I've gotten a little behind on blog posting, which isn't unusual if you've got a schedule as highly programmed as mine is. I'd hoped to write about a number of topics tonight but, well ... it isn't going to happen, unfortunately. So I'm going to catch up starting this weekend, which means that you should bookmark this post and come back to it next Monday, when I will have edited it with a few observations on a number of topics.
Thanks for reading, hang in there, and believe as I do that better days lie ahead for all of us.
UPDATE:
Well, it's a few days later, I'm better rested, there's been a break in the action (as they sometimes say in sportscasts), so I can now talk about ... well, what I wanted to talk about.
Which, to start off with, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshperson Congresswoman from New York who, IMHO, is the most exciting thing to happen in Democratic politics in decades. Yes, perhaps even more exciting than Barack Obama, notwithstanding the essential American history he made by being elected. I say that because a lot of Obama's supporters made the assumption that, because he was both African-American and a Democrat, he would be the strongly progressive leader that the U.S. had not had since the 1960s. Unfortunately, many of those supporters did not pay enough attention to Obama's Senate career, because, as measured in votes and public statements, Obama was not quite the flaming progressive that some wanted him to be. (Neither is Bernie Sanders, but that's a blog post for another time.) So Obama's presidency was similarly characterized by policies and speeches that only partially fulfilled his progressive promise. And this, in turn, led to disenchantment, the rise of Tea Party politics (and a Tea Party Congress), and the failure to get a "third term" by way of Hillary Clinton, whose failure to break the glass ceiling led to the crass basement of D***** T****'s presidency.
But that's precisely why Ocasio-Cortez is so exciting. Not a billionaire wanna-be, who thinks the presidency is merely another reality show. Not a "centrist Democrat" who lives to surrender the accomplishments of the past, inch by inch, for the sake of looking "reasonable" to the MSM and other practitioners of "bothsiderism." But also not a pie-in-the-sky idealist who can't articulate her ideas or develop them into practical applications. And, perhaps best of all, not a Caspar Milquetoast with no idea of how to defend herself from the slings and arrows of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
To begin with, there's the fact of her election itself. She won her seat in a heavily Democratic district in a heavily Republican state, so her victory in the general election is not all that surprising. It's what she did in the primary that was absolutely amazing: knocking off Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic House Caucus. She did it with grass-roots financing that was enough against Crowley's corporate fundraising, and with a message that spoke to the aspirations of people on the increasingly broken streets, and not in the increasingly plush boardrooms. Absolutely no one in the chattering classes saw this coming, which should show you how little they know in the first place.
Moreover, and more importantly, she did it with a message that she has already taken beyond campaign rhetoric, turning it in a well-though-out plan that cuts across the needs of the American people but also unites them in a slogan that is as forward-looking as it is historically resonant: a "Green New Deal." Through this plan, which you can read more about here, Ocasio-Cortez proposes to link the fundamental goal of the Democratic Party--economic security for all--to meeting the challenge of combating climate change. It represents the kind of thinking and messaging that have been absent for far too long from American politics.
And this is a case where both the message, and the messenger, are terrifying the living daylights out of the conservative commentariat. Perhaps even more delightfully, they are reducing their already minimal verbal skills to babble.
Take, for example, this attempt in the New York Post to "explain" Ocasio-Cortez' appeal. It starts out by saying that it has nothing to do with her demographics, but ends up saying--wait for it--that it's all about her demographics! Along the way, the piece takes the predictable pot-shots at her allegedly zany, loony-left ideas, the ones that are supposed to turn us into Russia at the end of "Dr. Zhivago," but with worse music and cinematography.
That's the line of debate they've taken over at Fox News on the subject of AOC, as she's come to be known. Blah blah blah Communist, blah blah blah Venezuela, blah blah blah un-American. A funny thing happens, though, when they get into the details and discover that the Devil has them by the tale. For all of the specifics of AOC's political advocacy, astonishingly, turn out to be things the American people actually want! Even more astonishingly, her proposed method of doing so, by asking the rich to be just a teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeny less rich, is also something they want. So, the more Fox News attempts to discredit her, the more they actually help her to make her point.
It even reaches the point at which they do so directly. Way to go, Tucker Carlson; I didn't think you had it in you. Perhaps, in time, they'll just come out and admit that the country AOC wants to turn us into is not Russia or Venezuela, but something more like Sweden.
But that may take a little while. AOC's white-male-winger detractors have largely attempted to go to war with her by way of social media. A mistake of epic proportions. AOC is of the generation that grew up on social media, and has regularly schooled her detractors when they make the pathetic attempt to play her game against her. Even when they dug up a supposedly "embarrassing" video of her dancing, she turned it around on them and made them whine about how she and her supporters were picking on them.
You can see the video in question here, along with a discussion of why conservative men seem to have such an obsession about her dance moves. Basically, the piece argues that their fear of AOC is rooted in their fear of her ideas, and the way those ideas challenge their basic assumptions about pretty much everything. That may be true but, as their failure to take her out through the video illustrates, what they're really afraid of is someone who has the integrity to be herself, not a package put together by consultants. People who are filled with fear have no game against someone who is fearless.
The only sadness I can find in AOC's political rise is the offense that certain people in the Democratic Party, of all places, seem to take to it. Obviously, when someone takes out an entrenched political power like Crowley, it stirs up a great deal of resentment among "Establishment" Democrats for whom the capital E seems to be more important than the capital D. Exhibit A for the prosecution: the not-so-honorable Joe Lieberman, former Democratic (later "Independent Democratic") Senator, enabler of the Bush-Cheney war machine, and endorser of the Republican presidential ticket in 2008. After AOC's primary victory, Lieberman described her ideas as "far out of the mainstream" and urged voters to support Crowley on a third-party ticket. Then there's Exhibit B: the unnamed Democrat from another state who recently urged New York Democrats to "primary" AOC in 2020 in favor of some unnamed individuals who had been in line for Crowley's seat.
A couple of questions here. First, why didn't any of these unnamed individuals decide to take on Crowley previously? No one was stopping them, apparently, but themselves and perhaps whatever retribution from Crowley. In any event, those people, if they have any political standing at all, should now that power isn't given to people who merely stand in line; it is given to people who step up and show that they have the ability to take it and make something of it. AOC did exactly that.
As for Lieberman, what can I say? The kindest, gentlest thing I can say to my fellow Jew is that he suffers from the same fear of leadership that afflicted the aforementioned unnamed individuals. He could have been Vice President in a Gore Administration that could have forestalled both 9/11 and the growing impact of climate change. Instead, he deemed it more important in the 2000 campaign to play footsie with Dick Cheney and the Republican efforts to block the Florida recount. Dayenu, Joe. Dayenu.
And yet, there is something sadder still than either Lieberman or anonymous Democrats. It's Baby Boomers (and yes, I am one), the generation that promised everyone it was going to be the biggest change agent in the history of the Republic, lecturing AOC and her fellow millennials about how to conduct themselves in politics. Case in point: Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the TV series "The West Wing," about a prototypical liberal Democratic presidency, headed by no less a liberal actor than Martin Sheen, who played Robert Kennedy in "The Missiles of October." One would think that someone like Sorkin would rejoice in the emergence of a new generation of leaders, one that could take the limited fulfillment of progressive ideas by Boomers and build something even better on top of them. Instead, we get grumpy lectures like this one, in which Sorkin laments the lack of "gravitas" among the new crop of Democrats in Congress, and wishes that its members would "stop acting like young people."
I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that comment. If he meant that they shouldn't be enthusiastic, bold, and even a bit pushy about expressing themselves, then he should remember a time when our generation, his and mine, were subject to some of the same criticisms. Somehow, it didn't stop us from doing some real good, and I suspect the same will be true of those who follow us. Frankly, it's depressing to listen to Sorkin in this instance and realize how "square" even a Boomer can be in middle-age.
For my part, I especially appreciate the fact that AOC's success thus far (knock on wood, pu! pu! pu!) is an affirmation of my thesis about modern politics: that it is not so much "local" as it is generational. AOC comes from a generation whose perspective on politics isn't summed up by Ronald Reagan standing at a lectern and asking people if they are better off now than they were four years ago. The generation of which AOC is a part has never know what it was like to be "better off" in the sense that Reagan meant. That generation has never known what it was like for Boomers like Sorkin and me to grow up in a world surrounded by a prosperity we ultimately came to take for granted. That generation has never had the luxury of assuming that their lives would be more comfortable than the lives of their parents. That generation has never been systemically patted on the head and constantly told how wonderful it is. Indeed, if anything, the followers of Reagan have largely dismissed that generation as a bunch of whiners who aren't spending enough to line the pockets of the 1 percent as quickly as possible.
Well, guess what? They aren't "spending enough" because they are not being paid a living wage that reflects their worth. And that, in turn, is happening largely because of 40 years of policies that promised wealth that would "trickle down," like crumbs from a feast to undeserving peasants. Instead, the wealth that the "peasants" created got sucked upward, higher and higher, until only a handful of people can reach it.
AOC and the people she's helping to bring to the table have figured it out. It's time to overturn the table, and replace it with one that has a seat for everybody.
I'm proud to say that I'm rooting hard for her to succeed. If she does, we all do.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Sunday, January 20, 2019
It May Make Sense For The Democrats To Counter T****'s Offer
I want to make this as clear at the outset as I can. I loathe D***** T****. I loathe him personally and presidentially. What he has done to his family and business associates is tragic; what he has done to the highest office in our land and its institutional standing around the globe is nothing short of an utter disaster.
And, in every aspect of his life over the past two years of his misbegotten Administration, he has violated so many legal standards that his impeachment and subsequent prosecution as a private citizen should have been a foregone conclusion months ago. As Bill Maher observed recently, if T**** isn't impeached, where is the bar set for impeachment of an American President? If Bill Clinton can be impeached for the constitutional equivalent of jaywalking (and I make no excuses for his misdeeds), while Trump can threaten with apparent impunity to circumvent constitutional processes in order to get the border wall most of us oppose, is partisanship the only place at which to set it.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I find the idea of doing business with T**** to be as loathsome as the man himself. I find the thought of reaching any sort of "compromise" with him to be wholly repellent. And that does not even begin to touch on the fact that reaching a "deal" with T**** does not prevent him from subsequently redefining that "deal" on his own terms. As Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it months ago, negotiating with T**** is like negotiating with Jell-O.
In spite of all of this, and only because I think that T**** may have accidentally created a loophole for doing so the other day, I think that it may at long last be as possible as it is absolutely necessary to reach a deal with the devil regarding the crisis at our border with Mexico.
Not the crisis that he imagines, the one in which hordes of "bad hombres" in Mad Max-style vehicles are racing across the desert filled with smugglers, pimps, and terrorists.
I'm talking about the crisis he has single-handedly created.
I'm talking about the families that have been incarcerated in border camps under inhuman conditions that have led to the death of innocent children.
I'm talking about the other families that have been attacked or otherwise forced to return to the countries they have been forced to abandon out of fear for their lives
I'm talking about the vast majority of undocumented aliens within our borders, the vast majority of whom came in under entirely lawful circumstances, but who have been trapped here by their inability to navigate an immigration system starved not just for enforcement resources, but for the basic administrative resources needed to process and approve visa applications.
And, perhaps worst of all in some respects, I'm talking about the new wave of investigations designer to "determine" whether naturalized citizens, many of them pillars of their community, should truly have been naturalized--a kangaroo-court process in which even the smallest infraction can destroy lives that were built based on a good-faith belief in what we used to call the American Dream.
Then, of course, there's the crisis on top of that crisis--the now-three-week old partial shutdown of the federal government that has deprived 800,000-plus employees, contractors, and their families of any sense of economic security, and that threatens the still-fragile ten-year Obama economic recovery, already threatened by the Republicans' debt-busting tax bill from last year.
Let's call the shutdown exactly what it and all the ones before it are: blackmail. They should not even be legal. They violate every principle upon which this nation was founded. They are a form of political warfare engaged in by politicians who do not even recognize their political opponents as sharing a nation with them.
They are criminal in every sense of the word. And every law enforcement professional will tell you that to cave in to blackmail is simply to invite more of it, without end. I agree with that advice wholeheartedly.
So, why might I be willing to make an exception here. Is it solely because of the severity of the combined border-shutdown crisis?
No.
It's also because T****, whose tyranny is as inept as it is cruel, may have really put his foot in it the other day.
He made a speech from the White House in which he announced that, in an "effort" to end the shutdown, he would send a bill to Congress which provides for temporary extensions of already temporary protections for certain classes of endangered immigrants, in return for the funding he has requested to begin construction of a permanent wall across our border with Mexico.
The temporary nature of the extensions make them utterly worthless to the populations they would allegedly protect. But that's not important in this case. What is important is the fact that T**** took this opportunity to redefine the word "wall" in this context as follows:
And so, there it is, Chuck, Nancy, and friends. You fought the battle against the sea-to-sea physical wall and won. You're no longer being blackmailed anymore. You can effectively declare victory.
And not only can you declare it, you can define it as well. So, how should you do that?\
By rejecting T****'s so-called concessions, and proposing an alternative that is more than fair. Instead of the fig leaf of making temporary protections slightly less temporary, why not do something as, shall we say, permanent as the now-redefined "wall"?
Why not take the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate by a more-than-two-thirds vote, and never got a vote in the House of Representatives, and make that the concession for getting the "wall"? After all, the only reason it never got a vote in the House is not because it wouldn't have passed. It would definitely have done so, and with a majority as bipartisan as the one in the Senate. The only reason that vote never took places is that the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, didn't want to lose a vote of no-confidence within his own badly divided caucus. Thus, thousands of jobs, and lives, were effectively destroyed because John Boehner wanted to keep his job.
But, now we have the perfect opportunity to rectify what went wrong in 2013, and give T**** what he wants to give to his most die-hard supporters. True, the devil would literally be in the details. The non-sea-to-sea nature of the "wall" would somehow have to be set in legislative stone. And provisions would have to be added to address the harms that have been done to immigrant populations during the past two years. But there's no reason that either of these steps can't be taken, especially if the larger goal is to gain a long-term resolution of the immigration issue in our nation.
The question, in the end, is whether that is something the Republicans truly want. On the strength of the last two years, there's not a lot of reason to think that it is. On a policy forefront, they're the party of tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judges. Everything else is just a series of wedge issues to maintain their power, not a series of problems that affect all of us and need to be solved.
Indeed, Mitch McCONnell, who has resisted efforts to end the shutdown until the Democrats and T**** come to an agreement, now is eager to rush T****'s new proposal to a Senate vote even though the Democrats haven't agreed to it. That, to McCONnell, is the point. Let the Democrats stop it with a filibuster, and then point the finger of shutdown blame on them. Real compromises have to hurt both sides a little; the current Senate majority leader only wants them to hurt the other side.
So, yes, the congressional Democrats have an opening. But they have a Senate roadblock looming in its face. What do they do?
In truth, they have no choice. They need to protect their constituencies, and they need to protect themselves politically. They have to take the opening that T**** has given them, and make the most of it. They have to fight like hell against the political "wall" that McCONnell has built up over the past decade, to do what they can to break it down, end the shutdown, put federal workers back to work, and ensure the continuation of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.
