Free At Last

“There is no freedom without justice”
Simon Wiesenthal

” Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last”. These words marked the dynamic conclusion of Martin Luther King’s famous I Have a Dream Speech on August 28th, 1963. The phrase was derived from an anonymous spiritual first published in 1907 by John Wesley Work, Jr. in his collection of songs “New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro.” In the song, the unknown singer rejoices:
“Way down yonder in the graveyard walk
I thank God I’m free at last
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
Thank God I’m free at last.”
The speech marked the end of the March on Washington. It was a big deal. The three major television networks covered the event. I remember watching that speech. It gave me chills. Every year, on the anniversary of King’s death, I look it up on youtube to watch it again. My eyes always start to well up as his voice begins to rise in measured fury, a verbal onslaught of anger, indignity, faith and hope, all rolled into a universal plea for simple justice. But the real meaning of those words has only recently dawned on me. I never understood the utterly damning indictment of Black life in America this song reveals, when the singer looks forward to death, because only in death will he, or she, be truly free. Three events occurred this past week that made me think of this song.
In Memphis, Tennessee, a black woman was sentenced to jail for registering to vote. She is one of those rabble rousers, an “activist”, and a former fringe candidate for the mayor’s office. She has an extensive record of criminal convictions, and had lost her right to vote as a result of those convictions. But in 2019, both the Department of Corrections and the County Election Commission advised her, in writing, that because her probationary sentence had been completed, she was eligible to register and vote. Based upon the express statements of both departments, she certified that she was eligible to vote as part of her registration application. Both departments subsequently said that they had made a mistake, and that she was not eligible. Despite the fact that both departments admitted the errors, she was nevertheless prosecuted for trying to illegally register to vote. The Judge sentenced her to serve 6 YEARS and one day. He said that the woman had “tricked” the probation office into giving her documents saying that she was off probation, which of course, she was. The sentence was a grotesque miscarriage of justice.
A few hundred miles north, former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was released from the Taylorsville Correctional Center in Central Illinois after serving about 3 years and 4 months of a 7 year sentence, released early for “good behavior”. On October 14, 2014, Van Dyke was on duty when he shot and killed a 17 year old black kid. He was convicted of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. His victim was shot 16 times while walking away from the officer. The first shot knocked the kid down. The officer pumped the rest of the shots, the maximum clip capacity of his 9mm firearm, into the kid as he lay defenseless on the ground. The original sentence was a travesty, the early release a cruel insult.
The third event was the response of Senator Ted Cruz to the news that President Biden intended to make good on his campaign promise to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. Cruz found the idea of appointing a black woman to the Court offensive, because “black woman are, what, 6% of the U.S. population?” Mr. Cruz was appalled by the inherent unfairness of it all. “He’s saying to 94% of Americans: I don’t give a damn about you. You are ineligible.” Cruz, along with several other Republican senators, was upset because the President’s decision smacked of discriminatory “affirmative action”, ignoring the fact that 108 of the 115 Supreme Court Justices have been white males. The, current Republican pandering to white supremacists is beneath contempt.
I am 74 years old. I have lived a wonderful life of white privilege. I am not a racist, I tell myself. I can’t be a racist because every time I watch “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Roots”, I cringe at the injustice of it all. I suspect, however, that I am cringing because my sense of justice in the abstract is offended, not because of the black oppression that demonstrates the injustice. I think I am more concerned about the possible damage to Lady Justice’s reputation than the actual damage done to the people Lady Justice is supposed to serve. I think that makes me racist to the core. I know I don’t have the faintest clue what it must be like to be black in America. I also know that these three events clearly reveal that despite all the flowery rhetoric about freedom and justice for all, our legal and political institutions are basically vehicles for the preservation of white power. Fifty-nine years have passed since Dr. King uttered those words. I fear that too many Black Americans are still going to feel freedom only in death.

MOLLY THOUGHTS

“There is no better, nor more loyal friend, than a good hound” …The Emperor of San Francisco, from A Dirty Job, Christopher Moore

           Last week was a pretty depressing week, unless of course you were a member of the Republican National Committee, which in a brilliant combination of new found commitment to diversity and a willingness to believe anything, unanimously declared that the Tooth Fairy was going to be the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024.  For the Mitman/Wilson household, the daily drumbeat of bad news managed to take some of the fun out of a visit to Key West, particularly when we learned that our daughter Kristin’s family finally had to do what they had hoped they would never have to do, put their dog Molly down.  In the end, the ravages of old age left them no choice, but that fact didn’t take any of the anguish away.  Molly was a yellow lab, a big, goofy bundle of fur, with a nuclear tail, floppy ears and eyes that could have melted even Mitch McConnell’s heart.  And although she lived at Chris and Kristin’s house, she was a big part of the entire extended family.  Everybody loved Molly, and she loved everybody back.  One of the best parts of every family get together was Molly’s welcome, a head wagging, tail thrashing, joyful dance.  She was a bright light in all of our lives, and like her best friend Chris, a teacher. 

     Molly taught us about happiness.  Every time she came to visit us in Virginia, she would wriggle out of the car and give us an abbreviated version of her welcome dance, then make a beeline for the deck where, in her eagerness, she practically fell down the steps to the dock.  She would pause at the bottom of the steps for a moment of delicious anticipation, her head sweeping back and forth looking out at the water, remembering how great this was going to be, and then she began to run.  This was no ordinary run.  This was more of a giant galoomph, with her feet going mostly forward, but also kind  of side to side, picking up speed as she got closer to the end of the dock.  And then came the jump, a leap of pure delight, her whole body fully extended, front paws as far forward as they could go, head straight up, ears swept back and a big dog smile on her face.  She would belly flop into the water, and then swim back to land, and do it all over again.  To me, that jump was the closest thing to pure joy I have ever seen. 

         She taught our granddaughter Aleesia not to be afraid.  At the age of two, Aleesia had the misfortune of being badly frightened by a dog, which resulted in an absolutely overwhelming cynophobia.  No matter what type, no matter what size, she was terrified anytime a dog came into her sight, and that included Molly.  Whenever Molly joined a family get together, Aleesia would take one look at her, and start to shiver in fear.  We all were aware of Aleesia’s fear, and everyone tried their best to keep her and Molly far apart, but Molly was nothing if not the friendliest dog ever born, so almost every family meeting included an episode of temporary, but very real, hysteria.  Brothers, sisters, cousin, aunt, uncle and parents all tried to convince Aleesia that Molly was a special dog who would never hurt her, but Aleesia was having none of our baloney.  But she believed Molly.  Over several years you could see Aleesia’s gradual, and painfully halting, willingness to let Molly get just a little closer.  You could also see that Molly knew she would have to take extra care because Aleesia was a special case.  And then one day, again in Virginia, we were hanging around in the kitchen, and Molly was walking around smacking everything and everybody with her incredibly enthusiastic tail.  As she came around the corner of the kitchen counter, she came face to face with Aleesia.  This time Aleesia didn’t run and Molly stopped wagging her tail and didn’t move . . . and then Aleesia held out a trembling hand, and petted Molly on her back.  It was a small and very welcome miracle. 

      Mostly, Molly taught us a little something about love.  Not the love that people have for their pets.  More about the love people have for each other, in so many different shades and circumstances.  We loved watching Chris and Kristin with their daughter Maddy when she was little climbing all over Molly, who patiently endured these daily assaults with nothing more than an occasional long snuffling sigh of parental tolerance.  We laughed as Kristin rolled her eyes when she tried to command Molly to do something, and Molly would just ignore her as she always did, not with any animosity, but just a simple “oh, she doesn’t really mean that” look on her face.  Cathy and I can smile at each other when we think about how Maddy will remember Molly, and us, many years from now.   In some mysterious way, the affection that we all felt for that dog was transferred to us, and among us, whenever we were in her presence.  We were so lucky to have had her as part of our lives.  Godspeed, good hound. 

GONE FISHIN’

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Henry David Thoreau

I considered Mr. Thoreau’s observation today on the way back to the dock after our first fishing excursion in Florida. Cathy and I arrived here three days ago after a mind numbingly boring drive from Virginia down Route 95 to Marathon in the Florida Keys. Cathy had slipped on the ice two weeks previously and ended up with a very nice plastic boot on her right ankle, an unfortunate turn of events which meant that I got to drive the entire trip while poor Cathy was reduced to the role of terrified passenger. She made good use of her imprisonment however, rattling off e-mails to the senators from the states we were driving through. My particular favorite was her missive to Senator Lindsey Graham, which went something like ” Dear Lindsey”, ( she wanted to start the conversation in a genteel, southern- like manner), “when you can pry your lips off Donald Trump’s ass, perhaps you could ask him to reach into his wherever for some federal money to re-pave South Carolina’s portion of 95, because frankly, Lindsey, anyone bouncing their brains out down this road would have to conclude that he or she is one of those s……hole countries the Trumpster simply cannot abide.” Alas, the Senator’s office replied, regretfully advising her that due to the large volume of mail that the Senator received, he could only respond personally to inquiries from South Carolinians, but she should rest assured that “he looks forward to supporting our troops in the War on Terror, repairing our economy and creating jobs, strengthening social security, lowering the tax burden on American families, and making the federal government more accountable and efficient.” That kept us laughing through Georgia to Jacksonville.

Miami is 336 miles south of Jacksonville, and Marathon is another 120 miles or so after Miami, so you still have hours to go when you hit the Florida line. Hours of billboards advertising various reptile attractions, and personal injury lawyers ( pause, while you all come up with hysterical punch lines). The lawyer billboards all have pictures of smiling folks supposedly saying things like “Gary got me $750,000.00,” or “Tom got me over a million”, followed by the lawyer’s name, and a catchy phone number like 777-7777. Judging by the pictures, I would have thought that the smiling folks should be extolling the miracles of modern medicine, because none of them appeared to have anything wrong with them. For a million bucks they should have been missing at least  an arm or leg, but nobody looked even a little bit injured, not so much as a missing tooth in any of those smiles. Of course, most of the time there was only one smiling person up there on the billboard, so you couldn’t discount the possibility that he or she was the happy surviving spouse of their unfortunate soulmate who got squashed by a tractor trailer hauling oranges northbound, and they got all this cash in the resulting wrongful death action. But it does make you wonder about those reptiles. In any event, by the time we got to West Palm, we were too busy battling the traffic to look anywhere but straight ahead. In any event, we made it, and after a day of rest and recuperation, we set out to catch dinner.

We were off in search of the  mutton snapper. This fish is supposedly plentiful in Keys waters, and allegedly easy to catch. According to the experts, one simply anchors near a patch reef, baits a hook, drops it over the side and waits for the entree to take a big bite. What could be easier? The reality proved to be somewhat more challenging. Our first problem was the wind, or more precisely, the waves that the wind kicks up. It turns out that baby mutton snappers live in shallow water closer to shore, the keepers tend to prefer deeper water. The deeper water is of course more exposed to the wind and waves, and even though our boat is perfectly seaworthy, she will bounce and buck in the waves, just like any other. NOAA predicted 10 knots from the south.  By the time we found our little patch reef and snagged a mooring, a 10 knot wind was a fond memory, and we were rolling around like ten pins on club night at the local bowlarama, which led to problem number two.

The successful mutton snapper angler uses a special rig, which consists of a swivel, then an initial leader to a sinker, then more leader to a hook. The depth of the water dictates the length of leader between the swivel, the sinker and the hook. The deeper the water the more distance. This means that unless you put together all kinds of combinations while tied securely to the dock, you have to wait till you get to the chosen spot, and then put the rigs together in situ, so to speak. Unfortunately, by the time we got settled at our in situ, the boat was rolling and bouncing so much that you didn’t dare let go of a tackle box  for more than a few seconds, otherwise the deck would have been covered with all kinds of hooks, lures, weights, and everything else. You also need two hands to tie the special knots that monofilament line requires, so, the choice was either to dodge the flying tackle boxes, or give up on the knots, which would kind of defeat the whole purpose. Pondering the conundrum brought out the first Heiniken. The solution proved simply a matter of timing; just wait till a wave started to push the bow of the boat up, grab the hook and sinker from the box as it slid back towards the stern, then  catch the sliding box on the downward roll, and repeat. Tying the knots was easier if you hooked an arm through the frame of the cockpit t top, and since I couldn’t keep my glasses on, who really knows what kind of knots we ended up with. But after some fairly fabulous gymnastics, we were rigged up, and ready to go, except for the bait issue.

Our local expert had recommended  fresh mullet for mutton snapper. The problem was that the local purveyor of bait, the rapacious Captain Hook, didn’t have any fresh mullet ( which, it turns out, you pretty much have to catch yourself, using a cast net, which is another story entirely). He did, however, have plastic bags filled with frozen mullet which , I was assured , worked every bit as good as frozen. So, I bought a bag which was “said to contain” three frozen mullet. They were still frozen when we first arrived at our chosen spot, and I pulled one out of the bag, sliced it into chunks, and baited our hooks. We were ready to fish. We each dropped a line over the side, and within a minute, whammo, big strike…of course, I had gone back up to the bow to deal  with airborne tackle boxes when my rod bent double, and by the time I could stagger back to the rod holder, whatever had grabbed the mullet had buried itself in a hole in the bottom and there was no way I was going to pry him out. Cathy meanwhile was struggling to keep from being pitched overboard, and her fish also dove into a hole . The net result was that nothing went into the net, we lost both rigs, and had to go through the whole rigging up process again. Meanwhile, our nicely frozen mullet chunks had been baking in the sun, and were no longer frozen. It turns out that thawed mullet has the same consistency as Lisa Murkowski, and we couldn’t get any of the remaining chunks to stay firmly on hooks. Basically , we provided a free buffet to the entire reef.

We finally gave up after losing 4 rigs, all the bait, and half a sandwich…final score, fish 4, fishermen 0. We limped back to the dock, and consoled ourselves with some fruity rum drinks and a nice cheddar. Clearly, Mr. Thoreau never went fishing for mutton snapper.

 

GET READY!

“I mean, there is no justice. The rich win, the poor are powerless. We become…tired of hearing people lie After a time we become dead. A little dead….we think of ourselves …as victims. And we become victims. We become …we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law”     Frank Galvin, closing argument, “The Verdict”.

Mr. Galvin’s assessment of the American condition was delivered in 1982. It is at least partially accurate today. On the one hand, the fact that Donald Trump enjoys an approval rating of over 90% of registered Republicans suggests that there are millions of people who have not yet become tired of the lying. On the other hand, impartial polling suggests that respect for, and belief in, our institutions, including the courts, is at an all time low, and falling. Justice Clarence Thomas’ recently announced decision in the case of Franchise Tax Board of California vs. Hyatt, backed by the Court’s new conservative ( Republican) majority, presents an existential threat to the rule of law. It is the curtain rising on the final act of the right wing’s plan to use the courts to impose conservative political doctrine upon a national population that does not share those beliefs. To understand the scope of the threat, one needs to understand the concept of Stare Decisis.

Stare Decisis is a fundamental cornerstone of the American legal system. The Latin phrase means “to stand by things decided”. The key word is “decided”. Stare Decisis provides finality for those decisions. Without Stare Decisis, there is no such thing as settled law. How can any individual, or business, or governmental agency, be assured that a course of action will be within legal boundaries when those boundaries can be arbitrarily set aside. Without Stare Decisis, the law becomes whatever any particular judge wants it to be, applied and enforced, or not, strictly upon his or her whim at the time. It is a recipe for anarchy.

Mr. Hyatt was involved in a nasty dispute with the Board. He brought suit against the Board in Nevada, where he resided. The Board tried to invoke the defense of sovereign immunity. The issue was whether or not the Constitution required the courts of one state(Nevada) to give full faith and credit to a defense of sovereign immunity raised by another state (California) when the latter state was sued in the former state. Mr. Hyatt wasn’t worried. The exact same issue had been previously decided squarely against California’s position by the Supreme Court in 1979 in the matter of Nevada vs. Hall. Imagine Hyatt’s dismay when a new majority of the very same court decided to overturn the Hall decision simply because they didn’t see the matter the same way the justices did 40 years earlier.

Justice Thomas wasn’t much concerned with Mr. Hyatt, although he did acknowledge that ” Because of our decision to overrule Hall, Hyatt will unfortunately suffer the loss of two decades of litigation expenses, and a final judgment against the Board for their egregious conduct”…But hey, no biggie, just your average citizen getting shafted by the system…happens every day. Thomas and the new majority justified their decision by claiming that ” Stare Decisis is not an inexorable command…and is at its weakest when we interpret the Constitution because our interpretation can be altered only by constitutional amendment”. The hypocrisy of Thomas’ statement is stunning.

