Cabinet? You Can Barely See Them. Another Accomplishment of Biden's.

Nobody's talking about the president's Cabinet. No articles. No discussions on talk shows.

It's almost like it isn't there. But it is. It's solid. It's made up of people who care. And they know what to do and how to act.

Something new, compared to the last four years of utter incompetence and sycophancy. Remember that first Cabinet meeting?

Remember that each Cabinet member declared their undying devotion and how they were so, so grateful to be added to the team of the terrible president? Remember that you got the feeling that anyone near the end of the line wouldn't possibly have a chance to say anything else?

Remember the Secretary of the Treasury and his wife, who made sure we knew how much fun it was to be rich? Janet Yellin hasn't, to my knowledge, said anything like that.

If she ever did, she'd be gone pretty quickly. Trust that. This president brooks no nonsense. It may be ego (which I highly doubt), it may be propriety as he understands it, but nobody's going to get out in front of him. They'll speak for their departments, and that's that.

Oh, he has a couple of people who have received their share of attention to this point: Pete Buttigieg at Transportation, for instance, who of course ran for Biden's spot but withdrew in classy style. His interviews on infrastructure have not wandered beyond policy and have outlined the task in excellent fashion.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who has taken turns as Michigan governor and talk show regular, knows her way around the media as well. But she hasn't sought it out. Her interviews are brief, pointed, and appropriate.

One guy, just one on the White House staff, pointed a veiled threat at a journalist who investigated his personal life. He was gone so fast you didn't notice his head spinning.

Biden was true to his word: You insult anybody and you will be gone that day. His administration won't be sidelined with frivolity, defined by him as anything else but issues of policy and action. There will be no losses of temper, no wild stuff.

The press secretary, Jen Psaki, is a model of press interaction. She is patient (so far; I wonder how long it will take her to totally blow up on right-wingers), cordial, professional. She is the spokesperson, on a daily, ongoing basis, for the administration. She's not a mindless wank, going out of her way to stifle any journalist that wishes to probe farther. She delivers for the public and to the public.

Beyond that, the Cabinet members chosen by Biden are (a) qualified and (b) desirous of the success of their endeavors, not undermining them disingenuously. Granholm is miles ahead of Rick Perry, who had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and arrived that way the first day she sat in the chair. That reflects on her competence, and Biden's.

We have heard little from the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, but trust that you will. He's not going to undermine and try to ruin public education, like Betsy DuVos tried to do right up to her last day. He didn't make a complete fool of himself in his Senate hearing. 

That's because Cardona was actually a teacher before that, because he knew his way around a classroom--instead of DuVos, who wasn't an expert in anything but destruction. But that's easy to do. Tearing down something takes no skill. It isn't governing.

We have heard remarkably little, as well, from the Justice Department, which Biden has allowed--as presidents are supposed to--to operate independently without political influence. That includes an investigation regarding his own son. Unquestionably, the previous president would have stifled such investigations on his son, and son-in-law, with incessant meddling. He would have had no hesitation whatsoever.

This goes beyond policy agreement, which I have for the most part. But viewpoints don't equal abilities to do the work. This is about what government can do when the right people are chosen. Money isn't wasted if things are done well by government; it's fulfillment of promises, implicit or otherwise. 

The public is served properly when the heads of departments do what they're told in ways that indicate that they have faith in those working for them. After all, they're people, as Biden pointed out in his speech to Congress last night. 

They aren't things placed in Washington, DC, to drive us crazy. They're flesh and blood. They do things. And they respond to problems and try to fix them.

Reagan, who didn't get it, either, once said that the nine worst words you can hear were I'm from the government and I'm here to help. That was wrong from the start, just like triple-down economics, a concoction of a dreamer who never mixed with the common person, at least in his adult life.

But they set a tone that's lasted four decades. At bottom, we got a president who had no idea what government did and just assumed that if he cut spending for something, anything, that was a good thing. He never believed in government because he had no idea what it's capabilities were. His utterly ridiculous attitude on the pandemic demonstrates it.

Biden's work on the pandemic, on the other hand, has gone far in restoring some trust in government. If he delivers on infrastructure, he can add to that. One thing's for sure: He won't have incompetence or grandstanding of his Cabinet standing in his way. It's a remarkable start, almost too good to be true. But then, we've just been through something too awful to imagine.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Harassment and Other Offenses: A Structure to Address Them

Andrew Cuomo's troubles with the opposite gender have been diffused, you have to admit, by relativism (and a recent in-state poll in which his political stature has been harmed but not devastated). After all, Matt Gaetz has allegedly conducted himself in far more offensive ways--and on the floor of the House of Representatives, if reports ring true. But Cuomo is still guilty of excessive schmoozing and perhaps jumping to conclusions, which is bad enough for normal guys but pretty awful for a sitting governor.

He's apologized, sort of, in a way that leaves you wondering whether it bothers him much at all. Not surprising, that's not good enough for those whom he has offended. They want specifics. But in public, that's water that both sides would be wise to tred gently.

This sticky, difficult road is walked by millions every day. Sex, after all, is what lends energy to many situations, even ones where no one wants to admit it. Nuances beckon. Some men and women are very good at observation, some men and women are rather offensive. (Don't stereotype.) So, too, with certain forms of commentary and tones of voice.

We need venues to hash these things out, largely because people become uncomfortable, especially at work. Surprisingly, the federal court system is attempting to create one.

What's that, you say? Well, yes. The courts are filled with (mostly) old white men who hire clerks to help them. Some of these clerks are women. Some of them are very attractive and dress so. Many are young and unmarried. Much of that is ripe for fantasy that, if not called out, can lead to disaster or, at the very least, embarrassing misunderstandings. They're as human as anyone else.

A person can feel bullied if she or he doesn't respond in a way that's expected, knowing that there are certain things that will go unmentioned, but shouldn't. The best interests of justice are thus not served, ironically, in a place where justice is supposed to take top priority.

But that's all in a vacuum. Clerks are aware of who hired them, and they want to please. They might tolerate comments and actions (e.g. ogling) that would otherwise evoke a deserved response, largely because they have goals and aspirations that might easily be dismantled by a bad recommendation or even a tepid one. In a perfect world, that wouldn't matter.

So how can someone deal with approaches that she/he feels, or knows, is inappropriate without going too far or flat-out embarrassing herself or someone else? Any accusations also unleash rumors within denials. It lights up a whole office sometimes, and serves as a lasting, halting distraction.

The Brennan Center for Justice held a Zoom conversation last month to discuss this very phenomenon. It can serve as a guide for other governmental situations and larger corporate venues. Certainly, it will have to involve more places for more discussions and more spending, because more personnel or more hours will be necessary. But as in nearly all things, spending upfront in terms of time and energy, not to mention money, usually results in much lesser spending down the road.

Margaret McKeown, an appellate justice in the 9th District, is on a committee gathered by none other than Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate these above situations in the federal court system. She spelled out a process that's been recently begun, starting with the Office of Judicial Integrity, which was created to deal with possible harassment claims.

McKeown said that a three-tiered system has been established to stem what she called "abusive and bullying behavior." She also, upon investigation, found that clerks prefer that someone "within the system" be involved in getting to the bottom of cases. She outlined three levels of reporting:

• Informal--just having a conversation off the record and anonymous, "someone to talk to;"
• Assisted resolution with a trained mediator; and
• Formal complaints, with a hearing and/or trial

That system is to be buttressed by training with staff and judges, especially new judges, to draw lines that should be strictly observed thus heading off problems before they develop. This is assuming, of course, that

• No previously established relationship exists between the two; and
• Any suggested relationship would be rejected, clearly and permanently.

I like the approach. The person who receives the informal complaint can ask whether he/she should report the conversation, again anonymously, to the judge (presumably) who's being accused of improper conduct (What if it's the other way around? Possible? Hmmmm.). It seems to me that if there are misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions made by either side, they can get clarified without embarrassing anyone. 

It's still largely (I know, I know) a man's world out there, and some male judges have wives at home, or perhaps no one at home, who might not, because of accepted habit, bring them up short. Such a private conversation might take care of that, especially if the accuser accepts that her comments won't be directly quoted. And sometimes she/he just needs someone to listen. Any way you look at it, no harm, no foul. A subtle, pointed, quiet report might just head off a growing problem.

But it might not work, which is why the second level exists. That represents a big leap in attention; someone must be pretty angry by that time. Then people will have to sit in separate rooms while a mediator goes between them (this is the way it works; I've done training) and names are named and people know. 

That will cause some embarrassment, so the accused has to be sure, probably must have done some documentation (which the informal meeting will probably engender. The facilitator might easily suggest that; in my work in union grievances, I always advised to "document, document, document"), and needs a promise to discontinue some practices in writing (which is also the result in mediation, if only between the parties).

The third step is applied in case of a real mess, the open, press-covered hearing in which nobody wins. I would think that the two previous stages represent reasonable options to avoid the third, but you never know. And that's exactly the point: Maybe these things can be reasonably resolved without going to that extreme, where lawyers are utilized openly and accusations are flung and reputations smeared forever.

This is just getting started, so no reports are in on success. But creating a structure for exploration of issues usually draws needed attention. I hope the Brennan Center has a follow-up of results.

I'm betting Andrew Cuomo would have welcomed such an approach. It's too late now, of course: He's now being vetted for impeachment. Whether it happens or not, the process has been messy and rife with posturing. People deserve more dignity than that. 

Maybe New York State, too, can come up with a methodology to deal with these accusations better than it has. No matter where it happens, the taxpayers have a right to expect it.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Genocide," or "Crimes Against Humanity:" Does It Matter? With Us, It Sure Does

So the Turks are not happy with us now, but we knew that was going to happen. On the other hand, three days out, they haven't said a thing.

President Biden came out and said that what Turkey did to the Armenians during World War I, and beyond (until about 1923, in fact), constituted "genocide." As if we didn't know.

We do know that imprisonment, execution, and starvation resulted in the deaths of about 600,000 to 1.4 million Armenians. We know that that wasn't a happenstance of geography, either. They were targeted. 

So do we call these acts "genocide," or "crimes against humanity?" And does it matter?

It apparently matters to the Turks. They blanch from "genocide." According to Phillipe Sands, law professor from the University of London, as interviewed on Fareed Zakaria's show "GPS," Sunday, the Turks don't want to use that word because it had not been invented when they committed it. Apparently--and I didn't know this--the word "genocide" was first used when discussing the Nazi mass murder of the Jews. That's a very narrow and mindless argument.

It would also leave the United States off the hook. Our genocide of the American Indian began in the 17th Century and continued into the 20th. It ended, too, before World War II, if only because we didn't have that many Natives to eliminate any longer, kind of like the bison, the staple animal for many of them.

With this thought train, William Sherman, Union Army general of note for razing Atlanta and marching to the sea, can also be excused for postulating: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Which separates two particular American tragedies from each other: Slavery and reservations. One meant that we needed to keep enough of some people of color alive so they could do dirty work that white people thought (and some still think) isn't lofty enough for them to do; the other pushed them away from their natural living areas without caring at all whether they lived or died, the latter of which they did in enormous numbers.

So slavery, as such, is a crime against humanity: It robs people of their civil rights, manipulates their existence, and keeps them from the freedom which all human beings deserve. They live because they serve someone else's purpose, not their own.

But what American whites did to American Natives was genocide. It was the intentional ending of human life because, simply put, they were in the way. They were cleverly referred to as "nations," and retain that status, but they are nations in the way that Liechtenstein can stand up to France. Which is to say, barely noticeably.

