January 16th, 2017
By Robert Slayton.
Donald Trump tweeted that Meryl Street was “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood,” notwithstanding the fact that she has been nominated for an Academy Award nineteen times, the most in history.
Here’s his view on some other folks:
Pablo Picasso—“Can anyone figure out what his paintings are about? I can’t even pronounce that Spanish one.”
Leonardo DaVinci—“So she’s got a grin, so what?”
Ernest Hemingway—“So not macho. My hands are bigger, if you know what I mean.”
Scott Fitzgerald—“In my opinion, Gatsby just wasn’t that great.”
Charlie Chaplin—“What a goofy walk! Vastly overrated.”
Cary Grant—“What’s this crap about Judy. Another foreigner on a visa.”
Tom Hanks—“He should have said, ’Life is like box of Trump chocolates.’ No class.”
Franklin Roosevelt—“Watch while I make fun of him.”
Teddy Roosevelt—“What a misshapen guy. Blind as a bat and needs dental work something awful.”
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July 20th, 2016
By Robert Slayton.
There is considerable discussion of outsourcing American jobs to foreign countries, especially Asian nations like China and India, as well as to Mexico. Although it has been a powerful issue for years, there is renewed attention since Donald Trump has made it a major feature of his campaign. In his speech in western Pennsylvania, Trump declared that American companies were “moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas,” and unless steps are taken “the inner cities will remain poor, the factories will remain closed.” What Trump and other advocates have missed, however, is the extraordinary amount of outsourcing going on within our borders, and its effect on the middle class.
The LA Times brought new light to this situation with a major piece, “Outsourcing Puts Squeeze on Middle Class.” In an introductory anecdote, the article described the fortunes of Alfred Molena. Working for Bank of America as an ATM repairman, Molena made $45,000 a year and had health insurance and a 401(k) plan. Though hardly a lavish salary, it was enough to support his wife and two children, and take an occasional vacation. Mr. Molena, an immigrant and without a high school diploma, thus mirrored what Mr. Trump heralds as the golden years for Americans, when a good job in a union shop, in industries like auto and steel, guaranteed a decent wage for the working and middle class.
In 2008, however, B of A subcontracted the work to Diebold, Inc., a domestic firm with its cheaper labor. Molena now drives a long distance truck for $30,000 a year and has no life insurance: “I cannot afford it.” He lost his job to domestic, not foreign outsourcing.
The Times reports that this is a common, not extraordinary story: “From human resource workers and customer service reps to cooks, janitors and security guards, many occupations have been farmed out by employers over the years. No one knows their total numbers, but rough estimates based on the growth of temporary-help and other business and professional service payrolls suggest that one in six jobs today are subcontracted, or almost 20 million positions, said Lynn Reaser, economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.”
These kinds of domestic, not foreign-based cutbacks have always been a part of American business. Andrew Carnegie came to dominate steel production in this country by lowering the production cost, and thus the price of his product. He continually said he wanted to see figures on cost, not on profits, since attention to one would automatically produce the other. I suspect this approach drove his partners crazy.
But research by David Brody, the great labor historian, showed that Carnegie attained his most important results by cutting the cost of labor, an area in which he achieved greater success than any other.
So it was then, so it is now. “If a firm wants to save labor costs, outsourcing is just a way of resetting wages and expectations,” said Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich.
As in Carnegie’s day, the effect is potent. “Rosemary Batt and other researchers at Cornell University found that large employers at subcontracted call centers, for instance, paid their workers about 40% less than comparable workers employed in-house at large firms, not including the value of health and retirement benefits.”
This is not just a concern for unskilled workers. Mr. Molena had a highly skilled trade. Doctors and lawyers now frequently are in part-time, piecework positions.According to Forbes, 51% of faculty in higher education are part-time. This is all domestic outsourcing, hiring part-time workers with lower wages and benefits to replace full time employees.
What can be done to address this situation? For many disposed workers, training is often ineffective. Enrolling someone in a program not linked to industry’s needs is a waste of money and the client’s time, and produces well-justified frustration. Years ago, however, the City of Big Shoulders ran the Illinois Retail Academy through a community college, targeting welfare recipients. The program was wildly successful moving individuals into jobs with some of the best stores in Chicago. But it had started with major industry buy-in, with the curriculum designed by the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
The other major effort should be in unionization. As in the glorified-by-conservatives 1950s, when unions achieved the wages and benefits that lifted workers to full citizenship, so they could now fight for part-time workers.
Clearly this will be harder with part-time workers, who do not identify themselves as sharing the fate of the companies that employ them. But there have been successful organizing campaign of graduate assistants, a group that is incredibly temporary and also incredibly vulnerable to pressure.
A better example would be the Pullman car porters. These men were hired on the basis of their ability to be accommodating, to care for the needs of others. If ever there was a group that was not inclined to stand up to management, this was it. Yet A. Phillip Randolph managed to create the successful Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and achieve better conditions.
Domestic, not foreign outsourcing is a major problem for America. The stakes are incredibly high. As the LA Times concludes, “The growth of outsourcing partly explains why so many millions of Americans have tumbled down the economic ladder. As a result, the middle class no longer constitutes a majority.”
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June 24th, 2016
By Robert Slayton.
In many ways Hillary Clinton is a paradox, someone who does not fit our standard configuration of how a politician performs and what skills they bring to a successful career. Yet she is now a presumptive candidate for the presidency of the United States from one of the two major political parties. An unexpected source of historical analysis provides some, although not all, explanations as to why Secretary Clinton has come so far.
A recent biography of Richard Nixon, of all people, offers some insight into this subject. Whereas most biographers chronicle the details of their subject’s life, Evan Thomas, in Being Nixon: A Man Divided, starts instead with a tantalizing question: how did Richard Nixon, with a terrible shortage of the social graces that most pols command in abundance, get elected to the nation’s highest office by popular vote, twice? Thomas wrote, “One wonders how someone who preferred to be alone, who often seemed so ill at ease in company, chose as his life’s calling a profession that requires constant attention to others—in the stereotype of the classic pol, endless glad-handing, schmoozing, shoulder-squeezing, and baby-kissing.”
The author starts by documenting Richard Nixon’s astounding lack of people skills. His prime example: during the 1970 elections, Nixon was in St. Petersburg when a policeman who was part of the presidential motorcade had his cycle flip over and was severely injured. “Nixon rushed from his limousine to express his sympathies. As was his way, he didn’t know what to say, blurting to the policeman who lay bleeding on the ground, ‘Do you like your work?’”
Yet RMN still enjoyed a long political career with many victories. Thomas claims Nixon achieved these milestones by dint of advanced political competancy and very hard work: “politics…was something at which he could succeed. He may have lacked the natural gifts of the smooth sophisticates…but by dint of shrewdness and hard work, he could work around, compensate, overcome….Nixon possessed a long-range vision….”
But much like Nixon, she brings to her candidacy clear assets: top political skills, a long career resulting in more and more varied experience than most seeking the presidency, the ability to work—and fight—in different arenas. Also, one other trait she shares with the 37th president: a pronounced ability to overcome opposition and persevere, what Thomas called, “a great capacity to accept discomfort and endure blows.” Employing this quiver of resources, Hillary Clinton, like Richard Nixon, may reach the highest office.
