immigration

The Reasons For Self-Destruction and What To Do About It


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 4:55; Viewing time – 6:46  .  .  .

The phenomenon of Trump’s election and his continuing popularity among his “base” is hard to fathom for many of us, but I just got a dose of clarity from, of all people, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci. He was on Joe Scarborough’s program hawking his new book and in the time it took to make coffee I saw enough of the interview to get his main point.

What I heard from him was the two word pairing “wrecking ball.” He said that people voted for Trump and continue to support him because they want him to be the wrecking ball of the establishment. Here’s why.

1. This country stopped working well for a lot of people a long time ago. For example, when globalization causes the main employer in your town to shut its doors, everyone loses their job, including the waitress at the coffee shop downtown. Everyone working at the movie theater becomes unemployed and the auto parts store closes.

There not only aren’t any jobs to be had, there isn’t even hope. But the bosses who were running the factory that closed still have jobs pushing paper around for the offshore company where their goods are now made, and they paid themselves huge bonuses for their genius that made that all happen. If you were one of the workers who lost their job and their hope, how would you be feeling about that?

READ THIS to understand today’s Republican Party. And click the pic for a larger view.

2. There have been huge productivity gains throughout our economy for decades, but nearly all the gains went to the top. Says Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his interview by Andrew Ross Sorkin,

“We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive.”

Think: The guys who off-shored the factory in your town.

Truth be told, they were, in fact, smart enough to have secured great riches for themselves, including from all those productivity gains. If you were a worker who didn’t participate in those gains, would you be okay with that?

3. Unemployment has been steadily going down to the point that we’re effectively at full employment. That should drive wages up, as employers fight to hire new workers, but that isn’t happening on a scale or at a pace that is remotely proportional to the increased demand for workers. In fact, wages haven’t significantly improved since at least as far back as Reagan’s presidency. If you were one of the workers affected by stagnant wages, how would that sit with you?

All of that speaks only to the economic drivers of citizen anger, and doesn’t touch on the fear of people living in a nation in transition and their imagined terrors of what change will do to them.

I’ve written several times in these posts (here and here and here) that the 2016 election and the leadership of Trump was and is a raised middle finger campaign. Trump speaks to the angry, the disempowered, the abused and forgotten of America. He speaks a rage that mimics their rage. He constantly targets enemies on whom to focus their rage, chief among which are anything that even suggests the establishment. Here’s a short list of Trump’s targets:

The press

The FBI

The Justice Department

NATO

The Democratic Party and all Democrats

Brown and black people

Migrants seeking asylum

Muslims

Cable news

And that targeting leads to someone sending pipe bombs to people on Trump’s list.

I recall playing Monopoly when I was a kid and can tell you that I didn’t like losing. One time I played with a friend and he won 3 games in a row in our Saturday marathon of game playing. I was so frustrated that I swept my hands across the board and scattered all the tokens, the houses, the Chance cards – everything. I took a metaphorical wrecking ball to the game – very much like blown-off Americans want to do with our establishment and exactly what Trump is doing to stoke their anger and resentment and to garner their continuing support. But there is a price that we pay for the wrecking of our establishment.

Paul Volcker named that price, saying,

I don’t know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country.

From Sorkin’s comments on Paul Volcker:

Mr. Volcker is no great fan of the president, but he acknowledged that Mr. Trump had cannily recognized the economic worries of blue-collar workers. Mr. Trump “seized upon some issues that the elite had ignored,” he said.

This rage endures powerfully within about 38% of the electorate, who are so angry and feel so strongly about being victimized that they’re perfectly comfortable overlooking Trump’s obvious lies, the Russian hacking and possible Trump conspiracy, his boasting of having the right to grab women you-know-where, his blatant use of his office to enrich himself, his refusal to stand up to Putin, his abandonment of the people of Puerto Rico, his use of an unsecured iPhone that’s being hacked by the Chinese and others and all the rest of his lunacy, as long as he sticks it to the establishment.

It’s possible that populism is a more proper word than mob-ism, which I just made up, but you get the idea. What we’re seeing is a continuing public lynching of the foundations of our democracy carried out via non-stop campaign rallies that stoke yet more anger.

People who are energized by Trump show up on election day. People who don’t show up to vote enable this self-destruction of America. And the people who vote for third party candidates in their principled protest are enablers every bit as much.