No American President has ever referred to what was done to Natives in that way. Someone should.

Of course, that might also open the doors to what African-Americans have started a conversation about within recent years: compensation. Compensation for being owned is one thing: Compensation for having your land and the lives of your ancestors taken is quite another.

Not only that, but it took until 1924 for Natives to be declared citizens. This post-dated the 14th Amendment for them by more than fifty years. After all, the 14th Amendment says that anyone born on American soil is a citizen, period. That's supposed to be that. But it sure wasn't.

It's nice, and accurate, for Joe Biden to clear the air about Turkish genocide of Armenians. It's a much longer reach to do it about our own people. But we should.

We intentionally gave them smallpox. We destroyed their bison. We made treaties that turned into big lies. And we raided their settlements, murdering men, women and children. Then we pushed them onto useless lands, pretending they could make a decent living.

Some of them fought back for a while. But they knew it would be futile. 

We took their children and tried to 'assimilate' them, turning them into white people, pretending again that it would do them all kinds of good. Totalitarian countries have another word for it: Re-education. It's what the Khmer Rouge did with Cambodians after they, in another act of genocide, butchered millions there, too.

Funny, but Biden's declaration (actually, he blended it into a sentence, which hardly makes it a declaration) did not set off incredible outcries in Turkey or elsewhere. They haven't made a peep. Does the above list of hypocrises have anything to do with it? Have they, along with the bungling of our last president, reduced our claim to world leadership and descended us into irrelevance? Does our declaration matter as little as that of, say, Thailand?

Either way, it would be a much bigger deal if we cleaned our own house and declared ourselves to be implicit in our own genocide. There's plenty of talk about what we've done and are still doing to blacks now, and Asian-Americans are catching a vicious whirlwind, too. As usual, the Natives stand in the corner, waiting for someone to recognize them beyond tokenism.

Let's do that right now. A declaration of genocide might raise some respect that the rest of the world has reduced. An admission of our own bruises and wounds might set off a new surge of scholarship in which our schoolchildren might learn anew that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution set bars for behavior that have still not been hurdled. That sobering thought might give more of us pause and take the steam out of the anger that many of us still have.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Capitol Steps--Great Political Humor, Now Moribund

It may or it may not be a sign of the times, but the Capitol Steps are closing their doors.

The humor group, originally invented by a bunch of U.S. Capitol staffers on both sides of the aisle--the better to create pointed but balanced humor, some of the cleverest I've ever heard---will no longer be holding shows or making CDs. It seems to be very appropriate, but very sad, timing.

Nobody caught a break with the Capitol Steps. Everyone was mocked, especially those within presidential administrations. But members of Congress, Supreme Court members and foreign leaders got it, too. And it was all done, usually, by singing to either Broadway or otherwise popular hits, so the humor blended in with popular culture.

Starting in the '80s, they performed at the Ronald Reagan Center on Friday and Saturday nights, but news about them got out fast. Their numbers grew such that there were several troups out there performing at political party conventions, union meetings, business gatherings, just about anywhere in which people would know, at least relatively accurately, who the people were that were being lampooned. When I served the NEA in DC and when I lived there, I would get an occasional ticket. They never failed to delight.

The absurdity of our politics didn't change. But at least someone was out there taking the nasty edge off of some of them.

The caricatures were light-hearted. They made fun without humiliating someone. And the evening ended with someone doing a hilarious juxtaposition of the first letters of words and phrases that people could unsnarl on the go, a routine called "Lirty Dies." Placed well, the twisted words sounded as if they were real. The effects were hilarious.

But all that's gone now. It's probably a direct result of the pandemic. There's no way The Capitol Steps were going to thrive in an atmosphere of forced seclusion. People couldn't fill up meeting rooms and halls, and most states are still allowing only 25% capacity. You can't eat on that income.

Neither can they wait it out. Because of the unpredictability of the spread of the vaccine (see something I wrote very recently), there's no way to know for sure when such gatherings can gain full, or nearly full, capacity. You can only tighten belts so much and for so long.

What an inopportune time for that to happen. If there were a time when we needed a relatively unbiased group of people to point out the absurdities of some of our positions in humorous ways, this would be it.

But maybe the time is ripe, too, to close that door. A genuine attempt to overthrow a legal election is still being dwelt upon by some of the perpetrators and their supporters. This, for the first time ever, is a real and palpable threat to the meaning of democracy. It's nothing to laugh at.

I suppose you can chuckle at the get-ups created by some of the rioters, and you wouldn't be alone in doing that. But they, for certain, were deadly serious about what they were there for--and if they weren't, they soon became so.

They were there to disrupt and in effect cancel a constitutional process that, while modern technology would normally make it largely and awkwardly unnecessary, is required to actually propel the machinery of governance forward. With that in mind, the previous president committed a clear and obvious act of insurrection by inspiring those listening to enter the Capitol building and do whatever they needed to do so the Electoral College vote wouldn't actually take place.

Not only that, but calling on the National Guard was delayed nearly into irrelevance that day by military leaders clearly supportive of the effort to cancel what 155 million Americans had done two months previously--determine that the sitting president shouldn't be eligible to serve another term.

The plot was indeed carefully made and possessed excellent timing, though it had the trappings of seat-of-the-pants, something that the previous president is good at hiding, as long as he has the loyalty of enough people with enough levers to pull. And on January 6, he had exactly that. 

Not only that, but most on his side still refuse to consider the undeniable facts and would still back the same event, should the occasion again take place. Should that happen, a true revolution might ensue.

I doubt that The Capitol Steps could make enough fun, poke enough holes, and create a sufficiently humorous scenario to highlight a presentation and deflect the actual meaning of an attempted coup d'etat. Perhaps it's better that they don't try, anyhow.

We are only now coming to grips with that. We are only now chilled enough to understand the undermining of democracy and what it truly means. The issue has not passed. That is distressing but cannot be diminished.

The Capitol Steps were a terrific entertainment group and well-needed at another time. Their CDs still represent an off-beat contribution to the history of the nation, starting with the Reagan Administration. That time has passed, unfortunately. It's time to get serious and stay that way.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Tipping Point on Vaccines, So To Speak: We Are Reaching It

Well, we're pretty close to being there. Meaning, the tipping point on vaccines.

No, not that tipping point, where herd immunity happens, where those getting shots so far outnumber those who haven't that we can start walking around like real, unmasked human beings. How devoutly to be wished.

No, no. The preliminary tipping point: The one where the number of shots far outnumber the people who want them. Because there are a whole bunch of people who: 

• don't think they need them; 
• don't think it's anybody's business whether they have them or not;
• think it's wrong for the government to make health decisions;
• think that they will be the one in many, many millions who will get sick anyway; or 
• are somehow religiously objectionable.

And that is an enormous percentage of our population--not the majority, but enough so that we can't look forward, not for a long time, to the day when 'normal' becomes part of our operating lexicon.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has said that 13% of all adults will definitely not get a vaccine shot. Why not? 

Let's run down the reasons, some from the article, some not:

• Not enough information--this is a cop-out. It's all over the Internet. Just get online. What the hell else do you need to know? If you get shots, you won't die. If you don't, you might. Questions?
• Side effects--Yes, there may be some. They may last a day. Look at it this way: This is what you're avoiding. Covid may last forever, even if you don't die from it. There is such a thing as "long Covid," too, with coughing and tiredness for months. Wow, does that sound like fun. How's that for side effects? Then, on the other hand, there is death.
• Long-term effects of vaccines are unknown--again, a cop-out. Covid's long-term effects are pretty definite, if it gets bad enough: You'll be dead forever anyway, but why start now?
• Don't know what's in it--Just ask. Your doctor will tell you. Probably researchable on the Internet, too. There's no poison. Millions have received shots and are perfectly healthy. That's the idea!
• It's just like the flu--Nonsense. This ain't like anything anybody's ever had. Yes, people die of the flu. They die in car accidents, too. But not nearly 600,000 in just a year. Uh-uh.
• You can't make me--Correct. If you don't care about yourself, though, which is your perfect right, do you care about anyone else? Is that somewhere on your agenda?
• God is in control (Robin Vos, Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, with that philosophy): Okay, so we're helpless, then. That's baloney, though. We now have several very effective vaccines. And, if you want to think about it--clearly an option for those suffering from another contagious disease, being ERA--excessively religiously afflicted--you can say that God also made humans who have brain power, have successfully attacked this virus with all the ingenuity they can foster, and did it with speed unprecedented in human history. If God meant for us all to die from Covid, for us to give up and face the rapture (which is what some evangelicals believe), all but a few of us would be quite dead by now, kind of like Stephen King's premise in The Stand, which is a book I've thought of several times in the past year. God, if you think he or she means anything, obviously didn't mean that. Death is inevitable, true. Once again, terrible death from a virus isn't. It doesn't need to run its course. It can be stopped. Right now.

Yes, they have now found some people who got the shots and still got sick, and a few of them died. And they have to figure out why. But those numbers are so incredibly low in terms of the whole population, that--like in all science--it represents an inevitable, minuscule exception. Besides, getting vaccine shots are still the most guaranteed way to prevent illness from this awful virus. It may not be absolute, but you have to get really, really unlucky for it to be otherwise. 

The only other alternative is to throw yourself out there and hope like hell the germs won't find you. If they do, you're in for a rough ride: Isolation in the hospital with a contraption stuffed down your throat indefinitely, perhaps in futility, just make sure you're still breathing. Which, if it's bad enough, is the way you'll die, of slow, torturous drowning. No one deserves that.

Guns are an inevitable price we have to pay for freedom in this country. So is abortion. So are people who don't want to get vaccine shots. Which of the above is the most hazardous? Tough call.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Take Down the Senate? You Must Be Kidding. Knock It Off and Get To Work.

I usually have terrific respect for those who appear on Zoom conferences on politics. They are academically, and politically, aware and learned. It's why I tune in.

But The New Republic's Zoom conference on liberalism threatened to go off the rails yesterday, even though it featured Jamie Raskin, Representative from Maryland and lead prosecutor of 45's second impeachment trial, on which he did a terrific job. Even Raskin was drawn into the absurd discussion.

To wit: the hand-wringing that liberals are doing about the present make-up, conduct, and process of the U.S. Senate. Respectably enough, they want to embark on wide-ranging improvements, like: 

• taking the poor off the streets; 
• making better schools for the kids;
• repairing dangerously crumbling infrastructure;
• reducing the overwhelming numbers of guns;
• paving a better path for immigrants; and
• creating a far greener economy.

It's just those pesky Republicans who are in the way. And not by much: the majorities are razor-thin.

There isn't a thing in the above agenda that I'm against. But more than one of the discussants wanted to change the very nature of the Senate to grease the skids, to hurry through legislation they know is good and necessary, now that they have the (slim) numbers until January, 2023, at the very least.

Not only is that not going to happen, and is a foolish part of some flighty wish-list, but dwelling on it wastes time and energy. That kind of radicalism draws on the kind that way too many Republicans in Congress supported on January 6: trying to change the whole system because you don't get your way.

One person quoted the late, long-time Representative from Michigan, Don Dingell, who once said that the Senate should be disbanded. Maybe that was said in a moment of frustration, maybe not. But the Constitution would need to be amended to do so--two-thirds of both houses of Congress required; in other words, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to disband itself. Then three-fourths of all state legislatures would have to agree.

