“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” — U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2

The U.S. Constitution is a mess. By preserving slavery for prisoners it has never fully abandoned that institution. In creating a Senate orginally intended to be appointed rather than elected, it preserved the vestiges of a House of Lords that gives outsized power to miniscule states. By establishing the Electoral College, we ended up with an institution that has undermined the will of the people several times in recent history.

Though the Founders were tired of a mentally-ill despotic monarch, they absolutely failed to remove imperial rule from the Presidency. It’s been a straight line from George II to Donald Trump. Checks and balances that the Constitution were supposed to provide have created instead a system of gridlock in four-year increments. The resulting inability of legislators to accomplish anything has led many Americans to question democracy itself and to to start flirting with authoritarianism — all to “make the trains run on time.”

But the problem is not democracy. It is the creation our slaveholding Founding Fathers left behind. Their rushed creation, the American Constitution, once a charming house, is now a rotting hulk with a deed that prohibits repair.

One piece of monarchical residue in our Constitution is the presidential prerogative to grant pardons and commutations. In all-too-many cases the President has pardoned cronies who committed serious crimes. Examples include Ford’s pardon of Nixon, Clinton’s pardon of his buddy Marc Rich, Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby, and any of Trump’s pardons of people whose crimes include: bribery, mail fraud, election tampering, treason, sedition, human rights abuses, and cold-blooded murder.

Changing the Constitution is difficult enough, and downright impossible when the country is as divided as ours is. But we desperately need a Constitutional Convention. Retiring the Electoral College, denying corporate personhood, altering or abandoning the Senate, limiting presidential pardons, expunging vestiges of slavery, returning powers to the legislature long lost to an imperial presidency, permitting snap elections to be held as in most parliamentary democracies — features like these are necessary for the survival of democracy in the United States.

Unfortunately, Americans don’t really want democracy. Especially those who benefit the most from a system slaveholders left behind.

But if Democrats are nauseated by the spate of presidential pardons we’re about to witness, the next President could easily use the power of the pardon for better purposes.

Grant amnesty to illegal immigrants and whistleblowers. Empty the prisons of people over the age of 75. Pardon the nation’s many political prisoners. Pardon Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional ballot while out on parole. Lift the federal death penalty from those sentenced to be murdered by the state. Abandon impossible-to-prosecute cases against the last detainees in Guantanamo, and find someplace to send them before shutting down that national disgrace.

Whatever moniker fits best — monarch or president — the nation’s top executive and her Department of Justice should never have the right to unilaterally thumb their noses at laws established by the people. Overturning convictions should be a power for the lawmakers who originally wrote those laws, perhaps through a Congressional Pardons Commission. Or, at the very least, make presidential pardons subject to House approval.

In the meantime, Democrats ought to exercise the power of the pardon to the max. Perhaps then both Democrats and Republicans could finally agree that such a power is simply too much of a risk in the hands of one person. Such a bipartisan realization might move us one step closer to that much-needed Constitutional Convention.

America loves its men in uniform. Policemen and firefighters who responded to 9/11 in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were celebrated as heroes, as many of them truly were. A generation later, members of the American military — even those who fought a war in the wrong country without ever questioning it — are given preferential boarding, preferential hiring, healthcare, paid leave, and state and municipal stipends. Laws in some states place a greater value on a policeman’s life than on an ordinary citizen. State and federal laws criminalize false claims of having received military honors. Even among those who question American wars most fiercely you hear the familiar “thank you for your service.”

Americans have decided that only a very limited (and mainly weapon-carrying) minority of American “workers” are worthy of our praise. When we attend professional sports events we find them running out on the field in fatigues along with the military flyover. It has become so common for an on-leave service member to surprise his son or daughter at a high school sports event or graduation ceremony that the President of the United States staged one of these heart-warming reunions at his last State of the Union address. Cash and spectacle are rewards for those who do the bidding of the defense industry without asking too many questions.

But America has real heroes — and they have been right under our noses all along.

The global pandemic we find ourselves in today has made it crystal clear that those who continue to deliver the mail, pick up the trash, show up for work at supermarkets, staff the help lines, deliver pizza to the door, care for the sick, keep making meals for school children, look in on their elderly neighbors — we/you are just as integral to the functioning of society as those we have chosen to police us and surround our borders with missiles and barbed wire.

To all Americans now being guided by their better angels, to all who look out for their neighbor, care what kind of world we live in, and to all who put their health on the line during this extraordinary crisis:

Thank you for your service.

People in the Trump administration like Reagan’s joke: be very afraid when someone says “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But anyone who remembers government responses to Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Maria ought to be doubly afraid when it’s a Republican offering the help. Only with the recent appearance of the Trump administration’s apparently only competent public health official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, are we now beginning to get some truth from the White House. There is still a lot of misinformation regarding both the Coronavirus and the government’s response to it.

COVID-19

COVID-19 is the 2019-2022 manifestation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The virus is most dangerous to people over 70 who are immune-compromised, have existing heart, circulatory, or respiratory problems, and who are habitually exposed to pollutants or do not have reliable medical care. COVID-19 is more deadly than the average flu but nothing like the 1918 Spanish Flu. That said, the 1918 Flu illustrates how a global pandemic unfolds, what helps to save lives, and the sorts of denial and stupidity that kill people.

Some readings on the virus itself:

• Bing COVID Tracker

• Coronavirus cases have dropped sharply in South Korea. What’s the secret to its success?

• Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

• Coronavirus: What You Need to Know

• Don’t Panic: The comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus

• How deadly is the new coronavirus?

• How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America

• Information on the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

• Situation update worldwide – European CDC

• The 1918 Pandemic and Coronavirus

Effects and Responses

Poor people suffer the greatest during pandemics and the United States stands alone as a nation without a national health care system or universal health care. Worse, Trump fired government global pandemic experts as soon as he came to office. Why? Well, because if Obama thought taking global pandemics seriously was a good idea, well then, it had to be reversed.

The strategy of “shelter in place” or self-quarantine is designed to slow down the transmission of the disease so that the American healthcare ‘system’ is not overwhelmed by too many hospital admissions. The entire United States has 924,000 hospital beds and only 45,000 acute care beds, so we are going to be in deep shit big trouble if too many people are sick at one time, as happened in China, Iran, and Italy. You can show no symptoms and still be a carrier, so it is important — not just for you — but for your grandparents and elderly friends to note expose them to a virus you don’t even know you are carrying.

The death rate in Italy is extremely high — not because Italy has a national healthcare system — but because the average age in Italy is 10 years greater than in the US; the average age of an Italian COVID-19 fatality is 81. So stay at home if you can. For 97.5% of us the virus is survivable. But for the very sick and very elderly, COVID-19 can be a death sentence.

New York expects the number of Coronavirus cases to peak in 45 days, the White House is saying this first wave of the virus may persist “well into July” and German researchers think that the entire course of the virus might repeat the 1918 pattern, taking possibly two years to die out. In some places school is being cancelled until next August or September. People really need to take this thing seriously and devise ways of staying in touch and checking-in with friends and family — without exposing high-risk people.

This is not a two week event. You are going to be bored and inconvenienced and stressed and freaked out for at least a few months.

Despite the science, there has been plenty of stupidity, especially by those who deny the risk to an aging population or who regard the risks as exaggerated or, worse, a plot to smear the president. There are currently several attempts to develop a vaccine, but it’s going to take at least several months to test and produce large-enough quantities to deal with it.

• Big Outbreaks Like The Coronavirus Actually Do Discriminate: Against the Poor and Most Needy

• Coronavirus May Disproportionately Hurt the Poor–And That’s Bad for Everyone

• Coronavirus shock will likely claim 3 million jobs by summer: Policy is needed now to curb further losses

• Coronavirus: Trump advises against gatherings of 10 or more

• Cuomo: Coronavirus peak in NY could be in 45 days

• Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test

• Germany coronavirus threat raised to ′high′ alert

• How the Coronavirus Effects Food Stamp Recipients

• Pence: Coronavirus Disruptions Could Last ‘Well Into July’

• Preparing for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S.

• The coronavirus pandemic requires state and local policymakers to act, in addition to demanding a strong federal response

• The particular peril of coronavirus for poor people — and then everyone else

• Why America Can’t Respond to the Current Crisis

Legislation

The virus will hurt people’s ability to earn a living, stay in their houses, feed their kids, and has already damaged an economic system that loves corporations but is not structured to help human beings. 63% of all Americans are $500 away from financial ruin, and the Coronavirus is going to take that $500 from most. For this reason Democrats have proposed a bill, H.R.6201, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Families First Coronavirus Response Act

This bill responds to the coronavirus outbreak by providing paid sick leave and free coronavirus testing, expanding food assistance and unemployment benefits, and requiring employers to provide additional protections for health care workers.

Specifically, the bill provides FY2020 supplemental appropriations to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for nutrition and food assistance programs, including

• the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);
• the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP); and
• nutrition assistance grants for U.S. territories.

The bill also provides FY2020 appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services for nutrition programs that assist the elderly.

The supplemental appropriations provided by the bill are designated as emergency spending, which is exempt from discretionary spending limits.

The bill modifies USDA food assistance and nutrition programs to

• allow certain waivers to requirements for the school meal programs,
• suspend the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program), and
• allow states to request waivers to provide certain emergency SNAP benefits.

In addition, the bill requires the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue an emergency temporary standard that requires certain employers to develop and implement a comprehensive infectious disease exposure control plan to protect health care workers.

The bill also includes provisions that

• establish a federal emergency paid leave benefits program to provide payments to employees taking unpaid leave due to the coronavirus outbreak,
• expand unemployment benefits and provide grants to states for processing and paying claims,
• require employers to provide paid sick leave to employees,
• establish requirements for providing coronavirus diagnostic testing at no cost to consumers,
• treat personal respiratory protective devices as covered countermeasures that are eligible for certain liability protections, and
• temporarily increase the Medicaid federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP).

Republicans seem less inclined to help the most vulnerable among us, oppose language in the legislation providing help to single-sex families, generally oppose paid sick leave, and seem to be unduly concerned with the airline and travel industries. Senate Speaker Mitch McConnell has told his GOP friends in the Senate to “gag and vote for it anyway.” But McConnell has not yet convinced them. Negotiations drag on.

The limitations of the plan are significant. Even thought the Coronavirus is a global pandemic that will last many months, the Families First bill only provides 10 days of paid sick leave — and only if you are employed with a company with 500 or more employees. The estimated cost of the legislation was originally $750 billion but was negotiated down to $104 billion by timid House Democrats. To provide a little context, Professor Deborah Lucas at MIT’s Sloan School estimates the 2008 financial bailout to Wall Street ended up costing taxpayers $498 billion. The Families First bill is an insignificant gesture that is unlikely to help much in a crisis of this magnitude expected to linger for many months.

Trump’s Economic Bailout

Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have unveiled a separate $850 bailout program for business and Wall Street. The plan was first discussed at a private lunch with Senate Republicans and provides help to small businesses, retailers, hotels and the airline industry, as well as more tax breaks. The airline industry alone will receive $50 billion in aid. The rest of America must be happy with a one-time $1000 check and 10 days of sick leave. When you hear “we’re all in this together” realize that some are in this thing more than others.

Other Legislation

There are a few other pieces of legislation: modifications of the War Powers Act to help manufacturers in yet unspecified ways; rulings on tax filings (April 15 is Tax Day); and the invocation of the Stafford Act, which (among other things) authorizes Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, to:

• Waive laws to enable telehealth services, for remote doctor visits and hospital checkins.
• Waive certain federal licensing requirements so doctors from other states can provide services
• Waive requirements that critical-access hospitals limit the number of beds to 25 or the length of stay of 96 hours.
• Waive a requirement for a three-day hospital stay before transfer to a nursing home.
• Allow hospitals to bring additional physicians on board and obtain additional office space.
• Waive rules that severely restrict hospital care of patients within the hospital itself, ensuring that the emergency capacity can be enhanced.

Readings

None of this legislation has yet been signed into law. Stay tuned.

