#331 / Integrities Makes A Recommendation

I am once again recommending the journal Integrities, published by the IF Foundation. The most recent edition has what I thought was a particularly insightful opening essay: "Confusion! What Is Really Happening?" 

The essay suggests that the confusion that abounds in our national politics is the result of a deliberate effort by the rich and the powerful to discourage political engagement and participation. The fact that it is difficult to know what is really going on is the desired outcome of those powerful forces that are seeking to abolish democratic self-government. The essence of our political "confusion" is that it is no longer easy (or maybe even possible, sometimes) to determine what is true and what isn't. 

The essay does not suggest retreat and disengagement. In fact, it counsels quite the opposite approach. It ends with the following piece of very good advice: 

Fight Truth Decay

Image Credit:

http://www.integrities.org/uploads/7/8/4/6/7846965/vol30-no1-2017.pdf

#330 / Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?

Democratic self-government is subject to many maladies. One of them is best epitomized by a wonderful song from 1965. That year, The Lovin' Spoonful released "Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?" The group is pictured above. Click that title link for the music. Click this link for the lyrics. 

What made me think about this song (and not for the first time, either) is a continuing failure of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to "make up its mind" when confronted by a difficult political choice. There is a pattern and practice at work here. I first became aware of this significnt problem with the decision-making process in Monterey County government when I was the Executive Director of LandWatch Monterey County. The Board continually refused to make a decision about what sort of General Plan it should adopt. Should the General Plan protect farmland, or not? Should it mandate regulations to stop building on steep slopes, or not? There were a number of such questions, with arguments on all sides. The Board preferred simply not to decide at all. It took the Board ten years, as I recall, to come to a decision, and then only by way of a settlement of a lawsuit.

The latest example of this pattern of decision avoidance is the County's failure to make decisions about the future of Short Term Vacation Rentals located in the Coastal Zone. This is a contentious political topic in Monterey County, and there are arguments on all sides. To be clear, I have been helping the Monterey County Vacation Rental Alliance, as its members seek to have the County adopt a set of rules that would permit (and regulate) vacation rentals in Monterey County's unincorporated areas. In other words, I am not a neutral party. My comment here, however, is not really about "what" the Board should do; it is an observation that refusing to make a decision at all is simply bad government. 

There are lots of good reasons to allow vacation rentals, and there are lots of good reasons to provide appropriate regulations, of various kinds, to make sure that when vacation rentals are permitted they are good neighbors in the neighborhoods, and don't end up causing impacts that undermine the integrity of residential areas. In addition, it is important that any regulatory program take account of the possibility that landowners who would otherwide provide needed rental housing don't convert such rental housing to vacation rentals. Real questions are involved, but there are real answers! The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, for instance, adopted a regulatory program for vacation rentals some time ago. Click right here to see the Santa Cruz County ordinance. San Luis Obispo County did the same.

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors has been working on this issue (to be generous in saying that the Board is "working on it") since 1997! 

1997 was the year that the Board sent an ordinance regulating vacation rentals in the Coastal Zone to the California Coastal Commission. The Commission staff promptly returned it to the Board, with various suggestions for amendments. The Board did nothing, ignoring the issue. More recently (though that word "recently" is problematic), the Board has been dodging the issue. Board Members have been doing that since 2013. A report on the website of the Monterey County Resource Management Agency, posted rather recently, now says that a draft ordinance may be presented to the Board by the end of 2019!

Having been on a Board of Supervisors, I know how long it takes to develop and decide upon proposed land use legislation, It doesn't take twenty-one years. It doesn't take five years. It doesn't even take one year!

The Board of Supervisors of Monterey County is trying to avoid making a decision about a difficult and divisive issue. That is perhaps understandable, but making such decisions is actually the Board's main job. The Board's failure to act impacts hundreds (and maybe even thousands) of local residents and property owners. I think the Board should face the music.

I also know exactly what music the Board needs to be listening to. Here's some very good advice from The Lovin' Spoonful. It's a metaphorical message, but right on target. Board members ought to put this song on their playlist:

Sometimes you really dig a girl the moment you kiss her,

And then you get distracted by her older sister.

When in walks her father and takes you in line,

And says, "Better go on home, son, and make up your mind."

Image Credit:

http://www.rebeatmag.com/it-was-50-years-ago-today-daydream-by-the-lovin-spoonful/

#329 / America's Values

The above cartoon appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday, November 23, 2018. On the same day, the editorial I reproduce below appeared in The Wall Street Journal under the title, "Trump's Crude Realpolitik." Same day, different papers, but a common theme. 

The editorial decries the president's statement on the Kashoggi assassination as failing to have referenced American "values." Are there, in fact, "values" that our national leaders should exemplify, when they can properly be seen as representing our nation? That would be nice, but I am of a mixed mind as I consider the criticism contained in The Wall Street Journal's editorial.

