Category: Featured

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Serves me right for reading. I come across this article on the automobile industry in my favorite rag and it makes me really stop and think. Not that I think about the auto industry on a regular basis, but here we are at a turning point that has both national and global ramifications.

I had no idea that China was so influential when it comes to car sales in the world. From the article:

China increasingly rules the global auto market and determines its course. In recent years, China’s voracious appetite for vehicles has accounted for almost all of the growth in global sales. Chinese consumers bought 24 million cars last year, far more than any other nation. Americans were a distant second with 17 million cars. General Motors sells far more cars in Asia — 947,000 in the first three months of this year — than it does in the United States.

That’s impressive. And it also points out the scary math that I’m sure people think about but that hasn’t been given its due. The United States has about 330 million people and Chin has almost two billion. India has another billion plus. Our birthrate has been dropping for a few years and our chief executive is not fond of growth through immigration. How, then, are we to compete? Tariffs will only go so far and, it seems, will do more harm than good for the workers and suppliers that are making the engines go. Tariffs will also raise prices and cut profit margins. Moreover, young people are moving out of rural and suburban areas into more urban settings, where a car is not a necessity and is even seen as a liability that costs too much, pollutes, and makes life more difficult in a city.

And then, of course, there’s the environment.

Except for those Know Nothings who are running the government, the general consensus and facts as we know them clearly show that the climate is warming, and that is having a profound effect on our planet.

We love our cars in the United States, and they have done a great deal of good for our growth, our economy, and our national pride. Those days, though, are on their way out. Americans are buying fewer cars and auto manufacturing is done mostly in Mexico. Cars pollute. They need parking lots and roads and gas stations and gas and insurance and money to buy all of those extras, and increasingly that money is going to other places in the economy.

It would be nice if our national policy was not moving in the exact opposite direction it needs to on cars and energy. A push for electric cars would help. A push for more mass transit systems would help even more. China is not going away, or even lose, whatever that means, a trade war. They simply have too many people and too much government that is willing to step in and ensure that their key industries have the leverage they need to succeed.

The United States, though, does have strategies it can follow to ensure its continued economic advance, but they should not include more fossil fuels and larger SUVs and trucks. Many businesses are taking it upon themselves to commit to a greener, cleaner future, and perhaps American ingenuity and creativity will enable us to shift away from the old model and into the new one. The rest of the world sees the danger. We seem to see only threats to our way of life, which in many ways needs a serious upgrade.

We need leaders who will realize this and enact policies that will help us get there.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

I went to an interesting event yesterday. Some of my high school classmates and those of other classes honored a teacher who died recently by collecting money and dedicating a bench to his memory and legacy. It was a wonderful affair, attended by about 20 people and followed by some reminiscing at a nearby establishment.

Which led me to think – people should do this much more for their teachers. And I am and am not saying this just because I’m a teacher. I am saying it because I know how much time, energy, care, and dedication teachers devote to their craft and their students. I’m not saying it just because I’m a teacher, but because I think it should be a regular practice to thank and to honor anyone who’s done something that’s impacted your life. We say thank you to service members, and rightly so.

It’s time for everyone to thank their teachers. 

You don’t have to fund a bench, or anything physical, but it would be a nice gesture. So would establishing a scholarship or naming a room, area or award for them. Be creative and make it a lasting gesture. More than that, though, write thank you letters to your teachers or send them private messages on social media. You don’t have to make it public, just heartfelt.

I’ll let you in on something that’s perhaps a secret: Teachers adore, love, and live for hearing from their students. We see you at your most vulnerable ages, and at those times when you might be awkward, unsure of yourself, embarrassed, afraid to speak out or sure that we might not like you. I can say with certainty that we want to see and hear about how much you’ve grown, how you’ve overcome that obstacle, how you discovered a truth because of what you did in our class, or just how you’re living your life.

Honestly, we do.

And don’t fret about that time in class when you… you know… And you think that’s how we define you. We don’t. We saw you as the future and we want to hear from you in the present.

Pick one of your teachers. Let them know how you’re doing. Thank them for any contribution they made to your life. You will make somebody happy.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Be honest; you thought that maybe this presidency and the direction of the country couldn’t get more offensive or obnoxious or dangerous. And yet, here we are.

The administration is beating the war drums over Iran, and what did you expect? I’ve always thought that anyone who would give John Bolton any responsibility for foreign affairs truly knew nothing about how to conduct foreign affairs.

He served as a recess appointment under George W. Bush and managed to alienate almost every one of our allies. But now he’s a major spokesperson for an executive who clearly doesn’t know what his advisers are doing. After all, any president who is quoted as saying he doesn’t want to go to war has clearly allowed events to get ahead of him. But then, when you don’t know policy, you’re beholden to the most reactional Republican-controlled members of your staff. In fact, the president said yesterday that he wanted some assurance that the Iranians were not going to be able to build a nuclear weapon any time soon. We had that assurance in the treaty with Iran that the president took us out of.

I really wish I was making this up.

As for China, the president actually caught a bit of a break this past week because it was President Xi who upended the trade negotiations, perhaps gambling that he could snooker Trump and be seen as the more sober-minded executive/dictator. Normally, that’s not a bad bet, but this time it backfired and now Xi has to either backtrack or double-down on his mistake. He seems to have chosen the latter. This gives President Trump something he’s rarely had; the moral high ground, and he’s using it to threaten, and then restrain himself, on new tariffs that would seriously hurt the American economy. Luckily for us, Trump thinks that the stock market is the only number that matters economically, and when the market dove last week, he got cold feet. We will likely still see tariffs and higher prices and lower profits over the next few months. So much winning.

Worst, though, are the new reactionary, destructive laws concerning reproductive choice and health care passed in Republican-controlled states. The most noxious is, of course, the Alabama law that not only would ban abortion but would also criminalize doctors who perform them and not make exceptions for women who became pregnant as a result of rape or incest. Missouri followed suit with a fetal heartbeat law requiring rape and incest victims to carry their fetuses to term.

Normally, I would say that this law would go nowhere because of controlling court decisions, but we are in a new universe where conservative justices might decide that we have no right to privacy and strike down Roe, Loving and Griswold in one fell swoop. In sum, they could rule that states can pass whatever laws they want in the name of states rights. Many conservatives say that the Roe decision is the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott. These people never mention Plessy v. Ferguson as a terrible decision because it would allow states to treat anyone they don’t see as normal as a second-class citizen. Forget separate but equal; we’re looking at separate and deport, marginalize, and jail.

If you still don’t believe that this administration and the religious fanatics who support it are a danger to free thought, equal protection, and democratic values, then you need to realign your thinking. Just make sure you’re registered and that you vote.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

I love it when the media runs stories about huge multinational corporations that do not pay any income tax. Why? Because it inevitably leads to…crickets. Oh, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats will make angry speeches, but they disappear after a few days. Then the corporations fight back and say that they’re paying what the law says they should pay. And then they write out no check and continue to plow their profits into overseas factories and their stock price.

Ain’t Capitalism grand?

In fact, this is a national disgrace and there should be protests in the streets whenever any company pays zero tax. And the tax laws should be written so that huge multinational corporations should always have to pay taxes every year, and not just income taxes.

Corporations should have to pay a percentage of their profits to support public education, the environment, and infrastructure. They should offer much larger pay packages to all of their employees that include affordable health insurance, and larger 401(k) matches when an employee opens an account. Executive pay should be adjusted and cut so it doesn’t dwarf the salaries paid to the workers who actually create, deliver, support and innovate.

But that doesn’t happen, and it won’t with the current gang of Republicans and most of the Democrats we have currently serving in the Congress, because they are bought and paid for. And so is the president. After all, this is man so terrified of releasing his tax return, because he knows it will show something ugly and/or illegal about his business practices, he will go to any lengths to grovel at the feet of the ultra-conservative wing of the party and select only the most anti-government cabinet members and Supreme Court justices to protect him in case the Democrats sue or subpoena his files.

The worst part, though, is that we are at a point in our history where wealth and money and excess and things and things to hold the things we have too much of which makes Marie Kondo a celebrity and box office numbers and player salaries and companies that are worth a billion dollars but are really worth very little are part of of our national culture. Our national conversation. Our national, and personal, aspiration. This creates the false assumption that we can all be wealthy and that the capitalist system works because free markets work.

This is why we don’t march in the street when a new tax law creates a scenario where corporations pay nothing but middle class homeowners have to pay more.  Because we believe we are next to hit the jackpot. And we’re not a little scared that if we do march, we will be fired.

It’s time for the tide to turn and for some fairness in the system. Think about that next time you’re in the voting booth.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

I think I’m rather glad that there’s nobody in the conservative movement who/s doing what Phyllis Schlafly did in the 1960s and 1970s. After all, why would we need a person who says that women should stay home, take care of their families and be obedient to their husband, while at the same time jetting around the country (and not being with her family), running for Congress, and joining conservative organizations?

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m saying that we need activists of all genders and orientations to carry forward positive, useful messages that will bring encouraging change to this country. Mrs. Schlafly preached one message and lived quite another, all the while attempting to scare people into thinking that the Equal Rights Amendment – which she can take credit for defeating – would require unisex bathrooms, would force women into the labor market, and… gay marriage. Then again, she was right, but for the wrong reasons.

With the conservatives back in charge of most of the government, it’s their time to talk about what they rue as the breakdown, or dormancy, of the family. But of course, this argument comes down to how you define the American family. If your idea is of a man and woman and children and perhaps a pet or two with the man working and the women staying home full or part time, then yes, we have a family system in decline.

But if you define a family differently, with, say same sex couples, unmarried couples, single parents or many adults living, working and being responsible for each other and offspring, then the issue looks different.

Part of the conservative lament is that women have entered the workforce, which raised incomes and family spending power, which led to rising prices and the cost of family-related services and thus the decline of purchasing power. This then necessitated both men and women to work more hours to keep up which resulted in children being kept in childcare for longer days, more family stress, and pressure on career couples to work harder just to keep up.

At the lower end of the income scale, the problem seems to stem from the fact that there are fewer jobs for men that would allow them to make a decent living. This is scaring off the available women who are deciding (deciding!) that they might be better off having a child and not getting married because, well, the man might be more trouble than he’s worth. And since single women are at the very bottom of the income scale in this country, they have to run faster just to keep up.

Some of the proposals in the article I linked to would allow families to borrow from their Social Security by taking paid leave now and having to work longer in their 60s to make up for the amount they borrowed. After all, it’s revenue neutral for the federal government. Of course, the federal government under the GOP had no problem slashing the corporate tax rate by 15% and giving the wealthy huge tax cuts ever since 1981, both of which resulted in trillion dollar debts to the federal budget.

But helping families get 12 weeks of paid leave? Sorry–must be revenue neutral.

And of course, let’s not get started about families headed by gay couples or LGBTQ Americans who love their spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, theyfriends, biological children, adopted children, foster children, and pets. We know that conservatives might pay some lip service to these arrangements, but beneath the surface, social and religious conservatives are hoping that Brett Kavanaugh will undo the abominations of a fellow Republican, Anthony Kennedy, who actually understood differences and accepted them as American, pure and simple.

The problems associated with the family are, to a great extent, related to the enormous income inequality that’s been foisted on the American Republic since the election of Ronald Reagan. If incomes don’t stagnate, then families and workers have a chance at earning real money and could cover the costs of services they need to function effectively as a family. If the government would recognize the dire need we have today for subsidized child care, paid family leave, and government programs that actually supported people who need the services, then we could have families that wouldn’t be stressed about missing work or school to take care of their needs.

Having to borrow from Social Security to pay for child care is an unnecessary burden that wealthier people do not have to carry. And it’s also a cruel joke on people who will likely need their Social Security at an earlier age than wealthy people.

I want strong families. I want healthy, well-educated children to have an opportunity to succeed in this country. I want people to be able to spend time with their loved ones, share experiences and contribute to the country. Let’s elect people who will share in this desire.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest