The Double-edged Sword of Technology

Posted on August 23, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 23, 2022

Ask any computer or IT specialist about technology, and you’ll hear a litany of all the ways our twenty-first century world couldn’t function without it. Everything from cars, planes, electronics, televisions – even modern refrigerators and dishwashers rely on computer chips and Internet connections. If your eyes haven’t glazed over by then, you might be treated to an even longer list of the dangers that poses.

The only positive result of my father having to work as a gas station attendant after World War 2 was that after a couple of years, he could fix most anything that went wrong on a car, which included his 1949 Ford. That car gave our family mobility and freedom it couldn’t have had any other way. Cars broke down, and people had accidents, but no one considered owning a car a liability. Is that true today? Cars are far more reliable than they were seventy years ago, but they have evolved to where an automobile mechanic almost has to be an electrical engineer.

One of the world’s earliest warnings about our dependency on technology occurred on September 1, 1859. A “massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs…spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles toward Earth,” causing the entire telegraph network in North America to fail. It was most people’s first introduction to electromagnetic pulses (EMPs.)

What came to be known as The Carrington Event, after the English astronomer who observed it, was an unpredictable natural phenomenon, and in 2021, scientists warned that the sun was entering a five-year stretch of intense activity that could result in the same kind of event. This time, however, the resulting EMP could destroy every computer chip not properly shielded against it. Everything we own that depends on computer chips would instantly become a pile of useless junk. A rare event, you say, but one of our adversaries could obtain the same end by exploding a high-yield nuclear weapon in space, directly over country.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The internet poses a much larger, if subtler risk. There’s not a website or media platform, a corporate or government computer system, or a personal computer or smart phone that cannot be hacked. We can build overlapping levels of security to protect our information, if we have the resources to pay for them, but the very nature of electronic systems means we can never achieve 100 percent security, and that only addresses the overt risks.

The Internet, while changing billions of people’s lives for the better, also introduced an insidious level risk capable of undermining our way of life, if not destroying it completely. The problem is anonymity; when we communicate with someone on the Internet or spend hours on social media sites, even when we believe we’re interacting with entities we trust, do we really know who’s on the other side of the computer screen?

We’ve seen many frightening examples in recent years, from the spread of child pornography to people being robbed of everything they own, including their identities, but those both result from overt events. The worst existential risks are the ones we don’t see coming. Social media platforms are like giant Trojan horses, promising us great gifts and benefits, but hiding a much darker potential. Our government has confirmed, repeatedly, that foreign actors constantly invade our social networks, either as bots (automated propaganda generators) or people with nefarious goals pretending to be someone else. It’s been estimated that as many as one of every five Facebook accounts has a faked identity.

Just as gun advocates claim violence isn’t the fault of guns, but of the people who use them, we might argue that the real culprits aren’t the bots and hackers, but the millions of people who believe everything they read on their computers without checking the facts. Whatever the reason, the effect is devastating. The lack of security in our social media threatens our elections, our personal property, our savings and investments – even our personal and national security.

Today, we have new evidence of how serious a problem this is in a whistle-blower complaint filed by Twitter’s former head of security. Before he was at Twitter, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko was a hacker. He was highly respected throughout the IT world, the kind of character that has frequently been popularized in films and television programs. Some might question his motives, but not his credibility or expertise. Zatko claims Twitter “allows too many of its staff access to the platform’s central controls and most sensitive information without adequate oversight. [He] also alleges that some of the company’s senior-most executives have been trying to cover up Twitter’s serious vulnerabilities, and that one or more current employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service.”

It sounds like a wild accusation, and it remains to be proven. But any reasonable person would ask how much smoke you have to inhale before you wonder if something’s on fire. I believe we’re way past that point. If our major social media platforms don’t clean up their acts, everything we hold dear will be threatened.

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The Greatest Threat to America

Posted on August 18, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 18, 2022

Former president Donald Trump’s son, Eric, is routinely mocked by stand-up comedians as being dimwitted. I have no idea why, but it’s one more testament to the media’s ability to influence the opinions of Americans who choose not to think for themselves. I have little interest in Eric Trump, but his comments, yesterday, on Newsmax, got my attention. He described his father’s political ambitions in terms of overthrowing the Republican establishment, RINO-hunting, and killing off what he called political dynasties: the Bushes, the Clintons, and now, the Cheneys.

Eric would have liked his audience to believe he was referring to changing ideologies, but if that were true, he would have mentioned that his father violated every tenet of Ronald Reagan’s Conservative dogma, which virtually every Republican politician referred to with reverence until Donald Trump came along. Many of us disagreed vehemently with Reagan’s domestic policies, but no one I know would describe him in the same terms as Trump.