• Anti-Gay Views Caused Andy Biggs to Vote Against Coronavirus Stimulus

• Coronavirus Tax Relief

• COVID-19 Emergency Funding and Tax Relief: Assessing Federal Opportunities

• Democrats look to stave off ‘blank check’ for airlines

• Democrats say Mnuchin squeezed paid sick leave program

• Families First Coronavirus Response Act

• Government Eyes War Powers to Speed Medical Manufacturing Ahead of Virus

• H.R.6201 – 116th Congress (2019-2020): Families First Coronavirus Response Act

• House Passes Families First Coronavirus Response Act

• McConnell says Senate will pass House coronavirus bill without changes

• Mnuchin: ‘We are looking at sending checks to Americans immediately’

• NAACP: Support the Families First Coronavirus Response Act

• Remarks by President Trump at Signing of the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020

• Republicans oppose coronavirus bill that would provide paid sick leave and free testing

• Republicans, White House Gut Paid Sick Leave In Coronavirus Bill

• Sen. Hawley to introduce Coronavirus bill aimed at securing medical supply chain

• Senate GOP and White House may combine coronavirus plans into massive package

• Tourism industry calls for $150 billion in assistance

• Updated bill text for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act

• What is the Stafford Act? It unlocks federal funding in emergencies

• What’s in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act?

• Whats in the coronavirus bill: free testing, benefits, paid leave

• White House seeks $850bn to stem coronavirus economic fallout

MGM Resorts International just agreed to a $800 million settlement with victims of the October 2017 mass shooting at its Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas. Stephen Paddock killed an unimaginable 58 people one block away at street level in a crowd of 22,000 enjoying an evening of country music.

Lawyers claimed the hotel was negligent in permitting the shooter to bring in twenty bags of luggage containing weapons and ammunition to a pair of rooms on the 32nd floor.

The hotel may very well have been negligent to a degree — though it could be argued that high rollers, entertainers and their retinue often roll into town with plenty of luggage.

But — in choosing a casino with deep pockets to pay off the victims — those who might have prevented the carnage (besides the shooter) once again eluded responsibility:

• the National Rifle Association, which fights gun control tooth and nail;
• Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt, a friend of the NRA, who nixed state gun control legislation
• the Nevada legislature, which has created the most lax gun registration laws in the nation
• and, finally, the people of the benighted state of Nevada:

This week there were a couple of studies in the news which shine a little light into the darkness that is settling over America. One should be read by all Democrats. The other will almost certainly be ignored by reality- and reading-averse Republicans. But both call into question the existence of near-mythological creatures believed to be true.

The first study, released last week by the Pew Research Center, calls into question the importance of the mythological swing voter. It turns out that the 40% of voters who identify as “independents” are not really all that independent. 13%, in fact, are pretty much reliable Republicans, while 17% are fairly reliable Democrats. This leaves 7% — mostly young and male — who are politically unmoored. This is no great revelation in a polarized political landscape in which the “middle” has largely eroded.

What’s important, however, is that, of these 7% only a third actually vote, which reduces the actual number of “independents” to about 2.3% of the American electorate. Democrats might actually appeal to some of these disaffected young voters if they chose a progressive candidate under 70, yet many in the 2020 race think they can appeal to the unicorn by bashing the social safety net, going weak on abortion, or alienating minority voters by slamming “identity politics.” Rather than trying to lower themselves to GOP standards, Democrats ought to be doubling-down on what makes them stand out from Republicans. And redoubling their opposition to Trump’s Imperial Presidency.

On this last point, Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections, warns that — unless Democrats “grow a spine” and risk alienating white swing voting unicorns by launching impeachment proceedings — we will see Donald Trump re-elected in 2020.

* * *

The last study, which was actually published a couple of years ago, reinforces a large body of research on immigration and criminality, showing (once again) that immigrants are actually less likely to engage in criminal behavior. The so-called “violent illegal” or Trump’s “Mexican rapist” are both unicorns, figments of the white supremacist imagination.

With the dry title, “Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades,” a study in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice concludes:

Research has shown little support for the enduring proposition that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime. Although classical criminological and neoclassical economic theories would predict immigration to increase crime, most empirical research shows quite the opposite. We investigate the immigration-crime relationship among metropolitan areas over a 40 year period from 1970 to 2010. Our goal is to describe the ongoing and changing association between immigration and a broad range of violent and property crimes. Our results indicate that immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime throughout the time period. […]

Despite continuing nativist arguments alleging a causal relationship between immigration and crime, individual-level research based on arrest and offense data of the foreign-born shows that they are overall less likely to offend than native-born Americans. Some argue, however, that regardless of immigrants’ relatively low involvement in crime at the individual level, immigration might nevertheless be tied to increases in crime through structural and macro-level mechanisms. […]

Our results indicate that, for property crimes, immigration has a consistently negative effect. For violent crimes, immigration has no effect on assault and a negative effect on robbery and murder. This is strong and stable evidence that, at the macro-level, immigration does not cause crime to increase in U.S. metropolitan areas, and may even help reduce it. The interpretation of our results gives us pause when considering the current cultural ethos in the United States. The variety of legislation at the state level aimed at immigrants, legal or not, is underscored by popular sentiments about how current immigration is detrimental to the U.S. economically and socially. But at least when it comes to crime — and in fact, on many other counts addressed in the literature — there is no evidence at a metropolitan level of these severe impacts. Our results are clear and overarching that immigration does not lead to increases in crime in American metropolitan areas.

Despite Donald Trump’s initial celebratory Tweets, he has not been vindicated by the Mueller report. If anything, the stench of corruption is now even greater — now that the cover has been taken off the reeking dumpster that is his administration. As CNN pointed out, the “vindication” victory lap didn’t last long before Trump started calling the Mueller Report “total bullshit.”

But there was a vindication to be celebrated. It turns out, the press, doggedly following leads and the dozens of now-felons who once worked for Trump, and despite some notable screw-ups, had been generally pursuing the truth all along. Despite constant whining from the White House that it was all “fake news,” and despite the spin that Trump’s personal lawyer James Barr tried to give it, the press was largely vindicated.

After years of bald-face lies and embarrassingly transparent prevarication, few believe a word that comes out of Kellyanne Conway’s smirking mouth. But it was quite the revelation that spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders — whose religious hypocrisy was on full display — actually lied to the press about James Comey’s firing.

It was disappointing that Robert Mueller’s findings did not establish presidential criminal conduct, but Mueller left plenty of bread crumbs for Congress should it wish to pursue impeachment. Yet even if the House impeaches, the Senate must convict with a supermajority — an almost impossible hurdle to overcome for ridding the nation of a corrupt, mentally unfit, white supremacist president. Equally disappointing, centrist Democrats with short attention spans have apparently lost the nerve to pursue impeachment — time to move on, national healing, campaigns to run, money to raise.

But the House must begin impeachment proceedings. And here’s why.

For one thing, Mueller’s report did not uncover everything that will ever be known about Trump’s corrupt dealings and his obstruction of justice. There are at least a dozen ongoing investigations that will eventually yield more insight into Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice and commit (or have others commit) criminal acts. While Office of Legal Counsel rules gave a sitting president a prosecutorial pass like Jessie Smollett’s, declining to prosecute is not the same thing as finding no wrongdoing.

Second, the greatest casualty of Donald Trump’s administration has been the truth. Impeachment proceedings will make it difficult for Americans with even partially open eyes and ears to maintain that it’s all been “fake news.” Impeachment proceedings will keep the Mueller report from fading from public consciousness and will make it difficult for Trump to ride out his crimes and lies, even with his invention of new national “emergencies.”

Painful and stressful as impeachment proceedings may be, it will do the nation good to dwell in the truth for a year after steeping in Trump’s lies for two.

On March 24th Trump’s Attorney General — and we should take the phrase literally, since William Barr has even less integrity and closer ties to Trump than Jeff Sessions — issued a four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. In it, Barr quotes Mueller: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Barr also writes: “The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, consired or coordinated with the Russian government [to influence the election].” Trump took a victory lap, claiming “complete and total exoneration.

Did not establish. Did not find. Despite the fact that a large number of close Trump associates — including Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Richard Pinedo, Roger Stone, and Alex van der Zwaan — were convicted (or in Stone’s case, indicted) for crimes related to collusion with over 30 Russians and 3 corporations that meddled in the 2016 election.

From the kid gloves applied to the president, one must conclude that ours is a broken legal system designed primarily to incarcerate and kill brown people with broken tail lights — but one that provides concierge service to rich white men — to the point that even treason can be overlooked.

I am always a bit suspicious of other people’s summaries, preferring to read an original myself. If you have ever read a Yelp review, you know what I’m talking about. If you have ever read an Amazon review, you recognize a fake when you see one — for example, as this Fakespot analysis of Trump’s “Art of the Deal” shows. Or, if you have actually read American history, you would be surprised to learn that the Cliff Notes version of American slavery says that “slaves sometimes had better physical living conditions than poor whites.” Or you might have seen James Agee’s gushing review of D.W. Griffith’s KKK film “Birth of a Nation.”

And we should be especially suspicious of any summary from an underling of Donald Trump, a pathological liar who will shortly celebrate his 10,000th lie.

But William Barr’s summary also notes that “the Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted collusion.”

In fact, Barr adds: “For each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. the Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.'”

For this reason I am patiently waiting for the actual 380-page Mueller report — though I hope it doesn’t look like Michael Flynn’s sentencing document:

In the end, it will be up to the House of Representatives, with its slim centrist Democrat majority, to decide whether to rake the president over well-deserved coals and, if necessary, to compel Robert Mueller to discuss his findings and explain any redactions. I am not hopeful Pelosi will rise to the occasion.

But I will try to be patient.

The other day I noticed that the liberal-ish press had suddenly become obsessed with civility and had begun hectoring us to listen to our better angels — to “play nice” with the Deplorables. Someone denied a cheeseburger to a White House spokeswoman who lies for a living, defending the cruelest of policies. And you’d have thought the end of civilization was near.

On the importance of maintaining “good form” both CNN and FOX News were in total agreement: “Fox Business host Trish Regan defended CNN’s Jim Acosta on Tuesday, calling verbal attacks on the reporter at a Trump rally are ‘not only bad manners, it’s bad form,’ while calling out both sides for a total lack of civility.”

Lots of people noticed the break from reality and bizarre lack of perspective. Philosopher Robert Paul Wolff (author of “The Poverty of Liberalism”) wrote, “The norms of public political discourse vary considerably from country to country, and even from neighborhood to neighborhood within a country. The British Parliament is much more raucous than the American Congress, and I will not even talk about the Israeli Knesset. Only in the world of the Washington elite does being denied service at a restaurant appear to be a violation of sacred norms calling for serious discussion of the foundations of democratic society. […] But whatever the local norms of civility may be, it can always be asked under what conditions it is right, even required, to violate them as part of a political protest.”

On December 12th, 1964 Malcom X spoke at the Oxford Union Club in England and talked about “the necessity, sometimes, of extremism, in defense of liberty, why it is no vice, and why moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. […] I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism, in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is a value. Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.” Earlier that year Malcom X gave his Ballot or the Bullet speech at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit, reminding listeners of the incivility and extremism of the American Revolution. Turns out, for much of American history dissent usually trumps decorum.

Media Matters observed that the “right-wing media are criticizing Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) after she encouraged people to publicly protest Trump administration officials who are complicit in the atrocious family separation policy at the U.S border. But the ‘civility’ these outlets are touting has been absent in their many vicious past attacks on Waters.”

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting took the liberal-ish press to task for its preoccupation with manners and distaste for speaking truth to power. FAIR pointed out that the Washington Post had run “three articles between Sunday, June 24, and Monday, June 25, calling for ‘civility’ and criticizing those who interfered with the dining experiences of Trump administration officials.”

In a Bloomberg News editorial, Jonathan Bernstein wrote, “Civility Is Important in a Democracy. So Is Dissent.” Bernstein observed: “In these times, however, it’s a joke to focus on incivility by Democrats even as the Republican president routinely says things that are as bad as or worse than the attacks of the most irresponsible Democratic no-name precinct chair.” In an unusual footnote, Bernstein reminded readers that when it comes to civility in a democracy, “of course incivility wasn’t the most important problem with U.S. democracy; indeed, restrictions on the franchise and full citizenship were so severe that there’s a good case to be made that it wasn’t a real democracy until at least 1965.” Whatever temporary gains we’ve made were made in the street.

