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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The version that favors white Christian men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting right now.

The Need To Fight For Climate Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Them? Why Not? We NEED Them!

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

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

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

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

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is A "Semite," Anyway?

Since I'm about to launch into a discussion of an understandably sensitive topic, I might as well clarify in advance my personal interest in it.

I am a recent convert to Judaism, having been married for nearly 27 years to a Jewish woman and, for much of that time, having been a fundamentalist Christian and then, for a time (and the subject of another post, soon), not much of anything, religiously speaking.  I came to Judaism not because of the influence of my wife and stepchildren (and their families), but  because it seemed, over time, the best and most enlightened way of having a relationship with G-d.  In particular, the influence of Jews in this country in culture and liberal politics has always given me a favorable view of both Jews and Judaism generally.

So I am proud to say that I am Jewish, to identify with the Jewish community, and to offer unqualified support to the current and continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state and a homeland for Jewish people from all over the world.  And, as a consequence, I treat any statement that impinges on those interests in any way, shape, or form with the strongest possible opposition, consistent with my values as a Jew.

And, I am sorry to say, recent remarks by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota fall directly into that category.  I contributed to her campaign, and see then (and now) the value of having not only Muslims in Congress, but Muslims having a greater role in American life in general, not just because it's consistent with our values as a nation, but because it also offers a chance to formulate policy based upon a rational understanding of Muslims, and not an "understanding" largely shaped by Fox News.  I repudiate her statements without reservation or exception.

But calling Representative Omar's comments out as "anti-Semitic," as some conservative Jewish commentators such as John Podhoretz have done, is a very different story.  And I'm writing this now, in part, to explain why that is true.

Despite the ancient nature of Judaism, the term "anti-Semite" (and variations thereof) as a term for hatred of Jews and Judaism is relatively recent.  In fact, it has a very specific geographic origin:  Germany, where Adolf Hitler used it in his book "Mein Kampf" to explain in part the basis for his perverted view of the world and his people's place in it.  Given that fact, as well as the subsequent historical record of Nazism in the Third Reich and the post-World War II world, and the Holocaust above all, it is not surprising that the terms "Semite" and "Jew" have become interchangeable in contemporary culture.  And that is not entirely due to Hitler; the origins of the link predate him by a considerable margin.

Take a look at this Wikipedia article, which discusses in detail the biblical origins of the terms "Semite" and "Semitism."  Originally, the term covered a wide number of racial and religious cultures in the Middle East, including Arabs.  That ended beginning in the nineteenth century in Germany, when it became fashionable in Germany, Hitler's adopted country, to use the term as a form of shorthand for spreading hatred of Jews.  This became the cultural and political topsoil in which the seeds of Nazism were to sprout in the following century.

So, when conservative commentators use the words "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitism" as a vehicle to attack the remarks of Representative Omar, and similar remarks made by Arabs or Muslims, or people otherwise linked to Semitic peoples or cultures, I am sorry to have to point out that they are (hopefully without meaning to do so) ratifying a use of language that has the most unsavory origins possible.

And that should trouble Podhoretz at least a little bit, not only because he is Jewish, and a staunch defender of Israel's existence and identity as a Jewish nation, but also because he was an advocate of spending trillions of dollars, at an additional and more horrific cost of thousands of lives--Jewish, Christian, and Muslim lives--on a war of choice that has destabilized the entire Middle East, and offered an invitation to Vladimir Putin to expand the influence of Russia in the region.  Russia, a nation with its own notorious history of persecuting Jews.

It should trouble Podhoretz, and others on his side of the political fence, that their indiscriminate use of these words may have played a role in the worldwide spread of violence against Muslims, including the recent tragedy in New Zealand.  Go ahead and say that I'm stretching a point; I don't think I am.  To borrow a quote from this article, "it's like a virus."  Go ahead and point out that the speaker was talking about white supremacy; try and tell me where white supremacy begins and hatred of the Jewish people begins.  I have followed bigotry as a Christian and a Jew, and I have always found white "pride" and hatred of Jews to be joined at the proverbial hip.

It should trouble Podhoretz that his words indirectly ratify the "soft bigotry" of evangelical Christians toward Jews, the kind that professes undying love for Israel while cloaking its desire to convert every single Jew on the planet, in and outside of Israel, under the pretext of "completing" their Judaism.  Yes, "completing" it.  Again, I lived in the belly of this particular beast for more than 12 years of my life, so I can assure you from personal experience that I know what I'm talking about.  Would it help if you had an example of what I'm talking about?  

