Regulations and the People Who Hate Them

Posted on February 19, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 19, 2021

If we learned anything during the last few years it’s to be wary of anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth, especially when there’s a good chance there is a hidden agenda behind the words. Trumpers and Tea Partiers constantly rail against federal regulations, often claiming they’re part of a conspiracy to replace capitalism with socialism. That’s about the same as suggesting that teaching children manners is equivalent to suppressing their creativity and freedom of expression. The intent of federal regulation is no more about restricting capitalism than teaching our children to behave civilly is about turning them into robots.

It might help to remove the mantle of bogeyman from regulation. Our Constitution grants Congress the sole power to pass laws, which in a perfect world, are supposed to reflect the will of the people. But laws tend be statements of principles and concepts. When Congress passed the Social Security Act, for example, and then modified it to include Medicaid, (health care for people in poverty and the disabled,) it laid out a set of goals and minimum standards. Most laws include layers of nuance to allow states and local jurisdictions some leeway to deal with local conditions. Enforcing the Social Security Act was far more complex than pulling someone over for speeding.

The bridge that links federal laws to actionable rules and policies is regulation. Congress passes a law, and then it becomes the province of the Executive Branch to translate the wording of the new statute into enforceable rules, that is, to create regulations that assure adherence to Congress’ wishes. Before any regulation is put in place, the government designates a period of time for public comment, town halls, and these days, debate in both public and social media. Regulations are not edicts of a king. They are intended to serve the common good while allowing states the flexibility they need to apply them to their individual circumstances.

Medicaid is an excellent example of the regulation process, particularly in light of the current push to get the eleven states that held out passing expansions under the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid regulations are written by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in the Department of Health and Human Services. The people who draft them understand that one size does not fit all. For example, all states must provide eligible recipients with a standard minimum list of health services, but states can add to the list and request waivers if they think they have a better way to serve their populations. Hundreds of such waivers are currently in force. Even then, the regulations are not absolute. A state need not comply if it wants to run and pay for its own program. The regulations are the requirements for obtaining federal financial assistance.

Most regulations attempt to meet a common need. Problems arise when competing financial interests politicize them. The classic example is the body of environmental protection regulations. The fight between scientists, environmental advocates, and polluting businesses has raged since the National Environmental Protection Act was passed by Congress in 1970, by a Republican Administration. Regardless of which side you’re on, the problem is lobbying and politics, not the regulatory process.

The latest example of why this is so critical is the current weather disaster in Texas. There are two national electric power grids in the United States, one for the eastern half of the country and one for the west. Their purpose is to enable power to be shared in emergencies like the current crisis in Texas. Since weather emergencies never impact the entire country at the same time, most local areas have a surplus power supply that can be shared when the demand in one region exceeds supply. The systems that comprise the U. S. power grid are privately owned, not some giant government utility. But in order to assure compatibility and maintain reliability standards, the systems that participate must comply with a set of regulations. No single entity profits from the regulations. They’re all about serving the common good.

As with Medicaid, states were not required to join one of the national grids, but in order to be connected to them and receive federal assistance they had to agree to abide by the regulations. Texas chose to go it alone, believing they could handle their own problems and would never need to borrow power from other states. In doing so they committed the same error as people who believe they don’t need fire insurance. They don’t – until there’s a fire. Texas politicians abhor federal regulation. In this case that fundamental prejudice cost its citizens dearly. It’s a catastrophe for millions of Texans that could have been avoided by preventing political views from overriding common sense.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Speak Not Ill of the Dead – Or Just Tell the Truth

Posted on February 18, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 18, 2021

We’re taught never to speak ill of the dead. Why? Is it mere political correctness, good taste, or squeamishness? One of the few things about which I agreed with Donald Trump was the need to do away with most forms of political correctness, which is simply lying or refusing to acknowledge the truth. As children, we were taught not to lie, except, that is, when older, wiser adults winked at all those “little white lies” they told us.

Except, there’s no such thing as a white lie. White lies are either an unwillingness to face an uncomfortable truth or a cowardly way of avoiding controversy. There have been many truly evil people in the world. You know who they were. They were evil when they lived and their legacy was still evil when they died. The thing is, if we shrink from telling the unpleasant truth about them in their epitaphs, if we do not shine a spotlight on their vile beliefs and deeds, we increase the risk of having them repeated by others.

Everyone defines evil in his own way, but Rush Limbaugh fit my definition to a tee. Listening to him, it was easy to conclude that he was a bigot and a misogynist, an image he reveled in. He coined the term “Feminazi” to describe women who chose not to be subservient to men. He described black people and welfare recipients (which for him, were synonymous) as leeches and cheats, stealing from the mouths of “hard-working white men.” In 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton’s first term, Limbaugh was not content to speak vilely about Hillary Clinton, the First Lady. He described Chelsea Clinton, their daughter, as the thirteen-year-old whore in the White House. What kind of person does that?

That stuff is damning enough, but my own view of Rush Limbaugh is even worse. I believe he was a charlatan, adopting a racist, populist persona for the sole purpose of enriching himself. It was much like the fake right-wing extremist character Stephen Colbert created in the Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, except that Colbert’s viewers knew he was simply in character. While pretending to be the champion of the working (white) man, Limbaugh lived extravagantly, owning a private jet and amassing an estate worth $600 million. The real Rush Limbaugh was a self-styled mover and shaker of presidents.

Limbaugh didn’t invent the populist, White Supremacist wing of the Republican Party, but he was one of its principal proponents and supporters until Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs came along. To some degree, he was an early creation of Roger Ailes, founder of Fox News. Ailes’ dream was to awaken a silent majority of angry white men and call them to action to take back what was rightfully theirs, and Limbaugh was his “beta” test of the concept. When it worked to the extent that Limbaugh daily peddled his hate to a syndicated network of 160 radio stations, Fox News quickly followed, unabashedly calling its news coverage fair and balanced, which was about the same as  Mao Tse Tung calling his Chinese Communist regime the People’s Republic of China.

But there’s more. The evil twins, Ailes and Limbaugh, viewed themselves as king makers. To fulfill that prophesy, they turned their duo into a triumvirate, recruiting a businessman turned television personality with a huge ego and a reputation for ignoring rules and ethics, and flaunting laws whenever it was convenient. Moreover, their new disciple got away with it more often than not. Thus was given birth to Trumpism, which is simply an updated, expanded version of the filth and philosophy Limbaugh peddled for thirty years. Originally a supporter of Ted Cruz in 2016, Limbaugh jumped aboard the Trump bandwagon as soon as it was clear that even the hateful Cruz was no match for Trump’s shameless pandering of lies and bigotry. Limbaugh had as much to do with keeping Trump’s base in line as anyone in America.

Given all that, should we praise Limbaugh as we bury him? Or, now that our country has reached a critical fork in the road with respect to Trump’s movement, should we call a spade a spade? Trump didn’t invent himself. He was the product of a carefully choreographed movement engineered by Ailes and Limbaugh. That, and the hate he spread for all those years until Trump took over the mantle of right-wing extremist in chief, are the despicable legacy of Rush Limbaugh. The world is a better place without him in it.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Party At War with Itself

Posted on February 15, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 15, 2021

In his new book, A History of What Comes Next, Silvain Neuvel describes the unfortunate circumstances in which the German population, specifically, it’s surviving men, found itself in 1946:

The Germans are in shock, stunned, stripped of who they were and everything that held their world together. It doesn’t matter what they believed in, it’s gone. They were promised the world and lost everything. Those who believed feel cheated, robbed by one man’s stupidity. Those who didn’t are defeated just the same. There’s no prize for having been ashamed early.

What a metaphor for today’s Republican Party. Led astray by a charismatic madman, they were assured that their destiny was to inherit the mantle of power and transform the nation into a Fascist Utopia. That’s not what their maniacal leader called it, but even the dimmest of them eventually got it.

It was clear to many from the start that that’s what Donald Trump was trying to create. They spoke out half-heartedly, mostly out of self-interest, but possessed neither the wit nor the will to stop him. Just as Germany allowed itself to be swallowed up in nationalist pride and prejudice, they took the easy path of going along with the rising tide. If you read what they said five years ago, it’s clear that they were appalled by what they were signing on to, but they played along to get along. In the aftermath, most probably regret supporting the Big Lie, but to paraphrase Neuvel, there’s no prize for being ashamed.

The Republican Party is a shambles, at war with itself, with no outcome in sight. Saturday’s Senate impeachment vote defined three factions – those with the courage to remain faithful to their conservative values, those who appear willing to stick with Trump to the end, and perhaps the largest group, who are horrified by what they allowed themselves to be dragged into, but can’t see a way forward.

Those divisions will be sharpened as President Biden proceeds to methodically level the playing field for Americans caught in the middle. His efforts to assure that people are not left in financial ruin by Trump’s criminal neglect of the pandemic, to expand health care to as many as possible, and to get vaccines into 300 million arms have the support of eighty percent of the country. Standing against them is the only thing that unites Republicans: obstruction. After blowing up the national debt to pass a disingenuous tax law that made the rich richer, Republicans who disagree about everything else are suddenly concerned with the cost of Biden’s recovery program.

Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in class warfare since the New Deal. It was ugly and painful, but somehow, the system functioned that way for more than eighty years. Trumpism, desperate to prevent evolving demographics from transforming America into a majority nonwhite nation, expanded the battle lines by injecting white supremacy and xenophobia into an already explosive mix.

The supply side economic policies Republicans have pushed since the Vietnam War were never more than a smoke screen for maintaining an elitist, classist society. When the nation elected Barack Obama to two terms, it was a sign that the winds of change had shifted toward equality, a word we were once taught was the basis of our Constitution, but was anathema to those who preferred to keep power in the hands of an American oligarchy. Americans revered fictions like the New York 400, the official list of those worthy of high society,  as recently as the second world war. But the Depression and the war showed that kind of elitism for what it was, and the growing middle class rejected it.

The Republican Party courted middle class votes, but their megadonors weren’t about to share their wealth. The extreme faction that formed the Tea Party movement more than a decade ago was dedicated to defending what Bernie Sanders called the Billionaire Class. Trump went a step further, feeding his supporters the lie that he wanted to lift them up. In fact, Trumpism requires a carefully managed underclass to survive. The Trump model differs only in detail from the Fascist tactics that transformed Germany in the 1930s.

Trump supporters in Congress face a conundrum. They are fully invested in currying Trump’s favor because they fear it’s their only ticket to remaining in power. They know it’s wrong. They understand that history will judge them badly, but they’re riding an out-of-control locomotive they can’t stop. The future is not theirs, as the various jurisdictions planning legal action against private citizen Trump are about to demonstrate. The question is what will take their place.

The country needs a loyal opposition. Domination by either party would be a disaster. Perhaps the best solution is Adam Kinzinger’s, a viable third party he refers to as center-right, but which might also include Democrats like Joe Manchin. A third party would enable strong coalitions and end partisan gridlock. It would also make it much more difficult for future demagogues to rise to dominance.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Disgrace of the Senate’s Acquittal

Posted on February 13, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 13, 2021

Yesterday was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I remember when February 12th was a national holiday except for a few southern states. HBO remembered, and they’ve been showing the 2012 film Lincoln wherein Daniel Day-Lewis brought Lincoln to life so convincingly, we might have wondered if we were watching history through a time warp. The film documented the fight to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery in the United States.

There is so much stark similarity between what occurred in January 1865 and January 2021, watching it again was a valuable wake-up call, reminding me that the struggle between White Supremacy and decency has been part of our history for more than 300 years. The recreated voices of House Democrats of the time (they were the racists back then) openly declared that the words “all men are created equal” were never intended to include Negroes (or women, for that matter.) Those same Democrats also made the argument Trumpers have made about Hispanic immigrants. If Lincoln was allowed to free four million (!) slaves, it would steal jobs from hard-working white men.

The anger, intensity, and hatred that prevailed after four years of Civil War exceeded anything we heard in Congress this week, but there was an important difference. Right or wrong, moral or immoral, the men (there were no women) in the 1865 Congress sincerely meant what they said. Slavery was the basis of the South’s agricultural economy, and shocking as it sounds, it never occurred to most southerners back then that a slave’s right to live free and prosper was worth upsetting the established order.

Today, in the Senate, as the political future of a treasonous former president was debated, we saw craven self-interest and cowardice instead. The Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump, not because of deeply held beliefs, moral imperatives, or conscience. It was because nothing mattered more to the forty-three Senators who voted to acquit than staying in power, which meant not angering the millions of Trump supporters who still believe the Big Lie and threatened to punish anyone who voted to convict.

The fight to pass the 13th Amendment was vicious. Lame duck Democrats were still able to vote, and Lincoln needed to convince at least twenty of them to change their minds. That was accomplished by promising them patronage jobs after their terms expired. But the last critical votes were conscience driven. Enough Representatives who believed slavery was evil had the courage to vote against their own racist party.

The Senate’s failure to convict Donald Trump was exactly the opposite. It was a concession to the power of the mob, acquiescence to the terror of a cultish vocal minority who were sold a complete falsehood and called to arms. It was a disgrace and an insult not only to the country but to the ideals of a once proud Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, the same Republican Party that had the integrity to force Richard Nixon from office. Nixon’s crime, a failed attempt to fix the 1972 election and then cover up the intent, were trivial compared to the actions of Donald Trump.

A failed attempt to cheat in a presidential election pales before organizing and inciting insurrection. The majority of Americans must understand that the Senate did not speak for them. If Donald Trump attempts to resurrect his political career, I’m confident they will stop him. They also must deal with the clear evidence that integrity is not a quality valued by forty-three of the fifty Republicans in the Senate. Only we the voters can fix that when they ask to be re-elected.

After the acquittal, Mitch McConnell delivered a speech in which he sounded more like a prosecutor than a defender. Despite having voted for acquittal, he held Trump responsible for everything he had been accused of in the Article of Impeachment. He condemned Trump’s actions in the strongest terms, but claimed that the Constitution does not empower the Senate to convict a former president, despite the great majority of legal scholars who disagree.

It makes my head spin that McConnell said Trump was guilty as charged but still voted “not guilty.” He seemed to be attempting to convince Americans that Trump disqualified himself from ever holding office again, and encouraged criminal prosecution for his actions. McConnell convicted Trump unconditionally with his informal words, yet voted to acquit him based on a technical argument in which he is clearly in the minority.

I take heart from the seven Republicans who voted their conscience to protect the nation, but we still have a serious problem as long as Senators like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham aren’t made to pay a political price for their refusal to do so.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

America on Trial

Posted on February 11, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 11, 2021

Whether or not House Democrats intended it, the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is really an attestation before the entire world of what America stands for. The nativist, America First aspect of Trumpism which rapidly evolved into a cult that mesmerized millions of his supporters is what got us here. The truth is that Trumpism was only ever about the megalomaniacal lust for power of its founder and the right-wing extremists he pandered to. America First is a dangerously naïve fiction that may in fact put America last.

In the manner of all wannabe dictators, the former president cultivated a fanatical army of armed supporters comprised of loosely aligned pseudo-militias. Such movements invariably depend on a charismatic leader’s ability to sell a Big Lie. The twentieth century saw several – Vladimir Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat, followed decades later by the Maoist philosophy of disinformation and insurgency. Benito Mussolini’s fascism was an attempt to create a new Roman empire with himself as Emperor, the Nazi vision was of a superior Aryan race whose destiny was to rule the world, and the Japanese Empire was driven by the belief that its godlike Emperor was meant to rule the inferior masses of mainland Asia. More recently a call to Jihad swept the Muslim world resulting in the ISIS Caliphate and the radicalized version of Islam that rules Iran.

These movements had two things in common. They were all attempts to overthrow the established order of the time, and they were all condemned by the United States. Emerging as the dominant world power after WW2, America took on the mantle of moral leadership, criticizing other nations’ indiscretions and holding its own values out as an ideal for the world to emulate. How righteous we were as we struggled to ignore the scars of our own history of oppression and genocide!

We railed against the Holocaust, the oppression of Joseph Stalin, Soviet troops occupying the capitals of Eastern Europe, and the killing fields of Southeast Asia. Criticizing the human rights violations of adversary nations became an essential element of our foreign policy. Castro’s Cuba, Ortega in Nicaragua, Tienanmen Square, Tibet, Maduro in Venezuela, Kim in North Korea, Mayanmar – the list of instances in which we held ourselves to be morally superior is endless. Today, it is we who are on display for the world to see, and what we are showing them is nothing to be proud of.

The case being made by the House impeachment managers is powerful and convincing. There is no doubt in the minds of most Americans that Donald Trump deliberately sparked an insurrection and attempted to subvert a presidential election. There is also no doubt that he recklessly loosed a mob on the Capitol that included people willing and able to murder members of Congress and the Vice President, and made no attempt to stop it when it got out of control. Our law-and-order former president, who was sworn to defend the Constitution, watched the horror show he created on television along with a billion people around the world and cheered the rioters on, resulting in five deaths and more than a hundred Capitol police officers injured and brutalized.

The peaceful transfer of power which is the cornerstone of our democracy had to be conducted behind three fenced perimeters guarded by almost 20,000 national guard troops and police. That spectacle was also viewed by the entire world, and now comes the final act, the trial mandated by our Constitution to determine whether Donald Trump committed the treasonous act of insurrection. One hundred Senators swore oaths of impartiality, to serve as a jury that considers all the evidence and renders a fair, reasoned judgment. We criticize the show trials of the Russians and Chinese governments. We attack the Saudi Monarchy and the North Korean regime for sanctioning murder and torture. Now it’s our turn.

It is the prestige and honor of the United States that is on trial before the world. The very Senators who must serve as unbiased jurors have among their ranks people like Josh Hawley (MO) and Ted Cruz (TX) who supported the Big Lie that started all this, and arrogant partisans like Marco Rubio (FL), Ron Johnson (WI), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Rick Scott (FL), who brazenly, in full view of the television cameras, ignored the evidence, instead staring into their laps or doodling.

