Category: Uncategorized

It’s Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving – the truly American holiday where the focus is on gathering family together and sharing fellowship and food.  In many families, it’s time to talk football, or weather, or pretty much anything other than politics.  Politics is too volatile; the issues too divisive, for many families to discuss.  It ruins turkey digestion.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a birthday celebration for a friend.  I knew that my political views weren’t “acceptable” in that company, and I determined that I would not disrupt the festivities by entering the political melee.  But there was that one guy, who constantly wanted to stir the pot.  From forest fires to immigration, he kept dropping comments to see what kind of local inferno he could ignite.  Out of respect for my friends, I didn’t jump into that fire, but it was hard.  I ate a lot, and drank little, in order to keep busy.

So it’s Thanksgiving. It’s also the week that Ryan Zinke, the “king” of the Department of the Interior (his flag is raised when he enters, lowered when he’s “left the building”) blamed the forest fires in California on “radical environmentalists.”  His argument:  if they’d stop suing logging companies, and the forests could be cut, then there wouldn’t be fires.

I have to admit there feels like a small truth inside that statement.  Forests don’t burn if you cut them down.  But it ignores all of the benefits of forests, from carbon dioxide absorption to mudslide management.  And, being Ryan Zinke, it plays directly into the hands of “big lumber” who have spent decades trying to buy passage into the heart of California’s forests.  There’s plenty of money to be made there.

Zinke’s statement echoes the right-wing meme on Facebook, blaming the “woodsy owl” for the fires.  The woodsy owl was an endangered species whose habitat was threatened by logging, one of the first court cases testing the Endangered Species Act.  They didn’t log out that forest, but it wasn’t the one that burned in California. The woodsy owl’s habitat was located on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, far from Paradise or Malibu or the other California fire targets.

Zinke, and President Trump, have both ignored the scientific FACT of human induced global warming.  In doing so, they struggle to find reasons for the fires in California, and the increasing levels of hurricane damage in the Southeast, and the growing flood dangers on the coast.   And they do so not because they are stupid; they ignore global warming because it is to their “supporters” economic benefit to do so.

Global warming is in large part caused by burning fossil fuels:  gas, oil, and coal.  In order to deal with global warming, we have to reduce fossil fuel use,  it’s really that simple.  But, in political terms, that means there is no “clean coal,” there needs to be increased spending on mass transportation to get cars off of the roads, there needs to be less oil and gas production.  The US, now the largest petroleum producer in the world (thanks to fracking, whatever that may be doing to local environments) has every vested interest in increasing fossil fuel use, not decreasing it.

So global warming can’t be human fault.  It must be a “natural cycle” that we play little part in.  And forests don’t need to burn:  we can cut them down.  No one burns in a desert.  And the friends and supporters of Trump and Zinke will make their money, at the cost of untold millions in future generations.

I know my Thanksgiving table.  We can have these conversations – and no one will throw a drumstick or a roll.  But if you are in a “mixed” setting; find a neutral subject.  And find the wishbone to share with your Trumpian relative.  It would be a start.

 

 

 

The Case for Old

I am sixty-two years old and retired.  I spent thirty-five and a half years teaching and administrating in public school, and forty seasons as a track coach.  When I was a younger teacher in the 1980’s and early 90’s, I worked in an amazing middle school.  Kids absolutely came first and the staff was excited:  we made a difference and changed lives.  We were a mix of young and old, led by a veteran Principal who cared about us all.  We often experimented with new ideas, but we always valued what worked in the past.

Once in a staff meeting, after getting our attention by playing the Steve Winwood’s “Roll with It,” our “older” principal (younger than I am now) told us to be glad we were teaching then.  He knew education was changing, getting more complicated and would become very different profession in a few years.  He wanted us to keep doing what we were good at, helping kids, and hoped we could “roll” with the changes.  He was right. In the end teaching got hidebound with paper and regulations; the reports were more important than the impact on kids lives.  Red tape and “annual growth percentages” counted:  the light coming on in the eyes of a kid who just figured out a new concept did not.

There is nothing wrong with new ideas, youthful energy, and differing philosophies.  But as an “old” teacher, I discovered that with the new came a loss of values; ignorance of institutional history and traditions, and a disregard for the successes of the past.  The “new” way of doing things swept out the good with the bad, and disregarded and disrespected any who disagreed.  When I left, it was a good time to retire.

What would be best is to respect what was done, employ what was working, and alter what needed to be changed.  A melding of the best of the old and the new and a recognition that while new ideas were good, old experience had value as well.  The excitement and surety of the young combined with the history and values of the old, like my principal did in that amazing middle school, is that “magic mix” that changed lives.

Nancy Pelosi is seventy-eight years old and has been in Congress thirty-one years.  She has had a storied career;  the first woman ever to be Speaker of the US House of Representatives. She represents the “old;” the traditions of the Democratic Party in Congress.  Pelosi has been vilified, made into the “bête noire” of the Republican right. She represents everything they hate: a woman and a liberal from San Francisco where you can pick you right-wing poison: gay rights, sanctuary city, environmental concern, even taxing businesses to help provide for the homeless; the Haight-Asbury home of flower power and the hippie generation.

Pelosi has proven to be an effective leader in the House.  As Speaker, she managed the Affordable Care Act passage, willing to risk her House majority to change American lives by providing insurance.  It did cost the majority, but she has worked since to bring that majority back.  She is the “queen” of fundraising, she has given support to all of the successful new Democratic Congressmen.  And she has allowed them the space to “run away” from her when they needed to, not forcing some artificial fealty to her leadership.  She achieved her goal:  winning back the House Majority at a time when America needed it most to serve as a check on a runaway President.

We are in a time of national crisis.  The next two years will continue the “stress test” on our Constitutional system.  Whether impeachment is in the future or not, Democrats and Americans will still need an experienced hand on the gavel in the House of Representatives.

Nancy Pelosi is that experience.  She will be like my “old” principal, melding the energy and values of the young with the history and tradition of the old.  She may ask her members to “Roll with It,” and if the Mueller investigation warrants it, she may ask them to risk their majority for the good of the nation. And like my old principal, she will look to those younger Congressmen to take on roles in leadership, so that her ideals won’t be lost in the future.

I hope the Democrats in the House can see her value, and find the courage to combine tradition and youth.  We need her strength, and her wisdom.

The Fourteenth

It’s a cold November day.  Good day to hear some Guns and Roses, and head back to Senior Government class!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution changed the nature of our United States.  From “…We the people of the United States…” of the preamble, establishing a federal government of sovereign states in 1787, the Fourteenth Amendment demonstrated the results of victory in Civil War, with the final outcome of one nation, indivisible.

The Fourteenth extends the requirements of the Bill of Rights to the states.  No longer were those rights  applied to just the Federal government, now each state government needed to protect them.  Section 1 of the Amendment is clear:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In our current political climate, the Fourteenth Amendment has immense significance.  To start with the “easy” argument, the plain language of the Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens…”  The foolishness put forth by the President, demanding the altering birth-citizenship laws, would require a Constitutional amendment to change the Fourteenth.

The key provision of the Fourteenth is the “due process” and “equal protection” clause.  Due Process is interpreted to mean that before a “right or privilege” is taken away (life, liberty, or property, voting) there needs to be a process where the citizen is given the opportunity to argue their side. This often is in a Court setting: the most recent example would be the denial of CNN’s Jim Acosta’s First Amendment right to freedom of the press by kicking him out of the White House Press Room.  CNN sued the White House because there was no “due process” provided Acosta for the removal, and while the case is not yet resolved, a Federal District Judge has found enough validity in Acosta’s arguments to temporarily order the White House to allow him back in.

“Equal Protection” means that all citizens must be treated the same.  This is a critical issue today; questions of voter suppression in some states,  religious rights and LGBTQ issues, and  ICE actions towards American citizens of Hispanic descent; all raise equal protection issues.

The clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that is less discussed today is the second clause.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Parts of this clause have been changed by Amendment.  The 15^thAmendment specifically guaranteed the right to vote to any race.  The 19^thAmendment allowed women to vote, and the 26^thAmendment added those eighteen to twenty to the electorate. This clause guaranteed suffrage, the right to vote, to everyone, and threatened to punish states that restricted suffrage by reducing the number of Representatives in the House of Representatives (and therefore the number of Electors for President.)

