June 2014 Archives

Dear America,

Robert McDonald, former CEO of Proctor & Gamble, has been nominated by President Obama to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  McDonald was CEO at Proctor & Gamble from 2009 to 2013 when he ostensibly retired after only five years on the job, but his replacement by A.G. Lafley, the CEO that McDonald replaced, begs the question of why McDonald "retired." at this time.  There isn't much information on that topic...at least not that I could find, but if I were President Obama, I think I would have wanted to know more about the circumstances of McDonald's departure from the executive leadership of a company that fell about ten places on the Forbes 500 list.  Some analysts have been unimpressed by McDonald's performance during a time when other corporations big and small have benefited disproportionately relative to the benefit derived by the average person from the recent purported recovery from the great financial crisis of 2008, which is when McDonald took over at P&G.  That all sounds like business news rather than political commentary, but it reminds me of the ascent of Bill Daley to the position of White House Chief of Staff, where he lasted just about a year before being quietly replaced ostensibly so that he could do other things, which is often a euphemism for anything but what he was doing at the White House.  The rationale for hiring Daley was that, being the son of the former mayor of Chicago, and the brother of the present one...the Richards...and a former high level executive at Goldman Sachs in the bargain, he had connections that would enable him to work congress over and get it to move more in President Obama's direction.  But that strategy yielded nothing in congress, and it would seem that other staff at The White House were none-too-pleased with him either.  So now, in continuation of that trend to turn to business to solve problems, presumably because current consensus among those with power--in other words the American, money-is-power oligarchy--is that only business men know how to manage despite the mess that business has created in our economy.  Then there was The President's advocacy of Larry Summers--Summers advised President Clinton to sign the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and thought that there was too much regulation of the financial sector that brought the world to its economic knees--for the position of Chairman of the Federal Reserve, which is the agency that controls the nation's monetary policy...a contributor to both the financial crisis of the past six years and the dubious nature of the solution (the bank "bailout") to the crisis that we are just now coming out of.  Summers is a financial industry veteran, and as a voice that has whichever president's ear nothing better than a shill for big finance, and now comes another big business would-be sage.  But what is the special gift that McDonald, unlike the other businessmen who were selected by presidents to save us all, brings to the task of rectifying the problems at the VA I wonder.

Maybe we'll hear more about that when the confirmation hearings occur, but this trend toward turning to business leadership...mostly CEO's who have managed to enrich themselves to the point of obscenity by sitting behind big desks and making a few decisions a week...is worrisome, especially since it is being continued in the Obama administration, and that is so for two reasons.  First, I don't recall any cases of "top" corporate executives fixing any social problems, with the possible exception of Michael Bloomberg, who might well have been a good choice to run the Veterans Administration for a year or two.  He did a pretty good job with another large institution, New York City, and he knows about business too, but from the critical side rather than from the narcissistic, self-aggrandizing corporate look-at-my-bio perspective.  But McDonald looks for all the world like a guy who failed when he finally rose to the top of a major corporation after working his way up for twenty or thirty years.  He looks like a poster child for the old Peter Principle: people rise to the level of their incompetence, which looks for all the world like what Bob McDonald did.  That principle stood for the proposition that promotion should not be based on performance in one's current position but rather on one's competency to perform the duties of the new, presumably higher position.  And while McDonald may have been terrific at most, or even all of the lower level positions he filled at P&G, it would seem that he didn't do what his board of directors and shareholders expected of him in the CEO position.  So now, what can be expected of him at the even higher level--the position of Secretary of any department in The President's cabinet is arguably higher than that of any CEO other than The President himself--of Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  I'm afraid that it will be the Peter Principle squared, that is, he is now going to be two levels above his last level of competency.

In the final analysis, the window dressing--McDonald is a West Point graduate who stayed in the Army just long enough to reach the rank of captain from his starting rank of lieutenant...a pretty undistinguished rate of progress...before going to P&G to start his inexorable climb to the top based on who knows what--means nothing, though in McDonald's case it certainly seems like a counter-indicator of success at the level he is going to be functioning on rather than a portent of a stellar future, which brings me to the second reason for my dismay over McDonald's nomination.  I thought I voted for a president...twice...who was not in the thrall of the almighty buck worshipers in this country.  I thought he believed in personal qualities rather than wealth as an indicator of human value.  I thought he had some sense.  In my opinion, the only business mogul worthy of consideration for the VA Secretary-ship is Bloomberg, and other than him, I think that other fields are the places to plumb for a new administrator for the VA.  Try academe.  Try healthcare administration.  Try the army again.  Ask Bill Clinton.  But for goodness sake, stay away from business.  There's nothing in it for the rest of us.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