Think that's going to happen? Think Senators in either party would de-egotize themselves by declaring themselves irrelevant?

Beyond that: the Senate is there exactly to, in a way, frustrate those who see the brighter, speedier path. And it was put there for that reason.

Good thing the Constitutional Convention didn't adapt Hamilton's plan for the government: The Senate was to have the sole power to declare war, and members would be subjected to impeachment, a process reserved for the executive branch. You saw that last year: What a mess. 

Not only that, but if you get rid of the Senate, you'd have to demand that someone else--the House? Oh, that would be fun--to approve of treaties, appoint ambassadors, federal judges, and members of the Cabinet. Imagine the row about Justice Kavanaugh in the House, considering the stink it caused in the Senate. "The Senate [is] coupled with the President in certain executive functions; treaties and appointments," Hamilton wrote in a letter to Washington in 1789, just days after he was sworn in as the first President. "This makes them in a degree as constitutional counsellors and gives them a peculiar [his emphasis] claim to the right of access."

And Madison, at the 1787 Convention itself, had the idea of the Senate figured out. It should not be proportional according to population; it should have fewer members. It should take a more detached, long-range view. "The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch," he said. "Enlarge their number and you communicate to them the vices which they are meant to correct." (Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley notwithstanding)

The disproportionality of the populations represented by Democratic and Republican Senators were discussed at yesterday's conference, too. Raskin himself pointed out that Senate Democrats represent 40 million more people than Republicans. That's more than 10 percent of the population, and yet, of course, the numbers pan out to a 50-50 tie. Wyoming, with less than 600,000 people, has two Senators, just like California, which is closing in on 40 million. That's something like 70 times more clout. 

But it also means that much of the disparity is because of California. What Democrats don't complain about is that for the foreseeable future, it has and will have an automatic 56 electoral votes for president. Got a problem with that?

I wonder whether, at any other time, the disproportionality between the major parties has been equivalent. Hard for me to believe otherwise, considering the uneven path and rate of the country's growth (I have no numbers to prove it either way, but it could be done). What Raskin and the Democrats conveniently ignore is that, with a Democratic President, they missed an enormous opportunity to ride some coattails. And they know why that is: race.

Yup. They didn't speak out nearly loud enough when defund the police became a catchphrase upon the murder of George Floyd. (though Biden decried it, but briefly and not loudly, either; 45's advocates lied about his support) Black Lives Matter pushed that phrase aggressively, which repelled potential crossover voters devastated by 45's antics. Democrats, caught in a messaging problem, understood that urban areas, greatly populated by blacks, might hold the key to victory. 

They certainly did, especially considering the Georgia upset and the narrow victories in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They didn't want to discourage large turnouts, so they downplayed the phrase. They got what they wanted--a new patron in the White House: an able successor to the incompetent, nasty, obnoxious, fascist dolt that preceded him.

Democrats had a chance to claim a larger slice of the Congress, though, but didn't. Their margins in the House are three votes, and one vote in the Senate. Changing the whole system is still way too expedient and futile anyhow. Time, and policy, have to be trusted to work their ways to loosen the icejam.

And, of course, the filibuster rule, presently making the approval of 60 Senators prerequisite for ending debate on the floor, is a firewall of a minority's power. Should Senators declaring their wish to filibuster be actually made to stand in the well of the Senate floor, talking as long as they can, actualizing the filibuster instead of merely declaring an intent?

Okay, let's do that. But Mitch McConnell is the master of organizing, especially in dissent, and he would produce a tag team of objectors on any and all bills that might go on for weeks, yielding the floor only to each other. That would have a devastating effect on consideration of other things that the Senate might actually agree to. 

That consists of delay, which is sometimes a very effective weapon. McConnell, if you remember, delayed the appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court for some ten months, and got his way with the election of the above mentioned terrible president, who nonetheless did fulfill McConnell's goal of a favorably imbalanced Supreme Court and otherwise-stacked federal judiciary. Mitch can play the long game as well as anyone, and the federal courts, with lifetime appointments, are the place to do it.

The idea of the Senate's strictures is to promote compromise. That so little of that's taking place is a creation of the horribly contentious times in which we now live. But the Constitution is too stubborn to be easily changed. We have what we have. And as of right now, people are going to resist rather than merely disagree.

So the Democrats would be wise to:

• Stop whining.
• Get to work.
• Come back to the conclusion that it's a big country.
• Do what they can, pass what they can, and improve what they can (with reconciliation legislation still possible in a couple of instances); and
• Get a better catchphrase to work with than Defund the Police, which, although understandable in some areas, won't work in most, won't stop racism and doesn't really capture the problem.

Checks and balances are horribly frustrating at times, and this is one of them. But politics is the art of the possible, and the people are watching. Democrats can still give them a government that cares, that works, that provides, that gives them what they need in a tough spot. They can put Republicans, who can now only sit and propagandize, in an unwanted hole if they accomplish that. 

The time to complain about Republican intransigence isn't now, it's in a year from now, when Congressional spots will reopen. But only after Democrats get and have a list of worthy accomplishments. The clock ticks.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Chauvin: We're Not Done With the Questions Yet

Derek Chauvin has been declared guilty on all three counts--two second-degree murder, and one third-degree--and that's that. The evidence was overwhelming, and the defense had a tough road to hoe. George Floyd, hands cuffed behind him, face down on the pavement, had his windpipe closed gradually over nine minutes by a cop who didn't care. 

It's awful to write that. But twelve people just ratified it.

