Former President, Barack Obama joined NBA Great Stephen Curry, Chance The Rapper and MBK Alliance to create this new video – “I am my Brother’s Keeper.”
I am my Brother’s Keeper.
Watch our new PSA with @BarackObama, @StephenCurry30 & @chancetherapper, then take action to stand with young men of color at https://t.co/VahrPnkwP2. pic.twitter.com/Mx4OL4ckPN— MBK Alliance (@MBK_Alliance) December 27, 2017
I keep coming back to something that Rutgers University Professor W. Carey McWilliams said once at a meeting I attended at the Eagleton Institute of Politics in the 1980s. He quoted Ronald Reagan’s famous campaign line from 1980 and 1984: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Of course, in 1980, after Jimmy Cater’s term, the answer was supposed to be no, and in 1984, after four years of Reagan’s supply-side trickle down policies, the answer was supposed to be yes. But McWilliams had a different interpretation of what Reagan was doing, and he was not happy about it.
Said McWilliams, “Reagan has boiled down more than two hundred years of constitutional government to a question that appeals only to the citizen’s craven self-interest. It is as far from democracy as one can get.”
Exactly.
Forty years later, we are living the ultimate manifestation of Reagan’s transactional politics and for most people, we are decidedly not better off than we were in 1980. Despite repeated tax cuts, the wealthy are doing just fine while the middle and lower classes have fallen farther behind with every passing decade. Buying power has declined, and it’s now absolutely necessary for everyone in a family to work in order to pay for monthly living expenses and to save for big ticket items such as cars, appliances and college educations. Many Americans love the myth that women should stay home and take care of the children, but the reality is very different. Economically, despite the explosion of wealth tied to technology and the rising stock market, it’s difficult to make the case that the people, however we define that, are better off than they were when the conservatives took power.
In addition, the social policies of the party that supposedly supports family values have not led to stronger families, in large part because the religious conservative’s definition of the family is rooted in a gone-forever past. Regressive policies regarding women’s health, family planning and welfare programs have resulted in more families living on the margins, and the prospects are that 2018 could see major cuts in social programs in order to pay for the trillion dollar tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. The fight to reverse gay marriage and abortion rights is one-conservative-to-replace-Anthony-Kennedy-away from reality. The right of religious people to use their beliefs to discriminate could be ratified by the Supreme Court this June.
The same is true regarding foreign policy. The West’s victory in the Cold War was supposed to usher in a period of peace and prosperity led by liberal democratic values and the respect for human rights. We’ve seen glimpses of this, but since the September 11 attacks, we’ve been involved in unnecessary and unwinnable wars against foes who don’t play by World War II rules. We’ve spent trillions trying to fight or buy off countries that will never be true allies, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we’ve seen a resurgence of Chinese and Russian nationalism and power rise to the point that we are now in a second Cold War being fought over economic issues rather than ideological ones. North Korea reminds us that we always one step away from disaster.
Both parties can take blame for these developments. The difference now is that we have a regime in the White House that doesn’t understand that American power is tied to its moral commitments, not just to whether a country has paid its bills. Republicans since Reagan have tried to question and undermine the role the United Nations should play in the world, and I have no doubt they would pull us out if the right scenario presented itself. The Trump Administration is fine with right-wing strong men (and it always seems to be men), and has said nothing about dictatorial actions in the Philippines and Myanmar, where a Rohingya genocide is unfolding right before the world’s Ray-Ban’d eyes.
Of course, there have been victories, and anyone who was over the age of 12 in 1970 can tell you that, this past year notwithstanding, the country does feel better about itself. Crime is down. Most of our major metropolitan areas have thriving cultural lives. Music, television and movies are far better than that of the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Inflation tamed, for now. Disco is dead.
I am of the humble opinion that we are at the end of the conservative movement and soon will be entering a period where the political pendulum will begin swinging back to the left. Perhaps the congressional elections will be the beginning of this trend. Will conservatives still win elections and continue to influence policies? Of course. And president Trump will continue to remind the majority that opposes him that his view of how this country ought to operate is an outlier, the same way that many moderates saw the counterculture of the 1960s as an outlier.
But the excesses of the conservative movement will begin to receded. The unending focus on money and competition and winning will give way to a more tempered view of what’s important in life and our place in the world. Taxes on the wealthy will go up. We will be less divided.
Am I an optimist? You bet. Am I confident about the future of our country? Yes indeed. Will the short-term be a trying, difficult, maddening, stressful period? Afraid so.
Another year dawns. See the best. Be the best. Do your best.
Happy New Year.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
The year is coming to a close, so the most inconsequential president in recent history is taking time away from his golfing to sell his many shortcomings as accomplishments. And while his Republican audience gobbles up his lies and truths, real Americans are once again, shaking their heads at yet another lie
This time, the lie is about his legislative progress. Trump calls it “a record!”
While meeting with Firefighters today, Trump was forced to praise himself due to a lack of congressional Republicans on hand to do the job.
“We got a lot of legislation passed,” Trump said Wednesday, according to a pool report. “But I believe—and you would have to ask those folks who will know the real answer—we have more legislation passed, including the record was Harry Truman a long time ago. And we broke that record, so we got a lot done.” In actuality, Trump has signed 96 bills, the fewest of any president since before Truman. Trump may have been referencing a similar claim his then-press secretary Sean Spicer made in April, when Trump had signed 28 bills, slightly more than other modern presidents had signed at that point in their terms, but considerably less than predecessors like Truman and Roosevelt.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
Terrorists. AIDS victims. Hut dwellers.
This is the President of the United States deciding policy.
His thought process? Bigoted. Uninformed. Under-educated. Judgmental. Ignorant.
What’s worse is that he is dragging down the reputation of the United States with him.
It’s clear that the president is not just protecting the United States from predatory foreign companies or workers who come here and take jobs that American citizens want. He believes, according to the article, that immigration is bad for the country and that foreign ideas are inferior to American ones. His nationalism is small because it rests on the incorrect assumption that our culture is superior to all others.
It’s president Archie Bunker at your service.
I suppose the good news is that much of the rest of the world ignores this nativist babble for the racism that it is, and that an interconnected, sharing world is a safer one both economically and militarily. Even allowing Internet service providers the ability to block, throttle or slow down sites will not stop people from blurring borders and searching for the best price, the highest wage, and people they can work with. A minority of voters in the United sates voted for fear, suspicion and moral relativity. I am optimistic that the majority sees through his blather and negativity.
And with that, I wish you a happy holiday, a Happy New Year and all of the other happiness that all humans so richly deserve.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
In addition to the praise and worship Republican lawmakers lauded on Donald Trump yesterday after passing the tax law – his first legislative win by the way, Donald Trump and his family will also draw huge benefits when the law goes into effect in 2018.
The Washington Post reports that Trump, who said he would be a “big loser” if the bill passed, stands to gain immensely from the Republican tax overhaul, including through a lower top tax rate and lucrative deductions for top-earning households, according to attorneys and tax experts who reviewed the final bill.
Trump could also take advantage of benefits that will lift specific business sectors, including a last-minute tax deduction that helps many owners of high-value commercial real estate, the industry where he first made his fortune.
The tax plan’s transformation into law crystallizes the contrast between Trump’s populist rhetoric and the private fortune he made by marketing condos, hotels and golf resorts to a wealthy clientele.
The Republicans’ first legislative triumph of 2017 will ensure a financial windfall for the president and his family in a way that is virtually unprecedented in American political history, experts said.
What began earlier this year as an assault on climate science continues this week with a directive by the Trump Administration to ban seven words, which clearly rankle conservatives even more than George Carlin’s famously dirty seven words. From the Centers for Disease Control website as reported in this article in the Washington Post,
Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
The charitable explanation for this change would be that Betsy DeVos called the president and said that these words were too big for her to understand and could the president please change them to more monosyllabic terms.
The reality, though, is far scarier. This is not a change on the order of Ronald Reagan saying that ketchup and mustard should be classified as vegetables for school lunch programs. This is censorship and doublespeak. As for what should replace these terms?
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.
Which means that every community in America can define its own reality. Your community doesn’t like climate change? Then it doesn’t exist. You oppose diversity? Why, feel free to discriminate. Or marginalize transgender citizens. Want to write a curriculum for your school district? No need to make it either evidence or science-based.
Can you say America Last in education and First in dirty air?
For all of their talk about allowing the invisible hand of the market a free reign, the Republicans certainly are afraid that Americans might make decisions based on science or any other information available to them. Fortunately, most Americans do not approve of the president or his policies, including this massive tax cut for the wealthy. And most Alabamans saw through the ridiculous argument that the state needed a fanatical pedophile to represent it rather than a former prosecutor who has worked tirelessly for all state residents.
The first casualty in any war, be it with weapons or policy, is language. The GOP is trying to redefine the basic elements of democracy and knowledge with a president who speaks on a fifth grade level.
Let’s define a new reality for them next November.
Usually I skip over stories that have to do with the Pope, but I’ve been reading more of them since Francis took the rather large yarmulke a few years ago because he seems to get the part about treating people like humans. He still has work to do with women and the Rohingya, but his proposed new change to the Lord’s Prayer (which I have as a 45 rock version from 1973) comes at a most perfect time.
Temptation seems to be all the rage these days and I have to agree with Francis that the problem is not with a deity leading us there, but with us as functioning people resisting the lure. And we do have problems with that.
From national and state politicians, media moguls, entertainers, business executives and, yes, the President of the United States, men have been tempted to use their power and influence to harass, rape, threaten, bully and terrorize both women and men for…what? Sex? Influence? Power? Babies? There’s a pathology here because rolling the dice and hoping you don’t get caught must be part of the demonic thrill involved in the chase. And sometimes, even an apology does not substitute for tears.
But there are other temptations that are weakening us too. The Republican Party, tempted by power, is shutting out any reasonable attempt at bipartisanship on health care and taxes, and I imagine that they’ll extend their terrible ideas to infrastructure, government spending and immigration.
The Democratic Party is similarly tempted by the thought of overreaching in their opposition to the president by becoming, at times, irrational baying wolves, calling for impeachment or overturning the election results. Neither of these will lead to the path to power, nor do I believe that they will become a force that compromises or ends the partisan war being fought throughout this country.
For all of this, I am not a religious person, but occasionally religious leaders do tap into the zeitgeist, intentionally or not. We could all use a little humility, and if it won’t come from the president or his inner circle of sycophants, then it must come from us because only the American people can put an end to a tolerance of lies, misdeeds and obstinate behavior.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
Minnesota Senator Al Franken, after losing the support of his fellow Democrats, stood on the floor of the Senate Thursday and announced his resignation after multiple women came forward and accused him of sexual misconduct.
And in what could be his final message on the Senate floor, Franken did not miss the opportunity to point out the “irony” of having the leave the Senate because of sexual accusations, while Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office with multiple sexual accusations against him, and Alabama senate hopeful, Roy Moore is about the be voted into the Senate with multiple sexual accusations against him.
Video
The crux of the article is that it’s currently illegal for colleges to collect and publish information on how much money each of their graduates is earning, what kinds of jobs they have and other information related to…money. Which bothers me a great deal because I am truly concerned about our present preoccupation with money and how students typically see a college as a four year job training program… with beer.
And that got me thinking. About me.
Because if you included information about me and my work experience, it might not lead to the type of information that might be helpful or that accurately reflects what some consider to be a typical college experience.
For example, I graduated from Syracuse University with a BA degree in two majors. One was in Television/Radio Management from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the other was in History from the Maxwell School in the College of Arts and Sciences. Both of these colleges are at or near the top of the rankings in their respective fields and I am duly proud of my accomplishments. Many of the graduates from these programs are thriving and are making valuable contributions to their fields.
Consider, though, that almost half of all college graduates are not directly using their major in their employment, including me. I’m a public school teacher and, yes, I do use my history degree every day, but I didn’t attend a school of education and I’m probably bringing down the income average of those classmates who are making more money in communications and media. Any prospective student would then look at my information and come away with financial information that doesn’t match my academic experience.
This is the problem with…money.
And this is also the problem when we, and I mean teachers, parents, guidance counselors, test preparation companies and society in general – focus on the financial aspects of a college education at the expense of its real purpose.
What we really need colleges and universities to publish is a happiness index or a satisfaction index or the ways in which a degree has made us more educated, more reflective, more compassionate, more inquisitive and more consequential, because those are the characteristics that we want people to come away with after spending four years at an institution of higher learning.
And we can use more people like that these days.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
I think the first paragraph of this story pretty much says it all about the Republican tax plan.
Corporate executives love the plan because they will make gazillions. But they don’t expect wages to rise. Which I think is a funny way of expressing that idea since it’s the corporate executives who are the ones in charge of making wages rise. So if they’re saying that wages will not rise, then not rise they will.
And wage earners in the middle and working classes can take that to the bank, where the bankers will likely laugh at them for trying to deposit empty promises. The silver lining is that interest rates are about to go up again, so the return on those empty promises is about to get larger.
Sucker.
Yes, there will be those who will see some more money in their paychecks next year, but the cost will be extraordinary. A black hole in the budget where trillions will be sucked into another dimension. Accounting gimmicks that will need to rely on millions of people giving up their health benefits so the rest of us insured folks can pay higher premiums when the uninsured get sick. And, now, the admission that wages are not likely to go up.
And through it all, the president remains broadly unpopular because Americans are far smarter than he is and they can see right through the hokum he and the Republicans are peddling. It starts with the contradictory argument whereby the president says that the stock market is at record highs, unemployment is at a 17-year low (thank you Barack Obama), and corporate profits are healthy and growing.
Why, then, do we need to mortgage our future and borrow on the backs of people without health insurance? Things seem to be going well without killing the economy. But since the GOP needs a win, even if it’s really a loss for the people, they will move ahead and hope that we won’t notice.
Too late.
Polls show that a majority of Americans don’t believe that tax cuts, especially to corporations and the wealthy, should be a priority. In fact, two-thirds of American voters say that cutting the deficit is more important than cutting taxes. But the GOP needs a win because their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed miserably for the understandable reason that taking health insurance away from 20 million people was a terrible idea. A tax cut bill that balloons the deficit and makes middle class taxpayers pay more is an equally terrible idea.
We also need to remember that aside from tax cuts, conservative orthodoxy says that the federal government is too large and that social programs, you know, the ones that are keeping many people alive in distressed areas, need to be eliminated or have their funding cut back. What are the odds that the GOP discovers the huge hole in the deficit next year and says that Social Security must be privatized and that Medicare and Medicaid need serious revision? I’m thinking the odds are pretty good.
The Republicans have been waiting for this moment, when they control all three branches of the government to undo the New Deal and Great Society programs, cut taxes and services, favor corporations and business interests over consumers, and turn the clock back to a more intolerant era.
Democrats have a year to remind voters what a great country looks like, how it acts on the world stage, and the costs of furthering income and legal inequality.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
We share the sentiment!
Why couldn’t we have this as our president?
Yes, I know her views on Israel would not be popular, but at this moment in time, don’t we need someone who has some, say, morals?
As far as I’m concerned, all the men who’ve been caught, have admitted, or have been credibly accused of inappropriate and/or criminal sexual activity should not be eligible for elective office. That’s Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, agree or disagree, religious or secular. It’s only when we have a zero-tolerance policy backed up by real and convincing action will people take this seriously.
The problem now is that we have a president who has no moral authority on this issue. Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from saying nothing about Roy Moore, but a lot about Al Franken. I stopped taking the president seriously about most issues last winter, but this one resonates because his supporters have created unique pinholes by which they are trying to weave their moral needles through with arguments that use very slippery thread. What it all comes down to with them is that Trump didn’t act on what he said about women.
To which I say, read what he said. It was not theoretical.
The same is true for Roy Moore, but since he’s the darling of the religious right, they need to twist a moral ideology so his behavior is OK. Like hanging around 14-year-olds. When he was 32.
The right likes to bring up Bill Clinton, and they should, because his behavior was reprehensible and probably cost two people–Al Gore and Hillary–their chances to be president. The big difference between Clinton and some of the others is that he was punished. He was impeached, although not convicted by the Senate, and he was disbarred. Meanwhile, many of these other predators are walking around unscathed and still either elected or eligible for office.
But harassment of women is not the only moral issue floating around these days. The tax cut bill, because it’s not really reform, is another example of retrograde Gilded Age thinking being gussied up as something new.
This bill is a moral disaster on a number of levels, but the key is that some middle class and even lower income people will actually pay more in taxes under the bill, either now or by 2026, in order to pay for the massive tax cuts that corporations and the already wealthy will see. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone who makes under $150,000 to see anything but a robust, healthy, consequential tax cut and a promise that the tax cut will last into the future.
Instead, what we seem to have in Congress is a bill that takes some of the most immoral and questionable stances we’ve ever seen. For example, teachers can now take a $250 deduction for items they buy for their classroom. The GOP wants to get rid of that so it can pay for the cuts to the wealthy. Imagine that. We already know that teachers mean nothing to this administration other than as a mostly unionized special interest, and that their goal is to destroy the public schools and make teachers into an even lower paid work force. But taking a paltry deduction away is beyond insulting–it’s immoral because it hurts students and communities. It sends a message that even that small amount of money is too much for public workers.
Further, the Senate wants to drop the personal mandate that everyone have health insurance, meaning that many people who should have it, but won’t because of the cost, will drop insurance, leaving themselves vulnerable to a financial catastrophe, and would use that money to further cut taxes.
The egregious immorality of this move is that in order to save money, the GOP is actually hoping that people will drop their coverage. And who will end up picking up the tab? Why, taxpayers like you and me in the form of higher premiums. And if you think that a further tax cut will make up for an insurance rate increase, then you haven’t been paying attention, unless you believe that you’ll be getting more than a 10% increase on top of what the GOP is offering now, because that’s at least how much your insurance will be increasing.
And the president thinks that wages will go up because of this tax cut. Um, not if insurance rates go up, they won’t because your employer will have to pay more to cover you if sick people can’t or won’t buy health insurance.
Have I also mentioned that taxpayers in high property and income tax states, like NY, NJ, and CA, will also lose in this bill because they will no longer be able to deduct those expenses? Not a problem for the GOP, though: Those states don’t vote Republican.
The only hope I have is that the GOP Senators who seem to get the danger of Trump–Corker, Flake, McCain, Murkowski and Collins–will sink this bill and ask for time, negotiations, hearings and analysis.
You know, democracy.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