What they can't do, and, thankfully, don't seem willing to do, is to make a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. As a former federal and state employee, I know what that means to those who are currently out of work and facing an uncertain financial future. I lived at times from paycheck to paycheck during those years, and I lack no ability to feel the pain that these employees, contractors, and families are feeling. One outcome of all of this, once and for all, must be to take shutdowns off the table once and for all, to end the nightmare of partisan blackmail. A law must be enacted to require automatic short-term continuing resolutions that at least ensure paychecks to those who have every right to expect them. Sadly, I think the enactment of that law will require a saner President, as well as a Congress more willing to pass laws for reasons other than self-interest.
But, in spite of the pain of those who depend upon federal employment for a living, and in spite of the even greater pain that immigrants and their families are also experiencing, the Democrats have no choice but to stand firm. My advice to them, with regard to T****'s latest offer: proceed with caution. See if he is serious about something less than a sea-to-sea wall. See if he is willing to accept the enactment of what was a clearly popular solution to America's immigration needs. See if he is willing, in the process, to help clean up the disgrace he's created at the Rio Grande.
If he is willing, then do business with him.
If he is not, and the T****-created crisis has to go on, then it must go on.
With a determination to aid the victims when it is finally over.
And with an equally strong determination to punish the perpetrators at the polls in 2020.
And, in every aspect of his life over the past two years of his misbegotten Administration, he has violated so many legal standards that his impeachment and subsequent prosecution as a private citizen should have been a foregone conclusion months ago. As Bill Maher observed recently, if T**** isn't impeached, where is the bar set for impeachment of an American President? If Bill Clinton can be impeached for the constitutional equivalent of jaywalking (and I make no excuses for his misdeeds), while Trump can threaten with apparent impunity to circumvent constitutional processes in order to get the border wall most of us oppose, is partisanship the only place at which to set it.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I find the idea of doing business with T**** to be as loathsome as the man himself. I find the thought of reaching any sort of "compromise" with him to be wholly repellent. And that does not even begin to touch on the fact that reaching a "deal" with T**** does not prevent him from subsequently redefining that "deal" on his own terms. As Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it months ago, negotiating with T**** is like negotiating with Jell-O.
In spite of all of this, and only because I think that T**** may have accidentally created a loophole for doing so the other day, I think that it may at long last be as possible as it is absolutely necessary to reach a deal with the devil regarding the crisis at our border with Mexico.
Not the crisis that he imagines, the one in which hordes of "bad hombres" in Mad Max-style vehicles are racing across the desert filled with smugglers, pimps, and terrorists.
I'm talking about the crisis he has single-handedly created.
I'm talking about the families that have been incarcerated in border camps under inhuman conditions that have led to the death of innocent children.
I'm talking about the other families that have been attacked or otherwise forced to return to the countries they have been forced to abandon out of fear for their lives
I'm talking about the vast majority of undocumented aliens within our borders, the vast majority of whom came in under entirely lawful circumstances, but who have been trapped here by their inability to navigate an immigration system starved not just for enforcement resources, but for the basic administrative resources needed to process and approve visa applications.
And, perhaps worst of all in some respects, I'm talking about the new wave of investigations designer to "determine" whether naturalized citizens, many of them pillars of their community, should truly have been naturalized--a kangaroo-court process in which even the smallest infraction can destroy lives that were built based on a good-faith belief in what we used to call the American Dream.
Then, of course, there's the crisis on top of that crisis--the now-three-week old partial shutdown of the federal government that has deprived 800,000-plus employees, contractors, and their families of any sense of economic security, and that threatens the still-fragile ten-year Obama economic recovery, already threatened by the Republicans' debt-busting tax bill from last year.
Let's call the shutdown exactly what it and all the ones before it are: blackmail. They should not even be legal. They violate every principle upon which this nation was founded. They are a form of political warfare engaged in by politicians who do not even recognize their political opponents as sharing a nation with them.
They are criminal in every sense of the word. And every law enforcement professional will tell you that to cave in to blackmail is simply to invite more of it, without end. I agree with that advice wholeheartedly.
So, why might I be willing to make an exception here. Is it solely because of the severity of the combined border-shutdown crisis?
No.
It's also because T****, whose tyranny is as inept as it is cruel, may have really put his foot in it the other day.
He made a speech from the White House in which he announced that, in an "effort" to end the shutdown, he would send a bill to Congress which provides for temporary extensions of already temporary protections for certain classes of endangered immigrants, in return for the funding he has requested to begin construction of a permanent wall across our border with Mexico.
The temporary nature of the extensions make them utterly worthless to the populations they would allegedly protect. But that's not important in this case. What is important is the fact that T**** took this opportunity to redefine the word "wall" in this context as follows:
This is not a 2,000 mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high priority locations.Emphasis added. And I added it because that is precisely the nature of the Democrats' objection in the first place. And T**** has, for all practical purposes, made it go away.
And so, there it is, Chuck, Nancy, and friends. You fought the battle against the sea-to-sea physical wall and won. You're no longer being blackmailed anymore. You can effectively declare victory.
And not only can you declare it, you can define it as well. So, how should you do that?\
By rejecting T****'s so-called concessions, and proposing an alternative that is more than fair. Instead of the fig leaf of making temporary protections slightly less temporary, why not do something as, shall we say, permanent as the now-redefined "wall"?
Why not take the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate by a more-than-two-thirds vote, and never got a vote in the House of Representatives, and make that the concession for getting the "wall"? After all, the only reason it never got a vote in the House is not because it wouldn't have passed. It would definitely have done so, and with a majority as bipartisan as the one in the Senate. The only reason that vote never took places is that the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, didn't want to lose a vote of no-confidence within his own badly divided caucus. Thus, thousands of jobs, and lives, were effectively destroyed because John Boehner wanted to keep his job.
But, now we have the perfect opportunity to rectify what went wrong in 2013, and give T**** what he wants to give to his most die-hard supporters. True, the devil would literally be in the details. The non-sea-to-sea nature of the "wall" would somehow have to be set in legislative stone. And provisions would have to be added to address the harms that have been done to immigrant populations during the past two years. But there's no reason that either of these steps can't be taken, especially if the larger goal is to gain a long-term resolution of the immigration issue in our nation.
The question, in the end, is whether that is something the Republicans truly want. On the strength of the last two years, there's not a lot of reason to think that it is. On a policy forefront, they're the party of tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judges. Everything else is just a series of wedge issues to maintain their power, not a series of problems that affect all of us and need to be solved.
Indeed, Mitch McCONnell, who has resisted efforts to end the shutdown until the Democrats and T**** come to an agreement, now is eager to rush T****'s new proposal to a Senate vote even though the Democrats haven't agreed to it. That, to McCONnell, is the point. Let the Democrats stop it with a filibuster, and then point the finger of shutdown blame on them. Real compromises have to hurt both sides a little; the current Senate majority leader only wants them to hurt the other side.
So, yes, the congressional Democrats have an opening. But they have a Senate roadblock looming in its face. What do they do?
In truth, they have no choice. They need to protect their constituencies, and they need to protect themselves politically. They have to take the opening that T**** has given them, and make the most of it. They have to fight like hell against the political "wall" that McCONnell has built up over the past decade, to do what they can to break it down, end the shutdown, put federal workers back to work, and ensure the continuation of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.
What they can't do, and, thankfully, don't seem willing to do, is to make a bad deal for the sake of making a deal. As a former federal and state employee, I know what that means to those who are currently out of work and facing an uncertain financial future. I lived at times from paycheck to paycheck during those years, and I lack no ability to feel the pain that these employees, contractors, and families are feeling. One outcome of all of this, once and for all, must be to take shutdowns off the table once and for all, to end the nightmare of partisan blackmail. A law must be enacted to require automatic short-term continuing resolutions that at least ensure paychecks to those who have every right to expect them. Sadly, I think the enactment of that law will require a saner President, as well as a Congress more willing to pass laws for reasons other than self-interest.
But, in spite of the pain of those who depend upon federal employment for a living, and in spite of the even greater pain that immigrants and their families are also experiencing, the Democrats have no choice but to stand firm. My advice to them, with regard to T****'s latest offer: proceed with caution. See if he is serious about something less than a sea-to-sea wall. See if he is willing to accept the enactment of what was a clearly popular solution to America's immigration needs. See if he is willing, in the process, to help clean up the disgrace he's created at the Rio Grande.
If he is willing, then do business with him.
If he is not, and the T****-created crisis has to go on, then it must go on.
With a determination to aid the victims when it is finally over.
And with an equally strong determination to punish the perpetrators at the polls in 2020.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Will 2019 Be Happy? It's Up To You
I'm in Maryland, on the east coast of the United States, so it's only a few hours before the start of 2019. Since this is generally a time for reflections, I'm going to reflect, while at the same time commented on several recent events.
I can't quite escape the feeling that I should be happier than I feel at the moment. After all, the country has just experienced a national election in which the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives by a wide margin, and made other gains in state and local elections. In addition, a large number of progressive ballot initiatives were passed as well. Even in the Senate, where the electoral map was heavily stacked against Democrats, the party's net loss of seats was a relatively small one.
All of this opens up the possibility of a full-scale investigation of D***** T**** and the shenanigans in which he, his family, and his appointees have engaged over the past two years. It opens up the possibility of making progress on progressive issues at the state, if not the national level. It suggests that the possibility of removing T**** from office in the next two years, either by impeachment, resignation, or defeat at the polls.
So why is my face long tonight as I contemplate the new year?
Because even though the Democrats made huge gains, that fact doesn't seem to be translating into a resurgence of democracy in America.
Let's start with the fact that, as of the moment, the federal government has been partially shut down by T****, in a last-ditch effort to get the federal government to fund his frequently-promised wall along the southern border. You know, the one for which Mexico was going to pay.
This is obviously an act of pure desperation by T****, who has nothing else going for him at this point. The stock market is in a slow-motion collapse, the budget deficit is blowing up, our allies are deserting us, and the legal walls are closing in on the Administration (especially on T**** himself). But it is also a naked attempt at political blackmail, one which Democrats have no choice but to reject if they are to have any credibility as a political force and any chance of keeping their supporters with them. There is no political case for the wall; were it otherwise, it would have started to become reality during the past two years of all-GOP control of Washington.
So what's the endgame? Is there an endgame?
If you rely on the MSM for answers to those questions, all you get is the who''s-up-who's down sports-style of reporting that the work-the-refs approach to the press by conservatives has produced. You would end up concluding that, sooner or later, someone will blink, and life will go on.
But there's another alternative. It's probably the alternative only a madman would pursue. On the other hand, remember: T****. If he's not a madman, who is?
That alternative is to use the powers granted by Congress to the executive branch to declare a state of national emergency, which in turn would give him the opportunity to transform himself from a would-be dictator to being an actual one. Frankly, I was not aware that this potential power existed, until I saw this Daily Kos piece. If you have not read it yet, please feel free to step away from my blog for a few minutes and read it. You will discover that, by constitutional means, we have effectively granted the executive branch the power to subvert our constitutional order.
Now that you've had a chance to read it and come back, do you have any doubt that we may be in a position where elections have no consequences for T****?
To say nothing of his party?
Look at what has been going on in Wisconsin and Michigan, where Republican legislatures are determined to make sure that elections replacing Republican governors have no consequences.
In the case of Michigan, look at what the Republican legislature has done to ensure that a minimum wage increase and a sick leave proposal that the voters wanted will not happen. That's right: they're deliberately picking the pockets of the people they are sworn to serve, so that they can line their own pockets with even more campaign contributions.
Now, let's leave the Midwest and go back to Washington, where, I'm sorry to say, it gets even worse. We find a Republican senator who is actually willing to use the loaded words "civil war" when it comes to stopping the newly-elected House Democratic majority from doing its duty to hold T**** accountable. Query: how many of his colleagues feel the same way? Will the investigations that are about to begin actually lead to shots being fired? We may find out shortly, because there will be investigations, whether Mike Lee likes it or not.
And finally, let's stay in Washington, and take a very short trip from Capitol Hill to Maryland Avenue, where we find the Supreme Court, and its newest Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who despite being the object of more than 80 complaints about his ethics, is essentially bullet-proof because the Court and its Justices apparently answer to no one when it comes to ethics. You can read all about this in painful detail here, while contemplating the fact that Kavanaugh will be on the Court for life, which, given his relative youth and barring some form of divine intervention, could very well be for a mighty long time. (For more background on the social cesspool that gave us Kavanaugh in the first place, take a look at this.)
So, here's where we are. No hope from the Supreme Court, or the Senate. Certainly no hope from a White House that is, to put it politely, a national embarrassment and a disgrace. No hope even where Democrats have taken governorships but still have to worry about state Republican legislators. If there's any hope at all, it rests, seemingly, solely on the shoulders of Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic members in the House.
Is it going to be enough?
I wish that I could give that question an unqualified "Yes." The history of the country itself gives me some reason to think that it will be. But nothing is guaranteed by our institutions.
The only guaranty that it will be enough--that we will get our democracy back, and continue to build upon the accomplishments of the past--is all of us. All of you.
We can only make this a Happy New Year if we become, in Barack Obama's words, the change we want to see. No one will save us but ourselves.
Stay alert. Keep in touch. Organize. Raise money. Vote. And never, ever, give in, despite the odds. It isn't about the odds. It's about how much you care.
And be assured, I will continue to do exactly that, here, and elsewhere.
Happy New Year.
I can't quite escape the feeling that I should be happier than I feel at the moment. After all, the country has just experienced a national election in which the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives by a wide margin, and made other gains in state and local elections. In addition, a large number of progressive ballot initiatives were passed as well. Even in the Senate, where the electoral map was heavily stacked against Democrats, the party's net loss of seats was a relatively small one.
All of this opens up the possibility of a full-scale investigation of D***** T**** and the shenanigans in which he, his family, and his appointees have engaged over the past two years. It opens up the possibility of making progress on progressive issues at the state, if not the national level. It suggests that the possibility of removing T**** from office in the next two years, either by impeachment, resignation, or defeat at the polls.
So why is my face long tonight as I contemplate the new year?
Because even though the Democrats made huge gains, that fact doesn't seem to be translating into a resurgence of democracy in America.
Let's start with the fact that, as of the moment, the federal government has been partially shut down by T****, in a last-ditch effort to get the federal government to fund his frequently-promised wall along the southern border. You know, the one for which Mexico was going to pay.
This is obviously an act of pure desperation by T****, who has nothing else going for him at this point. The stock market is in a slow-motion collapse, the budget deficit is blowing up, our allies are deserting us, and the legal walls are closing in on the Administration (especially on T**** himself). But it is also a naked attempt at political blackmail, one which Democrats have no choice but to reject if they are to have any credibility as a political force and any chance of keeping their supporters with them. There is no political case for the wall; were it otherwise, it would have started to become reality during the past two years of all-GOP control of Washington.
So what's the endgame? Is there an endgame?
If you rely on the MSM for answers to those questions, all you get is the who''s-up-who's down sports-style of reporting that the work-the-refs approach to the press by conservatives has produced. You would end up concluding that, sooner or later, someone will blink, and life will go on.
