Year: 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3qT4qMeLxU

Here’s the link, if the video’s not showing up in your browser or email.

As I have written before, I am enthusiastically neutral among all our fine Democratic candidates — knowing that whichever one gets the nomination will be miles ahead (in my view) of the Republican.  As noted a couple of weeks ago, that’s not blind partisanship; it’s recognition that their nominee would appoint Supreme Court justices like Bush 41 / 43 appointees Thomas, Roberts, and Alito; where ours would appoint justices like Clinton / Obama appointees Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor.  And that their nominee would favor the powerful and wealthy at a time when the pendulum has already swung too far their way.

(See, for example, “Jeb Bush’s Tax Plan Is A Large Tax Cut For The Wealthiest.”)

It’s also recognition that the stock market and the economy do better under Democrats than Republicans.

• During the 12 Bush years, net private-sector job creation totaled just 747,000 — versus 19.6 million during the Clinton years and 8.5 million so far under Obama — or 12.8 million if you don’t count the first few horrific months he inherited.  So that’s: 747,000 jobs under the 12 most recent years of Republican leadership, as deficits ballooned*; 30 million under the 14.5 most recent years of Democratic leadership, as deficits were brought back under control.**

• Invested in the S&P 500 only during Republican administrations since 1929, and excluding dividends, $10,000 would have grown to only about $12,000 — versus about $600,000 if invested only during Democratic administrations.

So if any of our candidates is unfairly characterized in one way or another (as I think Kerry was, when he was swift-boated or Gore was on multiple fronts), I’ll be eager to offer my two cents — or, as I posted previously, yours:

Tom:  “I worked for many years at Reader’s Digest, on the business side.  In 2005, the CEO, who was my boss, decided to re-institute a longstanding tradition of inviting politicians to a lunch at our ‘guest house’ on the campus.  And thus he invited Hillary Clinton, our senator at the time (and neighbor just down the road in Chappaqua).  As I recall there were only eight of us including Hillary and one of her aides.  She spent three full hours with us and was amazingly impressive.  Her grasp of policy down to the detail (she had a better handle on New Orleans geography, in this post-Katrina time, than my boss, who was from Louisiana), her openness, her passion, her wisdom, were all on display as we moved from topic to topic, driven solely by our questions.  And beyond that, she was very gracious, easy to share a laugh, relaxed, the whole bit.  Of the six of us Readers Digest-types on the management team who were there, I believe four were Democrats and two Republicans.  I’m not sure who was more impressed among us, but the GOP guys were raving about her after the lunch.  Whenever I read stories about how Hillary’s closest friends ‘wish everyone knew Hillary as they did,’ I think of that lunch.  Perhaps the punchline is, I wasn’t gaga from then on.  I voted for Obama ultimately.  I thought he was the more inspiring leader of the two.  But I still think that Hillary has what it takes to be a great President, easily.”

Totally.

That said, being neutral, I’ve been looking for ways to give “equal time,” if you will, to all our great candidates — so I wanted to be sure you had that link to Bernie’s terrific speech and the Q&A that follows.  The contrast between his message — the essence of which all our candidates basically share — and the Republican message is just so stark.  And what a fascinating place to deliver it: Liberty University.  So my message is: support whomever you want in the primary — I am enthusiastically neutral — but get engaged in the overall process to help turn out as many Democratic voters November 8, 2016, as we possibly can.  We need to hold the White House and take back a great many legislative chambers.

[Third Estimated Tax Payment Due Today (for taxable income not subject to withholding).  Click here for instructions and the form.]

Yesterday I provided the Trump paintbrush tool and the amazing Who Said It quiz.  (How’d you do?)

Today, from the Atlantic, Jon Lovett’s take on Trump’s 2017 Inaugural address and what follows.  (I expected hilarity.  The tone comes off more as: “hey, folks; this isn’t funny!”)

One of you who shares Lovett’s alarm sent me Andrew Reinbach’s post from 2011 — the last time Trump was flirting with ruling the world — writing: “It’s hard to believe all those details about Trump’s mob ties have eluded the DNC oppo research team. Yet I’ve never seen anything about them. Just for my own understanding, why is that?”

I have no idea. I’m not sure we even want him to lose the primary.  I personally want them all to lose the primary . . . or maybe somehow coax Rick Perry back into the race and on to the nomination.