The trial of Donald Trump is not an esoteric exercise couched in legalese that only the principals can follow. It’s all out there in terms that everyone can see and understand. Sometime in the next few days, the world will watch as one hundred Senators vote as jurors. What is at stake is nothing less than our status as the leader of what we used to call the Free World.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Trump’s Second Impeachment Trial is Much More Than That

Posted on February 8, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 8, 2021

It’s going to be ugly and unpleasant. At times it will be infuriating and frustrating. And there will doubtless be moments when we feel shame exposing our darkest, seamiest aspects to the entire world. They’ll all be watching, and that’s no small thing.

Many Americans have a “who cares” attitude toward the rest of the world, but it really does matter. President Biden is trying to re-establish normal relations with our allies, normalize trade and undo the damage done by Trump’s tariffs (though he may keep some of them) and reassert America’s moral authority with our adversaries. That won’t be easy when all the sordid details of the former president’s actions are made public.

Here at home, the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump has far greater significance than whether he is punished for his crimes. More than half the country is angry as hell and wants to see him pay for fomenting insurrection and threatening the stability of our nation. But his trial is about much more than that.

I strongly opposed the first impeachment. It was an emotional overreach that was doomed to fail from the start, and warnings that a pre-ordained acquittal on purely political grounds would only embolden Trump’s disregard for law and the Constitution were borne out. As re-election time neared, his desperation to remain in office might have played out exactly as it did even if the first impeachment hadn’t happened, but there is no doubt that it awakened the sleeping monster of the militant extremists who comprise a significant fraction of his base.

If we didn’t before, we now know how dangerous they are. We’ve learned that unfettered access to social platforms and extremist websites must no longer be permitted. Our notion of free speech and what constitutes responsible journalism will also be on trial, as will the survival of the Republican Party.

I opposed the first impeachment because I couldn’t see anything positive coming from it, but this one is different. The sixty-seven votes needed to convict (fewer if some Senators choose to be absent) may or may not be there, but a meaningless vote to remove a president who is no longer in office isn’t what this trial is about. It’s about rooting out what Mitch McConnell called the cancer of Trumpism and excising it. It’s about waking up to the reality that our country has reached a critical crossroad, and the path we choose will determine whether it continues to exist as a constitutional republic.

It’s critically important to tarnish the Trump brand so that it can no longer pose an existential threat to our nation. We already see an upheaval in Republican circles as major donors rethink where to invest their capital, voters reconsider whether they want to be affiliated with either party, and elected officials figure out whether their responsibility to their oaths of office takes precedence over their self-interest.

We may be better than most of the world, but the real America has never lived up to its ideals. Our history has been stained with racism and genocide, misogyny and elitism, greed and indolence, ugly truths that we’d rather not expose for everyone to see, but we have no choice. Trumpism has shined a painfully bright light on all of that, and the American family needs a serious intervention if it is to survive intact.

Interventions are painful. They’re not pretty, and they leave people on all sides battered and feeling raw. But it’s time to take a good, close look at who we are, and the upcoming Senate trial will do that.

There must be no procedural barriers to getting at the truth. We need complete transparency, which means hearing from witnesses, accessing private policy emails, and reviewing the hundreds of hours of documentation available from news media. Americans must clear their minds of preconceived notions and opinions and just pay attention. Both sides will have ample opportunity to present their cases. Watch and listen. Discern the truth.

The only substantive thing the Senate can accomplish is assuring that Trump never holds federal office again. Whether he deserves other forms of punishment will be determined by the courts and the marketplace. Federal, state, and local courts seem prepared to indict and prosecute the former president and his family, and the business world has already begun the process of starving the Trump empire and the Trump wing of the Republican Party of the thing they most crave – money. If you hate what Trump stands for, boycott his businesses and email your Senators about the need to follow their consciences.

The Senate may or may not convict – we’ll see. But it can determine the future of Trumpism, and that will be critical to our survival as a nation.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is Biden’s Relief Package Best For the Economy?

Posted on February 2, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 2, 2021

Despite Donald Trump’s ability to take over the news cycle, there are more critical issues on President Biden’s plate that involve saving and improving the lives of Americans. Getting people vaccinated against the pandemic as quickly as possible and providing financial relief for those drowning in COVID-related debt make Trump nearly irrelevant.

The debate over a new stimulus package has been predictable. Based on the recommendations of economists and health professionals, Biden proposed an aid package that’s really a bailout of the American people. But it’s different from other bailouts. The bank and automobile company bailouts invested taxpayer dollars to save industries considered too critical to our nation’s security to fail. The 2017 tax cut was also a bailout of sorts, a desperate rescue plan to prevent billionaires from slipping back into the ranks of mere multi-millionaires.

