9/11 Memories

Posted on September 12, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 12, 2021

We all have them. Like the day JFK was assassinated, we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when it happened. The former was fifty-eight years ago, but the moment is etched in my memory. I was doing laundry in the basement of my New York apartment building listening to a transistor radio. The gasp I heard when ABC News interrupted the music with that horrific bulletin came from my beautiful, blonde neighbor, who was terrified. I’d have liked to console her, but at nineteen, I was too shaken to console myself.

On nine-eleven, I was in a government conference room in Baltimore. Waiting for a video conference to begin, someone had turned the television to the local Fox news station, and the roughly twenty people who watched the initial bulletin seconds after the first plane hit the tower barely breathed. Oddly, I was the only one in the room who instantly realized it was a terrorist attack – everyone else thought it was just a horrible accident. But that was impossible. No matter how much distress a plane is in, any pilot would have been able to avoid hitting the tower. It had to be deliberate.

A native New Yorker, I took the attack personally. How dare anyone attack the city I had loved growing up? I’d been awed by its canyons of glass and steel. As a kid, nothing thrilled me more the looking up at those edifices and thinking, “People built all this.” And other people, sick with hate and corrupted religious fervor were trying to knock it all down. When the immediate terror subsided, my only thought was, when they catch the bastards behind this, I want to be the one that loops the nooses around their necks. As soon as the authorities allowed, I drove to New York to stand by the fence around Ground Zero. It wasn’t enough to see it on television. I had to be there and feel it.

I spent the day of the attack worried about my wife, who worked downtown in Washington and was caught inside the capital security zone when the cell towers were turned off. That actually helped my outlook, as a total stranger saw her among the stranded crowds, and offered to drive her home, thirty miles away. That act of kindness and generosity tempered my own anxiety and convinced me that we would come through it all strong and united.

Of all the remembrances that filled our TV screens, yesterday, we chose to watch the Canadian musical play Come From Away, which played to record crowds in theaters all over North America before becoming a smash hit on Broadway in 2017, and was just released on Apple TV. The play, which recounted how the wonderful townspeople of Gander, Newfoundland cared for 7,000 people whose flights were diverted when the FAA shut down American airspace after the attack, “has been received by audiences and critics as a cathartic reminder of the capacity for human kindness in even the darkest of times and the triumph of humanity over hate.” There were no dry eyes in my living room watching it last night.

Twenty years later, it’s clear that the nine-eleven attacks changed the world as much as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which brings me back to an ironic memory of another horror, thirty years earlier. I avoided the jungles of Vietnam by spending most of three years working for a defense contractor in the Pentagon. For me, seeing how things really worked inside the National Military Command was a terrifying eye opener. Most shocking of all were some of the things I and my fellow computer nerds heard at briefings by senior military officers. One marine general regularly scared the hell out of us, constantly warning about preparedness against threats most people never even thought about. We thought he was a lunatic, especially the day he talked about his experience on an aircraft carrier in the final months of World War II when two Japanese kamikaze pilots crashed their planes into the carrier.

The story was a lead-in to one of his worst nightmares. In 1969, red-faced, but sober as a judge, he railed at his audience about all the ways we were vulnerable. He stunned us all when he shouted that one day someone was going to “crash a damn plane into the Pentagon,” and we’ll be helpless to stop it. Turns out he wasn’t a lunatic after all.

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Federal Supremacy

Posted on September 10, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 10, 2021

The Federal Supremacy Clause of our Constitution “establishes that the federal constitution, and federal law generally, take precedence over state laws, and even state constitutions. It prohibits states from interfering with the federal government’s exercise of its constitutional powers…it does not, however, allow the federal government to review or veto state laws before they take effect.” The Biden Administration, in the person of Attorney General Merrick Garland has decided to use this clause to attack state laws and governors’ executive actions that he believes deprive Americans of exercising their constitutional rights.

The opening salvo was fired yesterday when DOJ sued the State of Texas over its new law that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and deputizes the entire state to report on anyone thought to be “abetting” a woman attempting to have one. It also offers bounties to anyone willing to spy on family or friends, a favorite tactic of dictators everywhere. Combined with Texas’ new open carry laws for firearms…I can’t even finish this sentence.

The idea of the DOJ lawsuit is that the Texas law denies women’s constitutional rights by violating fifty years of legal precedents that established their right to end unwanted pregnancies. A lot of anger was directed at the Supreme Court for refusing to enjoin the Texas law from going into effect, and the majority of Americans who believe in a woman’s right to decide what is best for her own body took that decision as an ominous warning that Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned.

Given that the conservative majority on the Court claim to be originalists, I believe that’s an over-reaction. The Court’s refusal to delay the implementation of the law falls within the dictate that the federal government cannot review or veto state laws before they take effect, as noted above. The true test of the Court’s position on Roe will emerge as countless challenges to Texas’ law come before it in practice.

After President Biden declared an all-out offensive to eradicate COVID, yesterday, if governors and state legislatures continue to obstruct the administration’s efforts to protect us, I expect the federal supremacy clause to be used to force them to comply with federal requirements. If recalcitrant governors and legislators attempt to undermine the Biden Administration’s efforts to vaccinate our population and protect Americans with mask requirements until enough people are vaccinated to make schools, workplaces, and entertainment venues safe, the DOJ will use a similar argument to attack those actions.

It’s right there in the first sentence of the Preamble to the Constitution. The Founders’ overall intent was to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of all Americans. Do those words apply to defending Americans against a deadly pandemic and a woman’s right to control her own body? COVID has already killed more Americans than any war since World War II, and far more than all foreign-inspired terrorist attacks combined, including nine-eleven.

How the Court’s originalist philosophy translates into today’s values remains to be seen. Laws evolve over time. What does it mean to adhere to the original intent of the Constitution in an environment that could never have been envisioned by the people who wrote it? The Founders couldn’t have imagined today’s world, in particular the state of medical science. When the Constitution was drafted there was no defense against plagues and pandemics. You lived or died based on the whims of fate as people didn’t even understand the concept of viruses and deadly bacteria. As for abortion, rape was rampant and even in the case of normal, desired pregnancies, millions of women died giving birth. Should a conservative interpretation of the Preamble be based on sound principles, protecting life, and science or politics?

The hyper-partisanship in our country today is mostly about people with obscene amounts of wealth fighting each other for power. That should not be what drives the Supreme Court. Justices on the Court have already achieved their life’s ambitions, and serve lifetime appointments. They should be able to put aside personal biases and religious beliefs. They should not be swayed by political pressure, either, and they usually aren’t. Take Chief Justice Roberts as a case in point.

Governors like Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Gregg Abbott (R-TX) have framed our public health emergencies as battles for states’ and individual rights. It’s an absurd argument motivated solely by their need to pander to Trump’s base, because that’s where they’ve bet their future ambitions. I believe the Supreme Court is better than that. They understand their role as the last bastion of sanity. They also understand that if they succumb to politics, our “democracy” is doomed. Let’s wait and see.

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Eight Months In

Posted on September 8, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 8, 2021

Did anyone else hear the alarm bells going off on all the cable hype networks? Catastrophe! Afghanistan was a debacle, COVID-Delta is killing people faster than its parent virus, and Republican Governors and legislatures are passing extreme right-wing laws as fast as they can be typed. All this in less than eight months, and President Biden’s favorability ratings in poll after poll started tumbling. Finally, last week, they dipped below 50%, and the not-so-loyal opposition is crowing, rooting out loud for him to fail.

A few days ago, Biden’s rating hit rock bottom, at 46% or 48%, depending which poll you read. That sounds terrible for a president whose main campaign promise was to re-unite the country, until we provide some context. Biden’s attackers, almost exclusively Trump supporters, fail to note that Biden’s rock bottom low is around the highest rating his predecessor ever had. Trump’s final recorded approval rating as president was 34%.

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was an embarrassing mess that bespoke diplomatic and intelligence failures, and inept planning. The chaos wasn’t Biden’s fault any more than it was Trump’s, yet there was a distinct difference in Biden’s presidential stature. Where Trump was incapable of admitting responsibility for failures and constantly engaged in scapegoating, Biden acknowledged that the buck stopped with him. Instead of publicly humiliating his generals and intelligence agents, he had nothing but praise for everyone involved in the operation.

And why not? After all the sniping and criticism, and Monday morning quarterbacks explaining how it should have been done with the benefit of hindsight, 130,000 people, among them, 6,000 Americans were airlifted from a place where they would surely have been arrested or killed and brought to safety. The only flaw in that ointment was a breach in the Taliban security line that was supposed to protect evacuees from harm, which allowed ISIS-K fanatics to pass a suicide bomber through the airport gate.

That attack, which killed thirteen U. S. Marines, horrific as it was, was a necessary reminder of why we were leaving that place. The British, Russians, and three American presidents all learned the harsh lesson that Afghanistan is unmanageable. It’s a collection of warring extremist factions that no one has ever successfully united into something that looked like a civilized nation. It’s a place that would require an occupation force of over a million to maintain law and order. The fact that ISIS-K was able to pull off that attack during a negotiated withdrawal truce underlines how impossible our mission was.  

But while Afghanistan was a windfall for cable sponsors and Nielsen ratings, our friend COVID-Delta was spreading at a frightening rate wherever it found concentrations of unvaccinated, unmasked people. That’s not a political statement. It’s an incontrovertible fact. In states or localities where people had been encouraged to reject the vaccines and right-wing extremists turned mask-wearing into a human rights battle, hospitals were filling, non-COVID patients were being turned away, and thousands were dying, this time including children.

