The Angry Middle

TEST, TEST, TEST

2024-12-30T17:32:00.002-05:00

Been more than four years since my last sporadic post. Working on a new project for 2025, to better understand the American body politic, where a nation who professes to be one of laws could vote for Donald Trump for a second time. Mostly reflections on readings, mostly for myself, but feel free to jump in.

Here's my initial thoughts, most of it is around domestic politics and specific to populism, specifically white populism, most of my reading will be from popular or more "centrist" academics, it is not intended to be a Marxist reinterpretation of history, it for me to have more understanding about America moving forward. Several major pieces here critical to American history I've studied in great detail; civil war, WWII, etc so I am not revisting them. Going to try to timeline this to be done by late spring, as we start to see the direction of the Republic clearer.

Colonial America

The Mayflower Compact

City on a Hill

The Scots-Irish

Bacon’s Rebellion

Slavery

Indians

Revolution-covered in other domains

The Founding of the Republic

The Declaration of Independence

Constitution

War of 1812 covered in other domains

The New Republic

Federalism

Formation of Political Parties

“popular rebellions” Whiskey Rebellion and Shay’s Rebellion/slave rebellions

Jacksonian Democracy

Westward Expansion and eradication/resettlement of native populations

The Road to the Civil War

Nullification Crisis

Abolitionists

Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis

The know-nothings

Civil war- cover in other domains

Reconstruction

Beginning of Black gov’t representation

Rise of Jim Crow

Election of 1876-Rutherfraud

Industrialization and the Progressive Era

Immigration

The end of the Indian Wars

Growth of Unions

Robber Barons, growth of extreme wealth

Anarchism

World War I-covered in other domains

Sedition and domestic crackdown

Between the Wars

The great depression

America First

World War II-covered in other domains

Cold War

Economic expansion

Anti Communism

The military industrial complex

1960s

Civil rights

Vietnam and the anti war movement

The Great Society

Non European Immigration

The Southern Strategy

1970s

Nixon and the Silent Majority

Malaise and Economic downturn

1980s and 90s

Rise of Conservatism and the Religious Right

End of the Cold War

First Gulf War

Union breakin

Reaganism

Clinton and the Third Way

2000s

9/11 and rise of the surveillance state

Explosion of the Internet

2008 economic crash

Obama:The Arc of Justice?

Robber Barons revisited

AmericaFirst Redux and the Election of Trump I

BLM and COVID: American Reckoning and Isolation

Jan 6th American Insurrection and ensuing justice

MAGA strikes back the Election of 2024

Rolling the Bones with Uncle Joe

2020-02-26T18:10:00.001-05:00

Yeah, this post is going to get me fucking slaughtered, I can hear people right now. So essentially we are down to six even close to "serious" Democratic candidates. Everyone of them has a fatal flaw in electibility. Some just by the perceptions of a lot of voters that you need to get to win, others that just kind of suck.

Fatal flaws in 7 words or less. Now some of these are offensive and not my views but those of the fucking sans culottes who brought us the current President and Senate. These are the things that both upfront and dark money would be paying for after the DNC for the general election.

Bernie-aged commie
Pete-gay guy with husband
Warren-commie pocahontas
Biden-gaffe filled grampa
Bloomberg- Rich Jew mayor of New York
Amy-mean bitch, comb salad

The targeted social media in critical states is going to be off the hook. Yes, Virginia there is an electoral college no matter what your hopes, dreams and unicorns would have you believe, only about 8 states are in play. (Bernie probably makes that 12-15)

A little background about my "endorsement" and I make this endorsement by picking the least clowny clown in the clown car. I donated money to Klobuchar after my brief flirtation with Senator Harris, I found Amy to be the "safest" of candidates, I mean other than being "mean" and "she was a prosecutor" it's hard to see in the general election what would be the attack ad. Is the Trump campaign going to attack Amy for locking Black people in jail, it's probably the worst knock on her, but it ain't losing her any votes in the general.

Also, I will vote for any democrat who is running against Trump in November.

I am (at least for the next week or so maybe) a centrist Democrat. I strongly believe in infrastructure, that government should provide the ability to create a backbone for folks in this country to have social and economic success. Transportation, public safety, education and yes, health care are critical to entrepeneurship, markets and personal success, safety nets are needed for both those who have less among us and those that want to leave a safe job with benefits to explore greater opportunity. I am a capitalist (leftist shudder...) I believe that people should be able to do well, and even get fabulously wealthy in well regulated markets and pay a "fair share" of taxes as in scripture it is said, to whom much is given, much is expected. I believe that Americans have a right to gun ownership but that background checks and other violence control methods are critical, do I have a right to have a 105 mm howitzer on my front stoop trained on my neighbor's backyard? I believe in humane immigration control, somewhere between the open borders canard and the build that wall losers. Your family "did it right"/"came here legally" because there were very few restrictions, if you weren't a polygamist, an anarchist or had a commnicable disease and said you had someone to stay with, you were basically in, at the same time nations should be able to police their borders. I am a fiscal conservative, I think we should pay our bills, I think our taxes are too low and we should all be taxed at a level to pay for all the things we need and want, and we should have highly qualified, empowered public servants who monitor that we are getting the best deal for the money we are saving. I could go on forever but I'm trying to make a point, I am not an ideologue, I do not believe any one person has all the solutions to all of our problems. As most of you that know me, I am probably as wacko as it comes when it has to do with civil and individual rights. But y'all probably don't think I'm as woke as I should be. There are a million more issues, defense, climate change, foreign policy, etc but you get my drift.

So here we go, I'm for Joe. I know everything that is bad about Joe, Joe is old, Joe's first terrible run for President was 32 years ago where he was soundly thrashed by Brookline's own sweater wearing erstwhile tank crewman Mike Dukakis. Joe makes gaffes, his stories smell like werther's originals and sound like dry drunk tales. Joe's times has passed, he hugs little girls and smells of brylcreem and Scranton. Oh and Hunter Biden, dammit Hunter, WTF.

OK, so let me tell you why, again I am not a "seize the wealth" Democrat. I know enough about history to know how that ends up. To be really selfish, through hard work, education, and a whole lotta of luck, our family is probably in the top decile of family income in this country, I have access to great health insurance. We've worked hard to build wealth, public schools and thriftyness/living below our means have helped, and we aren't wealthy but there is a very good chance our kids will be. I fear this "wealth" being taxed at extreme rates to satisfy the will of leftist, socialist programs. If that sounds selfish, again, yup it probably is, but think about a lot of voters across this country who feel the same way and they'll get you four more years of trump. I've identified myself as a progressive most of my adult life, to me a feeling that the world is in constant flux and one's politics and beliefs change to meet that change and its inherent challenges. I never really saw it as socialism. And as much as I will, I have no desire to vote for a nearly 80 year old socialist who yells at me.

I believe in Joe, because he believes in America and the American people. I truly believe that, and despite all the warts and all of Joe Biden, he is proud of America and Americans. He believes in the Democratic party as the party of the people that have been successful in America and of people that have been left behind. While not my first choice among the 300 milion people in this country, he is what is on the menu. To be frank, I think he has the best chance to win.

Many of my good friends on the left this is a time to be transformational, that voting for a moderate is just voting for more of the same, that this is an opportunity to make America the place they think it should be. My bumper sticker for this election is "I ain't looking to change the world right now, I'm just trying to wrest power from that fucking fascist ass mothafucka". (trademark pending) This is not your rainbow and unicorns election, this is the reset election, this is where you unplug America and plug it back in, where you get yourself back a sense of decency, morality and normality that a Biden administration would bring.

I think that Biden will choose the right people in the administration, and I think that's his selling point. I think a lot of people look at the nominee in a debate, oooh what will Trump do in a debate. Honestly when is the last time a Presidential GOP nominee won a debate? Hillary cleaned Trump's idiot clock. I think that a Biden administration will have highly qualified members chosen from the best America has to offer. I think there are a lot of Americans in the 8 states that matter that will see Joe's decency as a strength, possibly carrying the former blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan into the White House.

I'm not going to pretend to be enthusiastic about this, this is not a transformational Obama exciting type of candidate. I think you win by not being transformational, not being a hollering celebrity at the edge of the political spectrum. By not being the candidate that people holding their nose go to vote for in the general election. Right now I feel a gun is being held to the head of the large majority in the center by the right and left of the political spectrum, the whaddya gonna do vote for that fascist blowhard or whaddya gonna do go vote for that octogenarian socialist?

This is the most important election of our lives and somehow the Democratic party has brought up the political equivalents of Tony Orlando and Dawn and Carter Country. This being said in this crazy two party system, we gotta stand behind someone and I'm rolling the bones with uncle Joe.

Rest in peace, my timeline because here come the "leftsplainers"

A More Perfect Union

2019-09-06T17:30:00.001-04:00

A More Perfect Union

For nearly all of its history, the United States has been a two party country. Many of the founders were leery of partisanship and wrote against it, but America has mostly had a binary political construct. There have been flirtations with third parties and even minor parties have won local elections. For a period, we were electing socialists the election of 1860 was a real mess, some in the south tried to repeat that real humdinger of an election with the dixiecrats in the 20^th century but then all those racist ass motherfuckers became Republicans and created that cracker wall across the south and Midwest.

Part of me (well let me clarify, all of me) wants to see the Republican party completely routed in 2020, with the Democratic candidate winning 400 electoral votes, 54 seats in the senate and increasing control of the house. I know due to the way our electoral system is set up, that cracker wall and small states that are overrepresented that fact is very unlikely if not impossible but for the sake of our game, bear with me. What would happen again, what would happen with the spray tan colored wake behind the legacy of one Donnie Jay?

Even under the best scenario it will be no picnic. The stain of Trumpism will last for generations, can the GOP suddenly revert to it’s old conservative principles? (don’t get me wrong, a big part of the Republican party strength nationwide has been its racism and misogyny but since I’m already living the Democratic landslide fantasy let me have this fantasy as well)

I have known republicans that actually had principles. And while not a majority I think there were a lot with principles. Most of what that stood for actually is quite at odds with what Trumpist republicanism is. They were free traders, free market, fiscally conservatives, pro-scientific development, supportive of a strong defense and of law and order and particularly law enforcement. Trump is none of those things and somehow to get the lower taxes and anti-choice/anti-regulation judges and policies have made these “Constitutional Clownservatives” lie in bed with all of the other wacky bullshit.

It’s not like all these crazy MAGA motherfuckas just disappear. The GOP may begin to list slightly towards the center, ditch its authoritarian ways but they are going to still find votes among the red meat right and the crazier alt-righters. And what happens to these millions that hang on this moron’s every word? Many Trump voters just found Hillary for what ever reason they had despicable (and she was a terrible candidate but let’s not relitigate that, you can be a very good possible President and not a good candidate) or just voted Republican because they a. thought that Trump was a lot of bluster and would just be a normal Republican or be controlled by other Republicans (see GW Bush, 2000, 2004) b. find the idea of voting for a Democrat repulsive. I don’t worry about these people too much, they showed poor judgment electing a POTUS that was authoritarian, anti-democratic and basically the worst President of all time but aren’t total nutcases. Where do the nutcases go under this best case scenario rout of the President. Can they be marginalized and put back in a box, ridiculed by the vast majority of Americans like weirdo conspiracy theorists were in the past, or does Trumpism continue to stain politics, policy, and governance for the foreseeable future?

Does this period of history become forgotten as one tries to forget a weekend filled with bad acid and warm beer and Phish, that time you decided to date that girl from Hooters as your soulmate, or that time you thought that those skinny jeans and feathered haircut were the way to go. Or are these people the permanent part of the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower? It seem like the leadership of the GOP has fully baked in Trumpism and it has wide support out of a few intellectual anti-Trumpers and some meek and mild Baker moderate republicans who sort of sit there quietly and react to the extremely ridiculous. I fear it is here to stay and from time to time, as the pendulum swings back and forth politically, we get a very hard swing to the lunatic right from time to time, supported by opportunists like Mitch McConnell, who take these chances to push a more traditional right wing agenda amongst the populist grievances of anti-immigration, racism and sexism.

I do fear we have lost more than just and election or two, America has lost part of its soul.

Lightning Round: Don’t You Want to Win?

2019-08-18T19:14:00.002-04:00

From the time I was in my late teens to early thirties, much of my free time was spent on various asphalt (and the lucky occasional inside gym) basketball courts in eastern Massachusetts. Not organized ball, just pickup, full court when possible but mostly three on three or less, mostly with a core group of friends and others, just knocking each other around.

It’s the funny, little things in life that really sit in your head, between the big milestone events, like births, deaths, weddings, new jobs, etc is living. On one random day playing full court hoops in a rare occasion inside, a bunch of us friends were playing against a group of other guys. We’re all scrapping around, and at one point, a friend of mine, you know one of those guys who hangs out twenty feet from the hoop, waiting for people who work for rebounds to pass to him, says to my sweaty ass after a play, “don’t you want to win”. For some of my close friends, maybe 25 to 30 years later it still sticks out as just a funny moment that we all remember and repeat those words from time to time away from those youthful, active days.

“Don’t you want to win” is coming up to me as we begin to see the Democratic primary Presidential race (and senate and house races) come into focus, even in its oversized, amorphous form that it is here in August.

The Democratic party as a long time sometimes reluctant member has always puzzled me, some rolling to the center right, particularly when dominated in the days of white workers in the past (particularly when there were strong industrial unions) to a day when some progressives are pushing that the Black Congressional Caucus is far too conservative for a modern Democratic party. Republicans has always managed to have a big tent, a weird ass tent with lots of fucking crazy ass people but a big tent. There have always been the big business types, focusing on low amounts of regulation, low worker protection, and low to no taxes but the larger base has been much bigger; running the gamut from wacko racists, anti-choice, anti-immigrant and of course one of the largest constituencies, the gun culture. Many of these folks will vote and even more importantly show up to vote in districts that control the electoral college in sufficient numbers to win the electoral college and senate on a regular basis. It may be outside of running a terrible Democratic candidate (you know who they are) or some type of Democratic scandal or just Republican incumbent overachievement, that a Republican candidate will ever win the popular vote for a generation in this country. The demographics of the population, particularly the growth of the Latino population, just project to a Democratic majority, well until progressives take Latinos for granted and then you will see a population with “traditional” values start to move toward the GOP.

Do you want to win? Remember there are people that are not going to agree with you. Who are not socialists, who may not think that the job of government is to provide a cradle to grave hand hold. When treated like adults they generally understand the need for a safety net, who among us has not hit bottom and needed a hand up. Whether laid off, fallen sick, seen a family member addicted to drugs or left on the bad side of tomorrow? I think there are a significant number of Democrats (or all races, colors and creeds but particularly white folks who voted for Reagan) who really appreciate the idea but are sold some bill of goods that his safety net is a hammock. Are some of these racist tropes, yes for sure, but there are people that have been convinced that the Democratic party stands for layabouts and do nothings and essentially have been pushed to vote against their own economic interests.

The Democratic winning candidate does no have to clear the table. They are going to have to convince the hard core cracker Trump voter to vote for them, but they have to carry a significant number of 18 plus old people to register, show up and vote Democratic in about 5 critical states. The Republicans have figured out that they really just need to carry 50 percent plus one, (yeah I get the popular vote but bear with me. The key here is not to win 60% of the popular vote the key is to win. Don’t you want to win.

LEFTY LOOSY AND RIGHTY TIGHTY: MODERATING OUR LEFTIST TENDENCIES

2019-08-01T20:41:00.000-04:00

The Politics of Free Stuff

OK, I’m about to piss a bunch of my friends off. In a strange turn of life, and probably as a very intentional building of a bubble of really caring and generous people, I have a tendency to be one of the more “moderate” people in most of my social occasions.I know the counter arguments, and the arguments that I'm a upper middle class spoiled brat, but I earned every rung of that ladder so y'all can kiss my butt.

There are a lot of lefty ideas out there that are entering the mainstream of the Democratic party as the party lurches left. These are mainly around the growth of social services which some define as a social safety net and others in the electorate describe as socialism. The issue is many of the voters in primaries lean left and aren’t necessarily looking at the general election. In fact because we have been so much concentrating on our bubbles it is nearly possible to ascertain what the majority will vote for. For example how the hell could the melted creamsicle possibly win the electoral college majority in this country. Blame it on Russia, voter suppression, basic electoral/geographical math, but the necessity to win some Midwestern states and perhaps Florida/North Carolina are critical to winning Presidential elections. And these states do not lean politically like the more liberal northeast and west coast Democratic poles.

