A Twist on Instant Runoff Voting January 31, 2019January 29, 2019 One dearly hopes Howard Schultz — a good man, for sure — sees the light and stands down from his disastrous idea to become the next Ralph Nader / Jill Stein / Ross Perot. A super friendly Starbucks boycott until he does might help him see that light — and save us $5 a day we can put toward winning in 2020. I’m not suggesting you go without coffee; just suggesting you make it at home and pour into one of these. That said, I’ve long advocated Ranked-Choice or Instant-Runoff voting. You’d vote for Howard Schultz or Nader — or your high school sweetheart — but specify a second choice just in case your first didn’t win. It would be so healthy for democracy. One of you recently wrote me with an interesting twist on that notion. Richard S.: “I love the idea of Ranked-Choice Voting, but may I suggest a variation? Everyone votes for whomever they choose. After the votes are tabulated, until someone has more than 50% of the votes, we go in reverse order of ‘winning’ and allow the candidates who didn’t make it to allocate all their votes to any candidate above them. This preserves the very nature of a representative democracy, in which by voting you’re allowing someone else to make choices on your behalf; and would allow all kinds of third party votes to be not thrown away. Candidates could even — optionally — let people know in advance where they’d allocate their votes, should they not win, so voters could take that into account as well. This system would also encourage coalition building between the candidates. Best of all, no changes are necessary at the polls. Could that work?” One worry: in a close race, where the leader got (say) 48% of the vote, this would give the least popular candidate — who got just (say) 2.1% — more sway over who wins than the second most popular candidate, who might have gotten 20% or 30% of the vote. So I think I’d stick with the current proposals, where each voter specifies a second choice. But what say my estimable readers?
Left and Center January 29, 2019January 29, 2019 From the left . . . Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, profiled here with the frame: “Democratic attacks on AOC expose the party’s fear of taking on moneyed interests.” It concludes: . . . For too long, disagreements in the Democratic Party have been kept behind closed doors, and the result was the protection of powerful financial interests. It is time to start talking about this dynamic, so that voters can make a democratic choice about what kind of politics they actually want to build. That, in the end, is why it’s called the Democratic Party. I largely share the writer’s enthusiasm for AOC, but don’t buy all her ideas (a 70% rate on income over $10 million — which would be 83% in New York City — is too high and would have adverse unintended consequences, as we learned in the ’60s and ’70s) and I’d challenge some of the writer’s assertions (Democrats lost 1,000 legislative seats from 2010 to 2017 not primarily because the party wasn’t the party of the people, with its push for affordable health care and a higher minimum wage and student debt refinancing and higher taxes on the wealthy, but because the Republican RedMap plan led to redistricting after the 2010 census that cost us vast numbers of seats even as we won the popular vote). It’s really important that Democrats not demonize business or capitalism — or our wealthy donors. Business and capitalism, when sensibly regulated, are the greatest engines of broadly shared prosperity the world has ever known. And our wealthy donors, in the main, favor most of the things AOC does, like higher tax rates on the uber-wealthy (albeit not at counter-productive levels). But there’s much she and the author of this piece have to say that’s worth respectful consideration. There’s room — I would argue, a need — in the Democratic party for strong voices on the left. What would be cool is if AOC found a way to join the Problem Solvers Caucus. From the center . . . Gina Raimondo, profiled here with the frame, “The Loneliness of the Moderate Democrat.” . . . She recalled an exchange with college students not long ago. One of them said: “I get who you are. You’re one of those spineless centrists.” And I was like, ‘Excuse me?’,” she said. “It takes a lot of spine to be a centrist in America today. You get whacked from the left and whacked from the right. That’s my life. I get whacked.” Moderate Democrats have certainly had their day and their sway. In fact the passions of the left arise in part from how much compromise there has been — and here we are stuck with Donald Trump. The rage of less moderate Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is earned and righteous. And Raimondo said precisely that to me. But Ocasio-Cortez is by no means the whole of the Democratic Party. And is the leftward lurch that she personifies the best and safest bet for 2020? I worry, because there’s no political priority higher than limiting Trump to one term. Raimondo also worries — a lot. . . .
Mom Wanted A Chauffeured Rolls January 27, 2019January 27, 2019 Or at least used to joke that she did. “When you boys are older,” she would tell my brother and me, “that’s what I want you to get me.” We’d laugh; and I did once get her a pretty expensive model. But are you kidding me? A real Rolls costs $366,000 plus tax. Plus a fortune to garage, insure, and maintain. And a chauffeur’s salary and benefits? Yikes! (And what do you do when the chauffeur is sick or on vacation or wants a day off? Or when you travel?) My mother never got her car-and-driver. But I’ve scrimped and saved . . . and now I have one on call 24/7. As do you. And it will soon be cheaper, because no driver — or gasoline — will be required. And little insurance (driverless cars will rarely crash). This is why you have to do two things: 1. Find an hour to watch Tony Seba’s talk on the coming clean energy disruption. It’s already 18 months old, so none of this is new — you know some of this stuff, for sure — but I’d be amazed if it doesn’t grab you. We are alive at the climactic moment for the species — 10 or 20 years being barely a moment in the context of 10,000 human generations — when we’ll either figure out how to live together in the undreamed of prosperity technology is making possible . . . or else hurtle off the rails, done in by either that technology or by ourselves. 2. Read Part 3 of Andrew Yang’s afore-recommended The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future. Parts 1 and 2 explain why there will soon be almost no jobs, at least of the sort we have today. Part 3 begins a robust and pretty wonderful discussion of what to do about that. One way to look at the ever-accelerating onrush of technology is with fear. But it’s a lot more fun to look at the future with excitement . . . identifying the huge challenges and changes that loom and devising ways to live happily ever after.
The GOP Once Trump Leaves January 25, 2019January 23, 2019 From the Huffington Post: Two Years In, The Republican Party Faces An Uncertain Future In Trump’s Image Whether by resignation, impeachment, a 2020 loss or finishing a second term, Donald Trump one day will no longer lead the GOP he has so radically transformed. So then what? By S.V. Date . . . Trump’s chaotic, fact-free personality cult thus far has no obvious heir apparent. At the same time, the president’s daily dishonesties, repeated insults of large segments of the electorate and likely collusion with a foreign power to win his election may have poisoned his adopted party’s brand for many elections to come. “We’re in a demographic death spiral,” said Republican consultant John Weaver, a top aide to former Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich. “If we were Coca-Cola or Delta or any product on the market, would you be happy that your customers, your base of support, were old, white and closed-minded?” . . . . . . “He hijacked our party, and people went along with it,” said Weaver, who had previously worked for Arizona Sen. John McCain. “And we have try to fix it for the sake of the country.” That, though, may be easier said than done . . . For Weaver, the danger of leaving behind a “Trump party” is the biggest threat of all ― a generation of local, state and federal elected officials mimicking Trump’s verbiage. “How do you bottle up all that racism and misogyny that homophobia that he’s unleashed on the country?” he said. “The party is going to pay a heavy price for this, and they should.” If they can nominate people of decency, integrity, and competence — of whom they have many — the Republicans may attract enough votes to make up for the torch carriers they’ll lose (“some of them very fine people,” according to Trump). But can people of decency, integrity, and competence make it through a Republican primary in this new world Trump has created? I like to think so. Have a great weekend.
What Happens If Putin Wins? January 24, 2019January 23, 2019 So far, Putin’s managed, via Trump, to end the American Century, weaken our alliances, decimate our State Department, shut down our government, coarsen our discourse, and deepen our divisions. What, Salon asks Ambassador McFaul, if he wins?
Your New iPhone January 23, 2019January 22, 2019 Well, okay — my new iPhone. An XR, which is a little bigger — and a good bit cheaper — than the XS. Upgrading was seamless; and look at all the new things you can do! One feature that looked amazing was the ability to say, “Hey, Siri, what song is this?” So I said to the trusty Echo Show that sits to the left of my computer: “Alexa, play Forever Young.” And as it started to play, I said — to the thin air, because the phone was someplace on the table behind me — “Hey, Siri, what song is this?” And she said, “Okay, let’s listen.” After a few seconds — even before Alphaville had begun singing or the lyrics had begun scrolling up Echo’s screen — Siri said, “It sounds like ‘Forever Young’ by Alphaville.” To which I replied, “That’s —-ing amazing.” I had never even heard of Alphaville. I had been thinking of the Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart originals (backstory here). So then I got Alexa to play Bob Dylan’s version — and again, even before he started singing, Siri nailed it: “I’m pretty sure that’s ‘Forever Young’ by Bob Dylan.” Shazam! (Shazam was the app that invented this capability years ago. Apple bought it last year.) I said, “Hey, Siri: show my pictures of Italy.” Moments later: an album of all 234 pictures I took in October 2017. There’s more. I know Androids are cool, too, and cheaper. But wow. FANH: First suggested here at $5.40, when it topped $30 a year ago I suggested selling half (and did). It’s back down to $22 — in part on a nasty report by short sellers who say it’s a fraud. My friend who owned a ton doesn’t think it’s a fraud. He calls it a “hold.” I’ve sold all the shares I had in my IRA, where there’s no tax to pay; but am holding some I had elsewhere . . . nervous about the headwinds, but thinking it might do just fine.
Are We There Yet? January 22, 2019January 20, 2019 The case, as argued in the Atlantic, grows more compelling by the day. Republican senators might prefer resignation so they don’t have to be seen as having voted against him. Trump might well prefer it as well, if a deal were struck to mitigate his family’s legal jeopardy. — Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune
McConnell’s Norm January 20, 2019January 19, 2019 I’ve testified on Capitol Hill a total of once: to a Senate subcommittee. The chair was Mitch McConnell and on the issue at hand — moderate, sensible tort reform* — I was on his side. He was unpleasant anyway. In the 20-some years that have followed, it’s my view that McConnell is right up there with Dick Cheney in the warmth of his spirit and the harm he’s done. So it was with some interest that I read “How Mitch McConnell’s weak-kneed cowardice makes him the perfect target for agents of power and influence.” (And this from the Dallas Morning News: “How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns.”) It is a norm, not a law, that only the Majority Leader can bring a bill to the floor for a vote. It’s time to suspend that norm and reopen the government. *Read it here (chapter 4) or get a glimpse here.
More on the Conversation January 18, 2019January 16, 2019 How do we talk to each other? How do we consider ideas on their merits, not their sources? Today, Garrison Keillor tells a story. But handing the mike first to one of you, who asks that I use his initials only. J.L. writes: This winter I’ve started going to a CCC-era stone hut on a hill in Tallman Mountain state park near me. Something about the place has been attracting me as never before. A man showed up around 4 PM as I sat by the fire I had built and started talking about the remaining piece of the old Tappan Zee Bridge, about to be blown up on Tuesday morning. As you know, I tend to ramble and coax subjects in various directions, and after some talk about September 11, I brought up the subject of the wall. I found I had been talking with someone who believes in the wall. He said he has friends who work in law enforcement in Arizona and he described a situation that sounds like Trump’s description. But what amazed me the most: he claimed that the immigrants who come here are so hateful, they are using the lettuce as toilet paper in the fields on purpose to get back at Americans for having more than they do. He claimed it was a fact and I could look it up if I wanted. I recognize demonization when I hear it — but he was intelligent and had shown a caring attitude in how he had talked with me earlier, so I did my best to maintain my sense of compassion and my ability to help others expand themselves. Instead of attacking him, I examined out loud what he said, let him know I would respect his opinion yet not believe it. I shared the suffering I have been through in my life, how there have been times I needed the safety net, how I believe most people (including him) want to be good at heart and do right by others. I did my best to plant seeds in his heart and mind in hope that he may someday evolve. I tried to make the point that people tend to demonize the stranger. And as I said it, I though of Ancient Greek culture, and how revered the stranger was. And how “the stranger as guest” still is revered among my Cypriot Greek friends. I also brought up that even if everything he says about the immigrants pouring over the border were true, the wall is unlikely to work. Interestingly, he didn’t disagree with that point. I can’t readily explain the intensity of the experience, which ended as darkness fell so he needed to leave before his car got locked in the park for the night, but I had to share with you my sadness and shock at hearing the toilet paper story. Where there is hate, I try to sow love without being a fool. But after he drove off and I started walking home, I was seized with sadness and started to cry. Garrison Keillor’s posted last month about a time when people knew their neighbors: The annual marathon ran by our house in St. Paul Sunday morning, a phalanx of flashing lights of police motorcycles, followed by Elisha Barno of Kenya and other African runners, and later the women’s winner, Sinke Biyadgilgn, and a stream of thousands of others, runners, joggers, walkers, limpers. For the sedentary writer standing on the curb, it’s a vision of hard work I am very grateful not to have undertaken. In the time I’d spend training to run 26 miles and 385 yards, I could write a book. When you finish a marathon, all you have to show for it is a pile of damp smelly clothes. Our house is near the end of the course and so we stand yelling “You’re looking good!” at the runners and “It’s all downhill from here!” but after running 25 miles, most people don’t look so good. They look like refugees hustling to the dock to board the last ship leaving Gomorrah. And as the slower runners pass, it feels rather weird to be a bystander at the suffering of one’s fellow humans. Public whippings have been outlawed in this country for at least a century. It is unbecoming to take pleasure in the suffering of another. And that was when my neighbors turned their backs on the marathon and started commingling on the sidewalk, which is the true beauty of a marathon. It has become rare for neighbors in America to know each other. This avenue in St. Paul is a series of cloisters, people locked in small spaces and depending on media for their social awareness, and I am one of them. We work hard, fewer of us attend church, we shop at far-flung markets, and we don’t let our kids roam the neighborhood freely. And so, on Sunday morning, men and women in their skivvies jogging past, neighbors I barely know came over to say hi. This was embarrassing. I grew up in a tight semi-rural neighborhood back in the Fifties. Families of modest means who bought an acre of cornfield and built a house on it. My family was strict evangelical Christian who believed in the imminence of the Rapture and we had Catholics to the west and an outspoken atheist to the east. He believed that when you die, you go into a hole in the ground and that’s the end of the story. He and my dad had one thing in common — they each built their own home from the ground up — and so they shared tools, consulted each other on construction problems, and when it came time for Dad to raise the roof beam, Ted came over and helped. They did not discuss theology. Dad ignored Ted’s ever-present Pall Mall and the bottle of Grain Belt. Ted avoided bad language around my dad. We were neighbors, we made accommodations. Our family didn’t have a TV set — too worldly — but Mother adored Lucille Ball and so on Monday nights she found a reason to go next door and stand amid clouds of cigarette smoke and watch “I Love Lucy.” Once or twice, she may have given them a gospel tract, “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” But we got along. It was the children who bound the neighborhood together. Children roamed freely back then, formed alliances, invented their own fantasy games, rode their bikes around country roads, found abandoned barns and sheds to play in, were invited into the homes of people our parents had never met and maybe didn’t approve of. From the age of seven, I was able to walk out of the house and never be asked, “Where are you going?” I simply went. I saw what I saw, no supervision, no play dates. All the stories about angry divisiveness in the country — the neighbors standing in my driveway didn’t talk about that. What is of interest to us here are our kids, work, where we’ve been lately, and where to go to find the last of the fresh northern tomatoes. A man promised that if he found some at a roadside market he knows, he’d give me half, which is the sort of divisiveness I like. We did not talk about how remarkable it is that we have become so distant from people who live so near. It was good for my parents to live next door to an atheist. We need a neighbor-to-neighbor exchange program. Close the streets and commingle. You don’t learn manners from social media. I did look up “lettuce as toilet paper” and found this. It describes a problem not of hateful immigrants but of McDonald’s not adequately training employees in (at least) one of its U.S. 14,000 restaurants. The solution is not a 2000-mile wall. Have a great weekend. Invite your neighbor for a cup of hot chocolate?
Putin’s Sneak Attack: He’s Winning January 17, 2019January 16, 2019 As reported Tuesday: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years. Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States. . . . [T]he president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides . . . A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.” . . . . . . An American withdrawal from the alliance would accomplish all that Mr. Putin has been trying to put into motion, the officials said — essentially, doing the Russian leader’s hardest and most critical work for him. It’s a much longer piece — read it all. But that’s the nub. America suffered a devastating sneak attack December 7, 1941 — but no one questioned that it was real, or who attacked (it was not some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed); and it served to unite the country in common purpose. America suffered another devastating sneak attack in 2016 — and about 40% of Americans still don’t even realize it happened. Or that it is ongoing. Or how it is weakening us. Instead, they’ve been made to fear immigrants (who are entering the country in ever lower numbers). Against a far more powerful adversary, judo master Putin is winning. Whether Trump is a witting or unwitting Putin tool, he has already done enormous damage. I inherited the happy gene, so I’m hoping for the best and enjoying every minute of my currently awesome life. (I have hot water! As much as I want! Any time I want it!) Yet even under the best of circumstances, these are challenging times. And with an incompetent lying sociopath in office, seemingly doing Putin’s bidding? And Republican enablers in the Senate? I’d say, “have a great weekend!” but it’s only Thursday. Tomorrow, something more upbeat: How we can lower the heat and talk to each other. We have loads of common ground.