Conservatives will now leap on this analogy, declaring that she exhibits one other trait of the Nixon years, that of the profound corruption that lead to his downfall, and that will inevitably lead to hers. But a close reading of Thomas’ book also makes clear other, fundamental differences that explain Nixon’s demise and rebuts any argument that Mrs. Clinton will follow in those ignoble footsteps. He argued that Nixon’s disaster stemmed, not from any fundamental trait of dishonesty, but from an overwhelming self-pity, insecurity, and self-doubt, character flaws that lead to the terrible crimes of his administration. But Hillary Clinton exhibits few of these symptoms. The right claims instead that she is anything but insecure, depicting her as arrogant and driven. Based on their own claims, it is unlikely that she will fall into a similar funk of profound proportions.
There is one other fundamental way that she differs from her predecessor, and that is their respective genders. And that may be the most significant factor of them all in explaining her rise to the top despite all odds.
A remarkable article by Ezra Klein that raised the same issues as the Thomas biography bore the title, “It’s Time to Admit Hillary Clinton is an Extraordinarily Talented Politician”. But Klein wrote, “it would be impossible, and dishonest, to not recognize gender as a central, defining, complicated, and often invisible force in this election. It is one of the factors that shaped Hillary Clinton, and it is one of the factors that shapes how we respond to her.” He pointed out that presidential campaigns favor male traits, which disadvantages a woman. “Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both excellent yellers, and we love them for it. Nobody likes it when Hillary Clinton yells….research shows people don’t like it when women yell in general….Even though women are interrupted more often and talk less than men, people still think women talk more.” Still, even among the small pool of women politicians on the national stage, Clinton comes up short: “It is not that no women possess a public magnetism; Sarah Palin could rock a room, and Elizabeth Warren can work a crowd.”
Thus the key to Clinton’s success, therefore, and what makes her unique in the history of American presidential politics, is her female-centered approach, eschewing the standard male route. Klein described how, “Clinton employed a less masculine strategy to win. She won the Democratic primary by spending years slowly, assiduously, building relationships with the entire Democratic Party. She relied on a more traditionally female approach to leadership: creating coalitions, finding common ground, and winning over allies….This work is a grind — it’s not big speeches, it doesn’t come with wide applause, and it requires an emotional toughness most human beings can’t summon.”
But as a result of this gendered strategy, “Clinton is arguably better…than anyone in American politics today. In 2000, she won a Senate seat that meant serving amidst Republicans who had destroyed her health-care bill and sought to impeach her husband. And she kept her head down, found common ground, and won them over. ‘We have become, actually, good friends,’ said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who served as one of the Republican prosecutors during impeachment. ‘And that was a surprise to both of us.’”
Hillary Rodham Clinton brings an astounding and sometimes unique set of qualifications to her candidacy, some harkening back to past presidents, while others are unprecedented. If she succeeds, she may change our definition of what it means to be a winning politician.
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March 16th, 2016
By Robert Slayton.
Things do not look good for the Republican Party this year. Split between three factions–Populists and Trump, conservatives and evangelicals for Cruz, and an establishment candidate–it looks like the GOP will split badly, possibly letting a unified Democratic Party into the White House.
Can they recover from this? A quick reading of history implies the answer may be ‘yes.’ The classic conservative setback, Goldwater’s devastating defeat in 1964, was followed by Republican victories in 1968 and 1972 (the later another landslide year, this time for the GOP), and soon after, the Reagan revolution. A closer look at historical evidence, however, reveals far grimmer prospects for the Republicans.
There are a number of precedents that point up the problems they face, and may portend their future. The most obvious is 1912, when the Republicans split wide open, with Teddy Roosevelt launching a third party and polling substantially better than the GOP establishment’s candidate, William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson won that year in what is generally considered a reflection of the unified, progressive mood of the country.
Both Teddy and Wilson were reformers; if we combine their totals we get a sense of national sentiment, an indication of support for change vs. Taft’s standpat conservatism. And the voting results revealed a clear mandate: W/R v. Taft popular vote, 10,414,893-3,487,937; electoral, 523-8. In other words, at that time a candidate could ride a consistent national sentiment to success. Then, as early as 1916 the Republican Party came together, with both Roosevelt and Taft supporting the nominee: Charles Evans Hughes, governor of the biggest state (New York) and a progressive reformer who fit the mood of the times. Hughes lost to Wilson in 1916, but ran an extremely close race (unlike Taft in 1912), and revived the party.
There are two reasons this scenario is unlikely to repeat itself today. First and most important, there is no clear trend as to which direction the nation’s mood and politics is heading, unlike in the 20th century. The grim reality is that the Democratic-Republican fights we have seen recently, and the GOP’s factionalization, accurately reflects a fragmented public sentiment. The nation is groping agonizingly for a new identity and a new ethos in the 21st century, amidst profound shifts both at home with the technology revolution, and abroad with deep changes in the world order. In other words, politics is as chaotic as the public spirit today. There is no consensus attitude for the GOP to coalesce around, as they did after 1964.
The other reason this analogy fails is that there is no public figure likely to unify the three wings of the Republican Party mentioned at the outset, as Hughes did in 1916. Quick quiz: name a candidate both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz could back. Easy answer: there is none.
A more likely scenario resembles the Democratic Party after 1896, a year when they split over the Populist revolt and ran William Jennings Bryan, representing Midwestern and Southern farmers. After that episode they stuck with the insurgent faction for twelve years; in the four elections between 1896 and 1908 the Dems actually ran Bryan three times, again and again and again, unable to move on. They then finally won with Woodrow Wilson, a Northern governor tied to the prevailing reform sentiment, in 1912 and 1916. After that the Dems lost every election till 1932 and Franklin Roosevelt’s candidacy, riding not just dissatisfaction with a country in depression, but also the demographic revolution of immigrants and urban voters that had been building for years.
Again, this story brings little hope for beleaguered Republicans today. As noted above, unlike 1912 when there was a clear mood that Wilson/TR represented, the country is fragmented now. It is also unlikely that they will settle on a single mainstream candidate as they did with Hughes in 1916. FDR’s victory is an even more ominous marker, however. The major demographic trends in the nation right now, as in the 1930s, are introducing waves of new voters opposed to the party of Lincoln, not supporting a party comeback, as happened for the Democrats in 1932.
The best analogy, therefore, may be from a state election rather than national contests. In 1994 the California GOP under Governor Pete Wilson launched Proposition 187, which denied state services like health care and public education to illegal immigrants. Although it passed, courts struck it down later. More importantly, it transformed politics in the Golden State, branding Republicans as the anti-immigrant party and essentially nullifying their future. At present no member of their party holds statewide office, and their registration keeps dropping. This is the complete reversal of what FDR and the Dems accomplished eighty years ago, alienating and not harnessing a changed electorate.
Yet this year holds the possibility for the national Republican Party to repeat what it’s California branch accomplished in 1994. Without a national leader to reshape their image, if the GOP gets branded as the party of Trump for emerging blocks of Latin-American and Asian voters, and the party of Cruz for millennials, their prospects for the future look dark.
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February 27th, 2016
By Robert Slayton.
There is a growing consensus after South Carolina that Donald Trump may well get the Republican nomination. One key piece of evidence (besides his electoral victories): Jeb Bush, scion and pillar of the traditional wing and Trump’s most outspoken foe, went down to ignominious defeat; Republican voters are rejecting their party’s establishment in droves. Why is that?