Many of the programs mentioned by the left of the party are not considered leftist in the democratic socialist countries of western Europe where high levels of taxation and of services are expected. But for a great deal of the United States they are shocking and I imagine the level of taxation needed to pay for these programs would be shocking as well. As a matter of fact, even getting to a balanced budget under our current system would probably be an unacceptable tax hike for most Americans. The cost of these programs is astronomical, many will argue and probably have a point, that in the long term people would actually save money. So my arguments here are mostly that it is bad politics although as America’s last living fiscal conservative (I actually believe in increased taxes to pay the bills we have now) There are some that think soaking the rich in taxation will pay for it all, but the math does not work, even a seizure of wealth a la the Bolsheviks would not make up enough funding to make this happens despite what any senator from a small relatively wealthy northeast state would tell you.

I do have some opinions. Some have to do with the oft-quoted moral hazard that economists bring up, others with the fact that Clubber just thinks there is a budget fairy that brings free shit. Number one on the GOP dance card is going to attack the Democrats running on all levels for socialism, although their fiscal conservative card is bankrupt. That's what I'm really talking about here, there is one job for the Democratic party right now, defeat Trump and Trumpism. Restructuring of social safety nets will just have to wait, as important as they are. If the GOP can tie Democrats, socialism and a possible creating of an economic crater, then say hello to a more empowered President Trump for a second term. It's our Achilles heel as Democrats, good is never good enough.

So here are some uneducated opinions on the political ramifications of some of the more “socialistic” reforms being suggested by major Presidential candidates, some of which would have been saved for bong infested, smoke filled dorm rooms at Oberlin not too many years ago.

I think we can do a lot better job with our social safety nets and many of these infrastructure investments are necessary for the future moral and economic health, so I’m aiming at those that are just political non-starters .

Health Care

This is something I have a lot of experience with. I’ve used more health care in the last three years than most people will use in a life time. I’m also blessed enough to work for government and have a strong union (and my wife for government as well) and have really great health insurance. This health insurance sent me to a month of care (and many months of follow up care) at two of the best hospitals in the world. This is really remarkable, and it probably ended up costing under a thousand dollars in out of pocket co-pays along the way. We also have had two children born for like 20 bucks a piece out of pocket. I want everyone to have this level of care. BUT.

Sanders 20 20

It is 1/5 of the economy and something that cannot turn on a dime. The path to single payer, government supported health care under the best economic and political conditions is an arduous one. The government is really good at writing checks, social security has prevented millions of elderly and disabled people from living lives of abject poverty. Medicare has provided health care to millions of the elderly.(and unlike social security, even current medicare is not supported solely by that small premium you pay every pay period, it is a tremendous regular budge cost) And like today, many voters opposed these programs that are now important to support of themselves or older and infirm family members. However FDR and LBJ are not walking through that door. The machinations through the senate are nearly impossible for a Sanders (and everyone who has lurched to the left) quick change to medicare for all. For the electorate even a change to the Affordable Care Act, (which initially was hatched by conservative think tanks when being conservative meant more than just burning shit down and was support by noted chameleon and magic underwear model Willard Romney) was met with strong opposition, only an amazing effort at political jiu jitsu saw passage and even then in a watered down version. It required horror of horrors, an individual mandate, you know personal responsibility. What was missing was a public option (skewered by the nominally democratic Joe Lieberman from the Insurance Capital of America) that could provide an option for individuals and small businesses to access an affordable option to provide healthcare to themselves and employees. It was a continues to be the best first step to universal health care. An interim step over a much longer journey.

Politics is about money and fear. The idea that we can shift to a magical world where everyone receives health care funded by the government in the very near future involve both of those elements. If the Democratic presidential candidate wants to say goodbye to the few union votes left in these critical state with electoral votes, the first thing they should do is promote medicare for all, the fear that the GOP will put in the hearts will have them voting Republican for another decade as they feel their current strong private health care insurance will erode, as well as with the elderly who will be regaled with stories on Fox News showing lines of unworthy Mexicans, hookers and drug addicts fighting for the attention of the health care providers that they desire. In a post-truth America these are large pockets of voters.

Dude, stop yelling at me

Some of the candidates are already figuring this out. The idea of a public option that competes on the free market (even if this doesn't pass in the current configuration of Congress) is a strong one. It will resonate with voters, and provide additional access and has the additional element of not being political suicide.Sanders and other have said the cost savings to the consumer will be much greater than the cost of the tax increase on the middle class, but that makes the assumption that salaries will increase due to the lack of businesses having to pay for employee health care, if you believe that, I have a seat at my card table for you.

Cancelling Student Debt

The price of higher education has become astronomical. There was a time not long ago where someone could live very frugally, work two jobs all summer and a full time job during the school year with limited financial assistance and pay to go to community and state college (by using a monthly payment plan), work in restaurants to avoid food bills, you may have to go part time a bit, take a semester off here and there,crash on people's couches, rent a room in a family house, use the books at the library and get occasional food from a pantry but it could be done. I know it could because I did it. It may as well be a hundred years ago as the annual cost of higher education has gone from the price of a used chevy chevette to the price of a brand new SUV. At the same time, most good careers with family sustaining wages (outside of a few careers in selected trades with a relative cap on the number of jobs available) require post secondary education. This has forced many students and families to take out enormous loans that mortgage their futures. While most of the numbers will tell you even with this debt it is a long term positive investment, the beginning of adult life is shackled to a monthly payment when you are least likely to afford. The matter is even worse for students who don't earn a credential or have been conned by a private profit institution that overcharged them with little chance of actual career placement. The costs of higher ed have gone up for a lot of reasons, highly paid administration, much greater amenities ( I challenge you to go back to the public campus you may have attended or have friends that attended, they are palaces compare to the Stalinist architecture of the 80s and 90s) and just general inflation, making it a near necessity to take out loans. BUT

Student loan debt is estimated at 1.5 TRILLION dollars, that's a lot to dump on a government that is already running record deficits and as with health care mentioned above is not something that can be paid for by just soaking the rich or even again confiscating wealth, which I don't even think happened in World War II where marginal tax rates for the wealthiest Americans neared 100%.. Again this is hard sell to taxpayers, it is difficult to explain to a guy cutting sheet metal in Erie, Pennsylvania that his tax dollars should be spent on some kid who studied french literature at Cornell at 60K/year plus using their excess checks to spend spring break at Cancun harassing girls from Vassar and spending a thousand dollars plus a semester on chicken wings and pizza while reading Ayn Rand. I mean these attractive Republican talking points just write themselves. It's going to make Joe the Plumber look like nothing. And what is to be said for those families and individuals who took out second mortgages, got second jobs, etc and sent their kids to more affordable educational opportunities. I mean I at least Sen Warren's plan is just supposed to cost taxpayers 210 billion dollars (50K@42 million if I did my math right). It is one of those things that will just be seen as patently unfair to those who feel people knew what they were doing when they took out those loans.

And what to be said about the idea of future college attendance? Is that all free as well? Post secondary affordability needs to be addressed. Young (and old) people should have access to education that will allow them to be financially successful in life. Largely this is a state issue where of course in many state subsidies to public education have been dropping for thirty years, certainly the federal govt can (and has) support those goals of affordable higher education, but cancelling student debt is an election loser. It is intended to get millennials off there ass and at the polls, as if having a fascist dingaling for President isn't enough, but among people who actually vote, it's a real loser. Find different messaging around affordability. As I tell my kids, if anything says it's free it's really expensive

So much for now, again, this is mostly a political view, not a policy view, most of these large infrastructure issues like health care and education should really be addressed collectively through government involvement, they are impossible to afford as a small group or individual. This isn't fucking Little House on the Prairie.

In a future edition I'll address reparations, child care, guaranteed basic income, and if I can even start to understand it, the Green new deal and any other political losers I can think of.

Lightning Round: No Mueller High Life

2019-07-24T21:46:00.000-04:00

So this is something I'm calling a lightning round (patent pending), just a quick reaction to a weird day. There was always some hope among many that Mueller was there to save the nation. It seemed so perfect, Vietnam war hero, member of the power elite, incorruptible and Republican saving the Republic from Trumpism and disaster. Alas, fairy tales are just that, there is no simple Cincinnattus putting down the plow and coming to the rescue. In fact, Mueller's team did exactly what it was supposed to do, conducted an investigation and presented the facts. Did he goes as far as many hoped, no. But he left more than enough for a normal Congress to work with, where an impeachment investigation could dig up even more information and frankly does not have the same high standards of a federal court and judge. (see Clinton later 1990s)

The scariest thing that happened is not that this nation of rubes elected a narcissistic, criminal, sociopath. The founding fathers knew this was going to happen. They came from a world of multi-generational syphilitic monarchs who would periodically run nations into the ground or a virtual buzzsaw. They knew they needed a remedy against the mobs, a somewhat anti-democratic (but republican) concept to paradoxically protect democracy itself. But they could not have predicted the clown car that political parties have become. (actually Washington, Hamilton and Madison all warned of factionalism) The real scary thing that happened is that despite the protections the founding fathers framed in the Constitution, knowing exactly that this type of Presidency would exist, never expected the the electoral college and impeachment (including senate trial) could fail so miserably, being unable to predict that they would be overridden by a feckless gang of party first, nation if it is convenient Republicans.

All the information is out there and Americans have dug in on what side they are on with the issue of conspiracy with a foreign power (or at least not preventing it )and more so the more openly obvious obstruction. In the Mueller report, the most important thing was the Russian involvement, he was clear about that. The collusion/conspiracy piece was always going to be difficult to prove, particularly when the real intelligence and counter intelligence material could never be used in open court. (history in years will really illuminate the truth) There is of course a preponderance of evidence that all these motherfuckas engaged the Kremlin to win the election put complete beyond a reasonable doubt proof, well let's say they got people that are good at avoiding that.

The only real new thing coming out of the Mueller testimony today will be how the GOP toadies would embarrass themselves as Americans. Representative Nunes, a nation turned its lonely eyes to you. There were many willing accomplices, the expected Louis "goo goo eyes" Gohmert (R-InfoWars) and Matt "I'll drive" Gaetz (R-Floridaman) with their usual moronic insight into situations, who somehow can wake up in the morning and raise enough money from imbeciles to fuel their quixotic efforts towards peak idiocy. Old Texas Louis capped off his piece by introducing his own "Mueller Unmasked" screed into the Congressional Record. It wasn't just the usual rubemagnets, nearly every Republican who were obviously working hand in hand with the White House fell over themselves to protect the President, trying to deflect to the usual bogeymen of Clinton and Obama, re-repeating Fox and Friends and Gateway Pundit conspiracy theories to you start to really second guess your own sanity. Many were light weighted attacks on Mueller's character, using what was not an oscar worthy performance on the part of the Director against him. We've got to a point where everything needs to be a show and it is all in support of their leader, the greatest showman. Years of service, knowledge, experience and patriotism don't matter. A man trying to protect his country, long after he should have been comfortably retired belittled by a bunch of well dressed thugs. The constant bringing up of questions that he could not answer, due to intelligence reasons, (as well as executive privilege, which is somewhat ironic), was designed to make the case look weaker while really making this nation weaker. Among the craziness (and I only got a chance to listen to a bit while I was in traffic) was a conversation about the word "exonerate" not being an appropriate word in a legal construct. Nearly every bit of what the GOP was selling where it wasn't designed to deflect was a lawyer's dodge.

At some point for the good of the Republic, our leaders need to put country ahead of party and ahead of the monarch. No amount of tax cuts, deregulation and right wing judges can balance out the hole that is being dug. If not it is implicit to us as citizens to change our leaders. Difficult to do in a country that is so divided.

Our President, the Fucking Racist

2019-07-16T22:50:00.000-04:00

my first rally in a long time after Parkland with my girls

It's been a long time. Over 4 years to be more precise, since I've written here, I'm considering for my my long form stream of conciousness entries to move here from Facebook. Mostly because that's what I used to do. I used to consider social media as more of a here's my BBQ and garden, stuff I did with my family and stupid shit I did with Clubba but as the political became personal after November 2016, the idea of politics and more importantly the policies that were fucking up America, I tried to put everything on blast.

Well, that and having a stroke in September 2016 and really focusing on writing about that, which was super important to me in recovery. I started writing here over 10 years ago during the run up to the 2008 election, when that went well like most of this on this side of sanity, we took an Obama breath, we all got fucking lazy, let Barry fight the republicans and went on our merry way. Then the insanity came on. I'll see how this goes, I probably won't add as many pictures or anything and I'm not as clever or patient or funny as I used to be about things, but I'll give it a shot. I'm going to get a lot wrong, this is not researched news, this is opinion. If I get some fact wrong, call it out.

The idea behind the angry middle http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2005/ was 14 years ago when I really realized that no political extreme spoke to me, I found them both tired, unreasonable and unrealistic in setting policy. I'm pretty damn liberal/progressive in the classical sense and I'm unwavering on human rights. I do however believe in markets, that people should be able to work hard and get rich and generally be left the fuck alone.

I found this on Geocities

THE PRESIDENT IS A STONE COLD FUCKING RACIST

May you live in weird times -Stoned Confucius (probably)

I started this entry, had six pretty good paragraphs and then accidentally deleted but here we go.

It is really hard for me as a student of history to explain the President to my children or pretty much anyone else. I mean there are aspects of the 19^th century Andrew’s (Jackson and Johnson) racism and certainly aspects of Wacky Racist ass Woodrow Wilson who brought racism into the 20^th century. Racism is as American as apple pie. The entire nation was built on the notion of white supremacy. Genocide, the most extreme form of racism was used to settle the country, and chattel slavery, perhaps only second on this ladder of evil was used to build it into a 19^th century agricultural and industrial powerhouse whose economic influence is felt until this very day. This is not news to anyone who understands American history. (or has recently read Howard Zinn)

I none the less am a strong believer in America, I understand our racist history and understand it still exists today. Through Jim Crow and institutionalized racism, these chains of ignorance remain collectively difficult to throw off. I believe mostly in the promise of America. And honestly believe through the bravery of the civil rights movement and a progressive America things were incrementally changing for the better.

what did you do in the war daddy

In politics, quiet, whispered “polite” racism filled with codewords has been a part of the Republican party campaign handbook since at least 1964 and likely fueled by those Dixiecrats who started to exit the Democratic Party (at least the platform of the Democratic party) in 1948. It really started to pick up speed in 1968 with Nixon and the continuation of the southern strategy with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. (lets face it, 1972 and 1984 were complete wipeouts for the Dems as the GOP used their base and then just grabbed everyone in the center as the Democrats ran left. I’ll leave that one right there)

Republicans and often Democrats often used dog whistles to communicate to their base. Things like welfare reform and law and order communicated with large swathes of the population particularly in the south and Midwest. Many felt a victory over racism with the election of Obama but the base was still there, belittling him and marginalizing him and treating him as “other”.

OK, let’s fast forward from the boring history screed. This week the President suggest that four congresswomen should go back to where they came from. Its just a recent piece of his lifelong racism, ranging from housing violations against black and Latino residents, through the central park five, through his “muslim bans” through his thoughts on Charlottesville, and actions in post Maria Puerto Rico, Trump’s actions and speech. He has a history of treating non-whites as other, as some how less than American if not less than human. This is popular to many on the right, particularly those with less education (but common across all social classes) who have created their own grievance culture. As if some new immigrant has a better chance for success in a system that has been designed to hurt them.

I need the fried dough concession at trump rallies

BASE, HOW LOW CAN YOU GO

All this is fucking crazy. It is hard to imagine any other President would ever think about saying the shit that he says. Fox and Friends, right wing twitter and rubes everywhere were quick to come out and say, “what, what, racism” as if there is no church bombing or no use of the “n” word it can’t possibly be racism. In 280 character bursts the President continues to defame and retard the work of decades of progress towards equity and equality fueling a small but mighty base. The Trump strategy for election is to keep this base fired up, showing up at the polls and make the Democratic candidate unattractive enough to get enough other voters to turn his way, particularly in the critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. (Ohio’s gone so cuckoo, so it’s not even a swing state anymore) Therefore a 40 percent approval rate makes an electoral college win.

So the President, as a narcissistic racist gets his fuel from rallies. While Obama would fuel himself through policy memos and smart people, Bush through a cabal of more traditional republicans that were part of the power elite and neo-cons, Trump gets energy from d-list celebrities, fox news hosts and public rallies filled with devoted bumpkins. He is supported hand in hand by a cabinet that echos his radical beliefs and others like SkelatorAnne Conway who seek to amplify and simultaneously gaslight people with the feeling that the "other" are anti-Israel, anti-police, anti-veteran, anti-military and basically just hate America. Spineless Republicans have adopted this all as a campaign strategy. Boy, are these people's grandchildren gonna be embarassed when they pick up a history book.

These rallies have really taken on the energy of a fascist event, full of invective abuse of the media and women on the left and now going to straight up if thinly veiled racism. The President does his best Alfred E. Neuman version of denial, until the next rally which energizes his campaign. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and the yahoo network of fucknuts who support them in old and new media play the whatabout so and so game and the “they’re playing the race card” game that continues to feed grievance culture. You'll often here Trump use the concept of "we" as if it's one against another. You wonder about how people you disagreed with, even disliked but were elected and respected public servants bought into the madness in exchange for tax cuts and conservative judges. I imagine they understand how this base is situated, in particular districts they represent in low population, high electoral power states, states with large numbers of aggrieved, overrepresented white folks. How do people who came out against Trump in the 2016 primaries become such sycophants in such a short amount of time.

The issue is of course, the “mob”. Nothing ever comes good from the mob, they see America as a game. With winners and losers. To them their team is white people, and people that aren’t white or are liberal are other and anti-American. To them their thinly veiled racist “send them back” is a football cheer, rooting on their white team to beat the “other” people who are “not like them”. To be against them is to be “anti American” or even “communist” in a way that has not been embraced since Joe McCarthy. It is the most un-American of concepts. The very motto e pluribus unum is built on the idea that we come from many creeds, races, ethnicities, and ideologies to build a strong and diverse nation. The fact that documents written by slaveowners for slaveowners can be the foundation of liberty is a paradox but we are still an emerging republic filled with promise.

Stand up, put your head up
Don't take nothing from nobody

This promise is driven by women like these women. You may not agree with them ideologically, (they are mostly to the left of me, but I love me some AOC, Elena are you watching) but they are smart, dedicated, hardworking Americans who have risen in America beyond their parents' wildest dreams. (or maybe not) They were duly elected from districts that may or may not represent their ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds, they were elected to help to fill America's promise. I'm not sure where the fuck Ayanna Pressley is supposed to go back to in Trump's mind, her family was probably here when Trump's family was managing properties and exploiting tenant farmers for the local burgermeister. These are the women, agree with them politically or not, that represent the best of America. The ability to rise and lead. If anything, this racism and attacks are the most possible anti-American thing one can do.

Handicapping the GOP Field

2015-07-03T00:10:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while I think about this blog and how much fun I used to have writing it. After the first one, I slowed down, after the second kid, it became non-existent, other interests, etc. I've also grown to hate the gross morbidity of politics. The ideology, the dogma, the selected information and data, and the general echo chamber/circle jerk of the political poles. But I can't resist handicapping a field, like I did in 2007 especially when the field is just so fricking crazy.

I really have no idea what's going to happen, primaries without an incumbent are pretty much open and crazy, and open and crazy pretty much defines this GOP field. I'm certain this is not what the Wall St. and Main St. Republicans really want to see, there are a lot of wacky dudes up in the mix (and a wacky chick to keep it frothy). There are some angry ass people out there, from a lot of different angles, while I'm still waiting for the FEMA camps to open and all guns to be seized, apparently Obama the shapeshifting socialist dictator/person who does nothing but golf (for the love of God pick one, is he a crazed New Black Panther or a layabout?) can't seem to get any of his evil plots to keep the white man down.

If you want an actual good description of the candidates go to the Atlantic. Odds are for the GOP nomination, as of Independence Day 2015.

Jeb Bush 3-1

Sadly after the great conflagration of 2009, only seven families remain in America, so we have to keep having the same families throw their hats in the ring for the White House. How odd other countries must think that a democracy does this. Jeb is the candidate that the mainstream GOP wants. Mainly because he lacks the prime ingredient of most of the rest of the field, that being defined as being a little nuts. Bush has some baggage, and may not be getting the wacky billionaire money but he is going to get the lion's share of the conservative multi-millionaire money, so while he is not going to be feasting at the table of Crassus, there will be a shitload of monopoly guys tossing in their dough. Jeb is going to do his best to protect the status quo economically, particularly protecting rich people's dough compared to whatever crazy taxcutting/economic schemes the Club for Growth crew may have in mind. Jeb is tethered to a guy who for some reason invaded Iraq, but to some people this was still a good idea. I think Jeb is the odds on favorite, and he would be smart to run center right, and pick up Kasich from Ohio as a running mate.

Ben Carson 30-1

Dr. Carson was a celebrated neurosurgeon that was put on a pedestal by liberals (hell, everyone) as a guy who lifted himself up by his bootstraps, to become an accomplished neurosurgeon and medical professor. He was lefty Hollywood's dream, until of course someone asked him about his politics and realized that really he was batshit crazy. He has compared Obamacare to slavery for example and makes references that the United States is like Nazi Germany. There are however some people who have similar feelings and feel this "well spoken" brain surgeon is electable. Last week in Saugus I saw a pick up truck with three Carson bumper stickers on it. There is a small number of teaparty voters who are expressing interest, he's not going to come close to smelling the podium, but I'll be he gets 10% in South Carolina.

Chris Christie 20-1

Hmmh, eastern Republican in a possible state that can be turned red, a Governor with executive experience that is close to the Wall St. control center of the world, may a bit socially liberal making him electable in a country that leans that way. There are two real reasons that Christie doesn't have a chance of being elected. 1. He is a fat fuck. I don't mean chubby, or middle aged spread but he makes Taft look like Coolidge. He looks like his sweat glands have sweat glands. Taft really was our last fat President, in this day of television media, it's just not happening, you can't hide that with a sweater vest or something, sorry to say this, but American has a collective vanity. 2. He fucked with traffic. In many polls that I just made up, traffic polls up there with Isis as something that every American hates. And through "Bridgegate", Christie conspired to make NYC metro traffic worse, he may as well hole himself up in Tora Bora after that, he doesn't have a prayer. But damn this brother is going to eat through Iowa like a mf'er.

Ted Cruz 90-1

Senator Cruz is a maniac. He just looks crazy. I can't think of who he looks like. (is it Grampa from the Munsters?) And not only is he nuts, he's got probably the craziest father in American politics in a long time. Here's another Tea Party darling, unfortunately for the Tea Party they can't seem to find one candidate that can run in the primaries and instead spread their votes among many losers. Texas is just a crazy state, they just want to vote for people who are going to say the most radical things against the "libs" and in particular the President without any real substance, other than yelling "liberty" like my 4 year old yells for Paw Patrol. The thing with Cruz is that he must be a smart guy, he's got two Ivy League degrees, what kind of cognitive dissonance is this all about?

Carly Fiorina 100-1

Oh look, a Republican girl... Haven't we done this before? Fiorina is trying to sell herself as this year's Romney, and that America needs a CEO to "right the ship". Like Romney she has the advantage of being attractive to those that support the idea of America as a corporation, and particularly liking the idea of having someone who had a great deal of economic success taking leadership, the idea of aristocracy, oligarchy and rule by the 1%. There is some indication that she was not as successful as a CEO that she presents herself as, and really destroyed much of HP's corporate culture. Since it is unlikely we will merge with or acquire another country, her skills may not be as advantageous as one may think. Also, it is hard to imagine her debating the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hilary Clinton. We've moved a long way but seeing two women on that dais is unlikely.

Lindsey Graham 100-1

Lindsey ham. Confirmed bachelor? Man about town? Stone cold playa? Hard to tell, regardless in a red meat GOP primary, it is unlikely for a guy to land an electorate who can't land a lady. His advantage? Maybe the early primary in his homestate. Also in this avalanche of crazy conservatives, his more traditional conservative, Reaganesque conservatism may be more attractive. His disadvantage he seems to want to go to war with everyone. Unless this is attractive to people, I don't see much of a chance.

Mike Huckabee 666-1

Huckabee is the ultimate huckster. I actually found some humor in him in 2008 where I had him at 150-1, seemed like a fat guy, who by skipping the gravy and taking long walks got somewhat healthy, played guitar and just was kind of a regular, wacky conservative Christian. But really he's not, he hangs around with the worst kind of homophobes, and is unapologetic about that support. Mike is really in the race to sell books, get Internet hits, and get ready for whatever is next in his broadcasting career, in a cavalcade of dooshbags, he may be the worst of them all. His support will be limited to the most evangelical of evangelical, the snake handlers who can't really bring themselves to support Santorum, a Catholic or Jindal, a brown guy.

Bobby Jindal 600-1

Piyush is a Rhodes Scholar from Louisiana, which makes him the most accomplished Louisianan who is not a jazz musician other than Drew Brees. He is also one of the worst governors in the country, who was just today probably bailed out from his state being in near arrears because of the settlement of the BP lawsuit. Yes, thank God for that oil spill that will help us to balance our budget. I see little appeal for Jindal, he is one of two candidates (along with Santorum) that I think I may be able to outpoll in many states as a GOP candidate. There are some who are campaigning for the Presidency in this race, others for the VP, some to make a point around a particular issue, some to sell books or get a job at Fox News, all for notoriety and ego, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what Jindal thinks he's doing. It's gotten so bad, that the President's approval rating is higher than Jindal's in the state of Louisiana.

George Pataki 500-1

Granted, I haven't been following politics very closely, but I had no idea he was in the race. Pataki is a northeast moderate Republican without the chameleon like effect of Romney. There's really no reason to write anymore, Elliot Richardson is not walking through that door.

Rand Paul 12-1

Rand Paul scares the living snot out of the GOP. They do want millennials to look at the GOP as the party of liberty. (Liberty of course being defined rather narrowly and not involving gay, lesbians, or minority voters) They do not want the "libertarian" wing taking over the party. I have a couple of friends who voted for his dad years ago, mostly around the marijuana issue. To many, even on the left, Rand has views that resonate with them, around the NSA and privacy, around a more isolationist foreign policy, the aforementioned marijuana, and the recognition of the US' movement towards a national security state. Paul could do well early, particularly in some caucus states with other candidates dividing religious conservatives, etc. It will be very curious how the "mainstream" GOP treats his candidacy. He is a candidate that is a true believer, specific to ideology, not looking at the next paycheck/book deal and not looking for the second spot. There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer. The fear of the establishment on both sides is Sanders and Paul doing well early. Paul is a selective "libertarian" leaning more toward the state's rights/10th amendment type.

Rick Perry 300-1

Rick Perry is a three term governor of Texas. He is extremely popular in Texas. He is really conservative, which Texans like. I'm unsure if anyone else likes him and he bombed in the last election. I got nothing else right now.

Marco Rubio 20-1

If Jeb Bush is not the nominee, Rubio is the vice presidential candidate. He has the politics of Palin, the good looks, the good story without being a fucking moron. Rubio is young, married to a former cheerleader and has the potential to get out some Latino votes for the GOP which have traditionally ignored a population with a tendency to be social conservative because beating up on immigrants really played well with their base.Without any other tea party like candidates, he would likely play pretty well in the early primaries. We'll see how he can work the retail politics of New Hampshire and Iowa and gain any ground.

Rick Santorum 666-1

Rick Santorum is another candidate that couldn't win his home state, if every other religious conservative drops out, he could break five percent. But this is a guy in it, who knows that he can't win it.

Donald Trump 50-1

These odds should be much higher. Trump has huge name recognition, greater than any other candidate other than Bush, and is attractive to yahoo's. Yahoo's may come out and vote in some of the early primary and get him some decent double digit numbers if he decides to stay in the race until winter/spring 2016. My bet is he doesn't have the staying power to last that long and is out by Thanksgiving to work on "other ventures" as a true capitalist, unable to work within a system that can't handle the truth. Trump is a strong believer that there is no such thing as bad publicity. People will confuse their First Amendment rights with actually being able to say anything stupid they want without retribution. Trump is proud to be one of America's biggest most arrogant assholes. He confuses this with leadership.He sees diplomacy and honest negotiation as weakness, unfortunately, many Americans agree with him.

Scott Walker 10-1

Diehard conservative credentials? check. Anti-government guy who runs government? check. Hates government employees? check. This resonates with a lot of people, of course until they ever need services from the government. Walker had some huge victories in a state that used to elect socialists on a regular basis against organized labor (the battle with whom he compared to his ability to fight ISIS). Walker as a relatively young man could be looking at a second spot if he can't pull himself up to the top. He will get some of the billionaires to really get behind him, there will be a lot of dark money out there to support someone with these conservative credentials.

More to follow, don't sleep on Romney with this clown car.

On the First Anniversary of Doc's Passing

2013-04-14T10:04:00.002-04:00

Thank you, Father Curley. On behalf of our entire family—our grandmother, Geneva, our great-aunt Helen, our parents, spouses and children—we wanted to first thank you all for coming today to honor our grandfather’s life, and to thank you so much for your support during this difficult time. It is an honor for us to have a chance to speak about his long and productive life.

Julius was part of the generation that built what we know as modern America. He was born on June 7, 1918 to Polish immigrants Stanley and Mary (Noga) Sozanski, who had immigrated from their respective homelands in Eastern Europe while still in their early 20s. Stanley and Mary became part of the thriving Polish community that was centered around downtown Salem at the time. For decades they and their neighbors worked hard at the local mills, bleacheries, tanneries, and factories. Those of us in the generations that have followed owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for the lives of plenty and opportunity that we lead today, lives that would have surpassed anything that Stanley and Mary could have possibly imagined.

Although the family’s life was one of hard work and few luxuries, Julius remembered many good times; swimming near the factory where his father worked, fishing with his cousins, playing football and baseball, sneaking into Boston to see his beloved Boston Braves play.

Julius was Stanley and Mary’s only child, though he was fortunate to be raised close to his extended family. His mother’s two sisters also each had one son, and his cousins were like brothers to him. And it was the death of his dear cousins at a young age—one from a football injury, another from an infection that might easily have been cured after penicillin became available—which lead Julius to pursue his lifelong vocation as a physician.

You can imagine that the path to college and medical school was not an easy one for a young man of Julius’ working class background. But in so many ways, the lessons he learned from his parents and his community, and the early losses he suffered, gave him the greatest gifts of all: a work ethic, self-discipline, and sense of purpose that we have yet to see equaled by anyone else.

Julius graduated from Peabody High School and went on to attend St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire. He graduated from from St. A’s in 1939, and then from Loyola University of Chicago School of Medicine in 1942. He did residencies in Springfield and in White Plains, NY. And of course, there was the War. Like so many veterans of World War II, Julius never spoke about that period in much detail. We know that he served in the US Army Air Corps Medical Corps, that he did his training in Georgia and was stationed in the Pacific. After the war he continued to serve in the Air Force and was honorably discharged in 1953.

In 1939, Julius met Geneva Furtak, a local Polish girl, at a friend’s wedding. This marked the beginning of the most important relationship in his life, one that would last for over 70 years. They were married in 1947, and had 2 sons, Stanley and Stephen. In 1953, the family left Eglin Air Force Base and settled into their multi-family home at 538 Eastern Avenue. Soon they were joined by Geneva’s parents, Anthony and Polly, on the second floor, and later on the third floor by the Geneva’s sister Helen, her husband Daniel, and their sons Danny and David. Not long after, Julius acquired the property next door at 542 Eastern Ave, which is where additional family members would come to live and is where he built his ophthalmology practice. For nearly 60 years, Eastern Ave has been central to our extended family’s life.

When our fathers and their cousins were growing up on Eastern Ave, you can imagine the constant bustle of activity in their multi-generational house, always yelling up and down the stairs in Polish and English, always food on the stove, always someone to play with or talk to. “Pop” or “Unc” was tireless, using his free time to do home improvements for himself and relatives, tending to his tomatoes, coaching hockey and little league. Going out on their boat, the SS Gen, named for our grandmother, pulling in lobsters and fishing. Ballgames on the radio, cookouts and swimming in the backyard. Family vacations to Lake Attitash in Amesbury, and later to Dennisport on Cape Cod and later still to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where the walkway to the boat heading to Cabbage Island—Julius and Geneva’s favorite destination-- bears a brick with the Sozanski name.

Dr. Sozanski practiced ophthalmology for 57 years, seeing patients at his office next door to the family’s home, and acting as Chief of Ophthalmology at both Lynn Hospital and Union Hospital. He loved his profession, and continued to read medical journals, attend seminars, and meet with former colleagues until he was in his late eighties. He was part of numerous professional organizations and received numerous honors and awards for his exemplary work in his field.

