happen, once everyone faces up to the need for it--and it may take a cataclysmic event for everyone to do so.
But what if we could do it? And what if it could be combined with incentives to repatriate currencies that have fled their home countries, seeking tax shelters oversees? (U.S. dollars, we're looking at you here.)
Maybe some of that forgiveness, combined with a little cash, could save what's left of the carriage-trade model, before it vanishes altogether. Maybe some of that cash could help to not only provide the Lord & Taylors of the world with much-needed capital, but also with new, aspiring merchants to find ways to combine Internet-age convenience with old-school social experience. Maybe, if we can liberate money from the tyranny of debt service, and get it to start moving at the same speed as the people who make, save, invest, and spend it, we really can bake a large enough economic pie for everyone.
Admittedly, this is just a dream. But maybe necessity will make it a reality. I hope it happens before we say goodbye to another Lord & Taylor.
Monday, July 30, 2018
America? Russia? Can You Tell Which Is Which?
And now, sadly, on to what is only the second-most important story of our time.
During the Cold War, and for a long time after its unofficial end in 1989, Americans could take pride not only in its "hard power," as defined by its military strength, but also in the "soft power" of its ideals, and its willingness to pursue making this ideals a reality. It's fairly safe to say that much of the social progress that has been made in this country, especially in the area of civil rights, came about as a consequence of that willingness, at least in part. How, after all, could we lecture the rest of the world about freedom and equality if we as a people ourselves were neither truly free or equal?
Unfortunately, that question is now a haunting one. Because, under the current occupant of the Oval Office, much of that social progress is not only beginning to unravel, but is seemingly being thrown into reverse. In truth, much of this reversal has been going in slow motion for quite a long time, beginning with the Reagan era. But those of us on the progressive side of the fence has always maintained the faith that democratic processes, and a commitment by all political sides to abide by them, would be enough to eventually set this country headed in the right direction.
In fact, the end of the Cold War itself seemed to validate that point of view. So did the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, after a period of manufactured warfare and bankrupt economics. American ideals, during the Bush years, had been put to the ultimate test, and had proved to be enough to vanquish a serious attempt to thwart them.
But, as it turned out, the ultimate test was yet to come.
In 2016, the nation elected, and swore into office, a man whose victory had come about despite credible reasons to believe that a major foreign power, Russia (the functional successor to the Soviet Union) made massive, direct attempts to intervene in the outcome of the election and manipulate that outcome for its own benefit. And, although a few fingers were lifted against this horror in the form of demonstrations and legal challenges, the weight of public opinion leaned in the direction of those who believed that "our system" was strong enough to survive any attempt to thwart it.
For myself, however, and for many others, my weight shifted in the other direction.
I have long believed that the modern conservative movement, as launched in the post-World-War-II era, understands words like "freedom" and "democracy" in a very narrow sense. Specifically, the freedom to be a conservative, and to insist that democracy only be allow to promote conservative points of view. I have seen the truth of this in its willingness to promote right-wing dictatorships over legitimate democratic movements that were deemed to be "too leftist," in its insistence on "balanced" coverage from supposedly "liberal" media (while allowing the conservative counterparts to be as "unbalanced" as possible), and in its willing to promote an authoritarian perspective on faith under the twin guises of "tradition" and "religious freedom."
The tipping point, however, occurred for me even before Election Night 2016, courtesy of Mitch McCONnell, the Republican leader of the Senate. (I'll use his name, since a little manipulation allows me to tweak it in order to properly reflect his character, but will deny him the respect of pretending he leads a "majority.") Fresh from his successful denial of Merrick Garland the proper respect that a Supreme Court nominee deserves, in the hope that a Republican successor to Obama would get to fill a Court vacancy, McCONnell refused to cooperate with Obama's pre-election plan to share with the public what was then known about Russian plans to sabotage the election. He baldly stated his intention to denounce any such attempt as "partisan" in nature.
Sadly, Obama folded, as he did with the Garland nomination. That's on him, and I have no reservations about calling him out for it. In fact, Obama's penchant for folding in the face of Republican opposition, even when that opposition may have been little more than bluffing, is mirrored in a sad tendency by Democrats generally to put too much faith in the good intentions of the other side. That history, to some extent is recapped here. We have been constantly affronted with Republican disrespect for democracy, and then constantly been told, in the immortal words of Antonin Scalia, to "get over it." And, by doing so, we have enabled the present moment (myself included) to a far greater degree than any of is probably care to admit.
But make no mistake: McCONnell put Obama in that position with regard to the intelligence about the election. It was McCONnell who, faced once again with a choice between country and political chess, chose chess. Because that is what not only McCONnell, and the party that will follow him anywhere, do. They are not interested in building a better America, only in the acquisition of power, by any means. And let's be as clear as possible: they have not been stopped for a minute by the fact that the current President has a long history of association with Russia that makes plausible the possibility that he is not truly an American President, but a Russian asset.
How much plausibility should you give to that thought? Or, for that matter, to the idea that conservatives would chose conservatism over democracy? Take the words of a leading conservative, David Frum, who served in the Bush Administration: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Again, his words, not mine.
Or, don't take his words at all. Take a look at what is going on around us.
The banning of a reporter from the White House press pool, and the Presidential denunciation of reporters as "bad people."
The use of employer's rights to restrict freedom of speech for their employees, forcing people to choose between their beliefs and their ability to survive.
The restriction of the rights of the poor to public benefits, for no other reason than to assert who's "in charge.
The caging of human beings who are guilt of nothing more than the desire to flee unsafe countries, in conditions that cannot even be called decent.
The willingness of the current Administration to go to war not for the defense of the nation, but to use warfare as a public relations tool to pump up support for said Administration (here we go, "wagging the dog" again).
And finally, at least for now, the unwillingness of the current Congress to spend any money, or otherwise take any precautions whatsoever, to ensure that our elections are free from foreign--specifically, Russian--interference.
Is it any wonder that Putin wanted the current occupant of the Oval Office to be that occupant? He's getting exactly what he wants: a clone of his own country, one nominally led by a man who is easily susceptible to flattery. As has been pointed out recently, that's the hold that Putin, or anyone, can have over our "President," the only one that's really necessary. Flattery. Infinite amounts of it. That's how you hold on to a world-class narcissist. You don't need "pee tapes." You don't need "Playboy tapes." You don't need any tapes at all. You just need to keep petting him on the head and say "Good boychik. Good boychik. Now go do what I want."
And is it any wonder that Republican members of Congress spent the past Fourth of July not here, but in Russia, doing who-knows-what? It's enough to remind one of the chilling last lines of George Orwell's "Animal Farm," in which an idealistic rebellion by farm animals against a drunken farmer degenerates into an autocracy led by pigs, who increasing act like the animals former master. At the book's end, the pigs host and toast their human neighbors, while the rest of the farm animals look on in horror:
This is why it's essential to vote, and to get others to vote, this coming November. But, no matter what happens in this election (and a fair outcome is by no means certain, under these circumstances), it is not enough to vote. We must, sadly, fight the people we have long regarded as our fellow countrymen (and women) on whichever battlefield is necessary.
For they are no longer our fellows. They are the enemy. And, for the sake of true democracy, no quarter can be given.
During the Cold War, and for a long time after its unofficial end in 1989, Americans could take pride not only in its "hard power," as defined by its military strength, but also in the "soft power" of its ideals, and its willingness to pursue making this ideals a reality. It's fairly safe to say that much of the social progress that has been made in this country, especially in the area of civil rights, came about as a consequence of that willingness, at least in part. How, after all, could we lecture the rest of the world about freedom and equality if we as a people ourselves were neither truly free or equal?
Unfortunately, that question is now a haunting one. Because, under the current occupant of the Oval Office, much of that social progress is not only beginning to unravel, but is seemingly being thrown into reverse. In truth, much of this reversal has been going in slow motion for quite a long time, beginning with the Reagan era. But those of us on the progressive side of the fence has always maintained the faith that democratic processes, and a commitment by all political sides to abide by them, would be enough to eventually set this country headed in the right direction.
In fact, the end of the Cold War itself seemed to validate that point of view. So did the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, after a period of manufactured warfare and bankrupt economics. American ideals, during the Bush years, had been put to the ultimate test, and had proved to be enough to vanquish a serious attempt to thwart them.
But, as it turned out, the ultimate test was yet to come.
In 2016, the nation elected, and swore into office, a man whose victory had come about despite credible reasons to believe that a major foreign power, Russia (the functional successor to the Soviet Union) made massive, direct attempts to intervene in the outcome of the election and manipulate that outcome for its own benefit. And, although a few fingers were lifted against this horror in the form of demonstrations and legal challenges, the weight of public opinion leaned in the direction of those who believed that "our system" was strong enough to survive any attempt to thwart it.
For myself, however, and for many others, my weight shifted in the other direction.
I have long believed that the modern conservative movement, as launched in the post-World-War-II era, understands words like "freedom" and "democracy" in a very narrow sense. Specifically, the freedom to be a conservative, and to insist that democracy only be allow to promote conservative points of view. I have seen the truth of this in its willingness to promote right-wing dictatorships over legitimate democratic movements that were deemed to be "too leftist," in its insistence on "balanced" coverage from supposedly "liberal" media (while allowing the conservative counterparts to be as "unbalanced" as possible), and in its willing to promote an authoritarian perspective on faith under the twin guises of "tradition" and "religious freedom."
The tipping point, however, occurred for me even before Election Night 2016, courtesy of Mitch McCONnell, the Republican leader of the Senate. (I'll use his name, since a little manipulation allows me to tweak it in order to properly reflect his character, but will deny him the respect of pretending he leads a "majority.") Fresh from his successful denial of Merrick Garland the proper respect that a Supreme Court nominee deserves, in the hope that a Republican successor to Obama would get to fill a Court vacancy, McCONnell refused to cooperate with Obama's pre-election plan to share with the public what was then known about Russian plans to sabotage the election. He baldly stated his intention to denounce any such attempt as "partisan" in nature.
Sadly, Obama folded, as he did with the Garland nomination. That's on him, and I have no reservations about calling him out for it. In fact, Obama's penchant for folding in the face of Republican opposition, even when that opposition may have been little more than bluffing, is mirrored in a sad tendency by Democrats generally to put too much faith in the good intentions of the other side. That history, to some extent is recapped here. We have been constantly affronted with Republican disrespect for democracy, and then constantly been told, in the immortal words of Antonin Scalia, to "get over it." And, by doing so, we have enabled the present moment (myself included) to a far greater degree than any of is probably care to admit.
But make no mistake: McCONnell put Obama in that position with regard to the intelligence about the election. It was McCONnell who, faced once again with a choice between country and political chess, chose chess. Because that is what not only McCONnell, and the party that will follow him anywhere, do. They are not interested in building a better America, only in the acquisition of power, by any means. And let's be as clear as possible: they have not been stopped for a minute by the fact that the current President has a long history of association with Russia that makes plausible the possibility that he is not truly an American President, but a Russian asset.
How much plausibility should you give to that thought? Or, for that matter, to the idea that conservatives would chose conservatism over democracy? Take the words of a leading conservative, David Frum, who served in the Bush Administration: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Again, his words, not mine.
Or, don't take his words at all. Take a look at what is going on around us.
The banning of a reporter from the White House press pool, and the Presidential denunciation of reporters as "bad people."
The use of employer's rights to restrict freedom of speech for their employees, forcing people to choose between their beliefs and their ability to survive.
The restriction of the rights of the poor to public benefits, for no other reason than to assert who's "in charge.
The caging of human beings who are guilt of nothing more than the desire to flee unsafe countries, in conditions that cannot even be called decent.
The willingness of the current Administration to go to war not for the defense of the nation, but to use warfare as a public relations tool to pump up support for said Administration (here we go, "wagging the dog" again).
And finally, at least for now, the unwillingness of the current Congress to spend any money, or otherwise take any precautions whatsoever, to ensure that our elections are free from foreign--specifically, Russian--interference.
Is it any wonder that Putin wanted the current occupant of the Oval Office to be that occupant? He's getting exactly what he wants: a clone of his own country, one nominally led by a man who is easily susceptible to flattery. As has been pointed out recently, that's the hold that Putin, or anyone, can have over our "President," the only one that's really necessary. Flattery. Infinite amounts of it. That's how you hold on to a world-class narcissist. You don't need "pee tapes." You don't need "Playboy tapes." You don't need any tapes at all. You just need to keep petting him on the head and say "Good boychik. Good boychik. Now go do what I want."
And is it any wonder that Republican members of Congress spent the past Fourth of July not here, but in Russia, doing who-knows-what? It's enough to remind one of the chilling last lines of George Orwell's "Animal Farm," in which an idealistic rebellion by farm animals against a drunken farmer degenerates into an autocracy led by pigs, who increasing act like the animals former master. At the book's end, the pigs host and toast their human neighbors, while the rest of the farm animals look on in horror:
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.One wonders if a glimpse of that July 4th meeting would have produced a similar response to the viewer.
This is why it's essential to vote, and to get others to vote, this coming November. But, no matter what happens in this election (and a fair outcome is by no means certain, under these circumstances), it is not enough to vote. We must, sadly, fight the people we have long regarded as our fellow countrymen (and women) on whichever battlefield is necessary.
For they are no longer our fellows. They are the enemy. And, for the sake of true democracy, no quarter can be given.
In Not-So-Fake News, We're Either Burning Up Or Drowning
It may be hard to believe that having a potential traitor in the Oval Office is only the second-most important story right now in the world. And I'll get to that story, in due course. But, sadly, that is absolutely the case. Because the nature of the person in the Oval Office may not matter so much when there's a planet at stake.