Based on statements by Trump supporters, he is the only one standing up for them, expressing their feelings. They have lots of anger, lots of grievances. But above all, there is a sense that the deck is stacked against them in so many ways: by the rich, by ineffectual politicians, by immigrants supported by liberals. An article in the Christian Science monitor quoted South Carolinians on why they supported a New York businessman. Dianne Lawson of Ridgeland, S.C. explained, “He says what a lot of us want to say but are afraid to say.” Look at how Trump is wildly cheered when he rails against businesses that send American jobs offshore, and vows to block these Republican stalwarts; it is one of his biggest applause lines. This is not in front of Democrats, but with Republican voters in every state he has campaigned in.
Yet how has the Republican establishment responded to this deep and widespread outrage on the part of their constituents? More than any other concept, for a number of years, the Republican Party has stressed one idea as the single solution to the problems of this nation: cut taxes, especially on the rich. No job training, no infrastructure projects, nothing for those misfiiting to the new economy. It is this disconnect between the pain of Republican voters and leadership’s response that provided Donald Trump his opening, which the mogul then drove a truck though. Why this shortsightedness, this narrowness, that explains so much? You can thank Grover Norquist.
In 1985 Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform, a taxpayer advocacy group whose founding principle is “a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today.” Their foremost accomplishment is the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” which asks candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. Before the November 2012 election, 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans signed on, making it the fundamental platform of the Republican Party, almost unanimously. An August 2015 article in the Washington Post bore the title, “Nearly All the GOP Candidates Bow Down to Grover Norquist.”
There was enormous danger here, and not for the obvious reason that tax policy is far more complex than a single simple solution. The real threat to the Republican Party was that by focusing on this one item, it failed to develop a full panoply of solutions (some of which, but not all, required public monies), failed to develop a national platform with a wide range of proposals. Going into this election cycle they still campaigned too much on the tax package, not enough on responses to the legitimate anguish so many of their voters were experiencing.
But one man did see the need, and produced a range of answers, on every aspect of American life today. Republican voters responded with vigor, and Donald Trump may well be their standard bearer this fall. Party leaders can thank Grove Norquist if that happens.
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September 2nd, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
A joke goes like this: two men emigrate from Bangladesh. Coming to America with their families, they fall in love with this country. otal, unrestrained love. So they make a bet to get together in a year and the winner will be the one who has become the best American. One year later, they meet. The first gleefully reports: “I’ve got my own business in the tech field. My kids are doing well in school. Today we took the boys to Little League practice and the family went for lunch at McDonalds. Tonight we’re going to one of their friends’ birthday parties at Chucky Cheese.” The second simply says, “Drop dead, raghead!” This tells something important about the current election.
Everyone is talking about Donald Trump and why so many Republicans back him; party leaders especially are tearing their hair out. As the New York Times put it, “Mr. Trump is outperforming his Republican rivals with constituencies they were widely expected to dominate.” Ted Cruz, for example, was sure to win over Tea Party supporters; among these individuals, however, Trump beats him 26 percent to 13 percent or double. Among evangelicals he leads former preacher Mike Huckabee 21 percent to 12. Jeb Bush expected to win over Republican moderates; they support Trump 22 percent to Bush’s 16.
Trump’s appeal has many sources. Frequently cited is his outspokenness, his ability to break out of politicalspeak and express the feelings of everyday Republican voters. One woman interviewed for the Times’ article explained, “Even if he doesn’t win, he’s teaching other politicians to stop being politicians.” Also cited is the fact that unlike any other candidate for either party’s nomination, he can’t be bought, using his own funds so far and eschewing donations.
But two factors more than any other explain Trump’s rise. Both depend on a core argument. Many Americans feel the country is headed in the wrong direction, as high as two-thirds to 70 percent in some polls. Republican voters especially are worried–deeply worried–about the fate and status of the country they love, and feel it is in decline. Complementing this sentiment is guilt over their own possible role in this backslide: are they good enough, smart enough, entrepreneurial enough, tough enough to make it in the world anymore? In the quiet of their thoughts, they nervously ask, just how responsible am I, as an individual, for the rise of China and the loss of American prestige? They fear the answers.
And then along comes Trump with the best possible solution. His basic premise is that America is great–GREAT, I tell you–without any doubts whatsoever. And if that’s true, then equally obvious is the next step: that the American people are great too, and can do absolutely anything. Anything at all. So none of this is their fault!
But why all the problems? Forget about answers that involve complex analysis of difficult economic, political, and diplomatic questions. Trump has two solutions that will solve everything.
First, blame the outsider. It’s not our fault, it’s the newest outsiders’. As the joke I cited earlier pointed out, this is a long tradition, and as American as apple pie. Get rid of them–literally, Trump wants to round up and expel over ten million people–and things will get so much better as we purify the population.
Then Trump adds another powerful notion to this mix. All those problems are simply the product of a particularly bad batch of leaders, in both parties. Pay close attention to his rhetoric: America is “great” (just read his ball cap); this country and its people (and every one of his ideas) are “fabulous”, a word he uses quite a bit. Politicians, on the other hand, are not just poor choices or inept. They are “STUPID” (his emphasis–he usually shouts this term) and just plain “morons”.
This is wildly potent stuff. Both of these appeals have one common element. They release concerned Republicans from the burden of an enormous guilt trip. Trump recognizes their worries and plays off these fears beautifully. Yes, he trumpets, you’re right, America is indeed in big trouble (right here in River City!). But you are doing fine; the country is great and so are you. Most important of all, it’s not your fault! None of it! It’s all the product of those outsiders and all the politicians, people in both cases you have no personal contact or identify with, so you can blame without compunction. You’re off the hook. The country can be restored, and you don’t have to get smarter, compete better, change in any way, or even feel the slightest guilt.
Trump is playing to powerful trends. Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for George W. Bush in 2004, observed, “The base of the Republican party is now blue-collar, frustrated white males, and that group is angry at big government and angry at Wall Street.” James Poulos, staff columnist for the conservative Orange County Register, caught this spirit with a recent piece entitled, “Populist Fury on Immigration is Elites’ Fault.” Echoing Trump, Poulos ignores the possibility that anti-immigrant beliefs result, at least in part, from narrow minds or (heaven forbid) bigotry; rather “it’s now impossible to deny that big business and big government have both benefitted from a generation’s worth of undermining the rule of law and growing a national underclass.” Working class border patrolmen are always “great guys,” Trump repeats endlessly, but given bad orders by superiors. It’s all so simple; the leaders did this to us. And so guilt-free.
The reality is Donald Trump is serving up a massive therapy cure for Republicans worried about America and nervous about their own responsibility for these ailments. That’s a powerful appeal.
I honestly don’t know if Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. But he’s not just show. He’s offering something real, something very valuable to his party’s electorate that can’t be laughed off or dismissed. Expect him to be around for a while.
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July 28th, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
Back when I was in grad school, a standard intellectual exercise was to debate whether the foremost cleavage in American society was race or class. Of course the two are linked and reality is complex, but endless hours were spent on these discussions, all across the country. It was a means of sharpening our minds and developing analytical skills.
But for African-Americans this is not theoretical, and it is clear where they stand. Race supersedes everything else as the leading factor that has shaped their lives, and this nation. At the Chicago Urban League in the 1980s I asked a departmental director, an executive and a woman of color, if she felt more strongly about her identity and struggles as a woman or a black person. After about 10 seconds thought, she replied that her identity was more linked to being a black than one based on gender; the choice for her was clear. Commenting on a different nexus, James Baldwin explained,
A black gay person who is a sexual conundrum to society is already, long before the question of sexuality comes into it, menaced and marked because he’s black or she’s black. The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live.
And this creates a problem for Bernie Sanders. For his emphasis is just as definitive, and it is on the other side. Bernie has also made a decision from early on, and for him, class is the crucial issue in American society.