There is a folksy expression for unfortunate people: they can't win for losing.  It means that even in a contest to determine the worst loser, they can't win.  That is the position that our president finds himself in now.  And it isn't all because the Republicans have been out to sabotage his presidency from the beginning.  They have even admitted it over and over again, but for some reason, the voters don't seem to hold that against them.  But even with that unfathomable anomaly in tow, The President hasn't done himself any favors in at least one way.  The problem in Iraq is an example.  He deliberated for a bit too long, but that's what we need in this country as opposed to someone like John McCain who's answer to every foreign problem is military intervention of some kind...the Iraq problem not being an exception.  So it wasn't that aspect of the way in which The President chose to act that is the problem.  The problem is that when he made his decision, he announced it in the press room at the White House in the middle of the day.  I don't remember the last time President Obama had a press conference at night when a voter might actually see it, and after all, isn't that the point.  I have registered this plaint before, but obviously, President Obama doesn't read this blog.  Or perhaps he just doesn't want the American people to see and hear his position statements first hand, I don't know.  But in my opinion, the slump in his approval among the American people is a function of his being undermined constantly by the Republican Party, and by his diffidence when it comes to speaking to his people first hand rather than letting everything he says be filtered through the major news casts every night.  Film at eleven is no substitute for direct communication, and as a politician, Mr. Obama should know that.  Here's an example of how that kind of camera-shyness affects the electoral process.

Last weekend I was at my brother-in-law's house where he was having a pig roast in honor of his daughter's high school graduation.  During the festivities I sat down next to one of his neighbors who always comes to these events and we began to talk, waxing more political as we went.  The neighbor complained about having to pay taxes to support all those people who don't want to work.  He noted that there are jobs going unfilled and that the unemployed could have them if they would just relocate...if they wanted to work...but they just sit at home and collect.  That is the Republican-conservative trope today; the unemployed are just lazy.  Well, there is a limit as to how political you want a discussion to get when you are talking to your brother-in-law's neighbor and you are going to ride home in the same car as your borther-in-law's sister, not to mention get into the same bed with her later on, so I kept my responses very low key.  But not two nights later I saw a news item about a program that prepares high school kids to work in business, and in the course of that piece it was mentioned that there are only a million of those jobs that are going begging while there are ten million unemployed.  And it has occurred to me also that relocation isn't a good alternative to jobs in Seattle going begging when there are unemployed people in Connecticut who are unemployed.  One parent goes to Seattle to get that job and the other wants to go with him, not to mention the children.  And if the employed parent does so, then he or she is unemployed in Seattle instead of Connecticut even though his or her spouse is no longer unemployed in Connecticut but is rather employed in Seattle.  And what about the house they had to sell.  Can they get a mortgage in Seattle when only one of them is still working, and can they wait for their house to sell when there is a glut of existing housing on the market back where they came from.  It is a concatenation of circumstances that every unemployed person faces...one thing after another.  Yet Republicans don't even acknowledge the complexity of unemployment and relocation in response to it, and no one calls them on it.

The next time I sit down with my brother-in-law's neighbor, I am going to try to raise those points in a cordial manner so that he understands that, contrary to the opinion that he expressed to my wife, he isn't likely to change my party affiliation to Republican by repeating the same old canards that have left President Obama and the Democrats in this deep hole in which they now find themselves.  But my brother-in-law's neighbor is hardly the point.  The point is that I have to make these arguments for his benefit because our leader-in-chief isn't doing it.  I'd rather be in the position of sitting across from the guy and just smiling at the folly of his thoughts in the knowledge that my president will disabuse him of his erroneous notions any minute now, but I can't get that comfortable because there is no assurance, and maybe not even a likelihood that President Obama will defend himself...and me.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Two things.

First, President Obama used the term ISIL to refer to the reactionary Sunni Islamist army that is taking over parts of Syria and Iraq.  There are some variations on the element of that acronym, but the most common one used in English is Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  That fact is significant because it is a reflection of the basic misconception that The West has regarding the region in which all this, and the war in Iraq as well as everything that has happened there since shortly after World War I, has occurred.  The term Levant is somewhat vague in terms of what it comprises, but in general, it is the long used name for the region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean that we used to call the Near East, plus or minus some territory depending on who is using either term.  And just like The Balkans, where Bosnia and Herzegovina--you remember them from the nineties--are located along with Croatia and Serbia, all of which went to war primarily over the socio-religious divide between Christians and Muslims, there is a deep religious schism that prevails over all other social and political considerations in The Levant.  It isn't something that we can empathize over because it isn't in our recent experience, though if there is anyone who remembers the Spanish Inquisition first hand out there, he or she may be the exception.  There is nothing that runs deeper in a culture than religion, which is largely because religion is based on the belief that there is a being out there somewhere who controls everything, and what could be more important than determining what he likes.  In the case of ISIL, they have a very definite idea on that issue, and they believe in it strongly enough that they think everyone else, at least everyone else in The Levant, should agree with them, like it or not.  ISIL isn't a political entity anymore than the crusaders were.  It is a fanatical wave of violent proselytizers who won't take no for an answer.  So, while John McCain and John Boehner continue to posture for political gain, President Obama has it right when he talks about ISIL rather than ISIS, and what he is now trying to do--staunch the Iraqi losses to ISIL while he maneuvers the Iraqis into political reform that is more inclusive in terms of religious sects, thus co-opting those in the country who would be naturally aligned with ISIL--is consistent with that understanding.

