Monthly Archives: June 2017

Voting with the enemy

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-30 No comments

At every turn Bill Keating is a huge disappointment – healthcare, foreign policy, cheerleading Trump’s Tomahawk missile attack on Syria. The list of betrayals by the Massachusetts 9th Congressional District representative grows daily.

This week Keating and 23 other turncoats parted with fellow Democrats and voted for H.R.3004, Kate’s Law, which the Friends Committee on National Legislation describes this way:

“H.R. 3004 would expand grounds for indefinite detention and decrease legal opportunities for certain migrants challenging their removal. […] Criminalizing entire immigrant communities based on the senseless actions of a few individuals tears at the moral fabric of our society and will not make our communities safer. H.R. 3004 could prevent migrants from adequately accessing asylum and would increase family hardship through separation by offering no meaningful opportunity for family members to pursue a legal route when seeking reunification across borders. These provisions will only fuel the brokenness of our system, which is already heavy-handed on indefinite detention and dangerous deportations at great expense to U.S. taxpayers and our collective moral conscience.”

As the FCNL points out, slapping even longer detentions and a felony label on desperate people crossing the border accomplishes nothing except to show how cruel Americans can be and drives up prison costs.

But this is not the first time that Keating has supported Republican anti-immigration legislation. In the last Congressional session, Keating again joined with Democratic traitors in supporting H.R.4038, the Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015. The bill, written by Republican Michael McCaul (TX), now keeps Syrian refugees out of the United States – many of whom the United States made homeless by its thinly-disguised war to depose Bashar al-Assad.

If Democrats act and vote like Republicans, American voters must be forgiven for wondering just what the Democratic Party actually stands for – and what logic there is in voting for a mean-spirited Democrat when Republicans can do it so much better. And the DNC had better get it through their thick, thick skulls that voting with the enemy deprives voters of a choice.

I hope a progressive Democrat will emerge to challenge this DINO representative. The Greens, and even Libertarian foreign policy critics, could offer voters in the Massachusetts 9th Congressional District a needed alternative to bi-partisan warmongering and immigrant bashing. Win or lose, split vote or not, no third party could “spoil” this Congressional seat any more than Keating has already soiled it himself.

Red Lines

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-28 No comments

According to an article in the New York Times, the president summoned his aides to the Oval Office to discuss his reasons for asking Congress for permission to wage war on Syria – not that American presidents feel obliged to follow the Constitutionally-mandated procedure: “He had several reasons, he told them, including a sense of isolation after the terrible setback in the British Parliament. But the most compelling one may have been that acting alone would undercut him if in the next three years he needed Congressional authority for his next military confrontation in the Middle East, perhaps with Iran.”

If this sounds familiar it’s because it happened four years ago, just barely into Obama’s second term, when Syria looked every bit like the target it is today and Iran, too, was squarely within American crosshairs. Obama had drawn a moral “red line” in the sand warning Assad against the use of chemical weapons. The U.S. seemed to be on the brink of another war.

Bush had gotten Saddam. Obama had already dispatched Ghadafy and was now weighing going after Assad. And why not? The Middle East is America’s playground and American presidents murder foreign leaders at whim. Accusing foreign leaders of atrocities has always been common and self-serving – but it’s especially hypocritical in light of our own practices.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the nation’s first biological weapons program in 1941. From 1943 to 1969, the U.S. developed weaponized anthrax, Q fever, Malta fever, botulinum, cholera, dengue fever, and various dysentery agents.

The American chemical weapons program began even earlier, in 1918, with mustard and phosgene gases, Lewisite, hydrogen cyanide, and cyanogen chloride. After WWII, the U.S. developed sarin, VX nerve agents, and Agent Orange. When it signed the Geneva Protocol, the U.S. specifically exempted itself from defoliants like Agent Orange and gases for riot control. In 1997, the U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, committing to destroy its 30,000 tons of such weapons. But then it dragged its heels for decades.

A chemical weapons depot in Tooele, Utah once hosted the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world. Tooele stored 14 million tons of chemical agents, blistering agents, and nerve gas – almost half the U.S. total – and was closed only five years ago. Depots in Alabama and Maryland are still operational. A facility in Colorado is not expected to complete destruction of its stockpiles before 2019. Another one in Kentucky won’t be done before 2023.

The United States is the world’s leading arms dealer. Not individuals or corporations – but the government itself. 78% of the world’s arms come from U.S. government sales to foreign nations. In 2008 Israel committed a war crime by using white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza. The weapon, which melts human flesh, came from a U.S. stockpile stored in Israel. When Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurds, they were stamped “Made in the USA.” As old archives are opened and foreign policy documents leaked, U.S. culpability in historical atrocities is revealed. The German press recently reported that Chile’s dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, had stockpiles of U.S. botulinum toxins.

All the moral “red lines” regarding chemical weapons seem to converge in the United States.

From Havana harbor (“Remember the Maine!”), Laos and Cambodia, to fake yellowcake and invented WMD’s in Iraq, the U.S. has seized on many pretexts to bomb, blast, incinerate, and shoot people in faraway lands – as always, the majority civilians.

At this point, no one knows whether Trump’s claims that Assad is using chemical weapons are true or whether they’re simply a welcome distraction from his many corruption probes. But if history is a guide, “red lines” are never used as moral guideposts. They are usually just cynical pretexts to justify another war.

One down and two to go

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-27 No comments

On Monday, June 26th Mardee Xifaras graciously hosted a Meet and Greet for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Setti Warren at her law offices in New Bedford. Warren spoke to a group of roughly twenty-five visitors about his two terms as mayor of Newton, his military service, Newton’s budget surplus, its improved AAA bond rating, and educational improvements under his administration. Warren referred to two of his governing principles several times: transparency and outcomes-based decision-making.

Warren identified Income Inequality as the #1 challenge for Massachusetts. He supports a number of economic justice issues: Single-Payer Healthcare; Free Public College; the Fair Share Amendment; Paid Family Leave; and a $15/hour minimum wage. In short order Warren managed to check off a few boxes from Progressive Massachusetts 2017 Legislative Priorities, though many were not discussed.

Warren is an unapologetic advocate of raising revenue. He talked about setting reasonable goals and then backing into the funding. It requires considerable guts nowadays to argue that government has a function, that the function is to help people, and that these functions require adequate budgets. But after the Meet and Greet I stood out on the sidewalk comparing notes with two other visitors and they expressed concern that, if not handled cautiously, this could easily sink a candidate.

The economic and budget questioning went on for a while. Neither community policing, judicial reform, decriminalization of poverty, immigration, civil liberties, regional transportation, nor the governor’s relationship with the House leader ever came up in conversation. It was a friendly first meeting and Warren didn’t really get any hardball questions.

Sitting as we were in an office in New Bedford, I asked Warren what he as governor would do about rogue sheriffs. At first he wanted to talk about Safe Communities, which he as mayor brought to Newton. I clarified that I was interested in the discretion a governor had over the fourteen county sheriffs in the Commonwealth. I reminded Warren that Duval Patrick had once curtailed Tom Hodgson’s budget and cited the June 25th Boston Globe editorial on Hodgson’s recklessness in Bristol County. Warren acknowledged that it’s an important issue to local voters, promised to look into what a governor could do, and an aide said he’d follow up with me.

I would have liked to ask Warren – who campaigns on his service in Iraq, on his father’s service in Korea, and his grandfather’s service during the Battle of the Bulge – what he thinks of our perpetual wars or what he thinks of Clinton’s and Kerry’s records on militarism and foreign policy. If this ambitious politician is on his way up the food chain, I’d like to know now – not when he runs for U.S. Senate or a higher office – what he thinks of the U.S. military budget, our foreign policy, or the DHS Fusion centers that operate in the Commonwealth. Would Warren crack down on state police spying on citizens? Would Warren as governor follow New York Democratic governor Cuomo’s example and impose a blacklist on the BDS movement or continue leading trade delegations to Israel, as Charlie Baker does? What kind of relationship would Warren have with Massachusetts defense contractors? The ACLU? Black Lives Matter?

For that matter I’d like all the Democratic contenders to weigh in on these issues. Despite what the Massachusetts Democratic Party thinks, there is no artificial division between foreign policy and domestic policy. Not when 68% of our discretionary budget goes for war. Not when state Democrats regularly wade into national issues.

Setti Warren’s resume follows a familiar pattern: high school class president; university; politics; law school; political appointments; fundraising; political consulting; military intelligence; a failed bid for the Senate; a successful run as mayor; and now the governor’s office. Warren’s father Joseph was a Dukakis advisor and Warren himself has held positions on political campaigns and in government under Bill Clinton and John Kerry.

If there is one thing that nags at me it’s that his is the profile of an ambitious career Democrat. Contrast Warren’s resume with Paul Feeney’s background, for example. Everything about Setti Warren’s speech at the June convention in Worcester came across as well-engineered, maybe even a tad slick. After three decades of non-stop war I find appeals to military patriotism distasteful, but this is apparently a national strategy designed to make the Democratic Party more appealing to the Right. But, in an informal setting where visitors sat around a law office conference table and fielded questions, Warren came off as genuine and answered credibly.

