The LeftWingCapitalist household is decorated for Christmas. Most of the festive flourishes are due to the creative efforts of Mrs. LWC, of course, with assistance from Yours Truly, as appropriate.
A Christmas tree, brightly lit, fills the front room window. Its branches bend under the strain of supporting many ornaments; each comes with a story. Illuminated candles -- electric, of course -- brighten certain otherwise dim corners to reveal more Christmas decorations. There is Christmas music -- for the next few days, all of our music will be Christmas music.
The weather -- well, this is Southern California -- is what we call "seasonal." Which means it is nothing like what our friends in much of the rest of the country are experiencing with sub-freezing mercury readings day after day. But at least the temperatures here are staying below 75F, with one or two possible exceptions in this week's forecast.
It's all pretty traditional.
We say lots of "Merry Christmas"-es to people. And a few "Happy Hanukkah"s to our Jewish friends. And some "Happy Holidays" greetings, too. More tradition. People do not have to be Jewish or Christian to be a part of The Holidays. And so to those who are of other backgrounds -- be it Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, pagan (an occasional one, here and there; give them credit for yule), atheist, agnostic, Hindu, and all the others -- I am pleased to say "Have a Happy Holidays!" If it works for them, it works for me.
When did the "Merry Christmas!" greeting first come into general use? It surprised me to learn that "Merry Christmas!" is a relatively modern innovation. Like many other Christmas traditions, the greeting emerged into the public mind in the early 1800s. It gradually caught on in general use as a result of popular literature of the time such as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
Christmastime celebrations in colonial and early America were haphazard. This is not to say that they were insincere, but rather that sometimes, in some places, they happened, and at other times and in other places they did not. The Pilgrims, those paragons of piety whose Thanksgiving we recently celebrated here in the United States, were not known to celebrate a Christmas holiday, or even to give the day any special recognition. The Puritans of Olde and New Englands -- of which society the Pilgrims were a very small part -- actually went so far as to forbid Christmas celebrations throughout their lands, and insisted on occupying the day with a good day's worth of labor!
Is it any wonder, then, that it is almost impossible to conjure up an image of a smiling Puritan? Can anybody even find a Puritan in our midst these days? I think not.
We wish everyone Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! All are welcome to choose any combination, even all of them together.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Terrorism cannot destroy us, but climate change can
Global climate is changing. The world is becoming warmer. It is happening unnaturally fast. Humanity is being forced to live in temperatures that the human race has never before experienced. Human activity has caused this to happen. We can do something about this if we choose to; if we choose to do nothing, or not enough, the consequences will be disastrous.
"Film at 11," as we used to say about television reporting on breaking news.
Climate change is the sort of slow-moving news that does not lend itself to the 21st century social media frenzy -- film at 11 does not work with this story. Weekly heat waves will come and go, receiving their due treatment in daily media, but the impact of the story of long-term temperature averages that increase by a half-degree over a period of years is not as exciting as is the urgency of a few days of ten degrees above average readings on the thermometer.
Today's always-on media hype craves the recognition brought on by dissemination of the most intense excitement or most soothing entertainment ("here's a new cat video!") and so fails at any mission to cogently report on small, incremental happenings that quietly accumulate power. Complex, forward-looking analysis is not usually grasped by the intellectual immediacy that is the hallmark of a short attention span.
Here is why this slow-moving story is so important. In fact, it is so important that it deserves to be called "vital."
Nations -- especially the United States -- spend huge amounts of time, money, effort and political posturing protecting themselves from threats due to terrorism. But the resources and abilities of any terrorist organization are pitifully puny in comparison to those of the nations that they might attack.
Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS), for example, fields a force of a few thousand fighters, almost all of whom must be retained in Iraq and Syria to hold on to the shrinking amount of territory that they control; its fellow-traveler organizations are even more constrained. With no navy, air force, nor a cohesive command-and-control for their tiny ground forces, these thugs have no ability to strike decisively-crippling blows against America or any other developed nation.
Fear, conjured out of frustration of their weakness, is their most potent weapon, but only because our domestic political and media cultures act as amplifiers. At its worst, terrorism as we know it is capable only of scratching at the edges of civilization. And yet its threat-level is enough for the U.S. to justify the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars for protection.
If such a threat provides that justification -- we can accept that it does -- then a much greater threat should provide at least the same justification for action on an even greater scale. Climate change is a much greater threat.
A warming climate will result in extreme weather activity that is, to put it plainly, progressively more extreme. Wind storms will become stronger, heavy rainfall will become more intense, sparse rainfall will be further reduced. Damage to life, property, agriculture and the environment due to heat, flooding, winds and drought will increase. Warmer weather supports the spread of disease. Microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses, are prolific and adaptable; we can only guess at what epidemics of disease will look like as the world warms.
Perhaps surprisingly, temperature differences between vastly different types of climates is small: About 7 Celsius degrees separate today's climate from the climate that Earth experienced during the depths of the last ice age. That is approximately 12 Fahrenheit degrees.
The threat of climate change is that global temperatures will increase at least 2degC (3.6degF), which is about 30% of the increase since the temperatures of the ice age. It will happen in a few decades, instead of thousands of years. Is it reasonable to think that humanity and the environment can adapt to a change of that magnitude in such a short amount of time instead of the millennia that were required in the past? Is that something that we really want to have happen?
Climate change has occurred naturally. What is not natural is the speed with which it is happening now:
A good read that conveys the science that explains the reality and consequences of global warming is a recent article by Bill McKibben -- one of the founders of the environmental organization 350.org -- or, for more depth, his 2010 book "eaarth - making a life on a tough new planet." Both are an accessible collection of facts and analysis on the subject of the warming world.
The major corporate oil and gas producers -- such as ExxonMobil -- have finally acknowledged the reality of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, especially as they are produced by fossil fuel use. Royal Dutch Shell goes so far as to state support for "government-led carbon 'pricing' mechanisms." Though more could be expected of these companies, they at least recognize the reality and threat of global warming, and that fossil fuel consumption is a direct cause of that warming (if their public statements are to be believed).
Constantly increasing temperatures have very tangible effects on the world that we live in. Glaciers and ice covers are melting in ways that they have never melted before; those natural storehouses of fresh water supplies, once thought to be permanent, are disappearing. Wildlife is changing its natural rhythms and patterns of habitation as it adapts to environmental changes caused by increasing temperatures. Some are threatened and could be exterminated.
The ocean's levels are rising, thereby reducing the amount of nearby dry land and enabling salt water intrusion into fresh water aquifers; low-lying islands and coastlines are disappearing. By absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the oceans are becoming more acidic -- as they also absorb and store heat from the atmosphere that is eventually released into hurricanes and typhoons -- which threatens aquatic life, including that which is used for human sustenance.
People respond to this in some pretty weird ways. For example, in a head-in-the-sand moment a few years ago, the Republican-led North Carolina state senate vainly tried to legislate out of existence the use of terminology related to increasing sea levels so as to artificially preserve coastal real estate values. The Atlantic Ocean paid no attention to the North Carolina state senate.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provide a wealth of explicit temperature readings covering more than the last century that document increasing temperatures; in-depth research on an impressively-wide spectrum of related topics is available from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. Common among these, and other, sources is evidence of a trend of increasing temperatures.
Graphs and charts are handy ways to see these trends. They take raw data and make it visual. For the do-it-yourselfer (including skeptics) NOAA provides a great graphing tool that anybody can easily use. Taking a few moments to make the appropriate selections, I created this graph that shows the world's land temperature trends as determined by annual anomalies that are either above or below the average temperature:
A graph that also includes ocean temperatures looks very much the same.
Here's another one that shows the temperature trend for the contiguous United States:
Thanks to the internet, scientific evidence on these subjects is readily available. Significant conclusions that can be drawn from this evidence include:
How to fix the problem? At the moment, we seem to have many solutions but not enough action. Last December's Paris Agreement on climate change is a good step in the right direction by the world's governments. But its certainty of success is hard to measure since it depends on voluntary compliance. China is the biggest atmospheric polluter, followed by the United States. Leadership will have to come from both countries.
China, with its centralized government that places a priority on social stability among its huge national population, is likely to be seen as a world leader in this regard, if only because of the self-interest of its ruling class. That country's coal consumption peaked in 2014 and has continued to decline with the implementation of centrally-planned policies that favor non-polluting (or less-polluting) power production. Single-party governing can make things happen in ways that democracy cannot.
American leadership is hampered by the politics of democracy and by money from the fossil fuel lobby. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the twenty top campaign contributors from the Oil & Gas Industry during 2015 and 2016 have made almost all of their contributions to Republicans and conservative groups. These contributions are often in huge amounts: over $9 million from Koch Industries; over $4 million from Chevron; fourteen of the twenty chipped in a million or more. Of the total, only about $350,000 went to Democrats.
Based on the statements of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party platform, future American domestic and foreign policies ought to reject the convincing scientific evidence of global warming. A President Trump would pull out of the Paris Agreement, if only through ignorance. Such an action would be seen as an American-inflicted major wound on an agreement involving most of the world's nations, and would create a global leadership vacuum which China would be more than happy to occupy. Since the rest of the world is convinced that global warming is a major threat, the end result could only be damaging to America's foreign affairs.
By comparison, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to a Scientific American query about climate change with a set of actions and measurable milestones that she proposes for her presidency. (See item #3 here.)
If the Paris Agreement is a worthy start -- and it is -- then how else do we go about fulfilling it?
One way is to use marketplace pricing mechanisms, as alluded to by Shell. That could mean imposing a steadily increasing price on carbon, as championed by organizations such as Citizens' Climate Lobby. The CCL proposal would return the monies collected from the carbon fee to households -- because they are the ones who pay for it, they should get the money back. In their words, such a carbon price would be "revenue neutral."
California uses a "cap and trade program" for pricing carbon. This type of program levies the direct price of carbon on the corporate source, rather than the individual consumer. The World Bank has sponsored the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition to enable joint efforts among private enterprise and public policy in effectively pricing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
And what about all that atmospheric and marine carbon dioxide that will hang around causing problems for thousands of years? That is a question not only about the amounts that we have already deposited, but also the additional amounts yet to come because fossil fuel consumption will be with us for many more years. Private enterprise can be innovative, and innovation should be a source of capabilities to reduce and remove carbon pollution.