Second, David Brooks wrote about this in his New York Times opinion piece today, and while it should be obvious to our politicians in that they have been through this before in other places--the aforementioned Balkans being one of them--it isn't.  These sectarian conflicts are all the same in one respect: if you leave the combatants to their own devices, they will never reconcile their differences, so the only way to quell the conflict between them is to make them tolerate each other.  There are ways to do that, like the Dayton Accord that ended the fighting in The Balkans during the Clinton administration.  But there are other ways too.  The don't include the way in which the British, under the aegis of the entire international community, did it in the 1920's when Iraq was arbitrarily created in its modern configuration.  The vying for power and the violence will never end if you just tell sectarians that they have to live together.  They either have to agree to it as in the case of the Balkans--and that doesn't always hold up--or you have to impose mutual tolerance on them through the control of an autocrat, which is where Saddam Hussein came in in Iraq, and where Kagame, the Rwandan dictator comes in in Rwanda today, Brooks observes.  In his scheme of things, such autocrats can emerge over time through kleptocracy to benevolence, probably next to oligarchy and ultimately to democracy...if we are all lucky.  But in the interim, these autocrats are indispensable, as Hussein was despite the fact that he was a bad person and a brutal dictator.  There were many peremptory killings during his regime, often simply because he didn't like some people or didn't trust them, and he seems to have been merciless in administering his form of governance, but there was no chaos, and life was predictable.  He stole billions from his people, but my impression is that the standard of living was better than the prospect for the present seems to be.  And he performed an essential function: pacification.  Somehow, The Levant has to be pacified, and President Obama is trying to lead all of the parties, and the world, to the first alternative, which is mutual tolerance.  The consensus seems to be that the best option for that kind of outcome is partitioning of Iraq into its natural Levantine components--Shiite southern Iraq, Sunni central Iraq and a Kurdish entity in the north of the country--all of which would be confederated in a single nation of Iraq.  That is the best prospect for a peaceful region of the Levant, and it is eminently reasonable as well.  Those political entities are as close as the indigenous population can get politically to their natural affiliations, and it is the outcome that best portends a kind of stasis in the region, which benefits us all.

So, the next time some political hack tries to impugn President Obama for inertia, indecision or diffidence in his response to the crisis in Iraq, remember what he is dealing with.  And consider the fact that that very situation has been dealt with before in other regions and countries...just the way he is dealing with it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Sorry I'm late, but what I wanted to write to you yesterday about was Hillary Clinton's "Town Hall" meeting on CNN, and it didn't go on until 5:00 in the afternoon.  It was interesting too.  It seems that Clinton has learned to control her wicked witch persona and project some humility and vulnerability.  And while I never thought she was that smart--certainly not as smart as her husband--she handled herself pretty well.  Maybe she's smarter than I thought.  And as for aplomb, she showed some yesterday, though there wasn't really a challenge of any significance, such as might have penetrated her public persona.  All in all, it was a journeyman's performance, and it was on national television.  Considered along with her appearances before the Republican lynch mob in congress, it looks like she's ready.  She's backed off her front runner's egotism and become more thoughtful, which makes her look less like an ambitious politician and more like a national figure who's goal really is public service, but there was something missing.

I'm from the era when presidents were like royalty in that they were always addressed with respect, and in return for that deference, they gave a sense of paternal competence--there still hasn't been an opportunity for a president to express maternal competence...yet.  My first vivid recollection of a president facing the press, for example, was when John F. Kennedy held a press conference some time before the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Life was pretty good then, but as in all political eras, he had his critics, and they always had a voice in the press, which is as it should be.  But when they confronted Kennedy with a question about something controversial, it was abundantly clear who had the power in the room.  He might give an answer that the questioner didn't like, but it was Kennedy's answer, and that was pretty much that.  And of course in recent memory, there was Hillary's husband, Bill.  His style was more intellectual in that he didn't wear his gravitas and the gravity of his office like a cloak of impunity.  Clinton's style was to be better armed than those who were questioning him.  I never saw him asked a question to which he didn't have a good answer...a credible answer.  He knew every statistic that was relevant to every major issue, and he had thought out his positions on everything to the extent that they all hung together in a cohesive, internally consistent political philosophy.  He didn't have to resort to "because I'm the president" as a response because he could always justify what he did rationally...and most importantly, acceptably.  Clinton was the captain of his ship, but he didn't have to remind anyone of it because he could always rely on the fact that no one else had a better idea to support the course he chose, or so it seemed, though even Clinton would admit that there were judgments he made that he regretted, the one that he mentions most frequently being the failure of the United States under his leadership to intervene in Rwanda, but then, no one else did either.  Both Kennedy and Clinton had that presidential mantle around them, and it was nothing they had to work for.  It was natural for them to be in control, though neither one of them had control of his fly.  Of course, Hillary Clinton has no fly, so that won't be an issue, but what about the rest of it.

Somehow, when she was being questioned by Christiane Amanpour, it looked like a conversation between equals, not an interview by a supplicant reporter asking for the gift of a higher authority's wisdom, which is what it looked like when Bill used to take questions from the press.  Even President Obama manages to project superiority when he is speaking to the press, and he is as unassuming as any president I have ever seen.  But Hillary Clinton didn't seem to be above the fray yesterday, and that was what was missing.  A president has to be able to project his leadership without invoking it.  He...or she...must be able to command respect, because once he or she has to demand it, it can never be wholehearted.  That was the mistake Hillary Clinton made when she was running for president in 2008.  She would take the stage and demand everyone's attention, even that of her opponents, by speaking over the others, or laughing that haughty laugh when they said something she didn't like rather than addressing it.  That won't work for a president...not today it won't.  It may be something physical in her personal presence, or it may be something in her tone of voice.  For all I know it's her hair or her clothes.  But whatever it is, it is missing, and she had better find it if she wants to be president.  She has to find a way to project the notion that she is the mother of us all, and more important, that we like it.  She must find a way to verify her ideas on their merit rather than just by the fact that they are hers.  In short, she doesn't quite have that indefinable element of stature that all great presidents have.  At any given time there are four or so living presidents, plus the one in office.  When they get together, it has been said, they form the most exclusive club in the world.  Though it isn't that way anymore, what with the Bushes in the club and all, it used to be that they comprised a pantheon of what you might call immortal mortals.  They were men who weren't like the rest of us.  They were smarter and they had a kind of fortitude that only a handful of men in the world can have at any given time.  The question is, can Hillary stand in the same pose with those former presidents when her term is done as photographers take pictures of a historic gathering and look like she belongs?  It seems trivial, but I think the American people are sick of presidents who can't.  W doesn't look like he belongs there, and though his father had more integrity than W did, he wasn't any smarter, and certainly didn't seem like anything more than an interim president between Ronald Reagan and the next guy.  I don't think the voters are willing to put another minor figure into that exclusive club, and they are going to be looking at Hillary Clinton very closely to see if she, unlike the Bushes, belongs.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I wish I could attribute this idea to someone, but its conception is shrouded in many years, perhaps even a century or more, of wide spread use.  But even without attribution, if there was ever a time and a circumstance when it applied it is now.  Eric Cantor is a staunch Republican conservative, and his persistent wish seems always to have been for his party, and hence its platform, to achieve political hegemony.  The quest for such power was a shared endeavor among his peers as well, and in pursuit of their ascent to power, they basically cooked the electoral books whenever they got the chance, that is, whenever redistricting occurred after a census...once every ten years.  And gradually, through the process of "gerrymandering" in states like Texas...and Virginia...conservative Republicans were grouped together in electoral districts enabling them to elect officials of their ilk.  It is an unnatural process, gerrymandering, and as inbreeding generally does, it has led to some ugly mutations.  The Tea Party is the most recent one, and now it is devouring the party that spawned it, and it just devoured Eric Cantor as he lost the party primary for the seat he now holds in Virginia's seventh congressional district.  So to Cantor one might say, "be careful what you wish for, for you will surely get it," and the admonition would be indubitably apt.  I've heard the saying many times, and it has been attributed in one form or another to sources as diverse as Isak Dinesen, Lewis Carroll and James Baldwin, but the verity of the idea is indisputable.  Republicans have, over the course of many years, concerted their efforts to maximize their political power by concentrating it in electoral districts, but the result has been a localized fortitude for conservatism that does not translate into anything meaningful other than obstruction of the will of the overall majority.  The consequence is inertia on the national level and inbred partisanship on the state level, so while many states wax conservative at the level of governor and even legislator, on the national level conservatism may be favored when it deals with personal values, but it is eschewed on matters of broad policy because it tends to favor the few rather than the many.  Thus, on account of issues like the minimum wage, tax advantages for those who don't need them and immigration, nationwide office--that is, the presidency--has eluded them, and my guess is that it always will until they undo what they have done by sequestering conservatives in electoral districts.