Yes, I know, I write about this a great deal. But, since we don't have anyplace other than Earth on which to live at the moment, it might be worthwhile to stop from time to time, look around us, and see what's happening.
And it ain't pretty.
Resource depletion at a record rate, and increasing exponentially from year to year.
Coastal regions slowly sinking into the ocean, and likely never to return.
And if you don't live on the coast? No consolation there at all, folks. Chances are that, like Great Britain, you're burning up. Literally.
Go ahead and call me a creeping socialist for pointing out these articles to you. Two of them come from the New York Post, nobody's idea of a creeping-socialist newspaper. Yes, the third one comes from the New York Times, and you can flog the Times as much as you want. But when both papers are basically telling the same story about the world around us, I think that it has a lot more to do with the reality they're both seeing, and that their respective ideologies can't let them ignore.
Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no climate deniers anywhere the effects of climate change--there, I've said it--can be seen or felt. And, increasingly, those effects have no boundaries.
And just as those effects are crossing geographic lines, the response to them--the only response based on the facts, that is--is doing the same thing with political lines. Great Britain, of course, has (barely) a government led by the Conservative Party, a party whose members generally see eye-to-eye with their counterparts in the U.S., the Republicans. Here, from the Times article, is a single-sentence summation of that government's current take on climate: "The British government announced Thursday that adapting to a warming climate was now a matter of 'life and death.'” (Emphasis added, as if it needed to be.)
On the other hand, perhaps it does.
Because while this country was making some--some--real progress on this issue during the Obama administration, Obama's successor (who loves hearing his name, so I won't use it) has been going full-speed in the other direction, discouraging the development of renewable sources of energy, and wedding the country to resources that cannot be reproduced or duplicated, only replaced.
In so doing, he is preying on the fears of two groups: the owners of fossil-fuel industries, who fear that they will not be able to profitably adapt to an age of solar, wind, and geothermal power, and the employees of those industries (especially coal miners), who fear the loss of familiar jobs and doubt their own ability to adapt to employment in a world of renewables.
It should seem obvious that there are ways by which government at all levels could provide incentives in various forms to enable both investors and workers to successfully and painlessly make the transition from the extraction world of energy to the renewable one. Obama, of course, translated a number of these ideas into public policy when he was President. Hillary Clinton, the person who should be sitting in the Oval Office right now, was ready and willing to do the same and more.
But the current President does not actually care about solving problems. He only cares about political issues at all to the extent that they can be manipulated to promote his personal interests, both in his businesses and in his ability to reach a second term in office. And he always takes the divide-and-conquer approach to that manipulation. Thus, problems are never actually solved. They continue to fester, so that they can remain available for future misuse.
In short, he illustrates the difference between holding an office, and serving the people who have "elected" him to it. (I'll have more to say about the "election" part of the equation in a subsequent post.)
So, even though public opinion in the U.S. is--admittedly, very slowly--moving in the direction of accepting the reality and the danger of climate change, the reality and danger are growing at a faster rate than is the acceptance of its existence.
What can you do? Rather, what should you do, for everyone's sake?
Stop pretending the problem isn't real, if that's where you are. And stop pretending there is nothing we can do about the problem, if that's where you are. There are many things we can do to not only solve the problem but also, in the process, achieve a level of economic growth that could benefit more than just a handful of investors. I have said it before, and will continue saying it until either I or the temperature drops: it's possible to have an environment without an economy, but not an economy without an environment.
And, once you have stopped all of that pretending, one more thing remains: find out which candidates support policies that address the need to adapt to and overcome the effects of climate change, and only vote for those candidates.
It's our only planet. It's up to us to save it.
Get started doing that right now. Before we burn--or sink--together.
Yes, I know, I write about this a great deal. But, since we don't have anyplace other than Earth on which to live at the moment, it might be worthwhile to stop from time to time, look around us, and see what's happening.
And it ain't pretty.
Resource depletion at a record rate, and increasing exponentially from year to year.
Coastal regions slowly sinking into the ocean, and likely never to return.
And if you don't live on the coast? No consolation there at all, folks. Chances are that, like Great Britain, you're burning up. Literally.
Go ahead and call me a creeping socialist for pointing out these articles to you. Two of them come from the New York Post, nobody's idea of a creeping-socialist newspaper. Yes, the third one comes from the New York Times, and you can flog the Times as much as you want. But when both papers are basically telling the same story about the world around us, I think that it has a lot more to do with the reality they're both seeing, and that their respective ideologies can't let them ignore.
Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no climate deniers anywhere the effects of climate change--there, I've said it--can be seen or felt. And, increasingly, those effects have no boundaries.
And just as those effects are crossing geographic lines, the response to them--the only response based on the facts, that is--is doing the same thing with political lines. Great Britain, of course, has (barely) a government led by the Conservative Party, a party whose members generally see eye-to-eye with their counterparts in the U.S., the Republicans. Here, from the Times article, is a single-sentence summation of that government's current take on climate: "The British government announced Thursday that adapting to a warming climate was now a matter of 'life and death.'” (Emphasis added, as if it needed to be.)
On the other hand, perhaps it does.
Because while this country was making some--some--real progress on this issue during the Obama administration, Obama's successor (who loves hearing his name, so I won't use it) has been going full-speed in the other direction, discouraging the development of renewable sources of energy, and wedding the country to resources that cannot be reproduced or duplicated, only replaced.
In so doing, he is preying on the fears of two groups: the owners of fossil-fuel industries, who fear that they will not be able to profitably adapt to an age of solar, wind, and geothermal power, and the employees of those industries (especially coal miners), who fear the loss of familiar jobs and doubt their own ability to adapt to employment in a world of renewables.
It should seem obvious that there are ways by which government at all levels could provide incentives in various forms to enable both investors and workers to successfully and painlessly make the transition from the extraction world of energy to the renewable one. Obama, of course, translated a number of these ideas into public policy when he was President. Hillary Clinton, the person who should be sitting in the Oval Office right now, was ready and willing to do the same and more.
But the current President does not actually care about solving problems. He only cares about political issues at all to the extent that they can be manipulated to promote his personal interests, both in his businesses and in his ability to reach a second term in office. And he always takes the divide-and-conquer approach to that manipulation. Thus, problems are never actually solved. They continue to fester, so that they can remain available for future misuse.
In short, he illustrates the difference between holding an office, and serving the people who have "elected" him to it. (I'll have more to say about the "election" part of the equation in a subsequent post.)
So, even though public opinion in the U.S. is--admittedly, very slowly--moving in the direction of accepting the reality and the danger of climate change, the reality and danger are growing at a faster rate than is the acceptance of its existence.
What can you do? Rather, what should you do, for everyone's sake?
Stop pretending the problem isn't real, if that's where you are. And stop pretending there is nothing we can do about the problem, if that's where you are. There are many things we can do to not only solve the problem but also, in the process, achieve a level of economic growth that could benefit more than just a handful of investors. I have said it before, and will continue saying it until either I or the temperature drops: it's possible to have an environment without an economy, but not an economy without an environment.
And, once you have stopped all of that pretending, one more thing remains: find out which candidates support policies that address the need to adapt to and overcome the effects of climate change, and only vote for those candidates.
It's our only planet. It's up to us to save it.
Get started doing that right now. Before we burn--or sink--together.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
A Few Additional Thoughts About The Potential Fate of Roe
Obviously, in considering what a Supreme Court with five solidly conservative votes might do to the country's jurisprudence, almost all of the focus has been on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion services for women. It was Roe, after all, that shifted the focus of the conservative moment toward the goal of changing the Court's composition so that it would, one day, overturn the decision. Reversing Roe has for decades now been, if one may pardon the expression, the Holy Grail of social conservatives. And now, depending on what happens not only with the nomination and confirmation process for Anthony Kennedy's successor, but also with the midterm elections and the fate of the current Republican majority in the Senate, the Grail may actually be in sight.
So it is worth pondering, for a few moments, the outcome of reversing Roe. What happens then? Do we suddenly, or eventually, find ourselves living in a world not unlike the one depicted in Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," where the reproductive rights of women are completely controlled by a theocracy, one not unlike the contemporary American evangelical movement? (Full disclosure for those who have not previously read my blog: I am what I would call a recovering evangelical, now a converted Jew, who knows a thing or two about how evangelicals think and operate.)
It's more likely than not that any reversal of Roe would be based on an analysis of constitutional rights as defined by the Tenth Amendment, which reserves any rights not explicitly guaranteed by the texts of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to the states or the people. As the conservative justices would probably put it, since the texts of both documents do not explicitly refer to a right to abortion services, that right must necessarily be defined by the States and the voters (i.e., "the people"). This would undoubtedly led to various levels of abortion rights in different states, depending on the views of the voters in those states and the state governments they elect.
What might be true then, at least initially, is that abortion laws in different states might tend to move even further toward the extremes. Blue states, free of various restrictions enacted by Congress and the federal courts over the years, might end up permitting unlimited abortion on demand, while red states, no longer obliged by Roe to guarantee some level of access to abortion services would come up with levels of restrictions on women's health care services hitherto undreamed of by the Falwells and Grahams of the world.
The problem with this, however, is essentially the problem with so-called conservative efforts at health care reform, which tends to put ultimate decision-making power on providing health care at the state level. Health care is not only a national system, but an international one, which means that any decisions made on regulating it ultimately have to be made at the national and international level. As a consequence, even if Roe is reversed, Congress and whoever is President (hopefully, not the morally-compromised narcissist we have now) will be forced to develop some sort of federal law that will, in turn, control the level of abortion services across the country. In other, more concise words, we may be right back to where we are now, politically, on the question of abortion.
And there is yet one more interesting, potentially complicating factor for the future legality of abortion services in America. (Spoiler alert: it's good news for the pro-choice side.)
The Equal Rights Amendment, which has been limping along toward ratification for decades, is now just one state legislative approval away from full ratification and becoming part of the Constitution. True, a Democratic Congress and President would have to waive the inability of the ERA to be ratified prior to an earlier statutory deadline, but that's little more than a formality. As someone who has long imagined (gleefully) the litigation potential in the ERA being part of the fundamental law of the land, it has occurred to me that a reasonable position in litigation on the abortion question might produce the outcome that, for the ERA to be upheld, women could not be allowed to suffer a burdening of their rights based on the disparate impact of pregnancies on women, as opposed to men whose lives are not similarly burdened. This line of thinking could, in a post-Roe world, lead to a Supreme Court decision that, for all practical purposes, revives Roe under another name. Then, of course, overturning that decision would become the new Holy Grail of the social conservative moment.
And, to borrow a lyric from Cher, the beat would go on. And on. And on. With quite literally no end in sight.
I have rejected Bill Clinton as a political hero; however, there is something to be said for his standard for the existence of abortion services: safe, legal, and rare. I can't help but think that both sides of this seemingly never-ending debate would be better served by less friction in the legal/governmental system, and more cooperation toward making the Clinton standard not only the national one, but the international one. Women and children everywhere could potentially benefit so much from that level of cooperation.
And it might not hurt our legal/governmental system either. Maybe, just maybe, it could finally get back to focusing on making the country better, and less on who's winning the political game of chess that never ends.
So it is worth pondering, for a few moments, the outcome of reversing Roe. What happens then? Do we suddenly, or eventually, find ourselves living in a world not unlike the one depicted in Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale," where the reproductive rights of women are completely controlled by a theocracy, one not unlike the contemporary American evangelical movement? (Full disclosure for those who have not previously read my blog: I am what I would call a recovering evangelical, now a converted Jew, who knows a thing or two about how evangelicals think and operate.)
It's more likely than not that any reversal of Roe would be based on an analysis of constitutional rights as defined by the Tenth Amendment, which reserves any rights not explicitly guaranteed by the texts of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to the states or the people. As the conservative justices would probably put it, since the texts of both documents do not explicitly refer to a right to abortion services, that right must necessarily be defined by the States and the voters (i.e., "the people"). This would undoubtedly led to various levels of abortion rights in different states, depending on the views of the voters in those states and the state governments they elect.
What might be true then, at least initially, is that abortion laws in different states might tend to move even further toward the extremes. Blue states, free of various restrictions enacted by Congress and the federal courts over the years, might end up permitting unlimited abortion on demand, while red states, no longer obliged by Roe to guarantee some level of access to abortion services would come up with levels of restrictions on women's health care services hitherto undreamed of by the Falwells and Grahams of the world.
The problem with this, however, is essentially the problem with so-called conservative efforts at health care reform, which tends to put ultimate decision-making power on providing health care at the state level. Health care is not only a national system, but an international one, which means that any decisions made on regulating it ultimately have to be made at the national and international level. As a consequence, even if Roe is reversed, Congress and whoever is President (hopefully, not the morally-compromised narcissist we have now) will be forced to develop some sort of federal law that will, in turn, control the level of abortion services across the country. In other, more concise words, we may be right back to where we are now, politically, on the question of abortion.
And there is yet one more interesting, potentially complicating factor for the future legality of abortion services in America. (Spoiler alert: it's good news for the pro-choice side.)
The Equal Rights Amendment, which has been limping along toward ratification for decades, is now just one state legislative approval away from full ratification and becoming part of the Constitution. True, a Democratic Congress and President would have to waive the inability of the ERA to be ratified prior to an earlier statutory deadline, but that's little more than a formality. As someone who has long imagined (gleefully) the litigation potential in the ERA being part of the fundamental law of the land, it has occurred to me that a reasonable position in litigation on the abortion question might produce the outcome that, for the ERA to be upheld, women could not be allowed to suffer a burdening of their rights based on the disparate impact of pregnancies on women, as opposed to men whose lives are not similarly burdened. This line of thinking could, in a post-Roe world, lead to a Supreme Court decision that, for all practical purposes, revives Roe under another name. Then, of course, overturning that decision would become the new Holy Grail of the social conservative moment.