Read Tom Friedman’s post, How To Make America America Again from October 23rd. Then follow his advice: vote for Democrats. Not because you’re a liberal. Not because you’re a Democrat. Not because you’re black or brown or a tree hugger or a snowflake or a woman or a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School or because you’re a believer in global warming or a supporter of Medicare for all and free tuition, but because the most important thing right now is to save our democracy.

Vote for Democrats. Go do it now.

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Potpourri v4.0


A partial compendium of Trumpian distractions designed to keep your eye off the ball. Click the image for a larger view.

Reading time – 3:03  .  .  .

I just re-read Thomas Friedman’s essay on artificial intelligence and it brought back a question I heard posed in connection with self-driving cars and trucks: How will we deal with one million truck drivers when they’re suddenly put out of work?

We’ve experienced a loss of jobs for a long while, primarily due to automation and, less so but still significantly, due to outsourcing to cheaper labor. There’s a difference in perception and reactivity between slow changes like those, and the sudden change that AI is bringing. We haven’t done well dealing with that long term loss of jobs, so how will we deal with a much more sudden loss of one million jobs?

That’s just one complex issue stacked onto so many more in our rapidly changing world. Nobody in the history of the world has faced globalization as we’re experiencing it and it has impacted us in dramatic ways. Nikil Saval’s essay in The Guardian is a must read on this issue.

Most importantly, we have to recognize the impact globalization has had and will continue to have on an extremely fearful citizenry. That fear has already led to Brexit and the rise of what’s being called populism around the world, both of which are isolationist tactics designed to return to an unattainable past. We have to find solutions and admit that they don’t lie in fictions about a fairy tale past or in an imagined dystopian future, and our solutions can’t be found by demonizing others. This is truly hard stuff that will require us to work together to find solutions.

He’s nuts. No, I really mean he’s nuts. Dan Wallace lays it out for you with a simple clarity befitting a centrist with a penchant for – what else? – clarity.

You know about the Muslim ban. You know about the rejection and even jailing of people applying for asylum in the U.S. You know about our state-run kidnapping of children. You know about voter suppression, mostly of people of color and of poor people, which is done to fight nearly nonexistent voter fraud. Read this report about the most recent effort at governmental discrimination. All of these are battles in the war against “others” to perpetuate control by those in power.

If you’d like to learn what all that “othering”, all that denial of rights leads to, read this piece at Harper’s Bazaar. Systematic discrimination has a logical and diabolical end and you won’t like it if that shows up here.

Speaking of state-run kidnapping of children, that problem is worse than you might suspect. The number of migrant kids in federally contracted facilities is 5 times what it was last year at this time – 12,800 kids. You need to read this piece to understand that more fully. For now, give credit to our government for its astonishing ability to swat at symptoms instead of root causes, to make innocents suffer and to provide disincentive to relief for those kids.

One last comment on this. These kids are being held in “federally contracted facilities.” That means that they are privately owned and run prisons, like our state and federal detention facilities built to house the largest number of prisoners in any country ever.

Many of these prisoners are serving absurdly long sentences for minor drug offenses. Had they been white, hundreds of thousands of these people would never have been jailed or would have received minimal sentences. On the other hand, this ongoing insanity is an excellent way to suppress the vote of poor people and people of color, which benefits the wealthy. And it does one more thing: it’s good for business, like the prison business, which makes for great campaign funding.

Finally, there are tens of thousands of tons of plastic garbage floating about our oceans and the mess causes many problems. Dealing with that is a vexing issue, but someone is at last doing something about it.

A 2000 foot long floating boom has been constructed that is designed to encircle the plastic garbage so that it can be recovered and recycled. It’s headed for its first real world test right now and you can read about it here. Pretty cool!

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Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Populism and Obi-Wan


Reading time – 2:59; Viewing time – 4:06  .  .  .

Here’s Jax definition of populism: Mob behavior gussied up with a slick political cover.

Trump’s base is entirely populist, calling for extreme reaction to any issue and blunt force solutions to all problems. Think: Muslim ban; kidnapping children; building a $38 billion wall; embracing white supremacy and more.

Here are some characteristics of populism:

We are poor, innocent victims and that gives us the right to attack the imagined meanies who we fantasize have victimized us.

There is only “us” and “them” and we have to repress “them” or they will take over and victimize “us.”

There is always an enemy to demonize and dehumanize and blame for every problem. It’s never our fault and it’s never simply new cultural circumstances or the result of technological or global change. (See the cartoon below.)

All problems can be solved by hitting harder.

