Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture – Discussion

This is the fourth in this series. I recommend that you read or re-read Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here.

I have received two comments on the first two posts and I want to share those with you, together with my responses:

Michael Cerratto Esq. of Westville, New Jersey, wrote:

Good, something I don't feel so intimidated commenting on!

 The closing incident reminds me of a comment I once heard about the "cops vs. bad guys dynamic" being nothing more than our young delinquents vs. THEIR young delinquents. In any event, there are just too many dead bodies littering the streets lately, and the fact that we are only just now beginning to ask the questions which will, I pray, lead to some explanation of what is going on does not speak well of us. But then, again, I wonder if we really want the answers? Time will tell.

To which I replied:

You ask: "But then, again, I wonder if we really want the answers?"

According to CNN we do not.

I quote from my blog: "Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture - I”:

How many people are shot by police every year? Nobody seems to know the exact number (something that is itself disturbing -- no official government agency tracks the full data for the entire country)

… nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn't want it. They were concerned with their image and liability. They don't want to bother with it.''

If you have any observation on my later post, I welcome it.

And Bob Russo of Montclair, and its former mayor, chimed in with:

I loved your 20 year old letter to the Editor... and the reference to the Ham sandwich being indicted...the more things change, the more they STAY the same, I think is the correct version. Anyway, I think you are absolutely right on all counts. I just have a hard time as former Mayor and Deputy Mayor demonstrating against my police department as I have been asked to do by protestors of police brutality, which I believe really does exist, but should probably be referred to as overzealous excessive use of force. I just don't know what the solution to mistrust of police based on legitimate fears and negative past experiences is...while we still need the security provided by adequate community policing and foot patrols. I think we should be putting more police on the streets and devoting more resources to public safety and security at this time of increased violence and potential terrorism.....but the nation does not seem to care.....We should devote energy to securing our communities,  especially urban areas and cities,  rather than spending billions on foreign adventures that seem to only fan the flames of more hatred toward us....and we should fix our bridges and infrastructure which are crumbling due to neglect.   We really need another TR and FDR with a public works agenda to make things right again......sorry to write so late......I was just catching up and that is my commentary on yours tonight! 

Which prompted this response from me:

Sorry about not getting the idiom correct. I usually check things on the web, rather than relying on my memory, but in this case, apparently, I felt so comfortable with the form I used, (incorrectly) that I never thought of checking it.

On the substance, neither a TR nor an FDR, nor an LBJ, would make any difference. They all had collaborative Congresses, and overwhelming majorities in those Congresses. Congress does make a difference. And it used to be that politics ended at the water’s edge. All that is gone. 

The Supreme Court is no longer a judicial body, but a purely political one, with power greater then that of either the President or that of Congress. The Congress can be vetoed by the President, and the President can be overridden by 2/3rd in both houses, but SCOTUS can only be overridden but 2/3 of both houses and 3/4th of the legislatures of the states. That is awesome power, and when it is abused, e.g. Bush v. Gore, or the United case, which effectively legalized bribery and extortion, it does harm far beyond what people realize. Had Gore been allowed his victory, as was in fact the intent of the voters, the Supreme Court would have a totally different composition, would be handing down entirely different decisions, and even elections might be run differently, if a different court where to strike down the outrageous suppression of voters and the gerrymandering.

I have become convinced that SCOTUS must be weakened. I think 5-4 decisions should be treated as a tie and of no force and effect. I am aware that this might means that the upcoming 5-4 decision on gay marriage would be of no effect, but that would still leave most of the US with legal gay marriage. I assume that in any case giving effect to the Constitution’s, Full Faith and Credit clause (Article VI -Section 1) so that each state has to recognize a legal marriage in another state, is unavoidable even for the Right wing nuts on the Court. The language in the Constitution is too plain.

As for the police, I don’t think that we have inadequate forces. That may have been true once - I don’t think it is true any longer. But the police must be held accountable. If they are not, we are in deep trouble. But it goes way beyond the police. It is our whole criminal justice system, as I will elaborate in future posts.