Finally, Nation writer Sarah Leonard spoke my mind with her article, “Against Civility: You can’t fight injustice with decorum.” Among Leonard’s excellent points: “Throughout history, activists have seldom won battles against injustice by asking politely. […] The people being targeted [for protest] are adults living and working in a democratic society; facing consequences for their actions, as conservatives would agree, is what grown-ups should all do. […] To cling to civility is to allow the powerful to commit crimes, as long as they do so with a smile and a handshake.”

If we are truly listening to our better angels, they’ve been whispering — “#resist.”

We Boomers lament our waning powers if not the short time left to us. Many of us also shed tears for what might have been — changes that could have truly made the world a different place. But history won’t be kind to us for our failures and omissions. Today the world we’ve savaged is in worse shape than ever.

Of course, numerous impediments to change have always stood in the way — money, power, law, religion, capitalism, ignorance, apathy — for starters. Yet all of us either jumped whole-heartedly or dipped a reluctant toe into the system, inevitably playing our part in preserving injustices that have afflicted the nation right from the start. When we are finally gone I suspect we won’t be greatly missed.

Whether it’s just a fleeting hashtag or something greater, something like a movement is growing following the slaughter of seventeen high school students in Florida — a movement some have called a Children’s Crusade, one the religiously-inclined see echoing the words of Isaiah 11:6 — “and a small child shall lead them.” The sentiment has its appeal — a pure, new beginning.

But the children of the March for Our Lives movement — these sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters — are no ordinary children. These young victims of school shootings have acknowledged gun violence throughout our society. They seem to recognize intersectionality that never occurred to many of us. These young people are well-informed and fierce, and they promise to be a political force to be reckoned with. At least one hopes.

Yesterday our group of mostly older activists piled into a school bus headed for March for Our Lives in Boston. There was a distinct feeling we were there to support their efforts. It was clearly their movement, their moment, their debut. For me it was a poignant, bittersweet moment — one generation passing into irrelevance as another took up its challenges.

I also felt that these were no longer simply children to be protected. These were newly-forged Brothers and Sisters in one of a number of long-simmering national struggles.

Better than a hashtag, a moment, or a movement, I hope this represents a generational reset. As these young folks grasp political power they will need to consider all the insidious institutions they have inherited, recognize the links between violence in our communities and the violence American militarism wreaks throughout the world, and the racism and violence inherent in growing American authoritarianism.

These young Brothers and Sisters — and all who come after them — must not merely hold politicians accountable but reform the political and economic systems at the root of so many problems. And as these younger activists fill the ranks of political institutions the aging leadership must also gracefully, and rapidly, make way for them.

Our generation may not be finished yet. But our time is up.

* * *

Photos from yesterday’s march in Boston:

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you by the court…” — Miranda warning

Everyone’s heard the Miranda warning and the promise of public counsel. But few know how precarious the system is, how overworked public defenders are, or that the funding of public defenders is really just an afterthought — in even the most liberal of states.

In Massachusetts the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) provides legal representation to indigent people in criminal and civil cases and administrative proceedings in which there is a right to counsel. CPCS attorneys, social service advocates, investigators, secretaries and other professionals, also known as MassDefenders, work on behalf of poor people on criminal, juvenile, child and family, mental health and other civil commitment cases.

MassDefenders work hard for the most disadvantaged people in the Commonwealth. But CPCS staff have been working for years without a voice in the terms and conditions of their employment. Although public defenders receive some of the benefits provided other state employees (pensions and healthcare), they do not currently have the right to collective bargaining.

In 2004 the Supreme Judicial Court addressed a shortage of lawyers due to stagnant rates of compensation that hadn’t changed since 1986, noting the rates were “among the lowest in the nation.” Today there are signs that Massachusetts is again approaching another crisis.

On Monday, March 6th, starting with an early morning rally outside Superior Court in Fall River (186 S. Main St.) at 8:15am, Massachusetts public defenders will again demand their collective bargaining rights.

Later in the day, at 4:30pm, MassDefenders will attend a public hearing at Superior Court in Taunton (9 Court St.) organized by CPCS management to hear from the public on rate increases for bar advocates and other appointed lawyers. Like CPCS lawyers, bar advocates are attorneys contracted to represent poor people and do similar work as public defenders.

Public defenders and bar advocates are often the first to hear about injustices visited upon those in county and state prisons. Strengthening public defenders’ rights strengthens opposition to prison abuses, mass incarceration, solitary confinement and the systemic racism in the “justice” system. Defenders with the protections collective bargaining confers can also be powerful advocates for the lawful and humane treatment of people detained in immigration cases.

Defend the defenders.

For more information contact Ben Evans at ben.c.evans@gmail.com or at 401-258-4239.

Over 435,000 people – over 12,000 in Massachusetts alone – depend on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to live and work legally in the U.S. TPS provides safe harbor for people from countries affected by violence or disasters, and it can be renewed for as long as it is unsafe to return.

But the Trump administration is ending TPS for people from Sudan, Nicaragua, and Haiti, and it is likely to do the same for Salvadorans and Hondurans.

If TPS is not extended, those — from all these countries — will lose work permits and be subject to deportation. And they’ll have to choose between splitting up their families or placing their children in danger.

We can’t let this happen.

Massachusetts’ entire Congressional delegation supports extending TPS, as does even Republican Governor Baker. But that’s not enough. We need them to actively fight both to save TPS, and to enable TPS holders to seek permanent residency.

TPS recipients are our friends, neighbors — even members of our families.

Please act now. Call Homeland Security at (202) 282-8495 and urge them to extend TPS for Honduras and El Salvador, and to reinstate protections for those it has terminated.

Then use this tool to email your elected officials.

Two consecutive hurricanes have demolished much of the infrastructure in the Caribbean. The president’s response has been slow, callous, inept, but predictable: another general has been dispatched to solve a humanitarian crisis.

Americans have a special obligation to our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico who have been especially hard hit. Puerto Ricans have also been saddled for decades with crushing, colonial debt and now by bipartisan austerity programs. Hedge funds and bankers are circling the wounded island like sharks, and it occurs to no one in Congress to take hundreds of billions in military aid to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel and instead deploy it for neighbors and fellow citizens.

So, for the time being, it’s up to us. Below is a partial list of organizations responding to the crisis, most with Charity Navigator ratings you can check out if you are a nervous donor.

Choose at least one – and please give:

• All Hands • USVI Hurricane Response – 4 stars
• Americares: Our Response to Hurricanes Maria, Irma and Harvey – 4 stars
• Catholic Relief Services – 4 stars
• Fondos Unidos de Puerto Rico – 3 stars
• Global Giving Puerto Rico & Caribbean Hurricane Relief Fund – 4 stars
• Heart to Heart International | Connect to a world in need – 4 stars
• Hispanic Federation: “Unidos”: A Hurricane Relief Fund for Puerto Rico – 4 stars
• International Medical Corps – 4 stars
• Massachusetts Unido por Puerto Rico – 4 stars

Sometimes it’s not so easy to love this country.

The great patriotic displays on July 4th typically echo our great love of war. Bombs bursting in air, fireworks, rockets red glare. Tomahawks and drones. The new president even wanted a Soviet-style inauguration with rows of missile launchers driving down Pennsylvania Avenue. Many Americans would have loved it.

Today’s editorial sections were predictably full of appeals to American Exceptionalism – the Promise of America, the Dream of America, the Founding Fathers’ Challenge to Us All. They all fell flat because Americans are generally sick of promises and the Great America Again is just about all dreamed-out. People are working two and three jobs and still can’t afford medical care or a mortgage. Police are still murdering black people after centuries. We just won’t stop invading other countries, changing regimes, and slaughtering civilians.

But mainly, these patriotic invocations failed because we can no longer appeal to the America of Yesterday. All its sins and errors – and all the old worn narratives about the country – all have got to go.

Those who care to reckon with our history know just what kind of country it is. And there were plenty of reminders today as some commentators wrote about the country’s warts, even as others were celebrating our Exceptionalism. The late Howard Zinn reminded us ours is a country grown fat from conquest. Frederick Douglass, whom our commander-in-chief pretended to know personally, blasted the hollow democracy of slaveholders as an insult to black Americans. Michael Brenner wondered today whether it was time to finally pronounce dead America’s promises to the common man.

With economic insecurity, the very real possibility of dying without medical insurance, and rampant abuses of civil liberties, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness has become nothing but an empty slogan.

American democracy has certainly failed to live up to the hype, the anthems, the slogans, the appeals to raw nationalism – even the founding principles. More anthems and more nationalism haven’t helped. The day was always coming when we’d have to see that we’re just like every other people. Our democracy is just as imperfect and just as fragile. Nothing exceptional about that.

Love for a country has nothing to do with its clumsy symbols. The flag’s growing constellation is literally a record of territorial conquest. The national anthem has an ugly melody – just as it did when it was a British drinking song. The lyrics were penned by a slave holder. The White House, built with slave labor, is both a symbol of imperial power and a still-unresolved national sin.

Yet despite all this, this is where we live. It’s where we make our homes, make plans for the future, raise our families, drink the water, and involve ourselves in our communities. Progressives may not be out in the streets waving flags and setting off firecrackers, but there are other ways to love this country. And I think we’ve been out every night since January trying to demonstrate, and earn, that love.

Jon Schwarz has a thoughtful piece entitled “How to Love this Freaky Country” and it’s worth the read. Peter Laarman writes about how we need to re-frame the tired old “promise of America” narrative into something more constructive and, yes, more revolutionary. Lyz Lenz, editor of the Rumpus, kicked off a series of essays on patriotism that run throughout the month. These are views that look forward without trying to sanitize the past.

But then there is America itself. There is something mysterious and beckoning about our country. Or perhaps it’s the challenge of understanding the essence of something so vast, as Alexis de Tocqueville tried to do when touring the young nation. The old Simon and Garfunkel song “America” captures this idea so well that the Sanders campaign got permission to use it, repeating the refrain:

All come to look for America.

When interviewed, Art Garfunkel understood the song’s appeal: “We’ve come to look for the country and we don’t really know who we are. We never knew who we were. We’re still working out what Alexander Hamilton was working out: how do we fuse and become a united States of America…”

It is indeed a wonder to walk down the street of a major American city and see so many diverse faces. It is a miracle to drive across the country and see some of the most beautiful geography on the planet. It is astonishing that so much conflict can be packed together with so much amity, and that we have managed to stick together all this time. There is much to hate, much that needs change, but also much to love.

I wish everyone a Happy Independence Day, as we all continue to look for America.

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.

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.

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.

When I was a twenty-something, just entering the computer world of the early 1970’s, computer languages to watch were Fortran, PL/1, COBOL, Lisp, Algol, APL, Pascal – and a hundred types of assembly language.

Even back then, one language was especially reviled for its ugly syntax – or rather the fact that no one could program with it without using special pads of coding paper. This was a language developed by IBM in 1959 called Report Program Generator (RPG). RPG was really only good for one thing – generating boxes and boxes of “greenbar” – thirty pound stacks of computer printouts. Even in 1971 the preferred business language was COBOL.

Fast forward a mere thirty years to 2000. RPG programmers were already recognized as an endangered species – endangered by evolution. One article provocatively (“RPG – the Walking Dead?”) asked: “Is RPG dead?”

So there you had it – a generation ago, on the cusp of a Y2K apocalypse (that never happened) – a forward-looking author counseling fellow programmers to abandon relics like RPG, learn computer languages of the next millennium – and be prepared for the wave after that – Object Oriented Programming:

Unless you’re ready to retire, you should stop by your favorite bookstore, pick up a copy of UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modelling Language or a similar book, and start learning the ubiquitous language of OO designs. Also download the Whiteboard edition of Together/J (www.togethersoft. com) and start familiarizing yourself with an OO design and analysis tool. Besides helping you learn OO concepts, Together/J will help you learn Java by reviewing the source code it generates. With this knowledge, you should be in a better position to learn the next OOP language in vogue with minimal effort. The clock is ticking. Where will you be when it strikes midnight? Hopefully, not with the walking dead.

The clock certainly was ticking, as it always is. Coal miners received similar advice a century ago – as New Bedford sperm oil whalers did a century before that – after prospectors found petroleum in Pennsylvania.

But after millions of years of human existence, is anyone really surprised that change is practically the only constant?

Besides the president?

This is a guy who’s made political pets of coal miners. Instead of actually helping them by rolling out alternative energy infrastructure projects and training miners for jobs with a future, Trump and his Republican Congress will simply give them federal pensions and hope they go quietly into the night. But as Alana Semuels writes in the Atlantic – why stop there?

If it bails out the miners, why stop there? Why not bail out all of the other pension funds, private and public, that are on the brink of insolvency?

Why stop there, indeed. The Trump administration could also create special programs to save the nation’s remaining 283 RPG programmers.

Like the miners (and the coal owners) who were warned a century ago that petroleum was coming, the poor pioneering RPG programmers were so hard at work on their coding pads – keeping American business humming – that they never heard the future calling.

* * *

Next week – how to make America GREAT for elevator operators and movie theater projectionists!

Last May China celebrated – “tried to forget” might be more accurate – the fiftieth anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was little more than a murderous pogrom that took place from about 1966-1976. China’s true power elites stood aside and permitted the poor and angry to deflect blame on moderates and intellectuals for all the nation’s woes. Mao Zedong claimed that “bourgeois” elements had infiltrated the Party and to make China great again it needed a good old-fashioned Stalinist purge – and a purge it got. More than 1.7 million Chinese scholars, teachers, and political moderates were murdered in a single decade.

With Mao Zedong’s encouragement, paramilitary groups called the Red Guards screamed the Mandarin equivalent of “Lock Her Up!” as they conducted kangaroo courts and – like today’s Taliban – tried to physically erase a moderate, traditional Confusian culture from Chinese history. Scholars and intellectuals were sent to the countryside for “re-education” and many never returned.

In 1969 Mao declared that the Cultural Revolution had been a success. But China had to wait for Mao’s death in 1976 to restore a measure of normalcy by arresting general Lin Biao and the “Gang of Four,” and by instituting reforms under Deng Xiaoping.

In 1981 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party declared the Cultural Revolution had been an abject failure:

… on no account should the theories and methods of the “cultural revolution” have been applied. Under socialist conditions, there is no economic or political basis for carrying out a great political revolution in which “one class overthrows another.” It decidedly could not come up with any constructive programme, but could only bring grave disorder, damage and retrogression in its train. History has shown that the “cultural revolution,” initiated by a leader labouring under a misapprehension and capitalized on by counter-revolutionary cliques, led to domestic turmoil and brought catastrophe to the Party, the state and the whole people.

China survived Mao, and we will survive Trump.

There are two thoughtful articles that express both my frustration with, and hope for, Trump voters.

The first was written the day after the election by Jamelle Bouie and the title says it all – “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter.” In a nutshell, Trump voters brought their racism, privilege, and recklessness into the voting booth, completely disregarding everything and everyone Trump – with his extreme and well-known positions – promised to harm. These voters knew full well what they were doing and they should have known better.

And it wasn’t just the racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Trump voters also chose to destroy public schools, dismantle medical care for 40 million citizens, wreck environmental protections, and they actually chose to give themselves a tax increase so that a few billionaires could pay lower taxes or none at all.

The word “idiots” doesn’t even begin to describe them. But there’s also a more charitable view.

Justin Gest writes in POLITICO (“The Two Kind of Trump Voters”) that Democrats have to make a distinction between the new crop of proto-fascists in the GOP (along with their supporters) and the other numbskulls who cast their irresponsible votes for Donald Trump.

Gest writes off those whom Bouie does – he calls them the Nationalists – but holds out hope for those he calls the Exasperated, voters who were disappointed by Democratic Neoliberalism and wanted to try something new.

These Exasperated voters also heard the same Mexican rapist rhetoric we all did, and there’s no letting them off the hook. Bouie’s arguments apply completely. They voted for Trump because their [only slightly less ideological] racism and xenophobia made anyone else’s concerns invisible and irrelevant. But they still voted to screw their neighbors.

But Gest has a point. Many of the Exasperated were once Democrats, whether Southern Democrats or Democrats from Southie. Just from the numbers we know that many of them voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but changed their minds in 2016. Gest suggests that they may be irresponsible, unreliable, and unpredictable – but they aren’t stupid. They will turn on Trump as quickly as they did on Obama if he can’t deliver. And they can smell a bullshitter a mile away.

Democracy is dirty, reckless and untidy. And so is the American electorate. But Democrats have to reach out to these Exasperated voters and – most importantly – have to offer them something new and real – and something they honestly intend to deliver.

You get these things all the time – petitions from moveon.org, credo action, change.org, your political, professional and civic organizations, the list goes on.

Safe in your chair, coffee mug in hand, you add your name, zipcode and email address, and – click – you’ve made a difference.

Or have you?

Each time I send one of those things out into the great beyond, I do wonder a bit – do online petitions ever accomplish anything?

Maybe not as much as I’d like.

Both the White House and British Parliament offer citizens e-petition sites, and both are basically trash chutes into which voters throw their political engagement and minutes of their life.

The Atlantic Monthly calls the White House site a joke, while the Guardian (UK) calls the British version a farce.

Evgeny Mozorov, an American social networking skeptic, calls it Slacktivism:

‘Slacktivism’ is the ideal type of activism for a lazy generation: why bother with sit-ins and the risk of arrest, police brutality, or torture if one can be as loud campaigning in the virtual space? Given the media’s fixation on all things digital — from blogging to social networking to Twitter — every click of your mouse is almost guaranteed to receive immediate media attention, as long as it’s geared towards the noble causes. That media attention doesn’t always translate into campaign effectiveness is only of secondary importance.

One pundit explains why online petitions are not very effective:

No. The reason is that on the internet no one knows if you’re a dog. So legislators, executives, or administrators who are being lobbied by these petitions don’t know if you are a registered voter in their district, or even if you are an American citizen. They don’t know if you are signing multiple times or if you are signing for other people. They don’t know if you’re a robot, a person, or an alien.

Making the rounds this week was a reminder that in-person meetings and phone calls are much more effective in reaching politicians. The advice, from a former Congressional staffer, flatly rejects petitions:

You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.

Engaging with politicians is also a hot topic in the Indivisible Guide. And even more effective than having to persuade out-of-touch politicians to do the right thing is to vote for those who actually reflect your values.

We all want to do the right thing, and it’s hard to turn down a friend’s request. There are also cases where petitions have made a difference. Recently I added my name to the whitehouse.gov petition calling for Trump to disclose his tax returns – simply because he said nobody cares. It may have been a futile act politically, but the mounting signatures prove him wrong.

Let your judgment be your guide. But start making those calls.

Welcome to the Trump presidency.

In most democracies, leaders are elected by popular vote, not some crazy slave era concoction like the Electoral College. And in most parliamentary democracies citizens don’t have to suffer incompetence and corruption without relief. In most democracies there is a provision to hold new elections on a vote of no-confidence. But in the United States we either wait four years to throw the bum out – or we can try to impeach him. There is already a campaign underway to get rid of a president who started his term in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution:

“… no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

Although conservatives wave away the word “emolument” as vague, it appears in Samuel Johnson’s 1775 dictionary, and still means today what it meant back then: profit; advantage. Constitutional lawyers, including Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout and others from the Brookings Institution, argue that Trump cannot continue profiting from his international “deals,” especially when he is the only president in American history to refuse to divest himself of conflicts-of-interest.

The Trump cabinet, while not yet rubber-stamped by the Republican Congress, is shaping up to be a weird assortment of billionaires, generals, scammers, ideologues, and incompetents. God help us when Rick Perry assumes control of the Dept. of Energy’s nukes. Or when Ben Carson puts up the photo of himself and Jesus in his new HUD office. Before settling down to a nap. Or when Betsy deVos becomes the homeschooling czarina. Or when Jeff Sessions dismantles programs to reign in police violence against black lives.

You think Ferguson was bad…

While Bill Clinton was actually impeached for consentual sex with a White House intern, Republicans seem less inclined to hold Trump to the same standard – or any standard at all. Trump’s ex-wife’s divorce deposition included charges that he raped her and there is a very long list of victims of his sexual abuse, including Summer Zervos, who is suing Trump for defamation. This particular case could bring evidence, including videos, to light.

A serial misogynist and abuser and his incompetent cabinet.

Thus, it was appropriate that millions of women marched in hundreds of American cities. By one count as many as 4.6 million women in 600 cities protested the crotch-grabber-in-chief:

Pictures of the march were truly impressive. Washington DC was awash in pink. If you click on this link you can see the crowd from a drone-eye view:

People from the SouthCoast (MA) also took part in local rallies.

And even before Trump’s inauguration, local demonstrators from the Coalition for Social Justice, the ACLU, and various unions and church groups were protesting Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s publicity-stunted proposal to use prisoners for slave labor to build Trump’s Mexican wall. A photo from Ash Street:

* * *

In today’s local paper Robert Xifaras wrote that, in his 87 years, he has never seen so many “‘shameless deplorable unpatriotic divisive malcontents’ who have entered into a conspiracy not only to attack the legitimacy of the election, but to further espouse […] hatred.” Show some respect for the office!

Mr. Xifaras has apparently only recently started following the news since he obviously missed the Birtherism and racism that Trump had a major hand in spreading.

Well, Republicans, have fun being in charge.

For now.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Seasons Greetings!

Last week a friend sent me a link to a piece by Harold Pollack in The Nation which put into words what many of us have been thinking – that the time is soon coming when writing checks and signing petitions won’t be enough. Getting out into the streets and engaging in civil disobedience may be what is required, regardless of our age.

Civil disobedience is as American as Henry David Thoreau, and one could even say it’s been an American tradition since the colonies tangled with King George II. Thoreau spent his night in jail on July 23rd, 1846 when the twenty-nine year-old abolitionist walked into town to accept his punishment for withholding taxes as a protest against slavery.

Our individual actions do make a difference. Rosa Parks, through the simple act of refusing to move to the back of a bus, kicked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott was a turning point in building the Civil Rights movement. And the Civil Rights movement, in turn, inspired activists black and white – like the future U.S. Senator from Vermont pictured above being arrested.

In the face of what’s surely coming from the Trump administration – mass deportations, targeting of Muslims, even greater violations of civil liberties – should Americans dust off this tool of protest even if it means spending a night in jail?

According to Thoreau it’s our duty.

Have a wonderful holiday – and a disobedient New Year.

There is a a famous folktale, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, about a pest control expert hired by the town of Hameln in Lower Saxony to deal with its rat problem. The rat catcher was known to dress all in green (or multicolors, depending on the version of the story) and had a magic flute he used to lure rats out of town and to their deaths in a nearby river.

But when the town failed to keep its end of the bargain and refused payment for his services, the Pied Piper turned his magic flute on the village children, luring them into a cave or (depending on the version of the story) into the same river where the rats had been dispatched.

The folktale seems to have been based on real-life events. In the 13th Century hundreds of children disappeared from Hameln and turned up later in other parts of Germany. The children, who saw no future for themselves in their dreary hometown, had been lured – not by a rat catcher – but by recruiters from regions in the east looking for young and healthy settlers and promising them a fresh start.

If only the grownups had kept their promises.

The classic attack ad and the notion of the “lesser evil” go hand-in-hand.

The American public votes largely on the basis of attack ads painting the opposing candidate as evil. When so much fear is generated that there is only one thing to do – vote for the lesser evil.

This strategy assures that third parties never take root – and that voters never get what they really want – as long as they are always voting against what they fear.

Vote for a Third Party? You’re voting for Caligula! For Hitler! The parties themselves are never held responsible for fielding terrible candidates or ignoring their base. It’s always the voter’s fault for deviating from the script, not getting with the program.

