Sunday, December 31, 2017

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Forty Years Ago?

I keep coming back to something that Rutgers University Professor W. Carey McWilliams said once at a meeting I attended at the Eagleton Institute of Politics in the 1980s. He quoted Ronald Reagan's famous campaign line from 1980 and 1984: "Are you better off now that you were four years ago?" Of course, in 1980, after Jimmy Cater's term, the answer was supposed to be no, and in 1984, after four years of Reagan's supply-side trickle down policies, the answer was supposed to be yes. But McWilliams had a different interpretation of what Reagan was doing, and he was not happy about it.

Said McWilliams, "Reagan has boiled down more than two hundred years of constitutional government to a question that appeals only to the citizen's craven self-interest. It is as far from democracy as one can get."

Exactly.

Forty years later, we are living the ultimate manifestation of Reagan's transactional politics and for most people, we are decidedly not better off than we were in 1980. Despite repeated tax cuts, the wealthy are doing just fine while the middle and lower classes have fallen farther behind with every passing decade. Buying power has declined, and it's now absolutely necessary for everyone in a family to work in order to pay for monthly living expenses and to save for big ticket items such as cars, appliances and college educations. Many Americans love the myth that women should stay home and take care of the children, but the reality is very different. Economically, despite the explosion of wealth tied to technology and the rising stock market, it's difficult to make the case that the people, however we define that, are better off than they were when the conservatives took power.

In addition, the social policies of the party that supposedly supports family values have not led to stronger families, in large part because the religious conservative's definition of the family is rooted in a gone-forever past. Regressive policies regarding women's health, family planning and welfare programs have resulted in more families living on the margins, and the prospects are that 2018 could see major cuts in social programs in order to pay for the trillion dollar tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. The fight to reverse gay marriage and abortion rights is one conservative-to-replace-Anthony-Kennedy-away from reality. The right of religious people to use their beliefs to discriminate could be ratified by the Supreme Court this June.

The same is true regarding foreign policy. The West's victory in the Cold War was supposed to usher in a period of peace and prosperity led by liberal democratic values and the respect for human rights. We've seen glimpses of this, but since the September 11 attacks, we've been involved in unnecessary and unwinnable wars against foes who don't play by World War II rules. We've spent trillions trying to fight or buy off countries that will never be true allies, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we've seen a resurgence of Chinese and Russian nationalism and power rise to the point that we are now in a second Cold War being fought over economic issues rather than ideological ones. North Korea reminds us that we always one step away from disaster.

Both parties can take blame for these developments. The difference now is that we have a regime in the White House that doesn't understand that American power is tied to its moral commitments, not just to whether a country has paid its bills. Republicans since Reagan have tried to question and undermine the role the United Nations should play in the world, and I have no doubt that they would pull us out if the right scenario presented itself. The Trump Administration is fine with right wing strong men (and it always seems to be men), and has said nothing about dictatorial actions in the Philippines and Myanmar, where a Rohingya genocide is unfolding right before the world's Ray-Ban'd eyes.

Of course, there have been victories, and anyone who was over the age of 12 in 1970 can tell you that, this past year notwithstanding, the country does feel better about itself. Crime is down. Most of our major metropolitan areas have thriving cultural lives. Music, television and movies are far better than what was being produced from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Inflation has been tamed, for now. Disco is dead.

I am of the humble opinion that we are at the end of the conservative movement and soon will be entering a period where the political pendulum will begin swinging back to the left. Perhaps the congressional elections will be the beginning of this trend. Will conservatives still win elections and continue to influence policies? Of course. And president Trump will continue to remind the majority of this country that opposes him that his view of how this country ought to operate in an outlier, in the same way that many moderates saw the counterculture of the 1960s as an outlier.

But the excesses of the conservative movement will begin to receded. The unending focus on money and competition and winning will give way to a more tempered view of what's important in life and  our place in the world. Taxes on the wealthy will go up. We will be less divided.

Am I an optimist? You bet. Am I confident about the future of our country? Yes indeed. Will the short term be a trying, difficult, maddening, stressful period? Afraid so.

Another year dawns. See the best. Be the best. Do your best.

Happy New Year.

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Sunday, December 24, 2017

An Immigration Policy Based on Ignorance and Hate

I was actually looking for an uplifting article to post close to the holiday that might provide some confidence and hope. Then I came upon this posting that discussed the president's thinking on immigration policy and how he reacted to court rulings that postponed the travel restrictions and immigration bans he tried to implement this year.

Appalling doesn't really do justice to my reaction. According to six officials who were in the room with him, the president read a document that listed how many immigrants had received visas in 2017. Some of his responses:

More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained. 
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there. 
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.

Terrorists. AIDS victims. Hut dwellers.

This is the President of the United States deciding policy.

His thought process? Bigoted. Uninformed. Under-educated. Judgmental. Ignorant.

What's worse is that he is dragging down the reputation of the United States with him.

It's clear that the president is not just protecting the United States from predatory foreign companies or workers who come here and take jobs that American citizens want. He believes, according to the article, that immigration is bad for the country and that foreign ideas are inferior to American ones. His nationalism is small because it rests on the incorrect assumption that our culture is superior to all others.

It's president Archie Bunker at your service.

I suppose the good news is that much of the rest of the world ignores this nativist babble for the racism that it is, and that an interconnected, sharing world is a safer one both economically and militarily. Even allowing Internet service providers the ability to block, throttle or slow down sites will not stop people from blurring borders and searching for the best price, the highest wage, and people they can work with. A minority of voters in the United sates voted for fear, suspicion and moral relativity. I am optimistic that the majority sees through his blather and negativity.

And with that, I wish you a happy holiday, a Happy New Year and all of the other happiness that all humans so richly deserve.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Define Your Own Reality: The New Seven Dirty Words

What began earlier this year as an assault on climate science continues the week with a directive by CDC officials to have employees avoid seven particular words in their funding proposals. These words, which clearly rankle conservatives even more than George Carlin's famously dirty seven words, would presumably raise red flags among the more conservative legislators in Washington. From this article in the Washington Post,
Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
The charitable explanation for this change would be that Betsy DeVos called the president and said that these words were too big for her to understand and could the president please change them to more monosyllabic terms.

The reality, though, is far scarier. This is not a change on the order of Ronald Reagan saying that ketchup and mustard should be classified as vegetables for school lunch programs. This is censorship and doublespeak. As for what should replace these terms?
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.
Which means that every community in America can define its own reality. Your community doesn't like climate change? Then it doesn't exist. You oppose diversity? Why, feel free to discriminate. Or marginalize transgender citizens. Want to write a curriculum for your school district? No need to make it either evidence or science-based.

Can you say America Last in education and First in dirty air?

For all of their talk about allowing the invisible hand of the market a free reign, the Republicans certainly are afraid that Americans might make decisions based on science or any other information available to them. Fortunately, most Americans do not approve of the president or his policies, including this massive tax cut for the wealthy. And most Alabamans saw through the ridiculous argument that the state needed a fanatical pedophile to represent it rather than a former prosecutor who has worked tirelessly for all state residents.

The first casualty in any war, be it with weapons or policy, is language. The GOP is trying to redefine the basic elements of democracy and knowledge with a president who speaks on a fifth grade level.

Let's define a new reality for them next November.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Do Not Let Us Fall Into Temptation

Usually I skip over stories that have to do with the Pope, but I've been reading more of them since Francis took the rather large yarmulke a few years ago because he seems to get the part about treating people like humans. He still has work to do with women and the Rohingya, but his proposed new change to the Lord's Prayer (which I have as a 45 rock version from 1973) comes at a most perfect time.

Temptation seems to be all the rage these days and I have to agree with Francis that the problem is not with a deity leading us there, but with us as functioning people resisting the lure. And we do have problems with that.

From national and state politicians, media moguls, entertainers, business executives and, yes, the President of the United States, men have been tempted to use their power and influence to harass, rape, threaten, bully and terrorize both women and men for...what? Sex? Influence? Power? Babies? There's a pathology here because rolling the dice and hoping you don't get caught must be part of the demonic thrill involved in the chase. And sometimes, even an apology does not substitute for tears.

But there are other temptations that are weakening us too. The Republican Party, tempted by power, is shutting out any reasonable attempt at bipartisanship on health care and taxes, and I imagine that they'll extend their terrible ideas to infrastructure, government spending and immigration.

The Democratic Party is similarly tempted by the thought of overreaching in their opposition to the president by becoming, at times, irrational baying wolves, calling for impeachment or overturning the election results. Neither of these will lead to the path to power, nor do I believe that they will become a force that compromises or ends the partisan war being fought throughout this country.

For all of this, I am not a religious person, but occasionally religious leaders do tap into the zeitgeist, intentionally or not. We could all use a little humility, and if it won't come from the president or his inner circle of sycophants, then it must come from us because only the American people can put an end to tolerance of lies, misdeeds and obstinate behavior.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest



Sunday, December 3, 2017

How the Republicans Broke Congress

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Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, used the filibuster to stymie initiatives by President Barack Obama. CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation: to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security.
Congress no longer works the way it’s supposed to. But we’ve said that before.
Eleven years ago, we published a book called “The Broken Branch,” which we subtitled “How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track.” Embedded in that subtitle were two assumptions: first, that Congress as an institution — which is to say, both parties, equally — is at fault; and second, that the solution is readily at hand. In 2017, the Republicans’ scandalous tax bill is only the latest proof that both assumptions are wrong.
Which is not to say that we were totally off base in 2006. We stand by our assessment of the political scene at the time. What is astounding, and still largely unappreciated, is the unexpected and rapid nature of the decline in American national politics, and how one-sided its cause. If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system.
Even today, many people like to imagine that the damage has all been President Trump’s doing — that he took the Republican Party hostage. But the problem goes much deeper.
We do not come at this issue as political partisans; though we are registered Democrats, we have supported Republicans, consider ourselves moderates and have worked with key figures in both parties to improve political processes. Still, we can’t help seeing the Republican Party as the root cause of today’s political instability. Three major developments in the party required us to change our view.
Continue reading the main stor
First, beginning in the 1990s, the Republicans strategically demonized Congress and government more broadly and flouted the norms of lawmaking, fueling a significant decline of trust in government that began well before the financial collapse in 2008, though it has sped up since. House Republicans showed their colors when they first blocked passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Plan, despite the urgent pleas of their own president, George W. Bush, and the speaker of the House, John Boehner. The seeds of a (largely phony) populist reaction were planted.
Second, there was the “Obama effect.” When Mr. Bush became president, Democrats worked with him to enact sweeping education reform early on and provided the key votes to pass his top priority, tax cuts. With President Barack Obama, it was different. While many argued that the problem was that Mr. Obama failed to schmooze enough with Republicans in Congress, we saw a deliberate Republican strategy to oppose all of his initiatives and frame his attempts to compromise as weak or inauthentic. The Senate under the majority leader Mitch McConnell weaponized the filibuster to obstruct legislation, block judges and upend the policy process. The Obama effect had an ominous twist, an undercurrent of racism that was itself embodied in the “birther” movement led by Donald Trump.
House leaders continued to inflame the populist anger of their base to win enormous midterm victories in 2010 and 2014. They repeatedly promised the impossible under divided party government: that if they won, Mr. Obama would be forced to his knees, his policies obliterated and government as we knew it demolished. Their subsequent failures to do so spurred even more rage, this time directed at establishment Republican leaders. But most pundits still clung to the belief that pragmatism would win out and Republicans would nominate an establishment insider in 2016.
Third, we have seen the impact of significant changes in the news media, which had a far greater importance on the right than on the left. The development of the modern conservative media echo chamber began with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio in the late 1980s and ramped up with the birth of Fox News. Matt Drudge, his protégé Andrew Breitbart and Breitbart’s successor Steve Bannon leveraged the power of the internet to espouse their far-right views. And with the advent of social media, we saw the emergence of a radical “alt-right” media ecosystem able to create its own “facts” and build an audience around hostility to the establishment, anti-immigration sentiment and racial resentment. Nothing even close to comparable exists on the left.
Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it.
This is a far cry from the aspirations of Republican presidential giants like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as legions of former Republican senators and representatives who identified critical roles for government and worked tirelessly to make them succeed. It’s an agenda bereft of any serious efforts to remedy the problems that trouble vast segments of the American public, including the disaffected voters who flocked to Mr. Trump.
The failure of Republican members of Congress to resist the anti-democratic behavior of President Trump — including holding not a single hearing on his and his team’s kleptocracy — is cringe-worthy. A few Republican senators have spoken up, but occasional words have not been matched by any meaningful deeds. Only conservative intellectuals have acknowledged the bankruptcy of the Republican Party.
We have never suggested that Democrats are angels and Republicans devils. Parties exist to win elections and organize government, and they are shaped by the interests, ideas and donors that constitute their coalitions. Neither party is immune from a pull to the extreme.
But the imbalance today is striking, and frightening. Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must reclaim its purpose.

The Education Money Trap

And you thought I might have something scathing, sarcastic and scary to say about the terrible tax bill that the party of the deficit (which they now own) passed Friday evening. But since the horrible House tax bill will need to be reconciled with the even more horribler Senate bill, I figured I would wait a bit.

Then I saw this article about education and money and how our focus on college has become even more skewed than our focus on money and how money influences our money decisions and how money has become the overwhelming money focus of our money lives to the money extent that a college education is all about...money.

The crux of the article is that it's currently illegal for colleges to collect and publish information on how much money each of their graduates is earning, what kinds of jobs they have and other information related to...money. Which bothers me a great deal because I am truly concerned about our present preoccupation with money and how students typically see a college as a four year job training program, with beer.

And that got me thinking. About me.

Because if you included information about me and my work experience, it might not lead to the type of information that might be helpful or that accurately reflects what some consider to be a typical college experience.

For example, I graduated from Syracuse University with a BA degree in two majors. One was in Television/Radio Management from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the other was in History from the Maxwell School in the College of Arts and Sciences. Both of these colleges are at or near the top of the rankings in their respective fields and I am duly proud of my accomplishments. Many of the graduates from these programs are thriving and are making valuable contributions to their fields.

Consider, though, that almost half of all college graduates are not directly using their major in their employment, including me. I'm a public school teacher and, yes, I do use my history degree every day, but I didn't attend a school of education and I'm probably bringing down the income average of those classmates who are making more money in communications and media. Any prospective student would then look at my information and come away with financial information that doesn't match my academic experience.

This is the problem with...money.

And this is also the problem when we, and I mean teachers, parents, guidance counselors, test preparation companies and society in general, focus on the financial aspects of a college education at the expense of its real purpose.

What we really need colleges and universities to publish is a happiness index or a satisfaction index or the ways in which a degree has made us more educated, more reflective, more compassionate, more inquisitive and more consequential, because those are the characteristics that we want people to come away with after spending four years at an institution of higher learning.

And we can use more people like that these days.

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