Journal of the Plague Years

November 16, 2017

 

Every time we think we have vanquished Republican efforts to destroy the Affordable Care Act, it returns zombie-like, to threaten us anew.  The Republicans are counting on the tawdry Roy Moore saga and the new Al Franken scandal to distract us from their repugnant policy agenda and are rushing their abhorrent, redistributive tax plan through.  The constant battle to block legislation designed to reduce most of us to lives of penury and squalor is by turns enervating and enraging. Although that may seem like shrill hyperbole, consider the likely impact of the key provisions of the Republican bills currently under consideration:

Elimination of the State and Local Tax Deduction (“SALT”).  If the tax bill passes in its current form, it will eliminate (or at a minimum sharply curtail) this critical deduction that has been in place since the passage of federal income tax legislation in 1913.  The SALT deduction prevents double taxation of income, ensures that states and localities have sufficient revenue to fund essential services, and is a key component of housing values.  30% of all American taxpayers claim the deduction, including 39% of those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 per year and 75% of those earning $75,000 to $100,000 per year (Source: The Impact of Eliminating the State and Local Tax Deduction, prepared by The Government Finance Officers Association, www.gfoa.org). Continue reading “Accounting past due”

November 14, 2017

 

As a fifth woman came forward to tearfully recount Roy Moore’s attempted rape of her when she was only sixteen, Republican Senators finally fled Moore’s toxic side like rats leaving a sinking ship.  Although it was a palpable relief to hear Mitch McConnell say flatly, “I believe the women,” his call for Moore to step aside is much more about naked political calculation than principle.  Lest we forget, Moore was a lawless homophobe before he was revealed to be a disgusting sexual predator and no Republican found that to be disqualifying.

The sudden emergence of a Republican conscience has been brought on by fear of the shrinkage of their razor thin Senate majority.  The word is that they are considering the Hail Mary pass of Jeff Sessions as a write-in candidate, since it is too late to get Moore off of the ballot.  This would have the added partisan benefit of giving Trump the chance to appoint a new Attorney General who would not be recused from the Russia investigation and could fire Bob Mueller. Continue reading “Sweet Home Alabama”

November 12, 2017

 

Tuesday’s resounding electoral victories gave us reason to feel hopeful for the first time in a year. In Virginia and New Jersey, Ralph Northam and Phil Murphy won decisively against Republican candidates who waged ugly, racist campaigns. In addition, Democrats scored victories around the country, including the first trans woman elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, the first Sikh mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, the first African American mayor of Helena, Montana and the first African American woman mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. While these results are truly encouraging, we must be careful not to over-interpret them. Since Tuesday, Democrats have been crowing that these wins prove that blatant appeals to bigotry are ineffective. Unfortunately, a closer look at the numbers disproves that comforting message.

Continue reading “The Path To Power”

November 7

One year ago today, Americans went to the polls and elected the most unqualified man in American history to be President of the United States.  After waging a campaign grounded in racism and bullying cruelty, Trump was rewarded with the highest office in the land.  In the immediate aftermath, puzzled prognosticators searched the ashes for clues as to the cause of this calamity.  They were unwilling to face the obvious fact that 53% of white women chose racism over feminism, or that many Trump voters had a high enough income to be untroubled by “economic anxiety.”  Journalists, academics, and some Democrats told us that if we just went to the Midwest and made a convincing case to displaced white workers who have been voting for Republicans since Ronald Reagan, we could win them back. Continue reading “VOTE!!!!”

November 5, 2017

 

On Thursday of this week, Donna Brazile detonated a bomb inside of the Democratic Party in an article in Politico, which contained explosive charges suggesting that the Joint Fundraising Agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign rigged the primaries in Clinton’s favor. Brazile’s evidence for her claim that the Joint Fundraising Agreement was a “cancer” was the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over how money was spent prior to the nomination being secured and the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over key DNC staff hires, such as Communications Director (Source: “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” by Donna Brazile, Politico, 11/2/17). Closer examination reveals that the arrangement, while unusual, was not unprecedented (Source: “No, the DNC didn’t ‘rig’ the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton, by Boris Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17). While it is certainly true that those agreements are evidence of the DNC’s preference for Hillary Clinton, they do not offer any evidence that the DNC was responsible for Clinton receiving 3.7 million more votes than Bernie Sanders in the primary (Source: Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17). Continue reading “Turn the page.”

