Fear and Loathing in 2018

It’s October; we’re supposed to see lots of things that startle or give us a fright.  Just this month, here are but a few of these that have done so in my life, in no particular order:

• The Yankees made the postseason.  This one turned out all right, since they were quickly dispatched.
• The estimable New York Times published a detailed expose of how our President made his fortune.  Hints: there is a discrepancy (over $400 million of them) between what he said he inherited and what public records indicate.
• Pro Publica published a story alleging that apples have not fallen far from the Trump family tree, as Junior and Ivanka apparently inflated the value of various real estate ventures they were involved in, thus enhancing their own wealth.
• Son-in-law Jared is worth over $300 million, yet seems to have escaped paying those pesky income taxes for nearly a decade.
• An astonishing number of women I know have come forward describing times that they were sexually harassed.  Result: the woman who courageously opened these floodgates still cannot return to her home, due to death threats.  Conclusion: nothing has changed since Anita Hill. 
• We have a new Supreme Court Justice, confirmed without revealing documents he wrote during his time as a White House aide under Bush II.  He was confirmed by Senators who represent 42% of the population, opposed by Senators representing 58%.
• Republican incumbents, who have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act at least 50 times, are on the campaign trail, stating that they favor legislation requiring insurance plans to cover pre-existing conditions.  I guess those 50 or 60 votes really didn’t mean anything.  Their statements qualify as pants-on-fire lies.
• The president is whipping up a frenzy of fear about a caravan of a number of refugees which is currently more than 1000 miles from our border.  Worse, the press is covering this just like they did the Ebola scare of 2014.  I will bet we will hear no more about this on Faux News after November 7.
• The Republican in Georgia who is both a candidate for governor and the referee to ensure a safe election has tilted the rules so that hundreds of thousands of eligible voters may not have the ability to cast a ballot.  Voter suppression is nothing new for the anti-Democratic party; they’re just a lot more brazen about it this year.
• The Sooners lost to Texas in the Red River Shootout, an ignominious fate in any year.  I fear the worst in the annual confab between Florida and Georgia this weekend.  Prediction: UGH-HA by about 20.
• The president announced a 10% tax cut for the middle class, displaying insight into the process of how a bill becomes law that was woefully less than I learned in my 7th grade Civics class.
• Explosive devices were intercepted before delivery to two former Presidents, a news network, a Congresswoman’s office and who knows where else.  In a speech last night, the president smiled at the chants of Lock Her Up, while bemoaning the lack of civility in our discourse.
• Finally, we learned that the President uses a personal phone that is routinely hacked by Chinese and Russian spies.  I guess that's still not as bad as Hillary's emails. 

Yet none of these came close to the scariest experience I had all month.  I was on a flight on October 3.  When it landed in Atlanta, I heard alarms sounding on phones throughout the plane. I don't know that I had seen such panic on the faces of so many people since the dark days of September, 2001.  Soon, my screen, like everyone else’s, indicated that we had just received an emergency text from the President. I confess I was aware this test was coming.  I don’t think any of us would have been surprised to learn that we were at war somewhere or some other monstrosity had occurred.  Such is life in Trump's America.

The great news is that I had a moment of reassurance not long after the dread that engulfed me on that plane.  While walking through the airport, I saw Congressman John Lewis walking in my direction. Mr. Lewis, a man who has risked his life countless times to make life better for all of us, who has gladly gotten himself into "good trouble" in order to do just that.  All I could think of to say was "Thank you, Congressman", which was horribly inadequate for what he has done.  Still, I felt better immediately.

Vote: The Rights You Save Might Be Your Own

During dinner in San Antonio a few years ago, a colleague asked me, shock in her voice, "You're not a Republican?"  I proceeded to explain that her party left me in 1980, when candidate Reagan, during a speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi, stated that it was the responsibility of state governments, not the Federal, to enforce the law.  In today's parlance, that's called a Dog Whistle, or a veiled message to one's less-than-honorable supporters that you're secretly with them, but cannot state so overtly.

The county seat of Neshoba is Philadelphia.  I'm old enough to remember that was the scene of the killing of three young men who were guilty of nothing more than attempting to get this state's citizens registered to vote.  These three terrorist murders were committed by the local sheriff and members of the KKK.  At the time of Reagan's speech, 16 years later, all the perpetrators still had not been found guilty of their crimes.

One of the outcomes of this horror was passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which brought to bear the power of the Federal Government to ensure that ALL citizens had the right to vote and that local governments could not discriminate against the free expression of this right.  This Act was renewed several times by a bipartisan Congress, most recently in 2006, when the Senate approved renewal by a vote of 98-0.