Why a huge swath of working-class voters would ever embrace a Republican billionaire is a mystery to me. People have been swayed by an ignorant huckster who speaks gibberish at a fourth grade level and is woefully unconcerned with facts, whose only talent is selling himself and nostalgia for imagined days of American Empire. His supporters wave away all his defects of character, errors of judgment, moral failures, evasions, his baldface lies. What they like about the man is that he can stand at a podium and regale them like a Goodfella at a bar. Like the gangster, they think he’s strong, got all the right connections, knows how to get the job done. They also buy the lie that the alternative is a woman whose election would spell the end of civilization as we know it. Let’s not forget – they were once close friends.

But Democrats are equally blind to venality from their Anointed One. She may not be a billionaire herself (the family business is only worth half that), but she and her husband are certainly friends with enough of them. The credulity of her supporters – that a candidate living in gold-plated luxury really cares about the little guy – is pathetic. Unlike her opponent, the Democrat actually has a record of accomplishment – much of it negative. Unnecessary wars, invasions, destabilizing other nations, drones, extrajudicial killings, a coup in Honduras, support of an Apartheid-like occupation in Israel, propping up of autocratic regimes, shady dealings through the Family Business, lies, evasions. Like their Republican brethren, Democrats shut their eyes to what they refuse to see. Sure, she’s a foreign policy disaster. But at least she’ll do something for women and appoint some great Supreme Court justices. The alternative is just a goose-step away from Hitler. So we are told.

Republicans just want to go back to the 1950’s – or possibly the 1850’s. America was once Great (those being the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency). Let’s return to that Greatness, put gays back in the closet, shut down the abortion clinics, and rededicate ourselves to killing Contras and Iranians. USA! USA! USA! For this we need god-fearing patriots who go abroad with Bibles in hand to kill heathens and come back to run the country according to a weird mix of Christian Shariah, Ayn Rand, and Austrian economists. This is the essence of the New Republican Party.

Democrats love their gay children and their brown neighbors no more or less than Republicans, but they realize that the country is changing, and you can’t step in the way of change coming at you like a freight train. This is realistic and admirable. But when it comes to American Exceptionalism, Democrats sound just like Republicans. Most believe that the U.S. should continue to build up its military and flex its superpower muscles; that the U.S. has the “right” to invade any other country at will; that we can go into Pakistan (or any other country on earth) with drones to kill terrorists – even if we kill a few civilians by accident. We’re not putting boots on the ground, after all. This kind of war doesn’t count as war. And, besides, this is our right. We are exceptional. We have to be the world’s Top Cop. There are no other choices. To do otherwise is irresponsible isolationism, shirking our responsibility, rejecting our exceptional world role.

Far from being the “responsible ones,” it was Democrats who dropped nuclear weapons on fellow human beings, Democrats who amped-up the long Viet Nam war, killing up to two million people, Democrats who overwhelmingly voted for the War on Iraq. And the Democrats of today who have expanded the number of countries with whom we are now at permanent war since taking over following the Bush administration. Sadly, when it comes to foreign policy and militarism – and spying on civilians and crackdowns on whistleblowers – there is virtually no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

If Democrats pride themselves that they are the Lesser Evil, it is only fair to ask – a lesser evil for whom? Iraqis? Afghanis? Syrians? Libyans? Palestinians? Hondurans? Innocent victims of drone attacks? Fracking opponents? Whistleblowers? Civil Libertarians?

$15 an hour and a Supreme Court Justice may not be enough to offset all this “lesser” evil.

Dr. Irving Fradkin (“America can be great again,” August 12) is without doubt a beloved booster of communitarian values and I have enjoyed reading his pieces over the years. However, from time to time I have found his conventional wisdom to be less than wise.

This is one such case.

In his most recent letter Dr. Fradkin portrays the problems of our democracy as a lack of bipartisanship and suggests that tweaks to campaign finance rules can make government more democratic.

What we REALLY need is an end to corporate bribery through lobbying, PACs, and classifying corporations as humans.

Dr. Fradkin wants more people to establish scholarships for students.

What we REALLY need is free university education – such as Germany and other nations offer their citizens – if we don’t want the next several generations to be drowned in debt. Of course this requires that the states and federal government not be totally broke. Raising revenues is essential, and spending on more than the military is a choice we’ll have to make.

Dr. Fradkin wants to create jobs by reducing taxes.

Reducing taxes does not magically create jobs that can easily be outsourced to Bangladesh, Mumbai, or Taiwan. And in Bangladesh where major clothing companies sew your jeans and shirts – or in the FoxConn compounds where Apple products are made – wages are criminally low and companies need not worry much about worker safety. Places like the Marshall Islands are technically in the U.S. but workers there are not protected by the same labor laws as Americans. Are virtually slave-labor jobs in places like this going to magically migrate back to us when outsourcing is so profitable?

Even when American jobs ARE created, we are now seeing a trend toward McJobs and the Uber economy – where everyone cobbles together an existence from multiple part-time, low-paying jobs where benefits are a thing of the past. This is the Third World model, Dr. Fradkin.

And what is to ensure that the Walton (Walmart) family and the fast food purveyors – even when granted cushy tax deals – will provide a working wage for their employees? Absolutely nothing. In fact, Walmart employees have to supplement their paychecks with food stamps and Medicare – which WE, and not the Waltons, pay for. What’s good for the billionaires is not necessarily good for the average guy – and to believe that charity will be given generously and spontaneously by billionaires (trickle down economics) is more than wishful thinking. It’s delusional.

Next Dr. Fradkin suggests we go begging from billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for matching grants to communities. In fact, Dr. Fradkin devotes a lot of time to successful begging strategies, mentioning our local success story, Dr. Irwin Jacobs, as well.

There is nothing wrong with giving back voluntarily to a community that has given you so much – don’t get me wrong. But what we REALLY need is for corporations and wealthy citizens to pay their fair share of taxes, not simply drop a few bucks in our coffee cups as they pass us begging on the street.

When the working and middle classes are not living hand to mouth – that’s when America will be great again.

Joseph Michaud writes (in “Runaway Debt threatens American Dream,” July 12th) that “fiscal conservatism, that is, paying one’s own debts, was an integral part of the founding of this nation.” This is not altogether true, since slavery kept generation after generation in debt to slave owners like Jefferson, whom he selectively quotes, and created enduring income inequality.

Poorhouses may have given way to austerity programs but, if we look closely, Republicans like Mr. Michaud are eternally fond of punishing the poor and minorities – even if the strategy doesn’t work. Rather than improving health, housing and education – things that would help the most – the Republican approach is to keep the poor in their place and accuse them of profligacy. This goes for people and nations, a connection Mr. Michaud draws himself.

Michaud cites Greece and Puerto Rico as poster-children for the sins of debt. However, from the beginnings of their associations with the European economic union, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other Southern European nations were hobbled by an uneven playing field. Greece has actually cut its budget by more than 30 percent yet its economy has also shrunk by a third and unemployment has risen to 27 percent. Austerity has been a failure.

By law, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese companies must pay higher interest on credits than German counterparts. Consequently northern Europeans have more flexibility in pricing and financing than their Southern rivals and can be more competitive. These are some of the built-in inequities in the EU that no amount of “fiscal responsibility” can cure.

A century ago Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act which exempted interest payments on bonds in Puerto Rico from federal, state, and local income taxes. These triple tax exemptions created a Ponzi scheme that worked for a time because it was easy to refinance . Financial and banking deals were imposed on Puerto Ricans by American-appointed governors and corporations, the colony is still subject to whatever trade agreements the U.S. imposes, and trade with the rest of Latin America is limited by the Jones Act. Puerto Rico is also limited in its bankruptcy and refinancing options by U.S. law. But, by all means, let’s blame the victim.

Mr. Michaud bemoans the high number of people not paying into the system and the large number taking from it. However, he does not mention that among those paying no taxes are huge corporations like: Bank of America; Boeing; Chevron; Citigroup; ConocoPhillips; Corning; Exxon Mobil; General Electric; Goldman Sachs; and PG&E. Fiscal responsibility also means raising revenue to pay bills. But paying taxes is just not in the Republican vocabulary.

Michaud maintains that there are millions of healthy, young people drawing SSDI. Painting an image of a Welfare Queen sitting around munching on donuts, he writes that “the generous entitlement programs we have established to assist the needy are now serving as an enticement to avoid employment.” Mr. Michaud should get out of his office sometime and try living on the patchwork of assistance that troubled families have to. Reality experienced personally might change his outlook.

At least half of food stamp recipients live – and work – in poverty. With average hourly wages of $9 an hour, each Walmart employee costs taxpayers at least $1,000 per year in public assistance. Walmart alone costs the United States $6.2 billion a year. Walmart employees constitute the largest block of Medicaid and food stamp recipients in most states. One in six of Walmart”s 48,000 Pennsylvania employees are enrolled in Medicaid. Walmart is America’s REAL Welfare Queen.

Apart from the working poor, Medicaid enrollment has also risen due to the greying of America. Younger immigrants, rather than drawing on the social safety net, actually pay into it. Again, something Republicans might want to consider.

Michaud notes that three times as much money is spent on “entitlements” as on defense. Sadly, for decades we have had a defense budget – and then we have had a separate war budget, the Homeland Security and spy agency budgets, and the costs of caring for veterans from all our combined wars of choice. These costs combined – our war addiction – approaches the “entitlements” – which wage earners actually contribute to in addition to paying their taxes. Fiscal conservatives preaching “responsibility” never worry about programs like the F-35, which is a $1.5 TRILLION boondoggle. Or the projected $2 TRILLION dollars that care of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, now still in their twenties and thirties, will cost over their lifetimes.

It’s strange that Mr. Michaud’s piece included the phrase, “the American Dream.” Because of income inequality caused by Free Market fundamentalism, greed, and corruption, the American Dream is more distant than ever from the reach of our children and grandchildren. I only hope that we will restore some of that Dream to everyone – not just for the pampered and the privileged.

This was published in the Standard Times on July 28, 2015
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150728/opinion/150729577

The Supreme Court has ruled. Obamacare stands. But Steve DiMarzo isn’t happy and feels that only champions of insanity and inanity like Ted Cruz and Antonin Scalia can save us from decline.

Ted Cruz is an amusing sideshow, but Scalia serves on the bench, so let’s take a look at the ruling that DiMarzo mentions in his letter.

In summarizing “King et al. versus Burwell” for the majority, Justice Roberts wrote:

“The Act gives each State the opportunity to establish its own Exchange, but provides that the Federal Government will establish ‘such Exchange’ if the State does not. (42 U.S.C. §§180 31, 18041).”

Under the Act, states were to get the first shot at establishing their own exchanges but in their absence a federal exchange would provide similar services. Despite quibbling over some wording, the Supreme Court majority upheld Congress:

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress’s plan, and that is the reading we adopt.”

Writing for the minority dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia could barely contain his anger and demonstrated that he is a man with seriously disordered thought.

Scalia excoriates the majority, calling its ruling “absurd,” that “words no longer have meaning,” that the majority’s ruling exhibits “no semblance of shame.” He argues hotly that the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a state. (But of course neither are the governmental officials running our Massachusetts exchange.) Scalia also completely ignores the legitimacy of the federal exchange and only recognizes state exchanges. Ultimately all he can do is sputter and call the majority’s opinion “pure applesauce.”

Scalia then slams the tax credits by which the federal-state partnership works as the majority’s “interpretive jiggery-pokery,” proving that for Scalia himself words truly have no meaning. What does his bizarre expression even mean? And why are the Affordable Care Act’s complex tax provisions any more objectionable than the rest of a tax code that privileges corporations and the extremely wealthy?

And if Scalia is such a keen and literal reader of the Constitution, why are corporations now considered to be people? Why does he not scrupulously support Fourth Amendment rights regarding personal “effects” and the unequivocal requirements for warrants? Why doesn’t Scalia read the Second Amendment as referring not to individual rights to bear arms but the collective right to establish militias?

Or could it be that the Justice has applesauce between his ears?

Speaking recently at his granddaughter’s graduation, Scalia remarked, “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so.” Actually humanity has been around for at least a hundred thousand – and longer if we include our close human relatives.

Here is a man divorced from reality, ignorant or antipathetic to science, an angry, inconsistent, ideologue given to incoherent argument and babbling. Scalia is a walking example of precisely WHY the Court is in decline and an argument for the need to have term limits on Supreme Court justices – or at least to be able to recall those unfit for service.

So if Steve DiMarzo wants to recommend someone to save the country – he’d better keep looking.

This was published in the Standard Times on July 3, 2015
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150703/opinion/150709802

Recent letters in these pages have attributed the Charlie Hebdo attack to inchoate hatred of Jews. It is inconceivable or insignificant to the writers that American foreign policy or Israeli domestic policy had anything to do with it.

Similarly, writers Left and Right have reframed the story as one in which democracy and freedom of speech are under attack. “They” hate us for what we have, for who we are, for the freedoms we exercise. From Lindsay Graham to Bill Maher, the only conclusions Americans seem able to draw are (1) Western civilization is at war with people who want to live in the Neolithic Age, and (2) Islam is totally incompatible with democracy. No other narratives are ever used to rationally explain Al Qaeda’s and ISIS’s successes. And we won’t hear of it.

Bin Laden’s November 2002 “Letter to America” in the Guardian addresses two issues: why al Qaeda opposes the West and what it wants from it. The first answer to the first question addressed Palestine. He wrote: “Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: (1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. a) You attacked us in Palestine…” To Bin Laden Israel in Palestine was just another example of Western imperialism.

But we know better.

Bin Laden’s other talking points concerned Western involvement in the Middle East and the exploitation of the world’s resources to satisfy a consumer culture he regarded as immoral. He took the West to task for coddling Israel, nuclear hypocrisy, and for U.S. foreign policy and military bases throughout the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

But we know better.

History tells us: that the West carved up the Middle East; that it unleashed Wahhabism against the Ottomans; that the U.S. built Al Qaeda as a proxy to fight Russia in Afghanistan; that “Western” Israel formed Hamas to challenge the PLO; that the U.S. left Shias to die in the first Gulf War and disenfranchised Sunnis in the next; that it inadvertently armed ISIL; that the West’s “coalition of the willing” destroyed and destabilized Iraq, Syria and Libya through regime change masquerading as defense of civilians suffering state terror; that the new GOP Congress wants to add Iran to our national catalog of military disasters.

But we know better.

Didier Francois, a French journalist who was held almost a year by ISIS, was interviewed recently by CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. When asked about the Western-educated converts to ISIS, Francois responded, “There was never really discussion about texts or — it was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion. It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran.”

But we know better.

Analysts in the intelligence agencies know that ISIS and Al Qaeda ranks are swollen with ex-Baathists and anti-Assad Syrians. They also contain a sobering number of Western-born and Western-educated Muslims who are radicalized by domestic racism, growing surveillance states, unemployment and consumer culture. They and their lone-wolf brethren are radicalized in part by the realization that their own countries are not quite the democracies they claim to be, and their heritage permits them to see Colonialism with a clear eye. But ultimately they are radicalized by being told to “go home,” that they don’t belong in England or France or Germany. Or the U.S. And by joining ISIS they think they’re going home.

As Didier Francois tells us, though, it’s not the Quran. It’s politics.

And yet we only see a military solution. Americans all-too-quickly resort to war. War is not our last resort. It is pretty much our only resort. As long as we consistently choose to fight without thinking of the political dimensions, the war against ISIS and any future mutations will have only one casualty: our own civil liberties and democracy.

Only after we finally admit our foreign and domestic policies have been a failure and actually encourage recruitment to ISIS and Al Qaeda — and we alter them — will we be able to have any kind of peace.

Until then, we know better.

Good grief. Who says that low-information voters are undecided? Bernard P. Giroux (October 15th) ticks off a number of reasons voters should reject Elizabeth Warren. Most of them rest on hysterical fact-twisting.

Giroux states that Warren’s political principles will require a “re-write of the Constitution.” As he should know, the last change to the Constitution was in 1971, to give 18-year-olds the right to vote. Almost all 27 amendments improved upon our civil liberties or closed electoral loopholes. The usual method of amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in each house of congress and approval by three-fourths of all states. So what’s the point of his nonsense? Hysterical fear-mongering.

Mr. Giroux questions why an accomplished, tenured professor would give up a five-digit salary in academe for a five-digit salary as a Senator. He seizes on the first notion that pops into his head: “One reason comes to mind: power,” he writes. I seem to recall, from the same citizenship class Mr. Giroux apparently skipped, that our political system is based on a consensus-conflict model, in which political parties are in perpetual political arm-wrestling matches with one another. So – yes – power is the reason both candidates are competing, vying, running, fighting – all power verbs, you’ll notice.

I don’t know what Giroux has been reading, but he uses the word “statism” too broadly and as if it were a filthy word. Statism, in its simplest and most obvious meaning, indicates that a country is not left to anarchy or mob rule but its day-to-day functions are managed by – a state. The current crop of Republicans may prefer that we all live in the unpaved boonies, home-schooling our kids, and receiving faith-based services. But the “Somalian option” – letting states fail their own people – is still fortunately not very popular.

There were criticisms from both the Right and Left on how the TARP program was implemented. But Giroux chooses to ignore the millions of jobs and homes preserved by government interventions and modest US economic growth in the face of serious economic downturns in the EU, Japan, and even softening of the Chinese economy. Many believe more domestic progress would have been made if the Republicans had not made demonizing a Black, Muslim, Kenyan, Indonesian, Communist president their only priority.

Giroux writes, “living under statist rules means that you are not free to be an American. The statist will control everything you do in life and make you subservient.” As Joe Biden would say, “Stuff!”. Mr. Giroux’s political buddies are more than happy to tell women what they may or may not do with their bodies. These buddies are not averse to increasing the size of the Department of Defense by a couple trillion dollars here or rolling out more domestic Homeland Security surveillance programs there – or starting unfunded wars of choice. Republicans love Big Government – especially when energy, defense and aerospace contractors are doing so well.

But the fact is: the choice Massachusetts voters have between Elizabeth Warren and her Indjun-bashing opponent is not about the size of the state, but about priorities.

And here Mr. Giroux and I agree. He asks “Would it not be better to be in a country where the government flows from the people?” Absolutely. That’s precisely what Senatorial elections are for – voters weighing in on national priorities. And early polls show that the priorities Elizabeth Warren is campaigning for are the ones voters like.

This was published in the Standard Times on October 17, 2012
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20121017/opinion/210170312

Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in his new book, and in a recent article: the US is first in income inequality in the world, and it’s getting even worse. Social mobility is greater even in “old Europe” than here. The six Wal-Mart heirs own as much as the bottom 30% of the entire United States! So much for the “American Dream.” Kids, go to grad school abroad, then stay there.

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Stuart Forman (“Moral obligation must underpin Occupy movement“) looks at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and sees in its reflection a society beset by existential worries, alienated by not having the opportunity to contribute, by consumerism, and by the loss of meaning. His is largely a psychological analysis with a moral solution. The poorly-titled letter suggests Stuart’s prescription is for the OWS movement itself to find or promote morality, but we should actually let his arguments speak for themselves: society should be based on the common good and not dedicated to greed. This in fact is what OWS is saying as well. And isn’t this moral enough?

Stuart somewhat unfairly charges that the OWS movement has failed to articulate its goals, although its demands have been clear and unambiguous: among others, re-regulating the financial industry, single-payer health care, affordable student loans, commitment to a national energy program, rolling back the Patriot act, election reform, immigration reform, ceasing to be the world’s policeman, and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share of taxes. While there is no progressive equivalent of Grover Norquist or Glen Beck to hammer away on private media outlets at its dearest issues, OWS is not a top-down movement, so let’s not confuse a diversity of demands and people for a failure to articulate. As Stuart acknowledges, the “system” is in trouble, and lots of things need to be fixed. The OWS people have articulated enough specific reforms for anyone who really wants to listen. Now all that is needed is a political party which represents average Americans and not corporate lobbyists.

There may be a few within the OWS movement who question the entire economic system, but most are looking for a return to a Social Contract that applies to all citizens, not just a small percent. What are our responsibilities toward society and government, and what are its responsibilities toward us? Why is it we live with each other? These questions may have a psychological or a moral dimension, but they are essentially political questions. The moral philosophy of a John Rawls, whom Stuart mentions, is only one approach toward understanding or defining a Social Contract. Ensuring that all of society’s stakeholders are adequately represented by principled political parties and laws which do not privilege one group over another is another. Ultimately, fighting for reforms politically, rather than making appeals to morality, is more likely to produce the real change Americans are still looking for. In the marketplace of ideas and politics, this requires punishing politicians who fail to represent us and demanding that those we have elected do represent us. It is not the lack of morality so much as apathy and ignorance which have created this sick system.

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Barney Frank has proposed cutting European allies’ military aid in order to reduce the total military budget by 25%. Frank has mentioned numerous European nations by name.

However, the U.S. actually provides very little military aid to Europe, as it turns out. According to U.S. Government statistics for 2009 which can be found at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1299.pdf, all European nations combined received a total of $210 million (with a little “m” and not a “b”). The following nations were included in this calculation: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Congressman Frank will be relieved that Denmark and Italy are not among them.

However, if we look at the 2009 recipients of more than $100 million in aid, the top eight were: Afghanistan (5.7 billion), Israel (2.38 billion), Egypt (1.3), Pakistan (429 million), Jordan (238 million), all of Europe combined (201 million), and Somalia (102 million).

The United States maintains a network of over a thousand military bases in 150 countries. This is where the costs rack up. For example, Germany receives nothing besides rent for permitting the U.S. to maintain the Landstuhl military hospital and base. However, the U.S. is unlikely to shut down Landstuhl because this is where KIA and injured service members from the Middle East are sent before returning to the U.S. It serves no purpose to Germans. And as several years of wrangling with Iraq attests, the military does not willingly shut down bases and a “patriotic” Congress does not have the guts to force it to.

Some of the money allocated to Europe also goes toward the U.S. commitment to NATO. Long after the Cold War has ended and the Soviet Union was dismantled, we are still unwilling to give up those bases and dismantle our own Cold War club.

So it seems to hold true that whenever the U.S. goes to war, which is often, military infrastructure grows but is subsequently never permitted to be reduced.

Afghanistan represents 53% of all American military foreign aid. Israel gets 22%. The rest of U.S. allies get the remaining 25%. Congressman Frank has steadfastly refused to look at cuts for Israel, but clearly it’s a notable, politically-motivated exception. And the Obama Administration has asked the Congressional Research Service to prepare estimates of spending in Afghanistan until 2021, and we haven’t heard enough Democrats complaining about these plans.

If we are serious about reducing frivolous foreign military expenditures, we need to close useless bases, cut aid to countries inflated to excess by special interests, and get out of Afghanistan now and not in another decade. The rest of Congressman Frank’s ideas may have some merit, but it seems to me he’s no different from the rest of Congress: he only wants to go on a low-armaments diet if all he has to do is throw the maraschino cherry on the sundae away.

Besides all the other pledges the Religious Right takes nowadays — Anti-Abortion, Balanced Budget Amendments, No New Taxes for the Super-Rich, Defense of Marriage for Straight People, Repudiation of Global Warming, Fighting Evolution, or Promoting the Return of Christian Shariah — I sometimes wonder if they simply take a basic pledge to waste their time on social issues that are of interest only to a narrow group of narrow people.

Today’s Time Waster is Michelle Bachman’s new pledge to the National Organization for Marriage to defend straight people from harassment by gays and their straight enablers of the sinful gay lifestyle.

I am truly grateful that hordes of rowdy homosexuals and angry lesbians have never come to my street to harass me while I’m trying to have a nice quiet evening with my wife or tried to recruit me to the other team. So far, I’m working on my 3rd decade of marriage without ever receiving a single threat or so much as a peep from this apparently scary constituency.

On the other hand, I am more than a little disturbed that NOM and its supporters aren’t as tolerant when it come to letting gay people have their own quiet evenings without being demonized or asked to attend re-education camps. If anything, the defense of loving relationships is under attack by NOM.

And doesn’t Michelle Bachmann have anything better to do?

The Standard Times editorial this morning (“Public Employees, Private Freedoms”) is a long piece defending the dismissal of Bourne firefighter Richard Doherty for griping that he had to work on the Fourth of July. To me, Doherty’s firing seemed to be just vindictiveness on the part of the town. After a somewhat tedious case law review (so that we fully appreciated all the “nuance” involved), the op-ed took the town’s side, offering the weakest of arguments:

“As a newspaper, we aggressively defend First Amendment rights, but Doherty’s behavior undermined public confidence in the town’s ability to provide emergency services. Public servants have a right to express their opinion, but there is no right to a job funded at taxpayer expense for conduct that breaches the public trust.”

First, does any sane person truly believe that Doherty’s gripes “undermined public confidence?” If undermining public confidence in government infrastructure is such a horrific betrayal of the public, please, let’s dismiss every Republican who has ever disparaged “Big Government” or actually undermined its effectiveness by slashing necessary services. But going after a guy because he whined about working on a holiday? Give me a break. I could see firing Mr. Doherty if he had refused to show up for work instead of merely griping.

Second, it seems to me, for all the nuanced case law review, the Standard Times misses the point that Constitutional freedoms are not abrogated the moment a person becomes a public employee. The First Amendment does not have a clause exempting prickly firemen from its protections.

The Standard Times editorial asks the question, whether a gay person could confidently receive services from a firefighter who had gone on record making homophobic remarks. Valid point, but once again, let’s ask this question about half of the Republican Party, including five candidates who want to roll back gay rights. Would a gay person accept help from a homophobe? Sure, if their house were burning down or they were going into shock. Being civil to those whose opinions we despise or who despise us is all part of living a society. We don’t have to like everyone who serves us. But they have to do their job.

The foregoing arguments also apply to the recent case of Anthony Weiner, whose antics have brought disgrace on him and his family. New York voters will have a chance to weigh in on Mr. Weiner’s effectiveness in a 2012 election. At that time they can decide if his personal actions warrant revoking the public’s trust in him. Frankly, Weiner’s wronged wife is the one who should be firing him, not the public which merely has a prurient fascination with sex scandals.

Far worse betrayals of the public trust go unchallenged and unmentioned daily in your pages. The president’s recent violation of the War Power Act, the fact we are now ensnared in combat in five Middle Eastern countries, our shameful foreign policy, and recklessly giving half the TARP money to the nation’s richest people. These are the real betrayals of public trust! Consider for a moment how many years the Democrats in the House Ethics Committee avoided any serious investigation of Charles Rangel and you understand how betrayal of the public is not a serious issue, to Republicans or Democrats.

Which brings me to the Standard Times.

As long as the press has colorful sex scandals to report or whining firemen to vilify in the op-ed page, it can continue to half-heartedly fulfill its duty to expose the truth of larger, more important issues. We have plenty of wars, employment, infrastructure, and budget crises a properly informed public needs to know about. Of course, in the age of embedded journalism, this requires going head to head with government, not simply being an echo chamber for it.

When the editor writes, “As a newspaper we aggressively defend First Amendment rights,” I want to shout something unprintable here. The hell you are! Why not simply give the vindictive town bureaucrat who just didn’t like Mr. Doherty space to vent in your own column?

The editor seems to have no grasp of what, truly, betrayal of the public consists.

This was published in the Standard Times on June 24, 2011
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20110624/opinion/106240309

Here’s an example of the lack of transparency and dishonesty from the State Department that led to the most recent Wikileaks disclosures.

I have written previously about the case of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a non-violent Palestinian activist who was jailed for making a peace sculpture out of the many tear gas canisters and spent concussion grenades shot by Israel Defense Forces at people in the occupied village of Bi’lin. Recently Abdallah’s prison sentence was completed but Israel still keeps him locked away in Ofer Prison.

The case has been in the news for more than a year. Thousands of people around the world have written to their politicians and diplomats about Abu Rahmah. Former President Carter, Desmond Tutu, and a number of European diplomats have all spoken out about his case. It is inconceivable that people in the State Department are as clueless as they pretend to be.

Matthew Lee of the AP wire service has been trying unsuccessfully for weeks to get a straight answer from State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley about Abu Rahmah’s political imprisonment. The following clip shows the lengths that the State Department has gone to in deep-sixing any real concern for political prisoners and in deferring to Israel about human rights abuses.

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Yesterday, with a second Depression afflicting the nation, two wars, Wikileaks, and the Tea Party rebellion, I discovered that TIME had decided to make Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, its new Person of the Year for “connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives.” TIME’s Richard Stengel sees Facebook as not just a new social mechanism; it’s “the connective tissue for nearly a tenth of the planet.”

Accepting the honor (on Facebook), Zuckerberg wrote:

“Being named as TIME Person of the Year is a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I’m happy to be a part of that.”

The Wall Street Journal quickly put its seal of approval on TIME’s choice with an essay by a philosopher-ethicist, no less, on why Facebook is so important to us. Humans, it appears, were apparently built to “breathe, eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and check Facebook.”

Thus, to the visionaries at TIME and the WSJ, Facebook is not only a new social function but a new bodily function and has been elevated to a replacement for normal human relationships. NPR showed a bit more skepticism, though, wondering if perhaps better choices might have been available to TIME’s editors. NPR’s poll showed 75% of NPR listeners thought someone else should have been chosen. ComputerWorld saw the choice of Zuckerberg as a snub to Julian Assange, who was also the leader in the NPR poll. Many journalists wondered what was going on in Richard Stengel’s mind.

Like the Nobel Prize award to Obama last year, Zuckerberg’s award does not come as a surprise in our new Snookified world. We do live in a society in which basketball players earn a thousand times more than teachers and ex-cons like Martha Stewart and Buddy Cianci have their own TV and radio shows. And maybe it’s simply to avoid predictability that undeserved awards are given in the first place.

But undeserved? Is this really too harsh? How can one say that Zuckerberg, a white, privileged son of both a dentist and a psychiatrist, who came to Harvard via Philips Exeter academy and whose social networking creation may well be the result of theft or plagiarism, does not deserve the award?

After all, who doesn’t love self-indulgent narcissism? This is the true product of our collective use of Facebook — billions of digital pork sausages oozing from the grinder. If talking to one’s friends on a cell phone while visiting a rest room isn’t enough, Facebook lets people disclose even more about their one-night stands, drunken binges, the games they play on company time, or the fragile state of their mental health. You can post thousands of photos of yourself on Facebook. If you’re deranged, you can even post your suicide note, as Clay Duke did. How can something like this not be vital to the functioning of a society? We can get our 15 minutes of fame every day on Facebook.

Stengel tries to apply lipstick to the pig by describing how Facebook and Wikileaks are “two sides of the same coin”:

“Both express a desire for openness and transparency. While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends.”

Apparently TIME’s editors, one would have supposed champions of the Fourth Estate’s responsibilities, don’t see transparency in government as something which empowers citizens in any way. For TIME, narcissism is true empowerment. Taking flak for his choice, Stengel said that “I do think something is going on deep down in the human character that’s changing and evolving. […] Is there a bigger story than that? I don’t think so.”

Stengel also justified passing over Julian Assange: “There is no Julian Assange without Bradley Manning,” he wrote, referring to the presumed source of many of the leaked classified documents.

He was right about that.

Today’s Standard Times editorial (“Don’t weaken airport security”) is the result of good homework but bad analysis.

Acknowledging sperm mutations and an increased risk of cancer from the new “porno” scanners, the editors nevertheless advocate submitting to an imaging procedure which displays prostheses, colostomy bags, tampons, and the outline of genitals.

The editors warn that opting out of the virtual strip search and instead requesting an “enhanced pat-down” may not make them any happier. This second option, as it has sometimes been implemented, is neither enhanced nor a pat-down. It is simply sexual molestation by another name.

As terrorists get more sophis ticated, we will be called on to give up more and more of our privacy and our liberties. The Standard Times pooh-poohs the notion that these new procedures are indicative of a Big Brother society – but what’s next from the TSA when terrorists regularly start carrying explosives embedded in their bodies? Full strip and cavity searches?

Throwing away our right to privacy in the most intimate of ways is not the answer. Neither is privatizing air traffic safety. TSA agents, for all the outrageous things they are asked to do by the changing dictates of security agencies, are much more professional than their private sector predecessors. And neither is the answer to implement racial or ethnic profiling. Not only is it statistically useless, as a recent study by Professor William Press from the University of Texas at Austin shows, it leaves the door open to simple harassment. Just ask Donna Shalala, former US Secretary of Health and an Arab American, about her treatment at Ben Gurion airport last July. Apparently her profile as an American VIP and supporter of Israel were not as important as her profile as a suspicious 69-year-old Arab woman.

Until the root causes of terrorism have been addressed, attempts to bring down planes will continue. If Americans have no interest in discovering the real reasons our country has so many enemies, then we’d better get our scientists busy working on improving those million dollar bomb sniffers.

If my only choices are to have my genitals filmed or groped – or to be prohibited from traveling – these are not really choices at all. And this is indeed symptomatic of a Big Brother society with its rapidly multiplying security apparatus. I’m surprised the editors don’t find any of this as appalling as the average citizen does.

This was published in the Standard Times on November 27, 2010
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20101127/opinion/11270344

No, not you bean counters in Boston and in local town governments. I’m referring to every citizen of this fine state.

Boston just announced a cut of 900 jobs, including over 400 teaching positions. This is a 5.5% cut, or $107 million out of $833 million in Boston’s school budget, and a 6.2% reduction of the city’s 6500 teaching positions.

This all sounds reasonable until you hear that the city budget shortfall is estimated to be $140 million next year. As usual, schools are going to assume 75% of the burden.

In 1980 some cheap bastards – actually, we Massachusetts voters – voted for a referendum which capped property taxes at 2.5%. Proposition 2 1/2 thus became Massachusetts General Law Chapter 59 Section 21. For 28 years this law has guided the downward spiral of town and city services. In these hard times Proposition 2 1/2 will ensure that the downward spiral will end in death. Cynical banalities like “the schools just couldn’t compete” or “it’s time to privatize” will be uttered over the grave. And we will then look to casinos and corporations to come up with the money.

Wait a minute! Aren’t we currently bailing out the corporations?

Never mind. We’ll talk excitedly about how the new Duncan Donuts Academy, the Harrah’s Charter Schools, the McDonald’s pre-schools, and the Marvel Comics and National Enquirer libraries are providing services we used to pay for ourselves.

And all because we continue to be the same kind of cheap bastards the people on our block were 28 years ago. People who expect someone else to do it, someone else to pay for it, someone else to step up to do the right thing.

If there’s anything we can agree on in this consumer culture, it’s this: you get what you pay for. By paying for nothing, we get nothing. No future for our children, no future for young people, no stability for the elderly, no common dreams that bind our society. Proposition 2 1/2 has done enough damage. Repeal Massachusetts General Law 59 Section 21.

In Wednesday’s editorial section Henry Nichols argues that an American president needs a military background. Our current president sort of has one, mainly confined to avoiding as much reserve duty as possible and strutting in costume aboard an aircraft carrier. But look at the damage he’s done to the country.

I would argue that a military background might be nice to have, but so would a previous career in some other, non-martial, area of public service. Most importantly, however, I would prefer his ability to seek advice, be open to talking to friends and enemies alike, to re-engage with the rest of the world, and to have sound judgment and high intelligence – all of which the current president lacks.

Mr. Nichols argues that a president should follow the advice of the generals, citing Patton and MacArthur as paragons of great advice. Patton was famously a racist and anti-Semite, notorious for slapping a hospitalized soldier, and insubordinate to President Eisenhower, who fired him. MacArthur, another strong force of nature, was similarly sacked for insubordination by Truman. I would agree with those who say that sometimes those who have seen war are most loath to enter into one. This seems to have applied to Eisenhower, but neither Patton nor MacArthur were cut from this cloth. MacArthur, for example, had advocated widespread atomic bombing of Korea and attacking China. This is why we entrust government to calm, sane people directly accountable to the public, who should be agonizing over decisions that may have horrendous consequences.