And, to borrow a lyric from Cher, the beat would go on. And on. And on. With quite literally no end in sight.
I have rejected Bill Clinton as a political hero; however, there is something to be said for his standard for the existence of abortion services: safe, legal, and rare. I can't help but think that both sides of this seemingly never-ending debate would be better served by less friction in the legal/governmental system, and more cooperation toward making the Clinton standard not only the national one, but the international one. Women and children everywhere could potentially benefit so much from that level of cooperation.
And it might not hurt our legal/governmental system either. Maybe, just maybe, it could finally get back to focusing on making the country better, and less on who's winning the political game of chess that never ends.
Time For The Democrats To Create A New Reality
Unsurprisingly, the news of Justice Kennedy's retirement from the Supreme Court unleashed panic attacks among Democrats in Washington, and progressives around the country. No longer, it seems, would there be a proverbial "swing" vote joining the Court's Democratic appointees in throwing liberals and their supporters the occasional judicial bone (especially major ones like the Obergefell decision on marriage equality). Instead, thanks to Donald Trump and the ever-duplicitous Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McCONnell, there will soon be a majority-for-life (however long that may be) of five conservative Justices on the Court, ready to reflexively shoot down any and all major precedents of an even remotely forward-looking, people-protecting nature. Including--and especially--Roe v. Wade.
Or will any of this happen?
Trump holds the power of nomination, and knows that he owes his undeserved place in the White House to the support of evangelical voters who were willing to lose their souls for something less than the world (in this case, control of the highest court in the land). As for McCONnell, he effective holds the power of advice and consent with regard to the constitutional power of confirming Trump's nominees. He has already shown himself to be a complete master of how to abuse that constitutional power, first by inventing a "Biden rule" to deny the Obama-nominated Merrick Garland even a vote for the better part of an entire year, and then usurping the power of Senate Democrats to filibuster Trump's alternative to Garland, Neil Gorsuch. In both instances, McCONnell was able to command the loyalty of every vote in his caucus; in the case of the Gorsuch nomination, he was even able to intimidate several red-state Democrats into "offering" their support.
So, on the surface, nailing down that five-seat reflexively conservative majority on the Court should be a political slam-dunk.
But does it have to be?
I am, at this moment, reminded of that unfortunate statement made by a member of the George W. Bush Administration, in which he famously said that the United States was now an empire that no longer needed to heed anyone's definition of reality--that it was powerful enough to create its own reality. In the context of fighting the Iraq war, that type of assertion seems dangerously deluded at best, and dangerously meglomaniacal at worse. However, as applied to issues of a slightly lesser geopolitical magnitude, I'm not sure that there isn't something all of us can't learn from that assertion.
History, even recent history, is filled with instances of people who successfully defied the odds, not necessarily winning victories in the short run, but helping to build them in the long run. And, sometimes, even moments that weren't designed to be moments of triumph ended up being just that, simply because people acted on their beliefs and not on the calculations of others.
In a way, Barack Obama illustrates both points. The chain of victories for civil rights that was set into motion by the Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision resulted in Obama's election to the U.S. Senate. His successful presidential campaign was another story; up until the collapse of the financial markets in September of 2008, I thought the the election was John McCain's to lose. That collapse had almost everything to do with Obama's election. But had Obama not entered the Democratic race that year--a race that was supposedly Hillary Clinton's to lose--he would not have been able to turn that collapse into the history-making moment of his election.
Luck, as Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey once said, is the residue of design. And he knew what he was talking about; he knew that the major leagues would have to be integrated one day, but he also know that it would take just the right ballplayer to make it work. He waited until he had that player--Jackie Robinson--who then went on to make it work.
So why should the Democrats--and their supporters, for that matter--simply accept the consensus odds that there is nothing they can do to stop Trump and McCONnell from packing the Supreme Court? Yes, it looks right now like there's a glide path to that accomplishment. But a lot could happen to destroy that path. And it might only happen if Democrats in Washington stop focusing on the odds and start focusing on why they've been sent there by the voters in the first place--to fight for the people against the powerful (to borrow from Al Gore).
As it turns out, Democrats have regrets about not having fought harder for Garland during the pendency of his nomination. Those regrets seem to come less from a belief that such an effort would have been successful (it may very well not have been) and more that there is more to be gained in the long run by not running away from every showdown with their Republican counterparts.
For that matter, is it true that they can do nothing?
Not everyone thinks so. Here is one writer's list of helpful suggestions. Here is yet another suggestion, and my personal favorite. After all, there's no constitutional limit to the size of the Supreme Court. And no "Biden rule" to stop anyone from expanding its membership. True, it didn't work for FDR. But that was in a very different era, one in which the Senate functioned in a more bipartisan way than it does now. We may now very well be in an era in which two wrongs do make a right.
What is essential for Democrats and progressives to understand is that, in the age of Trump, there can and should be no attempt to wait for "a better moment to fight" to come. That moment may very well never show up. And, even if it does, nothing will have been gained by staying on the bench waiting for that moment. If a person has never even learned how to fight by fighting, how will that person even know what that "better moment" really looks like, in order to be able to take advantage of it?
The time to fight is NOW. Not just because of what could be at stake in future Supreme Court decisions, but also because to not even try may be what leads to a political defeat from which we may never recover. We cannot wait for reality to move in our favor; none of the great movements in history happened all by themselves. They happened because people who cared above all about what is right got off their duffs and pushed. Hard.
Are you listening, Chuck Schumer? Are you listing, Senate Democrats? Get off your duffs and push for a better reality. That's what your being paid for. That's what your oaths of office require you to do. For G-d's sake, GO DO IT!
Or will any of this happen?
Trump holds the power of nomination, and knows that he owes his undeserved place in the White House to the support of evangelical voters who were willing to lose their souls for something less than the world (in this case, control of the highest court in the land). As for McCONnell, he effective holds the power of advice and consent with regard to the constitutional power of confirming Trump's nominees. He has already shown himself to be a complete master of how to abuse that constitutional power, first by inventing a "Biden rule" to deny the Obama-nominated Merrick Garland even a vote for the better part of an entire year, and then usurping the power of Senate Democrats to filibuster Trump's alternative to Garland, Neil Gorsuch. In both instances, McCONnell was able to command the loyalty of every vote in his caucus; in the case of the Gorsuch nomination, he was even able to intimidate several red-state Democrats into "offering" their support.
So, on the surface, nailing down that five-seat reflexively conservative majority on the Court should be a political slam-dunk.
But does it have to be?
I am, at this moment, reminded of that unfortunate statement made by a member of the George W. Bush Administration, in which he famously said that the United States was now an empire that no longer needed to heed anyone's definition of reality--that it was powerful enough to create its own reality. In the context of fighting the Iraq war, that type of assertion seems dangerously deluded at best, and dangerously meglomaniacal at worse. However, as applied to issues of a slightly lesser geopolitical magnitude, I'm not sure that there isn't something all of us can't learn from that assertion.
History, even recent history, is filled with instances of people who successfully defied the odds, not necessarily winning victories in the short run, but helping to build them in the long run. And, sometimes, even moments that weren't designed to be moments of triumph ended up being just that, simply because people acted on their beliefs and not on the calculations of others.
In a way, Barack Obama illustrates both points. The chain of victories for civil rights that was set into motion by the Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision resulted in Obama's election to the U.S. Senate. His successful presidential campaign was another story; up until the collapse of the financial markets in September of 2008, I thought the the election was John McCain's to lose. That collapse had almost everything to do with Obama's election. But had Obama not entered the Democratic race that year--a race that was supposedly Hillary Clinton's to lose--he would not have been able to turn that collapse into the history-making moment of his election.
Luck, as Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey once said, is the residue of design. And he knew what he was talking about; he knew that the major leagues would have to be integrated one day, but he also know that it would take just the right ballplayer to make it work. He waited until he had that player--Jackie Robinson--who then went on to make it work.
So why should the Democrats--and their supporters, for that matter--simply accept the consensus odds that there is nothing they can do to stop Trump and McCONnell from packing the Supreme Court? Yes, it looks right now like there's a glide path to that accomplishment. But a lot could happen to destroy that path. And it might only happen if Democrats in Washington stop focusing on the odds and start focusing on why they've been sent there by the voters in the first place--to fight for the people against the powerful (to borrow from Al Gore).
As it turns out, Democrats have regrets about not having fought harder for Garland during the pendency of his nomination. Those regrets seem to come less from a belief that such an effort would have been successful (it may very well not have been) and more that there is more to be gained in the long run by not running away from every showdown with their Republican counterparts.
For that matter, is it true that they can do nothing?
Not everyone thinks so. Here is one writer's list of helpful suggestions. Here is yet another suggestion, and my personal favorite. After all, there's no constitutional limit to the size of the Supreme Court. And no "Biden rule" to stop anyone from expanding its membership. True, it didn't work for FDR. But that was in a very different era, one in which the Senate functioned in a more bipartisan way than it does now. We may now very well be in an era in which two wrongs do make a right.
What is essential for Democrats and progressives to understand is that, in the age of Trump, there can and should be no attempt to wait for "a better moment to fight" to come. That moment may very well never show up. And, even if it does, nothing will have been gained by staying on the bench waiting for that moment. If a person has never even learned how to fight by fighting, how will that person even know what that "better moment" really looks like, in order to be able to take advantage of it?
The time to fight is NOW. Not just because of what could be at stake in future Supreme Court decisions, but also because to not even try may be what leads to a political defeat from which we may never recover. We cannot wait for reality to move in our favor; none of the great movements in history happened all by themselves. They happened because people who cared above all about what is right got off their duffs and pushed. Hard.
Are you listening, Chuck Schumer? Are you listing, Senate Democrats? Get off your duffs and push for a better reality. That's what your being paid for. That's what your oaths of office require you to do. For G-d's sake, GO DO IT!
The Seduction Of Anthony Kennedy?
The Capital-Gazette tragedy is the worst story from last week; the loss of life guarantees it that distinction. But another story potentially presages even more potential loss of life and liberty, with more than a hint of potential corruption linking the Presidency and the Supreme Court.
Submitted, for your consideration, is the following sequence of events:
1) Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the supposed "swing" vote between the liberal and conservative wings of the Court, sided with the conservative majority on a trio of high-profile cases involving Donald Trump's travel ban against some Muslims,* the legal obligation of pregnancy crisis centers to provide information on abortion services, and requirements that public employees pay mandatory dues to unions that represent their interests, but in which they do not have formal membership.
2.) The aforesaid Justice Kennedy submitted to Trump his resignation from active service on the Court, in unusually smarmy language. ("My dear Mr. President"? Really?)
3) Within days for the aforementioned resignation, the New York Times reveals, in a profile of Republican efforts to induce Kennedy to resign ahead of midterm elections that might shift Senate control (and the power to confirm judicial appointees) to Democrats, that Kennedy's son may have, er, *ahem*, "helped" Trump's business interests with loans in nine figures or more.
All this news, in less than a week. You've got to say this much in Trump's favor: his business "acumen" certainly seems to have accelerated the rate at which corruption has spread.
And the reach of that corruption as well.
Kennedy, Ronald Reagan's third choice to replace Lewis Powell on the High Court (after Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg), has generally enjoyed a favorable reputation during his three-decade career as an Associate Justice. His reputation as the Court's "swing" vote has yielded some important victories for progressive interests, most notably the majority opinion in Ogberfell v. Hodges that established a constitutional right to marriage equality for gays and lesbians. And, apart from political ideology or judicial philosophy, his personal and professional reputation have been unblemished by scandal.
Until now. Now, we are left with the possibility that Kennedy, knowing that he and his family were about to be hit with some political dirt, courtesy of the Times, decided to be very un-swingy on three major decisions, and then, as an additional gift to his son's debtor, open up a vacancy on the Court that could be filled with whiplash speed by the Republicans ahead of the midterms. All locked into place before the (shall we say) dirt hit the proverbial fan.
And, given that this is Trump that we're talking about, exactly how unlikely is that possibility?
How difficult is it to imagine Trump, in exchange for a rather sizable loan that he may or may not be able to pay back (remember: Trump), promising to give Kennedy the most favorable possible treatment with regard to replacing him on the Court, including an exit that would help Kennedy to atone for some if the more liberal consequences, first by locking in some major conservative victories in important cases, and then exiting at a time that would theoretically put pressure on Democrats in red states to be intimidated (or, as they say, "bipartisan") with regard to their votes for Kennedy's replacement?
Not difficult at all, I'm afraid. As several people (myself included) have said on more than one occasion, Trump has a reverse Midas touch. He corrupts and destroys everything he touches. Even Supreme Court Justices, it seems.
*Exceptions to the ban, of course, exist for Muslims from nations in which Trump's real estate company has or will soon have development projects. This despite the fact that several of these nations have supplied terrorists who have attacked U.S. citizens, including, of course, those who were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One should reflect carefully on this, in assessing how seriously Trump takes his responsibilities for keeping the nation safe, avoiding conflicts of interests, and otherwise avoiding Constitutional violations that could provide the basis for impeachment hearings (the Emoulments Clause of the Constitution comes to mind).
Is Lacking A Conscience An Impeachable Offense?
