April 2014 Archives

Dear America,

It has begun to look as though Rand Paul may really have a chance at the Republican nomination for president in 2016.  The moderates in the party have failed to distinguish themselves lately--Christy's integrity is in question, Jeb Bush's conservative bona fides have waned to less than stellar from the Tea Party perspective, and even Marco Rubio is running into friction over his immigration policy stand--and the hard core reactionaries keep on demonstrating that while they can preach to the choir, their voices don't carry out of the loft.  So who else is there for the Republicans to turn to really.  They need someone who can distinguish his positions from the Republican norm, which is getting more and more threadbare as time passes and as the American people tend with greater and greater insistence to ask what their position is rather than just applauding mindlessly for the conservative cheerleaders and nay-sayers.  The country is looking for someone to take a stand, and if nothing else, Rand Paul is eager to do that.  And he seems to be getting the message that teeing off on federal programs aimed at putting more energy efficient light bulbs in every socket aren't grist for the opposition mill, nor are low flow toilets.  But he has two problems to overcome that would prevent him from winning election even if he got the nomination.

The first is his toupee.  You may perceive sarcasm in that remark, and maybe there is some, but imagine seeing that hairpiece at a G7 conference where the leaders of the free world are assembled.  It is a question of presidential bearing...gravitas...and it would be hard for other people who have risen to the leadership of nations to take seriously the ideas of a man who thinks he is fooling anyone with that hat.  Rand Paul is bald, and if he wants to be taken seriously, he had better admit it.  He isn't asking some co-ed to the prom.  And while it may seem a stretch to point out this problem now, wait until there is a campaign going on and civility is always hanging in the balance.  If he wants to get a transplant, he can still probably be vice-president some day, like Joe Biden.  But it takes credibility to be elected president, and wearing that funny looking wig just begs the question of whether he respects those whom he wants to support him enough to see the need for honesty or, to the contrary, he thinks he is fooling all of them.  If the choices a candidate has made for staff can sink a candidacy, the choice of what you can foist on the American people in the guise of truth is certainly sufficient to rule someone out.  I have never seen anyone with curly hair on top but straight hair on the sides and the back of his head.  It's the other way around in my experience, and sooner or later, the toupee deniers are going to have to eat their hats.  If the guy can't admit that he is bald...if he is that vain...in what other areas is he vulnerable because of his insecurities.  

Second, and I admit, more important, is his philosophy about government intervention in social matters generally.  Whenever he points to a problem and insists that people should be left to their own devices he invites the same criticism: if we were capable of that kind of autonomy as a species there wouldn't be governments.  Look at the Duke Power and West Virginia chemical waste spills.  Both were a function of government insouciance inspired by either supply-side, anti-regulatory dogmatism or simple cupidity.  And whether or not you believe that more money for the rich means more money for the rest of us, polluted rivers are bad for everyone, and we need government...and yes, regulation...to prevent these kinds of environmental insults, and that's not all we need government for.  There are all kinds of things that government has to control because if you left the people to their own devices, the rights guaranteed in our constitution would evaporate in a single generation.  Just consider voting rights and how in Republican controlled states they are being curtailed, labor organizing as victimized in a concerted, albeit informal, campaign against unionization at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee.  Consider the banks and other financial institutions that ran our economy aground in 2007 and 2008.  Consider the corruption of our securities exchanges, which allow people who invest in computers that do nothing but rake off pennies from every trade and produce nothing but billions of dollars of unearned profit while the investor pays more when he buys and gets less when he sells.  The decline in the relative wealth of the middle class is in part a function of that kind of procedural creaming of the financial system by those who exploit the processes involved rather than participating in them, and then there are the "short sale" phenomenon, options trading, which is naked speculation that finances nothing, arbitrage, which exploits differences in markets rather than differences in the intrinsic values of stocks, and of course the advantageous tax rate that those who produce nothing but live on capital-gains-income enjoy.  Even with government the vast majority of us are taken advantage of by those who have the power and the money.  Imagine what it would be like without government.  Most Americans recognize that the only barrier between them and certain kinds of predation is government, regulation and the law.