The same is true for those who populated the dynasties Trump vanquished. No one ever accused either George H. W. Bush or his son Jeb of being morally bankrupt during their tenures as our 41st President and Governor of Florida. We’ll probably never know the extent to which Bush 43’s ties to Saudi Arabia influenced his horrendous miscalculation concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but despite that, “W” is viewed as a decent man. Bill Clinton, for all his accomplishments, was flawed in his personal conduct and irresponsible in ways that proved damaging to the country, but no one would suggest that he was disloyal either to the Constitution or to the concept of democratic governance.

Dick Cheney, was an unscrupulous businessman/politician who people loved to hate, but whether or not he was guilty of profiteering from the Iraq/Afghanistan disasters, his worst sins may have been ultra-patriotism and a belief in unfettered capitalism. His daughter, Liz, showed us that it’s still possible for Republicans to possess integrity and dedication to Conservative principles. If that’s the kind of ideology Eric Trump believes his father destroyed, there is no stronger endorsement of those who would assure that Donald Trump never holds office again.

If Liz Cheney runs for president, I will register as a Republican so I can vote for her in my blue state’s Republican primary. I disagree with much of her Conservative philosophy, but some things are more important. The greatest threat to our nation is not Vladimir Putin or Xi Jiinping, but the 30% of our country that believes rigging elections, gun violence, racial separation and discrimination, and subjugating women are the “real” American values. Donald Trump didn’t create that horror, but he enabled, energized, and legitimized it. He continues to feed his base’s hatred of everything we were raised to believe in: equality, fairness, the rule of law, and compassion.

When Eric Trump talks about overthrowing dynasties, he means replacing basic American values with the ones that enriched his family and brought them unimaginable political influence. He would have us live in a country in which one man’s word is law, no matter that that man is a sociopath with no regard for truth, law, or common decency. He would further have us believe the Republican party no longer exists, but has been replaced by the Trump Party which values power and wealth over principle.

The media trumpet Donald Trump’s continued hold over his party, pointing to the fate during this year’s primaries of most of the people who opposed him in Congress. Business Insider examined opposing points of view and concluded that Trump’s influence may not be as strong as Eric thinks it is, citing a New York Times report that, “Of the more than 200 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed this year, many ran unopposed or faced little-known, poorly funded opponents. He has also waited to make some endorsements until a front-runner emerges, strategically picking the candidates most likely to win…”

Insider also noted that many high-profile former Trump Associates are speaking out against him and cooperating with Congressional or law enforcement investigation of Trump’s actions. His loyal Vice President, Mike Pence, while reluctant to criticize Trump directly, has launched a campaign to support candidates who oppose Trumpism, and Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan believes Trump’s support is over-rated based on the poor showing of Trump’s candidates in contested gubernatorial primaries. Even Alex Jones, who has as little respect for truth as Trump, and who spoke at his January 6th rally, abandoned him in favor of Florida Governor Ron Desantis.

Trump’s focus, other than staying out of prison and extorting millions of dollars from his supporters, is bringing down Joe Biden’s administration and reversing the legislation passed in the eighteen months he’s been in office. Medicare benefits, our Constitution, drug and gasoline prices, energy independence, carbon emissions, Russia’s undeclared war against NATO – none of that matters to Donald Trump as much as regaining power, and that makes him the greatest threat to America in the world today.

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Inflection Points

Posted on August 16, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 16, 2022,

President Biden often says we are at an inflection point in our history. In mathematics, an inflection point defines when a downward trend turns upward, or vice versa. That sounds very technical, but applied to our lives and history, it couldn’t be more profound. An inflection point can be the moment when despair turns to hope, when the half empty glass suddenly appears half full, when dawn breaks after a long, dark night.

The first half of 2022 felt like a period of encroaching darkness. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, out-of-control inflation, an obstructionist, dysfunctional Congress, a Supreme Court set on undoing much of our social enlightenment, a Party appearing unable to support its own president, the revelations of the January 6th hearings, increasingly violent threats against law enforcement by right wing extremists – the list of depressing events seemed to grow longer every day.

For the first time in my long life, I feared for the future of our country. Then, something changed. It was as though the massive organism that is our country had reached a critical mass of negativity and decided it had had enough.

The oil companies, reacting to disclosures that their windfall profits and stock buybacks were the primary cause of the huge rise in fuel prices, realized they’d been caught red-handed. Gas prices dropped more than 21% from their June highs. Voters in one of our reddest states overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have set women’s rights back fifty years. Congressional Democrats started behaving like lawmakers, stopped squabbling among themselves, and passed a major piece of Biden’s legislative agenda which will make serious strides toward mitigating climate change and assuring our energy independence without the use of fossil fuels. Congress will finally take on the most egregious price-fixing practices of the pharmaceutical industry and begin to repair some of the harm done to our veterans. And the inevitable downward spiral into recession now looks far less certain, as the job market is booming and unemployment is the lowest in seventy-three years.