I surely agree that our president's statements about the brutal murder of a Saudi journalist, by agents of the Saudi government, deserves the rebuke that is delivered by The Wall Street Journal (and by the cartoon). If we are honest, though, as we pontificate about "America's values," we ought to admit that the United States of America practices a "realpolitik" that is fully as brutal as that exemplified by the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. The Journal's editorial, mentioning our national support for the arms business, provides several examples. But May I refer you, also, to the assassination of hundreds, or even thousands, of people that the president nominates for drone-delivered death, with no due process whatsoever, and with absolutely no accountability. That is what the United States is doing, daily, in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

"Realpolitik" is not the kind of politics that I think should dictate our national conduct, and if the American people want to feel good about our "values," we need to change our own behavior, not just point the finger at others.

oooOOOooo

Trump’s Crude Realpolitik

President Trump did himself and the country no favor with his crude statement Tuesday on the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents. 

Commenting on whether Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knew about the murder, Mr. Trump said in a statement only he could have written: “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

We are unsure of the purpose of the exclamation point here, just as we are unsure what goal Mr. Trump hoped to achieve with what can only be described as a raw and brutalist version of foreign-policy realpolitik. 

The bloody realities of the Middle East and the clear threat from Iran, which Mr. Trump described in his statement, give any U.S. President some latitude in forging a policy toward the region that reflects America’s interests. 

But we are aware of no President, not even such ruthless pragmatists as Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, who would have written a public statement like this without so much as a grace note about America’s abiding values and principles. Ronald Reagan especially pursued a hard-line, often controversial, foreign policy against Soviet Communism, but he did so with a balance of unblinkered realism and American idealism. Mr. Trump seems incapable of such balance. 

It is startling to see a U.S. President brag in a statement about a bloodthirsty murder that, in his “heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia” last year, he did $450 billion in commercial deals, including $110 billion to benefit Boeing , Lockheed Martin , Raytheon and “many other great defense contractors.” From Mr. Trump’s point of view, U.S. interests in the Middle East can be reduced to arms deals, oil and Iran. That is crass; no other word suffices.

We don’t mean to join the critics who through moralizing glasses seem to be suggesting that the U.S. has no choice other than to sever its relationship with Saudi Arabia over this murder. That wouldn’t cause the Saudis to change their behavior or serve U.S. interests. The Saudis, as Mr. Trump asserted, are important allies in a still-dangerous war against Middle Eastern terror fomented and supported by the mullahs in Iran. 

But Crown Prince Salman’s misjudgments have sometimes made protecting U.S. interests in the Middle East more difficult. He has shown himself to be reckless in his prosecution of the war in Yemen and willful in his dispute with Qatar. Even if he did not sanction Khashoggi’s murder, it’s clear he was aware that the journalist would be kidnapped and brought back to the Kingdom. 

That too is bad judgment that should raise doubts about the Crown Prince’s reliability and effectiveness as an ally. The risk is that Mr. Trump’s public reduction of the relationship to crass interests is that the Crown Prince will feel he can do anything and suffer no diminution of U.S. support. We hope Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton are delivering a much tougher message in private. 

Like any President, Mr. Trump also needs domestic allies in pursuit of a foreign policy that sometimes requires hard choices. Instead, Mr. Trump’s statement isolates him from his natural supporters on Mideast policy, such as Senator Lindsey Graham or Senator-elect Mitt Romney, who both separated themselves Tuesday from the President’s position. 

The reality is that few members of Congress will align themselves with a statement bereft of asserting America’s abhorrence for the murder of political opponents. Without political or public support, Mr. Trump diminishes the odds that his Middle East strategy will succeed.

Image Credit:

https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/joel-pett/article221951745.html

#328 / Indivisible

On Thanksgiving Day, I got an email letter from Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. They are pictured above. Their letter is reproduced at the end of this blog posting. Levin and Greenberg are the Co-Directors of Indivisible, a group seeking to "remake our democracy." Indivisible was formed in reaction to the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016. I got to meet Leah and Ezra at a small fundraiser in Menlo Park, and was impressed. There is a very active Santa Cruz Indivisible group, one of thousands across the country. I am supporter of the Indivisible effort, and I certainly encourage others to join up and to contribute.

The entire letter from Levin and Greenberg tells a "Thanksgiving Day story," and makes an appropriate follow-up to my last two blog postings, celebrating our national holiday. Here is the part of the Greenberg-Levin letter that particularly got my attention. Greenberg says, as she describes her Thanksgiving Day search for a name for the group, not yet formed:

I thought about the Pledge of Allegiance. I had an idea. I tried saying it out loud: “Indivisible.” It gave us both goosebumps. One Nation, Indivisible. It was more than a word -- it was a promise. Because in this moment, with Trump poised to take power, when our democracy and our neighbors would be under attack, we would need to fight together, indivisible. That was the only way we’d make it through.