Our grandfather was dedicated to his patients, and no matter where we go we seem to meet someone who got their care from him. We have all heard stories from people whose family member’s vision was saved by “The Doc”. Something that most people do not know about our grandfather, something that neither he nor our grandmother ever mentioned, was the amount of low cost and charitable care he gave to his patients over the years. He would regularly provide eye care to patients who could not afford to pay, taking the small amount a patient could afford or setting up payment plans of as little as $5 a month. He also used to volunteer each year at the Danvers State Hospital, providing eye care to all the patients for no money and, as was his character, for no recognition. The Doc never became rich from practicing medicine, but he certainly enriched many lives.

Whether it was the success of his practice or the happiness of his home, Julius owed so much of what he achieved to Geneva. She was always there to pitch in at the office, and was well known and well liked by the patients. She woke early each day, made sure that her husband had a good breakfast, managed their household, and provided support to both the elderly and young members of the family who needed her help. In his later years, as his health began to decline, Geneva was a constant presence by his side, bringing him to his appointments (and to his weekly coffee with his former colleagues, making sure he continued to keep up a healthy, active routine for as long as he was able. And when the time came for Julius to move on to the next life, after a mercifully brief period of illness, he waited until a quiet moment when he was alone with Geneva to pass on.

We also want to recognize the constant support that Julius received from his sister-in-law, Helen McSweeney. We know Helen will continue to watch over Geneva, her big sister. We also know that Julius regarded his late brother-in-law, Attorney Daniel McSweeney as a brother; the only time we ever saw Julius cry was at Dan’s funeral 12 years ago. And we are certain that both Julius and Dan are looking down on us now (probably thinking that we have gone on too long talking), and that they will continue to watch over the Geneva, Helen and all of us.

Julius beamed when he spoke of his sons, Stan and Steve, of their academic and athletic achievement, their professional work in dentistry, and of the families they went on to raise.

Julius was a man of few words. He almost never talked about himself, though he would often inquire how you (or your car, or your neighbor, or your neighbor’s car) were doing. He was always concerned about everyone else’s well-being, which he put far ahead of his own.

There was never a hockey game too early or too far away for Julius to drive to, never a patient who needed him that he would not spend time trying to help. He was a man of few words who let his actions do the talking, whose pleasant smile and occasional humming always put us at ease. He always showed his love and commitment through the things he did for others, the extraordinary time, energy and effort he put forth, the life he led. The time he devoted to all of us was a gift that no one can ever take away, and is a great example for all of us of a life well-lived.

First Day of School

2012-08-30T20:29:00.001-04:00

Today was Elena's first day of school. A half day mind you, until she starts the full day on Tuesday which includes an extended day afterschool program at the Lincoln School in Melrose. It's funny to me, as I went to Maury School, who was a pall bearer at Robert E. Lee's funeral.

I don't usually write about education, except maybe as a piece of infrastructure in public policy as it just feels like work to me and I don't need my personal views wrapped up with that of my employer and those I serve. That being said, it's a special day to me as my daughter goes on a potential amazing journey.

Public education is the great leveller, the answer to most societal problems. Access to education all over America has grown greatly over the past 100 years as the United States grew from a agricultural/industrial nation to a complex economy required a large range of skills and knowledge. But education is far beyond the knowledge and skills required to get a job that will support you, your family and the American economy but also a voyage of personal emotional and spiritual growth.

Just in the past few days, it seems like Elena has started reading, that love of decoding and comprehension that are the keys to the acquisition of knowledge. Standing in the school yard watching the kids new and old ready to begin a new experience in their lives, a transformational experience for families and educators, I think of the embryonic nature of the American dream personified by backpacks and pencils.

Besides this access to a modern school house and a safe and consistent afterschool program, we are blessed as an upper middle class family with opportunities to supplement this education, through our own experiences, museums and other cultural, historical and educational experiences. There is no doubt in my mind that these experiences as use of our family leisure time will increase her capacity and potential for learning. Also it bring to me an understanding that this blessing is unlikely shared by a great number of families. It's these families I often think about in my work, how to break these multi-generational cycles of poverty.

Education is a life long journey, I find the more I learn and get to know the more holes I see in my own education across the spectrum, in places that I would be considered an "expert" as well as those such as science and programming that I am very ignorant. I look forward to learning along with my kids on new developments in the world of learning. It is an incredible look forward at what can be.

Education is an incredible investment in the future of this country.

Little Boy And Curiosity

2012-08-06T21:23:00.000-04:00

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. ~Albert Einstein, "Atomic War or Peace," Atlantic Monthly, November 1945

There are times, when ever I start to write about politics, that I fear I will just keep going out of control. Spinning out like the Unabomber did in some crazy rant. Usually this stops because I use spellcheck and that ordinarily slows me down a bit. I tend to preface most of what I say so one would take it with a grain of salt. It's funny to read what people put on the Internet, in full public, in comments and what not, not realizing that it's there forever. After your anger is gone and you've grown older and more tempered (well most people). I like to preface that I tend to use hyperbole to make a point, don't usually cite things (a blog is not a research paper) and most of all am in on my own joke and don't take myself to seriously.

But more seriously, today, August 6th has always been a day of reflection for me. A day when science, which has always had a "symbiotic" relationship with war, really reached a crescendo with the bombing of Hiroshima.

I've had an argument with my best friend for going on 25 years or more about the atomic bombing of Japan, my point of view is that it was necessary evil in a total war against evil, while his has been that it was (in my words) a political expediency, an unnecessary evil, and a show of force over an already defeated nation. He has from time to time started to see it my way, although I must say he has a good point. But I think this hindsight is 20/20. It was a free world that had tired of a long, brutal war, and the Japanese as a nation at least had not rendered itself as having any kind of mercy on POW's or the areas that they conquered. A quick blow to end a brutal conflict? A no-brainer at that point.

I also may have written of the fear of nuclear war that I and many others grew up with. Certainly our parents told stories of getting ready and running drills by getting under desks. My fears were sometimes uncontrollable and kept me from sleep, as I laid in a bed at my grandparents near Dulles Airport wondering if any of the incoming planes were Soviet bombers. I slept better when I knew Soviet bigwigs were visiting DC or the reverse in Moscow, thinking those who ran the nation would not commit an action tantamount to suicide.

Science in all its wonder is driven by war and vice versa. When conflict is involved, cold or hot, generally unlimited public funds and resources will be provided. In fact, while the organization, training, pay, leadership and sheer numbers of the US military have kept this nation's force projection above all other nations for the past 60-odd years, it is science's soul sister technology and engineering that has made US military power on air, land, sea and space without historical equal and supreme nearly to all other military forces combined. The US has seen a need, real or perceived to be able to fight two major wars simultaneously and felt threatened when unable to deal with any rising regional power or non-nation threat. This need for supremacy, and focus on national and international security has lead to a combination of respect, reliance, anger, fear, appreciation and expectation by most of the world's population. But that is a discussion for another day.

I appreciate people who can really understand science. I understand more about it's social, political and economic impact than I do the science. I frequently, due to a poor background in science in school, ask them to explain it to me and read as much about it as I can and try to learn along side my 5 year old. So today was a big day, on the same day that 67 years ago was marked by a Japanese city with no real military value was assaulted by the first use of nuclear weapons, NASA landed a large "rover" on Mars. Yes, the United States had managed to land a vehicle the size of an SUV after traveling 100's of millions of miles through space. An incredible achievement, where soon afterwards ordinary people were able to see what those who were most powerful in history could never dream of, the soil of another planet. And yes, it was 2.5 billion dollars, an incredible price tag in a recession torn America with a large national deficit and debt, but when you think about it, about the price of taking every American to a matinee movie. (but y'all gotta bring your own snacks)

When I get into my hippie moods, I wonder about our national priorities. I wonder why when all is said and done we will have spent a projected three TRILLION dollars on two wars that were largely "of choice". (I'll give you the first six months in Afghanistan as a "necessary" conflict) I wonder if we had the same energy to spend money on science and research in the life sciences, energy, space, communications, infrastructure, etc. on constructive rather than destructive conflict, what the world would look like. If we weren't so afraid of each other and what the world was coming to, what it would be like. Certainly I know there is evil in the world, treachery and hate but I'd like to think that vision and imagination could bring us far beyond that.

In some ways, the end of the Cold War made things much more complicated. It was easy to see black and white, communism and capitalism, good and evil in this conversation. But the binary nature of the conflict, while fearful was easy to understand. Assymetrical warfare against a non-nation/state has created much greater collective psychological issues on the part of Americans, particularly when this "foe" is shrouded by a religion and culture that greatly differs from that of the vast majority of the population of western democracies.

So our fear has become so much more complicated. And in fact driven us away from the logic of science, technology and engineering outside of the physics of destruction. Can Curiousity help to bring back a dream, that on the anniversary of one of the world's darkest days, that discovery is in fact the key to peace and freedom?

Civility: The Right Way or The Coward's Way Out?

2012-07-10T20:52:00.000-04:00

I don't really post anymore. Sometimes because I have kids, sometimes I'm just lazy or doing something else. We're back in the silly season, where people generally start to lose their minds and get all irrational.

So on occasion, I just need a written braindump so my eldest doesn't just see me yelling at the guy with the good hair and ironed flannel shirts on TV. I'm not sure there's a middle in politics any more. Don't get me wrong, there are moderates, but I think most of the moderates have been pushed out of the conversation altogether. And it's not that either of the major party's candidate's don't have moderate tendencies. Governor Romney was governor of one of the most liberal states in the nation and until his recent chameleon like spin, would likely be considered to be at "worst" a Scoop Jackson/Bluedog Democrat and at his most conservative, one of those extinct Rockerfeller/Elliot Richardson Republicans. President Obama, managed to push through a health care plan that in 1994 was the conservative answer to HilaryCare which has somehow been relabeled as socialism.

But the moderate has become a person who does not want to be part of the crazy discourse that is going on. The yelling, the screaming, the sudden birth of the half baked Constitutional scholar, the death panels, the channeling of Ayn Rand, the general silliness. The reaction from those who lean left, sitting there stunned, disappointed by what they thought was a liberal President and just shocked at how the President has created a new generation of drone warfare, pushed a health care plan without a public option and watched as the nation has ground to a complete halt politically. The sound from the extremes has reached a crescendo. Certainly and I think even those on the conservative side would agree that outside of the wackiness of the urban camping of Occupy Wall St., etc, most of that noise has come from the right, the corollary to BushDerangementSyndrome, Obamahate.

Most just don't want to get into the soundbite struggle, the armchair and keyboard riots. So to be civil, many have just excused themselves from the conversation altogether. I wonder sometimes how these folks can stand it, all the noise, how they will feel when they go to the polls, this huge majority of "independents"/non-aligned people and how unfortunate that this disorganized militia of regular folks can't really have a voice in the conversation. They are constantly under assault by media, both paid advertisement and the rest of the noise that goes on.

The right plays this game much better than the left, much of the information is easily digestable with easy to remember arguments, statistics and repartee. The argumentative left usually has very shrill exclamations of fairness and social justice. The conversation generally leaves rationalists of all political backgrounds shut out of any potential positive conversation and discovering consensus and middle ground. So what is the position of the rationalist? And again there are rationalists of many political background.

Where is the vital special interest group whose special interest is in fact a better America? And is civility shutting up, going to the ballot box and voting your conscience. Or is in fact cowardice, not standing up to the big money PAC's and noise and just acting like you're powerless? I feel the pull to not engage, certainly among friends the conversations can be heated and in fact entertaining. But to other, from the craziness of black helicopters, birthers and 9/11 conspiracies to the less extreme but still constant cacophony of FoxNews soundbites, socialist/Muslim/death panel babble, the effort just seems to be worthless.

What is the role of civility in a country that seems to have gone bonkers?

Nine Eleven

2011-09-10T22:03:00.003-04:00

"Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?" Father Mychal Judge, FDNY, "Victim number 0001" September 11, 2001

Let’s face it. For 97-98% of us, we’ve done nothing to deserve the sacrifice of those who charged into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Those heroes (whose brethren in the language of today are probably referred to as union thugs) as well as the victims of 9/11 have been given nothing by most of the people of the United States.

Sure, we’ll remember tomorrow, post some random patriotic Facebook status, watch some well made programming with bad music selections, make some random comments to others about how much the world has changed, etc. But mostly, we’ll just go on, like every other day since September, 2001. And I’m just saying if there was a President of the Haven’t Done Much to Help Out Since 9/11 to Change the Discourse and Path of America, I’d likely be a strong candidate.

We all have our 9/11 story, I was driving to Needham to attend a Superintendents' meeting, heard on sports radio that it appeared that a small plane had hit one of the Towers, it was very confusing of course. And shortly after beepers (yes, beepers) and cell phones started blowing up, the meeting quickly split up, the drive home very stressful and my now wife for some reason was kept at work as everyone else headed home to figure out what the hell was going on. Rumors were everywhere, and we went to dinner where everyone was attached to CNN and then to church to reflect on the day's events. Strangely, we were drawn to the Catholic church in Malden, which just seemed a natural place to turn to. My mother was in Lower Manhattan, and the cell traffic was crazy there, and it took several hours to realize that yes, she was not selling umbrellas in the financial district and was at the Javits Center instead. Of course, she said she was worried about us, as if I had made a quick trip to Logan to fly out to California, but such is a mother's way. But for most, we were observers in a crazy affair. Meaning a history changing crazy affair.

Certainly there are the under 1% of the population who have served overseas, and their families who have sacrificed. Certainly those who were widowed/orphaned that day have sacrificed, but for most of us, it’s a time for us to celebrate the concept of American exceptionalism. This exceptionalism is mostly undeserved, but seen as some kind of birthright regardless of any particular effort to make this country a better place. We are the beneficiaries of our own zip codes.I’ve written about his before, http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/09/beautiful-day.html,

I generally abhor the idea of patriotism. Not that I don’t love this country, it’s the best political organization ever, and in no country ever would someone like me ever have the opportunity that I do and have taken advantage of. Nor do I not appreciate those that have sacrificed so much, so that I could sit on my fat ass on Sundays and watch football, go to the polls a couple times a year to decide on my leaders, and have all the very real blessings of liberty.

However this bumper sticker patriotism cheapens the sacrifice of what all have done over the years.Instead of building on and appreciating the sacrifice of those on September 11th, we have instead become a bizarre collection of folks. We have grown-up’s who believe in crazy, conspiracy theories. I do understand that there is real evil in the world, and certainly people like Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta were true purveyors of that evil. However, no where in Al-Qaeda’s wildest dreams was there an idea that there would be Sharia Law in the United States or that Massachusetts would become part of some North American caliphate. While I’m certain that may have been used in the recruitment of some Saudi teenager, in the same way you would recruit an 80’s American teenager with visions of Heather Locklear, it was certainly not part of the goals and objectives in the cave in Kandahar.

What was? The idea that America would become confused, coming out of a bar swinging at the first target that it saw, like a drunk with it’s nose bloodied. The initial targets were obvious and righteous, to root out terrorism where it was and where it was supported. Everything after that became blurry, and as much as I hate to say it, at this point, maybe the terrorists have won. We have become a security state, with limitations of civil liberties, we have become more intolerant of difference; one might say that this is the product of war, but we may be in a war that may not have a foreseeable end. In WWII we did incarcerate Japanese citizens and other parts that are in retrospect of course, disagreeable, however of course, this war came to an end, and it was not a permanent state of affairs. Our country has become divided, a place where thinking that not so many years ago would be extremist has become the mainstream of one of the parties, and to ignore it on the other side, a candidate would do at extreme peril.

So on this day, we will reflect, some will pray, and my hope is that all of us will think about what this day did to us, and ironically how it divided us. Those who went up the stairs in the towers, didn’t care what race you were, what class you were, whether you were a citizen, a visitor or an “illegal immigrant” hired to clean the 99th floor. They were there to serve and protect. It saddens me today that we have cheapened that legacy of service.

Tomorrow, I’ll put out my flag, hoping that this day, perhaps in the same way that one bargains with the unknown in a state of illness or dying, that we as a nation will create a new discourse. A discourse that understands that a victory cannot be won solely by counterinsurgency tactics, a security state or in the most primitive words “nuking them”, it is instead a grand strategy of regaining the idea of that “City on a Hill” not because of our amazing military power or the power of our economy but instead on being the country where one is free and as that a beacon to the world and with a people able to create and achieve the level of accomplishment based on effort and ability. That is where the American dream appears to have been abandoned; we have become a nation of “nattering nabobs of negativity”. One hopes that as usual as a people we will rise above, or else the terrorists have won.

Education Month

2011-09-06T20:23:00.003-04:00

To all kids, adult students and teachers and other educators returning to school, my wishes for a great school year. America's greatest investment in its future is in public education. A much maligned system but the system that has made America great through access to a pathway to the American dream. It is your bridge to being a life long learner and the most valuable of intergenerational gifts. If there is a teacher that lit this fire, try to figure out how to pay homage to their legacy.

