August 5, 2019--Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right

This seems to be the week I am recommending summer books. Not the usual sort for the season which are traditionally page turners. It's August, it's hot, who needs more aggravation. Sorry, but this is my way of having fun. So indulge me just once more and I promise to stop.

If you have been following my blog you know that for more than three years I've been struggling to dispassionately understand the Trump phenomenon (it is that), particularly the people who have been his most fervent supporters. Even when doing so, especially when doing so appears not to be in their own best interest. 

The best roadmap to these paradoxes is Arlie Hochschild's brilliant Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning On the American Right.

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times review--

Hochschild calls this the “Great Paradox”--opposition to federal help from people and places that need it--and sets off across Louisiana on an energetic, open-minded quest to understand it.

A distinguished Berkeley sociologist, Hochschild is a woman of the left, but her mission is empathy, not polemics. She takes seriously the Tea Partiers’ complaints that they have become the “strangers” of the title--triply marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, and liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism. Her affection for her characters is palpable.

But the resentments she finds are as toxic as the pollutants in the Louisiana marsh and metastasizing throughout politics. What unites her subjects is the powerful feeling that others are “cutting in line” and that the federal government is supporting people on the dole --“taking money from the workers and giving it to the idle.” Income is flowing up, but the anger points down.

The people who feel this are white. The usurpers they picture are blacks and immigrants. Hochschild takes care not to call anyone racist but concludes that “race is an essential part of this story.” 

When she asks a small-town mayor to describe his politics, his first two issues--or is it one in his mind?--are welfare and race: “I don’t like the government paying unwed mothers to have a lot of kids, and I don’t go for affirmative action.”

In welfare politics, this is déjà vu all over again. It’s been two decades since Bill Clinton signed a tough welfare law aimed in part to end the politics of blame. “Ending welfare as we know it” would recast the needy as workers, he said, and build support for a new safety net. The rolls of the main federal welfare program have fallen by 80 percent from their 1990s highs--in Louisiana, by 95 percent. But reverse class anger is more potent than ever.

Liberals have long wondered why working-class voters support policies that (the liberals think) hurt the working class. Why would victims of pollution side with the polluters?

Theories abound. Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas? accuses the G.O.P. of luring voters with social issues but delivering tax cuts for the rich. Others point to the political machines built by ultra-wealthy donors like Charles and David Koch. Still others emphasize the influence of conservative media like Fox News.

Hochschild sees these as partial explanations but wants a fuller understanding of “emotion in politics”--she wants to know how Tea Partiers feel, on the theory that the movement serves their “emotional self-interest” by providing “a giddy release” from years of frustration. . . .

Many Tea Party adherents warn that more regulation will cost them jobs. (A small-town mayor says the pungent chemical plant “smells like rice and gravy.”) But Hochschild detects other passions and assembles what she calls the “deep story”--a “feels as if” story, beyond facts or judgment, that presents her subjects’ worldview.

It goes like this:

“You are patiently standing in a long line” for something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting along in years. You are male. There are people of color behind you, and “in principle you wish them well.” But you’ve waited long, worked hard, “and the line is barely moving.”

Then “Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!” Who are these interlopers? “Some are black,” others “immigrants, refugees.” They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare--“checks for the listless and idle.” The government wants you to feel sorry for them.

And who runs the government? “The biracial son of a low-income single mother,” and he’s cheering on the line cutters. “The president and his wife are line cutters themselves.” The liberal media mocks you as racist or homophobic. Everywhere you look, “you feel betrayed.”

Hochschild runs the myth past her Tea Party friends.

“You’ve read my mind,” Lee Sherman said.

“I live your analogy,” Mike Schaff said.

Harold Areno’s niece agrees, and says she has seen people drive their children to Head Start in Lexuses. “If people refuse to work, we should let them starve,” she said.

Actually, anger this raw may depart from the 1990s, when welfare critics often framed their attacks as efforts to help the poor by fighting dependency. The resentments Hochschild presents are unadorned, and they have mutated into a broader suspicion of almost everything the federal government does. “The government has gone rogue, corrupt, malicious and ugly,” one Tea Partier complains. “It can’t help anybody.”

Did welfare really “end”? Conservatives say no. Cash aid plummeted, but food stamp usage soared to new highs and the Medicaid rolls expanded. There’s room for debate, but the grievances Hochschild presents feel immune to policy solutions. As long as larger forces are squeezing whites of modest means, it’s going to “feel as if” people are cutting in line. In Lexuses.