At the end of 2016, America had 620 billionaires worth $2.6 trillion. Two years, later, the tax cut and the stock market boom it generated had increased the number of billionaires to 788, worth $3.4 trillion. Trump and Congressional Republicans touted the tax windfall as a break for working Americans, although we now know nearly 90% of the benefits went into corporate stock buybacks and the pockets of the already wealthy, a continuation of the Reaganomics in the 1980s.

Proponents claim that cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans (supply side economics) has a trickle-down effect on jobs and the prosperity of the working class. The argument between trickle-down and Keynesian economists has raged since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes proposed that increasing demand by average Americans would lead to full employment and prosperity. The way to increase consumer demand was to put money in the pockets of average Americans, which guided the economic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Supply side economists promulgated the notion that the economy always does better under Republican administration, which Congressional Republicans cite in opposition to the $1.9 trillion price tag of Biden’s stimulus package. There’s no doubt that Biden’s proposal would stimulate the overall economy, as virtually every penny would immediately be reinvested in businesses and services. But in addition to being a stimulus, it’s a compassionate response to the suffering of millions of Americans who are out of work and unable to support their families.

In today’s edition of the New York Times newsletter The Morning, journalist David Leonhardt published a data- and fact-driven study that belies the idea that our economy does best in Republican administrations. Focusing on job creation and growth in Gross Domestic Product, he showed that exactly the opposite seems to be true. According to Leonhardt: “The economy has fared far better under Democrats. The gap…is ‘startlingly large,’” as illustrated below.

In the ranking of presidents by average annual GDP growth, Donald Trump is dead last.

The chart of growth in jobs is equally striking, showing that Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump rank last there as well. Trump is the only president since Herbert Hoover whose administration had a negative job creation rate, despite passing the tax bill. While some people blame the pandemic for Trump’s ranking, his mishandling of the pandemic was responsible for most of the downturn.

These results strongly suggest that our economy does better under Democrats who practice demand side economics. Biden’s proposed relief package would put badly needed funds in the hands of individual Americans, small businesses, and state and local governments. In true Keynesian fashion, virtually the entire $1.9 trillion cost would flow directly back into the economy.

Republicans object to spending so much on COVID recovery, claiming it would unreasonably increase our national debt, instead proposing to spend a third of what Biden requested, and ignore the needs of local governments and low end wage earners. That’s not only wrong, it’s completely disingenuous. The difference in the impact on the national debt of the two proposals can be offset by undoing the portion of the 2017 tax law that increased the wealth of the richest Americans by more than a trillion dollars in its first two years.

The differences in the competing stimulus packages have little to do with economic theory. The real issue is whether Democrats and Republicans can compromise on a bipartisan bill that represents a compassionate, responsible reaction to the needs of Americans. President Biden will strive for a bipartisan agreement, but in the face of greed-based opposition, he should and will use the budget reconciliation process to pass it without Republican support.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Future of Post-Trump America

Posted on February 1, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 1, 2021

Today’s military coup in Myanmar is a warning to Senate Republicans eager to avoid going on record convicting former President Trump of insurrection. Myanmar has been at war with itself since its independence from Britain in 1948. Its economy is terrible, its people largely in poverty. Until 2012, Myanmar lived under military rule for fifty years amid constant resistance from pro-democracy groups.

Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi’s stunning victories in 2012 and 2015 achieved majority control of both houses of Myanmar’s Parliament, seemingly overturning the autocratic military government in power since 1962. If this were a fairy tale, the country’s economy would have flourished, and everyone would have lived happily ever after. But the reality was that Myanmar’s society was fractured, and ceaseless gridlock, turmoil, and political assassinations prevented progress, resulting in today’s detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and a declaration of national emergency by the military.

There is little resemblance between the United States and Myanmar. American military leaders consistently denounce taking sides politically, and while the pandemic has ravaged our economy, its structural integrity remains intact. Unlike India, which achieved independence from Britain at the same time as Myanmar, the latter was never able to achieve economic or political stability, making it easy prey for a military takeover. That couldn’t happen here, could it?

Anti-democratic forces in the United States represent a small percentage of the population. After months of concerted lies and misinformation by right-wing media and conspiracy-oriented websites, recent polls show that only one in six Americans believe there is any reason to question the election of President Biden, but every elections has sore losers. The military dictatorship that ruled Myanmar for decades also represented only a small faction of its population, but they controlled all the weapons. Myanmar’s experiment in democracy never had a chance.

Myanmar proves that unchecked, a small minority of motivated, heavily armed people have the power to subvert the will of the majority. Despite our different situations, the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th and the violent protests at a number of state capitals are ominous warnings. The American system is strong enough to hold off the forces of anarchy and autocracy, but that strength depends on the courage and integrity of our elected leaders.

