Category Archives: Donald Trump

Is Minnesota Ready to Loosen Social Distancing?

Posted on by

When it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic crisis, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who issued a stay at home order on March 25, has earned 82% approval ratings, compared to 34% for President Trump, according to a Survey USA/KSTP-TV survey.  Up until this point, stay at home orders seem to have actually been a political benefit to leaders courageous and wise enough to invoke them, not a burden. For instance as of early May, only about 20% of Minnesotans wanted the Governor’s stay at home order lifted.

But that is almost sure to change over time.  In part because of President’s Trump’s constant call to ease restrictions, and calls for the public to resist them, we’re already seeing Americans getting more antsy, as evidenced by a recent Gallup poll that shows the number of people avoiding small gatherings decreasing by four points among Democrats, 10 points among Independents, and 16 points among Republicans. 

Also a Unacast report card measuring social distancing activity, which earlier gave Minnesota an “A” grade, has downgraded Minnesota to a “D-” grade, a crushing blow to the earnest promoters of Minnesota exceptionalism.

Picking up on that sentiment, and following their President’s call to “LIBERATE Minnesota” from pandemic protections, Minnesota House Republicans are increasingly criticizing Walz’s stay at home order, and using a bonding bill as ransom to get it lifted. I’m not convinced “we’re fighting to stimulate the economy by blocking job-creating bonding projects” is the most persuasive argument, but that’s what they’re going with.

So, should Governor Walz further loosen distancing rules?  As of May 6, the experts at the Harvard Global Health Institute say that only nine states have done enough to warrant loosening restrictions — Alaska, Utah, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oregon, Montana, West Virgina, and Wyoming. The Harvard analysts find that Minnesota is not one of them, another blow to Minnesota exceptionalism. Specifically, experts find that Minnesota needs to be doing more testing and seeing lower rates of infection from the tests. 

There might be some modest steps Walz can take to ease the political pressure and help Minnesotans feel like they’re making progress.  I’m not remotely qualified to identify them, but for what little it’s worth here is some wholly uninformed food-for-thought anyway:

For those with low risk factors — people who are young and healthy and are not essential workers — maybe the good Governor could allow masked and socially distanced haircuts.   (Can you tell my new Donny Osmond look is starting to get to me?)

For the same group, maybe Walz could allow masked and distanced visits with members of the immediate family — offspring, siblings, and parents. (Can you tell I miss my daughter?)

Those two things seem to be particularly stressful to people. While far from risk-free, they aren’t recklessly risky. These kinds of small adjustments might help people (i.e. me) become more patient and compliant when it comes to more consequential rules. 

Overall, Walz should listen to experts and largely keep stay at home orders in place until the experts’ guidelines are met.  A new spike in infections and deaths will seriously harm consumer confidence and the economy, and that shouldn’t be risked. At this stage, most Minnesotans are not likely to flock back to bars, restaurants, malls and large entertainment venues anyway, regardless of what Walz allows. 

But maybe a little off the top would be okay?

What Would Democrats Do If They Had a Bribing Chief Executive? Ask Rod Blagojevich.

Posted on by

Republicans are currently led by a brazenly corrupt chief executive who was caught in a bribery scheme to benefit his personal and political career.  The evidence is clear and overwhelming, but congressional Republicans are marching in lockstep defending their corrupt leader.

As this plays out, many cynical observers shrug it all off, maintaining that if a Democrat leader faced a similar charge Democrats would do the same thing Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are doing.  They claim that “both parties protect their own, no matter what.”

They might want to ask Rod Blagojevich about that.

On December 9, 2008, Blagojevich, the Democratic former Governor of Illinois, was caught soliciting appointments in exchange for the right to name the replacement for former Senator Barack Obama.  It was clearly documented bribery for personal benefit.  Sound familiar?

The Democratic Governor’s actions were deplorable and corrupt.  At the same time, Blagojevich’s type of bribery lacked some of the worst elements of the Trump Ukrainian corruption scandal. 

After all, Blagojevich wasn’t endangering a foreign ally’s troops under attack from a sworn American enemy, as Trump did. 

Blagojevich wasn’t directing a foreign government to interfere with our free and fair elections, as Trump did.

Blagojevich wasn’t illegally redirecting hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds approved by a large bipartisan majority of the duly elected legislative body, as Trump did. 

Blagojevich wasn’t demanding the slander of a political opponent, as Trump did.

Blagojevich hadn’t launched a massive cover-up of evidence, as Trump did.

Still, Blagojevich’s form of bribery was despicable in its own right, so Democrats at both the state and national level acted swiftly to protect citizens from this corrupt leader. 

Immediately after the charges against Blagojevich became public, state Democrats immediately condemned their fellow Democrat and called for him to resign, including the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, Treasurer, and Secretary of State.

At the national level, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin called for the Democrat to step down.  The 50 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus ordered Blagojevich to not fill the seat with himself or anyone else. 

When Blagojevich named someone to serve anyway, the Democratic State Attorney General filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court seeking to declare the Governor “unable to serve” and strip him of the powers of his office. 

Then the Democratic-controlled House quickly began impeachment proceedings.  In January 2009, just one month after the Blagojevich crimes became known, Blagojevich was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House on a vote of 114–1. Only one Democrat opposed it.

Just twenty days later, the Democratic Governor was convicted by the Senate, with every Democrat voting in favor of his impeachment.  Democratic legislators also disqualified their fellow Democrat from ever again holding public office in the state.

In other words, faced with a powerful chief executive from it’s own party engaged in attempted bribery to benefit himself, Illinois Democrats didn’t make excuses.  They didn’t engage in blame-shifting “whataboutism” arguments. They didn’t shrug it off because no payoff had yet been made before investigators shut down the scheme. They didn’t put party over principle. 

Instead, Democrats supported a swift impeachment and removal of their party’s top leader.

Democrats are far from perfect. But as Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate begin their Trump impeachment trial, the contrast between how Democrats and Republicans have handled these two respective bribery scandals is clear and stark.  The case of Rod Blagojevich reminds us that lazy “both parties are equally complicit in the face of bribery and corruption” assertions just don’t hold up.

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Liberals

Posted on by

The 2020 elections are the most important elections of my lifetime, and potentially the most important in American history.  Will we replace the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times, and his shameless congressional enablers, or will we go further down the road to authoritarianism and corporatism?  That sounds melodramatic, but given what we’ve learned about Trump over the last three years, it’s not an exaggeration.

The stakes are high, so liberals need to step up their game. 

This isn’t about trashing liberals.  Liberals have done a lot of great things for America.  At a time when all of these things were quite unpopular, liberals had enough vision, courage, and commitment to pass Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, marriage equality, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protections, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

But we grassroots liberals also can be also our own worst enemies.  To win in 2020, we need to make five New Years resolutions to do better than we did in 2016.

STOP THE PETTY, PERSONAL ATTACKS.  With hundreds of substantive reasons to criticize Trump and his lackeys, there is no reason to stoop to snotty attacks about personal issues like the President’s complexion, hair, waistline, hand size, penis size, verbal slips, and misspellings.  The same goes for personally insulting his supporters.

Among the moderate swing voters who will decide the outcome of this election, those kinds of personal shots inadvertently create sympathy for Trump and others who don’t deserve swing voters’ sympathy. I get that they are cathartic, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek.   But they’re also and self-defeating in the end, and therefore self-indulgent, so liberals need to get better at taking a pass on the personal shots.

STOP THE CANNABILISM.  Liberals also need to be mindful of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “thou shall not speak ill of other Republicans.” 

I understand the temptation to wage civil war.  My top presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has already dropped out of the race, and my second choice, Cory Booker, doesn’t look like he will last much beyond Iowa.  Having to go to Plan C is deeply disappointing to me. Having to go to Plan D, E, F, G, H, I, J, or K, a distinct possibility in a field this large, likely will be even more disappointing to me. 

In the end, I realize that I am unlikely to be in love with my Democratic Party nominee.  But if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. Unless we learn something dramatically scandalous about one of the Democratic candidates in the coming months, I’m pledging to myself that I won’t trash other Democratic candidates, vote for a third party candidate, or sit out the election.  For a long time, I’ve even been making monthly donations to the eventual nominee, whomever that ends up being, via the Unify or Die fund.  