It's doubtful that the framers of the Constitution would have ever imagined a President so wrapped up in his self-esteem that he could give no thought, and therefore no public voice, to the deaths of innocent citizens as a consequence of his own, personal denunciation of their activities--activities that are explicitly protected by the First Amendment. Yet that is precisely the kind of president currently occupying the office that John Adams prayed would never be occupied by anything other than "honest and wise men." (We'll overlook the sexism in that sentiment, and leave it up to Abigail's shade to straighten John's shade out.)
In a post last month, I suggested that Donald Trump might be on his way to becoming a dictator. Well, dictators murder as a matter of course; you can't remain in absolute power unless you're willing to kill off those who rise in opposition to you. For that reason, it might be said that the willingness to kill one's opponents--or let others do the killing for you--is the most essential trait an actual or would-be dictator must possess.
Well, as of this week, Donald Trump got there, so to speak. We now have one more reason to think that he's on his way to being a dictator: he's learned to kill. Or, at least, if we are to deal in distinctions without differences, he's pretty chill with others doing it for him, once his rhetoric has opened the window of opportunity for them to do so.
Let me walk you through the steps:
In February of this year, Trump used his favorite medium, Twitter, to denounce American journalism as the "enemy of the people." You can't dismiss this as an alternative fact; it's right here for all to see. And it's not merely a not-nice thing to say about the press. The phrase "enemy of the people" is a loaded piece of rhetoric with a long history of use in connection with those who opposed powerful interests willing to do anything--especially committing murder--to maintain there power. Curiously, given the fact that Trump is nominally a Republican, the phrase has been historically a favorite of Communist rulers, especially those in the former Soviet Union. Again, not an alternative fact.
And neither is the most tragic news of the past week: the deaths of five reporters/editors at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, here in Maryland. The tragedy of gun violence on which so many journalists have reported finally, sadly, caught up with the journalists themselves. With not a little help from the nation's highest elected official, whose rhetoric, whether we like it or not, shapes our reality by virtue of his position.
You don't think Trump isn't himself aware of this? Why, apart from his boundless narcissism, would he be more addicted to Twitter than he is to time spent in the Oval Office?
And that's not the only means by which he betrays his awareness.
Trump, who never misses an opportunity to speak to the press he treats with open contempt, just couldn't find words to express anything about the slain Annapolis journalists. Not sympathy, Not thoughts and prayers. Not even a limp-wristed effort to shift the blame onto his political opponents. Nothing, absolutely nothing (unless you count the meaningless waves).
Not even a master prevaricator like Trump can pretend that he doesn't give a damn about the professionals who give him the oxygen of free publicity. Is it too much to hope that, in the wake of that monstrous display of public indifference toward human tragedy, the press finally starts acting like the Fourth Estate that they are supposed to be, and stop looking every morning for new and more exciting ways to give Trump a free pass on behavior that has, without a doubt, moved into the realm of the criminal.
Maybe lacking a soul is not a high crime or misdemeanor. But the fruits of that poisonous tree surely must be counted as such. This week produced five demonstrations of that truth. How many more do we need before the press, the voters, and, ultimately, a Congress with a conscience, does the right thing by the Constitution and the people whose interests are protected by it?
In a post last month, I suggested that Donald Trump might be on his way to becoming a dictator. Well, dictators murder as a matter of course; you can't remain in absolute power unless you're willing to kill off those who rise in opposition to you. For that reason, it might be said that the willingness to kill one's opponents--or let others do the killing for you--is the most essential trait an actual or would-be dictator must possess.
Well, as of this week, Donald Trump got there, so to speak. We now have one more reason to think that he's on his way to being a dictator: he's learned to kill. Or, at least, if we are to deal in distinctions without differences, he's pretty chill with others doing it for him, once his rhetoric has opened the window of opportunity for them to do so.
Let me walk you through the steps:
In February of this year, Trump used his favorite medium, Twitter, to denounce American journalism as the "enemy of the people." You can't dismiss this as an alternative fact; it's right here for all to see. And it's not merely a not-nice thing to say about the press. The phrase "enemy of the people" is a loaded piece of rhetoric with a long history of use in connection with those who opposed powerful interests willing to do anything--especially committing murder--to maintain there power. Curiously, given the fact that Trump is nominally a Republican, the phrase has been historically a favorite of Communist rulers, especially those in the former Soviet Union. Again, not an alternative fact.
And neither is the most tragic news of the past week: the deaths of five reporters/editors at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, here in Maryland. The tragedy of gun violence on which so many journalists have reported finally, sadly, caught up with the journalists themselves. With not a little help from the nation's highest elected official, whose rhetoric, whether we like it or not, shapes our reality by virtue of his position.
You don't think Trump isn't himself aware of this? Why, apart from his boundless narcissism, would he be more addicted to Twitter than he is to time spent in the Oval Office?
And that's not the only means by which he betrays his awareness.
Trump, who never misses an opportunity to speak to the press he treats with open contempt, just couldn't find words to express anything about the slain Annapolis journalists. Not sympathy, Not thoughts and prayers. Not even a limp-wristed effort to shift the blame onto his political opponents. Nothing, absolutely nothing (unless you count the meaningless waves).
Not even a master prevaricator like Trump can pretend that he doesn't give a damn about the professionals who give him the oxygen of free publicity. Is it too much to hope that, in the wake of that monstrous display of public indifference toward human tragedy, the press finally starts acting like the Fourth Estate that they are supposed to be, and stop looking every morning for new and more exciting ways to give Trump a free pass on behavior that has, without a doubt, moved into the realm of the criminal.
Maybe lacking a soul is not a high crime or misdemeanor. But the fruits of that poisonous tree surely must be counted as such. This week produced five demonstrations of that truth. How many more do we need before the press, the voters, and, ultimately, a Congress with a conscience, does the right thing by the Constitution and the people whose interests are protected by it?
A Few Words Of Explanation, Before June Disappears
In posting on this blog, I try to maintain a relatively steady pace of monthly postings. In the nine-and-a-half years that I have been blogging, some months have had a steadier pace than others. June of 2018, unfortunately, has been one of those unsteady months, due to a number of personal reasons (not all of them bad ones, but all of them time-consuming, in different ways). Not surprisingly, the need to comment on various issues has grown exponentially along with my lack of time for doing so. This is, after all, the Age of Trump. And, if there is one thing about Trump on which all of us can agree, it is that he thrives on conflict, even if he has to manufacture the conflict in order to thrive.
So, put simply, there's a lot to talk about. And, if I'm to keep on both current events and my own writer's discipline with regard to supplying a certain amount of monthly content for TRH, I've only got a handful of hours in which to do it. Thankfully, the software on which I publish operates on Pacific time so, technically, I have a few extra hours. And I intend to make the most of them.
So, without further ado, here goes ...
So, put simply, there's a lot to talk about. And, if I'm to keep on both current events and my own writer's discipline with regard to supplying a certain amount of monthly content for TRH, I've only got a handful of hours in which to do it. Thankfully, the software on which I publish operates on Pacific time so, technically, I have a few extra hours. And I intend to make the most of them.
So, without further ado, here goes ...
Monday, May 28, 2018
Please Don't Let Their Sacrifices Be In Vain
It's Memorial Day, of course, as I write this. I do so with the hope--dare I say, the expectation--that you will, in ways large and small, find a way to remember and pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice or served in uniform on behalf of their nation and the values to which it has traditionally aspired. Many of you, including me, have family members who fall into that category. In my case, it is a father and a father-in-law I was lucky to know, and an uncle and a cousin I did not get a chance to meet. All of them are a source of pride and reverence for me, as I am certain that similar members of your families are for you.
Which is why I am especially outraged over the current state of America on this Memorial Day. And why I hope and pray that you are similarly outraged. Outraged enough to do more than grumble and tweet about the present. Outrages enough to take action--positive action--but, if necessary, to make whatever sacrifice may be necessary not to make America "great" again, but to make America America again. If that can be done, the greatness part will take care of itself.
For, as of right now, America isn't America. Over the past eighteen months, the nation has rapidly moved away from being the America the world aspired to emulate, and has instead moved rapidly toward becoming more like the despotisms the world has always tried to escape.
It is, of course, a process that started when we put a professional narcissist and bully named Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Of course, only 46% of us did that, but that's federalism and the electoral college, plus a lot of voters who looked the other way and sat at home because they foolishly comforted themselves with the idea that their vote meant nothing--an idea that Memorial Day itself stands toward in opposition.
In any case, both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters comforted themselves with the idea that he was little more than an entertainer. So how much harm could he possibly do to the nation and its values?
In eighteen months, plenty.
Trump has shown in that time that he is not merely an entertainer, a buffoon, a narcissist, and a world-class bully. He has shown every intention of becoming what nobody thought that he could become, indeed what no one thought anyone could every become in the United States. A dictator.
Does that sound extreme to you? Its extremity, if any, is only exceeded by the nature of many of Trump's decisions and statements. Consider the following partial listing:
As is well-known by now, Trump's favorite presidential activity is using his Twitter account to inflate his record and libel his opposition. Accordingly, he has attempted to use the "block" feature of Twitter to silence those who respond in opposition to his tweets. This led to a suit in Federal court and a judge's ruling that Trump's account is a public forum that cannot be allowed to exclude anyone from responding.
You might think that this ruling would be the end of the matter but, in Trump's America, you would be wrong. In fact, Twitter itself is wrong; since the judge's ruling, the social media site has been locking out anti-Trump accounts. Do you imagine Twitter would be doing this on its own? I don't. I think the impetus to do this comes straight from the West Wing.
And, at any rate, the fascism expressed in all of this is not in isolation from Trump's other recent actions. He has demanded that the Washington Post, a newspaper that has been highly critical of him on a number of fronts, register as a lobbyist because of its supposed Democratic leanings. Anyone who has read the Post in the decades after the paper's Watergate coverage knows that it has been anything but easy on Democrats. Nevertheless, this is what Trump really is working toward here: a national press that he can control, censor, and otherwise manipulate so that it will always be friendly to him, just as it is to dictatorships in other countries where news outlets are "registered."
He is not alone in his administration in attempting to censor the press. His EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, barred reporters from CNN and the Associated Press from attending a national summit on harmful contaminants, to the point of physically restraining them from entering the EPA building.
Trump has gone, at least verbally, beyond the issue of mere restraint to suggest that, if you don't live up to his definition of patriotism, you should leave the country. This, of course, was in the context of his opposition to NFL players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem at games, to protest violence against African-Americans. To protest that, and not the flag, the Anthem, or even Trump personally.
And, when Trump thinks you should leave the country, he truly thinks that should happen "by any means necessary." You need only to look at his treatment of immigrants--the most American aspect of America--to see how far he is willing to go in his inhumanity to our fellow humans. He has deliberately separated parents from children at our border with Mexico, on such a scale that the babies literally have their own buses, courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has required the use of yellow bracelets to identify the parents of these children (sound familiar?). And even this level of efficiency hasn't prevented Trump from losing track of nearly 1,500 children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.
Trump's corruption of our most basic values has begun to destroy the fabric of other American institutions as well. Sadly, the NFL is a prominent example; its recent decision to divide players between those who will stand for the Anthem and those who won't, with the latter exiled to the locker room for the duration of the Anthem, is an example of how to compromise the First Amendment without even talking to the affected players or acknowledging the controversy that led players to start kneeling in the first place. Far from affirming the unifying power of the Anthem, the league has allowed Trump to weaponize both it and the First Amendment. This, despite the fact that the NFL is a non-profit organization (!) that, by law, is constrained in its ability to express any political speech, and has so little respect itself for the Anthem that it prefers using its playing as spots for advertisers. (It does have a few heroes in it, however; see here.)
Trump's corruption has descended all the way down to the citizen level. allowing individuals to insult and assault people who are guilty of no other crime except that of not being white males. Oh, and Christians, of course. Let's not forget them, especially the ones who want to make their beliefs as mandatory for the rest of us as possible.
Is this the America you want to live in? Is this the America that those we remember on Memorial Day died for? Do we want to ensure that their sacrifices were for nothing?
Please don't let that be the case. For the sake of my absent family and friends, and for yours, please get out there, one way or another, and resist the tyranny that is slowly creeping around all of us, and is threatening to make the greatest experiment in the history of democracy just another failed empire consumed by the base desires of a few, instead of the hopes and dreams of everyone.
Which is why I am especially outraged over the current state of America on this Memorial Day. And why I hope and pray that you are similarly outraged. Outraged enough to do more than grumble and tweet about the present. Outrages enough to take action--positive action--but, if necessary, to make whatever sacrifice may be necessary not to make America "great" again, but to make America America again. If that can be done, the greatness part will take care of itself.
For, as of right now, America isn't America. Over the past eighteen months, the nation has rapidly moved away from being the America the world aspired to emulate, and has instead moved rapidly toward becoming more like the despotisms the world has always tried to escape.
It is, of course, a process that started when we put a professional narcissist and bully named Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Of course, only 46% of us did that, but that's federalism and the electoral college, plus a lot of voters who looked the other way and sat at home because they foolishly comforted themselves with the idea that their vote meant nothing--an idea that Memorial Day itself stands toward in opposition.
In any case, both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters comforted themselves with the idea that he was little more than an entertainer. So how much harm could he possibly do to the nation and its values?
In eighteen months, plenty.
Trump has shown in that time that he is not merely an entertainer, a buffoon, a narcissist, and a world-class bully. He has shown every intention of becoming what nobody thought that he could become, indeed what no one thought anyone could every become in the United States. A dictator.