None of Hochschild’s characters appear to have been directly hurt by competition from people of color. Their economic problems lie elsewhere, she argues, in unchecked corporate power and technological transformation. Still there’s no denying that demographic and cultural change have robbed white men of the status they once enjoyed. Hochschild doesn’t buy the racial finger-pointing, but she can see their pain.

July 22, 2017--Imploding

No one should be surprised. Least of all Donald Trump. It has been clear for a half year or more where all this was headed.

It's always been about the money.

The denouement will not be about Paul Manafort's money or Michael Flynn's or Jared Kushner's or Ivanka's money, nor even Don Junior's.

It will be about Donald Trump's money.

A good question--if he is so proud of his wealth how come he has refused to reveal his tax filings?

On the simplest level, he has resisted because he lies about how much money he has. He has a lot, about a billion or two, enough for most of us, but not the 5 to 10 billion he has long claimed.

Remember how Marco Rubio's crack during the primary debates about his small hands got under his skin? Well, this is the same sort of thing. Manhood. Size always mattered more to guys than to women.

But, he somehow managed to get elected and reluctantly moved to Washington and into the White House. Back in New York, in his Trump, Inc. operation, which was and still is a mom-and-pop business, he was used to being the only one whose ideas counted and he had no one ever pushing back on him when he went off and did something stupid. Like getting involved with gambling casinos in Atlantic City and Miss Universe pageants.

Over time, with the big boost The Apprentice gave to his brand, he effectively became a brand. Selling his name and endorsement to the highest bidders, raking in the licensing money with little effort other than keeping his name and gold-foil life style in the public eye. Thus, even the parade of girlfriends and wives, as he aged and swelled up, ones younger and younger, were a part of that charade.

Zeroing in--

When Trump needed to ante up money for a project or bail himself out of an impending bankruptcy, where do we think he turned for money? Citibank? Chase? Wells Fargo? Goldman Sachs? No chance.

We're talking chop shops like Deutsche Bank, loan sharks, and especially money laundries such as the Bank of Cyprus which until a few years ago was a favorite place for Russian kleptocrats to sanitize their dirty lucre.

In 2008, Trump Jr. on the record said that, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

At least someone in his family is capable of letting the truth slip out.

Even a casual perusal of Trump's tax returns would reveal the sources of his money and income. Would it surprise anyone if we in this way discovered that he engaged in all sorts of shady deals and shenanigans with lots of money coming from Russia?

So when it finally dawned on Trump that special counsel Robert Mueller has the power to demand his tax and other financial documents, something Trump incredibly seems to have begun to pay attention to just this week, bells and whistles went off and that immediately became Trump's line in the sand--he told the New York Times he might fire Mueller if he pressed to scrutinize his finances.

We know for sure following the money trail is looming. It's Special Counsel 101.

And then, of course, Mueller would also see son Junior's and son-in-law Kushner's tax filings, which would make matters even worse.

What we'd be likely see is the inner financial machinations of a crime family.

Donald Junior is reported to be whining that he can't wait for this presidency to be over.

Well, he may soon get his wish. He may not have to wait another endless three-and-a-half years.

If Junior is unravelling as quickly as it appears, Trump's oldest son, feeling squeezed by the implosion, may follow in the footsteps of one of Bernie Madoff's sons. I can't bring myself to spell this out. If you don't remember the details, you're on your own to look it up.

So, here are the final steps. They will happen quickly because we have a talented and mobilized press corps. Much more so than during Watergate. Trump is getting back in kind for what he dished out to the "fake-news" press. I wouldn't have recommended messing with that sleeping giant.

I suspect he'll skip the firing-Mueller step and move right to the pardons. Sacking Mueller, assuming Trump has the power to do that, would bring down the wrath of not only Democrats (that would be predictable) but also rouse the up-to-now hypocritical Republicans who despise Trump but support his agenda, such as it is.

Thus, Trump has been asking about what pardon powers he has and boasting about it. They are constitutionally wide ranging. He'll pardon Flynn and Manafort, which should keep them from throwing Trump under the bus (elegant metaphor), and he'll pardon all his family members. Then, and he is looking into this too, unlike Nixon who had his successor, Jerry Ford pardon him, Trump will try to get away with pardoning himself.