It seems to have been inevitable that craven politicians who care more about power than human life would work as hard as they have to undermine the recommendations of every responsible health professional in the country. If I tried to incorporate all this into a novel, every editor in the country would reject it as too unimaginable to publish. Yet, here we are, with pro-Trump politicians all over the country legislating against masks and vaccination and declaring war on teachers and school children, all in opposition to President Biden’s attempts to eradicate the virus. They’d love to somehow convince voters in red states that scenes of friends and loved ones sickening and dying are Biden’s fault, but voters, Americans in general, are too smart for that. Anyone with eyes and ears can reach the right conclusion on his or her own.

That’s why Biden’s numbers will bounce back before long, and why Trump’s kept falling in 2020. The difference last year was that the majority of Americans concluded Trump was willing to sacrifice their health and lives to win re-election. Simply put, that’s why Biden beat him by eight million votes, and that’s why, when the smoke settles, Americans will wake up to the scams Trump supporters have been running on them.

It should be interesting to watch the political fortunes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, when it becomes clear they have bet their future political ambitions on Trump’s base, with the same attendant disregard for the lives of the people they swore to protect. It’s already hurting DeSantis, who must run for re-election in 2022 and who has clear presidential ambitions. Virtually a shoo-in for re-election last spring, he now trails former governor Charlie Crist. Do you think the spiraling COVID numbers in Florida are just a coincidence?

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The World’s Largest Posse

Posted on September 2, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, September 2, 2021

As a kid, whenever I watched a movie or TV western, there was one thing I could always count on. Some bad guys would rob a bank, shoot an innocent bystander or two, then jump on their horses and ride out of town headed for their hideout. Moments later, the sheriff or marshal would call for volunteers for a posse to hunt them down, and dozens of farmers, store clerks, and assorted cowboys would show up armed to the teeth and eager for the chase. They’d all be “deputized,” and ride off into the sunset.

They were like a volunteer fire department responding to an emergency, except that they were licensed to arrest and kill if necessary. With only a few hundred lawmen to cover a couple of million square miles of largely unsettled territory, there was no other reasonable way to catch bad guys. The rule of law was represented by circuit judges who came to town once a year, leaving the local citizenry to make their own laws, and posses often turned into lynch mobs.

Another common TV/movie trope was the sometimes real, sometimes fictional dictator who stayed in power with secret police and citizens spying on each other. Neighbors reported neighbors, children spied on their parents, and sniveling cowards spied on everyone for a few pieces of silver. We saw it in war and spy movies, and dystopian fiction like 1984.

Texas recently enacted laws designed to turn back the clock and incorporate both of these approaches to law enforcement into its repertoire. According to The Texas Tribune, as of September 1, 2021, every citizen over twenty-one who is not a convicted felon or criminally insane is permitted to carry concealed (or unconcealed) weapons without permits or licenses. Another new law outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions. It doesn’t matter if a woman or young girl was raped or a victim of incest, or if she wasn’t aware she was pregnant until after the six-week mark.

The abortion restrictions go further – they criminalize every form of assistance to a woman seeking an “illegal” abortion from performing the procedure, helping her make an appointment, to driving her there. And to get around the Rowe vs Wade precedents that states may not forbid abortions before twenty-two weeks, the new law bypasses law enforcement and government entirely. Instead, it authorizes any Texan to sue or take other actions to prevent anyone from violating it.

As a result, Texas has in effect created a posse of 22.9 million potentially armed citizens who have no training in either law or its enforcement to enforce the horrific crime of helping someone have an abortion under circumstances that have been formally legalized by federal courts for nearly fifty years. The same Texas legislature recently passed a voting rights law that bans ballot drop boxes and attempts to turn back the clock on who can vote to Jim Crow days, which Governor Abbott eagerly signed when it reached his desk.

Asked to stop the law from taking immediate effect, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to take no action, yesterday, thus signaling that forty-eight years of consistent legal precedents in hundreds of cases around the country are now deemed meaningless. As serious as the issues of abortion rights and responsible gun control are, both of which are supported by substantial majorities of Americans, the implications of the Court’s looking away go far beyond them. Some people might call this a great victory for states’ rights, but most see it is as undermining federal authority and an erosion of our constitutional guarantees.

In fact, what we see in Texas today is a victory for a minority of Texans who are tyrannizing their state and setting an example for other, similarly minded states. That minority is an unholy coalition of White Supremacist leaning Trump supporters and sheep-like evangelists who blindly follow the doctrine of ignorant and politically corrupted church leaders. They were defeated at the polls, nationally, but they still hold sway in half the state legislatures, at least until the next election.