As for "securing our communities, especially urban areas and cities” the best way to secure them in the long run is to deal with their economic and social problems. The outrageous under-financing of their schools, which should not be financed by local property taxes, which by their very nature finance poor neighborhood schools poorly, and wealthy ones extremely generously.  But, schools are not enough, unless we attack the underlying poverty and the social and cultural problems that have arisen from years, indeed generations of persecution, under-employment, and neglect.

As for "foreign adventures” I believe we must guard against isolationism (that has never served us well), while guarding against foolish involvement. Examples of sound involvement were the actions taken by Clinton in Bosnia and by George H.W. Bush in stopping the invasion of Kuwait, while Iraq, and of course, Vietnam were major errors. I think we are doing the right thing in punishing an expansionist Russia, but as I have indicated, we are wrong to allow an expansionist Israel.

Well, that’s a lot of area to cover in a nutshell, but on the criminal justice system, stay tuned.

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office. 

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued III)

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

In my last post entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)" as well as in the posts preceding that, namely "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)" and "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward," I discussed at length how the Republican Party has drifted further and further Right, with that movement having now accelerated beyond anything that preceded it with the advent of the Tea Party basically taking over the G.O.P.

Most would assume that this rightward trek started with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, but it actually began long before. In 1964 while Lyndon Johnson was basking in his Congressional successes and was getting ready to run for re-election in his own right, after succeeding the martyred John F. Kennedy, a battle for the soul of the Republican Party was taking place. Barry Goldwater, representing the extreme Right of the Republican Party, ran for the party’s nomination against Nelson Rockefeller, who even though now identified with the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws, was considered the liberal wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater won the nomination and even though he went on to a landslide defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson, the Right-wing control of the G.O.P. was never seriously in doubt thereafter.

Today, we are shocked as we see moderate and even conservative Republicans lose primary contests to the extreme Right wing of that party, but most have undoubtedly forgotten just how long this has been going on.

Yet it was as early as 1978 (two years before the election of Ronald Reagan) that Republican Senator Clifford P. Case, a liberal Republican from New Jersey, was defeated in the Republican primary, presaging the Rightward march that has since been identified with Ronald Reagan.

The Republican Party has now marched so far Right that Ronald Reagan would undoubtedly be considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by today’s standards. After all it was he who was enough of a pragmatist, despite his rhetoric, that when he was faced with a growing deficit introduced TEFRA, which is described by the Right-wing blog The Free Market as “the largest tax increase in American history”

And so we now have a Republican party that is so far Right that the Cato Institute, The Libertarian Think Tank speaking through its spokesperson, Daniel Mitchell, on the Newshour, referred to Nixon and Bush as: “big-government interventionists.” What might he have said of President Eisenhower who warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” And added.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. 

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. 

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. 

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. 

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. 

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. 

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. 

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

But the party has gone so far Right that its official Ryan “budget” endorsed by its Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, was denounced by the Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in these words:

I reiterate our strong opposition to an unfair proposal that would alter the Child Tax Credit to exclude children of hard-working, immigrant families,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. “Denying the credit to children of working poor immigrant families--the large majority of whom are American citizens--would hurt vulnerable kids, increase poverty, and would not advance the common good.   

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), provides vital food security to families during tough economic times,” Bishop Blaire added. “It is estimated that cuts proposed in this bill would deny assistance to two million families, and cut the benefit for everyone else. No poor family that receives food assistance would be unaffected, constituting a direct threat to their human dignity.   

The Social Services Block Grant is an important source of funding for programs throughout the country that serve vulnerable members of our communities--the homeless, the elderly, people with disabilities, children living in poverty, and abuse victims,” he continued. “We should prioritize programs that serve “the least of these,” not eliminate them.   

The Catholic bishops of the United States recognize the serious deficits our country faces, and we acknowledge that Congress must make difficult decisions about how to allocate burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs,” Bishop Blaire added. “However, deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility efforts must protect and not undermine the needs of poor and vulnerable people. The proposed cuts to programs in the budget reconciliation fail this basic moral test.

And Bishop Stephen Blaire, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice, Peace and Human Development, added:

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs. The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.

And on their web site the US Conference of Catholic Bishops set forth these criteria for evaluating a budget.