While that punishment was never exacted, even in the Jim Crow Era of grandfather clauses (you couldn’t vote unless you grandfather could) and literacy tests; today it might be a cause to invoke in voter suppression cases, particularly in places like Georgia.  If the state acts to suppress votes, particularly with a clearly racial bias, it would violate not only the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth and the Voting Rights clause of the 15^th, but also the “denial of voting rights” clause. The state should either stop suppressing, or lose representation.

The Fourteenth Amendment can be read historically as the legal implementation of victory in the Civil War. But its implications are much more far-reaching, as it defines citizenship, and expands protection of rights from just the Federal government to the States.  It should serve as a tripwire in our current era of regression and control; and remind us as well of what the alternatives are to protecting the law:  Civil War that created in blood what could not be done by legislation.

 

The Grand Strategy

When Steve Bannon joined the Trump Campaign, he brought his strong theories to an organization that had lots of energy but little foundation.  Bannon believed that the existential threat to world safety was from the Middle East, particularly, Iran.  Much of the foreign policy espoused by the Trump Administration came from his view:  the desire to improve relationships with Russia, the immediate decision to withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal, and the coziness with other Middle Eastern powers.

John Bolton, the current National Security Advisor, is another proponent of this view;  stop Iranian expansion and contain Iranian support of terrorism.  But perhaps the biggest proponent of the “grand strategy” is Presidential Advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Kushner has been close to Israeli Prime Minister “Bebe” Netanyahu since childhood, and has developed a peer-to-peer friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS.)

The Grand Strategy: array an alliance of the Sunni Muslim nations led by Saudi Arabia, with the tacit cooperation of Jewish Israel, against Shiite Muslim Iran.  Add Russian support, and the Trump Administration believes they have the key to peace in the Middle East, protecting Israel, and controlling the costs of oil for the next generations.

Russia, with significant internal pressure to control Muslim extremists, may be willing to go along with the deal, as long as they get control of Syria through the Assad regime. But Turkey has been an issue.  The authoritarian regime of Recip Erdogan has its own plan for the Middle East, including the suppression of the Kurds, and the restriction of democracy at home.  They see themselves as the key Sunni power in the region, harking back to the days of the Ottoman Empire.  And as a member of NATO, Turkey is a key to projecting US power into the Middle East through bases located in the nation.

The fate of the Grand Strategy may be linked to the fate of two individuals:  Jamal Khashoggi and Fethullah Gulen.   These two are proving to be a test for the Trump Administration’s commitment to the Plan:  whether the moral imperatives that have been the basis of American action, fairness and justice, will be upheld or fall to the situational needs of the Plan.

Jamal Khashoggi:  a US resident and Washington Post columnist, excruciatingly tortured, killed and dismembered by agents of the Saudi regime after being lured into their embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.  The entire process was captured on audio by Turkish intelligence, and shared to the world.  The US Central Intelligence Agency concludes that the murder was ordered by MBS, to stop criticism of his takeover of Saudi power.

The murder puts the US in an awkward position.  The Trump Administration and Jared Kushner have staked their entire Plan on the relationship with MBS, and have accepted all excuses made by the Saudi regime for Khashoggi’s death.  But as it becomes clear that this was MBS’s work, the Administration’s will need to decide: accept the murder, or ally with a murderer.

Fethullah Gulen:  a Turkish cleric who has been exiled to the United States for decades.  He is a legal US resident, granted political asylum.  He is also the “bête noire” of the Erdogan regime; Erdogan himself blames Gulen for an attempted military coup last year.  Erdogan knows what the US wants:  Turkish cooperation with the Grand Strategy, and continued access to bases in Turkey.  So he has offered a deal:  give him Gulen and he will fall in line with US desires.  Gulen’s fate in Turkish hands is clear:  imprisonment, torture, and death await.

Is one man’s life worth a plan to gain world stability and peace?  If our nation gives up moral standing and accepts the murder of one and condemns a second to a similar fate, does the end of “the Plan” justify the means?  While the US has always claimed a high moral standard to the world, there have always been actions belying that view.  But seldom have US moral standards been put to such a public test:  ally and abet murderers, or not.

President Trump is known as the “transactional” President; he knows how to make a deal.  Khashoggi and Gulen are pawns, will Trump sacrifice them in his bid for a Grand victory, or take a more moral view?  The former seems more likely, Gulen ought to find a safer environment than the Pennsylvania Poconos.  I hear Montreal is nice this time of year.

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for the Shoe to Drop

After a few days of driving – I’m back!!!!!

There is an old saying: “…waiting for the other shoe to drop.” If you’ve ever lived in a downstairs apartment, with another tenant above, you know what this means.  As you lay in bed, trying to sleep, your upstairs neighbor comes home, sits on their bed, and takes off their shoes.  First one drops, thump – and then you wait.

We, as a nation, are waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Florida, Texas and Georgia aside; the mid-term election results, with at least thirty-six House seats flipping to the Democrats, was a statement against Trumpism.  The President’s pouting reaction, first claiming a great victory, then firing his Attorney General and replacing him with a Trump “made man,” then acting like a churlish child in the rain in Paris, then stating over and over and over that there was “no collusion:” all were his reaction to rejection.

Donald Trump:  he made the election about himself, and he lost.  Donald Trump is a loser.  That, to a man of his fragile ego and a life based on image rather than substance, is intolerable. The ongoing dribble of defeat, as the narrow election returns and recounts come in, has simply prolonged his agony.  He can’t “flip the script,” the next  return comes in and another House seats falls to the Democrats.  And even when he tried to turn his failure into someone else’s fault, stating that Republican Congressman Mia Love lost because “…Mia gave me no love,” fell flat. Love is now leading the recount.  It’s almost as if the process was designed to continually humiliate the President.

All of that was the first shoe, the jolt in the night that interrupts dreams and opens your eyes.  You lay in bed, waiting…waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has carefully avoided breaking precedent.  He took his investigation “underground” for the sixty days leading up to the election.  There have been no press conferences, no leaks:  he has told his story only through indictments.  When last we left off, he indicted the “Russian side” of email theft, social media manipulation and election interference.  In those indictments he implicated US citizens as part of the conspiracy (the legal term for the undefined “Collusion”.)  The next step, the next shoe to drop, is the American side.

And yesterday we had a sliver of intrigue, perhaps an accidental glance behind Mueller’s curtain. In an August filing on an unrelated case, it appears that a “sealed indictment” has been issued against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, the online organization that was used by the Russians to publish stolen emails.  Whether this is part of the Mueller investigation, or some other Federal action, or whether it was just a “copy/paste” mistake by a junior Assistant US Attorney, it does lead to some great speculation.

Roger Stone, the old Nixon dirty trickster, is convinced he is going to be indicted by the Mueller team. Stone’s friend, Randy Credico, who has been thoroughly questioned by the team, was in contact with Assange prior to the release of the emails.  Credico communicated with Stone, and Stone may well have communicated with the Trump campaign.  There is even some evidence that Credico was attempting to negotiate a clemency deal for Assange with the Trumps.

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, is cooperating as hard as he can with Mueller; doing anything to avoid spending the rest of his life in jail. Manafort and Stone have a long history going all the way back to their youth in the Nixon campaign organization. If there was a path to Wikileaks, it could have gone from Trump, to Manafort, to Stone, to Credico, to Assange.

It’s absolute speculation. We do know this:  the Mueller team has asked the Court to delay finalizing the plea deal with Manafort for another ten days.  Why ten days, instead of the usual sixty or ninety?  What will happen in the next ten days to change his situation?

Roger Stone; and perhaps Donald Trump Jr and Jared Kushner; must be laying awake at night. And laying alone in the Presidential bedroom of the White House, Donald Trump must be desperately plotting to find a way out of this threat to his family, his business, his Presidency, and his all-important image.  Mueller is upstairs:  the other shoe is about to drop.

Mirror, Mirror

It’s been more than three years since Donald Trump emerged as a Presidential candidate, won the nomination, and then shocked himself and the nation by winning.  These three years have upended American political culture. Telling the truth used to be the expected norm; now telling the truth somehow is optional, and the definition of “truth” has become a malleable thing, based as much on the focus of the listener as the veracity of the teller.

But one “truth” I have discovered, is that Donald Trump lives in a “mirror” world.  When he does something that folks criticize, he immediately claims his innocence, and accuses the critics of doing exactly what he did.