A few visitors have already praised Warren, but love doesn’t normally happen on a first date. Democrats ought to be cautious: an affable, telegenic Republican already owns the governor’s office and Massachusetts Democrats are notoriously complacent. The Democrat to beat Baker had better be damned good and they’d better be a progressive. And progressives should be wary: this race in the Blue Heart of America may say a lot about where the Democratic Party is really headed.

Warren, Gonzalez, and Massey each will have an opportunity to present their vision for the state, answer tough questions, and convince us of their sincerity and electability.

But it’s early. It’s one down and two more candidates to go.

Bitter reality

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-25 No comments

The Intercept has an excellent tour down Bad Memory Lane in an interview with Ralph Nader. Nader outlines the series of missteps and betrayals that disgraced the Democratic Party and brought it to its present state of abject powerlessness. The Israelites had nothing on the Democratic Party; they were only lost in the desert for 40 years. Nader makes the case that it’s been downhill for Democrats considerably longer.

With Democrats flip-flopping on single-payer, holding undemocratic elections, proving to be able lobbyists for Republican interests, and ready to throw Pelosi under the bus for someone more palatable to the Right, nobody has any idea where the DNC is headed. Tom Perez hasn’t been much of a Moses to guide the DNC to the Promised Land. But, truth be told, Keith Ellison would have been just as ineffective. A party that has disgraced itself for decades doesn’t earn the electorate’s trust again in just a year. Ask any ex-con.

I’ve been telling people – mostly myself – that the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between total destruction of the United States and the Republicans. But by doing what? And using what power? In the case of the AHCA it’s now five freaked-out Republicans who block the way of Republican Senate colleagues acting as a death panel for their own constituents, not a totally emasculated Democratic Party. And it was Republican corruption, not Democratic opposition, that led to the downfall of several cabinet appointments.

It’s a year and a half from midterm elections and the same Democrats who presided over disaster and disgrace are still running the show. We still don’t have any idea where the Democratic Party is headed on internal democracy, donors, PACs, centrism, globalism, or if the party even has a 50 state strategy for backing and funding candidates – and what kind they’ll run. I see a proliferation of progressive platform planks but, really, not much else is changing.

Even a change of faces may accomplish nothing if the Democratic Party has ultimately lost the confidence of American working people and has no clear path back to power. Nader again:

“There are some people who think the Democratic Party can be reformed from within by changing the personnel. I say good luck to that. What’s happened in the last twenty years? They’ve gotten more entrenched. Get rid of Pelosi, you get Steny Hoyer. You get rid of Harry Reid, you get [Charles] Schumer. Good luck.

Unfortunately, to put it in one phrase, the Democrats are unable to defend the United States of America from the most vicious, ignorant, corporate-indentured, militaristic, anti-union, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-posterity [Republican Party] in history.

End of lecture.”

And those new faces Nader mentions – the “new personnel” – that includes even those of us who have stepped into empty local political committees, pledged to work in and revive the party, and fought for platform amendments. But in many ways it feels like a fool’s errand.

For all the new energy, the fresh new faces and good intentions, it may well be that the empty vessel we thought we could fill is just too riddled with chips and cracks. The moment is truly only months away when we may have to face the bitter reality – that it may be time to start from scratch and create a new, credible, and genuine, party of the people.

Let them eat cake

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-25 No comments

White House apparatchik/ consiglieri/ mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway doesn’t think Trump’s famous economic “carnage” is bad enough to throw a Medicaid lifeline to the working poor.

Sounding as out-of-touch and cruel as Marie Antoinette, Conway appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and said that jobless Medicaid recipients should just go out and get a job. “If they are able-bodied and they want to work, then they’ll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.”

Yeah, you lazy slackers. Why didn’t you think of that? Go get a job with her benefits.

For a political party that has so aggressively courted the poor white vote, this is a slap in the face to the very people who tipped the election in Trump’s favor. Of course, the working poor includes both Trump and non-Trump voters alike, and millions of minorities, but very few get medical and retirement benefits. Just ask Walmart workers who quality for food stamps and Medicaid because they work for unlivable wages. Kellyanne Conway’s suggestion would be laughable if it were not so callous.

Conway, who once ran a SuperPAC for billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and recently bought an $8 million mansion in suburban Washington D.C., spins steer manure for a living. But she doesn’t even have to believe it. For every lie she tells Conway is paid handsomely. And the medical benefits are great.

* * *

Now certainly the Democratic Party is guilty of turning its back on American workers. But out in the woodshed Democrats are taking a much more savage beating than the GOP, which is now doing the cruelest damage to the working class. And yet Trump & Company continue to receive applause for “promises kept” from this base.

It may take four years for Trump voters to realize the severity of their mistake – some people only learn things the hard way. But when American voters finally realize what the GOP has done to them, and to whom Trump’s promises were actually made, they’re not going to like Marie Antoinette and her boss at all.

Slow learners

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-23 No comments

Today in Science: Politicians may have human DNA

Since January 20th we’ve lived in a very different country, one where raw power is everything, character is nothing, and concern for others is seen only when cameras are rolling. But yesterday I saw some quiet, unrehearsed kindness. I saw a politician being a mensch. It surprised me. And then it surprised me that I’d been surprised. It made me see how cynical I’ve become. In some things I’m a pretty slow learner. But yesterday I realized that politics is not only local but has to be personal.

I had occasion to be in District Court yesterday where I ran into my state representative, Chris Markey, whose politics I have slammed previously. Mr. Markey had stopped and was patiently helping several confused people find their courtrooms, including someone I was there to assist.

Since Inauguration Day it’s been all too easy to lose sight of the fact that most of our politicians – even those we find most frustrating – are basically decent men and women. Like Chris Markey, like most of the Democrats with whom I have political differences, each is more than merely his office, each is not simply an agenda. For each, their politics are formed by values I may not fully understand or ultimately accept– but this is all the more reason to listen with respect and seek out opportunities to talk.

So, Chris, let’s talk.

Carrier Jobs off to Mexico after all

I am not the only slow learner in America. That honor also belongs to Trump voters.

Donald Trump made a big show of saying he’d crack down on US-bound Mexican criminals by building a big, beautiful wall. But this was always a one-way street for gringos. Mexico-bound corporate crooks don’t get a protectionist wall but receive instead big, beautiful tax breaks. Trump and Pence claimed they’d save thousands of Indiana jobs at the Carrier subsidiary of defense contractor United Technologies Corporation (UTC). But in typical Trumpian fashion, the real number turned out to be closer to 700. And now, in spite of millions of dollars of corporate incentives, Carrier is chopping 600 of those jobs anyway. Off to Mexico! Adios, ladrones!

Eventually reality will slowly dawn on Trump’s supporters. Instead of Making America Great Again, the Billionaire-in-Chief is actually presiding over the complete opposite. The Ford Focus assembly line is off to China. Saudi Arabia just took control of America’s largest refinery. And, as for the 33,000 coal mining jobs Trump claims he created, well, it turns out the number is actually about 1,000. Where is Trump’s infrastructure plan? Where are the real jobs? Even Trump’s most vehement supporters have got to eventually start asking some tough questions. Lincoln was right: You can fool some of the people some of the time…

And if Mr. Bigshot Deal Maker had really wanted to save the Carrier jobs, one option might have been to make United Technologies an offer they couldn’t refuse – to hold defense contracts hostage to American jobs. But that’s not how it works in Trumplandia. UTC will get even greater corporate welfare thanks to the biggest military budget since the Big Bang. And unemployed Carrier workers – many of them Trump voters – will get to pay triple premiums for the worst healthcare in the Western world. That is, if they don’t have any preexisting conditions.

And that’s how it really works in Trump’s Great New America.

Pareidolia

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-23 No comments

Pareidolia is the human ability to see shapes or recognize images, particularly faces, from random sensory stimulus. Common examples are “seeing” people in an inkblot test, canals on Mars, a man in the moon, rabbits in the clouds, an old man’s profile in a rock face, or hearing hidden messages in music. Pareidolia taps into the oldest, most primal, parts of our brain.

Then there is our tendency to see images we want to see. For centuries people have been seeing the faces of religious figures on everything from walls to their own food. A Virgin Mary on a slice of toast sold for $28,000 on eBay. A Michigan woman discovered the face of Jesus on a pierogi at a church fundraiser. An Ontario man found Jesus in a burnt fish stick.

Tom Miller, a California Lutheran minister, thinks he knows why it is so common. In a sermon he observed:

“It has to do with our faith and a need to know that God steps across time and space to touch my life and be involved in my life. It has to do with looking for Jesus. […] We somehow think that we have to look for the dramatic, for the unusual, for the extraordinary. We’ve gotten the notion from somewhere that if God is at work it has to be in a way that no one would ever believe if we told them.“

These sightings pop up out of nowhere, have to be truly offbeat, dramatic, and personal. And they are a matter of faith from people so desperate that they are willing to suspend rational thought.

You probably know where this is headed.

The claim that Donald Trump’s presidency is checking off wins and keeping promises seems delusional to anyone actually looking at the evidence. But Trump partisanship is not strictly a matter of evidence, nor even of reality. It’s a matter of faith from desperate people.