So it's just easier to multitask and start with my Facebook post but being that it's September and the beginning of school, I just wanted to reflect on education for a couple of minutes. Now, as I said I work in education so I usually steer away from it so this is more of a tribute to school.

I'm a man of many words who is enchanted by the sound of his own voice. I'm intellectually arrogant and very thankful for those who have brought me down this path, because, my friends once you get into middle age, there is nothing more annoying than a dumb@ss, ignorant, f#ck. I'd rather have someone says something crazy that they made up instead of just parroting something idiotic that they heard somewhere else.

So just a couple teachers to think of. Not necessarily the best but memorable nonetheless. There was a series of teachers in junior high and high school who seemed more concerned with some weird code of discipline than if any learning was taking place, organizing kids, sorting them out, sometimes by academic achievement, sometimes by sports talents or who their parents were. Wanting you to memorize prepositions or some other nonsense instead of spending time on learning and critically thinking. But good or bad, these are experiences that build us and if you can reflect critically and clearly can help you to figure alot out, the greatest gift of age is reflection.

First from Maury Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, Mrs. Smith, I can barely remember her but I remember being pulled out of Elementary school classes for something called CLC. So instead of Mrs. Gill making you hold a trashcan over your head in punishment (because I guess that's what they do in Korea) we interviewed people, got to make announcements for Black History month over the loudspeaker (where I learned about Harriet Tubman)and put together a newspaper. And read whole books, not just little kid crap.

Next I can think of Mrs. Francis, famous in Harwich Public Schools as the meanest teacher ever. Fireball Francis scared the hell outta kids, she would throw the classes papers onto the ground if they were unalphabetized, and generally just make kids lives hell. However once when I asked her why some Indian slums had television attennas, she said to me "well Nyal, some people would rather have a hot dog on a silver platter than a piece of roast beef on a chipped plate". Stuff like that just sticks with you.

High school is a mess. For us boys, we seemed more concerned with throwing stuff at each other and general horseplay and mischief than anything else. We went through 4 9th grade earth science teachers including a green beret reservist before they find someone who could actually make it, and that was a 22 year old female UMass grad. I admired the former Ms. Farrell who left being a nun to teach English to us, Mr. Lynch who handed me one of my favorite books Man's Search for Meaning as a 13 year old 9th grader (which is difficult to reconcile with the same kids who were tossing wax peeled off from lab tables at each other)but ultimately it was Mr. Larson, a 12th grade government teacher who inspired all. I'm not sure how he ended up there at Harwich HS. Hippie, Deadhead graduate of Berkley who just blew everyone's mind by making you think and learn. Read 1984 and discuss current world politics, there are few kids you'll meet who weren't completely blown away by this man, no matter where you were in this highly tracked system, his NEED TO KNOW tests were stoppages in time, where every senior would actually study, this in a high school where few needed to bring home books, and homework was usually done on the bus, during study hall or wherever you could crib and cram quickly.

There's people I have to thank on the College level, Sally Polito at CCCC who told me I didn't really know how to write and then remarkably, taught me how to do it. Roberta Roberts at Framingham who taught me how to research, Catherine Walsh at UMassBoston who taught me about teaching and ultimately Sonia Nieto at UMass Amherst who exemplified what it was to be a Latino educator.

It's difficult to illustrate what a great educator is, our educational experiences are the sum of these educators, the books and other media we consume, the students we study with and those self-guided explorations of life and education outside the schoolhouse. Much of what I think we learn is in the context of those life experiences, work, love, friendships, travails, etc. But in the exploration of our common experiences, particularly those of us in public education we must appreciate the gift that we were given. It is the best investment we will ever make as a society.

Generations of Americans have come here searching for this opportunity. In fact, in the greatest of repressions against African Americans, during and after slavery, education, even the most functional literacy education was denied to African Americans. It is so shameful to see those that today will push those opportunities away after so many have suffered and struggled.

So, in my few last attempts to be serious before I start haranguing on the Republican clown car. Thanks, teachers. Thanks for everything.

Return of the Angry Middle

2011-09-06T19:26:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while, been doing genealogical research, combing through primary sources on line, etc. Having kids, growing tomatoes, working etc. Going to give it another try, to discipline myself to write a little again.

I've been thinking about it for a while, as I watch this political mess. Any dream that I would be anywhere in the middle, a moderate is odd. The right just keeps moving further to the right, so much that what were once plain vanilla liberals are labeled as "socialists", ideas that the Republicans had 20 years ago are now labeled leftist. All but two of the major candidates at this point for the Republican nomination would have been laughed out of any big money GOP events even 10 years ago for their extreme views.

But ultimately the person who got me to sign back in was Matt Noyes. Yup, the NECN weatherman. Recently during Tropical Storm/Hurricane Irene, Matt continued to give the most measured forecasts, using this crazy thing called science. For many in New England, outside of Vermont which suffered greatly and week long power outages in other places, the storm led to mostly inconvenience and the usual grumbling about it being malpredicted and hyped. Matt Noyes on the Braude show commented on the Narccisistic nature of Americans, if it didn't affect them than what was the big deal, he attacked his own profession for engaging in the same Narcissitic behavior when they overhyped aspects of the storm and fear mongered. But what was most impressive about Mr. Noyes is how he illustrated the science of meteorology, the progress in the prediction of weather, yet how much still needs to be learned.

So what impressed, me and affected me the most is that people have become hyper selfish, arrogant and meanspirited, particularly with the anonymity and ubiquity of the Internet. Read the comments on any news article on the Internet, listen to political talk radio and there is a diatribe of hate everywhere. Thinly veiled racism, homophobia, sexism, and just general meanspiritedness fill the electronic packets and airwaves.

That being said, it's in my nature to make fun of people and things. I don't want to come of as a hypocrite, but occasionally I'm going to poke fun at someone's lack of intelligence, funny shirt or comment, etc. So bear with me, I'm going to give this another shot.

Vote Coakley!

2010-01-17T15:58:00.002-05:00

Coakley for Senate

Just blasting out an email to people on my list, sorry if you haven’t heard from me recently but that’s a whole other thing. I want you to encourage everyone you know to get out the vote for Martha Coakley for Massachusetts Senate on Tuesday, January 19, 2010. Even you Republicans and especially you independent thinkers who may think that this is the way to send a message to Capitol Hill and the White House.

OK, let me first say this, I’m voting strictly on the “D” for this one, no disrespect for Martha Coakley, I’m sure she’ll do a good job, the state Democratic party has sputtered during this whole race as has the candidate herself, they just counted on the legacy of Senator Kennedy to pull them through, counting on the Senator who has served the Commonwealth (whether you liked him or not personally) and had a special place in his heart for the poor, the disabled and the elderly, generally those who had least among us.

I got nothing against Scott Brown personally, he serves in the Guard, I’m sure he’s a great dad, raised a daughter who’s a helluva ballplayer and from what I hear a good singer. Hell, if it came down to it, I’d rather have a beer with him than Martha. (I think we’ve been down this road) But I’m not too fond of the company he keeps. He’s the candidate of Rush Limbaugh and of this weird, reactionary, contrived, “revolutionary” tea party bowel movement. He stands together with the party of “no”, the party that will paralyze government for at least the next three years if elected, the party that is party first, America second.

He’ll tell you he’s an independent, a person of the people, yup he’s got a truck with a bunch of miles on it and can bring his camera crews to Southie and Dorchester to shoot some ads but look where that money comes from, as he rails against special interests and lobbyists, looks who’s paying his bill, right wing extremists and the folks that brought you those eight wonderful years of Bush-Cheney. Hey, the candidate of the US Chamber of Commerce? they must be on the side of us working folks and small investors. He’ll fit perfectly into the backbench role in the Senate, he’s used to saying no to everything and not having to come up with a specific policy recommendation or good idea from his time in the Massachusetts Senate in the back seat of the Republican clown car.

I know you all are pissed, hell you should be, but remember who you’re pissed at, this is not a vote for protest, it’s a vote for paralysis in a time where government needs to work well. People are impatient for change and want to rise out of this economic debacle, but remember who the party was that brought you here. If you want the party of plutocrats and a return to the policies of George W. Bush, by all means vote for Brown.

So, if no one has asked you yet, I’m asking, please vote for Martha Coakley on Tuesday and encourage everyone you know to vote!

Thanks, Nyal
If you don’t know where to vote or someone else doesn’t know please go to http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php

Back from Vacation

2009-10-20T19:11:00.003-04:00

LIFE IN THESE UNITED STATES

I read a lot of stuff, sports, news, politics, history, cereal boxes, whatever, I'm an information junkie. I can't watch Independence Day without trying to think about the physics of stuff or whether having the President actually fly a plane without a succession plan was really a good idea. Honestly, it could have led to a coup by the guy who was in My Bodyguard.

The initial thought for this blog was actually a book, just for people who were annoyed as I was about the edges of politics that ranged from the pedantic to the pedestrian, from the moronic to the extreme left fan fiction of ivory tower elitism. But what it really was all about was Reader's Digest.

My grandparents, likely because their first language wasn't English but still had a library had a very large collection of Reader's Digest books, the condensed version of every crappy book you could possibly imagine. They also had many actual Reader's Digest magazines, where possibly my fabulous sense of humor came from; from such wonders as Life in these United States and Humor in Uniform, it probably sent me on my lifelong love of Parade Magazine, where every Sunday I return to the Howard Huge of my youth.

But more importantly they had a set encyclopedias, I'm unsure of the encyclopedia thing but I imagine there were some nice fellas that made a fortune selling encyclopedias to new immigrant families, as the license to do well in America. An access to the knowledge of everything. My father later bought us our own World Book encyclopedia. Education is the gateway to the American dream.

So here we are in 2009 with access to the greatest information source of all time, the Internet. Yes, we are still "malinformed" about just about every issue. There is a conspiracy theory for every stripe in the political spectrum, but little discussion, all vitriol, stupidity and rumor. The left wing does some stupid stuff, don't get me wrong but the right wing has invented all kinds of stupid. However what usually gets left out is data and logic. It appears that neither party wants to do much but feather their own personal nests and perhaps some bacon for their districts, but fails to want to look at the huge issues down the road for an America that has been so financially promiscuous without taking the prophylactic processes of paying for what we really want, which is in fact guns (we spend more than every country in the world combined on "defense"), and butter (the elderly being active voters are getting/will be getting huge entitlements in which they have not put in enough to fund them for 40 years of shuffleboard and complaining about their taxes)

The political ponzi scheme will soon come to an end, with either decreased entitlements and a decrease in the US military's footprint in the world or much higher taxes. Likely a combination of all of these. No party wants to be holding that hot potato, but every day that we do address these issues, we choose to fail. The recent financial meltdown has left the government with little non-Keynesian resource, this is the time you run deficits, recessions and national emergencies.

But soon and sooner than everyone thinks it will be time to pay the piper. I may be the only person in the country asking for a tax increase. And I think it's time for everyone to pay a bit more, 3 or 4 in ten don't pay a penny in federal taxes, while I don't want to balance the budget on the poor and working class at the same time everybody's got a cup and they ain't pitched in. Certainly the wealthy pay most of the taxes and have benefited the most from a pro-business and pro-wealth government that has protected a great deal of their income and in fact assets from being seized.

We've got spoiled, generations of politician selling snake oil, running up deficits, cutting taxes during wartime, understanding that Americans, other than a small few in uniform were not willing to sacrifice that in fact, someone else would pay the bills. It's understandable as our own lifestyles started to exceed our income, using cheap credit and the equity on our homes, as the US government appeared to draw on the equity of it's own reputation.

Certainly there are taxes that can be directly tied to usage and become more fee-based than taxes per se. For example, a gasoline or other energy tax attached to roads and alternative energy development, and social security and medicare taxes will need to go up to pay for the longer lifespans and the increased price of medical care. But mostly it will be income taxes, enough to move towards some control of the deficit along with budget cuts.

Nobody likes budget cuts or higher taxes. People always talk about cutting government waste, etc. "Why is my money being paid for this", etc. But honestly what most individuals pay in taxes for a year wouldn't cover the cost of one patrol in Bagram, it is in fact a partnership of the people, taxes pay for the things that we can' t buy as individuals. One person's waste is another person's livelihood or essential program. It becomes a difficult process, ending a government program is like leaving a great party, you don't want it to end because you know you're just going to be hungover later. Cutting government means cutting services, or making some of those services fee-based. On a local level for example, everybody expects that once the snow stops falling, even after a New England blizzard that they have some God given right to get right out on the road and drive on a perfectly clear street, this call for services is expensive.

But taxes are the worst option, they are pretty much treated with disdain by everyone. It is seen as an instant paycut, as restricting innovation in business. It's perhaps the hardest sell of all. During WWII there was a top tax rate of over 90%, essentially due to the national emergency the government was confiscating all high income. In fact, these very high tax rates existed for years after the war was over. While I'm not suggesting going back to these extremely high tax rates that likely encouraged hiding income in tax shelters, the reality is that for all of us, taxes will go up.

There are not likely going to be a lot of letters going to members of Congress asking to raise taxes, there will be fewer members of Congress who will likely take a stand to take a bite out of your wallet so don't be concerned. It will be left to further generations, our children and our grandchildren to tackle this debt monster.

Quick Ideas on State Government

2009-09-22T20:09:00.002-04:00

Quick Ideas on State Government
Usually the liberal answer to government is just throw more money at it, the conservative answer is just cut the program just not the one in my district, etc. Republicans in this state are fairly lucky, they can vote and complain about waste without anyone in their districts actually losing a dime of services.

A primary theme of this blog is that people love government services, sure they'll complain about government but they love what it brings, so much that sometimes I think they just take it for granted, road plowing is a great example, how quickly it gets done and how ready people are to race right out and get back to business even after three feet of snow that would have paralyzed the city for days if not weeks in the past have fallen. But the second part of that is that people hate to pay for these services, I know people on MassHealth who complain about their income taxes, people with three kids in public schools who complain about their property taxes. The fact is that most people just assume they are getting screwed.

The Commonwealth as many states is in a bad place economically. We have grown accustomed to growing budgets that would absorb the increased costs of health care, energy, general inflation and salary expenses. This is not just Massachusetts of course, there has been a decent safety net funded by federal largess but this too is unsustainable. There are very simple things that would save a lot of money, the so-called fat in government, the procurement issues, the redundancy, the constant covering of your ass and lack of supporting innovative programming and staff that prevents government improvement and cost saving but those are more leadership and governance issues .

So here is my initial framework for some of the Commonwealth's issues, as usual, mostly unresearched, some somewhat far fetched, may some that would require legislation and a few that may be plain illegal, just some ideas. Hell, some of these ideas probably hurt me in the pocketbook.

1. The GIC-all municipalities receiving state aid (OK, so all) whose health care costs exceed that of the GIC per person are required to participate in GIC, certainly this is very controversial to some local unions who have been blessed with very low premiums and co-pays or have more gold plated health plan. These changes will go against the long ingrained ideas of local control, likely something that is coming to pass as we get involved in much more high professionalized workforces in police, fire, DPW and other important city functions. (including schools obviously)

2. Regionalization
Some schools have already done this, and below I would encourage further regionalization of school functions, this is often treated as some sort of "Death Panel" argument of education, like all local elementary schools are going to be closed and they are going to ship my kid from Swampscott to New Bedford. But there are other functions such as fire and police dispatch, and specialized functions of government that are usually too expensive for one district that isn't Cambridge or Boston to fulfill. For example, I'm unsure if a single part-time veteran's agent (required under state law) serves our veterans better that an experienced regional, multi-town agent who isn't a local VFW denizen could provide. My feeling is that regionalization would help to move away from the local, often parochial hiring of "life long residents" who may not be as qualified for the job to a further professionalization of the workforce.

3. Casinos
I'm going here. They likely aren't as good as some people will say they are revenuewise and certainly not as evil as those that are against them are. I'm more pro-casino because of my libertarian streak, if you don't like them, don't go. I can do the math, I know "gaming" is stupid economically and morally it is a tax on the stupid, the old and the desperate. But lets face, folks are going to spend their money on something and even with Foxwoods, etc claiming economic issues, I still know dozens of folks who descend on these resorts to gamble. There are immediate licensing, construction and design dollars that would come out of these projects and some permanent jobs and tax income as well. I'd rather see some nice resorts than the inevitable panic of building big Quonset Huts filled with slots lined with buses filled with senior citizens during our upcoming continuing economic crisis. Certainly there are enough "Gateway Cities" that would welcome a little economic energy.