The fact is, our greatest political problem is that we all too often see ourselves only as "individuals," omitting to note that we are not only individuals. We are "in this together." It is only when we practice a politics that is premised on that truth that we will be able to realize our deepest aspirations, and to protect ourselves from the many dangers that threaten our future.

It could give us all goosebumps: "One Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

oooOOOooo

Indivisibles,

This time two years ago, Ezra and I were in Austin for Thanksgiving, sitting at the kitchen table at his dad’s house.

We were still reeling from the election of Donald Trump, and looking for something -- anything -- that we could do to respond. The night before, we’d met up with a friend who told us about a Facebook resistance group she was managing and how they weren’t sure what to do to have an impact.

A light bulb went off.

We knew exactly how grassroots activists could have an impact -- as former congressional staffers in the early Obama years, we’d seen the Tea Party organize a powerful resistance that nearly brought Congress to a halt. What if we took the lessons we’d learned from that era, reverse-engineered them, and wrote a simple guide to making Congress listen? And then we could just put it out into the world, so that any new activists who were getting organized could read it. Maybe a few folks would put it to good use.

As soon as we came up with the idea, we were obsessed. We started an outline that night and started drafting the guide the next morning. Ezra’s family kept trying to get us to leave our laptops and hang out -- it was Thanksgiving! -- but the project just consumed us. It was the only thing we wanted to do.

That day, we decided this guide needed a name. The Tea Party had had a name rooted in American history, one that captured the imagination. What was something comparable for us, something rooted in our values and our history?

Ezra and I came up with a lot of bad ideas that just didn’t fit. Great Society. Four Freedoms. Then I thought about the Pledge of Allegiance. I had an idea. I tried saying it out loud: “Indivisible.”

It gave us both goosebumps. One Nation, Indivisible. It was more than a word -- it was a promise. Because in this moment, with Trump poised to take power, when our democracy and our neighbors would be under attack, we would need to fight together, indivisible. That was the only way we’d make it through.

A couple weeks later, Ezra tweeted out a link to the Google Doc: “Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Resisting the Trump Agenda.” Within an hour, the traffic on the doc was causing it to crash. And that very night, we started getting emails from folks all over the country who were angry and scared and organizing. People who would pick up the charge, start leading this movement, and help change the course of American history. People who would soon start calling the groups that they had formed “Indivisible” groups.

Yes, the Trump administration has been as damaging and cruel as we could possibly have imagined. But in response to something so incredibly evil, and dark, and corrupt, Indivisibles have responded with love, light, and determination.

This Thanksgiving, we’ve got so much to be thankful for. Two years in, we’re not just resisting hate, corruption and authoritarianism -- we’re insisting on a better future for all of us. Two years in, we have this hope for the future thanks to this incredible family of Indivisibles across the country who are making that hope possible.

Thank you for banding together, indivisible, with us.

In solidarity,

Leah and Ezra

Co-Executive Directors

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.jta.org/2017/02/23/news-opinion/politics/meet-the-jewish-couple-leading-the-trump-resistance

(2) - https://indivisible.actionkit.com/mailings/view/37202?t=5&akid=37202%2E498101%2EwJa4pM

#327 / Almost Chosen

My advice, yesterday, was for us all to get ourselves into the "Gratitude Line." Today, following up on that Thanksgiving Day message, let me refer to a column that first appeared on Thanksgiving Day in 2014, written by Richard Samuels, who is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Samuels' column, which came to me through the Law & Liberty blog, is titled, "A National Thanksgiving: President Washington and America’s National Holiday." The column explores what it means to be, or to call oneself, an "American," and particularly comments on how our nation has oriented itself with respect to religion:

Strictly speaking, to be an American is to be an American citizen. When one calls someone an American, the first definition one usually has in mind is political. By contrast, when one says that someone is Chinese or Turkish, the first thought is of an ethnic or racial identity. Even so, there is an American culture. Hence it is very common to say that something is “very American.” Thanksgiving itself deserves that moniker. Is it a constitutional observance? That’s an open question.

That to be an "American" is to be a person politically-defined is (as anyone who regularly reads these blog postings knows) a thought to which I heartily subscribe. And why is it an "open question" why Thanksgiving might, or might not, be a "constitutional observance?" Precisely because there is a religious overlay to the Thanksgiving Day holiday, and, as I recently noted, the very FIRST Amendment to the United States Constitution, the document that "constituted," and thus created, American government and our nation, is absolutely clear that: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

This proscription against involving God in the political realm (that realm being, in fact, the very definition of the nation itself) has been of great benefit to the United States. This was the burden of my earlier comment. Still, as Samuels makes clear in his column, and as Washington made clear in his Proclamation, and as Jefferson and the Founding Fathers made clear in the Declaration of Independence ("When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."), the history of the United States of America has recognized from the very beginning the presence and existence of what 12-Step Programs call a "Higher Power."