If conservatives continue their iron fisted, and often manipulative fulminations aimed at getting their way not just for themselves, but by forced imposition for everyone, they will always have enough loyalty among the electorate to get some people elected, but they will never have control of government in the way in which presidents like Lyndon Johnson and FDR did.  There will never be sufficient support for the kind of sanctimonious positivism that they ooze to result in a generalized prevalence of their creed, and thus, they will never be able to muster the political power needed to move the nation in their chosen direction.  Johnson and Roosevelt had moral authority behind them, and they achieved profound change that continues to serve us all.  But while the call to egocentricity may be heard by the callous and the obdurate, the rest of us will always chafe at efforts to rein us into it.  Thus, Seattle has passed a $15 per hour minimum wage, largely because President Obama couldn't get enough support from Republicans to pass a $10.10 minimum.  The conservative forces within the Republican Party wished for the president to fail, and they got their wish but it will be a Pyrrhic victory in the end as others follow Seattle in doing the right thing.  The Tea Party opposes immigration reform out of isolationism and Chauvinism, and it looks like they will succeed in preventing it, but the consequence has been the ever dwindling pool of workers who are willing to do the kind of work that immigrants have done in the past.  That may be a good thing in the end because it seems only fair, but not for the reasons that conservatives raise.  It may have the effect of driving wages up and leveling the economic stratification that more than thirty years of "Reaganomics" has wreaked upon us, but it will also result in exportation of jobs, businesses and industries...even agriculture...to other countries, and maybe it's only fair that we export some of our standard of living to others who have so little when we have so much.  But I don't think that is what the conservatives in America have in mind.  The list of paradoxically adverse effects of the kind of conservatism that has emerged in American politics may be long, or it may be short, but in the end, it will profound and it will result in decline in America.  We are not headed in the wrong direction in consequence of conservatism, but we are standing still because of it, and the world is overtaking us, and frankly, I'm not sure I mind.  My wife and I are doing alright, and fortunately, our grown children are well on their way.  So, the dwindling of American hegemony that seems to be contemporaneous with the reemergence in America of jingoism and unabashed self-interest of the kind that was rampant in the "gilded age" may be a good thing in terms of international equity, but it won't hurt us for the foreseeable future.  However, it will be painful for us at some point...for all of us...if it isn't already.  Thus, we ascribe to the wishes of the Tea Party at our peril, because as their wishes become the wishes of more and more of us, it becomes more and more likely that we will get the things they are wishing for.  However, I for one don't particularly wish to live in the wonderland that they envision for us all.  Make sure you vote.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This past Sunday at around noon, two police officers were shot to death in a pizzeria in Las Vegas.  The murderers were a couple who billed themselves as the beginning of a revolution, for which they chose a "Don't Tread on Me" flag and a Nazi flag as their insignia, leaving both on the scene either draped over one of the bodies or near them.  It appears from internet material recovered after the murders that the couple were just unbalanced rather than indoctrinates of some social theory or cult, and as I interpret what has been reported thus far, the wife was the motivator between the two, and in the end, she shot her husband several times as the police closed in on them in a Walmart store to which they had repaired for the battle, before shooting herself.  That fact combined with a video in which the husband tearfully regrets having to end like this seem to indicate a domineering wife controlling a smitten and impressionable husband.  But all that is just the bizarre trappings of another multiple murder--they murdered a patron at the Walmart as well--based on the notion that those in authority, the police in particularly apparently, were oppressors and the enemies of liberty.  Vindicating liberty was their justification for murder, and there will certainly be those who empathize with them, many of them advocates of absolute adherence to the second amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.  But the irony of this whole thing isn't in the killing of police officers.  Hatred of the police isn't that unheard of as to make the circumstances of these killings incomprehensible.  But the victim shot to death in the store after those murders is the ultimate irony.  He was carrying a concealed weapon, and when he tried to use it to be a hero by confronting the husband, the wife shot him in the chest and killed him in an instant.  It would seem that the two murderers and the civilian victim they killed in the course of their "revolution" were kindred spirits.  It appears that the Don't Tread on Me mantra was not just one that they adhered to, but one that their last victim adhered to as well.

