January 2017 Archives

Dear America,

I don't have very high regard for Donald Trump as anyone who reads these letters knows, and he has confirmed my negative opinion daily since he was inaugurated.  He has ordered renewal of plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline though he obviously doesn't even know what it would be for or where it would run.  He has reiterated his ill-founded determination to build a wall between us and Mexico, overseen the silencing of the EPA's scientists, persisted in his false claims about Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in the popular vote, moved to prohibit immigration of Syrian refugees despite the fact that no Syrian has been involved in any terrorist act in this country, and on and on.  But I have to admit that I agree with him in principle about one thing.

I'm no Nostradamus epigone.  I don't even claim to be the second coming of Baba Venga or Jean Dixon.  But I have recounted before what I consider to have been a prophetic conversation I had with a friend as we walked to lunch in Boston in about 1976.  The UAW was negotiating with the car companies on its next contract, and the goal was $25 an hour in wages and benefits.  That was a lot of money back then, and I said to my friend as we walked that such demands were effectively exporting our standard of living; "nobody is going to pay an American $25 an hour to put lug nuts on a Ford when he can pay someone $15 an hour to put lug nuts on a Toyota," I said.  And sure enough, over the past forty years, most of our manufacturing--ironically not automobiles though as even the Japanese make many of their cars here--has gone abroad, to countries that pay less, and often times not nearly enough, to workers.  Manufacturing has become international, and it has cost us in terms of jobs, but in other respects as well.  It used to be the case that saying that something you owned was "imported" was a form of braggadocio, but now, it tends to mean that the quality of the thing probably isn't quite what it should be.  "Made in China" now means what "made in Japan" meant after World War II: this thing is junk.  And it's not much different when it comes to things made in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, India or several other manufacturing giants that pay children and their parents bare subsistence wages to work in unsafe conditions to make our one-size-fits-all socks, our dress shirts with sleeve lengths measured in two inch increments from one size to the next instead of one inch, shoes that come in only one width as if all of our feet were the same, and pants with waist sizes that reflect non-standardized American self-delusions about our weights rather than actual measurements in inches.  We have not just exported our jobs, we have exported our commitment to quality as well, and it hasn't been well maintained in many, many cases.

So now comes Donald Trump with his border tax plan.  It is directed at American businesses who manufacture things abroad and then sell them here.  He wants to tax every manufactured good that crosses our borders to be consumed here after being made abroad no matter who made it, and I applaud the idea.  It isn't popular among the experts who all see world trade as talismanic in economics these days, but the fact is that we run a trade deficit in the billions of dollars every month, and it isn't as if we get anything for it.  The quality of the goods available to us has declined since I was a kid, and I think that anyone born before 1955 would agree with me, and it is mainly our fault as consumers.  We buy cheap, and as a result, we have in our homes tables made in China that we brought home in boxes and put together ourselves rather than tables made in North Carolina and delivered whole.  And that is understandable in light of the fact that our real wages didn't significantly rise from Ronald Reagan's presidency until just a few months ago under Barrack Obama.  But those tables could be competitively made in pieces and put into boxes here just as well, if only the Chinese, or the Indians, or the Vietnamese would pay their workers a fair share of the money being made on them.  That's where Trump's plan to tax manufactured goods coming into our country across our borders makes sense.  American made goods could compete in terms of price with those made in countries that keep their industrial workers impoverished, and we could then begin to reclaim our standard of living and our standards of quality.  If there were no longer a price advantage to settling for something less, we would stop buying something less and demand what we used to get: quality.  And we wouldn't have to rely on unfair labor practices to do so either.

The consequence would certainly be a more isolated economy as internationally made goods would become less competitive with goods made domestically.  And we would still need to do something about the disparities in our wealth and income between the 1% and the rest of us who make their money for them, not to mention what they wear and drive.  But an import tax that induces American companies to stay home when they build manufacturing facilities would be a good start, albeit at the expense of the rest of the world, and I'm not unmindful of that.  We still need to think about the people who need to work somewhere in order to keep body and soul together, but the best solution to that problem is probably to make "imported" mean something admirable again..."made in America" too.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This is why Donald Trump is dangerous.  Today, he signed executive orders approving both the Dakota Access pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline: two completely different things with two completely different purposes and two completely different sets of objectionable qualities.  Lumping them together, albeit in two separate executive orders just demonstrates his wholesale ignorance and the fact that he won't let it get in his way.  The Keystone XL pipeline runs from the Hardisty terminal in Alberta, Canada to another storage depot in Steele City, Nebraska.  It cuts a corner in the extant pipeline system, but Hardisty and Steele City are already connected by a pipeline.  Thus, all the Keystone XL does is increase the volume of petroleum that can be shipped from Hardisty to Steele City.  So, why is the TransCanada pipeline company so interested in the Keystone XL?  For the same reason that our oil companies are interested in building more refineries on our Gulf Coast: to export oil to other countries.  The oil coming from Hardisty is troubling for a different reason as well.  It is derived from Canadian tar sands, and it is among the dirtiest kinds of oil pumped from the ground.  In addition, it is even harder to clean up when it leaks onto the ground, and last year alone, the EPA reported approximately 3,300 pipeline leaks in this country, so the Keystone XL, no matter how carefully built, is likely to cause environmental damage of some kind in some amount...for what.  The sole purpose of that segment of our pipeline system is to expedite transport of Canadian tar sands oil to gulf coast refineries, and then for export.  We are taking the risk so that Canadian big oil can make more money exporting oil while we are importing 20% of the oil we use.  So, if Trump really means it when he says America first, why is he risking the American environment so that Canadian companies can make more money?

But the Dakota Access pipeline is different.  It is intended to link the Bakken oil shale fields in North Dakota to the refineries and transport hubs in Illinois.  There, the American produced oil will be refined in America for use in the American Northeast and Midwest, and yes, some of it will be sent to the Gulf coast as well.  There are some environmental issues involved as the section of the pipeline in controversy is planned to cross under the Missouri River, which supplies drinking water to a Sioux tribe with a reservation downstream, and there is a sacred burial ground where the pipeline is supposed to be laid.  But, despite the objections to this pipeline, it is at least intended to benefit Americans, and I don't mean just the bottom lines of American corporations, whom Mitt Romney pointed out "are people too," at least under the law.  And I bring this up not because I don't care about the Sioux or the environment, but because energy independence is also an American priority, so there is at least an excuse for slogging through the debate and building the Dakota Access pipeline.  There is none for the Keystone XL.  Besides, these executive orders are noting but political showboating by the most egotistical president I can remember, and I remember quite a few.

The order regarding the Keystone XL suggests to TransCanada that it resubmit its application; the original application is no longer pending.   As to the Dakota Access pipeline order, it instructs the Army Corps of Engineers, which must study and approve or disapprove some newly proposed route, that it do so expeditiously, but only as permitted by law.   Thus, neither order means anything, nor does it bind anyone to do anything, so why issue them, and why lump them together in one day's transactions.  Well, the answer is that he promised to reduce energy regulations, which he has no power to do, so he wanted to make a show of doing nothing as if it were something.  It was just like the dog and pony show he ran with the executives from Ford, Chrysler and General Motors when he summoned them to his conference room in Trump Tower.  He just reiterated that any cars manufactured by any of them in other countries and shipped back to this country for sale would be taxed.  He didn't say how he was going to manage that since congress is usually, admittedly not always, involved in tariff and tax levies.  It's all shobiz.  Our president thinks he's still on The Apprentice.

So, before anyone gets excited about all these "executive orders," we should all remember that so far, they are "much ado about nothing," to quote The Bard: tempests in his little tea cup.  But for all their insignificance, there is this.  When Donald Trump makes these gestures in the future, some of them will be to some hapless effect.  And since his thought processes stop as soon as he comes to the part where he determines that doing something makes him look good, these orders could bode ill for the future, not because of oil, but because of Trump.  Lookout America.  He's loose!

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I visited my doctor's office a couple of days ago and I was quite surprised to hear her express her feelings about the incoming administration.  She started our conversation by admitting that she had awakened that day in a terrible mood...what my wife calls "green and grumpy."  She added that a friend had spoken to her earlier in the day and she too had awakened in an emotionally uncomfortable state, as it turned out had a psychologist my doctor had had occasions to talk to that morning as well.  The psychologist had told my doctor that this particular week is conceded in her discipline to be the worst for depression of the year...the third week of January.  The holidays have just passed, as has the celebratory mood they inspire, we feel a renewed sense of obligation with taxes and compliance with resolutions looming, and I would add in the case of 2017, Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated and his term is about to commence.  (I've still got 45 minutes before that disastrous prospect becomes a reality, so I am writing to you now while I still can as I anticipate a several-days-long funk starting at about noon.)  To my surprise, it was my doctor who brought up the prospect of a Trump presidency, adding that she didn't anticipate relief until either Trump was impeached or his term ended, whichever came first.  What was remarkable to me about that comment was that I have said since the day after the election that Trump's term would be at most four years long, and probably less as he is so likely to be impeached.  And as it turns out, I hear that a lot.  Impeachment is a hope that the people I know are clinging to rather than an advent that they fear or dread.  We are all looking forward to scandal, and we all think that our wishes are very likely to come true.

I will admit that the society amidst which I live is somewhat closed.  Except for my in-laws, we are all progressives...lifelong progressives...and we are all of a certain age, if you know what I mean.  So, given the univocality of our politics, it is to be expected that we would agree on Trump's and the nation's prospects at this moment, but as it turns out, about 60% of the American people feel the same way.  Of necessity, that includes liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats as well as independents, young and old, whites and others...black, brown, red and yellow...as well.  Trump won only 46% of the popular vote, but even fewer people now feel his transition behavior bodes well for the nation.  Thus, even those responsible for electing him, some of whom I will endeavor not to roundly reproach on Thanksgiving at the extended-family dinner table every year of his tenure, don't see his ascent to office as a positive portent, and that in itself is a reasonable inspiration for despondency.   Still, the only alternative to crawling into a hole and dragging the dirt in over my head is to hope for the best...to fervently wish for the best.  Because the alternative isn't a moment in which I can say to my relatives, "I told you so," it is to dig a 1950's style bomb shelter in my backyard and stock it with enough canned goods to last twenty years.  It is to sell everything I own and buy diamonds with the money because they may be the only thing that won't lose value during a Trump presidency.  It is to cower and practice apology to our fellow human beings around the world for the catastrophe we have wreaked upon the not just ourselves, but them as well. 

So, in this moment as I hear the clergy representative's benedictions in the hope that they aren't eulogies, I chose to be optimistic that Donald Trump can deliver on the desirable promises he has made--more and better jobs, a greater national weal, in short health, wealth and happiness for us all--and that he will fail with regard to the ominous ones like repeal of the Affordable Care Act and its replacement with something that will set the prospect of universal healthcare back decades, bellicose tensions with China, collegial rapprochement with a tyrannical and devious Russian demagogue by whom an entire Russian nation seems rapt.  There is the potential for cataclysm ahead of us, but there is also a viable hope, faint as it may be, that Donald Trump will do some or all of the right things despite his bent and his rhetoric.

So today, I won't indulge in deprecation and vituperation.  Today, I wish us all well, not matter what the odds.  I'll do what I can to make the advent of a new Pax Americana a reality, and I hope the rest America does too.  I would love to feel inclined to for Trump for the first time in four years. 

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Like tens of millions of you, America, I heard soon-to-be ex-President Obama give his final speech to the nation last night, and a little more than thirteen hours later I heard Donald Trump give his first press conference since becoming president-elect.  And I must tell you that the virtual side-by-side comparison was frightening.  After his rant about some putatively false news story about him, a diatribe that displayed his adolescent petulance and ad hominem tactics in their full glory, he never answered one of only two or three questions for which he stood at the podium.  He came to the stage only after his press secretary shrieked essentially the same screed and vice-president-elect Mike Pence showed himself to be as unimpressive and sanctimoniously hackneyed as he has always been.  Trump then took to the microphone and said almost nothing of significance, deferring to his Washington lawyer to limn his measures to avoid conflicts of interest, which was singularly unimpressive.  But his press conference was notable for one thing; despite decrying the "fake news" that had calumniated him, he reiterated some of his hyperbolic criticisms of Hillary Clinton so as to deflect attention from his own contra tempts, and then never mentioned the fact that emeritus General Flynn, Trump's chosen national security advisor, eagerly passed on the scabrous, grim, fairy tale about Hillary Clinton that led to a man with a loaded assault rifle shooting up a pizza joint in Washington, D.C. while it was full of men, women and children.  Flynn's re-tweeting of the "pizzagate" calumny was far more despicable than any false claims that have emerged against Trump himself, but Flynn is still on Trump's staff.  And while ranting about fake news, Trump never mentioned the fact that he never once decried the pizzagate story.