Well, here you go.  Take a good look at it.  It's less than two minutes long, so it shouldn't be inconvenient to do so.  And overlook what you will in it.  For example, the fact that, for most of this prayer, she neither bows her head nor closes her eyes.  This is clearly not aimed at a deity, for whom no physical reverence is being shown; it's aimed for a far less supernatural audience.  Or, if you wish, you can overlook the no-fewer-than-13 references to the "name of Jesus"--I'm sorry, the "NAME OF JESUS"--mixed in with the neat little commercial for T**** and his allegedly pro-Israeli policy.

But what you shouldn't overlook is the fact that the leader of this prayer goes out of her way to show blatant and grotesque disrespect for the purpose of the legislative session:  the swearing-in of Pennsylvania's first Muslim state legislator.  Under the circumstances, there could not have been a worse way to open the session, unless possibly the phrase "Death to Islam" was thrown into the mix.

And sometimes, the bigotry is not always soft.  Sometimes, it's much more overt, as in this case.  Yes, I am sorry to say, there are still plenty of examples of this type:  evangelical ministers who profess to love Jews but make it clear that this "love" gets folded into a decidedly Christian agenda, not one that respect the rights of Jews and Christians to worship G-d in very different ways.  And, as Jeanine Pirro demonstrated recently, the hard bigotry has a place in our secular culture, where it extends to Muslims as well as Jews (and kudos to the very neoconservative--and Jewish--Bret Stephens for calling it out).

Above all, what should trouble Podhoretz is the fact that, in Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has now become a persecutor not only of Muslims, but of other Jews.  With reference to the former, it has attempted to create security for Israel by turning the West Bank region into a de facto prison for Palestinians, and an opportunity to marginalize the Palestinian presence on the West Bank through additional settlements.  It has, in the process, only bought temporary "security" for the Jewish state by continuing war by other means, and created a new generation of terrorists in the process.  In Netanyahu's mind, the only road to "peace" in the Middle East is the one that enables one Semitic people to control the fate of another one.  (Again, do you think I'm exaggerating?  Take a look at this and tell me if you still feel that way).

Perhaps worst of all, it allows Netanyahu to define which Jews get to be protected by him at the expense of the rights of other people, including other Semitic people.  Israel was founded on the basic of a distinctly Jewish vision, but emphasized as part of that vision the rights of all people, Jewish or otherwise, to live in secular equality with each other and freely practice their respective faiths.  That was the Israel that I grew up supporting, and still support.  Netanyahu's Israel--an Israel where one part of the Jewish community can persecute another not merely with impunity, but with the blessing of the government--is not that Israel.  Read this very carefully, and see if you still disagree with me.

My point?

Podhoretz, and anyone else wishing to call out persecution of Jews (as should we all) should re-think what it means to reflexively use a phrase that itself was born out of bigotry, and whose continued use without a proper understanding of its place in history runs the risk of fueling bigotry toward the very people it should actually serve to protect.  Perhaps our particularly divisive moment in history, nationally and internationally, ironically provides an opportunity to re-think what we mean when we talk about anti-Semitism.  Perhaps we can broaden our usage of it in order to condemn not only hatred toward Judaism and Jews--which must and always should be condemned--but to also condemn hatred of the other cultures and peoples who rightly should be considered Semitic as well.  Whether Podhoretz likes it or not, Jews and Arabs are both children of Abraham; we might as well build our ability to relate to one another around that fact.

Perhaps doing so will help us to realize that someone from Representative Omar's background, as a refugee and a Muslim, has the capacity to broaden her understanding of human suffering, and call out injustice when she sees an example of it particularly offensive to Jews, as she did in this instance.  Where was Podhoretz's response to either her tweet, or to the offensive behavior of the Representative that led to it?  To borrow from the linked article itself:

{Crickets}

That's my point.  As long as Representative Omar continues in the right direction on her learning curve, I will continue to support her.  And as long as Podhoretz continues to use the phrase "anti-Semite" as an epithet of convenience against people to whom he is effectively related but with whom he lacks the ability to reason, I will continue to call him out.

And, Just To Really Clinch The Case ...

... here are two news stories from the past week that should help Speaker Pelosi, and the rest of her caucus, understand that we are not in a place in which politicians have room for calculation.  In the first one, T**** threatens, not to subtlely, to use police officers, fire fighters, and even motorcycle gangs to protect himself from his political opponents.  In the second one, his former "fixer," Michael Cohen, raised the possibility of violence breaking out should he lose the 2020 presidential election.