New thinking and fresh ideas are never contemplated or even welcome. Truth, facts and reality are no more than minor inconveniences, bumps in the road to greater power grabs.

Subtlety? What subtlety? We don’ need no stinking subtlety. We don’ need no stinking diplomacy. Or regulations to stop those who would exploit us. Or a press or justice system to hold leaders accountable. What accountability?

We are demanding of and slavish to an autocratic leader, a hero to worship, a strongman to idolize.

Perhaps democracy – rule by the people either directly or through democratically elected representatives – is an anomaly in human existence. Perhaps we are globally on the way back to monarchical, even dictatorial rule as our human default. The key is to envision what that looks like when we tear apart our hard won rights and structures, the foundations of freedom we’ve spent centuries building.

Our ancestors rebelled against the tyrant, King George III. You learned about that in your history classes, and his kind of tyranny is the world standard in the absence of democracy. In a monarchy, the people are rarely happy and most often are oppressed by the ruling class. That’s only attractive if you’re part of that ruling class. If you’re Dorothy from Kansas, not so much.

So, to the 27% of Americans who think that the government kidnapping of infants and children is okay, who think that shoving a thumb in the eye of our international friends is a good idea, who want to cozy up to tyrannical enemies of our country and who want to dismantle all of government and the judicial and press foundations that check executive excesses, you better be careful what you wish for. You just might get it and you will not like it and your grandchildren will curse you for your blindness.

Populism is driven by and generates great rushes of testosterone fury. It creates huge clouds of the sensation of being powerful, of sticking it to someone. But when those clouds lift we’ll be left with the tyranny of oppression.

To be clear, Trump and his minions are our challenge now. But to step back and look at a bigger picture, there is always a tyrant waiting to steal the reins of power and commit horrible acts and steal our democracy for himself. That can only happen if we allow the 27% to have their way.

I don’t have any notion that anyone can quickly change the visceral drive of the mobs that are the populism of this country. The Obi-Wan that is our only hope lies within the rest of us.

Click me for a larger image

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

If Only Someone Could Name One


Reading time – 2:15  .  .  .

It’s time to focus on Trump’s policies and policy actions and what they mean to us.

“America First” is more a campaign bumper sticker than a strategy, so that’s not a helpful guide. All I’ve been able to find are Trump’s various tactics to accomplish  .  .  .  something. Here are some examples.

I can’t name Trump’s foreign affairs policy. I do know that:

He moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby shoving a big U.S. thumb in the eye of all Palestinians and most Arabs and further undermining the possibility of lasting peace in the region. And he pissed off a lot of Muslims, creating a new recruiting poster for ISIS and al Qaeda. Not helpful to us.

He fired off a bunch of missiles at Syria, killing many people while avoiding hitting many of Assad’s chemical weapon stockpiles and production facilities, so the multi-million dollar fireworks show was essentially no help in stopping Assad from gassing his people. We did make some more fervent enemies.

He continues to play softball with Putin and his oligarchs, even after all the plain, visible evidence that Russia, an avowed enemy of the United States, cyber-attacked America. You fill in the blanks as to what that means to our democracy.

I can’t name Trump’s economic policy. I do know that:

He has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from some of our closest allies and trading partners (the EU, Canada, Mexico), incentivizing them to retaliate. That is to say, he’s started a trade war. It is forecast to raise prices in the U.S. and cost many thousands of American jobs. And that makes Putin smile.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump promised to bring jobs back from China. He recently visited with President Xi and oddly declared that ZTE, manufacturer of cheap cell phones that China uses to spy on America, had a problem and we had to support them and save 70,000 jobs – in China. Immediately thereafter China made a $500 million cash infusion to Trump’s private resort project in Indonesia. The results are fewer American jobs and unlawful emoluments for the president, which further erodes our system of justice.

Trump enthusiastically promoted and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which decreases federal taxes for most people for a short while and lowers taxes for corporations in perpetuity. 83% of the personal tax savings go to the super-wealthy and the Act will create $1.5 trillion of national debt. Do the math for your kids.

I don’t know what Trump’s civil and voting rights policy is. I do know that:

One of his first acts as President was to create the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity and make former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach its lead. Both the charter of the committee and Kobach’s personal purpose are to end the non-existent scourge of voter fraud by preventing lawful but poor or non-white U.S. citizens from voting.

Trump has tried three times to prevent Muslims from entering the U.S. That’s a subversion of the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion.