Bush and the Koch Brothers do for sure want Trump to lose the primary — and have vast opposition-research resources at their disposal — so if this story could hurt Trump, it will probably come out.  But why would it hurt him?  The piece acknowledges that everybody who wanted to build anything in New York worked with certain facilitators they probably knew were connected to the mob.  Confronted with this charge, Trump would likely just brush it off.

“Hey, I was 35, I wanted to build great buildings, my lawyer told me – and by the way, he was Jackie Onassis’s lawyer too, and wasn’t SHE a hottie, nice woman, really, loved to be with her — I used to be a Democrat back then but now I have a YUUUGE fortune and I’ve evolved, the way Ronald Reagan evolved — so when my lawyer, Roy Cohn, told me I needed to write some checks to avoid labor problems, and that everybody did it or went bankrupt, I chose not to go bankrupt.  Good choice, don’t you think?  And I built some great buildings!  Now when I’m president I’ll be able to crush the mob – I will CRUSH them! — because our stupid leaders are never tough enough to do it.  I’ll do it.  I will CRUSH them.  I’m tougher and smarter than anybody — have you read my book? — and I’ll have the launch codes in a football somebody carries aroundwherever I go, so I’ll just fix this — not just for New York but for all America’s cities — and you will thank me four years from now and say, ‘Great job, President Trump.'”

Right?

So I think we probably just need to stick to policy, experience, intelligence, and temperament, only one of which he suitably has (intelligence).  And to the facts.

It’s so easy to mislead people — “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on,” as someone said — and if you repeat it often enough, especially to willing ears, it becomes dogma.

The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”  It is just a completely ludicrous, “up-is-down” statement . . . how about “standards” like the economy or the housing market or corporate profits or unemployment or or gasoline prices or the reduction in the deficit* or the number of American soldiers dying each week . . . yet McConnell suffers no loss of status for having made it.

And climate-deniers chair the House and Senate science committees on climate change.

So now comes Donald Trump saying our leaders are so stupid!  Yes, okay, maybe the President was editor of the Harvard Law Review.  And maybe his Energy Secretary Moniz headed MIT’s Physics Department.  But they are just so stooopid!  The deal THEY brought the world together to secure gets rid of only 98% of Iran’s fissile material, so Iran can’t make even one bomb — Trump would have gotten rid of 198% of it!  The deal THEY brought the world together to secure gets rid of only the most modern two-thirds of their centrifuges.  Trump would have gotten rid of all but one of them — and forced that one to spin backwards.  The deal THEY brought the world together to secure imposes 24/7 inspection on Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain and allows for inspection of any other site . . . so that if, against all reason, their leaders do cheat (and religious fundamentalists do sometimes defy all reason), we will have far better intelligence than we have now on what needs to be done and how to do it.  Trump would have forced them to accept 25/8 inspection — and to pay us $50 billion a year for not attacking them.

He states flatly that not only isn’t this a good deal, it is the worst, worst, WORST deal he has ever seen in all his years of YUUUUGELY successful negotiations.  Like the time he brought China, Russia, Germany, France, and the UK together to . . . well, never mind.

It’s just ludicrous; and for now, at least, he’s both winning and helping to misinform the public and tear down our leaders.

(He’s joined in his assessment by Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and the Dick Dynasty guy — Trump was happy to share the podium with them.)

Oh!  And Dick Cheney says it’s a terrible deal, too, and you know how good his judgment is.

* Such that the National Debt is now once again growing more slowly than the economy as a whole.

Did you know you can now paint with Donald Trump?  I tossed off a quick abstract.  You can probably do a lot better — feel free to share.

But the real time you need to take this morning is with this jaw-dropping little quiz — Who Said It?  Donald Trump Or Lucille Bluth?

(Lucille, if you don’t recognize the name, was the hysterically funny alcoholic matriarch on “Arrested Development.”)

Let me know how you score.

As a nation, ours scored a D+ on the latest report card.

Blocked by Republican intransigence, we’ve been spectacularly “penny wise and pound foolish.”

(It costs a lot more to replace a bridge after it collapses than to maintain it so it doesn’t collapse — 10 times more so when you account for all the detours and traffic jams for the months required to rebuild.)

About the least “conservative” thing I can think of is cutting taxes as our infrastructure crumbles but that’s exactly what our Republican friends have for decades done.