Trumpers in general, a clear minority of voters nationally, are like a lame duck party scrambling to change everything they can before the voters get wise to them and throw them out of office. Texas is a clear example of this, a state whose population is only forty percent white (as opposed to African American, Hispanic, native American, and other minorities) but is desperately trying to prevent its sixty percent nonwhite majority from sharing power.

Texas’ new laws are anti-democratic in the extreme. Creating the largest posse the world has ever seen and turning it loose could be a precursor to anarchy and the end of our Constitution. None of us can afford to be apathetic while these things are happening. Imagine what Lincoln would say about legalized vigilantism.

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Freedom

Posted on August 31, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 31, 2021

One of the first things we Americans learned as children was that we lived in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” We heard it repeatedly until it became a mantra, and like all mantras, slogans, and mottos, the individual words lost their meanings over time, replaced by generalized notions that can be dangerous – dangerous because there is no such thing as complete freedom, and bravery has nothing to do with chest beating and mob rule. We do not have the inalienable right to do anything we please regardless of how it impacts other people.

When we first encountered laws and rules, we pushed back. We didn’t like being told what we could and couldn’t do, we resented authority. And when we disobeyed our parents and teachers or broke rules we were presented with the dichotomy of civilization versus the jungle. The jungle became a metaphor for living free, while discipline and regulation meant being civilized. Like most overgeneralizations, they represented a false choice.

When we were kids, jungles looked like fun. With no parents, teachers, or police around, we could do whatever we wanted, swing from vines, make friends with animals, and never have to be concerned with earning a living, getting sick, or having to follow rules. Except that real jungles aren’t like that. Everything living in a jungle has natural enemies and predators. Every living creature is constantly on its guard to avoid being eaten by something bigger, stronger, or deadlier.

We learned over several millennia that to survive we had to form communities and cooperate. Cooperation meant accepting restrictions on our freedoms in exchange for mutual security, a dependable supply of food, and protection against everything trying to kill us. But something went terribly wrong. We didn’t all define freedom the same way, and many of us forgot or never learned that with freedom comes responsibility and a very real cost.

Freedom is one of the most abused words in our language. I will never forget President Lyndon Johnson telling us that we had to defend “the freedom-loving people of South Vietnam” against the Communist menace, when all most of them wanted was to be free of colonial interference. A generation later, we were told that Iraqis wanted to be free of oppression by Saddam Hussein, Afghans were desperate to be free of their religious autocracy, and Iranians wanted to be free of the tyranny of Sharia law. After hundreds of thousands of casualties, wasting trillions of dollars, and creating serious divisions at home over decades of wars, it turned out that all those oppressed people had no interest in what we called freedom.

We’ve learned a painful lesson about trying to define freedom for other nations. And now we’re faced with what may be a worse issue within our own borders. Politics and craven, incompetent leaders have so distorted our notions of freedom that we are now at war with ourselves. Somehow, the Second Amendment to our Constitution, which was intended to prevent tyranny by an autocratic central authority over states’ rights, has for many, come to mean armed intimidation of elected authority. Worse, freedom has come to mean the right to be ignorant and ignore science.

Thus, we allow those who would profit from our foolishness to convince us that no one has the right to tell us we can’t pollute our air and water, permit our planet to become uninhabitable or protect each other against a raging pandemic. When nearly half our citizens consider essential public health measures unconstitutional restrictions of their personal freedom, something is terribly wrong in our country. When an elected state representative in Georgia can actively, openly agitate for continued armed insurrection against state and local governments because he believes mask mandates to protect our children in school and vaccination against a deadly disease represents tyranny, we ought to be seriously questioning our future.

Donald Trump and his patrons at Fox News proved that when a vocal minority of our citizens abandons critical thinking and adopts intellectual laziness as a way of life, (think Facebook,) they can be propagandized and instigated to believe that anyone who thinks differently from them is their enemy, and that any trouble or problem they face is the fault of “those people.” If you’re not sure who those people are, substitute every minority or dark-skinned immigrant or anyone else ignorant people can be convinced to hate.

The first two years of the Biden administration may well define our future. If the forces of decency and rational behavior are allowed to succumb to the madness unleashed by Trump and his supporters, we are in danger of destroying everything we’ve spent two hundred fifty years building.

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Best Laid Plans – Two Striking Contrasts

Posted on August 22, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 22, 2021

The City of New York and the effort to wind down our military involvement in the war-torn (so-called) nation of Afghanistan both faced daunting challenges of Intelligence gathering and logistics over the last few months. The consequences of potential failure weren’t comparable in the two situations, but there were striking comparisons. Both demonstrated what can happen when Intelligence information is flawed or incomplete, and both were examples of how unforeseen events can undermine even the best plans.

In Afghanistan, the challenge was to move tens of thousands of people, both Americans and Afghans fleeing the Taliban, out of the country ahead of the advancing Taliban forces. In New York, one of the most crowded cities in the world, the challenge was to move tens of thousands of people in and out of Central Park and provide a secure environment for a five-hour concert celebrating the city’s recovery from the COVID pandemic. Totally different goals, but strikingly similar in some ways.

One thing we saw in both places was a catastrophic failure of Intelligence, one understandable, the other, not so much. Afghanistan was the latest in an abysmal six decade track record of failure of military and diplomatic Intelligence that includes Vietnam, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, nine-eleven, and our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. New York needed to find a way to hold a massive concert without having it turn into either a riot or COVID super-preader, or a terrorist attack.

The Intelligence failure in Afghanistan was largely an American problem, but other NATO countries were equally guilty. I appreciate the logistical nightmare facing our military, but I cannot grasp the incompetence of our Intelligence efforts. We flooded Afghanistan with tens of thousands soldiers, marines, contractors, diplomats and intelligence agents. Germany and the UK did the same thing on a smaller scale, and those personnel were supported by continuous satellite, aircraft, and drone surveillance.

How is it possible that all those assets failed to observe 60,000 Taliban fighters mobilizing around the country? How could our operatives on the ground fail to have noticed the Taliban systematically dominating regional warlords all over this tribally divided country in preparation for an assault on Kabul? And how, after working closely with and training the Afghan military, did our people fail to realize that the departure of American forces would leave Afghan defenders feeling betrayed and unwilling to fight for their own government?

Those missteps and the failure to plan for the possibility that the corrupt Afghan government would cut and run are responsible for the chaos and human tragedy that is visible to the entire world. I believe we’ll get through this in the end, because it’s in the Taliban’s interest to honor their agreement for safe passage and avoid horrific images of civilians being beaten and killed. And the Taliban depends heavily on financial aid from outside Afghanistan, most of which has been frozen by NATO countries.

My intention is not to harp on failures that are obvious to everyone – it’s to shine a light on the success of New York City. While New York wasn’t facing a military disaster, its attempt to provide a badly needed spiritually uplifting experience for all Americans faced enormous logistic and planning issues. Gun violence and mass shootings have been on the rise for decades, and Homeland Security repeatedly warns that the greatest threat to our nation is domestic terrorism. In the past year, we witnessed demonstrations result in violence and death, culminating in the insurrection at the Capitol. And we’ve seen reckless, politically motivated actions and decisions that sought to deny and ignore the deadly effect of the pandemic.

But New Yorkers overcame all that, and for a couple of hours, the city put on a picture-perfect event that achieved all of its objectives. Each of the 60,000 attendees had to show proof of COVID vaccination and a negative test for the virus before being allowed in, and the concert was the complete antithesis of the divisiveness and political rancor that has kept us from moving ahead with the nation’s business. For three hours, the world saw pure joy, among the well-behaved crowd, the performers, and the security personnel who were largely invisible. The first hour, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra supporting brilliant performances by Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer Hudson were uplifting and beautiful, illustrating what we’re capable of when we set our minds to getting it right.

In the end, the one thing beyond everyone’s control, Hurricane Henri, cut the festivities short. But even there, New York shone. The ease and efficiency with which the entire crowd was safely, calmly evacuated in the face of potentially dangerous storms demonstrated that the event planners had prepared for every contingency. We’ll live with the anxiety and stress of Afghanistan a while longer, but for part of one evening, we were reminded of how we look at our best. Maybe the military should have hired Clive Davis, the record company executive who planned and managed the New York concert, to get our people out of Kabul.

I have no doubt that the crowd in Central Park exceeded the one at Donald Trump’s inauguration, both in numbers and joyousness. Way to go, New York!

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Why Parents With Disabilities are Starting Businesses (and How You Can Too)

Posted on August 19, 2021 by alanpzendell

Ed Carter, August 19, 2021

Ed Carter is a retired financial planner who uses his expertise to help people with disabilities plan ahead, as physical and mental disabilities often cause stress and confusion when it comes to financial planning. As we emerge from COVID, with millions still looking for ways to support themselves and their families, Ed’s ideas are more important than ever. You can email him at edcarter@ablefutures.org.

Finding the right career opportunity is tough when you have a disability. Even with the protections offered under the Americans with Disabilities Act, disabled jobseekers face barriers including lower educational attainment, higher levels of poverty, and misconceptions about what it means to have a disability.

For mothers with disabilities, the job market is even bl.eaker: Mothers experience significantly lower callback rates than childless applicants across industries due to assumptions about a mother’s commitment to her career.

With so much stacked against them, it’s no surprise that self-employment is a popular career choice for mothers with disabilities. More than half of working women with children are interested in entrepreneurship. That number rises even higher among women with disabilities who are disadvantaged in the traditional labor market.

Starting a business offers flexibility, autonomy, and limitless earning potential, but it also comes with challenges. Not only do first-time business owners lack the know-how, but they also struggle to find money to start a business.