I’m not sure the Democratic National Committee has a strategy to counter any of this. When it comes to religion, science, or even acknowledging observable phenomena like Tweets and climate change, many Republicans live in a completely different world. We can ask all day: “What promises did Trump really keep?” Or we can ask what part of climate change (or evolution, or the moon landing, or Sandy Hook) they dispute. But there is never a rational answer.

Most rational people see the world like the California minister. More importantly, even the California minister prefers to see a world that includes god rationally.

Americans don’t need to swallow Trump’s blatant lies or pretend there is substance in his extravagant promises. We don’t need to look for dramatic and cruel solutions to national problems that speak only to self-interest or primate instincts. We don’t need the showmanship of a latter-day P. T. Barnum to sell us on an alternate reality. We can glimpse the reality all around us and take notice of our brothers and sisters on our shared planet. And then we can think about it.

In Miller’s sermon he tells his congregants they can find God anywhere by seeing, not imagining, opening up themselves to the world, not shutting it out:

“Try looking into the eyes of the person next to you. Try looking at the face of the person at the next desk, or behind the counter. Try looking into the eyes of the people with whom you rub elbows every day. Try looking into the eyes of the person you don’t really want to deal with tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, or even this afternoon.”

Miller seems to be saying that there is an observable, collective reality in this world and compassion and solidarity derive from it. Conversely, compassion and solidarity allow us to perceive the world from many different perspectives, opening up an even greater reality to us. But many Americans, blinding themselves to a connection with the wider world, see only themselves, alone, in a hostile world of “carnage.”

A world of imagination where reality is only as firm as the fish sticks.

Coming Home

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-22 No comments

Democrats often complain that Bernie Sanders should either join the Democratic Party or knock off the criticism. I even hear this from people who admire the direction Sanders is trying to move the party.

But they forget that the Democratic Party includes many Senators much less reliable on liberal and progressive issues. In the House the party even winks at a faction known as the Blue Dog Coalition which proudly votes conservative. Call them mavericks or traitors, the Democratic Party never knows whether any of these “wildcards” are going to be assets or liabilities. But it’s had a reliable friend in Sanders.

The Senate has 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats, and 2 Independents. Of the 46 Democrats, 8 are conservatives and most are centrists. Though it often invokes the memory of the New Deal, the Civil Rights and Labor movements, and Camelot, this is a party that has put a lot of distance between itself and its most cherished values. The corporate-friendly entity that exists today is little more than a fundraising machine. And Democrats, though the memories are sweet, may never be able to come home.

* * *

Democratic Senate Conservatives:

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia
Sen. Jon Tester of Montana
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia

Democratic House Conservatives (Blue Dogs):

Rep. Brad Ashford of Nebraska
Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois
Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida
Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota
Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois
Rep. David Scott of Georgia
Rep. Filemon Vela of Texas
Rep. Gwen Graham of Florida
Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas
Rep. J. Luis Correa of California
Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee
Rep. Jim Costa of California
Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey
Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona
Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California
Rep. Mike Thompson of California
Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia
Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida
Rep. Tom O’Halleran of Arizona
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas

An unpleasant surprise

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-22 No comments

Dartmouth voters live in a pretty blue corner of a pretty blue state. With the ICE crackdown Trump unleashed on immigrants, many of us appealed to our state representatives only to discover they were not as blue as we thought. In fact, some are a surprising shade of red. And nobody likes an unpleasant surprise.

Dear Dartmouth Voters,

Many of us have expressed concern about Rep. Chris Markey’s poor record of voting for progressive causes. He recently added his support to the Massachusetts Family Leave Act, which may have been in response to recent lobbying by constituents. And for that we thank you, Rep. Markey!

But this presents us with a great opportunity to keep the pressure on by calling (1) to thank him for his support of the Family Leave Act, (2) to urge him to support H.3033, Tony Cabral’s bill, which in effect prevents Sheriff Hodgson from using his staff to assist ICE, and (3) to ask Rep. Markey to support more than a dozen other pieces of progressive legislation which to date he has failed to co-sponsor and seems unlikely to vote for:

https://scorecard.progressivemass.com/my-legislators/02748

Rep. Markey’s State House phone number is 617-722-2020 and his email address is Christopher.Markey@mahouse.gov.

Let’s keep the pressure on! Dartmouth needs a stronger ally in the State House.

Regards,

Bettina Borders, Kate Fentress, David Ehrens, Sue Perry, Lisa Lemieux

Election Night

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-21 No comments

Georgia Special Election

Last night Jon Ossoff lost the Georgia 6th Congressional District special election to Good ol’ Gal Karen Handel. There was, predictably, some crying and finger-pointing but it was generally acknowledged that Democrats need to find a winning strategy. A piece in Washington Monthly advised Dems to stop chasing Romney voters, pointing out just how wrong Chuck Schumer was when he said: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

A McClatchy piece and an article in TPM both reminded readers that Ossoff’s upscale district is nevertheless in the Heart of Dixie and Ossoff’s centrist Democratic “supporters, even when combined with politically moderate independents, couldn’t outnumber Republican partisans.” Demographics, not progressives, and not the DNC, are what defeated Ossoff. However, the loss does not signify the impotence or the end of the Democratic Party. But we seem to be missing opportunities to reach out with an honest economic message to people who might actually be receptive.

Make China Great Again

Donald Trump hasn’t said much about Ford’s plans to move its Ford Focus assembly to China although he will almost certainly blame the move on insufficient tax breaks for billionaires. But will the Billionaire-in-Chief slap huge tariffs on Ford when they begin re-importing the cars? …. Don’t hold your breath.

Make Saudi Arabia Great Again

Another American reversal-of-fortune has occurred on Donald Trump’s watch: Saudi Arabia just assumed total control of America’s largest refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. When asked how the purchase squared with Trump’s protectionist promises, Saudi ARAMCO CEO Amin Nasser smiled and sounded grateful for ARAMCO’s cozy relationship with the administration: “We don’t like to see any kind of protectionist measures…” It’s doubtful that the Saudi billionaires will ever see any.

The Family Business

Speaking of Saudi Arabia, this is a country with no Emoluments Clause. For that matter there aren’t many legal protections for anyone in what is essentially a family-owned business (slash nation) governed by a dictatorship and greased by nepotism. No wonder Trump loves the Saudis so much. Today the Saudi king announced a big shakeup, replacing most of what in a democracy would be cabinet or portfolio members with – what else – members of the Saudi royal family. The dictator also named his 31 year-old son to be the new heir. I thought this was the sort of thing that really disturbs us when Syria and North Korea do it… but guess not. We should probably count our blessings that Trump has run out of children and in-laws to stick in the White House.

U.S. War Crimes

You can’t wage war nonstop for three decades and not kill civilians. The U.S. has killed more than half a million since 9/11 but now it turns out that the US is also responsible for half of all civilian casualties since 2010.

Who are the real terrorists?

AHCA Mystery Meat

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-20 No comments

You remember it sliding off your lunch tray. They said it was a Sloppy Joe but it could have just as easily been the dead raccoon you saw from the school bus window that morning. Sometimes there was a drumstick shaped thing that might have once been attached to a species of fowl, but it was confusing because there were also pieces of ham and beef gristle attached like Frankenstein’s forehead.

I’m talking about Mystery Meat.

But I’m also talking about the GOP’s new healthcare plan, the AHCA. Trumpcare. Because in both cases nobody really knows for sure what’s in the unsavory concoction.

Mitch McConnell seems intent on forcing a vote on the AHCA by June 30th, though there is still no written draft to examine.

No Democrats have been invited to discuss the bill’s provisions. The Congressional Budget Office has had no opportunity to score the legislation. There will be no committee hearings, and no public input will be allowed. No one has any idea what’s in the GOP’s vat of salmonella and they are deeply shamed by the AHCA. They fear letting the public know how bad it really is.

Like a magician’s trick, this secret bill will be unveiled just moments before a vote. More secret even than the Patriot Act, Congress will be caught totally off guard, will have no time to study it or get feedback from constituents. The Senate majority intends to force this noxious sludge down Americans’ throats by using a process called “reconciliation” – allowing the AHCA (Trumpcare) to be passed by 51 votes instead of the customary 60.

But with grit, testicles (and ovaries), Democrats could slow down the adoption of this gurgling, sulphurous roadkill stew by using Senate rules to object to “unanimous consent” requests, also proposing and arguing for a stream of amendments to the bill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has indicated his willingness to pursue this tougher strategy to press for scrutiny of the legislation:

“Republicans are drafting this bill in secret because they’re ashamed of it, plain and simple. These are merely the first steps we’re prepared to take in order to shine a light on this shameful Trumpcare bill and reveal to the public the GOP’s true intentions: to give the uber-wealthy a tax break while making middle class Americans pay more for less health care coverage. If Republicans won’t relent and debate their health care bill in the open for the American people to see, then they shouldn’t expect business as usual in the Senate.”

And I hope he means it. Please call your senators and tell them to stay strong, have another coffee, and argue into the wee hours to fight this heinous attempt to betray the public.

