Support for President Trump

I call upon Democrats and Principled Conservatives to provide Trump with the same level of support and cooperation that Republicans provided to President Obama.

You Can Collaborate or You Can Resist

Masha Gessen writing for The New York Review of Books produces Autocracy: Rules for Survival.  

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, TheNew York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.
He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.
To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.
The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information.
The power of the investigative press—whose adherence to fact has already been severely challenged by the conspiracy-minded, lie-spinning Trump campaign—will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier. Even in the unlikely event that some mainstream media outlets decide to declare themselves in opposition to the current government, or even simply to report its abuses and failings, the president will get to frame many issues. Coverage, and thinking, will drift in a Trumpian direction, just as it did during the campaign – when, for example, the candidates argued, in essence, whether Muslim Americans bear collective responsibility for acts of terrorism or can redeem themselves by becoming the “eyes and ears” of law enforcement. Thus was xenophobia further normalized, paving the way for Trump to make good on his promises to track American Muslims and ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.
Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home.
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.

The Consequences of President Trump

I do not believe at this time that I can sway minds in this election.  You've made your decision.  You are voting for who you are voting.  Whatever I write here in this space will not change your mind.  If you are voting for Trump, Johnson or Stein then you own the consequences.  This post is about the consequences of those votes because those votes add up to the statement "I'm fine with Donald Trump being President" and if you feel that way, then you own the consequences and I'm going to lay out some of them for you.

Donald Trump is an authoritarian.  I've had arguments with people if he rises to the level of fascism.  He is a fascist.  The oligarchs in America will do quite well with President Trump.  One of the traits of fascism is that the people who support it do well when the government hands out contracts and spending.  And they will do well.  Donald Trump has already called for slashing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and his tax cut plan involves handing 99% of the benefits to the 1% in America.  He is an authoritarian who has said he will sue news sources and he has said he would put Hillary Clinton in jail if he wins.  Think he's bluffing?  When has Donald Trump forgiven a slight?  When has he not sought revenge when it was available.  He may not be a Hitler, but he is certainly a Mussolini or a Franco.

Paul Ryan's budget framework for the Federal Government will pass.  No one thinks the likelihood of the House of Representatives turning Democratic with this election to even be worth mentioning.  It is highly likely that if Donald Trump wins the election that the Republicans will retain a Senate Majority.  That means Paul Ryan can start passing his budget plan and it will be signed into law.  What's in that plan?  Tax cuts for the wealthy and Trump is already on board on that.  Restructure of Medicare devolving authority to the States and pushing the funding to the states in the form or grants.  The other offing for Medicare would be simple privatization at the Federal level.  Either way your parents Medicare is under the axe.  Obamacare would obviously be repealed and no there is no Republican alternative.  Social Security would be back under the threat of privatization.  Trump said he would save it, but didn't say how.  The Republican plan for "saving" Social Security has always been about privatization and it would likely take the form of 401k-type plans funded by payroll deductions in which Wall Street gets to start extracting management fees.  In order to pay for those tax cuts without cutting military spending social programs will have to be cut deep.  Dodd Frank which created a watchdog committee to monitor abuses by financial firms will be repealed.  They will also continue to dismantle regulations on other industries.

Donald Trump has also decided to end Federal support for Global Warming preparation and spending on renewable energy.  The US would pull out of the current global accord on climate change.  The accord likely would collapse.  A few degree world wide warming is going to cause droughts on the land and rising sea levels with coastal areas flooded.  None of that will be immediate, but will take decades.

The Supreme Court has a vacancy.  It will be filled by someone who will support the Republican agenda.  There are at least two more liberally leaning SCOTUS Justices who will retire in the next four to eight years.  The Republican Party and President Trump will hold a majority on the Supreme Court for another twenty years.

We've seen a great deal of work at the state level to suppress the voting blocks that traditionally support Democratic politicians.  That will continue and with the Supreme Court solidly in Republican hands for a generation and the Legislature and Executive branches we will see no attempt at the Federal level to stop these attempts.

These are some of the consequences of allowing Trump to become President.  There is one candidate who is in a position to stop this and she is Hillary Clinton.  None of what I describe above will come to pass while Hillary is President.  So there's your choice and there's your consequences.  Don't say you weren't warned.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Four

Question Four on the Massachusetts ballot concerns the legalization of marijuana.

I'm voting yes on question four.

I don't smoke marijuana.  I smoked it a couple times between high school and college and that was over twenty years ago.  So I do have some basis of understanding marijuana.  I've also smoked tobacco a few times over the years.  Single cigarettes here and there and the last time I tried one was when it was still legal to smoke in bars in Massachusetts.  My memories of smoking marijuana area about the same as smoking a cigarette.  I got about the same impact from smoking marijuana as I did a cigarette.  If tobacco hadn't of been big business when marijuana was made illegal you can bet tobacco would have gone that path too.  And then there's alcohol.  I don't see much difference between the impacts of alcohol and marijuana either.  The new law would only make marijuana legal for people over twenty-one, just like alcohol and tobacco.  I don't see any big difference between marijuana, tobacco and alcohol.  Alcohol and tobacco are legal.  Marijuana should be too.

I'm also a believer in the legalize it and tax it approach.  Right now we have a pretty big black market for marijuana.  None of that is taxed.  Legalize it and tax it.  Bring in new revenue to the state.

Lastly I'm a fan of personal rights.  Adults over twenty-one are fully capable of making their own decision to smoke marijuana or not.  We can put the same curbs on it as we do alcohol.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Three

Question Three on the Massachusetts ballot concerns a change to animal husbandry laws in the state. I'm just going to copy and paste a block from the state site: "his proposed law would prohibit any farm owner or operator from knowingly confining any breeding pig, calf raised for veal, or egg-laying hen in a way that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely. The proposed law would also prohibit any business owner or operator in Massachusetts from selling whole eggs intended for human consumption or any uncooked cut of veal or pork if the business owner or operator knows or should know that the hen, breeding pig, or veal calf that produced these products was confined in a manner prohibited by the proposed law. The proposed law would exempt sales of food products that combine veal or pork with other products, including soups, sandwiches, pizzas, hotdogs, or similar processed or prepared food items."

This is a hard one.  I do feel for the question, but I don't know enough about farming.  I understand the point of trying to get animals a "living" space, but again I don't know what this would mean to farms.  I also don't know how many farms would be impacted by this or what redress those farms would have if they can't comply.  I'm also not a fan of holding retailers for selling animal products if they "should know" that the animals weren't given the space indicated in this law.  I'm also a bit concerned about the cost of food products and how that would impact people living in poverty.

I guess the short of it is that I'm voting no on this one.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Two

Question Two on the Massachusetts ballot concerns lifting the current limit on the number of charter schools that can be opened in Massachusetts in a given year.  According to the summary the cap would rise to twelve or a maximum of 1% of total student enrollment.  I'm voting no.

I spent four years as a member of the Leicester School Committee.  I have a number of reasons to oppose this question.

First, the current cap allows for the Department of Education to actually take time to review individual applications.  Everyone likes to complain that the government is horrible and can't do anything right, but we're expected to believe that in this case they can effectively review twelve or more applications per year and only approve the qualified ones.  I find that doubtful.  The Department of Education is going to be swarmed with applications and they won't have time to properly review them all and they'll be under political pressure  to approve new schools.  Quality is going to suffer.  Bad charters are going to get approved.  How many years will go by before these bad charters are then identified and closed?  How often are charters in Massachusetts closed?  If it was just a matter of  the fact that it takes time it wouldn't be so bad, but each year is a year of a child's education.  Children don't get those years back.  The current cap allows for the Board of Education to review a small number and approve only the best of those number.  Towns don't open new schools very often, sometimes they replace existing schools, but they don't open truly new schools often and when they do they staff them with teachers and administrators from other schools.  In this case a new charter is truly a new thing in Massachusetts.  We owe it to the kids to make sure each and everyone of those charters is fully vetted and reviewed prior to being approved.  I do not trust the Massachusetts Board of Education to make a truly professional and thorough review when they will be approving so many at one time.  They just can't do it.  Bad schools will get approved and kids will pay the price.

Then there's the funding.  In Massachusetts the state sets a minimum budget number that school districts need to be provided.  The minimum budget is basically broken into two parts. One part is the amount that the local community is expected to raise through local taxes to support the school.  The difference between the local funding requirement and the minimum required budget is given by the state in the form of Chapter 70 funding.  When a charter opens in a district and students from that district enroll the state deducts a portion from that district's Chapter 70 and gives it to the charter.  The state uses an average per student spending number.  The average doesn't differentiate between elementary students and high school students.  The fact is that high school students are more expensive to educate than elementary schools students, so a k-8 charter gets some very impressive funding and the sending district loses more per student than it would take to educate those k-8 students (the way it works is that since high school students are more expensive to educate and k-8 are cheaper it balances out at the district level).  So charters get preferential funding.  There is bridge funding that the state provides for a couple years, but it's less than the amount the district loses and goes away fast.  I've read some disingenuous articles suggesting that local communities could just raise taxes to make up the difference, but that because of Proposition 2 1/2 (the property tax cap law in Massachusetts which limits how much local property tax can increase in a given year without an override vote by the community) it is nearly impossible to get such an increase in local taxes.  The fact is that most district schools are dependent on Chapter 70 funding because the towns can't raise taxes and when they lose the Chapter 70 funding they lose they just can't make it up.

And local schools can't cut costs.  Because of the property tax cap the schools are already running tight budgets.  The towns keep a wary eye on school budgets because the Boards of Selectmen and City Councils have to balance school funding against municipal funding knowing that they have a tax increase limit to work against.  Towns in Massachusetts run tight budgets.  And lets be honest there's only so much overhead that can be cut when a kid leaves a school.  If you have a school with 500 kids and 50 leave you can't close the school.  You can save some money by not needing one or two teachers and then money on supplies.  You still need that building.  You still need maintenance staff.  You still need administrators. You still need heat.  You still need all the other teachers.  You still have 450 kids needing an education.  So thinking you can just cut costs to make up the loss is simple minded.  It's an argument made by someone who hasn't actually thought through what they are saying or who has thought it through and decided to lie about it.

Which brings me to the advertisements by the "yes crowd."  I've seen a lot of these and oh my word are they full of lies.  I won't even go into them.  Basically my previous two paragraphs rebut most of the points that I hear in the ads.  Look at the funding behind those ads and you'll find that most of it is coming from out of state sources.  The people backing this don't even live in this state.  Outsiders want to change education in a state in which their kids will never have to live.  I have an issue with that.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned in this my personal view on charters.  I won't.  Charters are part of Massachusetts life.  The question is currently should we lift the cap on the number.  I think the current cap and the current process works for Massachusetts.  Massachusetts has the best schools in the country and if Massachusetts were it's own nation it would rank high on the list of best countries.  Massachusetts has technology companies specifically opening in the state because we produce well educated kids.  I don't see threatening that because a group of people who don't live here want to see their agenda advanced.  What I want is to see that kids in Massachusetts receive a quality education.  Public schools in Massachusetts have been under pressure to improve test scores and graduation rates since the 1990s and have achieved remarkable success as evidenced by the number of technology companies filling the office buildings in the Eastern part of the state.  The charters that have been opened have gone through a rigorous process of review and only a few can open per year which means that only best make it through.  I consider this law a danger to what's already been accomplished and what has been shown to work and I can not in good conscience support a law that I consider reckless.

I'm voting no on question two and I would suggest that you vote no too.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question One

In past blogs I've typically written about how I'm planning to vote on the upcoming ballot questions.  I'll post each individually.

Question One on the Massachusetts ballot is about expanded slot machine gaming.  I'm voting no on this one.  

When the last gambling question came up I was in favor of it.  I have no particular issue with gambling.  I personally don't engage in it.  I've been to a casino a couple of times and don't find it of any particular interest.  My reason for voting in favor of gambling then was that people were leaving the state to engage in gambling in Connecticut and I didn't see why Massachusetts should forgo that tax revenue.  Yes, some people may engage in self destructive behavior with gambling, but I'm not a fan of telling adults what they can and can not do.  I'm very much in favor of personal liberty and letting people do what they want so long as they don't cause harm to others and if they do cause harm to others we have plenty of laws to deal with that.  

Why am I not voting in favor this time?  I have a problem with this particular referendum.  This was ywritten in such a way that only one location could possible be suitable for the new slot parlor.  I'm just not a fan of this type of targeted agenda in the referendum process.  It won't hurt me or pretty much anyone that I can think of it passes, but this type of referendum just doesn't fit what I consider to be a good purpose of the process.  It sets a standard that anyone with a personal agenda can push to get a law passed that fits their desires.  I just don't agree with that approach.