November 2, 2017

 

Every morning we steel ourselves for the quotidian journey through the toxic sludge of our current reality.  Every morning brings a new revelation in the seemingly endless stream of prominent men behaving badly.  Whether arbiters of culture or pundits from across the political spectrum, prominent men seem incapable of refraining from assaulting or abusing women who have the temerity to be ambitious.  Yet this dispiriting drumbeat seems like mere background noise in the face of many more daunting challenges to our collective sense of safety and security.

Tuesday, the tranquility of our fall afternoon was shattered by a truck wielding terrorist who murdered eight people by careening down a bike path in lower Manhattan.  New Yorkers absorbed the shock with sober equanimity, refusing to be cowed into cancelling the annual Halloween Parade in the Village.  Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio managed to condemn the terrorist and reassure us that our safety was their paramount concern, without descending to hateful rhetoric.

In contrast, the walking garbage fire in The White House could not resist the impulse to do exactly the opposite.  Trump immediately called for an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program that was responsible for Sayfullo Saipov’s entry into the United States, taking a swipe at New York Senator Chuck Schumer in the process.  Trump chose to disregard the fact that Schumer co-sponsored legislation that would have ended the program in 2013 and the obvious fact that there is absolutely no logical link between the existence of the program and Saipov’s act of terror (Source:  “Schumer and the Diversity Visa Lottery,” Factcheck.org, 11/1/17).  Of course, Trump never lets facts or logic get in the way of an opportunity to demonize a Muslim immigrant.

Trump ratcheted up the demagoguery yesterday by calling the American judicial system a “joke” and a “laughingstock,” saying that Saipov should be sent to Guantanamo (Source:  “Trump labels US justice system ‘laughingstock, ’” by Dan Merica, CNNPolitics, CNN.com 11/1/17).  Although we’ve lost our capacity for surprise, we should be shocked that Trump so brazenly evinces his rejection of the judicial system at the foundation of our democracy.  We should be unnerved by Trump’s palpable desire to make any person’s fate subject to the whims of a mercurial despot, rather than dependent on universally administered neutral legal principles.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to emulate fascistic strongmen, so his exhortation that the “animal” be sent to Guantanamo is entirely consistent with his autocratic ambitions.  We should see his reckless effort to foment a desire for vengeance for what it is – the desperate attempt of a morally and intellectually bankrupt man to deflect attention from how Mueller is closing in on his confederates.  It is only a matter of time before the Special Prosecutor turns up evidence that points definitively to a corrupt, treasonous effort at the highest levels of his campaign to undermine democracy.  Trump and his accomplices know that their only hope is to derail the Special Counsel investigation and ultimately, the rule of law itself.  They are counting on our fear and bigotry being stronger than our love for justice.  It is up to us to prove them wrong.

October 31, 2017

 

The indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his partner, Rick Gates, along with the guilty plea of former Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos landed with brute force in Washington yesterday.  Manafort’s indictment was clearly anticipated, judging from the crowd of reporters staked out in front of his suburban Virginia condo in the pre-dawn hours, looking to catch what we can only hope is the first of many perp walks of the Trump administration.  The twelve count indictment against Manafort and Gates details a money laundering scheme involving more than $75 million dollars, stretching back to 2008.  It includes charges of conspiracy against the United States, Conspiracy to launder money and False and Misleading statements in connection with registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  The 31 page indictment details an elaborate fraudulent scheme employed by Manafort and Gates to disguise their work for Russian backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.  The indictment details how Manafort used millions of dollars laundered through an offshore account in Cyprus to fund the purchase of three Range Rovers, nearly One Million Dollars’ worth of Oriental rugs and Five Million Dollars’ worth of renovation costs on his home Water Mill, New York (Source:  United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates, III, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, October 27, 2017). Continue reading “Enemies, foreign and domestic”

October 27, 2017

       It has become clearer than ever that the overriding aim of the Republicans currently in office is to facilitate cruel and corrupt profiteering.  They have abandoned any pretense that their aim is to serve the public good. Consider the evidence.  In the Executive Branch, EPA Chief, Scott Pruitt, has made a mockery of his agency’s mission by using his power to institute rules that will jeopardize our access to safe drinking water (Source:  “EPA moves to repeal Obama water rule,” by Timothy Cama, The Hill, 6/27/17) and appointed a veteran chemical industry lobbyist, Nancy Beck as the administrator in charge of regulating chemical safety, a consummate example of the fox guarding the henhouse (“Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals?  An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots,” by Eric Lipton, The New York Times, 10/21/17).   Continue reading “Style over substance.”

