April 30, 2018--Alter Boy

Devoted to the simplistic macho writing of novelist Ayn Rand, House Speaker Paul Ryan, when it comes time to be a tough guy in real life--as they used to say in my old Brooklyn neighborhood--folds like a cheap camera.

But he had me going there for awhile the other day when I picked up some breaking news that he had fired the House chaplain, Father Patrick Conroy. 

These priests can't keep their hands off those teenage House pages, I thought, like so many in the Congress have been prone to in years past. Remember in 2006 Florida Representative Mark Foley of the wandering hands? 

The Speaker, I thought, liberated by his decision to step aside later this year, in high dudgeon, finally wielded his power. Maybe, I also thought, perhaps he will find a way to croak out a few words of criticism about his president. 

I know, don't hold my breath.

But then, true to his form, when the full story came out, it appears that the Speaker reverted to his craven self.

He sacked the good Father because in one of his morning sermons (which no one usually listens or pays attention to), rather than bringing Jesus into the House, he alluded to the unfairness of the tax cuts Congress was debating with Paul Ryan, about the only subject that makes his heart beat fast or evokes his piety--cutting taxes for the rich--egging his members on. Not that they need much egging.

Last November, when the House was considering the tax bill, in his morning prayer, Rev. Conroy said--

May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are no winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.

With these compassionate words, he was cooked. 

About a week later the father was admonished by the Speaker's office. He claimed, "A staffer came down and said, 'We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political'."

Because of Ryan's action, a religious war broke out on the floor of the House. Not a burning issue for me, but this flap exposed another fissure in Congress between traditional, mainly Northern Catholics and Southern evangelical Republicans, who want very different kinds of chaplains to lead their daily prayers. 

The Dems are sitting back enjoying the scrum, happy to add this to their list of Republican unforced political errors, hoping it will help them win enough seats in November to take control of at least the House of Representatives.

And while they're at it maybe they'll take a look at the extra-constitutional practice of both houses of Congress having chaplains on the payroll. James Madison, for one, resisted the idea that Congress should employ them if the framers wanted there to be a clear separation between church and state.

Again, don't hold your breath because in the meantime, carved in the marble lintel above the Speaker's chair in the House is, "In God We Trust."

But not to worry, there will soon be lots for Congress to do. Like impeaching the president.

May 9, 2016--Paul Ryan's Waiting Game

The race for the Republican nomination for president in 2020, yes 2020, has already broken out and Paul Ryan is the front runner.

About this one, unlike this past year when he "reluctantly" agreed to save the GOP from itself by agreeing to become Speaker of the House and later, appearing before as many American flags as one finds at a Donald Trump rally, he made speeches of the sort that only presidential candidates utter since he was . . . running for president. Again, blushingly hoping that the Republican nomination process would break down and once again his party would appeal to him to again save them.

Well, that didn't work out so well for him, did it.

Now we have Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee and what has Paul been up to? Running again in his faux-reluctant way for president in 2020.

Too soon? He is a marathon runner, albeit as we found out four years ago when he was Mitt Romney's running mate, he lies about his times.

Here's how the boyish Speaker is hoping it will unfold--

Stealthily, he does everything he can to make sure Hillary Clinton gets elected in November, then he hopes for her to have a failed presidency (as Speaker he can assist with that). And then, come the next presidential election cycle, announces with a sigh that he is running for the 2020 nomination, again not because he really wants to be president but because the country needs to be saved from four more years of Hillary.

Note all the "saved" allusions. Consciously using religious language he represents himself that way--doing God's work as a secular savior.

Do not be fooled by his self-denying, pious-sounding concerns about the current rupture (I almost wrote Rapture) in the Republican Party--the widening divide between the Paul Ryan-style conservatives and the more atavistic, nationalistic Trump wing that has achieved a version of a coup d'etat.

His heartfelt mien is less about the state of the party than the state of his ambition.

He had a chance to grab a brass ring in 2012 and was waiting around this year to be summoned after the nomination process crashed and burned and the Republicans were plunged into the chaos of an open convention with the nation turning its lonely eyes to him.

Failing this, we now have Plan C.

Ultimately kicking and screaming, Ryan tepidly endorses and thereby contributes to Trump's losing--a pretty good bet. With Trump an electoral disaster, still enough Republicans are reelected to the House and Ryan retains his speakership. He drags his feet on President Clinton's legislative agenda, and this undermines her effectiveness, and then in 2019, again without exposing his boundless striving, declares her a failed president and announces that he is again reluctantly, once more for the sake of the Party, stepping aside as Speaker and thereby becomes the presumptive GOP nominee for 2020.

Keep an eye on what should be a fascinating piece of political theater on Thursday when Trump meets in Washington (not at the Trump Tower) with Ryan and other senior Republican leaders. They will likely miscalculate how much Trump is willing to say and do to assure them that now that he is the all-but-certain  nominee he will begin to play by their conventional rulebook.

I suspect that Trump will use the occasion to trot out some of his self-promoted dealmaking skills. These include his likely not wanting to make a premature deal. Trump's supporters would likely be disillusioned if he did. At least at this point.

His best political posture is still to play the outsider game. It got him this far and I suspect Trump feels it will continue to be his best strategy for November. Thus, we should be aware of the likelihood that Trump is as eager to run against the Republican establishment as the Democrats. Perhaps, more so.

In the meantime, I suggest everyone read The Art of the Deal where Trump talks about the importance of being willing to walk out of negotiations. And Ayn Rand's Fountainhead for insight into the radical ways in which  Paul Ryan sees the world.

April 6, 2016--With Charity for One

In his Second Inaugural, near the end of America's bitterest and bloodiest war, Abraham Lincoln called for "malice toward none . . . with charity for all."

In more recent years the Koch Brothers called for charity for one. Or two. Them.

Here's how this works thanks to an analysis by Jane Mayer in her important Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right--

Drawing largely on their half-understanding of the work of Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek and the juvenile pieties and simplicities of novelist Ayn Rand, brother Charles, to justify the Kochs' anti-tax, anti-charity views, also cited the 12th century philosopher, Maimonides, by referring to him as saying, "I agree with Maimonides who defined the highest form of charity as dispensing with charity altogether, by enabling your fellow human beings to have the wherewithal to earn their own living."

In other words, do not allow inclinations or pressures to be charitable to interfere with people's motivation to amass unfettered wealth. Charity if unchecked can interfere with the workings of the Market's "invisible hand."

No matter that this is totally untrue. It fits the Kochs' narrative of what to them and their network of big-money activists constitutes a better world.

They also call for the end of all taxation--federal, state, personal, inheritance, corporate, and capital gains--as it too gets in the way of the freest of enterprise.

Foster Freiss, the Wyoming fund manager and Koch ally since the 1980s asserted this blatantly when quoted in Chrystia Freeland's, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich:

He argued that the public benefited more when the wealthy were not taxed because they would use their money to benefit the public more efficiently and effectively than the government. As he put it, left alone and unregulated, they would "self-tax" by contributing to charities.

With a straight face, Freiss wrote--

It's a question--do you believe the government should be taking your money and spending it for you, or do you want to spend it for you? (sic) It's the top 1 percent that probably contributes more to making the world a better place than the 99 percent.

Key to understanding this gibberish is the "probably."

The top 1 percent probably would do so many wonderful things to improve the world. Like fund right-wing think tanks. Like promote the activities of the Tea Party. Like support states in their efforts to gerrymander and suppress voting. Like giving more money to museums that will carve their names in granite than to organizations that are dedicated to assisting the poor.

Have the Kochs ever given anything to God's Love We Deliver, an organization that brings hot meals to the homebound?

Have Freiss and the Kochs contributed any of their cash to rebuild crumbling bridges?

Have they supported any charities that provide healthcare for the indigent?

Is there a homeless shelter named for any of them?

They have not done any of these things.

If they were sincere, rather than merely selfish, to demonstrate that if the government, which they want to phase out, were to eliminate all social programs, including Medicare and Social Security (which they favor) and would eliminate all forms of taxation (which they advocate), to illustrate their generous intentions, if they were allowed to keep all of their money, they would in fact have already done things, again to quote Freiss, "to make the world a better place."

With the exception of some charitable giving to cancer research, I can find few such examples.

Though they have thus far given $64 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

October 13, 2015--"M Train"

I was going to write about the Republicans struggle to come up with a new Speaker, about how they are trying to woo Congressman Paul Ryan to allow them to elect them.

He is playing hard to get, but since he really wants to be President he doesn't want to seem too eager for this lesser job, two heartbeats from the presidency.

Here's his plan--

Be coy about the Speakership and then do it for the sake of the party and, of course, of America.

Then next year, after the GOP presidential candidates wind up in a scrum without a candidate with either a majority or mandate, blushing politician that he is, allow them to nominate him. Come to him, as now, plead with him. Promise him anything if just he would only save them from themselves.

Recall, he's the one who makes his staff read Ayn Rand. That alone should disqualify him but, for the faithful in his dysfunctional party, that's what they most love about him. That he's a man of ideas. Even if crackpot ones.

Hillary, as of this week with a 20 point lead over Bernie in the polls (forget Joe Biden), must be sitting back, smiling, and lighting up a victory cigar.

But, rather than writing about any of this titillating stuff, if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Patti Smith's on-going memoir, M Train, I recommend it. It's not quite Just Kids level, but still special.

Here's a brief taste--

We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.

August 4, 2015--The Southernization of America

Anyone interested in understanding the conservative resurgence or revolution, if you will, should turn off Fox News and read Godfrey Hodgson's prescient, 1996 eyeopener, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America.

If you are interested in the intellectual roots, he does a good job of summarizing the contributions of serious economists such as Friedrich Hayek; pseudo-serious novelists such as Ayn Rand; polemicists like William F. Buckley, Kevin Phillips, and Irving Kristol; evangelical religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell; and political figures including Barry Goldwater and of course Ronald Reagan.

All of this is familiar ground for anyone paying attention to the cultural and political shift rightward, but nowhere all pulled together as well as by Hodgson.

For me, noteworthy is Hodgson's insight--or at least his clear statement--of how the ideology and politics that followed on in the South, transforming it from the Democrats' Solid South, after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were signed into law, and quickly became solidly conservative and Republican. The South at that time became the South that we now know and live with, continuing today to shift inexorably to the right.

Nothing that new about that. But what is new is Hodgson's perception that much of the North shortly thereafter--certainly by 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president by picking off millions of so-called Reagan Democrats--became southernized.

This happened in two stages--first there was the dramatic population shift of northerners to the former Confederate States and thereby their accruing electoral power. Reallocation of members and redistricting meant more seats in the House of Representatives for conservatives at the expense of liberal states such as New York and Pennsylvania; and, as Texas and Florida passed New York to become the second and third largest states, there was a dramatic increase in the South's number of votes in the Electoral College. With the South also becoming solidly Republican that made it much more difficult for Democrats to control Congress much less the White House.

The second stage, the result of Reagan's appeal to traditional blue collar Democrats and his election and reelection, subsequently turned a number of blue states into purple states (Pennsylvania is a good example) and over time threatened to turn a few northern purple states to red states.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of that transformation, and perplexing to progressives because of its role in the history of the emergence of the Progressive Movement, is Wisconsin, where Scott Walker managed to get elected governor three times, largely by acting as if Wisconsin were South Carolina.

As in the South he appealed to hawkish hyper-patriotism, belief in American exceptionalism, evangelical impulses, anti-affirmative action forces, a desire to limit government of all kinds, dog-whistle racism, and above all attacks on unions. Thus, Wisconsin has tipped to the right and now culturally and politically could become a permanent part of the emerging conservative majority.