This will go to the Supreme Court and, who knows, with Gorsuch recently nominated by Trump, he might prevail, 5-4. Remember Bush v Gore in 2000. Or then again, he may not.

Then we'll see what happens in the streets. Progressives will demonstrate once or twice but use most of their energy appearing on and watching CNN and "The NewsHour."

Trump people (that hardcore 35%) will go crazy. They'll see this crucifixion of Trump (that will become their preferred point of reference) as part of the ongoing liberal conspiracy. Tune into late-night talk radio if you want a preview of that. It will make Benghazi look like a tea party. Scratch that, a polite debate.

October 13, 2016--Shaken, Not Stirred

A savvy friend and I have been engaged in an email back-and-forth about the possible need to "shake up the system" as a precursor to improving the government and Americans' quality of life.

I have been arguing that the desire to shake things up is what is motivating many to support Trump. She agrees that this may be true but the list of things that they want to shake up is regressive, misogynist, xenophobic, and often racist. She claims that the things that appeal to them include--

Law and order
Deportation
Overturning Roe v Wade
Stoping Immigration
Stoping the War On Coal
Overturning Obamacare
Stoping terrorism
Bringing back manufacturing

I don't disagree with her list but I have also been attempting to make the case that though we abhor Trump's and his followers' agenda, it exists; like-it-or-not, it appeals to tens of millions; and for people who are fed up with the way things are working, the "system," their frustration and anger need to be understood and, here's where we do disagree, they may be ahead of us in reacting to the underlying causes of the deep discontent seen to be pervasive, including, among progressives. They also may be quicker than we to call for fundamental change, not just a spate of new government initiatives.

Liberals have their own list and thus among us there are frustrations but of a different sort, with different policies and outcomes. My friend made a list of these as well--

Fixing our crumbling infrastructure
Support equal pay
Fixing the broken education system
Fixing Obamacare
Make college affordable
Stoping terrorism
Creating programs to train/retain workers

We call for a lot of "fixing," Trump's people for a lot of "stoping" and "overturning."

One of her emails concludes--

The people I know want to wait until there are more responsible people (on both sides) who have the vision to make real change and are willing to compromise and respond to the realities of the 21st century. [My italics]

This is as good a summary of the liberal perspective as I've seen. Reasonable, mature, realpolitik, optimistic about human perfectibility, visionary, with a significant role for government to ameliorate differences, inequality, and selfishness.

The subject line on this email was the witty--Shaken, Not Stirred.

I responded--

From many, many  conversations over years with folks across the full spectrum of political views (from very progressive to far right) there appears to be at least one thing they share in common--to accomplish any of the goals you list is the need to shake things up. 

That has to happen before any of the good things you list have any realistic chance of happening. That list has been around for many years during Democratic as well as Republican administrations and still the roads collapse and the schools fail. 

What shaking things up specifically and realistically means is not clearly or persuasively articulated by anyone (very much including Bernie). 

For me, that's the heart of the problem--how to bring about the conditions essential to any large scale systemic alteration of the opportunity structure, economic policy, military as well as education reform, to cite just a couple of daunting but essential examples. 

And to me here's the irony--many on the right are most vociferous in regard to calling for shaking up but in truth have have only a retro-agenda--to stop doing some things and repeal others. Doing nothing, as the Tea Party folks understand, gets that nihilistic agenda accomplished.  

Since those on the left do have a proactive agenda one would think we would have the greater stake in wanting to bring about the conditions that precede real change. But what we have been calling for is largely program and project driven (thus Hillary has "plans"). There is no credible "radical" left left. And we desperately need that to shake things up in a positive way and help rescue us from incrementalism. 

We ended our exchange before I could mention one more thing about the preconditions needed to bring about more than emulative change--crisis.

There are many global examples but I would have mentioned just a few from our own history--

The First World War lured us from our national isolation and forced us to become players in the larger world.

The Great Depression led to the transformative social legislation that still protects our most vulnerable citizens.

The GI Bill that derived from World War II led to the beginning of what some at the time referred to as the American Century.

John Kennedy's assassination fueled the War on Poverty and Civil Rights legislation that help bring about social justice and economic security for the most forgotten and maltreated Americans.

Is there anything equivalent looming? Is a crisis essential to any hope for far-reaching fundamental change?

There's more to be said. I hope my friend will help me find more to say which I will pass along.

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.