Trump’s immigration practices are designed to prevent anyone but white, European Christians from entering the U.S. To enforce this, he has instituted the practice of ripping thousands of children from their parents when they show up at our southern border to apply for entry. Are you okay with that, Mom?

And of course there is Trump’s tweeted temper tantrum against Samantha Bee for her crude statement about Ivanka, matched with his complete absence of criticism of Roseanne Barr for her most recent racial slur. Apparently, bad mouthing Ivanka is inexcusable, but racial hate speech is okay anytime.

I can’t name Trump’s policy regarding preserving and protecting our democracy. I do know that:

He has carried on an unrelenting demonizing of our system of justice and the agencies that ensure that we are safe, like the Justice Department and the FBI, this for his stated purpose of undermining public confidence in those agencies.

He has attacked our press with his stated purpose of undermining pubic confidence in our Fourth Estate so that the American people won’t believe negative reporting about Trump.

There’s just a snapshot in understated terms of Trump’s policies. My promise to you is that I’ll henceforth do my level best to avoid reactions to Trump’s temper tantrum tweets and his constant stream of lies. Instead, I will focus exclusively on preserving our democracy and on his policies. Now, if only someone could name one of those policies  .  .  .

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Evolution


Herbert Spencer

Charles Darwin

Reading time – 1:49  .  .  .

After reading Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Herbert Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” to mark the core meaning of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. That perfectly captures the clarity that  those who were afraid of poisonous reptiles avoided them and survived to produce offspring; those who didn’t have that innate fear died from snake bites and didn’t make babies. It works the same way for fear of heights, spiders and the sound of something going bump in the night. And nothing is more powerful to ensure the survival of the species than the universal, instantaneous protection response for our young ones. Think: mama brown bear and her cubs. Or any father or mother and their babies. People just like you.

And that is why we’re horrified by the catastrophe of human suffering of mothers, fathers and children that President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have engineered on our southern border. This manufactured crisis is designed to pressure Democrats to support Trump’s idiotic wall and his targeted discrimination against black and brown people – those from “shithole countries.” Babies ripped from their mothers’ arms are just pawns in Trump’s game. He hasn’t a moral compass or the slightest compassion for those who suffer, because all he recognizes is that which serves himself.

That is why you must demand that your senators and congressperson do what you elected them to do and what they agreed to do: check executive excess. Their job is to demand an end to this inhumane discrimination. Tell them to vote for the Keep Families Together Act. And it’s critical that they allow absolutely no concession to Trump at all. The message has to get through that Trump will not benefit from his mistreatment of innocents.

Here’s contact info for your legislators:

Senate: Go to www.senate.gov and use the lookup on the top of the page.

House: Go to www.house.gov and use the lookup on the top of the page.

or call (202) 224-3121, the main switchboard for all of Congress.

Calling is more powerful than an email or text. Tell the friendly staffer that you want your legislator to make Trump stop his inhumane treatment of people on our southern border and to refuse to negotiate with Trump about this.

Our belief in right and wrong is on the line. And, if you listen closely, you’ll hear the imperative of evolution – what made you possible – calling your name.

P.S. Even as you make your calls, be sure not to let this diabolical kidnapping of children distract you from the Russian hacking and possible Trump conspiracy and other wrongdoing.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:
  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.
  3. Vote!

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Babies In Jail


Reading time – 2:38; Viewing time – 3:13  .  .  .

You’re horrified at those nursing babies being ripped from their mothers’ arms by I.C.E. agents. You’re speechless and apoplectic at the same time over kids who have literally done nothing wrong being put into shelters that you know full well are jails. You may be old enough to remember abominable things like this being done by the Soviet Union, which you abhorred. After all, we were the good guys and didn’t abuse people. So, why is the Trump administration doing these reprehensible things in our name?

Have a look at my post about Trump’s negotiating strategy. It’s always about taking something away and forcing opponents to bargain to get it back, and he’s doing that right now using these children.

He has assaulted our sense of right and wrong and taken away our self-image of being the good guys. He has betrayed our belief in proper treatment of others, all in order to make Democrats cave to his anti-black, brown and Muslim – anti-shithole countries – immigration plan. Aryans – like Norwegians – he tells us, are okay. In the process he is traumatizing thousands of innocent children and their parents, many of whom are only applying for asylum from deadly violence and have done nothing wrong.

But we have.

We have allowed those with the crudest, most primitive, fear-driven impulses to have power. Yes, I’m talking about the 87% of Republicans who support Trump and give him the power to punish Republican opponents with a tweet. We set that up – we set ourselves up – by failing to show up and vote last November. Yes, the 87% hair-on-fire primitives voted. They always do because they’re always afraid and angry and motivated. The only check on them is for reasonable people to show up in bigger numbers.

So, if you want to see an end to outrageous manipulation and the terrible abuse of people, an end to using people as pawns to gain power and crushing them under heel in the process, you have to do two things and they’re very personal:

You have to vote this November.

And you have to work to inspire others to show up and vote, too. A good way to start is to share this post with 3 others.

Be clear that they’re continuing to take away voting rights. Last week the Supreme Court allowed the state of Ohio to continue to purge their registered voter lists of people who were guilty of nothing more than not having voted for two years and who didn’t respond to their post card. I don’t remember either of those actions being required by the Constitution in order to be eligible to vote, but that is where this nation is going if we let it. Use it or lose it.

If you don’t vote, permanent internment camps in the desert, over-filled with orphaned infants may be next, and Trump-pardoned Joe Arpaio may be the warden.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:
  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.
  3. Vote!

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Got It


Reading time – 3:39; Viewing time – 5:22  .  .  .

Question 1

In 2012 President Obama signed the Executive Order on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA. He did this both because it was the right way to treat these folks and because the Republican Congress was dedicated solely to opposing anything Obama endorsed, regardless of its inherent value. That meant that an Executive Order was the only way to get this – or really, anything – done.

Last September President Trump reversed Obama’s Executive Order with one of his own. His justification was the flimsy excuse that Congress should create a law about this. He gave them 6 months to get that done and, of course, nothing has been done by this Congress for over 9 months. Why would Trump do that?

Question 2

Kim Jong-un asked for a meeting with Trump and Trump leaped to agree. The “rocket man” taunt and the juvenile schoolyard brag that Trump’s button was bigger that Kim’s were gone, replaced by gracious statements about the murderous North Korean dictator. Then Trump sent a letter to Kim calling off the June 12 meeting because Kim had said a mean thing about Vice-President Pence. Why would Trump do that?

Question 3

Trump slapped significant tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from our best friends, Canada, Mexico and the countries of the European Union. He justified his actions with false claims about our balance of trade. The allies we are presently abusing in this way are in the process of establishing their own retaliatory tariffs on American products, especially our agricultural exports, and China is thrilled with us making ourselves an unreliable trading partner. Our economists and financial types have made clear that the trade war Trump has started will cause the net loss of tens of thousands of American jobs – maybe hundreds of thousands – and create higher prices for all of us. Why would Trump do that?

Answers

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that his M.O. for negotiating is to take away something the other party has and wants. He figures that the other party will then bargain to get back what they had, giving Trump something he wants in the process, effectively at no cost. And all of that happens without Trump having any regard for the harm he does to others.

  1. Trump took away DACA and used that takeaway to bargain for his useless “beautiful wall.” He didn’t get the wall, but in the process of his manipulation he deported some and traumatized all 700,000 DACA people.
  2. Trump took away the North Korean summit so he’d look like he has the upper hand. What he got was a vague statement about de-nuclearization, so Trump said the meeting was now a go. Kim won’t eliminate his nuclear weapons, so Trump has fooled himself with his own stunt. And Kim will get exactly what he wants: international legitimacy and maybe sanctions relief. Foolishly, Trump will brag that only he could have done this. He might be right about that. But now millions will suffer and the world will continue to live in the shadow of Kim’s nuclear ambition. And all those bad things will happen even if Trump walks away from the summit. President Xi of China loves that.
  3. Trump slapped tariffs on our friends. Watch for Trump’s demand that they foot more of the cost of NATO as the key to terminating the tariffs. In the process he will have shredded decades, even centuries of built up goodwill, much to the pleasure of Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s negotiating strategy – got it.

Just keep in mind that Trump’s self-proclaimed genius for deal making led to six bankruptcies and a lot of very angry people. At the national and international level, abusing people is a really bad thing not likely to be forgotten by those angry people. That will have long term negative consequences for America.

Related to this, see the USA Today piece on Trump’s business relationships with top foreign leaders. And don’t miss the end of the ban on exclusions for preexisting conditions, coming soon to a medical insurance plan near you. What do you suppose Trump wants for his wealthy buddies in exchange for us keeping our insurance coverage?

As always, follow the money.

And Another Thing

Click me for the full story

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta has issued a report, “Suicide Rising Across the US“. Two things jump out of the report:

  1. The primary tool for suicide is firearms. I’m guessing that easy accessibility and ease of use are key factors in that. Thanks so much, NRA sponsored legislators.
  2. The states with the highest rates of suicide are largely states Trump won. Correlation? Dunno, but it looks most curious. And lethal.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

  1. Pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!).
  2. Engage in the Comments section below to help us all be better informed.

Thanks!


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

A Challenge For Moderates


Reading time – 4:51; Viewing time – 7:44  .  .  .

Preface

If in these darkly polarized times you and I aren’t in the same bubble, if our notions about politics, policies and what it means to be an American aren’t in lock step, try this on for size and decide then how far apart our bubbles really are.

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The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday arrived and with it a number of references to his Letter From A Birmingham Jail. Oddly, I had not read it before, so I had a look and was stunned at how much of what he had to say in 1963 resonates in various ways with the America of today. He wrote,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Do you believe that to be true? Are we interconnected? If we do harm to one of us, are we all affected?

Dr. King wrote of the clear obstacle that segregationists were to progress, the obvious discrimination they practiced, the brutality and the subjugation of an entire race of people in our country. As striking was King’s grave disappointment with what he called “white moderates”. He wrote:

“.  .  .  the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;”  .  .  .  Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection”

The white moderates of King’s time have been supplanted today in part by legislators who spinelessly refuse to stand up to the infantile bully on our national playground, as he acts to harm our citizens and demeans whole continents of people. They are the representatives, senators and even the cabinet members who bald face lie for the president, leaving their integrity far behind and all of us worse off for their cowardice. This is the greater frustration and bewilderment, magnified tenfold by those who stand silent to the outrages.

We aren’t living in the Jim Crow south anymore, but Republicans across the country are using various means to take the vote away from people of color, from our young and from our elderly. Their voter ID laws and the closing of poling places and voter registration offices are today’s version of a poll tax or literacy test or having to divine the correct number of jelly beans in a jar in order to vote. These are the “people of ill will” today, the present day thieves of the right to vote and the right to be a full and equal citizen of our country.

Sadly, the “white moderates” of today aren’t standing up to these thieves. They are Americans who sit at home instead of fiercely protesting the cruelty that is in front of them. They refuse to recognize that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” They are those who live in their self-imprisoned ignorance of, “What can one person do?” They sympathize silently and then change the channel on the television, numbing themselves into apathy. They are the ones who go along to get along, who won’t make waves and who avoid conflict, even in the obvious screaming need for conflict with what is plainly wrong.

King made clear that, ”  .  .  .  freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Yet those in power refuse to listen to those being oppressed today, as our citizens’ voting rights are stolen from them simply because those who are doing the stealing are allowed to get away with it by those who don’t demand justice. There is more.

A reader of these essays wrote privately in reply to my recent post, “Leadership and the Tax Bill”, reminding me of Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus. It is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. We all know the end of the poem, but it deserves to be read in its entirety.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
.
Every one of us save Native Americans is either an immigrant or is descended from immigrants who were welcomed by this Mother of Exiles. That means that your family wasn’t born here, but instead came here from somewhere else, surely for good reason. Perhaps their decision to leave all they had known was famine or discrimination or poverty or war and it’s quite likely your people weren’t royalty. Almost surely they were poor people, perhaps peasants, exiles. They were tired and poor and yearned to breathe free. They might even have been the wretched refuse of the teeming shore of a shithole country. If they were to try to come here today, would they be admitted? Would we lift up our lamp beside our golden door for your people? Would you allow your own ancestors to immigrate to America?
.

If you would, then you are not allowed to be what Dr. King called a “white moderate”, a passive presence. In fact, you aren’t allowed to be a moderate at all. If you would allow your family to breathe free here, then you must stand up for today’s immigrants.  And you must stand against the vote thieves ripping apart our democracy. You must mount the battlements and fight the loud and cruel oppressors of today.

Emma Lazarus’ voice is calling for you to take action, to lift our lamp beside our golden door.

Dr. King implores you to not be a moderate, but to stand up to injustice, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and that includes justice for you.

At the Women’s March – Chicago 20, 2018. The woman holding this sign said that she now knows she would have been a conductor in the underground railroad, saved Anne Frank and more. She knows that she could not stand idly by in the face of injustice. I don’t know her name, but I’m grateful for her courage, her passion and for being a role model.

Your own family is calling you – counting on you – to speak up in their name, the very name you bear.