So now comes a report from attorney Philip K. Howard, founder of Common Good (and author of The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America*) — no knee-jerk liberal he — that maintains:

Delays in approving infrastructure projects cost the nation more than twice what it would cost to fix the infrastructure, according to a new report released by Common Good, the nonpartisan government reform coalition. Those approvals can take a decade or longer, and the report shows that a six-year delay in starting construction on public projects costs the nation over $3.7 trillion, including the costs of prolonged inefficiencies. That’s more than double the $1.7 trillion needed through the end of this decade to modernize America’s decrepit infrastructure.

The report, Two Years, Not Ten Years: Redesigning Infrastructure Approvals, proposes a dramatic reduction of red tape so that infrastructure can be approved in two years or less.

I’m for it!

But it’s not just red tape that’s caused delays; it’s the G.O.P.  that blocks spending.  There was the American Jobs Act the President exhorted a nationally televised prime-time joint session of Congress to enact five years ago . . .

• Spending $50 billion on both new and pre-existing infrastructure projects.
• Spending $35 billion in additional funding to protect the jobs of teachers, police officers, and firefighters
• Spending $30 billion to modernize at least 35,000 public schools and community colleges.
• Spending $15 billion on a program that would hire construction workers to help rehabilitate and refurbishing hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes and businesses.
• Creating the National Infrastructure Bank (capitalized with $10 billion), originally proposed in 2007, to help fund infrastructure via private and public capital.
• Creating a nationwide, interoperable wireless network for public safety, while expanding accessibility to high-speed wireless services.

. . . killed by the Republicans even though there were so many people desperate for work and the interest rate on borrowing to finance such projects was so phenomenally low (see: “GOP kills Jobs Bill Despite Majority Support”).

And there were numerous local examples — prime among them:

Florida’s Republican governor killing . . .

. . . the Obama administration’s marquee high-speed rail project, giving up a whopping $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-Orlando bullet train. This was the nation’s most shovel-ready high-speed project, and the state wasn’t required to spend a dime to build it; running through the heart of the politically sensitive I-4 corridor, it had bipartisan support in South Florida, where it was seen as a precursor to a long-awaited Orlando-Miami line . . .

And New Jersey’s Republican governor killing . . .

. . . a $12.4 billion tunnel that would have doubled commuter capacity to Manhattan.  If Christie hadn’t stopped the Access to the Region’s Core project that began in 2009, mass-transit relief would have come as soon as 2018. Now he supports an approach, with new oversight by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, that has no dedicated funding and would take at least 10 years. . . .

Only now that interest rates look set to start creeping back up, and unemployment has fallen from 10% to 5.1%, might we — possibly — begin to ramp up our infrastructure programs.  The famous Republican “government shutdown” stunt that needlessly cost us $24 billion was dramatic and well publicised.  But the delay of infrastructure revitalization, while less visible, is costing us trillions.

Have a great weekend — and vote Democrat if you think we should strive for better than a D+ on the infrastructure report card.

*”Every doctor and teacher frustrated by paperwork, every judge frustrated by mandatory sentencing guidelines, every banker and businessman tied in regulatory knots, every manager terrified to fire someone for doing a poor job – every taxpayer – will findThe Death of Common Sense a blood-boiler. What makes it important, though, is not its (amazing) anecdotes, but that it so elegantly synthesizes them…and points to solutions.” – Andrew Tobias

My remarkable friend Dick Simon writes:

. . . We must take action to address the refugee crisis, both because it is humane and moral, and because we either pay now or pay much more later.  Abandoned, unemployed, and increasingly desperate youth, seeking any sense of community, are easy targets for ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

In 2010, I traveled in Syria with my family and was there again when the conflict began in 2011, when “only” 26 people had been killed in Daraa.  I spent time in markets in Damascus and Aleppo that now no longer exist, as well as the now destroyed archeological ruins in Palmyra.  Many of the people I met and visited with have either been killed or are now refugees.  The numbers are staggering.  More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed since the conflict began. Syrians now represent the largest refugee population in the world.  4 million have left the country and 8 million are internally displaced, a total of over half the pre-war population of the country.  Neighboring countries are overwhelmed.  Syrian refugees now represent almost a third of Lebanon’s and a quarter of Jordan’s populations.  In contrast, the US has admitted fewer than 1,000 Syrian refugees.

This year, spending time in the Syrian refugee communities of Turkey and Jordan, the most common question I hear from refugees is “Why do they hate us?”, referring to a feeling of being completely abandoned and forgotten by the world.  I provide the very unsatisfactory answer that the situation is complex and people don’t know exactly what to do, so feel paralyzed and do nothing, but that there are people who care and are trying to help.

I’ve been involved with the Karam Foundation creating a computer lab at Al Salam School in Reyhanli, Turkey and talking with a range of students about kNOw THEM.  Karam provides health and emotional support as well as enrichment programs for Syrian refugee children. In order to share our experiences, Patty and I have written articles, Challenging Stereotypes with Syrian Refugee Children in Turkey (Dick Simon) and What I Learned Making Instant Hug Machines for Syrian Kids (Patty Simon).  I’ve also been involved with a fantastic documentary, Salam Neighbor, which humanizes the crisis through the stories of several individuals living in the Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan.

Although the problem is in many ways overwhelming, small actions can make a huge difference in the lives of real people. If you’re interested in finding out more, some of the great organizations we’ve been involved with include: International Medical Corps, Karam Foundation, Mercy Corps, Salam Neighbor, and UNHCR.  If you’re interested in helping to create a documentary about Syria’s national wrestling champion now living in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp, visit the Hope Amid Despair in Jordan Kickstarter page.

There but for the grace of God — and how ironic that so much of this misery and mayhem comes in the name of God* — go we.

*”I have caused great calamities,” Queen Isabella declared five centuries before ISIS began its atrocities. “I have depopulated provinces and kingdoms.  But I did it for the love of Christ and his Holy Mother.”

The short clip is here.  The Donald has invited the speculation that she might find some role in his administration, “Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person.”

The full 15-minute Palin interview here.

(Meanwhile, I have not yet seen Trump Kills Kitten on Live Television, Expands Lead, from the satirists at the Daily Courrant — presumably because demand to see it has crashed the server.)

One politician with a deep commtment to Israel and a heavily Jewish constituency is Congresswoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Over the weekend, she endorsed the Iran deal.

If you don’t support it, or remain a bit unsure, I’d urge you to read her Miami Herald op-ed.

Enlightening, too — if dismaying — are the comments it elicited.

The first that comes up is from a retired Ashland, Kentucky man who reasons (in full):

What a moron!

He is followed by someone named Bruce Welt, a professor of agriculture and biological engineering at the University of Florida, who counters the Congresswoman’s arguments with:

The Democrat Party is vile, evil and immoral. Anyone supporting this idiotic and irresponsible concesssion to Iran must be shamed, punished and then ignored. The entire Democrat Party must be shamed, punished and ignored. DWS disgusts humanity.  

As do, it presumably follows, the 340 rabbis, 60 national security leaders, 100+ former ambassadors, George H.W. Bush’s former National Security Advisor, and all the others I’ve linked to — Republicans and Democrats — who also support the deal.  They all apparently “disgust humanity,” according to professor Welt.  

And someone named John Nelson reasons:

Congratulations. The Democratic Party goes down in history alongside incompetent fools such as Neville Chamberlain. Thanks to your wilfull ignorance, our servicemen and women will face fully re-armed and nuclear equipped Islamo-Nazis.

Oh!  And this just in: an extensive list of top-ranking Israeli military brass who urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept the deal.

That not a single Republican in the House or Senate agrees with Colin Powell, who has strongly endorsed the deal, or with Republicans like former Senate Armed Services Chair John Warner, is dismaying on so many levels.  What has happened to the Republican Party?

In case you tore a tendon lunging for a shuttlecock and can’t go out and play this weekend (does anyone still play badminton?), here’s a really interesting, important article from The Atlantic, “A World Without Work,” by Derek Thompson, that I commend to your attention.

It addresses one of the very most fundamental issues of our time, as our species attempts to adapt to the accelerating pace of technological change that could:

(a) provide extarordinary levels of health and prosperity for virtually everyone, if we can find ways to share the good fortune;

(b) lead to even greater inequality, where the relatively few who own and operate the capital equipment that does all the work live like kings, while everyone else stands in bread lines; or

(c) send us hurtling off the rails into eventual extinction.  (The article doesn’t address this, but it would give new, species-wide meaning to the phrase, “too smart for their own good.”  Not that anyone would be left to appreciate the irony.)

I favor (a), and am thrilled by the possibility.

Have agreat Labor Day . . . and enormous thanks to all who actually work for a living.  Not that writers and Democratic fundraisers don’t work, we do; but real work in the sense of work that is exhausting, feet-aching, back-breaking, sun-scorched, mind-numbing, smell-gagging — or dangerous.  We profit from your labor each time we eat a tomato or enter a hotel room or walk the streets in safety.  You are too often under-paid and under-appreciated.

Ed & Art: “You have to listen to this woman.  Even just the first minute.  Remember, this person has a driver’s license and is out there on the road somewhere.  This is why Trump could win.”

☞ Oh, deer.

And if you have another minute, read Tom Friedman’s column on why it is our great ally Saudi Arabia, not our great enemy Iran, that is the leading sponsor of terrorism and radical Islam that so threaten the world.  (And given how awful Iran is, that’s saying something.)

Speaking of which, you can see my friend Parvez Sharma’s A Sinner In Mecca, discussed here — “most striking is his footage, filmed on a mobile phone and two tiny cameras without permission from Saudi authorities, then smuggled out of the country” — at New York’s Cinema Village from September 4-11 . . . LA’s Laemmle Village from September 11-18 . . . Cinema Detroit September 18-25 . . . and San Diego’s Digital Gym Cinema October 9-15.

It is a New York Times “critic’s pick,” with 10 out of 10 favorable reviews here on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Islam is imploding upon itself right now and there’s a huge crisis,” Parvez told a French journalist.  “It (a reformation) is happening, but it is happening too slowly and we’re running out of time.  The change needs to happen with Wahhabi Islam [the Saudi brand] — that is the root of all the problems.”

“Mr. Sharma has created a swirling, fascinating travelogue and a stirring celebration of devotion.” – NEW YORK TIMES

“Next time you hear politicians or right-wing broadcasters asking why “moderate” Muslims don’t denounce terrorism, show them this movie.” – THE VILLAGE VOICE

“A Sinner in Mecca” takes its audience where no movie has gone before . . . an absolute must-see for any student of sociology or religion.” – THE DAILY NEWS

And one other note on religion: the Kentucky clerk jailed for defying the Supreme Court on religious grounds.

Jim Burt: “She has been jailed for ‘contempt of court’ – that is, repeatedly defying a lawful order of the court having jurisdiction over the present dispute — not for ‘practicing her religion.’  If she had been of a different religious persuasion, and felt prior to the Supreme Court’s decision that she should, as a matter of conscience and religious belief, issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite this then being against Kentucky law, should she have been permitted to do so because to stop her would have impaired her freedom of religion?”

☞ We all favor religious freedom; but I’m not sure the religious-freedom folks would have taken her side.

[CORRECTION! Yesterday’s link to the men who herd cats was broken.  So sorry!]

I concluded Tuesday’s post with a link, Get The Lead Out, that I assume none of you clicked.  (It was a long post, and you guys are busy!  Or perhaps, as Ronald Reagan explained when asked why he hadn’t read his briefing book for that day’s important Summit meeting: “Well, Jim, ‘The Sound of Music’ was on last night.”)

So I’m clicking it for you.  In very small part:

. . . During the ’70s and ’80s, the introduction of the catalytic converter, combined with increasingly stringent Environmental Protection Agency rules, steadily reduced the amount of leaded gasoline used in America, but Reyes discovered that this reduction wasn’t uniform. In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you’d expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that’s exactly what she found.

Meanwhile, Nevin had kept busy as well, and in 2007 he published a new paper looking at crime trends around the world (PDF). This way, he could make sure the close match he’d found between the lead curve and the crime curve wasn’t just a coincidence. Sure, maybe the real culprit in the United States was something else happening at the exact same time, but what are the odds of that same something happening at several different times in several different countries?

Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn’t fit the theory. “No,” he replied. “Not one.” . . .

The whole article is fascinating.  And, as argued Tuesday, we should de-lead America’s inner-city homes and apartments, because lead paint, too, has a terrible effect on our kids and the adults they grow up to be.  We’ve gotten the lead out of gasoline.  Now let’s get it out of housing.  The return on investment, as reported here, would be phenomenal.