December 15, 2014--Backbone

For all the years of his presidency, Barack Obama has been criticized for his reluctance, almost visceral reluctance to confront Republican members of Congress who are devoted to undermining his presidency and thwarting his legislative agenda.

Critics claim that Obama has no appetite for confronting or even working with members of Congress. He is no Lyndon Johnson, they say, nor even a Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton who seemed to have been adept at collaborating with the opposition in order to get at least some of their agenda accomplished. But things are so bad now, it is alleged, that Obama doesn't even like involving himself with Democrat members of Congress.

In fact, he is so reluctant to deal with Congress that he is prone to negotiate with himself, preemptively giving up on programs in which he believes without a struggle or fight to avoid a confrontation and compromise down the road where, if he were inclined to do so, he would get some or all of what he sought.

The best example of this came during the battle over health care reform, over what eventually came to be known as the Affordable Care Act or, more popularly, Obamacare. He was an advocate for a time of the single-payer approach. A version of Medicare for all, but traded away that progressive and more cost-effective option without much of a fight and got nothing in return, no quid pro quo from Republicans. Just grief, which continues.

So, last week, when there was controversy about what to include in the $1.1 trillion bill to appropriate money to run the government, to avoid yet another shut-down, President Obama finally showed some political backbone and worked the phones to urge wavering members of Congress to support the bill before the House of Representatives and Senate. A bill that was passionately opposed by an unlikely coalition of liberals and Tea Party stalwarts, led principally by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz in the Senate.

But ironically the arms Obama twisted were those of reluctant Democrats who were upset by a rider stuffed into the 1,600-page bill by financial institution lobbyists that was designed to gut a major provision of Dodd-Frank, legislation passed four years ago to rein in some of the same kinds of risky practices of banks, using taxpayer-insured money, that led to the crash that became the Great Recession and which cost taxpayers hundreds of billions in bailout money.

So, with his new-found gumption, Obama wound up challenging Nancy Pelosi, who carried the congressional water for him for Obamacare and the economic stimulus, and not Mitch McConnell, who said on day-one of the Obama administration that his goal as minority leader was to assure that Obama would be a one-term president.

If he was going to fight for something, why didn't the president stand with fellow Democrats and fight to have that pro-big-bank rider purged from the bill? Even if it meant seeing the government shut down. That would have made Obama look like a leader, shown him supporting Main Street over Wall Street (good politics), and again having the Republicans to blame for pulling the plug on most of the operations of the federal government (even better politics).

Or am I missing something?

July 3, 2014--Barefoot and Pregnant

I recently read Sean Wilentz's Age of Reagan.

It's a reasonably balanced view of how Reagan emerged on the national political stage in 1964 during Barry Goldwater's quest for the presidency and how, when Reagan was elected president, his administration became a vehicle for the proliferation of neo-conservative thought and action, with players who then and later influenced domestic and foreign policy. He managed to keep the pre-empters isolated, those who wanted to aggress against the collapsing Soviet Union, but allowed supply-siders to take control of economic policy.

Trickle-down became the belief system that guided tax and spending policy and, though it didn't work (the federal debt tripled and the gap between the rich and working poor began to widen dramatically), it continues to dominate, even control current conservative thinking.

Wilentz does a good job of describing the basic Republican strategy, fully on display during the Reagan eight years, to undo the policies of the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society.

With the significant exception of welfare reform, they never had the votes (as now) to overturn or dramatically transform safety-net programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, aid to education, federally-subsidized college loans, low-income housing, food stamps, and the like, nor could they get the Supreme Court to declare these unconstitutional. But they did figure out an effective long-term strategy to reduce and even eliminate them--asphyxiate them by cutting off their fiscal oxygen supply.

By refusing to go along with full appropriations, not agreeing to spend the money required to sustain these policies, over decades they have managed to chip away at the size and reach of many of these signature progressive programs.

It's the basic jujitsu approach to legislating--do as little as possible, better, do nothing and in the process watch programs such as Head Start wither.

A few are sacrosanct and have widespread support even among anti-government Tea Party Republicans--cut government to the bone, they chant, but take your hands off my Medicare and Social Security. Both actually forms of socialism!

Tea Party folks may say this, but the Republicans they keep reelecting to Congress continue to vote to make Social Security either discretionary or investable in the stock market and have voted repeatedly for the so-called Ryan budget, which would end Medicare as we have come to know and depend on it.