From “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown:

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.

Back to my comments in the Preface: What would happen if we – you and I – were to join our bubbles that we imagine to be so far apart and we refuse to be moderate?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

MLK, Jr. Day – Special Report


Reading time – 2:29  .  .  .

The Bigot-In-Chief

The President made it clear that we don’t want immigrants from any of those s***hole African countries. No Nigerians coming from their huts. No Salvadorans, either, even if they’re trying to avoid certain death. He postulated that it would be good to have more immigrants from “Normay”. Yes, that’s how the Bigot-in-Chief spelled it. He loves those white Europeans. As long as they aren’t from the southern parts of the continent, because those people can be pretty dark. More immigrants from Normay works for Trump.

DACA and The Wall

Trump cancelled President Obama’s Executive Order protecting our Dreamers, saying that it’s a good thing but should be made into law by Congress. At the time that sounded as though there was a remote possibility of a little sense in his action, even in the face of the obvious cruelty it would cause 800,000 people. Now, though, it’s clear that the only reason Trump had for taking protection from the Dreamers was to create a bargaining chip that Trump can use to get Congress to authorize money for the wall between us and Mexico. Bear in mind that Trump has made it clear that the Mexicans are rapists and murderers, the dregs of society (implied: they’re not as good as we of European stock), so we need that wall, he tells us.

Mr. Trump, this situation is easily solved. Let Congress send you a clean DACA bill. You sign it then send an invoice to President Peña Nieto of Mexico for $30 billion to pay for the wall. Don’t worry about his already having laughed at you and rejected your stupid idea. Just get payment in advance of construction. That’s what you promised your base, right?

If you can’t get President Peña Nieto to pay your invoice, just tweet to all of your base, telling them they each have to send you $750, because Mexico isn’t going to pay for the wall. I’m sure they won’t mind your having lied to them. After all, that will keep all those rapists and murderers south of the Rio Grande.

You already know  .  .  .

.  .  .  that these examples of continuing bigotry connect with Trump’s claim that people on the streets in Charlottesville, were “very good people on both sides,”

.  .  .  and Trump’s glacially slow rejection of David Duke.

.  .  .  and long before that the racial discrimination Trump and his father were convicted of.

Four decades of bigotry and discrimination. All that and more is why John Pavlovitz got it right in his piece about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: He Had a Dream. This Wasn’t It.

Here’s what it means

We cannot count on the President for leadership to a better place, to the realization of a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all. We cannot count on our spineless Congress, those who couldn’t seem to recall the crude, hateful things Trump said and who then morphed into dishonest denial. They can’t be counted on to lead us any place that’s good, either.

That means that you have to have a dream today. You have to hold it close and march steadfastly into that more just future. You have to be the leader of you.

Do it at the Women’s March – 2018. Here’s a link to find a march near you. Show up on January 20 – because you have a dream today!

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Leadership and The Tax Bill


Reading time – 5:12; Viewing time – 8:03  .  .  .

Others, nearly everyone, really, are doing a fine job of chronicling the insane Trump administration as revealed by Michael Wolff in his “best seller before it’s even released” book, Fire and Fury, and the stupid reactions of the Temper-Tantrum-Tweeter-in-Chief. So, I’ll have a look at a different piece of the crazy.

Following the passage of the “Actually, Not The Biggest Tax Reduction in History Act”, the Republicans in Congress and the Vice President fell all over themselves praising Donald Trump and his near-magical leadership, his blinding brilliance and his deal-making wizardry. That sucking up was rekindled last week when replays of Orrin Hatch debasing himself in this way were shown following his announcement of his retirement. With their over-the-top praising, these Republicans insulted and embarrassed:

  • – Themselves
  • – The Republican Party
  • – Congress
  • – The United States of America
  • – You and me
  • – All humans with any sense of self-respect
  • – Every exceptional leader throughout history – go see the current film Darkest Hour for an example of great leadership. Then compare and contrast. If you were inclined to fawn over Trump before, you won’t be afterward.

Mom would have said to these suck ups, “Shame on you, Trump fawners. Shame on you.” But today unethical, false, phony and sleazy words and deeds go wanting for perps who will own up to their bad behavior. Nevertheless, Mom would have been right.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating to make a point, but I mean this exactly as stated. This is the kind of praise that Supreme Marshall and Dear Leader of the People’s Republic of Korea demands from his citizens and his goose-stepping military. This is the kind of sycophantic obsequiousness (thank you, Allan Shuman, for the words) worthy of cowards, fools and invertebrates. The suck up was so great that it’s amazing they didn’t all pass out from oxygen deprivation. Next will be a Caligula-worthy announcement of Trump-as-god.