The statement from T**** himself, made during an interview, is hard to evaluate in one sense.  On the one hand, it's made in the course of an interview with Breitbart, a right-wing media outlet, so there's the possibility that he's just throwing red meat to his political base.  It's also possible that, if the reports of his mental decline are true, he's just rambling on about whatever pops into what's left of his mind. 

On the other hand, even if it's just red meat, it's 100% prime.  Maybe 150%.  In my experience, in this hemisphere, the only leaders who go around bragging about having the support of the military are dictators south of the border, and not elected officials north of it.  Given what I know about our armed forces, I can't even begin to imagine them responding to a clearly illegal order from T****.  But I'd hate to have to see them put into that position in the first place.  They and their families have enough to contend with as there is.  And, even though I'm confident that 99 44/100% of our military personnel will always do the right thing, there's always the Jack D. Ripper scenario.  As for the bike gangs, I have no confidence in them at all.

But when you combine T****'s comments with Cohen's testimony before a congressional committee, it becomes impossible not to take the substance of the Breitbart interview more seriously.  Even if Cohen is a confessed perjurer--and he is--he is no longer in a position where he has to lie.  And the fact that his testimony mirrored the interview on the question of T****'s willingness to use violence as politics by another means should frighten anyone into taking action to prevent such a scenario from becoming a reality.

Madame Speaker, too many people have lost their lives in the past decade as a consequence of right-wing political violence.  Calculation at the price of even one more life simply isn't worth it.  Don't calculate, and don't legislate.  And don't investigate if the main purpose of doing so is to spin the wheels of the House and let someone else do the job that the Constitution has given to you and your members to do.

Impeach T****.

NOW.

The Case For Impeachment

In the nearly 250 years of the American republic, no President of the United States has been removed from office by way of impeachment, the provision provided in the Constitution for the removal from office of "all civil Officers of the United States" on "Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."  It has almost happened three times.  Two instances resulted in acquittals after trials in the Senate, and the third instance never got as far as a trial; it was resolved through the resignation of a President who tactfully noted in his resignation speech that he had lost his "political base."

Removing an elected President from office is not something anyone should relish.  It requires, however justly, the thwarting of the will of the people in what is hoped to have been a free and fair electoral process.  On another level, on which the President is viewed not merely as the leader of the national government but also the head of state, it is the closest thing the Constitution provides for regicide with due process.  Impeachment is a process with no political winners.  Yes, it is a legal process that gives Congress a procedural path for removing a chief executive who has acted in such a way that he or she can no longer be trusted with the constitutional requirement to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.  But it is also an occasion for national embarrassment.  Were a President to be actually removed from office through this process, the American people would have to confront an unpleasant reality:  they elected a crook.  In the meantime, on the political front, the process would serve to even further polarize partisan sentiment in a deeply polarized populace.

So there is a strong case for treating the impeachment option with respect to a presidency gone badly wrong as the fire alarm box of truly last resort.  One breaks the glass of that box not in malice or in anger, but with the sorrow that comes from a love of one's country and its standing in the world, as well as a knowing and utter lack of other options.

Which brings me, unsurprisingly, to the subject of D****** T****.  But it also inevitably brings me to the subject of the current partisan split between the two houses of Congress.

When the 2018 election produced a strong Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and a narrow Republican majority in the Senate, it created the obvious good news/bad news divide for the American people, perhaps the one that many of them wanted at this moment.  Each house could check the impulses of the other that voters hated, but neither of them were likely to work together on any legislation that each of them might actually pass--to say nothing of the ability to survive a presidential veto.  In fact, you need look no further than this past week for an example of that dynamic actually playing out:  the House and Senate passed a resolution designed to nullify T****'s declaration of a "national emergency" in connection with refugees at the southern border, which led directly to the first veto of his presidency. 

And that kumbayah moment on the part of a divided Congress was more about protecting its constitutional prerogative to spend than it was about accomplishing something in the political arena.  In other words, it was a marginally hopeful sign that even a divided Congress could respond to an existential emergency on behalf of constitutional government.  Which is more than even I expected out of this Congress, along with many others.  The hope that most of us had was the the Democratic House would use its powers of oversight and investigation to begin the formal process of impeaching the most impeachable President in the history of the republic.

I don't say that lightly, and I certainly don't enjoy saying it at all.  Nobody wanted this presidency less than I did (with the possible exception of T**** himself).  But, as I have said on more than one occasion, I have followed his public and private shenanigans for nearly 40 years, and nobody has been less surprised than I have been by the level of disgrace he has brought to his office and our nation.

By way of illustration, let's single out the two specific crimes mentioned in the constitutional language relative to impeachment:  treason, and bribery.  I'll take them in reverse order.