A just-released study based on data provided by Rystad Energy -- an oil and gas consulting firm -- provides an analysis that conveys a sense of urgency about the need for tangible, meaningful actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. McKibben of 350.org clearly explains (in an article here) why this means that exploration for, and development of, new fossil fuel sources should cease. Our remaining fossil fuel energy needs, he says, can be supplied by existing oil wells, gas fields and coal mines; no new ones are needed, and, in fact, new ones will create more harm than good.
Nobody wants to pay more than necessary for anything, especially fuel, which powers our transportation, and heats and cools our residences and other buildings. But protection from threats and damage repair always comes with a price tag.
One thing else is always true: The sooner the work begins, the lower will be the total price in the long run.
"Film at 11," as we used to say about television reporting on breaking news.
Climate change is the sort of slow-moving news that does not lend itself to the 21st century social media frenzy -- film at 11 does not work with this story. Weekly heat waves will come and go, receiving their due treatment in daily media, but the impact of the story of long-term temperature averages that increase by a half-degree over a period of years is not as exciting as is the urgency of a few days of ten degrees above average readings on the thermometer.
Today's always-on media hype craves the recognition brought on by dissemination of the most intense excitement or most soothing entertainment ("here's a new cat video!") and so fails at any mission to cogently report on small, incremental happenings that quietly accumulate power. Complex, forward-looking analysis is not usually grasped by the intellectual immediacy that is the hallmark of a short attention span.
Here is why this slow-moving story is so important. In fact, it is so important that it deserves to be called "vital."
Nations -- especially the United States -- spend huge amounts of time, money, effort and political posturing protecting themselves from threats due to terrorism. But the resources and abilities of any terrorist organization are pitifully puny in comparison to those of the nations that they might attack.
Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS), for example, fields a force of a few thousand fighters, almost all of whom must be retained in Iraq and Syria to hold on to the shrinking amount of territory that they control; its fellow-traveler organizations are even more constrained. With no navy, air force, nor a cohesive command-and-control for their tiny ground forces, these thugs have no ability to strike decisively-crippling blows against America or any other developed nation.
Fear, conjured out of frustration of their weakness, is their most potent weapon, but only because our domestic political and media cultures act as amplifiers. At its worst, terrorism as we know it is capable only of scratching at the edges of civilization. And yet its threat-level is enough for the U.S. to justify the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars for protection.
If such a threat provides that justification -- we can accept that it does -- then a much greater threat should provide at least the same justification for action on an even greater scale. Climate change is a much greater threat.
A warming climate will result in extreme weather activity that is, to put it plainly, progressively more extreme. Wind storms will become stronger, heavy rainfall will become more intense, sparse rainfall will be further reduced. Damage to life, property, agriculture and the environment due to heat, flooding, winds and drought will increase. Warmer weather supports the spread of disease. Microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses, are prolific and adaptable; we can only guess at what epidemics of disease will look like as the world warms.
Perhaps surprisingly, temperature differences between vastly different types of climates is small: About 7 Celsius degrees separate today's climate from the climate that Earth experienced during the depths of the last ice age. That is approximately 12 Fahrenheit degrees.
The threat of climate change is that global temperatures will increase at least 2degC (3.6degF), which is about 30% of the increase since the temperatures of the ice age. It will happen in a few decades, instead of thousands of years. Is it reasonable to think that humanity and the environment can adapt to a change of that magnitude in such a short amount of time instead of the millennia that were required in the past? Is that something that we really want to have happen?
Climate change has occurred naturally. What is not natural is the speed with which it is happening now:
When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual. (Quoted from the end of the text in the prior link.)
A good read that conveys the science that explains the reality and consequences of global warming is a recent article by Bill McKibben -- one of the founders of the environmental organization 350.org -- or, for more depth, his 2010 book "eaarth - making a life on a tough new planet." Both are an accessible collection of facts and analysis on the subject of the warming world.
The major corporate oil and gas producers -- such as ExxonMobil -- have finally acknowledged the reality of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, especially as they are produced by fossil fuel use. Royal Dutch Shell goes so far as to state support for "government-led carbon 'pricing' mechanisms." Though more could be expected of these companies, they at least recognize the reality and threat of global warming, and that fossil fuel consumption is a direct cause of that warming (if their public statements are to be believed).
Constantly increasing temperatures have very tangible effects on the world that we live in. Glaciers and ice covers are melting in ways that they have never melted before; those natural storehouses of fresh water supplies, once thought to be permanent, are disappearing. Wildlife is changing its natural rhythms and patterns of habitation as it adapts to environmental changes caused by increasing temperatures. Some are threatened and could be exterminated.
The ocean's levels are rising, thereby reducing the amount of nearby dry land and enabling salt water intrusion into fresh water aquifers; low-lying islands and coastlines are disappearing. By absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the oceans are becoming more acidic -- as they also absorb and store heat from the atmosphere that is eventually released into hurricanes and typhoons -- which threatens aquatic life, including that which is used for human sustenance.
People respond to this in some pretty weird ways. For example, in a head-in-the-sand moment a few years ago, the Republican-led North Carolina state senate vainly tried to legislate out of existence the use of terminology related to increasing sea levels so as to artificially preserve coastal real estate values. The Atlantic Ocean paid no attention to the North Carolina state senate.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provide a wealth of explicit temperature readings covering more than the last century that document increasing temperatures; in-depth research on an impressively-wide spectrum of related topics is available from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. Common among these, and other, sources is evidence of a trend of increasing temperatures.
Graphs and charts are handy ways to see these trends. They take raw data and make it visual. For the do-it-yourselfer (including skeptics) NOAA provides a great graphing tool that anybody can easily use. Taking a few moments to make the appropriate selections, I created this graph that shows the world's land temperature trends as determined by annual anomalies that are either above or below the average temperature:
Here's another one that shows the temperature trend for the contiguous United States:
Thanks to the internet, scientific evidence on these subjects is readily available. Significant conclusions that can be drawn from this evidence include:
- Earth's overall temperature was relatively stable for several thousand years after the end of the last ice age; human civilization has developed and flourished during that period of temperature stability.
- Industrial development and higher global temperatures -- happening at the same time, year after year, for two centuries -- cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate coincidence. (Two events happening together once or twice might be a coincidence; if they continue to happen that way, how can it continue to be a coincidence?)
- Human activities, such as the use of fossil fuels (increasingly consumed as a result of industrial development) release huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, and these gases -- especially carbon dioxide, which can linger for thousands of years -- are known to cause our planet's surface temperatures to increase. That is the so-called "greenhouse gas effect."
- Human civilization has become dependent upon certain predictable and beneficial recurring weather patterns (temperatures, rainfall and snowfall) in determining where to live and how to sustain life; those patterns will be disrupted as the planet warms and Earth's climate changes.
- These disruptions will cause global shifts in populations, wealth and power. People will naturally move to be where the living is better. Power will shift to those nations that show the most effective leadership in dealing with the climate-caused disruptions.
- Rejection of the scientific evidence for global warming caused by human activities is too often the result of misrepresentation inspired by political dogma, such as this one which correctly references a NASA study as saying that upper atmosphere carbon dioxide reflects the sun's heat energy, and then amazingly and irrationally concludes that carbon dioxide must therefore cool Earth's surface (think about that for a moment -- if a mirror reflects when pointed in one direction, then it will reflect when pointed in any direction, and atmospheric carbon dioxide in the quoted NASA press release is like a mirror pointing both away from the globe and back into it).
- To the extent that it is human-caused, the climate problem can be human-fixed.
- The threats, costs and consequences of unaddressed global warming are far more dangerous to western civilization than are any threats from terrorism -- climate change has the ability to strike at the foundations of civilization, and it will do so with impunity as long as we allow it to gain power and strength by feeding off the byproducts of civilization's success.
How to fix the problem? At the moment, we seem to have many solutions but not enough action. Last December's Paris Agreement on climate change is a good step in the right direction by the world's governments. But its certainty of success is hard to measure since it depends on voluntary compliance. China is the biggest atmospheric polluter, followed by the United States. Leadership will have to come from both countries.
China, with its centralized government that places a priority on social stability among its huge national population, is likely to be seen as a world leader in this regard, if only because of the self-interest of its ruling class. That country's coal consumption peaked in 2014 and has continued to decline with the implementation of centrally-planned policies that favor non-polluting (or less-polluting) power production. Single-party governing can make things happen in ways that democracy cannot.
American leadership is hampered by the politics of democracy and by money from the fossil fuel lobby. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the twenty top campaign contributors from the Oil & Gas Industry during 2015 and 2016 have made almost all of their contributions to Republicans and conservative groups. These contributions are often in huge amounts: over $9 million from Koch Industries; over $4 million from Chevron; fourteen of the twenty chipped in a million or more. Of the total, only about $350,000 went to Democrats.
Based on the statements of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party platform, future American domestic and foreign policies ought to reject the convincing scientific evidence of global warming. A President Trump would pull out of the Paris Agreement, if only through ignorance. Such an action would be seen as an American-inflicted major wound on an agreement involving most of the world's nations, and would create a global leadership vacuum which China would be more than happy to occupy. Since the rest of the world is convinced that global warming is a major threat, the end result could only be damaging to America's foreign affairs.
By comparison, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to a Scientific American query about climate change with a set of actions and measurable milestones that she proposes for her presidency. (See item #3 here.)
If the Paris Agreement is a worthy start -- and it is -- then how else do we go about fulfilling it?
One way is to use marketplace pricing mechanisms, as alluded to by Shell. That could mean imposing a steadily increasing price on carbon, as championed by organizations such as Citizens' Climate Lobby. The CCL proposal would return the monies collected from the carbon fee to households -- because they are the ones who pay for it, they should get the money back. In their words, such a carbon price would be "revenue neutral."
California uses a "cap and trade program" for pricing carbon. This type of program levies the direct price of carbon on the corporate source, rather than the individual consumer. The World Bank has sponsored the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition to enable joint efforts among private enterprise and public policy in effectively pricing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
And what about all that atmospheric and marine carbon dioxide that will hang around causing problems for thousands of years? That is a question not only about the amounts that we have already deposited, but also the additional amounts yet to come because fossil fuel consumption will be with us for many more years. Private enterprise can be innovative, and innovation should be a source of capabilities to reduce and remove carbon pollution.
A just-released study based on data provided by Rystad Energy -- an oil and gas consulting firm -- provides an analysis that conveys a sense of urgency about the need for tangible, meaningful actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. McKibben of 350.org clearly explains (in an article here) why this means that exploration for, and development of, new fossil fuel sources should cease. Our remaining fossil fuel energy needs, he says, can be supplied by existing oil wells, gas fields and coal mines; no new ones are needed, and, in fact, new ones will create more harm than good.
Nobody wants to pay more than necessary for anything, especially fuel, which powers our transportation, and heats and cools our residences and other buildings. But protection from threats and damage repair always comes with a price tag.
One thing else is always true: The sooner the work begins, the lower will be the total price in the long run.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
The shadow of the election of 1856
The desire for analytical integrity stymies me. Long-time readers will know of my political inclinations, but will also know that my conclusions (most of them, anyway, though I try for all) are the result of comparing one choice against the other. Justice has her scales, and I have mine.
We are now about three months before the election. Last week's conclusion of the Democratic Party convention yielded the predictable result of Hillary Clinton officially becoming the Democratic candidate for president. Coming as it did in the week after the Republican Party convention produced the corollary result with Donald Trump, it seemed that the time had arrived for a piece of reasonable analysis that would compare the two candidacies.
The "reasonable" part of that is what has stymied me.
Clinton is a conventional candidate; some will find this comforting, to others it will be disturbing. Trump is unconventional; like the splitting of an amoeba, his unconventionalities multiply, and yet remain oddly similar. Clinton can expound in wonkish detail on almost any subject under the sun; Trump's grasp of details is ephemeral at best.
But the truth is -- Trump is wildly different, and therefore much more entertaining. He is the anti-wonk and the anti-factual. He does not embrace analytical integrity -- at least not publicly -- and so at this stage in the election it would be an exercise in futility to attempt to submit his candidacy to critical analysis.
Emboldened with that epiphany, the encumbrance of analytical integrity has fallen away. Fortunately, something robust and consequential has taken its place: It is our old friend History.
Trump might be different, but he has happened before. Here in the United States of America. In a presidential election. Not exactly in the same way, of course, but with startling similarities. History does not repeat itself, but the same tune can be played by one band at one time and then picked up a hundred years later by another band, adapted for contemporary tastes and played again.
In this case, over a century-and-a-half has passed since the election of 1856. The nation was politically-split at that time by several domestic social and economic issues. The electorate and the candidates held polarizing and deeply-felt opinions. At that time, slavery was the paramount issue. But there were others.
There were three main candidates for president, and five political parties, in the election of 1856. James Buchanan, the nominee of the Democrats, won the election with policies that tolerated slavery. John C. Fremont, the first Republican nominee for president, also was nominated by and supported by the anti-slavery Northern American Party. Former president Millard Fillmore was the nominee of the American Party and was endorsed by the Whig Party.
While the other political parties had been largely consumed with issues around how to expand, contain, diminish or eliminate slavery, the American Party (originally the Native American Party) had for the prior several years been occupied with promoting an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic agenda, largely in state and local politics and congressional elections. The goal was to retain, recover and rebuild the purity of America's social structure, mostly by saving it from incoming foreign influences.
The decade of the 1840s was one of vastly increased immigration into the United States, largely of Irish and German Catholics. Much of the established Protestant Anglo-Saxon population of the country resented the ways in which the recently-arrived people were changing the nature, appearance and customs of the nation.
Catholicism, though always present, was now considered by the American Party to be a danger to the republic because of the numbers of arrivals from Europe. Adding to the apparent danger was the perception that the Pope was executing a secret religious-political agenda, and immigration to America provided him with tools to further that agenda. The immigrants increased the competition for jobs, too.
Does any of this sound familiar? If the national and religious identities are changed, does all of it sound familiar?
Despite its populist appeal and rapid growth in adherents, the American Party withered quickly after the election of 1856. It disappeared and was largely forgotten. Also largely forgotten was the more common name of the American Party, one which was embraced by the party's membership as well as by its opponents.
It was called the Know-Nothing Party.
We are now about three months before the election. Last week's conclusion of the Democratic Party convention yielded the predictable result of Hillary Clinton officially becoming the Democratic candidate for president. Coming as it did in the week after the Republican Party convention produced the corollary result with Donald Trump, it seemed that the time had arrived for a piece of reasonable analysis that would compare the two candidacies.
The "reasonable" part of that is what has stymied me.
Clinton is a conventional candidate; some will find this comforting, to others it will be disturbing. Trump is unconventional; like the splitting of an amoeba, his unconventionalities multiply, and yet remain oddly similar. Clinton can expound in wonkish detail on almost any subject under the sun; Trump's grasp of details is ephemeral at best.
But the truth is -- Trump is wildly different, and therefore much more entertaining. He is the anti-wonk and the anti-factual. He does not embrace analytical integrity -- at least not publicly -- and so at this stage in the election it would be an exercise in futility to attempt to submit his candidacy to critical analysis.
Emboldened with that epiphany, the encumbrance of analytical integrity has fallen away. Fortunately, something robust and consequential has taken its place: It is our old friend History.
Trump might be different, but he has happened before. Here in the United States of America. In a presidential election. Not exactly in the same way, of course, but with startling similarities. History does not repeat itself, but the same tune can be played by one band at one time and then picked up a hundred years later by another band, adapted for contemporary tastes and played again.
In this case, over a century-and-a-half has passed since the election of 1856. The nation was politically-split at that time by several domestic social and economic issues. The electorate and the candidates held polarizing and deeply-felt opinions. At that time, slavery was the paramount issue. But there were others.
There were three main candidates for president, and five political parties, in the election of 1856. James Buchanan, the nominee of the Democrats, won the election with policies that tolerated slavery. John C. Fremont, the first Republican nominee for president, also was nominated by and supported by the anti-slavery Northern American Party. Former president Millard Fillmore was the nominee of the American Party and was endorsed by the Whig Party.
While the other political parties had been largely consumed with issues around how to expand, contain, diminish or eliminate slavery, the American Party (originally the Native American Party) had for the prior several years been occupied with promoting an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic agenda, largely in state and local politics and congressional elections. The goal was to retain, recover and rebuild the purity of America's social structure, mostly by saving it from incoming foreign influences.
The decade of the 1840s was one of vastly increased immigration into the United States, largely of Irish and German Catholics. Much of the established Protestant Anglo-Saxon population of the country resented the ways in which the recently-arrived people were changing the nature, appearance and customs of the nation.
Catholicism, though always present, was now considered by the American Party to be a danger to the republic because of the numbers of arrivals from Europe. Adding to the apparent danger was the perception that the Pope was executing a secret religious-political agenda, and immigration to America provided him with tools to further that agenda. The immigrants increased the competition for jobs, too.
Does any of this sound familiar? If the national and religious identities are changed, does all of it sound familiar?
Despite its populist appeal and rapid growth in adherents, the American Party withered quickly after the election of 1856. It disappeared and was largely forgotten. Also largely forgotten was the more common name of the American Party, one which was embraced by the party's membership as well as by its opponents.
It was called the Know-Nothing Party.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Brexit, Trump, Sanders, Clinton -- the end of globalization? Not likely -- but perhaps there will be more employment for lawyers.
Will the year 2016 go down in history as the beginning of the end of globalization?
The British -- almost 52% of their voters -- voted in favor of "Brexit;" apparently, according to the story, largely because of the negative effects that globalization has had on them. So, they voted to leave the European Union, an organization they see as a leading proponent of globalization.
Donald J. Trump is the Republican Party's presidential nominee, propelled to that position by a tide of popular Republican resentment at changes those people feel have been to their disadvantage. They believe that many, perhaps most, of those changes are caused by globalization.
Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, in part because she has positioned herself as opposing the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) agreement recently negotiated by the Obama Administration, now awaiting an increasingly-unlikely Senate ratification. Bernie Sanders competed well in the Democratic primary contests largely on the strength of his opposition to both the TPP and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), maintaining that those and other similar agreements have decreased well-paying American manufacturing jobs.
The outlook for globalization is dim. Or not. It depends on who is doing the globalizing.
The United States and the United Kingdom have for decades been the world's leading proponents of so-called "liberal economics." But time passes and things change. Now, "liberal economics" has become synonymous with "globalization."
With good reason, because those who benefit the most from liberal economics -- businesses, both large and small, that can exploit expanded opportunities; the employees, whether numerous or few, of those businesses; fraternal organizations, guilds and unions that encompass those same businesses and employees; and, of course, the governments that can, plainly speaking, impose taxes upon all the economic activities enjoyed by those people and entities -- have for the last half-century or so been increasingly using globalization as a tool to achieve the goals of liberal economics.
Some of those goals are altruistic, some are miserly; most are a blend of those characteristics and perhaps others, too. In any case, the benefits that come from achieving those goals -- in other words, the wealth and incomes -- have not been fairly distributed among the populations. Too much has gone to too few; too little has gone to too many.
And so, politics in America and Great Britain now seem to bode poorly for the prospects of increasing globalization. If anything, the Brexit vote and the American presidential election imply that both countries will start to limit their participation in globalization agreements. In the United States, NAFTA and the TPP (and other agreements) are at risk; withdrawal from them would dramatically reduce American participation in globalization. In Britain, all international trade and business agreements are at risk, since those that are in existence now are naturally a product of the U.K. membership in the European Union.
On the other hand, China is energetically building a free-trade zone with other Asian countries. Recently, the newly-launched Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (headquartered in Beijing) has made loans for development projects in at least four Asian nations. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is making progress in realizing its long-desired goal of having an international economic community consisting of its ten member nations.
In addition, the African Union has announced that it will begin issuing passports that will be recognized throughout that continent's nations. (The Washington Post article provides background and analysis, as well as contrast with Brexit.) South America's Mercosur is perennially underwhelming in its performance, but nonetheless it continues to function and to be persistent in its attempts at international economic integration.
The emerging and developing economies of Asia, Africa and South America have the momentum to continue their globalization projects. In the absence of American leadership, China will probably be successful -- through targeted use of its ample cash reserves, and the lure of its growing economy as a market for those things that can be provided by the other developing economies -- in channeling that momentum by setting developmental guidelines and rules. The benefits resulting from those guidelines and rules, of course, will flow more to China than to the United States.
Could politics in the United States and the United Kingdom change as this year closes out and 2017 begins? Once elected, could a President Clinton revert to her internationalist tendencies and eventually find approval for a revised TPP? Could a President Trump, when confronted with the likelihood of Chinese supremacy (China = "winner") in international relations, relent on his predilections for punitive tariffs and duties simply to avoid looking like a loser? Either is possible. But in both cases, Congress is not likely to be cooperative. The political pressures caused by the popular feelings about stagnating mid-level incomes and employment opportunities are powerful.
Brexit might happen, but then again, it might not. Last month's vote was a referendum, and therefore not binding on Parliament. As a member of the European Union, the U.K. has not negotiated much of anything by itself for decades, and so it finds itself now in the position of hiring hundreds of lawyers and negotiators to accomplish the exit milestones set forth in its current agreements with the E.U.
What all of this adds up to, I believe, is that globalization will continue, but with diminished leadership and involvement from the United States and Great Britain. My guess is that there is a 90% chance that inside of five years the world's national economies will be more globalized than they are now, even if there is less participation in that event by the U.S. and the U.K.
The irony of the American and British anti-globalization arguments is that they make the case for the benefits of globalization. Those arguments assert that wealth and economic opportunity are flowing from the developed national economies to the developing economies. ("Those people are taking our jobs!")
If that is so, then why would the developing nations of Asia, Africa and South America not want to have further globalization? After all, they will continue to benefit from it because their manufactured goods and natural resources will remain in demand by the populations of the developed nations, thus providing continued employment for the populations of the emerging economies. For those countries, that is a compelling case in favor of continued globalization.
The fears of economic insecurity that are the foundation of the anti-globalization forces in the United States and Britain are understandable. What I do not understand is the proposed actions and policies that would replace that insecurity with economic security. Perhaps manufacturing could be forced to return (Trump) or encouraged to return (Clinton), but even if that were to happen in a wildly-successful way (doubtful) it would not mean millions of recovered jobs (Trump again) because of the cost advantages of automation. If that makes for broadly-improved incomes and more equitably distributed wealth, and therefore a compelling case to withdraw from globalization, then it is news to me.
You would think that the historically-innovative and forward-looking economies and societies of America and Britain could figure out how to benefit from global changes that will happen with or without them, wouldn't you? They probably can. But is it better to do that from a leading position or from a following position? I think the answer is obvious. (Hint: China seems to have figured out the obvious answer to that question.)
The British -- almost 52% of their voters -- voted in favor of "Brexit;" apparently, according to the story, largely because of the negative effects that globalization has had on them. So, they voted to leave the European Union, an organization they see as a leading proponent of globalization.
Donald J. Trump is the Republican Party's presidential nominee, propelled to that position by a tide of popular Republican resentment at changes those people feel have been to their disadvantage. They believe that many, perhaps most, of those changes are caused by globalization.
Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, in part because she has positioned herself as opposing the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) agreement recently negotiated by the Obama Administration, now awaiting an increasingly-unlikely Senate ratification. Bernie Sanders competed well in the Democratic primary contests largely on the strength of his opposition to both the TPP and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), maintaining that those and other similar agreements have decreased well-paying American manufacturing jobs.
The outlook for globalization is dim. Or not. It depends on who is doing the globalizing.
The United States and the United Kingdom have for decades been the world's leading proponents of so-called "liberal economics." But time passes and things change. Now, "liberal economics" has become synonymous with "globalization."
With good reason, because those who benefit the most from liberal economics -- businesses, both large and small, that can exploit expanded opportunities; the employees, whether numerous or few, of those businesses; fraternal organizations, guilds and unions that encompass those same businesses and employees; and, of course, the governments that can, plainly speaking, impose taxes upon all the economic activities enjoyed by those people and entities -- have for the last half-century or so been increasingly using globalization as a tool to achieve the goals of liberal economics.
Some of those goals are altruistic, some are miserly; most are a blend of those characteristics and perhaps others, too. In any case, the benefits that come from achieving those goals -- in other words, the wealth and incomes -- have not been fairly distributed among the populations. Too much has gone to too few; too little has gone to too many.
And so, politics in America and Great Britain now seem to bode poorly for the prospects of increasing globalization. If anything, the Brexit vote and the American presidential election imply that both countries will start to limit their participation in globalization agreements. In the United States, NAFTA and the TPP (and other agreements) are at risk; withdrawal from them would dramatically reduce American participation in globalization. In Britain, all international trade and business agreements are at risk, since those that are in existence now are naturally a product of the U.K. membership in the European Union.
On the other hand, China is energetically building a free-trade zone with other Asian countries. Recently, the newly-launched Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (headquartered in Beijing) has made loans for development projects in at least four Asian nations. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is making progress in realizing its long-desired goal of having an international economic community consisting of its ten member nations.
In addition, the African Union has announced that it will begin issuing passports that will be recognized throughout that continent's nations. (The Washington Post article provides background and analysis, as well as contrast with Brexit.) South America's Mercosur is perennially underwhelming in its performance, but nonetheless it continues to function and to be persistent in its attempts at international economic integration.
The emerging and developing economies of Asia, Africa and South America have the momentum to continue their globalization projects. In the absence of American leadership, China will probably be successful -- through targeted use of its ample cash reserves, and the lure of its growing economy as a market for those things that can be provided by the other developing economies -- in channeling that momentum by setting developmental guidelines and rules. The benefits resulting from those guidelines and rules, of course, will flow more to China than to the United States.
Could politics in the United States and the United Kingdom change as this year closes out and 2017 begins? Once elected, could a President Clinton revert to her internationalist tendencies and eventually find approval for a revised TPP? Could a President Trump, when confronted with the likelihood of Chinese supremacy (China = "winner") in international relations, relent on his predilections for punitive tariffs and duties simply to avoid looking like a loser? Either is possible. But in both cases, Congress is not likely to be cooperative. The political pressures caused by the popular feelings about stagnating mid-level incomes and employment opportunities are powerful.
Brexit might happen, but then again, it might not. Last month's vote was a referendum, and therefore not binding on Parliament. As a member of the European Union, the U.K. has not negotiated much of anything by itself for decades, and so it finds itself now in the position of hiring hundreds of lawyers and negotiators to accomplish the exit milestones set forth in its current agreements with the E.U.
What all of this adds up to, I believe, is that globalization will continue, but with diminished leadership and involvement from the United States and Great Britain. My guess is that there is a 90% chance that inside of five years the world's national economies will be more globalized than they are now, even if there is less participation in that event by the U.S. and the U.K.
The irony of the American and British anti-globalization arguments is that they make the case for the benefits of globalization. Those arguments assert that wealth and economic opportunity are flowing from the developed national economies to the developing economies. ("Those people are taking our jobs!")
If that is so, then why would the developing nations of Asia, Africa and South America not want to have further globalization? After all, they will continue to benefit from it because their manufactured goods and natural resources will remain in demand by the populations of the developed nations, thus providing continued employment for the populations of the emerging economies. For those countries, that is a compelling case in favor of continued globalization.
The fears of economic insecurity that are the foundation of the anti-globalization forces in the United States and Britain are understandable. What I do not understand is the proposed actions and policies that would replace that insecurity with economic security. Perhaps manufacturing could be forced to return (Trump) or encouraged to return (Clinton), but even if that were to happen in a wildly-successful way (doubtful) it would not mean millions of recovered jobs (Trump again) because of the cost advantages of automation. If that makes for broadly-improved incomes and more equitably distributed wealth, and therefore a compelling case to withdraw from globalization, then it is news to me.
You would think that the historically-innovative and forward-looking economies and societies of America and Britain could figure out how to benefit from global changes that will happen with or without them, wouldn't you? They probably can. But is it better to do that from a leading position or from a following position? I think the answer is obvious. (Hint: China seems to have figured out the obvious answer to that question.)
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Color commentary on the presidential primaries
This has been a good year for politics, and a great year for any media that covers politics. Never before have the practitioners of the visual arts in politics -- editorial cartoonists -- had such easy material: working from the top down, the space above the top of the character's skull is easily used to define the remainder of the image and much of the message. Audio and visual broadcasting, as well as all manner of print, have had to work a little harder to maintain an audience for their offerings, but not much harder.
These things happen when the outsiders want to become the insiders. It helps their case if the outsiders can make it seem that they are valiantly trudging and slogging the path to insider-dom. At the risk of invoking a simile that could be all too apt, the outsiders might be tempted to compare their labors to that of Herakles at the Augean stables.
However, lacking an inclination to make classical references in the serious context of presidential campaigning -- an inclination that, arguably, could improve the orations of all candidates for president -- two contenders in particular have chosen to openly berate the processes of presidential nominations.
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly said that the Democratic presidential primary process is "rigged" against him. Donald Trump warned that he had better be treated "fairly" by the Republican nominating convention if the party is to avoid his wrath. (Since he seems to be the winner, let us assume that he no longer feels wrathful.)
The presidential primaries -- fair or foul?
(Classical references fail us at this point, so we must descend into the realm of baseball metaphors.)
Anybody in the Republican leadership who is smitten with the idea of Donald Trump as the GOP's presidential candidate is doing an excellent job of staying far out in left field. There continues to be a simmering desire that the upcoming party convention nominate somebody other than Trump who better represents the principles of the Republican Party -- in other words, for these people the outcome of the primaries does not fit with the intended ideals of the Republican Party and therefore should be overthrown. Inevitably, this would re-energize the Trumpian wrath.
Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters seem to think that next month's Democratic convention in Philadelphia is an opportunity to force their game into extra innings by capitalizing on the free-agency of the superdelegates. But this game is in the last half of the ninth inning, the Sanders team is trailing the Clinton team badly, Bernie is at bat, nobody is on base, and the count is full.
LWC conclusion: Everybody should look at the scores. There might have been some foul plays along the way (what game does not have them?) but Hillary and The Donald have won fair and square.
The Democratic contest is straightforward: after some out-of-the-park home runs -- notably in California, New York, Florida and Texas, the four most populous states -- Clinton's popular vote in the primaries is 15.8 million; Sanders' is 12.0 million. That is 57% to 43%. Without the much-maligned superdelegates, Clinton's delegate lead is somewhat slimmer: 55% to 45%. With superdelegates it becomes somewhat larger: 60 - 40. (Notably, the party's rules have actually favored the Sanders' candidacy in the awarded delegates, despite oft-repeated gripes about "rigging." ) If there were no superdelegates, and all the Democratic convention delegates were to be awarded proportionally according to popular vote results in primary elections, Clinton would still have the delegate majority. The choice of Democratic primary voters for the 2016 presidential election is Hillary Clinton.
On the Republican side: Consistent scoring with singles, doubles, triples and homers, ending with a grand slam in Indiana, gave Team Trump a solid advantage; everybody else was left with demoralized players. Trump enjoyed a cakewalk of forfeits for the remainder of the season. With everything put together, Trump has won more than enough delegates to be awarded the nomination at the Republican Party convention simply by following the rules (something of an irony, considering Trump's apparent disregard for behavioral norms).
The rules for the Republican nominating contests have been far more complex than those of the Democratic contests. While the Democratic delegates have been awarded proportionally to the popular vote, the Republican delegates have been awarded by a variety of formulas: proportionally; winner-take-all; winner-take-most; and maybe one or two other methods. Trump's popular vote of 13.3 million far exceeds that of his nearest challenger, Ted Cruz at 7.6 million, and represents about 46% of the total Republican primary vote. By the rules of the game -- even if by a plurality and not a majority vote -- Donald Trump is the presidential choice of the 2016 Republican primary voting.
Can the presidential nominating process be made more transparent and less chaotic?
Yes. But it probably will not happen. The U.S. Constitution balks in its pitches for qualifying and selecting candidates for president; it also takes no notice of political parties.
Such a change would require an unprecedented amount of political and legislative cooperation. Don't try to think about the bipartisan cooperation that would be needed, because before reaching that stage something even more difficult would have to happen: each political party would have to begin by arranging for intra-party consistency, and that would mean having cooperation among more than 50 Republican state and territory parties, and similar cooperation among more than 50 Democratic state and territory parties.
Only then could the various state legislatures begin crafting the laws needed to define, develop and implement a presidential nominating process that is different from, and hopefully better than, the one that we have now. I hope nobody holds their breath waiting for these things to happen.
Fortunately, there is an unending supply of editorial cartoons.
These things happen when the outsiders want to become the insiders. It helps their case if the outsiders can make it seem that they are valiantly trudging and slogging the path to insider-dom. At the risk of invoking a simile that could be all too apt, the outsiders might be tempted to compare their labors to that of Herakles at the Augean stables.
However, lacking an inclination to make classical references in the serious context of presidential campaigning -- an inclination that, arguably, could improve the orations of all candidates for president -- two contenders in particular have chosen to openly berate the processes of presidential nominations.
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly said that the Democratic presidential primary process is "rigged" against him. Donald Trump warned that he had better be treated "fairly" by the Republican nominating convention if the party is to avoid his wrath. (Since he seems to be the winner, let us assume that he no longer feels wrathful.)
The presidential primaries -- fair or foul?
(Classical references fail us at this point, so we must descend into the realm of baseball metaphors.)
Anybody in the Republican leadership who is smitten with the idea of Donald Trump as the GOP's presidential candidate is doing an excellent job of staying far out in left field. There continues to be a simmering desire that the upcoming party convention nominate somebody other than Trump who better represents the principles of the Republican Party -- in other words, for these people the outcome of the primaries does not fit with the intended ideals of the Republican Party and therefore should be overthrown. Inevitably, this would re-energize the Trumpian wrath.
Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters seem to think that next month's Democratic convention in Philadelphia is an opportunity to force their game into extra innings by capitalizing on the free-agency of the superdelegates. But this game is in the last half of the ninth inning, the Sanders team is trailing the Clinton team badly, Bernie is at bat, nobody is on base, and the count is full.
LWC conclusion: Everybody should look at the scores. There might have been some foul plays along the way (what game does not have them?) but Hillary and The Donald have won fair and square.
The Democratic contest is straightforward: after some out-of-the-park home runs -- notably in California, New York, Florida and Texas, the four most populous states -- Clinton's popular vote in the primaries is 15.8 million; Sanders' is 12.0 million. That is 57% to 43%. Without the much-maligned superdelegates, Clinton's delegate lead is somewhat slimmer: 55% to 45%. With superdelegates it becomes somewhat larger: 60 - 40. (Notably, the party's rules have actually favored the Sanders' candidacy in the awarded delegates, despite oft-repeated gripes about "rigging." ) If there were no superdelegates, and all the Democratic convention delegates were to be awarded proportionally according to popular vote results in primary elections, Clinton would still have the delegate majority. The choice of Democratic primary voters for the 2016 presidential election is Hillary Clinton.
On the Republican side: Consistent scoring with singles, doubles, triples and homers, ending with a grand slam in Indiana, gave Team Trump a solid advantage; everybody else was left with demoralized players. Trump enjoyed a cakewalk of forfeits for the remainder of the season. With everything put together, Trump has won more than enough delegates to be awarded the nomination at the Republican Party convention simply by following the rules (something of an irony, considering Trump's apparent disregard for behavioral norms).
The rules for the Republican nominating contests have been far more complex than those of the Democratic contests. While the Democratic delegates have been awarded proportionally to the popular vote, the Republican delegates have been awarded by a variety of formulas: proportionally; winner-take-all; winner-take-most; and maybe one or two other methods. Trump's popular vote of 13.3 million far exceeds that of his nearest challenger, Ted Cruz at 7.6 million, and represents about 46% of the total Republican primary vote. By the rules of the game -- even if by a plurality and not a majority vote -- Donald Trump is the presidential choice of the 2016 Republican primary voting.
Can the presidential nominating process be made more transparent and less chaotic?
Yes. But it probably will not happen. The U.S. Constitution balks in its pitches for qualifying and selecting candidates for president; it also takes no notice of political parties.
Such a change would require an unprecedented amount of political and legislative cooperation. Don't try to think about the bipartisan cooperation that would be needed, because before reaching that stage something even more difficult would have to happen: each political party would have to begin by arranging for intra-party consistency, and that would mean having cooperation among more than 50 Republican state and territory parties, and similar cooperation among more than 50 Democratic state and territory parties.
Only then could the various state legislatures begin crafting the laws needed to define, develop and implement a presidential nominating process that is different from, and hopefully better than, the one that we have now. I hope nobody holds their breath waiting for these things to happen.
Fortunately, there is an unending supply of editorial cartoons.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Public Higher Ed update -- Weary of negative politics? Here's a peek at the future of America (it has never looked better!)
June is a busy month. It is a month of endings and of beginnings -- springtime ends, summer begins (for us northern hemisphere types, at least); there seems to be a spike in marriage activities (thus the ending of an old lifestyle and the beginning of a new lifestyle); it is the biggest month for student graduations which herald the accomplishment of a major goal, and therefore the likely embarkation upon a new goal. Perhaps it would be better to refer to June as a month of transitions.
Frequent readers will know of my promotion of higher education, and of my involvement with Long Beach City College (LBCC) and its Foundation. I recently attended the annual ceremony recognizing those students who are recipients of scholarships that are awarded as they make preparations to transition into their next year of study at LBCC.
Over $1.1 million in scholarships were awarded to somewhere around 700 students. All of the recipients were in attendance and each one was introduced and recognized individually. President Eloy Oakley welcomed the assembled crowd -- not only the scholarship winners, but friends and families, as well as donors -- with remarks that were warm, sincere, inspirational and concise (hard to do in five minutes, but he did so). It was a big crowd, but it is a big college.
The diversity of the crowd and the winners was striking. The General Assembly of the United Nations might be more diverse, but not by much. The LBCC student population is immigrant-heavy. Economically, it tends towards the left-hand side of the bell curves of national income and wealth measurements. There was lots of positive energy. Sure, being handed a pocketful of money will make somebody feel good. But it was energy that was looking beyond the immediate and into the future.
The winners were anywhere in age from young to old(er). I sat next to one of the older winners. A 50-ish fellow, originally from Cambodia, resident in Long Beach for 35 years now, and the father of three sons. He was proud of the fact that all of them are in college -- elsewhere than LBCC, at other institutions of California public higher education -- and so now the father is emulating the children by expanding his education. I was impressed by his enthusiasm and outlook on life. Much of this gentleman's formative life was during the chaos and tragedy of the Khmer Rouge regime and its aftermath. He probably carries some baggage from that time, but whatever weight is in that baggage did not seem to be holding him back.
The Scholarship Reception happened to be on the day after the California election. Notably for LBCC, one of the outcomes of the election was an impressively-large local approval of a bond measure that will enable the College to make infrastructure upgrades and repairs to classroom buildings throughout its campuses. (Thank you to voters in Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill and Avalon!) Better classrooms means more students being educated, and more skills, knowledge and positive energy being put back into the community and the local and national economies. Everybody wins.
Diversity, lots of immigrants, modest means, positive energy, more voter-approved bonded indebtedness, enthusiastic and inspirational outlooks -- yes, it is California, isn't it? This is a state that has always been big on precedents, and as the most populous state, its precedents are big deals. With a population of 40 million, that which is California today will be America tomorrow.
My time as a student at Long Beach City College was long ago, way back in the 20th century. California was the most populous state then, too. Those were tumultuous times -- the country was wrestling with the social and economic issues loosened by the war in Vietnam, and by the civil rights and free speech movements. Nonetheless, the prevailing student energy then was much as it is today. The future looked good, and it turned out well. The future still looks good -- everywhere, not just in California.
The LBCC scholarship winners -- and the entire student body at the college, as well as students at colleges and universities throughout the country -- will return to their studies a few weeks before America votes to choose its leadership for the next four years. Now that the primaries are over (save for the one remaining in Washington, D.C.) the choice will be between a candidate who is clearly comfortable with diversity, immigration, and building on a foundation of already-existing positive energy; and another candidate who has demonstrated extreme discomfort with diversity and immigration, and proposes building on foundations of amplified fear, anger and distrust.
The voting choice is an easy one for me. Can you guess which one it will be?
Frequent readers will know of my promotion of higher education, and of my involvement with Long Beach City College (LBCC) and its Foundation. I recently attended the annual ceremony recognizing those students who are recipients of scholarships that are awarded as they make preparations to transition into their next year of study at LBCC.
The diversity of the crowd and the winners was striking. The General Assembly of the United Nations might be more diverse, but not by much. The LBCC student population is immigrant-heavy. Economically, it tends towards the left-hand side of the bell curves of national income and wealth measurements. There was lots of positive energy. Sure, being handed a pocketful of money will make somebody feel good. But it was energy that was looking beyond the immediate and into the future.
The winners were anywhere in age from young to old(er). I sat next to one of the older winners. A 50-ish fellow, originally from Cambodia, resident in Long Beach for 35 years now, and the father of three sons. He was proud of the fact that all of them are in college -- elsewhere than LBCC, at other institutions of California public higher education -- and so now the father is emulating the children by expanding his education. I was impressed by his enthusiasm and outlook on life. Much of this gentleman's formative life was during the chaos and tragedy of the Khmer Rouge regime and its aftermath. He probably carries some baggage from that time, but whatever weight is in that baggage did not seem to be holding him back.
The Scholarship Reception happened to be on the day after the California election. Notably for LBCC, one of the outcomes of the election was an impressively-large local approval of a bond measure that will enable the College to make infrastructure upgrades and repairs to classroom buildings throughout its campuses. (Thank you to voters in Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill and Avalon!) Better classrooms means more students being educated, and more skills, knowledge and positive energy being put back into the community and the local and national economies. Everybody wins.
Diversity, lots of immigrants, modest means, positive energy, more voter-approved bonded indebtedness, enthusiastic and inspirational outlooks -- yes, it is California, isn't it? This is a state that has always been big on precedents, and as the most populous state, its precedents are big deals. With a population of 40 million, that which is California today will be America tomorrow.
My time as a student at Long Beach City College was long ago, way back in the 20th century. California was the most populous state then, too. Those were tumultuous times -- the country was wrestling with the social and economic issues loosened by the war in Vietnam, and by the civil rights and free speech movements. Nonetheless, the prevailing student energy then was much as it is today. The future looked good, and it turned out well. The future still looks good -- everywhere, not just in California.
The LBCC scholarship winners -- and the entire student body at the college, as well as students at colleges and universities throughout the country -- will return to their studies a few weeks before America votes to choose its leadership for the next four years. Now that the primaries are over (save for the one remaining in Washington, D.C.) the choice will be between a candidate who is clearly comfortable with diversity, immigration, and building on a foundation of already-existing positive energy; and another candidate who has demonstrated extreme discomfort with diversity and immigration, and proposes building on foundations of amplified fear, anger and distrust.
The voting choice is an easy one for me. Can you guess which one it will be?
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Presidential primaries -- better with a final national super Tuesday?
Selecting presidential candidates for the quadrennial November election by popular vote is a relatively recent innovation. State primaries and caucuses in which candidates vied for citizen votes became an electoral force only in the mid-twentieth century. Up until then, political party operatives held meetings and conducted conventions to choose each party's candidate for the upcoming presidential election. The common practice of cigar smoking during these events gave us the concept of "smoke-filled rooms."
The current system of selecting presidential candidates for the general election is a chaotic combination of primaries and caucuses, voting for candidates and voting for delegates to the party's convention, proportional and winner-take-all (and winner-take-most!) awarding of a state's delegates to the convention, and a myriad of rules that affect the outcome of presidential candidate selection.
Since we have changed things before, maybe they should be changed again. Contributor and reader Andy Garcia has some ideas:
The current system of selecting presidential candidates for the general election is a chaotic combination of primaries and caucuses, voting for candidates and voting for delegates to the party's convention, proportional and winner-take-all (and winner-take-most!) awarding of a state's delegates to the convention, and a myriad of rules that affect the outcome of presidential candidate selection.
Since we have changed things before, maybe they should be changed again. Contributor and reader Andy Garcia has some ideas:
A FINAL
NATIONAL SUPER TUESDAY
The selection of
candidates for the presidency
of the most powerful and influential nation in the world
is currently
governed by a hodgepodge of ever
changing rules that differ from party to party, from state
to state and from
year to year. These inconsistent, confusing and sometimes
unfair rules,
combined with the special privileges allotted to Super
Delegates who have the
power to skew or nullify the votes of millions, can leave
voters and candidates
feeling manipulated, disenfranchised and resentful, and
can cause many to
believe the game is fixed and not worth their further
involvement or concern.
We can
do better than this. And the fix is easy.
Standardize the
election rules for all the
states and territories, including rules protecting voting
rights.
Do away with
delegates so that each vote cast
has the same weight as every other vote and the winner is
decided not by some
after the fact convoluted set of rules but simply by a
counting of votes.
After each state
has held a primary election,
after the candidates have been vetted by months of
campaigning and some
contenders have fallen to the wayside, all the votes from
all the states and
territories can be calculated. Then let there be a
National Super Tuesday when
the top 2 remaining contenders
from each party offer themselves up to the voters of their
respective parties one
last time. Those who voted early for other candidates that
did not make the
cut, those whose minds have been changed by months of
campaigning, and those
who neglected to vote in the first place, will all have a
chance to offer their
opinions.
And then, with
the primaries declared over and the will of the people
confirmed, the conventions can be called to order.
-- Andy Garcia, Long Beach CA
Friday, May 6, 2016
America gets a lesson in hostile takeovers in politics
The term "hostile takeover" has, until now, been reserved for use in business and the arcane world of "high finance." A company, or an investor, or a group of investors publicly puts up money to acquire another company against the wishes of the senior management of the target firm. Both sides usually talk a lot about "maximizing shareholder value;" accusations and denunciations fly back and forth. The conversation becomes heated and the environment is hostile. As of now, it looks like we are seeing something similar happen in national politics: Donald J. Trump is accomplishing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party.
In the world of finance, the acquiring party, if successful, ends up with something new that can be reworked and molded to make a profit for the winner. (When not successful, the rebuffed party usually goes in search of new prey.) Since Trump is nothing if not a denizen of the world of high finance, I have to wonder if there is a lesson to be learned in his apparent success in becoming the Republican Party's presidential nominee against the wishes of the GOP's senior management.
Trump's nomination does not become official until the party convention in July. Between now and then, what is left of the GOP senior management will have to accept Trump's leadership. Yes, as its presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump becomes the national leader of the Republican Party. Try, for a while at least, to wrap your mind around that fact. If you don't succeed, try again; eventually it will sink in.
With Trump as its leader, the Republican Party will change in some big ways. Here are a few of them:
First -- Civility and good manners. Remember George H. W. Bush? Remember Ronald Reagan? Remember Trump's behavior in the debates? Need I say more?
Second -- America as a world leader. Let's think about the leadership value of walls, as an example. There was the Berlin Wall, built by a couple of failed and now nonexistent countries known as the Soviet Union and East Germany. At least they paid for their own wall; Trump would put up a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and make the Mexicans pay for it. As you probably know, Mexico's leadership thinks this idea is dead on arrival. Trump would forcibly deport millions of undocumented immigrants, including those with natural-born American children. If you remembered President Ronald Reagan, then you probably remember how he and the Republican Party -- along with the Democratic Party; they did these things together in those days -- created millions of new citizens and permanent residents under similar circumstances during the 1980s.
Again on America as a world leader -- Another example: Trump's idea about encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons, which sounds to me like a violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Let's see, what other country might be doing something similar? North Korea, perhaps? That's a nation that is usually described as "rogue" or "pariah" but not "world leader." (North Korea is not currently a party to the NPT; it withdrew from the agreement, apparently at about the time that it started its nuclear weapons program.) The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has had strong Republican support for decades. Trump apparently has different ideas on that subject.
Third -- International trade. Since the end of the Second World War, the Republican Party has been a hard-core supporter of the growth of international trade. With Trump in charge -- well, not so much any more. The business of trade among sovereign nations can always be improved, but Trump's proposals are mostly policies of the past which did not work well then, and show no promise of working well now.
Fourth -- Reduced government, lower taxes. What could be more Republican than those two themes? And yet, Trump will punish American businesses -- using taxation policies and regulations -- when they manufacture their products outside the United States.
Fifth -- Religious freedom. Trump wants to track all Muslims in America, and keep more from entering. Has he ever read the first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Unless I have been hallucinating the news for the last few decades, it seems to me that both Republicans and Democrats can get real itchy when they think that some government action is going to infringe their religious freedoms. If official tracking of adherents to a particular religion is not a serious infringement on religious freedom, then perhaps the first Amendment has no real meaning for any religion in America.
There is much more, of course. But this is enough for now.
Will Rogers once said "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." That was said at a time when Democrats lacked the political discipline of Republicans, which condition was more-or-less consistent for decades. Perhaps it is a condition that applies to both political parties today.
Trump's hostile takeover will impose some new type of discipline on the Republican Party. The big question is: How much of the old Republican Party will be tolerated by the new discipline? We will find out in a few months.
In the world of finance, the acquiring party, if successful, ends up with something new that can be reworked and molded to make a profit for the winner. (When not successful, the rebuffed party usually goes in search of new prey.) Since Trump is nothing if not a denizen of the world of high finance, I have to wonder if there is a lesson to be learned in his apparent success in becoming the Republican Party's presidential nominee against the wishes of the GOP's senior management.
Trump's nomination does not become official until the party convention in July. Between now and then, what is left of the GOP senior management will have to accept Trump's leadership. Yes, as its presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump becomes the national leader of the Republican Party. Try, for a while at least, to wrap your mind around that fact. If you don't succeed, try again; eventually it will sink in.
With Trump as its leader, the Republican Party will change in some big ways. Here are a few of them:
First -- Civility and good manners. Remember George H. W. Bush? Remember Ronald Reagan? Remember Trump's behavior in the debates? Need I say more?
Second -- America as a world leader. Let's think about the leadership value of walls, as an example. There was the Berlin Wall, built by a couple of failed and now nonexistent countries known as the Soviet Union and East Germany. At least they paid for their own wall; Trump would put up a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and make the Mexicans pay for it. As you probably know, Mexico's leadership thinks this idea is dead on arrival. Trump would forcibly deport millions of undocumented immigrants, including those with natural-born American children. If you remembered President Ronald Reagan, then you probably remember how he and the Republican Party -- along with the Democratic Party; they did these things together in those days -- created millions of new citizens and permanent residents under similar circumstances during the 1980s.
Again on America as a world leader -- Another example: Trump's idea about encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons, which sounds to me like a violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Let's see, what other country might be doing something similar? North Korea, perhaps? That's a nation that is usually described as "rogue" or "pariah" but not "world leader." (North Korea is not currently a party to the NPT; it withdrew from the agreement, apparently at about the time that it started its nuclear weapons program.) The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has had strong Republican support for decades. Trump apparently has different ideas on that subject.
Third -- International trade. Since the end of the Second World War, the Republican Party has been a hard-core supporter of the growth of international trade. With Trump in charge -- well, not so much any more. The business of trade among sovereign nations can always be improved, but Trump's proposals are mostly policies of the past which did not work well then, and show no promise of working well now.
Fourth -- Reduced government, lower taxes. What could be more Republican than those two themes? And yet, Trump will punish American businesses -- using taxation policies and regulations -- when they manufacture their products outside the United States.
Fifth -- Religious freedom. Trump wants to track all Muslims in America, and keep more from entering. Has he ever read the first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Unless I have been hallucinating the news for the last few decades, it seems to me that both Republicans and Democrats can get real itchy when they think that some government action is going to infringe their religious freedoms. If official tracking of adherents to a particular religion is not a serious infringement on religious freedom, then perhaps the first Amendment has no real meaning for any religion in America.
There is much more, of course. But this is enough for now.
Will Rogers once said "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." That was said at a time when Democrats lacked the political discipline of Republicans, which condition was more-or-less consistent for decades. Perhaps it is a condition that applies to both political parties today.
Trump's hostile takeover will impose some new type of discipline on the Republican Party. The big question is: How much of the old Republican Party will be tolerated by the new discipline? We will find out in a few months.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Self-righteous Democrats and the Bernie Sanders candidacy
Senator Bernie Sanders, formerly a self-identified Independent from Vermont, has prosecuted an almost unbelievably-successful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Not much more than a blip on the presidential political radar a few months ago, he has achieved a measure of respectability for governing policies that are commonly labeled as "socialist," such as guaranteed healthcare and guaranteed public higher education for all Americans. Though he trails front-runner Hillary Clinton by mighty margins in both popular voting and nominating delegates, his ideas will be a force for change in the Democratic Party -- and the nation as a whole -- for the foreseeable future. How has this happened?
A guest writer has some answers, which he offers here with gratitude extended to the author of the prior, and similarly-named, post on Donald Trump's Republican candidacy which inspired the following:
A guest writer has some answers, which he offers here with gratitude extended to the author of the prior, and similarly-named, post on Donald Trump's Republican candidacy which inspired the following:
Self-righteous Democrats created Bernie Sanders
Democratic voters who are in the
category of the so-called disenfranchised and who favor presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have been the pawns of
the Democratic establishment for
decades.
These grassroots Democrats,
these self-righteous citizens who
have been enthusiastically supporting
that gerrymandering which supports
maintaining their candidates in office for years, are now ecstatic with Sander's demagoguery, but they
have been spouting inconsistencies and contradictions and exaggeration and
outright lies for years.
(If the original author
doesn't need to support the allegations with specific examples, then neither
does this author. Not that this author
is concerned with responding to specifics. Both parties, all candidates, have
been spouting inconsistencies and contradictions and exaggeration and outright
lies for years! Speaking in unsupported
generalities is the hallmark of a skilled politician of any ideology. )
They have traded in fear and hatred and division. They have
demonized and slandered and demeaned. They have belittled legitimate
government, called the good people who try to run the country incompetent,
wasteful, and corrupt. They have refused to govern, refused to compromise,
refused to consider the needs of the people of the country above their own self
interests or the interests of the East
Coast billionaire
(The next 2 paragraphs,
admittedly, are a little harder as Democratic elites are not as vocal in their
dismay that the more radicalizing Bern is so effectively interfering with the
anointed Hillary's ascendance to the nomination. But let's give it the Old College Try.)
And now they wring their hands and scurry around looking for
someone to blame for The Bern’s ascendance
to policy influence within the Democratic Party: the media, the
president, the rules, the coal, the oil. Anyone and anything but
themselves. But they have created The Bern. Indeed, they
are The Bern.
They hate him because he has learned their lessons too well and because he
can't be controlled.
And mostly they hate him because Bernie may cause them to lose. Just let him get ahead in the polls
for a day or so and you'll see them jump on his train like spineless
sycophants, elbowing each other for a chance to stand at his side.
Even now, some are snuggling up to his brand of rage and division and calculating what
might be in it for them.
--Craig Ingalls, Burnsville MN
--Craig Ingalls, Burnsville MN
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Self-righteous GOP and Donald Trump's candidacy
Donald J. Trump is just a man, but his candidacy for President of the United States might be called a phenomenon. According to now-humbled conventional wisdom, his non-existent political experience combined with his public antics -- crude, boorish behaviors which are apparently intended to distract his audience from recognizing the shallowness of his knowledge and thoughtfulness on issues of domestic and foreign policies -- should have doomed the Trump candidacy long ago. Yet with the results of this week's New York primary, Trump has captured about 40% of the Republican popular vote, and 49% of the nominating delegates awarded to date. So much for conventional wisdom.
Why has this happened? Here is one reader's answer to this question:
Why has this happened? Here is one reader's answer to this question:
Self-righteous GOP created Donald Trump
Republican
voters who are in the category of the so-called
disenfranchised and who favor presidential candidate
Donald Trump have been the pawns of the Republican
establishment for decades.
These
establishment Republicans, these self-righteous
politicians who have been gerrymandering themselves into
office for years, are now complaining of Trump's
demagoguery, but they have been spouting inconsistencies
and contradictions and exaggeration and outright lies
for years.
They
have traded in fear and hatred and division. They have
demonized and slandered and demeaned. They have
belittled legitimate government, called the good people
who try to run the country incompetent, wasteful, and
corrupt. They have refused to govern, underfunded the
government, refused to compromise, refused to consider
the needs of the people of the country above their own
self interests or the interests of the billionaires and
corporations that have funded their campaigns.
And
now they wring their hands and scurry around looking for
someone to blame for Trump's ascendance to leadership of
the Republican Party: the media, the president, the
rules, the trees, the grass. Anyone and anything but
themselves. But they have created Trump. Indeed, they
are Trump. They hate him because he has learned their
lessons too well and because he can't be controlled.
And
mostly they hate him because Trump may cause them to
lose. Just let him get ahead in the polls for a day or
so and you'll see them jump on his train like spineless
sycophants, elbowing each other for a chance to stand at
his side.
Even
now, some are snuggling up to his brand of hatred and
division and calculating what might be in it for them.
--Andy Garcia, Long Beach CA
Thursday, March 31, 2016
U.S.A. election 2016: The Bern and The Donald -- Believe it or not, their candidacies are a good thing
The other night the LWC household was enjoying an evening of televised entertainment, courtesy of one of the inhabitants of the NCIS ecosystem. Not a bad show; pretty good, in fact, considering the acting, directing, dialog and overall production values. But procedural and formulaic, without a doubt.
For variety we can always turn to the presidential candidacies of The Bern (Senator Bernie Sanders - Independent/Democratic Socialist/Democrat (for current purposes, at least), Vermont) and The Donald ( Billionaire Mr. Donald Trump - Republican (currently), At Large) which are both anything but procedural and formulaic. And they are entertaining, too, although to this viewer they are two very different types of entertainment: one is like the PBS News Hour, sober, factual and thoughtful, though with an occasional touch of irritability; the other is something like an exaggerated Game of Thrones (there's something bad on the other side of the wall!) with fewer socially redeeming values.
However, both Trump and Sanders are responsible for doing something good -- Together, they are dragging out of electoral torpor great new numbers of voters. The wealthy and decidedly-white collar Trump seems to have made himself into tribal war chieftain for legions of older blue collar workers who are inconsistent voters; grumpy, grandfatherly Sanders has become some kind of superhero rock star for millions of young people who, as a group, are historically infrequent voters. In a country that has come to congratulate itself when 60% of registered voters actually vote in an election, this is a good thing.
Both deserve credit for something else -- Stimulating the political conversation. I am not entirely convinced that this year's newly-stimulated conversation is going to yield positive results in the short run, but in the long run democracy requires stimulated public conversation in order to produce better and long-lasting governance.
Do not misunderstand the giving of credit where credit is due as any type of endorsement. Both of these candidacies are seriously flawed. Sanders is cerebral and positive, but does the voters a disservice by ginning them up with hot-button issues only by presenting a portion of the story. Manufacturing jobs, for example, have been lost not just because of international trade agreements, but also because of the profit-driven motivation that manufacturers have to relocate their labor-intensive operations to locations with the lowest cost of labor (assuming other things are equal). And let's not forget about quality and end-user appeal: like many of my contemporaries, my first brand-new car was a Toyota. Built in Japan, that car and its clones cost America some manufacturing jobs. But it met my needs, it was fun to drive, it looked good, and it was the right price. By the way, this was in 1976, so it was way, way pre-NAFTA.
But if we are to count flaws in a candidate, Trump is light-years ahead of Sanders. He is the opposite of cerebral and positive by appealing to -- and amplifying -- the base emotions of hostility, fear and anger. Listening to him talk about "illegal immigrants," you would never guess that in the last few years the flow across the southern border has actually reversed direction (based on comparing the numbers of border crossings), or that repeated and reliable research consistently shows that undocumented immigrants in the United States are among the most law-abiding residents in the country. After all, they have more reasons to avoid the notice of the authorities than the rest of us.
The Donald is an authoritarian. Authoritarianism does not mix well with democracy. The administration of a President Trump would not be likely to result in a country that is able to robustly advance itself in foreign affairs, economic and fiscal policies, and civil and human rights.
The Bern is an idealist. To produce positive results, a President Sanders would have to recognize that the appeal of idealism in a new government quickly goes on life-support without the backing of an electoral mandate for a sensible, fact-based and near-term action plan.
At this point, Trump will probably (though not definitely) be the Republican nominee for president. Sanders is not likely to be the Democratic nominee; that is, as long as "not likely" is read in the context of "anything is possible."
So, yes, The Donald still has an opportunity to change those tiger's stripes of his, and The Bern has time to more completely bake (pun intended) his policy proposals. That is two pretty tall orders, so I wouldn't bet even money on either of them happening.
For now, though, I will maintain my own personal confession that the non-procedural, non-formulaic candidacies of Trump and Sanders are good for the country. As for entertainment value, though? Well, I will have to give the edge on that competition to the NCIS people.
For variety we can always turn to the presidential candidacies of The Bern (Senator Bernie Sanders - Independent/Democratic Socialist/Democrat (for current purposes, at least), Vermont) and The Donald ( Billionaire Mr. Donald Trump - Republican (currently), At Large) which are both anything but procedural and formulaic. And they are entertaining, too, although to this viewer they are two very different types of entertainment: one is like the PBS News Hour, sober, factual and thoughtful, though with an occasional touch of irritability; the other is something like an exaggerated Game of Thrones (there's something bad on the other side of the wall!) with fewer socially redeeming values.
However, both Trump and Sanders are responsible for doing something good -- Together, they are dragging out of electoral torpor great new numbers of voters. The wealthy and decidedly-white collar Trump seems to have made himself into tribal war chieftain for legions of older blue collar workers who are inconsistent voters; grumpy, grandfatherly Sanders has become some kind of superhero rock star for millions of young people who, as a group, are historically infrequent voters. In a country that has come to congratulate itself when 60% of registered voters actually vote in an election, this is a good thing.
Both deserve credit for something else -- Stimulating the political conversation. I am not entirely convinced that this year's newly-stimulated conversation is going to yield positive results in the short run, but in the long run democracy requires stimulated public conversation in order to produce better and long-lasting governance.
Do not misunderstand the giving of credit where credit is due as any type of endorsement. Both of these candidacies are seriously flawed. Sanders is cerebral and positive, but does the voters a disservice by ginning them up with hot-button issues only by presenting a portion of the story. Manufacturing jobs, for example, have been lost not just because of international trade agreements, but also because of the profit-driven motivation that manufacturers have to relocate their labor-intensive operations to locations with the lowest cost of labor (assuming other things are equal). And let's not forget about quality and end-user appeal: like many of my contemporaries, my first brand-new car was a Toyota. Built in Japan, that car and its clones cost America some manufacturing jobs. But it met my needs, it was fun to drive, it looked good, and it was the right price. By the way, this was in 1976, so it was way, way pre-NAFTA.
But if we are to count flaws in a candidate, Trump is light-years ahead of Sanders. He is the opposite of cerebral and positive by appealing to -- and amplifying -- the base emotions of hostility, fear and anger. Listening to him talk about "illegal immigrants," you would never guess that in the last few years the flow across the southern border has actually reversed direction (based on comparing the numbers of border crossings), or that repeated and reliable research consistently shows that undocumented immigrants in the United States are among the most law-abiding residents in the country. After all, they have more reasons to avoid the notice of the authorities than the rest of us.
The Donald is an authoritarian. Authoritarianism does not mix well with democracy. The administration of a President Trump would not be likely to result in a country that is able to robustly advance itself in foreign affairs, economic and fiscal policies, and civil and human rights.
The Bern is an idealist. To produce positive results, a President Sanders would have to recognize that the appeal of idealism in a new government quickly goes on life-support without the backing of an electoral mandate for a sensible, fact-based and near-term action plan.
At this point, Trump will probably (though not definitely) be the Republican nominee for president. Sanders is not likely to be the Democratic nominee; that is, as long as "not likely" is read in the context of "anything is possible."
So, yes, The Donald still has an opportunity to change those tiger's stripes of his, and The Bern has time to more completely bake (pun intended) his policy proposals. That is two pretty tall orders, so I wouldn't bet even money on either of them happening.
For now, though, I will maintain my own personal confession that the non-procedural, non-formulaic candidacies of Trump and Sanders are good for the country. As for entertainment value, though? Well, I will have to give the edge on that competition to the NCIS people.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Election 2016: Can a candidate win without using “voter anger?” – a conversation with Sue Savary, candidate for Congress
Pretend, for the moment, that
this year’s electioneering could look different than it does. Imagine that the candidates’ bellowing, and
the media hype, about “voter anger” were to be replaced with other
messages. For example: Perhaps there could be more meaningful and detailed discussions
about policy positions and growth proposals?
Would not that make for more informed voting decisions? I think most people would answer that last
question with a big “YES!”
But, the reality is that “voter
anger” – whatever that really means – has been a dominate political theme for
most of the last year, and will continue in that way for the rest of 2016.
Leaving aside the presidential
aspirants, there must be other candidates – perhaps candidates for Congress –
whose message is not dominated by references to voter anger. Change can be done constructively and without
rancor, whether from one side of the political spectrum or the other. There must be some candidates out there who
are brave enough to appeal to voters’ intelligence instead of simply seeking to
amplify emotions.
And so I finally wade into the
mission of analyzing the issues and candidates of this year’s election by
starting locally. Can I find a local
candidate for Congress with a message of constructive change that has little or
nothing to do with voter anger?
I found one.
This one is a Democrat. (Maybe there’s a Republican for another
time.) She is a Democrat who has no
trouble embracing ideas that are comfortable for Republicans and other
conservatives as well, too. And she does
this in the spirit that “all things are possible;” anger is not needed, nor
would it be helpful.
Dr. Suzanne Savary is a
Democratic candidate for Congress in the 48th Congressional District
in California. That area is coastal
Orange County – from Seal Beach at its northern end, to Laguna Beach at its
southern reach, and a few miles inland. Its
wealth and income levels are above mean and median. The District is currently represented by 14-term
Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who was first voted into Congress in the election
of 1988. The District has a decades’
long record of a Republican voting majority – although it interrupted consistency
with a vote for Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election – and
Rohrabacher will stand for re-election.
With the additional advantage of incumbency, it would be no surprise if
Rohrabacher were confident of victory.
In fact, Savary and Rohrabacher
faced off in the last election in 2014.
Rohrabacher, of course, won handily.
So, why would Savary want to try again?
As it turned out, she had
several good answers to that question.
2014 was Savary’s first – and,
until now, only – try for elective office.
Now, in 2016, that has to count for something in an election year in
which voters seem to place a premium on candidates whose careers have been
something other than politics. She seems
happy to look at 2014 as a novice’s learning experience, with lessons, and a
certain amount of legacy campaign organization, that can help produce a better
campaign the second time around. Also, 2016
could see a larger turnout of Democratic voters than was the case in the last
election.
Savary positions herself as the
Democrat candidate who is proud of her political affiliation, and at the same
time is equally sincere in promoting a pro-business theme. She sees that as a way of accelerating local
economic and employment growth while maintaining a commitment to addressing
root causes of income and wealth inequities, including constrained employment
and educational opportunities. She emphasizes
small and medium sized businesses as those providing the best fit in the
Congressional District’s cities.
There is nothing particularly
novel about that message. It sounds
somewhat Clinton-esque, in the sense of the Bill Clinton administrations of the
1990s, although Savary did not try to make that connection. Instead, she draws on her extensive
experience in management consulting and on her time on the faculty of the
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, where she taught
on the subject of management and communications.
And so, there will be a Democratic
candidate in the 48th Congressional District who can make a very
convincing case that she can best represent the business development needs of
the local cities to the nation’s government in Washington, D.C. Rohrabacher can disagree with Savary on that,
but he could find himself forced into a defensive position because of Savary’s
business background and credibility. She
has the ability to occupy space that is traditionally Republican turf.
Savary is challenging the
established order of things, but without the need to appeal to voter anger. She speaks instead in positive and optimistic
terms about the boundlessness of America’s future, both locally and nationally. In her words, now is the “time to accomplish
bold things.” She is eager to present
herself to the electorate by saying that “bold things” ought to include policies to stimulate
business formation, job creation, empowerment of women and families, enhancement of
educational opportunities, rethinking foreign policy, additional space
exploration – a full spectrum of things, from the work-a-day needs of employees
and business owners, to the wide-open visions of developing and using new
technologies.
California’s June 7 primary
election will be Savary’s electoral gateway to competing against Congressman
Rohrabacher in the November contest.
California runs a jungle primary – only the top two finishers,
regardless of party affiliation, advance to November. She will compete against other Democrats;
Rohrabacher is unlikely to face any Republican challengers.
California’s 48CD has a largely conservative
and Republican population. But Savary,
as a Democrat, probably has a style that is too conservative for the more liberal type of Democrats who are turning out in relatively large numbers in other
parts of the country in voting for Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential
nominating process. Should Democratic
voters in the 48th follow in that same pattern it could hurt her
chances to advance beyond the primary election.
If, however, Savary is one of the
two finishers who walk out of the June 7 jungle, then her business-aware
approach is likely to serve her well in November.
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