When I urge us all to remember that we live in "Two Worlds," and ultimately in the "World of Nature," the world that God created, I am asking that we not forget this ultimate reality as we busily go about creating that "Political World" we most immediately inhabit. 

To get into the "Gratitude Line," we need to acknowledge that there is someone or something to which we owe such appreciation. The Declaration acknowledged this presence as "Nature's God." Let us not forget that part of the American idea of who we are, and where we are. 

No one can or should claim religious sanction in the political world in which we most immediately live, but we are putting all of human civilization at peril when we refuse to recognize that we do not, in fact, create ourselves, and that we are utterly dependent on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." 

"Americans" are defined by their right to be active creators of the political world that we most immediately inhabit. This is not a religiously-defined status, but we need to recognize that we operate, always, within a world that we did not create. 

Abraham Lincoln, speaking of these matters, is quoted in the Samuels column as saying that Americans are "an almost chosen people." That is, indeed, a status for which we should all give thanks.

Image Credit:

https://www.lawliberty.org/author/richard-samuelson/

#326 / Thanksgiving

This would be a really good day to consider getting into that other line!

Image Credit:

https://www.gocomics.com/cornered

#325 / NOT Linked In!

The headline on a recent article in The Mercury News proclaimed, "Bay Area tops U.S. in new office space, but lags in housing starts." How much lag? Well, according to the article, "the region created six times as many jobs as housing units between 2010 and 2015, according to a study by the leadership group and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation." SIX TIMES!

My home town, Santa Cruz, is experiencing the impacts of this disporportionate creation of jobs over housing. The "jobs housing balance" is not "balanced" at all. Furthermore, the state has redesigned its High-Speed Rail project, which was supposed to tie San Francisco (and ultimately Sacramento) with Los Angeles (and ultimately San Diego), providing a high-speed modern alternative to the airplane, and reducing traffic congestion on the state's highways. Now, the High-Speed Rail Authority is touting HSR as the way to provide a commuting train for Silicon Valley workers, who will occupy what is now prime farmland in the Central Valley, turned into lower-cost (though probably not truly "affordable") subdivisions to serve the job-creating vortex spinning wildly out of control in the Bay Area. The train idea is just taking the "Google Bus" phenomenon one step further. Huge public subsidies would be necessary. This is not the way we should be "Linked In."

Let's think about public subsidies for a moment. If business activity has an impact (for instance, by its discharge of toxic waste products) we have long understood that governmental regulations are needed, to make the giant corporations "internalize" their adverse public and environmental impacts, rather than saving money by "externalizing" their impacts, thus making the public pay for dealing with them. Whether we have always done a good job of making this happen is debatable, to put the best face on it, but the principle is well understood. 

I would like to suggest that we start trying to make the giant, high-tech companies of the Silicon Valley start "internalizing" the housing impacts they are causing, instead of continuing to expect the public to to do that on behalf of the multi-billion-dollar companies that are causing the damage. 

Actually, this could be rather easily done. The large, high-tech employers like Google and Facebook could be taxed, on a per employee basis, to offset their impacts on the communities where their workers are housed. The money could be used in those impacted communities for truly affordable housing. In addition, before new office developments are approved, the housing and traffic impacts that they would cause could be mitigated with new housing and transportation improvements that would eliminate or reduce those impacts, with such mitigations put in place concurrenlty with, or before, the new office construction proceeds. 

This is a pretty radical idea, right? Not in principle it isn't! The idea of making businesses "internalize" the impacts of their activities only seems "radical" to those who are making billions while their companies export the adverse impact of their burgeoning businesses to hapless communities like my own.

Image Credit:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/22/bay-area-tops-u-s-in-new-office-space-but-lags-in-housing-starts/

#324 / He Did Not Make It Home

Here is a picture of Major Brent Taylor, also known as "Mayor" Brent Taylor. Taylor was the Mayor of North Ogden, Utah, when he was called up, as part of the National Guard, to deploy to Afghanistan. This was his fourth deployment. Taylor left his wife and seven children behind and took a leave of absence from his job as Mayor. You can read the whole story in The New York Times. 

To cut to the bottom line: 

He did not make it home. Major Taylor, 39, was killed on Saturday in an insider attack, apparently by one of the people he was there to help.

This story reports on just one more of those "when will they ever learn" moments. The United States of America should not be sending its good citizens/trained killers off to remote countries, allegedly to "help" them. Our military involvement in Afghanistan, and in all those other places around the world where good people get sent to kill for the United States, is not "helping" those other countries. 

