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Climate change Featured

It’s Just the Weather. Nothing to See Here, Citizens. Move Along.

No, it’s not the Apocalypse. That happened last November. This is just weather.

Just weather. And the earth. How quaint.

Three hurricanes, and a major earthquake that very few people outside of Mexico are paying attention to, are taking their physical and psychic toll on a country that does not need any more bad news. Add in a cleanup that will be expensive, daunting and political, and you’ll see more partisan bickering in addition to the usual American disaster response which will include astounding stories of bravery, generosity, and poignancy.

Coming on the heels of the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the earthly events of the past few weeks are instructive and worthy of reflection. For as a much as we consider ourselves as the vanguard of technology, knowledge, wealth, sophistication and freedom, we need to remind ourselves that nature ultimately holds us to account. There’s just no way to stop a hurricane or to predict an earthquake in time to safely evacuate residents. We are really at the mercy of our own limitations and our uncanny hubris when it comes to assessing risk. Just as we overestimated our safety 16 years ago, and unconscionably put the New York disaster assessment agency in the World Trade Center, so have Houston and, I’m reasonably certain we will find out, South Florida, will find that they were unprepared for events that stretched the vocabulary of every weatherista in the media.

And the political lessons? Please. Just ask anybody in New Jersey who remembers the Texas Congressional delegation’s incomprehensible opposition to federal relief for Superstorm Sandy in 2012, how they view the Ted Cruz FEMA telethon and screechy request for funds to rebuild, and they’ll tell you quite a story. Just don’t stand too close. And I hope you’re not offended by salty language. There’s also more money to be spent on Florida, and in the end I expect that both states will get what they need.

What these storms ultimately should tell us is that we are pretty good at reacting to disasters (right, Brownie?), but we are terrible at planning, execution, building codes and, yes, infrastructure. We simply cannot continue this way. Other countries, such as the European low countries and Great Britain, have made adjustments and not simply rebuilt up the affected areas. Dunes on the New Jersey shore will help, but building more houses on stilts will just set up homes as field goal attempts the next time we are pummeled with a 100-year storm that comes 95 years too soon.

The last piece to all of this is how we react, long-term, to these challenges, and the main component is the effect our activity is having on our atmosphere. Climate change is real. It is being influenced by choices and actions that humans have made since the industrial age. You can’t believe in meteorology and astronomy and physics, but deny the atmospheric chemistry that is making the earth warmer and holding more moisture. It’s time that we realized that we need to make adjustments and to not put people in danger that is avoidable.

That will require leadership that, at present, we just don’t have.

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

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Featured

This Is How You Burn Your “Make America Great Again” Hat – Video

donald trump spouting nonsense METRO GRAB taken from: http://video.metro.co.uk/video/met/2018/01/06/8980338924088870056/640x360_MP4_8980338924088870056.mp4

“I can stand in the middle of Fifth Ave and shoot somebody, and not lose any voters!” That was ‘amnesty Don’ back when he was campaigning for president. With all the foolish things he said and all the love he received from Republicans for saying those things, Donald Trump felt invincible.

What changed? If you listened to the followers he has left, talking

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Featured

Steve Bannon Says Catholic Churches Need “Illegal Aliens” to Fill The Churches

Steve Bannon, leader of the conservative right, and most recently known as the man who whispered in Donald Trump’s ear as his Chief Adviser, explained his feelings on DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – and the Catholic church.

In a recently published interview, Bannon told CBS that Trump’s recent decision to end DACA – which would lead to the deportation of children and young adults who were brought to this country at by their parents – would not go over good with Catholics. Not because the decision is a terrible and insensitive one, but because the church need “illegal aliens” to fill their pews.

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Education Featured

The New School Year: History Will Guide the Future

New school years always bring new challenges for children, parents and teachers. This school year, though, promises to be much trickier, because we are now debating United States History.

Remember history? That’s the class that isn’t tested at the end of the year by the great national testing monopoly, Pearson. The PARCC tests focus on non-fiction readings, which allows for more use of historical documents on the test, but there’s no real history or context that a student has to master in order to answer the questions.

For decades we’ve focused on language arts and mathematics as the key components of K-12 education, relentlessly testing students in those subjects. And what has your school district likely spent a good deal of money on over the last few years? STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or STEAM (ibid., but add Arts). Coding classes are now part of the curriculum in many states as required business and personal finance courses. They get lots of press. And, yes, United States History is required in all states, but far too many of them require only one year of it. And with no summary test, save for a final exam at the end of the class, history has lost a good deal of influence in the curriculum.

We are now paying the price.

As this new school year begins, teachers will be asked to address the explosive issues that are daily in the media concerning our history and what it means. How should we treat Confederate statues and monuments? What place do hate groups such as the KKK and the American Nazi Party have in a country with a strong First Amendment? What should we do about immigration and children who were brought here by undocumented parents? And of course, we seem to be debating President Trump’s behavior, tweets and spur-of-the-moment policy declarations on a minute-by-minute basis, not to mention his speculative knowledge of historical events.

This is the environment in which America’s school teachers must operate this academic year. We are the ones who will be the first point of contact for many children who are feeling the anxiety and divisiveness that has taken hold in our society. Remember that as much as any adult is trying to make sense of what’s happening in our society, children experience these events on a magnified scale. They have less of the emotional regulation necessary to confront explosive debates that adults have and they have little context by which to weigh the consequences of what they’re learning. Great teachers recognize these deficits and conduct their classes so as to support students, to teach them civil behavior, to make sure students respect differences, and to calmly appeal to their students’ intelligence, humanity, and sense of justice.

Of course, some would argue that if teachers had done this in the past, then we wouldn’t be at this place in our history where there is so much disagreement and division. This would be a tragic conclusion. Did any of your teachers teach you to hate? To insult your classmates? To steal? To plagiarize? Of course not.

The simple truth is that teachers can only be as effective as the communities in which we teach, and if a community, or the country, is dysfunctional, then that will be reflected in the schools. We see students for only a portion of the day. The media, social and otherwise, takes over from there. Together with parents, teachers can only plant the seeds of knowledge; society and common sense have to do the rest.

That’s why this school year will be more of a challenge than most years, but I have no doubt that America’s school teachers will do their best, keep their emotions in check, teach from the heart and the head, advocate for every one of their students, and proudly represent themselves as doing one of the most important and difficult jobs in this country.

I wish all of my fellow teachers a happy new school year full of joy and wonder. May we learn as much about our students as they learn from us.

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

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Featured Racism

Pardon Our Appearance While We Crash and Burn

In the Trump Administration’s best approximation of Friday Night Lights, the president (shudder) treated two of his main constituencies to a Shabbat treat. First by throwing civil rights and equal opportunity to the floor when he banned transgender Americans from serving their country in the armed forces, and then when he pardoned convict Joe Arpaio, a move that sent a solid message to those who believe that medieval treatment of prisoners is not just for the 14th century.

Trump’s defense? That Joe was following the law. We should note that Joe was convicted of contempt for not following the law

The silver lining is that in order to receive a pardon, the person has to admit that they committed a crime. So Arpaio is now an admitted crook. Just the kind of guy that Trump admires.

These actions would be bad in any administration, but for one that is committed to really turning the clock back to 1946, before the armed forces were desegregated, these new twists are simply the method by which this country, ruled by white men, informed by white men, and acculturated by white sensibilities, will be…returned to white men.

Pardon my confusion as we slowly twist in the wind.

While the media focuses on the president’s foibles and twitter follies, he and his minions have done real and present damage to the country. They have sent the message that it’s fine to exclude people from participating in and benefiting from our democracy, opened up public land for economic exploitation, set us back at least 75 years as far as pollution and the environment are concerned, rolled back civil rights protections, and essentially made us a non-player in world affairs. And they’ve shown that they have no shame in perpetrating these policies. In fact, if it’s what the ultra-conservative base of the Republican Party wants, then Trump is eager to give it to them.

I would expect more pardons, more executive orders and more erratic and unpresidential behavior in the weeks and months to come. President Trump’s approval ratings are low enough that he doesn’t have to care about what the opposition thinks. After all, how much worse can things get?

Exactly my point.

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

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Keith Olbermann And The Dumping of Donald Trump – Video

Keith Olbermann continues leading The Resistance against the failure in the White House, with another epic edition detailing “some” of the individuals and organizations who have called it quits on Trump!

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured Racism

Robert De Niro Calls Trump a “Flat-out Blatant Racist!”

An outspoken critic of Donald Trump spoke in a recent interview and called #45 a “flat-out blatant racist!”

Robert De Niro tore into President Trump in an interview published this week, calling him a “flat-out blatant racist.”

“If he was smart, he’d be even more dangerous. He’s dangerous as it is,” the “Wizard of Lies” actor told Deadline.

“He’s terrible, and a flat-out blatant racist and doubling down on that, and it’s good that he does because he’s going to sink himself.”

Trump has become increasingly isolated since he concluded last Tuesday, that decent Americans protesting racism are the same as the KKK, White Supremacists and Nazis. Americans of all political persuasion have correctly denounced the man in the White House, some even saying that he “lacks the moral decency” necessary to lead the country.

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Featured Racism

Our President: The Hate That Keeps on Hating

With all that Charlottesville means now and will mean in the future, this much is clear: Donald Trump is probably the most genuine president we’ve ever had.

  • He is a genuine racist.
  • He is genuinely ignorant of United States History.
  • He genuinely believes that there is a moral equivalency between those who hate and those who want to stop the hate.
  • He is genuinely a terrible businessman.
  • He genuinely thinks that he, and only he, can have a correct opinion on an issue.
  • He has genuinely done damage to the office of the president of the United States.
But we should have known, shouldn’t we? After all, Trump ran on a white nationalist platform that blamed the country’s troubles on President Obama, immigrants, foreign countries, multiculturalism, political correctness and amorphous values that it’s clear Trump does not value. The far right-wing groups that include members of the KKK and Nazis are lauding his remarks from Saturday and Tuesday, remarks that placed equal blame for the violence on civil rights, justice and anti-hate groups. He claims to have seen footage and watched it closer “than anybody else,” (I’m not sure how you do that), then determined that it showed an equivalence that ignored reality.
Because people walking down a street chanting “Jews will not replace us” is that same as…people walking down the street in 1935 saying the same thing. In German.
And that brings up another trope of the Trump catastrophe. He says that he’s not racist or anti-Semitic because his daughter married Jared Kushner, who is Jewish and Orthodox, and then she converted. This is, and please pardon the disconnection, hogwash. I married into a Catholic family and while both parents seem(ed) to like me, they both harbor(ed) terrifically ugly anti-Semitic attitudes. They both deny(ied) their prejudice, but it was there just below the pleasant surface. So when Trump talks about his bona-fides, I don’t believe him for a second. And clearly, he has little regard for Kushner’s feelings as evidenced by his refusal to paint racist hate group violence for what it is.
As for history, the president seems to think that Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Stonewall Jackson are morally equal to George Washington because, after all, they all owned slaves. Never mind that the first three allied themselves, as treason, with a government that wanted to break up the United States, enshrine slavery as a constitutional right, and to rip up the laws that George Washington fought to establish and then helped to create. And after the Civil War was over, Forrest and others decided that they could not live in a country where the freed slaves had the same rights as white men. They then created a legal system that ignored the constitution and brutally killed African-Americans for more than a century.
The consequences are already unfolding. CEOs, you know, the people Trump said would help him rebuild the economy, have already left the Manufacturing Council and the Policy Forum as a protest over his remarks. And I’m sure more will follow.
But the real damage he’s done is embolden some frightening sociopaths who want to do damage to me, my relatives, and my friends and acquaintances, who encompass a multitude of races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual choices. He’s said that Nazi ideology is equivalent to civil rights activists.
The President of the United States believes all of this. Think about that!
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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Democracy Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

The Trump Doctrine: Shoot Off Mouth, Then Foot

At this point, the main difference between President Trump’s (shudder) relationship with Kim Jong-un and Mitch McConnell is that Trump has asked only McConnell to resign. Kim just gets the bluster treatment. Of the two, McConnell is in the biggest trouble.

Here in New Jersey, and only about 10 miles from the president’s retreat in Bedminster, there is calm. The area is primarily Republican, so most of the population either supports Trump or would never think of voting Democratic no matter who’s on the ballot. In fact, Bedminster, one of the horsiest places in the state, is fast becoming more Democratic due to the building of a huge condominium development, the Hills, back in the 1980s. Prior to that, the area was solidly GOP when the party was sensible. The Hills included the demon seed of New Jersey politics, affordable housing, which brought in moderate income people like me, and just like that, Democrats began being elected in the land of Malcolm Forbes.

There’s a reason that wealthy towns in New Jersey fight tooth and nail not to have to build affordable housing, or prefer to sell their housing credits to more, ahem, modest towns. Of course, you’ll never hear Trump talk about affordable housing or how the neighborhood surrounding his golf club is changing. That’s for losers. Not winners like him who’ve signed major legislation to…to…so sad!

It is in this context that our chief executive has taken to his Twitter account, threatening fiery death, destruction, ruin and an eternity in hell to…Mitch McConnell, whom the president blames for not getting a terrible, horrible, hellfire health care bill through Congress, a Congress that finally realized the political peril of throwing 22 million people off their healthcare. That’s not good enough for our once and future dear leader. He was absolutely no help in the process, mainly because he knows nothing about health care policy, and focused on threatening Senators who have stouter backbones than he does and who do not fear his empty suit.

Now Trump wants tax reform and infrastructure, but these will fail for the same reasons that repeal and replace failed; because the president does not know enough to lead on these issues and cannot speak in more than 140 character bursts. Tax reform is also looking more and more like reform to make wealthier people even more wealthy, while here in New Jersey we might lose the state tax deduction, which will result in the savaging of the middle class taxpayer.

Infrastructure will also go badly because the plan is for the government to spend $200 billion and private industry to spend $800 billion. But if there’s no profit, why would private concerns pony up that kind of money? It’s pretty obvious that we, the people, will end up paying more in fees and tolls to reimburse the private concerns, who might cut corners if their projects turn out to be too costly. Say what you will about public works projects; most of them last if you maintain them.

All this will be moot if we get into a nuclear war with North Korea, which we won’t. And without a coherent policy, or an actual diplomat in South Korea to carry our messages – which we don’t actually have – this will remain a war of words which we can’t win. And our allies and China should now be convinced that our man in the White House cannot be trusted to confer with them or to behave diplomatically. Trump figures he can yell at them like he did the plumbers and spackle guys in his towers when they didn’t do the job as he expected. Then he stiffed them.

What Trump did with North Korea is the diplomatic equivalent of stiffing a contractor. We, the people, unfortunately, will get stuck paying the invoice with our souls.

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

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Democracy Featured

Sometimes, America, It Takes a Leak

Thank goodness for government leaks and the leakers who leak them.

From the Pentagon Papers to the transcripts of President Trump’s (shudder) conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia, leaks of government information have overwhelmingly benefited the country. They serve the interests of democracy. They uncover that which the ruling class would like to keep covered. They embarrass those who, on balance, should be embarrassed. And they lay bare the conceit that the public cannot handle certain information.

After all, think of what we’ve learned about Michael Flynn and Russia and Jared Kushner and Mike Pence and James Comey and Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. We’ve learned that each and every one of these people had something to hide. We learned that they lied, sometimes under oath. We learned that they did not follow the letter of the law or treat all examples of wrongdoing equally. And we learned that the president simply is not prepared intellectually or temperamentally for his job.

So now the president has a new Chief of Staff, John Kelly, who is renowned for not smiling much and for being a military guy who will bring order and discipline to the White House. He got rid of Anthony Scaramucci, which was not just a low-hanging-fruit moment, it was Kelly picking up a rotten apple and flinging it into the Potomac. Next up will be investigations, extreme vetting of current and potential executive branch hirings, and firings of those who are adjudged as insufficiently kowtow-ish.

What he, or any other White House employee, will not stop are the leaks. The simple truth is that there are just too many people in government who see the danger that Trump represents. It’s one thing to oppose policy, whether it’s about Vietnam, the Cold War, missile defenses, Israel, bugging, or a military man who sets up a shadow government in the bowels of the White House. It’s quite another to have a president who doesn’t know the limits the constitution puts on his power. We’ve already seen cabinet members express their personal fealty to Donald Trump, not to the constitution or the American people. We’ve heard the president complain that Jeff Sessions did not have his back when Sessions correctly recused himself from the Russia investigation. We’ve also heard him talk about other government officials who don’t support him personally.

Under these circumstances, it is incumbent upon those who can uncover circumspect, illegal and immoral actions to uncover them. To publish them. To post them. To shout them.

So leakers, please keep taking leaks. Especially with this crew in the White House.

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

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Featured

Chris Christie Get’s in Fan’s Face – Didn’t Even Spill His Nachos – Video

Everyone is concerned. They want to know what New Jersey governor Chris Christie said to the fan at a Milwaukee Brewers game in Wisconsin. But I’m not. I don’t care about that. I want to know about the skills Christie demonstrated in his left hand.

A bowl filled with nachos and cheese and the like, or a loaded hot dog as some are reporting, managed to stay perfectly perched, resting in comfort as the New Jersey governor bend awkwardly over to scold the fan. I wanna know about the kind of balance required to pull of such a feat!

But for those who insist on knowing about the one-sided conversation, reports say Christie asked the man whether he wanted to “act like a big shot” and then told him to “be careful.”

Video

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Democracy Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

The Trump Cycle: Blather, Reince, Repeal

American Heroes Week is firmly in the rear-view mirror. But as we celebrate our heroes – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John McCain and every Senate Democrat – it’s important to remember that every American can be a hero every day simply by living a positive, moral, thinking, compassionate, empathetic, reflective life and acting on those values every day. Even a child knows that these behaviors are in everybody’s interests.

And then there’s the current administration in Washington. They talk about those values, but most of the time they fail to live up to them. This past week is a prime example.

The Republican healthcare crash and burn (or maybe not) should not surprise anyone who understand how insurance works and how much having health coverage affects other life decisions. A bill that would take coverage away from upwards of 22 million people or that would allow states to let insurance companies sell ‘cut-rate’ policies that cover… well… nothing, or have sky-high deductibles is not a bill that should even be written, much less voted on.

And yet.

The clear, unequivocal truth is that after 7 years of bleating and babbling, the Republican Party still had no idea how to solve or improve the health insurance issue in this country. And the president (shudder) showed that he doesn’t have any political or persuasive skills he can call on to get legislation done. All he knows is to threaten, and tweet-shame, and complain to Boy Scouts that it’s everybody else’s fault except his. His ignorance of policy and his drive to get anything passed simply to say it’s been passed is dangerous, as last week showed. His leadership skills are likewise impotent and very few, if any, legislators fear his wrath.

But that’s what happens when a minority of people elect an unqualified outsider who doesn’t know how to do the job of being this country’s leader.

That would be a full week for most presidents, but the palace intrigue that resulted in both Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus exiting the administration because of Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment is the stuff of farce. I have some respect for Spice now because after reading Scaramucci’s rant against Priebus it looks like old Sean has a good grasp of Scaramucci’s character.  We will see more people exiting the administration only to be replaced by sycophants and fringe know-nothings whose only qualification is that they’re loyal to, and love Trump.

Of course, the irony of Trump speaking in front of the Boy Scouts and appointing a foul, vile, self-obsessed capo in the same week is rather tasty. Scaramucci threatening to kill leakers adds another merit badge to the mix, yes?

None of this is a real surprise given that I’ve lived in Chris Christie’s New Jersey for the past 8 years. He’s set the tone for Trump and his ilk by demonizing the people and groups who oppose him, and flaunting laws that should apply to everyone but not to him. Beach photos anyone?

At some point, and we might have reached it, the Republican Party will need to make critical decision: Do they keep supporting the president or do they barrel forward on their own. For Democrats, this is not an appealing choice. But for the good of the country Congress will need to make sure basic American institutions survive a man who clearly has not read the Constitution and has no interest in doing so.

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

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