But there's another alternative. It's probably the alternative only a madman would pursue. On the other hand, remember: T****. If he's not a madman, who is?
That alternative is to use the powers granted by Congress to the executive branch to declare a state of national emergency, which in turn would give him the opportunity to transform himself from a would-be dictator to being an actual one. Frankly, I was not aware that this potential power existed, until I saw this Daily Kos piece. If you have not read it yet, please feel free to step away from my blog for a few minutes and read it. You will discover that, by constitutional means, we have effectively granted the executive branch the power to subvert our constitutional order.
Now that you've had a chance to read it and come back, do you have any doubt that we may be in a position where elections have no consequences for T****?
To say nothing of his party?
Look at what has been going on in Wisconsin and Michigan, where Republican legislatures are determined to make sure that elections replacing Republican governors have no consequences.
In the case of Michigan, look at what the Republican legislature has done to ensure that a minimum wage increase and a sick leave proposal that the voters wanted will not happen. That's right: they're deliberately picking the pockets of the people they are sworn to serve, so that they can line their own pockets with even more campaign contributions.
Now, let's leave the Midwest and go back to Washington, where, I'm sorry to say, it gets even worse. We find a Republican senator who is actually willing to use the loaded words "civil war" when it comes to stopping the newly-elected House Democratic majority from doing its duty to hold T**** accountable. Query: how many of his colleagues feel the same way? Will the investigations that are about to begin actually lead to shots being fired? We may find out shortly, because there will be investigations, whether Mike Lee likes it or not.
And finally, let's stay in Washington, and take a very short trip from Capitol Hill to Maryland Avenue, where we find the Supreme Court, and its newest Justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who despite being the object of more than 80 complaints about his ethics, is essentially bullet-proof because the Court and its Justices apparently answer to no one when it comes to ethics. You can read all about this in painful detail here, while contemplating the fact that Kavanaugh will be on the Court for life, which, given his relative youth and barring some form of divine intervention, could very well be for a mighty long time. (For more background on the social cesspool that gave us Kavanaugh in the first place, take a look at this.)
So, here's where we are. No hope from the Supreme Court, or the Senate. Certainly no hope from a White House that is, to put it politely, a national embarrassment and a disgrace. No hope even where Democrats have taken governorships but still have to worry about state Republican legislators. If there's any hope at all, it rests, seemingly, solely on the shoulders of Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic members in the House.
Is it going to be enough?
I wish that I could give that question an unqualified "Yes." The history of the country itself gives me some reason to think that it will be. But nothing is guaranteed by our institutions.
The only guaranty that it will be enough--that we will get our democracy back, and continue to build upon the accomplishments of the past--is all of us. All of you.
We can only make this a Happy New Year if we become, in Barack Obama's words, the change we want to see. No one will save us but ourselves.
Stay alert. Keep in touch. Organize. Raise money. Vote. And never, ever, give in, despite the odds. It isn't about the odds. It's about how much you care.
And be assured, I will continue to do exactly that, here, and elsewhere.
Happy New Year.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Can Federalism Be The Key To A Progressive Future?
Federalism. The concept that certain government powers belong to the national government, while certain others belong to state and local governments. It's a concept embedded in our Constitution, and it's also a concept at the heart of our national division of not just of opinion, but also of day-to-day reality. And, as a consequence, it's reflected in Washington right now in a particularly divisive way.
We have a House of Representatives that will, in just a few days, be controlled by the Democrats, because the majority of the people in this country, as election after election in this century has shown, identify either with the Democratic Party or the progressive ideals for which it has traditionally stood. On the other hand, we have a Senate that, for the foreseeable future (and I hope I'm wrong) will be controlled by Republicans because the minority of people in this country live in the majority of states, and consistently vote for Republicans despite the fact that Republicans have spent the past four decades on trickle-up-and-out policies that shift wealth from workers to investors and, ultimately, oversees (along with the workers' jobs). More on that later. Of course, we also have a President elected by a minority of the people because federalism, by way of the Electoral College and its allocation of electoral votes, allows the states to control who occupies the Oval Office.
And because the federal structure of our government is embedded in our Constitution, it's not going anywhere soon. Anytime.
Perhaps it shouldn't.
A key historical argument against it is the fact that, originally, its strongest proponents have been those who saw it as a convenient philosophical vehicle for transporting an inherently racist institution, slavery, into their own economic convenience without regard to its power to poison the lives of the enslaved and the larger character of the nation as a whole (think, for example, of those in the North who found it convenient to support slavery in the South through the Triangle Trade). Those advocates were successful, leaving us with a national curse that public and private institutions have slowly begun to unravel.
But that does not mean that federalism can't and doesn't have a valid purpose. Part of what has kept it alive over the centuries is the obvious fact that some issues, such as the prosecution of war and the regulation of trade "among the several States" is most easily and effectively done on a national scale, while others more dependent on an understanding of conditions on a smaller scale, such as police and education, are most effectively dealt with on a local scale. With that in mind, it may make sense for progressives to stop fighting or bemoaning the existence of federalism, but rather to start figuring out ways by which to make it work on behalf of the causes they care about.
Take economic development, for example.
Like it or not, government at all levels has been involved in the national, and in local, economic conditions. That has been even more true over the past century, as national government has been forced to deal with economic dislocations often caused by international events (i.e., the Great Depression), and state and local governments have likewise been forced to deal with changes in their communities and, relative to that, their tax bases (i.e., post-WWII suburbanization). Perhaps the most interesting feature about this trend, in fact, is the manner in which it has over time become one of the few truly bipartisan aspects of our politics, both pro and con. Thus, you have Republican governors offering Amazon taxpayer-funded "bribes" to add a new corporate headquarters within their boarders, but you also have Democrats decrying such "bribes (rightly, IMHO, as an Amazon member) as an unjustified form of corporate welfare.
Well, since government promotion of economic development is no longer a purely partisan issue, why not integrate it into our federal system? What if we did this promotion on a national scale, tethered to goals set at a national level, but with enough flexibility that states could, in fact, tailor it to their specific needs?
Take, for example, the concept of block grants, a concept beloved by conservatives as a way of funding social programs for states. What if we were to give each state a sum of money each year, with the specific sum for each state determined by its population, and with the stipulation that it had to be used to ensure a job for every able-bodied adult in the state--but with no other stipulations about how it was to be used? State and local governments could take these funds, and then tailor their use to local conditions. And they could be used to address unemployment caused by anything, whether historic poverty related to race, or rural poverty based on bigger structural changes in economics (such as the decline in extraction industries).
Don't like giving away taxpayer money? Then don't. Instead, create federal tax credits that can be used with the same flexibility as the block-grant proposal I just described. And again, tie those credits to federal oversight, to ensure full employment across the country. The point, ultimately, is that there are ways to take federalism and make it work for, rather than against, progressive goals.
I've been thinking about this subject for a while, and recently saw two New York Times articles that made me think that the time may now be ripe for making this approach a part of our political discussion.
This one, about the tendency of rural Kentucky voters to vote Republican despite their financial dependence on federal welfare programs, indirectly comes to the conclusion that this tendency is most logically explained by the fact that people in these communities would rather have jobs than welfare--a feeling that is doubtless universal. What I'm suggesting is a way that would directly address that desire, with the added benefit that local workers would be able through their votes to have some say in the types of jobs that are created.
And this one, about how to save small-town America, suggests from some of the suggestions about how to do it that people are ready for that type of approach. Think locally about solutions to poverty; build up mid-sized cities; create incentives for new industries to replace departed ones. All of these are ideas presented in this article, and all of them would be encouraged by what I'm proposing here.
I'm so convinced of the significance of what I'm proposing here (and no, not because I'm proposing it) that I'm willing to say that the presidential candidate who makes this central to his or her campaign will be the one who wins not only the nomination, but also the honor of being the person who will make us forget all about D****** T****. Any takers among the 20-plus hopefuls for that honor?
Maybe it'll happen if enough of us get behind us and push it. I know I'll be pushing hard, this year and next. I hope many of you will join me.
We have a House of Representatives that will, in just a few days, be controlled by the Democrats, because the majority of the people in this country, as election after election in this century has shown, identify either with the Democratic Party or the progressive ideals for which it has traditionally stood. On the other hand, we have a Senate that, for the foreseeable future (and I hope I'm wrong) will be controlled by Republicans because the minority of people in this country live in the majority of states, and consistently vote for Republicans despite the fact that Republicans have spent the past four decades on trickle-up-and-out policies that shift wealth from workers to investors and, ultimately, oversees (along with the workers' jobs). More on that later. Of course, we also have a President elected by a minority of the people because federalism, by way of the Electoral College and its allocation of electoral votes, allows the states to control who occupies the Oval Office.
And because the federal structure of our government is embedded in our Constitution, it's not going anywhere soon. Anytime.
Perhaps it shouldn't.
A key historical argument against it is the fact that, originally, its strongest proponents have been those who saw it as a convenient philosophical vehicle for transporting an inherently racist institution, slavery, into their own economic convenience without regard to its power to poison the lives of the enslaved and the larger character of the nation as a whole (think, for example, of those in the North who found it convenient to support slavery in the South through the Triangle Trade). Those advocates were successful, leaving us with a national curse that public and private institutions have slowly begun to unravel.
But that does not mean that federalism can't and doesn't have a valid purpose. Part of what has kept it alive over the centuries is the obvious fact that some issues, such as the prosecution of war and the regulation of trade "among the several States" is most easily and effectively done on a national scale, while others more dependent on an understanding of conditions on a smaller scale, such as police and education, are most effectively dealt with on a local scale. With that in mind, it may make sense for progressives to stop fighting or bemoaning the existence of federalism, but rather to start figuring out ways by which to make it work on behalf of the causes they care about.
Take economic development, for example.
Like it or not, government at all levels has been involved in the national, and in local, economic conditions. That has been even more true over the past century, as national government has been forced to deal with economic dislocations often caused by international events (i.e., the Great Depression), and state and local governments have likewise been forced to deal with changes in their communities and, relative to that, their tax bases (i.e., post-WWII suburbanization). Perhaps the most interesting feature about this trend, in fact, is the manner in which it has over time become one of the few truly bipartisan aspects of our politics, both pro and con. Thus, you have Republican governors offering Amazon taxpayer-funded "bribes" to add a new corporate headquarters within their boarders, but you also have Democrats decrying such "bribes (rightly, IMHO, as an Amazon member) as an unjustified form of corporate welfare.
Well, since government promotion of economic development is no longer a purely partisan issue, why not integrate it into our federal system? What if we did this promotion on a national scale, tethered to goals set at a national level, but with enough flexibility that states could, in fact, tailor it to their specific needs?
Take, for example, the concept of block grants, a concept beloved by conservatives as a way of funding social programs for states. What if we were to give each state a sum of money each year, with the specific sum for each state determined by its population, and with the stipulation that it had to be used to ensure a job for every able-bodied adult in the state--but with no other stipulations about how it was to be used? State and local governments could take these funds, and then tailor their use to local conditions. And they could be used to address unemployment caused by anything, whether historic poverty related to race, or rural poverty based on bigger structural changes in economics (such as the decline in extraction industries).
Don't like giving away taxpayer money? Then don't. Instead, create federal tax credits that can be used with the same flexibility as the block-grant proposal I just described. And again, tie those credits to federal oversight, to ensure full employment across the country. The point, ultimately, is that there are ways to take federalism and make it work for, rather than against, progressive goals.
I've been thinking about this subject for a while, and recently saw two New York Times articles that made me think that the time may now be ripe for making this approach a part of our political discussion.
This one, about the tendency of rural Kentucky voters to vote Republican despite their financial dependence on federal welfare programs, indirectly comes to the conclusion that this tendency is most logically explained by the fact that people in these communities would rather have jobs than welfare--a feeling that is doubtless universal. What I'm suggesting is a way that would directly address that desire, with the added benefit that local workers would be able through their votes to have some say in the types of jobs that are created.
And this one, about how to save small-town America, suggests from some of the suggestions about how to do it that people are ready for that type of approach. Think locally about solutions to poverty; build up mid-sized cities; create incentives for new industries to replace departed ones. All of these are ideas presented in this article, and all of them would be encouraged by what I'm proposing here.
I'm so convinced of the significance of what I'm proposing here (and no, not because I'm proposing it) that I'm willing to say that the presidential candidate who makes this central to his or her campaign will be the one who wins not only the nomination, but also the honor of being the person who will make us forget all about D****** T****. Any takers among the 20-plus hopefuls for that honor?
Maybe it'll happen if enough of us get behind us and push it. I know I'll be pushing hard, this year and next. I hope many of you will join me.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
George Herbert Walker Bush, And The Death Of WASP Culture
It's been several weeks since the death of George H.W. Bush, and quite a bit has happened since then, politically speaking. I always get behind in my blogging around this time of year, and 2018 has been no exception. I'll catch up with recent events in a few days, or at least do my best to do so. But it's impossible for me to allow Bush's death and funeral, and the media frenzy surrounding both events, without using some of the bandwidth available to me to make a few observations.
Bush was a one-term president, which might surprise some of you who did not live through his presidency as I did. If your view of him was or has been formed at least largely by the lionization of him by the MSM earlier this month, you would have thought that he was another FDR, someone who would have been elected to four terms had the Constitution permitted it. The truth of the matter is that the administration of the 41st President, even from the most non-partisan of perspectives, a decidedly mixed bag, one that, in the end, was undone at the polls in no small part because of a weak economy, and a violation of a campaign promise not to raise taxes.
I noticed that one of the wire services pointed that fact--and fact it is, as Yoda might say--in announcing the news of his death on Twitter. The tweet was immediately pounced upon by the usual right-wing media hookers looking for attention, and denounced by them as an insult to a deceased leader and World War II veteran. As a consequence, the tweet was subsequently followed up by a "correction." Well done, Michelle Malkin and your cohorts in libel; let's see you show the same posthumous respect to another one-term president and veteran, Jimmy Carter, when he passes away. I for one am not holding my breath.
Fortunately, although the MSM is instantly and complete cowed by professional media-hunters like Malkin who love to "work the refs" to promote their lies, the Internet proved to provide greater diversity in assessments of Bush and his public life. You can, for example, find a relatively complimentary piece here, one that also takes a number of Bush's critics to task for overlooking his accomplishments, including his volunteering to be a Navy pilot and his facilitation of a peaceful resolution to the Cold War. As for the critics, you can certainly find them as well; this piece, and this one as well, do a fairly comprehensive job of cataloging Bush's various sins, although I'm shocked that neither of them mentions Bush's pioneering work in placing a sexual harasser, Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court for life, paving the way for Brett Kavanaugh to join him.
What made it perhaps somewhat easier for MSM outlets to lavish praise on Bush was his stature as one of the last Rockefeller Republicans on the national stage, someone whose devotion to Wall Street and gunboat diplomacy was tempered by a desire to work collectively with those on the other side of the ideological fence. That desire is perhaps best reflected in the accomplishments for which I, as a card-carrying progressive Democrat, believe that he legitimately deserves genuine praise for achieving: the budget deal that, in conjunction with the one subsequently passed by the Clinton Administration, paved the way for the prosperity of the 1990s (and, of course, required him to break his earlier no-new-taxes pledge), and the prosecution of Gulf War I against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Unlike the subsequent Gulf War prosecuted by Bush's son, GWI was based on principles of international law, with the consent and cooperation of the international community and the full authorization of Congress. Bush's handling of GWI reflected a commitment to the pillars of the post-WWII order that subsequently characterized his dealings with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations in ending the Cold War.