One side of his mouth says that the Supreme Court is supposed to be the final arbiter of constitutional disputes. Those who believe that the Court’s decision was erroneous can still prevail, but to do so they must persuade enough voters to change the Constitution itself, an extremely difficult task which requires the support of two thirds of both houses of Congress, and then ratification by the legislatures of three fourths of the states. In other words, only an overwhelming expression of the will of the people can overrule a final decision of the Supreme Court on a constitutional matter. But the other side of his mouth says we ( meaning the new conservative majority of the Court) can avoid all this legislative difficulty, and the will of the people, by just ignoring Stare Decisis. We can change the law simply because we now have the votes to do so.

The success of the Republican plan to impose a radical conservative philosophy on the rest of us by judicial fiat depends entirely upon the willingness of the new Supreme Court majority to ignore judicial integrity and ride roughshod over the most basic principle of American jurisprudence. Who would have ever believed that a hope for judicial integrity appears to be hopelessly naïve.

 

 

TIME TO TAKE A STAND

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, raise the black flag, and begin slitting throats”….H. L. Mencken

Much like Confucius, the 20th century philosopher, Lorenzo Pietro Berra, known to his followers as “Yogi”, dispensed his wisdom through insightful sayings. Who among us has not pondered the hidden meaning in the words “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else”, or “You should always go to other peoples funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours”. Perhaps his most profound offering was “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”. The announcement on November 30th that the National Marine Fisheries Service has granted oil exploration companies permission to begin seismic testing off the east coast of the Untied States presents us with a major fork in the road. The question is, will we take it?

Underwater seismic testing is an oil exploration process. A ship tows an array of high powered air guns. Every ten seconds or so, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for weeks at a time, each gun fires a blast of compressed air down through the water column into and through the seabed. The sound produced by the blasts produces a seismic wave that travels through the ground beneath the seabed like a rolling earthquake. The properties of the wave are measured by sensors, and the resulting data is analyzed to detect pockets of oil and gas. The sound produced by an individual air gun blast is similar to the sound of a jet engine powering up for takeoff. An array of guns produces sound levels equivalent to the eruption of an underwater volcano.

The government says that the question of whether or not underwater seismic testing is actually harmful to marine life has not been conclusively answered. But numerous scientific studies have determined that these acoustic assaults can harm, and potentially kill, many forms of marine life, from dolphins and whales all the way down to zooplankton, the foundation of the marine food chain. According to Katherine Brogan, a NOAA spokeswoman, “NOAA Fisheries is clear in the documentation…..we do not expect mortality to occur as a result of these surveys.” What exactly does that mean…that the paperwork is in order? And what is the rationale for their “expectation” in light of the scientific studies?

The permits were approved on an “incidental basis”, which basically means that as long as the testing is not intended to kill marine life, “incidental casualties” are no problem. Well, that’s just great. You may permanently disrupt their habitat, you may destroy their migration patterns, you may critically impair their ability to use their own sonar systems to find food, but as long as you don’t kill’em on purpose, you’re good to go. In support of permit approval, the Bureau of Ocean Management claimed that “there is no confirmed evidence that animals are actually harmed by seismic mapping”, and it considers the threat “negligible”. But just last year that same Bureau opposed test applications saying that “the value of obtaining the geophysical and geological information from new air gun seismic surveys does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys’ acoustic pulse impacts on marine life”. So, what miraculous event caused the Bureau to undergo a 180 degree shift in position from one year to the next? New research, updated science, or big oil politics?

Whether or not east coast drilling is a good idea is the subject of ongoing debate. The Trump administration stands squarely with the oil industry claiming that the national interest requires continuing efforts to produce more “home grown” oil. Virtually every elected coastal state official is opposed to the idea of drilling, which will of course expose millions of people and thousands of miles of developed coastline  to the threat of another Deep Water Horizon catastrophe. Regardless of which side of that debate one chooses to be on, several additional factors with respect to the seismic testing cannot be disputed: 1) There is no immediate need to increase oil production. The United States is now an oil exporting nation, and domestic oil consumption is declining; 2) While there may not be conclusive proof that the acoustic testing kills marine life on the spot, there can be no doubt that the adverse risk factors concerning long term impacts are significant; 3) The surveys aren’t actually necessary. The area off the east coast was subjected to this testing years ago. The oil companies already know where the oil is. This round of testing is designed to enable the industry to fine tune drilling plans, which may never be implemented. Under these circumstances, the fact that the government has approved a process that will threaten the very existence  of  as many as 250,000 marine creatures is simply unconscionable. Thus the fork in the road.

We can choose to react to this massive display of arrogance by following the usual course of peaceful protest. Or we can, in Mencken’s words, spit on our hands, raise the black flag…and start slitting. Not throats perhaps, but certainly hydraulic hoses, coolant lines, towing cables, and anything else that can be done to prevent these tests from being conducted. This course will not be without serious risks. People will be arrested and imprisoned, property will be damaged, physical injury will almost certainly occur…but it is clear that extraordinary steps must be taken to stop this travesty.

GOING, GOING….GONE

This past Sunday my wife suggested that I take a break from the National Football League to accompany her to a lecture in Kilmarnock, Virginia. The subject of the lecture was climate change. The speakers were Lonnie Thompson and his wife Ellen Mosely- Thompson. The Thompsons are professors at Ohio State University. They are also world renowned experts in the field of paleoclimatology. Mr. Thompson has received numerous  national and international  awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Tyler Prize, a world prize for environmental achievement. Mrs. Thompson has led nine expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores from glaciers for laboratory analysis. They have also undertaken expeditions to glaciers all over the world, in all climate zones, including the tropics. By using very sophisticated equipment and techniques, most of which they have personally developed, the Thompsons have been able to reconstruct climate history. They know what they are talking about.

According to the Thompsons, there is no legitimate scientific debate as to whether or not the climate is changing. The overwhelming weight of the available evidence establishes the fact that the earth is warming. Furthermore, human activity, while not the sole cause of the increase in warmth, is a significant factor. This is primarily due to the discharge of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which is accelerating the rate of change. During the lecture the Thompsons referred to the IPCC Climate Change Report which was released in early October. The Report “paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought.” The Report describes a world of worsening food shortages, intensifying storms and droughts, massive die offs of coral reefs, coastline inundation and consequent loss of life, all of which can be expected to begin by 2040. I imagine as people left the lecture, their thoughts were about the fate of their grandchildren.

Up until last Sunday night, the President of the United States, consistently expressed his view that climate change was a hoax. On 60 Minutes, he announced that actually “I think something’s happening….something’s changing…and it’ll change back again.” He still does not believe that human activity contributes to climate change. He doesn’t believe the scientists because they are ” politically motivated”. The Trump administration is all in on increasing the use of fossil fuels, and ignoring any efforts to develop alternative energy sources. He appointed Scott Pruitt, another climate change denier, as head of the EPA. Agency employees can no longer use the term ” climate change”‘. The term has officially been removed from the Agency vocabulary. Under Pruitt’s watch, the EPA began to roll back emission control standards which even the automobile manufacturers believe is misguided. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreements, thereby reinforcing the notion that America is the only country in the world whose energy policy choices are based upon utter madness, i.e., there is no global warming, but even if there is, it’s only natural and human activity has nothing to do with it. This insanity is not confined to the White House. There are members of Congress who believe that climate change is really just some sort of left wing conspiracy. All of these “leaders”, including the President, are committed to doing everything they can to prevent the United States from changing course to steer away from the catastrophe ahead.

How we respond to climate change is the single most important issue confronting the world’s population today. All of the other “important issues” that compete for our attention are insignificant by comparison. Earnest debates about abortion rights, gun control, political tribalism, race relations, Saudi assassination plots, or whether or not Elizabeth Warren really danced with wolves are utter wastes of valuable time when measured against the threat imposed by climate change to life as we know it. According to the IPCC report, avoiding the danger posed by climate change will require “transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has no documented historical precedent.” It is obvious that extraordinary world-wide leadership will be required to implement such a transformation. It is equally obvious that our current “leadership” is criminally deficient. The basic question is whether or not our system of representative democracy can summon the political will necessary to remove the charlatans.

Kangaroo Court

The recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning Christine Ford’s allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh reminded me of a classic scene from the movie “My Cousin Vinny.” As Mr. Kavanaugh began to read from his prepared statement, I kept waiting for one of the senators to channel Vinny, as he waits for an answer to the question he had posed to Mr. Wilbur, the state’s automotive expert witness. Vinny had re-called Mr. Wilbur to the stand after Vinny’s girlfriend, the unforgettable Mona Lisa Vito, shredded the state’s case with her analysis of a photograph of the tire tracks left by the killers’ vehicle as they fled from the Sack-O-Suds. Vinny first asks Wilbur: “Would you say that everything Ms. Vito said on the stand was 100%accurate?” Wilbur reluctantly admits that “I’ld have to say that.” Vinny then bores in for the kill:  “And is there any way in the world that the Buick the defendants were driving made those tire tracks?” Wilbur just sits there. He doesn’t want to answer because he knows she was right, and the state’s case is going straight down the drain. Vinny patiently waits for the answer, and then looks at the jury as he says to Wilbur “come on, you can say it, they know”. Someone should have said those same words to Kavanaugh, because by the time Ms. Ford had finished her testimony, everybody did know.

Granted the Committee’s proceeding wasn’t actually a trial. There was no judge or jury. The rules of evidence clearly did not apply. There was a prosecutor however, hired by the Republican senators who were scared to death of the television image of  a woman being grilled by a bunch of men bent upon destroying her credibility in the pursuit of partisan political victory. And the committee members were sort of like a jury since they were the ones who would have to decide if Mr. Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court was going to be derailed by Ms. Ford’s allegations. But the folks who serve as real jurors are carefully questioned to make sure that they have no pre-conceived ideas about the case they are going to hear. If they admit to having such notions, they are then asked if they can set them aside and decide the case strictly on the evidence produced at trial. Nobody questioned the committee members before the hearing commenced. It was already abundantly clear that most of them had pre-conceived opinions about Ms. Ford’s allegations, and it was equally clear that they were not going to set those opinions aside, no matter what the testimony revealed.

Despite the schizophrenic nature of the proceeding, at least three things were established beyond doubt. First, Lindsey Graham needs a rabies shot. Second, Mr. Kavanaugh has neither the judgment nor the temperament to be a justice on the Supreme Court, and third, nothing about the proceeding, or its aftermath, is likely to have any effect on the outcome of the vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Graham’s outburst at the hearing was remarkable for a host of reasons, but given his recent disheartening conversion from being a card carrying member of the” anybody but Trump” group (remember his description of Mr. Trump as a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot”  and “completely unfit for office”) to one of Trump’s most cloying acolytes, it was hardly surprising. The most revealing statement Graham made after Ford’s appearance however was his complaint that “I feel ambushed”. Poor Lindsey felt “ambushed” because somewhere in his hypocritical little heart, he suspected that Ford was telling the truth, and he and his Republican colleagues were going to be left hanging out to dry after a solid week of sniping at Ms. Ford in an effort to bolster Kavanaugh’s chances.

The Republican senators of course had never wanted the hearing to be held in the first place. The last thing they wanted to do was preside over some hysterical witness blubbering on national television about a life ruined by sexual hijinks that took place 35 years ago. Imagine their surprise when the blubbering hysteric turned out to be the nominee. Real jurors are often required to make determinations about the credibility of a witness. They are usually instructed by the judge to consider, among other things, the demeanor of the witness. That same instruction ought to apply to someone seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s demeanor was that of a typical politician caught in an embarrassing situation…bombastic bluster, crocodile tears, and of course, the assertion that the accusations against him were all part of a sinister conspiracy, in this case “a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled by apparent pent up anger about President trump and the 2016 election….revenge on behalf of the Clintons”. Really? The Clintons somehow cajoled Ms. Ford into subjecting herself to national scrutiny in order to sabotage Mr. Kavanaugh’s nomination? Nothing about his petulant performance suggested that Mr. Kavanaugh has either the temperament, or the mature judgment, required of a Supreme Court justice.

Unfortunately, neither Ms. Ford’s testimony nor Kavanaugh’s histrionics are likely to  make any difference in the outcome of the nomination process. The Republicans are bound and determined to put a right wing provocateur on the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell thinks he has the votes to do it. He isn’t about to let a little matter of sexual assault stand in the way. This is an exercise in power politics , pure and simple. Truth and integrity have nothing to do with it.

DIRTY WORDS

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words”….Philip K. Dick

On May 27, 1972, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a young comedian named George Carlin  introduced a bit he called the “seven words you can never say on television”. Carlin’s performance was recorded and released later that year as an album entitled “Class Clown”.  The following year, Carlin released the follow up album “Occupation: Foole” which included the seven words routine. In October 1973 the Pacifica Foundation FM radio station WBAI broadcast the entire album on the air. A card carrying member of a group called Morality in Media claimed that he heard the routine while driving in his car with his fifteen year old son and was mortally offended by the broadcast. He filed a complaint with the FCC which led to the case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in the United States Supreme Court ( 38 U.S. 726 for you legal eagles). In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court held that Carlin’s routine was indecent but not obscene and affirmed the power of the FCC to regulate the broadcasting of indecent or obscene material.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the case was the fact that Carlin compiled the list of the seven words on his own. No government agency had issued any directive forbidding the use of the words. In fact, the Department of Justice intervened in the case on behalf of  Pacifica, alleging that the FCC’s enforcement action violated Pacifica’s constitutional rights. The notion that the government would attempt to prohibit anyone from speaking or writing a specific word, by an Executive Order for instance, in which the President forbade any citizen from uttering the word “collusion”, would have been considered nonsense…..until now. On December 16th, the Washington Post reported that “senior officials” from the Health and Human Services Department had directed various sub-agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( the CDC) that certain specific words and phrases could no longer be used in any official documents being drafted by those agencies in connection with fiscal year 2019 budget proposals. The banned words were “vulnerable’, “entitlement”, “diversity”, “transgender”, and “fetus”. The prohibited phrases were “evidence-based” and “science-based”. No explanation for the ban was provided, and the source of the ban, i.e. the person or persons who made the decision to ban these particular words and phrases, has not been identified.

The ban’s potential for mischief is readily apparent. The Post reported the fact that in August the CDC published a study that determined that transgender women “had the highest percentage of confirmed positive results in agency funded HIV testing than any other gender category”. If the word “transgender” can no longer be used in budget documents, the funding for HIV testing for this group of people will end. In effect, the language ban requires the CDC to pretend that transgender people do not exist. Funding for pre-natal research, including treatment developments for pre-natal medical conditions, could be at risk. That research cannot occur without funding, which will be difficult if not impossible to obtain if the word “fetus” cannot be used in budget applications.

The more troubling consideration is that Trump and his minions have put people in positions of significant governmental authority who actually believe that by forbidding government employees from using certain words, the concepts and issues related to those words will  simply disappear. Therefore, there is no need to address any of those concepts or issues. This practice of governance by fantasy is in full swing at the EPA, where the wingnuts have solved the problems posed by climate change by simply refusing to use the words. By eliminating the words “climate change” from their vocabulary , there is no climate change issue as far as the current EPA administrator and his appointees are concerned, a ludicrous position in the face of reality. Trump of course thrives in fantasy land: witness his recent national security address wherein he listed various threats to national security but didn’t mention climate change as one of them, despite the fact that virtually every other country in the world has acknowledged that the implications presented by the changing climate pose significant threats to world order and security.

The CDC is an agency whose work must be based upon science, not fantasy. Protecting the national population from the scourge of disease requires a rigid adherence to scientific methodology and practice. Yet the terms “science-based” or “evidence-based” now cannot even be mentioned. Instead, the officially approved substitute phrase is “the CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and values.” In other words, the Trumpists are now claiming that scientific findings must be weighed against village suspicions and old wive’s tales. Is the CDC now  required to give credence to conspiracy theorists who claim that vaccinations cause autism? Is vital medical research going to be subject to peer review by shamans and snake handlers?

The government of course claimed that this was all a big misunderstanding. Health and Human Services spokesman Matt Lloyd suggested that ” the assertion that HHS banned words is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process.” In other words, Fake News. But when Lloyd was asked by the Post to identify any specific inaccuracies in the report, he declined to do so. Various department flacks have been back pedaling steadily over the past few days, assuring one and all that of course the CDC will use scientific principals and methodology, and that the whole matter has been overblown…but no one has actually said that the directive has been lifted or withdrawn.

The reaction from the scientific community was swift and direct. Russ Holt, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science observed that “among the words forbidden to be used in the CDC budget documents are ‘evidence-based’ and ‘science-based’. I suppose one must not think those things either. Here’s a word that’s still allowed: ridiculous”. Mr. Holt’s language is too mild. The Administration’s effort to inject evangelical mysticism into the CDC’s functions and operations is an assault on reality, and poses a clear and very present danger to the health of every American. The perpetrators are alt right ————–s (fill in the blank from Mr. Carlin’s list). They must be stopped!

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

“There are Gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus”….Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

There are two universal constants in the great state of Alabama. The first is that the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, 10 and 0 in the Southeast Conference, is ranked No.1 in college football and will play for the national championship once again in January. The second is that political insanity is alive and well. Consider the matter of Bret Talley.

Mr. Talley has been nominated by President Trump to be a federal district judge in Alabama. Mr. Talley is 36 years old and has been actually practicing law for all of three whole years. He graduated from Harvard law in 2007 and promptly went to work as a judicial law clerk. After 4 years of clerking, he became a political speech writer, first for Mitt Romney and then for Ohio senator Rob Portman. In 2015, he was appointed to be a deputy solicitor general for the state of Alabama. In January, 2017, he became a deputy assistant attorney general. Now, you need to understand that when someone is appointed deputy assistant anything, he or she is doing nothing but political work for whoever appointed him or her. It’s like being the deputy commercial attaché at a U.S. Embassy. Everyone knows that you are really working for the CIA. In any event, Mr. Talley has NEVER tried a case in court…NOT ONE….AS IN NADA…AS IN NOT EVER. Even for Trump, whose record for appointing completely unqualified people to government office is extraordinary, this appointment is truly ridiculous. The American Bar Association rated Mr. Talley as being unqualified for the office, not really an earth shaker given the circumstances. It appears that Mr. Talley’s only qualifications are that he is married to Ann Donaldson, a senior lawyer at the White House, a relationship he conveniently failed to disclose to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that his political views are appropriately alt right. Despite his complete lack of any qualifications for the job, the Republican dominated Committee recommended that he be approved for the position on a party line vote. So much for any hope that the Republicans under the Trump administration have any interest in acting for the best interests of the Country. Which brings us to Roy Stewart Moore.

Mr. Moore’s campaign as the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Alabama has hit a bit of a speed bump after the Washington Post published a story asserting that Moore essentially preyed upon young girls while he was a local prosecutor in his 30s. One of the Post’s sources claims that she was 14 years old when Moore sexually molested her. Of course, sexual misconduct doesn’t appear to faze Republican voters these days, unless it’s a Democrat doing the canoodling. After all, they elected Donald Trump. And Alabama Republicans have risen to Moore’s defense with a sleaze level of biblical proportions. Geneva County GOP Chairman Riley Seibenhener had no problems with Moore’s conduct, saying “other than being with an underage person, he didn’t really force himself”. Apparently Chairman Seibenhener is unaware that “being with an underage person” is a criminal act, even in Alabama. Bibb County GOP Chairman Jerry Pow told Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star that he would vote for Moore even if Moore did commit a sex crime against an underage girl because “I wouldn’t want to vote for Doug” (Moore’s Democratic opponent). Alabama’s State Auditor, a Republican named Jim Ziegler, offered a truly blasphemous defense by claiming that old men messing with young girls was biblically sanctioned: “take the Bible–Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth, and they became parents of John the Baptist…also take Mary and Joseph, Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became the parents of Jesus”. That little snippet of Bible study will forever be known as the Ziegler defense. Criminal defense attorneys everywhere will quote Ziegler as they attempt to explain away the predatory conduct of their clients…Jesus, Mary and Joseph, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is perfectly normal that my 30 year old client groped a 14 year old against her will. The Bible tells us so. Even Judge Talley will have to agree.

Moore of course has taken the high road. He denies all allegations of impropriety. During a speech on Sunday night he said that he was “investigating” his accusers and threatened to sue the Washington Post. Well, how positively Trumpian. Remember when Trump threatened to sue all the women who claimed that he sexually harassed or assaulted them. The Post’s editors are no doubt quivering in their boots waiting for the arrival of the process server. Moore ended his remarks by calling on the United States to “go back to God”. “If we go back to God, we can be united again”. The danger that Moore poses to the Senate is not that he was a child molester in his youth. It is that he fervently believes that ” Christianity should order public policy”.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides among other things that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. In 1974, Justice Hugo Black wrote in the case of Emerson versus the Board of Education that: “the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state or the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force or influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs….in the words of Jefferson, the clause against the establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state”. One thing is certain about Roy Moore. He does not believe in the separation between church and state. And his record proves that he is completely prepared to ignore the law to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Moore believes that “the free exercise clause of the Constitution does not apply to any religion other than Christianity”. In other words, if you are a Jew, a Hindu, A Muslim or a Buddhist, your right to practice your faith is not protected by the Constitution. In 2001, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, he ordered that a monument to the Ten Commandments be erected in the state judicial building. In 2003, a federal judge ordered him to remove the monument as it was a clear violation of the Constitution. Moore refused, saying “I consider it my duty to acknowledge God. To take down the Ten Commandments and to stop holding prayer would be a violation of that duty. I will not take down the Ten Commandments and I will not stop holding prayer”. In short, Moore refused to abide by his oath of office and refused to obey the lawful order of the federal court. He was therefore removed from office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. In 2013, he got himself re-elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, again as Chief Justice. In 2016, he was again suspended, this time because he directed Alabama probate judges to refuse to enforce Alabama’s ban on same sex marriages, despite the fact that the ban had been ruled unconstitutional. He has demonstrated utter contempt for the rule of law, claiming he need answer only to God’s law. He is a dangerous religious fanatic who will not hesitate to use the power of any office that he holds to impose his evangelical beliefs on the rest of us…no different than an Iranian Mullah.

It may well require divine intervention to keep Roy Moore from winning the special election in December. Those of us who don’t live there can only watch the spectacle unfold, like a slow motion train wreck. 262,641 Alabamians voted for Moore in the primary runoff. The Bible thumpers, snake healers and every other kind of fundamentalist fascist will be going to the polls to, as Moore so often counsels, “worship with your vote”. Will the Christian soldiers be marching in lockstep, persuaded that God is on their side? We can only hope that Gust Avrakatos, the CIA operative in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, was right: “Well, reasonable people can disagree, but I don’t see God anywhere within miles of this”.

WHO DAT DO DAT VOODOO THING

“Down in the swampland where anything goes, there’s a wicked looking woman with a bone in  her nose”….Cedric Benoit

The 1986 film classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off contains a wonderful scene in which a teacher, played dead pan perfectly by Ben Stein, tries in vain to get an answer from his students to his questions during a lecture on economics. The students simply stare vacantly at him, totally bored and completely uncomprehending. “In 1930, the Republican House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of…Anyone?Anyone?…the great depression, passed the…Anyone?Anyone?…the tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot tariff Act? Which, Anyone?…raised or lowered…Anyone?…raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government…did it work?…Anyone?Anyone?..it did not work”. He then brings the discussion forward in time….”Anyone seen this before?…the Laffer Curve…Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? …Something—-doo economics. Voodoo economics”. Thirty one years later, here comes that curve one more time.

The Laffer Curve is a visual depiction of an economic theory advanced by supply side economist Arthur Laffer. It supposedly shows the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues, and is touted as demonstrating that it is possible for governments to increase revenue by cutting tax rates. It was the theoretical basis of the Republican efforts to cut taxes under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush. The argument goes that by cutting taxes more money flows to the wealthy, who will then increase their business investment, which will lead to more jobs and a growing economy, which will result in more tax revenues for the government and a general increase in the economic well being of the middle and lower economic classes. This is also known as the “trickle down” theory. In practice  the theory has proven to be completely bogus. Candidate George H.W. Bush famously called it “Voodoo Economics” when he ran against Reagan in the 1980 Republican primary. He was right!

Under Reagan, tax rates were significantly lowered without any corresponding reduction in expenses. This not only failed to result in any increased revenue, it lead to the predicted massive increase in federal debt, an increase from 997 billion to 2.85 trillion dollars. Despite the fact that the application of the theory was a fiscal disaster under Reagan, President George W. Bush and the Republicans dusted it off and used it as the basis for the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Bush claimed that the increase in productivity which was supposed to occur as a result of the cuts would completely offset  the decline in revenue. Not surprisingly, it did not. The Congressional Budget office has consistently reported that the Bush cuts not only utterly failed pay for themselves, they resulted in a significant decline in government revenues and added another 1.5 trillion to the national debt. The incontrovertible fact is that 16 years of slavish Republican devotion to the  “trickle down” theory has proven that the theory does not work in the real world. In reality, tax policy based upon the Laffer Curve only serves to increase income inequality by providing massive economic benefits to those who are already wealthy while doing nothing at all for the middle and lower economic segments of the population. But the “trickle down” Republicans have never let the facts thwart their constant efforts to help the rich get richer, and so we are once again confronted with the fraud of Laffer Curve economic theory under the guise of “tax reform”.

The “Tax Reform” plan proposed by President Trump features 5 major elements: 1) reduce the number of income tax brackets from 7 to 3, with the resulting 3 being 12%, 25% and 35%; 2) double the standard deduction; 3) cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%; 4) repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, and 5) repeal the Estate and Gift tax. Trump has loudly proclaimed that these “reforms” will provide a”uuuuge” benefit to middle and lower income Americans, which is of course complete nonsense. Not only will these proposals essentially do nothing for those folks, (how many average couples have estates valued at over 11 million dollars?), the plan will result in yet another gigantic increase in the national debt,  estimated to be at least 1.5 trillion dollars. Trump tried to explain his proposals during a recent interview with Maria Bartiromo, but he was basically incoherent, so Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin was chosen to make the network rounds.

This was an unfortunate choice, primarily because Mnuchin is a dead ringer for that noted economist Rocket J. Squirrel. Seriously, take a look at his picture and imagine an old leather flying helmet on his head. Who do you see? And he loves to fly too, just like Rocky, except he does his flying on military airplanes at taxpayer expense. But never mind, that’s small potatoes. According to the squirrel, the Trump tax cuts will not result in any deficit increase because these cuts will lead to increased tax revenues derived from the increased annual economic growth that will somehow magically appear. Rocky’s pal Bullwinkle used to do that magic on TV, saying “hey Rock, wanna see me pull a rabbit out of my hat”, as he stuffed his arm down into his stovepipe hat and always pulled out something other than a rabbit. The squirrel says that the tax plan “will not only pay for itself, but it will pay down debt by generating 2 trillion dollars of additional revenue”. The additional revenue comes from  the Administration’s pie in the sky projection of 3 to 4 percent annual growth in the economy, which an overwhelming number of real economists think is complete hooey. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects annual average growth rate over the next ten years  to be about 1.9%

Albert Einstein supposedly said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. The “trickle down” claim that these tax cuts are going to pay for themselves, and that everyone will benefit, was made by the Reaganites and then the Bushies. It was hogwash then and it is hogwash now. The Republicans have followed the Voodoo economics plan twice. It failed miserably both times, leaving the Country with massive debt, and shattering the myth that Republicans were actually fiscally responsible. The current cabal of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Trump are hell bent on doing it all over again. And who do you think is ultimately going to pay for it…Anyone? Anyone?