Americans deserve to know exactly what’s in the mystery meat they’re being told they have to swallow.

An Act of War

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-17 No comments

There was a vote last Thursday on S.722, “Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017,” a bill which slaps economic sanctions on both Russia and Iran. The vote passed almost unanimously in the Senate, except for two senators with fiercely independent streaks. One of them was Rand Paul. The other was Bernie Sanders.

On his website Sanders wrote that, if fashioned as a separate bill, he would have voted for Russian sanctions and noted he has previously voted for sanctions on Iran. But the bill, he wrote, “could endanger the very important nuclear agreement that was signed between the United States, its partners and Iran in 2015.”

Massachusetts senators Warren and Markey, however, both enthusiastically voted for the sanctions, as did every Democrat in the Senate. Warren had previously been opposed to Iran sanctions and supported the Iran deal. But on Thursday she voted with the herd to both jeopardize the work John Kerry had done and to wage economic war on Iran. In fact, Warren not only voted with the herd but was a co-sponsor.

Economic sanctions are acts of war. The Council on Foreign Relations characterizes them as alternatives to war, but the targets of sanctions understand quite well what they really are. When, in 2015, the EU slapped sanctions on Russia, one Russian banker called it “economic war.” And North Korea has never minced words: “We consider now any kind of economic sanctions to be taken by the Security Council as a declaration of war.”

As economic acts of war, sanctions can provoke military responses just as easily as bombing. Students of history may recall that reparations and economic sanctions against Germany following World War I fed both German nationalism and militarism leading up to World War II. Writing in Foreign Policy Journal, Gilles van Nederveen wrote:

Sanctions can lead to war “if the state is militarized and the central government is backed to the wall. Consider an example of pre-World War II Japan. American and Japanese militaries prepared for a confrontation throughout the twenties, but real tensions did not start until the 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japan. At the outset of U.S.-imposed oil blockade in 1940, Japan estimated that it had a fuel reserve of just under two years. The Imperial Japanese Navy drafted plans to seize the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia) in order to maintain steady supply of oil and its military strength. International organizations like the League of Nations were powerless in curtailing aggression during the thirties. After the initial oil blockade in 1940, each Japanese move was met with yet another U.S. embargo: scrap metal, access to the Panama Canal, and finally, the U.S. froze all Japanese accounts in the US, effectively putting Japan on the collision course with the U.S.”

Sanctions are an overused tool of both neoconservatives and neoliberals. The Heritage Foundation pointed out in 1997 that, during Bill Clinton’s administration, Clinton managed to slap sanctions on 42% of the world’s population. Of course, this was twenty years ago when Conservatives were out of power and posing as reasonable statesmen. Fast forward twenty years: they’re back in power and they’re leading the charge themselves.

Economic sanctions are often accompanied by physical blockades, embargoes, interdiction of shipments on the high seas, proxy wars, and covert warfare. All of these apply to Iran. Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment, former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew described sanctions in the same terms as precision bombing:

“The sanctions we employ today are different. They are informed by financial intelligence, strategically designed, and implemented with our public and private partners to focus pressure on bad actors and create clear incentives to end malign behavior, while limiting collateral impact.”

But economic sanctions do not limit collateral impact. Sanctions are every bit as lethal as bunker-busters. On May 12, 1996 — long before Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal — Madeline Albright was asked if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from U.S. economic sanctions were worth it. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State didn’t shed a tear or miss a beat when she answered “yes.”

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Van Nederveen points out that during the Cold War — a time when there was no single superpower — economic sanctions had no teeth. But now that the U.S. is the biggest, meanest dog in the kennel it can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Returning to the Carnegie’s black-tie event, Obama’s Treasury Secretary went on to describe the restraint that the U.S. must show once it forces other nations to submit to its sanctions:

“To preserve the effectiveness of sanctions over the long term, we must use them wisely. We must clearly articulate our goals, and we must provide relief when those goals are met.”

But no such restraint was ever exercised with Iran following the nuclear deal. Virtually the moment the ink had dried on the deal, the United States began undermining it. Last year Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times, described the Obama administrations sabotage of its own accord:

“But today America is undermining that balance, reinforcing Iranian hawks and putting the hard-won deal that reversed Iran’s steady advance to the nuclear threshold at risk. It’s a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot policy after a major diplomatic achievement.”

The professed American love of democracy and diplomacy now only provokes derision throughout most of the world. American power is out of control and neither Conservatives nor Liberals have any great urge to rein it in. American Exceptionalism, AIPAC, and tantalizing Saudi defense dollars are the real hammers that forge our foreign and military policy. It is in moments like Thursday’s vote that we see how bi-partisan American imperialism and aggression really is.

Bernie Sanders was right. The vote by every Democratic senator jeopardizes the Iran nuclear deal and creates a more precarious world. Here in Massachusetts we just learned our so-called “progressive” senators just couldn’t resist waving the flag and voting for more American bullying.

Americans might want to imagine the day when China slaps economic sanctions on the United States. And it is coming. Our global militarism has made us a “bad actor” that must be taught a lesson by the next superpower. Like Germany a century ago, when that day comes there is no doubt that Americans will regard those sanctions as an act of war.

A completely different perspective

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-15 No comments

On June 13th I headed up to the Massachusetts State House with a group from the Coalition for Social Justice working with Raise Up Massachusetts.

We were there to show support for Paid Family and Medical Leave. Several women in our group offered personal stories explaining why the legislation is so important. Many families in this state are already only a single paycheck away from financial ruin. Family Leave holds out a lifeline to families in the impossible situation of having to choose between keeping their job (and their home) – or taking care of a sick parent, a new child, or even themselves. For most of us this is a matter of economic and social justice.

The Joint Committee conducting hearings was patient and thoughtful and often gave speakers a minute or two more than their allotted time to speak. The committee heard from mothers holding infants and restless toddlers. It listened to testimony from fathers, gay parents, economists, healthcare experts, people who had experienced catastrophic medical crises, or had retired early or sacrificed to care for a sick parent. Present also were members of the business community holding both supporting and opposing views.

One group of business people offering testimony in support of Family Leave made a special impression on the committee. They were there to lobby for the bill as a perk to offer their high-tech employees. The committee showered them with disproportionate interest, praise, and questions. It seemed a bit odd – even just plain wrong – that offering Family Leave as another fringe benefit for Route 128 employers might be what actually sells the bill to the Democratic legislature. Forget the cute babies.

Then testimony was heard from Massachusetts Teachers Association president Barbara Madeloni, who told the Committee how important Family Leave was for her union’s 100,000 members, many of them women. Madeloni expressed a little surprise at the inordinate interest in a benefit program for entrepreneurs, reminding the Committee Family Leave was really a matter of economic and social justice. And so it is.

This example illustrates that there are significant differences between progressive and mainstream Democrats. Often our goals align – but we view the world from very different perspectives.

* * *

Nathan J. Robinson, in Current Affairs, writes that these differences are often downplayed as misguided tactics, dogmatism, impatience, mendacity or immaturity – while, In fact, they are simply different ways of looking at the world:

“The core divergence in these worldviews is in their beliefs about the nature of contemporary political and economic institutions. The difference here is not “how quickly these institutions should change,” but whether changes to them should be fundamental structural changes or not. The leftist sees capitalism as a horror, and believes that so long as money and profit rule the earth, human beings will be made miserable and will destroy themselves. The liberal does not actually believe this. Rather, the liberal believes that while there are problems with capitalism, it can be salvaged if given a few tweaks here and there.”

But we are in the fight of our lives to protect a democracy and a functioning government. Progressives and liberals both recognize that, whatever the differences, we share more than enough common values to work together. And we can’t lose sight of that.

A recent piece in the New York Times by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin deceptively paints Jon Ossoff’s congressional bid in Georgia as a fight between the Liberal and progressive wings of the Democratic Party, one that “realist” Democrats are waging instead of progressives:

“Outside Atlanta on Friday, Jon Ossoff offered a decidedly un-Sanders-like vision of the future in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, a conservative-leaning patchwork of office plazas and upscale malls, where voters attended his campaign events wearing golf shirts and designer eyewear.”

Ossoff’s campaign style indeed reflects the blue-red sensibilities of his Congressional district. Drilling into Ossoff’s positions he looks like any other liberal Democrat – entrepreneur, Zionist, pro-choice, not explicitly in favor of single-payer healthcare, vague on foreign policy positions but eager to strengthen the military and support an undeclared war against ISIS. Ossoff is a baby Bill Keating.

Yet despite the New York Times’ mis-characterization of Ossoff as a DNC project, his campaign was in fact first supported by progressive organizations Democracy for America and Our Revolution. Only after the first round Georgia “jungle” primary did the Democratic National Committee offer Ossoff any help.

But let’s fast-forward past the finger-pointing right to the good news:

Far from adopting a dogmatic strategy, progressives embraced a guy who represented enough of their values that they could live with him, gave generously to his campaign, and stepped into a vacuum created by the DNC. And to the DNC’s credit they ultimately joined the fight and are now doing the same in other races.

In Washington Monthly David Atkins also took issue with the New York Times piece:

“As usual, the intramural battle on the left is being framed as one between intelligent pragmatists who want to win, and unrealistic ideologues who want to make themselves feel good.

Like me, Atkins sees hope. Progressives have a winning perspective and pragmatists have institutional memory and experience running campaigns. He writes that “the populist left’s premises have proven themselves over time. Clinton’s own SuperPAC did the research and discovered that the Obama-Trump switchers who made the difference in the election were driven by economic anxiety and a loss of faith in the Democratic Party…” Then Atkins argues:

“But establishment pragmatists also have points that cannot be ignored. First and foremost is the reality that the path to retaking the House lies less in rural economically ravaged districts full of angry voters, than in bourgeois suburban neighborhoods uncomfortable with Trump’s lack of seriousness and gentility.”

Keep in mind that this is not a progressive disagreeing with a liberal, but a liberal Democratic political consultant splitting hairs with fellow liberals. I don’t agree with Atkins that avoiding races in places like Montana and Idaho is wise. After all, the Democratic Party is barely hanging on in its urban archipelagos. Democrats need to return to a Fifty State strategy and only grassroots activism can make that a reality. Progressive Arizona Democrats point out that, in Tucson alone, 44,000 seniors live in trailer parks and only Republicans are talking to them. The future for these older Americans looks increasingly bleak as healthcare becomes unaffordable and the social safety net is deconstructed.

Failure to engage is insane and irresponsible.

Atkins himself demonstrates that there is a legion of Democratic political experts who can be repurposed for progressive campaigns. Bernie Sander’s media guy, Tad Devine, gave a talk in Westport, Massachusetts just last night delivering much the same message. And at the same talk former New Bedford mayor Scott Lang provided historical context for the party’s missteps and his own views for getting it back on track. Institutional memory and experience.

But whatever the outcome of this relationship, eventually the Democratic Party must unequivocally choose between a progressive and a centrist message. And this is already starting to happen. Young voters have not been well-served by crushing student debt, endless war, and dim prospects for good jobs and their own homes. Senior citizens also face an uncertain future. Call it neoliberalism, globalism, or any euphemism you like, but Capitalism’s warts are showing and progressivism is on the rise.

Global economic injustice and insecurity is as real and terrifying as global warning. Democrats should remember – and with considerable pride – how the New Deal met the challenges of a global economic crisis head-on 85 years ago, literally saving the lives of millions of Americans.

We can do it again but it’s going to requires a completely different perspective.

Purgatory

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-12 No comments

Four years ago the Massachusetts legislature considered the Massachusetts Trust Act – H.1613 and S.1135 – twin bills which placed limits on ICE but had only a handful of co-sponsors. The bill was not sent directly to hell, but it landed not that far away. This is how spineless state Democrats deal with controversy.

In the last legislative session S.1258 once again tried to protect Massachusetts refugees – and once again the bill was sent to the purgatory known as the House Rules committee. This time it had 25 Senate co-sponsors.

In the current legislative session, S.1305, the Senate version of the Safe Communities Act, has 53 co-sponsors and H.3269, the House version, has 80. Political tides are turning and many Democrats have lost patience with spineless do-nothing representatives like mine and autocratic House speakers. And to those of you (Chris Markey and Robert DeLeo) effectively collaborating with the enemy’s ICE roundups – you have turned yourselves into a list of hacks who ought to be primaried.

MIRA has a great write-up on the Safe Communities Act but in a nutshell this is it:

Massachusetts has its own laws, which must be respected. Police departments, officers, and prisons may not be federalized. The Fourth Amendment must be applied equally to all residents of the Commonwealth, regardless of status. State resources and monies are not to be used for federal purposes. Constitutionally- guaranteed rights are to apply equally to everyone in the Commonwealth. The state will not make its databases available to ICE or Homeland Security. This is the Safe Communities Act.

Progressive Massachusetts has a great script for calling your legislator.

Flood the State House with calls. Remind your representative that sending Safe Communities to purgatory will result in similar political consequences for himself.

Notes from the Oligarchy

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-11 No comments

Forget the fake news for a second. It’s real enough but the most insidious assaults on democracy come in the form of endless “opinion shapers” and legislation from right-wing think tanks and lobbyists doing the bidding of an American oligarchy.

I just finished reading a piece in CommonWealth which argues that the Fair Share Amendment is liberal-elitist. The author, Josh McCabe of Wellesley College’s Freedom Project, says that by increasing taxes on multi-millionaires the federal SALT (state and local tax) exemption will be triggered, permitting gazillionaires to pay lower federal taxes. McCabe goes on to say that SALT has cost the feds about $100 billion in revenues and states will have to scramble to pay for their own services out of pocket. He asks:

“The amendment means residents of poor states such as Mississippi (ranked 50th in per capita income) will partially subsidize residents of wealthy Massachusetts (ranked third in per capita income). In what sense is it fair to place some of the burden on Mississippi to pay for schools in Wellesley or roads in Andover?

If this sounds almost reasonable on the surface, consider for a moment that the super-rich already pay lower tax rates than wage earners and have many opportunities and legions of tax lawyers helping them to avoid paying their fair share. States like Massachusetts that want to raise taxes to pay for services are simply being smarter and more responsible to their citizens than, say, Mississippi. And Mississippi is already a drain on the rest of the nation, particularly Blue States, receiving $2.02 in federal money for every $1 their citizens pay in taxes. Nice try, though, Mr. McCabe.

Besides following the money it’s always a good idea to see who’s advocating for tax breaks for the super-rich. Predictably, the Freedom Project (as in “freedom” from paying taxes) is dedicated to the free market fundamentalism of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich August von Hayek.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that Wellseley’s Freedom Project is bought and paid for by Charles Koch?

So nice of CommonWealth to give them a free platform.

* * *

And, while we’re still talking about oligarchs: if you were watching the British election and envied the Brits their chance to call an election and throw out the government, you’re not alone.

Impeachment right now seems like the only option open to citizens, but Paul Street’s article Impeach the U.S. Constitution points out that the real problem is our system of government – not factionalism, not Donald Trump.

Yes, the Founding Fathers were either high on crack when they came up with this insane system – or the founding slavemasters were intent on building an oligarchy. Turns out, it was the latter:

I am always darkly amused when I hear one of my fellow Americans call for a return from our current “deep state” plutocracy and empire to the supposedly benevolent and democratic rules and values of the nation’s sacred founders and Constitution. Democracy was the last thing the nation’s founders wanted to see break out in the new republic. Drawn from the elite propertied segments in the new republic, most of the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention shared their compatriot John Jay’s view that “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”

As the celebrated U.S. historian Richard Hofstader noted in his classic 1948 text, “The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It”: “In their minds, liberty was linked not to democracy but to property.” Democracy was a dangerous concept to them, conferring “unchecked rule by the masses,” which was “sure to bring arbitrary redistribution of property, destroying the very essence of liberty.”

Donald Trump is their crowning achievement.

The War on Terror is a failure

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-10 No comments

Britain was still in the grip of the May 23rd suicide bombing in Manchester which claimed twenty-two lives. Tory Prime Minister Theresa May was running on a “fear and crackdown” platform in the last days of her collapsing campaign, even promising to curtail civil liberties “if they get in the way” of cracking down on terror.

Not to be out-done American Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” James Mattis was promising a policy of annihilation toward ISIS, telling West Point cadets, “Manchester’s tragic loss underscores the purpose of your years of study and training at this elite school. […] We must never permit murderers to define our time or warp our sense of normal. This is not normal.”

It was a perfectly normal day in the War on Terror. Where killing civilians has become the new normal. Not only for ISIS but for the United States and its allies.

Although the U.S. admits killing only 352 civilians, human rights groups that track the civilian slaughter put the number closer to 4,000. But for Mattis civilian deaths are just too damned bad when one is waging just war (the West’s word for jihad) against ISIS. Appearing on Face the Nation Mattis commented, “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.”

The “sort of situation” Mattis means is the permanent war the United States has been waging in the Middle East for going on 30 years.

The savagery of ISIS-encouraged suicide bombings, drivers plowing through pedestrians on crowded bridges and, in one case, three attackers setting upon one woman with knives, is enough to sicken anyone. But if we look at ISIS attacks somewhat dispassionately, this is simply asymmetric warfare.

This is how people fight when they don’t have an air force or SEAL teams to slaughter civilians the “proper” way.

Two weeks ago the Pentagon admitted it had killed two ISIS snipers in the al Jadidah district of Mosul, Iraq – with “collateral damage” of 100 civilians. In Yemen, the U.S. military killed five civilians, including a blind seventy year-old man. This followed another disaster in Yemen last January in which SEALs killed twenty-five civilians, including fleeing children. Regardless of which news outlet covered it, the civilian deaths were downplayed. If it’s not on TV, it’s not real.

Most Americans think that the war in Yemen is just another fight against ISIS but it is in fact a civil war, and it involves a Shi’a insurgency in the south being put down by a Saudi-allied dictator in the north. It is fair to call it a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran – one into which we have poked our noses.

After all these screw-ups CENTCOM was recently forced to undertake some damage control, so it released figures claiming that, regretfully, 484 civilians have been killed. But regardless of the number – whether 484 or 4,000 – U.S.-led wars have displaced, killed, and terrorized millions of people throughout the Middle East. In Mosul alone 200,000 people were driven from their homes. In Syria, half the population are refugees.

In Syria, the U.S. has stepped up indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Raqaa. In Tabqa, a nearby town, eleven people – “including eight members of the al-Aish family: three women between the ages of 23 and 40, and five children, the youngest one just 6 months old” – packed themselves into a vehicle to flee from U.S. bombing. They didn’t make it. They were hit with heavy machine gun fire by a U.S.-led coalition forces. It was a tragedy local reports called a “massacre.”

Or, as Mad Dog Mattis might call it, Annihilation.

But if you really want to do repression and terror right, there’s nothing like State Terror. And the United States and its “allies” throughout the region are the undisputed experts. The Saud family, which owns and runs Saudi Arabia as a family-owned and operated kleptocracy, is barely distinguishable from ISIS in its repressive version of Wahhabism. Shortly after Donald Trump visited the country, the kingdom announced it would expand the use of the death penalty for peaceful protest.

Appearing with Donald Trump and Saudi King Salman in Riyadh, all touching a curious glowing orb together, was Egyptian dictator Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who is cracking down on protests and journalists. In Egypt, where Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein is now beginning his seventh month of prison, el-Sisi has also severely restricted the ability of NGOs, particularly those focused on human rights, to operate.

I could go on about Erdogan and Duterte, two of Donald Trump’s favorite thugs, but what’s the point? America’s commitment to human rights is hypocritical. The same Trump who was wined and dined by the Saudis – where no one dares challenge the royal family – criticizes Venezuela for repression and calls for free elections. The same U.S. government, outraged by Cuba’s treatment of political prisoners, has looked the other way at Israel’s imprisonment of almost a million people since 1967, where 40% of all Palestinian men have been in jail.

* * *

While Conservative PM Theresa May was campaigning on fear and xenophobia, crackdowns and ditching civil liberties, Jeremy Corbyn was campaigning on fresh ideas and offering unpleasant truths.

One of Corbyn’s truths was that the War on Terror is a failure. And that only a new foreign policy can solve the problem:

“Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services pointed out the connections between wars that we’ve been involved in or supported … in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home.”

And how can anyone really refute his argument? Killing civilians, propping up dictators, wrecking entire countries, and creating millions of refugees doesn’t make you any friends.

This is why they hate us. This is why they fight us.

If we really want to end terrorism, we’d better stop terrorizing other people ourselves.

We have a lot to do

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-08 No comments

Dear Dartmouth Dems,

The convention is barely over and we’ll be meeting again on Monday, June 12th.

In February there were 7,609 registered Democrats in Dartmouth. The percentage of town Democrats (like the rest of the state) is roughly 33%, while for Republicans it is about 11%. Raw numbers of both Republicans and Democrats have been constant (and therefore stagnant) since about 2000, while the share of unenrolled voters has risen sharply to the 55% it is today. People are not happy with either party in this state.

And we Massachusetts Democrats need to do something about it.

It’s not just Trump. Here in Massachusetts democracy has been in trouble for some time. Our state ranks last in competitiveness in political races. In the 2016 Democratic Primary there was not one challenger in all nine U.S. Congressional districts. At the state level half the candidates for the Governor’s Council ran unchallenged. In County Sheriff Democratic primary elections, six out of fourteen ran unopposed and two slots were never filled, including Bristol County where Republican Tom Hodgson won by default because of Democratic complacency. In almost half the state legislature primaries and in 29 out of 42 state senate races there was no challenger.

We need to do something about this, and soon.

There are a number of elections coming up in 2018: U.S. Senator (Warren); U.S. Representative (Keating); Governor (Gonzalez, Massie, Warren); Secretary of the Commonwealth (Galvin); Attorney General (Healey); Treasurer (Goldberg); Auditor (Bump); Governor’s Council (Ferreira); State Senator (Montigny); State Representative (Markey); County Commissioners (Kitchen, Mitchell); District Attorney (Quinn); Register of Deeds (Treadup); and Clerk of Courts (Santos).

We’re going to have to have to debate the merits of some of these candidates. At least a couple of them need to find new jobs.

For campaigning and voter outreach, Dartmouth Democrats should look into using the VoteBuilder system that MassDems makes available to towns and wards. The DTC Chair will need to sign a VoteBuilder contract and several people must sign up for one of the weekly training classes that the party’s Operations Center offers or will be offering shortly.

According to the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s Field Manual for City, Ward, and Town Committee Chairs, a Local Committee:

“shall conduct, according to duly established and recorded local by-laws, such activities as are suitable for a political organization; among which (without limitation) are:

“Endorsement of enrolled Democratic candidates; Financial Support of the State Committee; Adoption of resolutions and platforms; Raising and disbursing of funds for political purposes; Voter registration campaigns, and Calling of caucuses for the purpose of endorsing candidates, adopting resolutions, or Conducting other Party business as provided for in the Call to Convention.”

Other ideas might include scholarships or essay contests to involve students and their families, voter registration, phone banking, a speakers series, or candidate nights.

According to the MassDems Town Committee Bylaws, there is a formal Affirmative Action and Outreach Advisor position. Dartmouth may be demographically 89 to 95 percent white but we still need to make sure the committee is more diverse.

According to Article V of the bylaws, the Town Chair presides over all meetings and supervises all subcomittees. In addition, the Chair sets meeting dates and frequency “subject only to the vote of the Committee in fixing the number of regular meetings to be held during the course of the year.”

With all we have to accomplish, I will make a formal motion at our first meeting on the 12th that we hold 12 monthly meetings thereafter. And I hope some of these ideas find their way onto the agenda for this meeting.

We have a lot to do.

David

Blue-Green dialog – part 2

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-07 No comments

Before I get to it, I want to thank Eli and Green Mass Group for the opportunity to contribute to this dialog on Which way Left? – something that should really be taking place face-to-face. After all, it’s not as if we are creatures from different planets. As my username suggests, I was once a member of the Green-Rainbow Party but am presently a Democrat. During the 2016 election I was impressed by Bernie Sanders and still am. But I also appreciate how carefully Greens think about issues and how often they are miles ahead of even progressive Democrats. But I’ve nevertheless decided to stick with this #DemEnter experiment – at least until the midterm elections.

There have been numerous, and well-documented, failures to reform the Democratic Party but in the 45 years I’ve been voting I can’t recall a moment in our history that has been so dangerous. Like it or not – and like them or not – Democrats are the only serious force standing between Republicans and their kleptocratic version of Gilead.

Eli’s comment on my previous post also deserves a reply. For many Greens Elizabeth Warren is the poster child for the failure of so-called progressive Democrats to be a real party of the people. To some extent I agree – though perhaps for different reasons. Eli’s example is the Dakota pipeline and Native American rights, which Warren has not particularly gone out of her way to defend. For the sake of argument I’ll concede his point immediately – although, to be fair, Warren had plenty of other things to do during post-election Senate confirmation hearings.

But then – to be absolutely fair – one also must ask why Green Party senators and congressmen from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois failed to intervene and defend environmental and indigenous interests. Not just craft progressive platform planks – but duke it out every day in Congress and face political realities. This is neither a rhetorical question nor an intended cheap shot. The question really boils down to this: how do progressives [of any sort] get elected, and what do they do in office once elected? A case in point is die Grünen, Germany’s Green Party. In coalitions with the SPD they have periodically represented austerity programs and militarism, and in recent years have been the eco-friendly European business party – but their platform is great.

Words are cheap and politics is complicated.

This was pretty clear at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention on June 3rd. Many of the progressive planks that Our Revolution Massachusetts (ORMA), PDA and Progressive Massachusetts called for were shockingly adopted with little objection and almost no discussion. There was an endless, and exhausting, four hour procession of machine Democrats proclaiming themselves the party of the resistance – Democrats who next week will be back to fundraising at $2500 a plate dinners. In fact, the speechifying went on so long that it was generally agreed that the purpose was to prevent discussion, promote an illusion of “unity” by masking disagreement, and to kill pesky, embarrassing non-platform resolutions. ORMA summarized their losses:

“Its push for new housing policies to end displacement was defeated by delegates who favor building more market-rate housing. ORMA’s proposals to make the party structure more democratic, by adding more state committee members who are elected by grassroots members and by reducing the number of signatures required to propose amendments to the charter, were also rejected. The convention chair ruled that ORMA-backed proposals on military and foreign policy, and on peace in the Middle East, were ruled out of order although they clearly had substantial support. The chair likewise ruled out of order a proposal that Democratic candidates must support the majority of the party platform or face loss of support by the party organization.”

This last one tells us something — that uplifting language in a platform is meaningless when there are no consequences for candidates who fail to uphold platform principles. Look at Ninth Congressional District Congressman Bill Keating – Iran hawk, cheerleader for Trump’s Tomahawk missile attack, and opponent of single-payer healthcare. Extreme disappointments like Keating were no-shows at the convention – my guess is because they would have reminded everyone of what the Massachusetts Democratic Party really is.

Likewise, the arbitrary elimination of foreign policy planks — even as the state party weighed in on Trump, climate change, veterans, and immigration — revealed once again the Democratic Party’s deathly fear of tackling militarism and the Israel-Palestine issue, and its fundamental lack of democracy. Only 80 of 413 party committee members are elected and the next charter convention is in 2019, after the midterms. These professional Democrats make the old Soviet Politburo look like a bunch of amateurs. In my heart of hearts I know that the party is more likely to be reformed by an earth-bound asteroid than entryism.

Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts had a great piece in Commonwealth reminding readers that the Massachusetts Democratic Party has historically talked big and delivered little. And this was precisely the thesis that Thomas Frank elaborated in Listen, Liberal. But in “talking big” and delivering little, Democrats, Greens and Democratic Socialists are all tragically similar. The common thread is our self-delusion.

Democrats like to think they are more progressive than they really are. Progressive Democrats like to think they’re more influential than they are. Greens seem to think that correct positions alone can pave the road forward. Democratic Socialists think the conditions for socialism are ripe. Unfortunately, the only thing that’s ripe is our fevered imaginations. But, besides self-delusion, our biggest enemy is lack of democracy and the failure to build grass-roots parties. And I include my friends in the Green Party: you expend a lot of effort and money running presidential and gubernatorial candidates – but where is your congressman from North Dakota?

As for us – either the Democratic party will become little-d democratic or it will fail spectacularly. Reform is extremely unlikely – but wandering through this political desert is an attempt and a shared experience that Democrats will have to go through together. I think we’ll eventually see the formation of a third – or more accurately a replacement – for the Democratic party without so much of the baggage of its predecessor. But this is going to require progressives of every color – Green, Blue, and Red – to have been working together in coalitions and to have created a progressive ecosystem from which a new movement can emerge. And the moment that happens progressives are going to start learning the old lesson in a new context. Precisely how it’s going to happen none of us can imagine now.

Words are cheap and politics is complicated.

Blue-Green dialog – part 1

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-06 No comments

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank has a lot to say to Massachusetts Democrats specifically. We — and I now reveal myself to be a #DemEnter Democrat — often regard ourselves as the most liberal of the liberal, the most progressive Democrats of all Democrats. An elite, if you will. This was certainly the self-congratulatory message we all heard last Saturday at the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform convention. Yet that’s not quite the reality, is it? In a post to follow I will write about the convention itself. But Frank’s book puts on paper many of the criticisms that progressives of every stripe — Greens, PDA, DSA, Working Families, Progressive Massachusetts, Our Revolution — have with the party. Some of us are now trying a little experiment — seeing for ourselves how far we can at least move it back to a democratic (small “d”) party of the people. But, like pharmaceutical research, these clinical trials may take some time.

Frank marks the moment that the Democratic Party decided to abandon organized labor, befriend Wall Street, and embrace a professional, instead of the working, class. It explains how Bill Clinton put a bullet in the head of an already-injured New Deal, ushered in a new era of “meritocracy” and its close friend, social and economic inequality. Frank explains how and why all of Obama’s “best and brightest” simply ended up doing what the Republicans had done before them. He explains why — even in bright Blue states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts — economic inequality has not been addressed or repaired by Democrats. Frank takes us from Boston to Fall River, one of the poorest cities just a short ride away. He looks at the record of Deval Patrick, once an “Obama Lite” governor, one who started his professional career at Ameriquest and ended up at Bain Capital. With Mitt Romney.

But Democrats just can’t help it. This is who they — we — are now. Clinton the First, Clinton the Second, Obama, and many other “meritocracy” Democrats deserve Frank’s tough love. Their friends — the Eric Schmidts, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerbergs — are their idols and rock stars. Their “shared values” are with pharmaceutical and software developers, hedge fund managers, and dot.com billionaires. Long gone are Democratic friendships with captains of organized labor such as the teamsters or teachers. Half the time Democrats are at war with Labor — think Rahm Emanuel’s and Arne Duncan’s attacks on teachers. These new Democrats are nothing like FDR’s friends of the common man. Instead, they are smug, well-fed, well-educated functionaries — “gatekeepers” who serve the ruling class yet still like to think of themselves as Democrats of their fathers’ generation, all while betraying their professed constituency.

Frank’s conclusions speak for themselves:

“It is time to face the obvious: that the direction the Democrats have chosen to follow for the last few decades has been a failure for both the nation and for their own partisan health.”Failure” is admittedly a harsh word, but what else are we to call it when the left party in a system chooses to confront an epic economic breakdown by talking hopefully about entrepreneurship and innovation? When the party of professionals repeatedly falls for bad, self-serving ideas like bank deregulation, the “creative class,” and empowerment through bank loans? When the party of the common man basically allows aristocracy to return?

Now, all political parties are alliances of groups with disparate interests, but the contradictions in the Democratic Party coalition seem unusually sharp. The Democrats posture as the “party of the people” even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege in a way that Americans find stomach-turning. And every two years, they simply assume that being non-Republicans is sufficient to rally the voters of the nation to their standard. This cannot go on.

Yet it will go on, because the most direct solutions to the problem are off the table for the moment. The Democrats have no interest in reforming themselves in a more egalitarian way. There is little the rest of us can do, given the current legal arrangements of this country, to build a vital third-party movement or to revive organized labor, the one social movement that is committed by its nature to pushing back against the inequality trend.

What we can do is strip away the Democrats’ precious sense of their own moral probity — to make liberals live without the comforting knowledge that righteousness is always on their side. It is that sensibility, after all, that prevents so many good-hearted rank-and-file Democrats from understanding how starkly and how deliberately their political leaders contradict their values. Once that contradiction has been made manifest — once that smooth, seamless sense of liberal virtue has been cracked, anything becomes possible. The course of the party and the course of the country can both be changed, but only after we understand that the problem is us.”

Ideas, Inaction

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-05 No comments

The motto of the Massachusetts Democratic Party is, was – or should be – Ideas in Action. And if it is we should really mean it.

Replying to my first-timer’s impressions of the party’s convention in Worcester last Saturday, I heard from Jonathan Cohn, co-chair of the Issues Committee at Progressive Massachusetts, who asked the cheeky question:

If a platform is adopted and no legislators are there to enact it, did it make a sound?

– which was precisely my concern about a convention that put so many progressive ideas down on paper. But while Massachusetts Democrats have plenty of good ideas, and no doubt many have good intentions and good hearts, the follow-through is always lacking, and has been for some time.

Cohn recently devoted an entire piece in Commonwealth to the discussion of the 80% Democratic majority in the Massachusetts Legislature that is, somehow, and chronically, unable to enact progressive legislation. Thomas Frank made many of the same points in his book, Listen Liberal, and in a Nation article entitled “Why Have Democrats Failed in the State Where They’re Most Likely to Succeed?”

Cohn’s piece is worth your time and he has graciously given me permission to reprint it with attribution.

And while you’re online, check out Progressive Massachusetts’ Legislator Scorecard.

# # #

Democratic supermajority not so super

Jonathan Cohn, reprinted from Commonwealth Magazine, May 27th, 2017

IN THE YEAR FOLLOWING a presidential election, the Massachusetts Democratic Party updates its platform. A party platform can stand as a defiant statement of goals and ideals, and a roadmap for a legislative agenda and priorities. In today’s national political climate, such aspirational declarations are especially important as they offer voters something to fight for and something to vote for.

The platform released just last week contains new planks on paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, automatic voter registration, and the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences, bolstering what was already, by and large, a progressive document.

On Saturday, June 3, delegates from across the state will convene in Worcester to approve the platform, perhaps with a few amendments to make it stronger.

On Monday, June 5, if the past is any guide, our overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature will proceed to completely ignore it.

But a supermajority has value only to the extent that it stands for something, and to the extent that it is put to work. When one looks back at the party’s 2013 platform, the contrast between the aspirational document and actual policymaking can be quite stark, perhaps most so in the realm of health care.

For years, the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform has called for a single-payer health care system, one that would truly enshrine health care as a right. The momentum that exists behind single payer in other parts of the country does not seem to have yet reached Beacon Hill. Single-payer legislation recently advanced out of committee in the California Senate and was passed by the New York Assembly. On the national level, the majority of the House Democratic Caucus in Congress now supports single-payer, an all-time high. But only about a third of Democrats in either branch of the Massachusetts Legislature have taken heed of their own party’s platform.

Or take another hot topic: immigration. The 2017 platform, like the 2013 one, calls for “the elimination of policies that make state and local police responsible for the enforcement of national immigration laws.” The Trust Act, which would have done just that, died in the Legislature without ever getting a vote in the past two sessions, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo seems inclined to let the Safe Communities Act, its new, expanded incarnation, see the same fate.

Or take a look at public transit. The MBTA has a $7.3 billion – and growing – repair backlog and is the victim of years of disinvestment. The 2013 platform recognized the importance of increased investment in public transportation to economic prosperity, to equity, and to climate mitigation. But the Democrats in the Legislature have preferred to side with Gov. Charlie Baker’s misguided mantra of “reform, not revenue,” authorizing the creation of a control board that has mainly sought to cut and privatize basic services. The Fair Share amendment, broadly supported by Democrats, will help bring in some more money for public transit, but it’s only a start, and a late one at that.

Sometimes it isn’t just inaction; at times, the Legislature has done the exact opposite of what the platform calls for. The Massachusetts Democratic Party platform advocates for allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, a move backed by sound public safety logic. However, the Legislature voted to ban them from doing so at the end of last session.

It would be unfair to blame both branches equally when it comes to the inertia characteristic of Beacon Hill. Several of the new planks of the 2017 platform, such as paid family and medical leave and more aggressive enforcement of wage theft laws, did make it through the Senate last session, only to languish in the House. Platform mainstays like Election Day registration have passed the Senate in the past as well.

The divide between the two branches is reflected in the scorecard that Progressive Massachusetts releases each session, in which one can see a Senate where members are more willing to vote – on record – for progressive policies and a House where voting in lockstep with the Speaker is the norm.

With full Republican control in Washington, we are already seeing attacks on workers’ rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, reproductive rights, and vital social and environmental protections. It is up to states to serve as laboratories of democracy, to use Louis Brandeis’s apt phrase.

Massachusetts Democrats could make our Commonwealth a beacon of progressive policymaking. If they aren’t interested, it’s up to activists and voters to make them.

# # #

Jonathan Cohn is an editor and activist in Boston and the co-chair of the issues committee at Progressive Massachusetts.

MassDems Convention impressions

Posted by David Ehrens on 2017-06-04 No comments

Yesterday I attended the Massachusetts Democratic Convention in Worcester with a busload of delegates from the SouthCoast. In Worcester there were over 4,500 of us, many alternates and guests, and it was quite likely the largest in the state party’s history. This was a platform convention, and the job was to vote on a new direction for the party.

My personal interest was to see if the #DemEnter strategy (joining the party to try to change it) was sensible. In all honesty it’s too early to tell, but the advantages of getting out on the field outweigh those of sitting on the sidelines and not having to make painful trade-offs. And – disappointments aside – this was democracy in action. You don’t always get what you want.

In Worcester there were 1,500 new delegates, of which I was one. And there were 800 Our Revolution delegates, of which I was one as well. There were many fresh young faces, including my niece’s. Many of the speakers were introduced by young people, including a ten year-old who had reverentially saved the candy bar he had collected one Halloween from Elizabeth Warren. Fast forward a few years – the same kid, now a teenager, was introducing the incredibly beloved Senator at the podium.

SouthCoast delegates piled onto our school bus at 6:30 in the morning. We arrived in Worcester early enough to join the breakfasts that various organizations had organized. I had a breakfast ticket from the Mass Teacher’s Association (to which I belonged about 10 years ago) but the room was mobbed. By luck I wandered into the ORMA (Our Revolution MA) breakfast next door and got a bagel. I signed amendment petitions from ORMA (Our Revolution MA), then it was time to return to the convention floor.

For almost six hours delegates sat listening to speaker after speaker. One U.S. Congressman, both U.S. Senators, the state Attorney General, each of the three gubernatorial wannabes – and at least one speaker to introduce each of them. By almost three o’clock the light at the end of the tunnel was getting dimmer and delegates began chanting “Vote! Vote!” Several more speakers tried to keep it short – but finally delegates had had enough of all the words, no matter how uplifting or strident.

Much has been made of the 2017 platform being the most progressive – ever. And this is not an exaggeration. But words are cheap so no expense was spared in adding progressive planks that – one hopes – a few Democratic legislators may actually create legislation to turn into reality.

Our Revolution Massachusetts, which had an incredibly well-organized contingent from Somerville and Cambridge, was able to successfully advance a number of amendments to an already much-improved platform:

“The party declared its support for a ranked choice voting system; making Election Day a state holiday; ensuring incarceration does not impact an individual’s right to vote; the abolition of Massachusetts super delegates; and a nonpartisan commission to draw voting district boundaries. On criminal justice, the party called for accountability and clear consequences for the use of excessive force and brutality by law enforcement officers; an end to for-profit prisons; and for shifting funds from policing and incarceration to long-term safety strategies such as education, restorative justice, and employment programs. Democrats declared that Democratic candidates and the party will no longer accept contributions from fossil fuel industry and infrastructure companies, for putting a price on carbon, and for more renewable energy and faster phaseout of carbon emissions. They also called for forgiveness of student loan debt.”

Nevertheless, the Democratic leadership firmly rejected several human rights amendments and efforts to democratize the party:

“Its push for new housing policies to end displacement was defeated by delegates who favor building more market-rate housing. ORMA’s proposals to make the party structure more democratic, by adding more state committee members who are elected by grassroots members and by reducing the number of signatures required to propose amendments to the charter, were also rejected. The convention chair ruled that ORMA-backed proposals on military and foreign policy, and on peace in the Middle East, were ruled out of order although they clearly had substantial support. The chair likewise ruled out of order a proposal that Democratic candidates must support the majority of the party platform or face loss of support by the party organization.”

This last rejected charter amendment should tell us something – that all the flowery language in a platform is meaningless unless there are consequences for candidates who fail to uphold platform principles.

And the arbitrary elimination of foreign policy planks – even as the state party weighed in on Trump, climate change, veterans, and immigration – seemed designed to avoid drying up the money tree which many state Democrats enjoy shaking. The Democratic Party is deathly afraid of tackling the Israel-Palestine issue – and this convention was no exception.

In reality there is no clear division between many Massachusetts state government and federal functions. As Safe Communities illustrates, states often need to take a keen interest in “federal” issues. Besides, the Massachusetts legislature Committee Book has standing committees on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Affairs, Redistricting, Election Laws, Healthcare Financing (which includes Medicare and Medicaid), Public Safety and Homeland Security, Telecommunications, and Veterans and FEDERAL AFFAIRS. Massachusetts officials regularly participate in trade delegations to nations where human rights abuses occur. Especially to Israel. The ban on certain topics is inconsistent, arbitrary, and manifestly hypocritical.

Censoring debate on foreign policy and Middle East issues is as arbitrary as if the party chose immigration issues to censor. One delegate challenged the party chair to cite the rule which specifically bans certain topics from being debated. Neither Gus Bickford nor the parliamentarian could cite any rule, only their “prerogative” to shut down the debate. But in a truly democratic organization no topic can be off-limits.

And I would still like to see the MassDems answer that delegate’s question? Where in the rules is such censorship permitted?

The press correctly observed that the focus of the convention was for the state party to portray themselves as the Resistance to Trump’s national (and nationalist) policies. But, again, this highlights the insanity of having a state convention with a national focus – and then shutting down debate of arbitrary national issues.

I was disappointed that a few passengers of our very own yellow schoolbus agreed with the Democratic leadership that both the party’s charter and platform should be almost impossible to change. If the party did not already have acute democracy problems this might be a different story. But only 80 out of 413 state committee members are democratically elected. The national party has credibility problems arising from the DNC leadership, including Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Donna Brazile, and John Podesta, and superdelegates are a sore point with at least half the party membership.

I was also disappointed that, even within ORMA, apparently two faction leaders voted against their own amendments. Mel Poindexter and Lesley Phillips opposed the ORMA-supported charter amendment, Toward a More Democratic State Committee.

* * *

Ultimately the platform added many great-sounding goodies. But the party is still littered with disappointments like my local state representative, Chris Markey, who didn’t even bother to attend, and my U.S. 9th Congressional District Congressman, Bill Keating, who also was a no-show. This is a party that just gave a thumbs-up to single-payer healthcare (which Keating doesn’t support), debt-free college education, defending immigrants (which Markey won’t), a $15/hour minimum wage, family leave (again, Markey won’t), and abandoning superdelegates.

But the exhausting pile of words we were subjected to yesterday means nothing if Democrats won’t clean house and replace the Markeys and Keatings with people who are truly on board with these newly-affirmed values. And these words will mean nothing if we don’t see progressive legislation and changes to party fund-raising practices.

Democratic midterms occur late next year. The Massachusetts Democratic Party will have a charter convention in 2019, during which the gears and levers of the party can be changed. Only after all this happens will any of us really know what kind of party it is, or if it can be reformed.

In the meantime, I would like to encourage progressive SouthCoast Democrats (and others) to join me in starting an ORMA local in the New Bedford area.

Change only happens if we make it happen.

Civilization and its Discontents

a brave new fascist America

Monthly Archives: June 2017

Voting with the enemy

Red Lines

One down and two to go

Bitter reality

Let them eat cake

Slow learners

Today in Science: Politicians may have human DNA

Carrier Jobs off to Mexico after all

Pareidolia

Coming Home

An unpleasant surprise

Election Night

Georgia Special Election

Make China Great Again

Make Saudi Arabia Great Again

The Family Business

U.S. War Crimes

AHCA Mystery Meat

An Act of War

A completely different perspective

Purgatory

Notes from the Oligarchy

The War on Terror is a failure

We have a lot to do

Blue-Green dialog – part 2

Blue-Green dialog – part 1

Ideas, Inaction

Democratic supermajority not so super

MassDems Convention impressions