On the other hand, President Obama did what I had hoped he would do; he gave one more state of the union address, which served the purpose I urged yesterday that we all serve in the future, that is, debunking any false claims that trends continuing from the Obama years are creditable to Trump's and his party's tenures.  And in the course of delivering his last speech as president, Barrack Obama showed himself possessed of grace, intelligence, magnanimity and tact, in short, presidential timber, all of which has eluded Donald Trump.  That speech was as notable for what The President didn't say as it was for what he did, for what was implied but never said.  And if Trump had any grasp on reality...any sense at all, he would have been embarrassed by his performance today compared to Obama's last night, and so would have every American who voted for him.   I have disagreed with our departing president's strategies and tactics many times, primarily for his lack of venom, but I see today that what I sometimes took for diffidence was actually aplomb and maturity.  I see today that we are about to return to the era of unqualified leadership steering our ship of state into unknown and troubled waters, and as they used to write over the seas on maps before Christopher Columbus, there be dragons there.  I know that there is a large constituency that takes Trump's inarticulate, self-laudation as plain talk, but I can't help thinking that even they...after watching both Obama and Trump in rapid succession...are daunted by the prospect of four years of Donald Trump as our president.

Well, what can we do about it.  Not much now.  I think that, as President Obama suggested last night, we have to keep on talking to others in order to elucidate the dangerous course we are on so that we get off it as soon as possible.  I still hope, and sincerely believe, that an avaricious dolt like Donald Trump, guided by a young son-in-law who looks a lot like Trump as the whelp he was at the outset of his "career", will not be able to keep himself from taking bites too big to chew and thus relegating his presidency to history as the first to end in both impeachment and conviction.  I wish I could follow the nobler path urged by President Obama last night, but I can't.  I hate to admit it, but I look forward to that day.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

With self-aggrandizement being the first order of business in the Oval Office starting January 20 and given that Donald Trump is the grand master of self-aggrandizement--second-to-none when it comes to narcissism--we have to be ever-diligent with regard to the message he sends, whether by tweet or in person.  He will spin everything he does, and everything each of his critics do as well, so as to either excuse himself when he fails or take credit when none is due, and lest we must endure not just one term of his leadership but two, we need to be prepared.  Setting aside the appointments and nominations he has made--including his son-in-law, a presumable sycophant and kindred spirit who "made" his first money while still a purportedly cum laude sociology student at Harvard by borrowing money from family members to invest in Somerville real estate, then taking over his uncle's company as if he built it himself, as much a self-made man as his father-in-law himself--Trump has forewarned us of his true bent in many ways.  But, though the future for those who voted for him on a wing and a prayer doesn't look as rosy as the promises he made, they voted for him once based on the Trump devised Trump myth, and if he is allowed to perpetuate that myth, they might well vote for him again.  So we must remind them of the truth over the course of however long Trump can avoid impeachment in the hope that they will soon see the light, if they haven't already given the billionaire boys club that the Trump administration has become.

Primarily, what we have to be watching for now isn't whether there are more jobs or better pay.  There will be; we are already on that course.  What we have to ensure is that the electorate holds Trump and the Republican Party responsible for what they do rather than allowing them to take credit for trends that they had nothing to do with creating...that the Republicans did everything they could to prevent.  In short, if current trends continue, Trump and the Republicans will have done no harm in those regards.  But if those trends weaken or reverse, that will surely be their doing.  And reliance on the Dow Jones Industrials Index for vindication will not suffice.  The Dow tells us only how the rich and investment institutions are doing.  Our paychecks tell us how we are doing.  And as for gross domestic product, it measures primarily how much we spend, not how prosperous we are.  Consumer spending comprises 70% of GDP.  The rest is government spending and business investment, neither of which helps any of us directly, or even indirectly in many respects.   We must insist on measuring the performance of the currently all-Republican federal government by trends in the incomes of the bottom 90% and in income and wealth inequality.  Worker earning power, the federal deficit, accessibility to health care and poverty levels indicate the well-being of the American people, not how rich the rich are becoming.  And trends are what counts, because as time passes, population increases, so all the other numbers do too.  So comparisons and ratios...wealth to poverty, earned income to unearned income, wages to investment income...those are the things by which the success or failure of the new administration and the continuing Republican congress should be measured, and we have to begin harping on that point right from the beginning.