Luckily, there’s never been more help for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you want to become your own boss but don’t know where to start, use these tips to set your plan in motion.

1. Choose an easy business to start

The best businesses for first-time entrepreneurs are low-risk, low-cost, and scalable. As a parent with a disability, it’s also important to choose a business that fits your lifestyle. Do you need the ability to work from home, run your business part-time, or take time off during holidays and summer breaks?

These limitations may clash with a brick-and-mortar business, but there are lots of business ideas with the flexibility you need. Ideas include:

  • Cleaning services.
  • Pet sitting.
  • Property management.
  • Virtual assistant.
  • Social media management.
  • Website design.
  • Tax preparation.
  • Tutoring.
  • Writing/blogging.
  • E-commerce dropshipping.
  • eBay selling.
  • Pop-up shops.

2. Legally start your business

Most self-employed people operate as a sole proprietorship or a limited liability company. You don’t have to file any paperwork to establish a sole proprietorship. However, you do need to file a DBA (“doing business as”) if doing business under a name other than your personal name. Filing a DBA is a fairly straightforward process, but some states do require publishing your DBA in local newspapers.

Starting an LLC is slightly more complex, but still easy enough to do yourself. In addition to naming your business, registering an LLC requires completing Articles of Incorporation and paying filing fees.

Once your legal business entity is established, you can apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) and open a business bank account. Your state, county, or city may require additional business licenses and permits. Contact your local Small Business Development Center or city clerk to determine what’s required in your state.

3. Find Startup Capital

Even an affordable business idea requires money to start. You need to set up an office, purchase assets and supplies, and pay the initial fees to start your business. After calculating your startup budget, compare funding options to find the best fit.

Your talents may be underappreciated in the job market, but the truth is, few people are more resilient, industrious, and creative than parents with disabilities. If the workforce isn’t working for you anymore, take the opportunity to do something different. Starting a business just might be your family’s path to a brighter future.

  • Family and friends are an important source of startup capital for many entrepreneurs. A promissory note protects all parties when taking a loan from family and friends.
  • Borrowing money from your 401(k) or IRA is an option if you have a nest egg from a previous career. However, borrowing from your retirement isn’t risk-free.
  • While qualifying for business loans is challenging as a new entrepreneur, you may be able to get a business credit card for startup expenses. The best options offer 0% introductory APR and cashback on purchases.
  • Special funding programs are available to disadvantaged entrepreneurs including microloans for entrepreneurs with disabilities and assistive technology business loans. Women entrepreneurs can also apply for free money through grant programs like the Amber Grant.
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Kabul, a Disquieting Echo of Saigon

Posted on August 16, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 6, 2021

“Do not let my party pretend to be outraged by this. Both the GOP and Dems failed here. Time for Americans to put their country over their party.” That was Representative Adam Kinzinger (R, IL) on the diplomatic and military disaster of Afghanistan. Kinzinger, an Air force veteran who served in Afghanistan, criticized former President Trump for announcing that all American forces would be withdrawn by May, 2021 and current President Biden for following through with that promise. Kinzinger claimed neither president had a withdrawal plan and predicted it would end in disaster.

If you’re watching TV, it looks like Kinzinger was right, but let’s take a step back. The truth is, our time in Afghanistan couldn’t have ended any other way. The current debacle was inevitable and predictable. The Afghan government only survived for the last twenty years because it was propped up financially and militarily by the United States; it never had a chance. Whether the Taliban defeated it in sixty days, as intelligence reports predicted, or in three, as it turned out, it was going to happen. The fact that the government collapsed so suddenly, ceding the country to the Taliban, simply reflects how wrong-headed our mission there was.

Amid this high emotion, let’s examine some facts. We spent more than a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, trained an army of 300,000, and helped them build an air force. Our sacrifices included more than 2,000 dead and 20,000 injured, not to mention the wasted resources that could have funded our badly needed infrastructure program. What we got in return was the pyrrhic victory of the assassination of Osama bin Laden and a stain on our diplomatic and Intelligence record that we will regret for decades.

Afghanistan is a complete failure of Intelligence, diplomacy, and strategy, and more than a little corruption. The ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering when we invaded. Americans were reeling from the nine-eleven attack, angry and scared. Our leaders, the media, and a majority of us demanded revenge, and the Bush administration succumbed to that bloodlust and invaded the wrong countries.

The decision to begin our twenty-year war in Afghanistan and Iraq was a continuation of the policy begun during the Reagan administration to support Sunni Arabs over Shias, who overthrew the Shah and control Iran. Many of our leaders, including the Bushes, have had close ties with Sunni Saudi Arabia, which has long vied with Iran for control of the Arab world. Despite the facts that most of the nine-eleven terrorists were Saudis and bin Laden, himself a Saudi, was funded by Saudi money, our government convinced itself that fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would avenge nine-eleven.

If you’re feeling déjà vu, you’re remembering our humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The chaos at the airport in Kabul, thousands of Americans and Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban, is frighteningly similar to our ignominious withdrawal from Saigon. In 1974, Americans and their South Vietnamese allies had to be evacuated by helicopter from the roof of the American embassy as the corrupt South Vietnamese government fled the country and the Viet Cong swarmed into the capital.

Despite our shame, we managed to reprise that disaster in Kabul, forty-seven years later. Not only were we fighting the wrong country, we had seen the Soviet Union bankrupt and destroy itself trying to occupy it in the 1980s. Afghanistan was Russia’s Vietnam; nine years of guerilla warfare and insurgency by Islamic clerics brought Russian forces to their knees. Russia, with shorter supply lines and a need to create a buffer between itself and Iran, demonstrated that occupying and reshaping Afghanistan was virtually impossible. Yet, we repeated their error.

The worst thing about the similarity between America’s failure in Vietnam and Afghanistan is that we chose the wrong side both times, propping up corrupt governments against determined insurgency. We fought in Vietnam because of the Domino Theory put forth by President Eisenhower in reaction to our paranoia over the spread of Communism. That fear blinded us to the reality that Ho Chi Minh was not a puppet of the either the Russian or Chinese Communists, but a populist leader who was trying to rid his country of European colonialism. The success of Vietnam today makes it clear that we were on the wrong side.

The same argument can be made in Afghanistan. Experts express shock that the Afghan army refused to fight the Taliban, but it was never committed to the Western style government we installed in Kabul. They signed up because we paid and armed them, not from any sense of loyalty. If they were truly opposed to the Taliban, they would have defended their country, but it’s likely that the Taliban represents the will of the majority of Afghans.

As President Biden correctly said, yesterday, we do not have the right to continue to try to influence how Afghans are governed, and there is no rational reason to continue to waste lives and resources there. It’s a horrible mess that seventy years of misdirected diplomacy made unavoidable.

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Baby Steps – Signs of Progress

Posted on August 12, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 12, 2021

Nearly seven months into his presidency, Joe Biden faces more problems than he did when he took office. He inherited a nation plagued by divisiveness whose root causes go back to Colonial days, which his predecessor exacerbated for his own benefit. That divisiveness is more poignant today, exactly four years since the White Supremacist invasion of Charlottesville, Virginia. With the perspective of hindsight, the most significant memory of that day was then President Trump’s refusal to condemn a racist attempt to re-awaken a violent, fascist movement that had lain dormant waiting for a leader to deliver the endorsement they received when Trump said, “There are fine people on both sides.” There weren’t.

That divisiveness led to the perpetuation of Trump’s Big Lie, the January 6th insurrection, and a flood of red state laws attempting to assure that non-white Americans won’t vote in sufficient numbers to have a meaningful voice. I believe that if Congress does not pass the voting rights bills currently on its docket, it could spell the end of our constitutional democracy. But recent developments prove we face even greater threats from enemies that couldn’t care less about politics, and which could defeat our too-little too-late responses.

Today, the COVID pandemic and climate change are more dire threats than they were six months ago. It’s time Americans woke up to the reality of the damage they can cause to our society. Future historians may well look back on this year as our final opportunity to act responsibly to protect future generations. Today’s news makes the prospects seem grim.

Yesterday, senators from states whose economies rely on income from fossil fuels voted down an amendment to the $3.5 trillion budget framework that Democrats passed by a 50-49 margin, that would have cut off tax credits for fossil fuel production. Senators, led by Lindsey Graham (R, SC) claimed it would cause prices for gasoline and heating oil to skyrocket. They’re probably right, but this is a time for hard decisions. A few years back when oil prices tanked and gasoline sold for under two dollars a gallon, did you cringe a little while you were reaping those big savings as gasoline consumption went through the roof, setting back efforts to change to electric, non-polluting vehicles? The recently released report on the worldwide effects of climate change make rising fuel costs a small price to pay to protect our future.

Possibly worse, despite continual warnings from the entire medical and public health communities that while COVID had been set back by vaccines, masks, and distancing, the virus was still with us, we have not had the will to permanently put it to bed. If half our country remains unvaccinated, the virus will mutate into more contagious and deadly strains. The delta variant is already ravaging states that refused to mandate masks and vaccinations, and epidemiologists warn that far more dangerous variants may follow, including the possibility of airborne contagion.

Health care systems in Texas and Florida are already at the breaking point with thousands of children now hospitalized. Yet, Governors Abbott and DeSantis continue to pander to Trump’s base rather than protect their citizens. What happens when whole economies have to shut down again and our failure to act makes it unsafe to send our children to school? As finite resources run out, productivity falls, and supply lines degrade, how long before our economy collapses?

Despite all that, there are signs of progress, and President Biden is undeterred in pressing his agenda of saving America’s soul and substance. His first success was passing the $2.2 trillion CARES act last March. Four months of economic data since then show that our economy has added an average of over 800,000 jobs each month due to the stimulus it provided, not to mention that millions of households can pay rent and put food on the table.

Rather than try to kill the filibuster outright, Biden opted to keep his campaign promise of bipartisan government. It was risky, but his gamble paid off, as nineteen Republican Senators voted to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. In return, holdout Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) gave Democrats the one vote majority they needed for their $3.5 trillion budget package. These are significant victories, a light at the end of our tunnel of doom. But important as they are, they are only the first steps in getting us back on track.

The House still must act on both the infrastructure and budget reconciliation bills. The latter would “expand Medicare to include dental, health and vision benefits, and possibly to lower the program’s eligibility age from 65; fund a host of climate change programs; provide free prekindergarten and community college; create a paid family and medical leave program; and levy higher taxes on wealthy businesses and corporations.”

A tough road, fraught with peril, but our future depends on it. President Biden, who was accused of being too old, sick, and feeble-minded by Trump supporters, has thus far proven himself up to the task. There’s no sign that he’s about to slow down, either.

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Thank You To Our Civil Servants

Posted on August 8, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, August 8, 2021

Civil servants at all levels of government have often been the target of unwarranted attacks from the Right. Conservative Republicans (the real ones, not the Trump supporters) believe in small government, while politicians on the left believe governments have important responsibilities that cannot be farmed out to the private sector. I don’t know whether Ronald Reagan was being literal or just making a campaign speech when he said government can’t solve problems, government is the problem, but I’m certain he was wrong.

As both a contractor and a civil servant I spent almost forty-five years working for and with people at all levels of government. Especially at the state and county levels, I have never met a more committed, overworked, and underappreciated work force. Not as much at the federal level because politics and overzealous budgeting cause the size of the federal workforce to oscillate like a yo-yo. Since the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson greatly increased the number of federal workers, Republicans and Democrats have alternately tried to reduce and restore their numbers, for no substantive reason but out of political ideology.

There’s a reason government employment is call Civil Service. The vast majority of people who choose that career path take the word “service” seriously. While it’s true that the government provides excellent health care and retirement benefits, it’s also true that some of our brightest and most talented people choose service over jobs that pay far more than government salaries. And in addition to their talent and hard work, they possess a commodity that seemed to be going out of style since Trump entered the political scene: INTEGRITY!

Americans should thank whatever deity or force they believe in that the U. S. Department of Justice is populated almost entirely by people of that caliber. Political views and personal values aside, they have a special commitment to their jobs, and unfailing patriotism that may ultimately be what saves our democracy. They are people who place principle over politics, who are willing to resign in protest when ordered to act in a manner they consider illegal or unethical, and who are willing to fight internally to assure rules and laws are obeyed despite professional and personal threats.

We saw clear evidence of that in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The Committee is investigating whether former President Trump illegally attempted to overturn the 2020 election in violation of the Constitution in the ten weeks after the election. William Barr, who often appeared to cross the line between defending the Constitution and allowing politics to corrupt his Department, resigned as Attorney General on December 20, 2020, a month before President Elect Biden was to be inaugurated. Even Barr, whose actions aroused anger from both Democrats and his own senior professional staff, finally reached a point where he could no longer stomach having his personal legacy trashed by Trump.

Trump appointed Jeffrey Rosen to replace Barr, and according to testimony by Rosen and his Deputy, Richard Donoghue, spent the ensuing weeks pressuring the Justice Department to declare that the election was invalidated by fraud, despite all objective evidence to the contrary. They implicated another DOJ attorney, Jeffrey Clark as being at the center of a plot to declare the election void and turn it over to state legislatures which would have given Trump a victory along strict party lines in clear violation of the will of the people, who gave Biden a victory in the Electoral College and a margin of nearly eight million popular votes. It’s not clear whether Clark was acting on his own to support Trump or the former president was directing him, but Senate testimony made it clear that they were working together.

As first reported by the New York Times, three Senators, Richard Blumenthal (D, CT), Thom Tillis (R, NC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) sat through eleven hours of testimony by Rosen and Donoghue, with several other (bipartisan) Senators participating. There was little disagreement over the actions of Jeffrey Clark. What remained in question was whether Clark had violated federal law or simply behaved unethically in violation of his oath to defend the Constitution. The DOJ Inspector General will make that determination.

Senator Blumenthal characterized the Committee hearing as “profound and important,” and later told CNN that he “was struck by how close the country came to total catastrophe” after listening to Rosen’s entire closed-door testimony. What he meant was that we all owe a debt of gratitude to the committed senior officials in our Justice Department for averting what would have been at a minimum, a serious Constitutional Crisis, and at worst the undermining of it’s most critical provisions, the fair election of a president.

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