Monday, October 29, 2018

Guilty!

The Court of Trump has rendered its verdict: guilty!

Shame on you Cecil Rosenthal!

Shame on you David Rosenthal!

Shame on you Irving Younger!

Shame on you Melvin Wax!

Shame on you Rose Mallinger!

Shame on you Bernice Simon!

Shame on you Sylvan Simon!

Shame on you Jerry Rabinowitz!

Shame on you Joyce Fienberg!

Shame on you Richard Gottfried!

Shame on you Daniel Stein!

Shame on you for attending baby-naming services in an unprotected synagogue! Shame on you for your ignorance! Shame on you for your naivete!

Is this a pre-meditated attempt by left-leaning radicals to make the NRA, assault weapons and our president look bad? Is it?

How dare you get in the way of bullets fired by a licensed gun-owner exercising his second-amendment rights!

Let's be clear: the NRA is not the fall guy here. This is on you—one hundred percent.

It was your choice to attend services in an unsecured synagogue knowing the danger. Knowing that malcontents like Robert Bowers—with virtually unrestricted access to assault weapons—lurked somewhere...out there.

You should have had armed guards.

You should have had metal detectors.

You should have had face recognition software, even though it wouldn't have done any good.

You should have been paranoid.

So yes, this is on you. Don't you dare try and pin this on our president, who merely voices the feelings of our downtrodden white majority for political gain.

That is his right.

Maybe this will help you see the light: we don't have a gun problem—we have a security problem.

Maybe next time you will think twice before going out in public without armed guards, bulletproof vests and a cache of assault weapons of your very own.

This is America! Land of the free! 

Don't you understand?

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Grabbing Power

While I regularly use this blog to deride, decry and diminish Republicans and their policies, at the same time I harbor a secret and perverse admiration for them.

While I steadfastly believe Republicans couldn't lead a flock of kindergartners to the bathroom, they possess a devious and cunning ability to seize power that I only wish was shared by my political party of choice.

They market and manipulate with a precision that is the envy of every ad agency on Madison Avenue.

Not so long ago, Republican policy-makers looked into their crystal ball and saw the future. With the steady erosion of America's white majority and knowing their policies would never appeal to anyone outside of that majority, Republicans sought alternate ways of holding on to power.

Naturally, option number-one was to shrink the power of the vote. And the best way to do this is to restrict its availability. To create obstacles that make the voting booth a difficult place to reach. Instead of pursuing the democratic ideal which holds that voting booths should be as available as tap water, access is placed high on a hard to reach shelf.

By enacting legislation which acts as a filter, Republicans can make it difficult for voters likely to be unreceptive to their policies to see the inside of a polling place. Which is why in states like Texas a handgun permit is an acceptable form of voter ID while a student ID is not.

Georgia has an exact match policy, which demands that information contained on voter registration rolls is identical to information held by the state's issuer of driver's licenses—even if that information is wrong. A hyphenated last name or the absence of a middle initial is enough to keep you from exercising your constitutional right.

If only buying an assault weapon at a gun show were as difficult.

Even the highly-respected League of Women Voters had its once-unassailable mission impacted by Republicans. Thanks to restrictive legislation passed by the state legislature in 2011, Florida chapters and their volunteer staffers were unable to register new voters without being subjected to fines and felony charges.

The message is clear: if they won't vote for you, don't let them vote.

When simple voter suppression doesn't work, Republicans diminish votes through their artful use of gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of a district's borders which allow one party to dilute another party's advantage in a specific geographical area, either by dividing that population into two districts or packing it into a single one. While it is conceivable both parties do this, one has only to look at vote totals versus seated representation to know which party is the major player.

In fact, a 2014 study by the Washington Post concluded that eight of the ten most heavily gerrymandered districts in the United States were crafted by Republicans. 

So are Republicans more-likely to gerrymander or just better at it?

Yes.

With gerrymandering embedded in the political landscape, the average margin of victory in 2016 congressional races was over 37%. With such margins (not to mention re-election) practically guaranteed, there is little incentive to acknowledge the opposition. Or compromise. 

Needless to say, it entrenches our bipartisan divide.

Using 2016 House campaigns as an example, just eight incumbents were defeated out of the four-hundred thirty-five up for re-election. Eight. That works out to a microscopic 1.8%.

How much would you enjoy a casino where you stood just a 1.8% chance of losing?

The corrosive effects on voter participation shouldn't be ignored. What sentient person isn't disinclined to vote when the result has all but been assured, even with election day still weeks away?

Left unchecked, gerrymandering is the pancreatic cancer of democracy.

But it doesn't end there. No sir. The Republican toolbox is brimming with toxicity and malevolence.

It was ten years-ago that James Bopp, a Republican lawyer, filed the suit that eventually gave Republicans their greatest hit. So thorough and profound was its influence, I remain gobsmacked that we don't today refer to Republicans as Boppublicans.

The Citizens United decision was the product of a longstanding obsession of Bopp's to free-up Republican's biggest political advantage—money. Let's face it. When it comes to big, giant stacks of money, Republicans have it all over Democrats.

When we accumulate great gobs of money, it frequently changes us. Like a chimpanzee with a shiny new piece of glass, we want to protect it. Save it. Wall it off. We want to ensure that no one else can touch it, because it is ours.

Such selfishness is the antithesis of democracy, which is why Republicans so often find themselves in opposition to it. Turn on the TV, open your mail or log-on to Facebook and you will be inundated with Republican attack ads. And every one says precisely the same thing: Democrats will raise your taxes.

Translated, this means Democrats will steal your shiny new piece of glass. Er, money. It is a remarkably effective strategy, and one that has endured seemingly forever. It plays upon some very primal fears and creates anxiety and unease. The effects of having your shard of glass forcibly removed from your possession cannot be underestimated.

Despite any number of studies that show Republicans and Democrats raise taxes with equal vigor, Republicans have successfully pinned the raise-your-taxes tail on the Democratic donkey.

See what I mean about marketing?

But I digress.

So. Republicans—as a group—have a lot of money. And they want to make it an even bigger advantage than it already is. Since their political agenda runs counter to that of the electorate, they must buy power as opposed to winning it.

And Citizens United is the appliance that allows them to do so. Citizens United tears the roof off of the donor ceilings which existed before the decision by creating a kind of middleman called Super PACs.

Super PACs can collect unlimited amounts of money from anywhere and distribute it as they see fit—as long as the money doesn't go directly to a candidate. Super PACs create their own advertisements, reportedly without input from the candidate or their campaign. However, the source of donations must be shared with the Federal Election Commission.

The real game-changer is the formation of non-profit entities which can collect campaign money virtually anywhere and in any amount from donors who are able to remain anonymous. This is the source of the “dark money” we hear so frequently about. 

If you're Vladimir Putin and feel threatened by Hillary Clinton, you can slide a cool twenty-million dollars across the table—no questions asked. 

Of the Six-hundred million dollars spent by such organizations in federal elections between 2010 and 2015, five-hundred million (or 83%) originated from conservative organizations.

This torrent of dark money not only raises the cost of running for office exponentially, but in so doing further consolidates power in the hands of the (very) wealthy. And only a Republican would think that's a good idea.

Obviously, not everyone can be wealthy. With that in mind, how do you get house painters and construction workers to march lockstep with hedge fund managers and CEOs?

Social issues.

Republicans are expert button-pushers. As I have written before in this blog, Republicans could turn a group of Buddhist monks into a howling mob. Being masters at manipulation, Republicans know how to burrow into your psyche and exploit your deepest and most primordial fears. Death. Poverty. Violent crime. Foreigners. Homosexuals. Liberals.

Yes, Republicans pour this into a gigantic shaker and concoct the toxic martini that'll have you voting a straight ticket before you can question what became of your free will.

When you're marching in Charlottesville and sending explosives to Barrack Obama, the Clintons and George Soros and baiting gays, Jews and minorities on social media and seeking to charge women who don't wish to bear their rapist's baby with murder, it's expecting an awful lot that you also keep an eye on the never-ending stream of Republican giveaways to corporate America and the one percent.

If you're a basketball fan, this is the the equivalent of the player who stays behind to argue a call with a referee while the opposition enjoys a five-on-four advantage downcourt. Which is exactly what Republican leadership is counting on. While you're foaming at the mouth and chanting “Lock her up!”, the Republican elite are eating your lunch. And mine.

Republicans have succeeded in divide and conquer beyond Roger Ailes' and Karl Rove's and Rupert Murdoch's wildest dreams.

What do you suppose the rest of us can do?

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

The Premature Coronation

I frequently delude myself with the notion that Chicago is a baseball town. More specifically, a Cubs town. But even after four last-place finishes in a row, Bears' pre-season games knock the Cubs, who happen to be in the midst of a heated pennant race, off the front page.

Huh?

The Bears win three games in a row for the first time in five years and it is apparent they are headed to the Super Bowl. This is cycled endlessly by the media and on Facebook and even by sober people. The Bears are the talk of break rooms and bars and subway cars.

A lopsided win against a deeply-flawed Tampa Bay team etches it in stone. And thanks to an early bye week, the Bears and their fans have fourteen days to revel in the afterglow. And revel they do.

This is the best Bears defense since 1985. After one (that's one, as in less than two) big game from heavily-scrutinized quarterback Mitch Trubisky, the Bears are the '62 Packers, '84 Niners and '72 Dolphins all rolled into one.

So when does the Super Bowl start, anyway?

So it goes when you defeat the diminished Seattle Seahawks, forlorn Arizona Cardinals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who conveniently are minus their starting quarterback. This is all it takes to engorge the Bears and their fans.

As an admittedly fair-weather Bears fan (I will root for the Dallas Cowboys when Jerry Jones is gone), I can take the local heroes—and their fans—with a grain of salt. That goes for the overheated media coverage, too.

I smile when I realize that the same team which took down the high-flying '85 Bears on a Monday night also took these guys down last Sunday.

Oh sweet irony.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for the Bears. The franchise that mostly wasted the services of Hall-of-Fame LB Brian Urlacher has done a serviceable job in the last two drafts. This is noteworthy when you consider the signing of QB Mike Glennon and dismissal of K Robbie Gould not so long ago.

Then there is the timely theft of Kahlil Mack from the Oakland Raiders. He has cemented an already talented defense, which bodes well for any team.

But the Bears are young. They are inexperienced. Like freshly-laundered sheets, there are plenty of wrinkles to iron out.

They are playing a last-place schedule and all concerned are convinced they're the New England Patriots. Let's be clear: a thrashing of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers does not a world champion make—even in a microwave culture like ours.

The Bears need to learn how to win. And how to lose. They need to learn how to sustain effort and focus and how to ignore the hyperbole.

The Bears need to learn how to respect each and every opponent. Every guy they face was The Man on his high school and college team. You get that, right?

We pull long and hard for our guys. But like the champions we envy, we shouldn't get too high after a win or too low after a loss.

Clear-eyed moderation is best.

Like my favorite GM says, if the Bears are truly pointed in the right direction we should give them a little time and enjoy the process.

The Bears are a work in progress—not a museum-ready masterpiece.


Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Driving Deregulation (remixed)

We've all seen them. Those outrageous thirty-foot long limousines created out of muscle cars, SUVs and pick-ups. Dodge Challengers, Cadillac Escalades and Jeep Cherokees have all gone under the knife. Er, welder's torch.

One such limousine (a refitted or "stretched" Ford Excursion) was involved in a horrific accident last weekend in upstate New York.

Watching the story unfold, I was struck by the conditions underlying the event: an unlicensed driver. A modified limousine which had failed not one, but two safety inspections. A small business cited for twenty-two violations in the previous twenty-four months.

Then it hit me. This is Trumpland.

The Trump-whore has whined long and loud about the undue burden regulation places upon our businesses, put there by socialist Democrats bent on punishing success. To hear Trump tell it, America's businesses are being systematically strangled.

Please ignore the current economic recovery, which is the second-longest in American history. You know, the one that has the Dow Jones Industrial Average setting new highs seemingly every other day?

Maybe it's just that Democrats are really crappy stranglers.

Or maybe the Trump-whore has overstated the ruinous effects of regulation.

Ya think?

Yes, this is a sneak peek at America—unregulated. No irksome licenses. Bothersome inspections. Government-imposed standards. Untenable protocols. No liability.

This is the Republican ideal: free-market capitalism. 
 
Caveat emptor, bro.

I'm sorry to politicize this tragedy. I'm sure the sense of loss felt by everyone connected to this collision is unbearable.

And yet, doesn't it nudge us towards a realization? Doesn't it kinda sorta show us that maybe 
regulation—no matter how stifling—protects us from the worst of us?

Scott Lisinicchia was not trained in, nor could he conceive of, the massive responsibility that accompanies conveying a big group of people from one place to another.

If he had, he would have noticed the upcoming three-way intersection. He would have noted his speed. And the inevitable conclusion he was hurtling towards.

Professional drivers do one thing—drive. Mr. Lisinicchia had his nose buried in his cell phone.

And yes, that is conjecture. But no skid marks? Really? Does that tell you anything? Anything at all?

Nauman Hussain was a typical businessman. Prestige Limousine Service was his personal ATM. And as we all know, ATMs don't ask for money, they give it.

So why stuff money into one?

Why spend money repairing and maintaining vehicles? Why spend money hiring and paying accredited drivers? Wouldn't that cut into Hussain's bottom line?

And isn't that unconstitutional or something?

Those twenty people didn't die in vain. Their deaths are human-scale proof that there is a very, very good reason we regulate our businesses, and a need for doing so.

May their gods care for them and the loved ones they left behind.
 

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Happy to Be Wrong

Several months ago, I expressed doubt that Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who shot an eighteen year-old African-American male sixteen times in the back, would ever see the inside of a prison cell.

Given the numbing regularity that cops are exonerated in such cases, I had little reason to think otherwise. But justice prevailed, and Van Dyke was found guilty yesterday of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery—a count for each bullet.

This isn't a celebration. Perhaps 'relieved' would have been a better word choice for the title of this post. I wonder if Van Dyke had it to do over again, would he have reacted differently? He has to know that as a former cop in prison, his life will be very difficult. I pity him.

Yet it has become a cliche to say cops have tough jobs. We all know that. As officers of the peace, their job is to de-escalate situations, not escalate them.

And the behavior exhibited by the responding officers, from Van Dyke's over-reaction to the conspiracy of the cover up to the stream of lies about what transpired on Pulaski Road that night doesn't speak well of the Chicago Police Department.

To be sure, Laquan McDonald was a troubled young man with only a faint sense of direction and purpose. He is another victim of the most hideous incubator of young lives the United States can offer—the ghetto.

But that is not in and of itself a crime.

As is the nature of things, we don't hear about the school bus that safely delivered two dozen schoolchildren to their homes. Or the construction crew that successfully secured dozens of support beams to the framework of a sixty-story high-rise.

Or of the cops who routinely arrest the bad guys while safeguarding the good ones.

But like surgery, when police work goes wrong it is often fatal.

Consider the cost of this event. A young man dead. A cop's life destroyed. Families left with a giant hole at their center. Police who must routinely confront the worst our society has to offer left with a chip on their shoulder.

The best we can hope for is that this proves to be a watershed moment. One that shines a light on the ocean of men in our ghettos who have little to live for, and the effectiveness of the police who encounter them every day.


Monday, October 1, 2018

Seriously, Lindsey? Really?

Lindsey Graham, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, let fly last Friday with seething contempt directed at anyone who couldn't offer knee-jerk support for Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, calling the hearings the worst sham he's seen in his long political career.

Gosh Lindsey. Very impressive.

But what I'd like to know is where that righteous indignation was when Republicans refused to even consider a sitting president's Supreme Court nominee for the vacancy left by the passing of Antonin Scalia back in 2016.

Because I didn't hear any outrage. I didn't hear any contempt. And I sure didn't see any finger pointing.

What I saw was a deliberate attempt to—in your words—hold that seat open until the next election, when an appropriate (read conservative) nominee could be forwarded by an appropriate (read Republican) president at an appropriate (following the 2016 election) time.

That obstruction and delay (to use your boss's words) had a purpose, didn't it?

Lindsey? You could possess the imagination of an accountant and still picture Brett Kavanaugh and Donnie snickering over their “grab 'em by the pussy” days. Kavanaugh is cut from the same cloth as President Petulant, which I'm guessing had something to do with his nomination.

Kavanaugh is an alcoholic sex offender, qualities which make him ideal for Trump's staff.

But as a Supreme Court Justice? Not so much.

You understand that this outrage, this “sham” (as you call the investigation of a Supreme Court nominee), is a direct result of Republican refusal to allow any debate over Merrick Garland, right?

You understand that this hellish and humiliating chapter in our politics could have been avoided had even a syllable of discussion been devoted to Merrick Garland's nomination?

And that the blame for this divisive and unnecessary ugliness falls squarely on the shoulders of the very people who are crying foul the loudest?

You get that, right Lindsey?

I'll always wonder what would have happened had Republicans simply done their job instead of politicizing the nomination process. Which is, after all, what you are accusing Democrats of, correct?

You and your cohorts are the whore who cried “Rape!” after the check bounced.

I mean, I'm really sorry that Kavanaugh was such a shit as a young man, and even moreso that someone remembered it and called him on it. 

But this is on you. So very, very much on you.

But hey, thanks for the great YouTube video. Unlike you, it's a hoot.