Year: 2018

It sounds wrong . . . but as this essay makes clear, you just need to have a general sense of which side you’re on.  Or closest to.

Are you more with Taylor Swift and Michelle Obama and Mike Bloomberg and Ellen and Hillary and Beto and Bernie and the Pope?  Or with Mitch McConnell and Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin and David Duke and Paul Manafort and Ted Cruz and the NRA and the Duck Dynasty guy and the climate deniers?

Speaking of the climate — did you notice that our species has barely a dozen years to mitigate catastrophe?

Are you on the team that’s amused Trump defrauded the government — i.e., his fellow taxpayers — out of half a billion dollars?  And think it’s okay that he lies all the time, with nary a peep from the Republicans in Congress?

Or the team that’s generally appalled by lying, cheating, bullying, and fondness for murderous dictators?

To me, obviously, the choice is clear.  As it is — confoundingly, I’ll admit — to many who disagree with me, not all of whom carry torches.

But my point is that most people have a sense which side they’re on.  And that those on mine — even if they can’t name their two Senators, let alone their state senators — should go out and vote Democrat and get all their friends to do likewise.

It’s not complicated; yet everything depends on it.

Vote. Volunteer. Give.

I’ve written before about the need for Universal Basic Income (which Ray Kurzweil says much of the advanced world will have in the early 2030s and that we will have 20 years from now).  The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future brings that all to life in a compelling, sobering way.  (Thanks, Ira!)

Boy, does the accelerating pace of change ever call for smart, thoughtful, empathetic, science-believing leaders.

Vote. Volunteer. Give.

Here is a remarkable analysis of our new Justice.

They both volunteered for polygraph examinations (except for Brett).

They both passed their polygraph (except for Brett).

Neither one had a single thing to gain by lying (except for Brett).

And Susan Collins is certain they’re both telling the truth.

It’s just that Dr. Ford, someplace along the line, forgot who scarred her for life.

It would be so terribly unfair, Susan Collins believes, not to give Brett this lifetime appointment.

But what about the other 330 million of us?  Is it the best outcome for us?  Or even for the Court itself?  On that last point, Mark Joseph Stern argues — maybe not.

Vote. Volunteer.  Give.

DEALS: I’ve told you about the card that pays you $500 to carry it (after you’d spent $3,000) and gives you 4% back on your dining and entertainment.  (Granted, you’d get 90% back if you stayed home with a pizza and watched TV.)  Now, here’s Seated, an app that suggests restaurants you might want to try — and that gives cash rewards at Amazon, Lyft, or Starbucks if you do.  For example, were I to make a reservation at a restaurant a short walk from me today — a restaurant I already like, by the way — and were the check to be $52 or more “pre-tax-and-tip” — I’d get 24% back.  (And another 4% off the entire bill if I paid with that credit card.) Thanks, Brian!

INTRODUCING HOTLIST.VOTE: Designed especially for college kids who may have the option of registering with either their campus or their home address.  You enter your zip code, and if it’s not in a contested Congressional district, it invites you to try your other zip code, where your vote would matter more.

THREE CORROBORATING WITNESSES:  They all say he lied under oath.  Should he go to jail?  Certainly not.  Should he lose his current amazingly good lifetime job?   Realistically not.  But should he have been given a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court?  These three Yalies say no.  Your view?  Do you think there’s a chance the three of them (and Dr. Ford) are telling the truth?  Does it matter?

MINORITY RULES: With sixty-eight times as many people as Wyoming, California  nonetheless has the same number of Senate seats.  This is how the Founders wrote the Constitution, to be sure; but did they ever imagine there would even be a state called Wyoming?

This is the current state of our democracy, where Republicans have lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections but control all three branches of government.

They’re fine with that, too. The Founders, after all, said only propertied white men had the right to vote.

As to the Court, the 78% of us who are not Catholic are now in the minority.  At 22% of the U.S. population, Catholics hold a majority of seats on the Court.

THE US-MEXICO-CANADA TRADE DEAL: As analyzed by the Peterson Institute (Pete Peterson was Nixon’s Commerce Secretary):

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. . . it could have been worse . . . the pact succeeds in partially updating the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by imposing new obligations for enhanced environmental policies and labor practices, curbing state-owned enterprises, and fostering digital trade. These provisions improve incrementally but usefully upon the high standards for these policy areas developed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the three countries signed onto during the Barack Obama administration, only to have President Donald Trump cancel the treaty in his first week in office. In these areas, not very contentious in North America, the provisions in the USMCA set some good precedents for future trade accords.

. . . [But] contrary to President Trump’s claims, the new pact . . . imposes new restrictions that will impede regional trade and investment, stifling the potential for economic growth. On autos, the deal is innovative in a perverse way: It is the first free trade agreement (FTA) negotiated by the United States that raises rather than lowers barriers to trade and investment. It adds layer upon layer of costly new regulations that producers must follow to qualify for NAFTA’s low tariffs—layers virtually certain to drive up costs of autos for consumers and very likely reduce US jobs in the auto sector. . .

. . . The implications of the deal for other sectors are mixed and not very significant. . . . [In all], a step backwards on trade and investment in the United States and the region as a whole that, while not as damaging as it could have been, will do little or nothing to help workers, consumers, and the economies of North America.

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But first:

Was Kavanaugh truthful and forthcoming under oath?  Herewith a compendium that argues otherwise.  (A couple of the items are truly quibbles; but the rest?  Seems to me a Supreme Court Justice should be, in temperament and integrity, beyond reproach.  And ideally, not someone with a nationally televised record of despising Democrats or Republicans.  It’s a job interview, not a trial.  If the employer has some serious doubts, he or she, —  or in this case, we — should move on to an applicant about whom there would be no serious doubts.  Especially when hiring someone for a lifetime.  That may not be entirely fair to the applicant.  But that’s just one person’s disappointment.  At stake is the well-being, over the next 30 years, over hundreds of millions.)

Next:

Randall B: “My wife and I went to Fahrenheit 11/9 tonight, due in great measure to your encouragement. Given your DNC experience, I am really interested in your take on his indictment of the Democratic party. If you agree with his criticism, what course of action would you recommend to a loyal, but concerned, Democrat? If you do not agree, why not?”

☞ Great question.  (I had thought of addressing this in the initial post, but wanted to keep that brief.)

Two things jumped out at me.

First, the film makes it look as though the election was stolen from Bernie, and that’s just not the case, as I’ve written here, mainly (Not Rigged!), but also here and here.

The DNC had zero to do with Hillary backers’ giving her a two-year head start (“Ready for Hillary“) over Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee. Had Bernie’s folks also begun bus tours in 2014, things might have been different; but as it was, Hillary got nearly 16 million votes to Bernie’s 12 million.  And I think it’s hard for anyone to argue that by the time the voting started, Bernie’s candidacy was not all but universally known.  It was — rightly — nightly national news.

Second was the general portrayal of the DNC as — while maybe not as bad as the RNC — basically a corporate tool.  But that’s just not true.  Most of the DNC’s 450 or so members are neither corporate nor particularly affluent.  And its chair — where most of the decisions get made — is a Latino champion of labor.

Of its eleven other officers, only one is a straight non-Hispanic Caucasian.

And only one is a Wall Streeter.

And if you read his bio — as I hope you will — I think it will leave you feeling pretty good that [Understatement ON] he’s no Wilbur Ross [OFF].

Finally:

Democratic donors frequently ask, especially in a non-Presidential year when there’s no single standard-bearer: what’s the Democratic message?

But as former Congressman Steve Israel argues, “A message that resonates in downtown Brooklyn, New York, could backfire in Brooklyn, Iowa—which happens to be located in a Republican district that’s now highly competitive.”  We don’t need a single message.

Yes, it would certainly be great if we Democrats had better discipline, repeating the same two or three short, simple mantras over and over.

E.g.: “The incredible Obama recovery was so strong, even Trump hasn’t yet killed it . . . though with his massive borrowing to cut taxes on the rich he’s certainly laying the seeds of the next crisis . . . ” (Already that’s too many words.  I get it.)

But there’s no magic slogan that will power the massive blue wave needed to pull the country out of its tailspin November 6.

We just each need to vote, volunteer, and give.

Have a great weekend!

My pal Tommy gave this TED talk a few months ago, taking us all the way from oracy, literacy, and numeracy through to graphicacy — his specialty — in six minutes.  (Note especially the graphic of 2-letter Scrabble words.)

The famed Randy Rainbow re-imagines “Camelot” (“Kavanaugh“).

Long-time readers know that my infrastructure play — Great Lakes Dredge & Dock (“silt accumulates”) — has been at best a sleepy disappointment (after an initial great run with warrants and such).  Now that GLDD is showing signs of life, what to do?  This analysis suggests holding on.

Vote, volunteer, give.

“If we want to protect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, Kavanaugh should not be on it,” writes Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, making the case that — based on his performance last week — he can’t be seen as impartial in any case involving a left-leaning litigant.

“This is a man soaked in the Clinton wars, who delivered dozens of speeches thrilling conservative activists at the Federalist Society and now lets on that he harbors rabidly hostile views of the Democrats. It’s inconceivable someone so biased, someone who vowed revenge (‘What goes around, comes around,’ he shouted), could be elevated to the Supreme Court.”

Also, he appears to have lied under oath.  Unless you believe boofing* is flatulence, the Devil’s Triangle a game with quarters — and that Christine Ford would somehow forget which boys assaulted her in the singularly most traumatic event of her life.

But lying under oath — or even just likely lying under oath — is thus far not a disqualifier in the eyes of Republican senators.

Speaking of whom . . . Willie Nelson sang this new two-minute song at a Texas rally over the weekend.  “Vote ‘Em Out.”

Speaking of which . . . vote, volunteer, give.

*The phrase “have you boofed yet?” in a high school yearbook would appear to make no sense if all it referred to was breaking wind.  But a risque sexual achievement would seem to fit perfectly in that context.  So while I have zero interest in what sexual acts Brett and Mark may or may not have engaged in, it seems clear (to me, at least), he was lying under oath to the Senate last week on this matter as well.

First off, you must change your plans and see Michael Moore’s new movie, Farenheit 11/9 today.  Or if not today, this week, for sure, “before it’s too late.”  It will leave you wanting to get everyone to see it, to register, to volunteer, and to give.

Unless, of course, you’re a Trumper.  Let alone a storm-Trumper (some of them very fine people).  Then, whether you see the film or not, you will give it one star out of ten.  And you will believe, among so much else (climate change hoax, Russia investigation witch hunt), that Brett Kavanaugh deserves a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Which bring me to this.

Picture it!

You are 15.

You are traumatically assaulted by a drunken teen you know well (and his drunken friend).

You hear their laughter to this day, and remember not being able to breathe.

An event that has haunted you every day of your life.

But along the way over the years you somehow forgot who did this to you?

Oh, please.

Everyone with an open mind must realize Brett and Mark did this.  The only question is whether they’re lying; or were so drunk that one or both truly managed to forget it.

My own guess is that, being the best little boy in the world — number one at everything all his life — Brett just can’t allow it to be true.  It can’t be true.  Because, as you may have read in the Washington Post (HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO BRETT KAVANAUGH?), this seat on the Court, given Brett’s lifetime of hard work and achievement, belongs to him.

Take six minutes to be dazzled by what we humans, and specifically we Americans, have been able to do (thanks, Mel!) . . . and then as much time as you need to figure out why we haven’t been able to manage something seemingly less complex: how to live with each other with kindness, making rational decisions and reasonable compromises.

(Steps in that direction: redistricting to give moderates a better chance . . . instant run-off voting, to empower third parties without unintended consequences . . . nullifying the Electoral College to accept majority rule . . . restoring earmarks (up to 1% of the federal budget) to lubricate deal-making and cooperation across party lines* . . . replacing caucuses with primaries and making it as easy as possible to vote in primaries, to lessen the influence of those with the most extreme views . . . overturning Citizens United and McCutcheon to lessen the distorting influence of big money . . . teaching civics — and science and logic — to give the voters of tomorrow the education they need to make sensible choices.)

*It’s not as though every earmarked dollar is wasted; and if your representative does fund a dumb project, vote him out of office!

Trump knows the best people (and the best words).  Wilbur Ross, co-chair of a Russian money-laundering Cyprus bank, was the obvious choice for Commerce Secretary.  Read Forbes’ profile and be appalled.

“Trump is giving swamps a bad name,” writes my pal Dan Magraw. “Swamps are actually very important ecologically and do great good by cleaning water, serving as fisheries and nurseries, etc. He should say he is trying to drain the sewer — but he may actually like sewers.”

(And do you know who lives in sewers?  Dana Milbank labels Mitch McConnell the biggest rat of all.)

Send folks to iwillvote.com and to Join Team Blue and (if they’re millennials) here!  And if you’ve done well on FANH or HD (and can forget the others), here!  I’ll see whatever you do and jump through the screen to say thanks.