Imagine

 

                                         Imagine

Imagine that Rush Limbaugh was reincarnated as a young Black woman. Come on, you can do it, …think Star Parker. Here is her current screed’s headline: “The cries from the left predicting the end of the world in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe V Wade is a familiar sound.”  She then speaks of “Morality rooted in Biblical Truths” which she alleges provide the rules and framework which “sustain life and living.”  She does this to openly pander to those of the religious right who see abortion as somehow having a negative Biblical connection, which it does not. My previous column detailed exactly how abortion has become “weaponized” by the Right to obtain votes, and morality is a very small part of that for those who are in position to benefit from it.

It would be a fool’s errand, even if it were possible, to ask Ms. Parker which of the numerous “Biblical” contradictory sources and rules regarding the “sanctity of life” she thinks are applicable. Does she mean Genesis which defines life as the first drawn breath? Does she mean the divinely mandated slaughter of 3,000 Hebrews who dared worship a golden calf? If she’s speaking of “precious” then why did God kill the Egyptian young males? Is it the annihilation of an entire city to teach some of the inhabitants a lesson? Or maybe it’s just Far Right evangelical, political, dog whistle politics? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it.

This approach is, at least, blatant enough to immediately recognize it as the same old “It’s not sufficient that I am free to believe and worship as I see fit, but you must do so too.” Of course, that applies to Christians only, since Jewish tenets don’t speak to abortion, and Talmudic Law stipulates life beginning with breath. The fetus in the womb is considered part of the mother and specifically excluded in the penalty for the taking of a life. So does this mean Jews favor abortion? Of course not. It simply means it is personal decision not religiously dictated. Many American Christians also share that belief.

Miss Parker ventures much further off the rails as she goes on to speak about the “appreciation for the sanctity of life,” while supporting the idea that states like Texas and Mississippi, where legal executions are still carried out, automatic weapons abound, and school children are murdered as police stand by, should be allowed to impose severe penalties on a woman who chooses to determine her own reproductive fate, even if diagnosed with a fatally compromised embryo or carrying the result of a rape or incestuous assault.

Most of the above are examples of opinion, stated as fact, with the hope that no one will actually perform a reality check. Ms. Parker natters on to say that the Roe V Wade decision caused the collapse of the institution of marriage and of childbearing. She further states that the fertility rate in the United States today is an historic low and well below the rate necessary for the population to replace itself. So, “What's wrong with that?” you say. In the first place the statement regarding the “collapse” of the institutions of marriage and childbearing is simply an opinion which is unvalidated by any statistical analysis. Linking it to abortion is patently ludicrous. While it is true that the birth rate in the United States is insufficient to replace the current population, that fact has little or nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with the post-World War Two “baby boom.” whose progeny are now drawing Social Security and slowly. but surely dying off.

        In the post war era, the average fertility rate for white females was about 120 live births per 10,000 women, peaking around 1950. By 1965, (8 years prior to the Roe V Wade decision!!!) it had declined to 65.3 live births per 10,000 and, contradicting Ms. Parker’s allegation, has changed very little since. By the choice of the people involved, that birth rate is now about two live births for women of childbearing age, or about half of the Baby Boom era. Just like terminating a pregnancy ought to be, family size is a choice. The fertility rate among white women has decreased from 1950 simply because families today are choosing to have fewer children.

        While speaking of insane assertions, let’s detour, briefly, to Fox News talking head Jeanne Pirro. In early May, following the “leak” of USSC intentions re: Roe V Wade, she told the Fox sponges, “My stats, that I have, are that there are 63 million abortions a year in this country.”  I say “sponges” because they will never actually question this blatant lie but will absorb it and certainly repeat it as if it was factual. Pirro was actually exaggerating by a factor of 70!

        While we’re at it, let’s consider that these are many of the same folks who systematically minimized the threat of COVID early on, based on the assurances of what we are, today, being shown is the most corrupt man ever to disgrace the oval office. Covid has, for each of the previous years, killed more than1/3 the number of US abortions, still anti-vaxx indignation and disdain flourishes in the same group of true believers.

        Some statistics related to unwanted births are staggering and tragic: 92% of the roughly one million abortions that are performed in the United States each year are the result of unwanted pregnancy and less than 4% of unwanted pregnancies result in adoption. The literature on foster care is voluminous and experiences vary widely, but for those unwanted births, 96% of whom are unadopted, and end up in the child welfare system, the following statistics are sobering:

In a nationwide study, children who spent their whole childhood in foster care were compared to adopted children who hadn’t spent time in foster care, those who had been adopted from foster care and those living in a variety of family arrangements, including single-mother and economically disadvantaged households. Using logistic regression models, researchers found that kids who’d been in foster care were: seven times as likely to experience depression, six times as likely to exhibit behavioral problems, five times as likely to feel anxiety, three times as likely to have attention deficit disorder, hearing impairments and vision issues, and twice as likely to suffer from learning disabilities, developmental delays, asthma, obesity and speech problems. 

        Finally, Ms. Parker plays the Race card against the Congressional Black Caucus for decrying the USSC decision and saying they support “the culture of death” (yes, she said that!) She points out that single mothers head an inordinate number of Black households. We are, I suppose, left to draw some conclusion that Roe V Wade is somehow responsible for that, too. And in all this, regardless of race, discussion of male responsibility is notably absent. How about that?