October 24, 2017

 

As Bob Corker’s ‘No F__ks Tour’ continues apace, came word today that Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona would not seek re-election. Flake made the announcement in an elegant speech, which mournfully detailed the debasement of our democratic ideals and civic culture occurring under the Trump presidency. Flake called out the “reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior” coming from the Executive Branch (Source: “Read Flake’s bombshell Senate Speech: ‘I rise today to say: Enough!’” Azcentral.com; 10/24/17). Flake quoted Teddy Roosevelt to remind his colleagues that calls to “stand by the President, right or wrong” are “unpatriotic and servile.”

 

Flake’s speech, coming on the heels of McCain’s and W’s takedowns of Trumpism last week, is evidence that those Republicans with a shred of principle have concluded that it is untenable to remain silent in the face of the full scale abandonment of any fealty to Democratic norms or fundamental decency by this President. They have also concluded that there is no path to electoral victory in the current Republican Party for those unwilling to traffic in dehumanizing stereotypes to attain power.

 

If they are self-reflective at all, though, they all must admit that the use of racism to divide the white working class from the Black and Brown Americans that should be their natural allies is a venerable tradition that stretches back to the passage of the 15^th Amendment in 1870. In more recent political history, starting with the Southern strategy of Richard Nixon, Republicans have mined the rich vein of American racism to ensure their electoral success. From patrician George H. W. Bush’s use of the “Willie Horton” ads to defeat Mike Dukakis in 1988 to the openly racist anti-Latino ads being run by Ed Gillespie in the current Virginia governor’s race, Republicans have never been shy about invoking racism and fear to win elections.

 

Even now, as Republicans no longer in office look aghast at the white supremacist horror show unfolding in The White House, their colleagues in Congress are lining up to endorse secessionist theocrat, Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate seat. Out of 52 sitting senators, only Flake, McCain and Corker have spoken out against Trump’s reckless bellicosity and unfitness for office. Only Collins, Murkowski and McCain voted against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The others go along in timorous silence or zealously pursue baseless witch-hunts against their eternal adversary, Hillary Clinton, while stymieing all efforts to get to the bottom of the Russian interference in our election.

 

Craven House Speaker Paul Ryan urges us to “forget” about Trump’s Twitter feud with Bob Corker (and presumably to ignore the substance of Corker’s criticisms) and focus on tax cuts instead (Source: “Paul Ryan says Corker will vote for tax reform despite Trump feud,” by Sunlen Serfaty, CNNpolitics.com, 10/24/17).

 

Thus, while we should welcome the words of Corker, McCain and Flake, we cannot laud them for words alone. We must remind them that with knowledge comes responsibility. All three remain in office until January of 2019. Corker is Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could blunt Trump’s rash moves on the Iran deal. McCain, as chair of the Armed Services Committee, could convene hearings to determine what actually happened to Sgt. Johnson and the other three service members killed in Niger. Flake, as chair of the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law could commence hearings on the use of social media platforms by the Russians to influence our elections.   Their road to Damascus conversion is welcome, but should serve as a stark reminder to us all– those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.

 

October 21, 2017

In this past week, the illusion of John Kelly as the “adult in the room,” who could bring some baseline adherence to the norms of public service to this White House, has been shattered. To provide cover for Trump’s thoughtless treatment of a Gold Star family, Kelly ruthlessly attacked a sitting Congresswoman, Frederica Wilson. Kelly told outright lies about Representative Wilson’s speech at the dedication ceremony for a new FBI building, accusing her of braggadocio. Of course, videotape quickly exposed Kelly’s slanderous lies for what they were, revealing Rep. Wilson’s speech to have been gracious, appropriate and bi-partisan. (“Frederica Wilson 2015 video shows John Kelly got it wrong,” by Larry Barszewski, Sun-Sentinel, 10/21/17). Continue reading “Nowhere to hide”