Upon the original passage of the Act, President Johnson was quoted as saying that the Democrats would lose the South for a generation.  Who knew he was such an optimist?  Subsequent administrations, notably under Reagan Bush II,  attempted to subvert various provisions of this law in order to ensure the election of their own candidates to office.

The provision that Republicans were most intent upon overturning was the one that mandated any state with a history of discrimination against the right to vote must have any changes to their voting processes pre-approved by the Department of Justice.  Finally, in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that, as discrimination against voters no longer existed, this law was no longer necessary.

Within months, EVERY former Confederate state had implemented new voting procedures, ranging from requiring voter ID, restricting the hours and number of places where early voting could take place, closing DMV offices which made it more difficult for citizens to obtain these necessary IDs.  These restrictions had the desired effect: it made it more difficult for minorities to exercise their right to vote.

Those legislators who championed these restrictive efforts claimed that these new regulations would reduce the incidence of in-person voter fraud.  Here are the facts: in all Federal elections (for members of Congress and President) between 2002 and 2016, over 1 billion votes were cast.  The amount of in-person voter fraud?  Less than 60.  If you're doing the math, this fraud occurred 0.000000006 % of the time.

Yet, every Southern state, in addition to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin, has enacted these restrictive laws.  Looking at this list, the one thing Donald Trump was honest about in 2016 was when he stated that the election was rigged; given all these restrictions, it certainly allowed him a path to an electoral college victory.  In Georgia alone, some 600,000 names were purged from the rolls of registered voters.  One county, with a majority African-American population, recently attempted to close 7 of its 9 voting precincts in the interest of saving costs.  The new regulations in North Carolina were considered so restrictive, a Federal judge, in overturning it, ruled that African-American voters were eliminated with surgical-like precision.

I frequently write my Senators and Congressman, asking what they will do to ensure the expansion of the voting franchise.  In two years of writing, I have yet to get an answer to this simple question.  My guess is that they prefer the system that tilts the rules so they can remain in office.  Perhaps the GOP should now be called the Anti-Democratic Party, since they have little interest in allowing all citizens to vote.

What to do with these scoundrels?  At the minimum, they should be required to attend some class in basic Constitutional law, perhaps taught by John Lewis, who certainly knows the subject.  I would like to see each representative who votes to restrict voting rights lose their own rights to vote for at least two election cycles, but, we know that will never happen.  So, I urge you to take matters into your own hands and vote!  There are multiple organizations who can assist voters with information about polling places, registration dates and absentee voting processes.  They need your help, in order to get still more of our citizens registered and voting.  My favorite is Let America Vote.

At a minimum, check to see if you are, in fact, registered, or to ensure that your state has not, for reasons unknown, purged your name.  You can do so at VoteSaveAmerica.com.

Note: The Justice Department attorney who worked to overturn the Voting Rights Act in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration?  His name was John Roberts.

The Differences Between Cats and Dogs

Back in my traveling days, one of my favorite stops was Houston.  While I had no particular fondness for the city or its environs, a trip there usually resulted in an invitation to my colleague Patti's home for dinner with her family.

During one such visit, her son, who was about eight at the time, asked his father and I to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  His father, Pat, was a reasonable man, whom I categorized as a moderate Republican.  He told their son that Democrats chose to interfere in the lives of citizens in order to take money away from hard-working people to give to those less so.  Republicans, on the other hand, thrived in an environment in which government left them alone, free from the encumbrance of needless regulations and excessive taxes.  Given these circumstances, the economy would grow and all would be right with the world.

My immediate response: I turned to Pat and said: "How about if I tell him the truth now?"

Republicans, I explained, are the most optimistic people on the planet.  They believe that if the government cuts their taxes and eliminates regulations, the right people will make more money with the benefits eventually trickling down to the rest of us.  They are such believers in the inherent goodness of man that they have remade laws several times over the previous 25 years to build such a society; the first, during the Reagan years and again during the ascendancy of W. Bush.

Democrats, on the other hand, don't share these Pollyanna-ish views about mankind.  They believe that if government takes this hands-off approach, baser human motivations - like greed - will dominate. The economic result of this trickle-down theory,  aptly characterized by GHW Bush as "voodoo economics", is a massive redistribution of wealth to a small minority (about 1%) of the population, who will take advantage of those less fortunate.  Democrats believe that the role of government must also include the protection of these vulnerable from these economic predators.

My punchline was that Republicans campaign on the premise that government does not work; once in office, they prove it.

That was 15 years ago.  Don't these arguments seem so quaint today?  I relate these tales to illustrate that it was not that long ago when the two political parties carved out positions close to the center of our political discourse.  My, my, how things have changed!  In 2012, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann published It's Even Worse Than It Looks.  Their main premise: the Republican party has been hijacked by an extremist faction that is holding the country hostage to their anti-government credos that undermine our system of democratic government.  Their positions, supported without question or dissent by their in-house media apparatus - Fox News - are so out of the mainstream that the patron saints of American Conservatism, Goldwater and Reagan, could not be elected dogcatcher today, because some self-styled Republican would outflank them to the right.

My GOP friends tell me that both sides do this, both have become more extreme.  I disagree; allow me to cite some examples:

• In the 2000 Presidential campaign, the press focused on the alleged statement by Vice President Gore that he had invented the internet instead of asking Governor Bush how he would finance the massive tax cuts he proposed without adding to the deficit.  
• In 2016, the estimable New York Times devoted far more column inches to the non-story of Hillary's emails, instead of asking questions about the temperament, record and abilities of candidate Trump.  We all know how that one turned out.  
• President Trump has nominated candidates for lifetime positions in the Federal judiciary, all of whom have in common the endorsement of right-wing legal societies, hell-bent on overturning protection of Voting Rights, health care reforms, restrictions on secret funding for political candidates and women's right to choice.  Several of these candidates have, in hearings to vet their abilities, questioned the legitimacy of Brown v. Board of Education.  Seriously.  Yet, only one Republican senator has voted against any of these candidates, who will be interpreting law well into my grandchild's adulthood. 

I believe the term is "false equivalence".  For the one district in Illinois that has an odd shape to protect a Democratic incumbent, I show you the convoluted construction of districts in North Carolina, which a Federal judge overturned because it eliminated African-American voters with "surgical precision".  My own state, Georgia, has slightly favored the Republican Presidential candidate in the last three elections, reaching a high water mark of 54%.  Yet, our Congressional delegation is 72% Republican.  

We have a  Congress with lower approval ratings than the Department of Motor Vehicles.  They have spent their current term in blind allegiance to an woefully incompetent President who, for reasons as yet unclear, has no words of criticism for our global adversaries but plenty for our allies.  They clutch their pearls at the separation of families at our borders but do nothing to resolve this human rights catastrophe nor to prevent it from recurring.    

No, both sides don't do this.  

Dear Congressman Loudermilk

The following, a letter to the person who represents the district in which I live (Georgia's 11th):

Mr. Loudermilk:

I see that you have, once again, gone along with the wishes of your party, by voting for the American Health Care Act.  I am aware that by doing so, you are fulfilling the promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.  I wrote to you, several times, in advance of this vote, imploring  you to stand against your party and vote for the good of your constituents.  I made these pleas for the following reasons:

• The AHCA is a tax cut for people who don't need one, disguised as health care reform.
• The AHCA will make it more difficult - and expensive - for many of our citizens to obtain insurance.
• The AHCA will allow states to determine what are "essential health benefits" (such as doctor visits, emergency room treatment, transport by ambulance), in addition to restricting the preexisting conditions that insurers will be obligated to cover.  
• The AHCA will allow employers to "cap" the amount of coverage for their employees who purchase insurance through their job.  The logical effect of this is that should someone incur a catastrophic illness, the amount insured will not go over a certain limit. 
• In a particularly cruel twist of fate, Congress is exempt from the provisions of this act, as all members and their staff remain under the coverage of the Affordable Care Act.
• Finally, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan group that calculates the cost of every piece of legislation, has not yet scored this particular bill. As a result, you and your party voted to approve a bill for which no one had calculated the costs, the consequences or the number of those who will be left unable to obtain insurance.  

How is that for a summary?  Did I get the salient points?  

As we were raising our children, we dined together as a family each night.  Like most families, we discussed our day, its events and highs and lows.  I have spent the bulk of my adult life working for the same company in the hospitality business.  I can honestly say that there was not a single day in all the years I have worked for this company that I was ashamed or embarrassed to tell my children what I did at work that day.  The company I work for prides itself on its integrity, even to the extent of training all our new associates in the mantra that "how we do business is just as important as the business we do."

What did you tell your children at the dinner table Thursday night?  Did you tell them how you cast a vote for a bill about which you knew neither its costs nor consequences?  Did you give them an estimate of how many people (best guesses: upwards of 20 million) would no longer have insurance? Did you tell them the extent of the tax cut you approved for 1% of the population?  I cannot even imagine how you reconcile your continuing silence about the behavior of a President who seems to exist only to enhance his own self-image and his family's wealth with your public stance as a man of honor.  How do you explain that to your children?

You may think your constituents have short memories.  I disagree.  At some point, you will have to answer for your shameless actions. 

A Choice, Not an Echo

Politics should be the most illustrious example of the art of compromise.  In fact, the establishment of our system of government arose out of one proposed in 1787.  I can accept that I will not agree with every policy position of any candidate for office.  For, as Mr. Churchill noted, if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. 

I am at a loss to explain how a major party nominated Donald Trump to be their candidate for President.  While the Republicans of my youth completed their abandonment of me when Ronaldus Maximus gave that infamous speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi (Google that location and the source of its notoriety), they have mostly nominated men of competence.  

Instead, this time they have chosen a man who, in the words of National Review columnist David Brooks, is running for President with less preparation than you or I would undertake to buy a sofa.  He has no interest in policy, people or our government.  Yet, that’s not his most fatal flaw.

We all know a Donald Trump, hopefully, only one.  We first met him early in middle school.  You remember; the rich kid who was the class bully during our most awkward years.  We tittered nervously when he made fun of the nerdy kids or he popped the bra strap of the first girl to wear one.  We may have even stood by when he directed his cruel vitriol against one of our friends.  We tolerated any behavior, so long as he did not come after us, since our self-esteem was already shaky.  We longed to be one of those who followed him, sharing in the glory that he projected upon himself.  He never admitted fault; if he flunked a test, it was because the teacher didn’t like him.  If he wasn’t the star of the game, the coach or referee was unfair. I even have his picture:

Remember Biff?  I’ll bet the first time you saw Back to the Future, you identified someone in your past who was just like him.  I’ll also bet you experienced a sensation of schadenfreude when, at the end of that first film, he had become an obsequious toady to Mr. McFly.  Sic semper bullies.

Now, it’s been revealed that Biff Trump has said something especially heinous about women.  I must confess my surprise, not at the news, but that people find this so incredulous.  His statement is consistent with what he has said since he announced his candidacy.  You know the litany of his verbose transgressions, everything from calling Mexicans rapists to fat-shaming women, all the while denying he said this or that, despite ample proof to the contrary.  Failing that, he blamed his inadequacies on a malfunctioning microphone, a rigged system or his crooked adversaries.  And, I’ve only referenced but two of the hundreds of insults and inappropriate bilious comments that have spewed from his over-inflated potty mouth over the past year.

Even more astonishing is the number of supporters who are only now running for cover.  I’m talking about the leaders of the Grand Old Party in Congress, various governors, even his own running mate, who act shocked that he has said such a thing.  Of course, his lapdog, Sean Hannity, remains firmly in his pocket, although I have not seen anything from the other toadies.  You know, the Biff chorus brings to mind another crew:

Well, so-called Republican leaders, you have abased yourselves for far too long at the altar of Biff.  You made him, now stick with him.  It’s a little late for you to profess surprise that this tax-cheating, narcissistic, misogynistic, bigoted bully is anything but what he has so often purported to be over the past 18 months.  He has been this his entire life, for all to see.  For all of them that have pretended he’s not all that bad, I can only hope that you go down in flames with him next month.  You deserve nothing better.

More Than Alphabetical

Growing up in Oklahoma, it was never a question of whether I would become a fan of college football; instead, it was more a matter of for whom or to what degree.  I have followed the (largely) successful runs of the Sooners for more years than I care to count.  It was not until my daughters decided to attend the University of Florida that my allegiance shifted, if just a tad.  Their rivalries became mine; I shared their superstitions.  And, I have followed the roller-coaster wins and disappointments over the last decade, albeit not as rabidly as the two of them and their friends.

Now, as a resident of Georgia, I have been puzzled by the reference to this annual game played in Jacksonville in an order decidedly non-alphabetical in nature.  Even in my home hundreds of miles west, we knew it as Florida/Georgia weekend, but we still considered it something of a piker in the realm of state university rivalries.  I guess one would, with the Red River Shootout (no longer a PC term) as the gold standard of such games.

I have listened to the boastings of all those UGa fans throughout these many Augusts and early Septembers, only to hear the deafening silences that have ensued as their highly-regarded team has suffered several defeats, effectively relegating their postseason appearance to a few rungs below BCS-land.  Enough, I say.  Let us set the record straight on the correct order of this game played yesterday.  Yes, by calling it Florida/Georgia, it is proper for more than the logical alphabetical order. Heck, even the logo for the game gets it right:

The first and most obvious comparison: national football championships is led by Florida, 3 to 2.
National championships in team sports: Florida, 45 to 41.

You want non-sports comparisons?

Average SAT score of incoming freshmen: Florida 1918, Georgia 1800
US News & World Report ranking of top universities: Florida 43, Georgia 61.
Washington Monthly ranking of top universities (which sorts by contributions of its graduates to the quality of life): Florida 22, Georgia 52.  FYI: Georgia Tech ranks #9.
Research & Development ranking (amount of $$ spent for this purpose): Florida 12, Georgia 55.
Nobel Prizes awarded: Florida 3, Georgia 0.

I have neglected to mention the one category in which Georgia clearly leads Florida: number of universities that call themselves Bulldogs: 38; number calling themselves Gators: there's only one.

I rest my case.

Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In.

Ah, Brooklyn: a place I had visited but three times in my life, most recently for a wedding in 1985.  My father, who grew up in Queens, once said that it was easier in the 1930s to go to a foreign country than to travel the 10 miles or so to Ebbets Field.  He did admit to going to see the Dodgers play there once, after at least two failed attempts to find the borough.

In the intervening years since my father wandered the tunnels of the subway in search of those pearly gates, the allure of Brooklyn has dimmed somewhat.  Entire neighborhoods have acquired infamy as places visitors should not venture: Bedford-Stuyvesant has long been a symbol of urban blight and neglect, while other areas have become home to a new (if undesirable) class of immigrants, such as the Russian Mob in Brighton Beach.  To be fair, I cannot determine if that appellation is a Hollywood storyline or actual fact, since I've never been there.  Finally, there's Coney Island, another place I've not seen but feel omission from my bucket list will cause no tears.

Lately, Brooklyn has developed a new patina, as home to hipsters, urban pioneers and others, who have been accused of "gentryfying" the neighborhoods.  Allegedly, it is home also for what passes as affordable housing in New York.  These tribes are rumored to regard Pabst Blue Ribbon, a beer we settled on in college when we couldn't afford anything better, as some sort of nectar.

Brooklyn is now home to younger daughter Amanda, who has worked there the past three years, actually residing there since the middle of last year.  I recently traveled north to visit her and to see what all the fuss is about.

In a word, I was impressed!  While a good number of the old buildings are in a state of disrepair, there are some gems that have been restored.

This, for example, is the old Williamsburg Savings Bank, one of the tallest clock towers in the world. Apparently, it is now home to some higher-end condos.  

I was struck by the number of warehouses, many of which have been artfully tagged by local artists.  Some have been restored into shops or restaurants.  We went to an especially wonderful place, called Ample Hills Creamery, where I enjoyed perhaps the finest ice cream I had ever tasted.  One of the buildings that caught my eye was this one:

I know someone has to make caskets; I always assumed they came from some outfit called Lighter Than Air or Eternal Respite.  I had no idea that someone would actually call such a company by the items it manufactures.  

Amanda explained that part of the Brooklyn experience is complaining about going to that other island, which we did, a couple of times (went, not complained).  We met up with friends at the Marriott Marquis, where our tour guide led us to a wonderful cafe near the theatre district called Don Antonio, where we laughed and ate to excess for too short a time.  Afterwards, we visited the guardians of the New York Public Library, Patience and Fortitude, who are old friends to us. 

Our next visit to that island was to tour the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  Over 7,000 people lived there in the 70 years before New York began to regulate such buildings.  There are several different tours, each relating the tale of one of the families that lived there.  After our tour, we all wondered that anyone survived that era in such a place and felt grateful that our ancestors, who certainly had their challenges when arriving here, did not have to live in a place quite like that. 

We explored Brooklyn Bridge Park, the school where Amanda teaches and saw a variety of neighborhoods, ranging from the elegant to the still marginal.  I think it would be a hard life, to exist there.  While I was fascinated by the diversity of life, people, buildings, businesses and neighborhoods, I fear I would find it overwhelming to live there.  

But then, I'm a bit older than my hosts/tour guides.  They are both at a great age and in a great spot.  They seem to relish the wonders of living in such a stimulating environment.  For them, getting on a train to the City or walking a mile or two are just part of everyday life.  I'm thankful for the time I had with them and the many memories they created.  

Thanks, tour guides!  I can't wait to go back!