Does that sound extreme to you? Its extremity, if any, is only exceeded by the nature of many of Trump's decisions and statements. Consider the following partial listing:
As is well-known by now, Trump's favorite presidential activity is using his Twitter account to inflate his record and libel his opposition. Accordingly, he has attempted to use the "block" feature of Twitter to silence those who respond in opposition to his tweets. This led to a suit in Federal court and a judge's ruling that Trump's account is a public forum that cannot be allowed to exclude anyone from responding.
You might think that this ruling would be the end of the matter but, in Trump's America, you would be wrong. In fact, Twitter itself is wrong; since the judge's ruling, the social media site has been locking out anti-Trump accounts. Do you imagine Twitter would be doing this on its own? I don't. I think the impetus to do this comes straight from the West Wing.
And, at any rate, the fascism expressed in all of this is not in isolation from Trump's other recent actions. He has demanded that the Washington Post, a newspaper that has been highly critical of him on a number of fronts, register as a lobbyist because of its supposed Democratic leanings. Anyone who has read the Post in the decades after the paper's Watergate coverage knows that it has been anything but easy on Democrats. Nevertheless, this is what Trump really is working toward here: a national press that he can control, censor, and otherwise manipulate so that it will always be friendly to him, just as it is to dictatorships in other countries where news outlets are "registered."
He is not alone in his administration in attempting to censor the press. His EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, barred reporters from CNN and the Associated Press from attending a national summit on harmful contaminants, to the point of physically restraining them from entering the EPA building.
Trump has gone, at least verbally, beyond the issue of mere restraint to suggest that, if you don't live up to his definition of patriotism, you should leave the country. This, of course, was in the context of his opposition to NFL players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem at games, to protest violence against African-Americans. To protest that, and not the flag, the Anthem, or even Trump personally.
And, when Trump thinks you should leave the country, he truly thinks that should happen "by any means necessary." You need only to look at his treatment of immigrants--the most American aspect of America--to see how far he is willing to go in his inhumanity to our fellow humans. He has deliberately separated parents from children at our border with Mexico, on such a scale that the babies literally have their own buses, courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has required the use of yellow bracelets to identify the parents of these children (sound familiar?). And even this level of efficiency hasn't prevented Trump from losing track of nearly 1,500 children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.
Trump's corruption of our most basic values has begun to destroy the fabric of other American institutions as well. Sadly, the NFL is a prominent example; its recent decision to divide players between those who will stand for the Anthem and those who won't, with the latter exiled to the locker room for the duration of the Anthem, is an example of how to compromise the First Amendment without even talking to the affected players or acknowledging the controversy that led players to start kneeling in the first place. Far from affirming the unifying power of the Anthem, the league has allowed Trump to weaponize both it and the First Amendment. This, despite the fact that the NFL is a non-profit organization (!) that, by law, is constrained in its ability to express any political speech, and has so little respect itself for the Anthem that it prefers using its playing as spots for advertisers. (It does have a few heroes in it, however; see here.)
Trump's corruption has descended all the way down to the citizen level. allowing individuals to insult and assault people who are guilty of no other crime except that of not being white males. Oh, and Christians, of course. Let's not forget them, especially the ones who want to make their beliefs as mandatory for the rest of us as possible.
Is this the America you want to live in? Is this the America that those we remember on Memorial Day died for? Do we want to ensure that their sacrifices were for nothing?
Please don't let that be the case. For the sake of my absent family and friends, and for yours, please get out there, one way or another, and resist the tyranny that is slowly creeping around all of us, and is threatening to make the greatest experiment in the history of democracy just another failed empire consumed by the base desires of a few, instead of the hopes and dreams of everyone.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
The First White President?
Given my recent experience with using articles from The Atlantic Web site as a jumping-off point for these blog posts, I'm half-tempted to just tell all of you to just ignore my blog and buy a subscription to The Atlantic instead. Or, at least, get a subscription of my own. Granted, I have something of a family connection to the publication, as I have previously explained, so my self-interest is already tied up in the publication to a small degree. But that doesn't matter. Frankly, given the current state of our country and its government (or what passes for it), I really don't care where you get your wisdom from, so long as you, and others get it.
But I digress.
Here is a link to an Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, making the case for Donald Trump as the nation's first white president. This is a case Coates makes successfully, and as carefully and thoroughly as possible. He starts with a discussion of Trump's own personal history, documented the racism that has been the single common thread throughout all of his public life, from keeping people of color out of his father's apartment buildings to his personal assaults on Obama's personal history and character during Obama's Presidency. Coates goes on from there to review the data from the 2016 Presidential election, and shows that whiteness, not economic distress, was the single demographic factor against all others that identified Trump support (yes, even including gender). Finally, Coates goes back into our history, and shows how race has been manipulated from the very beginning as a tool of both economic and social oppression. In the process, he also shows why progressive white Democrats who want to "unify" with Reagan-Trump Democrats are doomed to fail in their efforts. It is not possible to transcend the issue of race without directly confronting the racism that exists everywhere in our society.
And I truly do mean everywhere, based on my own personal experience. Consider, for a few moments the fact that Trump's various raced-based political appeals, now largely but not exclusively focused on the issue of immigration, make him a slightly-more-silk-suited version of George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who carried five states running on a third-party ticket in the 1968 Presidential election. But Trump's a native New Yorker, you say. How could such a blue state like New York, and especially such a blue city like New York City, produce a political clone of Wallace.
Well, fairly easily, when you consider the fact that Trump, who built his real-estate career in Manhattan, was born and raised in Queens, the home bureau of Archie Bunker from "All in the Family." And, although the Queens of today is very much of a multi-ethic, multi-national melting pot, that was certainly not the case in the Queens where Trump came of age.
As I suggested a moment ago, a little personal experience here.
Flashback: It is 1979, the first of my four-year sojourn in New York, largely as a civil servant and later as a would-be commercial artist. Summer has come and, with them, summer blockbusters at the movie theaters. I'm living on the top floor (with elevator access) of an apartment building in Elmhurst, a neighborhood in northwest Queens that had become (and may still be) the most ethically diverse zip code (11373) in the entire nation. The hallway on which my apartment is located includes two Indian families, a single East European woman, a gay African-American and Hispanic male couple, and a Caucasian-Japanese straight couple.
Far from being frightened by all of this, I'm enjoying the diversity, even though it includes nightly visits from that well-known New York pest, cockroaches. I find myself, even as I write these words, aching with a sense of loss for these friends from my early adulthood.
And then, one Saturday night, I decide to go see "Rocky II" at a movie theater in Flushing, a neighborhood in northeast Queens that, at the time (and no longer) was still predominantly a white-ethnic conclave. And my eyes are opened, not only to the spectacle of Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers duking it out in the ring, but to the spectacle of racial hatred that the film's climatic fight unleashed. I was surrounded by young white men in a small, neighborhood theater, all of whom suddenly, and then for the rest of the fight scene, chanted almost in unison "GET THAT [N-word]! GET THAT [N-word]!"
I hated having to sanitize the memory, because it robs you of experiencing the full impact of the hatred I experienced. But I feel that to not sanitize it is, in some real sense, to become complicit with it, which I refuse to do. In any case, I realized that night that Queens, regardless of my Elmhurst experience, was not a racial paradise.
And neither is New York. And, for that matter, neither is America.
So it should not be surprising that a President from Queens should be the one to unleash the inner bigot of so many Americans who attempt to sanitize their feelings with cliches about being hard-working, everyday, not-those-coastal-type, economically-left-behind Americans. What far too many of the white people who hide behind these cliches are, fundamentally, is the thing that can never speak its true name, but must always hide behind a pretense of nobility it can neither earn nor deserve.
They are bigots. And they now feel free, in the age of Trump, to be who they really are. Loudly, proudly, and destructively.
You can see them doing it here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
So pervasive a pattern is this--white police attacking innocent black people--that it has been identified, researched, and reported as a systemic problem. And that problem is reflected in our nation's prison system as well.
But why should that be surprising? Systemic racism is openly reflected not only in public policy on behalf of "the poor" (i.e., those who are presumed to be black but very often are white), or with reference to "national security," but even within the halls of government itself, in the way that white public officials relate to their colleagues of color.
In fact, racism is the single most rational explanation for the fact that immigration, and racist attitudes against it, are at the center of the current national political debate. Let's go back to New York for a moment here--in fact, to Manhattan, that supposed citadel of open-minded tolerance--and take a look at this incident, involving the most horribly naked bigotry being displayed against people of color, for no reason other than the fact that they are people of color.
Do you really have any doubt that this explosion of hate rests on Trump's shoulders? Does that really seem far-fetched to you?
Well, from the vantage point of persuasion on this argument, I've deliberately saved the best piece for last. Take a long look at this, and tell me if you still think everything I've documented here is somehow separated from our Criminal-in-Chief.
So, how do we fight it? One thing we don't do is respond in kind, such as petitions like this one. For one thing, people have a civil right to bigotry. Sad, but true. The irony of freedom is that it protects many ugly things, in no small part because freedom is what exposes the darkness to the light, ultimately killing it.
That, in fact, is what we must do.
We must expose the fundamental bigotry on which America is built to the light of public discourse and debate, and ultimately to our political process. We must re-shape not only our politics, but also our economy and culture, to fight against and ultimately destroy hate in this country. But do so without destroying either the haters, or the hated. It is bigotry itself that must be destroyed because, left unchecked, it will destroy all of us.
It destroys no one, however, to simply remove them from public office, thereby preventing them from spreading the poison within them throughout all of the people. Donald Trump has not been the first President who also happened to be white but, as Coates has so eloquently described, he has certainly been the first White President.
By peaceful means only, let's make sure he's the last one.
But I digress.
Here is a link to an Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, making the case for Donald Trump as the nation's first white president. This is a case Coates makes successfully, and as carefully and thoroughly as possible. He starts with a discussion of Trump's own personal history, documented the racism that has been the single common thread throughout all of his public life, from keeping people of color out of his father's apartment buildings to his personal assaults on Obama's personal history and character during Obama's Presidency. Coates goes on from there to review the data from the 2016 Presidential election, and shows that whiteness, not economic distress, was the single demographic factor against all others that identified Trump support (yes, even including gender). Finally, Coates goes back into our history, and shows how race has been manipulated from the very beginning as a tool of both economic and social oppression. In the process, he also shows why progressive white Democrats who want to "unify" with Reagan-Trump Democrats are doomed to fail in their efforts. It is not possible to transcend the issue of race without directly confronting the racism that exists everywhere in our society.
And I truly do mean everywhere, based on my own personal experience. Consider, for a few moments the fact that Trump's various raced-based political appeals, now largely but not exclusively focused on the issue of immigration, make him a slightly-more-silk-suited version of George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who carried five states running on a third-party ticket in the 1968 Presidential election. But Trump's a native New Yorker, you say. How could such a blue state like New York, and especially such a blue city like New York City, produce a political clone of Wallace.
Well, fairly easily, when you consider the fact that Trump, who built his real-estate career in Manhattan, was born and raised in Queens, the home bureau of Archie Bunker from "All in the Family." And, although the Queens of today is very much of a multi-ethic, multi-national melting pot, that was certainly not the case in the Queens where Trump came of age.
As I suggested a moment ago, a little personal experience here.
Flashback: It is 1979, the first of my four-year sojourn in New York, largely as a civil servant and later as a would-be commercial artist. Summer has come and, with them, summer blockbusters at the movie theaters. I'm living on the top floor (with elevator access) of an apartment building in Elmhurst, a neighborhood in northwest Queens that had become (and may still be) the most ethically diverse zip code (11373) in the entire nation. The hallway on which my apartment is located includes two Indian families, a single East European woman, a gay African-American and Hispanic male couple, and a Caucasian-Japanese straight couple.
Far from being frightened by all of this, I'm enjoying the diversity, even though it includes nightly visits from that well-known New York pest, cockroaches. I find myself, even as I write these words, aching with a sense of loss for these friends from my early adulthood.
And then, one Saturday night, I decide to go see "Rocky II" at a movie theater in Flushing, a neighborhood in northeast Queens that, at the time (and no longer) was still predominantly a white-ethnic conclave. And my eyes are opened, not only to the spectacle of Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers duking it out in the ring, but to the spectacle of racial hatred that the film's climatic fight unleashed. I was surrounded by young white men in a small, neighborhood theater, all of whom suddenly, and then for the rest of the fight scene, chanted almost in unison "GET THAT [N-word]! GET THAT [N-word]!"
I hated having to sanitize the memory, because it robs you of experiencing the full impact of the hatred I experienced. But I feel that to not sanitize it is, in some real sense, to become complicit with it, which I refuse to do. In any case, I realized that night that Queens, regardless of my Elmhurst experience, was not a racial paradise.
And neither is New York. And, for that matter, neither is America.
So it should not be surprising that a President from Queens should be the one to unleash the inner bigot of so many Americans who attempt to sanitize their feelings with cliches about being hard-working, everyday, not-those-coastal-type, economically-left-behind Americans. What far too many of the white people who hide behind these cliches are, fundamentally, is the thing that can never speak its true name, but must always hide behind a pretense of nobility it can neither earn nor deserve.
They are bigots. And they now feel free, in the age of Trump, to be who they really are. Loudly, proudly, and destructively.
You can see them doing it here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
So pervasive a pattern is this--white police attacking innocent black people--that it has been identified, researched, and reported as a systemic problem. And that problem is reflected in our nation's prison system as well.
But why should that be surprising? Systemic racism is openly reflected not only in public policy on behalf of "the poor" (i.e., those who are presumed to be black but very often are white), or with reference to "national security," but even within the halls of government itself, in the way that white public officials relate to their colleagues of color.
In fact, racism is the single most rational explanation for the fact that immigration, and racist attitudes against it, are at the center of the current national political debate. Let's go back to New York for a moment here--in fact, to Manhattan, that supposed citadel of open-minded tolerance--and take a look at this incident, involving the most horribly naked bigotry being displayed against people of color, for no reason other than the fact that they are people of color.
Do you really have any doubt that this explosion of hate rests on Trump's shoulders? Does that really seem far-fetched to you?
Well, from the vantage point of persuasion on this argument, I've deliberately saved the best piece for last. Take a long look at this, and tell me if you still think everything I've documented here is somehow separated from our Criminal-in-Chief.
So, how do we fight it? One thing we don't do is respond in kind, such as petitions like this one. For one thing, people have a civil right to bigotry. Sad, but true. The irony of freedom is that it protects many ugly things, in no small part because freedom is what exposes the darkness to the light, ultimately killing it.
That, in fact, is what we must do.
We must expose the fundamental bigotry on which America is built to the light of public discourse and debate, and ultimately to our political process. We must re-shape not only our politics, but also our economy and culture, to fight against and ultimately destroy hate in this country. But do so without destroying either the haters, or the hated. It is bigotry itself that must be destroyed because, left unchecked, it will destroy all of us.
It destroys no one, however, to simply remove them from public office, thereby preventing them from spreading the poison within them throughout all of the people. Donald Trump has not been the first President who also happened to be white but, as Coates has so eloquently described, he has certainly been the first White President.
By peaceful means only, let's make sure he's the last one.
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Forget About The Internet Of Things. What About The Internet Of People?
I'm happy to commend this article in The Atlantic by James Fallows, for a number of reasons (as well as the disclosure that Mr. Fallows is the father-in-law of one of my father's former students). Primarily, I appreciate the fact that Mr. Fallows, in his travels around our politically divided nation, found many reasons for optimism in the ability of many small American communities to pull together and find solutions to the problems that divide our nation's capital as well as our national debate. It offers some confirmation of my theory that the Internet has become more of an electronic megaphone through which we can shout at each other, instead (as I had once hoped) to be a window through which we could look at and honestly get to know each other. As it turns out, virtual reality is no substitute for actual reality.
That's reassuring, all by itself. But I can't help, in thinking about the article after I read it, that it's easier to feel reassured about what's happening around the country if you have the ability to jump around it in your own jet. Not that I begrudge Mr. Fallows that privilege. In this case, you're reading the words of someone who thought that, by now, we would all have flying cars that would allow us to travel around the country with the same ease that we now call each other from around the world. Unfortunately, we can't do that at the moment.
If only we could.
If only there was a way that we could travel not only from city to city, but even from state to state, at speeds faster than are possible on highways.
If only that way provided enough opportunities to go anywhere in the country, with as much convenience as the automobile does with regard to people's personal schedules.
If only that way made use of existing infrastructure and emerging technology, so that it was feasible to finance its existence and, at the same time, create tens of thousands of temporary and permanent jobs. And, in the process, bring hundreds of communities back to life, by providing direct investment in them and business opportunities with other communities.
If only this involved a mode of transportation this nation once used on a regular basis. One that, in fact, help build this nation in a, dare I say, transcontinental way. One that people still use today, on a regular basis, in the nation's most prosperous areas. One that, admittedly, has always required a substantial degree of public investment, but has always proved to be worth it.
In case you didn't figure it out after the second "If only," I'm talking about ... railroads.
Railroads, which have the potential to be the Internet of people.
But isn't the Internet already made up of people? Frankly, it's kind of hard to tell these days, from the way we shout at each other, as though we've actually known each other long enough to know that we can't stand each other.
If you want to experience an Internet whose members are almost unfailingly polite to each other, you're better off dealing with the Internet of things. Simply put, this refers to the growing ability of our technology to communicate directly from device to device, with little or no human interaction to help them do so. If you have a smart phone that allows you to connect with a "smart home," and set your cable, HVAC, and security settings, you already know what I'm talking about. But the Internet of things goes well beyond consumer needs, and is well on its way to dominating and even controlling international commerce.
That sets up the possibility of a world in which our devices effectively run us, instead of the other way around. Or, as Marshall McLuhan is reputed to have once said, we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.
Maybe, in such a world, shouting at each other through our online caricatures, and posturing to people we've never met, just isn't enough to keep us safe not only from natural catastrophes, but the ones that we manage to make for ourselves, through our own cleverness. Maybe we need to spend more time in each other's actual presence, so that we can get to know each other as individuals. Maybe, just maybe, in such a world, we would discover that we might actually like each other more than we ever before thought was possible. And maybe, at the same time, we would find more ways to more the wealth around the country, along with ourselves.
Imagine, for example, if someone could, via high-speed rail commute from St. Louis to Chicago, bringing a large income back to a city that could use all the large incomes it could get, in much the same way that immigrants from other countries send U.S. dollars back to their home countries and support their families. Imagine if that led to more direct investment in communities from wealthy cities like Chicago to less-fortunate ones like St. Louis. Imagine if that made those latter communities less dependent on public support, and instead transformed them into sources of support for public enterprises.
Imagine, if other words, what would happen if we did invest in technology that created a real Internet of people, one that was made up not of bytes and impulses, but real, actual people who didn't have a technology that just encouraged them to posture, instead of one that forced them to, well, you know, actually be themselves.
Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be the Divided States of America anymore.
Maybe, just maybe, America really could be great again.
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Fallows' optimism would have support from the successes of thousands of communities.
Maybe it's just a dream. But I'm willing to bet that it could be an American one.
That's reassuring, all by itself. But I can't help, in thinking about the article after I read it, that it's easier to feel reassured about what's happening around the country if you have the ability to jump around it in your own jet. Not that I begrudge Mr. Fallows that privilege. In this case, you're reading the words of someone who thought that, by now, we would all have flying cars that would allow us to travel around the country with the same ease that we now call each other from around the world. Unfortunately, we can't do that at the moment.
If only we could.
If only there was a way that we could travel not only from city to city, but even from state to state, at speeds faster than are possible on highways.
If only that way provided enough opportunities to go anywhere in the country, with as much convenience as the automobile does with regard to people's personal schedules.
If only that way made use of existing infrastructure and emerging technology, so that it was feasible to finance its existence and, at the same time, create tens of thousands of temporary and permanent jobs. And, in the process, bring hundreds of communities back to life, by providing direct investment in them and business opportunities with other communities.
If only this involved a mode of transportation this nation once used on a regular basis. One that, in fact, help build this nation in a, dare I say, transcontinental way. One that people still use today, on a regular basis, in the nation's most prosperous areas. One that, admittedly, has always required a substantial degree of public investment, but has always proved to be worth it.
In case you didn't figure it out after the second "If only," I'm talking about ... railroads.
Railroads, which have the potential to be the Internet of people.
But isn't the Internet already made up of people? Frankly, it's kind of hard to tell these days, from the way we shout at each other, as though we've actually known each other long enough to know that we can't stand each other.
If you want to experience an Internet whose members are almost unfailingly polite to each other, you're better off dealing with the Internet of things. Simply put, this refers to the growing ability of our technology to communicate directly from device to device, with little or no human interaction to help them do so. If you have a smart phone that allows you to connect with a "smart home," and set your cable, HVAC, and security settings, you already know what I'm talking about. But the Internet of things goes well beyond consumer needs, and is well on its way to dominating and even controlling international commerce.
That sets up the possibility of a world in which our devices effectively run us, instead of the other way around. Or, as Marshall McLuhan is reputed to have once said, we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.
Maybe, in such a world, shouting at each other through our online caricatures, and posturing to people we've never met, just isn't enough to keep us safe not only from natural catastrophes, but the ones that we manage to make for ourselves, through our own cleverness. Maybe we need to spend more time in each other's actual presence, so that we can get to know each other as individuals. Maybe, just maybe, in such a world, we would discover that we might actually like each other more than we ever before thought was possible. And maybe, at the same time, we would find more ways to more the wealth around the country, along with ourselves.
Imagine, for example, if someone could, via high-speed rail commute from St. Louis to Chicago, bringing a large income back to a city that could use all the large incomes it could get, in much the same way that immigrants from other countries send U.S. dollars back to their home countries and support their families. Imagine if that led to more direct investment in communities from wealthy cities like Chicago to less-fortunate ones like St. Louis. Imagine if that made those latter communities less dependent on public support, and instead transformed them into sources of support for public enterprises.
Imagine, if other words, what would happen if we did invest in technology that created a real Internet of people, one that was made up not of bytes and impulses, but real, actual people who didn't have a technology that just encouraged them to posture, instead of one that forced them to, well, you know, actually be themselves.
Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be the Divided States of America anymore.
Maybe, just maybe, America really could be great again.
Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Fallows' optimism would have support from the successes of thousands of communities.
Maybe it's just a dream. But I'm willing to bet that it could be an American one.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
The Road Back To Unionization Runs Through Public Schools
There are lots of books, articles, blog posts and so forth documenting the decline of labor unions in American life. This recent article from the New York Times is probably as useful a thumbnail summary of those works as any. Perhaps one observation from it does as much as any other fact to sum up that loss of power: the fact that, within my lifetime, a president as Republican as Richard Nixon appointed a union man as his Secretary of Labor. It's safe to say that Nixon took no pleasure in doing so, but Nixon was nothing if not practical (with the exception of Watergate) when it came to political moves. He was simply recognizing the power that unions exerted back then on national elections, especially on the Democratic side, and so, as he did in other areas, he moved to co-op a potential political threat.
Today, Donald Trump has no need to worry about such a threat and, for all of his phony rhetoric about turning power back over to "the people," the reality is that his Administration is staffed with quite possibly the most plutocratic as well as kleptocratic personalities in our history. So, in theory, there's no need to worry about a rising labor movement between now and 2020.
Or is there?
What happened in West Virginia earlier this year, as documented by Slate.com, was remarkable by any standards. It demonstrated that, despite that state's to destroy union power by outlawing strikes and collective bargaining for public workers, workers cannot be denied their First Amendment rights to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. And make no mistake: whenever there is an assault on union rights, it is in fact constitutional rights as well as economic rights that are very much at stake.
But it did much more than that: it reaffirmed the reality that in the United States, while unions no longer support a significant number of manufacturing jobs, it is definitely supporting a large and rapidly growing number of service-sector jobs--in the process, redefining what it means (as pointed out by Slate) to be a "working-class" American. And, at the same time, it identified a significant and widely supported object of government spending--education--that is also a large part of that sector.
The West Virginia strike by teachers led no less a business media outlet than Bloomberg to speculate about the possibility of similar uprisings by teachers in other states. Well, it did not take long for speculation to become fact. As it did in Oklahoma. In Kentucky. In Colorado. And, most recently, in Arizona.
And make no mistake: these teachers have the support of the parents whose children they educate, not only within their own states, but outside of them as well. What happened in Oklahoma when the teachers there went on strike? People from all around the country ordered pizzas for them as a show of support (and kudos also to the pizza shop that made all of the pizzas and all of the deliveries). That kind of support doesn't happen to fringe movements. And this expanding revolt of public-school teachers against red-state budgets and the corporate tools that pass them is clearly anything but a fringe movement.
You can see that in the unbelievably pathetic response to the Oklahoma strike by one Sooner lawmaker that the ranks of the strikers were filled in part with paid protesters. He declined to name his source for this "information." I don't see why he needed to do so; it really doesn't take that long to say "no one." But you can see it far more clearly in the response by the Republican governors of the affected states, who are at least beginning to make real, if somewhat tepid, responses to the strikers by putting pay raises on the political and budgetary tables.
There's some suggestion that this teacher revolt might not have much impact on political issues other than education--and, given the fact that many of the affected teachers are themselves Republicans, there is at least some practical reason behind that suggestion. Then again, it may be so much whistling past the proverbial graveyard; here is another Times piece, in which three Arizona public-school teachers, all Republicans, commit the cardinal Republican sin of--wait for it--asking for a tax increase in order to pay teachers.
For the Trump GOP, the teacher revolt is not a minor course correction. It is very much an existential threat to the entire way of doing business over the past four decades, going back to the real beginning of the "Reagan Revolution" when Saint Ronnie, the first former union president to occupy the White House, busted the air traffic controllers' union and signaled the beginning of a war by Wall Street on the right of workers to organize in the same way that investors have the right to organize capital in corporations.
We have, as a nation and as a people, come a very long way down a very bad road since then. I say all of this, as I have said here before, as the son of an educator who promoted public education. But I also say it as a member of two unions with a very strong appreciation for what union power can do to make the lives of working people better. And the only way back to where we were, back to when the American Dream was not the American Fantasy, is through organizing not only politically, but also economically. If teachers can point the way--and I believe that they are now doing exactly that--it just makes me doubly proud. In any case, it's time for all of us to express our American pride in the same way, to borrow a phrase, that we always have. Together.
Today, Donald Trump has no need to worry about such a threat and, for all of his phony rhetoric about turning power back over to "the people," the reality is that his Administration is staffed with quite possibly the most plutocratic as well as kleptocratic personalities in our history. So, in theory, there's no need to worry about a rising labor movement between now and 2020.
Or is there?
What happened in West Virginia earlier this year, as documented by Slate.com, was remarkable by any standards. It demonstrated that, despite that state's to destroy union power by outlawing strikes and collective bargaining for public workers, workers cannot be denied their First Amendment rights to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. And make no mistake: whenever there is an assault on union rights, it is in fact constitutional rights as well as economic rights that are very much at stake.