That doesn't answer all the questions. In fact, some dangle there, outlining the work we all have to do:

• If Keith Ellison, a black man, isn't the Attorney General of Minnesota, does Derek Chauvin face the same charges? What if he's white and Republican?
• Is Al Sharpton leading prayers post-verdict an intentional slap at the white supremacist evangelicals, who are only too eager to pray for the political victories they want and get? Or just a demonstration, as in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., that the Almighty can be summoned in the cause of racial justice just as much as he/she can by right-wingers wanting to demonstrate their chauvinism?
• Did Joe Biden do the best possible thing when he told reporters, pre-decision, that he was praying for the "right" verdict?
• What now of Kim Potter, also a very experienced police officer, up for second-degree murder in the same metropolitan area for the police shooting of Daunte Wright? Did she commit the same kind of crime? Or was the immediacy of the moment such that she might have room to plead down to third-degree negligence, which drawing the wrong weapon in the heat of the moment might have represented?
• Was there too much celebrating? Or, considering the injustices that have been committed, was this a kind of 'climbing Mount Everest' moment for the black community, as sad as that is to contemplate?
• Following that up, is this the apex of the Black Lives Matter movement, or a preview of future developments?
• Will there be a significant pushback by such right-wing groups as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers? Will there be someone listening when they defend the police, seeing as how members of all three groups lent major help to the January 6 raid? Will there be pushback to that pushback? How will George Floyd now fit into the total conversation?
• Why did all this take eleven months to process? Is the right to a speedy trial, one of the hallmarks of the Sixth Amendment, just another one of those parts of the Constitution that are present but no longer relevant? If this was speedy, what's slow?
• Again, if it's a black person on trial, does it happen faster? Was it better that it took that long to mount an ongoing level of protest that couldn't be denied? Did that unwittingly, but definitely, help the state of Minnesota?
• Will police departments act differently, or are they locked into their responses by training, practice, and human expedience? Will the concept of 'qualified immunity,' verified by the Supreme Court, now come into greater question? There are far more do-or-die situations by the day, or those that look like it.

I'm sure there are more pertinent questions, but these will do. The country is exhausted by all this. We need to rest.

But there is no rest. There are too many guns out there, too many reasons for too many police officers to be jittery, and not for bad cause. Some guy loses a fight in a bar in Kenosha Saturday night, then returns with a gun because he can and kills three people. Will that take eleven months to adjudicate?

Yesterday was one of victory but also a sad one, a bittersweet demonstration of what facts can do if the rest of the dissonance is swept away. It is evidence, too, of the onrushing, undeniable effects of more people of color in our nation, now 41%, according to Fareed Zakaria on his Sunday show "GPS." That wave is building and can be clearly seen.

Not only police cameras are unmasking the inequities of enforcement; sheer numbers of others who are watching are, too. In 1957, Milwaukee police got away with the murder of Daniel Bell. Were that to happen today, way too much would have been made of that way too quickly and way too loudly.

The white supremacist militias can't stop that. The previous president knows that and ginned them up. It continues. But people of color also now have George Floyd. He lives on in perpetuity. Too.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Look Who's Trying to Get People to Talk to Each Other? Bush-43

I wasn't that surprised to see it. If you remember, he also tried during his presidency.

George W. Bush wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday, outlining what he believed to be a reasonable place for both political parties to begin discussions on that pesky of all issues, immigration. Most of his ideas are workable. They're all within reach.

But if you recall, his efforts back in 2006-07 failed. He was sincere, being from Texas and having seen the problem firsthand. Even back then, though, the Congress was too full of radical firebrands to make reasonable compromises and reasonable recognition that the situation was getting out of control.

Fast forward fifteen years: Look what has been tried. An actual wall was begun. Still not working: people with a desire to get into a place will get there. If they are not actually tied down, they will find a way.

Children were put into cages and kept there for weeks. They were treated like lepers, like future pandemic carriers. The border patrol had no choice; they went tone-deaf.

The public at-large recoiled. But the problem persists.

Cynical phrases from that earlier era remain:

• Amnesty.
• Catch-and-release.

New problems emerge: The gangs of Central American countries that make kids pay 'tribute' to continue to attend school. Refusal often leads to death.

What's a parent to do? Bundle all their resources available, bribe a 'coyote' to gather up the kids and get them to the U.S., where hopefully a relative or a foster parent will take them in. It's an incredible gamble, with diminishing odds.

The spring is the high point: The hot weather's coming. The time to get to America is now. We are being overwhelmed again, and it will continue unless we get a handle on it.

The numbers are staggering: According to The New Yorker, as of March--

• Two hurricanes last fall displaced tens of thousands of Central American people;
• About 550 children have been arriving at the border every day;
• There is a backlog of asylum cases of 1.3 million;
• There are 18,000 unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody; and
• 5,000 who remain in holding cells, most held for at least twice the legal time.

The government's capacity to deal with this has been overwhelmed for some time now. The Biden Administration has set up nine emergency shelters, and worked loose 5,000 more beds at a Texas military bases. Biden has gotten on TV to tell the migrants to stop coming. But of course, they won't.

Bush has entered the fray, perhaps to confront and reduce the discord. He outlined some concepts from which to operate:

• DACA should be operational for the "dreamers" who are as American as anyone, and it doesn't mean open borders;
• a "secure and efficient border" with up-to-date technology and ports of entry;
• building "freedom and opportunity" with those countries inclined to send lots of migrants our way, which means--give them money and whole pile of it and cross our fingers that they spend it well;
• a "modernized asylum system" to handle those cases as they come;
• a workable temporary entry program; and
• while no amnesty should be given to those already here, a gradual, workable process with respect to paying taxes, learning the language, and getting a history and civics education can be constructed to allow them to come out of the shadows.

These are reasonable stipulations. They are a place to begin discussions.

To emphasize the gifts that immigrants have given us, Bush has spent considerable time and developed his skills to paint portraits of people who have come here and contributed greatly, such as:

• Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, from Czechoslovakia;
• Dirk Nowitzki, NBA basketball player, from Germany;
• Gilbert Tuhabonye, a long-distance runner, author and motivational speaker, from Burundi;
• Capt. Florent Groberg, Medal of Honor winner from France;
• Roya Mahboob, one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world in 2013, who built internet classrooms in high schools in Afghanistan.

He's published these portraits in a book that he's releasing, so yes, there's a profit motive there. But there's also a demonstration of common humanity and an implication that we should observe. Turning others away is counterproductive: They can contribute deeply to the body politic, the economy, and the social welfare.

Not that nobody realized it, but he's trying to get more people to look at immigrants in a positive light. There's no reason why not. He's descended from them. And so are you.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Sun Prairie: An Act 10 Firing. We All Lose.

They resigned. But we all know what happened.

They were unceremoniously fired. They faced a firewall of criticism and accusations.

If a "small group (three)" middle school teachers in Sun Prairie would have had a contract, if they would have had union protection, they still might be teaching today. Oh, chastised, I suppose, about a lesson that they got off a site that teachers use to do more creative teaching, created by other teachers--and what, may I ask, is wrong with that?--and perhaps a warning, maybe even a freezing of a "step" on their salary scale. 

But not fired. Not shown the door.

There was no review of any good teaching that any of them did, no attempt to balance this 'offense' against good reviews posted by their superiors. No mitigating information considered, in other words. No attempt to blend that lesson into the overall curricula. Nope. Guilty: Gone at the drop of a hat.

No UniServ Director, no other union rep, can do a thing about it. Their legs have been cut off early on. Oh, they can complain and make public statements, but it's all done in an echo chamber now.

Republicans love it: You can now get rid of teachers if any parents complain, right on the spot, the very thing they were always whining about, along with administrators who didn't want to put in the work of determining who could survive the three-year probation period that nearly all local contracts offered, work that could bear great fruit down the line. Teaching descended to a common blue-collar job with the advent of Act 10, with the dissolution of agreed contracts which established due process for the determination of punishments or firings.

If liberals love it, too, immersed as many are in the cancel culture, they might pause to think again. For, handled well, there might be plenty of good things in the presentation which cost three teachers their jobs.

The lesson was, ostensibly, determining what punishment slaves might undergo--and what students might assign--if they lived under the Hammurabi Code, created more than 3700 years ago and named for the king who enforced it. If you haven't heard of this, it's one of the first collection of written laws ever recorded and preserved. Some of the laws were relevant today; they were, in any event, attempts to equalize a punishment with the offense, a forerunner of our Eighth Amendment against "cruel and unusual punishments."

Not that it made everyone equal under the law. Just the opposite, in fact. And maybe that's what the teachers were trying to point out (giving them the benefit of the doubt). The History Channel's webpage, for instance, notes that, under the Code, the charge for curing a severe wound was ten shekels for a 'gentleman,' five for a 'freedman,' and two for a slave. 

Fair? Well, the charge was clearly scaled for the anticipated ability to pay. And what's wrong with that? Ever hear of Medicare?

On the other hand, the price of malpractice didn't seem fair: If a doctor killed a rich patient, his hands were cut off; if it was a slave, he merely paid restitution to the owner. It's a sad comment on the diminishing value of human life based on social status. That, as we know, extended far into the future and the terror of slavery reached our shores for two and a half centuries.

What a great foundation for a discussion, though. Who were these people, that they agreed to live under this code, that tried to be fair but in the end could not, or perhaps preferred not to, deal with the unfairness of slavery? 

Hmmmm. "All men are created equal." Remember where that appears? Remember who wrote it? Remember that he owned slaves and tried to reconcile it with a statement about it--which was shot down by other members of the group which signed it? Remember that we lived under a government that permitted it right from the start? Isn't that worth mentioning?

And let's back up a minute. If the teachers' core subject was world history, they owed it to the kids to stay within that realm. The New York Times' "1619 Project," which could have provided lots of factual information and emotional importance to American slavery, was off-limits in terms of scope and content. The teachers reached out to other teachers and tried to be creative with what they had to work with.

So should they have just skipped an in-depth discussion of what it meant to be a slave thirty-seven hundred years ago, and just stressed the horrible parts of it? Does any admission that, at one or two points, a slave actually got a break mean necessarily that the teachers were advertising slavery as a good thing, as a lifestyle advantage, or just a point of irony? To the more cogent point, was the presentation racist, which is obviously what someone assumed?

Am I a racist for saying so? I don't think you'd conclude that if you've read any other blogs I've put out there. We all have work to do, to be sure; racism can be seen on a spectrum. But I sincerely doubt that racism was any part of what those teachers meant to teach kids. If it was, they deserve a strong scolding and new training. Maybe they were just relatively clueless.

Look, I wasn't there and have no concept of the context of the moment. But that's the point. I assure you that the people who are raising the stink about this may easily have taken it out of context, too. Nothing in the lesson sounds egregious on its face. And nothing, hopefully, that was taught was inaccurate. History isn't a bunch of safe, antiseptic, nice things: It's often bad news for someone. And information that may be ethically challenging or unclear. On the other hand, you can mold new realities with chosen facts: Just look at Fox News.

This, of course, would have been aired at some kind of hearing that had a contract as its basis. But there is none. There are just "conditions of employment," including catch-alls that allow administrators to release people who have done things which may be the least bit controversial. 

The higher-ups own it. The teachers don't. They have no input. That's the impact of Act 10. School districts don't have to listen to teachers anymore, even though they're experts in their chosen fields. They have a college education. So what? They're just working slugs now.

Who else does this hurt? It hurts every social studies teacher, and perhaps every other teacher, in the district. It means that stepping outside of the textbook to take some chances and expand students' minds will be strongly self-restricted--which is to say, for many it won't be tried at all. Why bother? They'd be on the street the next day, maybe after the next irate phone call. Why have to look over one's shoulder?