• Trump never mistreated women, they in fact were attacking him.
• Trump doesn’t tell falsehoods, in fact, the media is telling all sorts of falsehoods about him – Fake News!!
• Trump will build a wall on the Mexican border, and Mexico will pay for it.
• Trump would never consider “cheating” in an election, it’s the Democrats that are corrupting the process.
• Trump wants to protect pre-existing conditions, it’s the Democrats that want to remove the protections.
• Trump wanted a deal on immigration, the border and DACA; it was Schumer and Pelozi that turned him down.
• Trump isn’t trying to interfere with the Mueller investigation, it is the “seventeen Democrats” employed by Mueller who are trying to unjustly accuse him.

So here’s the scary thing about this theory.  If Trump is doing everything that he accuses others of doing, he’s doing a whole lot of stuff that’s bad.

He sees in the actions of others the flaws within himself.  He expects people to lie, cheat, steal, because in his life that’s what he’s done.  He takes pride in his ability to “play the system;” remember the quote “…I alone can fix the system, because I know it best.”  Part of Trump’s allure as a candidate is the image of the great “deal maker” who knew all the corners to cut to get the “job done.”

So he was elected President. And we discovered that when Donald Trump looks at America, he looks in the mirror.  What’s good for Donald Trump is good for America, “Making America Great Again” is really making Donald better again.  That’s what he does:  in the tax cut bill, in pouring gasoline on the fire of polarization, on undermining American institutions from the FBI, to the Courts, to the Free Press.

And the Republican leadership, overwhelmed by the power Trump tapped in the American electorate, accepted his leadership, and his image in the mirror.  They didn’t like the view; the fear and the prejudice, but they wanted the results.  They wanted a generational control of the Courts:  Mitch McConnell’s dream of a “Federalist Society” dominated judiciary. They wanted the tax cut; supported by all of their financial backers. And they wanted an end to “Obamacare” – well you can’t have everything!

They’ve had to accept the mirror image of Trump to get what they wanted.  They paid a price at the polls last week, losing the House, the majority of state Governorships, and, in a slow motion “blue wave” slowly eroding what they thought was an ironclad Senate.  It was an election about Trump, and while 46% of Americans chose to support his views, 53% voted against him.

Want to know what’s going to happen in the next two years?  We now know Donald Trump, and we know that he will attack anything that threatens him, using any means necessary.  Whether they go high or low, he goes to the bottom.  Don’t be surprised by anything:  firing Mueller, attacking the Justice Department, declaring “war” on the House of Representatives, refusing the courts.  Whatever the “goals”  to improve America of the Democrats in the House, or even the Republicans in the Senate,  we already know what’s going to happen.  It’s all in the mirror.

 

 

 

You Ain’t Got the Votes

Yes – another Hamilton reference – the theme of our time!!!

 

I’m sitting in my camper in beautiful Florida; home of palm trees, beaches, fire ants, and never-ending election turmoil.  This is a state so on the edge of Republican and Democrat that “purple” really doesn’t describe how narrow the margins are.  But just because Florida is teetering on balance doesn’t mean that the support for either party is throughout the state.  Florida has Democratic strongholds, and huge swaths of what we now call Trump Country.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the highly contested election of 2018 didn’t finish on Election Day. The Senate race pitted an old fashioned Democratic candidate, three-termer Bill Nelson, against a healthcare billionaire turned Governor, Rick Scott.  The Governor’s race pitted Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, vying to be the first black man to earn the office, against Congressman Rick DeSantis, who literally modeled himself after President Donald Trump.

Over eight million votes were cast in the Florida election.  They have “all” been unofficially counted – it took until Saturday – leaving Scott with a less than 13,000 vote lead, 0.2%.  DeSantis has a 33,000 vote lead, 0.3%.  Election boards had to wait for late mail arrivals of absentee votes, and check the validity of provisional ballots.

 Florida is already in an automatic “mechanical” recount, where the ballots are run back through the counting machines for both races.  Should the outcome be within 0.25% in either or both races, the ballots that were “rejected” by the machines will be examined by hand, to determine if “the intent” of the voter can be discerned. If the examiners can reach a judgment, then that ballot will be added to the total.

Every vote counts.  That’s the “School House Rock” version of the American political process; Americans of all races, creeds, religions, gender orientations, and ethnicity; lining up together to “make their mark” on the ballot.  But we know that traditionally the American electoral process has been fraught with attempts to alter the outcome by illegally changing votes.  The rarely seen $2 bill (with Thomas Jefferson’s face) “earned” it’s unpopularity in the late 1800’s because it was “the price” of a vote; if you had one, you must have sold your vote.

And we had all sorts of obstructions to voting in our history, from the “Jim Crow” literacy tests of the past, to the current practices of voter suppression in Georgia, and Kansas, and North Dakota, and other places in the nation.  So it shouldn’t be so much of a surprise that there is “outrage” in Florida that votes are being recounted.  Scott and DeSantis are winning in the current count; counting more votes, particularly in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, both highly Democratic, isn’t going to improve their lead.

The Republicans are following the path blazed by Jim Baker, the chairman of the George W Bush 2000 Presidential campaign.  When Florida was declared for Bush by a marginal 500 plus votes; Baker sent teams of lawyers and protestors to do everything they could do disrupt efforts to recount and re-examine ballots.  His theory was simple:  we won on this count, who wants another one?  The Gore team was slow to recognize their opportunity, and so did not hit the ground as quickly, giving Republicans an edge.  When the United States Supreme Court voted along party lines five to four to stop vote counting in Florida, it gave Bush the Presidency.

Studies later showed that a full recount would have elected Gore.  But there certainly is a case to be made, both then and now, that hundreds of votes out of multiple millions may well be within the “margin of error” where the outcome would waver each count.  Put simply, it might be impossible to ascertain the actual outcome by counting.

So here we are, back in Democratic strongholds Palm Beach and Ft Lauderdale, where Republicans are claiming “fraud” and “ballot creation.”  Rick Scott has flat out stated that Nelson is trying to “fix” the election, and protestors and lawyers are crowding each other outside of the county election centers.  President Trump has weighed in by twitter, claiming fraud and corruption.

It echoes Trump’s claims that the election of 2016 was “rigged,” laying the groundwork for not accepting a Clinton win.  He made that very clear in their last debate.  To his and the country’s surprise, he won, so I guess it wasn’t rigged enough.

Florida, and Georgia, and Arizona will count and recount the votes.  They will reach a final “figure” that will determine who wins and loses.  There will be sore losers, and maybe even sore winners.  But, if we can keep the counting process going and not use legal and extra-legal means to stop it, we will eventually find who “…ain’t got the votes” and who does. It is the only way to reach an answer that allows the elected to govern with legitimacy.

And that’s the point – faith in the outcomes.  Scott, and Trump, and Kemp in Georgia, are doing everything they can to undermine the legitimacy of the process.  And while they may win by doing that, they are undermining their own ability to govern, shaking citizens faith in government.  They may end up being losers even if they win.

Above the Law

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at the request of the President of the United States, resigned from his office on Wednesday.  The phrase, “…serve at the pleasure of the President,” applies to Cabinet positions (called principal officers in the Constitution) as well as other positions in the Executive Branch.  Like it or not, since the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1869 over this issue, the President can hire and fire.

In Article II of the Constitution, the process of appointing and confirming the Cabinet level positions is established:

…he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States…

Officers, and particularly the principal officers of the Cabinet, require confirmation by the US Senate, the “advice and consent” process.  We know this:  we just went through the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination.

But if a cabinet member leaves, there is a void that needs to be filled.  Should the Senate be in recess, the President can make a “recess” appointment to the position, not subject to Senate confirmation, for as long as two years. This is how the current National Security Advisor, John Bolton, was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations during the George W Bush administration.  Bush avoided what would have likely been a failed Senate confirmation by putting Bolton in the UN during a Congressional recess.

Technically, the Congress is not in session this election week.  This might allow for a “recess” appointment.

But that’s not what the Trump Administration has done.  The President has appointed Matt Whitaker, the former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions as “Acting” Attorney General, not calling it a recess appointment.  Without getting into the qualifications of Mr. Whitaker, a key point to be made is that the Chief of Staff position at the Department of Justice (like the Chief of Staff at the White House) is not a Senate confirmed position.

To try to clarify this process, in 1998 the Congress passed a “succession” process law, called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998.  This law established a process for replacing high-ranking executive department officials, and was clarified after the 9-11 attack, when it seemed possible that whole departments could lose their leadership.

In the Act the normal process established would be for the “first assistant” to take over if the “principal” leaves.  In the case of the Department of Justice today, that would be Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was confirmed for his position by the Senate.