All liberals should make a resolution to forgo intra-party cannibalism, because it greatly increases the chances that we have four even more catastrophic years with the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times.  That can’t happen, so we all have to suck it up and pledge to support the candidate that prevails in the nominating process.

STOP THE SHINY OBJECT CHASING.  We all know that President Trump is going to do and say hundreds of things before the election that are mock-worthy and outrageous, but probably are not issues that are going to sway swing voters or motivate non-voters.  Every moment we spend talking about those side issues –say, a funny golf story, a boneheaded gaffe, a stupid joke at a rally, a silly exchange with an athlete or celebrity–is a moment we’re not talking about issue differentiators that are more likely to influence voting decisions.

What Trump actions are more deserving of our focus? His giving lavish, deficit-spiking tax cuts to the wealthy. His separating young children from parents and caging them. His taking birth control and other types of reproductive health care away from women. His blocking legislation to control pharmaceutical prices. His cowardly refusal to cross the NRA to support common sense gun safety laws. His erratic Russian-friendly foreign policy decisions in dangerous places like Iran, Syria, the Ukraine, and North Korea. His repeated attempts to repeal Affordable Care Act protections, such as preexisting condition protections for 133 million Americans.

Polls show those kinds of issues work against Trump with swing voters and non-voters, so those kinds of issues should be the primary focus of conversations at the break room, bar, barbeque, or online chat. 

With such a steady stream of Trump’s outrages, it’s difficult to not take the bait from the ever-outrageous tweet stream. I’m far from perfect on this front.  But we liberals have to get better about focusing on the issues that matter the most to swing voters and non-voters, and that means shrugging off a lot of the side issues.

FOCUS ON ROOT CAUSES.  When deciding how to spend time and resources, liberals should also consider focusing on the root causes of Trump’s electoral success.   For instance, rather than only supporting individual candidates, consider supporting groups like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 and the ACLU. Those groups are battling Republicans’ relentless voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color, which threaten to swing close elections to Trump and his political toadies now and for decades to come. 

Ensuring that every vote counts and voting is easier will help progressive local, state and federal candidates up and down the ballot. It will help preserve our representative democracy for future generations. Supporting those groups isn’t as obvious to most of us as supporting parties and candidates, but it’s every bit as important.

SPEAK OUT EARLY AND OFTEN.  Speaking out against Trump and Republicans in person and on social media is frowned upon by Americans who are “non-political,” ignorant, and/or in denial about what is happening to America.  That can make speaking out about Trump unpleasant and exhausting.  Goodness knows, no one relishes being called, gasp, “political,” and being accosted by trolls. 

But in America today, we have politicians who are all too willing to separate brown-skinned kids from their parents and put them cages indefinitely.  We have politicians trying to repeal health protections for 133 million Americans. We have a party that gave a massive, deficit-ballooning tax gift to the wealthiest 1% at a time when we have the worst income inequality since 1928 and record deficits.  We have a President taking birth control and other reproductive rights away from women. If we don’t vote out this crew, we could easily have much worse developments on the horizon in a second, even more unhinged Trump term.  

All of which is to say one person’s “politics” is another person’s life, livelihood, and rights.  A while back, writer Naomi Shulman helped put this issue in proper perspective for me:

“Nice people made the best Nazis.  My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

I’m not saying liberals have be jerks and nags to their friends and relatives. We don’t have to be the turd in the punch bowl.  In most cases, we should be calm, respectful, factual and measured when we speak out, even when the respect isn’t deserved and returned, because that’s usually the best way to win hearts, minds, and votes. 

But we do have to speak out, because silence implies consent.  As Martin Luther King  famously said of another movement in another time:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”  

The same is true of the movement to save America from Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.  I’m about as conflict averse as they come, but unfortunately that excuse just is not going to cut it with so many lives hanging in the balance.

So my fellow liberals, this New Years Eve raise a glass of your favorite truth serum, and make some challenging resolutions that nudge you outside of your comfort zone.  Your country needs you now more than ever.

“Support Our Troops” Sloganeering Has Led To No One Supporting Our Taxpayers

Posted on by

When it comes to food stamps (aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) for poverty stricken Americans — 80% of whom are children, the disabled or elderly—President Trump is a tough fiscal conservative.  This Christmas season, Trump announced he’s taking food away from 700,000 of them, which will save about $1 billion per year. Self-described fiscal conservatives are cheering. 

But when it comes to lavishing funding on the Pentagon’s huge corporate contractors, Trump has been the furthest thing away from fiscally conservative.  Last year, he proposed an increase of $34 billion per year to a $4.7 trillion 2020 budget, including funding Trump’s Space Force toy.

To recap, Trump is saving $1 billion per year on food stamps with the one hand, while going on a $34 billion per year Pentagon spending spree with the other hand.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is contemporary fiscal conservatism, where cruelty is the point, not actual fiscal restraint.

Contrary to Trump claims that President Obama “devastated” the military, the U.S. doesn’t need to play “catch-up” on spending. It spends more on military than the next seven more armed nations, COMBINED. Clearly, we are armed to the teeth so that chicken hawks like Trump and McConnell can have their hair triggers at the ready any time they feel the urge to send other people’s kids in front of bullets and IEDs.  

At the same time, the Pentagon has not exactly shown itself to be the most trustworthy and efficient of public agencies.  It was recently caught hiding an audit that found about $125 billion in wasteful spending. The Washington Post reported what the Pentagon and fiscal conservatives wouldn’t:

“The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”

So, how do politicians and their constituents justify taking from the poorest Americans while giving lavishly to the richest corporate Pentagon contractors?  Three words: “Support. Our. Troops.”

Uttering those three magical words gets most politicians on both the right and left to obediently write deficit-financed blank checks to corporate contractors, lest they be accused of being anti-troops. 

The “support our troops” mega-brand has been built in no small part by Pentagon military recruitment budgets that ensure there is an endless stream of shallow paid-patriotism sloganeering at all types of community gatherings, particularly sports events. The Washington Post explains:

“In 2015, an oversight report by Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona revealed the NFL as one of several leagues that accepted Department of Defense funds to stage military tributes, a practice known as paid patriotism. (The league eventually gave back more than $700,000, drawing praise from Flake.) Joe Lockhart, a former Clinton administration staffer, had just joined the NFL as a spokesman when the scandal broke.

‘As I dug into that a little bit, the National Guard, which is probably the most aggressive advertiser at NFL games, talked about how it was the single best recruitment vehicle they had,’ said Lockhart, who left the NFL last year. ‘Which is just interesting. I think there is a connection. . . . Football Sundays have a connection to what a lot of people view as patriotism.’

The service members presented at games can feel like props, part of a show. The camouflage uniforms and accessories can cheapen the sacrifice of soldiers and prohibit critical thinking about the military.

‘It almost feels like it’s a mandatory patriotism that is pushed down the throats of anybody who wants to attend a game,” said former Army Ranger and author Rory Fanning, who has become a vocal critic of America’s wars. ‘By trotting out veterans, patting them on the back, I don’t think it does justice to the actual experience of veterans, particularly over the last 18 years. There certainly isn’t an opportunity for veterans to talk about their experiences in combat. So many veterans don’t feel like the heroes the NFL wants to present them as.””

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for “supporting our troops,” at least in ways that are actually relevant and meaningful.  Say a sincere, heartfelt thanks. Provide good pay and benefits. Supply the training and equipment soldiers need.  Fund lifelong help after they serve.  Most importantly, keep them out of unnecessary armed conflicts.

But writing blank checks to corporate contractors is not on that list.  The reality is, too much of that $4.7 trillion annual Pentagon budget has nothing to do with troop-supporting functions, such as the $125 billion in covered-up waste. 

So how about some bipartisan cooperation for dramatically reducing that largest of government boondoggles, the $4.7 trillion per year Pentagon budget.  How about putting a little “support our taxpayers” in the mix?

Top 10 Worst Trump Defenses, So Far

Posted on by

“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.” 
– Walter Scott

And so it goes with congressional Republicans defending President Trump’s indefensible arms-for-dirt bribery scheme. 

They can’t possibly defend it on the substance, because the substance doesn’t pass the smell test with 70 percent of Americans.  At the same time, they can’t fathom not defending Trump, because they live in fear that he might mean-tweet and primary them back to, gasp, civilian life. 

Therefore, they use a constantly changing array of truly preposterous defenses to get through the humiliating interviews they’re forced to do.  The defenses are maddening and highly entertaining, and these are a few of my favorites:

Top 10 Worst Defenses

Transparency!  Righteous congressional Republicans stormed a secure committee room and dramatically demanded public hearings! 

But when televised public hearings were launched a few days later, the same Republicans suddenly switched to demanding “an end to the media circus!” 

Hearsay!  This one was very hot this week.  Trump defenders demanded that they hear from someone who directly saw the bribery.  “Hearsay,” they say.

Of course, there are several problems with that.  First, the White House-verified call record clearly documents the bribery, directly in the President’s own words. It’s not hearsay, it’s Trumpsay.

Second, nonpartisan, decorated combat war veteran Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was on the infamous call, and he’ll be testifying soon.

Finally, Trump apologists also say it’s perfectly fine for Trump, Mulvaney, Bolton, and others, who do have firsthand knowledge of the bribery, to refuse to testify about what they observed. You can’t try to have it both ways and be expected to be taken seriously.

Whistleblower!  They’re outraged that someone blew the whistle on the bribery, and demand that he be publicly pilloried, even when the law says he is guaranteed anonymity and protection, and even after a long list of named, credible, nonpartisan officials are publicly confirming everything about which the whistleblower was whistling.

This initially might have had some political traction when the whistleblower was standing alone, but after all of this corroborating testimony, it makes no sense.

Incompetence!  This one is especially delicious. Lindsey Graham and others have continually asserted that Trump and his team couldn’t possibly have committed bribery, because, well, they’re obviously far too inept to commit bribery. 

“What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent … They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.”


While incompetence is always a plausible theory when it comes to Trump and his team, corruption is actually the one skill Trump that very clearly has mastered throughout his life.

Also, the White House’s own call record plainly shows Trump’s bribery: After the military aid is mentioned, Trump immediately followed up with “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”

Failed Crime=No Crime!  Media darling Nikki Haley is among those who have said Trump is innocent of bribery because his bribery efforts failed after the bribery scheme exposed. 

Thousands of prisoners whose criminal endeavors were unsuccessful wish mightily that this was somehow a legitimate defense. It is not.

Impeachment=SERIOUS!  Many say that impeachment is only for serious offenses and this clearly isn’t a serious offense. 

I’m not sure I can think of a more serious example of presidential abuse of power than this: Illegally redirecting hundreds of millions of congressionally dedicated U.S. tax dollars to bribe a desperate foreign leader — who is under attack by Russia, a sworn enemy of the U.S., and has thousands of his troops’ lives and his nation’s existence on the line — to dig up political dirt on his opponent and interfere in an American election. 

That’s pretty much a greatest hits of impeachable offenses in that run-on sentence, and it doesn’t even mention the cover-up — altering and burying records, witness tampering, and refusing to honor subpoenas. Anyone who thinks that isn’t serious isn’t a serious person.

Tradeoffs=Normal Foreign Policy.  White House Chief of Staff Mick “Get Over It, He Did It!” Mulvaney is among many Republicans who shrug this off by noting that trade-offs are proposed all the time in the course of foreign policy. 

The problem, of course, is that when Trump said “I would like you to do us a favor, though” the rest of his White House-verified call record made it clear that the “us” in that sentence was actually “me.”  That is, the bribed “favor” wasn’t for America as a whole, it was for Trump’s personal political gain.

That’s foreign bribery, not foreign policy.

Corruption-Fighting!  While Trump has never shown any interest whatsoever in rooting out corruption in corrupt nations like Russia, North Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or others that he regularly praises, his apologists swear that he is absolutely passionate about rooting out Ukranian corruption.  Right.

The White House’s call record showed that the only alleged “corruption” Trump mentioned was something that just happened to benefit him personally, not corruption broadly.

But Biden!  In a reprise of “but her emails,” this may be the Republicans’ favorite defense.  When their interviews are melting down, they spew unsubstantiated Biden corruption conspiracy theories. 

First, Biden’s effort to remove a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was not corrupt. It was official U.S. foreign policy that was done in broad daylight, and was supported by allies around the world.

Second, if an American feels a fellow American has broken the law, the only acceptable response is to report it to American law enforcement officials, not to illegally redirect tax dollars to bribe a foreign leader to effectively play the role the FBI and/or CIA should be playing.

Democracy!  Many claim that impeachment is anti-democratic, since Trump was elected in 2016 and is up before the voters again in just one year. 

The obvious problem with that defense is that Trump is using tax dollars to bribe foreign officials to rig said election. With foreign interference potentially rigging the election in favor Trump, stopping him through impeachment could be the only real option for Americans to hold him accountable.

Bonus Round

Oh wait, that’s ten? Already?  I can only have ten?  Well, if I could have more, I’d add this one to the list. 

Less Outlandish!  The Republicans’ lawyer Steve Castor half-heartedly tried this breathtakingly moronic defense:

“This irregular channel of diplomacy (conducted by non-government official Rudy Giuliani), it’s not as outlandish as it could be, is that correct?”


Well, yes, Mr. Castor, I guess it might have been slightly more outlandish if the bribery had been carried out by a nude Roger Stone sporting a Carmen Miranda-style fruit hat, but…  

Good grief. When “not as outlandish as it could be” is the best your high-priced lawyer has, it’s pretty safe to say you’re in deep doo-doo.

In Their Partial Defense

Probably the most political palatable defense would be “bad, but not quite impeachable.” That defense is not the least bit substantively defensible, but it at least has a little political traction. After all, the matter of what is considered impeachable can be a bit murky and saying “bad, but…” at least shows Republicans are not shrugging off the whole thing.

But the thin-skinned authoritarian won’t allow his toadies to utter the “bad, but” part, so they are left to humiliate themselves for our entertainment. Pass the popcorn, please.

A Cujo Presidency

Posted on by

Guest post by Noel Holston

In an article for The Guardian, Stephen King, man of letters and master of horrors, talked about two characters he created who kinda-sorta predict the rise of Donald J. Trump.

I know what you’re thinking, but no, he didn’t mention Cujo or the clown-faced maniac in It.

In The Dead Zone (1979), there’s Greg Stillson, a snake-oily Bible salesman who flimflams his way to a mayor’s post, the U.S. House and finally the Presidency, where he starts a world war. King also points to Under the Dome (2009), in which he gave readers Big Jim Rennie, a self-promoting car salesman and small-town alderman whose authoritarian tendencies grow stronger and sociopathic when his community is cut off from world by a mysterious, impenetrable bubble.

I can see King’s points, especially the huckster part, but for me, his more prescient novel is The Stand, an epic tale of life in America after a laboratory-engineered super-flu wipes out 99 percent of the human population. Published in 1978, The Stand was soon being hailed for its uncanny anticipation of AIDS and other virulent new threats to human health.

That’s not the prescience I’m talking about. The more interesting parallel today is King’s meticulous laying out of a crisis of American democracy.

We hear constantly about the “polarization” afoot in our supposedly United States, of red-blue rifts over immigration, guns, minority rights and government’s societal role that end friendships, divide families, even provoke mass shooters.

The website FiveThirtyEight recently posted an interview with a guy who believes our nation has become ungovernable, “run its course,” and should be divided up into five or six separate countries: a Left Coast strip that includes California, for instance, and a Dixie-fried aggregation that includes most of the old Confederacy.

And speaking of the Great Secession, we’ve all heard murmurings, nervous speculation, that we could be headed for an actual civil war. Heard it, or read it on Facebook or Twitter.

In The Stand’s decimated America, the poles are amplified. Survivors of the apocalyptic disease are assembling under distinct banners for a war for the nation’s soul. (Heard that phrase lately? If not, you obviously haven’t been watching the Democratic Party’s televised debates.)

In Las Vegas, good ol’ Sin City, an army’s worth of the criminal, the bitter, the resentful,  the envious and the toady  – a basket of deplorables, some might call them – is in the sway a seductive demagogue-cum-devil who goes by the name of Randall Flagg and makes them all feel important, useful, wanted. They’ve happily embraced tyranny.

On the other side of the Rockies, in Boulder, Colorado, another legion is forming, this one united around the notion of rebooting the nation that the super-flu has laid to waste, not just the machinery but the republic that was.

In a key passage, Stuart Redman, a classic reticent-reluctant American hero, gets down to brass tacks over a jug of wine with Glen Bateman, a sociology professor who exists as a character in large part to theorize and philosophize on behalf of author.

Bateman says their first task must be to “re-create” America, albeit in miniature. He says they’d need to call a meeting of all the survivors in Boulder and “read and ratify” the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

“Christ, Glen, we’re all Americans…,” Redman interjects.

“No, that’s where you’re wrong,” Bateman responds. “We’re a bunch of survivors with no government at all. We’re a hodgepodge collection from every age group, religious group, class group and racial group. Government is an idea, Stu.”

He goes on to say they need to act quickly. “Our people here are very soon going to wake up to the fact that the old ways are gone, and that they can restructure society any old way they want. We want – we need – to catch them before they wake up and do something nutty.”

We obviously still have a government, gridlocked though it too often is. And Trump is no Randall Flagg; he’s a needy, greedy man, not a supernatural creature. Nonetheless, we do find ourselves in a tricky situation, disorganized and disunited.  And arguably the scariest thing, with regard to our Republic’s vulnerability, is that it didn’t take a plague to get us here.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” which is scheduled for publication fall of 2019 by Skyhorse.

Left of Eden

Posted on by

Guest post by Noel Holston

On the first night of the first round of debates among Democratic presidential aspirants, Julián Castro, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, had a spotlight-grabbing moment when he upbraided fellow Texan Beto O’Rourke for not supporting his plan to end criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants crossing our southern border from Mexico.

On the second night, when a different 10 hopefuls fanned across NBC’s Wheel of Fortune stage, the impact of Castro’s attack was obvious. Aked if they backed Castro’s plan, nine candidates raised their hands. All 10 said they would back federal health subsidies for undocumented immigrants, an idea President Barack Obama nixed a decade earlier.

The candidates’ stampede to out “left” each other reached its most bizarre point when Castro volunteered that his universal healthcare plan would cover abortions, including abortions for trans women. At least this would not be a benefit that would significantly affect the deficit.

Since those nights, one of the hottest topics among the commentariat has been whether Democrats are going to blow their opportunity to dethrone President Trump by catering to their most progressive constituents.

Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart asked, “Will the Democratic Party go too far?”

“I’ll vote for almost any Democrat, but lurching left won’t beat Trump,” read the headline on a USA Today editorial by Tom Nichols, a national security professor at the Naval War College and a self-identified “Never Trump”-er.

“Democratic candidates veer left, leaving behind successful midterm strategy,” read the headline on a Washington Post analysis piece by Michael Scherer, one of its national correspondents.

Hogwash, say others, among them Keith A. Spencer, writing in Salon.com about “hard evidence” that supposedly proves a centrist Democrat will belly flop in 2020.

Other op-ed’s have warned Democrats to beware of Republican trolls trying to trick them into pursuing foolish moderation.

So, what are Democrats to do?

Well, what if they borrowed a phrase from “A Clockwork Chartreuse,” Loudon Wainwright III’s tongue-in-cheek paean to an anarchist: “Let’s burn down McDonald’s/Let’s go whole hog.”

Here are few things Democratic candidates can advocate at the next round of debates – July 30 and 31, CNN — if they really, really want to test the notion that the way to deny Donald Trump a second term is not moderation but a triple jump to the left. In no particular order:

Claiming “originalist” interpretation, ban private ownership of all firearms designed after 1789, the year the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

Ban bacon and big-ass pick-up trucks.

Remove slave owners’ heads from Mt. Rushmore.

Outlaw Mountain Dew.

Expand national park acreage to include Texas.

Along with abolishing private health insurance and replacing it with Medicare for All, reimburse patients for parking at hospital ramps.

Mandatory kale consumption.

Stop construction of Trump’s wall; commence construction of automated “people mover” walkways.

Change national anthem to Neil Diamond’s immigrant-friendly “(Coming to) America.”

Abolish apple pie as the national dessert. I’m thinking rhubarb.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” which is scheduled for publication fall of 2019 by Skyhorse.

Donald Trump Should Donate His Body To Science

Posted on by

Guest post by Noel Holston

Donald Trump should donate his body to science.

Laugh if you will. I realize it’s more than a little ridiculous, the notion that the most science-averse U.S. President of all time would bequeath his corpse to the medical school at Harvard or Emory or the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater. 

But I’m serious. He’s an unusual human specimen, and he owes it to the nation  — to the world – to make himself available for posthumous study. 

First of all, there’s his body, the ample corpus that, clothed in white tie and tails for his recent state dinner with British royalty, led wiseacres and fashion critics to suggest that he wouldn’t be out of place leaping for mackerel at a Sea World show pool. 

What life-extending secrets could medical science learn about longevity, energy and endurance from dissecting an overweight septuagenarian who stays up half the night watching cable news and tweeting angry insults, gets little exercise beyond walking to Air Force One and his golf cart, and eats mostly the sort of fatty fast foods that are the foundation of America’s obesity epidemic? 

How is it that a walrus with the added weight of the world on his shoulders can make it through day after day of cabinet meetings, sit-downs with foreign dignitaries, medal ceremonies, interviews, photo ops, and campaign rallies without even taking regular naps? His performance on such occasions – his logic and lucidity – may leave many of us scratching our heads and grinding our teeth, but you kind of have to admit that his stamina is impressive.  

I don’t know about you, but I’m two years younger than he is, close to the ideal weight for my height, an exercise buff and a healthy eater. I take a siesta most days and still can’t stay awake for Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon. And I don’t have the added stress of Nancy Pelosi or Rachel Maddow talking about jailing me.

More challenging, but also more rewarding potentially, would be the study of Trump’s brain. He says he’s a genius, and a stable one at that, but his declarations of mental prowess sometimes seem at odds with his erratic behavior, his childishness, and his very, very limited vocabulary. What could dissections and tissue scans discover about the wiring of his brain?

Some people believe that Trump is a narcissist, a liar, a con artist, a crook, or even a psychopath. He says he isn’t, and that he only interrupted his lucrative business career to take a relatively low-paying government job because America’s greatness needed restoration.  Objective scientific study of his brain could, among other things, settle such debates for posterity. 

In an article for the website Live Science, writer Clara Moskowitz reported about a Mayo Clinic study of people with antisocial personality disorder, a condition commonly found in criminals and characterized by an indifference to laws and the rights of others.

“Brain scans of the antisocial people, compared with a control group of individuals without any mental disorders,” she wrote, “showed on average an 18-percent reduction in the volume of the brain’s middle frontal gyrus, and a 9 percent reduction in the volume of the orbital frontal gyrus – two sections in the brain’s frontal lobe.”

Another study Moskowitz cited compared the brains of like numbers of psychopaths to non-psychopaths. “In the psychopaths,” she wrote, “the researchers observed deformations in another part of the brain called the amygdala, with the psychopaths showing a thinning of the outer layer of that region called the cortex and, on average, an 18-percent volume reduction in this part of brain.”

“The amygdala is the seat of emotion,” she was told by a member of the research team, Adrian Raine, of the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.  “Psychopaths lack emotion. They lack empathy, remorse, guilt.” 

A close look at Trump’s orbital frontal gyrus and his amygdala could add to our understanding of how he came to be who he is – and possibly exonerate him.

Finally, there’s the fame factor. Very few celebrities have donated their bodies to science. Not only could Trump join that short list, but he would be also the first President. He really ought to do it. Let’s hope he does. 

The big reveal could be the basis of a prime-time special, like The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault. The ratings would be huge.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” which is scheduled for publication fall of 2019 by Skyhorse.

Don’t Donate To Presidential Candidates

Posted on by

If you want to defeat Trump in 2020, I’d argue one of the worst things you can do right now is donate to Democratic presidential candidates.  I’m serious. 

Bear with me. 

Last time I checked, Democrats have something like two dozen candidates in the race.  That means any given donor’s chances of picking the winning candidate who ultimately runs against Trump are poor.  Therefore, the contribution you give today could be, for the purposes of defeating Trump, pretty much wasted.

But what if you really feel strongly about a candidate? 

Look, the policy differences between most of the candidates are not very significant.  The differences get artificially magnified in heated primaries, but let’s keep things in the proper perspective.  If you feel strongly about Issue X, the odds are very good that you are going to have several candidates in the race who agree with you, if not all of them. 

So, donating now won’t particularly help promote Issue X. That’s why it’s very difficult to pick a Democratic candidate deserving of your donation.

Finally, making a contribution to an individual candidate now could inadvertently prolong the portion of the campaign season where Democrats have so many candidates in the race that their message is pretty much incoherent.  Candidate winnowing is particularly needed with a field of 24, because a crowded, contentious field muddles the eventual nominee’s message and probably muddies the nominee’s reputation. 

Candidates typically leave the race when they run out of money to pay for staff and ads, so giving to candidates now could simply delay the badly needed winnowing phase of the campaign. 

So, which candidate or candidates should get your contributions?  None of them. 

Instead of contributing to one of the Democratic presidential candidates at a stage of the process when the race is essentially a roulette wheel, direct your contributions to Unify, Or Die. 

Unify, Or Die was started by the hosts of the excellent podcast Pod Save America, in partnership with Swing Left.  The idea simple and brilliant.  People who want to defeat Trump can Donate to the Unify, Or Die Fund now, and the minute there is a Democratic Party nominee, all of the accumulated funding immediately will go to the Democratic nominee, so they can hit the ground running post-Democratic Convention against Trump and his massive war chest

So before you write that next big Hickenlooper check, stop, think big picture strategy, and redirect your money to a unified movement to remove the most corrupt, incompetent, and bigoted President of our times.

It ain’t so, Joe

Posted on by

Joe Biden is stuck in a bygone era where Democrats were desperate to be accepted by wealthy donors.  That’s at the root of his recent comments that he opposed “demonizing” the wealthy.

“’Remember, I got in trouble with some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side, because I said, you know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who’s made money,’ Biden told about 100 well-dressed donors at the Carlyle Hotel on New York’s Upper East Side, where the hors d’oeuvres included lobster, chicken satay and crudites. 
 
‘Truth of the matter is, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done,’ Biden said. ‘We can disagree in the margins. But the truth of the matter is, it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change,’ he said.”

Just to clarify, contemporary Democrats are mostly talking about restoring tax levels for the wealthy to, at most, something like the Clinton-era levels, a time when the wealthy still were getting plenty rich.  That’s hardly “demonizing.”  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

At a time when the United States has the worst wealth inequality since 1928, in no small part due to massive tax giveaways to the wealthy under Donald Trump and George W. Bush, a correction is obviously warranted.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race.

Moreover, restoring tax fairness through progressive tax reform is the only real way to responsibly finance badly needed help for families, children, students, patients, workers and the environment. Democrats can’t live up to their progressive values if they don’t make those investments.  If Joe doesn’t understand that, he doesn’t belong in the race. 

Policy substance aside, this episode reveals a dangerous political blindspot, and/or insufficient awareness that everything you say anywhere in 2019 is very much “on the record.”  Characterizing core progressive ideas as somehow “demonizing” the wealthy is spectacularly dumb primary politics. It also forfeits perhaps the strongest issue Democrats have for running against a corrupt billionaire and his congressional apologists, whose entire agenda has been designed to further enrich billionaires at the expense of the middle class and future generations of Americans. 

If Joe doesn’t understand that, he especially doesn’t belong in the race.

And you know what? After reading Biden’s remarks, I’m pretty concerned that the 76-year old, who has been an elected official for 48-years, during political eras that were very different from the current era, doesn’t sufficiently understand any of those 2019 realities.

The Applause Line You Won’t Hear At Trump’s Minnesota Tax Day Rally

Posted on by

President Donald Trump is coming to Minnesota today.  That means we’ll be treated to lots of bullying of Representative Ilhan Omar, crowing about the “exoneration” that the Special Counsel specifically has said was not an exoneration, and vilifying of families fleeing desperate conditions for a better life in America.

And you thought there was a cold wind blowing into Minnesota last week?

Since it’s Tax Day, we’ll also be hearing lots of bragging from the President about his tax cut law.  But you probably won’t hear him mention that his tax law, which was dutifully supported by every Republican in the Minnesota congressional delegation, led to twice as many corporations paying $0 in taxes compared to the period before the Trump tax cuts.  Here is an excerpt from an NBC analysis.

At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero…according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). The number is more than twice as many as ITEP found roughly, per year, on average in an earlier, multi-year analysis before the new tax law went into effect.

Among them are household names like technology giant Amazon.com Inc. and entertainment streaming service Netflix Inc., in addition to global oil giant Chevron Corp., pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co., and farming and commercial equipment manufacturer Deere & Co.

“Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year.”

“The specter of big corporations avoiding all income taxes on billions in profits sends a strong and corrosive signal to Americans: that the tax system is stacked against them, in favor of corporations and the wealthiest Americans,” Gardner wrote in the report.”

The next time you hear Trump or other Republicans say there isn’t enough money to help seniors, children, disaster victims, patients, farmers, disabled people, veterans, students, parents, and dislocated workers, remember this report and these lavish corporate handouts that are blowing an enormous hole in the federal budget.

I’m pretty sure “and we doubled the number of corporations paying zero taxes” is not likely to be an applause line that we will hear from President Trump at today’s Minnesota Tax Day rally.  So I thought I’d do the President a favor and promote that particular accomplishment here.

If You Like TrumpCare, You’ll Love JohnsonCare

Posted on by

Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson (R-Plymouth) is crying foul over an Alliance for Better Minnesota television ad that says Johnson’s health care proposals would take health care away from Minnesotans who need it.

But the Alliance’s ad is accurate. Without question, the health care “reform” approach candidate Johnson is promoting during his campaign would take health care away from Minnesotans who need it.

Let’s break down the proposed JohnsonCare plan, piece-by-piece.

Johnson Eliminating ACA Protections

Johnson wants to make the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a thing of the past in Minnesota, via a federal waiver granted by the Trump Administration. More specifically, Johnson wants to eliminate the ACA approach that has:

  • Protected Record Numbers of Minnesotans. Under the ACA framework, Minnesota achieved the highest rate of health care coverage in state history.
  • Made Previously Unaffordable Protections Affordable. For lower and middle-income Minnesotans who don’t get coverage through their employer, the ACA has provided hundreds of millions in financial assistance to reduce or eliminate premium costs.
  • Strengthened Minnesotans’ Protections. The ACA also banned the hated preexisting condition denials, insurance payment limits, and dangerous junk coverage.  Because fewer Americans are no longer living one illness or injury away from being crushed by a mountain of bankrupting medical bills, personal bankruptcies have decreased by 50 percent during the time the ACA has existed.

If Johnson eliminates the increasingly popular ACA protections in Minnesota, that all goes away.  So yes, in several different and dramatic ways, Johnson absolutely would take health care away from Minnesotans who need it. The ad is correct about that.

Johnson’s False Claims

Johnson’s criticism of his opponent’s health care proposal is also utterly ridiculous.  Johnson says claims opponent Tim Walz “wants to eliminate private health insurance and force all Minnesotans onto one government program.”

The reality is, Walz supports a MinnesotaCare buy-in option. Under that approach, Minnesotans would have the option of either buying private plans or buying into the MinnesotaCare program, which is a government program operated by private health insurance programs.

In other words, Johnson’s claims that Walz wants to “eliminate private health insurance” and “force all Minnesotans onto one government program” are flat wrong.

If Walz is proposing a government-run single payer plan in the short-term, I’m not aware of it. Even if that were true, Johnson’s inference that eliminating private insurance in favor of government run health care would hurt Minnesotans is also wrong.  After all, Medicare, a government-run health plan, is popular and effective.  Medicare is helping Minnesotans, not hurting them.

Moreover, government run health plans are used in many other developed nations. Compared to the United States, consumers in those nations have 1) universal comprehensive coverage, 2) lower overall health costs and 3)  better overall health outcomes.

JohnsonCare and TrumpCare

Instead of the ACA, Johnson wants to back a high risk pool program that was very expensive for both consumers and taxpayers when it was used pre-ACA. Minnesota Public Radio reported:

Craig Britton of Plymouth, Minn., once had a plan through the state’s high-risk pool. It cost him $18,000 a year in premiums.

Britton was forced to buy the expensive MCHA coverage because of a pancreatitis diagnosis. He calls the idea that high-risk pools are good for consumers “a lot of baloney.”

“That is catastrophic cost,” Britton says. “You have to have a good living just to pay for insurance.”

And that’s the problem with high-risk pools, says Stefan Gildemeister, an economist with Minnesota’s health department.

“It’s not cheap coverage to the individual, and it’s not cheap coverage to the system,” Gildemeister says.

MCHA’s monthly premiums cost policy holders 25 percent more than conventional coverage, Gildemeister points out, and that left many people uninsured in Minnesota.

Johnson also wants to promote “junk,” “short-term,” or “skinny” plans, which are cheap because they don’t cover basic protections.  Promoting junk plans to reduce health care costs is like promoting cheaper cars lacking seat belts, airbags, crumple zones, safety glass, and anti-lock brakes. They look good if you’re only considering the price tag, but they’re a disaster when you and your family are in dangerous situations and desperately need those life-saving protections.

On health care, as with so most other issues, Jeff Johnson is aping Trump. President Trump is obsessed with eliminating Americans’ ACA protections in favor of a skimpy TrumpCare replacement. Trump insists that TrumpCare will cover everyone and cut costs, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that 23 million Americans would lose their protections, and millions more would pay higher premiums.

So Minnesotans, if you like TrumpCare – and only 17% of Americans do – you’re going to love JohnsonCare.

“Trumpublicans” Not Republicans

Posted on by

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2018.  If he was, polls indicate he would get crushed in a landslide by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Oprah Winfrey.  But because Trump isn’t on the ballot, criticizing him during the campaign will have little effect on the Trump agenda, unless voters become convinced that the 468 Republican nominees who are on the general election ballots are substantively the same as Trump.

After the 2018 Republican primaries are over, we can expect many congressional Republicans to stop pandering to the roughly 35% of Americans who make up the “Trump base” and instead distance themselves from him in an attempt to win over the swing voters who will decide the election.  They’ll be saying things like “I support his tax cuts, but I’m my own person and don’t agree with him on many things.”  This is absurd because most Republicans voted with Trump over 90% of the time in Congress.

Still, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising will be spent in gerrymandered districts to build this “independent from Trump” illusion.  If congressional Republicans get away with this Extreme Makeover, Americans will be stuck with unchecked Trumpism in 2019 and 2020, and perhaps beyond.  It could get so much uglier.

So Democrats need to do more than just give long-winded anti-Trump speeches on MSNBC. Casually involved swing voters don’t have the patience for long-form communications. Instead, Democrats need a concise term to rebrand Republicans in the Trump era.  Congressional Republicans need to be branded what they are, a group of Trump-programmed bots who are ideologically indistinguishable from Trump.  Republicans of the Trump era need to be branded as “Trumpublicans.”

I certainly didn’t invent the term “Trumpublican,” and I don’t find it especially clever.  But it has the important virtue of clearly and concisely communicating that Republicans have become a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump.  These shameful 468 Republicans have empowered this dangerous, bigoted, unpopular moron.  So let’s shine klieg lights on what these Republicans have allowed themselves to become, boot-licking Trumpublicans.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras would never have kicked 30 million Americans off of health coverage.  But that’s what Trumpublicans giddily did when they repeatedly pushed Trump’s unpopular and cruel TrumpCare bill.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras would never have deported 800,000 beautiful young people productively living out the American dream.  But Trumpublicans enthusiastically embraced Trump’s unpopular and racist DACA repeal.

Even trickle-down Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras never would have given 83% of a tax bill benefits to the richest 1% of Americans.  But these Trumpublicans toasted the billionaire Trump as that extremely unpopular and immoral bill was enacted into law.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras supported conservative Presidents and Administrations that had at least some modicum of experience, integrity and ethics.  Trumpublicans have embraced and blindly defended the Trump Administration’s jaw-dropping parade of incompetence, inexperience and corruption.

Because of congressional Republicans’ complete lack of Trump oversight the last two years, they are no longer Republicans in the sense Americans have traditionally used that word.  That term is now much too good for them.  Republicans have completely merged with Trump Incorporated and made themselves into Trumpublicans.  Americans need to understand this truth before November 6, 2018.  Drain THAT swamp.

So Democrats should be continually reframing Republicans as “Trumpublicans” during the 2018 mid-term campaign season.   Unlike conservatives, progressives don’t have Russian bots and billionaire funders to drive the message.  So Democrats are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, with disciplined repetition.  Trumpublicans, Trumpublicans, Trumpublicans.

Five Anti-Trump Critiques Liberals Should Drop

Posted on by

On dozens of issues, President Trump deserves criticism. In fact, one of the central challenges of the anti-Trump resistance is that he offers up so many examples of lies, corruption, destructive policies and incompetence that it can be difficult to remain focused on the things that most matter to swing voters who will decide the all-important 2018 elections.

With so much outrageous behavior in the White House, Trump resisters don’t need to overstep. Moreover, overstepping detracts or distracts from more persuasive critiques.

But like the conservative base, the liberal base frequently does overstep with their critiques. Let me count the ways:

Appearance. The President is orange complected, obese and has bizarre hair. We all can see that on our own. Repeating it ad nauseam doesn’t win any converts, distracts from consequential issues, and makes the messengers look petty and small. So just stop.

P.S. The same applies to Trump’s staff. Snarky jokes about the appearance of Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Steven Bannon detract and distract from real issues and make the messengers look like shallow bullies.

Junk. The obsession with presidential phallic matters is wrong on many levels. It’s pure speculation, has absolutely no bearing on his job performance, and makes critics sound like small-minded middle schoolers. Think of it this way: What would liberals think if conservatives constantly commented on some aspect of a Senator Clinton’s genitalia?

Daughter. The fact that Trump says his daughter is beautiful and smart doesn’t mean there’s something creepy going on between them. That’s a leap too far that too many liberals make with absolutely no evidence.  It’s not fair, and it hurts them more than it hurts the President.

Wife. Sorry, but you can’t make conclusions about a marriage based on body language alone, something that is done constantly by Trump critics on social media. Besides, plenty of Presidents with troubled marriages were effective. So move on to more important issues.

Golf. Yes, it’s outrageously hypocritical that the man who constantly criticized President Obama for golfing and vacationing too much golfs and vacations much more than Obama did. But Trump is a failure because he is incompetent, an ultra-conservative and corrupt, not because he isn’t sitting at his desk enough.  So let’s stay focused on making THAT case.

So please, my fellow progressives, continue to criticize President Trump and his shameless Trumpublican enablers. TrumpCare cruelty. Tax handouts to billionaires and corporations. Russiagate. Foreign bribes.  Deficit spending hypocrisy.  A racist, unnecessary wall financed by Americans. Obstruction of justice.  Medicare and Medicaid cuts.  Serial lying.  Climate change idiocy. Gun protection obstruction. The sexual assault admission.  Racist immigration policies.  Childish, dangerous warmongering.  There is a very long list of things that liberals should stress in the 2018 elections.

But these five things should not be among them.

Al Franken Is Putting His Self-Interest Over Everything He Claims Is Important

Posted on by

If Senator Al Franken left the U.S. Senate in the wake of his sexual harassment admission, Governor Mark Dayton would be able to appoint a replacement.  Many speculate that he might name his Lieutenant Governor, Tina Smith, a respected, thoughtful leader who would likely be a very capable candidate in a November 2018 special election.  There are also other excellent choices Dayton could make.

As a result, Al Franken and Minnesota DFLers need to be asking themselves some important questions.

Who would have more moral standing to hold sexual harassers and abusers like Roy Moore and Donald Trump accountable, and send a clear signal that sexual harassment will no longer be tolerated?

Who would be a more credible and persuasive advocate for progressive causes?

Who would be a more respected representative of Minnesotans’ interests, opinions, and values?

Who would be a better role model for Minnesota’s young men and women?

Who would be more re-electable in 2020, and more likely to help Democrats stop Minnesota’s Senate seat from going to a Trumpublican?

What Al Franken did is less egregious than what Moore and Trump did, so he may be able to hold onto his job, even after a long and humiliating Senate Ethics Committee investigation that will further cement this incident in the public mind. But just because he can hold on to his job doesn’t mean that he should.

Note:  The day after this post was written, Senator Franken resigned, proving this post’s headline wrong.  In his resignation speech, Senator Franken said: “Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus with all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day.  I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls is running for Senate with full support of his party.” 

Two days after this post was written, accused pedophile Roy Moore lost his Alabama U.S. Senate race by 1.5 points, which underperfromed Trump’s 2016 victory margin in Alabama by a staggering 30-points.

Voters Need To Fire The Creeps

Posted on by

We’ve learned a lot of grotesque things in recent weeks.  Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken will do anything to get a laugh, including humiliating women. Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is a serial pedophile predator who should have been prosecuted before the statute of limitations ran out. Minnesota Representative Dan Schoen and Senator Tony Cornish continually go way over the flirt-harassment line, and it’s not close. President Donald Trump has admitted on videotape to sexually assaulting women, and at least 16 women have gone on the record to assure us that what the President told Billy Bush is true.

So enough with the political noise.  Enough “if the allegations are true” games.  Enough “what about others in the other party?” What these men did was unacceptable.

I obviously can’t control the outcomes of these controversies.  But if I could, this is what I would wish for all of them: None of them would resign under pressure from party leaders. All of them would be voted out.

Clearly, if they do resign before their next election, that’s better than them retaining their power.  But if I could wave a magic wand, I don’t want the final chapter on these men’s history to be “resigned under pressure from party leaders.” I want it to be “rejected by the voters.”

Here is why:  If it’s the former, there will be many Americans who blame the spineless, “politically correct” party elites who forced the resignation. If it’s the latter, it will be much more clear that the community-at-large rejects sexual harassment and assault. That’s what we need to stigmatize this behavior and make it less prevalent.

I understand why party leaders call for these men to resign. To give them the benefit of the doubt, they’re showing that they take the issue seriously. To look at it more cynically, they need to replace their damaged political goods with a more electable candidate so they can retain power for themselves. Whatever their motivation, I’m glad they’re doing it, because it helps to spotlight and denormalize the behavior.

But I don’t want party elites to end these political careers. I want the larger “us” to do that. We’re a democracy. Voters need to step up and do our job. We need to overcome our tribal instincts and vote these guys out. We should replace them with more women. We should send a clear signal to political leaders that creepiness and criminality are electorally toxic, so parties will start nominating better people.

Like a lot of men, I’m not all that comfortable speaking out on this topic. Men who are self-aware and honest know that we’re all part of the sickness we’re reading about on the front pages.

Though we continually assure ourselves that we’re “way better than most,” we also know we’re far from perfect. Maybe we’ve told a joke that we understand in retrospect made women uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve confused objectification with flattery. Maybe we haven’t always controlled our eyeballs. Maybe in the exclusive company of men, we didn’t have the courage to speak out about comments that embolden harassers. Maybe we haven’t called out peers who went over the line in our presence.

So I’m not coming at this from a holier than thou perspective.  We all need to improve. We all need to own this and fix this. Seeing the community at large — masses of fed up voters — reject this behavior will do more to hasten the improvement process than seeing them forced out by a handful of party elites scrambling to cover their asses.

When Manafort Met Trump.

Posted on by

I would love to have been in the meeting where Paul Manafort pitched his services to Donald Trump. What those two grifters saw in each other may be the wet kiss that seals both of their fates.

The suspicion today, before the inevitable avalanche of more damning details, is that Manafort was in hock to Russian paymasters — i.e. oligarch/gangsters — and badly needed to “get whole” ASAP. We know that almost immediately after getting the job to run Trump’s campaign he uses that very phrase in a correspondence seeking ideas about how to monetize his new presidential candidate connection.

But come on! The guy, who has been a DC system parasite for over 30 years, with a career of shady deals in his treadworn baggage, has no concern about walking into the spotlight of a presidential campaign? No concerns that at long, long last the Justice department or US Attorney or someone will take a more focused look at what he’s been up to or … what he will now do to win an election?

Talking Points’ Josh Marshall speculates that Manafort was so desperate to resolve his debt(s) to Oleg Deripaska (and likely others) that he decided the lesser risk was in the spotlight working for Trump. As we know, Manafort, a character who regards every breath he takes as an opportunity to make a buck off someone, worked for free.

Now that’s a motivated employee.

Says Marshall in the context of Manafort suddenly increasing his value to the Russians, “… spies look for people who are crooked and people who are desperate. Manafort looks like he was both.”

So what did Trump see in Manafort? We’re told they were well acquainted with each other, but not close. Besides a relationship with (yet another career long grifter) Roger Stone, the one thing they absolutely had in common, and which I suspect they knew about each other, were long-term relationships with Russians laundering money, in Trump’s case through wildly over-priced purchases of Trump real estate.

But what does Manafort promise to deliver? As of yesterday we now know Team Trump was being baited with the prospect of Hillary e-mails as far back as March, months before they eventually dropped, (within hours of the Access Hollywood tape.) Did Manafort promise to make that delivery happen? Did he convince Trump that he knew the right people to make it happen? Had he heard offers of cooperation from the Russian hacking operation? Did Trump see in him, a veteran grifter, a guy who could weaponize such information and not screw up?

We know that Manafort had some kind of role in dropping that plank about arming Ukrainians against the Russians. That move — though symbolic — had to have impressed Russians watching to see what they might get for their money, or at least their continued patience until Manafort delivered the money he owed.

But now that he’s under house arrest, with no chance of repaying whatever he owes Deripaska (and other Russian mobsters) how does Manafort see a way to defeat these first charges, much less all the others very likely to come down thanks to George Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, and “proactive cooperation”, (i.e. wearing a wire to talk to campaign and White House supervisors)? Russian oligarchs with millions in property all over Western Europe and the United States have to see a Manafort under arrest as worse than useless to them. If he starts singing, aggressive US attorneys (if there are any left after the Trump purge) will be delighted to move on those empty $5 million condos glutting markets in New York, London, San Francisco and everywhere else.

And then, as has been noticed, let’s not forget Gen. Flynn, about whom nothing was said yesterday. If Mueller kept Papadopoulos’s guilty plea under wraps for months, fair speculation says he’s got something similar going with Flynn.

 

 

 

 

Estate Tax Exemption Spotlights Minnesota Republicans’ Twisted Priorities

Posted on by

In the first year that Minnesota Republicans took full control of the Minnesota Legislature, they elevated Minnesota’s millionaire heirs and heiresses to the very top of their fiscal priority list.  Representative Greg Davids (R-Preston) says the wealthiest Minnesotans should be able to “keep more of what their mothers and fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers have earned,” so Republicans significantly increased the’ estate tax exemption for millionaires.

To be clear, we’re talking about filthy rich grandfathers and grandmothers,  After all, only the very wealthiest Minnesota estates pay any estate tax.   According to the Minnesota Public Radio:

“Up until now, your estate would have to be worth more than $1.8 million before the Minnesota estate tax kicked in, but that changed during this year’s legislative session.

The tax bill passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and reluctantly signed by DFL Gov. Mark Dayton increases the taxable estate value from $1.8 million to $3 million over the next three years. The top tax rate remains at 16 percent.

Minnesota is among 14 states that impose their own estate tax. Farms and family-owned businesses worth up to $5 million are already exempt.”

So, we’re not talking about the four-, five- or even six-figure inheritance you might get from Aunt Gertie.

All of this is being proposed by Republicans at at time when wealth inequality has reached grotesque proportions, as illustrated by this stunning video:

This is how intergenerational privilege perpetuates: Millionaire heirs and heiresses – having done nothing more than winning the birth lottery by being born into a wealthy family — are exempted from taxation, including for wealth that has already avoided taxation because it is unrealized capital gains.

And on it goes, generation after generation. This is how we get the Donald Trumps and Donald Trump, Jr.’s of the world, entitled scions born inches from home plate crowing about their home run.

To state the obvious, because it apparently is no longer obvious to everyone, this is not in keeping with the American value of “all men are created equal,” which used to be all the rage in America. America was founded in defiance of the British system of aristocracy, which gave power to a small, wealthy privileged “ruling class.”  Abolishing aristocratic forms of inheritance was a primary way the founding fathers went about furthering American equality.

While today’s Republican Tea Partiers don Revolutionary War-era tri-corner hats while asserting that the estate tax is “Marxist,” the truth is that the estate tax has been strongly supported by a number of founding fathers.

Remember Thomas Jefferson, the guy who penned “all men are created equal,”  America’s “immortal declaration?” He promoted the egalitarian values of America’s founding fathers by arguing against the passing of property from one generation to the next:

“The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.“

Jefferson was hardly alone in this opinion. Similar sentiments were expressed by Adam Smith, the hero of conservative free market advocates, as well as Republican Party icon Theodore Roosevelt.

“The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.  The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

You might guess that someone like Bill Gates, Sr. would be all-in when it comes to increasing the estate tax exemption. But he eloquently explains why the wealthy people need to pay back the community that supported them:

“No one accumulates a fortune without the help of our society’s investments. How much wealth would exist without America’s unique property rights protections, public infrastructure, and academic institutions? We should celebrate the estate tax as an ‘economic opportunity recycling’ program, where previous generations made investments for us and now it’s our turn to pass on the gift. Strengthening the estate tax is important to our democracy.

Consider all of the other alternative ways Minnesota Republicans could have used the $357 million that they are giving to Minnesota’s wealthiest heirs and heiresses over the next two bienniums. They could have used it to improve our transportation or broadband infrastructure,  help vulnerable children access early learning programs to close our dangerous achievement gaps, or expand clean energy capacity.  Those kinds of investments would have paid dividends for all Minnesotans far into the future.

Instead, Republicans made their top priority lavishing more enormous tax breaks on the small number of ultra-wealthy Minnesotans who least need help.

Governor Dayton has already signed the Republicans’ estate tax exemption, so at this point he has little if any negotiation leverage. But if Democrats take control of state government in 2018, this should be one of the first policies they reverse in 2019.  In the meantime, at every campaign stop they should spotlight this outrageous Republican giveaway to the wealthy elite.

Opioid Abuse Crusader To Crack Down On Safer Opioid Alternative

Posted on by

The Affordable Care Act repeal, which will lead to 23 million Americans losing their health insurance protections, isn’t the only way the Trump Administration is endangering Americans. It’s proposal to ban patients from getting relief from cannabis-based medicines is just as ill-informed and cruel.

Trump’s states rights-loving Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked Congress to restore the federal government’s ability to crack down on state-authorized medical cannabis businesses. Since 2014, Congress has prohibited the federal Department of Justice from using funds to prosecute these state authorized businesses.

In a letter to Congress, Sessions made his case:

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.”

I can’t think of a delicate way to say this. This is moronic.  Trump and Sessions say they are making battling rising opioid addiction a high priority, but this move would prevent pain patients from transitioning from highly addictive and dangerous opioid pain relievers to much less addictive and dangerous cannabis-based pain medicines.

Before you bust out your best adolescent weed jokes or Reefer Madness paranoia, give some serious consideration to recent peer-reviewed medical research on this topic, as summarized by Scientific American:

A 2016 survey from University of Michigan researchers, published in the The Journal of Pain, found that chronic pain suffers who used cannabis reported a 64 percent drop in opioid use as well as fewer negative side effects and a better quality of life than they experienced under opioids. In a 2014 study reported in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, the authors found that annual opioid overdose deaths were about 25 percent lower on average in states that allowed medical cannabis compared with those that did not.

Marijuana can be habit-forming, at least psychologically, but the risks are not in the same league as opioids. A 20-year epidemiological review of studies concluded that more than nine out of 10 people who try marijuana do not become dependent on the drug. The review paper, published in 2014, said the “lifetime risk of developing dependence among those who have ever used cannabis was estimated at 9 percent in the United States in the early 1990s as against 32 percent for nicotine, 23 percent for heroin, 17 percent for cocaine, 15 percent for alcohol and 11 percent for stimulants.”

Also, unlike the case with opioids, it is virtually impossible to lethally overdose on marijuana—because a user would have to consume massive quantities in a prohibitively short time. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) says such a fatal result is very unlikely. Meanwhile, heroin-related overdose deaths have more than quadrupled since 2010. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that from 2014 to 2015 heroin overdose death rates increased by 20.6 percent—causing nearly 13,000 deaths in 2015.

This is no longer coming from some guy in a Grateful Dead t-shirt making vague anecdotal claims. This is now coming some of the foremost medical authorities in the nation.  For many people, cannabis-based medicines can ease their pain without the level of addictiveness and nasty side effects that unfortunately come with opioid pain relievers.

Beyond pain relief, cannabis-based medicines — often with the intoxicating component of cannabis oil (THC) removed when it isn’t medically necessary — also are helping Minnesota patients who have been diagnosed with a variety of diseases, such as cancer, Glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, Epilepsy, Tourette Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, Crohn’s Disease, and terminal illnesses.

In Minnesota, most patients with those ailments who have been using cannabis-based oils, tinctures and capsules report to officials at the state Department of Health that they are experiencing substantial benefits from using cannabis-based medicine. On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is “no benefit” and 7 is “great deal of benefit,” nearly two-thirds (64%) of patients chose a 6 or 7.

Meanwhile, no patients report being hospitalized with complications from the cannabis-based medicine, something that cannot be said for opioids and many other FDA-approved medications. Minnesota’s Commissioner of Health, Dr. Ed Ehlinger, looked at this data and concluded:

“Based on this evidence from the first year, Minnesota’s approach is providing many people with substantial benefits, minimal side effects and no serious adverse events.”

For years now, Americans have seen patients benefitting from medical cannabis, and an overwhelming number of them like what they see.  A February 2017 Quinnipiac University survey found that 93 percent support “allowing adults to legally use marijuana for medical purposes if their doctor prescribes it,” including 85 percent of Republicans.  Only 23 percent of Americans, and 36 percent of Republicans, support “the government enforcing federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana?”

All of this leaves me wondering, what exactly are Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump smoking?

 

Note:  I’m a public relations consultant who has in the past done work for one of two medical cannabis businesses licensed by the State of Minnesota.  I no longer work with that company, and this post reflects my personal views.

Minnesota GOP’s Tobacco Tax Cut Is A Killer, Literally

Posted on by

There is a lot to dislike about the Minnesota Republicans’ tax cuts that were recently signed into law. For instance, increasing the estate tax exemption from $2 million to $3 million is an unnecessarily lavish gift to about 1,000 Minnesotans who won the birth lottery by being born into a relatively wealthy family.  Overall, the Republicans’ tax cuts will compromise Minnesota’s future fiscal stability by reducing state revenue by more than $5 billion over the coming decade. This is a particularly reckless move at a time when President Trump and his Republican congressional supporters are proposing to shift billions of dollars in future costs to states.   The next time Minnesota has a budget shortfall, remember the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts.

But the stinkiest of the Republicans’ tax cut stink bombs was their tobacco tax cut, because in the coming years it will cause suffering and death.

Think that’s hyperbole?  A mountain of research shows that every time tobacco prices increase, tobacco consumption decreases. The corollary is also true – tobacco consumption increases when tobacco prices decrease.

This is particularly true when it comes to price-sensitive young Americans.

Here’s why that matters:  When tobacco consumption increases, tobacco-related suffering and death increases. Though we don’t hear about it as much as we used to, tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable diseases and death in America. It causes a variety of deadly cancers, lung diseases, and heart diseases, among other serious health problems.  If you’ve ever seen anyone suffer from one of these illnesses, I promise you will never forget it.

If you don’t believe the legion of public health and economic researchers about tobacco taxes decreasing tobacco use, listen to the tobacco industry executives themselves. In a previously secret document that got disclosed during lawsuits, an executive from Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes, said:

“Of all the concerns, there is one – taxation – that alarms us the most. While marketing restrictions and public and passive smoking [restrictions] do depress volume, in our experience taxation depresses it much more severely.”

Likewise, an executive from RJ Reynolds, makers of Newport and Camel cigarettes, came to the same conclusion:

“If prices were 10% higher, 12-17 incidence [youth smoking] would be 11.9% lower.”

So if Republican legislators think their tobacco tax cut is doing a favor for Minnesota smokers, they couldn’t be more wrong.

Yes, financially speaking, the tobacco tax is regressive. That is, the higher costs of tobacco products that result from tobacco taxes disproportionately impact the pocketbooks of poorer Minnesotans.

But that’s not the end of the story, because the reduction in tobacco-related suffering and death that comes from higher tobacco taxes is progressive. That is, the life-saving health benefits associated with higher tobacco taxes disproportionately flow to poorer Minnesotans.  And by the way, the millions of dollars in savings from not having to pay as much to treat those tobacco-related diseases flow to Minnesota taxpayers and health insurance premium payers.

The bottom line is that cutting tobacco taxes, as Minnesota Republicans did this year, has two major impacts. It causes tobacco executives to profit more from increased sales, and it causes our family members, friends, and neighbors to suffer tobacco-related diseases.

Therefore, when it comes to tobacco taxes, Minnesotan leaders have to be cash cruel to be clinically kind. If the DFL Party wins control of the Minnesota Legislature in 2018, increasing tobacco taxes must be at the very top of their agenda.