It has to be remembered, though Donald Trump continues to deny it, that the Democrats gained two seats in The Senate and six seats in The House, and their candidate won the popular vote by nearly three million votes.  Barrack Obama beat Mitt Romney by only four million, and his win was considered decisive.  Only the electoral college separates Hillary Clinton from President Obama in election terms.  So the Democrats are not without their own mandate, and that should be remembered.

Now, all we have to do is remind everyone who the real majority are.

Your friend,

Mike 

Dear America,

The emboldening of Donald Trump is something we have to abide, but can we survive it.  He has now nominated a shill for the financial industry--Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer specializing in managing mergers and initial public offerings as well as counseling wealthy families on wealth preservation --who has already made it clear that his control of the SEC will be directed at "job creation" and moderating financial industry regulation, as if moderation is all that is needed to keep the financial industry from doing to us again what it has done to us over and over again in our history.  All of that is nothing but a euphemism for the paternalism of wealth, if I may coin a phrase, and what it means in general terms is more of what Donald Trump is emblematic of: the corruption of greed.  He is one more member of the executive branch who will shepherd in a new gilded age as gaudy and self-aggrandizing as the Trump and his Tower itself.  We're back to the Gordon Gecho creed: greed is good.  It's now official.

I don't know whether Ronald Reagan would approve, but we are embarking on an era in which the notion that wealth trickles down is going to be put to the test again...one more opportunity to confirm that wealth doesn't trickle down; it trickles up.  The concern has to be that the new era of Mammon worship will result in a reprise of the last one: stagnating wages, reduced opportunity to do anything but run in place like hamsters on wheels, obscene accretion of wealth among a class of plutocrats that includes corporate officers, heirs and heiresses, thieves and whores.  And it could all have been predicted if the Trump candidacy had been thought to have been anything but a joke at its inception.  The way Trump won was by portraying a common man...just incidentally a rich one.  Set aside flags that should have been raised by his behavior in the course of getting rich and the influences that brought him to believe that all that stuff was alright and just consider the things he said to garner public support.  He called Hillary Clinton one of the most corrupt people ever to run for office in this country's history, yet his own corruption was never really brought up to any effect.  Seizing on a catch phrase that was approved by those who wouldn't think about something said by someone to whom they gave credence, regardless of the merit of the phrase or the lack thereof, is one of the things that made his ascent possible.  What made Trump--his carnival barker demeanor and his mountebank's ability to sell snake oil and then discredit those who were sickened by it--has nothing to do with political policy or rationality.  It has to do with the willingness of that portion of "the people" who can be fooled all of the time.  It has to do with the willingness of a sharper like Trump to use any means to get what he wants, even if it is destructive or inimical to the common good.  Trump is his appointees.  He is not the embodiment of plain talk.  He is the emblem of an industry of which he is a prime representative: the confidence industry.  Trump is a confidence man, and I mean that in the worst sense of the concept.

People gravitated to him not because of his "plain talk."  They gravitated to him because he said he was a plain talker.  They didn't flock to his rallies because they wanted to hear the plain truth.  They did so because they wanted to hear someone say the things that they didn't dare say themselves because they were so odious.  They voted for him not because Hillary Clinton is corrupt, though whether she is or not isn't an issue on which I would care to take a position.  If corruption were disqualifying to Trump supporters, Trump would never have been able to get anyone to watch him descend on that gold plated elevator in his tower.  But his ability to make that label stick to Hillary Clinton...to make Ted Cruz into "lying Ted"...to make Marco Rubio into "little Marco"...and most importantly to make Hillary Clinton into "crooked Hillary" that got him elected, and that ability was an endowment from the great mass of American voters who would rather foam at the mouth than think.  And now, he is going to take what he wants because enough of us are willing to give it to him.

It should be clear what this is all about from Trump's rejection of the possibility that the Russians poisoned our electoral well.  If Hillary Clinton won the popular election by almost three million votes, Donald Trump lost it by that much, and the Trump never loses.

But we do.

Your friend

Mike