Oaths of Fealty

Posted on June 14, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 14, 2017

David Axelrod said, “Frankly, it was embarrassing.” Stephen Colbert suggested that it made Kim Jong-un seem classy. A broad spectrum of commentators called it bizarre, with the most often heard comment being, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I felt shocked, disbelieving, and nauseated, in that order.

By now you’ve figured out that I’m referring to the awkward, artificial, and wholly inappropriate Cabinet meeting that Trump conducted on live television a couple of days ago. In his most narcissistic act yet, like a medieval king, he required every member of his Cabinet to proclaim fealty, perform obeisance, and generally embarrass him or herself before the world. It was as staged as a Chinese election, and I’m honestly torn between hoping it was just the repulsive puppet show it seemed to be and being terrified that it wasn’t.

Trump began the show with cheap shots at Democrats, all of whom are nothing but worthless obstructionists followed by hollow, exaggerated praise for the people he somehow convinced to serve in his Cabinet. Then we were treated to a surreal summary of all his wonderful accomplishments that have never been matched by any other president in our history. Finally, our pompous, self-important president basked in the glow of the forced adulation he required as the price of admission to his administration, as one by one, every member of his Cabinet soiled themselves on live television. The fact that this occurred in the wake of James Comey’s testimony that Trump inappropriately demanded a loyalty pledge from him made this display even more outrageous, but then, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about.

Anyone who expected to see a real Cabinet meeting had those hopes dashed when the television cameras were turned off as soon as this latest episode of reality television concluded with Trump praising himself for presiding over a completely transparent administration. All this, after Trump had spent the night tweeting that James Comey was the worst possible leaker, while one of the Donald’s good friends, who claimed he’d never spoken with the president, began leaking…errr…I mean floating the rumor that Trump was considering firing Robert Mueller.

On the same day, the media was full of speculation over whether Attorney General Sessions, the first Senator to pledge loyalty to Trump, would claim executive privilege before the Senate Intelligence Committee or if he might be willing to shed light on the possible existence of taped conversations. Remarkably, in a Cabinet which is a model of transparency, Sessions’ memory seemed to fail him every time he needed it

So Trump once again demonstrated how well he had learned to practice distraction, obfuscation, and misdirection, while in his typically unsubtle manner, having no idea that when he does these things repeatedly everyone begins to see through them. Oh, I get it – that’s what he meant by running a transparent administration.

I wish the media would stop grabbing at every bit of bait Trump throws them. Did we need yet another rehash of the Saturday Night Massacre? Did anyone actually believe Trump would fire Mueller with people in both parties (except our old buddy Newt Gingrich) screaming that he’d better not? Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein effectively told the world he’d resign if Trump ordered him to fire Mueller, and currently Rosenstein is viewed by most Americans as the Department of Justice’s standard bearer of integrity.

I’m a big fan of loyalty, especially today, Flag Day. But I spent thirty-seven years in the federal government, and in all that time I never witnessed a politician demand blind loyalty from a career civil servant. And every time I observed political pressure to commit an illegal action, it was rebuffed out of hand. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

After ten years of living in this country as a legal permanent resident, one of my daughters-in-law is about to become an American citizen. Since her country of origin is currently under the yoke of one of the wannabe dictators Trump has been cozying up to, she understands better than most of us how dangerous a corrupt administration can be. When she is asked to pledge allegiance to the United States of America, she will do so with joy and pride. But the only other loyalty pledge she ever has or will sign was her marriage contract. No wonder I love her.

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Erosion of Trust

Posted on June 12, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 12, 2017

Mountains and huge institutions rarely collapse all at once. Under constant battering by opposition and internal decay, they erode a little at a time until, when their once-strong foundations have rotted to the core, they come crashing down.

We saw it happen to the Soviet Union almost thirty years ago. In retrospect the warning signs were clear. Despite the seemingly overwhelming power of the Kremlin, the satellite Baltic nations began demanding independence in the late 1980s. In the face of mounting revolutionary pressure at home, the Soviet Union’s resources were insufficient to stop the tide of history. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and one by one, subject states broke away. Even with all those portents, when the world woke up one morning in 1991 to find that the Soviet Union no longer existed, most of us were stunned.

Erosion is slow but implacable. Bits crumble, and eventually a weakened substructure is revealed. It looks to me like that is exactly what is happening to the Trump presidency. Independents who voted for him were the first to abandon him. In each of his five months in office, his popularity and approval ratings have steadily declined, until his support among his own party has dropped to around 80%, which political historians consider a critical danger sign. And his base, whoever they actually are, shrinks in every poll.

Last weekend, four Republican Senators spoke out. While none of them overtly withdrew support for the president, they were all highly critical of his behavior. It’s not difficult to read between the lines. They are not only embarrassed by this administration, they see its legislative agenda floundering with little chance of advancing ahead of the 2018 election. They’ve also seen Congress’s approval rating fall even lower than Trump’s, and that has to have their frustration level near the breaking point. Whether Trump survives or goes down, they’ll all still be there answering to angry voters.

Yesterday, Washington Post business writer Steven Pearlstein titled his Sunday column “It’s Time for Business Leaders to Dump Trump.” Business leaders are already bailing, with many large corporate CEOs having publicly distanced themselves from the administration which was supposed to be their champion. “Distancing themselves” is one of those phrases that implies a lot more than it says. If we’re hiking in the mountains and we see a rattlesnake on the trail, we put distance between it and us. When a tsunami warning is issued we get as far from the shoreline as we can. And when a massive ship is about to sink, people jump into lifeboats and get as far away as possible to avoid being sucked under with it.

And Trump’s cabinet? More and more we hear appeals to put country ahead of party. Secretary of State Tillerson looks exhausted every time he takes the podium. He is undercut almost every time the President tweets or speaks. How long can he be expected to support policies he strongly disagrees with?

Perhaps the most frustrated cabinet member is National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster. Pearlstein’s Sunday business column addressed that too. He drew on the distinguished military correspondent Tom Ricks, a big fan of McMaster. According to Pearlstein, “Ricks was encouraged that someone of [McMaster’s] intelligence, integrity, and experience would be there to educate the new president and restrain some of his worst instincts.” But after watching McMaster “contort himself and the truth over the past three months,” Ricks wrote an article in Politico urging McMaster to resign for the good of the country.

Attorney General Sessions was the first major politician to support Trump’s candidacy. He was rewarded for his loyalty by an appointment any ambitious lawyer would crave, but he couldn’t possibly have anticipated the quagmire his new job would become. He, like most of Trump’s supporters, held their noses at his campaign tactics hoping that once he was elected he would be different. They’ve said that for nearly five months, and things keep getting worse. Two months in, Sessions had to recuse himself from the Russia mess, and today under enormous pressure, after trying hard to avoid public testimony, he had to agree to appear in open session before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Does he wish he could turn back the clock?

Sessions is too good a politician to give false testimony, but what about Trump asserting that he too will testify? He repeatedly accuses James Comey of lying, but doesn’t seem to hear the silence that invokes on both sides of the aisle, where most observers believe Comey told the truth. Ask yourself honestly – do you believe Trump would lie under oath if he thought he could get away with it? Does anything about his conduct in the last two years, or in his entire career convince us he’d be truthful? And if his tweets and public statements, whether before Congress or anywhere else, continue to cause disruption and dig ever deeper holes for him, what then?

In the end erosion, like entropy, always wins.

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Life Imitating Art?

Posted on June 7, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 6, 2017

During the tumultuous weeks in 2003 leading up to the second invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush trotted Secretary of State Colin Powell out to present evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction to the United Nations. Whether or not Powell knew at the time that the information he was presenting was false, he later went along with the National Security Council’s decision to support the invasion, even though he was opposed to it.

When, with much of the world media reporting that the evidence of WMDs might have been faked, British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged the UK’s support for the invasion, three members of Blair’s government resigned in protest. They knew how to act when their honor was besmirched.

When Bob Woodward interviewed Powell for his book, The Commanders, he asked him why he hadn’t resigned as well. Powell said he’d have fallen on his sword for nothing and ruined his career. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from the Brits.

We’re not in a shooting war now, but we face an equally serious situation. Last week, we watched President Trump succumb to the swamp politics of special interests who wanted the United States out from under the environmental restrictions of the Paris Accords. What was less widely reported, was that the only two members of his Cabinet who had earned bipartisan respect and support, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were strongly opposed to the decision but were overruled by Steve Bannon.

Many people thought Mattis and Tillerson should have resigned in protest. If it wasn’t enough that the sound counsel of the two most important people in the Cabinet was ignored on an issue that threatens all of us, the spectacle of these two competent advisors being overruled by a craven political hack like Bannon might have been the tipping point. Given all the controversy and confusion caused by the President’s unhappy relationship with the truth over the Russia investigations, I can only guess how difficult it is for them to remain in the government.

I don’t know whether Powell did the right thing fourteen years ago, and I can’t imagine what goes on the minds of Mattis and Tillerson. Neither seems like the sort of person who is either easily bullied or overly concerned about his career. I want to believe that they both think they can do more good within the government than outside it, but how many such incidents will it take to tip the balance the other way? Today, our ambassador to China resigned in protest over our withdrawal for the climate accords. It’s a start.

If these questions weren’t so serious in real life, they’d make for great entertainment, the kind of thing that successful television series thrive on. My curiosity was piqued when I heard Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, the stars of Netflix’s House of Cards talking about the new season, which was released last week. In its first four seasons, the show featured ever more outrageous acts by an unscrupulous Congressman scheming his way to the White House. Ms. Wright commented that the current season topped the previous ones, but that the writers were now stumped about what to do next. The antics of the Trump administration made it tough to be more outrageous than reality. Spacey lamented that the White House may have better writers than he does.

That’s quite a statement, since the fictional President Underwood does things that make the audience gasp in every episode. I had to see for myself, so I began watching season five, which was scripted before anyone knew what the Trump administration would be like. Ironically, in episode two, when the president somehow outdoes himself in his unrestrained lust to hold on to power, the fictional Secretary of State tells the equally fictional Vice President that they have to do something to stop him.

“What can we do,” says the Vice President, whose backbone and integrity have been suspect for two seasons.

“We can resign,” the Secretary of State tells him. “If we do it together, people will listen.”

Were the writers prescient? Is it accidental that whatever President Underwood does, we have no trouble picturing Trump doing the same things? I’m almost afraid to watch the next few episodes. It’s the same feeling I get watching the news every morning.

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

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Lies

Posted on June 6, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 5, 2017

We’ve all had to deal with liars in our lives. When it’s our kids, we do everything possible to put a stop to it, because as parents, we know that one of the worst things that can happen to them is getting a reputation for not being believable. We explain to them that lying has consequences. What child has not heard the parable of the boy who cried wolf?

As adults we use honesty and truth as criteria for selecting friends, lovers, life partners. We understand that relationships are built on trust, and the foundation of trust is truth. How often have we heard someone proclaim, “Friends don’t lie to each other?” How many marriages have been broken because of lies?

We’re taught in school that cheating and plagiarizing are grounds for dismissal. What are they but specialized kinds of lying? In law perjury (lying to the court) is a serious crime. Federal law prescribes a punishment for lying that can include imprisonment for up to five years. It seems lies are pretty serious stuff, doesn’t it?

What happens when our president lies? Let’s look at the record. Lyndon Johnson told a real whopper that led to our involvement in Vietnam. His contrition over the events of the next few years resulted in one of the most remarkable mea culpas in American history as he announced that he would not run for re-election on March 31, 1968. Richard Nixon lied about Watergate, and his repeated denials of the truth cost him his presidency. Bill Clinton’s lies about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky led to the only impeachment of the twentieth century and destroyed his legacy as president. George W. Bush lied about the pretext for invading Iraq, and as it became clear, his job approval rating steadily dropped until it reached 26% during his last year in office.

In today’s world even a president cannot lie with impunity. It always catches up with him. It’s as inevitable as the sun rising.

Donald Trump has not learned that lesson. It’s understandable in a way. He’s lived his entire life valuing money more than truth, and he’s gotten away with it. His instinct for the darker side of human nature has enabled him to manipulate and bully his way through life, virtually without permanent consequences. Given his arrogance and narcissism, is it surprising that he thinks he can run the country the same way?

Ronald Reagan was known as the Teflon President, since none of the scandals in his administration ever stuck to him. That’s probably because people viewed him as honest overall, and he wasn’t above apologizing and taking responsibility for errors. He was actually very good at it. But Trump possesses neither Reagan’s integrity nor his acting skills.

What makes his lies more serious and even helps perpetuates them is that a sizable portion of his base knows that he lies and revels in the fact that he appears to get away with it. It’s part of that populist persona of thumbing his nose at Washington and daring anyone to call him on it. When he said he could shoot someone in mid-town Manhattan and still be elected, 20,000 of his most rabid supporters cheered wildly. After that, why wouldn’t he think the usual rules didn’t apply to him?

No doubt he’ll keep lying until the day his words bring him down. Consider the spectacle of repeatedly seeing and hearing him say climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. We see those videos every time we turn on our TVs. It’s not hearsay, and no one put those words in his mouth. Yet, for the last two days, his spokespeople can’t even respond to the question: “Does the president still believe climate change is a hoax?” This kind of thing has become so much a part of the way he’s viewed in general, people both in our own country and around the world are just shaking their heads.

This cannot go on indefinitely, and it won’t. Despite partisan bickering, our Senators, Representatives, Governors, and Mayors care about the values our country was founded on. They care about our role as international leader, and they care deeply about losing the respect of the rest of the world. Most of all, they know that we can’t just go our own way in a world in which our economy is inextricably tied to the those of every other major nation. When Trump’s antics start affecting jobs, our trade deficit, and our GNP, their embarrassment will evolve into rage, and his days will be numbered.

It’s tragic that our children have to witness this. My grandson asked me what I was doing as I began writing this. I said I was writing about lying, and he asked why. I told him it was because we have a president who lies all the time. He said, “You mean President Trump?”

Sadly, I said, “Yes.”

Four-year-old Nate thought it over, and said, “That’s really bad.”

It certainly is.

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Summing up the Paris Accords

Posted on June 3, 2017 by alanpzendell

Gary Zendell, June 2, 2017

Gary Zendell is a former teacher who is now running his second successful small business. He didn’t have a political bone in his body until Donald Trump announced his candidacy. I know because I raised him. If you want to see how successful his business is, check out his restaurant, IsaBella Bistro, 4015 Avati Drive, San Diego, CA 92117, http://www.isabella-sd.com/

Let me sum up Trump’s pulling out of the Paris Accords for those of you who only watch Fox News.

“It strained those sectors [coal, steel, etc] of our economy.” – Fox News

TRANSLATION – It put pressure on those sectors of our economy to innovate and evolve. If we don’t do it, then who will? We created the micro chip, we made the internet, we made the first great automobile company and the first major airplane manufacturer. All those sectors of our economy were doing okay last I checked.

“…As a result, many coal miners in places like western Pennsylvania lost their jobs.” – Fox News

TRANSLATION – “Steel Town” should be called “Natural Gas Town” now, because that’s what’s feeding their economy. See? They evolved and innovated. As a result, employee earnings are higher than those of the coal companies, the work-related death rate no longer makes where they work “the most dangerous workplace on earth”, and the environment is healing rather than further deteriorating.

“The terms of the Accords were unfair and unequal. They were more stringent for the US than China and India. In fact, China and India were both given a ‘13 year pass’” – Fox News”

TRANSLATION – –and…I’m just using common sense here. China and India are the two largest manufacturing countries in earth. They are also two of the most impoverished countries on earth, so in order to not collapse completely, they needed more time to make the transition. Or better yet, first, we, THE WORLD LEADER AND LARGEST CONSUMER ON EARTH needed to time to develop A DEMAND for alternative energy sources so China and India would have the motivation to supply them, and so they can survive by selling them to us instead of selling us the other stuff that destroys the earth.

Hey Fox and Trump, it’s called BEING SELFISH. When will you learn that we are all in this together? How can you sleep at night with your, “oh well, f–k ‘em” attitudes?

For a man that’s supposed to be a great innovator and businessman, you’d think Trump would recognize that the Paris Accords were ultimately good for business. But that’s not what Trump does. He doesn’t make money by creating viable, long term, stable, respectable things that benefit society as a whole. He puts on a show and then sucks the blood out of things.

Take the Taj Mahal (his version, not the one in India). It looks awesome and exciting and super fun, but almost everyone that walks into the casino leaves without their money feeling a little worse about the world while Trump gets richer. And have you seen the rest of Atlantic City lately? It kind of looks like Manila.

OMG. Did I really waste my time writing all of this?