Let me be very, very clear: I am definitively not claiming that Sanders is biased or racially insensitive. His record is clear, of supporting racial justice going back to the 1960s, when he participated in the March on Washington. And many efforts since then.
Nevertheless, his great issue is still economic, not racial; it defines him. And for those who look at issues through another prism, that emphasis is not what they are looking for. A recent New York Times article analyzing the lack of excitement about Sanders in the black community argued that a leading reason for this phenomenon was that he comes from a state that is 95 percent white and has not built up a record of championing black causes.
But without noticing it, the article’s authors also showcased the priority of class over race. Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, argued, “his message — the need for more good-paying jobs, and opening up higher education regardless of wealth and family background — will have strong appeal with African-Americans and other voters.” Note the language: His candidate would knock down barriers based on “wealth and family background.” Those stemming from race would drop as well, in the course of this struggle, but they would not be the primary focus. That won’t fly among black voters, who see things very differently.
Yet Weaver accurately represents his candidates understanding of what challenges are most important in America today. According to the New York Times‘ article,
Mr. Sanders, in a recent interview, said he believed his call for a ‘political revolution’ to change an array of politics, such as ending tuition at public colleges, could win over black voters in the months ahead.
Clearly in Sanders’ understanding of how the world works class trumps race, and blacks will recognize that over time. Except in reality they don’t and they won’t, because of their life experiences and history in the United States.
And that creates an enormous problem for the Sanders campaign. African-Americans are clearly one of the most important voting blocs in the Democratic coalition. Yet the first paragraph of the New York Times‘ article ended with, “Black voters have shown little interest in him (i.e. Sanders).”
And why should they? For both African-Americans and Bernie Sanders the games we played in grad school are quite real — and defining — and they have chosen opposite sides. Bernie Sanders is sincere and fighting many righteous fights, but for black voters he is on the wrong side of their fundamental sense of who they are in this country.
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July 25th, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
Donald Trump keeps making headlines, and thoughtful Republicans beware the possible impact he may have on their party. George Will, who in 2012 referred to Trump as a “bloviating ignoramus,” this year accurately compared his target to Todd Akin, the congressman who did so much harm with his “legitimate rape” comments. Will claimed that Trump would “disrupt things”, that he couldn’t do more damage if he was working for the Democrats intentionally. Lindsey Graham branded the mogul a “demagogue” and “a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party.”
Trump is accused, by these commentators and many others, of doing something new, of mobilizing the worst elements of America, using appeals to sensationalism and nativism. The very fact that he is doing so well, according to this analysis, could singlehandedly change the nature of what the Republicans stand for. “I’m very worried about where we’re headed as a party,” Graham cautioned. In fact, Trump is only a vulgar manifestation of the Republican strategy for decades. They have been courting this constituency for half a century.
As far back as 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater had a mixed voting record on civil rights issues. While his presidential campaign did not focus that much on race, implicit in his libertarian platform was a sense that government should not interfere in these matters.
What for Goldwater was implicit, Nixon made explicit, and began the still current Republican practice of using racially charged code words, what some commentators have labeled “racial dog whistles.” While eschewing blunt terms, the party made clear what sentiments it was inflaming. Nixon’s Southern Strategy was the start of this; as a University of Michigan report put it, the candidate would appeal to Southern whites (and some Northerners as well) by playing on their “disaffection with liberal democratic racial and welfare policies.” An article in Salon explained, “The trick, then, was to wink and nod at white Southerners with signals that were simultaneously nebulous and unmistakable.” Dick Gregory claimed that “law and order”, one of Nixon’s campaign themes, was just another way of saying the n-word.
Ronald Reagan then turned this into an art form. As early as August 1980, while campaigning for his first presidential term, Reagan chose an unusual place for a major party speech, the Neshoba County Fair in rural Mississippi. While seemingly an out of the way site for an important address, the location held a long history, as it was Philadelphia MS, Neshoba’s county seat, where three civil rights workers — Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner — had been murdered. At that time, Paul Johnson, the state’s governor, humorously dismissed the incident, “Maybe they went to Cuba.”
Sixteen years later Reagan appealed to the same sentiments as Johnson, telling the crowd bluntly, “I believe in states’ rights and I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level.” Technically his topic was welfare, but everyone — then and still now — knew that “states’ rights” was shorthand for rolling back racial reforms, or as the Salon piece put it, “the rallying cry for every politician who’d fought civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s… The crowd responded with delirious cheers.”
What Reagan began on the campaign trail he made a symphony during his presidency. In 1981 Lee Atwater, Reagan’s campaign manager the year before, said their goal was to speak to “the racist side of the [George} Wallace voter” without turning off mainstream Americans. Instead of racial terms, “you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights.’…” In one of his more famous speeches, President Reagan referred to an African-American male as a “young buck,” using language that harkened back to terms used during slavery and segregation.
Reagan expanded this into policy, a trend that continues in the Republican Party, with devastating results. He vetoed sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid regime, traveling there as well, and turned down the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, though Congress overrode his veto. To this day, the Party has led efforts at the state and national level to limit voting by minorities and the poor.
Despite the claims, Trump is doing nothing new this time. Attendees at his rallies tell reporters they like him because “he has balls,” he “stands up” for their values. The chickens are coming home to roost.
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June 24th, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
South Carolinians, like many residents of formerly Confederate states, claim that the Stars and Bars represents “heritage not hate,” a defense frequently cited. But what, in fact, is that heritage?
Reaching back to the Eighteenth Century, South Carolina carried the distinction of being the first of the thirteen colonies to experience a black majority, where slaves outnumbered their white masters. The results were three fold: a major slave revolt in 1739, the Stono Rebellion, the first on this scale in North America; a tightening of the slave codes so that they were the stiffest of any in the slaveholding area; and a longstanding racial tension, engrained into local culture. Dylann Roof apparently chose Charleston because it “at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.”
This legacy exploded a century later. As crisis built, South Carolina became known, more than any other, as the “firebrand” state, the most committed and aggressive of any in defending slavery, the states’ right, above all others, that caused the South to secede. It was not an accident of history that the opening shots fired in the Civil War, the place where Southerners felt they had to act violently, was at Fort Sumter, Carolina.
In the subsequent era of segregation, one of South Carolina’s greatest statesmen wasPitchfork Ben Tillman, governor and then U.S. Senator from 1895 to 1918. Tillman started as a defender of poor white farmers during the Populist revolt. Having failed in that crusade, he turned to abject racism, explaining simply that the only two fates possible for African Americans were domination or extermination. These South Carolina residents, while clearly inferior to the white man, were not baboons, though some were “so near akin to the monkey that scientists are yet looking for the missing link.” Playing the most vile race card of them all, interracial sex, Tillman declared, “I have three daughters, but, so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed by a tiger or a bear [and die a virgin] than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend.”
In more recent years, it was Joe Wilson, U.S. Congressman for South Carolina’s 2nd District, who surpassed even his most fervent Republican colleagues in disrespect for a black president, when he interrupted Barack Obama’s 2009 speech to yell, “You lie!”
Based on the evidence, the “heritage” this flag stands for is one of continued racism. It is time, therefore, for South Carolina and the South to do what other entities, places like South Africa and Germany, have done to move beyond a troubled past. It is essential that Southerners recognize and rebuff what their ancestors did, something they claim they can never do.