But the Trump Administration wants to end or restrain the Mueller Investigation, and putting Rosenstein in charge of the Department wouldn’t change anything.  Rosenstein, due to Sessions’ recusal from the Mueller probe,  has already been in charge of the probe  and not to the President’s liking.  However, the President under the law, does have the legal right to pass over the “first assistant.”  The second section of the act allows for: 

notwithstanding paragraph (1), the President (and only the President) may direct a person who serves in an office for which appointment is required to be made by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to perform the functions and duties of the vacant office temporarily in an acting capacity subject to the time limitations  

The standard legal interpretation of this section, is that the President could choose ANY candidate who is Senate confirmed to take the job. The most recent example of this was when Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, was placed in charge of the Consumer and Finance Protection Bureau after the resignation of Jim Cordrey. Mulvaney has proceeded to hamper the Bureau’s protective actions, but as he was a Senate confirmed (for OMB) officer, he got the job.

The appointment of Matt Whitaker as “Acting Attorney General” may be an act to slow or stop the Mueller investigation, but, hard to imagine, there is an even more important legal question.  By reading of the law, Mr. Whitaker, NOT Senate confirmed, is not eligible to lead the Department of Justice.

The White House has embraced a minority interpretation of the Vacancies Act in order to pursue their political agenda.  When it all goes to Court, it is likely that the Whitaker appointment is not allowed by law: it is in fact illegal.  The problem is, will  Whitaker’s current presence achieve the White House goal;  ending the Mueller Investigation before the Courts can reach a legal conclusion?  Among all the rest, that’s the grave  Constitutional issue the nation faces today.

 

Flip the Script

There are a lot of things that I don’t like about President Trump, so many that I won’t even start the list.  But, there is something that I do have to give him credit for:  he is able to find ways to grab the “story of the day.”  He can “flip the script” better than any politician I’ve ever seen.

Take yesterday:  on Tuesday night, President Trump and the Republican Party suffered a huge electoral defeat, losing the House of Representatives.  Even more, it comes at a time when the Mueller investigation of the President is coming to a climax and allows a Democratic House to help protect the investigators.  And yet, the President was able to do two things to regain control of the news cycle.

First he picked a fight with the national press in a press conference, staging an altercation between a staffer and “arch-nemesis” Jim Acosta of CNN.  The video of that encounter was then doctored (by InfoWars – a right wing website) and the fake video re-messaged by the White House.  The President failed to answer questions; insulting reporters instead of responding to their queries.  In that process, he directly lied to them and the American people, denying any changes in his cabinet.

He already had fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and replaced him with a man who literally went on television to “try out” for the Trump Administration.  Matt Whitaker is now the Acting Attorney General, taking charge of the Mueller Investigation.  His appointment is of questionable legality, since his previous job as Department of Justice Chief of Staff did not require Senate confirmation.  The law providing for temporary replacement seems to indicate that Senate confirmation is needed to fill a Cabinet position, so that will end up in Court.

And so, the “script is flipped.”  The “Reality TV President” did exactly what he does best:  he attacked the media, then fed them the “red meat” of a potential attack on the Mueller Investigation.  The story of the national Democratic vote, almost seven percent greater than the Republican turnout, and the story of a Democratic victory in the House of Representatives, was drowned out.

His actions have triggered the “Resistance” marches to protect Mueller, with over 900 demonstrations scheduled throughout the nation tonight at 5.  And it underlines the emasculation of the rest of the Republican Party; unwilling to stand up for their own statements of support for Mueller just a year ago.

Everyone who hoped to “take a break” after the election – guess it’s not happening.  It seems like President Trump’s strategy is to take advantage of the next two months before the new session of the Congress and Democratic House control.  What happens next, likely will be a continuing attack on Robert Mueller, as he tries to continue to do his job.  I anticipate that more indictments are coming; and I suspect that those charged will be a much closer to the President himself than those already indicted.

That’s likely to trigger an even greater response from the White House.  From Trump’s standpoint, the timing is perfect.  After an election, before the transition of power, during the holidays; the President is almost literally “by himself” in Washington, able to act with even less checks on his power.

Whew —  I guess we should have seen it coming.

Michael Steele, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, said yesterday that Democrats should “enjoy the moment.”  He was right, and Dems should be proud of the accomplishments of November 6^th.  But President Trump, who has already said that he will be on a “war footing” if the investigations get too close, has begun the fight.  So enjoy, but “gear up” as well.  It may be quite a ride to Christmas.

 

PS – what does it say about America, when 13 more are killed in a mass shooting in a California bar, and just barely breaks the surface of the news?  It’s common place, 13 today, 11 last week, and on, and on, and on.  We have made ourselves powerless to prevent it…

The Day After

When writing the Constitution of the United States, the founding fathers were concerned about the “people” exercising their will on the Government without the necessary judgment to carry out the task.  So, instead of developing a “democracy,” where every person would have an equal say in government, they built a Federal Republic.  They recognized that the United States was in fact sovereign states joining a sovereign Federal government.  And they developed that government to represent the views of the people, and of the states.

The power of the states was guaranteed in the United States Senate, where each one, small in population or large, would have two representatives.  They served for six years, a long time without a reckoning, so they could act more independently. Originally, those representatives were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by popular vote, putting Senators a full step away from direct election. This was changed by the 17^th Amendment (1913) requiring a direct vote, but Senators are still not based on equal representation.  Senator Tester of Montana represents a little over a million people, Senator Feinstein of California thirty-nine million.

The voice of the people was to be heard in the House of Representatives.  They were directly elected, their districts apportioned equally throughout the country.  Today, each member represents about 800,000 people, whether they are from New York or Rhode Island or Alaska.   The House was designed to be “hot,” a place of argument and action; the Senate, the “saucer to cool the hot tea” of the House, a place for long debate and deliberation.

Review for that old American Government Exam is over.

Yesterday the nation made a choice.  We chose to put a check on the Presidency of Donald Trump, by using the “People’s House,” placing it in the hands of the opposition party, the Democrats.   Today President Trump actually offered to compromise with the incoming House of Representatives (though he did threaten to withhold cooperation if the House investigates his behavior.)  Even he recognizes the message.

But while he is trying to “make-up” to the Democrats, he has “doubled-down” on his attack on the Press.  If Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party aren’t to be his bête noire, his conference today made it clear that the Press will continue to serve the role as “whipping boy.”  Ask Jim Acosta of CNN.

Yesterday the nation also chose to back many of those Senators who were “blessed” by the President. No repudiation of Trumpism should be seen in the results of those elections, only a desire of Americans to give Democrats a chance to change the constant clamor of divisiveness and inability to achieve.  The nation wants something to get done, Democrats are now being given a chance to act.

So it’s up to Democrats. There probably is no one who wants investigations of the President more than me, and there should be thoughtful and deliberate hearings into the actions of the President and his campaign. But if that’s all that Democrats can get done, then they will not have answered the mandate given them last night.

After two years of Resistance, it’s hard not to “go for it all” right away.  We want to undo the “mistake” of 2016, and we want to limit further damage to our nation.  But that’s not going to convince a broader element of the country to turn away from the polarization of Trumpism, and it will fall into the trap of the President’s plan.  He needs the divide to succeed for his own success (God forbid) in 2020 and it’s up to the House not to get used and give it to him.

It should fall to the Mueller Investigation, with the support of the House, to ferret out what happened in the 2016 election.  And if the President decides to lash out at Mueller and Rosenstein, firing them or trying to short-circuit their investigation, then it will be up to the House to protect the process.

One final history lesson: in the election of 1858, the “compromisers” were given a last chance at government.  It was already too late, but Illinois choose Stephen Douglas, a moderate, over Abraham Lincoln, who wanted to limit slavery.  It didn’t work, and within two years Lincoln was President, and Douglas was defeated.   The Civil War soon began.

So we need to ask ourselves, are we at the point where only the extremes can prevail?  And if that’s true, then is the outcome some kind of alteration of our way of government, unable to withstand the pressure from either side, as was the case in 1860?  Or can we get back to a point where there can be dissension without polarization; that while the President and the House may clash about investigations and cooperation with foreign adversaries, they could still find areas to work together to improve America?

The choice of the people last night, was to take another chance on a functioning government. Democrats, and the President, the sole and acknowledged leader of ALL  Republicans, now have to decide what to do.

 

Good Morning

I spent forty years as a high school track coach.  I loved the competition, the intense effort my kids would make to support their team. Improvement was good, winning was even better, and the camaraderie of our team was everything.