In a study from 1998, guns kept in homes by individuals in Memphis, Seattle and Galveston were more likely be involved in accidental shootings, criminal assaults or suicides than in self-defense.  In another study by Dr. Charles C. Branas, et al. in the American Journal of Public Health in 2009, a person in possession of a gun at the time of an attack is almost four and a half times more likely to be shot than someone who is unarmed. In other studies, a person who has a gun at home is more than twice as likely to be shot with it as he is to shoot an intruder.  And of course, there is the misfortune produced by George Zimmerman's ownership of a gun, and there are reports nearly every week of guns being misused and innocent victims being injured or killed.  Thus, though this death of an innocent by-stander in Las Vegas is only anecdote rather than statistical support for those conclusions reached in responsible scientifically conducted studies just mentioned, and more, it serves as an object lesson regarding the effectiveness of ordinary people intending to defend themselves or others with a loaded gun.  In Las Vegas, such an effort served only to add one to the number killed in the incident, and that outcome is not unusual among the outcomes in general of such events.  But as a case in point to support gun control efforts, or even the banning of concealed weapons or guns in general, it is likely to be ignored by those who single mindedly advocate for unlimited and unconstrained gun ownership.  None-the-less, the obvious fact--and this case of a man attempting to do something heroic but being unprepared to do so just serves to reify this contention--is that in the total scheme of things, those who are willing and able to pull the trigger are more often criminals than innocents trying to defend themselves or others.  If you combine with this contention the statistics on the effect of gun ownership on national violence and resulting deaths and injuries, it is abundantly clear that our chosen philosophy on gun ownership has not made us a safer people, but rather has led to the United States being by far the most vulnerable to gun violence, and thus far less safe than citizens of other countries in which gun ownership by private persons is illegal.

So, this week will be interesting in that the NRA may respond to the observations that will surely be made by others about this victim of gun violence who died to no avail of a gunshot wound.  But whether the NRA tries to place this event in some kind of defensible light or not, the topic of private individuals defending themselves with firearms merits discussion by all of us. The paradox of the shooting death of a gun owner who was quite possibly an advocate of the universal right to keep and bear arms...maybe even an NRA member...should not be forgotten any time soon.  Self-defense has been the primary justification for gun ownership cited by the NRA and others who see no reason to restrict gun ownership, but this incident is a stark demonstration of the erroneous assumption that having a gun means knowing how, and being able, to use it in desperate circumstances.  It may not merit the kind of attention precipitated by the Newtown shootings of small children, but it certainly merits some consideration.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

A couple of days ago, I heard a portion of a speech given by Michelle Obama about veteran homelessness.  She noted that we pass by these men and women almost without notice...that they "sleep in their cars, or in a shelter or next to a subway vent."  "We should be horrified," she said, "because that's not who we are as Americans."  Of course it is.  I respect Michelle Obama for her efforts in what I consider to be noble, or at least admirable causes, but as to veteran homelessness, the indifference with which the problem has been met is palpable.  And it isn't just veterans who are homeless.  It is not just veterans who cannot afford the healthcare they need.  It is not just veterans who have to wonder where there next meal will come from, and it is not just veterans who find themselves and their families without shelter or food because of lost jobs.  The fact is, the extension of unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed has been stalled in The House of Representatives since January because of John Boehner's and the Republican Party's politics, and in The Senate--which passed an extension bill in March that was retroactive--a new bill that is only prospective is being fashioned in the hope that Boehner will change his mind.  As to unemployment generally, despite the fulminations of House Republicans, several jobs measures have been sent to them and they have been tabled for political reasons while efforts to reduce taxes for the well-to-do without any budgetary offset continue unabated despite the complaint that any public welfare bill must be paid for with budget reductions.  Then of course there is healthcare in the form of the Affordable Care Act.  The Republicans have waged a successful rhetorical campaign against the law that continues to be persuasive to more than half of Americans, and they did it not because the law is objectionable, but because they didn't think of it...or rather because they thought of it as an alternative to something better during the Clinton administration, but they never really wanted universal healthcare anyway.  And as to food on the table, they have cut the food stamps program based on all kinds of pretexts, not just for poor veterans but for the poor everywhere.  Tea Party organizations have been known to complain that food stamps represent more than 80% of the expenditures under the agriculture bill that was stuck in congress for so many months, which is as much of a red herring as saying that the defense budget is a hundred times what the agriculture bill authorizes.  Neither ratio is relevant to the merits of either program, but to those who are looking for reasons to cut programs for those in need, it may be a specious rationale, but it is better than none at all.  So as to homeless veterans, their plight demonstrates exactly who we are as Americans, and on that point, Michelle Obama is a Pollyanna at best.  But perhaps that isn't a bad thing.  Pollyannas put a luster on what they see, and sometimes their enthusiasm is contagious, so we can hope that Ms. Obama's will be.  But for our nation to deny that the plight of veterans, the uninsured, the poor, the homeless and the hungry don't demonstrate who we are as a nation would be to tell an unconscionable lie.  The plights of those people are exactly who we are, or at least who we have become, and it is our shame in lieu of the national pride that people like John Boehner would have us feel.

So here's a theme that I must plead guilty to raising too many times, though until there is a change, not times enough.  In this country we have the vote as individuals.  We can change things like those about which Michelle Obama admonished her receptive audience.  But bemoaning the problems in and of itself usually accomplishes nothing in today's American political environment.  She was gentle about it, but sufficiently assertive that it should have been to some effect, but such speeches have not led to change with regard to the legislation on all kinds of remedies for the plights of millions of Americans that languish unconsidered in the House of Representatives.  It is particularly odious that John Boehner makes spurious defenses of his obduracy and that of the Republican Party...his party...on the news every other night but no one calls him out for it.  Recently, a Hispanic journalist asked Boehner about his refusal to even allow a vote on immigration reform and Boehner launched into an irrelevant diatribe on "Obamacare" because he had no defense for the intransigency of his controlling party in The House.  But the irrationality, the lack of any relationship between what he was saying and the question he was asked, got almost no mention thereafter, which means that he got away with it...or did he.  That is what we will find out in November, and we should all be thinking about that election every day when we see what our politicians are actually doing about the problems that afflict so many of us--when we see how our politicians are actually telling us and the whole world who we are.  When Boehner demonstrates his callousness as he did when asked about immigration reform, every one of us should make a mental note of it, and of the fact that no Republican anywhere distinguished himself by objecting to Boehner's evasive disingenuousness.  When there is news of an alternate bill to help the long-term unemployed that is necessary because the original bill has been sabotaged over and over again on one pretext or another in Boehner's House, we should all feel our outrage and make another mental note.  And when we are embroiled in contentious discourse with those who think, like Michelle Obama, that "that isn't who we are," we should recall those mental notes and refer to them.  They are not just the shame of conservative, Republicans.  They are the shame of all of us if we don't do something about it in November.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

While listening to the news this morning, there was a piece on NPR's Morning Edition about the Seattle City Council's approval yesterday of a $15 minimum wage to be phased in over the next few years.  The success of the measure was largely a consequence of the campaign for her council seat of the body's lone, self-described socialist, who campaigned on this issue specifically, and her comments were largely as would have been expected of an activist in the labor movement, socialist or not, pointing out that the battle over the minimum wage, and over fair treatment of workers in general, was just beginning as is the struggle against earnings inequality and the wealth gap between the rich and the poor.  During the course of the piece, the reporter interviewed the owner of two Subway sandwich shops, who had professed concern that he would have to raise the price of his sandwiches by a dollar as the wage increase kicked in: a $5 foot long will become a $6 foot long at his shops.  What he never mentioned as he observed that some of the Subways in the area...those along the city's borders...might suffer from the competition of the shops just over the city line that were not being required to pay the higher minimum wage, but rather were paying only the state minimum of $9.32.  But he never mentioned the factors that would go into the necessity for the price hike he predicted, nor did he mention how much he was making from his sandwich shops.  It seemed never to have occurred to him that perhaps he would have to live on earnings closer to those of his workers in order to remain competitive.  My guess is that he was a Republican.

Across the nation, the discussion of this issue--more broadly describable as the disparity between the excesses of the top 2% and the persistent struggle of those in the bottom 50% to meet their needs--is percolating through the electorate, and since 50% is greater than 2%, that should precipitate election results that are reflective of the "wealth gap," as it is sometimes called.  But will it?  Elections in the past three cycles haven't born out that prognostication and the conservative, supply-side Republican trend that started in 2010 has continued, though slightly diminished in 2012, which begs the question, what are the American people thinking that makes them continue to support candidates whose loyalty is to someone other than them.  Most voters are not millionaires.  Most voters struggle every day to make ends meet while putting way enough to educate their children without incurring too much debt and simultaneously providing for their own old age, so why are they willing to vote for candidates...Republican candidates...who unabashedly unsubscribe to the supply-side notion that unless we help the rich get richer, the poor will get poorer.  The notion is so counterintuitive, and the consequences of that philosophy--the acceptance of which we can attribute to Ronald Reagan's advocacy of it--are so plainly inequitable, and demonstrably so over the past thirty five years or so since the end of the Reagan administration, that no one should be able to get elected on the basis of his adherence to it.  Yet, the tide seems to be running against a rational economic theory that allows for a reasonable distribution of the fruits of American business and industry.  The role labor plays in creating that wealth seems to be forgotten much of the time...even by labor itself, which includes many more of us than does the portion of the population falling under the rubric "capital."  We seem to be voting self-destructively as a nation, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why our electorate allows it to happen.  Of course, the nation as a whole is probably more socially conservative than liberal, and the Republican Party has managed to arrogate the relevant debate to its own benefit by pandering to those who not only want to live their own lives a certain way, but want everyone else to live their way also.  The consequence is that economic issues have been rendered secondary in the minds of many of the 50% who provide most of the labor that makes our nation rich.  And that is what makes the minimum wage change in Seattle so consequential.  Maybe that worm has turned.