Why not? Their forefathers, for generations, engaged in practices, using the mildest language possible, that was dishonorable. And the other countries cited did exactly that, admitting fully and publicly that part of their heritage was wrong, and must be disowned. The South has never done that. During the debate that led to the compromise that put the Confederate flag on state ground in 1998, Rick Quinn, majority leader of the state House of Representatives called it an “honorable symbol” despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Today, blacks and whites walk down streets named for Confederate leaders, military and political. That is like having German citizens, both Gentile and Jew, traverse boulevards named Goering or Goebbels. Germans have acknowledged what they did and rejected that past. The South has done neither.
I’m not looking for an apology from modern day Southerners, who are part of a far better, far more open society. But until they recognize that their ancestors committed something wrong, that in that region the heritage is in fact tainted, the Confederate flag will continue to fly in a state capitol. Kay Hightower, a member of Emmanuel AME told an LA Times reporter, “People need to take ownership of all the history. And that’s a painful thing to do.” But it is what’s necessary if we’re ever going to get past this.
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March 29th, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
Simply put, the A-10 is the best plane ever designed to support troops in combat. By any nation, anytime. The U.S. Air Force is trying for the second year in a row to get rid of it; there are holes in their arguments.
The A-10 was uniquely designed to assist ground troops in battle. In an age of jets that can fly very high and very fast, this one works low and slow. Instead of going Mach 2, it usually flies at 350 mph. It can enter a combat zone and access what is happening, rather than whisk by and drop bombs on GPS coordinates. And once engaged, it can stay and loiter, unlike any other fixed wing jet airplane in the modern inventory. Thus, the A-10 is uniquely constructed to take punishment so it can get hit and still fight; it was designed to withstand a succession of knocks from a 23mm automatic cannon (US fighter planes, by way of comparison, employ a lesser 20mm cannon for air-to-air defense), and even some from a 57mm cannon, a round powerful enough in WW II to take out tanks.
In battle, the most vulnerable part of the plane is the cockpit, the human-machine interface that controls everything. But the pilot here sits in a titanium enclosure weighing 1,200 pounds, providing substantial protection. All control surfaces, meanwhile, are quadruple redundant; you can shoot out two full systems and the A-10 will still be flying and trying to take you out. For striking power, the Warthog (as the plane is known) has eleven pylons to carry a veritable arsenal of ordinance; right now the Maverick missile is considered its primary tool for helping our troops and taking down the enemy. But most of the attention goes to its 30mm gatling gun, capable of firing at one of two rates: 2,100 or 4,200 rounds per minute (the fastest rifle caliber machine gun in WW II only fired 1,200 rounds per minute; at that speed–a half or even a quarter of the A-10’s weapon–you cannot hear individual shots; it sounds like fabric ripping).
So it can get in the mix like no other plane, and save the lives of U.S. ground troops. U.S. Army Capt. Rudy Varner–who deployed seven times, five in Afghanistan and two in Iraq–feels that A-10 pilots have “the knack of knowing exactly what we’re looking for on the ground….And they can do it in a more responsive fashion than…any other airframe…compared to anything else in the inventory [the A-10] is really unparalleled.”
Now, for the second year in a row, the Air Force wants to scrap the entire A-10 program. The new F-35 will be a multiple use aircraft that will take on air support instead. And it’s running way over budget. Hence the need for money. So let’s get rid of the A-10.
The Air Force provides two rationales for this change. First, other planes can do the job. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James explained, “close air support is not a plane. It’s a mission.” They will still provide air support, with fast movers like the F-15 and F-16, and later, the F-35. Second, in this age of tight budgets, the service cannot afford single purpose craft dedicated to one function.
There are several counterarguments. If one accepts the importance of the mission (which the Air Force swears it does), there is no multiple function aircraft that can do the job nearly as effectively, especially not the high speed jets proposed to carry this till the F-35 comes on line. But that won’t be until 2023, at the earliest date; for eight years there won’t be a plane designed for this mission, and even after that, it won’t be done as well. The projected substitute, the F-35, doesn’t have the protection, doesn’t carry the ordinance, doesn’t have the gun, can’t loiter to see how the battle works out, without getting blasted out of the sky. Unless, of course, it goes at Mach 2, in which case nothing on the ground will hit it, and it can’t see or hit anything except by remote control. There is just no plane that comes close to what the A-10 does to help soldiers fighting for their lives, not now and not in the future.
As to the argument that they can’t afford a single mission plane. Right now the most expensive fighter plane in the history of the world is the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force’s beloved air superiority master. Or to put it a different way, a single mission plane that does what it is supposed to do better than anything else. The Air Force fought long and hard to protect this one.
The reality is that the service heads never liked the A-10. The official nickname is “Thunderbolt II” but everyone calls it the Warthog, an ugly animal if ever there was one. In a service dominated by fighter jocks and bomber barons, there is no love for a plane that is not glamorous in mission or appearance.
So no one loves it. Except for the pilots and the troops on the ground. A U.S. Army colonel told how “most, if not all …soldiers that have been on the ground in a fight take real comfort when A-10s are inbound or overhead.” One senior senator on the Armed Services Committee commented, “I’ve yet to meet a general, an Army commander whose responsibility is with the troops on the ground, that believes a B-1 or an F-16 replaces the capability of an A-10.”
But we’ll let a grunt have the last word. Master Sgt. Charlie Keebaugh, president of the Tactical Air Control Party Association, dryly and accurately noted, “The people who are saying this have never been shot at, have never been on a battlefield and had to employ that asset.”
Protect our troops. Keep the A-10.
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March 11th, 2015
By Robert Slayton.
Rick Santorum, a potential Republican presidential candidate, recently commented on immigration policy, providing examples from our history. “I’m not saying shut [unskilled immigration] down, but I will tell you, the last time we had this kind of surge in immigration was the Great Wave between 1880 and 1920, and after that Great Wave, there were two bills that were passed, 1921 and 1924, and they both passed almost unanimously in the House and Senate,” Santorum explained on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The candidate defended those who voted for these bills, “because they put politics aside. They did what was best for the American worker.”
Santorum was referring to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924. What did these bills actually legislate, and for what purpose?
The 1921 measure set a total cap on the number of immigrants allowed in each year at roughly 350,000. It also set a quota for each country, derived from their percentage of the population.
But the bill set up a rigged system. Each country’s quota was based, not only on their percentage of the then current population, but also on how many Americans were descended from that group’s original settlers.
Thus, some nations received unusually large quotas, despite minimal immigration in the past few years before the bill’s enactment. If ten people had arrived in 1750 from Great Britain, the number of that original cluster’s descendants would be huge by the twentieth century. And the base year was 1910, set back a decade to exclude from the figures all those who had recently arrived from war-torn Europe after the sea lanes were safe again in 1918. This was designed to keep out, not immigrants in general, but certain nationalities.
These restrictions were not sufficient to Congress. In 1924 they revised this with another immigration act, even tougher. This one cut the overall yearly figure in half, to 165,000.
Even more important, it moved the base year to 1890. By doing so, they totally excluded from quota calculations not just recent arrivals, but the entire generation of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The quotas for some nations dropped substantially under this revision, went way up for others. Thus, these bills were specifically designed to keep out, not immigrants in general, but immigrants from specific places, places that were undesirable. Places like Italy and Poland and Russia and Greece. Places that were Catholic or Jewish or Eastern Orthodox.
Rick Santorum just endorsed measures created, not to save jobs, but to block the arrival of people the framers did not want in this country. People like many of our grandparents.