4.Education
I usually don't write about education because it is where I work, and I just don't want to represent my organization, since I don't set policy. However perhaps the biggest things I would advocate for are 1. Regionalization of particular school functions and governance 2. A statewide teacher contract for all of the Commonwealth's teachers 3. Full vertical articulation of our early childhood, K-12 and higher education system 4. Merit teacher pay for teams of teacher in underperforming schools.

5. Health
Education and health care are the two most expensive pieces of state government. I know very little about health care except that I have great health insurance (it cost me more out of pocket for lunch after my little girl was born than paying for the entire prenatal care and birth) and that I've been blessed with pretty good health all things considered. Massachusetts took the amazing but likely unsustainable step of universal health care. It was a good first step. The state will have to take step to work on tort reform, more options for lower and middle income people, likely built on higher co-pays and possible development of local non-profit co-ops run by health care professionals for health care professionals. The state will likely have to take steps to improve people's long term health through encouraging prevention and interventions for people with chronic disease, unsure that happens. The other big piece is to look at the health care system in a different way, nurses and nurse practitioners who are the heavy lifters in the system are more than qualified to do most than the most complicated medical procedures and come at a much cheaper price. More could be done to build the pathway to these positions that will serve our aging population as well as empower these professionals to do the work that they can do.

6. Business One-Stops
This may have happened already but these would be an extension of One-Stop Career centers that would focus on business development. These folks would work through permitting processes that often get held up locally, acting as ombudsmen or liaisons with local governments, working on permitting and licensing issues, etc. Working with local universities as economic incubators to build innovation, people don't come to Massachusetts for the waters. They come for the brainpower.

7. Collective Bargaining
I'm a union member. In fact it seems that a time may come where government employees are the last remaining major union the way things are going. This is probably some dangerous ground but I got to say that public employee unions and teacher unions are doing the best they can to mimic the United Autoworkers Union (also a former local UAW 2322 member here) in burying their workforce. I imagine that the image of public employee unions may be slightly better than Congress right now, seen as protecting our worst employees, standing in the way of real change, etc. There is something to be said for those accusations, there are many employees who judge themselves by seat time instead of performance, position rather than competence. (and many higher ups who feel the same way) But in fact there is a large majority of public employees who put public service first and are looking for the same economic security everyone else in the free world is looking for. I look for my own union leadership to negotiate in good faith with a strapped Commonwealth, unsure how this happens. Creation of career ladders for successful employees, more rapid and welcoming hiring and HR systems that support employees and a union that's more responsive to cleaning it's own house. OK, maybe this one is the biggest pipedream of them all.

8. Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention
First the Quinn Bill and the whole use of details are a joke and don't prevent crime or keep us safer. The cost of construction and utility projects grows higher and in fact police departments can pretty much require a higher level education or it's military training equivalent as a matter of pre-service for hiring. These are huge issues for the boys in blue, leading to huge salary cuts from the hundreds of cops in the Commonwealth earning over 100,000 a year. I realize that being a cop is hard job, but public employees have to realize that with the promise of relative job security and a pension and good benefits is the balance that you're not going to get rich doing it. Again regionalization of some law enforcement and the increase of specialized units and the state police would be helpful. To use a firefighting example, the fire chief of our city was asked when the last time they put out a fire without mutual aid was and he quite honestly declared, "I don't know, but I'm sure the fire engines were pulled by Clydesdale's". This mutual aid idea needs to be formalized more, not just for firefighting but for fighting gang violence and other specialized functions. The Crips and Bloods don't really care if they are gangbanging in Lynn, Revere or Chelsea, these issues quickly cross our quaint municipal borders. Certainly there are other complex issues of law enforcement and public safety that are analogous to this.

9. Zoo's and Pools and Rinks
I like state parks and likely they could be added to this list but maybe a primary function of the state should be recreational areas, but when it comes to zoos, pools, and rinks, I'm unsure if these are core functions of a state government that is having difficulty housing homeless kids or putting social workers into the lives of kid's whose very reality is falling apart. In this case, I think the development of non-profits or actually selling off of these assets to private or local public entities is necessary. I love the bears at Stone Zoo, just don't think it's a government function, although I think a beer garden at Stone Zoo would be really cool, I don't think the government's going to be trucking in Hefeweizen anytime soon.

So just a few quick ideas, I'd like to get into the complexities of transportation issues, but I got nothing, I just want to see some discourse about these and other issues other than we need to cut! or we need to raise revenues!

The Empire Strikes Back

2009-09-15T19:20:00.007-04:00

A BIT OF A ELITIST, EGGHEAD, NORTHEAST INTELLECTUAL RANT

I try to be a moderate, well OK politically. It's hard sometimes for me, I'm very liberal on social issues, I don't care what you do that doesn't affect me or the general welfare. Don't care who you love, who you sleep with, who you marry as long as it's consensual. Don't care what you drink, eat, smoke whatever as long as you're not driving my bus or sitting in a firehouse or something. In contrast, I would like to make abortion as rare an event as possible, I lean towards pro-life tendencies but am aware enough to know that sometimes women have to make this terrible choice and I want it to be safe, I'm pro-soldier and pro-national security as long as we pay for it, and pretty much think that long weapons (rifles and shotguns) should not be abridged. I think parents and students should be the focus of schools allowing for charters and choice. I believe in personal responsibility but also the second chance. I'm an investor in stocks and think people should be allowed to invest, innovate and get rich. Also I tend to be a fiscal conservative, but lean towards tax increases to pay down debt versus tax cuts that just make the problem worse. So I guess this basically makes me a tax and save libertarian.

I haven't been an political extremist for a long time, in fact as most, I tend to get a little more conservative as I get older, jaded by life experience and as a father a little more protective and paranoid of outsiders. I do however try to remember where I came from and all the opportunity, choice and second, third and fourth chances that I got.

So currently, I'm really struggling. For the past 30 years the right has been pretty organized, oh there were bouts of real weirdness but they figured out their talking points and starting fighting battles in school board meetings and on the local level. The strategy was brilliant, building a national political machine that built itself on post-Vietnam malaise, declining industrialism, evangelical Christianity and the perception of declining family values. The battles ended up securing a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, electing 12 years of Bushes, 8 years of Reagan, 8 years of a largely centrist Bill Clinton whose administration was often tagged as liberal, immoral and corrupt by the same right and a fiscal ponzi scheme that allowed a nation to have lower taxes, high economic growth, and even more government services such as social security, medicare and a military budget that equaled the rest of the world combined.

Then finally the wheels came off the bus for the right. 8 years of George Bush, constant war and an economy that sunk to the bottom hit the conservative movement hard and moderates and independents began to think that President Obama despite the unfortunate name and skin color would make for better leadership than the old crazy guy and the moose hunting ice princess from Seward's Folly.

There were always populist elements among the right, the footsoldiers outside abortion clinics for example but they were always pawns of a bigger well oiled machine. Now it's as if a train full of zombies has jumped the track spilling it's contents across the nation. There are voices of the rabble who have waited for the opportunity to serve a buffet of strange information to the masses, the undereducated DJ's turned political leadership of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other self taught demagogues with easy to repeat sloganry and catch phrases. Imagery that can somehow simultaneously evoke Nazism, Socialism of all kinds and Communism in some odd manner and some (certainly not all) evoking thinly and sometimes not veiled images of racism and nativism.

Many of the crowd feel that they are modern versions of the founding fathers, vestiges of a better time at the birth of a nation, they see themselves as a vanguard (some) and others has representing "real America", you know the America that we saw on TV in the fifties, the nostalgic fantasy of the Reagan era even. You know when Norman Rockwell walked you home from school and the only black people around were Sidney Poitier and Nipsy Russell.

The signs and actions are disturbing, cartoonish even and the gatherings are of a lot of really pissed off white people. I'm not sure what they are so pissed off about, you seem to look at the crowd and there are a lot of old and fat people there. So if you're fat, than you must not be starving, hell you can still hit up the breakfast buffet at Shoney's and the Sizzler on Saturdays. Chances are you're going to end up needing some ObamaCare eventually. And the elderly, hey wait don't all you old folks have some of that delicious socialized medicine that we call medicare? How are those social security checks treatin' ya?

Conservatives will argue, "well Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, MoveOn, etc", OK if Cindy Sheehan jumped off a bridge would you jump off a bridge. I thought their actions were stupid too, it's like those people who go to church and then go home and beat their kids and treat people like crap all week. The people who come armed and are supporting militias are among the scariest, they are the intimidators, but most are just harmless buffoons who think that their country has gone down the tubes in the last 8 months. (God only knows where these people were for the past eight years)

I do fear the Lone Wolves in the group, the people that take it to another level, the homegrown right wing equivalents of SDS or the Weather Underground or Black Guerilla Army. Most of these folks will go home, get pissed off, watch Fox, pick up their social security checks, unemployment checks or other government aid and head down to Walmart for some crappy Chinese imported stuff. It's harmless likely except to the political discourse that feeds off theater instead of reality and data. It's much easier for media, particularly with the dearth of print and serious journalism to bring some cameras than do analysis of complicated issues that are actually going to cost people money and have them make difficult choices.

I want to analyze these Tea Parties in detail among the different issues that they are attempting to address, there does not seem to be the same hatred of Wall St. and the big financiers that helped to create most of the fiscal mess, as you may have seen during the Great Depression. It is again, a considerable part of the population that seems to be venting their anger at a government that has been somewhat forced into a situation of large Keynesian deficits. Dissent is healthy of course and I mean in no way to stifle anyone's right to expression, but we really don't have to listen? Do we? Is this truly the best way to run an airline? Will the Republican Party draw it's energy from the mob?

Seven Months

2009-09-09T19:19:00.008-04:00

I went into hibernation for seven months. Lots of stuff, working, my daughter looking at maps, gardening, brewing beer, all sorts of stuff. The election and Inauguration killed me mentally. I really started to realize that I have a life long love/hate relationship with politics. I find them fascinating, the ultimate chess game, or perhaps more accurately the largest demonstration of game theory possible. So much give and take, so many variables. I vacillate between my love of rhetoric and writing of politicians and the idiocy and absurdity that it breeds.

Lots of stuff going on. A president with over 200 days experience that has not pleased the left but certainly really pissed off the right and kind of left the middle saying, "what the hell is going on."

HEALTH CARE IS OTHER PEOPLE
Joint Session of Congress

8:02 Michelle Obama really looks good, she's a beautiful woman
8:03 Here comes Hillary, she's air kissing everyone, that's a damn red pantsuit
8:07 Hillary gets a little time on camera, better start talking about Bill
8:11 Switched over to Fox to watch the right wing scroll on the bottom
8:12 My 2 and a half year old daughter is yelling Obama and waving an American flag, unprompted by the way, she asked for the flag. Maybe the right wing is right, we are creating a nation of toddler Obamabots
8:13 Mitch McConnell apparently left his chin in another suit, the President whispers in Hillary's ear, hopefully saying "damn, sister I hope this goes better than Hillarycare in 1994"
8:15 Pelosi tells the President where to stand, I bet that woman can tell water to boil.
8:17 "E, you have to go to bed soon", "AFTER OBAMA!"
8:20 "He's talking about babies and medicine and doctors?" OK, my toddler has a better understanding of this than half of the general public.
8:21 Drops TR's mantle on the session and then old Johnny Dingell who I believe participated in the charge up San Juan Hill.
8:24 Yeah, dummies it's about the middle class. Now for the love of God talk about small business, talk about sole proprietors and family businesses who don't have access to health care, please. The people that drive this economy.
8:25 The President cannot pronounce "metastasized" so he avoided a Bushism and said grew larger in size. Whew, he brings up entrepreneurs....
8:26 Yes, the fact is this health care system is unsustainable fiscally, even if you are the most selfish bastard this side of Ayn Rand
8:28 My daughter has now changed sides and is calling the President a "pig", maybe she heard about the death panels. Wait she's clapping now. She seems pretty pleased with the lack of a cap
8:30 NO MONEY DOWN! OK, I'm a wonk I need details.
8:34 Gotta get old man McCain on board, he's the magic man, crazy mf'er but the magic man
8:36 Ah, the details need to be ironed out
8:38 Someone yelled out during the illegal immigrant thing, seriously Mr. President, just walk up, knock one of them out and it's smooth coasting for the next 3 and a half years.
8:40 BEAT ON WALL ST, BEAT ON WALL ST. Obama hates plutocrats.
8:44 The look on Eric Cantor's face says "f#ck you Barry and you're work together"
8:46 OK nothing to the deficit, now or in the future, interesting, must be magic
8:48 Medicare, yup untouched, it must be magic
8:53 900 Billion, "now that's a lot of meatballs!"
8:56 The Teddy Kennedy personal touch
9:00 F#ck you and your civility, it got lost somewhere around the corner of Gridlock and Partisanism

Republican Response: Agree on some stuff (the nice stuff everyone likes), too expensive, tort reform

Then Fair and Balanced FoxNews goes right into a right wing political commercial about health care without missing a beat

THE END OF AN ERA

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely. Ted Kennedy eulogizes RFK

The Republicans loved to hate Ted Kennedy, at least when they were fundraising. The image of the heavy, non-repentant liberal with the tarnished past played great in the red meat districts in the west and south while at the same time using his political abilities to strike bipartisan bargains and get the job done. It was interesting to see the eulogizing for Teddy, Orrin Hatch's story, the unlikely pair who served for decades together in some of the most disagreeable settings putting judges on the bench.

Ted Kennedy was liberal in only the way really rich people could be liberal. He owed nobody anything. He never had to worry about ending up having to lobby for drug companies or chase K Street blackbag jobs. Sometimes I would find some of his largesse with the federal pocketbook to be somewhat over the top, a commitment to a welfare state that would give many of us who grew up working class a time for pause, without thinking of what it actually brought us and that was humanity. I could disagree with some of the proposals, but they actually were rooted deep in the Irish Catholic politics of Boston. The Kennedys were just a generation removed from the city wards and machines that built themselves on largesse and aid to immigrants and the impoverished.

I think about what Teddy brought to me. Student loans? An access to an education that may have not been able to a person of my means. As a kid when we had nothing, AFDC and food stamps? And those are just the selfish tangible things. I had a great sadness, like losing an uncle when Teddy died, we had come to take him for granted, we laughed at his families foibles and showed great disdain at their greater failures. He was a public being. I think of what he brought to the poor, the elderly and the disabled. A promise to protect social security, medicare, and medicaid to those that couldn't speak up for themselves. Teddy was always there for them.

It's a helluva seat to fill, as we speak the machinations in Massachusetts begin. How do you replace a giant? How does a future back bencher fill the hole in the Senate. Likely, Ted Kennedy will be the last real liberal every elected to the Senate. Certainly there will be Democrats with a progressive tilt but never of the intellect and drive for social change that Teddy brought with him.

Getting it on the Road

2009-02-09T20:32:00.005-05:00

Whew. Back from Inauguration, just a quick warmup post as we move into stimulus territory. More to follow.

DEAD CAT BOUNCE?

At some points for some of us "small investors" it just seems like a bad joke. A really bad joke. Save your money, but it in equities and bonds, the best place you're ever going to put your money. The American dream, work hard, buy a house, pay your bills, take care of your property. All seemed like it was working well for the middle class. Even those that chose to get overextended on credit cards had some modicum of control, pay it off with your home's equity.

We even began to buy into an ownership society, almost entertaining some craziness of letting social security go into the stock market. Wow, what a difference a year makes. I don't want to compare loss of home price, losses in retirement funds, losses in mutual fund or other brokerage accounts with someone in danger of losing their home or had lost their job or even worse is homeless, slapped in the face by a "changing economy." There are true victims here, a lot of us middle class folks will be working a few more years or cutting back a bit but for many they are truly be left behind.

It's hard to find out where the bottom is. Are we here? The wrangling of blame is insane, who caused this crisis? Big financial companies who created crazy, impenetrable instruments and derivatives? Folks who overspent and overcharged and overbought homes, assuming they would always keep going up, using their homes as ATM's to live Vanderbilt lifestyles on Lucy Ricardo incomes? An overspending, taxcutting government who gave itself little room to respond to a financial crisis during wartime and instead creating an even bigger deficit and debt when times were good? Was it Barney Frank (play your favorite right wing race card here) whose mean, bully government cruelly made banks make loans to people who couldn't afford them? Is it an economy that has become too focused on services and consumer spending and not industrial capacity? Don't know, maybe it's just Clinton's fault.

So what's the way back out? No economist knows for sure, my buddy clubba always said, "why do you invest in stocks, why not savings bonds." And to think I laughed at him. I'm not a rich man but with the money I lost, I could be driving a Range Rover.

THE STIMULUS

There's only one thing I know, my grandfather knew more than any of these economists. He saved his money, had a stack of savings bonds thicker than an unabridged dictionary on his desk, tons of liquidity. Once the bank said he missed a mortgage payment, he went down and paid the small mortgage off rather than deal with someone who would be so disorganized with his money. On his deathbed, he talked about my own interest rates with me, well that and about Pedro getting in a fight with the Yankees. He had what few of us have, control over his own financial life. Few of us do because the economy has become much more complicated. We're squeezed by debt, student loans, consumer debt, high mortgages. By energy bills, child care, elder care and then funding our own retirement.

So when the "perfect storm" of economic distress hit, a credit crunch, stock market crash, real estate crash and even more damaging unemployment very few of us feel safe. A local police chief got laid off. Who's ever heard of that? And so comes on the federal stimulus package. The public is scared and at the same time very angry. They see huge amounts of money going to TARP funding with the stories of huge, politically tone deaf executive bonuses being a part of it. They don't perceive any benefit, it is very vague if this money is trickling down to alleviate the credit crunch. So how does some nearly 800 BILLION dollars in spending affect the American economy.

800 Billion is an incredible amount of money. More than the entire defense budget. It's enough for a bunch of tax cuts to pay off people who do have jobs to feel like they "got their bailout," pay for food stamps and unemployment, some infrastructure and a some aid for states, etc. In some ways, there is something for everyone. Suddenly, some Republicans have found some fiscally conservative roots that they lost for the past eight years. Now I actually agree that the bill is making OMNIBUS really OMNIBUS and probably should be seven to eight different bills covering important physical and non-physical infrastructure but hey let's welcome back those fiscal conservatives from wandering the wilderness since Billy Clinton graced the South Lawn.

It's hard to tell if these Republicans are just being political, trying to reposition themselves as having an actual position or if there is general concern about this spending. Or maybe just being jackasses thinking that there is a good chance to say "I told you so" when the stimulus has little effect but a bandaid. Most of these conservatives come from states that are really hurting and ironically these states tend to be poorer and get more net dollars from government than they pay in.

I don't like the idea of having our grandchildren and children pay for our mistakes of today. I personally don't like tax cuts when you're running a huge deficit. I've never understood this Reaganomics construction. It's not like I like to pay taxes but people want services, they want good schools, they want a strong military, they want their roads plowed, they want an ambulance to pick them up when they have a heart attack, a cop to come when they feel threatened, all this stuff shockingly costs money, all these services happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In these times, once you cut taxes, it's hard to have the political stones to raise them back again, so the debt grows and grows.

I'm a strong believer in infrastructure. It's what government is intended to provide. But in the same way it is difficult for my wife, myself, my siblings and their spouses and hell throw in all my buddies to build a bridge over a river, it is also difficult to provide other essential modern infrastructure such as health care or education. People tend to scream at "socialized medicine", some of those actually benefit from government provided healthcare. Very few poor people are against "socialized medicine". It's difficult to pay for an MRI with a chicken and some fresh milk as much as Ron Paul would like it so. If this is in fact, an infrastructure bill, I guess you could buy that these types of things are added in. In fact, the nation would have been better off with this as separate transportation bills, health care reform and education reform bills.

The key to the bill is confidence. Part of this confidence is that government is back for the people. Not invisible TARP funds, but money going into research and roads and buildings. Funding is there so mommy or daddy will be able to collect unemployment and not lose their homes or have to take that $8 an hour job and lose his healthcare at the same time. It's a quick fix, a bridge to something better. A shot of whiskey before the bar fight. It's certainly not going to get the job done, there is no magic Obama wand.

There are many steps after this. Regulation that works for everyone, business and the investor, a sense of transparency. Wealth will always be built on risk, but that risk should be known. Capitalism should serve democracy and not the other way around. There are some that will cry "socialism" and I imagine in just a few years, Wall St. will be screaming for the government to get off their back. There is great opportunity in crisis.

The MetaNarrative

2009-01-21T19:38:00.001-05:00

Back on the AMTRAK and headed home. After five days of running around the cold, chasing history wherever we could, history of the past, history being made and a historical prelude to the future. First the travelogue piece of the narrative, we ate at the Georgetown Grill last night, nice enough place in a fancy hotel. There are few cheap meals in DC that don’t come out of a cart or fast food joint. I had a jones for a cheeseburger before it’s back to reality and a normal, middle aged guy diet, also had some lobster bisque, which is nothing like the lobster bisque in New England, they also had Manhattan clam chowder on the menu, call it clam tomato soup or whatever but don’t call it chowder you heathens. Becky had a nicer meal, but I just wanted that damn burger and beer. Not sitting well with the lingering stomach flu. I can’t believe I went my entire vacation without once touching whiskey, damn digestive system.

We went to take the early train out of DC, lugging around all of our stuff and our child. Union Station was crowded, for those of you who are traveling with toddlers, always take the first, front seat in the train. There are no trays, but definitely more room to “run” around. This train was packed, a post-Inauguration train out of town. People are overloaded with their Obama gear. So we slowly and methodically leave DC, the land of the self-important, the pinnacle of power, where the local news in the news making capital of the world ironically is 90% traffic and weather.

I’m trying to get some collective thoughts together, most of this again if for my two year old, so we can somehow remember this week. And for my wife who engineered this whole extravaganza. What I really want to write about is the speech. I love rhetoric and often feel like I’m playing chess with the speaker and speech writers and overanalyze. I’d like to see the first and former drafts and find out what the initial direction was. The time to note where the Scripture was used and why, to understand all the hidden messages. Unfortunately we heard the speech through speakers walking away from the ceremony to the bus due to a sick child, I need some time to read the text and sit down with a glass of scotch and watch it on c-span.

Going Home
Like everyone else, I’m often asked “where you from?” and like most people who have lived in different places there are different answers. If I’m out of state, I usually tell people I’m from Boston; it’s a common reference even though I’m about 8 miles from the city itself. For work friends, colleagues and folks like that I usually say I’m from Melrose, but I grew up on the Cape, lived in Framingham, Somerville and Malden as well. For people who are looking for a familial context, my mother’s family is from Massachusetts and the Bronx and my father’s family is from Puerto Rico. But really my young childhood was spent in Northern Virginia, Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County to be precise and most of my school vacations, etc were spent at my grandparents’ house down there.

When we were at dinner Inauguration night, the waiter asked us where we were from, when Latino people ask you that (he was Honduran), it usually means what country did your family come from, but in this case we said the usual, Boston (since there were folks in town from all over the country), but then I remarked but I was born right over here on Pennsylvania Avenue in the District. “Wow”, he remarked, “you’re only the second person I’ve met that was actually born here, the other one was my daughter.”

DC is quite remarkable in its mobile population, certain there are Washingtonians who have lived here for generations, but mostly and particularly in the Northwest part of the city, there is a constant churning of the population. You are as likely to be born in Tegucigalpa, Denmark or Nairobi as in Columbia Hospital. Being born in DC, meant that I really only spent the first three days of my life here before being taking home to Virginia. I do have some roots in the DC area, still a Redskins fan, but as time has gone by in my life I have become more disconnected. I tried living down here for a while after college, thinking it would be a good start to a professional career but it lasted about 10 months, I ended up going back to cooking over the summer and then into graduate school and living in Somerville to never look back. Since my grandfather moved to Florida and later passed away, my connections weakened even more, to the point that now I’m just a tourist.

So, home is now Boston, or Melrose technically, it’s where my heart lives, it’s where I’ve buried the stakes of my life. Washington is now like it is to most people, a center of power, and a center of history. A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Color, Caste and Class
On every news broadcast from Fox News to American Pravda Weekly, the inauguration of the 44th President was announced as “historic”. And that is that nobody ever thought that a dark complected individual would ever be President. Certainly this is a man that can negotiate many cultures, a White culture in which he was raised by his mother and grandparents, an immigrant and specifically African culture by blood, an African American culture by context and surely the culture of the corridors of power, greased by Harvard and access to the best education. What lies underneath this talk of a “historic” inauguration is a lack of conversation on color, caste and class and whether truly this “historic” event has knocked down the vestiges of racism and classism.

It is hard to talk about race. It is often easier to talk about class or even “caste” which to me is the institutionalization of class. . You are maligned as either a “racist” or on the other end of the spectrum being “too PC”. The argument is that we should really talk about class, meaning we have de-racialized the entire discussion. To me this is a coward’s way out; you can’t talk about one without talking about the other. Today, for example, schools are more segregated then ever, but ironically one of the biggest destructive mechanisms to the black middle class in the south was desegregation, which cost thousands of jobs for middle class African American adults who were employed as teachers and administrators in segregated “black only” schools. While “Jimmy Crow” ended for the youth, “James Crow” locked out a lot of adults from decent paying jobs in “desegregated” schools, but I digress…

In nowhere but DC is the range of color, caste and class so apparent. As I noted above there always seems to be few people who were born in the wealthier part of the city. However in southeast and other parts of the city there are people who have lived there for generations, perhaps descendants of freemen or even folks who were auctioned off as little as 200 years ago in the district itself.

Most of the African American population in the District is the “underclass”. This very term is hard to define, I’m not an economist and can’t tell you what the actual income levels would be but suffice to say for my purposes it’s the poor, both working and non-working, on public assistance or not that are struggling day-to-day to make ends meet. For some of these families, people may have been on public assistance for generations, many of the folks are ill-educated, underserved by DC public schools in the past, large numbers of males (and growing numbers of females) have been institutionalized in prisons, so prison culture begins to match that of the streets and vice-versa. It’s a depressing scene, for the very poor; the homeless it is even more extreme, particularly in the cold and particularly for those homeless people that are severe substance abusers and/or mentally ill, it is extremely difficult for these poor folks to access the most rudimentary social services such as food and clothing. I am sad to say I saw a man with flip flops on, no socks, walking by and in a moment that I could have given him my own socks, embarrassingly just passed him by, not my best moment but my fear of possible mental illness and the threat to my family caused this lack of charity.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter mile away, one could spend over five dollars for a single cup of fancy coffee. A mile or so away, a celebration for a new President cost tens of millions of dollars. I believe in capitalism and the right of all to rise to the best of their abilities but certainly this fella should have a pair of socks when it’s ten degrees out.

Many of the poor have had a terrible shot at the American experience. The best and brightest have always risen to the top, particularly those that were blessed by strong families and teachers who led them down a path of success. But many continue to be cursed by multi-generational poverty and general lack of access to the good parts of capitalism, be chewed up and spit out by life. In many ways, Obama never had this experience, the experience of the urban cycle of poverty as a child, the legacy of slavery, not to say that there wasn’t racism at every turn but not the type of virulent institutional racism that faces many urban African Americans. As a community organizer in Chicago he worked in these communities, but his scars are not as deep. Nonetheless he is a hero and an icon to those that live in these communities and I think more so in those communities that have risen above it.

The amazing part about this trip to DC was the turnout of these folks. The amazing numbers of African American families that came out for celebration. And when I say families I mean multiple generations of families, grandparents (maybe even great-grandparents) parents, children, aunts, uncles, close family members that came from all over the country. All with a certain level of affluence to take time off there jobs, get everyone together and travel. I felt for the southerners and Californians who had no idea of the concept of layering clothing and discovered on the fly that many layers of Obama gear would help to keep them warm.

I could see Dr. King smiling amongst these hordes of people, but I was wondering, was he truly smiling on seeing the President himself standing there, feeling the same pride I felt as he snapped salute after salute to passing military honor guards? I was wondering, was he truly looking at John Lewis and other veterans of the civil rights movement that had gone beyond the fire hoses, birdshot and police dogs to the very highest levels, the corridors of power? Actually, I think Dr. King was looking down on the Mall far beyond the Capitol from the same spot where he gave one of his greatest speeches at a horde of successful people both African American and not, sometimes literally hand in hand to mark an enormous change in America. At a place where a shantyville was build by the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 where King had merged his racial justice movement with that of an economic justice movement, Americans of different colors, classes and creeds had come together to celebrate the unshackling of part of their former selves.

To adapt Winston Churchill’s quote about the battle of El Alamein, “certainly this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.”

Is the US Government the only people who buy US cars?
While watching the parade I started to think, are federal, state and local governments the only people who buy American cars? Outside of rental agencies, most American cars I see have government plates of some kind. A lot of these security vehicles are SUV’s, limos or high horsepower police vehicles and for more pedestrian state employees, Malibu’s, Taurus’s and the particularly brutal Chevy Aveo. With the cap values of these American car companies being greatly exceeded by the current and future government bailouts (I think Avon at this point is worth more than General Motors, which was once the most valuable company in the world) would it make sense for the government to take the ultimate step of simply adopting these company, nationalizing them into some wing of the Pentagon.

Wes Clark, who I usually side with on most issues but disagree on this, argues that to let these companies fail, to diminish American industrial capacity is a national security issue in the same way that pre-WWII (read Depression) capacity hurt the initial buildup of US force infrastructure. If had not been for some recovery governmental spending and the roughly two years before the US became involved in the war officially, the argument is that the Arsenal of Democracy would have flunked the test, and that the industrial support particularly of the Red Army who turned the Nazis back would have been diminished greatly. I’m not one to argue with a Rhodes Scholar and a national security expert but this seems not to be fighting the last war, but probably 4 wars ago. I’m trying to envision a scenario in which the US would have to produce that level of tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc., would it be WWIII, a land war in Asia, a return to fighting the Russians across the Fulda gap?

I’m no national security expert but this seems to be a very weak argument for not letting these companies fail. Certainly this industrial capacity if necessary could be developed in current auto plants in the south that are building smaller, more efficient cars. If not then there is a case for nationalizing these plants and drafting car makers into a reserve component of the armed forces, OK sounds crazy and it is.

Message to Elena
On Christmas, your mama engineered this whole trip to DC. I had half joked about going, but knowing my grand opposition to crowds and spending money, I didn’t think it would actually happen. How crazy one may think, bring a toddler in the middle of the winter to stand outside in the freezing cold, never getting a chance to actually “see” the event. Well, baby, I guess 90% of life is just showing up and you were a part of history this week.

You won’t remember anything about this, which is why I tried to write a bunch of stuff down and take some pictures, we’ll tell funny stories about how horrible we were as parents to take our girl with stomach flu all over the city in the cold and how you threw up on my back. How I taught you Lincoln’s house and Obama’s house. We even made sure to include some embarrassing photos of you eating crackers in bed with just a diaper on, that I’m sure to show every first date that you have and maybe if I’m so lucky use it as an 8 by 10 as your wedding photo.

So there you were in Lincoln’s house looking down on the crowds watching the end of the Bush administration. It was the end of an era as well as the beginning of another, it had been a run of Reagan/Bush and Clinton for 28 years, not far removed from Nixon and a 4 year outlier by a peanut farmer from Georgia, at a time when people would have voted for an outsider, any outsider unblemished by Watergate. At this point we have rolled the dice with a young man (relatively by political standards) from Hawaii via Illinois. It’s hard to say what kind of President he’ll be, “historical” yes, but so was Andrew Johnson.

He’s got a rough trail ahead of him. An uncharted trail filled with hazards, both foreign and domestic. Not only a “War on Terror” and an economy that seems to be broken but also the image of America in the world as a bully and not a “City on the Hill”. Not only crumbling infrastructure, meaning physical infrastructure such as bridges, roads, and buildings but human infrastructure such as education, health care, and retirement. I’m not sure there’s a roadmap for this. The traditional Democratic roadmap of “relax, government will take care of everything for you” seems as flawed as the Republican roadmap of “every man for himself”.

How to regulate but not over regulate? How do you get the right people in government, not only elected officials but those that execute the orders of the legislative and executive branch? How do you run a government that is not so small and ineffectual that “you could drown it in a bathtub” but also not so big and arduous that it runs every aspect of everyone’s life and stifles opportunity for wealth and production?

OK, a two year old likely isn’t going to understand this or answer these questions. In fact the hundreds of think tanks and politicians have yet to figure this out. But my challenge is for you to answer these questions and to grade President Obama not on his transformative nature but on his execution. He does not have the benefit of being a caretaker president, the train for the most part has jumped the tracks, and this is not to say that the tracks and the train don’t exist, but the engineer has got to get things in gear.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-21T19:12:00.001-05:00

The long awaited day, a new chance, a new start. Now the right wing has played up that Obama is being played up as the Messiah and after being in Washington for a few days among his most fervent followers, I can’t say I disagree with them. I’m all about being optimistic but one man doesn’t make a miracle worker outside of the movies.