It is not helping ours, either. 

Image Credit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/utah-mayor-killed-afghanistan-brent-taylor.html

#323 / Time For A Concession

How do you win an argument? My wife teaches critical thinking (among other things), and she makes sure I never forget about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. You must display all three of those in your presentation, speech, or debate to be persuasive.

My wife never lets me forget about the need to make a concession, either.

What is a concession? It is an admission that the party or person with whom you are debating or disagreeing is probably right about some things. A concession stipulates that the person or party with whom you disagree may be making some very good points!

Here is what is important about a concession. You need to make a concession in order to be able to win!

Participating effectively in our system of democratic self-government is not exactly the same thing as writing a good argumentative paper. It is close, though!

As we move towards next year, presuming that those who call themselves "progressive," or "liberal," want to win the national political debate that will begin early next year in the Congress and then extend to every part of this country, culminating in the next set of elections, we had better start addressing how we can make concessions that will establish our fair-mindedness to those parts of the country stained red in the post-election maps we saw on November 7th.

Self-righteousness will not triumph. So let's be careful about that. We are going to need to concede...

In order to win the argument!

Image Credit:

https://www.slideshare.net/MrCPHSTitans/writing-your-concession

#322 / It's All Right, Even If You're Old And Grey ...

... It's all right, you still got something to say!

I have always loved the Traveling Wilburys' song, "End of the Line," and the verse I am quoting here strikes me as ever more appropriate, as I get ever more "grey." Click the link if you would like to listen to the song. Click right here for the lyrics.

For a more prosaic approach to the topic, consider reading an article from The Wall Street Journal, "Building Bridges Across the Generational Divide." The Journal, too, suggests that those older ones among us do, and most emphatically, have "something to say."

If you believe the schema set forth in Generations, The History of America's Future, you might come to the conclusion that we ought to be expecting a lot from the "combination of ingredients" product that The Wall Street Journal article is advertising.

Speaking about this topic in an earlier blog post, I said this:

As I reported in this blog back in 2015, Strauss and Howe say that their research on past generations leads them to expect a "crisis lasting from 2013 to 2024." They say "the early 2020's appear fateful," and they expect Malloch's "next Great Generation," the Millennials, will have "a chance to demonstrate civic virtue and to triumph over great adversity."

As I am remembering the book, that "chance to demonstrate civic virtue and to triumph over great adversity," will require my generation, those of us who are ever more "old and grey," to play a catalyzing role. 

We still got something to say!

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/building-bridges-across-the-generational-divide-1541086302

#321 / Nationalized Politics

David Brooks has written a column about it, in The New York Times. Daniel J. Hopkins, who is a professor of political science at the University of Pennylvania, has written a whole book about it (see the picture to the left). 

You and I (I am betting you have had the same experience that I have) have been noticing our nationalized politics in the form of an email bombardment from every corner of America, as political candidates who undoubtedly do reflect our general political views send us heart-wrenching appeals for campaign contributions. 

These emailed appeals come to us despite the fact that we may never even have heard about these candidates, prior to receiving their emails, and despite the fact that they are seeking public office in states we may never have even visited.

Is the "nationalization" of our politics a good thing or a bad thing?  I haven't read Hopkins' book, so I don't know his views. The title suggests that he is writing as an "observer," more than anything else, reporting on a fact of our contemporary political life, rather than taking any specific position on whether this change in our politics is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Brooks definitely has a position, and he doesn't like it. In fact, Brooks believes that the nationalizing of our political life is leading to the "unraveling" of the United States as a political community, dividing the nation into two distinct, different, and irreconcilable camps. The "Venn diagram is dead," says Brooks. "There is no overlapping area."

I tend to side with Brooks. I think my favorite political theorist, Hannah Arendt, would do so, too. Arendt celebrated the "federal" nature of American government, which sets up lots of competing centers of political power, making authoritarian and totalitarian central government less likely. California's effort to fight the Trump initiatives on immigration and environmental policy are great examples of how our federal government is supposed to work. "Nationalized" government discards that conflict in an "all or none" fight for central political power. All political eyes focus on the federal government, the arena in which individual persons have the least likelihood to be able to influence political choices. 

Concern about the "nationalization" of our politics is not just a "modern" understanding, either. In a book review appearing in The New York Times on November 4, 2018, Jeff Shesol cites to Joseph J. Ellis, and his new book, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, to remind us what James Madison thought: 

Along the way, as Ellis recounts, Madison was forced to part with his deeply held belief in federal supremacy and to embrace, instead, the blurrier concept of dual sovereignty — the idea of a nation caught, eternally, somewhere in the balance between state and federal authority. Madison came to see this tension as the genius of the Constitution.

Conclusion: there may be a reason to disregard those political pitches from North Dakota, Florida, Georgia, Texas and wherever. A nationalized politics is a surefire route to a more authoritarian and totalitarian future. 

Image Credit:

http://go.drivelive.club/?book=022653037X

#320 / This Is Why

Click to enlarge

I am a big fan of Pearls Before Swine, the comic strip authored by Stephan Pastis. This cartoonist also happens to be a lawyer, which is not an automatic strike against him in my book. 

Pastis' cartoon on Friday, November 2, 2018, shown above, ran on the same day that The New York Times carried a major feature story titled, "'God Is Going to Have to Forgive Me': Young Evangelicals speak out." 

The Times' article is about how young, dedicated evangelical Christians are attempting to separate themselves from a politics that has become infused, in some evangelical churches, with their religious beliefs, to the point that the politics is now more important than the religion. That is not the way it is supposed to be!

Presuming that there is good reason for suspecting that the Constitution of the United States of America is a pretty good model, or template, for organizing our common (and hence political) life, it is not a fluke that the very First Amendment to the Constitution says this:

Amendment I 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

Why is this the very first thing our Constitution says, after outlining the structure of our tripartite, federal system? Look at the list below, certainly only a partial list. Pastis has it right. All around the world, where religious beliefs have been allowed to become involved in politics, the result is death and disaster: 

• Ireland

• India / Pakistan / Bangladesh

• Israel / Palestine

• The Arab World 

• China / Tibet

• Indonesia

• Malaysia

It is heartening to find young people in the United States learning this lesson, and putting into practice the "separation of church and state" that has, indeed, been one of "the blessings of liberty" that the Constitution has provided to "ourselves and our posterity." For any to whom these quotes are not immediately familiar, I am citing the Preamble to the Constitution.

Our Constitution is not a perfect document. It was built, after all, on a commitment to the institution of human slavery. We are still working to extricate this nation from the legacy of this horrible bargain. 

With respect to the role that religion should play in our civic life, however (none), the Constitution definitely got it right!

Image Credit:

https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2018/11/02

#319 / Go Light

This poetry reading begins at 6:00 p.m. this evening. 

Admission will be on a "first come, first seated" basis. 

FOR THE CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us,

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light 

    - Gary Snyder

Image Credit:

https://sanjose.carpe-diem.events/calendar/7859555-gary-snyder-ninth-annual-morton-marcus-poetry-reading-at-the-humanities-institute-at-uc-santa-cruz/

#318 / 4.0?

Monday's Wall Street Journal, which I read shortly after having written my "Do You Approve?" blog post, brought news from two of Hillary Clinton's political associates. They are stating, as a matter of fact, not supposition, that "Hillary Will Run Again." If you run into a Wall Street Journal paywall, trying to click through to that article, you can get the story here.

Apparently, there is going to be a 4.0 version of Hillary Clinton. That is what we are told:

Reinventing herself as a liberal firebrand, Mrs. Clinton will easily capture the 2020 nomination. 

We currently have a president whose major preoccupation is himself. Hillary Clinton appears to be manifesting similar propensities. 

In my view, the voters should not really be considering any politician who is mainly focused on winning for herself or himself, as opposed to advancing a particular set of policies for the constituents that the politician is seeking to represent. I do not think that the nation is hungering for a candidate who will "reinvent herself" for political advancement (i.e., portray herself in whatever way will be necessaary to gain support). 

Maybe it's just me, but I am not looking forward to a Hillary 4.0.

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-will-run-again-1541963599

#317 / Do You Approve?

An email with the above question popped into my inbox shortly after the November 6, 2018, midterm elections. I bet a number of my friends got similar inquiries. Friends registered as Republicans might have received an inquiry like this from the Republican Party, too, but with the question rephrased to read: "[First Name Last Name] Do You Approve of Republicans?" The pictures of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi would have been substituted out, of course, replaced by pictures of Donald J. Trump and Mitch McConnell. At least the Democrats have a woman to include in this kind of political mailing! That is surely one point in favor of the Democrats.

My reaction upon receiving this email was as follows: What is the real question here? Does the "Progressive Takeover" group, which sent me the email, want to know whether I approve of all Democrats, no matter who they are and what they do? Is the question about Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, specifically (and does the "Progressive Takeover" group think that Pelosi and Obama are progressive?). Is it about the Democratic Party, in general? How about Bernie Sanders, does he count as a Democrat?

As those with even a passing familiarity with the United States Constitution know, the document "constituting" our government, and outlining how it works, says absolutely nothing about political parties. In fact, the concept advanced by the Framers posited a system of representative government in which voters from specific geographic areas picked individual persons to represent them in the Congress. Quickly, parties did appear on the scene, and a candidate's decision to identify himself (and, later, herself) with a particular party affiliation was information that the voters might well use to make a decision about who they wanted to represent them. The scheme was emphatically not that the voters would decide what party they wanted to represent them. Political systems based on that principle, and there are lots of them, are either parlimentary in nature or totalitarian. We are supposed to be working on the basis of a different approach, one that does not suggest that members of a political party cede their individual views to the party leadership. Read all about where that goes (with a Republican Party Member of Congress as an example) in a recent edition of The New Yorker.

So, here is my answer to the "Progressive Takeover" group that sent me this [offensive to me] email: "No, I do not 'approve of Democrats.'" I approve of candidates and officials who are working for the kind of government I think we need, and to advance the policies that I think would help the nation (and me personally). There are many "Democrats" who do not advance positions that I think are correct. Take Hillary Clinton, for instance. I do not approve of her commitment to American military intervention in the affairs of other nations, and her all-too-cozy relationship with the billionaire class. In November of 2016, I voted for Hillary Clinton because I disapproved of the other candidate, who called himself a "Republican," a whole lot more. My vote, however, was not on the basis of party. In the primaries, I voted for Bernie Sanders. In fact, I was a Sanders' delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where I witnessed in person how Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee betrayed Democrats all around the nation, as it violated its own rules to hand the nomination over to the candidate who lost to Donald J. Trump. 

If Democrats want to take back our country from the clutches of the narcissistic and irresponsible person who now "leads" it (and someone who calls himself a "Republican," of course), then I suggest that the Democrats should make an appeal to the nation that is not based simply on party allegience, or on feelings of personal repugnance for our president. That's just not persuasive, to me and to lots of other people. 

Study up on how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez managed to win her Congressional District election. It was because of how she campaigned and what she campaigned for. That's why she won. Incidentally, Ocasio-Cortez (like Bernie Sanders) doesn't primarily self-identify as a Democrat, but it wasn't the fact that she had a non-Democratic Party label that led to her electoral victory. It was how she conducted her campaign and what she stood for. Democrats could do the same thing if they wanted to; they could run that kind of campaign!

Democrats (I'm still registered as a Democrat, but with little allegience to the label) had better take heed!

==============================

PS: Speaking of The New Yorker, the cover of the next issue illustrates the kind of changes in our national politics that we (and I do include the "Democrats") are going to have to make if we hope to leave our current politics behind. Furthermore, some of those figures now outside the door of that "Democratic Party" going on in the foreground are going to have to be representative of the voters in those "Red States" who also want a transformed national politics: 

Image Credit:

(1) - Personal email solicitation from: [email protected]

(2) - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2018-11-19

#316 / Do U?

On June 23, 2018, India Today ran an article that focused on the criticism of Melania Trump that followed her appearance in public wearing a Zara jacket with the following words painted on the back: "I really don't care, do u?" That's where I got this picture.

The First Lady chose to wear this particular jacket on her way to a detention center in Texas, set up for migrant children separated from their parents. It seemed like a gratuitous insult. Just yesterday, in another gratuitous insult, the president blamed California's "gross mismanagement of the forests" for the two major wildfires now blazing in the state, one of which is the deadliest wildfire in the state's history.

We need, of course, to "care" about the world, and everything in it, but maybe we should "care less" about what the president and his family do and say. 

I was in Spain once, and saw a bullfight. If you were the bull, "not caring" about that irritating red cape could be the route to a different kind of life. Do you remember that story about Ferdinand? Think about it! We don't have to charge to our death every time some member of the Trump family, including the president, waves a blood-red rag in our face.

We don't, actually, really have to try, one more time, every time, to kick that stupid ball that the president keeps tempting us to kick!

Image Credit:

(1) - https://www.indiatoday.in/movies/celebrities/story/mira-rajput-slams-melania-trump-for-her-i-really-don-t-care-jacket-1267679-2018-06-23
(2) - https://www.saawinternational.org/bullfighting.htm
(3) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx9nKsHAWqc

#315 / The Demise Of Sears (And The Sears' Idea)

An article in the October 24, 2018, edition of The New York Times carried this headline (as the article appeared in the hard copy version of the newspaper; online sources differ): 

In Its Heyday, Sears Spread the Wealth. Companies Today Don't.

This article is worth reading. It makes the point that Sears (and other corporations) used to "share the wealth," making certain that their workers participated in the company's prosperity and success. According to the article, "Half a century ago, a typical Sears salesman could walk out of the store at retirement with a nest egg worth well over a million in today’s dollars, feathered with company stock." As the article pointedly notes, "A warehouse worker hired now at Amazon who stays until retirement would leave with a fraction of that."