So libertarian theory is going to be a tough sell, and that is all Rand Paul has to distinguish himself.  He's a dark horse at best with regard to the presidency, but as to the Republican nomination, I don't know.  The party of Goldwater seems never to disappoint when it comes to going out on a limb with a saw.  My hope is that they won't disappoint this time.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I think that most people have a basic misconception about the nature of justice and its source.  People think of the courts as dispensing justice, and in fact the symbol of the judicial function is "blind justice," a woman wearing a blindfold and holding the scales of justice, but that isn't really what the courts are all about.  And in other circumstances, we think of the police force and the agencies of the executive branch of government as the guardians of justice, but it isn't them either.  The executive and the judiciary are, for purposes of this discussion, "ministerial" in their functions, as opposed to "discretionary."  The executive is charged with executing the law, that is enforcing it, and the judiciary is responsible to decide disputes as to what constitutes compliance with the law.  Those "magistracies" are simply a matter of doing what has been dictated in the general sense somewhere else: the legislature.  The executive branch, including the police, service providers and regulatory officials are supposed to do only what the law provides for, or at least permits.  They don't get to decide what to do other than to enforce the dictates that the law constitutes.  Similarly, when a case goes to court, whether it be civil (a dispute between two parties) or criminal (a dispute between a defendant and the state), the court simply applies the law--whether common law or statute--and when a jury is involved, the court tells the jury what the law is and requires of the jurors that they decide the case in accord with the dictates of the law.  So if an outcome in a court proceeding or an administrative decision by an agency of the government is unjust, then, presuming that the court or the agency followed the law, the only source of justice in the matter, or at least in matters like it in the future, is the legislature.  And as to our national legislature, as we all know, there is an election coming up in November, and we should go to the polls with justice in mind as we cast our votes, because the police and the courts are not responsible for the injustice we experience as long as they act lawfully.  For the most part, it is the legislature that is to blame if justice isn't being done, and it is them whom we should importune if we want to see a change.

At least here in the United States of America, we should be taking our elections very seriously because they create our national ethos, at least to the extent that it is institutionalized in law.  With that in mind, maybe we should examine our electoral options from a perspective other than those such as party affiliation and personal opinions about how to stimulate the economy and how much regulation is too much, which seem to guide us all these days.  Maybe we should be thinking in terms of the effect on justice that the candidates we choose to vote for will have.  Maybe elections aren't as simple as advancing our personal interests, but are rather an opportunity to see that justice is done in our society at large...not just to us, but to everyone.  From that perspective, the complexions, and the import for that matter, of some issues change dramatically.  For example, there have been two major chemical accidents over the past year: one in North Carolina committed by Duke Power and the other in West Virginia committed by a much smaller company that is declaring bankruptcy now as a result.  Both of these accidents polluted drinking water for thousands of people and fouled rivers that many people used for all kinds of purposes, including recreation.  But, while the nation hung on tender hooks as BP cleaned up the mess it made in the Gulf of Mexico, there really hasn't been much talk about either of these accidents, or about the paucity of administrative oversight preceding both cases as well as the climate of aversion to regulation that prevails in both states.  What we need to consider is the injustice represented by the actions...or in these cases the inaction...of these two states in anticipation of these two environmental disasters.  With BP we saw an unabated quest to allow the oil companies to continue to operate as usual, and to even expand their risky enterprises in The Gulf, despite the hue and cry over the damage to hundreds of miles of coastline and coastal waters that affected the lives of millions of people.  And that cadre of Washington politicians who cried out for maintenance of the status quo with regard to the petroleum business is largely still in office, I think because their constituents never really considered their preference for business over individuals to be a function of commitment, or lack thereof, to social justice.  And it's the same in North Carolina and West Virginia.  In West Virginia in particular, the climate that led to the lack of agency scrutiny of the facility that caused the environmental damage in question was a function of the mentality of the state's governor, who ran on a business friendly, regulation averse platform.  His slogan was, "West Virginia is open for business."   And the pollution of a river that serves not just as a recreational resource but also as a source for drinking water for thousands of people was a consequence of that attitude.  And that attitude prevails in Texas too, from whence a presidential candidate in 2016 may well be nominated.  In fact, that creed...openness to whatever business wants...is the Republican, conservative creed.  It is the rationale for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which poses an environmental risk that could be obviated by building refineries in the northern tier of states rather than shipping tar-sands oil across hundreds of miles of pristine land so that it can be delivered to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico from which it will largely be exported as gasoline, leaving the pollution behind but importing the profits into corporate coffers.  Is it socially just to afford this kind of sop to business at the expense of environmental risk and damage that could be avoided if greed were not being accommodated?  Is it socially just to put local environments at risk, and hence the health and welfare of hundreds of men, women and children, because some corporation's bottom line...and hence its CEO's salary...would be improved by taking that risk?  Is it socially just to prohibit regulation of hazardous activities because other states don't and business will go elsewhere if we don't let them have their way with our tax systems and environments...and hence the quality of our lives?

We have a lot to think about in November, and again in 2016, but it seems to me that our priorities are wrong right at the moment.  Politics should have very little to do with how we vote.  Justice should be what matters.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

First the Republicans seized upon the initial failure of the Affordable Care Act in its execution, but now that the initial problems have been all but solved, at least in terms of the website involved, public opinion is less solidly on their side, and they are beginning to feel the sand shift below their feet.  So they are seeking another axe to throw at the opposition, and they thought they had it with the minimum wage.  They dragged out the old supply-side rhetoric about "job killing" and the free market, but there are more minimum wage earners than there are people who pay minimum wages, and what they assumed would be resurrection of an article of faith among conservatives turned out to be an uphill slog politically.  Municipalities and states...even some Republican governed states...are raising their minimum wages because they see that they have more votes to lose than to gain by resisting the movement in that direction.  That's strike two for the Republican Party and its November aspirations.  So now, they are taking a last gasp leaning on dogma with the "Common Core" educationstandards. They are mischaracterizing them as an attempt by the federal government to take over state and local education.  But the fact is that the Common Core is only a set of performance standards for students that the federal government will reward the states monetarily for achieving.  There isn't any attempt to color history or imbue children with the civic standards that some big brother administration wants them to observe.  It's just a set of competencies that the Republicans are trying to associate with President Obama so that they can characterize him as an evil force...once again.  They want us all to believe that The President concocted the idea and is foisting it upon us when in reality, the roots of the common core are in the sixties.

It all started with what was called "competency based education."  It was not teaching to a test, but was rather teaching to enable students to do certain things.  And it was not based on a specific course or curriculum as much as it was on the ability at the end to perform specific tasks and demonstrate specific skills and spheres of knowledge from arithmetic to history.  Mastery of the subject matter was what counted, not the amount of time spent studying it.  From that educational credo came CLE--or "credit for life experience"--and returning or non-traditional students were thereby allowed to accrue credits for what they had learned on their own, thus making degrees in higher education more accessible, and in reality, more meaningful.  After all, what is important about a degree is that it connotes a level of competency, not that you spent a certain number of years learning how to do things.  And all of it made sense then, which it still does.  But the common core, which is in its essence the same thing, is too easy to vilify as political chicanery, and that is why it is ill advised; not because it is a bad idea, but because it isn't being presented the right way.  This is what I mean.

When I was in high school in the sixties, there were two tracks that we could take.  There was the general curriculum, which was designed for the people who wanted to enter the trades when the graduated, and there was the academic track, which was intended to prepare us for higher education.  As to those of us in the academic track, when we graduated from high school in New York in 1964, we all had to take a series of tests called "Regents' Exams."  They were achievement tests in various disciplines that had been part of the standard, state-wide curriculum, including chemistry, biology, algebra, foreign language, etc.  Those of us who did well got "incentive awards:" specific amounts of money to be applied to tuition throughout the standard four year program at a state school.  Those of us who did the best--approximately the top 5%-- got full scholarships that paid all of our tuition at the state schools of our choices.  That kept able students in state to some degree, and it enabled some students who were capable to go to college even though their family finances would not have afforded them the opportunity without the assistance.  That was a system that everyone could understand.  Show that you are up to the work, and you get to go to a state college for free...at least without having to pay tuition.  No one objected to the State of New York administering a test by which their children could qualify fornancial grants and scholarships for college, and that is the essence of the mistake that the Obama administration is making with the common core.  The federal government shouldn't be rewarding the states for participating.  It should be rewarding the children for doing so, and that would serve two purposes.

First, by setting a federal--essentially universal--standard for high school graduates to meet if they want to be rewarded, we induce, not compel, satisfaction of that standard, and who can complain about that.  Second, in this era in which college costs the figurative arm and a leg, we are financially crippling tens of millions of young people with debt that will follow them for decades in many cases because it often amounts to a six figure burden.  By providing merit grants to student regardless of income or factors other than the sheer mastery of standard skills that are availing to anyone when he goes to apply for a job; we enhance the competency of our workforce, ease the financial burden that higher education or trade school represents, and we put more spendable money into the economy, which all federal expenditures accomplishes.  That is what we should have instead of what we call the common core.  We should have a merit system that embodies not only a set of criteria by which to measure educational success, but a way in which to enable the best, brightest and most skilled to go on with their educations and to contribute that much more not only to their own families, but to the nation as it competes in the world of commerce around the world.  It's simple really, so why didn't anyone think of it?  Oh yeah, they did...fifty years ago.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This is what's wrong with the CBO (Congressional Budget Office)...or at least one of the things.  I've mentioned before that it is compelled to base its reports on certain agreed upon accounting rules that may or may not be rational depending upon the occasion and your political orientation.  But also, any congressman can ask for a report from the CBO on legislative considerations.  In the instance that elicited this letter, someone asked what the increase to $10.10 in the minimum wage would mean in dollar terms for business and the government.  The report came back saying that it would cost business $15 billion, and government $1 billion.  Of course, if you do not consider the significance of those figures carefully, they support the conservative, generally Republican opposition to the increase.  After all, the Republicans have been saying since President Obama first publicized the administrations desire to see the minimum wage increased that such an increase would result in fewer jobs, which would be bad for the unemployed...at least by implication.  But that surmise begs all kinds of questions, which the report of the CBO doesn't.  It gets reported on the news dutifully, and it stands alone...without reproach, scrutiny or interpretive commentary.  It is just news, and thus, is prima facie credible.  But does it really mean just what the Republicans say, or is there more to it...and who is asking that question.  The answer to the latter is no one so far.  But as to the former, it doesn't mean what the Republicans would like it to mean.  It doesn't mean that business will be impaired in its altruistic attempt to create the jobs that we all need (feel free to infer cynicism in that remark).  It doesn't mean that consumers will pay a price without any off-setting or greater gain.  It doesn't mean that there will be fewer jobs in the long run, but if you listen to the Republicans over the next few days, I'll bet that that is what you will hear; another job killing Democratic initiative, they will say.  Booshwah.