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Climate Change is NOT a Hoax

Posted on May 31, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 31, 2017

The problem with stirring up a huge, angry and largely uninformed base with political rhetoric and lies is that you have to keep lying to avoid losing them. Oh, they’ll catch on eventually when it’s clear that the results they were promised will never materialize, but that’s a problem for later, and if he’s anything, President Trump is someone who focuses on the daily news cycle.

Perhaps the biggest and most dangerous lie of the 2016 election campaign was Trump’s oft-repeated claim that climate change is a hoax. We know it was a lie for several reasons. First, Trump is not a religious, anti-science creationist. Second, whatever you may think of him, he’s not stupid. But the convincing evidence is that that particular lie meshed so perfectly with Trump’s campaign of pandering to ignorance.

He knew he was lying when he promised to bring all those coal-mining jobs back to Kentucky and West Virginia. Most economists know that while coal may still have a small place in our energy future, it will never compete with natural gas for efficiency and environmental friendliness. And whatever coal we produce in the future will largely be mined by automated machinery and robots, not miners risking lung disease. Mitch McConnell understands that, yet he was one of the senators who urged Trump to perpetuate the lie.

Apparently, the economists in Trump’s White House know it too, so the decision to withdraw from the Paris Accords can only mean that with Jared Kushner and his wife laying low for the moment, Steve Bannon is once again on the ascendancy. That may explain how the internal battle in the White House turned out this way, but not why Trump was willing to infuriate the other 190 signatories to the Accords, among whom are counted our closest allies. Is this just Trump doubling down on his tough-guy act? Will he never grow up?

Most of the educated world understands that this latest example of out-of-control irrational Trumpism is incredibly dangerous. Despite Trump’s dwindling hard-core support, we are not an isolationist country, and the last time I looked most Americans weren’t going out of their way to give the rest of the world the finger. They also weren’t willing to gamble their grandchildren’s future on political opportunism. They’re still not and neither am I.

Reversing decades of meager progress in attempting to slow down and mitigate the effects of climate change is criminally irresponsible. Combined with the way Trump trashed NATO in Brussels, last week, it’s certain that we will pay a heavy price both in terms of prestige and trade. Unless we the people force this to change quickly, Trump’s naivete about how the world works could haunt us for decades. The irony of that is that the people who suffer most will be the workers who lose their jobs because there is no export market for their products. When they ultimately turn on the man who did that to them, the rest of us will derive no satisfaction from seeing him go down. Not that we wouldn’t love to, but we’ll be too busy picking up the pieces and teaching our grandkids how to fasten their breathing masks.

I’ve tried not to let my anger come through on most of the posts on this blog, but I literally cannot find the words to express my fury and concern now. When Stephen Moore, the reactionary economist who has been whispering about the Paris Accords in Trump’s ear since the campaign began finally had to concede that the 43,000 jobs he predicted would return to coal-mining country would actually amount to about 1,300, all he had to say was, “That’s a lot less than 43,000” (http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/31/news/economy/trump-coal-jobs/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom).

This action is an outrageous kick in the teeth to the majority of Americans who understand that climate change is the greatest threat to future generations. You know all those immigrants Trump rails about who steal our jobs and want to bring down our democracy? What all those people have in common is a willingness to sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of their children. Perhaps that’s why their children continue to excel, while our own keep slipping backward relative to the rest of the world. Wake up and smell the flowers, Donald, while they’re still there to smell.

The president has the legal right to lead us down this path, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fight him on it. There are enough people in Congress who see things the right way to affect this decision, but they need to hear from all of us if we expect them to act.

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Politics, Social Media, and Entropy

Posted on May 31, 2017 by alanpzendell

Joel Liebesfeld, May 31, 2017

Joel Liebesfeld is a consulting forensic engineer, and a very smart man. He spends his professional life analyzing accidents to determine their cause. Those same skills are equally applicable to politics, to people, and to life in general.

What do Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in common? This is not a trick question, but rather a reflection on a conversation that I recently had with Alan Z. The question we’d been discussing was: how is it that most of the global political arenas and in particular that of the United States, have become so convoluted?  I thought about it for a couple of days and arrived at the following.

When pondering the various scenarios that brought our political system to where it is, I focused on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the numerous pictures of Clinton holding her cell phone during various meetings, the issues surrounding her use of a private server in her home, Trump’s obsession with Twitter, and the seemingly endless White House leaks being routed through social media.  Given all that, it dawned on me that modern day politics have been bastardized by the constant tweaking that alleged secrets go through when they get passed on from one party to another. We all learned this as children when we played “telephone,” wherein a secret was whispered from ear to ear, and even when we attempted to relay the message accurately, it became totally transmuted after only a few repetitions. When information is filtered through social media, we don’t even have the presumption of the intent to transmit it accurately.

In my opinion, it’s far more likely that Clinton lost the election less because of former FBI Director Comey and his late breaking revelations, than the distortions of facts as they passed through various channels and networks while the bottom line truth remained mostly undiscovered. On the other hand, Trump has been repeatedly shooting himself in both feet by all too frequently by releasing self-destructive and unnecessary tweets that certainly do not coincide with what we expect from the President of the United States. And when his tweets continually contradict both his staff and each other, even without being massaged through the social media, the result is growing confusion and frustration.

Defining a problem is the first step in using the scientific method for research.  While considering the definition of this one, I found myself shouting, “Oh, grow-up!”  Many politicians try to convey to millennials and perhaps most of the rest of us that they are really hip or cool with their usage of modern computerized communications. I think the growing sources of streaming channels for data/information, and the data itself  has developed a life of its own. Moreover, the totality of data is accumulating at an accelerating rate to a point where clarity  and the ability to understand most political issues may be a thing of the past.

Is this a living statement of the effect of entropy? Is this what must occur as human development begins to become integrated with artificial intelligence, resulting in a condition mathematically and philosophically equivalent to chaos? I believe external actors have interfered with both Clinton and Trump, and the migration of rerouted information surrounding them corrupted the effectiveness of both major political parties and thus the American political system.

Meanwhile, the global conditions brought about by North Korea, Iran, Syria, climate change, and ISIS remain  terribly far away from solution, while internally we must still address our own healthcare crisis and growing level of home grown poverty, to name just a few.

Of course, over the long run, entropy always wins. But in the short term concerted effort can allow us to regain control, and that is essential if we are to focus on our real problems. Does anyone remember the outbreak of Ebola?  Think about it.

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Gerrymandering and the “Efficiency Gap”

Posted on May 29, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 29, 2017

National polls have long shown that voters decry Congressional gridlock and ultra-partisanship. Arguably, they were a major part of the general displeasure with Washington which fueled the populist uprising that drove the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Candidates talked about forcing Congress to reach across the aisle to get things done, but that was just a pipe dream. None of the campaign bombast offered any suggestions about how to fix the problem. That’s because the only way to fix it is to place limits on gerrymandering. It would be nice to eliminate it entirely, but that’s an even more unrealistic fantasy.

The Supreme Court has already acknowledged that gerrymandering is a serious problem. Recently, they overruled the way North Carolina drew its Congressional boundaries, finding that they discriminated based on race. That’s an important precedent, but the larger problem in terms of overall numbers is arranging districts lines to favor one political party over another.

The Court will be looking at this issue in the near future. They have already stated that when it can be shown that drawing Congressional lines based on partisanship is extreme, it is unconstitutional, but no one has been able to propose a quantitative method for determining what crosses the line.

It’s one of a class of interesting problems that are always thorns in the sides of mathematicians and statisticians. Anyone can see just by looking at a map that the lines are unreasonable. Some districts are so skewed and misshapen they are a constant source of jokes, but intuitively knowing that something is wrong doesn’t mean the problem has an obvious solution, as any student of geometry can attest. Statistics is rife with problems whose solutions defy intuition.

Most observers accept that gerrymandering will never be entirely eliminated, but it may be possible to develop standards and methods that determine when excesses become illegal. A possible solution is discussed in https://newrepublic.com/article/118534/gerrymandering-efficiency-gap-better-way-measure-gerrymandering, which addresses the concept of partisan symmetry that was raised by Justice Stevens in a 2006 case. As co-author Nicholas Stephanopoulos explained, partisan symmetry requires that partisan votes translate into seats with equal efficiency, and several justices suggested that this approach might find a favorable reaction from the Court in the future.

The article referenced above discusses such an approach based on measuring a concept called the “efficiency gap”. It’s an interesting notion that counts wasted votes; that is, votes in excess of what the winning candidate needed for victory as well as every vote cast for the loser. The idea is that gerrymandering attempts to minimize the wasted votes of the winner while maximizing those of the loser. The question is whether a test can be developed to define when that practice is so extreme, it becomes unconstitutional.

The efficiency gap measures the difference between votes wasted because of packing (creating unnecessarily large majorities) and cracking (causing too many votes to be wasted by losers). The ideal would be “a state with perfect partisan symmetry, [in which] both parties would have the same number of wasted votes.” Stephanopoulos says the efficiency gap represents the winning party’s “undeserved seat share.” It sounds simple and fair, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The authors studied elections from 1972 to 2012, finding that the efficiency gap peaked in 2012, and that in seven large states it resulted in an unfair swing of more than two legislative seats, and every one of those seats favored the Republican Party. They went on to propose (somewhat arbitrarily) that a reasonable standard for determining when gerrymandering is extreme enough to be unconstitutional is when it produces two or more undeserved seats, and further, that the system in place is “unlikely to fade away” given plausible assumptions concerning future vote swings. Their hope is that lower courts would find this test consistent with the comments made by the Justices in 2006, which would make it easier for the high court to agree.

Could this happen in any of the upcoming cases on the Court’s agenda? It’s impossible to predict. There is always a debate between those who favor a strict interpretation of the Constitution and rulings that appear to adapt the words of the Constitution to address issues not foreseen by the founders. Given the role gerrymandering has played in causing our government to become dysfunctional, and the likely importance of next year’s congressional election, the debate ought to be interesting.

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Ryan Needs to Show What He’s Made Of

Posted on May 27, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 26, 2017

Were I to write to House Speaker Paul Ryan, I could say everything I needed to in three words: “Grow a pair!”

But that wouldn’t be nice, and more to the point he might not get it. I used to have a lot of respect for the Speaker. Ask me two years ago, and I’d have said I disagreed with his conservative philosophy but I respected his integrity and intelligence. I’ve watched him closely as Donald Trump’s domination of the Republican became complete. I now wonder if I was wrong on both counts.

The Greg Gianforte incident will ultimately help me decide. Give Ryan credit for speaking out more directly than his Republican colleagues before the votes were counted in Montana. He said there was no circumstance under which violence by a politician against a reporter was acceptable and insisted that Gianforte apologize. That got my attention. It wasn’t the condemnation I wanted to hear, and it stopped short of suggesting that he wasn’t fit to be in Congress, but it leaned in the right direction.

Gianforte won the contested House seat, possibly because seventy percent of the votes had been cast by mail before the incident, and only after he won did he apologize. I listened carefully to the apology. He said he’d made a mistake and regretted an action he couldn’t take back, but he didn’t actually admit assaulting the reporter. That tells me the only thing sincere about the apology was Gianforte’s concern about his upcoming date in criminal court. An explicit public confession probably wouldn’t have impressed the judge much.

Ryan was faced with a dilemma. Would he stand his ground about the assault or would the so-called apology buy Gianforte a pass from the Speaker? Ryan decided, now that the election was over, to welcome Gianforte to the Republican caucus, and even went so far as to say he would bring a fresh approach that would be an asset. Fresh approach? Is Ryan planning hand-to-hand combat with the Democrats?

I think Ryan totally missed the point. The court hasn’t ruled yet, but Gianforte appears guiltier than O. J. Simpson did the day after the crime, and in this case there were several million witnesses. It’s hard to imagine the judge giving him a pass. What if he’s convicted and required to serve time in jail? What will Ryan do then? Perhaps a better question is what would the Speaker do if a sitting member of the House was convicted of assaulting a reporter honestly doing his job?

One might argue that misdemeanor assault isn’t a major crime, not as serious an offense, for example, as sexting with a minor. If the Member served his time, apologized, and behaved properly afterward, should all be forgiven? That would be the Christian thing to do, wouldn’t it? Except that that argument, too, completely misses the point.

Hillary Clinton gets it. In her commencement address at Wellesley College, she reminded everyone that condoning violence against the press in any form has always proved disastrous in the past, a sure step toward the destruction of democracy, and I think she got it exactly right. Given the president’s attempts to discredit the press and the rising tide of aggressively suppressing honest journalists attempting to do the job of keeping the American public informed, Gianforte’s actions take on far more significance than a typical, garden variety misdemeanor. It’s the stuff from which authoritarians have been built all through recorded history. It’s a blatant threat to our Constitution and Paul Ryan, who calls himself a defender of our founding documents needs to say so out loud.

So Mr. Speaker, I hate to be crude, but when the time comes, you need to censure Representative Gianforte and strongly urge him to resign his seat so the people of his district can vote with their eyes fully open. You really need to grow a pair and do the right thing.

 

 

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Listen Up, Rust Belt

Posted on May 24, 2017 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 23, 2017

Of all the constituencies that made up Donald Trump’s base, the one I found most perplexing was the so-called white working class Rust Belt. While at some level I couldn’t imagine why any woman would have voted for Trump after he bragged about his lack of respect for them publicly, Hillary Clinton’s lack of appeal to women wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

But the Rust Belt? It still makes no sense to me. Donald Trump should have been anathema to the stereotypical hard hat workers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, regardless of Clinton inexplicably taking them for granted and virtually ignoring them. Trump has never supported working people or labor unions and has an abysmal record treating his own employees. And his sudden anger over free trade agreements doesn’t square either with his previous positions or his vaunted international business deals. For all the talk about stopping corporations from shipping jobs overseas, check the labels on the products marketed under his name.

In spite of all that, those understandably disgruntled workers who felt left behind by the sluggishly improving economy bought into all of candidate Trump’s promises. You  remember – quality affordable health care for everyone, tax cuts for working class Americans, and oh yes – jobs, jobs, jobs. He repeated that last one in Saudi Arabia last Saturday, after inking a $110 billion arms deal, but an economic analyst on CBS’ Face the Nation said the number of new American jobs attributable to that deal amounted to forty five (45) while it was expected to create at least five hundred (500) jobs in Saudi Arabia. Were you listening, Rust Belt?

He talked about draining the swamp, but look at the mess he’s made of Washington so far. Rather than rid the capital of influence peddlers, he tried his hand at doing some peddling of his own, inappropriately attempting to get at least three high-ranking officials to quit trying to find evidence that his people collaborated with the Russians. And this week, while he was basking in the love showered on him by the Saudi royal family and the Prime Minister of Israel, his staff gave us a peek at his proposed budget.

Pay attention, Rust Belt, I’ll keep it simple. The budget cuts nearly a trillion dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000) from Medicaid and food stamps while placing the burden for funding increases in those programs squarely on the shoulders of the states. In addition he’s giving the states sweeping authority to cut benefits further at their own discretion, which may be the only alternative to large increases in state taxes. Combined with the administration’s plans for health care, which with the new cuts in Medicaid could leave an additional 30 million people without coverage, try to picture how this will affect people who have lost their jobs and employer-related health insurance. The huge cuts all reduce the safety nets that are in place to protect their families from disaster.

And if that’s not bad enough, they want to slash Social Security SSI subsistence and health care benefits for the disabled. That means your brothers and sisters who were hurt on the job and exhausted their workers compensation benefits, your parents who were paralyzed in accidents, disabled veterans, severely retarded and learning-disabled children – I could go on, but you get it. Suffice to say that the cuts in all the programs designed to support Americans most in need total over $1.3 trillion.

And for those of you with families who are struggling to get by hoping for one of those promised jobs, consider the huge proposed cuts in public education. Education Secretary Betsy Devos brags that this will be largest change in education choices in our history, unless you don’t happen to have the discretionary income to pull your kids out of public school. And remember Meals on Wheels? You may have to say goodbye to them, too.

Trump’s tax proposal includes huge benefits for the wealthy. The reduction in the marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 39.6% to 35% (a $4,600,000 tax cut on every $100 million of reported income) explains why they need to slash over a trillion dollars from programs the poorest Americans depend on. The tax plan includes eliminating the estate tax, which compared to current law, would benefit only estates valued at more than $5,000,000, killing the tax on investment income, and removing the Alternative Minimum Tax. Guess what all those changes have in common and who would benefit most from them?

As for middle income Americans, the administration wants to eliminate most itemized deductions, which for you means your real estate taxes and your state and local income taxes, that are all likely to rise as federal welfare and Medicaid funding dry up. And where are all those jobs Trump promised? Have you heard a whisper about that $3 trillion infrastructure bill? You’re not likely to any time soon.

But the budget proposal does keep one promise. It asks for $1.5 billion to pay for the border wall, just what workers in the Rust Belt need to keep their families safe.

So please, pay attention. The Trump budget and tax proposals can be summed up in a single word: BETRAYAL.

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