It isn't necessary for minimum wage laws to change all over the nation for the people who have to live with whatever the minimum wage is to realize that they are being used to someone else's advantage.  This goes back to what I was talking about recently when the subject was "class warfare."  People are starting to realize that they don't need to give up their aspirations just because someone else call them names.  We may in fact be heading for a political era in which people say with satisfaction that they are class warriors, and then where will the Republicans be since they will no longer have the benefit of an unquestioned social stratification that favors the people who fund their political careers.  But partisan rhetoric aside, it may be the case that people are starting to do something that I have advocated all my life: think with their own heads rather than with someone else's.  It may be that the Republican use of derogatory shibboleths to disparage those who disagree with them will serve only to inflame passions against their creed.  It may be that we are heading toward a new populism based on practical reality.  I can hardly wait for November to find out...I think.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

One of our problems as a nation is the lack of adequate information at our disposal for the purpose of informing our votes.  The problem stems from the fact that our news media are filters for all of the facts that we need to be well informed.  So, for example, when CBS news runs a news feature on the Benghazi raid and relies on a source that is not credible, the result is a swing in public opinion that allows for the persistence of the endless probing in the form of redundant hearings run by Congressman Daryl Issa of the House Oversight Committee.  He was undeterred, as was Speaker John Boehner, by the discrediting of the report in question, and in fact, Boehner has created a new committee to dysinform the public even further toward the end of political gain vis-à-vis the ostensible discrediting of the opposition party.  Over the years, the Republicans have learned that the answer to the question isn't important.  What matters is getting everyone to ask it, and these hearings accomplish that end...at least among the party loyalists.  So, when a reporter who sounds a lot like Lara Logan, the disgraced reporter on the discredited Benghazi story, asks on the evening news about the persistent failure to get relief funds to those whose businesses were damaged on the New Jersey coast by Hurricane Sandy, the purpose served isn't the informing of the American public.

What actually happens is that people begin asking that question along with the reporter instead of asking why, which is the question the reporter really should have been trying to answer.  She interviewed two people whose businesses continue to be in a state of devastation because they can't get the funding they need to restore them, but why can't they get the money?  Are they entitled to the money in the first place?  Have they done all they should have to get it?  What agency is the money supposed to be coming from?  What does that agency have to say about the failure to distribute the subject funds?  Does the agency have the funds in question?  Has congress funded the program through which the funds were to be authorized to the claimants in question?  All of those questions should be the subject of congressional inquiries, but there is no political gain to be had from asking them.  And why?  Because a reporter gave either incomplete or inaccurate information to the public, which resulted in a blind eye being turned toward the misuse of power in Washington, D.C. toward the end of misdirection of the attention of the public.  It couldn't happen without the reporter, which is our problem at its core.  We don't get reliable, complete information from the media, even though we have the freest press in the world.  We know all there is to know about a little boy stricken with cancer who idolizes the local college football team and gets to lead them onto the field, but we have no idea why victims of hurricane Sandy can't rebuild their businesses.  It's all part of a new cultural imperative we subscribe to these days: pandering for popularity.

The decline in the effectiveness of American politics--by that I mean the ability to accomplish great things through legislation and execution of the law--is a function of this obsession with public favor, and pandering to get it.  That's what Daryl Issa is doing, and while John Boehner has to pander not just to the public but to a small, obdurate minority within his party as well, he too is a panderer.  Of course, President Obama sometimes panders too, for example when he gives speeches directed at the inertia afflicting congress, but his pandering isn't as effective as that of the real old political hands in the opposition party.  Mitch McConnell has been pandering for decades, as has Boehner.  Issa is an old hack too, and the chairman of Boehner's new Benghazi committee, Trey Gowdy, is a panderer who is trying to accrue the pandering bona fides he needs to be a career political hack too.  It all works to the advantage of the politicians who pander for personal gain because the press...the media...are pandering too, giving us all we want of "human interest" while ignoring the difficult issues like bureaucratic mismanagement of our governance.  But what can we do about it.

In our house, we used to watch Diane Sawyer every weeknight to get at least a portion of the news.  But gradually...steadily...she undermined the news function of her program and moved toward gimmicks designed to whet the popular appetite for the ABC Evening News.  I mean, really.  What is an "Instant Index" anyway, and how does her knitted brow inform us about the issues that she tells us we should be concerned about by knitting it.  So, we started watching Scott Pelley on CBS, for whom I have a bit more respect than I do for Sawyer and her naked quest for star status.  But now there seem to be more and more stranded whale stories on CBS too, and that is where I saw the reporter interviewing Hurricane Sandy victims without making serious inquiry as to why they were victims.  Frankly, the problem seems to be a product of networks regarding news as a moneymaker rather than a public service.  At one time, news lasted 15 minutes, and it included facts only.  No opinions and no human interest stories meant to be a draw for viewers.  That difference--the desire to make money on the news--is what has led to a change in the meaning of the world "news."  It is no longer just the facts of current events, but rather includes entertainment masquerading as news, which in turn has transmogrified.  Now news is not limited to reports of facts.  Now it has become not public persuasion as well.  A free press is not all we need.  We also need a responsible one.

Your friend,

Mike