In Seattle, the city has passed a $15 per hour minimum wage, after a recount by just 77 votes, but it did pass.  However, Alaska Airlines, which has a terminal at Seattle's airport, went to court to get a stay of execution regarding the law because, it claims, no municipality can impose a regulation on the companies that do business at its airport.  As a consequence, the referendum's mandated wage rate increase has been enjoined for the present while the federal court ponders the issue...presumably up to the Supreme Court...in other words, for a long time.  That in turn has led to discussion of the issue in the media, including the motivations of Alaska Airlines.  It turns out that the company made a $500 million profit last year, which raises the question of what role that wage increase would play in Alaska Airline's finances, if it would play any significant role at all.  There are four thousand employees of Alaska Airlines at the airport indirectly in the form of baggage handlers and the like who are employed by a contractor that does all that work for all the airlines that have terminals there.  Thus, Alaska Airlines would pay another company the difference in a new contract between them, not the employees themselves directly, and the difference in cost to Alaska Airlines and all the other companies that rely on this particular contractor would be about $10.4 million; that's .02% of Alaska Airlines profits if it were going to bare the entire financial burden itself.  But none-the-less, the company complains, as all conservatives do, that the higher wage will result in fewer employees to do the work because they will create fewer jobs.  But this is a classic case of the flaw in that logic.  If the amount of work remains the same and someone has to do it, that same amount of work has to be paid for one way or the other.  And if it has to be done by fewer employees, they will have to work more hours, some of which will have to be paid at overtime rates: time and a half.  For a $10 per hour worker, which is what the workers get paid now, that would amount to the same financial burden for the additional hours.  The savings might be minimal, but how much less than .02% could they be.

At the same time, there would be $10.4 million spent in the Seattle area by wage earners, which would create more jobs if Alaska Airlines just paid the increased wage along with all the other airlines who would share the financial burden.  That increase in commerce might well create only minimally more air travel out of Seattle's airport, but it would certainly would augment the economy of the area for the benefit of all...and as I am saying...with almost immeasurably small consequences for Alaska Airlines.  It probably doesn't amount to what the CEO gets in the form of a bonus every year, but I guaranty you that those 4,000 employees do a lot more work for the benefit of the company.

So, as in the case of Obamacare, which is suddenly being referred to as the ACA (Affordable Care Act) now that it looks like it is going to succeed after all, the discussion of the CBO's reports on the subject have to be considered in perspective.  The answer isn't always as simple as a total national dollar amount for one facet of the issue.  It's not that the CBO isn't to be trusted.  It is purportedly non-partisan.  But when the accounting rules by which it operates are skewed toward supporting a particular doctrine--the supply side theory in this case--the answer doesn't matter as much as the question does, and in this case, the query sent to the CBO was intended to prove a point, not to answer a legitimate question.

Your friend,

Mike  

Dear America,

The news hasn't changed much over the past five or six weeks, and that means that we continue on our path toward self-destructive crisis and strife.  Russia sits next to Ukraine like a cat next to a bird cage just waiting for everyone to look away for a moment.  A disappeared airplane with two hundred thirty people aboard continues to be unaccounted for, and the prospect of accounting for it recedes as time passes.  And of course there's Syria, in which the public interest has faded with our collective attention span.  There are still faint calls for American and/or international intervention such as that which the Jordanians have recently tentatively entered upon, but overall, it seems that the world has realized that radical Islam is the risk that anti-authoritarian rebellion invites us to take,  We've seen it in Libya, Egypt, Syria and quite possibly in Tunisia where the Arab Spring started with the solitary self-immolation of a man who had had enough.  What it portends for the world is that the "enemy" we have all been searching for since the end of the cold war is not quite as well defined as the "communist threat" that used to be our international adversary.  But we have ceased to recognize that these particular killings were a relatively minor manifestation of a far larger...indeed profound problem.  We face an implacable form of righteousness that insists on dominating everyone, not being satisfied with self-control as a path to heaven.  The Jihadist form of Islam is not interested in conciliation, much less reconciliation with the rest of the world.  Reactionary Islam seeks to create a universal caliphate that controls the life of man, not just of men.  It is where Christianity was six to eight hundred years ago, which is understandable since it has taken Christians six to eight hundred years to get over the need to dominate the world.  We should have learned all this from bin Ladin and Afghanistan, where congressman Charlie Wilson took it upon himself to help arm Osama's Mujahadin, which in turn emboldened them to form an international movement that has killed hundreds of us with terrorism.  President Obama seems to have learned that it does us no good to support anyone in the Arab world at this time if what he seeks is change.

And speaking of reactionary Islam, the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing is this week, and we continue to celebrate it as if the entire population of Boston had been injured in the attack and the fact that it has survived is some kind of heroic miracle.  The phrase "Boston Strong" is getting on the nerves of even some Bostonians, and many of us wonder why there wasn't an "Oklahoma City Strong" or a "New York Strong" campaign when each of those cities lost hundreds more people in a single attack than Boston did.  It is almost as if the City of Boston is a monolithic entity and it is celebrating itself while never considering the possibility that this whole campaign was nothing but a money-maker--like the "America Strong" feature on Diane Sawyer's ABC Nightly News--devised by some smart merchandisers to capitalize on the tendency toward narcissism and pride that we have not only developed, but now cultivate as a nation.  But while this celebration of the martyrdom of not just the victims, but of the population at large goes on, no one contemplates the underlying issue, which is that as time passes, not only do we see more and more instances of mass murder and mayhem, we seen those with the delusion that only they are right becoming more and more willing to turn to it in order to make their points.  That is what Boston should be talking about rather than relishing its role as "The Hub."  That's what Boston is called...The Hub.  People outside Boston think that it refers to the hub of New England, but having lived there once, I can tell you that it refers to the universe, nothing as limited as a geographical region on earth.  Just ask any Bostonian.

And while this all goes on in the rest of the world, there are the Republicans continuing to empty and reload their foot-shooting pistol like there was no tomorrow, which, if the news is any indication, there may not be.  Conservatives celebrate themselves by harkening to the siren call of blatherskites like Ted Cruz, who insists that they should all have their two hands tattooed, one with the word growth and the other with the word opportunity, as if those two concepts are the answer to all our problems.  It's more of that old, "let business be business" boosterism that seeks to let the rich get richer while they cheer from the sidelines as the rest of us do the work that makes them, and keeps them rich.  Don't increase taxes on the rich because they support us all, and don't regulate their businesses even though they pollute our drinking water and our air.  The whining about regulation from conservatives like Cruz and Rand Paul continues without so much as a nod to the chemical spills in West Virginia and North Carolina by coal related businesses that caused people to suffer all kinds of symptoms, made their drinking water non-potable, and ruined a couple of rivers for the indeterminate future.  But Paul thinks that everyone should be free to do those things as a matter of right in a free country, and so does Cruz, not to mention Donald Trump, who has somehow deluded himself into thinking that he is smart and has something useful to offer us all in the way of political and moral wisdom.  These are the people whom the Conservative movement wants to lead us into the future, which might well look much like the beginning of the last century...or China today.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The positivism of the conservative movement in this country is amazing for its constancy.  Its fealty to absolutist dogma never fails, and it is never questioned, yet all the while conservatives decry any effort to impose socially conscious duties on them--health insurance reform comes immediately to mind--by the very government that they seek to imbue with the power to rule over all those who disagree with them.  And there are two specific examples of what I mean in the news this week.

First, the right to marry for homosexuals is being reconsidered by the federal appeals court in Colorado relative to a referendum passed in Utah intended to ban same-sex marriage, and a similar ban in Oklahoma will be considered by the same court next week.  In the Utah case, a federal court declared the same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, and the state of Utah appealed.  The law with regard to constitutionality is quite complex, and the arguments in court reflect that, but it comes down to whether the State of Utah has what is called "a compelling interest" in curtailing the rights of the group affected by the curtailment, and whether the type of curtailment of rights chosen by the state was necessary as it was the only effective way to accomplish its compelling purpose.  Put simply, the state must demonstrate that the well-being of the people of Utah requires that same-sex marriage be banned and that banning it is the only way to preserve that aspect of the public's well-being: they need to do it and this is the only way.  That burden of proof requires very complex social science data and philosophical and moral considerations, and that is what is being argued now.  Thus, the central consideration will not be whether homosexuals have the right to marry each other, but whether their doing so is harmful to the rest of us.  That is why these efforts to ban same-sex marriage have not succeeded in federal court so far; the courts have essentially decided that whether homosexuals marry each other is no one else's business.  But the positivistic conservative movement continues to assert that the public is harmed by what homosexuals do in public, having given up on the futile effort to prevent what they do in private, and the courts keep telling them to mind their own business.  And the righteousness of that position is not in question.  The Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was intended to impede same-sex marriage on the federal level by barring same sex spouses from receiving any kind of federal recognition as beneficiaries under federal programs or from benefiting from federal law protecting marriage in general.  The Court said that homosexual spouses had the same standing as heterosexual ones and thus could not be deprived of the equal protection of the law and the rights and privileges that it provides.  That should have been the end of it, but conservatives persist in doggedly pursuing their sanctimonious ends, and in this case, I believe that they will fail.

The other instance of conservative sanctimony in the news is the budget passed--gratuitously, I might add--by the Republican controlled House of Representatives under the aegis of Paul Ryan, the House Budget Director.  It's essentially the same budget he got passed in The House each of the past two years, although this time without the unanimity of his party as eleven Republicans are reported to have voted against it.  Like each of its predecessors, this budget will languish, or even be voted down in The Senate, and everyone knows that, but there are elections coming up in seven months, and the Republicans are stating their national platform with this budget, and that platform never changes.  They want to cut the food stamps program, increase defense spending and lower the taxes for those in the top tax bracket, and in the past, that has been a relatively successful position on the local level since the "gerrymandering" enabled by the last census.  The conservatism of conservative house districts has been solidified conservative Republican state legislatures, and conservative doctrine prevails in those homogeneously conservative districts, just as liberal philosophy prevails in homogeneously liberal districts created by Democrats when they had control of state legislatures at census time.  And right now, there are more uniformly conservative districts than there are liberal ones, but when you take a vote statewide, as we do when we elect senators, those concentrations of support become meaningless as the state population at large elects a senator, and so far, that has meant that more Democrats prevailed than did Republicans, and when it comes to budgets, it is party lines that matter, not philosophical considerations.  The Republicans can pass a budget in The House, but as they know, the Democrats can prevent it from becoming law in The Senate.

So, with the coming elections in mind, the Republicans, conservatives in particular, are showing their hand to the American public, and conservatives in general are scrambling to augment their influence by litigating their way to control of the American ethos.  It's all part and parcel with the effort to control each of us so that we conform to evangelical mores while pretending to defend civil liberty and social consciousness.  The question is this.  Will the American people vote for hypocrisy or not; that is the issue in politics these days.  What the Democrats need to do now is point that out.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The first good news of the war there came out of Afghanistan this past weekend.  After thirteen years of American investment of blood and a trillion dollars...after thirteen years of watching the American mission that ostensibly justified that expenditure of life and treasure in what ever- increasingly seemed a futile and misguided effort to bring modernity and civility to a nation that had never known it, a glimmer of the twenty first century shone through thru the blood and tears. The Afghan people went to the polls in the millions to vote in defiance of vile threats from a willing and brutal cult that takes its inspiration from life as it was lived in the seventh century.  Despite the threats of the Taliban and the efforts to influence the outcome of a venal, egotistical president, the populace went to the poles in record numbers not only to vote in defiance of the threats of the Taliban, but also in a manner contrary to the wishes of the only "democratically elected" president they have ever known.  While there have been some accusation of vote fraud, they have been few and minor compared to the last election, and the two candidates who seem to be destined to come out of it with substantial leads over the other candidates do not include the kleptocratic president's hand picked successor.  Those two candidates, one of them an outspoken critic of the incumbent, will vie in a run-off election to choose the next president, and regardless of who wins that run-off, this election is a victory for the Afghan people and a defeat for the inhumanly brutal theocratic autocracy that governed when the United States, having had its demand for the head of Osama bin Laden in 2001 ignored, invaded.  Over the past decade and more, the mission that started it all--the capture of bin Laden--faded into oblivion and our purpose in being across the world in a place that didn't seem to welcome us in any fashion became nebulous at best.  The Bush administration was big on "nation building," but while democracy may have been the ostensible form of the governance we installed in Afghanistan, the country remained little more than a feudal society ruled by war lords and corrupt bureaucrats affecting western airs.  Afghan President Karzai's brother was indicted for massive bank fraud, only to have the investigation of his thievery openly quashed by the unapologetic president.  Billions of dollars have disappeared into a system of bribery and outright theft that has passed for the Afghan government, and now, President Hamid Karzai has taken to condemning the American war effort for the collateral damage its war effort has caused, including the tragic loss of civilian Afghan lives, as if the Americans who virtually ceded his office to him were the progenitors of the misfortune that the war has become.   The lives lost were beginning to look like a perverse waste just a week ago as Karzai's new palatial estate neared completion just next door to the current presidential palace...an overt reminder that Karzai intended to function with impunity as the father of the country when his successor took office.

But it appears now that the status quo will not prevail after the election is complete.  At least one of the candidates in the run-off to come--there will be a run-off unless one of them wins more than 50% of the vote--was an open adversary of forces maintaining that corrupt state of affairs, and the effect of the Taliban's imprecations on the Afghan people seems to be on the wane.  Those two phenomena have been the missing ingredients in the effort to bring Afghanistan into the twenty-first century politically and socially, but the Afghan people seem now to have said "enough" to both the oppression of an atavistic theocracy and the greed of the first generation of Afghan erstwhile democrats.  It is the willingness of the people of any nation to accept less than civil liberty that makes repression possible, and the Afghan people have committed to shrugging off that kind of apathy...that understandable submission to fear.  It is wholly commendable, and the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to all of those who went to the polls and voted...especially the women, who have been subjected to attempted assassination for wanting to go to school and "honor killing" when they have happened to fall in love with someone from the wrong village.  The Afghan people are still a long way from the modernity that passes for evolution in the rest of the world, but they have taken a giant step forward, and they are to be commended for both their courage and their resolve.  The next steps will be no less of a slog, but it seems at least plausible that the people of Afghanistan will take them, and that is not a good thing just for them.

Thousands of American lives have been lost and mangled in the transmogrified search for Osama bin Laden.  Bin Laden has been found and dispatched, but the residuum of the mission, to the extent that it was ever defined, was the creation of a modern, democratic nation in the stead of the brutal theocracy constituted by the rule of the Taliban, which continues to fight the prospect of the war's intended outcome with the same indiscriminate inhumanity that led to its decision to harbor the murderer of a few thousand American civilians on September 11, 2001.  The "War on Terror" was created in response, and instead of labeling the al Qaeda perpetrators as the criminal deviants that they were, their cause, and the Taliban's for that matter, were elevated to those of a wartime enemy nation...a mistake in my opinion in both the political and the moral sense.  But be that as it may, thousands of Americans have lost their lives in the fray and it was beginning to look like it was all for naught.  The war in Iraq seems to have left behind a simmering battle between religious sects that shows no sign of abatement...much less resolution...this century, and until last weekend, it appeared that once American troops departed at the end of this year, Afghanistan would recede from incipient modern democracy and revert to the agglomeration of fiefdoms that it was not so long ago.  All we would have been left with was the question of why we bothered to expend so much in so futile a cause.  But now, that question may be obviated by the election results in Afghanistan, and for that, we can all be thankful if it materializes into the advancement of Afghan society in what now portends to be a substantial way.  Perhaps now all of the dead, including our own, can rest in peace after all.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

So here we are just seven months or so from the next election and the Republicans are still banking on the strategy that they have pursued for the past six years: undermine the opposition but undertake no new initiatives.  Even relatively civil Republicans like Senator Lyndsey Graham of South Carolina persist, Graham just this week again calling for the complete repeal of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) because it is a "monstrosity" that must be torn down completely.  And on the minimum wage, a conservative congressman was heard to say that it was "never meant to be a living wage." The minimum wage was meant just to be a start so that "we" can bring the worker along and increase his wage as he evolves into a better worker.  Of course, he never mentioned how that would happen or when for the average minimum wage earner, nor did he address the question of why even those who are just starting out in the workforce aren't entitled to a wage that allows them to shelter themselves and enjoy adequate nutrition and healthcare.  And while all this is being said by conservative Republicans, even conservative media commentators like Jenna Lee of Fox News are pressing them for better answers.  When Graham appeared on her show, Lee asked Graham why the Republicans haven't advanced a preferable alternative to Obamacare, and Graham dodged the question rather than answering it.  When she persisted, intimating that perhaps the continuing opposition to the ACA was just a political strategy aimed at the November elections, he expressed the hope that the Republicans would come up with something...that it would be good for the party to do so...then reiterating his mantra about tearing it down to start all over again.  In fact, there is nothing new about the conservative press expressing doubt about the Republican strategy.  During the 2012 election cycle, when Chris Wallace, the erstwhile mainstream television journalist who made the move to Fox like several of his formerly credible colleagues have, confronted a Tea Party candidate for congress when he claimed that he and his Tea Party comrades were going to repeal the ACA.  Wallace flatly confronted the candidate by saying, "You know that's not going to happen."

I remember saying a couple of years ago what I said on Tuesday about the risk involved in harping on a program that had the prospect of providing to the American people something that has been in the political offing since Teddy Roosevelt was president...a thing that the majority of Americans have always wanted.  Now that the Democratic plan seems to be enjoying at least a modicum of success in for providing it, you would think that conservatives, Republicans in particular but Democratic "Blue Dogs" as well, might consider taking credit; after all, health insurance reform was their preferred alternative when the Clinton administration was investigating the possibilities for health care reform focusing on a single payer system.  Or they could take the tack that the Democratic mainstream seems to be taking.  Their rational approach to dealing with their apprehension about the popular concerns regarding the ACA is to say it is a start, but we need to fix it, and we will.  The Republicans could join in that effort and largely undermine it as a Democratic strategy, showing themselves to be not only responsible but non-partisan when the welfare of the American people is at stake, but there isn't much chance of that.  It has always been the Republican preference to discredit the opposition, in other words to take the ad hominem approach by criticizing the opposition for being the opposition rather than offering the voters a critical counter-argument and an alternative position.  And negative campaigning has been rather successful despite the general revulsion for it expressed by American voters, and maybe the Republicans are still right about the effectuality of their preferred political technique.  Maybe the American people say they don't like negative campaigning but they are swayed by it none-the-less.  And I must admit, the continuous Republican repetition of their anti-ACA polemics has produced its desired effect.  People have largely acceded to the conservative exhortation to despise the ACA, even if they don't have either a reason or evidence to justify doing so, but now, there are about 18 million people who are covered either by insurance of Medicaid because of the ACA, and it will be difficult to keep them in the fold.  The success of the federal website in meeting administration goals is an open gate, and the sheep are bound to wander off now.  And 18 million is a lot of votes to lose when you are trying to take over the government.

No matter how staunch conservatives like Graham, Boehner and House Majority Leader Cantor are in their defending the conservative orthodoxy on Obamacare, as they like to call it, the ACA seems to be here to stay, at least until there is enough popular pressure for a single payer system like that extant in the rest of the thirty most industrialized, modern countries in the world...and the American people both know it and want it that way.   Changes in the law are the way to go, and it isn't just liberal talk show hosts and President Obama who are saying so.  So, it will be interesting to see if the conservative contingent in our government find a way to sidle over to the ever more approved proposition that improvement of the law is the course to take, not its repeal.  But if they wait too long, it will look like sheepishness, and by that time, I think the American people will have had enough of sheep...both being them and following them.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The deadline for enrolling for insurance on the federal and state healthcare exchanges came and went last night, albeit with an extension for whoever started the process prior to the expiration of the enrollment period.  The total number of enrollees after six months of open enrollment is projected to be about seven million...just what the administration predicted before it became apparent that the website on which most people were expected to sign up for insurance was woefully inadequate.  Yet, despite what looks like a successful effort to redeem both the program and the website, the Republicans are still trying to poison the public perception of the ACA (Affordable Care Act), continuing to register the same hyperbole with the news media as if it hasn't occurred to them that their may be seven million people out there whose experience will put the lie to the Republican propaganda program.  Even with the prospect of that seven million people now being satisfied with the end result of the Obama administration's roll out of what the Republicans have reveled in calling "Obamacare," the Republicans are doubling down on their strategy of defaming President Obama and the ACA, running the risk that seven million people will possibly be calling them liars for doing so and casting their votes accordingly, or as Shakespeare might have put it, running the risk of being hoist by their own petard.

Add to that the fact that while they have continuously called for the repeal of the entire plan, over the four years since it was passed the Republicans haven't made a single proposal to replace it while the American people have clearly stated a preference for something rather than nothing when it comes to healthcare reform.  The voters may favor altering the ACA to make it more effective, but they are in no way in favor of throwing it away and reverting to the past.  Still, the Republicans have insisted on extending the battle even though they are armed with not so much as an idea at this point, which seems a rather imprudent strategy right now.  They would be better served by initiating a cohesive set of revisions to the ACA, or perhaps proposing a comprehensive alternative to the program if they really do have the grand design that they have been hinting at for four years, but they have proffered neither.  It's hard to know what they're thinking, or if they are thinking rather than just mustering for a battle they should not be able to win based on political calculation rather than pursuit of the common good for the American people.  It's a big risk in that if the voters see all this for what it is and that seven million votes align themselves against Republican candidates, it could be twenty years or more before the Republicans have any power in Washington; it could easily take that long for them to regain the trust of the public.  It's an all or nothing proposition, and given the most recent iterations of their scorched earth politics--debt ceiling arguments resulting in closing government offices down to the consternation and incitement of voters on both ends of the political spectrum and more recently, withholding unemployment benefits from people who have been unemployed for six months or more--it doesn't look like a sound choice.  But I say, if they want to fall on their collective sword, let them.

Meanwhile, Democrats are staking out the moral high ground with a new strategy that the Republicans should have been monopolizing all this time: proposing to fix the ACA rather than repeal it.  There is ever increasing evidence that the American people like the features of the ACA of which they have already taken advantage: keeping their children under 26 years old on their plans, access to insurance even when they have preexisting conditions, and now affordable health insurance, and subsidies for most of those who need them.  If the stories about people losing desirable coverage because insurers stopped offering it are anything but apocryphal, they are at best few in number, and they cannot make up for the millions for whom the ACA has proven its worth in more ways than one, so the number of votes the Republicans can garner by pointing to those few cases is likely to be very few...certainly not enough to offset 7 million going the other way.  And now, though The Senate has passed the unemployment insurance extension, those who cover Washington are suggesting that it cannot get through John Boehner's Republican controlled House of Representatives.  That's another one and a half million voters who are pissed off at the Republicans this November.

With all that said, I thought the Republicans would lose on the bet they placed in 2010 but I was wrong, as I was in 2012 when they lost ground, but not as much as I thought they would.  It is difficult to assess the mood of the electorate, especially seven months in advance, but like most progressives, I am cautiously optimistic.  Republican fortunes did take a downward turn in 2012, and though the federal healthcare website was a disaster at the outset, it has recovered due to diligent effort by The Administration, and enough people have seen positive results from it that it should be a positive for the Democrats...even if only a marginal one.  Be that as it may, it is fruitless to continue projecting what the American people will do in November 2014.  Between the fact that a lot can change before then and the impression that the Republicans are starting to give that they are really only whistling in the dark, I'm optimistic.  I really am.

Your friend,

Mike