Forty-five out of one hundred Senators (all Republicans) are on record in a procedural vote declaring the second impeachment of Donald Trump unconstitutional. The merits of that argument are moot; the significance of the vote is their fear of Trump as a political strongman despite what every Senator knows is true. The entire country saw Trump incite an attempted coup. That’s what it was no matter how some people try to mitigate or sugarcoat it. Yet 45% of our Senate either does not believe that warrants a conviction or lacks the courage to act because it threatens their political futures.

That kind of cowardice in our leaders cannot be tolerated. Myanmar tried for eight years to establish a democracy supported by 80% of its people, but failure to suppress or bring the opposition into the fold resulted in today’s coup. The issue in America today is that Trump has hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a PAC whose purpose is to disrupt and oppose the Biden administration and keep Trump’s base angry and believing they’ve been robbed and disenfranchised. As usual, what’s best for the country isn’t part of his agenda.

Is it necessary to convict Trump in an impeachment trial? There’s a compromise effort underway to censure him instead and follow that by a simple majority vote to prohibit him from ever holding federal office again. Isn’t that really the goal? An impeachment conviction would be entirely symbolic, its only purpose in the Constitution being to remove a president from office. Censure and prohibition can be accomplished quickly and painlessly, and would allow the new President to get on with essential business.

Every Executive Order and legislative proposal put forth by President Biden has the overwhelming support of the American people. Opposition comes from right-wing groups and those who remain beholden to billionaires who oppose all federal spending even after having their own net worth increase by over a trillion dollars as a result of the 2017 tax law.

If our elected Senators remain true to their oaths, Trump’s efforts will be irrelevant. Only their inaction, brought on by fear of a small militant base offer Trump any chance of success. A block of Senators who hold power far out of proportion to the number of people they represent are the greatest threat to our future security and prosperity. As the last line of defense of our democracy, it falls to us, the voters, to prevent that and purge Congress of people who support insurrection. Make sure they know they will be held accountable if they fail to act responsibly.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Fakery on a Global Scale

Posted on January 29, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 29, 2021

In 1983, Woody Allen created a fake documentary called Zelig, after its main character. Before the age of sophisticated computer imagery, Allen used a variety of movie making techniques to seamlessly insert his character into real scenes of historical film footage. Comic book writer Will Pfeifer of Catwoman fame described Zelig as “a completely convincing portrait of the 1920s and 1930s…When we see Zelig being serenaded by Fanny Brice or standing by Babe Ruth in batting practice, or disrupting a Nazi rally by waving at his girlfriend, you’d swear it really happened.”

Pfeifer was right. Audiences were amazed by how real those fake scenes seemed. Interspersed with fake commentary by real historians commenting on the life of the fictitious Leonard Zelig, and some excellent deadpan comedy, the film was brilliantly crafted. But some viewers noted  that it was also an ominous warning for the future. Creating a mock-documentary was great comic theater, but if Allen, using the low-tech tools available in the early 1980s could pull it off so convincingly, what if those same techniques were refined and applied to things like the news, evidence presented in court proceedings or National Security pronouncements?

That question was echoed by many futuristic writers of the time. With the rise of the Internet, many writers predicted that over time, objective news reporting would be swamped by unvetted crowd-based websites spouting heavily skewed opinions and outright lies. The age of Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite would be replaced by political spin, conspiracy mongers, and alternate realities shaped by people with deep pockets and a strong dislike for the established order.

The art of lying convincingly became a national pastime. In the 1990s we saw striking examples in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, and in Bill Clinton’s impeachment. When Clinton looked into the camera and said, “I never had sex with that woman,” everyone on the planet knew he was lying. Likewise, when George W. Bush began the misinformation campaign about weapons of mass destruction that led to our involvement in a nineteen-year war in the Middle East, virtually the entire Congress was fooled into supporting the effort.

It’s not that we naively believed politicians always told the truth in the past, but the ability to disseminate false information enhanced by rapidly developing technology had opened an era of audacious lies of a magnitude not previously seen. The Obama Birther Conspiracy was the next example. The perpetrators knew it was all fakery, but millions were convinced by it. Extremists at both ends of the political spectrum, primarily on the far right realized they had a new weapon against which there was no defense.

Many people had become concerned about the ability to falsify information. It was becoming apparent that people could be convinced of almost anything if it came from an authoritative-sounding source, and by the 1980s, computers were as authoritative as it got. I could have written hundreds of false reports, and people would have believed them because they were printed by a computer. Computers can’t lie, but they can be wrong if they’re fed false information.

Roger Ailes and Fox News weaponized this idea and enlisted a telegenic, power-mad narcissist to spread the word. They understood that there was a huge, angry base, a silent majority of right-wing extremists, waiting to be tapped by anyone with the money and brazen unscrupulousness to try. As much as I saw it coming, when senior advisor to the Narcissist in Chief, Kellyanne Conway coined the phrases “fake news” and “alternate facts,” and no amount of pushback by the forces of reason had any effect, I was horrified. Was it really that easy to create a movement based on lies and pandering to the uninformed? With dozens of totally unvetted sources available, all spouting the same nonsense, all covered by the First Amendment right to free speech, where would it end?

We don’t know, and that’s a scary thought. People like Steve Bannon, Rush Limbaugh, and the entire crew of Fox News and AONN are able to create any reality they want to. Fact checkers are a useless joke, their only audience people who already care about the truth. So today, we have QAnon people in Congress, openly inciting disorder and insurrection, and right-wing militias and Nazis openly threatening Congress and state governments. Cheering them on is an insane former president who has demonstrated that there are no limits to either his lust to regain power or his criminality.

How do we combat them in an age in which objective truth no longer exists, when anyone can find support for every crazy belief on countless websites? We can start by demanding integrity from the people we elected to serve us. This is a battle that requires everyone who values democracy to stayed engaged.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Importance of the Senate Impeachment Vote

Posted on January 26, 2021 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 26, 2021

In two weeks, the U. S. Senate will conduct the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Americans are so weary of the political divide, of all the infighting and lying and misrepresentations, not to mention the pandemic, most people just want this to fade into the rear view mirror.

That’s both unfortunate and dangerous. We need to remain engaged and let our Senators know what we expect them to do. The Senate trial will not be a criminal proceeding; it has neither established rules of evidence nor an obligation to enforce the law. The sideshow in the Senate will be entirely political, a game in which appearances and illusions are likely to take the place of reality.

If the recent past is an accurate predictor of the future, most Republican Senators will posture about responsibility and how awful the attack on the Capitol was. They’ll engage in procedural maneuverings and look for alternative means of slapping Trump’s wrists, doing everything possible to avoid going on the record with a vote to convict or acquit. Such is their overriding concern with their next election, their lingering fear of an animated Trump base, that a disappointingly small number will cast their votes based on the merits of the case.

The merits are pretty clear. If you screen out the partisan noise, most constitutional law scholars agree on two things: it is constitutional to conduct a trial of a former president, and the evidence, as seen live on television by about a billion people, clearly showed Donald Trump inciting insurrection against the Congress and attempting to undermine a presidential election. If you care about America, that’s pretty serious stuff.

The idea of the Senate trial as political theater is extremely dangerous. The implications of Trump’s actions on the behavior of future presidents cannot be overstated. When the House of Representatives decided to impeach him the first time, many people, myself included, strongly disagreed. With Republicans in control of the Senate, the majority of whom were terrified of angering Trump’s base, the certainty of acquittal was assured before the impeachment vote in the House was taken. The only possible outcome was emboldening a president with autocratic tendencies who had already demonstrated his disdain for the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

Democrats hell-bent on political retribution went ahead anyway, a very bad decision. As predicted, when the Senate refused to even hear evidence, Trump came away claiming total exoneration. Why else would he believe he could get away with subverting the election? Why else would he imagine that he could commit treason and suffer no consequences? It’s not much of a stretch to conclude that those things might never have happened if the House had shown some restraint or the Senate had demonstrated a shred of integrity. We were warned the first time, and failing to heed that warning is what brought us to where we are today.

If we care about the kind of America our kids will live in, we have no choice but to pay attention this time. If Trump is allowed to walk away from his actions without consequences, not only will he be emboldened to continue to stoke his base to undermine the Constitution, but there will be no restraints on the actions of any future president. Senators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio have already thrown in the towel, publicly acknowledging that nothing is more important than their self interest. They have told us by their disingenuous inaction that Trump may have been right five years ago when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

In fact, Trump will be right only if we all sit on our hands and do nothing. Americans hungry for a return to moral leadership voted in record numbers to deny him a second term. Georgians, appalled by the former president’s attempts to strong arm their state’s leaders seconded that with their votes. If you’d been asked in November, what odds would you have given Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of winning their runoffs elections?

That’s proof that collectively, Americans have formidable weapons, when they are wielded in concert. Republican Senators care about getting re-elected, and they care very much about how much money is in party coffers. How do we convince them that integrity has value? By speaking up now and telling them that they will pay a price for being morally bankrupt.

We don’t need violent demonstrations or extremist threats. We have telephones and the Internet. Make some noise. Write to your Senators. Use your voices and social media to assure that Donald Trump can never hold federal office again, and that actions like his will not be tolerated in the future.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments