From your lips to God’s ear.
9 Likes
April 19, 2021 (Monday)
America today is caught in a plague of gun violence.
It wasn’t always this way. Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. Indeed, it always jumps out at me that the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, when members of one Chicago gang set up and killed seven members of a rival gang, was so shocking it led to legislation that prohibits automatic weapons in the U.S.
Eighty-nine years later, though, in 2018, another Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 children and wounded 17 others. In response, then-President Donald Trump called for arming teachers, and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature rejected a bill that would have limited some high-capacity guns.
Our acceptance of violence today stands in striking contrast to Americans’ horror at the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Today’s promotion of a certain kind of gun ownership has roots in the politics of the country since the Supreme Court handed down the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Since Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted a government that actively shaped the economy, businessmen who hated government regulation tried to rally opposition to get rid of that government. But Americans of the post-World War II years actually liked regulation of the runaway capitalism they blamed for the Great Depression.
The Brown v. Board decision changed the equation. It enabled those who opposed business regulation to reach back to a racist trope from the nation’s Reconstruction years after the Civil War. They argued that the active government after World War II was not simply regulating business. More important, they said, it was using tax dollars levied on hardworking white men to promote civil rights for undeserving Black people. The troops President Dwight Eisenhower sent to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, for example, didn’t come cheap. Civil Rights, then, promoted by the newly active federal government, were virtually socialism.
This argument had sharp teeth in the 1950s, as Americans recoiled from the growing influence of the U.S.S.R., but it came originally from the Reconstruction era. Then, white supremacist southerners who were determined to stop the federal government from enforcing Black rights argued that they were upset about Black participation in society not because of race—although of course they were—but rather because poor Black voters were electing lawmakers who were using white people’s tax dollars to lay roads, for example, or build schools.
In contrast to this apparent socialism, southern Democrats after the Civil War lionized the American cowboy, whom they mythologized as a white man (in fact, a third of the cowboys were men of color) who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone (in reality, the cattle industry depended on the government). Out there on the western plains, the mythological cowboy worked hard for a day’s pay for moving cattle to a railhead, all the while fighting off Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, and rustlers who were trying to stop him.
That same mythological cowboy appeared in the 1950s to stand against what those opposed to business regulation and civil rights saw as the creeping socialism of their era. By 1959, there were 26 Westerns on TV, and in March 1959, eight of one week’s top shows were Westerns. They showed hardworking cowboys protecting their land from evildoers. The cowboys didn’t need help from their government; they made their own law with a gun.
In 1958, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona rocketed to prominence after he accused the president from his own party, Dwight Eisenhower, of embracing “the siren song of socialism.” Goldwater had come from a wealthy background after his family cashed in on the boom of federal money flowing to Arizona dam construction, but he presented himself to the media as a cowboy, telling stories of how his family had come to Arizona when “[t]here was no federal welfare system, no federally mandated employment insurance, no federal agency to monitor the purity of the air, the food we ate, or the water we drank,” and that “[e]verything that was done, we did it ourselves.” Goldwater opposed the Brown v. Board decision and Eisenhower’s decision to use troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School.
Increasingly, those determined to destroy the postwar government emphasized the hardworking individual under siege by a large, grasping government that redistributed wealth to the undeserving, usually people of color. A big fan of Goldwater, Ronald Reagan famously developed a cowboy image even as he repeatedly warned of the “welfare queen” who lived large on government benefits she stole.
As late as 1968, the National Rifle Association supported some forms of gun control, but that changed in the 1980s as the organization affiliated itself with Reagan’s Republican Party. In 1981, an assassin attempted to kill the president and succeeded in badly wounding him, as well as injuring the president’s press secretary, James Brady, and two others. Despite pressure to limit gun ownership, in 1986, under pressure from the NRA, the Republican Congress did the opposite: it passed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which erased many of the earlier controls on gun ownership, making it easier to buy, sell, and transport guns across state lines.
In 1987, Congress began to consider the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, otherwise known as the Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases and to prevent certain transfer of guns across state lines. As soon as the measure was proposed, the NRA shifted into high gear to prevent its passage. The bill did not pass until 1993, under President Bill Clinton’s administration. The NRA set out to challenge the law in the courts.
While the challenges wound their way upward, the idea of individuals standing against a dangerous government became central to the Republican Party. By the 1990s, men increasingly vowed to take up arms against the government that talk radio hosts told them was bringing socialism to America. After April 19, 1993, when federal officers stormed the compound of a religious cult whose former members reported that their leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons, talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones warned that the government was about to impose martial law. Angry opponents of the government began to organize as well-armed “militias.”
In 1997, the NRA’s challenges to the Brady Bill had made their way to the United States Supreme Court. Printz v. United States brought together the idea of unfettered gun ownership and Republican government. The court held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to perform background checks. This both freed up gun purchases and endorsed states’ rights, the principle at the heart of the Republican policy of dismantling the active government that regulates business and protects civil rights.
We are in a bizarre moment, as Republican lawmakers defend largely unlimited gun ownership even as recent polls show that 84% of voters, including 77% of Republicans, support background checks. The link between guns, cowboys, race, and government in America during Reconstruction, and again after the Brown v. Board decision, helps to explain why.
13 Likes
People starting to believe the bullshit myths they’ve made up themselves never ends well.
12 Likes
Longer form contextualization of gun culture and racism here:
And an unrelated plug for Mediocre, by Ijeoma Oluo.
I’m listening to it, which is probably not the best format for a book of this type. I want to say I’m enjoying it, but its hard to enjoy something that confronts so many of my unexamined assumptions. I’m learning a lot.
13 Likes
April 20, 2021 (Tuesday)
Today a jury in Minneapolis, Minnesota, convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin on all counts in the death of George Floyd. On May 25, 2020, Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds after arresting him for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. The jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He faces up to 75 years in prison, and will be sentenced in two months.
As we heard this verdict today, it was striking how many Americans breathed a sigh of relief. It stands out to me that, although a girl passing by, Darnella Frazier, had the presence of mind to record a video of the entire encounter on her cell phone so we could all see what happened entirely too clearly, we were not certain of the outcome.
When they released information about Floyd’s death on May 26, the Minneapolis police department described it like this: “Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. [He was, in fact, dead.] Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.”
If Ms. Frazier had not captured the video, would Chauvin be in prison right now? Between 2013 and 2019, only 1% of killings by police have resulted in criminal charges.
How many of those deaths are like that of Mr. Floyd?
I cannot help but think of the famous image of Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price and Sheriff Laurence A. Rainey laughing at a hearing after their arraignment following the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964.
Price and Rainey were members of the Ku Klux Klan. On June 21, Price stopped James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, allegedly for speeding, then arrested them on suspicion that they had burned a church. That night, after they paid their speeding ticket and left, Price followed them, stopped them, ordered them into his car, and then took them down a deserted road and turned them over to two cars full of his fellow terrorists. They beat and murdered the men and buried them at an earthen dam that was under construction.
Price and Rainey thought it was funny when they were arraigned along with 16 of their friends—not for murder, because Mississippi refused to bring charges, but for conspiracy and violating the civil rights of the murdered men, both federal offenses. And why shouldn’t they think it was all a joke? The jury was all white and, after all, they were law enforcement officers.
But, in the end, Price was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (he served four) and Rainey, who was not at the murder scene, was found not guilty, but lost his job and his marriage and blamed the FBI and the media for ruining his life.
That’s what at stake today, of course. After 1877, certain white men in the American South could commit crimes with impunity, doing whatever they wished to the rest of us, because the region had become a one-party state. Protesters like Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner set out to reestablish the principle of equality before the law. In 1964, Price and Rainey tried to stop them and found, to their surprise, that the world had changed. Then, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act protecting the right of Black people to vote and the stranglehold of the white supremacists on the one-party South loosened.
In 2021, once again, certain people in our government and law enforcement would like to exercise the political dominance of a one-party state and the power that comes with it, this time on a national scale. Today, Chauvin found, to his apparent surprise, that the world is changing.
May her extraordinary act of bearing witness bring peace to Ms. Frazier.
Rest in power, Mr. Floyd.
13 Likes
April 21, 2021 (Wednesday)
The second coronavirus shot is whuppin’ me. Haven’t even looked at the news, and am going to take the night off and keep sleeping.
I took this picture the other day of a carving on an old birch when Buddy I and hiked Tumbledown Mountain, and am posting it today to thank all the scientists and healthcare providers who have gotten us through this.
There are no words for how much you have done.
18 Likes
April 22, 2012 (Thursday)
Today there are three stories in the news about the mechanics of government that add up to a much larger story about American democracy.
First, by a vote of 216 to 208, the House of Representatives passed a bill to grant statehood to the District of Columbia. The measure would carve out the area around Capitol Hill, the White House, and the National Mall to remain much as they are today, but the rest of what is now the District would get one representative in Congress and two senators. About 712,000 people live in Washington, D.C., only about 37.5% of whom are non-Hispanic white.
Republicans are furiously arguing that this is a naked power play on the part of the Democrats, for D.C.’s inhabitants are presumed to be Democratic voters. In response, those in favor of D.C. statehood point out that the Republican Party, quite famously, admitted six states in twelve months between 1889 and 1890. They were not shy about what they were doing. The admission of North Dakota, South Dakota (they split the Dakota Territory in two), Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, Republicans said, should guarantee to the Republican Party a permanent majority. (They were so blatant that they convinced a number of Republicans to turn against them.)
But today’s vote to admit D.C. to the Union is not quite the same as the power grab of the 1890s for the simple reason that Washington, D.C., in 2021 has a lot of people in it. Republicans pushed for the admission of their six new states as quickly as they did because they knew that the 1890 census would reveal that the new states did not have enough people in them to become states (unlike Arizona and New Mexico, which did have a lot of people, but those folks supported the Democrats).
In contrast to that push to create states purely for political power, today’s D.C. has people in it. A lot of them. It has more people today than Vermont… and Wyoming, one of the states the Republican brought in in 1890.
The second thing that happened today dealing with the mechanics of government was that on the steps of the Supreme Court building, in a talk to reporters, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), alongside Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), linked the vote for D.C. statehood to control of the Supreme Court. Cruz accused the Democrats of trying to pack the Supreme Court both by trying to add Washington, D.C., as a state—which would add two Senate seats, presumably going to Democrats—and by adding more seats to the court. Then Cruz went on to say something astonishing:
“You didn’t see Republicans when we had control of the Senate try to rig the game. You didn’t see us try to pack the court. There was nothing that would have prevented Republicans from doing what they’re doing other than respect for the rule of law, other than basic decency, other than recognizing that democracy matters, and packing the court and tearing down the institutions that protect our rights is fundamentally wrong.”
This is classic Cruz: straight up gaslighting. Because, of course, Republicans have been stacking the Supreme Court since the Reagan administration, when Attorney General Edwin Meese deliberately politicized the Department of Justice in an attempt, as he said, to “institutionalize the Reagan revolution so it can’t be set aside no matter what happens in future elections.”
Currently, on the court there are 6 justices appointed by Republican presidents and 3 appointed by Democratic presidents. Of the five justices appointed by a Republican president, only one—Clarence Thomas—was appointed by a president who won the popular vote (George H. W. Bush). Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito were both appointed by George W. Bush. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were all appointed by Donald Trump. That is, five of the Republicans on the court were appointed by presidents who did not represent the majority of voters, not to mention the majority of Americans.
The story of “rigging” goes beyond this, though. Gorsuch got his seat only because then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared that President Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016 was too close to the date of a presidential election, the following November, to allow for the nomination to go through. That left the seat free for the president who followed Obama—Donald Trump—to fill, even though McConnell had invented that rule.
Even so, Gorsuch could not get the votes he needed for confirmation until McConnell had invoked the so-called “nuclear option” to get rid of the filibuster so that Gorsuch’s appointment could get through with just 51 votes.
And then, of course, although he had declared that eight months before a presidential election was too late to nominate a Supreme Court justice, McConnell pushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett on October 26, 2020, eight days before the end of a presidential election in which voters had already begun to cast their ballots.
The third thing in the news today is the filibuster. The admission of D.C. as a state, as well as the popular new voting rights bill (which would protect the right to vote, stop gerrymandering, and end the flood of corporate money into our elections), the infrastructure bill, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (which bans chokeholds, limits military equipment on our streets, and requires body cameras) all come down to whether the Senate will preserve the filibuster, which enables the 50 Republicans in the Senate—who represent 40.5 million fewer Americans than the 50 Democrats in the Senate—to stop the passage of bills unless the majority can nail together 60 yes votes.
It seems to me that these three stories about the mechanics of our government show that our democracy is in a bad place right now. Republicans have stacked the deck in their favor for a long time and have come to rely on that unfair system, rather than policies that appeal to voters, to retain power. Now that Democrats are trying to level the playing field, they howl that the Democrats are cheating.
13 Likes
A level playing field is the apocalyptic nightmare of the Republican party. On an even field, they are doomed and they know it. It is an absolute battle for survival for them, as they are a minority party whose policies don’t even enjoy majority support from their own voters. So they rely on culture war shtick and unequal representation to cling to power for just a little longer. They cannot burn in Hell soon enough.
19 Likes
12 Likes
April 23, 2021 (Friday)
The big news today is the two-day climate conference of world leaders, which I will write about in the future, but I am still chewing over something from four days ago. Tonight’s post is a combination of history and speculation, so this is a good one to skip if you need a break from politics or you’re not interested in musings.
If you’re still on board….
On April 19, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), who is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in charge of fundraising to elect Republicans to the Senate, wrote an astonishing op-ed for Fox Business. It lashed out at “Woke Corporate America,” the corporations Scott blames for shunning states that are undermining voting rights in order to try to keep Republicans in power, particularly Major League Baseball. Using language that echoes that of former president Donald Trump, this scathing op-ed accuses business leaders of catering to “the rabble leftist mob” because they are “hoping to buy time to rake in more cash.” It warns, “There is a massive backlash coming. You will rue the day when it hits you. That day is November 8, 2022. That is the day Republicans will take back the Senate and the House. It will be a day of reckoning.”
The man who is in charge of raising money to elect Republicans to the Senate, a businessman whose net worth is estimated to be more than $200 million, with his wife worth another $170–208 million, is turning viciously on the business people who, until now, have provided the financing to keep Republicans in office.
This strikes me as an interesting moment.
The ideological faction that is currently in control of the Republican Party grew out of opposition to the active government both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II. But since Americans actually liked business regulation, a social safety net, and infrastructure projects, those Movement Conservatives who wanted to take the government back to the 1920s got little traction until 1954, when the Brown v. Board of Education decision enabled them to harness racism to their cause. With federal government efforts to end segregation in the public schools, businessmen who hated government regulation warned voters that their tax dollars were being used to give Black Americans extra benefits. It was socialism, they said, and it would encourage Black people to step out of their place.
This formula worked. Businessmen determined to cut the government bankrolled Movement Conservative candidates, and people determined not to let their tax dollars go to Black or Brown people voted for them. In 1986, Grover Norquist, a former economist for the Chamber of Commerce, brought together business people, evangelicals, and social conservatives. “Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources,” Norquist explained, “but these groups can provide the votes.”
These two very different groups have worked together since the Reagan administration, but former president Trump changed the equation. In the past, the racist and sexist language was understated enough that supporters could wink at it and insist that those calling it out were overly sensitive. But Trump put it openly on the table.
When Trump announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015, suggesting that Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are drug dealers, criminals, and rapists, supporters continued the old pattern of excusing that rhetoric. But in August 2017, when Trump appeared to side with the white supremacist mob that killed Heather Heyer and wounded 19 other counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides,” a split seemed to open up in the party. Fed on decades of racist and sexist rhetoric and emboldened by the president, white supremacists stepped into public view in a way that could not be ignored. And party leaders who depended on their votes did not turn away.
But the calculation for business leaders changed with the January 6 insurrection and the attempts of states like Georgia to restrict the vote, largely to keep Black people from the polls. Consumers and employees are pressing business leaders to take a stand against the white supremacist wing of the party, and many of them are doing so. At the same time, though, small donors are making up for the money that corporations are withholding from Republican candidates. This seems to have inspired Senator Scott—who is in charge of fundraising, after all—to turn viciously on businessmen in order to court Trump loyalists.
Could it be that after all these years the marriage of business and racist voters is twisting apart?
If it is, it seems to me there are two logical outcomes to this split. It could be that the people running today’s businesses fall in line behind the white nationalists and let them call the shots, letting them take the lead in the old partnership for a change. If that happens, we can expect any future Republican government formally to throw out our foundational principle of equality before the law, and the vision that the former president and his followers embraced will come to pass.
But there is another possible outcome. It was, after all, the marriage of these two very different groups that gave Movement Conservatives the power to take over the Republican Party in an attempt to destroy the post–World War II government. If they finally wrench apart, the remnants of the Republican Party would once again have to appeal to ordinary voters who want to keep the active government that provides Social Security and Medicare and roads and clean water but who want a real conversation about what that government should look like.
12 Likes
any idea if she’s going to continue to write updates past the end of the month? i think i remember at one point she said she was going till his 100th day, which is maybe the 29th?
( i will definitely miss her perspective and summaries whenever she’s done 
)
7 Likes
All I remember hearing was the author of a feature about her saying this work is “unsustainable,” but nothing directly from her about how long she’ll keep at it. She has 1.5 million followers on FBook alone, so it’s hard to imagine her just stopping one day. I’d imagine some sort of slow down is coming though.
12 Likes
April 24, 2021 (Saturday)
Spring has sprung here, and life is starting to pick up again.
Going to bed to get a jump on it. Will see you tomorrow.
[Photo by Buddy Poland]
9 Likes
April 25, 2021 (Sunday)
On Thursday and Friday of last week, April 22 and 23, President Biden convened a virtual meeting of 40 world leaders to discuss addressing climate change. It is no longer possible to ignore changes in the world’s climate: the last decade was the hottest in recorded history, and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached record levels. Arctic ice is melting; last summer’s fires in Australia, California, and Colorado were catastrophic.
In 2015, representatives of more than 190 countries, including the U.S., gathered in Paris and hammered out an agreement on mitigating climate change, adapting to it, and financing those changes. Former president Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. On his first day in office, Biden took the U.S. back into the international agreement.
But Biden seems not simply to be trying to adjust the nation’s energy production. With the Leaders Summit on Climate, Biden is taking what his Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm called “our generation’s moonshot,” a reference to the American determination to reach the moon in the 1960s, a goal that spurred previously unimaginable developments in technology, computers, and science.
In the past, refusal to address the issue of climate change has centered around the idea that cutting back on fossil fuels would take jobs from coal miners and those in related fossil fuel industries. That focus was always about more than jobs: the hardworking white man in a hardhat was a cultural symbol for a certain political stance more than it was about reality. Walmart, for example, employs about 28 times the number of people as does coal, even including executives, office workers, and so on. Still, it’s a trope that worked in 2016: Trump won West Virginia by 42 points.
But a lot has changed in the last four years.
For one thing, the market for coal has slid, illustrating that old blue-collar jobs are not coming back. Trump promised to make coal great again and seemed to think that slashing environmental regulations would do the trick, but even combined with an infusion of up to $1 billion, slashing regulations could not stop Trump’s administration from overseeing the fastest decline of coal-fuel capacity in U.S. history. The U.S. lost 10% of coal-mining jobs—5300 of them—between 2016 and 2020. Low natural gas prices and the rise of wind and solar alternatives pushed coal aside. At the same time, mechanization across blue collar industries means the recovery of old manufacturing jobs is not in the cards.
On April 19, the United Mine Workers of America, the largest coal miners’ union, backed Biden’s plan to move away from coal, so long as miners get government support to transition into similar jobs. In a plan endorsed by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia (who is well known for delivering for his constituents), the union asked for funding to plug abandoned oil and gas wells, clean up mining sites, and train workers for new jobs in new energy technologies.
The sentiments of business leaders have shifted, too, as they recognize that climate change is a financial disruptor. Earlier this month, leaders of more than 400 businesses that collectively employ more than 7 million Americans signed a letter asking Biden to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. “To restore the standing of the U.S. as a global leader, we need to address the climate crisis at the pace and scale it demands,” they wrote. “New investment in clean energy, energy efficiency, and clean transportation can build a strong, more equitable, and more inclusive American economy.” Signatories included Etsy, Facebook, Nike, Microsoft, Verizon, and Walmart.
Biden has already embraced the idea that addressing climate change is not a loss but an opportunity. It will, he insists, bring good jobs to ordinary Americans. “When people talk about climate, I think jobs,” Biden said on Thursday. “Within our climate response lies an extraordinary engine of job creation and economic opportunity ready to be fired up.”
Indeed, Biden’s American Jobs Plan already calls for $16 billion to clean up abandoned mining sites and more for the training in new infrastructure jobs coal miners want. It also addresses job losses in rural areas in an obvious but novel way: by supporting the caregiver economy. Caregiving jobs cannot ever be mechanized, and there are caregivers—and people who need care— in every single community in this country. Supporting those positions will bring money into towns left behind by the loss of jobs like mining.
Biden’s emphasis on new energy jobs is part domestic politics, but it is also a major play for redefining future world power. It was no accident that the overarching political theme of last week’s conference was “America is back.”
As the White House fact sheet on the conference stated: “Over the course of two days and eight sessions, President Biden convened heads of state and government, as well as leaders and representatives from international organizations, businesses, subnational governments, and indigenous communities, to rally the world in tackling the climate crisis, demonstrate the economic opportunities of the future, and affirm the need for unprecedented global cooperation and ambition to meet the moment.”
America is back, indeed.
But what does that mean, in this context? At the summit, Biden announced that by 2030 the U.S. would reduce emissions by 50–52% from the levels of 2005, more than doubling our commitment under the Paris Agreement. He called for other countries, which make up 85% of emissions, to “step up” to “tackle the climate crisis and support the most vulnerable.” (The U.S., which has 4% of the world’s population, emits 15% of the world’s greenhouse gases). This is all pretty standard for U.S. climate statements. Biden went farther, though, calling for changing the American economy over to renewables, including wind, solar, nuclear, and so on, to make the country carbon-free by 2035.
Still, what jumps out from the rest of the Biden proposal is what sure looks like a major reworking of the world economy and thus its political tensions.
While the U.S. focused on fossil fuels and refused to jump wholeheartedly into research and development of alternative energies, China did. That nation is still dependent on fossil fuels and expects not to reach its highest pollution levels until sometime before 2030, but it has heavily subsidized solar power and now has 8 of the top 10 solar companies in the world. America has one; Europe has none. Chinese dominance of the technology and supply chains for the solar industry threatens to sideline American technology and national security, as even American solar manufacturers depend on Chinese materials.
Dominating the world of alternative energy would give China a powerful geopolitical tool. Remember how hard the supply chain failures in China during the early days of the coronavirus hit the U.S.? Now, think energy. A recent piece by Emerging Markets journalist Kenneth Rapoza in Forbes is titled: “How China’s Solar Industry Is Set Up To Be The New Green OPEC,” a reference to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose oil embargo to the U.S. in 1973 slammed the U.S. economy.
Countries, especially weaker countries, would need to turn toward China if that’s where they get their energy technology. And even stronger countries would be dependent on China for one of their most vital needs. To forestall that scenario, Biden has stepped in to reclaim leadership on new energy technologies for the United States, enabling other countries to work toward an energy future that is not dominated by China. On April 22, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg signed onto the idea of NATO cooperation on climate change and other security challenges.
After four years in which our leaders saw the height of American strength as standing alone, our leadership is now focusing on the idea of international teamwork. Biden’s climate plan is about saving the planet, but it also seems to be about saving global alliances, binding countries together with a new climate agreement to retain their power over their own energy in the future.
9 Likes
It’s great to see more cooperation and alliances, instead of divisiveness and antagonism. It makes me hopeful to see competence IRL, instead of only in theory or fiction. Our challenges in technology, climate, and infrastructure can be solved with a combination of innovation and consistent effort. We just need a good strategy for dealing with the detractors, distractors, and derailers.
9 Likes
April 26, 2021 (Monday)
In his first major speech as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken laid out the principles of the Biden administration in foreign policy, emphasizing that this administration believed foreign and domestic policy to be profoundly linked. Biden’s people would support democracy at home and abroad to combat the authoritarianism rising around the world… including in the U.S.
“The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people’s fundamental needs and hopes. It’s on us to prove them wrong,” Blinken said. “So the question isn’t if we will support democracy around the world, but how.” He answered: “We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.”
President Joe Biden has set out a foreign policy that focuses on human rights and reaches out more to foreign peoples than to their governments, heartening protesters in authoritarian countries.
On Saturday, Biden issued a document declaring that the displacement and slaughter of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915 was a “genocide.” The U.S. had previously refused to recognize the ethnic cleansing for what it was because of the strategic importance of Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO (among other things, Turkey holds the straits that control access to the Black Sea, on which Russia and Ukraine, as well as other countries, sit).
Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide is a reflection of the fact that Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is increasingly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Taliban, and appears to be abandoning democracy in his own country, giving Biden the room to take a step popular in America but previously too undiplomatic to undertake. (Remember when Erdogan’s security staff beat up protesters in Washington, D.C., in 2017 and prosecutors dropped the charges?)
Erdogan greeted Biden’s announcement with anger, demanding he retract it, but he also said he expected to discuss all of the disputes between the U.S. and Turkey at the June NATO summit. Geopolitics in Erdogan’s part of the world are changing, as Putin is struggling at home with protests against his treatment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and with the new U.S. sanctions that, by making it hard for him to float government bonds, could weaken his economy further. It is looking more and more likely that Biden and Putin will also have a summit early this summer.
Biden’s emphasis on ordinary people and his attempt to illustrate the power of democracy showed today, too, when the Biden administration announced it would share as many as 60 million doses of our stockpiled AstraZeneca shots with the world once they pass safety reviews.
But the news shows that Biden’s concerns about the rise of authoritarianism at home are well founded. Republican pundits and lawmakers are rallying their supporters to a world that is based not in reality, but rather in what they consider to be fundamental truths: a hallmark of authoritarians.
The ridiculous idea that Biden’s climate proposals would mean that Biden was banning meat swept through the right-wing echo chamber this weekend. It appears to have originated in an entirely unrelated academic paper from 2020 that explored how changing the American diet might affect greenhouse gas emissions. Still, the Fox News Channel (FNC) claimed that Biden was cutting “90% of red meat from diet,” and restricting people to “one burger per month," and lawmakers joined the chorus.
The right seems increasingly detached from reality, but it is a detachment with a purpose.
Right-wing pundits are fantasizing about being afraid of the left. After the guilty verdict in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he died, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) both implied that the nation’s cities are boarded up and people are cowering in fear from protesters against police brutality. They seem to be saying that imagined excesses of the left justify extreme behavior from the right. That is, in their telling, left-wing protesters are so out of control, their actions justify any sort of a crackdown they bring upon themselves.
On Twitter, lawyer and political writer Teri Kanefield did a deeper dive on the way lies serve the authoritarian government of fascism. Stories like that about meat, or about the inhabitants of the nation’s capital being afraid to go outside, or the idea that the January 6 insurrectionists were Biden supporters are not true, and those who tell them know it. But those lies illuminate what those who tell them see as a higher truth, doing so in a way that ordinary people can understand. People challenging the lie prove they do not accept the higher truth, and thus are enemies.
History suggests we’re in dangerous territory.
Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Combatting Public Disorder Act,” designed, as he said, to “stand for the rule of law and public safety.” Recalling the summer’s protests, he said, “We are holding those who incite violence in our communities accountable, supporting our law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to keep us safe and protecting Floridians from the chaos of mob violence. We’re also putting an end to the bullying and intimidation tactics of the radical left by criminalizing doxing and requiring restitution for damaging memorials and monuments by rioters.”
The new law lowers a “riot” to three people and dramatically increases punishments for “rioting,” including the loss of the right to vote. It also makes local governments financially liable if they do not respond aggressively enough to “unlawful assembly,” and it protects people who happen to injure or kill a protester during a riot, including by driving a car into them.
But a study by The Guardian, released earlier this month, suggests that the summer’s mass arrests were an attempt to control crowds, silence protests, and turn observers against the protesters by portraying them as violent and lawbreaking. Law enforcement dropped, dismissed, or never filed the vast majority of citations and charges it issued to Black Lives Matter protesters.
Guardian reporter Tom Perkins looked at 12 different jurisdictions and found that in most of them, including in Minneapolis where Floyd was killed, at least 90% of the cases were dropped or dismissed. In Dallas and Philadelphia, 95% of the cases were dropped. In San Francisco, 100% of the cases related to peaceful protest were dismissed. In Detroit, most of the tickets were written by officers who were not themselves at the protests.
Tonight, FNC personality Carlson called for his audience to start direct action. He told them to confront people wearing masks, which he says are signs of “political obedience.” He maintained that 64% of white Americans who called themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” “have been diagnosed with an actual mental health condition.” He called them “aggressors” and told supporters, “it’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in.” He said to call the police immediately if they see children wearing masks and keep calling until someone arrives: it is child abuse, he says, and his audience is “morally obligated to prevent it.”
The chyron under his monologue read: “THIS ISN’T ABOUT SCIENCE. IT’S ABOUT POWER.”
12 Likes
Well, he is correct about this, just not in the way he thinks.
Honestly, in some areas (like where I live) this has potential to be terrifying. He is inciting confrontation and potential violence. And calling the cops if you see a child wearing a mask? That’s a call for Karen action if ever there was one. This has serious potential to get very ugly very fast. Buckle down, folks. He is trying to start another insurrection.
11 Likes
April 27, 2021 (Tuesday)
More than 140 military leaders, former national security officials, and elected officials from both parties have asked Congress to establish a commission to figure out what led to the January 6 insurrection, when rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol, and how to stop a similar coup attempt in the future.
Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) told reporters that the proposed congressional commission should focus solely on that attack. “What happened on January 6 is unprecedented in our history, and I think that it’s very important that the commission be able to focus on that,” she said. “It’s very important that the January 6 commission focus on what happened on January 6 and what led to that day.”
Cheney is staking out turf apart from that of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has said any commission should cover political violence in general, including Black Lives Matter protesters and Antifa protests. And yet, an investigation by The Guardian established that more than 90% of arrests at Black Lives Matter protests never led to charges and were apparently at least in part to feed a narrative that the BLM protesters were violent.
Cheney and McCarthy are parting ways over what they see the future of the Republican Party to be. Cheney voted to convict former president Trump of incitement of insurrection for the events of January 6 and clearly wants to keep herself from the contamination of that crisis.
McCarthy, in contrast, has come back to the Trump fold. Immediately after the January 6 attack, a number of Republicans who had witnessed the events said that McCarthy called Trump to beg him to call off the insurrectionists. Trump had said to him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” to which McCarthy responded: “Who the F—k do you think you’re talking to?”
Nonetheless, later that night, McCarthy joined the majority of the House Republicans to object to the counting of the certified state ballots electing Joe Biden president. Although he later said that the former president “bears responsibility” for the assault, he voted against his impeachment for incitement of insurrection.
What is at stake is the future of the Republican Party. What is also at stake is the future of the country.
McCarthy doesn’t want to alienate Trump or his supporters because he sees them as key to future electoral victories. On Fox News Sunday this week, Chris Wallace asked McCarthy whether the story about his angry phone call with Trump on January 6 was true, but, despite witnesses, McCarthy refused to answer. He would like to keep Trump voters behind Republican candidates and has suggested forcing Cheney out of her leadership position in the party.
The Trump loyalists in the party are trying to take over the party in its entirety. Trump and his supporters have continued to feed the idea that Biden cheated Trump out of his election win until now more than two thirds of Republicans say they believe Biden did not win the election. (He did. This is well established.)
To continue to feed this Big Lie, Republicans in the Arizona state senate have turned to a private company for a vote audit in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa. The vote has already been audited at least twice, under formal rules, and both audits turned up no fraud. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a Republican, said there was no need to review the ballots again.
In contrast to the trained election officials, the company the Republicans tapped is run by a conspiracy theorist who supports the idea that voter fraud stole the election from Trump; he claims Trump actually won by 200,000 votes. When a judge ordered the company, Cyber Ninjas, to explain publicly how it was conducting the audit, company attorneys refused. A reporter who observed the early process by claiming to be a volunteer noted that the volunteers helping with the audit were using pens that could be picked up by the scanners. The ballots are no longer secure, so whatever this so-called audit claims is automatically suspect.
Tying the Republican Party to the Big Lie that caused the January 6 insurrection is a dangerous game. It is still unclear what will come out about the insurrection and the media lies that supported it and continue to support it.
While officials in the Department of Justice have been quiet about investigations of the insurrection, that does not mean they are ignoring it: it is not appropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation. Indeed, more than four hundred people have already been arrested for their participation in the insurrection, and news broke yesterday that the FBI had at least four informants within the Proud Boys, the right-wing organization that allegedly provided security for Trump adviser Roger Stone in the days around the insurrection. The Department of Justice has announced it expects to charge at least 100 more individuals.
There are also suggestive insurrection-adjacent stories swirling. A far-right British agitator, Tommy Robinson, who urged Trump supporters to keep fighting after the insurrection and who appeared in right-wing U.S. media, is now affiliating himself with Russia.
If Russian disinformation is indeed involved in the Big Lie, it might well be revealed: nine regional military commanders last year asked the intelligence community to declassify information about the ways in which Russia and China are undermining U.S. national security by shaping public opinion. Yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced that the administration will establish a new center to coordinate intelligence about foreign interference in U.S. politics. Haines noted that “[E]fforts by U.S. adversaries seek to exacerbate divisions and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”
Lawyers from the Justice Department have been arguing in court lately that Trump’s continued lying about the election, along with the amplification of those lies by right-wing media, remains an ongoing threat.
10 Likes
April 28, 2021 (Wednesday)
Earlier today, in anticipation of tonight’s address to Congress, President Joe Biden met with news anchors. The president told them that his many meetings with foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, have convinced him that the story of this moment is whether democracy can survive the challenges of the twenty-first century. As things speed up, is it possible, he asked, to achieve the consensus necessary for democracy in time to compete with autocracy?
He told the anchors that “they’re going to write about this point in history.”
Biden nailed it. The struggle to preserve democracy is precisely what the story of this moment is—although it started long ago in the U.S., at least—and historians are already writing about it that way.
In the United States, the move toward oligarchy had been underway for decades. First, Movement Conservatives, who wanted to destroy the liberal state President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, increasingly grabbed power through voter suppression, gerrymandering, filling the courts with originalist judges, focusing on the idea of the so-called “unitary executive,” and propaganda. Once they controlled the Republican Party, their techniques left it open to a leader like Trump to gather power to himself alone. Their admiration for oligarchy left them open to autocracy.
And now the Republican Party appears to have embraced Trump over any principles the party once held. Its leaders support the Big Lie that Trump won the election and are exercising their control of certain state legislatures to cement their power in enough states to control the federal government. They are passing laws to restrict voting and outlaw protesting; at the same time they have given up on policy and are relying on such blatant propaganda that just yesterday a writer for the pro-Trump New York Post felt obliged to quit after writing a completely fabricated story.
Biden is calling this move to autocracy like it is, and making a bid to shift the course of the nation.
Today, the Department of Justice executed search warrants on both the Manhattan home and the office of Trump’s ally and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani as part of an investigation into Giuliani’s adventures in Ukraine as he tried to dig up dirt on Biden’s son Hunter. Experts say such a search against a lawyer, and against a president’s former lawyer, to boot, is extraordinary. To get a warrant, investigators had to convince a judge that they believed it would turn up evidence of a crime that they knew had been committed. Political appointees in Trump’s Department of Justice had blocked such a warrant in the past, but Attorney General Merrick Garland lifted the block.
Federal officials also executed a search warrant on Victoria Toensing, a media personality and lawyer associated with Giuliani on his Ukraine work. The details of that search are still murky (but my long-time readers will be pleased to know that Lev Parnas is relevant).
Also today, federal prosecutors have added conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to the charges against three men who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a jury in New York today convicted a Trump supporter of making a death threat against elected officials for his statements in a video he posted online after the January 6 insurrection calling for the “slaughter” of Democratic senators. The penalty for such a crime is up to ten years in prison.
While authorities seem finally to be exploring the potential lawbreaking of the previous administration, Biden is properly entrusting law enforcement to the branch of government responsible for it, leaving the actions of the previous administration to the Department of Justice and state and local authorities. He is also refusing to engage in the rhetorical brawls the right wing is trying to spark, ignoring, for example, the ridiculous story that he was going to outlaw the consumption of meat, or that the federal government had bought and distributed copies of Vice President Kamala Harris’s children’s book to incoming refugees, both of which then blew up in the faces of those who had pushed them.
Instead, Biden is advancing a vision of an active government that levels the legal, economic, and social playing field for all Americans. While observers tend to associate this vision with FDR, who gave us our modern government, in fact that vision has been shared by all our greatest presidents.
Indeed, it was Republican Abraham Lincoln who first proposed the idea that the country does best when government guarantees equality before the law and works to guarantee equality of resources to all. Under Lincoln, the Republican Party established public colleges, put farmers on land, built railroads, and backed Black equality before the law, paying for those things with our first national taxes, including an income tax.
Republican Theodore Roosevelt took that idea a step further, addressing the extremes of industrialization with a federal government strong enough to regulate business and provide support for labor. Democrat FDR went much further, using the government not just to regulate business but to provide a basic social safety net—Social Security and the Works Progress Administration, for example—and to promote infrastructure through investments like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity and flood control to what had been a neglected region, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which enabled men to recover the landscape from the ravages of the Dust Bowl.
Biden is in the mold of such predecessors, but his vision is new. He wants the government to support all Americans, beginning not with the ability of a man to support his family but with the idea of protecting children. Since the beginning of his presidency, he has focused on rebuilding the economy by improving the conditions in which children live—famously, reformers credited his American Rescue Plan with reducing by half the number of children living in poverty—and with the plan he announced tonight, he illustrated this reworking of society by investing in our children.
The American Families Plan calls for investing $1.8 trillion in education, providing free schooling from pre-kindergarten through community college. It calls for funding for childcare and paid family medical leave, and it includes more money for fighting child poverty. Biden plans to pay for this, in part, by enforcing existing tax laws which wealthy people and corporations currently slide by, raising as much as $700 billion. Biden also proposes increasing the top tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, the rate it was under President George W. Bush, and by increasing the capital gains rate.
“The question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent,” Biden reminded us tonight, in an echo of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. “Can our democracy deliver on its promise that all of us —created equal in the image of God—have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect, and possibility? Can our democracy deliver on the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart?”
The world’s autocrats are betting it can’t, Biden said. But he listed the accomplishments of the past 99 days, when the people of the United States came together to administer 200 million doses of vaccine and create hundreds of thousands of jobs and he pointed out: “It’s never been a good bet to bet against America.”
“Our Constitution opens with the words, ‘We the People,’” Biden reminded his listeners tonight. And “it’s time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It’s us. It’s ‘We the people.’”
And if we remember that and come together, he said, “then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong.”
“The autocrats will not win the future….America will.”
12 Likes
April 29, 2021 (Thursday)
Today marks the hundredth day of the Biden-Harris administration. In many ways, the hundred-day mark is arbitrary, a holdover from the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who worked with Congress to pass 76 new laws by the end of his first 100 days, setting a high bar for a consequential presidency. A hundred days is not an entirely useless metric, though, because by that time, a modern president has generally set the tone of the administration. Crucial to the success of that tone is having scored a major win. That, in turn, sets the tone for public reaction to a presidency, which then feeds the administration’s momentum.
When President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office on January 20, 2021, they were facing crises that rivaled the ones faced by FDR and even by President Abraham Lincoln, who took office after a number of southern states had declared they were leaving the United States to form their own confederacy.
Biden and Harris took office after the former president had supported an insurrection to overturn the results of the election and seize power. Trump denied the legitimacy of their election (and continues to deny it) despite more than 60 lawsuit outcomes that upheld it, while 147 members of Congress sided with the former president, challenging at least one of the official state-certified ballots that made Biden president. The actions of the former president were unprecedented, breaking our previous history of peaceful transitions of power, and on January 20, Washington, D.C., was patrolled by troops stationed there to protect the incoming government.
When Biden took office, the novel coronavirus was ravaging the country. More than 24 million of us had been infected with the virus, and more than 400,000 Americans had died of Covid-19, including 2727 deaths the day before Biden was sworn in. New variants were spreading, and while the previous administration had begun vaccinations, reaching about 4% of the population, it had not arranged for distribution of them, planning simply to get them to states and let the states handle the process from there.
The economy was under water. More than ten million people were out of work and another 3.9 million had stopped even looking. Economic growth before the pandemic was modest—2.2%—but the economy contracted during the crisis. Biden also inherited the biggest federal debt since World War II, standing at over $21.6 trillion. That debt was not simply a product of the coronavirus recession: Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, passed without a single Democratic vote, cost almost $230 billion, helping to create a federal deficit of $984 billion even before the pandemic hit.
The first tweet Biden sent as president made a marked contrast from what Americans had seen for the previous four years. “There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face,” Biden wrote. “That’s why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families.”
And he did.
After he was sworn in and the ceremonies were over, Biden went to the Oval Office and began the process of signing more than a dozen executive actions that either addressed the pandemic or rolled back some of the policies of the previous administration.
During the campaign, Biden had promised to hit 100 million vaccine doses delivered in his first 100 days; on January 25, he increased that number to 200 million. By February, the administration had bought enough vaccines to inoculate all Americans and had begun to open mass vaccination sites. By April 22, the United States had met Biden’s goal of 200 million vaccinations, a week ahead of time.
On January 20, Biden announced the American Rescue Plan to rebuild the nation after the ravages of the pandemic. It appropriated $1.9 trillion to expand unemployment benefits, make direct payments to individuals, increase food security, fund housing, move children out of poverty, support small businesses, and fund support for healthcare and Covid vaccines. The plan passed Congress, and Biden signed it into law on March 11, less than two months after he took office, a major win.
The job market is rebounding. For the third straight week, initial jobless claims—which are a way to look at layoffs-- have dropped below 600,000, the lowest they’ve been in a year. At the same time, U.S. employers added more than 900,000 jobs in March, and economists expect to see more than a half a million new jobs a month for the next year. That will not end the economic crisis of the past year—we are still down 8.4 million jobs from the beginning of the pandemic—but numbers are moving in the right direction. In the first quarter of 2021, the economy grew at an annual rate of 6.4%
A problem for the administration that did not show up in the media last January was the budding crisis at our southern border, where numbers of refugees were about to surge both with seasonal migration and with those held at the border by the former administration. The administration adhered to Covid protocols, turning away from admission all but unaccompanied children. This initially created a surge of children in Border Patrol and Health and Human Services facilities, but the administration has worked to get the situation under control. The number of children in the custody of Border Patrol has dropped 82% in the past month, leaving fewer than 1000 still in custody. The problem is not solved—the children still need to be moved out of Health and Human Services facilities—but it seems to be getting into order.
But Biden has done more than address the coronavirus crisis, the economy, or the refugee crisis. He is reclaiming the nation from the policies of the Reagan Revolution, rejecting the idea central to that revolution, that government is bad by nature and that the country works best when we turn it over to individual actors. He is doing so by working around the Republican lawmakers who are determined to obstruct him at every turn, appealing instead to ordinary Republican voters, who actually want many of the same things ordinary Democratic voters do. The American Rescue Plan, for example, was popular with 77% of Americans, although it received not a single Republican vote.
Biden is reasserting the idea that government can address problems that can only be fixed at a national scale—problems like a pandemic and the economy—but he is not resurrecting the idea of using the government to protect the ability of men to support their families, as FDR did. He is adapting the idea of an active government to the civil rights movements after World War II, defending the rights of Americans as individuals, rather than as members of nuclear families. His administration is centering children and those who take care of them, rather than shoring up any particular family structure.
His revision of the American dream shows in his appointment of the most diverse cabinet in American history: 58% of his political appointees are women while half identify as non-white, 15% were the first in their families to go to college, and 32% are naturalized citizens or first-generation Americans. He chose the first female vice president, the first female Treasury Secretary, the first Indigenous American to lead the Interior Department, and the first Black head of the Pentagon.
One thing, though, about what sure seems to be a very strong start from the Biden administration…. Never forget that what made the American Rescue Plan possible was the election of Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Had the Democrats not held 50 seats in the Senate, enabling them to enact the American Rescue Plan through reconciliation, Biden would be able to maneuver only through executive orders, since Republicans in the Senate would have stopped all legislation.
Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, traveled today to Plains, Georgia, to visit former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. “We owe a special thanks to the people of Georgia. Because of you, the rest of America was able to get help,” Biden said to reporters while he was there. “If you ever wonder if elections make a difference, just remember what you did here in Georgia… You changed America.”
13 Likes
