Monthly Archives: December 2016

Let’s Not Over-Analyze Trump’s Victory.

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Despite the blame being heaped onto the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, I believe it was never a fair contest. Hillary was outgunned by a biased media; by a partisan FBI director; and by Russian interference. But even without those things, Hillary may have fallen victim, as did Trump’s primary opponents, to the cultural changes that have taken place over the past five decades.

Those who voted for Trump simply wanted to throw a live grenade into Washington without regard for the aftermath. They have been enticed by a right-wing ideology that has destroyed respect for America’s greatest institutions – the federal government, the court system, traditional news media, science, and public education.

Contrary to popular belief, Trump voters were not merely blue collar workers who are struggling as the result of globalization. In fact, many of Trump’s supporters are comfortably retired, or are quite wealthy. These people were driven to vote for Trump out of the fear that they will lose their power and wealth to immigrants and people of color. Indeed, for many, President Obama was the embodiment of that fear.

Certainly, there is also the rural-urban divide that has been much discussed. But that is based on economic conditions that no president or administration can easily solve. It has followed the demise of the family farmer. Since the 1960’s, the size of farms has grown by ten-fold. As a consequence, there are far fewer people to shop in small towns.

In addition, franchise organizations and large box stores like Walmart, which are subsidized by governments, have used predatory pricing to hollow out the retail centers of small and medium-sized towns. That means there are far fewer independent retailers, and far fewer small-town jobs that pay a living wage.

At the same time, robots have replaced human workers in auto plants and other manufacturing plants.

Those who once worked in rural communities and mid-size cities have been left with a choice: Either continue to struggle, or give up the only lifestyle they have known and move to the large urban centers. These people are angry…at their former employers, at their government, and at what they see as the urban “elites” who seem to be do doing much better than they are.

Obviously, their anger is misplaced. But they have fallen victim to the new GOP’s message of fear – fear of those they don’t know and don’t understand. And their fear is driven by Republican propaganda on Fox News; on right-wing radio; on Breitbart News; on social media. During this past election, they were also deluded by a plethora of fake news sites – many of them financed by Putin’s Russia.

Addressing their anger and their plight will not be easy. Jobs lost to corporate farms, big box stores and robots will not be coming back. And adding tariffs to goods from our international trading partners, as Trump suggests, will only make matters worse by increasing the cost of the goods they need.

No president can wave a wand and bring back family farms and restore small towns to their former glory. That would take an act of Congress to end subsidies for corporate farms; to make multinational corporations pay their fair share of taxes; to make the wealthy pay their share of income taxes. But those things are anathema to those who now control Congress and the White House. Instead, they are committed to trickle-down economics on steroids – an economic theory that has never worked.

Given that reality, it seems likely that the new government will have to distract their angry rural supporters by creating a diversion. It’s likely they will try to re-focus the anger toward immigrants; toward Muslims; toward Planned Parenthood.

Oh wait! They’ve already done that. That’s how they got elected to begin with!

Starving The Beast? More Like Drowning It In A Cesspool Of Oil And Right-Wing Ideologies.

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For years, the GOP has been intent on starving the federal government of the funds in needs to operate. Unconcerned by large deficits (except when Democrats are in power), Republicans have continued to cut taxes for the wealthy. At the same time, they have happily created loopholes for corporations to evade taxes. By doing so, they are convinced that they will be able to force Democrats to accept draconian cuts to so-called “entitlements” like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

With a Russian lapdog in the Oval Office (Trump apparently thinks he’s too good to live in the White House), majorities in both the House and the Senate, and an unfilled seat on the Supreme Court (thanks to GOP obstruction), Republicans have an opportunity to achieve their goal as never before. One need only look at the list of Trump nominees to see why all Americans, even those who voted to toss a tangerine-colored grenade into Washington, should be concerned for their future.

For example:

Attorney General – Trump’s nominee is Sen. Jeff Sessions, a man who was previously denied a federal judgeship for his racist views; a man who only objected to the KKK when he learned that some members smoke pot; a man who claims the NAACP and ACLU are communist-inspired; a man who thinks the Voting Rights Act is a piece of intrusive legislation; a man who is virulently anti-gay and convinced of the Biblical righteousness of his cause. If confirmed, he will be the person most responsible for enforcing the nation’s laws.

Secretary of Education – The nominee is Betsy DeVos, a billionaire whose school-choice advocacy group has racked up more than $5 million in unpaid election fines. DeVos once described public education as a “closed system, a closed industry, a closed market…a monopoly, a dead end.” She has spent millions trying to persuade states to replace government funding of public schools with a system of vouchers that benefit private and parochial schools. In Michigan, her efforts resulted in an increased number of “free choice” charter schools, most of which have recorded math and reading scores below the state average.

Secretary of Energy (the department that oversees the nation’s nuclear program) – The nominee is former Texas governor, Rick Perry, a slower-witted, less charming version of the governor he succeeded: George W. Bush. Perry has not only proven himself to be an incompetent dancer, he was a largely incompetent governor. More troubling is the fact that, if he is confirmed, he will be in charge of a department that, as a presidential candidate, he vowed to eliminate – that is, when he could remember that it existed…oops.

Secretary of Labor – The nominee is Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurant Holdings, the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. No friend of labor, Puzder opposed minimum wage increases and the Affordable Care Act. (After all, why should a business be expected to offer its employees a living wage and health care benefits?) In addition, his organization has a spotty history when it comes to compliance with labor laws. According to a Bloomberg study, since 2009, roughly 60 percent of Labor Department investigations of Carl’s Jr. restaurants found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act which regulates wages. Indeed, Puzder is more supportive of management than labor.

Secretary of Health and Human Services – The nominee is Rep. Tom Price who has long called for the repeal of Obamacare which would take health care coverage away from more than 20 million Americans. If he is confirmed, the department would more fittingly be known as the Department of Unhealthy and Inhuman Services.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development – Ben Carson is the former presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon whose home displays a large portrait of the doctor alongside Jesus. However you describe Carson, modest is certainly not one of the terms that comes to mind. Though he grew up in public housing, he seems oddly opposed to affordable housing.

Secretary of Treasury – Steve Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs (Remember how Trump derided Clinton’s ties to the company?) banker who has no political or policy experience. Indeed, his views on issues are a complete mystery. About all that’s known about Mnuchin is that he is very wealthy and his bank, OneWest, aggressively foreclosed on homes following the 2008 housing crisis, including the home of a 90-year-old woman who owed the grand sum of 27 cents!

Secretary of Homeland Security – Retired Marine General John Kelly is the nominee to lead the nation’s 3rd-largest government department. He carries a mixed bag of right-wing ideologies and practical beliefs, ranging from maintaining Gitmo and cracking down on the now virtually non-existent illegal immigration across our southern border to supporting human rights and supporting religious freedom of an individual to “…venerate any God he or she pleases.”

Secretary of Defense – Retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis has been chosen to lead the DOD, despite the fact that his nomination flies in the face of the law that requires the position to be filled by a civilian who has been away from the military for at least 7 years (Mattis retired 4 years ago). To be confirmed, Congress will have to grant him an exception. That aside, he may be the most qualified and the most sane of all of Trump’s cabinet picks.

Secretary of State – The nominee, Rex Tillerson, is worrying on several fronts. He is CEO of ExxonMobil, the mega oil company that for decades covered up data linking fossil fuels with global warming. Tillerson also has strong ties to Russia, including strong relationships with Vladimir Putin and Russian military leadership.

Director of the CIA – Rep. Mike Pompeo, an extremist and Benghazi conspiracy theorist with lengthy ties to the Koch brothers in his home state of Kansas. In the words of the NY Times, if confirmed, Pompeo will become “one of the most overtly partisan figures to take over the CIA.” Indeed, he could make Sen. Joe McCarthy proud.

Director of the EPA – Scott Pruitt is the Attorney General of Oklahoma, climate change denier, ally of the fossil fuel industry and long-time detractor of the agency he has been chosen to lead. Indeed, it would seem that Pruitt was chosen to the post with the expectation that he will all but dismantle the agency and the regulations that protect us.

National Security Adviser – Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant-general who is akin to Richard “The Dick” Cheney on steroids. Flynn’s passion for wild conspiracy theories is highlighted by his tweet suggesting that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex ring in the basement of a Washington, DC pizzeria – a claim that resulted in an armed Trumpster shooting up the place. He believes that Islamic terrorists have been guided across the Mexican border with the help of Arabic-language signs he claims to have seen. And he seems convinced that Democrats have begun to impose Sharia law in Florida and elsewhere. To make matters worse, he is already surrounding himself with a group of like-thinking wingnuts whose only experience seems to be as contributing conspiracy theorists for Fox News Channel.

Chief White House Strategist – Steve Bannon is the former editor of the fake news site, Breitbart News. He is also one of the chief propagandists for the white supremacy movement and the man who has attempted to clean up the image of neo-Nazis by renaming them the alt-right.

One of Trump’s campaign promises was that he would drain the “swamp.” But, upon examining his proposed cabinet choices, it would seem that he is intent on replacing it with an open sewer of bad ideas.

It’s going to be a looooooooooong 4 years!

The Real Threats We Face.

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Our planet is facing a growing number of crises – any one of which could lead to a calamity that could end life as we know it.

Let’s begin with the threat of climate change. We’ve known about the impact of burning fossil fuels for many years. But our Republican politicians continue to allow the coal and oil industries to obstruct most attempts to switch to sustainable forms of energy. As a consequence, greenhouse gases continue to pollute our atmosphere and the planet continues to warm resulting in more severe storms and large scale droughts that are turning tillable land into desert. Already, this has caused the displacement of millions of economic refugees who are finding themselves increasingly unwelcome in other countries. Yet president-elect Trump has dismissed climate change as a Chinese-created hoax.

To make matters worse, climate change has led to the unprecedented melting of glaciers and sea ice. In fact, Arctic sea ice is now declining at the rate 13.3 percent per decade. The Antarctic ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate. And the melting of the Greenland ice sheet doubled between 1996 and 2005, receding more than 12 miles in just the past decade. That may not seem particularly catastrophic until you consider that just one of Greenland’s glaciers contains enough water to raise global sea levels by 18 inches. And, if the entire Greenland ice sheet, which covers more than 656,000 square miles, melts, it could raise sea levels by as much as 20 feet!

If our governments don’t act quickly and aggressively to slow and reverse the melt, many of the world’s largest cities will be under water within a few decades, displacing hundreds of millions more people.

In addition, our oceans are warming. This not only changes ocean currents, it’s placing stress on the coral reefs, which are home to the fish that sustain hundreds of millions of people. Already, 80 percent of the Caribbean’s coral reefs are dead. Large portions of the Great Barrier Reef are dying. And the reefs in the so-called Coral Triangle, which feed more than 380 million people, are stressed and over-fished. What are these people to do when the reefs are dead and the fish are gone?

As if that’s not bad enough, factory ships are cruising the oceans netting anything that swims. The oceans are also being inundated with oil, agricultural runoff and other toxins creating dead zones. What’s more, humans are using the oceans as trash dumps creating floating “islands” of plastics and other trash.

In the Amazon, the rain forest is being clear-cut to create grazing lands for cattle to meet the world’s rising demand for beef. And, in the South Pacific, rain forests are being cleared to grow palm oil to be used as an ingredient in a growing number of processed packaged foods. Not surprisingly, the loss of these rain forests leads to diminished rainfall and changing climate patterns. Moreover, the cattle release methane which further contributes to greenhouse gases and rising temperatures.

In Africa, the rain forests are also being destroyed and, on the savanna, the almost unabated poaching of large mammals, such as elephants, rhinos, giraffes, lions, leopards and tigers may lead to their extinction in our lifetimes. In particular, the loss of the apex predators will create a cascading effect by allowing the overpopulation of other species placing further stress on the environment.

Religious strife has led to wars and terrorism which have also displaced millions and further damaged the environment. Worse, they have distracted our governments from focusing attention on even more dire problems.

Finally, the growth of computerization, robotics and artificial intelligence threaten to eliminate roughly half of the nation’s jobs within the next 10-20 years. Yet, like most of the other crises, this has not even created a conversation by our politicians and news media.

As catastrophic as all of these things could be, they also represent opportunities. For example, addressing climate change by restructuring our economies around renewable energies could create millions of new jobs that could offset those lost to computerization. Rebuilding and modernizing infrastructure could also create jobs.

Limiting our consumption of beef, in addition to other meats, and changing our diets to include more grains and vegetables from sustainable agriculture could not only save our rain forests, it could improve our health and reduce the chemicals in our foods. It could also reduce the stress on our oceans. And reversing the recent trend of nationalism and learning to respect the beliefs of those with other religions and cultures could also help by reducing wars and terrorism.

Ultimately, saving our planet and humanity depends on educating ourselves about these complex issues and electing government officials who truly understand the daunting issues we face and who are willing to address them.

Based on the results of the past election, we failed miserably.