One of my favorite times as a coach, was early in the morning at a meet before the competition began. The track was calm, the kids slowly waking up and warming up.  There wasn’t the intensity yet, just the ritual of getting ready.  We were relaxed, prepared, and confident in what we could do. It was the “calm” time, before the cheering and the clapping, when everything was possible.

Everything was possible. The highs and lows of seventeen events, from shot put to pole vault to two mile, to the final 4×400 relay; were yet to occur.  All of the work and planning; the “blood, sweat and tears” of Churchillian fame, was done.  It was the cusp of change:  everything would be different when it was over.

It was the same in my “previous life” as a political campaigner on the dawn of Election Day. Whatever the polling and the “talking heads” on television had said; it was the day of decision.  Everything was still possible.  Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign did a great commercial:  “It’s Morning Again in America.”  It captured the essential concept of morning, and Reagan, as a new beginning (it also was turned into a great Folger’s Coffee commercial theme.)

It’s Election Day morning in America again, and everything is possible.

Folks are lining up at their polling places:  they are making up their minds.  We don’t know what the collective mind of America will decide this day, but they definitely have three choices.  America can choose the minority view that gained control two years ago, where, that day, our entire world was “turned upside down.”  Or, America might show its confusion, and send mixed messages to itself and the world.  The split that exists in America might be further exposed, raw and bleeding, waiting for salve, but instead scoured even more.

Or Americans might do what they have been doing in almost every special election since 2016: reject the polarization and crassness of the Trump Presidency, and choose a different path.  It happened in Alabama, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and almost in Georgia and Ohio.  It may happen today, and we will wake up tomorrow to a different “Morning in America.”

So I sit in our camper in Florida, the hotbed of the “split” in American life.  Like the beginning of that track meet, everything is possible.  However it all turns out tonight (and onto tomorrow, as counting may take more than just a few hours) today is one of the times I am proudest to be American.  We will all decide today, with more and more Americans taking part in determining their future.  It is the essence of what our country, a Constitutional Republic, founded in the compromises of the eighteenth century and forged in the blood and labor of history, is about.

It’s Election Day in America.  Everything is possible.

Closing Argument

The cast of Hamilton sings for voters to show up on Tuesday

Political campaigning is a process of getting a candidate’s message across.  Events often control how that message is delivered, and campaigns often “go negative” to try to knock down their opponent.  Outside groups are particularly willing to do that, and may do it up to the day of the election.

But for the actual campaign in the last two weeks, there comes a time to make their closing argument; the last concept they want the voters to take into the polling booth with them.  Here in Florida, Rick Scott, Republican for Senate, has found his phrase – “let’s get to work,” to capsulize his candidacy.  It works. His Democratic opponent, Bill Nelson, has a “muddier” closer, something like “…I’ll work for Florida, not for Trump.”  We will see how that turns out.

So what should be the “closing argument” for the national Democratic Party in 2018?

President Franklin Roosevelt has the answer, from his inaugural address in 1933.  It was the depths of the Great Depression, unemployment was over 20%, and many Americans felt there were no answers in our Democracy.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

“…Fear…unreasoning, unjustified terror…”has been used to pursue the Republican political agenda.  Fear: of brown people massing at the border, of the shooter in the school and the church, of gays and minorities and all those who are “different.”  A “Trumpian” friend described it as trying to stay “small,” not become a target.  Stay in your home, don’t go “downtown” where “things are different.” Keep your door locked, and your gun loaded.

The Republican closing argument, made by the President with OUR aircraft, Air Force One in the background, is Fear.  Democrats represent “mob rule” by “Antifa” anarchists, 6000 MS-13 gangsters are headed here in the caravan; we need to send the Army to the border, we need to load our AR-15’s.  And if the media calls him on “truth,” it’s “fake news.” “Don’t believe what you see or hear in the media, believe what I tell you.”

Barack Obama is trying to counter the argument with “hope.”  Hope is working together to find solutions to problems rather than quivering behind closed doors.  And while neither Trump nor Obama is on the ballot tomorrow, Democrats throughout the country are closing with by saying Democrats can solve problems.

Democrats don’t need to be afraid, they can “get the job done.” They can protect health care, protect the environment, protect social security and Medicare.  And they can do it without the “fear mongering” and hatred that the “Trump Circus” requires.

That’s the Democrats’ closer:  don’t fear, work together to get the job done.

In his inaugural, Roosevelt called on the historical belief that in crisis, Americans would give their leaders the “…understanding and support…which is essential to victory.”  Democrats don’t need fear to gain support:  they need sleeves rolled up, sweat on the brow, get to work Americans to turn from fear and solve problems.

In the election tomorrow the choice is stark:  fear or future.  Democrats cannot be “paralyzed be fear” and trepidation of what the results might show. Unlike 2016, they need to boldly go out and vote: and if they do – they will “get the job done.”

 

 

 

Health Care – Carrots and Sticks

Tuesday is election day in America.  This year’s midterms have become a referendum on the Republican control of government, and on President Trump in particular.  One of the great “failures” of Republicans in the last two years is their inability to “get rid of Obamacare.”  After fifty-four attempts to end the Affordable Care Act while Barack Obama was President, once Republicans gained Congressional majorities and the Presidency, they couldn’t get it done.  It came down to a single vote, the famous middle of the night “thumbs down” of Republican Senator John McCain.

The Affordable Care Act was a compromise of proposals among the Congressional Democrats in 2009.  Many wanted to create a “single payer” system – Medicare for all; but were unable to gain a majority.  So in the “sausage factory” of Congressional legislation, the ACA was created.

There were lots of “carrots:” items that made the ACA palatable to American citizens. Insurance companies were required to cover people with pre-existing conditions without charging them additional fees, and parents were allowed to maintain coverage of adult children until they were twenty-six.  The ACA also allowed for a major extension of government health coverage for low income folks; the Medicaid expansion provided health coverage for millions.  And the ACA provided for insurance independent of employment, so that folks could change jobs and maintain coverage, without the extreme fees of “Cobra.”

But with “carrots” there had to be “sticks.”  All of the above benefits certainly increased costs; in order to offset them, the ACA expanded the “pool” of folks required to have health insurance to – everyone. This meant that those who were healthy and had a high enough income to pay taxes and chose to go without insurance, now were required to either buy insurance or pay a tax: the “individual mandate.”  On an actuarial level they were less likely to need coverage, so that their payments went to offset the additional costs.

Insurance companies didn’t lose all their profitable perks. They were able to keep insurance coverage on a state-by-state basis, limiting the “size of the pool” for ACA insurance. They also maintained the 80% of coverage that was privately based through employment, though they had to follow the new ACA regulations.  And, of course, they could withdraw from offering ACA coverage in areas that weren’t profitable.

President Trump, through executive action, was able to end the individual mandate.  By doing so, he removed the “stick” of the ACA.  He used the time worn excuse for cutting government benefits:  he was “freeing” people from government regulation.  It allowed the healthy to go without insurance.  Costs for ACA insurance increased, as the “pool of insured” grew smaller and sicker.  Republicans then claimed that the ACA didn’t work, was too expensive, and had to be abolished.

It’s two days before election day.  I have had the opportunity to travel in the past couple of weeks:  Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and finally Florida.  In this tense election season, there has been commercial after commercial for hotly contested House and Senate campaigns.  Republican after Republican now claim to support insurance for pre-existing conditions without additional costs, as well as many of the other “carrots” of the ACA.  But they offer no plan to cover the costs, the “sticks” that made the ACA work. They simply say:  “I’m for pre-existing insurance coverage.”

President Lincoln said: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

The American people are pretty good at knowing the truth, even through all of the political hyperbole of campaign ads.   And most Americans know too, that politicians will often say what’s popular rather than what’s true.  But – if we look at what they “do” rather than what they “say,” Republicans have done nothing to protect those with pre-existing conditions, and the  proposals they have made allow insurance companies to raise prices, making insurance unaffordable.

So don’t be fooled by the new Republican line.  Look at what they done – everything to make health care what it was before 2009.  If healthcare is the issue – then Democrats are the answer in 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

Show Me Your Papers

Voter ID laws make so much sense, if:  if, you are from the suburbs, if, you have had no negative interactions with the police or government, and if you are secure that the American Democracy is meant for you.  To most Americans, having an ID to cash a check, or go to the store to buy beer or cigarettes, is so common place that it defies common sense that having ID to vote is a big deal.