Just in case this might have escaped our notice, it happens to be true that we can MAKE corporations share. We do not, actually, have to wait around for spontaneous benevolence. Corporations are legal persons created by government, operating under rules that the government establishes. We can, through the political process, impose requirements that we determine are appropriate. Not so long ago, I referenced a plan being advanced by the Labour Party in Great Britain that is intended to give the workers who produce the wealth some claim to a share of the ownership in the organizations that make it all happen. This is just one example of the general principle. 

Instead of waiting for the one-percenters to get generous, the ninety-nine-percenters need to get organized!

Image Credit:

http://www.fox4news.com/business/sears-adds-a-restructuring-expert-to-board

#314 / Analog

Jaron Lanier, pictured above during a recent appearance at UCSC, is the author of Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Wikipedia describes Lanier as "an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of classical music." Lanier is also considered to be a founding father of the field of virtual reality.

Lanier's UCSC appearance was reviewed in an article in The Mercury News. According to this report, some of the college students whom Lanier addressed were reluctant to unplug themselves from the social media sites that Lanier argued are a major threat to democracy. These sites, an algorithmic simulacrum of reality, are the places where we increasingly spend our time (and thus our lives). 

"Real" reality (as opposed to "virtual" reality) is analog, not digital. Digital is a distortion. It is chopping up into little bits a unified whole that is, in its reality and integrity, not susceptible of division. 

Our bodies are not digital abstractions but living tissue. As I advised in another blog posting, we should listen to our bodies. Our bodies do know! In terms of politics, this means "precincting," meeting real people, door to door and in face-to-face meetings, not thinking we can connect in any political potent way through the mechanisms of social media. The distortions of our democratic process in the 2016 presidential election, whether the product of "Russian tampering" or not, make clear that Lanier is on to something!

Image Credit:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/31/tech-pioneer-jaron-lanier-social-media-is-destroying-democracy/

#313 / Tyrone Hayes

Pictured is Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Hayes spoke at an evening banquet held during the 27th Annual Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite, the conference I mentioned in my blog posting yesterday. Hayes is a consumately engaging speaker. He described himself as "a little boy who loved frogs."

Hayes still loves frogs, and he seems to have a great love for people, too. He is best known, as Wikipedia notes, for:

Research findings concluding that the herbicide atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that demasculinizes and feminizes male frogs. He is also an advocate for critical review and regulation of pesticides and other chemicals that may cause adverse health effects. He has presented hundreds of papers, talks, and seminars on his conclusions that environmental chemical contaminants have played a role in global amphibian declines and in the health disparities that occur in minority and low income populations. His work has been contested by Syngenta, the Swiss manufacturer of atrazine and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. It was used as the basis for the settlement of a multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Syngenta.

Hayes received three standing ovations from the audience at the Yosemite Conference as he described his efforts to tell the truth about atrazine, and the damage it does to both frogs and humans. You can read a compelling story about Hayes in The New Yorker, "A Valuable Reputation," documenting how Syngenta, which manufactures atrazine, pursued an active effort to discredit Hayes and his work.

In all litigation based on demonstrating the harms caused by chemicals, proving "causation" is almost always very difficult. Consider the long course of the tobacco litigation needed to establish the fact that cigarette smoking is bad for human health. Chemical pesticides and herbicides pose an extreme danger to human and environmental health. By litigation or legislation, it's time to stop undermining the integrity of the Natural World that sustains us all.

Image Credit:

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/tyrone-b-hayes

#312 / Giving Nature A Right Of Action

Should trees have standing? That is the title of a rather famous book by Christopher D. Stone, who is an Emeritus professor at the USC Gould School of Law. The book was first published in 1996 and is now in its third edition.

At the 27th Annual Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite, held during the last week of October, Judge Margaret McKeown, who serves on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals court that handles appeals from federal district courts located in Alaska, Hawaii, and California, plus other western states) spoke to the idea that "Nature" should be given the right to come into court to complain on its own behalf about the insults and injuries visited upon the Natural World by human activity.

"Standing" is a word of art, and means the legal right to come into court. You can't maintain an action in any federal court unless there is a demonstrable "case or controversy" in which your interests are directly affected. If you can demonstrate that kind of direct impact upon you, then you have "standing" to raise your issues and to have them judged.

Nature couldn't represent itself in court directly, of course. Trees, rivers, mountains, and deserts are impressive and sometimes imposing, but they can't move around a courtroom and speak up when needed. On the other hand, it is the rare litigant in federal court who is not represented by an attorney. If trees had "standing," there would be lots of attorneys willing to represent them.

At a time when extinctions are occurring at horrendous rates, and as irreplaceable natural environments are being laid to waste by human activity, let's give Nature its day in court.

Check out Stone's book. I hope you'll agree that trees, and the Natural World in general, should be able to litigate and defend its existence. It's a matter of life and death.

Including our own!

Image Credit:

https://calawyers.org/Yosemite