Democrats have no equivalent long-term plan to preserve and expand policies that reflect their core values and, as a result, the handwriting is on the wall. Even if they manage to keep electing Democrats to the White House this policy erosion will continue.

Beyond congressional tactics, for the moment conservatives have firm control of the Supreme Court and the national federal judiciary and there they are doing a version of the same thing--taking seemingly small regressive steps that have enormous long-term consequences. The recent Hobby Lobby decision is a case in point.

It exempts two small family-owned companies from having to comply with the Obamacare requirement that their health care insurance cover the cost of contraceptives. But legal scholars worry that this is just a foot in the door to other forms of restriction. Few are yet thinking of rolling back the right to buy and use contraceptives--pre-Griswold v. Connecticut days--but one never knows. There are more than a few Republican and Tea Party leaders who would ban all forms of contraception and like to see women again barefoot and pregnant.

May 14, 2014--Marco Rubio in 2016

According to a string of recent reports in the New York Times about climate change--

A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun to fall apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported. . . . If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries. 

These latest findings by NASA and other earth scientists appeared in Science magazine and Geophysical Research Letters.

When confronted with this evidence, Senator Marco Rubio, an almost-announced candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said he does not "believe" this to be true, that he disagrees with the science, and most important to his political aspirations, does not "believe" that humans are responsible for climate change. To him and most other conservatives, climate is always changing. Thus, there is nothing new happening or to be concerned about.

This from a senator who represents Florida, half of which will disappear under water in coming decades.

I put "believe" in quotes not only because that is the word Rubio used repeatedly during a series of TV interviews on Sunday, but because it represents the heart of the political part of the problem--progressives cite scientific evidence when they argue that humans are in fact contributing to global warming while conservatives base their case on belief.

Rubio over and over again claimed that the science is either flawed or ideologically based. And just as often said he didn't "believe" it.

In his words--

I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. And I do not believe that the laws that they propose will do anything about it.

He did not cite any evidence that what we are seeing is a totally natural phenomenon and, irresponsibly, was not challenged by any of his interviewers to do so. He was simply allowed to get away with critiquing the scientific evidence without citing any contrary scientific evidence.

He did not cite even one study when making his case. I suppose if he knew enough to do so his anti-science Tea Party supporters would feel he had somehow gone over to the other side by citing even flawed science. Any science at all. They don't believe in science.

Nor was he asked, "What if you're wrong? How will you be able to look your grandchildren in the eye when later in the century their houses in south Florida will be literally underwater? When they ask you what you were doing when there was still time to do something?"

I suppose Senator Rubio, or Vice President Rubio, will say he still doesn't believe its happening.

October 19, 2013--Ladies of Forest Trace: Immaculate Generation

Approaching 106, there are days when my mother has less vitality. At those times, our conversations are brief as she struggles to take in the oxygen she needs. We talk only about the weather in Florida and New York and what we plan to have for dinner. If she hears we are cooking and eating at home she is happy that we are taking care of ourselves and not "wasting money eating out."

So I was pleased to find her in good form the other day when I made my daily call.

One of the ladies of Forest Trace, she told me, was having trouble with her eyes. "Gussie, poor thing, not only has to walk with a walker but now when she goes down for dinner she can't see where she is going and bumps into everything."

"Maybe she needs an aide," I suggested, "Like yours who would help her find her way and do whatever else she needs help with."

"I tell her that, but she is very proud and doesn't want to admit she needs any help."

"I understand that."

"There's nothing to understand. She's a danger to herself not to mention people in worse shape who she keeps crashing into. If she was driving a car, God forbid, they'd take away her license."

"You're probably right."

"But that's not the worst of it."

"What is?"

"I told you about her condition."

"To tell you the truth I don't remember. There are so many conditions to keep track of."

"Immaculate Generation."

"Immaculate what?"

"Generation. Generation. That's what she has."

"You mean, Macular Degeneration. Her eye problem."

"Whatever."

"What about it? How far advanced is it?"

"Plenty advanced. That's why she's running people over."

"I suppose she's too old to do much about it."

"That to. But her doctor is terrible."

"In what way?"

"He doesn't have time for her."

"He won't make an appointment to see her?"

"Not that. He makes the appointment, but when she goes she's in and out in five minutes."

"If there isn't anything they can do--"

"Still is this a way to treat people who are going blind?"

"I suppose not. What would you have the doctor do."

"You know Gussie's not shy."

"That I know from direct experience," I chuckled, recalling having dinner with her a few times. She has opinions about everything--generally sound ones--and isn't reluctant to share them. At full volume. My mother says she talks so loud because she can't hear and refuses to get hearing aids.

"So she complained to the doctor, telling him he shouldn't be running his office like a factory. Though Gussie knows there is nothing to do for her condition, she wants to feel the doctor knows who she is and cares about her. That he has time to at least talk with her. After the life she lived, she should be entitled to that. A little talking to. A little being paid attention to."

"That is not unreasonable to expect."

"But her doctor tells her he has no choice."

"No choice?"

"That with Medicare cuts he can't afford to stay in practice if he spends more time with patients. 'I couldn't pay my rent or my office staff,' Gussie quotes him, 'if I practiced the way I want. The way I used to.'"

"I've heard that from others," I said. "From doctor friends who are frustrated with the state of health care these days."

"Do you think Obamacares will make things any better?"

"I'm not sure it will for Gussie, but for millions of others, absolutely."

"They're making such a big deal on TV about the computer."

"You mean the Obamacare website?"

"I think so, though I don't know from computer webs."

"No need to worry about that."

"It's the least of my worries. I have plenty of other things to worry about. About why I take so many naps, why I--"

"I take naps too," I cut in before she went down her whole list. "It is not unusual for older people to take naps. And you are nearly 106."

"I never took a nap until I turned 100. I'm wasting my time sleeping the day away. You know what your father used to say about sleeping?"

"Yes, 'There's plenty of time to sleep when you're . . ." I couldn't utter the word to my ancient mother.

"Dead. Dead is what he said. I know what that is. You don't need to sugar coat me. I want to live. I'm fine. But I'm ready for whatever awaits me. That too."

"Anything else about Obamacare?" I was looking to change the subject, "By the way, I love that you call it Obamacares.

"Because he does. Care. And it will turn out to be wonderful. The same kind of people said the same kind of things about Medicare when that came out. How it wouldn't work. How doctors wouldn't take Medicare patients. How people would not be able to keep their doctors. How we wouldn't be able to afford it."

"True. Though I do worry about the cost going forward."

"There's plenty of money for other things like bombs so we shouldn't be so worried."

"Also true," I said.

"But now, ask anyone here what they think about Medicare and they will tell you, 'Don't touch my Medicare.' Even people from that Tea Party who want to get rid of the government. I tell them, 'What do you think the Medicare you love so much is? I'll tell you what--a government program. Socialized medicine.' That one they like. Food stamps, no. Welfare, no. But Medicare because it's for them, and they think it's free, they don't want you to touch."

"I hear the same thing. Don't expect people to be consistent when it comes to their self interest."

"They have what they want and now they want to deny the same thing to others. Like Obamacares."

"I agree with that. Among other things their attacking it feels so selfish."

I could hear her breathing becoming labored. "But you'll see--I won't be here to see it but please God you will be--two years from now everybody will be happy. All of this will be forgotten. Millions more will be healthier. Especially children. And like with Medicare no one will want to change anything. Including the Tea Party. If they are still around. Which I doubt. I see the beginning of the end for them. Which is another good thing."

"Don't overtax yourself," I said, concerned about her breathing.

"I'm not like this every day any more so when I am I want to get things off my mind."

"I'm for that. But I don't want you to overdo it."

"Poor Gussie," she said and hung up.

October 25, 2013--Big Government

One claim about Barack Obama can be put to rest with a few facts.

Most Republicans contend that he is a proponent of big government.  

The facts are these--

Back in 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, excluding members of the military (who are also federal employees), there were 2,721,000 government workers.

Last month, before the government shutdown, the federal government had 2,723,000 on the payroll. The lowest figure since 1966.

As a percentage of the workforce, the Obama administration is the picture of fiscal rectitude--In 1966, 4.3 percent of all workers were federal employees. Now the government employs only 2 percent of the nation's workers.

If one takes a look at the military, back in 1966 there were 2.6 million on active duty. Today the figure is just 1.4 million.

In contrast, during Ronald Reagan's eight years in office, the number of non-military employees ranged from 2.77 to 3.05 million the year he left office.

I know you won't hear this on Fox News or from Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party. You won't even hear this from the remaining mainstream Republicans. But these are the facts.

There is a lot of fault to be found with Barack Obama and his administration, but being advocates of big government is not one of them.

October 18, 2013--The Not-So-Grand Bargain

Didn't everyone know it would end this way?

The congressional adolescents would have their week or two of cable airtime where they would be permitted to have politically-motivated temper tantrums and then the adults would take over, send them to their rooms, and make a deal.

In this case the deal was to surrender unconditionally to the Democrats and especially President Obama since the focus of the Tea Party's fury was and remains the Affordable Care Act.

The deal is a pathetic one--to negotiate a long-term budget by mid-December and then in early January, since there will likely be no such deal, begin the process again of threatening to shut down the government and then in February begin to rally around the idea to not raise the debt ceiling.

We got a not-so-grand bargain but need a real one that controls spending and adds more revenue to the budget mix.

We need to see the Medicare and Social Security cost curves bend downward as Baby Boomers cascade toward retirement and put bankrupting pressure on those two programs.

If we do this seriously, next time around it will be the liberals doing the screaming.

In the process, we will find out if President Obama has starch in his shorts and is willing to take on his own party and constituency or was his tough stance this time around just about preserving his eponymous program--Obamacare?

September 25, 2013--GOPcare

Forty-two times Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted to repeal or defund Obamacare.

Most recently the end of last week when they did so as part of a budget package to make the entire federal budget contingent upon eliminating it. Effectively, they said, if you want the Affordable Care Act, there will be no government--no Social Security, no Medicare, no national parks, no aid to education, no airport security, no oversight of drugs and medicines, and even (their favorite federal program) no military.

And then they went home for their 6th or 7th vacation of the year.

Additionally, they left a marker back in Washington, saying that unless Obamacare is ended by the end of October they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling. They will not vote to pay for federal programs that they themselves already enacted into law.

Effectively, they are, with this, drawing a legislative red line which asserts that unless the Democrats and the president go along with this they will allow the United States for the first time in history to default on our financial obligations--if you have T-Bills, they will not pay you the interest you thought was guaranteed; and the U.S. dollar will no longer serve as the world's reserve currency because we will have welched on our international debts and obligations.

All because of Obamacare. All because the GOP leadership has caved in to the Tea Party crazies who are really anarchists seeking to eliminate most of our government, seeing nearly all of it profligate and evil.

While spending much of the past two years futilely voting against Obamacare, the Republicans have not put forth a credible alternative health care plan of their own. One to cover the 44 million Americans who who have no coverage, or would have none if Obamacare were to be rolled back--mainly dependent children and lower-income workers whose employers do not provide medical insurance or do not have the $5,000 to $10,000 a year to buy their own insurance.

By not voting in favor of a plan of their own the GOP is rendering a death sentence to hundreds of thousands of Americans who will die prematurely without preventative or on-going care.

I know for these radical Republicans the death penalty is one of their favorite governmental programs; but at least executing people comes after someone commits a heinous crime and is tried and convicted.

To kill people (and that in fact is what we're talking about) because they cannot afford to pay for an operation or cancer-fighting medications is not so different from condemning someone to death through the courts.

One difference--we usually put people in the gas chamber one at a time. Denying people the medical help they need and deserve is nothing short of mass murder.

July 18, 2013--Affordable Health Care in NY

There was a report in yesterday's New York Times about the rollout in early 2014 of the Affordable Care Act in New York State.

One might expect that since New York is about the highest-cost state in the United States the cost of mandatory insurance to New Yorkers would be in line with what one needs to come up with to buy a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. In other words, a ridiculous fortune.

But in spite of all the alarmist ranting about how Obamacare is socialized medicine and that people will have their health care rationed with end-of-life decisions taken aways from patients and their families and be assigned to government "death panels," when all is said and done, tens of millions will for the first time have health insurance, hundreds of thousands of lives will be better and even saved, and the cost, it appears, if administered correctly, will go down. Actually plummet.

In New York, for example, because of the competition engendered by having various health care insurers compete for new clients, to quote state regulators, because of the on-line purchasing exchanges, the rates they have approved for insurers are "at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York."

For those now paying $1,000 or more a month, as early as October, they will be able to purchase comparable insurance for as little as $300 a month. If one cannot afford that, with federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.