This is exactly the kind of stupid stuff that has to stop if we’re to come together as a nation. It’s not just the polarizing “we’re so right” self-congratulations and the “Trump is my Dear Leader” sucking up; it’s that the vast majority of Americans didn’t want any of what is in that tax act and are more negative about it than we were about either the Clinton or H.W. Bush tax increases, this even as the sucking up continues.

If you want to see how bad this bill is, have a look at Thomas Edsall’s review of the analyses done by professional number crunching people, the type of resource the Republicans DID NOT call upon for guidance in writing the bill. Be sure to note the very real cruelty built into this fraud of a tax reform. If you want to see what Corporate America has announced it will do with its upcoming windfall, read this piece from Reuters and you’ll put aside any hope that this forked-tongue tax reduction was ever about job and wage growth. For context on all of this, have a look at Christopher Ingraham’s very clear piece about wealth distribution in America and you’ll understand how undemocratic and counter-productive this bill is for nearly all Americans. And to understand How Republicans Learned to Sell Tax Cuts for the Rich, read Isaac Martin’s piece.

Donald Trump and many Republicans in Congress went to great lengths to tell we Americans that the tax plan would primarily benefit ordinary Americans, yet that is untrue. Every independent study of the plan tells us that at least 80% of the tax benefit goes to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, while our poor and working class children will be saddled with an additional $1 to 1.5 trillion of debt in order to send all that money to already rich people.

Trump repeatedly told us that the tax plan will not benefit him or his wealthy friends, but that’s factually wrong, too.

There are only two possible ways to understand Trump and the Congressional Republicans telling us these false things:

  1. These guys are ignorant of the facts. They are either too lazy to learn the truth or too dim witted to recognize it and then too foolish to keep their ignorant mouths shut. Or,
  2. They know the truth and are intentionally telling us something at odds with the truth. This is commonly called lying. It’s why you got grounded. It’s why you felt ashamed of yourself and you learned not to lie. It’s possible Trump and the Congressional Republicans had a different kind of upbringing and consequently they just don’t recognize what ashamed feels like or what they’re supposed to do about it.

Let’s be clear that I think neither my judgment about the colossal fawning over Trump, nor my bashing of this miserable tax bill, nor the DC types lying about it are in conflict in any way with the “come together” message of my last post of 2017. We are supposed to discern between what is good, fair and truthful versus what is simply reprehensible. The fawning and the tax bill and the lying are reprehensible.

And another thing  .  .  .

Last September President Trump pulled the plug on DACA – The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly known as the Dreamers policy. It affects about 700,000 people who were brought to this country as children, who have known no other country, who speak English the same way you do and who are doing the same things your children do and likely you did. They’re now in school or working jobs and hoping to advance, just like you did. In every respect except for the geography of their birth, they’re as American as you.

Let’s see if we can bring the impact of Trump’s plug-pulling down to a manageable number that’s easy to relate to.

Every three minutes 2 Dreamers – maybe one them is a friend of yours – lose their protection from deportation. Every three minutes 2 more Dreamers live in fear of ICE agents banging down their door and hauling them away.

Is that okay with you? Just in case it isn’t, it’s important that you know that nobody in power listens to Dreamers because they have no political muscle, so they need you to speak up on their behalf. Call your senators and representative and tell them what you want. Tell them that if they don’t do what you want that you will fire them this coming November.

Note, too that 39% of American children – that’s 9 million kids – get their healthcare through the CHIP program, which our leader also cancelled in September. That means that state-by-state, all those kids will lose their healthcare. Add these cute but poor 9 million children to the list of people our government doesn’t care about. Go ahead and tell your legislators what you want done about that, too.

Oh, and by the way, fundamentally the same “Who cares about you?” message is still being delivered by our government to everyone in Puerto Rico – that’s 3.4 million people. 50% of the people there still don’t have electricity and many have no clean water and little food. People are still dying from the aftermath of the hurricane and we’ve pulled the bulk of our support services from the island. You might want to mention that, too, when you make your calls to your legislators.

Exactly when did the Republican Party become the “Who cares about you?” party?

Just for fun  .  .  .

from The Onion, of course!

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we’re on a path to continually fail to make things better. It’s my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!) and engage.  Thanks!

Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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