1.Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.  

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first. 

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times…  

Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs.

In April 16 and April 17 letters to the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee addressing cuts required by the budget resolution, Bishop Blaire said:

The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.

Bishop Blaire also wrote that cuts to nutrition programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- food stamps) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) will hurt hungry children, poor families, low-income workers and other vulnerable people. Additionally, he wrote that if cuts to the federal budget need to be made, savings should first be found in programs that target more affluent and powerful interests.

Altogether three letters were written by the Bishops. The can be found here, here and here.

Other religious leaders' statements can be found here.

But our so-called middle and even many on the so-called Left do not find it in their hearts to express outrage and our media -- – Well, They see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

They are busy analyzing events only from the perspective of a horse race.

But I have gone far afield from where I intended to go. In my last post I concluded with: “But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by [David] Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Well, I guess that will have to wait till next time.

If you have read this please click here: es628@columbia.edu put "read" in the subject and hit send. A note will be welcome but it is not necessary.

The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part III)

In my posts entitled: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part I)" and "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part II)" I set forth an analysis showing that the urgency of the deficit has deliberately been exaggerated, for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to use it as a wedge to decimate all the protection that we have built up, not only from the deprivations of our senior years, but from all the threats that modern technology, if unchecked, subjects us to. Many of these, such as the FDA keep our food and drugs safe, or the EPA which keeps our water and our air from being ever more contaminated, the SEC that keeps our securities safe from rigging (at least when properly funded and properly headed) than it is. I could go on and on, but let me mention a few more such as our schools and libraries, our National Parks, our National monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Or the agencies that are supposed to prevent oil spill disasters, such as the Valdez spill in Alaska, or the more recent one in the Gulf of Mexico. Even our safety in riding an interstate bus depends on Federal Regulation, which the recent fatal bus crash in the Bronx dramatically reminds us.

They all need adequate funding and inadequate funding, which I am afraid is what is happening in the cuts that are quietly being agreed to, will decimate the protections on which we depend.

But let me address the elephants in the room: Social Security and Medicare. If you think the attempt to end Medicare and Social Security is something that Republicans feel is necessary to solve the deficit think again. It has been their goal since at even before the Administration of Ronald Reagan, who before he became President denounced the then incipient passage of Medicare with the following:

We do not want socialized medicine…behind it will come other government programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism…We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” He went on to say: “The doctor begins to lose freedoms, it’s like telling a lie. One leads to another. First you decide the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government, but then the doctors are equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him he can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

(Emphasis added)

You can find both the quote and a video of the speech here.

When Reagan became President he became somewhat of a pragmatist and, as far as I can find made no effort to have Medicare repealed. In fact, despite his rhetoric on Social Security where he had scorned Social Security as “as an involuntary, quasi-socialistic example of government running amok” and argued, in a nationally televised 1964 speech for GOP candidate Barry Goldwater, that Social Security should become a "voluntary" program. But as President he made an agreement with Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill. It raised the payroll tax, it raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 to be phased in by 2027; it required government employees to pay into Social Security for the first time; and beginning in 1984, includes up to one-half of Social Security benefits as taxable income for taxpayers whose adjusted gross income, combined with half their benefits and any tax-exempt interest they may have exceeds $25,000 for a single taxpayer and $32,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly. Benefits received by married taxpayers filing separately are taxable without regard to other income. Appropriates amounts equal to estimated tax liability to the Social Security trust funds. These reforms extended the life of Social Security by many decades.

But this sort of compromise is not one the new inflexible ideologues of the Republican Party are seeking. George W. Bush proposed in 2005 doing away with Social Security and substitute for it private investment accounts. “While the White House has helped convince more than two-thirds of those polled that Social Security is heading for a crisis or possible bankruptcy without change, 56 percent disapprove(d) of his approach…” wrote the Washington Post in March of 2005 The proposal went nowhere.

So it was obvious that the determination to abolish all that had been accomplished by Roosevelt –Social Security; by Lyndon Johnson - Medicare and Medicaid, by their own Richard Nixon –the EPA and all the other programs, e.g. Theodore Roosevelt – Food and Drug Administration or our under funded National Parks the first of which having been created in 1896 under the Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, would, if they have not already been, be either abolished or have their funding severely cut. Rahm Emanuel once said” You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," but here there is a desire not only to take advantage of a crisis, but one that doesn’t really exist, and that to the extent that it does, was deliberately created by them, for the very purpose of finding a rationale, an excuse, to do what the public would not otherwise let them.

In case anyone doubts that even our National Parks and all conservation efforts are under attack, see what the non-partisan Wilderness Society has to say or regarding the arts and NEA funding see Advocate For The Arts.

Every decent program conceived by either party in years past, before the Republican Party became an irresponsible radical party, is endangered.

But before I close, and despite the risks of making this too, long allow me to revert to my last post: “The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part II)” where I quote from the Economist.

I believe this quote is so important that with your indulgence I will repeat it here:

Mr Ryan's plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programs for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus's plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I'm curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus's budget proposal. But it's hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes "courageous" and "honest". And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is rooted in class.

Yes, the conservative, Economist, is more inclined to tell it the way it is than the so-called “liberal” and so called “un-biased press.”

This struck me last Friday night when I listened to the highly respected PBS program Washington Week where in their endeavor to sound non-Partisan, they ended up explaining nothing and made this epical battle over the future of our country sound like a squabble between of playground kids, or as though, or at best, it was a sporting event. Worse of all, when they finally, did concede that great philosophical divides are what drives the power play, they defined it as, “Big government vs. Small Government” which is exactly the way Tea Party members, and indeed Republicans in general, would like to define it, for in polls when the issues are defined that way Republicans win, while if it is defined as specific programs that are endangered, from Medicare, to SS, to our clean air, water, etc. Democrats win. Thus as the Economist points out, we do not have to look for “Fox News” to find a “disparate treatment… rooted in class.”

It is very discouraging that we can not find unbiased reporting on such an important subject even on PBS – or are they too worried about funding from the Republican Congress and Corporate underwriters.

Again in order not to make this unduly long I will, in my next post, “The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part IV)” review how they planned, nay, plotted to create this crisis for the very purpose of gutting all these programs.

The Vanishing Middle in America

I am increasingly disturbed by what I perceive as the vanishing middle in America. Of course, many will differ as to what constitutes the middle. The media, that institution so vital to our Democracy, increasingly caters to popular opinion, and too often fails in its responsibility to inform. Too often they seek to reinforce what might be called “the conventional wisdom” without questioning its validity or even its basis in fact.

Thus the conventional wisdom on the “middle” might be those many, who proudly claim to be independents, affiliate with no party and claim they vote on the merits of individual candidates, but when we examine their philosophical orientation we find they have none, and that too often they vote on the basis of the candidates charisma, charm, or whether they once met him and found him a “fellow well met”. It was this kind of thinking that brought many voters into the camp of George W. Bush because as was said at the time of his first election, by Chris Mathews of MSNBC among others, that he was a person one would feel more comfortable drinking beer with. Is this a sound criterion for choosing our President?

As can be seen from the positions of the political parties in the Congress they are now so far apart that the filibuster has become a matter of Republican Party policy and compromise has become a dirty word. The “conventional wisdom” is that the filibuster has always been used and that it protects the rights of the minority. But like so many concepts falling into the category of conventional wisdom it is a myth. To be sure the filibuster was at one time used by devoted segregationists and defenders of the right of states to in effect legalize lynching, but it was never used by any political party as a tool of party policy. Thus in 1957 Senator Strom Thurmond, at that time a segregationist Southern Democrat (later the candidate for President on the Dixiecrat slate and finally a Republican) conducted a one man filibuster, talking against a 1957 civil rights bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

But while that was dramatic it was also unusual, and Thurmond was unsuccessful. It was so unusual that there was only an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. But when the Republicans lost control of the Senate in the 110th Congress of 2007-2008, and even though they still had a Republican President who could veto legislation, they used a record 112 filibusters, and so far in this Congress they have already used this tactic over 40 times and we still have eight months to go.

See also this article in US News & World Report.

Republican voters are so unforgiving of compromise that George H.W. Bush was defeated for agreeing to a compromise with Democrats in order to reduce a looming budget deficit which called for both spending cuts and tax increases, thus violating the party’s commitment to never increasing taxes.

Thus with no middle ground between the parties those who claim to straddle between two irreconcilable philosophies can only be compared to a person with one foot on land and the other in a boat well away from the shore and moving further away. They can only drown. They may swing elections, but they will never bring about a positive legislative agenda for they lack a political philosophy.

There is a great misunderstanding about how much things have changed. I keep hearing about how President Lyndon Johnson was able to get Medicare passed with 68 votes, but bills that have the votes to pass attract more votes than they would otherwise get. That is still true today as can be seen from the passage of the jobs bill where only five Republican Senators voted to end the filibuster but eleven voted for the bill on final passage, the idea being to stop the bill if possible, but record a positive vote for a popular bill if it is going to pass anyway.

The fact is that Johnson only had 55 votes for Medicare that he could count on or to quote from a letter written at the time “Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.”

At that time it would have taken 67 votes to stop a filibuster, but the Republican Party never contemplated using that unsavory device. How times have changed!

And how has the media and this so called middle greeted this outrage. They have accepted Republican claims that it is the intent of the founders that it should take 60 votes to pass anything, or even to confirm a Presidential appointment, and that attempts to circumvent such obstructionism, whether by reconciliation, or any other means is in some way unsavory.

And some are even trying to pass of the Tea Partiers as a grass roots movement. Thus Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader, who more than anyone else founded and is leading the movement tries to pass them off as, “These are folks who don't care about politics and don't like politics and don't like politicians. They're skeptical and cynical about all of them…” but ignores that these are the same people, or at least the political heirs to the John Birch Society or as one article described them, they are “white, male, older, less educated, Southern and religious…”.

But even now the movement is already the subject of a power struggle between Armey, who resists its nativists impulses as led by Tom Tancredo, or in Armey’s words, “… bungling the issue in a way that would alienate much of the electorate, by failing to keep a lid on such anti-immigrant crusaders as Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado congressman.” And Armey has good reason to be concerned about this for as George Will, one of the so-called intellectual spokesmen of the Right has pointed out, “Demography often is political destiny, and 47 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority.”

So where do we find the true middle?

It may or may not surprise the reader to hear that I put a claim on that designation. For if the middle is to be found somewhere between FOX and MSNBC, I fit that description. But in order not to burden the reader with too much verbiage in one post, I will defer an exposition on this claim for a few days. In the meantime I hope the readers will take the time to read at least some of my source material.

The Achievements of Barack Obama

 From the viewpoint of Republicans, who lately have chosen to dress themselves in the mantle of Independence and pretended bipartisanship, Obama has achieved nothing worthwhile, and every act of his and every achievement has been a detriment. That is not surprising.

But what we are increasingly finding is that it is his base that is complaining, “too slow” and some of his acts are a betrayal of their agenda and of his promises. It's strange, but it wasn't so long ago that the complaints were "Too Much To Soon?" prompting me to write a commentary by that name on April 9, 2009 rebutting that fallacious viewpoint.

I think that the criticism is factually wrong and strategically counterproductive. It ignores that Obama has done more in his first year in office since any President, save for FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

So what has he done so far? I will list some of these at random.

 He saved this country, and arguably the whole world from an economic meltdown on the scale of the ’29 depression and he did it in record time. On October 12, 2009, eight months after his inaugural Fox Business reported, “The recession, which began in December 2007, (almost a year and a half before his inaugural) has ended…” On November 25, 2009 Reuters reported, “U.S. consumer spending rises, jobless claims tumble." 

   If he had accomplished nothing more in his first year than this, it should have marked his Administration as one of solid achievement. Instead both Left and Right are complaining about an unemployment rate, a lagging indicator, as being at 10.2%. When the Reagan Administration without having to cope with an incipient meltdown, allowed unemployment to become almost as bad at 9.7%, I do not recall either the Left or the Right indulging in the kind of hand wringing we see now. In economic terms there are still certain laws. The economy must revive, and job growth will inevitably follow. The economy has revived, and only the disgruntled and those disconnected from reality will do other than applaud.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace prize was derided by both Left and Right on the ground that he had not yet accomplished anything, but his success in changing the standing and the image of the US throughout the world, and in fostering diplomacy instead of endless confrontation with friend and foe alike, was a major accomplishment.

He started the process to reform our Health Care System and has succeeded in getting it through the House. Even if it eventually flounders in the Senate, it is his leadership that has brought it to a point never before reached in American history.

But a number of things have already been accomplished in the Health Care area through the stimulus package, e.g. $19 billion has been allocated to help implement an electronic medical record system.

On infrastructure the Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects.

A $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education has been enacted. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion.

 He has saved the jobs of untold numbers of teachers and in the process saved the primary educational system in many states throughout the country.

He saved the auto industry and untold millions of jobs in the process.

He allocated $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems. One high-ranking Hill aide called battery technology "the next big frontier" in the automotive world.

Appropriated $5 billion in aid commitments "to bolster Pakistan’s economy and help it fight terror and Islamic radicalism" within the country.

Set up an office of Urban Policy in the White House.

Through the Recovery Act, DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces. The money, cut during the Bush years, should have massive ramifications on inner-city crime and violence.

 Signed Schip legislation giving health coverage to millions of children by a bipartisan vote.

 Pushed for and got unemployment insurance extended more than once by a bipartisan vote.

 The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 put under federal protection more than two million acres of wilderness, thousands of miles of river and a host of national trails and parks.

 He signed into law the Lilly Led-better Fair Pay Act, designed to make it easier for workers to sue over gender-based pay discrimination.

He cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers in his stimulus package.

Tightened limits on interrogation tactics by Central Intelligence Agency officers.

Removed financing restrictions on groups that provide or discuss abortion overseas.        
   
Granted California a waiver to regulate automobile tailpipe emissions linked to global warming.

Ordered the Transportation Department to issue guidelines that will ensure that the nation's auto fleet reaches an average fuel efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, or earlier.

The day after pill to stop unwanted pregnancies was approved by a new science based FDA.

Dealt effectively with a standoff with Somali Pirates.

 Changed Cuba policy allowing Cuban Americans unlimited travel and money transfers to relatives there.

 Signed an executive order reversing the ban on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research.

 Restarted nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia.

 Released the Bush Torture Memos, almost without redactions.

Announced a new policy on medical marijuana raids by the federal government.

EPA adopted the position that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare.

   Stopped the deployment of an ineffective missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

   Took away from perpetrators of 9/11 the positive appellation of enemy combatants and treats them as mass murderers and common criminals, bringing them before the bar of justice.

Put Sonya Sotomayor on the Supreme Court.
   
   I have no doubt that there are many accomplishments that I have overlooked, but anyone who says the Administration’s accomplishments are meager, has a short memory or a convenient one. Carping from the Right is to be expected. Carping from the base is foolish and counterproductive.

Why This Is So! (continued)

In my last two commentaries I first explained, why I believe that things are worse than they seem and then set forth my views as to why is so. 

Now I wish to continue my comments on why this so. All these problems were still manageable and in the election of 1968 Johnson won a landslide victory over the Republican nominee Barry Goldwater. This was a cataclysmic event not so much because of the overwhelming victory by Johnson but because it marked the transformation of the Republican party from an East Coast dominated conservative party to a radical Libertarian party which in its avowed radicalism tended to frighten voters and by comparison made Johnson into the peace candidate. But events and decisions by Johnson and other Democrats worked against Democratic strengths. First by the time the election of 1972 rolled around the Vietnam War had become increasingly unpopular. As a result Johnson, after his humiliation by Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, withdrew and Hubert Humphrey had the nomination within his grasp. There is every indication that Humphrey would have run as a peace candidate, but Johnson feeling that this would amount to a repudiation of his stewardship threatened to withdraw his support of Humphrey, which would have doomed his candidacy. As a result, Humphrey ended up antagonizing the peace movement, which resulted in huge peace demonstrations in Chicago. Chicago’s Democratic Mayor, Richard Daley, was not going to stand for the demonstrations and called out the riot police who were extremely hostile to the demonstrators, resulting in what many considered a police riot. The images in the media conveyed demonstrators, many of whom were rioting, as well as the brutality of the police against peaceful demonstrators, thoroughly damaging the Democrats in general, and Humphrey in particular. I voted for Humphrey, but at the time wrote an open letter to Humphrey, which was neither published nor responded to. 

The result was that Humphrey lost to Nixon (who had claimed that he had a secret plan to end the war) but who prolonged the war and caused untold casualties to American troops as well as Vietnam and Cambodian civilians. (Anyone who saw the movie “The Killing Fields” is well acquainted with the horrors that resulted. But despite this and even though Watergate was already brewing, Nixon won the next election beating McGovern the committed peace candidate by a landslide and Nixon, instead of being remembered as the man who prolonged the war and finally lost it, is remembered by many as the man who ended it.

Watergate ended Nixon’s career, but not the Southern strategy, and allowed him to pick his own successor, the Nixon loyalist Gerald Ford. Carter beat Ford, but not because Democrats were in the ascendancy or because Carter was a strong candidate, but because the smell of Watergate was still too strong in the nostrils of the electorate.

Carter is often dismissed as a failure because, it is asserted, he was too focused on details but there is little to support this other then the press’s penchant for caricaturing public figures, just as they caricatured Ford as not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

To me, Carter’s greatest fault was that he was a conservative in many ways and started the trend to deregulate making it fashionable; thereby laying the groundwork for the Republican massive assault on regulations in the years to come.

Why This Is So!

In my last column, entitled, “Things are worse than they seem,” I set forth my rather pessimistic views as to the state of the Democratic Party, (not Democrat Party) (more on this in a later essay) and the state of the progressive movement in general. I did not mention in that article two other disturbing factors which bear mention, namely that the percentage of the Latino and over 65 vote for Kerry, both declined from the percentages of the previous four years. I concluded my article with the promise that in my next analysis I will discuss why I think this is so and in a third installment I will discuss what I believe must be done to reverse the trend.

So here is why I think this is so! I believe that the seeds for demise of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, which has its roots in the administration of Theodore Roosevelt early in the twentieth century, were sown during the Administration of Lyndon Johnson and in the Civil Rights movement. Until then the Democratic Party held its dominance based on a coalition of what used to be the Confederacy whose representatives, for the most part, were segregationists and anti-union factions, and the industrial states centered on the East and West coasts and around the Great Lakes. Franklin Roosevelt, held this coalition together by never touching what he saw as the third rail of politics, namely the plight of African-American’s in the South. 

Truman endangered this coalition to some extent, when he desegregated the military, but the South, which associated the Republican Party, with Lincoln and emancipation, could not bring itself to even consider any association with this old enemy. Johnson, who but for Vietnam, might have gone down in history as the greatest of twentieth century Presidents, totally shattered this image by pushing through a recalcitrant Congress the greatest change in racial relations since the Emancipation Proclamation. What Johnson did may in fact have done more to free the Black man than Lincoln because Lincoln legacy left the Black man in something equivalent to slavery, known as “share cropping.” 

While the South was not immediately lost to the Democrats (voting habits die hard) the South gradually fell away from the Democratic party and when Nixon took advantage of this with his “Southern strategy” the die was cast, particularly when it became apparent that the party of Lincoln was now embracing the most rabid of the segregationists and welcoming them into its bosom. Strum Thurmond, who ran for President on the Dixiecrat ticket was only the most egregious of these. Not only was the South lost, but since then not a single Democratic candidate for president ever received a majority of the White, or more accurately, the Caucasian vote. 

Johnson did more than this. He enacted the programs of the Great Society, which with their great appeal to the poor and most of the middle class had the potential to overcome the loss of the segregationist vote. Johnson led a revolution, which in its scope dwarfed the achievements of the New Deal. Under his leadership, Congress enacted Medicare, Medicaid, Public Housing, and Aid to Dependent Children, to mention only the most important of his “War on Poverty.” Unfortunately, The Vietnam war not only tarnished his and the Democratic parties legacy but forced an underfunding of many of his programs, thus making many of them ineffective.