Thanksgiving week 2019: Drive bys

* I had begun reading The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, by David Treuer (2019). Treuer is part Jewish heritage and part Ojibwe (a tribe now centered in the area of Minnesota). He has written what so far appears to be a very powerful book, but in the first third I am reading, it is a painful summary of the rise and fall of the different tribes throughout each region of the nation from ancient times to 1890. He makes a salient point that it seemed whether a tribe chose accommodation or war, the result tended to be the same, which was destruction and often genocide.  The rest of Treuer's book promises to be more hopeful about Native American survival into the present, and I am looking forward to reading that. One knows to at least some extent the tragic legacy arising from the genocide of Native Americans. I am thankful for Treuer to attempt to see the cup as not completely empty.  And if one has not read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's The Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014), one is missing a great deal.  I found Dunbar-Ortiz's book to be an immensely rewarding, if also painful, experience. 

* Harvard history professor Philip DeLoria, who specializes in Native American history, and who is enrolled in the Sioux tribe in the Standing Rock area, has written, in the New Yorker, as great a summary as I have ever read about the true background to the holiday we call Thanksgiving. The article fills in gaps of knowledge, provides nuances and specifics about various Native tribes, but punches home the points that we find uncomfortable to the present day.  One may not hear Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" in quite the same way again; something I myself have though about in recent years.  

* Ron Cobb sorta summed up Thanksgiving in a one panel political comic from about 50 years ago.

* Meanwhile, here are Calvin & Hobbes giving thanks for each other.  It is likely unauthorized, as fans of Bill Watterson's iconic comic may best understand.

* And speaking of thanks, with the largely unreported Bernie surge, Matthew Rozsa at Salon has noticed there may be a way for Sanders to win.  He is no Sanders fan, but has written a few times throughout this year how corporate media understates Sanders' chances.  However, this Politico article shows how much the DNC and Obama still hate Sanders.  It is obsessive, and shows the lie behind the corporate Democrats' mantra of "Blue No Matter Who."

* Here is an article showing what has already been found regarding the fraudulent removal of hundreds of thousands of voters from Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election.  I wonder what those who support Bolivia's coup against Evo Morales would say?  Actually, we already know, since the people who support that coup are often the same who would commit voter fraud or push for voter suppression here in the United States.

* And maybe, just maybe this article summarizing the report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may get some traction, particularly the report's conclusion the fossil fuel industry receives as much subsidies as the Pentagon.  And maybe how the US military believes Trump not only did in the Kurds, but helped ISIS regroup and revitalize.

* And finally, a little anti-Boomer humor from College Humor, entitled "Do We Really Need Baby Boomers?"  Hmmm....sounds like a short story I wrote.  This is the next step in the Millennial or really Gen Z response to Baby Boomers' continued attacks against Millennials and Gen Zers.  My take is simple: I stand with the kids, and the word generation comes from the word general, as in generalization.  And I continue to believe 60% of white people over age 55 will vote for Trump and the Republicans in 2020.  They have a lot to atone for, as well as their continued attacks against the youngs.

Sunday morning drive bys: November 24, 2019

* Fascist foreign policies leads to fascist reactions. This time, Trump's bellicose policies toward Iran have given the Iranian government permission to engage in crackdowns against dissent, after Iranians took to the streets protesting high gas prices. The reformers who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal with the Obama administration are now on the run. Personally, I think the Iranian government needs to follow American practices to keep people off the streets: Flood the market with self-help books designed to make us feel like the only problem we face is ourselves as individuals.  Tell people it is never systemic, or, if you hear that, just say, "You are not taking personal responsibility!" Then, make sure you load up the television, Internet, or radio with diversions and distractions.  And make sure you keep telling citizens how they live in the "greatest country in the world." It does not matter if it is patently untrue. Any number of economic indicators show it is not true in America, but we keep telling ourselves that over and over--so inbred is this belief.  Cue Lee Greenwood and salute the flag, you ingrates!

* If you have to engage with the proverbial uncle at Thanksgiving--thankfully, pun intended, I do not--here are some handy statistics from The Century Foundation.  I know, I know.  Factual analysis and information is irrelevant to the proverbial uncle, but our more sane family or fiends may find the information useful.  Recently, a Trumpist told me Obama never had a quarter with 4% GDP growth, but Trump presided over one that did--in 2017, early in his presidency.  I thought, though, that can't be true--but it was.  However, the charts in The Century Foundation link provide charts showing why that one quarter was an outlier of a downward trend. To me, however, the whole thing about quarters and GDP growth applied to presidential administrations are more silly than not because the president has less immediate and direct impact on quarterly results than we ascribe.  I said this consistently during Obama's years, and say it again now during Trump's.  Still, it's okay to use the charts in The Century Foundation article as a cudgel against the proverbial uncle who thinks the economy only got going under Trump, and that somehow making air and water less clean made the unemployment rate drop to 3.9%.  I also like to remind people the definition of unemployment in the US unemployment rate includes people working part-time who want a full time job.  That started under Reagan to give the impression unemployment was falling, and since then, no politician wants to change it back--even though most western or advanced nations count part-timers who want full-time work as unemployed. Then, Obama changed the definition of when one dropped out of the work force from 99 weeks with no job to 260 weeks with no job.  This played havoc with decades old comparisons regarding workforce participation.  But, hey. Don't talk about this stuff with your proverbial uncle. It may get him too confused.  You may sound like you are looking at economic indicators with intelligence and nuance, which may make his head explode.

* But maybe making your uncle's head explode is a good thing?  I mean, really.  Do we need Baby Boomers at all anymore?  The website, College Humor, has an interesting take on us Baby Boomers, somewhat akin to my 2016 short story, Boomerang.  And yeah, Boomers and addled Oldsters.  Keep pissing on your children and grandchildren, and making fun of them for cultural matters you don't understand.  I am sure they will be glad to shore up your social security payments in twenty years since you are all doing so well as you enter retirement.  The article highlights a dirty secret corporate media doesn't often tell, which is, without social security, most elderly would be impoverished.  

*So a hyper-partisan investigation into the FBI's concerns over Trump's ties to Russia while he was running for president found no bias?  This investigation was the subject of fevered, delusional rhetoric all around the right-wing social media and right-wing corporate media (I'll save you the disgust from reading links)--as if the FBI had no probable cause to be concerned about Trump's Russian ties and communications. The report finding was dropped into the laps of news reporters on Friday, I believe, and is not getting the coverage it should be receiving.  But too bad.  Nonetheless, the right-wing media, which FoxNews leads, is having none of that conclusion.  They think, simply because an FBI lawyer they long hated, Peter Strzok, was ahead of his own curve in terms of evidentiary support for the Russian-affiliated Carter Page, My God!, they scream. This is the first time in history that a government lawyer (whether District Attorney, Attorney General, etc.) was ahead of his or her own evidence in a search warrant demand from a judge!  Stop the presses!  Esquire has a round up of more Friday dumps that should be shoved into the faces of Trumpists.

* And really, after all the nonsense attacks on Clinton and Obama (and Susan Rice) over what occurred in Benghazi, Libya, one would think these Trumpists and right-wing media should be demanding Trump be impeached for this enhancing of ISIS alone.

* The Confederacy, now joined by Nebraska, has decided they would rather not count their own citizens and residents in the next Census.

* I feel bad for the Boy Scouts.  The organization long made the necessary reforms against sexual abuse, and I know from experience with my son, I had to take an online course, and know how strongly the rules were enforced to protect the pre-teen and teen boys.  Yet, because of the change in he statute of limitations (essentially dropping statutes of limitations) in various states, the Scouts now face lawsuits for events thirty and forty years ago, which may well bankrupt and destroy the organization.  The beloved Philmont camp is now collateralized to pay for insurance premiums and related costs to the various litigations.  I have to say, as I have said before, the US tort system is a part of the dog-eat-dog capitalist ethos of vengeance and greed, which system we should rein in, once we establish societal norms where people can be helped and protected in a humane way.  We should not make millionaires of a few litigants and their lawyers.  Oh well.  I am certainly out of step with victim culture in that particular respect.

*Can we ever do economic development in a way that actually helps poor and working class people, as oppose to helping the wealthy, i.e. gentrification?  Looks like we are in for another round of gentrification in the deserts of California. 

* The CA ACLU organizations have been busy defending people's rights.  Here, they are helping students who did activist art after the teacher said...Create activist art.  And here, the ACLU is holding UC to its commitment to not discriminate in providing abortion and abortion-related services simply because the UC has a contract with a Catholic hospital.  I think Mike Hiltzik's column is correct, and it is what we used to call a sticky wicket for the university.  However, maybe the UC needs to promote secular hospital contractual relationships, and help limit the ever-growing power of religious-sectarian hospitals, which deny abortions are part of women's health.

* Krystal Ball, who is my hero in the corporate-owned media these days (through readers here know I am not in full agreement with her on the Trump impeachment issues), has a Bernie has a path commentary worth seeing, and the ending, which goes beyond that topic, is worth considering.  Here is Matthew Rosza, at Salon.com, who has not been a Bernie fan, saying something similar.  But let us remember, American men, and some white American women, are still having a hard time getting their heads around a female president.  Pathetic.

* And this article made me happy to see, because I always admired Eric Dickerson.  If I recall right, I saw six of the eight home games that season when Dickerson set the NFL record for most rushing yards.  It has never been broken in thirty-five years.  The story ends with how Adidas shoes, which sponsored Dickerson, gave him a cake, when Walter Payton received a fancy car.  Dickerson, unlike Payton, was a guy who took no crap from the media, and paid for it.  He also stood up to the Rams' owner, a chorus-woman widow of a jerk of a business man, who literally ran down the Rams' team to get an excuse to get a big payout from St. Louis municipality and its citizens in moving the Rams from the Los Angeles/Orange County area to Missouri.  And I have long admired NBA start, Chris Paul.  This article shows why I like him so much, besides his amazing athletic abilities.

* I have long loved the LA Times' Calendar section because of articles such as this one on Netflix's She-Ra series using "they/them" to describe a non-specific gender character.  I used "they/them" after a single subject noun, such as "student," "lawyer," etc. when I was in high school and college.  However, a poli-sci prof at Rutgers, a woman, said it was terribly wrong from a grammatical viewpoint and marked me down in grades for my use of the terms.  I said I found "he or she" to be tiring to a reader after awhile, and thought it would be easier for a reader to use "they/them."  Because of that, I studiously tried to say "he or she" or find some other way, consistent with traditional grammar, to express myself in such a situation. Now, with the transgender movement, it appears this is the new way to use those group pronouns, even when discussing a single named person, as opposed to a generalized noun, as I did.  I think the prof, who is no longer alive, would have been appalled, though, as a liberal minded person, she may have come around to the idea. :)

Don't worry, we don't remember a lot of things before we were born, either

Yesterday, I substituted as a World History teacher at a local high school. On the wall, the teacher (who from his wedding photo and what I hear, is an older Millennial) had a photograph of JFK. In three classes, I asked, Does anyone know the historical significance of today's date of November 22? 

In all three classes where I asked this, I had to literally point to JFK's photo before anyone could guess, and most had no idea.

Now, we may throw up our hands and say, Oh, this is terrible. This generation is so ignorant of history! However, I never knew anyone from the misnamed Greatest Generation or especially the Silent Generation who knew the day William McKinley was shot. Let's remember, these high schoolers were born after 9/11/2001.  That is nearly forty years after 1963.  The Greatest Generation people were born only twenty or so years after McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, with the Silent Generation born in the late 1920s through early 1940s, so that they, too, should know the day McKinley was shot--if we think students today should know November 22 is the day JFK was shot.  

I know what Boomers and addled Oldsters are thinking, though: "JFK's murder was far more important than McKinley's!" Sorry, fellow Boomers and Oldsters. You are wrong; arrogantly, ignorantly, and selfishly wrong. The change from McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt was at least as, if not more, momentous as the change from JFK to LBJ.  McKinley was a man of the late 19th Century Gilded Age. McKinley was none too bright, and largely a pol who followed the new corporate plutocrats. McKinley was so simplistic he had to pray on his knees to get God's guidance before deciding to go into the war the jingos (including, especially, his Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt) wanted against the Spanish and the Spanish colonies in 1898, and, at the time of McKinley's assassination, our nation had embarked on a program of mass murder and "pacification" in the Philippines. TR wanted that war so bad he could taste blood, and TR, after assuming office, solidified America Pax Americana in a way McKinley may well not have been as effective in doing--oh, that is an irony for the anarchist who shot McKinley, though at least the assassin understood the war crimes the US was perpetrating in the Philippines (Mark Twain knew it, too, but was afraid to publish his parody in real time).  However, on matters of domestic policy, TR represented everything McKinley had no clue about, and TR's important break with McKinley in this regard cannot be overstated. TR saw corporate trusts as a problem to be overcome and solved. TR saw the importance of protecting forests and natural wonders.  TR saw the importance of regulating products businesses sold nationally and even within states.  And in each of these areas, he worked with Congress to enact legislation in these matters, and, when the legislature did not act, he often acted through executive order.  TR was active in a way that would have bewildered, if not shocked, McKinley.  TR changed our culture, how we saw presidents, and was the first president to recognize how mass media worked.  It was a phenomenal change, when we look at the change from various perspectives.

As for JFK, I would posit JFK died for our nation's sins prevalent in his and our time.  JFK had no luck and no skill in getting Congress to pass civil rights legislation, Medicare, or any assistance to the poor.  The Goldwater-Kennedy election of 1964 was going to be a nail-biter, because there was already a white backlash brewing.  It is so easy to forget how many white folks hated or feared Martin Luther King, Jr., or how "respectable" white opinion saw King as "divisive." Malcolm X was off the charts scary to those people.  And let's remember, this is the misnamed Greatest Generation and the aptly named Silent Generation we are talking about as the ones in prime time charge of America's power centers.  As Robert Dallek initially recognized in the early 1990s, and now Robert Caro (finally!) recognizes, LBJ cannily used the nation's grief over the dead JFK, and LBJ's own understanding of how the Congress worked at the time, to push through the legislation which improved the lives of many Americans who had been left out of the so-called American dream. 

For those who think JFK would have pulled troops out of Vietnam, Chomsky's analysis refutes the John Newman, and later, Oliver Stone and James Galbraith thesis in a way which reveals the childishness behind that thesis.  The November 1963 memorandum on Vietnam, which JFK received shortly before his death in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was naively hopeful that the coup against Diem was going to stabilize the government in South Vietnam, and we could pull out safely by mid 1965, meaning after the 1964 election.  See Chomsky's response to James Galbraith (and Galbraith's lame reply) in the letters section of the Boston Review.  Well, we know how that optimism worked out, and, at the time, JFK, and most US national security state policy-makers really believed we could replicate what the US had done in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1958, the Congo in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1963, which was overthrow governments and replace them with military juntas we liked, train the juntas to prey ("control" or "pacify" were the usual terms used in internal documentation and sometimes in newspaper op-eds) on the people there, and keep from using US troops while the local military leaders in those nations "stabilized" their nations for our corporations to exploit.  We have to also recognize JFK, LBJ, and Nixon all politically came of age when the right-wing led "Who Lost China?" political debate reigned in 1949 through 1953 in the power corridors of the United States.  None of them wanted to be blamed for "losing" Vietnam to the Communists.  I find it almost preposterous to think JFK was going to pull out troops or seek a negotiated settlement with Ho Chi Minh's forces in 1965, 1966, or 1967.

Anyway, what I did find yesterday, at least in the first period, where the students started asking political-historical questions, is the Kids are much more knowledgeable about substantive issues than people my age were back in the early 1970s.  However, they don't know who their local or state representatives are.  As I said to them, knowing about substantive issues is an improvement over their grandparents and probably some of their parents. However, I said, if they expect to effectuate change, they must register to vote, and further, they must learn precisely who their area representatives and senators are. They nodded with appreciation, from what I noticed, but, as a mere sub, I don't know how much sticks.

I admit I winced when I saw none of the students could readily recall November 22 as the day JFK was assassinated.  However, after I immediately stepped back, did some mathematical birth year calculations, went back in some relatively recent US history (120 years or so), and realized something:  These young people in that classroom were not only born forty odd years after JFK's assassination date.  They have lived in the shadow or through major historical events, starting with Al Queda attacks in September 2001--and we know how our corporate media culture has reacted to that.  The Kids have also lived through the Great Recession of 2008 and the greatest economic inequality in the US since Mark Twain described the Gilded Age of 1870-1900 (and beyond Twain's death in 1910).  They have lived through the non-transformational, often reactive Obama presidency and now the fascistic-racist transformational presidency of Trump. They have seen how climate change has become a national security issue, and intuitively know water and food are, above all, political issues.  And, yet, we Boomers and addled Oldsters think they should know something about the murder of a then-mainstream Cold War politician 56 years ago--largely because we can personally remember where we were when we heard the news of that single event?*  

I have long laughed at Billy Joel's insipid song, "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The lyrics are simply a list of names and references without any showing of or explanation of any how's or why's (compare and contrast Phil Ochs' songs on generational topics).  And when Joel, says, "JFK blown away: What more do I have to say?" I would scream at the radio, "You fucking moron. You haven't said a goddamned thing!"  And, Billy, don't fool yourself.  Our generation started a whole bunch of fires, in tandem with The Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation.  It is why I wrote "Boomerang."  And, this morning, on the Web, I was glad to see an amusing comedy skit, "Do We Really Need Boomers?" from College Humor, as it shows others in the Generation Z and Millennial generations are starting to understand people over fifty are political arsonists.  

If I could say something to the Kids, it would be this: You need to come out and vote, and start with registering as Democrats to vote for a guy from the Silent Generation, Bernie Sanders (Birth month and year, December 1941). Sanders stands apart from most his age, and from a majority of Baby Boomers, both in physical strength and historical-political perspective. Bernie is a Popular Front New Dealer, who understands and works from a strategic perspective that involves mobilization, coalitions, and elevating people who were previously at the margins.  It is a very different approach from technocratic, post-WWII approaches from liberals and even some lefties (cough, cough, Elizabeth Warren, who is still miles ahead of most of the other corporate media named candidates).  Sanders' approach harkens back to labor union organizing, at a time when "One Big Union"--the cry of the Industrial Workers of the World--gains more currency in a globalized, technologically connected economy.  And, as a big by-the-way, find out who is a Bernie type running in Democratic Party primaries in state and local offices, and support and vote for them, too.  He can't do it alone, and neither can we.

And I say to those around 50 and up: Let's not rip into the Kids, shall we?  How about we act like good parents, and embrace the youngs, and give them some respect for their youthful idealism, hopes, and concerns.  When a young person demands great change from the horrible things today, instead of saying, "Don't be naive," or some such thing, we should be embarrassed these things exist, and we should ask them, "What do you think we should do?" and talk about various solutions where we don't fall into the "what is" of accepting excessive political power from an economic royalty or elite.  In short, we should stand with our Kids, for they are all our kids--and they are the ones we are asking to support us in our old age.

*I know it may seem strange for me to speak of JFK in this way since I wrote "the" book about RFK surviving 1968, and becoming a transformative president (albeit due to the circumstances at the time, and personal charisma more than leadership skills) who helps lead us close to a completion of the New Deal.  However, RFK believed in the Camelot Myth more than most, and he thought he was completing his brother's visions.  RFK, more than his brother, also realized their father's isolationist streak had some merit in not trying to overthrow governments or prop up unpopular governments abroad (Nasaw's biography of Joe Kennedy, Sr. is quite good on the topic of Joe Kennedy's paleo-conservative skepticism of the Cold War international project).  RFK sat with Cesar Chavez, saw merit in environmental policy ideas, wanting to rebuild cities on behalf of those living in them, particularly African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans, as well as rural areas where whites and African-Americans were living side by side in poverty, and beginning to take a crack at the military-industrial complex which his brother Jack had little understanding about.

Drive bys for November 22, 2019

You may think I wish to speak about JFK's assassination 56 years ago today. Nope. Been there, done that in my old blog, at least I think. Let's get up to speed on drive bys for today:

* I was unable to access the NYT due to the subscription wall. However, this Common Dreams summary tells us what we need to know about how corporate Democratic Party leaders feel about the base. The first response was contempt, voiced against an immigration activist, to go vote for Trump. One may ask, What is that about? It's a Bidenian shorthand for, "You'll lose the election to Trump, you dark skinned radical!" The other was to tell a person concerned with Biden's funding sources, that the person was "listening to Bernie too much" and "it's not true." Well, technically, Biden may be correct as corporations cannot give directly to Biden, but they can have executives and industry associations bundle money into PACs and to Biden personally. And "listening to Bernie too much" is the pat-on-the-head, saying, "You silly, naive ninny. You need to listen to an adult like me." 

Yup. That is the way in which corporate Democratic Party leaders express themselves when they have to deal with activists and members of the base. Never Trumper David Frum's dictum holds, "The Republican Party leadership fears its base. The Democratic Party leadership hates its base."

* And now this appears in The Atlantic after another poor debate performance from Biden. I read it thinking, Oh my God. We are now going to call Joe Biden a Stutterer-American? Really? Now he tells us? After his gaffe about the "only" African-American woman in the senate endorsing his candidacy, referring to now former, and largely disgraced Carol Mosley Braun of Illinois, when black female senator Kamala Harris is a primary opponent on the same stage with him? That is not a stutter. That is an error in recollection and maybe we can say a brain fart. But again that is not a stutter. Not knowing what state you are in when speaking to a crowd is not a stutter. This article is clearly a controlled leak to a sympathetic reporter and it gets written and reported as if there is some amazing insight. Typical. The Atlantic is so often a disappointment, though, when it is on, it is definitely a moment.

*And, meanwhile, despite the Bernie Black Out, and the often carping dismissal of Bernie as a candidate with a low ceiling, and no basis for improvement, this new national Emerson poll shows Bernie now tied with Biden and several points ahead of Warren--while Mayor Pete is lagging in a dismal fourth place at 7%. This poll is interesting poll because I continue to believe how a poll is conducted is going to be far more important than a poll's results. I am not sure how pollsters poll for a caucus in a place such as Iowa, and I am not sure if the polling data showing Mayor Pete in the lead in Iowa includes many young people in that polling. I also think we should be cautious at this point about national polling data because Trump is still in an excellent position to win re-election by virtue of the Electoral College, and white Baby Boomer and Oldster support in the Rust Belt. It is why I scream with frustration more often than not that only Bernie is in a position to peel away that support, excite young people's activism and voting, and bring back the black voter to the polls with the type of hope they have not had since RFK was gunned down over 50 years ago. As many who know me know, I consider the greater tragedy in American history the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 than Jack's in 1963. Jack's death gave LBJ an opening to pass legislation JFK was never going to get passed in the Congress, starting with the Civil Rights laws in 1964 and 1965, and Medicare in 1965. As for polls, my advice is to stay with your presidential preference among the top four candidates, at least, as the voting in the Iowa caucus is not for three more months, and the first primary almost four months away. If you change, it should be for substantive reasons, not strategic in the sense corporate media wants you to change--especially when, for me, the clear choice remains Bernie. I mean that from as much strategy in this anti-Establishment time as for public policy reasons.

* Chomsky is essentially correct in this interview at Truthout.org, but I depart from his analysis, well, really drive by, comment about Watergate. I agree with him that historian Henry Steele Commager was wrong to say Nixon's resignation "vindicated the system." However, the scandals under the heading "Watergate" were far more than the break-in at the Watergate hotel. The Plumbers had already broken into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to try and find personal information on Ellsberg to discredit him through friendly sources in the corporate media. There were taps on phones without FBI approval of various people in and outside the administration. There were plans to kidnap student leaders, including veterans of the peace movement, and take them to a concentration camp in Mexico (The Huston Plan, which was making its way toward final approval by Nixon). Nixon had bypassed the FBI--which was a pretty amazing thing to do considering Hoover was still in charge, and ready to pounce on unarmed dissenters to American domestic and foreign policies--and even sidetracked the CIA. Behind it all was the illegal bombings in Cambodia, which led to the creation of the Plumbers, who were to plug "leaks" in the administration to news reporters. And, as several commentators have analyzed over the years, there were multiple reasons to break into the DNC headquarters at the hotel, namely: (1) DNC char Larry O'Brien's friendship with a Greek dissident, who Nixon and Agnew believed provided information to the Democrats of the Greek military junta having giving money to the Nixon-Agnew campaign in 1968, money that was originally from the CIA to the junta (Agnew being a Greek-American may have inspired this). I wish The Nation would reprint the Christopher Hitchens essays on the topic (written in the 1980s and early 1990s), based upon Hitchens' own discussions with the dissident. Also, let's recall the main outside guy to put up bail money for the break-in defendants in court was Tony Pappas, a Greek-American rich guy who had dealings with the military junta in Greece. Pappas is mentioned in the linked to article; (2) O'Brien had information on Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in 1968 from Clark Clifford, LBD's last Defense Department Secretary, and Nixon wanted to know how much Clifford had given O'Brien; and (3) There is also perhaps reason to believe John Dean, the Nixon WH lawyer who went rogue, may have been interested in finding out what O'Brien knew about a ring of "escorts," which may or may not have included Dean's wife before Dean and she were engaged. I always found the last one involving Dean to be really far-fetched, but let's recall how humans in a conspiracy have their own peculiar motives, sometimes. I am surprised Chomsky did not seem to recall any of that, and fell for the right wing line that the Watergate scandals were a "third rate burglary," and nothing more.

*Speaking of sports, I mean, really, the Lakers have the best record in basketball at 12-2. Oh, wait. Not that. It's time for another look at Colin Kaepernick, who continues to be the obsession of white citizens who are in love with the NFL, and hack sports guys in television, like Stephen Smith, who should have known better. This article provides the background, including how the waiver the NFL wanted CK to sign was probably designed to stop CK from criticizing the NFL ever again, or even bringing another suit against the NFL. And Max Kellerman (starting at about 3 minutes it) reaches back into his Jewish-American roots, and shows his father taught him about how important it was to challenge power--and not talk about how "uppity" Jackie Robinson was behaving after Robinson's first year and reporters, such as the overrated and odious Jim Murray of the LA Times, and Dick Young of the NY Daily News, treated Robinson as a "boy." I wish one could find links on the Internet about Young and especially Murray. Murray is deified in death (even Rachel Robinson joins in that chorus, when the Arnold Rampersad bio of Robinson gives us a strong whiff of Murray's attitude toward Robinson in the latter's playing days, though it does not show how Murray waxed eloquent and tearfully supported Zola Budd, a South African Olympic runner, during the boycott movement against South Africa), while Young has had his reputation clipped for decades after Young's death due to more generalized racism toward other black and Latin American players such as Roberto Clemente and others.

Trump, the influence of television, and the destruction of open government discourse

This essay-review in the latest New York Review of Books is a decent summary of two recent books on Trump and television. I think the article is wrong to leave Taibbi's belief that "Russiagate" is ultimately a hoax akin to Saddam Hussein's WMDs. Taibbi's judgment is horribly and cynically wrong because there is more than smoke with Trump's long relationship with Russian oligarchs and many of Trump's foreign policy moves, as Seth Abramson and Craig Unger, two respected reporters, have disclosed in books on Trump and the Russians, released a year or more ago. I am surprised the writer, David Bromwich, who should know better, seems to have not considered those books in evaluating Tiabbi's conclusion. Worse, Bronwich seems unfamiliar with findings in the Mueller report, which showed over 100 contacts between Trump, his campaign, and the Russians in the 2015-2016 campaign period, and totally ignorant of Mueller's clear conclusion that, while he believed he was bound by the executive branch conclusion that no president could indicted, Congress had the power to take action against Trump and others surrounding Trump. Mueller's testimony made clear to any reasonable person he believes Trump should be further investigated, particularly where Mueller acquiesced in not personally deposing Trump. This is a major failure on the part of Bromwich, who again should know better as a veteran NY Review of Books reviewer for over 30 years.

However, I am glad Bromwich properly castigated the colloquiums and cliches that mar the other book being reviewed, and was wise enough to recognize some important analysis within that other book. Bromwich says:

"Here indeed is a clue to his (Trump's) presidency. For though Trump is an attention guzzler—he wants an audience to notice him every hour of every day—he has a smaller need than the average politician for wide popularity. An extra skin or protective layer of unconcern goes with his readiness to say or do the abrasive and insulting thing. It was this that most set him apart from his immediate predecessors, Obama and the younger Bush. The numerical minority and electoral majority that lifted him to the presidency seem to have done it partly in response to this trait. He offered a perversely satisfying relief from the soft-sell pandering of American political life."

This insight is why those who revere Trump, mostly older, white Baby Boomers and addled Oldsters, who have racial insensitivities and appear unable to overcome corporate media biases, mostly right wing and elitist, are less and less interested in majority rule--and worse, live in a world that promotes a new type of anti-intellectualism and portent of outright fascism.  Eric Alterman, who I used to like a lot, but who I find less and less interesting, had earlier this year written an essay in The New Yorker that traced the decline of History majors in public universities to a decline in historical understanding, noting Yale University was increasing the number of History majors because of its elite status, where people graduating with a degree in History were in a much better position to land a job teaching History.  This is true as far as things go, but wholly unsatisfying as a reason for any decline in historical understanding.  I would say most of the American population has long had a problem with historical perspective, as Gore Vidal properly said our nation should perhaps be called "The United States of Amnesia."  Vidal understood the role of broadcast corporate owned media in heightening an inability to grasp and evaluate historical perspectives and how people are often focused on trivialities, inanities, and gossip.  I would also add the destruction of private unions across the nation that accompanied the de-industrialization of the nation, which corporate-friendly trade deals accelerated.  These are more systemic and more profound in producing Trump as a political leader and where our nation's discourse is at in the present.  I find it more and more impossible to converse with people who claim they are Republicans or support Trump to the extent they live in a right-wing media bubble, complete with unfounded and discredited conspiracy theories against the Clintons, a lingering belief Obama is not a US citizen and is a "secret" Muslim fundamentalist friend of terrorists, and are obsessed with immigration and guns based upon an avalanche of misinformation and fear. 

In addition to the substantive points responding to Bromwich, I have a perhaps quibble with Bromwich, which is his assertion that the New York Times is "an organ for educated middle class." This is incomplete if not outright misleading.  The New York Times, for the past 100 plus years, has been an organ for elite opinion, particularly the economic elite, and that is well beyond the middle class. That the middle class buys too much into the slant from corporate owned media, and does not critically evaluate the information, that much is definitely true. It is also true of Bromwich's article, though Bromwich's article should nonetheless be read in its entirety to help move forward a discourse sorely needing progress.

Drive bys on Veteran's Day, 2019

Some Veteran's Day 2019 drive bys:

* This op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times may be the closest someone gets to say in corporate owned media why people like me have mixed emotions on Veteran's Day and especially Memorial Day, the latter which honors those soldiers killed in wars in which our nation has engaged. As citizens, when considering our nation's soldiers, our first duty is to know when our nation is truly in peril so as to justify sending our soldiers to a war. For most of American history, our fellow citizens have failed in that duty. When we consider most wars, there is no good case to be made that any of our wars besides the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII, and maybe the War of 1812, were wars to fight for our freedom. The rest have been wars of choice, grounded in imperialism and, in the so-called "smaller" wars, grounded in genocide of the Native Americans in the 19th Century, and colonialism in the 20th Century. The second duty citizens owe to our soldiers is to care for our veterans after they return. We have a better understanding of how badly we have failed as citizens in that regard, but to the extent one votes for Republican politicians, one finds Republican politicians much less eager to support veterans' benefits and protections (see here and this snapshot from 2013).  I am not saying Democrats, in the main, are great for veterans' benefits, but it is noteworthy how Bernie Sanders is almost always in the forefront of protecting veterans' benefits.  So, maybe this Veteran's Day, we should save the parades and flag waving and maybe consider those two duties outlined here today. And maybe, too, save the "Thank you for your service" bromides and say to Vietnam War, Iraq War, Afghan War vets, "Sorry for sending you to wars we did not need to send you to, and for not taking better care of you after you came home."

* Grifters gotta grift: When wading into this sleuth type article from Salon.com and one of Giuliani's crony world, one sees again how Republican politicians learned from Sarah Palin how to milk the Republican white evangelical base and beyond and not even have to run for office.

* I am seeing much hand-wringing over the upcoming British parliamentary elections.  Labourites who hate Corbyn are legion in second guessing, backbiting, and throwing mud at Corbyn.  My prediction is this will be trumpeted in corporate media and even BBC presentations in the next weeks.  We will see panic-style written articles, as in the past, saying Corbyn will disarm Britain's military, will promote anti-Semitism, will undermine Britain's economy, and generally lead Britain into drift and eventual anarchy.  Corporate media and the BBC will tell Britons who are rational that they must show decorum, and leave the populism to Boris Johnson.  Of course, this is a strategic mistake of major proportions, but I find rational voters in Great Britain more and more resemble Democratic Party voters in the United States, meaning they are too trusting of the strategic bromides corporate media pundits throw at us day after day.  What gives me hope for Corbyn and Labour is the steep rise in 18-34 year olds to register to vote after the December election date was declared.  The kids are healthily wary of corporate media propaganda, and know Corbyn stands with them.  The question is how much damage the older people in Great Britain, who bought into the lies that led to Brexit in the first place, will do again, and how much damage Tony Blair supporters in the Labour Party will do in sabotaging Labour.  Just as I think there are a number of corporate Democrats who would welcome a Trump re-election rather than have Bernie Sanders win the party's presidential nomination, there are Blairites who will support re-election of the Tories if it means the end of Corbyn's leadership in the Labour Party.  It remains a frustrating pity to me how Corbyn may be the only political leader in Great Britain who understands what Yanis Varoufakis is saying about the European Union.  There is one commentator from Great Britain who I deeply trust, and that is Bernard Porter, who operates a little blog himself.   My advice is to check his blog over the next weeks especially as the madness of Britain's election season continues to unfold.

* Speaking of right wing populism in the United States, I guess maybe we have finally found a reason for right-wingers, who so often see things through a racist lens, to favor free public college tuition--so, for example, the University of California system is not left trolling for dollars from foreign families wanting to send their children to school in America. 

* Back in my CA lawyer days, I would sometimes have to travel to Murietta, CA's courthouse for a couple of cases I had pending there. While there, I would see how clogged the courts were with lawsuits credit card companies, and their factors, filed against people for unpaid credit card debts. It was disgusting to me, particularly because I knew these people were in this predicament from the 2005 Bankruptcy law reforms, which the Republicans, along with their handmaiden, Joe Biden (D-MBNA/Delaware) passed. This article from the NY Times by way of Yahoo! News shows how this is now occurring with respect to medical bills. My outrage grows with respect to Democrats who buy into the Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, Biden, corporate media spin about public options and choice. Those arguments ignore cost issues, both in terms of overall costs and how choice does not in the least cut doctors' offices' administrative bills, and how public options only create another high risk pool for doctors to reject. The payments from individuals who are struggling and sick, ill, or have a debilitating condition, continues.

* I admit I totally missed what has been happening in Bolivia for the past months, and even weeks. Evo Morales, who I had thought was much better than Hugo Chavez and Mauduro in Venezuela, has suddenly resigned, amidst what smells like a semi-fast moving military coup. I first read this article from the Miami Herald, but my corporate media radar was up as was my deep understanding of US foreign policy towards Latin America and Central America. Then, I read Mark Weisbot at The Nation who, in an article from a few days ago, and before Morales' sudden resignation, helpfully explained why the Bolivia situation is more complicated. The article showed what the mainstream media will not admit, which is the unofficial voting count was stopped to avoid violent protests, as the unofficial tallies were not fully tracking with actual counting of votes. With Weisbot, I also am somewhat wary of the Organization of American States, particularly at moments when the US is putting its finger on the scale.  I remember well the debacle with Aristide and Haiti in the early 1990s, for example. 

I found the comments against Weisbot at the end of the Nation article enlightening, but, I must admit, in my old age, I am wary about how we Americans so quickly agree and conclude leaders in other nations are corrupt because, for example, the Supreme Court in those nations are chosen by them and rule in their favor. I wonder if those who think Morales is corrupt would reach the same conclusion if the current US Supreme Court, with Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Roberts, backs Trump on subpoenas, etc. The idea that Morales has "cronies" in his administration is a bit ripe when one considers the history of Latin and Central American nations over the past 170 years, and continued US intervention to undermine most norms for any rationally based open governments to develop. If one applied the type of "cronyism" argument used against Morales to American politicians throughout much of US history, one should have welcomed military coups against the US government, too. I mean, really, Boss politics, spoils politics, and now the gerrymandering that allows for a minority of voters to act as if they are the majority, not to mention other forms of modern voter suppression, are readily identifiable examples of US election corruption.

The anger against Morales from the corporate media and the US government is not about democratic norms, since the US likes to support dictators around the globe who do "our" bidding. The reason they hate Morales is because Morales is not in favor of giving big favors to International corporations, and, instead, Morales tends to side with peasants' feelings and interests. Most American politicians only care about whether other nations' leaders allow global, American based corporations to exploit the people in those other nations. Hence, the love affair between American-based corporations and China from the moment Premier Deng initiated the Chinese plan, which was to keep the Chinese Communist political dictatorship while moving in the direction of state-sanctioned "capitalism," and having Communist cadres reaping major economic benefits for themselves and their families and friends. And of course the love affair with Saudi Arabia, with countless Latin American and Central American dictatorships, with Suharto in Indonesia, etc.

Human beings are in a three hundred year experiment in trying to establish open government norms, and the results so far are mixed at best. I believe there remains a danger that technology, combined with capitalists and militarists, will work in tandem with fascists to end the experiment and return us to feudal forms. 

Drive bys November 10, 2019

Reading today's Los Angeles Times, through my online subscription:

* This article, about a re-enactment of an 1811 Louisiana slave rebellion, caused me to wonder, So where are the slave rebellion reenactments instead of the Civil War reenactments?  I think the slave rebellion ones will have a heck of an impact on white southern Civil War buffs, who so often seek excuses for their ancestors' treasonous, hateful behavior.  Hmmm....

* Glad to see Kshama Sawant survived Amazon's brazen attempt to force her out of her Seattle, WA City Council seat.  

* The smell of marijuana and a large business/industry corrupting Carpinteria, CA, a small town just south of Santa Barbara.  It is a beautiful town, as I recall it, and one that was more affordable in part than most places in Santa Barbara.  Local communities tend to be controlled by the largest industry in tandem with real estate businesses.  It is a fact of life in American history.  It is why communities should not assume the "hippie" cannabis business will behave any differently.  There is also something to the pollution marijuana smells cause.

* This profile of the less than 10,000 population town of Taft, CA, which I have been to on a few occasions in my time living in CA (mostly for law cases, including depositions, and walking around the town) is interesting to me because it shows, even in Taft, it is not 100% right wing or "Red" in the current, modern parlance.  There is the gay male cheerleader in town, the various "libs," and others who do not fit within the usual corporate media-political strategist for the DNC/RNC profile.  Why should their voices, when combined with the majority of city and suburban dwellers not count for presidential elections, or, for that matter, districting?  The idea that the majority of citizens of Taft, who are a distinct and clear minority view of voters, should have more representation or more of their voices heard, is fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-republican, and goes against the grain of anything we would normally find moral in terms of human governance.  That the oil industry is a threat to the planet is something that also required to be said.

* Related to the two stories immediately above is this one about the anti-CA fervor in Boise, Idaho, where CA residents are apparently moving in relatively higher numbers than from other places.  Boise is a gorgeous community, from what I have heard from those who moved and regularly visit there.  What I find interesting is the article never asks, Shouldn't people in Boise be more upset at the globalized economy which undermines their wages?  At the rich people in Boise who have lived there for generations who exploited them with poor wages and benefits?  Or maybe ask, Why is it that a gorgeous place like Boise never developed before?  Nah.  Easier to blame the Californians.  The funny thing is it is mostly right wingers who are moving there, not "libs."  It reminds me of a Los Angeles Times Magazine piece, not on the Internet for some reason, about Californians who left the Golden State and came back.  It profiled a number of business people and their families. The business people said they found the workforce too uneducated, too poor in their cultural habits, and not enough of a labor pool to, well, exploit.  The business people's families largely said they missed malls, missed things to do that were not merely "outdoors," found the people closed-minded, not very bright or engaged, and ultimately dull.  These people who the magazine article profiled labeled themselves as "conservative" and one literally said how he thought he was a conservative until he moved to the small town in Arkansas or Kentucky, I forget which of the states.   So amusing.  So telling.  Perhaps it is why the article is not on the Internet, as far as I last checked.

* As AOC said at the big Iowa rally for Bernie yesterday, the key is solidarity, not merely unity.  The robots are coming, and they should not come in a structure that only benefits the wealthy and powerful.  Technological change should benefit the majority of people and humanity as a whole.  We see this in the Times' Business section article regarding the technological undermining of longshore workers, and those truckers who are not supporting their fellow workers should wake up, especially if Andrew Yang and Elon Musk are correct that their friends will successfully implement self-driving commercial trucks.  One may say, "Wait, being against technological changes is a Luddite position, and why should those jobs, so drudging, so wracking to a human body, remain at all?"  I get that.  But if the result is simply unemployment and no universal basic income, no economic assistance from government, and only letting the well off employers extract more profits--exploitation is the old economic term for this--then, I stand with those who want to fight back against that type of change.  It remains frustrating to me that Harry Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital" is not taught in high school or college, and  I would guess most living Americans have never read it. However, I loved the Wiki reference to the book that the Wall Street Journal, in 2009, said it was one of the "five best books on working."  Still, the Wiki reference does not make clear the other main point in Braverman's book is how technology is not "neutral," and how its implementation is subject to the structure of a community's or nation's political-economy and society.  That is even more important than the attack on Taylorism, which one may intuitively understand and learn from other books.

* Also in the Los Angeles Times Business section is the almost always brilliant Michael Hiltzik.  His column today on light bulbs, specifically LEDs, CFLs, and how the Republican officeholders and corporate media dummy down our culture.  Hiltzik shows there were environmental issues with CFLs, but how LED lights removed most of the environmental challenges, and how, for public policy to work, it must do so without ideological cynicism.  Empirical data gathering and analysis, accepting of compromises when the facts--not power centers' demands--require those compromises, should be how we evaluate and implement and reform public policies.

* Ooops.  Hard work does not translate into higher wages.  So readers may understand, this article was placed in page C2 in the Business section.  What a surprise as to how corporate media plays up other things that are trivial and not this study.  What a surprise in a system not designed for workers'  lives to be improved.  Ugh.  There will be no talking heads in corporate broadcast media saying, "Wait! Maybe if we had more private sector unions again.  Maybe if we had free college and people did not have to worry about crushing medical bills.  Or maybe if we started to spend on the military only what the Russians and Chinese spend combined, instead of what the Chinese, Russians, and the next 8-10 nations thereafter spend combined and redirected our resources to infrastructure improvements and the Green New Deal policies Bernie has proposed." Nope.  Not allowed. It was funny.  Last week, a candidate for the nomination of my congressional district tried to tell me about health care issues, "It's so complicated."  Really? If it is too complicated for you, then why are you running for the office?  I did not get to say that to this particular candidate, and now regret that.  

And on to the New York Review of Books:

* This is an extraordinarily insightful article about the history of "Porgy & Bess."  I think we are now at a point where even Gershwin's demand to use African-Americans in the play is not enough.  It raises legitimate questions about appropriation, but I still find the music compelling.   

* Historically analyzing anything to do with an organized religion is fraught with danger, largely because such an analysis leads to a rejection of "magic" beliefs and beliefs grounded in "what someone told me when I was a kid, and that's enough!"  I always wince when I see the bumper sticker "God said it! I believe it! That settles it!"  One would like to ask those persons, "Which translation did you read?  Did you read what 'God' said?  What is it that 'God' actually said that you believe and believe it is settled?"  Well, we know what happens there.  Cognitive dissonance at the highest, most acute level.  Screams of "Heretic!"  And, historically, we know it gets worse from there.  Anyway, this article from a religion scholar about Mary, mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene, is one worth reading for those interested in the cultural and theological history of Christianity. 

* This article is only worth reading to expose how corporate media narrative biases and limitations seep into even the most critically intellectual of journals.  Michael Tomasky's discussion is ultimately banal and pedestrian, though it is still better than most newspaper and television pundits' perspectives.  His refusal to analyze the basis for Sanders' support, his refusal to show he understands how corporate media works in fact, and inability to analyze outside the box that is, well, the television box, mar this article's import.

* The NYRB has been great on the climate change issue in the past year, more than usual.  This is another intriguing analysis of important books on this subject.  I crack up in despair and frustration when I hear questions to political candidates about climate change, and the demand that whatever we do, we should not have to sacrifice or change our lifestyles in any way.  I wonder, and have said, How will the catastrophes change our lifestyles if we don't take serious actions now?  Oh well.  That is not how human beings behave.  We are T-Rexes helplessly watching the meteor crash into the planet, except this time, the meteor is our fellow human beings who control our societies' fossil fuel industries, and the rest of us who think this is either a hoax or not worth any immediate structural changes.

Finally, an amusing note.  I was invited to join an "Ok, Boomer" FB group.  I did and published a comment highlighting my short story from 2016, "Boomerang."  I am pleased to say I have had over 60 likes/loves and growing, and almost every commenter thanked me or said something kind to me.  I have been called an "Okay Boomer."  The Ok, Boomer phenomenon is one I welcome, as it moves our argument forward, and it allows us to begin to realize it is not necessarily about a generation, though the word "generation" is from the same root as "general" and "generalization," and sadly, for 60% of white Baby Boomers and addled Oldsters, the generalization fits.  It is to realize who is controlling the world, and how the attacks on younger people is so hateful, wrong, and self-defeating.  The Kids, as I call anyone younger than a Baby Boomer (1946-1964 birth years), are in the best position to vote in huge numbers, and join with those of us more, ahem, enlightened Boomers and Oldsters to vote for political leaders who will mobilize people to change systems to protect people, other living creatures, and our planet.  For those still not sure where this started, it appears the meme, phrase, and movement started with this New Zealand female politician, who pushed back against an older, white, male politician.

This dovetails with Timothy Noah's article, "The Baby Boom was a Bust" in this month's Washington Monthly.  I am grateful Noah has woken up and I hope this discussion takes the type of political turn I hope it takes, which is to show the nation's majority of citizens have moved decidedly left--and Boomers had better wake the hell up.  It is not enough to vacillate between corporate Democrats/corporate Republicans who say "I got mine!" and reactionaries and racists who say, "Get off my lawn!"  It is time to get out of that rut of ignorance, greed, and hatred, and embrace your children.  I have long said the entire analysis of the Sixties student movement is fundamentally wrong in its focus.  We should realize, They were just kids. And the parents are to blame for the excesses and madness which developed.  The kids were correct about how wrong America's war against Vietnam was and how the civil rights movement was correct.  The parents, however, the misnamed "Greatest" Generation, just pissed on their kids and refused to listen, preferring to ridicule them, beat them up with their police they controlled, and were happy to create resigned cynicism and return to consumerist, anti-human values.

And on that note, Season 4 of "Rick & Morty" begins tonight, which is one of the two most intelligent shows on television (the other being "Bojack Horseman" with the last four seasons of "South Park" and "The Good Place" being close seconds).  Here is how to catch up to Season 4, if you have not seen it, though I also recommend, Season 1, Episode 2, which is the take off on "Inception" and the most extraordinary plot line about the nature of humans and dogs.  I find most Boomers and Oldsters have problems following these programs.  Sad.  I learned about R&M, BH, and The Good Place from our children.  I try to listen to them when they speak about artistic matters and the world.  I have learned much from them on artistic matters, and find they are learning much about the world on their own--and, as my son said yesterday, "Dad, I now get why you were yelling at the television in the 1990s when I was young."

Anti-California and anti-liberal article in front page of Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times has a front page headline this morning:  "Leaving California for "redder" pastures."  However, the article proves the opposite of the article's intent in multiple ways.

First, I can't wait till the first couple profiled in the article, who moved from Modesto to McKinney, Texas, finds out about Texas state property taxes, which are 1.83%, nearly double CA's 1.00% property tax rate.  McKinney adds enough to make the property tax rate more than double California's property tax rate.  Texas ranks sixth in the nation for highest property taxes, while CA, much more due to high home values, ranks 17th.  If the profiled couple had almost paid off their home in Modesto, which I bet is the case, they are likely going to pay the same amount of money in property taxes, and if their new home area economically grows in the next decade, they will pay more in property taxes than if they stayed in relatively small time Modesto.   

With respect to sales taxes, Texas has a sales tax rate of 6.25%; however, McKinney adds 2.25% more percent, for a total of 8.25%.  Modesto, CA has a sales tax rate of 7.88%, so a slight savings in sales tax in "bad" and "liberal" California.  Oh wait. Texas sales tax includes a sales tax on services as well as goods, unlike California, which only taxes goods.  The link provided about Texas sales tax on services includes cable, telephone, and internet service bills, movie theaters, golf courses, health clubs, rodeos, sporting events, insurance, real estate services, and photographs, and various other service providers. But what about state gasoline taxes?  California, even with the new carbon related tax, is 80 cents a gallon, perhaps the highest in the nation.  Texas' state gasoline tax is...wait for it...60 cents a gallon, much higher than I would have thought.  So what accounts for the vast difference in retail gas pricing, as of November 4, 2019, with CA at $4.05 and Texas at $2.28 when the difference in gas taxes is only 20 cents a gallon?  Maybe, instead of attacking "the stupid libs" in the State political leadership, Californians should be backing Governor Newsom's demand for an audit of retail gas prices in California.

But let's admit there is no income tax in Texas.  However, this couple does not sound wealthy, so paying a bit of income taxes in CA is not so significant when compared to the probably higher property taxes--again, McKinney is economically growing, so home values will increase--and pay more and wider sales taxes over each year.  The savings to live in McKinney compared to Modesto are not so significant, especially when CA proves the price gouging and orders a major reduction in gas prices as part of fines paid.

The rest of the Los Angeles Times article reveals politics is actually a very low reason for leaving the Greatest State in the Union.  As with us, the article confirms the main reason people leave is the high cost of land and housing (funny how nobody ever mentions the high cost of medical care for Americans, which are what drives economic decision making, including whether to move or stay in a location). What was astonishing, but was buried deep inside the article, is a statistic I never saw before:  A Texas real estate group compared the number of people who left CA in 2017 for Texas, around 63,000, to those leaving Texas to move to CA, also in 2017, which is about 41,000. CA has a state population of 40 million, while Texas' population just under 22 million. Thus, the leave rate is significantly lower for CA leaving for Texas than Texans leaving for CA!  And 2017 is when The Wife and I left for New Mexico,* and, as I always say when asked, we left because of the high land prices and the American medical insurance system.  The costs we paid in health care would have bankrupted other families who earned less coin than I did, and likely would have resulted in an early death for me.   

So what explains the misleading headline, not including the comparisons of actual taxes paid in CA and Texas, as I did, and the hiding, at page A8 of the information that Texas residents move to CA at  a higher rate than CA residents move to Texas?  The answer is fairly obvious to anyone familiar with corporate press criticism of the past 100 plus years: the Los Angeles Times front page section headline writers have an agenda.  They decided to focus on what the article admits is not a significant reason anyone leaves CA for another state.  The headline writers and editors at the Los Angeles Times have an agenda, and that agenda is to discipline readers to believe government can't help us.  The message is we are serfs for the corporate power which continues to rule our nation, and no matter what we try to do, it will always end up with people paying more in taxes, even though the people who pay the most taxes in CA are rich people, as it should be.  Yes, I can make an argument against increases in the gas tax or sales tax as regressive taxes, which burden more workers and the poor, and it is why I support the higher state income taxes.  I also support other reforms which are a topic for another day.  But the point here is to show the front page article's breathless headline is not only misleading, i.e. failing to explain to the Modesto couple what they actually taxes in Texas would be and comparing those to CA, but what is called "burying the lede," which is the story how, according to a Texas realtor group, more left Texas for CA than vice-versa as a percentage of population. 

* New Mexico has a 1.00% property tax rate, but much, much lower property values.  New Mexico has a 7.70% sales tax rate, and one where we pay a tax on most services, including accounting, legal, cable, but not movie theater, food, medicine.  The state income tax is around 4% for us, even when I was working as a lawyer.  It should be lower for lower income people, but in 2019, the governor and legislature at least raised the top rate to over 6% for those families with $300,000 in income.  And New Mexico's gas tax is around 20 cents a gallon, much less expensive than Texas or CA.  More needs to be done in New Mexico to get to a better distribution of what economists call the "burden" of taxation, which would mean narrowing sales taxes to goods, lessening the tax on Social Security payments, and the like.  That is coming, however, if I understand what our local representative in the State legislature (a good liberal Democrat) is aiming to do. 

Patrick Deneen: Latest in a long line of reactionaries who confuse capitalism and liberalism

Robert Kuttner, who I adore, has just delivered a smack-down of Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (Yale, 2018) in the New York Review of Books. I can't wait for the rejoinder from Deneen, where I suspect he will look like the reactionary fool he is. For me, what was depressing about reading the essay-review is where Kuttner notes how many otherwise smart people, such as former President Obama, liberal-left historian Jackson Lears, and even Cornel West, failed comprehension 101 in "blurbing" Deneen's screed. Worse, any modern liberal or left persons who favorably reviewed or blurbed Daneen's book showed the limits of their own reading in not recognizing Deneen as largely another Anglo-American reactionary who only sounds "liberal" when attacking excessive pro-capitalist nostrums and societal structures. 

It is always important for close readers of William Blake, Lord George Byron, Charles Dickens, and others in the early British capitalist accumulation period to recognize their attacks on capitalism (this even accounts for some of them opposing slavery and supporting extending the voting franchise) was nonetheless rooted in a nostalgic belief in the pre-capitalist or late feudal period. E.P. Thompson understood this better than most historians and political philosophers. It is not to say such early dissenters from the capitalist accumulation period did not speak in a language that implied or expressed socialist oriented ideas or socialist based outrages against the capitalist system. Instead, it is to say these late 18th Century and early 19th Century should never be simply ripped from their time, nor should we ignore how they ended up where they did on the issues of their day.

Kuttner exposes how Daneen's idealism for a pre-capitalist European and American past renders him unable to comprehend the actual bloody history of the Dark Ages, when faith, not reason, was most valued, and when the Church enforced an ostensible moral code--where an exposure of the hypocrisy and corruption in the enforcement was treated as a heinous heresy worthy of torture or state-sanctioned murder. What makes Kuttner especially compelling, however, is his deft, succinct, and wise appreciation of John Locke and Adam Smith, two avatars of capitalist-oriented philosophers who are far more useful to Marxists and New Dealers than one may ordinarily think. See David Brin and John Kenneth Galbraith, among others, on Smith's continued liberal radicalism; and Robert Dahl on the left-oriented radicalism in John Locke's thought. Kuttner, whose own work, such as The Economic Illusion and Everything for Sale, correctly questions the modern business libertarian philosophies which emanate from Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman, and the Austrian version of the Bobbsey Twins, von Mises and Hayek--though at least Hayek recognized social welfare states are possibly okay. 

In short, what Kuttner exposes is Daneen wishes to throw out the Enlightenment baby with the modern bathwater. Admittedly, it has not been an easy time since the Enlightenment, as we see the Enlightenment also encompasses the rise of nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, Fascism, and Communism. The modern era since 1600 has worked alongside slavery and capitalists have worked in tandem with religious zealots who deny the modernity capitalists continually pursue. But the best values of the Enlightenment remain a respect for individual autonomy, civil liberties, pluralist, secular and open government, laws which outlawed slavery, child labor, discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religious, and other statuses, and a demand that government has a duty to provide for the common good. The irony of the revolutionary era is how oppressed peoples around the globe were able to ingest and articulate back against Europe's and Great Britain's Enlightenment values the reason for their revolts. The Western canon gave important background and articulation to the most revolutionary values, in the sense of hopefulness, not simply violence and vengeance. 

Kuttner shows, perhaps not as well as I would have liked, how Daneen is wrong to put von Mises and Karl Marx in the same box. However, as Noam Chomsky has recognized, there is, among modern Western elites, an overlap in beliefs between Gingrich and Clinton, Thatcher and Blair, and the conservative and liberal elitists who oppose minimum wage increases and support pro-corporate trade deals. There is also admittedly some overlap between Patrick Buchanan and Ralph Nader on corporate trade deals, but Buchanan's is rooted in feudal, reactionary, religious zealotry that easily turns to tribalism. Nader's is more about moving forward with the best the Enlightenment has had to offer. It is here where Kuttner is imploring us to not embrace Daneen because, while Daneen may be a strange bedfellow anti-capitalist, Daneen's position is essentially atavistic and tribalistic. Daneen's vision exults religion at the expense of reason, exults organized religion as a mechanism of and for social control, and seeks a vague return to a form of pre-capitalism that is at best nostalgic and ahistorical, and worst, monstrously reactionary. 

For me, I would rather stand with David Brin and Steven Pinker as potentially strange bedfellows than with Daneen. Unlike Brin and Pinker, Daneen wants us to reject the premises of the Enlightenment project, something which would, in the current environment, only play into the hands of the Fascist International and accelerate a return to the Dark Ages, where organized religion rules. His is a prescription he would only countenance if it was Christian-dominated, and one which would easily play into the hands of imperialists of, ahem, a Western historical tradition. Attempting to run his morality through other religious traditions, starting with Islam, shows the vacuousness of his a priori style claims.

Caveat: Notwithstanding my adoration for Kuttner and his take-down of Daneen, I found troubling Kuttner's statements, near the end of his essay-review, where Kuttner stated:

Liberal democracy has endured a long history of premature burials by its detractors. Despite such pronouncements in the 1930s by anti-liberal philosophers and dictators, liberalism enjoyed a remarkable renaissance in the postwar era. World War II was the epic victory of the democracies over fascism. The cold war, for all its faults, represented the triumph of the democracies against communism. The democratic state won broad legitimacy for its success in taming the instability and inequity of the laissez-faire market. The economy not only grew, but it grew more equal. In the twentieth century, the domain of rights was expanded to bring in formerly excluded citizens, notably African-Americans and women.

I am hoping this was an editor's editing which led to the second and third sentences in the above paragraph. When I read Kuttner saying there was a "remarkable renaissance" of "liberalism" in the post-WWII period, my mind immediately flashed on the post-war anti-Communist hysteria and the start of the Cold War National Security State. These were not a renaissance of liberalism, but the start of a decades-long project of reaction. That the New Deal era echoed a few decades into the post-war period is more a recognition of the great success of the New Deal era which had to be dismantled step by step. Kuttner is also way too blithe in saying "the Cold War, for all its faults, represented a triumph of the democracies against communism." This sentence reveals a remarkable tone deafness to, if not ignorance of, the disgusting post-war activities of the American Empire, and a naiveté as to what caused the Soviet Union to collapse from within.

 It is most amusing to recognize there is more than enough to argue about with those who believe in the best of Enlightenment era values without having to spend much time arguing with Dark Age and feudal era apologists, such as Patrick Daneen. The best book on the subject Daneen tackles is Michael Harrington's The Politics at God's Funeral, published in 1983.  Harrington gets at precisely what I am hopefully articulating here, and does so without the nostalgia for a pre-Enlightenment era.  Sadly, I don't see anyone engaging with Harrington's works, especially this topic.  This is true of even young DSAers. As we descend into the madness which rejects democratic and republican (lower case, please!) values, we need Harrington's voice more than ever.  Too bad we are not going to get it.