The January 6th committee, spearheaded by Republican House members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and testimony almost exclusively from law enforcement and Republicans who were in former President Trump’s orbit exposed horrifying details about a president willing to overthrow our constitutional democracy for his own selfish ends, and worse, is still being supported in his lies by politicians clinging to his coattails. After excruciating months of investigation, Georgia appears ready to indict Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and likely, Trump himself for election fraud; New York appears equally likely to indict Trump’s senior people for fraudulent business practices and tax evasion; and Attorney General Merrick Garland is investigating Trump for major violations of our espionage laws, leading an insurrection, and the attack on Congress.

We see, too, that Biden’s efforts to re-unite and strengthen NATO have paid off in a huge way. NATO support for Ukraine has stymied Russia’s invasion and severely weakened Russia’s influence in the world, including the prestige of Vladimir Putin. Future historians may well view standing up to aggression by a major power with the threat of nuclear war a real possibility as a major inflection point in the evolution of a new world order that goes hand in hand with pushing back against the rise of nationalism and right-wing populism. Standing up to a serious threat like Russia’s disregard of international norms and its willingness to risk major conflicts may also have taught us a more important lesson.

Donald Trump awakened and empowered the very same kind of dangerous, anti-democratic elements of our own society. Celebration of an unregulated gun culture, White Supremacy, racism and bigotry, xenophobia, the abrogation of women’s rights, anti-semitism, and attacks on the LBTGQ community have all increased sharply since Trump entered the political scene seven years ago. And now, some of the most dangerous groups in our country are threatening revolution and civil war, openly encouraging violence against law enforcement, politicians, and judges with whom they disagree.

As the Biden administration recognized that regardless of the risk, standing up to Russia was an existential necessity, drawing a line in the sand against fascist, autocratic politicians here at home, and standing up to those who support them with threats of armed violence is equally important to our survival as a nation. Perhaps the hypocrisy of Trumpism’s pretense that its followers believe in law and order will finally energize traditional Republican conservatives to stand up and take back their party.

Biden is correct that we are at an important inflection point in our history. He is also right that the policies he has pursued and been able to execute have reversed the trend of negativity and restored hope in the future.

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Republican Midterm Sweep (or Not)?

Posted on August 14, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 14, 2022

Given their dismal record overall, the last few years, when the last few holdout pundits jumped on the Republican sweep train concerning the midterm elections, something felt off. With Trump under criminal investigation by two states and the Department of Justice, the revelations of the January 6th committee, and wide popular disapproval of the direction in which newly appointed Republican Justices have moved the Supreme Court, continued predictions of doom for Democrats seemed at odds with reality. It also didn’t feel right that given all of the above, President Biden’s approval rating was mired in the high thirties.

Much of the reason for those negative outlooks is the media’s need to stir interest through controversy. Their ratings and income depend on it. Worse is the effect of social media, whose clients often eschew thinking for themselves, and whose active users seriously over-represent fringe points of view. It’s never been more important for Americans to pay attention to facts and remember the priorities set forth in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Changes in our public mood take time, but trends are shifting. Consider the most recent report of Biden’s approval rating by the Rasmussen Group, which is viewed as biased toward Republicans, and rated “Lean Right” by AllSides.com. According to Rasmussen, Biden’s approval rating based on polls taken between August 10th and August 14th show a sharp increase. The respected website 538.com, which adjusts raw numbers to eliminate known biases and sampling issues, says Rasmussen rates Biden’s current approval at 45% and his disapproval rating at 49%. Both numbers show huge improvement in recent weeks, and look a lot better than Trump’s were, approaching the midterm elections. Perhaps more important, while they reflect much of Biden’s recent success, they motly pre-dated the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act which is supported by a large majority of Americans.

Over the past few weeks, average voter sentiment by Party, nationally, has Democrats and Republicans in a dead heat at 41% each, hardly a right-wing tsunami. Given how badly many states have gerrymandered their electoral districts, that still portends Republican gains, although nearly a fifth of likely voters are still undecided. The fate of Republicans who spoke out against Trump during his impeachments and concerning the January 6th insurrection is tough to evaluate. Most have either retired or been defeated in primaries by Trump loyalists, but that reflects the divide among Republicans in states where Trump’s hold on the party is strongest. On further reflection, many of the Trump-supported candidates who won their primaries are not given much chance of winning in the general election.

It’s worth noting that until now, there has not been a united push by Democrats to influence public opinion. Additionally, it’s not Biden’s nature to brag or heap adulation on himself, which many Democrats fear makes him look weak in the face of a constant barrage of attacks and criticism from the right. Biden’s strategy has been to work quietly behind the scenes, not letting setbacks deter him from persevering, and that strategy has finally paid off.

The passage of two sweeping, watershed pieces of legislation he championed from the start reflect Biden’s legislative skills and seemingly infinite patience with renegades within his own party, and they significantly changed the direction of the country. We will now have the capacity to produce the billions of computer chips on which our economy and basic survival depend here at home instead of outsourcing them to countries that are potential adversaries. We will force our largest corporations to pay taxes on their earnings, and we will cut into pharmaceutical cartels’ ability to set drug prices that harm both our senior citizens and our treasury.

Finally, we are providing veterans with the support they deserve, especially against harm and injury caused by our own military practices; we are investing massive resources in reducing carbon emissions and assuring national energy independence; and Biden’s quiet, unspectacular uniting of Europe and NATO against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and it’s ability to extort European policy based on dependence on Russian gas and oil has worked what many viewed as miracle six months ago. The massive Russian military has been stalled, and Russian casualties in its war with Ukraine are reportedly approaching 100,000 killed, while NATO appears to be expanding and strengthening.

With DOJ and the states of New York and Georgia appearing to move closer toward indicting Donald Trump for serious crimes that would be slam-dunk convictions against anyone else, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about the November elections yet. We still have critical problems in states that are attempting to put Republican partisans in charge of elections, but change is clearly in the wind.

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Forecasts and Outcomes

Posted on August 6, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 6, 2022

When historians write about the last few years, “forecasts and outcomes” might well be the tag line. As marketing and government systems, social networks, and statisticians collected mountains of data, and computers crunched them, we experienced a massive change in the way we process information. You almost have to be a meteorologist to understand a weather forecast, dozens of software packages help investors predict stock prices, and we’re fed so much quantitative information during sports events we barely have time to watch the games.

Recently, while I was watching a baseball game on television, a ball was hit over the center fielder’s head. He took off, leapt through the air, and snagged the ball just as he hit the ground. Within seconds, my television screen informed me that the fielder had had less than an eight percent chance of catching the ball, and the route he reflexively took to intercept its path was ninety-seven percent accurate. No one even questions how they know that stuff. People seem to trust everything they read on a computer or TV screen, unless they have a vested interest in believing an election was rigged.

Mathematical forecasting models have become extremely reliable as the amount of data and computer speeds grew, but they’re far from perfect. Last week, my town’s weather forecast predicted rain every day. We never got a drop. The reasons predictions fail fall into two categories: insufficient or inaccurate data and a faulty model. When a model fails, it’s usually not the math that’s in error. Forecasting technology and data modeling have been around forever, and they’ve been vetted and tested countless times.

What goes wrong is that models become obsolete, It can happen quickly, and even when the best minds in the business sound alarms, many people ignore them because they have too much invested in the status quo. A good forecasting model has a database of many years of historical information from which to identify and model trends. If the data are good and the underlying forces that produce the outcomes we track remain constant, predictions improve over time. But if the fundamentals change, the whole basis of the model can be undermined. That’s happened, notably, with climate change. Global warming changed the way energy flows in our atmosphere, making predicted outcomes (weather forecasts) less accurate because the new conditions weren’t included in historical data.

The same is true for economic data, politics, and social trends. The emergence of a political force like Donald Trump is totally unpredictable. An economic dislocation due to a temporary shutdown of the economy because of world-wide health crisis makes accurate forecasting nearly impossible because, nothing like it exists in our historical database.

All this matters a lot right now. Economists use historical trends to predict future GDP rates, inflation, job growth, and unemployment. Even determining when our economy is in recession is based on arbitrary definitions and past trends. Political forecasters spent 2022 predicting the outcomes of the midterm elections, and it’s important, in our sound-bite culture, that we rememeber it’s our votes that control the outcome, no matter what the polls say.

No model or expert could have anticipated how moving most of our manufacturing overeas would result in broken supply chains when COVID struck. No model could have anticipated the political divisions over a president leading an insurrection that threatened the basis of our democracy. Nor could it have predicted how the actions of a reactionary Supreme Court would affect how Americans cast their votes. The result, for forecasters, is chaos.

Seven weeks ago, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $5.016, triggering panicked forecasts that inflation would cause a catastrophe for Democrats in November, yet today, the average cost of the same gallon of gas is $4.084, down 18.6% and dropping every week. Despite predictions to the contrary, our economy added nearly a million new jobs in June and July, with modest increases in wage growth. And last week was the biggest shock of all, when Kansas, one of the reddest states in the country voted to preserve abortion rights in its state constitution.

We don’t know whether the Trump or Cheney factions of the Republican Party will dominate, or how independent voters will react in November. The Democrats’ success this week in passing the CHIPS and PACT bills, and reaching an agreement that will allow passing the Inflation Reduction Act in the Senate under reconciliation have thrown yet another monkey wrench into forecaster’s predictions. And there is still a huge unknown that could change everything. If former president Trump were to be indicted either by the state of Georgia or the Department of Justice, how would that affect the November vote count?

The truth is, no one knows. Americans need to do their own thinking for a change. Turn off your damn social media, and if you must let your favorite news channel fill your head with propaganda, at least listen to the other side and decide for yourselves what’s best for our country.

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Unintended Consequences

Posted on August 2, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 2, 2022

Some people plan everything they do in agonizing detail. Others, like me, play things by ear, trusting that we can adapt to changing conditions as they arise. That’s not to say we never think about outcomes – the key to surviving with minimal planning is always being aware of the worst-case possibilities and taking sufficient precautions to avoid them.

Forty-five years ago, my family took a seven-week-long road trip that required considerable negotiation between me and my wife, who is an inveterate planner. Thus, we agreed to travel off the grid, going from place to place without advance reservations, but we made exceptions, like assuring we had a place to stay at the Grand Canyon. We also tempered our free-spirited attempt to fly blind by purchasing a CB radio, which saved us from calamity – it kept the kids occupied chatting with truckers, and it saved us from disaster when we ran out of gas outside Union Gap, Washington.

One reason I avoid detailed planning is that no matter how much I prepare or how many hours of research I do before making important decisions, the events that have the greatest impact on my life are usually things I couldn’t have anticipated. Even our most carefully planned actions have unintended consequences.

When President Franklin Roosevelt, fearing that the Nazis would develop an atom bomb first, launched the Manhattan Project, he couldn’t have known that the Germans would abandon their development of the A-bomb in 1943 or that our own use of those weapons to speed the end of World War 2 would trigger the Cold War and the nuclear arms race we live with today. When a progressive-looking Congress passed the Civil Rights and Social Security Acts in the 1960s, their focus was on improving the lives of senior citizens, the poor and the disabled, and removing inequities that had existed since the days of slavery. They didn’t know those laws would trigger a new era of struggle between people who believe in equality and beneficent government, and those who put states’ and individual rights ahead of what is best for the majority of Americans.

We didn’t know that when the Supreme Court issued its initial Roe v Wade decision, it would spark a fifty-year battle among religious conservatives and the politicians who pander to them to reverse it. We didn’t realize that supporting despots like the Shah of Iran would eventually lead to today’s Ayatollahs, or partitioning Korea would lead to the nightmare of today’s North Korea. We didn’t know President Reagan’s massive increase in defense spending would ultimately bankrupt the Soviet Union, or that thirty years later Vladimir Putin’s principal ambition would be to reconstruct it.

When Donald Trump revealed that the divisions in our country were much deeper than we realized, and that the election of Barack Obama had energized the underground movements of White Supremacy and right-wing militias, we began to realize we were at the edge of a precipice. When millions of independents and centrists, upset with progressive extremism, were fooled into believing that Trump’s fantasy of autocracy, guns, and enriching billionaires would make America great, they had no idea he would try to overthrow the government and undermine our Constitution. When Trump championed the mentality that science is fake news, we didn’t know a half million Americans would unnecessarily die of COVID, or our efforts to offset the global climate crisis would be set back for a decade. And when Trump attempted to extort Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky into smearing Hunter Biden, we had no idea he was playing into Putin’s plan undermine the Ukrainian government.

All of that has contributed to the worst pandemic of pessimism in America since the Civil War. Even I, for the first time in my life have felt pessimistic about our future, but I forgot that things don’t always turn out as we fear or expect. What I thought was a dark future now looks streaked with the first rays of dawn. Trump’s base is cracking, and millions of his supporters understand how he betrayed them. The Republican Party has been forced to re-define itself, and more Americans identify as centrists and independents than ever before. I never believed Andrew Yang had a chance of founding an effective center party, but I’m changing my mind.

I never really believed Ukraine had a chance to defeat Russia, but nearly a half-year into Russia’s invasion, it’s clear that Russia has lost far more than it gained, and standing tall against aggression, autocracy, and the threat of nuclear war was the right decision. If we look further, it may turn out that the long-term impact of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine will be to force all of Europe off dependence on fossil fuels decades earlier than they would have otherwise.

Finally, there is the result of the primary election in Kansas, one of the reddest states in the country. Kansas Republicans turned out in unexpectedly huge numbers to defeat a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have outlawed all abortions. It’s never a good idea to disregard the wishes of voters, ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences, or forget that it works both ways.

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Republican Overreach

Posted on July 30, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 30, 2022

I’m not one to say I told you so, but in case you either weren’t paying attention or thought I’d made up fake numbers about why gasoline prices have spiked so much, here’s what The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had to say, yesterday. The five largest western oil companies, (make no mistake, they are all international cartels with as much power as many national governments,) reported record profits during the April-June quarter of 2022. Exxon, Chevron, and Shell reported collective profits of $46 billion during the quarter. When you add in anticipated earnings reports from BP and the French cartel, Total Energy, $74 billion in record profits will have been made in three months.

The oil companies have already indicated that most of their record earnings will be used to buy back stock from shareholders, which will greatly increase demand for shares and drive up stock prices, thus further enriching the largest shareholders. There’s nothing overtly illegal about all this, but the ethical and moral issues are mind-boggling. The windfall profits came on the backs of hundreds of millions of consumers, many of whom can barely afford to feed their families because they are captives of an industry that answers to no authority but the gods of profit. Equally repugnant is the decision to enrich shareholders rather than modernize and expand refineries that haven’t been upgraded in decades. And since reinvesting in refineries is off the table, the refineries, too are reaping record profits.

If you wonder why the oil companies get away with this kind of thing whenever there is a supply crunch on energy resources, have a look at who represents the three largest oil producing and refining states: John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; John Cronyn and Ted Cruz of Texas; and James Langford and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. All six are Republicans, and the only things they hate more than reasonable gun control measures are taxes on oil companies and anything that limits their profits. Protecting oil companies, along with pandering to evangelists, anti-abortionists, and gun nuts have been the principal planks of Republican campaign platforms since 2000.

This is really important stuff, especially as the midterm elections approach. As MAGA politics is daily shown to be what it really is, the antithesis of everything that helped make America great, and most Americans continue to suffer under a system in which the rich get richer at their expense, people are starting to wake up. And while the right-wing propaganda machine continues to paint President Biden and the Democrats as incompetent and not knowing how to lead, the team of Biden and Senate Major Leader Chuck Schumer is finally showing its mettle. Classic overreach by Republicans in their attempt to dominate the government by opposing policies and legislation that the vast majority of Americans favor is causing the tide to begin to turn back toward majority rule.

Democrats, after eighteen months of being stymied by Mitch McConnell, have finally put together a package of legislation that can protect American manufacturing of critical parts and components, like computer chips, take meaningful steps to reduce inflation, and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Let’s not give them too much credit for innovation, however – only a bunch of morons could fail to see the necessity of these measures. But Democrats have finally demonstrated that they know how to govern when the chips are down, and they are taking full advantage of popular backlash to Republican overreach.

The most glaring example is the shocking reversal of Senate Republicans who had previously voted in favor of a bill to help veterans whose health was ruined by exposure to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Out of pure pique and spitefulness, McConnell led his caucus to reject the measure this week, leaving thousands of veterans in the lurch with debilitating and often fatal illnesses. Combined with turning a deaf ear to law enforcement agencies who decry being outgunned by criminals and homicidal lunatics, they are spitting in the faces of much of their traditional base of support.

We are at another critical crossroads in our country, as the CHIPS bill and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, approach final votes in the Senate and House with the strong support of President Biden and large majorities of American voters. It’s been well publicized that the fifty Republican Senators who control half of the Senate represent only 43% of American voters. If you support this new legislation, and you’re tired of being part of a majority being dominated by a spiteful minority, now is the time to speak up.

Since our politicians seem to care more about the next election than serving the people they represent, voters’ voices are the court of last resort.

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Is America Moving in the Wrong Direction?

Posted on July 27, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 27, 2022

The news and social media tell us the Democrats’ prospects in the November elections look dismal, in large part because President Biden’s approval numbers can’t rise above 40%. The pundits say the primary reason is the economy, which is likely headed for a recession due to out-of-control inflation, which is somehow Biden’s fault. Let’s look at that.

The worst, most noticeable component of inflation is gasoline prices, which, by the way, have dropped from a national average of $5.03 per gallon last month, to $4.31 this week. That’s still an outrageous number, but will the 14% drop improve Biden’s approval rating the way the huge increase triggered by Russia extorting the world energy market hurt it?

Do you know why gas prices rose so much? According to the latest available data, 53.6% of the price of gasoline is the cost of crude oil. When Russia invaded Ukraine, oil cost $91.64 per barrel. At the end of June, it was $114.84, an increase of 25.3%, which should have increased the price of gasoline by 53.6% of 25.3%, or 13.6%. The comparable average prices of gasoline at those times were $3.61 and $5.03 per gallon, an increase of 39.3%, three times what the rise in the price of oil was responsible for. Gasoline taxes didn’t change, and distribution and refining costs rose only moderately. The huge difference between gas and oil price increases resulted from windfall corporate profits and stock buybacks.

That should surprise no one. Since the Arab oil embargo, fifty years ago, the oil companies have exacerbated every supply shortage to reap windfall profits. Each time, after secreting away billions of dollars, just as Congress began questioning the sky-high price of gasoline, it mysteriously dropped, taking the wind out of any threatened investigation.

What about the price of food? Remember when the country was locked down during the first COVID outbreak, and we saw farmers lamenting that they couldn’t feed their herds or tend their crops? Remember the warnings that the prices of everything from grains to produce to beef and pork would be very low in 2020 but would skyrocket when everything had to be replenished in the following years? That’s why food prices are so high.

Then there was China, where the American giants of industry moved their industrial production to increase profits. That included computer chips, critical parts for virtually every major product sold in the United States, clothing – you name it. When China shut down, re-opened, and shut down again it took our wholesale and retail markets with it. That’s why it takes six months for a new couch, a new refrigerator, or a new car to arrive. Our supply chains were screwed. A furniture salesman at Macy’s told me they’ve had to increase prices and extend delivery delays every month in 2022 because demand is so far ahead of supply.

Why is demand so high and the price of real estate rising so fast? Because the Biden administration has performed a miracle of economic recovery in eighteen months. There have been record job growth, record decreases in unemployment, and stronger financial markets than any economist predicted; yet, the polls say two thirds of Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction.

Biden’s foreign policy had a dismal start when he fulfilled Trump’s commitment to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. The optics were terrible. The Afghan army we had invested billions training turned out to be a paper tiger, a terrible intelligence failure for the United States. A suicide bomber killing thirteen of our soldiers made the withdrawal look like an incompetent mess, despite successfully evacuating well over 100,000 military and civilians.

The buck stopped in the White House, as it should have, but since then, Biden has directed a foreign policy that was able to re-inspire confidence in American leadership around the world. NATO was re-united and strengthened, and as a result, the European Union stood firm against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Imagine a world in which Putin’s military was allowed to run rampant over his neighbors, with the threat of nuclear war growing every day.

Finally, I’d ask which president placed the interests of our country first. Exhibit A is January 6, 2021 insurrection, which was entirely orchestrated and executed by Donald Trump. Joe Biden is a president who defends democracy, believes in our Constitution, in basic decency, and in defending us against enemies who seek only domination and the spread of their autocratic forms of government.

In spite of all that I, too, believe we’re headed in the wrong direction, but I wish pollsters would start asking the question properly. Are we moving in the wrong direction because of Biden? Might it be because of our dysfunctional, obstructionist Congress? Might it be because of the MAGA crowd who believe there are never enough guns and never too few restrictions on their use? Could it be the Supreme Court, whose Trump-appointed Justices perjured themselves to secure lifetime seats that control one third of what was supposed to be the nonpolitical branch of our government and now want to move us back to when women had no rights and only heterosexual, white Americans who adhere to some distorted version of Christian values have any say in how the country functions?

Most Americans know the right answer.

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America’s Favorite Pastime

Posted on July 17, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 17. 2022

That’s what baseball used to be called. Growing up ten blocks from Ebbets Field, I was a diehard Dodger fan until I was fourteen. That was in 1957, when the Dodgers broke the hearts of every kid in Brooklyn by moving to Los Angeles. Baseball, like all professional sports, we were told, is a business.

It’s a lesson fans have learned repeatedly since then. Each time we learn it, it’s more of a bitter pill. Sports, like politics, is driven by money. Like politicians, team owners think the fans who keep them awash in dollars will forgive and forget every time they shatter our dreams. Politicians count on voters having short memories, but team owners sometimes learn that fans who shell out big bucks for tickets and overpriced hotdogs remember when they’ve been wronged.

Faced with the prospect of becoming a Yankee fan, my adolescent brain rebelled. Instead, I awaited the arrival of the New York Mets, who rewarded me with 40 wins and 120 losses in their first season, the worst record since 1889. They’d have lost 122, but they were so far behind, they didn’t bother to make up two rained-out games.

In 1967, I moved to Maryland, but like every hopeless romantic, I stuck with the Mets. Two years later, I was really rewarded. 1969 was a magical year for a transplanted New Yorker in Maryland. The Mets beat the heavy favored Orioles in the World Series, the Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA finals, and the football season ended with Joe Namath leading the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl.

I tried hard to be an Orioles fan, but although they were a great team, it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t even find a decent bagel in Baltimore in those days. How could the Orioles replace the Mets? Like all spurned romantics, I started over again when I moved to Seattle in 1974. It had taken half a dozen failed attempts, but in 1976, voters finally approved a bond issue to fund construction of the Kingdome, and the Seattle Mariners were born. I was in love again. The Mariners won 64 games in their first season and lost only 98, much better than the Mets had done.

Being a Mariners fan was a struggle, but I had a place to take my sons to watch baseball games. Unfortunately, when we left Seattle to return to Maryland in 1985, we hadn’t yet met the stars that Seattle came to love – Ken Griffey, Jr., Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, (who turned out to be not very lovable,) and Randy Johnson. But I worshipped from afar, staying up well past midnight to follow the Mariners from the Eastern Time Zone.

I knew the Mariners would never desert me, which made it easy to ditch the Orioles when they were sold to the hated Peter Angelos, who proceeded to trash the once-proud franchise and bring eternal suffering to its long-time fans. NFL owners were just as bad. The year before I returned to Maryland, the Baltimore Colts had sneaked out of town under cover of darkness one night, abandoning the most loyal fans in the world. But the Mariners sustained my faith, becoming a competitive team that won a record 116 games in 2001.

Washington, DC had had it’s share of disappointments, losing two teams, both called the Senators when greedy owners moved them to Minneapolis and Dallas. It was easy to relate to Washington fans’ suffering. Thus, when Montreal had to give up its team, and it moved to Washington to become the Nationals in 2005, I was instantly hooked. Would I never learn? The Miami Marlins had continued the tradition of ungrateful owners, going through cycle after cycle of building winning teams, only to sell them off the following year, dashing the hopes of their fans, because – baseball is first and foremost a business. Still, like any new lover, I was committed.

My investment skills had improved. The Nationals won 81 games their first season. The next year they acquired Ryan Zimmerman who will live in our hearts forever. The Nationals’ owners promised to always put their fans first, and they spent the next decade building a winning team. In 2019, we were rewarded with a World Series title. The Mariners struggled that year, but you can’t have everything. In 2020, COVID wreaked havoc with professional sports, but 2021 promised to be a normal season. The Nationals fielded the same aging stars that had won in 2019. They struggled, but we, their adoring fans stuck with them.

When the trading deadline arrived in July, we knew the owners would do the right thing. But then, disaster struck. It was the Miami Marlins all over again. The owners sold out, dumping all our heroes save the young star, Juan Soto. But lovable Soto couldn’t do it alone, and this season, the Nationals have been awful. By June, both the Nationals and the Mariners were sinking fast. It was the most depressing Spring in years. I’m too old for another failed love affair.

The Nationals’ owners forgot their promise to the fans, and most of us who supported them for seventeen years will never forgive them. The Washington Post reported today that they may trade Soto next month. If they do, I want the owners to know I’m done. I’ve learned my lesson. If Soto goes, it’ll be like 1957. I’ll never spend another dime enriching the greedy bastards again.

But wait! Remember those fast-sinking Mariners? They just won fourteen straight games, and they are virtually atop the American League Wildcard playoff race. Hope springs eternal. My love has been vindicated.

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Politics

Posted on July 16, 2022 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 16, 2022

It’s often been said of how diplomacy works that the only thing worse is having none at all; in that event, all international disputes could erupt into armed conflicts. Every nation, including the United States postures high ideals in public while negotiating differences entirely based on pragmatism. Sometimes, pragmatism and idealism overlap, as in the case of NATO and the European Union coming together to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression – at least for now. That example illustrates the difficulty diplomacy always faces, as the self-interests of the nations united for a common purpose often conflict for entirely justifiable reasons.

A similar interplay of national interests and diplomacy was out front for the world to see this week when President Biden visited the Middle East. Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid put on an admirable and almost convincing show of unity, despite strongly disagreeing on two critical points: the American diplomatic stance on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and when the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would be justified.

Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia was fraught with even more important divisions, as Biden had previously criticized what he believes are the Kingdom’s human rights violations, specifically the alleged involvement of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. On the other hand, it’s clear that Biden needs the Kingdom’s cooperation in increasing the supply of oil and its support for renewing the Iran nuclear deal which even the U. S. Senate has not committed to doing. It’s much like the old saw about making sausage.

Complaints about the reality of how diplomacy works also apply to politics. Politics is a dirty, messy business that most of us hate, but where would we be without it? Current divisions in our country and the gridlock in our Congress make us wonder if politics will ever be able to resolve our internal differences. It would be naïve to assume politics will solve our problems. If that were true there would never have been a Civil War, and the differences between ultra-capitalists and progressives would not have resulted in the Great Depression.

The situation is not helped by Donald Trump and his allies who openly promote divisiveness, white supremacy, and a disingenuous brand of Christian evangelism. It is not helped by a Supreme Court that has the lost the confidence of a large majority of Americans or of extremist politicians who put their own greed and lust for power ahead of what is best for the country. It’s easy to blame Republicans for allowing Trump to dominate their party and to accuse the other fifteen 2016 presidential candidates of letting their personal self-interest prevent them from uniting against what they all knew might destroy their party and their country, but Democrats must share the blame, along with social media giants like Facebook who put their own interests ahead of responsibly managing their content. For that matter, millions of Americans who prefer swallowing whole what they read on the Internet to thinking for themselves have landed us where we are today.

Where we are today is not a pretty place. The Republican Party is waging a self-destructive civil war while Democrats seem unable to get out of their own way. The only thing that unites them is their terror of losing control of both houses of Congress next November. They posture that possibility as an existential fight for the future of the country, yet they behave no better than their opponents. They lambast Trump for raising hundreds of millions of dollars by lying to his supporters as they decry the frighteningly successful efforts of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to stack the courts with extremist right-wing judges. But what have they done in response?

Rather than mount an effective, unified campaign to re-educate voters, they relentlessly beg for money, equally as shamelessly as Trump. They don’t realize that the fastest way to alienate their own supporters is to reward them for donating to their cause by continuously asking for more while showing no evidence that they have any idea how to use the money they raise effectively. If, like me, you have ever donated money to a Democrat running for office, you’re bombarded hourly by fundraising emails from something called DGA, which I assumed was the Democratic Governor’s Association. But there’s also a PAC called DGA, and neither group goes out of its way to disassociate itself from the other. I checked the website Open Secrets, which reports that as of three weeks ago, not a single penny was donated to any candidate running for office by the DGA PAC.

From here, it all smells like rotting fish. My advice is that if you want to support a particular candidate financially, ignore these ambiguous pleas and send your money directly to that candidate. It’s a sad fact that our politics is entirely driven by money. Make sure yours goes where you intended it to.

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