Voter ID is supposed to protect us from voting fraud. But, there’s really no evidence of widespread voting fraud occurring, with or without Voter ID laws.  In North Carolina for example, where the Republican candidate for a Congressional seat is accusing his Democratic opponent of being in favor of voting fraud by not supporting a new Voter ID law, a voting study showed that from 2010-2014 there were 19 fraudulent votes cast out of 12 million.  Most of the 19 were longtime US residents, who mistakenly thought they could vote. That’s .00000015% illegal votes, not a “game changing” impact.  The North Carolina Voter ID law solves a problem that didn’t exist.

Voter ID isn’t a big deal I f you see the government as serving your interests, not questioning them. Say you’re a citizen of Hispanic ethnicity, and go to the polls to vote and are asked for you ID.  Perhaps, in some polling places, a “challenger”  (folks whose job is to “challenge” you’re registration, affiliation, address and documentation) will ask for additional information.  Language might be an issue, but intimidation might be even a more significant blockade.

It is absolutely true that if a voter stands their ground, ultimately they have the right to vote, at the least on a provisional ballot.  But the knowledge of the rules is fully weighted to the poll workers and the challengers; most regular voters don’t know enough to demand their rights when questioned.  And if you are a new citizen, or maybe one with a father or mother who is in the US illegally, or a “Dreamer” living with you, will you fight the “voting battle,” or will you avoid drawing attention to yourself and not vote at all?

In newly migrated communities in the United States today, fear of the government is growing.  The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency, “ICE,” has earned a reputation for arbitrary round-ups, and fast and loose play with individual rights.  Regardless of what President Trump says, no reasonable politician, Democrat or Republican, is in favor of  “open borders.”  Reasonable enforcement of immigration law makes sense.  But in our nation, with at least 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working here, it also would make sense to target enforcement towards those who are truly dangerous.

That’s not what ICE’s is doing right now with their factory “round-ups” and arranged fake meetings.   The US government is even questioning the legal citizenship of some American citizens crossing at the border, demanding documentation beyond Passport cards, and denying their issued birth certificates.  An atmosphere of fear has been created in Hispanic communities, among documented, undocumented, and even US citizens.

Folks are scared. They are scared to interact with the government, and they are scared to vote.  Demanding additional layers of identification just create additional barriers to participation.  That drives down Hispanic participation, and reduces their impact on elections.  Will that make a difference?  We will see in the Florida Governor’s race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum, and in the Texas Ted Cruz versus Beto O’Rourke Senate election.  Suppress the normally Democratic leaning Hispanic turnout, and elections already on the knife-edge fall Republican.  It’s difficult to imagine that’s not intentional.

In the old World War II movies, there was always a scene on the train rolling through occupied Europe. The “good guys” were riding along, and into the railroad car walked the black uniformed Gestapo.  “Show me your papers,” was the demand, and the good guys would hope and pray that their forged documents would hold up.  “Show me your papers” became the trademark of authoritarian regimes, governments that don’t trust the governed.

If you’re white, suburban, middle-class; it doesn’t feel like it effects you.  “Sure, I’ll show you my papers, and sure, I know the government is acting in my interest.”  But in minority and newly migrant communities it’s different.  “Show me your papers” is a challenge of your right to be here, a challenge made with the full authority of the government.

Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran, spoke of the Nazis:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

They asked for your papers.

 

What He Says

Since the first day of the Trump campaign there have been outrageous statements.  From Mexican “rapists and criminals at the border” to “bleeding from whatever” to “banning Muslims,” President Trump has found a way to encourage his base and inflame his opponents.  The energy, anxiety, and outrage these statements produced took a whole lot of time and resources from  Trump’s opposition, such that “wiser heads” (such as Rachel Maddow on MSNBC) began to say:  “Don’t listen to what he says, watch what he does.”

It was the “doing” that was changing the country:  trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act; giving vast tax cuts to the wealthiest (and vastly enlarging the National Debt;) packing the Federal Courts with appointees, some of whom were rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association; tearing children from their parents at the border.  Those actions required energy enough, without the constant irritation of the Tweets and the Fox interviews.

But what we have seen in the past two weeks is that what “he” says has had more impact than we realized. The old adage, “words have consequences” is ultimately being applied to Donald Trump as well. What he has said, more perhaps than what he has done, has inflamed the political and cultural divides of America.  That inferno of rhetoric has pushed many Americans to the edges of their political views; and to those who are already deranged, pushed them into the abyss of violence and hate.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little Abolitionist lady of Cincinnati, was driven by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act to write a novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  It was the story of slaves in the South, beaten, killed, willing to do anything to escape their bondage.  Eliza, a mother of a five-year-old boy, carries him from ice chunk to ice chunk across the near-frozen Ohio River to reach freedom.  Uncle Tom, the kind elder slave of the story, is beaten to death by his master.

In the North the story inflamed passions, giving energy to the growing Abolitionist movement.  While only a small minority of people in the free states were Abolitionists, they had a strong voice in newspapers read throughout the nation, and with the publication of Stowe’s book, found even greater power.

In the South the book was read as well, as an outrageous “creation” of a Northerner’s mind.  It was used to convince slave owners that the Federal government would never allow slavery to continue, and was held up for ridicule by slave owners who didn’t treat their slaves with such brutality.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe.  “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” he supposedly said.  He recognized the role that “what she said” had in pushing the nation to extremes, leaving no middle ground left for political compromise.  The compromisers, Stephen Douglas who offered to let states vote slave or free, and John Bell who hoped to focus US attention away from slavery, both were left in electoral defeat.  The extremes, Lincoln restricting slavery’s expansion, and Breckenridge calling for total slavery, were all that was left.

While I do not think America today is heading to a Civil War, the point to be made is that words in fact “do matter.”  What is said contributes to forcing each side farther apart.  Add that to the political forces that already encourage polarization: the huge amounts of money contributed by a few ideological billionaires, the division of our media into left and right, the divisive impact of the structural changes made in gerrymandering, and the increasing income inequality in America; and we have a divided country.

And in that division, the extremes go even farther to the edge.  Whether it’s bombs in the mail, shooters at the Synagogue, or a black child shot at for knocking on the front door; the deranged find it easier to act.

Thousands of people have left their homeland looking for safety and security.  They are carrying their children through a harrowing thousand-mile march in the hot Central American sun.  They sleep in the street at night; they take what generosity the local townspeople can give.  They are doing what many immigrants to America have done:  they have decided to risk the dangers of travel, to give their families an opportunity to grow in peace.  They have risked all to leave the gangs and the death and the poverty behind.

But the “words” of the President are those of hate:  invasion, infection, a “horde” coming to attack.  And those words are serving the purpose:  Americans who normally would have sympathy for the refugee’s plight, are now convinced we are facing a siege .  Troops are being sent to the border (even though they cannot, by law, actually police the border.)

Maybe it’s all just a campaign ploy, and on November 7^th the words will evaporate.  But the impact on our divisions will matter beyond the election regardless.  We will remain divided as along as division serves Trump’s political needs, and as long as we the people allow it to polarize our minds.  What he says does matter.

Robert E. Lee

Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal has a new book, called Leaders, Myth and Reality.  He also had some things to say about the President’s plan to send 5000 plus regular US Army troops to the Southern Border. In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, the General spoke about what the troops could do, mainly support operations like erecting tents and building barricades, and what they couldn’t do; act as the “Border Patrol.”  He made a significant point:  while all of the things the Army could do at the border some other force, the National Guard or even civilian contractors could do as well; sending “TROOPS TO THE BORDER” was the point.  McChrystal did not come out against the President, but he made it clear that the President’s actions were much more symbolic than necessary.

It fits the “caravan invasion” scenario that Mr. Trump has been touting on the campaign trail, just as his threat to repeal birthright citizenship is a political ploy.  The 14^thAmendment to the Constitution in “black letter law” states:  All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

While it’s clear that a few of the President’s advisor would like to quibble about “subject to the jurisdiction,” claiming that illegal immigrants who have children here are in fact not subject to jurisdiction and therefore their offspring do not have the right to citizenship; the Courts immediately claim jurisdiction when those same immigrants cross the border, are found “guilty” and sent to jail.

And of course, if you really want to quibble with wording, than let’s look at the Second Amendment, with the hanging opening clause:  A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

If jurisdiction applies to citizenship, then well-regulated militia must apply to bearing arms.  The Court decisions for over one hundred years argue that neither is true.