But it did much more than that: it reaffirmed the reality that in the United States, while unions no longer support a significant number of manufacturing jobs, it is definitely supporting a large and rapidly growing number of service-sector jobs--in the process, redefining what it means (as pointed out by Slate) to be a "working-class" American. And, at the same time, it identified a significant and widely supported object of government spending--education--that is also a large part of that sector.
The West Virginia strike by teachers led no less a business media outlet than Bloomberg to speculate about the possibility of similar uprisings by teachers in other states. Well, it did not take long for speculation to become fact. As it did in Oklahoma. In Kentucky. In Colorado. And, most recently, in Arizona.
And make no mistake: these teachers have the support of the parents whose children they educate, not only within their own states, but outside of them as well. What happened in Oklahoma when the teachers there went on strike? People from all around the country ordered pizzas for them as a show of support (and kudos also to the pizza shop that made all of the pizzas and all of the deliveries). That kind of support doesn't happen to fringe movements. And this expanding revolt of public-school teachers against red-state budgets and the corporate tools that pass them is clearly anything but a fringe movement.
You can see that in the unbelievably pathetic response to the Oklahoma strike by one Sooner lawmaker that the ranks of the strikers were filled in part with paid protesters. He declined to name his source for this "information." I don't see why he needed to do so; it really doesn't take that long to say "no one." But you can see it far more clearly in the response by the Republican governors of the affected states, who are at least beginning to make real, if somewhat tepid, responses to the strikers by putting pay raises on the political and budgetary tables.
There's some suggestion that this teacher revolt might not have much impact on political issues other than education--and, given the fact that many of the affected teachers are themselves Republicans, there is at least some practical reason behind that suggestion. Then again, it may be so much whistling past the proverbial graveyard; here is another Times piece, in which three Arizona public-school teachers, all Republicans, commit the cardinal Republican sin of--wait for it--asking for a tax increase in order to pay teachers.
For the Trump GOP, the teacher revolt is not a minor course correction. It is very much an existential threat to the entire way of doing business over the past four decades, going back to the real beginning of the "Reagan Revolution" when Saint Ronnie, the first former union president to occupy the White House, busted the air traffic controllers' union and signaled the beginning of a war by Wall Street on the right of workers to organize in the same way that investors have the right to organize capital in corporations.
We have, as a nation and as a people, come a very long way down a very bad road since then. I say all of this, as I have said here before, as the son of an educator who promoted public education. But I also say it as a member of two unions with a very strong appreciation for what union power can do to make the lives of working people better. And the only way back to where we were, back to when the American Dream was not the American Fantasy, is through organizing not only politically, but also economically. If teachers can point the way--and I believe that they are now doing exactly that--it just makes me doubly proud. In any case, it's time for all of us to express our American pride in the same way, to borrow a phrase, that we always have. Together.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
And, Speaking Of Paying For Civilization ...
... we should be especially concerned about the best area of investment in our future: education.
I have said it before, in the interest of full disclosure and (for those who came in late, to borrow a phrase from "The Phantom" comic strip) I'll say it again: my late father was both a university professor and a leader in expanding publicly-financed higher education in Maryland. If you wish to view my education advocacy through that lens, feel free to do so. I advertise it with no shame and a considerable amount of pride.
And yes, it is one reason why it offends me that we have let our system of public education fall apart. Not completely, of course. Here in Maryland, it is still strong and well-funded, thanks to the involvement of parents who always need to be the backbone of their children's academic life.
But that is not the case in many parts of the country. There, conditions are at a place that has to be considered below sub-standard. I can't sum it up any more effectively that the New York Times has in this article, which you should take a look at. And be appalled. And resolve to do everything and anything you can to turn this disgraceful state of affairs around. The point made in the Times article about the age of textbooks currently used in school was somewhat poignantly reinforced for me by this CBS News story. As great as it is that this first grader is excited about reading a textbook that Blake Shelton used 36 years ago, she deserves a better text book I'd like to think that Blake Shelton would agree with that thought.
But what can you expect when this country has school districts advocating the use of miniature baseball bats to combat the current epidemic of school shootings? That's right--miniature baseball bats, the kind that ballparks sell or give away as souvenirs. I'm not kidding; take a look at this, if you don't believe me. Lest you think this is entirely about a lack of money, consider the idiotic observation in this article that "I think a bat could disarm a pistol with a nice swing."
Do we think so little of our own children, the future not just of this country but of the human race, that we have no regard for the contents of their brains or the safety of their lives? Does having a few extra dollars in our pockets (and billions more in the pockets of special interests) mean that much to us?
Perhaps not to all of us. Perhaps this helps to explain this year's surge of mothers running for public office. Perhaps they're not content with seeing their children educated under conditions that would make a Third World government blush.
Perhaps this explains the recent surge in labor actions by teachers, about which I'll have more to say in a future post. (Spoiler alert: I'm quite sure that it does.)
In any case, it time to realize the truth I talked about in my last post: a rising economic tide does not produce magic money for governments. Like it or not, overall, we are not taxed enough. That must change. America must change. Or it will go the way of all nations that do not adapt, and turn into dust on the shelves of history.
I have said it before, in the interest of full disclosure and (for those who came in late, to borrow a phrase from "The Phantom" comic strip) I'll say it again: my late father was both a university professor and a leader in expanding publicly-financed higher education in Maryland. If you wish to view my education advocacy through that lens, feel free to do so. I advertise it with no shame and a considerable amount of pride.
And yes, it is one reason why it offends me that we have let our system of public education fall apart. Not completely, of course. Here in Maryland, it is still strong and well-funded, thanks to the involvement of parents who always need to be the backbone of their children's academic life.
But that is not the case in many parts of the country. There, conditions are at a place that has to be considered below sub-standard. I can't sum it up any more effectively that the New York Times has in this article, which you should take a look at. And be appalled. And resolve to do everything and anything you can to turn this disgraceful state of affairs around. The point made in the Times article about the age of textbooks currently used in school was somewhat poignantly reinforced for me by this CBS News story. As great as it is that this first grader is excited about reading a textbook that Blake Shelton used 36 years ago, she deserves a better text book I'd like to think that Blake Shelton would agree with that thought.
But what can you expect when this country has school districts advocating the use of miniature baseball bats to combat the current epidemic of school shootings? That's right--miniature baseball bats, the kind that ballparks sell or give away as souvenirs. I'm not kidding; take a look at this, if you don't believe me. Lest you think this is entirely about a lack of money, consider the idiotic observation in this article that "I think a bat could disarm a pistol with a nice swing."
Do we think so little of our own children, the future not just of this country but of the human race, that we have no regard for the contents of their brains or the safety of their lives? Does having a few extra dollars in our pockets (and billions more in the pockets of special interests) mean that much to us?
Perhaps not to all of us. Perhaps this helps to explain this year's surge of mothers running for public office. Perhaps they're not content with seeing their children educated under conditions that would make a Third World government blush.
Perhaps this explains the recent surge in labor actions by teachers, about which I'll have more to say in a future post. (Spoiler alert: I'm quite sure that it does.)
In any case, it time to realize the truth I talked about in my last post: a rising economic tide does not produce magic money for governments. Like it or not, overall, we are not taxed enough. That must change. America must change. Or it will go the way of all nations that do not adapt, and turn into dust on the shelves of history.
We Need An End, Once And For All, To Voodoo Economics
From its beginning, TRH has been, as much as anything, my personal opportunity to scream as loudly as the Internet will let me against the assault by the Republican Party on the means to pay for the civilization we've built. Or, to use a word they regard as a curse word, on taxes. Somehow, it seems fitting, on the day that Barbara Bush is being laid to rest, to renew my protest against that assault by recalling one of her husband's best contributions to our political discourse--the phrase "voodoo economics."
If you can recall the 1980 Presidential campaign, and specifically the New Hampshire Republican primary, George H.W. Bush coined that phrase in a debate against, among others, Ronald Reagan, who was building his campaign, as he would later build his Presidency, around advancing supply-side economics as the means to ending the financial woes of Americans. Supply-side economics--or the concept that steep tax cuts will pay for themselves through the amount of economic activity they can generate--were correctly viewed by more moderate Republicans as being the fiscal equivalent of alchemy, and therefore not to be taken seriously.
Despite the correctness of that view, the concept has remained popular with the American people, many of whom have never met a "free lunch" they didn't like. Which goes a very long way toward explaining why, with a few exceptional moments of Democratic ascendancy in our national politics, supply-side economics have not lost its grip on the economic thinking of most Americans. Indeed, it is reflected in the one and only major piece of legislation signed into law by Donald Trump: last year's so-called "tax reform" bill.
It's worth stopping for a moment and asking the question: exactly why don't massive tax cuts generate equally massive amounts of economic activity? True, the expectation that they will pay for themselves is foolish on its face. But it does seem slightly logical to assume that, if Washington takes in less money from taxpayers, the taxpayers will then turn around and spend or invest the money in ways that generates tax revenue that, arguably, might not otherwise have been generated. Shouldn't that at least mitigate the cost of the cuts to the government?
Well, once again, the short answer is no. And the reasons for that are twofold: the tax rates that are created though supply-side economics, and the actual fate of the money that flows from the cuts.
Let's start with the rates themselves. As illustrated here, the United States, over the past 60 years or so, has gone from having a systems with a series of graduated tax rates, designed to tax incomes more deeply as they increased along the scale (i.e., "progressively"), to one that has a much smaller number of rates. The effect of this has been to tax the middle class far more heavily than wealthier taxpayers, forcing the former to pay for an increasing share of government services, while rendering it less able to generate economic activity on its own through either consumption or investment. It also means that the folks at the top of our economic pyramid get an increasingly larger share of benefits from those cuts, especially in the case of the Trump tax cuts.
But so what? Who cares about whether the very well-off get a lot of money from tax cuts? Surely they would be motivated to spend and/or invest that money in ways that make up for what the middle class is no longer able to do, right?
Again, no. Generating economic activity is not, contrary to conservative belief, what naturally motivates these people. Rather, fear of losing their riches is what motivates them the most. This is reflected in decades of Republican propaganda directed at working-class voters, to the effect of "Watch out, the Dems are going to find ways to take your money and give it to undeserving people!" (And, of course, by "undeserving people," they mean people of color.)
So, what do they do?
First of all, they buy out the government and the major political parties. This goes a long way toward explaining why political campaigns, and election spending generally, has increased in cost (but definitely not value) over the past several decades. It also goes a long way toward explaining the presence of corporate cash in Democratic coffers, and its subsequent "centrist" effect on traditional Democratic politics.
Second, they engage in bidding wars for various trophy items in our consumer culture, especially real estate, the last refuge of people looking to squirrel away money. Once upon a time, no one could find a decent place to live in New York City because of rent control, or so it was said by people who had an interest in destroying rent control. Now, no one can find a decent place to live in New York because the wealthy have bid up the price of real estate to a level at which only they can afford it. In the case of New York, this has the unfortunate ripple effect of pricing a lot of up-and-coming artists and arts organizations out of the supposed cultural capital of the nation. And the ripple effect of prices in New York eventually affects the price of real estate elsewhere, as people move out and bid up the values of other locations.
Third and, in some ways perhaps worst of all, they simply send the money out of the country altogether, into overseas business or into pure (actually, impure, given their purpose) tax shelters. I have said for many, many years that the Reagan tax cuts, and all similar tax cuts that followed, were little more than a foreign-aid program. The Trump tax cuts, however, illustrate this point to a spectacular degree.
So, unfortunately, we don't get massive benefits from the massive cuts. What most of us get, frankly, is the laughter behind closed doors of wealthy Republican donors and their economic fellow-travellers, as they gleefully celebrate pulling a fast one over on the rest of us. Once upon a time, the rich mocked the poor with so-called "poverty parties." No doubt nowadays, they're coming up with even more creative ways to mock the rest of us.
But wait a moment. Is it possible that the rest of us are finally catching on, that we're finally ready to stop being played for suckers?
Maybe. Consider, for example, this, especially coming, as it does, from a media source deeply invested (pardon the pun) in flattering the business community.
Or, speaking of business-oriented media, consider this, straight from the old Capitalist Tool itself.
Or, speaking specifically of Forbes, consider this. We are staring down the face of an annual federal deficit that has increased almost threefold in just a year. And we can't count on other countries to help us; they have their own problems. That's probably in no small part because they have followed our own bad example.
Is it too late to do anything about this?
Of course not.
We have an election coming up this fall. We absolutely must use it to tell Washington to stop comforting the comfortable at the expense of the afflicted. We must tell them that we are willing to pay for the civilization we have all worked together to built, in a manner that is fair in the paying and not spendthrift in the result. We must ensure that they take the steps needed to undo the harm that Trump and his Congressional cronies have done.
In short, we must put an end to voodoo economics. Once and for all. And remember that everything worth having has a price tag that has to be faced. And paid.
If you can recall the 1980 Presidential campaign, and specifically the New Hampshire Republican primary, George H.W. Bush coined that phrase in a debate against, among others, Ronald Reagan, who was building his campaign, as he would later build his Presidency, around advancing supply-side economics as the means to ending the financial woes of Americans. Supply-side economics--or the concept that steep tax cuts will pay for themselves through the amount of economic activity they can generate--were correctly viewed by more moderate Republicans as being the fiscal equivalent of alchemy, and therefore not to be taken seriously.
Despite the correctness of that view, the concept has remained popular with the American people, many of whom have never met a "free lunch" they didn't like. Which goes a very long way toward explaining why, with a few exceptional moments of Democratic ascendancy in our national politics, supply-side economics have not lost its grip on the economic thinking of most Americans. Indeed, it is reflected in the one and only major piece of legislation signed into law by Donald Trump: last year's so-called "tax reform" bill.
It's worth stopping for a moment and asking the question: exactly why don't massive tax cuts generate equally massive amounts of economic activity? True, the expectation that they will pay for themselves is foolish on its face. But it does seem slightly logical to assume that, if Washington takes in less money from taxpayers, the taxpayers will then turn around and spend or invest the money in ways that generates tax revenue that, arguably, might not otherwise have been generated. Shouldn't that at least mitigate the cost of the cuts to the government?
Well, once again, the short answer is no. And the reasons for that are twofold: the tax rates that are created though supply-side economics, and the actual fate of the money that flows from the cuts.
Let's start with the rates themselves. As illustrated here, the United States, over the past 60 years or so, has gone from having a systems with a series of graduated tax rates, designed to tax incomes more deeply as they increased along the scale (i.e., "progressively"), to one that has a much smaller number of rates. The effect of this has been to tax the middle class far more heavily than wealthier taxpayers, forcing the former to pay for an increasing share of government services, while rendering it less able to generate economic activity on its own through either consumption or investment. It also means that the folks at the top of our economic pyramid get an increasingly larger share of benefits from those cuts, especially in the case of the Trump tax cuts.
But so what? Who cares about whether the very well-off get a lot of money from tax cuts? Surely they would be motivated to spend and/or invest that money in ways that make up for what the middle class is no longer able to do, right?
Again, no. Generating economic activity is not, contrary to conservative belief, what naturally motivates these people. Rather, fear of losing their riches is what motivates them the most. This is reflected in decades of Republican propaganda directed at working-class voters, to the effect of "Watch out, the Dems are going to find ways to take your money and give it to undeserving people!" (And, of course, by "undeserving people," they mean people of color.)
So, what do they do?
First of all, they buy out the government and the major political parties. This goes a long way toward explaining why political campaigns, and election spending generally, has increased in cost (but definitely not value) over the past several decades. It also goes a long way toward explaining the presence of corporate cash in Democratic coffers, and its subsequent "centrist" effect on traditional Democratic politics.
Second, they engage in bidding wars for various trophy items in our consumer culture, especially real estate, the last refuge of people looking to squirrel away money. Once upon a time, no one could find a decent place to live in New York City because of rent control, or so it was said by people who had an interest in destroying rent control. Now, no one can find a decent place to live in New York because the wealthy have bid up the price of real estate to a level at which only they can afford it. In the case of New York, this has the unfortunate ripple effect of pricing a lot of up-and-coming artists and arts organizations out of the supposed cultural capital of the nation. And the ripple effect of prices in New York eventually affects the price of real estate elsewhere, as people move out and bid up the values of other locations.
Third and, in some ways perhaps worst of all, they simply send the money out of the country altogether, into overseas business or into pure (actually, impure, given their purpose) tax shelters. I have said for many, many years that the Reagan tax cuts, and all similar tax cuts that followed, were little more than a foreign-aid program. The Trump tax cuts, however, illustrate this point to a spectacular degree.
So, unfortunately, we don't get massive benefits from the massive cuts. What most of us get, frankly, is the laughter behind closed doors of wealthy Republican donors and their economic fellow-travellers, as they gleefully celebrate pulling a fast one over on the rest of us. Once upon a time, the rich mocked the poor with so-called "poverty parties." No doubt nowadays, they're coming up with even more creative ways to mock the rest of us.
But wait a moment. Is it possible that the rest of us are finally catching on, that we're finally ready to stop being played for suckers?
Maybe. Consider, for example, this, especially coming, as it does, from a media source deeply invested (pardon the pun) in flattering the business community.
Or, speaking of business-oriented media, consider this, straight from the old Capitalist Tool itself.
Or, speaking specifically of Forbes, consider this. We are staring down the face of an annual federal deficit that has increased almost threefold in just a year. And we can't count on other countries to help us; they have their own problems. That's probably in no small part because they have followed our own bad example.
Is it too late to do anything about this?
Of course not.
We have an election coming up this fall. We absolutely must use it to tell Washington to stop comforting the comfortable at the expense of the afflicted. We must tell them that we are willing to pay for the civilization we have all worked together to built, in a manner that is fair in the paying and not spendthrift in the result. We must ensure that they take the steps needed to undo the harm that Trump and his Congressional cronies have done.
In short, we must put an end to voodoo economics. Once and for all. And remember that everything worth having has a price tag that has to be faced. And paid.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Why It's Time To Stop Being So %$#*@! Nice
Like water to a wilted flower in the desert, so was this Slate article to me. And yet, almost as quickly, this New York Times article almost stomped the flower deep into the sand.
The Slate article first.
In "It's Time to Fight Dirty," David Faris makes the case that Democrats should, at long last, play hardball not only in fighting the Republicans on issues and policy, but also do so in order to make structural changes in the system that would undo much of what the GOP has done over the past decade to give themselves a perpetual advantage in national elections. He goes so far as to advocate expanding the number of Supreme Court seats, and adding additional states in various ways, such as breaking up California, and admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
Some of these latter ideas seem, at the moment, to be beyond the boundaries of political possibility, and may not even be necessary, in the short run. After all, if there is a Democratic wave this fall big enough, the party may have sufficient clout to deal with a President hobbled with crises and scandals of his own making. But Faris' larger point is well worth making over and over again. I know, because I've made it many times myself, here and elsewhere.
And that larger point is this: over the past thirty years, the Republicans have shown an expanding willingness, sometimes brazenly, to destroy many of the political norms that ensure a level playing field in both elections and in the process of governing. During the Obama administration, this willingness reached epic proportions, as the Supreme Court's destruction of campaign finance reform combined with Mitch McCONnell's abuse of the filibuster rule, and state governments' unprecedented use of gerrymandering, to shred any sense of fairness in our political process. As noted by Faris himself in the Slate interview, this culminated in the abuse of the advise-and-consent process with respect to Merrick Garland's nomination to replace Antonin Scalia on the High Court, as well as the penetration of the 2016 presidential election process by Russian political/business interests.
On this, I agree with Faris 100%. The Republicans have shown beyond any doubt a complete willingness to shred any and all political norms for the sake of maintaining and expanding its power. In such an environment, there is no justification or requirement for their opponents to play according to Hoyle. When one's opponents have shredded the rule book, they forfeit the right to object to any violations. If there is one principle that is absolutely fundamental to a truly free society, it has to be this: either the rules apply to everyone, or they apply to no one. And, since the Republicans have decided that the rules do not apply to everyone, the Democrats need not worry about violating them.
This does not mean, however, that Democrats should behave as badly as Republicans. Far from it. It simply means, as Faris suggests both in his book and in the Slate interview, that they should stop approaching the GOP on their knees ready to make major political and policy suggestions for the practical equivalent of crumbs. They should act, in the first instance, with confidence in what they believe, in part because history has time and time again shown that confidence to be justified. Then they should set goals that go beyond what they think they can practically achieve, in order to bend the public perception of what is possible. Finally, they should not be afraid to not give in. The people who voted them into power, including me, did not give them a mandate to unilaterally surrender. We gave them a mandate to win. They should act like it, and stop being afraid of their own ideas as well as their opponents.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that the Democrats should be afraid to be edgy. Let's take the Garland case for example. You know what I would have done if I had been in President Obama's shoes? I would have, as the leader of a common-law nation, invoked an ancient common-law maxim: qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit. Put simply, silence equals consent and, since the Senate never took an official position on Garland--in fact, they refused to do so--they were deemed to have consented to his nomination, and I would have wasted no time in having Garland sworn in. Would the Court object? Unlikely; the Court's jurisprudence in disputes of this nature is to allow the executive and legislative branches to sort out their differences.
So, in the end, it's not a question of who has the angriest voice, but who has the sharper mind. The Democrats should not be afraid to use their advantage in this regard. They should not be, above all, afraid to win, for the sake of their supporters and, ultimately, the sake of the nation.
Now, sadly, to the Times piece.
Being mindful of another Latin maxim, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, I grieve with the family, colleagues, and friends of David Buckel in morning his death. His legacy of fighting on behalf of LGBT rights is a noble one, and deserves to be honored and remembered.
But that is what make his choice of political suicide all the more puzzling and, ultimately, upsetting in light of my view of the need to fight.
Our opponents are not inspired by noble examples of good behavior, no matter how honorable and sincere those examples are. I certainly do not question Mr. Buckel's honor or sincerity. But I am forced to question his judgment, and question whether or not it was clouded by the despair that our current political situation naturally inspires.
Simply put, we cannot afford to lose people like him. We don't need them to sacrifice themselves; we need them alive, well, and able and willing to fight the fight that must be fought against opponents who sacrifice nothing and demand everything.
If you out there are reading this, and feel the level of despair that Mr. Buckel obviously felt then, by all means, get whatever help you can. And stay with us. And band with us together. And fight like hell for the sake of a nation built on the sacrifices of far better people than our opponents.
It's time to leave sorrow and politeness in the past. There's a future to be won for the sake of the greatest nation in the history of the human race. Let's go win it.
The Slate article first.
In "It's Time to Fight Dirty," David Faris makes the case that Democrats should, at long last, play hardball not only in fighting the Republicans on issues and policy, but also do so in order to make structural changes in the system that would undo much of what the GOP has done over the past decade to give themselves a perpetual advantage in national elections. He goes so far as to advocate expanding the number of Supreme Court seats, and adding additional states in various ways, such as breaking up California, and admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
Some of these latter ideas seem, at the moment, to be beyond the boundaries of political possibility, and may not even be necessary, in the short run. After all, if there is a Democratic wave this fall big enough, the party may have sufficient clout to deal with a President hobbled with crises and scandals of his own making. But Faris' larger point is well worth making over and over again. I know, because I've made it many times myself, here and elsewhere.
And that larger point is this: over the past thirty years, the Republicans have shown an expanding willingness, sometimes brazenly, to destroy many of the political norms that ensure a level playing field in both elections and in the process of governing. During the Obama administration, this willingness reached epic proportions, as the Supreme Court's destruction of campaign finance reform combined with Mitch McCONnell's abuse of the filibuster rule, and state governments' unprecedented use of gerrymandering, to shred any sense of fairness in our political process. As noted by Faris himself in the Slate interview, this culminated in the abuse of the advise-and-consent process with respect to Merrick Garland's nomination to replace Antonin Scalia on the High Court, as well as the penetration of the 2016 presidential election process by Russian political/business interests.
On this, I agree with Faris 100%. The Republicans have shown beyond any doubt a complete willingness to shred any and all political norms for the sake of maintaining and expanding its power. In such an environment, there is no justification or requirement for their opponents to play according to Hoyle. When one's opponents have shredded the rule book, they forfeit the right to object to any violations. If there is one principle that is absolutely fundamental to a truly free society, it has to be this: either the rules apply to everyone, or they apply to no one. And, since the Republicans have decided that the rules do not apply to everyone, the Democrats need not worry about violating them.
This does not mean, however, that Democrats should behave as badly as Republicans. Far from it. It simply means, as Faris suggests both in his book and in the Slate interview, that they should stop approaching the GOP on their knees ready to make major political and policy suggestions for the practical equivalent of crumbs. They should act, in the first instance, with confidence in what they believe, in part because history has time and time again shown that confidence to be justified. Then they should set goals that go beyond what they think they can practically achieve, in order to bend the public perception of what is possible. Finally, they should not be afraid to not give in. The people who voted them into power, including me, did not give them a mandate to unilaterally surrender. We gave them a mandate to win. They should act like it, and stop being afraid of their own ideas as well as their opponents.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that the Democrats should be afraid to be edgy. Let's take the Garland case for example. You know what I would have done if I had been in President Obama's shoes? I would have, as the leader of a common-law nation, invoked an ancient common-law maxim: qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit. Put simply, silence equals consent and, since the Senate never took an official position on Garland--in fact, they refused to do so--they were deemed to have consented to his nomination, and I would have wasted no time in having Garland sworn in. Would the Court object? Unlikely; the Court's jurisprudence in disputes of this nature is to allow the executive and legislative branches to sort out their differences.
So, in the end, it's not a question of who has the angriest voice, but who has the sharper mind. The Democrats should not be afraid to use their advantage in this regard. They should not be, above all, afraid to win, for the sake of their supporters and, ultimately, the sake of the nation.
Now, sadly, to the Times piece.
Being mindful of another Latin maxim, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, I grieve with the family, colleagues, and friends of David Buckel in morning his death. His legacy of fighting on behalf of LGBT rights is a noble one, and deserves to be honored and remembered.
But that is what make his choice of political suicide all the more puzzling and, ultimately, upsetting in light of my view of the need to fight.
Our opponents are not inspired by noble examples of good behavior, no matter how honorable and sincere those examples are. I certainly do not question Mr. Buckel's honor or sincerity. But I am forced to question his judgment, and question whether or not it was clouded by the despair that our current political situation naturally inspires.
Simply put, we cannot afford to lose people like him. We don't need them to sacrifice themselves; we need them alive, well, and able and willing to fight the fight that must be fought against opponents who sacrifice nothing and demand everything.
If you out there are reading this, and feel the level of despair that Mr. Buckel obviously felt then, by all means, get whatever help you can. And stay with us. And band with us together. And fight like hell for the sake of a nation built on the sacrifices of far better people than our opponents.
It's time to leave sorrow and politeness in the past. There's a future to be won for the sake of the greatest nation in the history of the human race. Let's go win it.
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