No doubt those accomplishments, as well as perhaps others, were based on the fact that Bush built his entire political career on connections, building a business and political Rolodex one card at a time that took him all the way up the Washington ladder and earned him the nickname "Mr. Resume." But a career built on connections can be something of a double-edged sword, depending on the nature of the connections themselves. Two names can be pulled out of the Bush Rolodex to illustrate that point: Roger Ailes, and Shafiq bin Laden. The former helped Bush build a electoral strategy for the 1988 presidential election that was built on racism and challenges to the patriotism and mental competency of his opponent, Michael Dukakis. The latter belongs to the family that used its access to American (gained through the Bush family) to savagely, tragically attack the United States on September 11, 2001, and change the history and culture of this country for the worse, perhaps forever.
I think it's precisely this mixed bag of his connections that informs, perhaps even dictated (in hindsight) the mixed bag that is George Bush's presidential legacy. And I think that the bag is mixed in the first instance because Bush, lacking a true ideological compass, just grabbed for whatever connections he could get as he moved up the political ladder. It didn't matter whether those connections were on the left or the right, whether they were friend or foe to this country, or whether they even genuinely liked Bush as much as he thought they like him. All that mattered was that they could help him "move up." And so, when he finally got to the top, he was beholden to too many people with too many conflicting interests to have a coherent presidency with a consistent focus and clear priorities. You can find a more extensive discussion of this here.
So, then, why the orgy of MSM worship on the occasion of his death?
I don't think that it was really all about Bush, or his presidency, or his fondness for handwritten notes (which, ironically, underscores the "connections" dimension of his career). I think that, in an age and a current presidency defined by racial animosity and the rise of the poor white class as the focus of our political debate, it was really a kind of media Viking funeral for the elite WASP culture into which Bush was born, and which for decades served in a number of ways to mediate the differences among the various demographic groups that make up America's famously multicultural mosaic. That culture is largely gone, its survivors in political retreat, and nothing has emerged to replace it as a mediating force. If anything, the Internet has emerged to further fracture an already fractured nation, while simultaneously giving it millions of "channels" by which to express its increasingly divided character.
But the elite WASP culture, however much it may have mitigated the influence of racism in America, also institutionalized it in order to preserve its credibility with poorer white Christians. That institutionalized racism harmed generations of people of color, and denied the country as a whole the benefit of the dreams and the talents these people possessed. And, even if WASPs themselves are in retreat as a political force, the racism (and, for that matter, sexism) they institutionalized still remains a sore subject in our national debate.
This is why the aforementioned orgy of worship is, with all due respect to Bush's family, friends, and other supporters, sadly and seriously misplaced. True, Bush was a former president; he deserves a certain level of respect, and his passing is unquestionably a major news story. But it is also an entirely appropriate to use the occasion of his death to take stock of his impact on the nation and its people. The power of the presidency is such that we as a people need to properly take stock of a president's actions and inactions, for better and for worse. And the natural and appropriate grief that an individual's death inspires should neither influence nor deter that assessment process. This is one of the many sacrifices a president's family makes for the sake of their family member's service. We owe them a debate carried on with respect. But we owe all of us, for the sake of our democracy, an otherwise honest debate.
As one of the pieces linked above puts it:
Bush was a one-term president, which might surprise some of you who did not live through his presidency as I did. If your view of him was or has been formed at least largely by the lionization of him by the MSM earlier this month, you would have thought that he was another FDR, someone who would have been elected to four terms had the Constitution permitted it. The truth of the matter is that the administration of the 41st President, even from the most non-partisan of perspectives, a decidedly mixed bag, one that, in the end, was undone at the polls in no small part because of a weak economy, and a violation of a campaign promise not to raise taxes.
I noticed that one of the wire services pointed that fact--and fact it is, as Yoda might say--in announcing the news of his death on Twitter. The tweet was immediately pounced upon by the usual right-wing media hookers looking for attention, and denounced by them as an insult to a deceased leader and World War II veteran. As a consequence, the tweet was subsequently followed up by a "correction." Well done, Michelle Malkin and your cohorts in libel; let's see you show the same posthumous respect to another one-term president and veteran, Jimmy Carter, when he passes away. I for one am not holding my breath.
Fortunately, although the MSM is instantly and complete cowed by professional media-hunters like Malkin who love to "work the refs" to promote their lies, the Internet proved to provide greater diversity in assessments of Bush and his public life. You can, for example, find a relatively complimentary piece here, one that also takes a number of Bush's critics to task for overlooking his accomplishments, including his volunteering to be a Navy pilot and his facilitation of a peaceful resolution to the Cold War. As for the critics, you can certainly find them as well; this piece, and this one as well, do a fairly comprehensive job of cataloging Bush's various sins, although I'm shocked that neither of them mentions Bush's pioneering work in placing a sexual harasser, Clarence Thomas, on the Supreme Court for life, paving the way for Brett Kavanaugh to join him.
What made it perhaps somewhat easier for MSM outlets to lavish praise on Bush was his stature as one of the last Rockefeller Republicans on the national stage, someone whose devotion to Wall Street and gunboat diplomacy was tempered by a desire to work collectively with those on the other side of the ideological fence. That desire is perhaps best reflected in the accomplishments for which I, as a card-carrying progressive Democrat, believe that he legitimately deserves genuine praise for achieving: the budget deal that, in conjunction with the one subsequently passed by the Clinton Administration, paved the way for the prosperity of the 1990s (and, of course, required him to break his earlier no-new-taxes pledge), and the prosecution of Gulf War I against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Unlike the subsequent Gulf War prosecuted by Bush's son, GWI was based on principles of international law, with the consent and cooperation of the international community and the full authorization of Congress. Bush's handling of GWI reflected a commitment to the pillars of the post-WWII order that subsequently characterized his dealings with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations in ending the Cold War.
No doubt those accomplishments, as well as perhaps others, were based on the fact that Bush built his entire political career on connections, building a business and political Rolodex one card at a time that took him all the way up the Washington ladder and earned him the nickname "Mr. Resume." But a career built on connections can be something of a double-edged sword, depending on the nature of the connections themselves. Two names can be pulled out of the Bush Rolodex to illustrate that point: Roger Ailes, and Shafiq bin Laden. The former helped Bush build a electoral strategy for the 1988 presidential election that was built on racism and challenges to the patriotism and mental competency of his opponent, Michael Dukakis. The latter belongs to the family that used its access to American (gained through the Bush family) to savagely, tragically attack the United States on September 11, 2001, and change the history and culture of this country for the worse, perhaps forever.
I think it's precisely this mixed bag of his connections that informs, perhaps even dictated (in hindsight) the mixed bag that is George Bush's presidential legacy. And I think that the bag is mixed in the first instance because Bush, lacking a true ideological compass, just grabbed for whatever connections he could get as he moved up the political ladder. It didn't matter whether those connections were on the left or the right, whether they were friend or foe to this country, or whether they even genuinely liked Bush as much as he thought they like him. All that mattered was that they could help him "move up." And so, when he finally got to the top, he was beholden to too many people with too many conflicting interests to have a coherent presidency with a consistent focus and clear priorities. You can find a more extensive discussion of this here.
So, then, why the orgy of MSM worship on the occasion of his death?
I don't think that it was really all about Bush, or his presidency, or his fondness for handwritten notes (which, ironically, underscores the "connections" dimension of his career). I think that, in an age and a current presidency defined by racial animosity and the rise of the poor white class as the focus of our political debate, it was really a kind of media Viking funeral for the elite WASP culture into which Bush was born, and which for decades served in a number of ways to mediate the differences among the various demographic groups that make up America's famously multicultural mosaic. That culture is largely gone, its survivors in political retreat, and nothing has emerged to replace it as a mediating force. If anything, the Internet has emerged to further fracture an already fractured nation, while simultaneously giving it millions of "channels" by which to express its increasingly divided character.
But the elite WASP culture, however much it may have mitigated the influence of racism in America, also institutionalized it in order to preserve its credibility with poorer white Christians. That institutionalized racism harmed generations of people of color, and denied the country as a whole the benefit of the dreams and the talents these people possessed. And, even if WASPs themselves are in retreat as a political force, the racism (and, for that matter, sexism) they institutionalized still remains a sore subject in our national debate.
This is why the aforementioned orgy of worship is, with all due respect to Bush's family, friends, and other supporters, sadly and seriously misplaced. True, Bush was a former president; he deserves a certain level of respect, and his passing is unquestionably a major news story. But it is also an entirely appropriate to use the occasion of his death to take stock of his impact on the nation and its people. The power of the presidency is such that we as a people need to properly take stock of a president's actions and inactions, for better and for worse. And the natural and appropriate grief that an individual's death inspires should neither influence nor deter that assessment process. This is one of the many sacrifices a president's family makes for the sake of their family member's service. We owe them a debate carried on with respect. But we owe all of us, for the sake of our democracy, an otherwise honest debate.
As one of the pieces linked above puts it:
Rest in peace, Mr. President. Thank you for your service, and for your family's sacrifices. And rest assured that the rest of us will continue to respect both of those things, no matter how much we may disagree with each other. And we will continue to build a stronger, safer, more prosperous and peaceful nation on your legacy.A president lies in state, as Bush is to do beginning today, not because he is kind to his family or has delighted those closest to him with his thank-you notes and a patrician manner, though those stories are important for historians to gather. A president lies in state simply because he was president; because he held power over the fates of hundreds of millions of citizens, and the direction of the world.How he used that power, or failed to use it, must be reckoned with by any who seek to fully understand his legacy.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Fallen Heroes, Lasting Work
Deaths of celebrities, it is said, come in threes. That was certainly the case this past month for me, as three famous people who made an impact in my life, as well as the lives of others, passed away. Not prematurely, thankfully. All of them lived very full lives and left behind legacies that, although complicated in certain ways, will have a lasting positive impact on many people, especially in the arts.
I'll begin my discussion of those legacies with the member of the group who, for me, has perhaps the most complicated legacy: Stan Lee, the co-creator of the Marvel comic-book universe. The complicated part is, in fact, summed up in that word "co-creator."
Lee was a tremendous story-teller and promoter, who worked for many years in the comics business when comic books were considered a medium strictly for kids, and one no self-respecting adult would confess to having as a source of pride, let alone as a source of employment. In fact, Lee admitted that there was a time when he was ashamed of the industry that ultimately made him both rich and famous. Bur those riches and fame began to accumulate in the 1960s, a time when Lee sensed (correctly) that cultural boundaries were shifting, especially the ones that defined "high" and "low" culture. He felt that there might be room in the comics for stories that dealt with topical issues and with the struggles of heroes who, while having super powers thrust upon them in a variety of ways, were still very human, with very human flaws and disappointments.
And so those superheroes became, over the course of the '60s and the decades that followed, household names to millions of comic-book readers, and, ultimately, mass-cultural phenomena when the technology of film making made it possible to show the adventures of these heroes in films and on TV. And Lee's talent for story-telling made all of that possible. As well as his talent for promotion. He was not just Stan Lee, editor and writer. He was Stan Lee of "Stan's Soapbox" in every Marvel book, using the space to promote current issues--and I'm not just talking about the ones with superheroes. He was willing to jump into politics, which helped him to expand the Marvel market from grade schools to college campuses and beyond. This is without a doubt the best-known, and best-written example, and one cited frequently in the many obituaries of Lee.
He also used his Soapbox to promote "the Bullpen," the small army of creative talent whose contributions to Marvel were no less memorable than Lee's. This was especially true of the artists, who created the "look" that defined a highly visual medium and continues to do so down to the present. And this, sadly, is where the legacy becomes complicated. As Lee became more of a celebrity and, in the process, more of an executive, he became less of a colleague and more of a boss, one who was not there for his creative team when some of its members badly needed him. This was most egregiously the case with Jack "King" Kirby, the artist who did more to define the Marvel "look" than anyone else. When Kirby's heirs attempted to claim the copyright (and related royalties) to much of Kirby's work for Marvel, Lee supported Marvel's assertions that Kirby was an "employee" of Marvel and therefore didn't own the rights to his art. He did this despite an earlier statement in a deposition to the opposite effect.
Ironically, then, Lee, like many of his co-creations, was a flawed hero, one who, in the case of Kirby and by extension other Marvel artists, through his co-creators under the proverbial bus at a point when they could have used his help in a significant way. Does it make his live not worth celebrating? Frankly, I'm not in a position to say that. If I do, I'm effectively denying not only the value of his writing, but the value of the art by the artists he injured as well. Together, they created books that helped children like me, children who had trouble fitting in to the world around them, feel that, one day, the world might be a place in which "fitting in" was possible. They gave me the patience, and the confidence, that one did not have to be "like everyone else" in order to matter. Today, no matter how badly the Lee-Kirby relationship ended, I, along with millions of others, have the two of them to thank for that.
Less complicated, perhaps, are the legacies of Douglas Rain and William Goldman. Rain had established a solid career as a Shakespearean actor in Canada when Stanley Kubrick made a last-minute decision to cast him in the rule of HAL, the computer that wasn't programmed to keep a secret and then was given one to keep, leading him quite logically to try killing off all of the astronauts on the spaceship he was designed to operate. While he may have been a last-minute choice, he was an absolutely inspired one. Rain managed to combine the tonal neutrality one would expect from a machine with the quiet intensity of an entity experiencing intense conflict. Even lines as simple as "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" were charged with a sinister effect that was as effortless as it was effective. Rain's accomplishment has informed my efforts to develop a career in acting, by reminding me that acting is an art that must seem effortless to work, and that, when it does, there truly are no small parts.
As for Goldman, his work as a screenwriter and as a novelist speaks for itself. Alas, when it came to the stage, he did not enjoy the same level of success he attained in those other arenas. He wrote two shows for Broadway with his brother, James, who would go on to write the libretto for the Stephen Sondheim musical "Follies," and neither of those shows was, to put it mildly, a hit. But Goldman found Broadway success in a very different way, by writing "The Season," a show-by-show analysis of the 1967-68 season on the Great White Way that used each show to analyze a different aspect of American theater. Despite being 50 years old this year, "The Season" does not feel dated in the least; if anything, Goldman was especially prescient in foreseeing (in the last chapter, "What Kind Of Day Has It Been?") the demise of the impresario model of producing in favor of corporate/not-for-profit producing. Thus, from Goldman's experience, I learned the value of mining one's failures in order to find a different kind of success.
I miss all three men very much, especially Lee and Rain, whom I will now never meet. I got to see Goldman speak in my student days, during which he talked about his experiences at Oberlin (my alma mater as well), and we had a very brief exchange as a result. I'm grateful for that memory. But I'm even more grateful for the work all three men left behind, and the value that work will continue to have long after I'm gone. I would be thrilled if anything I managed to do before I die managed to be a fraction as valuable as what Lee, Rain, and Goldman accomplished.
But I would be even more thrilled if we as a nation can get past the current wretched moment, and build a world worthy of what they accomplished.
I'll begin my discussion of those legacies with the member of the group who, for me, has perhaps the most complicated legacy: Stan Lee, the co-creator of the Marvel comic-book universe. The complicated part is, in fact, summed up in that word "co-creator."
Lee was a tremendous story-teller and promoter, who worked for many years in the comics business when comic books were considered a medium strictly for kids, and one no self-respecting adult would confess to having as a source of pride, let alone as a source of employment. In fact, Lee admitted that there was a time when he was ashamed of the industry that ultimately made him both rich and famous. Bur those riches and fame began to accumulate in the 1960s, a time when Lee sensed (correctly) that cultural boundaries were shifting, especially the ones that defined "high" and "low" culture. He felt that there might be room in the comics for stories that dealt with topical issues and with the struggles of heroes who, while having super powers thrust upon them in a variety of ways, were still very human, with very human flaws and disappointments.
And so those superheroes became, over the course of the '60s and the decades that followed, household names to millions of comic-book readers, and, ultimately, mass-cultural phenomena when the technology of film making made it possible to show the adventures of these heroes in films and on TV. And Lee's talent for story-telling made all of that possible. As well as his talent for promotion. He was not just Stan Lee, editor and writer. He was Stan Lee of "Stan's Soapbox" in every Marvel book, using the space to promote current issues--and I'm not just talking about the ones with superheroes. He was willing to jump into politics, which helped him to expand the Marvel market from grade schools to college campuses and beyond. This is without a doubt the best-known, and best-written example, and one cited frequently in the many obituaries of Lee.
He also used his Soapbox to promote "the Bullpen," the small army of creative talent whose contributions to Marvel were no less memorable than Lee's. This was especially true of the artists, who created the "look" that defined a highly visual medium and continues to do so down to the present. And this, sadly, is where the legacy becomes complicated. As Lee became more of a celebrity and, in the process, more of an executive, he became less of a colleague and more of a boss, one who was not there for his creative team when some of its members badly needed him. This was most egregiously the case with Jack "King" Kirby, the artist who did more to define the Marvel "look" than anyone else. When Kirby's heirs attempted to claim the copyright (and related royalties) to much of Kirby's work for Marvel, Lee supported Marvel's assertions that Kirby was an "employee" of Marvel and therefore didn't own the rights to his art. He did this despite an earlier statement in a deposition to the opposite effect.
Ironically, then, Lee, like many of his co-creations, was a flawed hero, one who, in the case of Kirby and by extension other Marvel artists, through his co-creators under the proverbial bus at a point when they could have used his help in a significant way. Does it make his live not worth celebrating? Frankly, I'm not in a position to say that. If I do, I'm effectively denying not only the value of his writing, but the value of the art by the artists he injured as well. Together, they created books that helped children like me, children who had trouble fitting in to the world around them, feel that, one day, the world might be a place in which "fitting in" was possible. They gave me the patience, and the confidence, that one did not have to be "like everyone else" in order to matter. Today, no matter how badly the Lee-Kirby relationship ended, I, along with millions of others, have the two of them to thank for that.
Less complicated, perhaps, are the legacies of Douglas Rain and William Goldman. Rain had established a solid career as a Shakespearean actor in Canada when Stanley Kubrick made a last-minute decision to cast him in the rule of HAL, the computer that wasn't programmed to keep a secret and then was given one to keep, leading him quite logically to try killing off all of the astronauts on the spaceship he was designed to operate. While he may have been a last-minute choice, he was an absolutely inspired one. Rain managed to combine the tonal neutrality one would expect from a machine with the quiet intensity of an entity experiencing intense conflict. Even lines as simple as "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" were charged with a sinister effect that was as effortless as it was effective. Rain's accomplishment has informed my efforts to develop a career in acting, by reminding me that acting is an art that must seem effortless to work, and that, when it does, there truly are no small parts.
As for Goldman, his work as a screenwriter and as a novelist speaks for itself. Alas, when it came to the stage, he did not enjoy the same level of success he attained in those other arenas. He wrote two shows for Broadway with his brother, James, who would go on to write the libretto for the Stephen Sondheim musical "Follies," and neither of those shows was, to put it mildly, a hit. But Goldman found Broadway success in a very different way, by writing "The Season," a show-by-show analysis of the 1967-68 season on the Great White Way that used each show to analyze a different aspect of American theater. Despite being 50 years old this year, "The Season" does not feel dated in the least; if anything, Goldman was especially prescient in foreseeing (in the last chapter, "What Kind Of Day Has It Been?") the demise of the impresario model of producing in favor of corporate/not-for-profit producing. Thus, from Goldman's experience, I learned the value of mining one's failures in order to find a different kind of success.
I miss all three men very much, especially Lee and Rain, whom I will now never meet. I got to see Goldman speak in my student days, during which he talked about his experiences at Oberlin (my alma mater as well), and we had a very brief exchange as a result. I'm grateful for that memory. But I'm even more grateful for the work all three men left behind, and the value that work will continue to have long after I'm gone. I would be thrilled if anything I managed to do before I die managed to be a fraction as valuable as what Lee, Rain, and Goldman accomplished.
But I would be even more thrilled if we as a nation can get past the current wretched moment, and build a world worthy of what they accomplished.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
It's Time For Democrats To Be Democrats; Or, More Unpacking Of The Midterms
I'm coming back to the midterms for this week's post, simply because there's a lot to unpack from the results, as well as the fact that we're still in the process of unpacking them.
I want to start with the bad Senate news for Democrats: specifically, the losses in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. As things stand at the moment, the next Senate will have at least 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats. The fact that it will be under Republican control in any case can be largely laid at the feet of the three incumbent Democrats who lost their seats: Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill. McCaskill made a post-election appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program, in which she laid the blame for her defeat, and that of other Democrats, on the increasingly popular view that expertise (legislative, in her case) is on the decline as a quality people look for in deciding how to vote.
I don't disagree with her on that point entirely. After all, a declining respect for the value of experience plays a large role in getting self-interested imbeciles like T**** in office, where they don't belong, but where their "outsider" status allows them to "shake things up" (usually, for the worse). But I don't think the voters of Missouri "fired" her because she was inexperienced. Rather, they did so because they tried to pretend that they wouldn't be Democrats if they were elected. This was most notoriously tried by Heitkamp, who boasted in ads about how frequently she voted with T****, before she decided to roll the dice and bring out Resistance voters by voting against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. But McCaskill wasn't much better; in a dead heat in the polls, unlike Heitkamp, she decided to run a series of commercials in which she proudly boasted that she wasn't one of those "crazy Democrats." Presumable, this meant that she wouldn't stand for the things that Democrats now routinely stand for, despite the fact that those "things" poll very well. Donnelly's campaigning was basically the same.
I can understand why, in purple-to-red states, moderating one's tone matters. But it's possible to moderate your tone without moderating your substance. If you do that as well, you end up with a political universe in which you have, for all practical purposes, two Republican Parties (as the late David Brinkley once pointed out). Or, to use Harry Truman's formulation of this approach, given a difference between a Republican and a Republican, people will pick the Republican every time--by which he meant the real Republican, not the ashamed-to-be-a-Democrat.
Of course, at this point, this is little more than 20-20 hindsight for Democrats in Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. But it is food for thought for the next election, which will be upon us sooner than you think. Moderation as a political philosophy may be the media's favorite flavor of politics, even when they can't tell us what it tastes like. But there's a lot to suggest in last week's results that it may not be a flavor that people want to buy, in any case. After all, in Texas, Beto O'Rourke created a Senate race that none of the "experts" thought could possibly exist, and he did it in part by not shying away from progressive policy stances. On the other hand, in Tennessee, Phil Breseden ran a more typical, Blue Dog, all-things-to-all-people campaign--and, despite being a popular former Governor, spectacularly lost to a bat-sh*t crazy Republican candidate who will help push the Senate event further to the right.
My point: Maybe it's OK for Democrats to be Democrats going forward from here. The key is to do what O'Rourke (no known relation, BTW) did in Texas to come within 3 percentage points of unseating Cruz, the Republican even other Republicans love to hate. Go out to the people. Get to know their concerns. And explain what you have in your policy bag to help them. Our bag has better ideas than the other sides' has. Trust that. And go help others to do the same.
Maybe it helps--or should help--that people are gradually coming around to our ideas. On guns, for example. And, even in California, the birthplace of the so-called "tax revolt," a referendum to repeal a new gas tax to fund infrastructure projects failed by ten percentage points.
Maybe the fact that they're coming around to our ideas is the reason why the only thing the Republican Party now stands for is dark money, gerrymandering, and straight-up voter suppression. As of this writing, all three of those things have carried them across the finish line in the gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia. Will they continue to do so in 2020?
As always, that's up to you. Keep doing what you did this time. Encourage others to do the same. And, as Barack Obama, a real President suggested, be the change you want to see.
I want to start with the bad Senate news for Democrats: specifically, the losses in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. As things stand at the moment, the next Senate will have at least 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats. The fact that it will be under Republican control in any case can be largely laid at the feet of the three incumbent Democrats who lost their seats: Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Claire McCaskill. McCaskill made a post-election appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program, in which she laid the blame for her defeat, and that of other Democrats, on the increasingly popular view that expertise (legislative, in her case) is on the decline as a quality people look for in deciding how to vote.
I don't disagree with her on that point entirely. After all, a declining respect for the value of experience plays a large role in getting self-interested imbeciles like T**** in office, where they don't belong, but where their "outsider" status allows them to "shake things up" (usually, for the worse). But I don't think the voters of Missouri "fired" her because she was inexperienced. Rather, they did so because they tried to pretend that they wouldn't be Democrats if they were elected. This was most notoriously tried by Heitkamp, who boasted in ads about how frequently she voted with T****, before she decided to roll the dice and bring out Resistance voters by voting against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. But McCaskill wasn't much better; in a dead heat in the polls, unlike Heitkamp, she decided to run a series of commercials in which she proudly boasted that she wasn't one of those "crazy Democrats." Presumable, this meant that she wouldn't stand for the things that Democrats now routinely stand for, despite the fact that those "things" poll very well. Donnelly's campaigning was basically the same.
I can understand why, in purple-to-red states, moderating one's tone matters. But it's possible to moderate your tone without moderating your substance. If you do that as well, you end up with a political universe in which you have, for all practical purposes, two Republican Parties (as the late David Brinkley once pointed out). Or, to use Harry Truman's formulation of this approach, given a difference between a Republican and a Republican, people will pick the Republican every time--by which he meant the real Republican, not the ashamed-to-be-a-Democrat.
Of course, at this point, this is little more than 20-20 hindsight for Democrats in Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. But it is food for thought for the next election, which will be upon us sooner than you think. Moderation as a political philosophy may be the media's favorite flavor of politics, even when they can't tell us what it tastes like. But there's a lot to suggest in last week's results that it may not be a flavor that people want to buy, in any case. After all, in Texas, Beto O'Rourke created a Senate race that none of the "experts" thought could possibly exist, and he did it in part by not shying away from progressive policy stances. On the other hand, in Tennessee, Phil Breseden ran a more typical, Blue Dog, all-things-to-all-people campaign--and, despite being a popular former Governor, spectacularly lost to a bat-sh*t crazy Republican candidate who will help push the Senate event further to the right.
My point: Maybe it's OK for Democrats to be Democrats going forward from here. The key is to do what O'Rourke (no known relation, BTW) did in Texas to come within 3 percentage points of unseating Cruz, the Republican even other Republicans love to hate. Go out to the people. Get to know their concerns. And explain what you have in your policy bag to help them. Our bag has better ideas than the other sides' has. Trust that. And go help others to do the same.
Maybe it helps--or should help--that people are gradually coming around to our ideas. On guns, for example. And, even in California, the birthplace of the so-called "tax revolt," a referendum to repeal a new gas tax to fund infrastructure projects failed by ten percentage points.
Maybe the fact that they're coming around to our ideas is the reason why the only thing the Republican Party now stands for is dark money, gerrymandering, and straight-up voter suppression. As of this writing, all three of those things have carried them across the finish line in the gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia. Will they continue to do so in 2020?
As always, that's up to you. Keep doing what you did this time. Encourage others to do the same. And, as Barack Obama, a real President suggested, be the change you want to see.
Monday, November 12, 2018
Light In The T**** Darkness
On Tuesday night of last week, I slept more soundly than I have slept in the past two years.
That's not an exaggeration. Two years of the T**** nightmare has put more stress on me, my family, our business, and just about everyone we know than anything else that we can remember. The knowledge that there will be at least some relief from that stress can't possibly be understated.
I had hoped, as I had in the 2016 election, for a Democratic "blowout," by which I specifically mean not the type of "blowout" we had in that election, where the Democrats were completely blown out of power. Truthfully, I would not describe this election as a "blowout" for either side. As of the time I'm writing this, it appears that the Republican hold on the Senate may grow at least a little bit. The majority of states will still be under GOP control, to varying degrees (including, sadly, here in Maryland, where an amazing number of voters decided that mediocrity in the Governor's Mansion was just fine with them). And, at least for the short term, T**** himself isn't going anywhere.
But, if you want a gauge by which to measure how much Tuesday's results, as well as the results that continue to trickle in from several states, have disrupted the D.C. status quo, T****'s behavior is an excellent one to use.
He fired his Attorney General, and replaced him with a loyalist of dubious constitutional standing, one he feels will protect him from Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian influence in his election. He has publicly berated members of the media for daring to criticize him, suggesting that doing so is somehow unpatriotic, and even going so far as to revoke the press credentials of CNN's White House correspondent (something I don't recall being done even by Richard Nixon). He has openly challenged the legitimacy of close elections in which votes are still being counted (and, in the case yet again of Florida, recounted), even to the point of suggesting that the counting should be frozen in favor of Republican candidates. This latter suggestion is an unbelievable insult to men and women serving overseas, who are allowed an extra ten days to have their ballots received and counted.
And, in perhaps the ultimate insult to those men and women from a Commander-in-Chief, he failed to make a public appearance at a Paris military cemetery to commemorate the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I. His excuse? It was raining. Lightly. All of the other heads of state who had come for the ceremony somehow managed to suck it up and show up. The only exception was the man more worried about his combover than about those who sacrificed to make his abominable Presidency possible.
As someone who lost an uncle in World War II, and with three other relatives who served in uniform (my father, my father-in-law, and my cousin), I have no words for this. The public insult, the dereliction of duty, the unfathomable narcissism of this, can't truly be captured in any words. And yet, it gets even worse: Vladimir Putin was there, and for their public greeting of each other, T****'s face lit up as though he was a little boy on Christmas morning. One is force to wonder whether T**** missed the cemetery ceremony to huddle with his Russian master and get fresh instructions.
All of this only magnifies my sense of relief that Tuesday's results ensure a House of Representatives that will, without any doubt, serve as a check not only on T****'s behavior, but also the actions of Cabinet officials and departments, and other agencies under the executive branch's control. I have noticed that there has already been some degree of debate about whether or not the new House should focus on investigation or legislation. Personally, I see no reason not to do both: the need for the former speaks for itself, and the latter process, even if (as is likely) stymied by the Senate and/or T****, will at least help to set a Democratic agenda for 2020.
My other takeaways from last week's elections:
That's not an exaggeration. Two years of the T**** nightmare has put more stress on me, my family, our business, and just about everyone we know than anything else that we can remember. The knowledge that there will be at least some relief from that stress can't possibly be understated.
I had hoped, as I had in the 2016 election, for a Democratic "blowout," by which I specifically mean not the type of "blowout" we had in that election, where the Democrats were completely blown out of power. Truthfully, I would not describe this election as a "blowout" for either side. As of the time I'm writing this, it appears that the Republican hold on the Senate may grow at least a little bit. The majority of states will still be under GOP control, to varying degrees (including, sadly, here in Maryland, where an amazing number of voters decided that mediocrity in the Governor's Mansion was just fine with them). And, at least for the short term, T**** himself isn't going anywhere.
But, if you want a gauge by which to measure how much Tuesday's results, as well as the results that continue to trickle in from several states, have disrupted the D.C. status quo, T****'s behavior is an excellent one to use.
He fired his Attorney General, and replaced him with a loyalist of dubious constitutional standing, one he feels will protect him from Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian influence in his election. He has publicly berated members of the media for daring to criticize him, suggesting that doing so is somehow unpatriotic, and even going so far as to revoke the press credentials of CNN's White House correspondent (something I don't recall being done even by Richard Nixon). He has openly challenged the legitimacy of close elections in which votes are still being counted (and, in the case yet again of Florida, recounted), even to the point of suggesting that the counting should be frozen in favor of Republican candidates. This latter suggestion is an unbelievable insult to men and women serving overseas, who are allowed an extra ten days to have their ballots received and counted.
And, in perhaps the ultimate insult to those men and women from a Commander-in-Chief, he failed to make a public appearance at a Paris military cemetery to commemorate the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I. His excuse? It was raining. Lightly. All of the other heads of state who had come for the ceremony somehow managed to suck it up and show up. The only exception was the man more worried about his combover than about those who sacrificed to make his abominable Presidency possible.
As someone who lost an uncle in World War II, and with three other relatives who served in uniform (my father, my father-in-law, and my cousin), I have no words for this. The public insult, the dereliction of duty, the unfathomable narcissism of this, can't truly be captured in any words. And yet, it gets even worse: Vladimir Putin was there, and for their public greeting of each other, T****'s face lit up as though he was a little boy on Christmas morning. One is force to wonder whether T**** missed the cemetery ceremony to huddle with his Russian master and get fresh instructions.
All of this only magnifies my sense of relief that Tuesday's results ensure a House of Representatives that will, without any doubt, serve as a check not only on T****'s behavior, but also the actions of Cabinet officials and departments, and other agencies under the executive branch's control. I have noticed that there has already been some degree of debate about whether or not the new House should focus on investigation or legislation. Personally, I see no reason not to do both: the need for the former speaks for itself, and the latter process, even if (as is likely) stymied by the Senate and/or T****, will at least help to set a Democratic agenda for 2020.
My other takeaways from last week's elections:
- I remember thinking, after the GOP wave election of 1994, that the outcome was sort of the second wave of the Reagan Revolution. The comfort level people developed during the 1980s in voting Republican reached a stage in the 1990s where people were willing to take a chance on congressional candidates bearing the same essential message. The New Deal era was, as of that point, over, and the Reagan Era, with a Democratic President whose authority was compromised by his personal life, was on the ascent. We now have record numbers of women and people of color in the next majority of the People's House. Does this foreshadow the beginning of an Obama Era? Time will tell. Even the losses produced rising stars like Amy McGrath and Beto O'Rourke (no relation, to my knowledge) who, hopefully, will stay in the process and run again soon.
- Meanwhile, in not only Florida but also Georgia, the election results are being challenged by Democrats as a consequence of actions by the Republican candidates, both of which reflect conflicts of interests on their part. In the case of the Georgia gubernatorial election, the Republican running was also (until a few days ago) the secretary of state overseeing the election process and disqualifying large numbers of voters, while in Florida, the sitting governor is attempting to interfere with the recount of the elections for the Senate seat (for which he was running), and for the man to replace him in the Governor's mansion. Two more reasons to think of the GOP less as a political party, and more as a crime syndicate.
- Even if the Senate remains in Republican hands by a vote or two, it looks as if that outcome is largely due to the embarrassing process of putting a probable sexual assailant and perjurer on the Supreme Court. At this rate, Mitch McCONnell may want to consider expanding the size of the Court simply so he'll always have a nominating process to use in skewering election results. That's assuming he'll be around for a while, and that might be less than a guaranteed proposition--and not just because he's up for re-election in 2020. Take a look.
- The gains that were made by the Democrats at the state level, combined with the pressure that can be applied by the new Democratic House, offers some hope that the systematic abuse of the redistricting and voting processes by Republicans in the past decade can at least begin to be dismantled.
But none of this will matter unless all of you stop treating Democratic waves as something that should only happen once every decade. They need to happen every single election year. Think about how different things would be regarding income inequality, climate change, immigration, the composition of our court system, if Obama (and Hillary Clinton, for that matter) had benefited from a steady succession of Democratic waves. Never mind them, even; we all would have benefited.
Don't make voting a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Make it a habit. It's the only way to ensure that Americans continue to make democracy a habit. And the only way we're going to end the T****/GOP nightmare once and for all.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
The Real "Caravans"
At 6:00 p.m., at the end of a very long work week, my wife was dead tired, and well into months of pain from a leg injury. She ought to have sought treatment for the injury a long time ago, but has feared the possibility of a diagnosis and treatment that would prevent her from seeing law clients for weeks, if not longer. On this particular day, she had hoped to spend some time catching up on work that was deferred by months of client appointments that seemed to have no end and whose beginning can probably be traced back to, say, roughly two years ago.
It wasn't meant to be, however. The day of catch-up work had, instead, become a day of walk-in appointments. Walk-ins are an experience she has gotten used to over the past 20-plus years and, until (again) about roughly two years ago, it had never been a significant source of stress. Since then, it has grown to the point at which a heavy client day no longer consisted of six scheduled appointments, but something closer to six scheduled appointments and six walk-ins.
But, on this day, the walk-ins had come and gone, and it was 6:00. She thought she could go home. She turned off the downstairs lights in our office, dragged her injured leg back upstairs, and began to shut down the electronics in her office. And that was when she heard it.
The sound of the outside office door, opening, and someone entering the lightless first floor. It was yet another walk-in, determined to see her no matter what.
She very politely explained to him that she was getting ready to leave for the day, and that he would have to arrange to see her at another time.
He didn't move.
What else could she do? She met with him, of course.
I said that all of this happened at the end of a long work week.
Did I mention that it happened at the end of a long work week that was, in fact, the end of a long calendar week? And that the next work week would begin the very next day, on a Sunday?
Now, I am not describing all of this at this level of detail simply because it involves my wife, who (full disclosure) is also my partner in our law practice. I am doing so because her practice area is immigration. All of her clients are immigrants, in varying stages of documented status, from aspiring to expired. All of her experiences, minus the part about the injured leg, are utterly common to virtually all American immigration lawyers in the first two years of the T**** nightmare. And all of these clients, regardless of the status of their documentation, are painfully, needlessly scared to death.
To begin with, the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in this country are not the so called "caravans" from Central America that T**** uses to whip up fear among his dwindling base of supporters. (Actually, if you are willing to check more reliable sources of information that T****, the size of the current caravan is dwindling as well.) They are individuals who entered the country in a documented status--a visitor, a student, an investor, a manager, a short-term worker, and yes, as a fiance(e). These categories differ substantially from the ones used by those fleeing various forms of persecution and upheaval, as is the case with those coming from the south.
The people in these categories overstay their visas not because of any intention to do so, but due to an immigration system that is broken and expensive, and which we steadfastly refuse to reform, despite the general acknowledgement that it needs such reform. Contrary to the venom spewing on a daily basis from what passes for T****'s mouth, these individuals are not "bad hombres." They are people more concerned with trying to live their lives, for the sakes of themselves and their families, than with having any kind of criminal or political impact on the U.S..
Yet, because T**** found it personally and politically convenient to spread fear about the undocumented, they are now living in the shadows, afraid to come out and attempt to adjust their status in the U.S., afraid due to the threat of prosecution that is not warranted by the lives these people have led, or the expense that such prosecutions entail. Even worse, immigrants who have "played by the rules," the ones we supposedly want to reward for doing so, are now being subjected to denials and delays in the processing of their papers that all but guarantees that it will be years before their status is finally resolved--and many years more before any of them will be able to naturalize and vote (and don't think for a moment that this latter aspect is an accident; voter suppression is a chameleon that can take many forms).
This is why the T**** nightmare is also the immigrants' nightmare. It is also the nightmare of their esteemed counsels, always overworked and underpaid in any case, but never more so than now, and never more aware that one single, human mistake on their part might be the end of a person's life, or the lives of families. As I noted previously, that produces pressure that has the potential to lead to self-destruction. That fact alone, plus the awareness of doing battle on a daily basis with the most corrupt Administration in the history of the Republic, is why the members of the immigration bar are, in my 25 years of experience practicing law, the most unified and cooperative attorneys I have every had the privilege of meeting.
And the victories they win are not just victories for their clients; they are also victories for all of us, and the system that protects us even in the midst of the current darkness. Ask our less-than-esteemed Attorney General if he would disagree with you.
So, then, those are the only two caravans that should concern you. The caravan of the unjustly persecuted, and the caravan of those who defend them. They are not your enemies. That would be the current miserable occupant of the Oval Office. Send him a warning on November 6. And, at the same time, send both of the two caravans a message of well-deserved hope.
P.S.: My wife got home safely. She's seeing a doctor on Monday. Thanks for asking.
It wasn't meant to be, however. The day of catch-up work had, instead, become a day of walk-in appointments. Walk-ins are an experience she has gotten used to over the past 20-plus years and, until (again) about roughly two years ago, it had never been a significant source of stress. Since then, it has grown to the point at which a heavy client day no longer consisted of six scheduled appointments, but something closer to six scheduled appointments and six walk-ins.
But, on this day, the walk-ins had come and gone, and it was 6:00. She thought she could go home. She turned off the downstairs lights in our office, dragged her injured leg back upstairs, and began to shut down the electronics in her office. And that was when she heard it.
The sound of the outside office door, opening, and someone entering the lightless first floor. It was yet another walk-in, determined to see her no matter what.
She very politely explained to him that she was getting ready to leave for the day, and that he would have to arrange to see her at another time.
He didn't move.
What else could she do? She met with him, of course.
I said that all of this happened at the end of a long work week.
Did I mention that it happened at the end of a long work week that was, in fact, the end of a long calendar week? And that the next work week would begin the very next day, on a Sunday?
Now, I am not describing all of this at this level of detail simply because it involves my wife, who (full disclosure) is also my partner in our law practice. I am doing so because her practice area is immigration. All of her clients are immigrants, in varying stages of documented status, from aspiring to expired. All of her experiences, minus the part about the injured leg, are utterly common to virtually all American immigration lawyers in the first two years of the T**** nightmare. And all of these clients, regardless of the status of their documentation, are painfully, needlessly scared to death.
To begin with, the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants in this country are not the so called "caravans" from Central America that T**** uses to whip up fear among his dwindling base of supporters. (Actually, if you are willing to check more reliable sources of information that T****, the size of the current caravan is dwindling as well.) They are individuals who entered the country in a documented status--a visitor, a student, an investor, a manager, a short-term worker, and yes, as a fiance(e). These categories differ substantially from the ones used by those fleeing various forms of persecution and upheaval, as is the case with those coming from the south.
The people in these categories overstay their visas not because of any intention to do so, but due to an immigration system that is broken and expensive, and which we steadfastly refuse to reform, despite the general acknowledgement that it needs such reform. Contrary to the venom spewing on a daily basis from what passes for T****'s mouth, these individuals are not "bad hombres." They are people more concerned with trying to live their lives, for the sakes of themselves and their families, than with having any kind of criminal or political impact on the U.S..
Yet, because T**** found it personally and politically convenient to spread fear about the undocumented, they are now living in the shadows, afraid to come out and attempt to adjust their status in the U.S., afraid due to the threat of prosecution that is not warranted by the lives these people have led, or the expense that such prosecutions entail. Even worse, immigrants who have "played by the rules," the ones we supposedly want to reward for doing so, are now being subjected to denials and delays in the processing of their papers that all but guarantees that it will be years before their status is finally resolved--and many years more before any of them will be able to naturalize and vote (and don't think for a moment that this latter aspect is an accident; voter suppression is a chameleon that can take many forms).
This is why the T**** nightmare is also the immigrants' nightmare. It is also the nightmare of their esteemed counsels, always overworked and underpaid in any case, but never more so than now, and never more aware that one single, human mistake on their part might be the end of a person's life, or the lives of families. As I noted previously, that produces pressure that has the potential to lead to self-destruction. That fact alone, plus the awareness of doing battle on a daily basis with the most corrupt Administration in the history of the Republic, is why the members of the immigration bar are, in my 25 years of experience practicing law, the most unified and cooperative attorneys I have every had the privilege of meeting.
And the victories they win are not just victories for their clients; they are also victories for all of us, and the system that protects us even in the midst of the current darkness. Ask our less-than-esteemed Attorney General if he would disagree with you.
So, then, those are the only two caravans that should concern you. The caravan of the unjustly persecuted, and the caravan of those who defend them. They are not your enemies. That would be the current miserable occupant of the Oval Office. Send him a warning on November 6. And, at the same time, send both of the two caravans a message of well-deserved hope.
P.S.: My wife got home safely. She's seeing a doctor on Monday. Thanks for asking.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
A Few Almost-Final Thoughts On The Midterms
I will probably have more to say, actually, about the midterms in a few days, especially in light of recent tragic events. I'm recovering from a bad bout of stomach flu as I write this to you. I would probably still be in bed for the sake of my recovery. But I've decided to get out of bed for at least a little while to write this.
These days, my legal work includes a great deal of time spent with firms that review documents produced for litigation. On one such project recently, in a conversation with a colleague on a project, the subject turned to politics (a lot of this work is done in D.C., so that's probably not surprising. We started talking about why young people generally don't vote, and, on the basis of current reporting, are probably not going to vote in next week's midterm elections. He advanced the theory, advanced many other places in the MSM and social media, that young people don't vote because they don't see themselves as gaining or losing anything by not doing so.
Then he surprised me by including himself as one of those young people.
I say "surprised" because I assumed that someone who had been through both undergraduate and law schools, passed more than one bar exam, and worked on a regular basis in what is arguably the political center not just of the nation, but the world, would understand the power of voting. I would not necessarily expect that person to have an appreciation of all of the sacrifices that have been made for the sake of the right to vote, although I would hope that he (or she) would do so. But I would think they would know that voting affects a broad range of issues that ultimately do affect young people--the economy they graduate into, the ability to pay for tuition, and the assurance of health care coverage, for example.
Apparently, however, it's not enough for this cohort to make political appeals based on issues that affect everyone. Somehow, they're expecting to get something specifically, uniquely targeted at them, regardless of its impact on anyone else. And, even worse, they seem to think that, by not voting, the right political appeal will just come along looking for them. To put it another way, they don't think like citizens, putting the interests of the country first. Rather, they think like consumers, regarding themselves as a market that will, sooner or later, be "served" by a politician wise enough to do so.
But that's not how politics works today, if it has ever worked that way at all. On the Republican side of the nation's partisan divide, the pursuit of power at the expense of every other consideration is its only motivating force. The GOP pursues power largely for the sake of holding onto it, so that it can protect itself, as well as its principal funders, the investor class.
If you are not a significant member of that class (and 99% percent of us are not), well, the Republicans are still interested in you. But not as a market to be served. Rather, as a market to serve them.
I shared with my colleague a quote that I am fond of sharing in these circumstances: "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." I made the mistake of attributing it to Brecht; judging from the Internet, its provenance seems a bit uncertain. Regardless of the source, however, it has always been true, and remains true. Even in a world where it may be hard to find politicians perfectly or mostly aligned with you, it is nevertheless absolutely essential, especially in this political climate, to practice what can be referred to as "defensive voting." At the very least, do what you can to protect not only yourself, but any other people or causes you care about, from the potential of greater harm to your interests should the results go to a candidate less aligned with those interests than someone else might be. Perhaps this explains it somewhat better than I'm doing here; it's worth a look, in any case.
In any case, my colleague was not particularly impressed with the quote. I hope and pray that you will feel differently.
And vote next month like your freedom depends on it. Because it does.
These days, my legal work includes a great deal of time spent with firms that review documents produced for litigation. On one such project recently, in a conversation with a colleague on a project, the subject turned to politics (a lot of this work is done in D.C., so that's probably not surprising. We started talking about why young people generally don't vote, and, on the basis of current reporting, are probably not going to vote in next week's midterm elections. He advanced the theory, advanced many other places in the MSM and social media, that young people don't vote because they don't see themselves as gaining or losing anything by not doing so.
Then he surprised me by including himself as one of those young people.
I say "surprised" because I assumed that someone who had been through both undergraduate and law schools, passed more than one bar exam, and worked on a regular basis in what is arguably the political center not just of the nation, but the world, would understand the power of voting. I would not necessarily expect that person to have an appreciation of all of the sacrifices that have been made for the sake of the right to vote, although I would hope that he (or she) would do so. But I would think they would know that voting affects a broad range of issues that ultimately do affect young people--the economy they graduate into, the ability to pay for tuition, and the assurance of health care coverage, for example.
Apparently, however, it's not enough for this cohort to make political appeals based on issues that affect everyone. Somehow, they're expecting to get something specifically, uniquely targeted at them, regardless of its impact on anyone else. And, even worse, they seem to think that, by not voting, the right political appeal will just come along looking for them. To put it another way, they don't think like citizens, putting the interests of the country first. Rather, they think like consumers, regarding themselves as a market that will, sooner or later, be "served" by a politician wise enough to do so.
But that's not how politics works today, if it has ever worked that way at all. On the Republican side of the nation's partisan divide, the pursuit of power at the expense of every other consideration is its only motivating force. The GOP pursues power largely for the sake of holding onto it, so that it can protect itself, as well as its principal funders, the investor class.
If you are not a significant member of that class (and 99% percent of us are not), well, the Republicans are still interested in you. But not as a market to be served. Rather, as a market to serve them.
I shared with my colleague a quote that I am fond of sharing in these circumstances: "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." I made the mistake of attributing it to Brecht; judging from the Internet, its provenance seems a bit uncertain. Regardless of the source, however, it has always been true, and remains true. Even in a world where it may be hard to find politicians perfectly or mostly aligned with you, it is nevertheless absolutely essential, especially in this political climate, to practice what can be referred to as "defensive voting." At the very least, do what you can to protect not only yourself, but any other people or causes you care about, from the potential of greater harm to your interests should the results go to a candidate less aligned with those interests than someone else might be. Perhaps this explains it somewhat better than I'm doing here; it's worth a look, in any case.
In any case, my colleague was not particularly impressed with the quote. I hope and pray that you will feel differently.
And vote next month like your freedom depends on it. Because it does.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
What I Learned From An Understaffed Hotel
As I mentioned last week, my wife and I recently returned from Louisville, Kentucky, where she attended an embroidery conference and I went sightseeing. And, as I mentioned, we had a good time. But one negative aspect of it has stayed with me, as it has a bearing on what is arguably the major issue of our current political debate, especially headed into the midterms.
We stayed in--well,, I won't mention the name, but it was a major hotel designed and built to serve the needs of convention-goers. The city's convention center is a very short walk away from the hotel, in fact, as are a number of major tourist attractions. The room was very spacious, clean and comfortable. But there was one major problem, one that surprised both of us given our experience with conferences and conference hotels.
Everything was understaffed. On our first full day in Louisville, we had dinner at one of the hotel's restaurants, and ended up waiting over an hour for our meal. We both noticed that the wait staff seemed badly outnumbered relative to the number of tables in the restaurant. When our food finally arrived, we complained to our waitress, who told us that there were only two cooks in the kitchen. Two cooks, and perhaps four or five servers, for a restaurant that had over 60 tables (a rough estimate on my part). On the plus side, she did give each of us a free dessert, without a lot of negotiation on our part. This tended to make both of us think that our complaint about the wait for our meals wasn't an unusual one here. On our way out, we noticed a crowd of about 20 people waiting to be seated, with no host or hostess to seat them but plenty of available tables. I tried to shout to them that they may want to go elsewhere, but I doubt that any of them heard me. Needless to say, after that, we took all of our meals outside of the hotel.
Then there was housekeeping. Or, rather, there wasn't, unless we made a complaint to the front desk to have our room cleaned and made up, and our bathroom supplies replaced. Again, given our experience with the restaurant, we suspected the problem was not with the diligence of the housekeeping staff, but with the level of staffing that the hotel was maintaining. And my wife discovered, from talking to some of her fellow conference attendees, that this was indeed a hotel-wide problem.
I realize that, in the broader scheme of life's potential problems, these are relatively petty complaints. They didn't detract from the fact that the overall experience was a wonderful break from other responsibilities that my wife and I both badly needed. But I found myself looking at the understaffing of the hotel from a business management standpoint, and I found myself wondering: why would a major convention hotel, one whose management should be well aware of the staffing levels needed to keep its business running smoothly, allow itself to be so poorly staffed while still marketing itself as a full-service hotel for conference business?
Not deliberately, of course. But what circumstance beyond its control could put the hotel, and perhaps others, in a circumstance that threatens its short-term effectiveness and its long-term existence?
Well, when you've traveled as much as I have, and you notice how many hotels rely on immigrants to staff their businesses, especially on the food service and housekeeping side, it becomes pretty clear what's really going on here, in the Age of T****.
It's not that there aren't people who are available, willing, and often very experienced to fill these vacant positions, thereby energizing the economies of cities all over the country and creating more jobs for everyone, native-born or otherwise. It's that we have a "President" who has turned his back and the nation's back on the centrality of immigration to the very essence of the history and greatness of the United States. All of those potential housekeepers, cooks, servers, and porters are just grist for the deportation mill, and for T****'s manipulation of the immigration issue for personal political gain. Sadly ironic, given how much of his alleged economic gain has come from the use--and abuse--of immigrant labor.
But what about all of those "economically distressed" T**** voters? The ones who supposedly have a better work ethic than all of those POC willing to risk their lives for the sake of making their lives better, and keeping America great? Why aren't they making themselves available to take these jobs, which are clearly there for the taking? What do they have to say about their seeming unwillingness to cross city and state lines to do so, a far less riskier process than crossing national borders to do so?
In a word: {crickets}
That's all you really need to know about both immigration and the state of the economy, currently pumped up by debt but shortchanged by the subtraction of labor from people who will take any job, and any risk associated with that job. That's how much we as a people, at the moment, are willing to throw away the American Dream for the sake of perpetuating the continuance of the American Nightmare: racism, the original sin of America's founding and the thread that runs through every major crisis in our nation's existence.
Does it really make any sense? Is it even what a decent people would expect of themselves? Have we struggled and sacrificed as a nation for nearly three centuries to die a death inflicted by caving in to our worst impulses?
T**** has no interest in anything except exploiting our worst impulses for short-term political gain. Immigration, on the other hand, has been an enduring part of our nation's growth, and a part that we have neglected fixing for decades. If I have to chose between T****, and the people who really want to exemplify the American work ethic, the people who should be filling the jobs at the convention hotels across the country--well, I've made my choice.
And I'm making it again on November 6.
I hope and pray you will join me.
We stayed in--well,, I won't mention the name, but it was a major hotel designed and built to serve the needs of convention-goers. The city's convention center is a very short walk away from the hotel, in fact, as are a number of major tourist attractions. The room was very spacious, clean and comfortable. But there was one major problem, one that surprised both of us given our experience with conferences and conference hotels.
Everything was understaffed. On our first full day in Louisville, we had dinner at one of the hotel's restaurants, and ended up waiting over an hour for our meal. We both noticed that the wait staff seemed badly outnumbered relative to the number of tables in the restaurant. When our food finally arrived, we complained to our waitress, who told us that there were only two cooks in the kitchen. Two cooks, and perhaps four or five servers, for a restaurant that had over 60 tables (a rough estimate on my part). On the plus side, she did give each of us a free dessert, without a lot of negotiation on our part. This tended to make both of us think that our complaint about the wait for our meals wasn't an unusual one here. On our way out, we noticed a crowd of about 20 people waiting to be seated, with no host or hostess to seat them but plenty of available tables. I tried to shout to them that they may want to go elsewhere, but I doubt that any of them heard me. Needless to say, after that, we took all of our meals outside of the hotel.
Then there was housekeeping. Or, rather, there wasn't, unless we made a complaint to the front desk to have our room cleaned and made up, and our bathroom supplies replaced. Again, given our experience with the restaurant, we suspected the problem was not with the diligence of the housekeeping staff, but with the level of staffing that the hotel was maintaining. And my wife discovered, from talking to some of her fellow conference attendees, that this was indeed a hotel-wide problem.
I realize that, in the broader scheme of life's potential problems, these are relatively petty complaints. They didn't detract from the fact that the overall experience was a wonderful break from other responsibilities that my wife and I both badly needed. But I found myself looking at the understaffing of the hotel from a business management standpoint, and I found myself wondering: why would a major convention hotel, one whose management should be well aware of the staffing levels needed to keep its business running smoothly, allow itself to be so poorly staffed while still marketing itself as a full-service hotel for conference business?
Not deliberately, of course. But what circumstance beyond its control could put the hotel, and perhaps others, in a circumstance that threatens its short-term effectiveness and its long-term existence?
Well, when you've traveled as much as I have, and you notice how many hotels rely on immigrants to staff their businesses, especially on the food service and housekeeping side, it becomes pretty clear what's really going on here, in the Age of T****.
It's not that there aren't people who are available, willing, and often very experienced to fill these vacant positions, thereby energizing the economies of cities all over the country and creating more jobs for everyone, native-born or otherwise. It's that we have a "President" who has turned his back and the nation's back on the centrality of immigration to the very essence of the history and greatness of the United States. All of those potential housekeepers, cooks, servers, and porters are just grist for the deportation mill, and for T****'s manipulation of the immigration issue for personal political gain. Sadly ironic, given how much of his alleged economic gain has come from the use--and abuse--of immigrant labor.
But what about all of those "economically distressed" T**** voters? The ones who supposedly have a better work ethic than all of those POC willing to risk their lives for the sake of making their lives better, and keeping America great? Why aren't they making themselves available to take these jobs, which are clearly there for the taking? What do they have to say about their seeming unwillingness to cross city and state lines to do so, a far less riskier process than crossing national borders to do so?
In a word: {crickets}
That's all you really need to know about both immigration and the state of the economy, currently pumped up by debt but shortchanged by the subtraction of labor from people who will take any job, and any risk associated with that job. That's how much we as a people, at the moment, are willing to throw away the American Dream for the sake of perpetuating the continuance of the American Nightmare: racism, the original sin of America's founding and the thread that runs through every major crisis in our nation's existence.
Does it really make any sense? Is it even what a decent people would expect of themselves? Have we struggled and sacrificed as a nation for nearly three centuries to die a death inflicted by caving in to our worst impulses?
T**** has no interest in anything except exploiting our worst impulses for short-term political gain. Immigration, on the other hand, has been an enduring part of our nation's growth, and a part that we have neglected fixing for decades. If I have to chose between T****, and the people who really want to exemplify the American work ethic, the people who should be filling the jobs at the convention hotels across the country--well, I've made my choice.
And I'm making it again on November 6.
I hope and pray you will join me.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
The Kavanaugh Aftermath
I spent last weekend with my wife in, of all places, Louisville, Kentucky--in other words, in Mitch McCONnell's home state. Louisville is a relative island of blue in a sea of Bluegrass red, so I can't say I picked up anything from the locals about the nature of their support for the Senate majority leader. However, and despite the fact that we had a good time on our trip, McCONnell and his fellow caucus members still managed to put a damper on our mood, as well as that of millions of Americans (and women in particular). They did this, of course, by ramming through a vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, by a margin of 50-48--the lowest number of votes for a Supreme Court nominee in the nation's history.
McCONnell and his Senate cronies, of course, don't give a damn about making this kind of history. Nor do they care about the sham FBI investigation of Kavanaugh requested by the aptly-named Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. This, of course, would be the investigation that was arbitrarily limited in scope by T**** (or T$$$$, if you will; works just as well), to make sure that nothing was discovered, and in which any number of witnesses who volunteered to cooperate were without exception ignored. The investigation, in other words, that accomplished nothing except formalizing the politicization of the FBI that began almost the moment that T$$$$ took office.
Nor did McCONnell and his cronies care about the systematic trashing that they, and their media allies, did not only of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the principal accuser against Kavanaugh, but other women who came forward to share their knowledge of Kavanaugh's abusive behavior. All of these women were systematically slandered or libeled, and, with the exception of the sham FBI investigation previously mentioned, none of their accusations were investigated in any way, or treated with the seriousness that they deserved in connection with the potential (now actual) lifetime appointment of Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.
If anything, the Republican caucus members and their fellow-travelers on Fox News and the Internet felt obliged to show blatant, over-the-top disrespect for the accusers in a way that not only demeaned them individually, but also demeaned them as women as well (and thereby demean all women). Typical of this sort of verbal assault was the suggestion by Senator Lindsey Graham that Dr. Ford was little more than the lowest form of prostitute, looking for attention from Kavanaugh. To put that slanderous accusation in a little political perspective, it was not long ago that Graham, along with his late colleague John McCain, was regarded as one of the more moderate Republican members of the Senate. If that is still true of Graham, then the rest of us can only conclude that the World's Greatest Deliberative Body has been led completely off the deep end.
Anyone watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings from the very beginning, however, and doing so with any degree of objectivity and intelligence, would have been able to see almost immediately that he was almost certainly a perjurer, and temperamentally unsuited for any judicial post at all, let alone an Associate Justiceship on the Supreme Court. I'll put aside the question of how he couldn't remember whether he recently talked to a law firm or not, yet somehow had detailed calendars from over three decades ago covering his prep-school personal life. I'll even put aside the question of his personal finances, even though that question did and still does have a bearing on his character, especially his ability to be blackmailed.
Instead, I'll point out something that, in all of the controversy over the sexual abuse allegations, somehow got overlooked. And that is the fact that there exists evidence that Kavanaugh perjured his way into his previous position on the D.C. federal circuit court. You don't have to believe me; you can find out more about it here.
Now, you may recall that a Republican Congress once upon a time impeached and put on trial in the Senate a popular Democratic President on the grounds that he had committed perjury while defending himself in a civil lawsuit--a lawsuit in which he was accused on engaging in the sort of conduct that Kavanaugh was accused of engaging in with Dr. Ford. This was allegedly done not because of the salacious details of the alleged conduct leading to the suit, but because the President's alleged perjury showed contempt for the rule of law, which every president swears to uphold.
Needless to say, every candidate for a federal judiciary post testifies under oath and, if a candidate lies while doing so, is subject to the penalties of perjury. If Kavanaugh did commit perjury, it not only disqualified him from service on the Supreme Court, but also makes him a candidate for impeachment either from his former circuit court position, or his new one. Unsurprisingly, neither the Senate Republicans nor the politically-tethered FBI delved into the question of Kavanaugh's possible perjury too deeply--or, indeed, at all. Thus, a new entry can be made in the catalogue entitled "It's OK If You're A Republican." Especially OK, of course, if the opportunity to politically pack the Supreme Court for a generation is at hand.
Aside from the question of Kavanaugh's fidelity to the truth, however, there is also the matter of his temperament. Judges are supposed to be fair and, in order to be fair, are expected to keep their feeling on the proverbial even keel, thereby preventing them from being swayed in their judgments by anything other than the application of the law to the facts of a given case. Likewise, in order to be fair, they are supposed to deal with individuals who come before them in a way that does not show partiality to one cause or another.
If it seems overly obvious to make those points, it is only so I can demonstrate the abundant lack of temperament that Kavanaugh demonstrated over the entire course of his confirmation hearings. Early in the process, at the end of one day's session, he was approached by the parent of a school shooting victim, one who was concerned about Kavanaugh's Second Amendment views. Kavanaugh could have politely greeting him, shown a modest amount of respect for the man's loss, and otherwise excused himself without tipping his hand on how he might rule in a case that raised the issue of school gun violence. Doing so would not have betrayed any degree of prejudice regarding the relative rights of gun advocates versus students.
Instead, Kavanaugh retreated from the man with the demeanor of a frightened rat who was looking to avoid being poisoned. Again, you need not take my word for it; you can look for yourself. Personally, I was convinced right then and there that he was not someone who belonged on any bench. Why should the law of the land be shaped by someone who is clearly afraid of the people to whom it might be applied?
As if that wasn't enough, there was his diatribe defense against Dr. Ford's allegations, for which he appeared to have been coached into doing an amateur imitation of Trump. Whether he was following a specific line of strategy or not, he made an absolute embarrassment of himself. No sane person could come before a judge who acted like this and expected justice, or even fairness. The clincher in the whole mess of words was his reference to his previous work for Kenneth Starr against Bill and Hillary Clinton, suggesting that the accusations against him were only some form of political retaliation for that work. That reference, far from serving as an effective line of defense, only served to poison his own reputation by exposing him as a political hack, one who was only being considered for the Supreme Court to serve a partisan agenda. It also served to illustrate, for the umpteenth time, the Ahab-like obsession that conservatives have with a Democrat who, during his time in the White House, gave them much of what they wanted in a desperate attempt to avoid impeachment--and then ended up being impeached anyway.
Despite the many doubts raised against Kavanaugh, despite the fact that there were undoubtedly other conservative candidates for the Court with far less baggage dragging behind them, McCONnell rallied his colleagues and rammed the nomination through a badly divided Congress. Because, of course, that's what McCONnell does. Nothing he does has anything to do with serving the interests of the nation, its people, the Constitution, or the Senate itself. All of these long-term interests, in the majority leader's world, are routinely sacrificed in favor of the short-term political victory. And that is especially so when doing so may well have the effect of tipping the outcome in midterm elections that now are less than a month away. You can understand McCONnell's inability under the circumstances to refrain from gloating in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote--even though at least one conservative has counselled against doing so.
So, without further ado, here is my five-point plan for wiping the smug grin off of McCONnell's oyster-face.
First, impeaching hearings much be launched, not only against Kavanaugh, but also his partner on the High Court in sexual shenanigans, Clarence Thomas. As I said earlier, there is certainly evidence that Kavanaugh has committed perjury; there was also the likelihood that Thomas did the same thing, and was allowed, in less enlightened times, to get away with it. If anything is clear in all of this, it should be the fact that we no longer live in less enlightened times, and Thomas, for the sake of the Court's reputation and for the sake of justice in this country, should not get the benefit of being barely confirmed (52-48, the previous record-holder for a close confirmation vote) to the Court simply because a less enlightened Congress made that possible.
Second, take a page out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's book, and pack the Court. There's never been anything constitutionally sacred about nine seats: the Court could have one, a thousand, or any number that Congress and the President see fit for it to have. Add two seats. Hell, add four, or six.
Politically, it would be a very heavy lift but, like FDR's attempt, it might send a message to the Court that its jurisprudence can't survive if it is not sensitive to the will of all the people. And it would certainly send a message to the Republicans that there are consequences to playing politics with the judiciary. Having already blazed that trail, they are in no position to try to club the Democrats over the head with that argument.
Third, and either of these would be a heavy political lift as well, either pass a statute limited the jurisdiction of the Court or, better yet, do so by constitutional amendment. Such an amendment could also impose term limits on the Justices, thereby lessening the pressure and the high-stakes politics that now surround lifetime appointments. It could also provide a mechanism for overturning Supreme Court decisions, such as by votes in the state legislatures.
Fourth, investigate the living daylights out of McCONnell. There is every reason to believe, going back to his willingness to block a Russian investigation before the 2016 election, that he is every bit as complicit as T**** is with allowing Vladimir Putin to try to turn the United States in a proxy state to do his bidding. Just as we need to know everything we can find out about T****, we need to do likewise with McCONnell.
Fifth, and the most fundamental point I can make here, is that none of these ideas are going to go anywhere in the current configuration of political power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. We need, American needs, our future needs a Democratic Congress in Washington by next January, so that all of this can begin, and include the impeachment of T****, without question the most impeachment-worthy President this country has ever had the misfortune to have.
You know what you have to do.
DO IT!
McCONnell and his Senate cronies, of course, don't give a damn about making this kind of history. Nor do they care about the sham FBI investigation of Kavanaugh requested by the aptly-named Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. This, of course, would be the investigation that was arbitrarily limited in scope by T**** (or T$$$$, if you will; works just as well), to make sure that nothing was discovered, and in which any number of witnesses who volunteered to cooperate were without exception ignored. The investigation, in other words, that accomplished nothing except formalizing the politicization of the FBI that began almost the moment that T$$$$ took office.
Nor did McCONnell and his cronies care about the systematic trashing that they, and their media allies, did not only of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the principal accuser against Kavanaugh, but other women who came forward to share their knowledge of Kavanaugh's abusive behavior. All of these women were systematically slandered or libeled, and, with the exception of the sham FBI investigation previously mentioned, none of their accusations were investigated in any way, or treated with the seriousness that they deserved in connection with the potential (now actual) lifetime appointment of Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.
If anything, the Republican caucus members and their fellow-travelers on Fox News and the Internet felt obliged to show blatant, over-the-top disrespect for the accusers in a way that not only demeaned them individually, but also demeaned them as women as well (and thereby demean all women). Typical of this sort of verbal assault was the suggestion by Senator Lindsey Graham that Dr. Ford was little more than the lowest form of prostitute, looking for attention from Kavanaugh. To put that slanderous accusation in a little political perspective, it was not long ago that Graham, along with his late colleague John McCain, was regarded as one of the more moderate Republican members of the Senate. If that is still true of Graham, then the rest of us can only conclude that the World's Greatest Deliberative Body has been led completely off the deep end.
Anyone watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings from the very beginning, however, and doing so with any degree of objectivity and intelligence, would have been able to see almost immediately that he was almost certainly a perjurer, and temperamentally unsuited for any judicial post at all, let alone an Associate Justiceship on the Supreme Court. I'll put aside the question of how he couldn't remember whether he recently talked to a law firm or not, yet somehow had detailed calendars from over three decades ago covering his prep-school personal life. I'll even put aside the question of his personal finances, even though that question did and still does have a bearing on his character, especially his ability to be blackmailed.
Instead, I'll point out something that, in all of the controversy over the sexual abuse allegations, somehow got overlooked. And that is the fact that there exists evidence that Kavanaugh perjured his way into his previous position on the D.C. federal circuit court. You don't have to believe me; you can find out more about it here.
Now, you may recall that a Republican Congress once upon a time impeached and put on trial in the Senate a popular Democratic President on the grounds that he had committed perjury while defending himself in a civil lawsuit--a lawsuit in which he was accused on engaging in the sort of conduct that Kavanaugh was accused of engaging in with Dr. Ford. This was allegedly done not because of the salacious details of the alleged conduct leading to the suit, but because the President's alleged perjury showed contempt for the rule of law, which every president swears to uphold.
Needless to say, every candidate for a federal judiciary post testifies under oath and, if a candidate lies while doing so, is subject to the penalties of perjury. If Kavanaugh did commit perjury, it not only disqualified him from service on the Supreme Court, but also makes him a candidate for impeachment either from his former circuit court position, or his new one. Unsurprisingly, neither the Senate Republicans nor the politically-tethered FBI delved into the question of Kavanaugh's possible perjury too deeply--or, indeed, at all. Thus, a new entry can be made in the catalogue entitled "It's OK If You're A Republican." Especially OK, of course, if the opportunity to politically pack the Supreme Court for a generation is at hand.
Aside from the question of Kavanaugh's fidelity to the truth, however, there is also the matter of his temperament. Judges are supposed to be fair and, in order to be fair, are expected to keep their feeling on the proverbial even keel, thereby preventing them from being swayed in their judgments by anything other than the application of the law to the facts of a given case. Likewise, in order to be fair, they are supposed to deal with individuals who come before them in a way that does not show partiality to one cause or another.
If it seems overly obvious to make those points, it is only so I can demonstrate the abundant lack of temperament that Kavanaugh demonstrated over the entire course of his confirmation hearings. Early in the process, at the end of one day's session, he was approached by the parent of a school shooting victim, one who was concerned about Kavanaugh's Second Amendment views. Kavanaugh could have politely greeting him, shown a modest amount of respect for the man's loss, and otherwise excused himself without tipping his hand on how he might rule in a case that raised the issue of school gun violence. Doing so would not have betrayed any degree of prejudice regarding the relative rights of gun advocates versus students.
Instead, Kavanaugh retreated from the man with the demeanor of a frightened rat who was looking to avoid being poisoned. Again, you need not take my word for it; you can look for yourself. Personally, I was convinced right then and there that he was not someone who belonged on any bench. Why should the law of the land be shaped by someone who is clearly afraid of the people to whom it might be applied?
As if that wasn't enough, there was his diatribe defense against Dr. Ford's allegations, for which he appeared to have been coached into doing an amateur imitation of Trump. Whether he was following a specific line of strategy or not, he made an absolute embarrassment of himself. No sane person could come before a judge who acted like this and expected justice, or even fairness. The clincher in the whole mess of words was his reference to his previous work for Kenneth Starr against Bill and Hillary Clinton, suggesting that the accusations against him were only some form of political retaliation for that work. That reference, far from serving as an effective line of defense, only served to poison his own reputation by exposing him as a political hack, one who was only being considered for the Supreme Court to serve a partisan agenda. It also served to illustrate, for the umpteenth time, the Ahab-like obsession that conservatives have with a Democrat who, during his time in the White House, gave them much of what they wanted in a desperate attempt to avoid impeachment--and then ended up being impeached anyway.
Despite the many doubts raised against Kavanaugh, despite the fact that there were undoubtedly other conservative candidates for the Court with far less baggage dragging behind them, McCONnell rallied his colleagues and rammed the nomination through a badly divided Congress. Because, of course, that's what McCONnell does. Nothing he does has anything to do with serving the interests of the nation, its people, the Constitution, or the Senate itself. All of these long-term interests, in the majority leader's world, are routinely sacrificed in favor of the short-term political victory. And that is especially so when doing so may well have the effect of tipping the outcome in midterm elections that now are less than a month away. You can understand McCONnell's inability under the circumstances to refrain from gloating in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote--even though at least one conservative has counselled against doing so.
So, without further ado, here is my five-point plan for wiping the smug grin off of McCONnell's oyster-face.
First, impeaching hearings much be launched, not only against Kavanaugh, but also his partner on the High Court in sexual shenanigans, Clarence Thomas. As I said earlier, there is certainly evidence that Kavanaugh has committed perjury; there was also the likelihood that Thomas did the same thing, and was allowed, in less enlightened times, to get away with it. If anything is clear in all of this, it should be the fact that we no longer live in less enlightened times, and Thomas, for the sake of the Court's reputation and for the sake of justice in this country, should not get the benefit of being barely confirmed (52-48, the previous record-holder for a close confirmation vote) to the Court simply because a less enlightened Congress made that possible.
Second, take a page out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's book, and pack the Court. There's never been anything constitutionally sacred about nine seats: the Court could have one, a thousand, or any number that Congress and the President see fit for it to have. Add two seats. Hell, add four, or six.
Politically, it would be a very heavy lift but, like FDR's attempt, it might send a message to the Court that its jurisprudence can't survive if it is not sensitive to the will of all the people. And it would certainly send a message to the Republicans that there are consequences to playing politics with the judiciary. Having already blazed that trail, they are in no position to try to club the Democrats over the head with that argument.
Third, and either of these would be a heavy political lift as well, either pass a statute limited the jurisdiction of the Court or, better yet, do so by constitutional amendment. Such an amendment could also impose term limits on the Justices, thereby lessening the pressure and the high-stakes politics that now surround lifetime appointments. It could also provide a mechanism for overturning Supreme Court decisions, such as by votes in the state legislatures.
Fourth, investigate the living daylights out of McCONnell. There is every reason to believe, going back to his willingness to block a Russian investigation before the 2016 election, that he is every bit as complicit as T**** is with allowing Vladimir Putin to try to turn the United States in a proxy state to do his bidding. Just as we need to know everything we can find out about T****, we need to do likewise with McCONnell.
Fifth, and the most fundamental point I can make here, is that none of these ideas are going to go anywhere in the current configuration of political power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. We need, American needs, our future needs a Democratic Congress in Washington by next January, so that all of this can begin, and include the impeachment of T****, without question the most impeachment-worthy President this country has ever had the misfortune to have.
You know what you have to do.
DO IT!
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