It’s all about optics and politics.  It is unlikely that the President would try to change the Constitution through Executive order, nor is it likely that he will even bother to pick the fight after November 6^th(though with Trump it’s hard to tell.) Even Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would have a tough time agreeing with him on that.

But it was something that McChrystal said later in the interview that caught my ear.  The General said that for decades he had a portrait of Robert E. Lee in his office, given to him by his wife.  He saw Lee as the kind of leader that America can produce, and the kind that McChrystal wanted to emulate.

Four Star General McChrystal had a storied career, completing Special Forces training and ultimately commanding US Special Operations, but was removed from his last command as Chief of Forces in Afghanistan.  He said “too much” to the press, ridiculing his civilian commanders including Vice President Joe Biden, and President Obama asked for his resignation.  It was a sad way for a great General to leave service, but just as necessary as General MacArthur being removed by President Truman during the Korean War.  The foundation of the American military is civilian control, both MacArthur and McChrystal were reminded of that the hard way.

So McChrystal, a General who made a serious mistake, was an admirer of Robert E. Lee, the storied leader of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But McChrystal said that he re-evaluated him, after the Charlottesville incident last year, where right-wing Nationalists rioted over the removal of a statue of Lee.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Lee, a career officer in the United States Army and top of his generation, chose to turn down US command and offer his services to the Confederacy.   Our history books have always taught this as “honorable,” choosing to serve Virginia rather than the nation.  But evaluating this decision today, Lee’s actions prolonged the war (by his generalship) and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.  McChrystal saw Lee as committing a tragic mistake, and after Charlottesville took the picture down.

I am a Civil War “buff;” trooping battlefields to imagine the struggle and sacrifice.  And I too saw Lee’s actions in a “neutral” way; making a difficult life choice in a time when all were forced to chose.  But, after listening in General McChrystal, I see a different analysis. Lee, a tremendous strategist and tactician, got the great question of his time wrong.  He chose the past, the “Southern cause;” rather than the future that even his own father’s peers saw for America.  Lee was the next generation from the founding fathers, his father, “Light Horse Harry” Lee was a Revolutionary hero and friend of George Washington.

Those men saw the future of the United States, and while they did not (or could not) end slavery, they compromised to get a nation based on “all men created equal.”  Robert E. Lee, did not see this future; instead he saw a past that he tried to defend. He failed, both in his decision, and his effort to maintain the slave South.

While we can look with sadness and admiration at the great sacrifices the Confederates made in Lee’s honor, we must also see that the greater tragedy was the decision Lee made in the first place.   Like the career of General McChrystal, Lee earned the right to be respected, but must ultimately be judged on failure:  not his failure to win at Gettysburg or the rest, but his failure to see America’s future.  I don’t have any portraits of Lee hanging in my office, but I have taken one down in my mind.

This is the same standard we should hold our own leaders to today.  We should stop thinking of  “moral neutrality” in our choices, for the past or future.  Whatever you think of President Trump, “Make America Great Again” is a march to the past.  That is how he should be judged.

Pittsburgh

Jenn and I went to Pittsburgh for the first time this weekend.  Some friends of ours, die-hard Steelers fans, love Pittsburgh, and they wanted us to see it through their eyes.   We literally did the tour:  seeing the stadium, the old Fort Pitt (the original point of civilization in the American frontier,) ate at a Kelly O’s Diner (as seen on TV,) had awesome meatballs in a restaurant on Penn Street.

In Pittsburgh they have San Francisco-like hills leading from the rivers that surround the downtown. And like San Francisco, Pittsburgh built cable driven cars to go up the incredibly steep hills, called “Inclines.” Two are still working, and on Saturday morning we went to the top the top of the Duquesne Incline.  After seeing the awesome view, we rode back down to river level, waiting for our tour bus.

From all over town came the wail of sirens:  police heading through the maze of tunnels and bridges and “uptown.”  One of our friends, a police officer, thought it seemed like a mass shooting kind of response.  A new acquaintance we met in the Incline car from Northern California turned his phone into a police scanner, and we began to hear the awful news. It started with this broadcast to police, “…don’t go out on Wilkins Avenue, you’ll get shot!!”  We watched the armored SWAT vehicle race through town, then more police, and then ambulance after ambulance.

Our next stop was the Rivers Casino where we saw the tragedy revealed on television.  Pittsburghers were saddened, worried about the dead and wounded, and about the police officers that were injured trying to end the carnage.  But they also were resilient; it’s a big town with a lot to do, and a lot of people there for all sorts of different reasons.  So we went on, seeing the monument to Mr. Rogers (the attack was in Mr. Rogers’ actual neighborhood) and following the news on our phones.

That evening we went to an Irish pub on the “Strip Section” (not from strippers, but from strip mining that leveled the area in the late 1800’s.)  The owner was holding a benefit for Haiti, but he spent time talking about the members of his “pub family” who were affected by the attack as well.  We sang Amazing Grace in their honor, and Haiti relief did very well, especially from the visitors from Ohio who became part of the Malaney “pub family” for the night.

Sunday most of the guests in our hotel were headed to the Steelers/Browns game.  But while the inevitable talk was about the game (and how the Steelers would win:  they did) there was always a pause, and sad eyes, and “what is wrong with the world” conversation.  On TV was the Mayor of the city, exhausted, talking about gun control and AR-15’s.  The rest of the media world wondered:  how can we, in this week of attempted bombings and a completed mass shooting:  how can we get our nation to stop raising the rhetoric so high that those on the edges fall into madness?

And in our little hometown of Pataskala, there was outrage about the “Haunted Hoochie” (a series of barns where they scare the hell out of you for $25 – it’s Halloween) who decided that Saturday night was right for “swastika night.”  Wear a swastika as part of your costume (or painted or tattooed on your body) and you get in free.  They argued that swastikas represented real horror; but a lot of the community commented that it never was acceptable, it certainly wasn’t the night when eleven Jewish folks were murdered in their Synagogue by a racist with a rifle. There were a few who didn’t get it, and there probably were a few in Pittsburgh who didn’t either.  But most of the town was outraged.

It has to stop.  We need leadership who backs civility, not pays lip service to it then jokes about having a “…bad hair day.”  We need the President to stop calling the news the “…enemy of the people (Trump-10/29/18 am);” and dabbling in conspiracies like a “…Soros funded Caravan from Central America.”   It isn’t that the President and these others are causing violence, but they have contributed to the climate.

President Trump is not anti-Semitic.  His  daughter and son-in-law are  conservative Jews, he could have been at the service on Saturday. And Trump sees himself as a great supporter of Israel.  But he has allied himself with some who would use anti-Semitism to further their political goals:  the dark conspirators on the internet, who see George Soros and Tom Steyer and Chuck Schumer not as loyal Americans, but as a part of a Jewish cabal looking to take over the world.

Next week’s election may not change that.  Changing the President might not either:  Trump is a symptom, someone who caught onto this, not the creator. It will take a lot of communicating for all sides to get back to what America can be.  The Steelers and the Browns fans rose together for a moment of silence on Sunday, maybe there’s a way for all of us to find common ground for talk, even if we disagree.  That’s what our leaders need to do, from whatever party or view they represent.  Common ground to end the killing ground we are creating.

 

 

 

 

 

On a Happier Note

My wife and I are headed out; it’s time for retired folks to travel!!  I’ll keep on writing, (computers work everywhere, but probably not for the next few days or so) but before I leave I wanted to point out some “happier” news in our world.

We live in Licking County, Ohio, in the middle of “Trump Country.”  That’s also in the heart of Ohio’s 12^thCongressional District, the one that Democrats almost flipped in the August Special Election. Two years ago the Republican won with 66% of the vote, in August it was a mere .02%.  The polls show it’s just a close for the November 6^thelection. If Dems can win here, they can win everywhere.

Of course we voted, early, at the Licking County Board of Elections in Newark, Ohio.  And we did have to stand in line for fifteen minutes, I hope (and think) that’s a good sign.  As we stood in line, we got to witness an uplifting event.  An extended family, my guess would be of Indian or Pakistani descent, were casting their first votes as American citizens.  There were the great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and young kids (they came along for the ride) all casting their first votes.  Some were given help with translating the ballot language (Ohio has a State Issue that reduces drug possession penalties in favor of treatment) and they completed their civic duty.