Before he even took the oath of office, T**** made it clear that he had absolutely no intention of separating himself from his world-wide business interests during his Administration.  He even floated the unbelievably ridiculous idea that he could serve on a part-time basis, running the country from the Trump Organization in New York while only occasionally coming to Washington.  He has, since then, disdained the idea that money could be a corrupting influence on a public official, arguing that people with money were the kind of "successful" people that the government needed.

Spoken with the kind of confidence that comes from someone who has always inherited or borrowed money, but never truly earned it.  Never mind.  The point here is this:  T**** was telling all of us, up front, that he was going to make no distinctions between the private and public sectors as President.  So far as he was concerned, he was free to mix them up as much as he wanted.  Or, to put it another way, he was willing to be bought if it served his personal interests, even if it harmed those of the U.S..

And some of those who were willing to do the buying also happened to be among those who led nations whose interests are not always allied with our own.  There is Saudi Arabia, for example, which provided most of the terrorists for the 9/11 attacks, and which executed a journalist who was an employee of a newspaper T**** hates and an lawful permanent resident of this county--doing so, in fact, with little more than a verbal slap on the wrist from Trump.  And then, most notoriously, there is Russia, where T**** has had business dealings for decades--dealings that, by his son's own admission, include loans from Russian lenders.  Effectively, that means loans from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a former KGB agent who runs the country on behalf of Russian mobsters with the same ruthlessness he displayed on behalf of the former Soviet government.  And equally effectively, it means that T**** is indebted to the Russian mob.  Yet he finds no irony or shame in trying to tout that relationship as an asset.

There you have it, folks.  Evidence of both bribery and treason.  Beyond a reasonable doubt?  Perhaps not.  Probable cause?  To quote someone who came a lot closer to being Vice President than she should have?  You betcha.  Or, to use an oft-used Maya Angelou quote:  when someone tells you who they are, believe them.  And is Congress--or, at least, the House--using its powers to delve into the probably cause it has had now for some time?

Unfortunately, not far enough.

Nancy Pelosi, in her second go-round as House Speaker, has decided that it isn't politically correct to pursue the question of impeachment, at least for the time being.  She has stated that the House will not move forward in any impeachment process until there is a bipartisan consensus that it should be done.  Otherwise, in her words, "he's just not worth it."

He's just not worth it.

Well, never mind whether he's worth it for the moment.  Maybe that would matter if we were just concerned with the question of feeding T****'s martyr complex, or the martyr complex of the T**** base, or the T**** media.  Maybe that would matter if we just didn't want to help him continue using his presidency to get ratings, or clicks.  But it doesn't.  Because there's that nagging question of whether WE are worth it.  We, the People, the ones who allegedly ordained and established the Constitution to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Don't we deserve as a people to know beyond any doubt that we have a President who is working for us, and not his business interests?  Hasn't the Constitution provided you with a tool for removing a President if he or she has been found to be guilty of treason and bribery, two things T**** may have found a way to mix?  And didn't the vote on the phony "national emergency" at the border suggest that even the current crop of Republicans can be persuaded to reach across the proverbial aisle in the face of an existential threat to our form of government?

Madame Speaker, the answer to all of those questions is yes.  And you owe it, as a constitutional officer and a leader in a co-equal branch of a tripartite government, to not only have the courage that this moment requires, but to impart some of that courage to the wavering Democrats in districts that T**** won in 2016.  Let them talk to some of the veterans of the Watergate era, if necessary, about the importance of stepping out of one's comfort zone when the moment requires it.  It is all too easy to pass the proverbial buck when it seems possible to do so--to Robert Mueller, to state law enforcement agencies, to the media, to all of them at once.  None of those parties has the specific duty to pursue the removal of a President who has broken the law and betrayed the trust of the American people.  You do.

When a house is burning down, you don't hope and pray that the water pipes will burst in time to contain the damage.  You call the fire fighters.  Madame Speaker, our constitutional house is burning down.  You and your colleagues are the fire fighters.  Your tools are not axes and hoses, but your authority as members of Congress and your political ability to build a credible case.  That always involves taking risks, and no one should take those risks likely.  But, as an attorney, I can tell you can cases do not always build themselves; more often than not, someone has to build them, even when the prospects of doing so are daunting.  Perhaps they are daunting here.  But going forward is absolutely necessary.

So do it, Madam Speaker.  This is not a moment for calculation, but a moment for resolute action.  To paraphrase Richard Nixon, who resigned as President rather than face an impeachment trial, and as he once said in the context of law enforcement, you have the tools.  Do the job.

And, Speaking Of Preserving The Past ...

... I want to also share this obituary from the New York Times, paying tribute to a man who did much to preserve the historic parts of New York that we (and even I) sometimes take for granted.

It's humbling to me to think about the hard work that Mr. Taylor must have put in, in a pre-Internet age, to fight the battles that he fought to save historic structures.  In the mid-1990s, with the help of some New Yorkers I met online, I launched Friends of the Biltmore, a non-profit organization designed to promote and perhaps operate Broadway's Biltmore Theater on 47th Street.  The existence of the Web, the ability it gave me to organize people and make contacts with the media and with various arts-related constituencies and organizations in the city, make the task of saving the theater a lot easier than it would have been had I tried to do it in a world of analog contacts and physical meetings.  Indeed, in my case, since I live in Baltimore, had it not been for the Internet it's doubtful that there would have been very much that I could do at the time to help save the theater.

The other lesson that I took from Mr. Taylor's obituary?  A reminder that, for a preservationist, it's important to accept in advance that you will not win every battle, for a variety of reasons.  Often, saving buildings is possible only by way of the kismet of various factors coming into place at the right time.  But that's all the more reason to savor the victories--and all the more reason to be involved in the first place.  After all, who's to say that you, or I, aren't meant to be one of the essential factors?  If you care, get involved.  You never know how important you may be until you make an effort to find out.

RIP, Mr. Taylor, and baruch dayan ha'emet.  Thanks for doing your part to save the essential New York for all of us.

What Does The Past Mean To Our Cities, And Our Young People?

As a dedicated historic preservationist, the only thing that makes me sadder than losing an important landmark is to read or see media pieces describing the loss, and/or similar losses, as inevitable, no big deal, or just another step on the inevitable march of human progress.  If it surprises you that this perspective is still prevalent, even after we've lost so many important structures and places in the early part of this century, you probably don't read publications like the New York Post.  For the most part, that's no great loss; it's a paper that has lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several decades promoting, often in libelous ways, various right-wing causes and perspectives.  Even so, it's s source of information about New York, a city whose people--and landmarks--are deeply important to me.

Which is why it hurts to read this piece by Steve Cuozzo.  Not just because it catalogues a number of recent losses among Big Apple landmarks.  Not even because it pretends to exhibit a studied level of indifference to these losses, under a you-can't-fight-the-future mantra.  But, because in doing so, it is fundamentally dishonest about why this is happening in the first place.

Cuozzo's main purpose in this piece seems to be to dispel the idea that money is the motivation for destroying New York's physical history in favor of faceless, can't-tell-one-from-the-other super-skyscrapers.  It's not about sheer greed, according to him; it's just humble real-estate investors living to serve the needs of the flood of young people coming into the city, who, if anything, prefer the glass behemoths of, say, the Hudson Yards, to low-rise townhouses and shops of yesteryear.

That might be plausible, if the young people could afford to live and work in those buildings.  But they can't--many of them, in fact, can't even afford a mortgage on a house, which is why so many of them are still living with their parents.  In fact, most of the high-rise residential structures built in midtown Manhattan are little more than investment properties owned by wealthy individuals from abroad, who view New York real estate simply as a safe place in which to park their money.  In fact, many of these supposedly "luxe" buildings are unoccupied.  There's no one in them to enjoy whatever luxury they provide.  Nor are any of these non-tenants present to contribute to the economic life of the city in other ways:  shopping, sightseeing, and so forth.

The truth is, and has been for years, is that young people have come to New York in droves even during its leanest periods (as I did, in the 70's) because of its unique role as the center of American culture--and not just to consume it, but to, in the words of Kander and Ebb, "be a part of it." And, when I use the word "culture" in this context, I'm not just talking about the arts and other media, but its physical landmarks, buildings and other public places that have played (and often continue to play) a major role in American life.

In fact, Cuozzo's article alludes to an example of how this process in continuing.

He mentions the shuttering of Lord & Taylor's Fifth Avenue store as an example of the acceleration of landmark departures.  However, what he doesn't mention is the fact that, although the store itself has disappeared, the building itself is protected by landmark designation from the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.  Nor does he mention that the new occupant of the building is going to be WeWork, a company that provides flexible, short-term office space to young companies who find using such space to be more affordable, and otherwise more practical, than leasing real estate under more traditional terms.

So, if Cuozzo's thesis is true--if young people are hungry only for what's new and shiny--then what is a company like WeWork setting up shop in an old, nineteenth-century carriage-trade department store?