I will agree with Mr. Nichols that a president must seek advice from the military, but surely he knows that the president has the last word once a war is authorized by Congress. The president also must have a bigger picture in mind than simply managing military campaigns. The president is also responsible for shepherding our economic, health, education, energy, and environmental concerns – all of which have been severely neglected during this administration. With the biggest deficit in history, perhaps the next president should be a former economist.

Several of the other points Mr. Nichols makes in his letter simply make no sense. Bombing Hanoi may have gotten North Vietnam’s attention, but it certainly did not shake their resolve. Losing 2 million civilians to carpet and napalm bombing actually strengthened it. And his picture of Iraq as a beach head against hordes of violent Islamic extremists just waiting to overrun our shores is as ill-informed as it is comical. This costly U.S. invasion of the wrong country just inflamed people who think of themselves as patriots fighting foreign invaders.

No, whether economist, lawyer, or former soldier, the number one job qualification of our next president must be sound judgment. And a better knowledge of geography.

This was published in the Standard Times on August 2, 2008
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20080802/opinion/808020308

I was disappointed with Steve DeCosta’s article (“Big Government”) in Sunday’s paper. His article was framed in the language of conservative tax activists, such as the Tax Foundation, whom he quoted, and it placed the spotlight on local government.

But the real issue is not whether local governments are wasting taxpayers’ money. It is why local governments are not getting the revenue they require to provide essential services.

It is also about our economic priorities at the national level. Mr. DeCosta’s article offered vague statistics and could have dug deeper to contribute to an informed debate over how we as a society choose to live together and determine and fund our social priorities.

Some of his statistics were not helpful. For example, “The Tax Foundation reports that about 30 percent of all American income is turned over to one government or another in the form of taxes.” Unfortunately, this says nothing about how or where the money is spent, or by whom.

So let’s check.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, federal taxes consume approximately 20.27 percent of average American incomes, state taxes 7.12 percent and local taxes 3.56 percent.

The article goes on to quote: “Between the feds, the state, and our cities and towns, 19.7 million people work for us,” the size of Madagascar, it points out. Or that one out of seven Americans is a government employee. But wouldn’t it be more useful to actually know what services these people are rendering and which type of government they come from?

Using figures drawn from the same government sources, we learn that 1.88 percent of all Massachusetts workers are employed by the federal government, 3.24 percent work for the state, and 6.53 percent work for local government. Of these local government employees, half are teachers; the rest dogcatchers, snow plow operators, police, fire, sanitation and medical workers.

What we see here is that local governments employ the most workers, who deliver the most direct services to taxpayers, yet they receive the least amount of tax revenue, even adjusting for state and federal transfers.

So why is the focus of Mr. DeCosta’s article on local government? Perhaps recent tax override referenda have inspired the theme. But if we really want to deal with the costs of government, we have to acknowledge that the federal government is getting most of our money.

Rather than giving local librarians pink slips and arguing with our neighbors, we should be paying more attention to how our federal taxes are spent and where the government jobs really are. This is where the article missed the boat.

So let’s take a look.

Of the nation’s 2.7 million federal employees, 770,000 are postal workers. After this, many of the remainder either carry guns or provide service to people who once carried guns. The VA runs a vast parallel medical care system that employs more than 250,000 people. Combined, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and the spy agencies employ more than a million people.

In contrast, the Department of Labor employs 15,000 and Housing and Urban Development 10,000. These figures reflect our national priorities.

So, rather than standing out in the rain, waving picket signs urging the lowest possible local taxes at the local level, it might make sense to pony up for higher local and state taxes, lower federal taxes and exercise restraint on unnecessary expenditures — military spending and servicing the national debt come to mind.

It might make sense to ensure every American has medical insurance and to gradually shut down the parallel VA hospital system.

It might make sense to spend more on education to make Americans more competitive in the global economy, and less in creating defense bureaucracies or building electronic fences to keep out the poor.

It might make sense to spend more on developing mass transit infrastructure and less on automotive research or expanding the highway system.

These are topics we can all argue about, but at least our discussion will have turned to what kind of society we want to live in.

The debate over how we spend tax money is already highly politicized. Mr. DeCosta’s article suggests that local governments are doing their best with what they’ve got, and I agree.

But I would have preferred a more substantive article, particularly addressing use of our federal taxes, to fuel a public discussion of why it is we live together in a society, and what we should expect to both contribute and gain from doing so.

That’s a bigger and more important question.

This was published in the Standard Times on May 21, 2008
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20080521/opinion/805210318

Dear America:

The 2004 Presidential election is over, and a majority of you has chosen George Bush.

In an era of sound bytes, spin, and dog-wagging – and with the lies and unchecked statistics of today’s political campaigns – it is all too easy to conclude that you were deceived. But I believe the reality is far worse. You cast a vote yesterday for a peace-of-mind no one can honestly deliver to you and decisively condemned secular liberalism by embracing fundamentalist “moral values.” In so doing you have repudiated our Founders’ vision of America and our children’s’ futures.

This country, which now seems defined by SUV’s and cocooning in dens with 90-inch entertainment systems, now finds itself increasingly unemployed or underemployed, with a downsized space program that can’t even keep its budget Martian rovers running. Our social nets have failed. Almost half of Americans have no health insurance, a matching figure has no life insurance, and the Social Security system is in danger of being looted or privatized. Your answer to all of this is to build a new heavily-armed Roman Empire. And you thank your Evangelical gods that you have no responsibilities toward that other half of this nation.

Now, when those Chinese-manufactured entertainment systems of yours have a glitch, you phone in for support and reach a customer service person in Bangalore. Meanwhile, our schools are in crisis and privatization and “standards” have replaced any real funding. As long as you have a slogan like “No Child Left Behind,” you can safely ignore the reality. Much of the world is angry at America for its belligerence, self-interest, and meddling. You see the loss of our former educational, technological, and economic greatness as equivalent to the terrorist’s taunt, so little do you care for distinctions. More telling, your half cares little for what the rest of the world thinks. We own all the nukes and your half is developing increasingly itchy trigger fingers.

For many Americans, the future is a dark and uncertain place and national fears are tangible and multiply with every presidential speech or Homeland Security alert. You want mommy to make it better and you’ll believe anyone who promises that force equals security. Despite your seeming lack of interest in taking rational steps to ensure economic, energy and political success in the future, you cling to irrational views that you can buy or build this physical security. Even dogcatchers in this last election ran on platforms of “Keeping America Safe.” Soon it will be the mandate of house painters.

This new aversion to risk and uncertainty (except for your total disregard of the economy, foreign policy, education, technology, social security and medical care) has led to a country with zero-tolerance for dissent or unrest. Let’s forget for one moment that you have cheered while the Patriot Act has shredded our Constitution. Your expectations of security have led you to even worse excesses. Recently, the Boston Police shot a Red Sox fan to death in a massive show of force to protect – what? – the streets from a few drunken celebrants. Similarly, a University of Massachusetts student was burned severely by flash grenades deployed by the State Police breaking up similar Red Sox hooliganism. Your patriotic Homeland has now become one that now values its security – whatever that is – more than its children. So much for your moral values.

So, to all of you who have bought the fear and the false promises of security: you were not duped, but succumbed to your weaker nature, like victims of get-rich-quick schemes. You were motivated by ignorance and a lack of perspective of what is truly important in a society and in our national history. Led by your “moral values” to reject freedoms for gays, immigrants and dissenters. Led by your own self-absorption to deny the economic, medical and energy security we actually do have some control over. Led by blind animal fear and the false promise of security you will find is a mirage. You have chosen a leader as weak and as bereft of compassion and vision as you.

So, to you, the other half: you deserve the next four years of George Bush.

Your children do not.

No one who has children – or a heart – could fail to be horrified or angered by the massacre of hundreds of schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia. As George W. Bush put it, “This is yet another grim reminder of the lengths to which terrorists will go to threaten the civilized world.”

Unfortunately, the monsters who committed these acts –and 9/11 – were made in the “civilized world.”

Anyone who has ever watched a Rambo movie should remember that the Soviet Union was embroiled in Afghanistan, much as the United States was in Vietnam. In 1989, one of the CIA’s teletypes in Islamabad printed out, “We Won” as the last Russian soldier departed Afghanistan. How had the United States “won” in its struggle for influence in Afghanistan? By supporting Islamic jihad organizations, Osama bin Laden specifically.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post has written a book called “Ghost Wars,” which offers a fascinating view of the love-hate relationship between the United States and bin Laden. As it transpired, even after the Russian departure, the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence services continued to fund the mujahadeen, and run bombing and assassination campaigns against the Russian puppet, Najibullah, who warned Afghanis that “If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan … Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism.” He was right. He was also dead by 1996, betrayed by U.S.-funded warlords and hanged by the Taliban.

Likewise, Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress’ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. According to Bodansky, the Chechens were directly trained by Pakistan’s security service, the ISI, and funded by the U.S. government.

The “civilized world” must take responsibility for many of these threats itself.

While we are angered and disgusted by suicide bombers, we seem to be blind to terrorism committed by governments. We forget that the first self-described “terrorists” were the French Jacobins, who pursued their “Reign of Terror” on civilians in the late 1700s. State terrorism is nothing new. Terror originates in injustice and only works by turning a blind eye to human suffering, whether by a state or a self-appointed group.

When millions of Jews were slaughtered in Europe, or Armenians wiped out in Turkey, the world barely took notice. It took several years for the world to recognize the slaughter of Bosnians. Humanity generally ignored the genocide in Rwanda. Americans watched without outrage an interview by Lesley Stahl of Secretary of State Madeline Albright, in which Albright assessed that the deaths of a half-million Iraqi children by economic sanctions “was worth it” in pursuing U.S. policy.

We currently argue the “nuances” of genocide in Darfur. Although we have sympathy for Russian families in Beslan today, where was our sympathy for Chechen victims of horrific Russian atrocities and massive destruction in Grozny? Where is our sympathy for the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the war in Iraq? Why do we tolerate the obscene term “collateral damage?”

Why do we light a candle for the kidnap victim in Colombia but forget the victim of government death squads and torturers who continue to be trained at the School of Americas? We grieve with the families of suicide bombing victims in Israel, but where is our sympathy for innocent Palestinian civilians bombed indiscriminately “in retaliation?” Why must, everywhere, so many innocents pay, and why do we apparently feel so little for them that we take no notice of their deaths?

Listening to remarks like those of the president’s, we cloak ourselves in the delusion that our governments always pursue morality rather than simply pragmatic foreign policy. We swear allegiance to states but confuse this allegiance for our personal declarations of faith and morality. Only when we recognize that state terrorism is a symptom of global injustice, and in fact perpetuates violence by the enemies of those states, will we be able wage a successful “war on terror.”

This was published in the Standard Times on September 8, 2004
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-04/09-08-04/a12op136.htm
(link may be broken)

Dear Mr. Reich,

I’m sure you remember your article:

http://prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/11/reich-r-11-02.html

But have you seen this? Bangalore has overtaken Silicon Valley as a techie center.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow/406560.cms

I know of former textile workers here in the New Bedford area who, 4 years ago, were unemployed by companies who could no longer compete with Chinese textiles. They went back to school on retraining programs and chose the computer industry. Now they are back at square one, as the computer industry has become the newest casualty of deregulated industry and monetary manipulation by foreign governments.

While this hemorrhage of IT sector jobs apparently is not enough to make you lose any sleep, it is not the trickle or insignificant amount you imply in your article (“First, the number of high-tech jobs outsourced abroad still accounts for a tiny proportion of America’s 10-million-strong IT workforce” and “Second, even as the number of outsourced jobs increases, the overall percent of high-tech jobs going abroad is likely to remain relatively small”). Both these points are simply untrue. Your third point is simply stupid: “There’s no necessary limit to the number of high-tech jobs around the world because there’s no finite limit to the ingenuity of the human mind. And there’s no limit to human needs that can be satisfied.” You have waved away the problem because, apparently in your fevered mind, tech jobs are as infinite as the stars.

I have no idea how someone with logic and facts as weak as yours ends up in a first-class university, but wonders never cease.