After they voted, they all gathered in front of the building, under the “Licking County” sign, and took a family picture.  It reminded my of how important the vote is to those who may not have had that opportunity in their past lives. In our nation where less than 50% vote even in the most important elections, these new citizens made it a family outing to go and exercise their rights.  I don’t know who they voted for, and there was some “unrest” in the line as “L County” dealt with diversity, but I was proud of those new citizens, and proud of the nation they joined.

The other uplifting recent event in our lives started with sad news.  A young friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, faced with the struggles of chemotherapy and surgery.  She and her husband are also confronted with the reality of American healthcare:  no matter how well you are financially prepared, a major health crisis creates a major financial crisis as well.  My wife managed the effort to raise funds, not necessarily to cover the costs (estimated at over $400,000 in the next two years) but to help keep their lives going, as our friend missed work due to treatments and dealt with the day-to-day bills.

We asked our small town, Pataskala, to buy T-Shirts and raffle tickets (Ohio State football tickets on the line) and drop their change in cans in the local stores.  And, as this town does, the folks of Pataskala helped out, and we raised close to $3000 in a couple of weeks. No one asked whether you were a Trump supporter (though by the averages, most of Pataskala was) they just helped out.  The town mayor stopped by and bought a T Shirt and a ticket – $30 – for $100. By the way, when the internet explodes with small town crisis, he posts pictures of goats and sunsets to calm everyone down. He’s what you want in a small town leader.

Local stores asked what they could do, from gift certificates for raffles to donation jars on their counters.  Everyone we asked wanted to help, from bars to beauty salons.

Maybe our small town is best symbolized by this story.

We set up our camper in the Hardware store parking lot on Sunday morning in the rain. The goal was to sell T-Shirts, but it was cold and wet, and we weren’t sure anyone would stop. At ten, just as we got setup, a mini-van pulled in and a man jumped out. “I saw this on Facebook,” he said “and didn’t want to miss out.”  He dropped $10 in the can, and said “God bless you.”  We asked if he wanted any of the items we had to sell, but he said no, he just wanted to be a part of helping.

Eventually it warmed up a little, and the sun came out, and we made close to $1000.

In our world, dominated by the negativity of the President and the frustration of politics, it’s easy to get so “them against me” that we end up “sticking to our own side.”  It’s good to see, even in Pataskala, Licking County, Trump and God’s country, that people can still be people; willing to help and excited to be Americans.  Good things still happen.

As we grow more fragmented and polarized, that’s important to remember.

Respect

Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Eric Holder, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, George Soros, John Brennan, CNN, Maxine Waters, Robert DeNiro, Joe Biden – List of those receiving mail bomb attacks as of 10/25/18 AM

A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST! – President Donald Trump Tweet, 10/25/18

 The mail bomb attacks on high profile Democratic opponents is not the President’s fault.   It is a product of the environment; of our time of polarization and divisiveness.  We all know it.  It takes two sides to have a fight, and while Democrats (including me) would place blame on the President himself, in reality both sides have engaged in an ugly fight.

Ask Brett Kavanaugh.

But there is also a time when we expect the President of the United States, our President; to step across the divide and, at least for the crisis, try to unify the nation.  We are in one of the crises; two former Presidents have been attacked as well as a long list of those who have voiced their opposition to Donald Trump.

But the President sees everything in “us and them” terms.  It is the Trump trademark:  when you get hit, hit back harder.  The President can’t “hit” back against the bomber, but he can strike against those who might blame him for the environment.  So, in this moment of national fear, the President has followed the failed path of his Charlottesville strategy.  He allowed cooler heads in the White House to prevail for a moment, for the scripted call for “national unity.”  Then he got on Air Force One, flew to Wisconsin, and went right back on the attack.  “Lock her up” and  “Fake News” were part of his rant last night and this morning’s tweet.    He even mocked “being nice.” But for the Grace of God, the Secret Service and the NYPD (and the rest) they could have all been dead.

Donald J Trump does not respect the Presidency.  He doesn’t understand the role of leader of the United States.  And it’s not just in this moment of domestic terrorism:  last night the New York Times reported that the President continues to use unsecured mobile phones, disregarding the advice of his National Security advisors.  The Times reports that Chinese and Russian intelligence are listening to his conversations, gathering information, and developing operations to influence the President using his own words.

This is a President whose main campaign slogan was “lock her up.”  He claimed that Hillary Clinton, in using a private email server, violated US security laws and should be imprisoned.  So a President who uses unsecured communications that he KNOWS is being tapped by foreign intelligence agencies is better?

One line in the article, quoting Administration officials, is chilling.

They said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.

The President can’t reveal secrets because he doesn’t know them. Another sign of disrespect for the Office; he won’t even do the work required to protect the nation.  And the unnamed Administration officials who “leaked” this story, said they did so not to damage the President, but to get him to listen to their concerns.  He won’t hear them in person, but he will “read it in the Times.”

There are more bombs out there.  As I write, they found a second mailed to Joe Biden.  Lets hope they are all found, without loss of life.  It’s a tough day to be a Postal Worker.  And every day is a tough day to be President of the United States.  It is a complex role, one that Americans look to during times of ultimate crisis.  In American history “lore,” there is the belief that those who become President “unprepared” grow into the job.  Harry Truman is the most recent example that historians cite.

We are waiting Mr. President.  Waiting for you to show that you understand the Presidency.  The first thing you can do is to show respect for the awesome gift the country has granted you.  You haven’t yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not a Nationalist

I am a Patriot.  I believe in the United States as an exceptional nation.  I believe that America, despite all of its flaws and failings, has been the “shining city on the hill” of Ronald Reagan’s voice, serving as an example to the world. I believe in the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, that all are created equal, and the structure of the Constitution.  They represent a hope of freedom and prosperity unprecedented in world history.

I am not a Nationalist. While I believe in American exceptionalism I do NOT believe that it was founded on some warped and racist view of white supremacy.  I, in fact, believe in the opposite:  that the strength of the United States is in its admixture of cultures, ethnicities, and races.  America is best represented by its Main Streets:  Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Southern, Soul, McDonalds and Starbucks all lined up beside each other.  That is the America I believe in, one that draws strength from all of its diverse cultures.

I share in the dream of the “caravan” forming thousands of miles away in Central America.  They have lived in danger, in poverty, in fear for their children’s lives.  They are looking for a better life and a better place; of course they are coming to America.  While that represents a problem, they  represent the BEST of what America offers the world. How we respond, either with compassion, love and respect for the risks they took; or with guns, prisons and families ripped apart:  that will say what America is today.

The President of the United States has tapped into a dark side of America.  The fear and inadequacy that some feel; the loss of unearned power based on skin color and wrongful tradition, have left a sad few looking for answers in hate and repression.  The President has found a way to tap into the power of that fear, and use it to leverage the ballot box and subvert the principles of his political party.  That fear is strong enough to silence or ostracize those within his party that dare to speak differently.

We used to speak of “dog whistles;” quiet signals of nationalism and racism that only few could hear.  Mr. Trump has carried us into a different age, where there is no need to whisper. He has shouted the dog whistles into clarion calls.  Not only does he speak of “nationalism” as positive, empowering the hate, but he has given license to all those petty acts of racism that go on day to day.  Whether the police are called for “blacks barbecuing in the park” or “restaurant staff speaking in Spanish,” or folks are publicly shamed through the anonymity of Facebook; we are in a new age of hate.

This is nothing new to America.  In my college dorm room in the early 1970’s I put quotes on my wall.  One was Robert Kennedy’s:

 There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why?  I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

He represented the best of what America could be, ripped away at the moment we needed him most.  But contemporaneous with him, was an American “nationalist,” George Wallace, who stood on the capital steps in Montgomery, Alabama and stated: 

In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

There were of the same era and the same political party.  Wallace’s “greatest people” were white.  The “tyranny” he fought was the Federal government enforcing integration and equal opportunity.  I had both quotes on my wall to remind me what we were fighting for, and against.

We thought, and hoped, that the sentiments of George Wallace had faded away.  They certainly were suppressed and made unacceptable in public discourse.  But clearly they were not gone, and Mr. Trump has become a new voice for their sad views.  He can’t even claim to have invented this old fear, he simply has made it “acceptable”  again and given it power.

He is stoking those suppressed views to bring out his vote, to stand against the America of the future.  It is disheartening to see our nation revert to the arguments we thought we left on the wall in some dim dorm room forty years ago,  but here we are.  We need to fight the fight and win once again.  So pick up your protest sign, cast your ballot, and stand for what is great in America.  We changed the world before, we can do it again.