Civil Rights For Who?

 

                               Civil Rights For Who?

 

The actions of the United States Supreme Court this past week have induced, in many of us, a wave of revulsion unlike any other single previous decision. For me, the reasons are several- fold. In the first place, the reversal of Roe v Wade clearly evidences that the USSC, in a majority decision, has allowed religious dogma to undermine the rule of law. Secondarily, and almost as concerning, is the fact that several of the justices who handed down and concurred in the majority decision overturning Roe vs Wade lied or were, at most, disingenuous under oath in their Senate confirmation hearings where they all indicated that they viewed that decision as stare decisis, meaning established under the legal principle of determining points in litigation according to precedent. All agreed at th time that they viewed the matter as established in law. Several are liars.

Most previous reversals have involved the righting of long-established wrongs in the area of deprivation of civil rights to all citizens. Plessy v Ferguson (upheld segregation) and the Dred Scott (Blacks weren’t equal citizens) were essentially overridden by Brown v Board of Education which outlawed segregation in education and, by inference, affirmed equal status of all Americans under the law. Congress had also acted in the spirit of Brown with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Driving much of this, is the “weaponization” of opposition to abortion by a number of religious groups acting as if their beliefs must be mandated to all. A key piece has been the carefully manipulated morphing of opinion by conservatives who see it as a voter trigger issue. Reading modern issues of the Southern Baptist publications, one might be shocked to read what the official Southern Baptist Convention to Roe v Wade was:        

What follows is the initial reporting from Baptist Press (house organ of the Southern Baptist Convention) on the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973:

Question: Does the Supreme Court decision on abortion intrude on the religious life of the people?

Answer: No. Religious bodies and religious persons can continue to teach their own particular views to their constituents with all the vigor they desire. People whose conscience forbids abortion are not compelled by law to have abortions. They are free to practice their religion according to the tenets of their personal or corporate faith.

 The reverse is also now true since the Supreme Court decision. Those whose conscience or religious convictions are not violated by abortion may not now be forbidden by a religious law to obtain an abortion it they so choose.

In short, if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law. Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.

Yep, that was the word from the top for Southern Baptists regarding the Roe v Wade decision…...then!

In America, pre-Roe, while there were persons with strong opinions either way on the topic of abortion rights it was not a partisan political issue. In fact, many Democrats many of whom were Catholic were opposed to abortion as a matter of faith but not as a political tenet. Following the Roe decision, conservative laypersons understood that they could turn abortion into an election issue. This was a time when Republicans, now quite different from Dwight Eisenhower, were still smarting from the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Brown versus Board of Education and what they viewed as a general levelling and far broader civil rights application to all Americans.

Complicating matters for these people, then and now was, and is, the fact that they feared that someday they might not be the majority and that someday white folks might not dictate policy to the entire body politic (see Carlson, Tucker). The term “dog whistle politics” applies here. This was much like Nixon's southern strategy, in which the words Law and Order were understood to imply control of certain elements of society deemed just not quite as deserving as “us.” These were also the policies of Newt Gingrich (Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress? Yeah, it happened in 1994) and others who realize that if you can find a marquee issue to unify your voters, once you get to Congress you could sneak a lot of other garbage into the legislation to ensure “your” continued societal dominance and superiority. Later Ronald Reagan would “come out” as Pro-Life to gain the Nomination and, eventually the White House.

Add to this the tweaking of Evangelicals and others toward abortion as a trigger/litmus test issue and, sadly here we are. We have an ex-President who actually tried to get his first trophy wife to abort their child who, all of a sudden, became pro-life (a misnomer if ever there was one) to gain conservative support when he turned to politics. We saw him designate USSC nominees to cater to a power base he loathes.

Sadly, this has resulted and people with little or no understanding of the issue simply viewing the word abortion as a bull supposedly sees the matador’s cape. This manifests itself in many ways. In some cases, we see people carrying signs proclaiming “abortion is murder” while opposing the aborting of a dead fetus or unviable fetus to save the mother. This results in people who would be horrified by the thought of rape or incest who still seem to feel that “Well as long as it's not me, the victim has to carry the results of those crimes.”

By 1977, the Baptists were on the way to where the Far Right wanted them but still tempered their position:

 Therefore, be it RESOLVED

That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.

Not anymore, in some states like Texas, other than health of the mother. Of course, that excludes the mental health of a woman legally forced to carry a rape or incest pregnancy to term.

As an aside,  as is true of all religious dogma, these positions, ever changing, are the result of ordinary people for their own purposes, whatever those may be, deciding what they want naïve and gullible folks to believe. Many of the more fundamentalist bent deride science (see Galileo) and continue doing so today, in favor of religious tenets handed down almost 2 millennia ago. Yet St. Augustine’s position that life begins with a child’s initial breath has been rejected because it doesn’t for the narrative.

And, finally, this is also about denying women their right to control their own bodies. Looking at the faces of the current Republican Party, with the inclusion of the mentally challenged Greene and Boebert, one sees persons such as Gaetz, Hawley, Kavanaugh and others who are simply fine with that. Of course, two of the three women on the court who heard the case (Justice Jackson did not) dissented. But even though females are a majority of the US population, they remain a minority on the Court which can control their destiny.

 Additionally, this decision is economically biased. While probably not so by intent, it is so in reality, since women with means will still be able to travel to a state where abortion is legal. Unfortunately, Women living below the federal poverty line experience unintended pregnancies at rates five times higher than higher income women do, and nearly half of women who seek abortion care live in households below the poverty line.

Much of the above is about emotional, vote getting, partisan control which primarily benefits those who are, for the most part unaffected and care little for those who are or may be. My fondest hope is that women will, in the upcoming elections, throw off the shackles of Far Right and pseudo-religious rhetoric and join their sisters in voting in their own best interests. 

 

 

 

 

 

Economics: Fact and Fiction

 

                    Economics: Fact and Fiction

 

In keeping with the subject of numerous previous columns which is that basically some (too many) Republicans cater to people who don't know how government works, here are several more indices of just exactly how that's working in the current political climate.

First of all, let's consider inflation. Far Right talking heads from Betsy McCaughey to Star Parker to the deplorable Tucker Carlson have all attempted to blunt the force of what is becoming an ever more revelatory January 6th committee open hearing by claiming that President Biden is responsible and solely responsible for inflation. As an adjunct to that they simply toss out the blatant lie that President Biden is also responsible for the high gasoline prices we’re currently experiencing.

 

Let's deal with the first lie last, because it is more complex, and address initially the second lie, that of gasoline prices. As Republicans scream that Biden should open up more federal lands to drilling for petroleum, what slips by relatively unnoticed is that there are currently over six thousand authorized gas and petroleum drilling leases not being used by the petroleum industry. One would be reasonable to ask, “Why is that?” and answer is twofold. In the first case US petroleum refiners are not refining at capacity; rather they are at about 90% capacity and making no real efforts to increase production. Why? Simply because shortage causes higher prices and higher prices are good for the bottom line of the petroleum industry, which is showing record profits, while the rest of us pay $4.95 per gallon at the pump. It must also be noted that proven petroleum wells produce a product which is costing refiners no more as a raw material, no more to refine but, because of the shortage, the market economy that we have allows prices to rise.

 

In a recent column Star Parker made the comment that Biden is responsible for the inflationary cycle we're in simply because he is “More ignorant of economics than a college freshman.” That statement which is blatantly unrealistic actually indicts Parker as having less knowledge of economics than many high school students.

Any criticism regarding the economic literacy of the current administration must be weighed against the miserable economic failures of the Trump administration. This begins with the baseless claim by Trump that “Mexico will pay for the wall” which, of course, they did not. It also brings to mind Trump's comment that “China will pay the tariffs,” which are currently costing each American household about an extra $850 annually. Any high school economics student knows that tariffs are paid by the importer not the exporter. Thus, it has always been and thus it is today. In fact, in 1828, South Carolina came remarkably close to seceding from the Union because of tariffs passed at the request of northern industrialists on British imports of which the South was a disproportionate consumer. Only Andrew Jackson’s threat of armed force, accompanied by a massive reduction in the tariff, soothed that conflict. Remember, Trump couldn’t get into an MBA program and graduated sans honors of any type. It seems he also was not much of a history student.

 It is amazing how quickly the supposedly fiscallly conservative Republican Party has either forgotten or simply ignored the fact that, during what Trump touted as the “best economy ever,” we saw the deficit rise in the pre-COVID years by record amounts. In similar fashion, Betsy McCaughey alleges that the reason we have the current inflationary cycle is that the Biden administration has “Irresponsibly increased the money supply.” Ms. McCaughey is apparently too young to remember 2002 When the previous (Bush 43) Republican administration allowed a huge injection in the money supply with an accompanying record spike in inflation, all to fight a futile war.

How soon Republicans forget this 2020 headline from the conservative Forbes magazine: “Donald Trump And The Fed Are Destroying The U.S. Dollar.” in the body of the following article is this statement: “The Fed has pumped over $1 trillion to the system in recent weeks, with its chair Jerome Powell promising never before seen levels of money printing and so-called quantitative easing to infinity through an unlimited bond-buying program”. FED chair Powell, a Trump appointee, is still in that office.

While the Biden administration has also done significant deficit spending, via the “Build Back Better” initiative passed by Congress, that money is being spent primarily on much needed infrastructure upgrade and repair which puts people to work instead of simply giving them money, as COVID disbursements did in the Trump years. In point of fact, the largest single increase in the money supply in the last 10 years was during the 2018 to 2021 period, part of that pre COVID. I reiterate, Republicans also don't want constituents to understand the difference between giving away money and putting it to constructive use creating jobs in the process.

As to the claims that Biden is responsible for and should do something to end the current inflationary cycle, again it escapes, most people that other than a wartime surge, market economies such as ours have historically had ups and downs. In fact, the U.S. economy has experienced twelve different recessions since World War II until the COVID-19 pandemic, which ended the longest period of economic expansion on record. That period of expansion was “rebound” from the depths of the housing bubble collapse. For the math challenged that’s about one every 6.5 years. Sometimes that has been due to market manipulation by unscrupulous individuals and sometimes it is not in the control of any individual but, as is the current situation, reflects lingering concerns over a global pandemic, continuing supply chain shortfalls and. as I pointed out about the petroleum industry. willingness of people in positions to make excess profits to do so at the expense of their compatriots.

In this economic climate the President of the United States is almost powerless to do anything by himself to change the status quo. Control of the economy is in the lap of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System who are supervised in that role by the Chairman of said board who is currently a Republican (Trump) appointee confirmed by a Republican Senate, one Jerome Powell. Understand this, I am not being critical of chairman Powell, who is under pressure to do what he can to improve the current economic climate. However, it is also true that, as with Psychology and Sociology, Economics is a relatively “soft” science in which, sometimes, one plus one equals “Who the hell knows?”

In Chairman Powell’s case, the tools he possesses are generally limited to changing the interest rate that banks are charged for borrowing from the Fed and or to increase or recommend an increase in the amount of federal debt that is being incurred by the sale of federal securities as a means of injecting money into the system. A discussion of Modern Monetary Theory is far beyond the scope of this column, but it is worth learning. I say that because there has been, for probably 20 years or more, continuing debate about how the money supply should be regulated and why. Rest assured the vast majority of MAGA hat wearers have no idea as to the meaning of what I just wrote. They are instead content to go to their gas station, bitch about the price of gas, and slap a sticker of Biden saying “I did that” next to the price meter.

And finally, as they say, “This just in!” High school dropout and MTG wannabee Lauren Boebert is in the news again. Here’s the headline: “Rep. Lauren Boebert called Biden's infrastructure bill 'wasteful' and 'garbage.' Now she wants $33 million in infrastructure funding for a new bridge.” And so it goes.

 

January 6th Fallout

 

In what has become a continuing litany of Far Right lies regarding the January 6th insurrection in our nation's capital, one of the most outrageous statements yet was made on June 9th by Sean Hannity on his television show. He said, and I quote,  “Donald Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops to protect the capital but was rejected by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”

There are several characteristics of this statement that highlight the general motives of the Republican Party and of Trump, Hannity, and their ilk specifically. The most obvious is that they assume that many of their Red Hat wearing sycophants know nothing about the way government works. This means that most of their bloviations of bovine excreta are unexamined by the unwashed masses and simply accepted as factual. The above is a classic example of the genre.

The facts (remember facts?):

In point of law, DC National Guard is responsible to only one individual in the entire nation and that individual is the President of the United States. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer could have screamed their heads off and it would have made no difference, if Trump had actually attempted to activate the DC National Guard, which he did not. In fact, the only mention of anybody suggesting activating the National Guard was attributed to Vice President Mike Pence who, if you recall, Donald Trump later suggested should possibly "be hanged" because he refused to subvert the Electoral College process. Jane Campbell, president of the U S Capitol Historical Society made it even more clear: “No congressional official or body has the authority to activate the National Guard to the U S capitol, only the President. And if the President does so no congressional official has the authority to decline its service.”

This of course is simply a continuation of the litany of outright lies and half-truths that those desperate Republicans still clinging to Trump’s petticoats are throwing at the wall hoping that some may stick. Along the way however, we have seen remarkable backbone from Liz Cheney and even Betsy DeVos who was certainly the least prepared person for a cabinet post in recent history, but who actually acknowledged that the cabinet had considered invoking the 25th amendment to remove the President in light of the events of January 6^th!

In addition to continuing stream of Hannity bullshit, we were treated on June 10th to this, by Tucker Carlson: “Not a single person in the crowd on January 6th was found to be carrying a firearm. Not one.”  As is generally the norm with Tucker Carlson, when confronted with the fact that video evidence and news coverage shows rioters with firearms and dozens more with knives and bats and other real weapons, some made up on the spot, he simply refused to respond to the request for clarification.

Validating his statement would have been difficult simply because it's a lie and here’s one quick example. One Lonnie Coffman, who came all the way from Alabama, showed up at the capitol with multiple weapons in his vehicle and in his personal possession. His truck was loaded with weapons including a handgun, rifle, and shotgun, all loaded. There were also hundreds of rounds of ammunition, several illegal high-capacity magazines, a crossbow with bolts, machetes, a stun gun and 11 Molotov cocktails. None of the firearms were registered.

It has also come to light in congressional hearings that, prior to the insurrection, a Justice Department underling, sensing an opportunity to curry favor with the Cheeto in charge, was engaging in unauthorized face to face scheming with Trump.

 Evidence has been brought forward from earlier Judicial Committee testimony that a lawyer in the Justice Department went over the head of the attorney general and went directly to Trump with a plan to simply declare the election “in question” and request states to set an alternate slate of electors. Three days before Vice President Pence was to certify the election in front of the Congress, a minor official in the Justice Department, one Jeffrey Clark, suggested to Trump in a meeting (un-sanctioned by his supervisors) that the Justice Department should identify “significant concerns” about the vote and, as mentioned above, suggest that states provide an “alternate” slate of electors.

Clark initially was held in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer questions claiming his interactions with Trump were privileged and then he later did appear and invoked the 5th amendment and therefore his testimony from that appearance hasn't been released to the public. It is worth noting that while he is a Harvard Law graduate, Clark's background is strictly in environmental law and regulation, not constitutional law. This led to speculation as yet verified, that the gist of memo and impetus for the message he gave Trump was provided to him by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), one of the earliest proponents of Trump’s voter fraud claims.

 

When Clark’s boss, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen, heard of this he told the President that the Justice Department couldn’t “just flip a switch and change the election,” to which (Rosen later testified) Trump responded, “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman.” it is significant that Rosen was “acting” A.G.  because Trump appointee, William Barr, had already told the president that the election was valid and left office because he couldn't stomach what was about to happen. Remember, this was Bill Barr, a partisan if ever there was one!

Clark also proposed that Trump fire Rosen and appoint him (Clark) as AG so he could pursue several wild-eyed allegations. Trump then suggested this move in an Oval Office meeting with, Clark, Acting AG Rosen, and a cadre of assistant Attorneys General. Almost immediately, Trump was assured by all these senior Justice Department persons, appointed by Trump, and confirmed by the Senate, that appointing Clark to AG would immediately result in mass resignations and undermine confidence in Trump, himself, who had appointed them.

 It was also pointed out, with Clark in the room, that Clark, whose career was entirely in environmental policy, had zero experience in criminal law. Another assistant AG suggested that Clark should “call Trump the next time there was an oil spill.” Trump figuratively patted Clark on the back and told him he wouldn’t be appointed at this time. This is noteworthy, in that it shows how susceptible Trump was (and is and always has been) to hare brained offers from underlings if he sees any chance he may gain from them.

This, then, pretty well sums up the actual extent of such election fraud (none) which was found in the most examined election in the history of the country.

With regard to the opening discussion of the Hannity and Carlson lies, how much of the June 6^th insurrection will be made to stick on Trump, himself, remains to be seen, but hope springs eternal!

Dumb and Dumber

 

           Dumb and Dumber

One of the great tragedies in American politics is the decline of regard for the truth among those whose political aspirations exceed their moral fiber. Two such individuals are Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Let's consider Rubio first. As with Cruz and many others who get significant contributions to their campaign funds from the National Rifle Association, he immediately, in the wake of the recent Uvalde, Texas school shootings, said the following:

“There hasn't been a single of these mass shootings that have been purchased at a gun show or on the internet.”

        Apparently, the senator has forgotten the names of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Remember them? They were the individuals behind the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and they acquired their firearms at a gun show with the help of an 18-year-old classmate. In a similar vein, at least one of the handguns Seung-Hui Cho used to kill thirty-two persons at Virginia Tech in 2007 was purchased online. Those are the ones we know about, there are undoubtedly many more out there, sold at gun shows or on-line by unlicensed dealers or private individuals, whose current owners are on nobody’s radar. That is, of course until the shooting starts.

        Of course, like McConnell, Trump, and many others on the Red side of the aisle, these are attempts to dull the efforts of those who call for assault weapons bans and universal, stringent background checks prior to firearms sales. In truth, every single poll involving NRA members has returned results showing that more than half of responding NRA members support rigid background checks prior to firearms sales. In some polls, that percentage has been as high as 75%. So why would a nice Cuban immigrant boy like Rubio support the NRA so avidly? How about Last year’s NRA donation of $3,303,000 to his campaign war chest?

 How odd is it that Republicans excoriate Democrats for supporting labor unions while they, themselves, almost universally as a party, continue running interference for an organization who thinks there are never enough guns, regardless of whose hands they are in? As a former high school teacher, I find Rubio loathsome for several reasons but none more so than this.

 Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is even more off the rails, on the issue. On May 24 he said (referring to the Uvalde shootings),

 “We know from past experiences that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”

 Apparently not in this case. While there have been, and continue to be, various and often conflicting reports elated to what happened at Robb Elementary School, on May 25, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw initially said that before the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school and shot and killed at least 19 children and two teachers, he was confronted by a district school resource officer, the standard title for armed police officers who work on school grounds. That assertion was later “walked back” as it appeared that Ramos had entered the building unobstructed by the armed Resource officer who was on duty. However, related to Cruz’s statement: a non-profit which concerns itself with researching gun related issues found that in Santa Fe and in three other prominent shootings in 2018 — Kentucky’s Marshall County High School in January; Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February; Maryland’s Great Mills High School in March — "attackers stormed campuses despite the presence of armed guards." "In every case, guards failed to stop the shooter from killing.” As events, and the “operative explanations” unravel in Texas, it is beginning to seem that armed police even hesitated to engage the shooter for some time.

 The Rand think tank examined data from U.S. schools between 2014 to 2018 to evaluate the impact of school resource officers. It found that school resource officers "do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.”

        It is crucial, when engaging in this dialogue, to bear in mind who does the surveys and where their interests lie. Cruz, a recipient of significant NRA moneys, ergo hardly an unbiased observer, received $176,000 in NRA funding last year! One organization which is far more likely to be relatively unbiased, the American Medical Association, funded a 2021 study on the issue. Published in the JAMA, their data suggested “No association between having an armed officer and deterrence of violence" in mass shootings from 1980 to 2019. "Prior research suggests that many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent," the study said.

Following Cruz’s statemen, a “spokesperson,” attempting to validate his falsehood, pointed to a 2019 article that referenced 2005 research that suggested “increased police presence leads to fewer people committing crimes”. So, what’s wrong with that? Unlike the studies referenced above, the article and research mentioned by Cruz’s talking head wasn’t even addressing school shootings specifically, but was generalized to all public situations such as concerts, sporting events, shopping malls, etc.

There are factors related to these tragedies which seem to slide under the radar to some extent. Guns seem to be seen by the school shooters as some sort of “solution” to what are obviously their significant underlying mental and emotional issues. Bullying seems to head this list exacerbated, so it would seem, by parents who are in some cases (Columbine, Uvalde, Stoneman Douglas, etc.?) either blind to the activities and issues of their children or unwilling to intervene until too late. Making guns available to these troubled adolescents just provides the modality for a far more deadly “acting out” event.

As a former teacher I also feel that “No Child Left Behind,” (NCLB) while undoubtedly well intended, can cause far greater issues at the local level that any bureaucrat ever intended or any President (“Is our children learning?”) was capable of understanding. The Stoneman Douglas and Uvalde shooters showed red flag behaviors both at home and in school, but both remained enrolled until it was far too late. In a similar vein, psychiatric heath care professionals had identified both James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho as mentally unstable, yet there were apparently few concerns or interventions related to their propensity for violence, yet Cho killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others with two semi-automatic pistols, one of which was definitely bought online. Likewise, Holmes, whose youth was littered with emotional red flags killed twelve and wounded seventy with weapons he should never have been allowed to possess.

At the public school level,  NCLB (Subpart 14, Section 5541: Grants for the Integration of Schools and Mental Health Systems) would seem to provide for enhanced mental health concern and scrutiny at the Elementary and Mid-Hi levels, and yet…A comprehensive study related to connections between school mental health services and No Child Left Behind, conducted by a National Institute of Mental Health researcher, found that between 5% and 9% of students face emotional and behavioral issues that impede their learning.  Beyond this, a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on the interaction between school policies and health for adolescents noted in 2008 that some twenty percent of students annually demonstrate evidence of experiencing a mental health issue.

As we continue to see demonstrated, it only takes one. This is a far from simple issue but banning assault weapons nationwide and negating easy and unverified access to guns by unstable individuals would certainly go a long way toward reducing the body count of our children. And by the way …the top two US states with respect to gun deaths last year? Texas (3,647) and Florida (2449). Think about that.

"Invisible Hand" job

 

         "Invisible Hand"Job (with a nod to                         Adam Smith)

        There's a strange phenomenon that occurs in American politics. In general, it goes something like this: If the party in power before you were elected committed The US government to some action and new administration follows through with that commitment and things go wrong then it's the fault of the current administration for carrying out the previous administration’s committed actions.

        Two cases in point. In the first, George W. Bush committed the United States to troop withdrawal from Iraq. Barack Obama carried out those, previously agreed upon, initial troop withdrawals and there was some criticism of that from the Right. In the second case, Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban that the US would pull out of Afghanistan. This commitment, made while Trump was president, was carried out, as scheduled, by the Biden administration. Of course, Trump's ardent sycophant fanbase immediately jumped all over Biden when the Taliban re-seized control of the country.

        In the same vein and along the same lines, Donald Trump constantly bragged about his “record breaking economy” as if we were to believe that he actually knew anything about economics. This runaway growth was fueled in large part by incredibly high federal deficits during what Trump himself styled as a period of “great prosperity.” Trump’s response to one staffer who dared caution him re: deficits, was “We won’t be here!” It is contradictory to common sense, but not surprising, that much of this deficit was what fueled economic growth and so it was, in essence, as if Trump was using the nation's credit card to make himself look good. Of course, he once referred to himself as “The King of debt” in his personal business dealings.

        We are currently experiencing a period of high inflation even as Republicans in Congress have complained about the Biden administration's spending plan, which was actually aimed at improving infrastructure nationwide, creating jobs in the process. The inflation, and this is really the bottom line, has been driven to great extent by one global occurrence over which we have little control, that of course being the COVID pandemic.

        Some of the fallout of this has been that many Americans have not gone back to work or are not going back to work in their previous occupations. Among these are longshoremen, warehousemen, truck drivers and others involved in the process of getting imported goods to consumers. As any 11th grade high school student could tell you, shortage causes prices to increase, ergo inflation. As the global economy began rebounding from the pandemic, the price of crude oil also skyrocketed – also contributing to inflation. High gas prices are one of the most frustrating phenomena for any White House because they affect almost every American, but they are essentially immune from presidential action.

        No matter how many Republican brickbats are hurled at Joe Biden, the awkward fact is that inflation is the job of the Federal Reserve Board and even their ability is limited. Of course, people are upset about inflation, and they want the president to solve their problems, but the harsh reality is that it isn't his problem to solve, and his scope of possible actions is extremely limited, as it is with gas prices and the other things which constitute the economic inflationary scenario.

        The Federal Reserve Board is charged with maintaining price stability and the current period of elevated inflation is anything but stable. Even so, the Fed continues attempts to stimulate the economy, keeping interest rates at low levels. The head of JPMorgan summed it up thus: "We put all of this on the President. We put him on a pedestal and pretend he has this power that he doesn't have. This is the Federal Reserve's job."

        There is one move which could help relieve the stress the pandemic-related supply chain crisis is having on US companies: Lift tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump. Trump put tariffs on roughly $350 billion of Chinese-made goods. US importers have paid more than $106 billion to cover the cost of those tariffs to date, and many of them are now also dealing with skyrocketing shipping costs. The nature of these tariffs is that they aren’t necessarily apparent to the consumer, but they have caused inflationary pricing for auto manufacturers, and even companies such as Black and Decker who use foreign components in most of their tools. When have you ever heard any Republican critique of these punitive tariffs? Me neither.

        The Biden administration has taken some actions within the current system aimed at inflation, but specific legislation would be necessary for major change. The President signed an executive order last September directing rulemaking at the Agriculture Department to boost competition and improve conditions for smaller farmers. The White House has also tasked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate potential price fixing in the energy sector.

The White House has said (correctly) that consolidation in the meat sector is part of what has driven up food prices. Some economists say more aggressively pushing antitrust laws could help ease inflation concerns.         Robert Reich, who was Labor Secretary under former President Bill Clinton, summed it up like this: "One of the big puzzles today is that corporate profits are at record highs and yet the corporations are passing on all these price increases to consumers."  He continued: "If they were really in a competitive market, if we were not dealing with monopolies or what we call oligopolies, these companies would not so easily just simply pass these prices on to consumers. They'd be worried about their competitors. But they're not and I think antitrust enforcement has got to go after these sources of huge market power, this corporate market power in the United States right now."

        One mantra of the Far Right is constant railing about “excessive” government regulation. This actually reflects the current political position of the Republican Party which is, to great extent dominated by two groups whose real situations could hardly be farther apart. On one hand, we have industrialists and corporations which, in reality, border on oligarchy in some key commodities, meat production and some agricultural products among them. (higher grocery bills?) These people benefit from a laissez-faire, or “hands off”, government attitude which says, in essence, “As long as you don't blatantly break the law, whatever you do is fine.” This includes price gouging, price fixing and market controls which benefit the corporation at the expense of the consumer. In the first decade of the 21st century it also meant bundling high risk mortgages and selling them as legitimate investment instruments. (And we all know how that worked out.) Of course, one of Donald Trump's first initiatives upon taking his seat in the White House was to gut the Obama administration's Dodd-Frank legislation which had tried to bring some regulation and assurance of legitimate operation to financial markets.

        One of the chief criticisms of laissez-faire theory is that capitalism as a system has moral ambiguities built into it (you think?) It does not inherently protect the weakest in society, nor is it even motivated to do so by any tangible means. While laissez-faire advocates argue that if individuals serve their own interests first, societal benefits will follow, modern society has not seen that altruism in action. This is why regulation “in the public interest” as Republican Theodore Roosevelt dubbed it, has evolved, primarily in the 20^th century.

        At the other extreme, we have the Red Hat wearing MAGA power base, motivated principally by carefully inculcated racial bias, who don't understand that those they support only care about their votes and could care less about their economic situation, One quick example and then we move on: As things stand right now, in the labor market, increased immigration could go a long way towards filling those jobs such as warehousemen and other labor related jobs that would get the supply chain moving again. This, of course, runs counter to the Trumpist propaganda, therefore they will continue railing at President Biden because of inflation while opposing actions which might help ease the situation.

        Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, referred to the vast and complex web of market pressures and influences as “the invisible hand,” a metaphor he coined to characterize the mechanisms through which beneficial social and economic outcomes may arise from the accumulated self-interested actions of individuals, none of whom may actually intend to bring about such outcomes. Even Adam Smith however, publishing in 1776, could not have predicted the impact of interdependent and interwoven international markets on individual national economies. He used the invisible hand metaphor to describe economics and markets in a far simpler world, without modern communications, labor unions, interlinked economies, and global markets.

        Smith’s “beneficial” social outcome assume some altruistic behavior, which is seldom seen these days. This does not mean Socialism is better, but it does imply that, for market capitalism to be sustainable for all citizens, some overarching authority elected by all the people should aspire to insure fair play for those voters. This is the “government regulation” so detested by Trump, Musk, and others.

        As it always has, inflation will level out, but in the modern scenario of linked world markets, affected as they are by events on other continents over which we have little or no real control, and dependent on resources unevenly distributed, it is far from a simple exercise in that most vague of the soft sciences, economics.

Betsy McCaughey Off the Rails Again

 

      Betsy McCaughey Off the Rails Again

    In a recent column in the local rag, the loathsome Betsy McCaughey leads with the following.: “Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents’ values. It's what the teachers’ unions intend. Amazingly, that's just fine with President Joe Biden.”

    Digging deeper into the article, it becomes soon obvious that the real complaint here is that teachers may not teach or reinforce their students’ parental biases and/or bigotry or might present factual materials to refute the Far-Right anti-revisionist history that says, in effect, that, “America has always done everything perfectly and nothing we ever did was detrimental to anybody else.” This is somewhat analogous to insisting that German schools ignore the Holocaust. America has had its own holocausts if you define holocaust as an attempt to either relegate an entire race or group to secondary status or even, in the most extreme cases, eliminate them.

    Ms. McCarthy proceeds to lambaste teachers’ unions, the President, Secretary of Education, and anybody else who believes America is a great country which could be an even better country if all our citizens were given the treatment the constitution supposedly guarantees them. When Ms. McCaughey says schools are trying to turn children against their country that is an incredibly misleading statement because what schools are actually doing, if they're teaching honest unbiased history, is discussing all things that have been done historically, not just the ones that support the Far-Right narrative.

    In my position as a teacher of Advanced Placement U.S. History that meant that we talked about the Tulsa race riots. We discussed the fact that even though the Constitution had been amended to attempt to protect the Black minority in the South, social Reconstruction was largely farcical, simply because the law was not enforced or simply just circumvented at the State level. That's not fiction and that's not revisionist history. That is data-based analysis of the situation. It is Ida Wells Barnett publishing every time somebody black was lynched in the South. it is the NAACP being formed as a reaction to the lack of constitutional protection being afforded to Black people in America.

    Now, if you're a bigot or white supremacist, you may very well not want your children to hear that. If you fear your children being told the truth and the whole truth about those less savory moments in our history, then you're the problem, not the victim. We talked about white soldiers coming home from World War One believing that their jobs, some of which were now being held by Black workers, should simply be given back to them and the Blacks should be fired. It means that, in 1920, Black people in Ocoee Florida died, or had their homes burned because they tried to vote. It means discussing Wounded Knee as what it was - an unwarranted attack on Native Americans and the absolute lack of any control of the armed US Army forces who fired upon them.

    One example I used is that of George Armstrong Custer who has been lionized on the silver screen by such actors as Errol Flynn in the movie “They Died with Their Boots On.” In that version of the Custer story or more correctly, the Custer myth, Custer's 7th cavalry was attacked for no apparent reason by a brutal horde of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors. The facts are categorically contradictory to that and every single reputable historian who has evaluated the situation acknowledges this. But don't tell that to the Far-Right. To understand the present and put it in proper context, it is crucial and absolutely necessary to understand the past. The Far-Right fears this in some degree.

    This has been a paradox in many historical contexts, one example and then we move on. The great famine in Ireland was a result of not only a crop failure, but prejudice against Catholic Irish by Protestant British who had simply been given control of land by royal grant. As some Southerners would say of Black people during reconstruction, British MPs were treated to such verbal pap as, “The Irish must learn to live within their means.” Of course, those “means” included lands which they were not allowed to farm for food because even in the face of starving Irish peasants, exports of food to Britain continued. Ireland continued to export large quantities of food, primarily to Great Britain, during the potato blight. In cases such as livestock and butter, exports actually increased during the Potato Famine.

     In 1847 alone, commodities such as peas, beans, rabbits, fish, and honey continued to be exported from Ireland, even as the Great Hunger ravaged the countryside. Some luckier Irish managed to immigrate to the USA.

     Now flash ahead to the 1900s. Many descendants of these abased and poorly treated Irish immigrants became, themselves, some of the most racist residents of northern cities. One reflects on poor whites being some of the most bigoted, Trump supporting, Americans today. Teaching critical race theory without calling it that is one way to at least address this paradox 

        Shining the light of truth on racial, sexual, or religious discrimination is not “Turning children against their own country.” It should, one hopes, help them to see that it could be better.

    Then, in a turn for the worse (if that’s even possible) Ms. McCaughey then says, “All children deserve kindness but that doesn't mean kindergarteners should be instructed in how boys can transition to become girls or vice versa.” She then says nearly half of teachers agree those issues don't belong in the classroom. There are two significant errors in her method again. The first is that no one with a brain has ever suggested kindergartners should be instructed and how to transition if they’re gender dysphoric. No public-school teacher who even suggested such a thing would lose their job soon after a parent called the principal. That is far different from teaching or even mentioning transitioning at the kindergarten level. It just doesn't happen, it hasn't happened, and no responsible teacher (not “almost half”) thinks it should happen but, using the dog whistle political type of rhetoric made popular by Richard Nixon, Ms. McCaughey throws it out there just like throwing feces at the wall, hoping that some will stick.

    She then states that the American Federation of Teachers website declares that “The U.S. is facing health, economic, and racial challenges all made worse because of Donald Trump. All are demonstrably true. She just tosses it into the conversation because she wishes the unwashed Red Hatters to somehow link an under-educated (couldn’t even get into Grad school) buffoon to real education issues. Go figure.

    Finally, she ends with a union-bashing quote which declares, as if it were the threat of nuclear destruction, that the American Federation of Teachers website urges visitors to “Take action on student debt, voting rights and passing the Equality Act.” For the uninformed, the Act prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. By implication, this seems as if Ms. McCaughey favors voter discrimination, predatory student debt lending and discrimination against some citizens for reasons which affect no one else. (And she probably does).

     I have to stop writing about Betsy McCaughey now, because my computer just threw up.