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October 5th, 2014
One of the problems with confronting and dealing with racism (and sexism) in this country is that we’re locked into old stereotypes. This prevents us from recognizing new forms of prejudice, and blocks efforts to confront these practices and change them. If they don’t exist, no one will ever do anything about them.
To the general public, it is clear where the problems are, what the bad guys look like. In issues of race, the culprits are the cops; police officers have long been at the flash point of racial tension. Back in the heyday of the civil rights movement, it was a Southern sheriff with a fat gut and aviator sunglasses, with his dogs and water cannon. In the 1990s it was LAPD officers beating Rodney King. Today it is cops in a small Missouri town shooting Michael Brown. The men who suppress women, on the other hand, wear suits and smoke cigars.
Back when I worked at the Chicago Urban League we used to talk about racism by habit, rather than by intent. Prejudice committed by the nicest people, who would disdain any use of the “n” word or any attempt to block equal access. All they do is what we all do, hang out with people like themselves. And hire them and give contracts to them as well. And by so doing, exclude others.
Thus, the new face of bias is not Mississippi but in tech industry places like California’s Silicon Valley. Inequality prevails there at every level. A broad survey of overall hiring in the giants of the tech industry, by USA Today in August 2014, clearly shows this pattern. Apple has a gender ratio of 70-30, men to women, which roughly prevails at every firm looked at. The home of the iPhone also has a workforce 55% white, 11% Hispanic, and 7% black. And this is the best in the business, courtesy of increased diversity, relatively speaking, at its retail stores.
Look at the figures for other brand name firms. As noted, gender levels are all about the same; Yahoo is best at 62-37. But their workforce is only 4% Hispanic, 2% black, as is Facebook’s. Google is a bit lower, at 3% Hispanic, 2% black.
It is not just the average worker either. It goes all the way up to what entrepreneurs face, trying to woo investors to high tech startups. Wired ran an article that opened with the story of Kathryn Tucker, founder of RedRover, an app for kids’ events. At a tech event in NYC she pitched her idea, only to find a potential angel rejected it because “he didn’t invest in women”. Far from shy, he explained, “I don’t like the way women think…They haven’t mastered linear thinking.” As evidence he described how his wife had problems organizing her to-do lists. He concluded with a big compliment for Ms. Tucker: “You’re more male.”
Randall Munroe, author of What If? blamed this, not on any overt desire to discriminate, but on a kind of “nerd pride or revenge of the nerds attitude”. The folks previously excluded can now get to work solely with their own kind. “This can easily become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that can make a community steadily more homogeneous and exclusionary.” And block the hiring of other peoples, not out of overt prejudice but through habit, with the results the same as they would be in a segregated society.
Some firms are trying to do better. Google’s HR department (called People Operations in California softspeak), has been working to alert the whole company to the role of hidden biases. But we need to do more. Tech is too big, with millions of employees, and is the employer of the future. And they’re not alone. This kind of invisible bias is going on across the board.
A lot can be done to tackle this problem. Start with data. The old term was patterns and practices; individual acts may or not be prejudicial, but long running patterns cannot be ignored. Education can help; alert people to what is happening, usually as the result of unintentional acts. There can also be efforts to build capacity, establishing programs to increase interest in STEM fields among non-traditional groups.
But first, we have to recognize what is going on. Bias today is not just a cop misusing his power. It’s the tech guy down the block, and it’s your local bank official. Noam Cohen titled a NY Times article on pop culture, which referred in passing to bias in the tech industry, “We’re All Nerds Now”. Change starts here.
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March 24th, 2014
There’s something there, I swear it! The satellite saw it! Really, there’s something there!
Last night, both CNN and MSNBC spent hours on how a satellite had spotted something in the Indian Ocean. That was it. Just that. But it sufficed as a rationale for ignoring Crimea, Affordable Health Care, Rand Paul and Chris Christie.
Of course, every once in a while they mentioned that no one knew at that point if it was airplane wreckage. Or a bunch of boots. Or anything else. But that qualifier was contradicted by the sheer time devoted to this revelation. If this news wasn’t important yet, if we didn’t know what it was, why devote so much precious air time to it?
Here’s how the New York Times (hereinafter referred to as “real journalists”) covered the same story. The headline read, “Two Weeks After a Plane Crash, Debris Would Be Only a Modest Clue, Experts Say.” Later, a “real journalist” pointed out that “two weeks after the crash, there is certain to be less of the debris on the surface, and what remains is more dispersed and further from the clues that investigators really want…”
Citing the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed in 2009, after five days experts estimated that the debris would have drifted 15 miles away, quite a distance. However, they actually found it 30 miles away, and in a different direction. The article also noted that the important parts of a plane sink right away, while floating debris drifts on the currents for many miles, further throwing off investigators.
So why the coverage? CNN, which has had mixed results lately, scored a giant success with this story. This wasn’t about news; it was about ratings.
Worst of all, CNN’s Don Lemon had a regular hour-long broadcast devoted to the all the theories being bandied about on social media. Pandering, in other words.
In the movie Network, executive Diana Christensen, played by Fay Dunaway, decides to highlight Sybil the Soothsayer as the star of a news show. Is CNN far behind?
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March 12th, 2014
The Right wants us to do so much more on the world scene. We should be intervening in so many places, they argue, and any failure to do so signifies inept and gutless leadership, a symptom of America’s decline. The list of world spots where our military should be fighting includes at least Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan for starters.
There are numerous spokesmen for this viewpoint, powerful ones, with considerable access to the media. Harvard professor Niall Ferguson wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. was experiencing “the great taper,” a term taken from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke when he called for a slowdown in that institution’s efforts. Ferguson pointed out that, “it is not only U.S. monetary policy that is being tapered. Even more significant is the ‘geopolitical taper.'” As a prime example, he claims that, “Syria has been one of the great fiascoes of post-World War II American foreign policy. When President Obama might have intervened effectively, he hesitated. When he did intervene, it was ineffectual… The result of U.S. inaction is a disaster.” The title of his article: “America’s Global Retreat.”
Much of this rhetoric is overblown. In 1949, when Chaing Kai-Shek’s corrupt regime was defeated by Mao’s communists, the Right lambasted Truman for the “fall of China,” clearly America’s greatest foreign policy disaster. The list of these imagined milestones is amazingly long.
There are a number of problems with this approach. Most glaring of all, it fails to recognize that we cannot be everywhere, that there are places where our opinion simply does not matter.
The notion, for example, that we could have dictated outcomes in a global event like China going communist was farfetched. As the China historian John King Fairbank put it:
The illusion that the United States could have shaped China’s destiny assumes that we Americans can really call the tune if we want to, even among 475 million people in… a subcontinent 10,000 miles away.
Second, the Right’s worldview denies people in third world countries any sense of agency, any consideration that they should determine their own destiny, rather than have it imposed on them by a superpower. This is a lesson we should have learned in Vietnam, but it seems to have been lost by later generations, especially by those in the Bush White House, their allies in Congress, and modern day successors.
As the conservative columnist Conor Friedersdorf pointed out, writing in the even more conservative Orange County Register, House majority leader Eric Cantor is a member of this cadre. In a recent speech at Virginia Military Institute, Cantor “sketched a foreign policy agenda open to waging war in four Middle Eastern countries.” According to Friedersdorf, “Cantor believes America should still be fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan… He criticized President Obama for failing to intervene in Syria… And he’s open to the possibility of bombing Iran’s nuclear program, despite intelligence reports showing that a… strike would merely delay, not prevent, Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon….” Not stopping there, “In the same speech, Cantor suggested that America should have intervened earlier in Libya, and that it should play a larger role in Tunisia.”