I suspect that politically we will see a situation similar to the mid-1960s when Medicare was rolled out. It was condemned by organized medicine (the AMA in the lead) as socialized medicine and this was echoed and worse by most Republicans. But now, even Tea Party members though wanting to eliminate much of what government provides, make an exception for Medicare.

When I have at times confronted some who have nothing good to say about any government program, pointing out to them that Medicare is a government program, and in fact is socialized medicine, still they say, poking a finger in my chest, "Don't you touch my Medicare."

Five years from now people will be saying the same thing about the Affordable Care Act--though it is far from socialized medicine (it is after all based on a Republican model), they will be poking fingers in chests and warning, "Don't you touch my Obamacare."

July 8, 2013--Obama Agonistes

Sad to say, but the Obama presidency is over.

Yes, he may get us involved in knocking out Iran's nuclear facilities and this could lead to another ground war in the Middle East. That would be both perversely presidential and dangerously consequential. But unless a crisis is presented to us, or there is one we ourselves engender, Obama no longer matters.

The cascade of events and his behavior that rendered him ineffective began in Benghazi last September when our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed. It wasn't the tragic murders that began to bring down Obama, but his administration's and his careless and perhaps deceitful handling of the narrative about what happened.

Then for at least a year, Obama's back-and-forth fumbling about what to do about the unraveling in Syria is a further example of his inability to have America exert influence or, more important, contribute to solving global problems. Admittedly, the situation there is likely intractable. The colonial and big-oil history of Western involvement in the region for more than 100 years, which included ignoring tribal and ethnic issues, is a classic case of proverbial geopolitical chickens coming home to roost.

Closer to home was and is the Internal Revenue scandal. "Scandal" is not too strong a term to describe the situation where the IRS, the most hated of the federal government's agencies, apparently targeted Tea-Party-related organizations seeking tax-exempt status. Once again, as serious as the deeds themselves was the ham-handed way in which the Obama administration handled the excuse-making and eventual staff changes.

Of course, perhaps worst of all, were the disclosures about the unfettered N.S.A. spying on American citizens at home and abroad. Yes, much or most of this may have been, is strictly-speaking "legal" and needs to be secret; but the casual way in which constitutional-scholar Barack Obama attempted to shrug off the facts that were emerging and the out-and-out dissembling, OK, lying by his national security team is beyond disappointing. And this gave his opponents, and the rest of us, further reason to be concerned about his ability to lead.

Speaking of his opponents, his domestic ones have effectively shut down any hope of legislative fixes to any of our daunting closer-to-home problems.

Because Barack Obama is inherently incapable of establishing personal relationships with congressional leaders of both parties--it is obvious that he even hates to have any of them over for a drink--do not expect comprehensive immigration reform. Tea-Party members in the House will assure that nothing comprehensive occurs.

Forget dealing with tax reform and sensible deficit reduction. Again Tea-Party Republicans are happy to do nothing and in that passive way see, to them, hated programs such as subsidized college loans and food stamps wither for lack of funding.

Forget doing much about climate change. Obama can make all the speeches he desires about this and other critical issues, but Republican opponents will continue to shrug him off.

Further, President Obama does not appear to have any international friends or partners. At the recent G-8 summit, when he attempted to sit down with Russian President Putin to talk about Libya and Iran, the pictures of them not relating to each other were worth many more than a thousand words.

And when the N.S.A. leaker revealed that the U.S. has been massively spying on our European allies, not one Western leader came to Obama's or America's defense. In fact, the head of the E.U. compared this outrageous behavior to what the Stasi did in East Germany during the Cold War.  To have the U.S. government compared publicly and angrily to the oppressive and barbaric East German communist regime may be hyperbole, but it is hyperbole engendered by Obama's passive behavior.

Then as a kind of piece de resistance, there was the announcement late last week, via a staffer, that the roll-out of Obama's signature, perhaps historic health care program's, Obamacare's implementation will be delayed for at least a year. This brought glee to Republicans who claimed, rightly, that the Obama administration is incapable of running even its most-favored initiative.

Lastly, at a very different level of concern, when my mother turned 105 last week, Rona attempted to get the White House to send her a letter of congratulations. She was able to get such letters from hapless George W. Bush when my mother's sisters Gussie and Fay turned 100; but my mom is still waiting for her letter from the current president.

Barack Obama may be gifted at delivering speeches and getting elected and reelected, but for running his administration, for leading the country, to acting effectively as the "leader of the free world," not so much.

So, it's on to 2016.