People need to realize that the new President really is in a world of you know what. Putting out the fires that exist today while promising “change” for the future. It is hard to make change, turning the ship of federal bureaucracy around while getting sniped at from the right and the left on every possible move that he makes. Right wing radio has already ripped Obama’s “socialist” policies and I have said before there is just not enough revenue to fulfill the left’s dreams of more social services and aid to education and the environment. I’m unsure if the polarization of the past 16 years is reparable, I think we are a nation with way to much pressure from the edges, this pressure causes intellectual paralysis. Will an Obama administration with a frustrated middle in Congress of both parties be able to overcome the gridlock, to make real change and home and abroad. Wow, now that would be a real American revolution.

Another Sickie Morning
Elena was sick again in the middle of the night, she seems to throw up and then feel better. It’s still touch and go with her digestive system but we’re off to inauguration. It’s cold this morning in DC, colder than yesterday with a wind. We got on a crowded bus, again people don’t really understand public transit and of course don’t understand their surroundings, one woman said that Elena could sit in her lap, and even as a guy who believes in the kindness of strangers, we’re not about to hand over our daughter to some weird lady in a fur coat talking into a voice recorder. A woman finally gave her seat to Becky and Elena, preventing them from falling down on the metro bus. We got off on Washington Circle and started down 23rd towards the Lincoln Memorial. For some reason, taxis were still allowed down this road but not the buses. So it was just some bicycle rickshaws, taxis and National Guard humvees. People were pouring out of the GW/Foggy Bottom stop into a ad hoc flea market that had been set up outside with Obama merchandise. No McCain merchandise to be seen anywhere. The only merchandise that I found really annoying were the American flags with imagery on them. The American flag stands for us all and should not be used for personal gain or celebration, burning a flag is one thing, it makes a statement, but adding one’s personal touch is an insult to us all.

We managed to leave Georgetown a little after nine, TV reported that people were arriving long before dawn. Our objective was to be somewhat realistic; you just can’t spend that much time out in the cold with your toddler and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be close enough for a clear sight anyway. We were happy with the jumbotrons and set sites for the Lincoln Memorial.

The Crowd and Setting
I love the Lincoln Memorial. The idea of Lincoln keeping the country together in reality and his seeming overlooking of the Capitol and the country as a whole in some sort of eternal marble vigilance. Also as the place where King made amongst his greatest of speeches in a place of one of the greatest of gatherings. A lot of people had the same idea as we had and took a seat along the steps, we spent sometime and took some photographs among the Lincoln Memorial and then headed down into the throngs of people around the Mall. There were some nice volunteers in red knit caps wishing everyone a good morning with a smile that I later deemed the prozac patrol.

The beauty of DC is despite a million, two million people whatever, there was still enough space available to move around, as long as you didn’t need to have your face pressed up against the window upfront. Where we were going, security was limited, meaning while there were hundreds of guardsmen around and other security folks, you could carry bags, strollers, whatever. A couple of smart people had actually brought chairs and as much as I know could have had flasks of bourbon (taking notes for my next historic DC event). There were some bottlenecks of barricades and people who are either electronically or intellectually distracted and didn’t really understand the nature of crowds and that they did not move at their whim. Also for the tens of millions that were spent on security, 100 sheets of Xeroxed paper with some arrows point where you could and couldn’t go would likely have been helpful. I can save that for my after action report.

The crowd had an amazing energy and incredible diversity. I would estimate that 40% or more of the crowd consisted of African American families from all around the country, as contrasted with the large underclass of Black people in the District itself it was amazing to see these extended groups of families and friends, students from HBCU’s, sororities and fraternities joining in the celebration. It looked beyond King’s dream to Cosby’s creation. When Elena started to cry, she was offered cookies by a father of twins with Down syndrome, it was a crowd that was ready to cheer, as if a heavy weight had been pulled off them. As I have said the cult-like adoration was somewhat disturbing but if this enthusiasm can be channeled into work and service then maybe this country has a fighting chance after all.

By this point about a half hour or more before the swearing in, Elena finally had enough, it wasn’t that she was cold but “her belly”. And just starting uncontrollably crying. Nothing we could do about it, there were a bunch of folks around but still room for people to move around. Kids were playing, people stomping their feet to keep warm, walking around, some stupid people who had brought bikes through the crowd, stupider people who had brought dogs, and a stupid guy who was rollerblading. The jumbotrons were cool, but we had a sightline through a leafless tree in exchange for more room to wander around. The sound was great, occasionally picking up on live mikes just general chatter on the stage.

The Ceremony

Slowly dignitaries, including the living Presidents (OK, bringing Lincoln himself would have been kind of gross) were introduced getting jeers and cheers by an overwhelmingly Democratic partisan crowd.

Rick Warren came out to do the prayer. Rev. Warren has been under some fire for his homophobic tendencies, many of which are shared by many of his evangelical flock. I’ll say this, outside of this, I do like Rick Warren. He reverse tithes, giving 90% of his money to the church and is concerned about economic and environmental justice issues. I’m not nearly conservative enough to join his church but I like to hear him speak. He gave a fairly long prayer and a Christian prayer at that which may be disturbing to our non-Christian friends but Rick Warren and his followers can be a positive if unlikely ally to the Obamamaniacs. He stresses service both to God and to his fellow man. Certainly there will be a great deal of disagreement between progressives and evangelicals but both of them have some common views on a few important issues. Evangelicals make up 20% of the US population, anointing Rick Warren despite his views on homosexuality pay homage to those folks and maybe a bended ear to the Oval Office by a leader of the Evangelical community, some may call it pandering and some a reach across a dangerous chasm of misunderstanding. There was limited reaction in my area to this, some sneers from some of the more “progressive looking” folks but mostly just listening in anticipation to the main event.

The swearing in of VP Biden brought a small clamor from the crowd and Aretha Franklin really warmed them up. Then came the main event, the swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States. Wow, people just started going crazy, the equivalent of Elvis or the Beatles, or just hundreds of thousands of people celebrating. I was as if the Sox had won the World Series in front of 1.5 million people live in 2004.

Unfortunately Elena’s crying had become crazy and we had to leave as the President made his speech. (More comments on that tomorrow). I carried her back up past GW to the bus, as efficient as the buses were getting people in, is as confusing as getting people out, the buses and stops lacked appropriate marking, showing the focus on the complicated instead of the simple like signage. We made our way back and were able to warm-up nap and watch the parade on television, how sweet it was to see Barack Obama snap out those first salutes as commander in chief.

Day 4

2009-01-20T14:16:00.000-05:00

Uggh. Damn stomach flu, why, why now. Seems to be a quick spin through the body, but pretty darn brutal, Elena as I said threw up on my back in the backpack and we’ve had to do several loads of laundry (ok, Becky has). Becky had it and then it hit me hard, I was pretty depressed but then I rallied. We caught our favorite Circulator bus got off at GWU and took the train over to Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery
As I have said in a pervious post, http://theangrymiddle.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-behalf-of-grateful-nation.html Arlington is an incredible place. Not only for members of my family obviously but for thousands of other families. Today, Arlington was a mob scene of buses and people. Thousands coming to “see the sites”. I still have never seen the eternal flame or the changing of the guard, my visits are personal and to my grandparents. As much as I’d like to see these things, I’m usually ready to go on my way.

Going through the throngs there are few people that are actually seem there to visit loved ones, most are there to see the sites, and pay their respects to those who have served in a more general sense. There was a small group of 82nd Airborne troopers in loose formation, who I imagine were in the city on some type of security duty and I later thought probably there in the cemetery to visit someone that they have loved and lost. The soldiers are so young, so many of them look like they are a couple days out of high school, not having felt a razor to their face but likely visiting a lost friend.

Elena got to meet her great grandparents, or in the least a monument to their memory and we got to visit a monument to America’s greatness, or actually the greatest of its people and specifically its warriors.

Walking the Mall
Washington has become on odd place since the days of my youth. Well, I guess it was always a little off, as any place that it the seat of government of the free world would be. A certain sense of self importance by a set of residents that tend to not be long time denizens of the city, brought back and forth by political winds of change. However, today, unlike the days of my youth it is a fortress.

Security since 9/11 has been tantamount, to the point that our Department of Justice looks like something out of a dystopic, post-apocalyptic nightmare. Flowerboxes serve a dual function, the vessel for plant like and also to protect from suicide bombers. Including at some places that I’m unsure if al Qaeda, Baader Minhoff gang or Earth First would ever consider attacking. One thing though it the NEA ever becomes the terrorist group that the former Secretary of Education insisted it may be, it is one of the few buildings that a F-350 could get a good hit of pavement to hit.

The security changes are not only the physical walls and barriers but the absolute exponential growth of security forces, both public and private. You can’t go anywhere without seeing an armed security guard of some kind and often turning in different directions you will see representatives of many different law enforcement organizations. This weekend security of course was at an extreme but on a usual day the capital is an armed camp. Curiously, the National Guard present (estimated at over 10,000) was unarmed, unsure if that is due to posse comitatus or not. Also somewhat concerning was the physical fitness of some of our guardsmen, which was fascinating in these days that the guard is so frequently used in active duty.

The Mall is America’s backyard. When I was little there would be dozens of football games, soccer games, whatever being played upon it. It also is a place of history, with protests and celebrations that have provided the flavor for the vanilla that DC can often be.

We walked the entire mall after walking over from Arlington, it seemed a balmy 35 degrees at that point, it was impossible to get up to the Lincoln Memorial as they had all the stuff still up from Sunday’s concert. Walking through the throngs of people and vendors to the Capitol where the cold started to take over. We got a passing glance at Soledad O’Brien through the crowd, I was shocked, she was like a rock star. I’m just glad I’m taller because I wouldn’t have had a shot. The plethora of Obama gear is still amazing to me, and people are just scooping it up

The on-demand Sesame St. Elmo is a good relaxer for Elena, and gets her to downshift through her stomach issues as we drag her around town, she managed to fall asleep in the backpack for a couple of hours. She got to visit baby Nate this evening and Carrie’s cats Marbury and Madison.

Day 3: The Stomach Flu

2009-01-19T16:52:00.002-05:00

We tried to get an early start this morning but during our bagel trip, Elena threw up so we came back to do some laundry. Met a fellow Red Sox fan at the bagel store, a young kid from DC, the nation grows. We tried to make it out again and Elena threw up again in the knapsack and all over my back. OK, today looks like a washout, it may just be NFL football in someone else’s basement. But he has a 50 inch TV so it may not be a washout altogether. And they sell Yuengling at the Safeway. Hopefully everyone will be healthy enough that I can start that million person “USA, USA” chant. NOTE: Now we all have some version of the stomach flu, hopefully we’re all healed by Tuesday.

Obama: Cult v. Substance

There is something discomforting and odd to the Obama phenomena. He has been the darling of the liberal press, first because the mainstream press while not likely “liberal” itself consists of mostly liberal (at least in the classical sense) people outside of Fox and talk radio. Liberal meaning a constant interest in change and accepting difference, a certain curiosity in life as opposed to the more accurate leftist/socialist label that is put on the press by the right wing. This press was interested in Obama because he was interesting, not only a good narrative but smart, well educated and the ability to communicate beyond soundbites and clichés. McCain had a great narrative as well, and was the only Republican with a chance to win but he ran away and took bad advice to go to the right, rather than the vital center that had fed his whole career.

Outside of the press adoration there was a strange public adoration by Obamamaniacs. For people of color it was a transformative candidate, beyond the poverty pimping and race card playing to a man being judged by the content of his character, his intelligence and talents. For left liberals there was a change from the odd last eight years of administration and for those far to the left (that saw Clinton as a conservative) a possible end to some 40 years of conservative presidencies (outside of the Carter outlier). For the young and even Generation X it was the potential election of one of their own.

But like I said for many of the deciding votes that put Obama over the edge it was just the change that people felt was needed. A sinking economy was what put people over the edge and the seeming addled commentary by McCain and his followers that the economy’s fundamentals were strong. We who lean to the left should always remember that it was a single digit swing that led to the Obama victory and that the tough decisions that will need to be made will lead to further defections from this vital middle.

My initial observation is that there are too many people who are putting their faith in the man, rather than the management and leadership of the system. The number of folks with Obama wear and jewelry is incredible, albeit the inauguration is a celebration of a historic event and not the kickoff of a cult of personality. There are more images of the leader than any other leader this side of Pyongyang. I mean, t-shirts, hats, necklaces, sweatpants, sweatshirts, etc. I’m a man who holds on to clothes for a long time, and it’s hard for me to think of my Obama knit cap during a future Jeb Bush administration. There is a tremendous amount of Obama gear around the city, including Obama/Biden earrings. I’m holding out for the Biden story telling doll.

I’m afraid of people’s disappointment. That a President Obama will not be able to pull the magic that people think he will be able to do. I face the same frustration with some Christians who will pray for money or for God to help them through some magic or miracle, rather than praying for the strength or wisdom to make these decisions. It will take some fierce effort and wait for it, some sacrifice to help make things change. After everything is swept up and the port a johns are put away the work begins. There likely will be millions of disappointed people, frustrated with the speed of change, the seeming same old same old in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a deepening economic recession based on some real issues.

The father of the Red Sox fan had flown in from overseas on business. He commented that at the airport he had never seen so many overseas visitors and that most were here to see Obama inaugurated, now that’s something. You have a whole world, well at least those with the money to travel to the US who may be thinking the same thing, that’s a lot of weight on one man’s shoulders.

Listening to the right wing radio already talk about the failure of the Obama administration, you hear the other side. The frustration with the anointed Obama, the frustration of looking at a man who some authentically feel to be too inexperienced, too liberal/socialist or more disgustingly too black, too foreign or too Muslim.

I feel that Obama has the substance to get the job done, the willingness to listen to other smart people and make the right final decision, the understanding that his constituency is the entire United States of America and in fact the world. The world is going to have to be patient, these growing pains of globalization and misorientation of resources towards the extreme wealthy are going to take time to iron out. All the brilliant rhetoric in the world won’t help.

The Coming Wage Deflation

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. The auto industry has come hat in hand to Congress making some political missteps along the way. What kind of auto industry doesn’t understand the right political move here, a convoy of their products heading through various states and having various events in factories in the states where they make their products. Oh, I guess the type of auto industry that makes crappy products that no one wants to buy.

You’ll hear everyone screaming about the UAW and the onerous contracts that make each car $1800, $2200 or $3 million dollars more expensive than their Japanese equivalent. Most of these are due to “legacy” costs, the costs of health care and pensions of those damn retirees who just keep living longer. Of course, all these contracts were made in good faith (Disclosure: As a grad student I was a member of the UAW) but made at a time where no one could see that Americans would go and buy Hondas and Toyotas that were more reliable. The US companies continued to make SUV’s and trucks that were great, but since few of us work on farms and we continue to drive farther and farther for work, these options didn’t make the sense of buying a Civic and knowing it wouldn’t be in the shop 6 times a year.

Recently some Republican legislators by Bob Corker (dooshbag-Tenn.) have come to say that there should be no bailout unless the unions agreed to terms similar to those of the Japanese companies that are running factories in you guessed it, Tennessee and other southern states. So essentially, you have a Republican senator leading a movement to have American wages determined in the boardrooms of Tokyo. It would make one wonder which side of the desk the winning side was on the USS Missouri in 1945. It’s enough to make your head swim.

I’m not one to say that these agreements don’t put American automakers at a competitive disadvantage but to blame the terrible planning and implementation on workers is just insane. And the fact is, they signed the contracts. What is scary is not so much these companies going the way of horse glue factories, but the effects that good, strong unions and high pay have had on the rest of the working public. The benefits and pay levels that many Americans now take for granted came from competition for workers with these companies that are now coming to pass.

So the economy retools in the next few years, there is the potential for wage deflation, that is fewer benefits and less pay for the same or equivalent positions that may actually require more education and qualifications, for most gone are the days you could walk out of high school and get a good job for the rest of your life.

What the danger here is, is the threat to the whole middle class. A class of people who have already overextended themselves to overreach to the class above will now likely have to stretch farther to own homes, get health care, care for both their children and their parents. We lose sight of this as we get frustrated with what seems the outrage of unions that protect the worst employees and continue to get high wages on the taxpayer’s dime while the layoffs continue across the country in other businesses.

Let’s remember that during this crisis, the big banks and the big moneyed class are starting to restructure themselves as well, using huge taxpayer bailouts and the gun to the head of the American government to fiercely protect the ultra rich, likely at the hands of the middle class.