It is fortunate that there are sane voices rebutting this adventurism, on all sides. That columnist wrote, “if the GOP establishment persists in espousing views more in line with defense contractors than rank-and-file conservatives, they may succeed in throwing the 2016 election to the Democrats. Americans are tired of spending money in the Middle East… More than that, they’re tired of seeing our troops bleed and die there.”
The worst consequence of the war hawks, however, is their failure to recognize our greatest weapon in the modern era — the soft power of American ideals. And then, they often oppose and block its employment, neutering our best case for leadership.
Thus, while we might not choose, or be able, to intervene everywhere, we can still influence events by living up to our own highest values, by presenting a thriving democracy that fights for individual rights, for free speech, and for the citzenry’s right to choose their own government. These are principles that win victories.
But too often, this effort is defeated by the Right. Take the example of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. It has been ratified by 141 countries, and is actively backed by former president George H. W. Bush, veteran’s groups, and businesses. That list includes such noted liberal groups as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Wounded Warrior Project, the United States Chamber of Commerce, plus Coca-Cola, Walmart and IBM. And why not? After all, the measure is based on the Americans With Disability Act of 1990.
The treaty is soft power at its finest. The United States should be leading this campaign, presenting itself as a model that other nations choose to follow.
So what happened? Senate Republicans defeated the treaty, adopting the arguments of opponents like former presidential candidate Rick Santorum and the Heritage Foundation. They claimed that signing this treaty would permit UN enforcement over American homeschooling practices, and loosen access to abortion. None of which is true. Richard Thornburgh, attorney general during the first Bush presidency, declared, “There is nothing in this treaty that would allow what these critics allege.”
The war hawks want giant government expenditures, more graves, and an America resented around the world, rather than admired — or followed. They should listen instead to the words of one of the truly great Americans. Though he is talking about aerodynamics, the lesson applies to our foreign policy as well.
Wilbur Wright, inventor of manned flight for the world, wrote, “The best dividends… have invariably come from seeking more knowledge than more power.” That choice still works.
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March 7th, 2014
By Robert Slayton.
I think I’ve found a solution to the debate over open carry laws that will satisfy all sides and answer our many concerns.
That’s right, folks concerned about their safety as they enjoy day to day activities, whether work, school, or just running errands, should buy a tank.
This is really quite possible. One web site, (Tanktownusa.com) explains on its home page that it is “a fully licensed and bonded importer of military vehicles (both soft skinned and armored) of any type or size. We can source almost any jeep, military truck, armored car or tracked vehicle from any location in the world and deliver it directly to your doorstep.”
These folks are really into customer service too, so if you’re not sure what to get, you can depend on them. For prospective buyers, “If you don’t know what your purchasing options are we can help! There is generally a military truck, armored vehicle or tank available for every budget and situation. Once you know your options you can decide which vehicle works best for you, and let us handle the rest! Just ask us how!”
Finally, we have the ultimate stand your ground device. Frankly, if someone ordered me to halt from inside a fifteen ton vehicle with one inch rolled armor plate, I’d freeze. Quickly and totally.
Just think about how many lives this would save. Nobody would challenge a voice from inside a tank, so there would be no provocation, no need for violence.
For those of you concerned about the very real menace of vagrants who might take on a tank, fear not. Armored vehicles, although demilitarized with all guns removed, still have plenty of ports for an AR15 or a Glock. Just in case.
Let me respond to a couple of other possible objections.
What about gas mileage, some of you may ask. How will this affect the environment, pushing around so much weight?
Silly rabbit, most armored vehicles have diesel engines, which everyone knows use less fuel than the gasoline version. Just as a side benefit, that fuel is also a lot less combustible than what we put in our cars now. You don’t ever see a tank burning by the side of the freeway, do you?
And, for those thinking of buying tanks with gasoline engines (the Sherman, e.g.) you could always convert them to a hybrid system. I mean, if you’re going this far, why not pay for a few frills, especially the kind that will improve mileage?
But I can hear objections from a lot of Americans. Tanks are fine for driving locally, but in many suburbs, let alone rural sections, you have to get on a freeway just to reach the 7-11. And tanks are slow. So how will this solve the personal safety problem for our countrymen in these districts?
As always, American technology, bless its soul, has provided the answer. The World War II M18 tank destroyer easily managed 55 miles an hour, making it the fastest armored vehicle in the world prior to the M1 Abrams tank. Some reports claimed it actually went much faster, and they had to put a governor in place to slow down young studs driving these vehicles. Think about running one of these on the interstate; I promise you, no one will pass on the left.
Armored vehicles are the wave of the future, the ultimate stand your ground tool, the solution to so many issues.
You can post your thanks in the comments section.
My last piece began with the words, “Never let it be said that the rich are silent.” That was too modest. Let’s add that they’re tone deaf too.
Tom Perkins got into trouble for comparing attempts to raise taxes on the wealthy to what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany, posing the question, “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?”
Given that the only other creature who would pose such an ignorant question is Rin Tin Tin, he was roundly criticized. Most of us would be embarrassed, and shamed into silence. Perkins publicly apologized.
But somehow I get the feeling the apology was pro forma, and not from the heart. And let’s face it: if you are a Master of the Universe you have a God given right to speak your mind.
Several days later, Perkins made news again. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, asked for an idea that would change the world, he replied if you don’t pay a dollar of taxes you don’t vote. Elaborating on this idea, he argued, “You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?” The audience responded with laughter. Hey, why not? With lines like that, he’d be a smash in Vegas.
But just as claiming the rich are enhanced, the idea that the poor should be disenfranchised is an old one, yet alive and well in America today.
At the start of the twentieth century, with America facing a giant wave of immigration, the fear among conservatives was that those people were becoming citizens and voting. And they couldn’t read English or write it, and they didn’t know anything about the Constitution. Of course, that ignored the fact that these new Americans paid taxes of all sorts; that they worked hard, raised families here, invested in this country in so many ways; and that they followed news and politics in the great wealth of that era’s foreign language newspapers.
Back then, the solution being posed to this terrible immigrant problem was a literacy test, to prove you could sign your name. That would catch all kinds of undesirables!
Al Smith, the great champion of the urban newcomer, was a member of the New York State Legislature when that idea was the rage. He commented that there were plenty of folks up at Sing Sing, because they could not only sign their names, but had shown talent at signing other persons’ names as well.
But now we’re back at it again. Many Red states recently passed id laws, requiring multiple forms of identification to vote, ostensibly to root out voter fraud. Which, just for the record, has rarely if ever occurred in these states.
Now, such documents are standard for middle class, middle age, middle income folks. But they are less common if you’re poor. Or a student (in which case you’re probably poor too). Mr. Perkins’ ideas are no laughing matter today, and examples have been passed far too many times since Barack Obama started winning elections.
There are other variations in play right now. House Republicans tried to pass a rider to the farm bill that would have required anyone who gets food stamps to undergo mandatory drug testing. A poster on Paul Krugman’s blog proposed instead “mandatory drug tests for employees of too-big-to-fail financial institutions, which receive large implicit subsidies.” Krugman noted, “Now that would cause a panic.” My own suggestion is that if they pass a bill requiring that the food stamp poor be drug tested, a rider must mandate that any member of Congress that voted for the bill must also take such tests, and their staffs. Seems only fair.
Perkins claims it’s the rich who are being picked on. Evidence (never his strong suit) indicates it is just the reverse.
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Never let it be said that the rich are silent. In response to criticisms of Tom Perkins, the wealthy are granting media interviews to make the case for how important they are, in spite of all the class warfare attacks they have to endure.
A letter by Perkins to the Wall Street Journal started everything. Perkins wanted to “call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich'”. The headline read, “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?” Mostly what this missive proves is that you can be rich but also offensively ignorant, and the desperate need for Mr. Perkins to take a course on the history and operation of the Final Solution.
Such shortcomings, however, did not dissuade wealthy Americans from coming to the aid of their spokesman. A Wall Street Journal editorial, in high dudgeon, told its readers how Perkins’ critics’ “vituperation is making our friend’s point about liberal intolerance, maybe better than he did.” Wow, take that, Occupiers.
The most infamous retort came from Sam Zell during an interview on Bloomberg Television. Zell started, “I guess my feeling is that he’s right.” Elaborating, he continued, “The problem is that the world and this country should not talk about envy of the 1 percent. It should talk about emulating the 1 percent. The 1 percent work harder.”
Let’s try and analyze these statements, using words with more precision than either Perkins or Zell did.
True, the rich are often more productive, given their position in society. But language counts; that’s different from “working harder”; you could, for example, make a lot of money without doing much. Just ask Wall Street.
A far greater exception develops once you factor in inheritance. True, second and third generations of money are often model citizens, and highly productive. Many others, however, are wastrels. Until we ban inheritance (unlikely), there is a big hole in Zell’s arguments; if you inherit wealth, not make it on your own, are you productive?
One of Perkins’ other comments raised more issues. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, he explained that it was “absurd to demonize the rich for being rich and doing what the rich do, which is get richer by creating opportunities for others.”
Let’s simply say in response that what is absurd is to overgeneralize the rich’s effect on society. It is absolutely true that some rich folks create jobs, often truly vast numbers. Steve Jobs, for example, innovated an entire industry.
Many others among the rich, however, destroy jobs. This is in the name of efficiency and profitability. Both worthwhile goals, but often causing jobs to simply end or be moved offshore. This is euphemistically called “creative destruction,” and defended by the rich’s advocates. Just ask Mitt Romney how it works.
But I take words seriously, so let’s go back to what Zell said. Do the rich, as he put it, “work harder”?
First, there is a difference between “productivity”, or “profitability”, and “hard work”. As noted above, the rich are frequently top producers in society, given their control of resources and power.
But how about working hard? Sometimes, after a bad day, of too many meetings, of too many student problems, of…too much, I bemoan my job and its travails. Then, as I walk to my car, I see a dump truck and the garbage collectors filling it from plastic containers. And I think to myself, “Now, that’s hard work”. Honestly, would any of these titans like to change places with workers in this industry, even if the compensation was the same?
One other note of reality. The hardest work I can think of is taking care of kids, God’s little atomic powered treasures, filled with near unlimited ability to get into stuff. How about mothers who care for two, three or even more at the same time? For my money, I’ll match their hard work against the worst day Perkins or Zell ever put in.
Do the rich “work hard”? Quite often, yes, they work very hard. But if that’s the basis for apportioning wealth, what about the tens of millions of Americans who perform arduous labors every working day, yet earn middle class wages or worse? According to Perkins’ and Zell’s own criterion, therefore, that hard work should determine compensation, something is wrong with our society.
Also published Here
My sister likes to forward to me chain letters. No, she does not send me entreaties to invest in an African oil scheme, but rather, political opinion pieces. The latest sample read:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.
Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan . None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan . They were defending the United States of America as
one people.
When we liberated France , no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about.
I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
(signed)
Rosemary LaBonte
I have included punctuation and spacing just as it was sent to me, as well as the person’s name, since this has been widely picked up and is all over the internet. I do not know if Ms. LeBonte is a real person, or if she is actually the author of this piece, so the name is used here for identification purposes only.
Why am I dealing with this at all? Because there are so many historical inaccuracies it bears rebutting. My first book was on labor and immigrant history, so I have some expertise in this area. The writer sets up a false dichotomy, between earlier immigrants who loved America, and recent ones who hate our country. This is not accurate; the historical experience of Americans, then and now, is far different.
Let us start with one important fact: in the period around 1900, when the past wave of immigration was at its height, 44 out of every 100 immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe went home. Given that one of the largest groups in this cohort–Jews–did not have that option, it is fair to guess that 50%–half–of this wave did not stay in the United States.
The reasons they returned were many and diverse, but let’s look at the two biggest. First, many people succeeded in this new land. Some remained, but others took their new fortune back home to Europe, and became landowners and bigshots. They chose to invest in their homeland, in other words, rather than America. Not the image depicted by Ms. LePonte.
Second, were those who couldn’t make it here. This should surprise no one: America was a rough land, that did not treat newcomers gently. There are many pieces by immigrants decrying their discovery that the streets were paved with anything but gold. Like in any situation, some people could not find the right job, the right approach, and did not prosper. Of these, some persevered, some languished, some died, and many, for understandable reasons, returned home.
There is also the notion that earlier generations of immigrants revered America and rejected their homeland. This is totally false. I have looked at many, many foreign language newspapers and documents from this era, and witnessed countless images of non-American flags, plus paens to the country of the writer’s birth. Theodore Roosevelt for example, co-founded the American-Irish Historical Society (a superb organization, by the way). Note the title carefully; this was Teddy’s idea, because he wanted to stress the American tie, rather than the ethnic heritage which was the norm at that time. Again, fierce nationalism prevailed, based on ties to foreign lands.
Instead, the reality was that many of these organizations, these communities, forged a new identity, both American and ethnic at the same time. Including maintaining the language of their birth, not giving it up, as Ms. LePonte alleges. When I lived in Chicago’s Back of the Yards in the 1980s, the Polish National Alliance ran classes at nominal cost to teach youngsters the language of their forefathers.
Parents enrolled their children, not because they rejected their American identity in any way, shape or form; they simply wanted their children to be part of their ethnic culture as well. Similarly, my wife grew up in an Italian-American family. They were bilingual; why should we expect anything different from families today? My parents were also bilingual, my sister and I are not. My parents felt that this lapse was a failure on their part in maintaining our heritage; not a symptom of anti-americanism, of patriotism or the lack of it.
And that really is the point. I am not trying to dismiss the story of any group of immigrants–then or now; it would be awkward for me to do so, as the son and grandson of immigrants. Instead, I am arguing for a history that captures us in all of our humanity. American history, in other words, is made by human beings, and we are complex creatures. Simple explanations–such as the notion of a “Greatest Generation” that ignores the shattered families and juvenile delinquency caused by the economic hardship that also inspired such extreme sacrifice–rarely captures what an era is like, or how these lives were lived. I do not doubt, for example, that an extremist has called for tearing down the Statue of Liberty, but statistically, the vast majority of new immigrants are raising families, working and paying taxes, sending their kids to school, and adding to the American tapestry. Diatribes like Ms. LePonte’s ignore the complexity of our heritage, of our very lives.
And as to the veterans. I have been to the cemetery on Omaha Beach, and seen the names she speaks of. And have wept for them. But has she ever seen the names and faces of those who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan? I look at the listing every time they appear, in the Army Times, or in my local newspaper; they deserve no less. There are many, many names from the new immigrants there as well, individuals just ike those from her generation, who sacrificed all for their country. They also deserve our respect, and our American tears.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-slayton/immigration-and-history_b_594838.html