I'm not going to pretend that I've talked to the WeWork folks about why they did this.  And I suspect that the Fifth Avenue location played a factor in its decision to take the space.  But they clearly weren't deterred by the age or design of the building.  And I have to believe that the building's status as a visual icon, a powerful symbol of commerce in the city, didn't hurt in the decision-making process.

But I also have to believe that the key consideration for WeWork was simply this:  what type of space would young people want to work in?  And I have to believe that they believed that they would rather be in a historic building like Lord & Taylor's old flagship than in whatever glass behemoth might be just around the corner.

And I would be the least surprised person to discover that, in fact, that was true.

After all, whenever young people have come in significant numbers to New York in the past half-century or so, they have always gravitated to historic neighborhoods and buildings.  In the process, they've taken structures that the marketplace had effectively declared worthless, and turned them into financial magnets for real estate investors.

Think Greenwich Village in the 1960s.  Or Soho and Tribeca in the 1970s.  Or the Upper West Side in the 1980s and 1990s.  Or Brooklyn--Brooklyn!--in the 21st century.  When I lived in New York in the early 1980s, and with the notable exception of Park Slope, you couldn't get the city's real estate industry to touch Brooklyn with a ninety-foot pole.  Today, Brooklyn, its historic brownstones and other structures, are the hottest part of the city's real estate market.  Even long-lost historic theaters, such as the Kings and the Paramount, have come back.

Young people don't move out of America's faceless suburban tracts simply to move into faceless skyscrapers.  They can't afford to.  And they're not interested in any case.  They want to be connected to something bigger than the next five minutes, contrary to what some media "experts" argue in self-serving efforts to pigeonhole them.  The truth is that, by choosing landmarks over supposedly "luxe" buildings, they are actually making conservative choices in doing so.  They are voting to connect themselves to America's past, and using it to build a future for themselves.  They are also putting meat on the bones of their environmental rhetoric; as is commonly said in the preservation community, the greenest building in the world is the one that's already built.

And the truth is that even Cuozzo recognizes this.  Here, in a later piece, he laments what he sees as the "fact" that New York will never produce another Andy Warhol, in part because he came of age in a New York where, thanks to the city's mid-20th-century economic decline and the "preservation by neglect" that the decline effectively encouraged, a lot of amazing and historically important real estate could be acquired and repurposed to continue writing new chapters in the city's and the nation's history.

The truth is that all five boroughs of New York City are rapidly running out of space that young people just starting out in life can afford to live in, work in, or use in any way for their purposes.  And that's also the case in other cities throughout the country.  The urban renewal of our past that was launched in the late 20th century may become a victim of its own success.  And, as a consequence, the continued existence of existing landmarks may be threatened by pressures from investors and builders whose pocketbooks depend on the perpetuation of the new and shiny.

Affordability.  Conservation of history.  Economic growth.  These are all elements of a successful city.  We are rapidly reaching the point at which it seems impossible to have all of them in our major metropolises.  In the case of New York, we may very well have reached that point.  Perhaps the message from Cuozzo's conflicting pieces is that we are, definitely, already there.

Are there any answers?  At this point, I can only say that I hope so.  Somehow, we have to figure out how to continue moving toward the future without sacrificing what we can gain from the past.  I don't think there are any easy answers.  I'm not even positive that their are answers with which all of us can live.  But I think that we have to try to find such answers, if we can.  As young people have recognized, and continue to do so, the past is an important part of who we are.  It's
important--in fact, I would say it's essential--not to try moving forward without it.

Shed No Tears For Amazon Or New York

When New York started to come apart at the seams in the 1970s, as crime ran rampant, city finances proved to be a proverbial house of cards, and corporations large and small (but especially large) fled the city for the relative stability of the suburbs, I worried obsessively about it.  My parents had taken my sisters and me to the 1964-65 New York World's Fair; in fact, they took us twice.  I can only tell you that, from my eight- or nine-year old perspective, I fell in love with the city, and have always felt that way ever since, through all of its ups and downs.  And so, as I reached adulthood and went off to college, I would buy the New York Times every day (a habit I acquired from my father) and read about the Big Apple's triumphs and tribulations.  I agonized over stories of departing businesses, and rejoiced at the occasional report about people and businesses defying the trend and coming in to New York.

So why should I feel so "meh" about the news that Amazon will not be bringing a "semi-headquarters," and the thousands of jobs that would allegedly come with it, to Long Island City in Queens, as it had committed to do some time ago?

A number of reasons.

To begin with, the economy not just of New York, but of the nation as a whole, is far more homogenized than it was back in the '70s and before then.  Businesses, stores, newspapers, theaters--all of the things that make up an urban economy were unique to each city, and they would tend to stay in one location because, back then, there were economic and technological advantages to close physical proximity.  But one of the sad consequences of the concentration of wealth over the past four decades is that a lot of these individualized enterprises could no longer depend upon purely local consumers to survive.  At the same time, advances in technology, especially in communications and transportation, made the location of organizations far less important in planning their operations.

And thus, newspapers like the New York Times survived by becoming national newspapers, focusing less on the city and more on the rest of the national.  Meanwhile, businesses were splitting up there operations and spreading them out to take advantage of lower costs in cheaper locations.  Stores?  They either became national stores, like Macy's, or they disappeared altogether (like Bonwit Teller and B. Altman) and were replaced with other formerly local and now national stores like Target or Nordstrom's.  Theaters?  Well, when was the last time you watched a movie or saw a play in one, instead of on your laptop or smartphone?

The physical and other segmenting of major corporations like Amazon, and the related ease by which such companies can helicopter in and out of an urban area, makes me truly wonder why any city, much less New York, would offer $3 billion in tax incentives to have them fly in for who really knows how long.  What if, in a short span of time, Amazon found it convenient to helicopter all of some of the promised jobs to another location?  What happens to the space they occupy, the local businesses that came to depend on them, the value of property in the area, and so forth?

The Amazons of the world don't care about those things.  And it's insane for the New Yorks of the world to care about them.  We are living in an age in which the virtues of city living are slowly being rediscovered, and people are moving back to them in significant numbers.  In the process, they are making a statement about their own commitment and sense of loyalty to the urban life around them, and they are starting and patronizing businesses of their own.  Why not take the $3 billion in tax breaks and given them to those people?  Seems to me like they're more worth it.  New York is creating new jobs and new opportunities without the Amazons of the world.  Once, New York had over 100 Fortune 500 headquarters; today, it has no more than 50.  But it still leads all other cities in this category, and the departures aren't stopping people from coming in.

And speaking of Fortune ...

Here's a little item from that magazine that suggests they really have no reason to rattle a tin cup in the faces of public officials.  It suggests even further that this whole headquarters search was little more than an effort to find out who was the biggest municipal sucker of all--an effort that, as the Times reported, backfired on them.

Shed no tears for Amazon (and full disclosure:  I shop on its Web site).  It will do very well without New York and the promised subsidies.  If it really needed to come there, it could easily afford to do so without them.  New York should be putting that money into making life better for the new arrivals from other states and other countries, who are coming in asking for no help at all, but who could greatly and deservedly benefit from having it given to them, in the form of good schools, good transit, better police and fire protection, better trash collection, better access to capital for housing and business expansion, and so forth.  Providing for those things are the true work of municipal and state government.

Amazon can helicopter to wherever it wants.  It's best to just get out of its way.

Moving Forward From The Virginia Mess

I'm a few weeks late again in blogging, and there's quite a bit to catch up on.  But I think I'll start with a story that was on everyone's minds a few weeks ago, and (as is par for the course in T****land) has been pushed aside by subsequent chaos.  Unfortunately, it's far too important to let it get lost in the media sauce:  the news that the white Governor and Attorney General of Virginia wore blackface in former parts of their lives, while the African-American Lieutenant Governor of the state is facing an investigation based on two accusations of sexual assault.

As per the SOP of legacy media and right-wing social media, this news became, and probably remains, grist for the "Dems-in-disarry" meme on which they are stuck when it comes to covering Democrats and progressives more generally.  It's difficult, however, for me to see this as anything but a southern-specific, and especially a Virginia-specific, issue when it comes to the blackface episodes in Ralph Northam's and Mark Herring's lives.  I mean, let's be realistic:  does anyone believe that their are any Virginians in either party who could be professional qualified to take the place of Northam or Herring, and who has not worn blackface at some point in their lives?  Can I just get a on that one, and move on?

I'll go so far as to say that this is perhaps the main reason why this story has faded to a significant degree in the MSM's coverage priorities.  Again, this is Virginia, the state in which Northam's 2017 opponent, Ed Gillespie, spent the better part of the campaign dodging accusations that he was a bigot.  And then, going back a few years or so, there was then-Senator George Allen, who thought it best to run for re-election by insulting one-sixth of the planet's entire population (and a significant portion of Virginia's population as well).

Perhaps the more significant reason that the story has faded from the electronic headlines is simply this:  the "Dems" aren't in disarray over the Virginia situation.  Even single Democrat who has publicly condemned all three men, and demanded their resignations.  In doing so, their statements have made it clear that the behavior of which they are accused runs contrary not only to the values of the Democratic Party, but also to the ideals of public service.  Yes, all three men deserve due process, but that is a right, while holding public office is a privilege. 

And the ability of a public servant to act honestly and fully on behalf of the people he or she serves must never be called into serious question without consequences for that servant.  This is especially true in the case of Justin Fairfax, the state's lieutenant governor.  Blackface, for which there is never any justification, is an act of psychological violence, but sexual assault is an act of physical violence.  If the first duty of a public servant is to promote safety (and I believe it is), then there can be no questions about a public servant's ability and willingness to do so.

In spite of these arguments and others, Northam, Fairfax, and Herring all seem to be intent on staying on the job, without regard of the potential for compromise to their status as public servants, or the larger damage that staying on may, eventually, do to the larger goals of the Democratic Party in 2020 and beyond.  Maybe they have confidence in the Republican hypocrisy on issues of race and gender to not feel immediately threatened with removal from office.  Maybe they genuinely believe that there is some value to trying to ride out the controversy and repair their damaged relationship with the people of the state.  And maybe, just maybe, they feel safe where they are because they know that national Democrats can't do much more that call for their resignation.

Or is there?

What about members of Congress who display an open affinity for another country, to the point at which their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States might be called into serious question?  Say, for example, the Russian Federation, or the Confederate States of America?  Should they be allowed to serve in Congress, even if they meet the constitutional requirements of age, citizenship, and residency?

I mention those requirements because the Supreme Court, in the 1969 case of Powell v. McCormack, stated that a member of Congress could not be denied a seat so long as those requirements had been satisfied, and the election results as certified by the relevant state showed that the individual in question had won the election.  This is why members of Congress, such as Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey (to cite a recent example) can stand trial for criminal charges without being forced to relinquish his seat in Congress.  And this is why someone like Fairfax, despite the allegations of sexual assault, could not be barred from being seated in Congress.

But blackface, like the use of other antebellum symbols of the Confederacy and Southern culture (such as the Confederate battle flag) represents something even more significant than a violation of criminal law.  It raises the question of national allegiance.  It asks whether or not the users of those symbols are trying to resurrect the proverbial "Lost Cause."  In fact, it ultimately begs the question of whether or not the user can, with a full and sincere heart, swear an oath of loyalty to a Constitution and a nation that fought and vanquished the nation associated with those symbols.

I think it's a fair question.  And I think it's high time the Democrats acted upon it.

Which is why I'm calling on the Democratic leadership in both houses that, should they retain (in the case of the House) or acquire (in the case of the Senate) control, they should refuse to seat any elected member who has ever, in any way, been associated with the symbols and ideals of the Confederacy, with the provision that they may be seated if they renounce in writing the use or support of those symbols, and the knowledge that they may be expelled if evidence emerges that they have not been faithful to that renunciation.

No battle flags in their campaigns, or on the walls of their offices.  No "off-color" racial jokes.  No appeals to "heritage" (whatever that really means).  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.

Does this offend you?  Does this seem like some kind of infringement of First Amendment rights?

Let me be clear.  The First Amendment has no more passionate and absolute supporter than this blogger.  There is a constitutional right to be a bigot.  There is no constitutional right to be a traitor, or to support the interests of a vanquished nation while swearing an oath to uphold the laws of another one--specifically, the one that did the vanquishing.  There is no such thing as "dual citizenship" in the Union and the Confederacy.  You belong to one, or to the other.  And since, as I wrote earlier, public service is a privilege and not a right, it's not at all unreasonable to demand loyalty to the government and the flag to which members of Congress swear a daily oath.  (Yes, that's right; the Pledge of Allegiance argument works both ways).

We have a "President" who likes to go around saying that you can't have a nation without borders.  Well, you can't have "one nation under G-d" with two flags.  Make a choice. And if the Stars and Bars is your choice, well, at least we know where you stand.  And we can act accordingly, not only with our votes, but also with our Congressional leadership withholding the privilege of serving a nation you do not fully support.

If the Northam-Fairfax-Herring mess in Virginia can do nothing else, it can help to clarify our national values, and the expression of those national values in our national government.  Jesus said that no one can serve two masters.  Let's see the Republicans, who would like to use the Virginian mess for their own purposes in the singleminded pursuit of power, make a choice.

And let's see if they get it right.

And withhold the privilege of public service if they fail to do so.

A Word (Or Several) About THR's Publication Schedule, And A Lot Of Words About Ocasio-Cortez

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.

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:

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.