The kids lose, too. They lose the joy of teaching, the creativity of ideas expanding in the moment, exactly the thing that I enjoyed about teaching: my own moments of 'aha.' Kids feed off that excitement. They remember days like that. 

Better still, they take them home and tell their parents. I wonder if, in excitement, some student did and opened a can of worms they didn't even know was there.

Nearly twenty years ago, No Child Left Behind took much of the meaningful spontaneity of teaching away with its demand of textual adherence to buttress test scores; the rest is left to unvetted paranoia like this. An investigation, supported by contract, might have ameliorated the situation and placed it into proper context.

The Hammurabi Code was, literally, carved into stone in the 18th Century BCE, and Hammurabi's name is carved into the facing of the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court's hearing room, to demonstrate how vital at least the form of the writings were. I've personally seen it. Slowly, inexorably, Act 10, now ten years old, is being carved into the same legal stone. Educators not only suffer in Wisconsin because of it; education does, too.

Be well, Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Samantha Power for USAID: The Obvious Choice

I read her memoir. I expected it to be self-serving, as all memoirs are. But this one, written by Samantha Power, former UN Ambassador, is different.

This reveals all the scars of her striving, but also her indefatigability in moving forward beyond them. It is refreshingly human, full of feelings, full of humanity. It doesn't feel measured for effect.

When she was caught insulting Hillary Clinton in the 2008 campaign--and had to resign from Barack Obama's campaign team for it--she recounted her entire thought process, including the moment at which she suddenly remembered what she had said and to whom. Very few people would go public about this. Very few people would be this introspective.

If she were a guy, she'd call this approach "balls out." As a former participating athlete, I'm sure she's heard it. She'd probably laugh. Then she'd probably point out the sexism.

She has been in some of the roughest spots in the world, writing about them and what someone should do. Inevitably, she concluded that someone has to stop the abuse, the devastation, the destruction. She was in the middle of it all, in Bosnia, in Serbia.

Her descriptions of her access to sources early on, while she was trying to establish herself as a free-lance reporter, are amazingly strident, a devotion to the idea that you can't get anywhere unless you try. It had to help her win a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book A Problem from Hell, about the challenges of genocide.

She never backed away from risky venues, in her job as UN Ambassador, either. When there were situations in Africa that demanded attention, she didn't send people, which is what high-ranking government officials usually do: She went there herself. 

She went to places like Sierra Leone and Liberia, to help arrest the onrushing Ebola virus (and halting what would have been an ugly forerunner to our current predicament); Nigeria, to see the damage that the hyper-Muslim extremist group, Boko Haram, was doing; and visited the UN offices of every single member country, which stunned them but from which she learned fascinating information about representatives and their conditions.

Her husband, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, regularly freaked out before her foreign trips, as did her children as they got old enough. He would tell her as they embraced, "Please don't go." She felt that. She went anyway.

She went so she could write her own report to the president. As someone who used to be a journalist, she didn't, and doesn't, use legalize for her explanations. The book is remarkably pedestrian for someone who's been in the densest policy meetings. Anybody could understand it easily.

Yes, she's been a bit naive. There's a little Pollyanna in her. But it still seems to be there. She hasn't turned jaded and cynical, despite all she has seen. She still has faith in not only her country's ability to lead and deliver, but in humanity itself.

If you read her book, The Education of An Idealist, and don't walk away with sincere admiration for her, you'd better check your soul to see if you have one anymore.

To be sure, she has been a pain in someone's neck wherever she has gone. She sees problems in strictly their human dimensions, eschewing systems or politics. "You get on my nerves," Barack Obama would tell her more than once in meetings of either the National Security Council or the Cabinet.

Not just his. Secretary of State John Kerry complained more than once that Power sometimes hindered his job. Sometimes, diplomacy can be better accomplished with representatives who agree with a policy, but don't want it attached to their portfolios. You can get work done that way, but not always: It's also a way to avoid tough calls. As UN Ambassador, Power brought things out into the open, though, forcing reluctant diplomats to answer for them. She got work done, too.

She did all this while raising two little kids. Yes, she had help from an Hispanic nanny and various friends, but she spares no sentiment telling us how torn she sometimes was between her family and her jobs.

Today, after withstanding the last, horrible, degrading administration by teaching at Harvard (and for the paperback version of this book, she's added new paragraphs about the pandemic), she's been nominated for the directorship of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the official organization which oversees what most people refer to as "foreign aid." The USAID helps other countries in such areas as:

• Agriculture and Food Security
• Democracy and Human Rights
• Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment
• Global Health
• Humanitarian Assistance

President Biden also wants to raise that position to the National Security Council level (Power was once a member of that group, pre-ambassadorship, under Obama). Doesn't that sound like she's a perfect fit? She had her Senate nomination hearing last month. She awaits approval. She'd better get it, or one blogger will be mighty upset. Should she ever be considered for being, at long last, the first female President (and she's now 50), we could do much, much worse.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Finally, We Leave. Worn Out, Worn Down. Humbled.

 September 11. How ironic a deadline. How demonstrative. Twenty years.

Twenty years of lasting in Afghanistan. And for what?

Originally, it was a matter of trying to find Osama bin Laden. But they found him in Pakistan and took him out.

After that, it was about being apologetic about remaining in the country to advance human rights. We were, again, halfway in and halfway out, getting people killed for nobody quite knew what.

Mostly, it was about getting women and girls an equal chance for an education and advancement. But the culture doesn't believe in that. The culture is based on the 6th Century. It's now the 21st. That's 1500 years. We have enough trouble moving our own culture from the point at which blacks came here as slaves, and that's only four centuries ago. Almost seems like yesterday.

Our last, awful president wanted to completely withdraw the troops, too. He wanted to do it all at once, ignoring political realities. In a stunning surprise, he had the right idea. But he wants to withdraw everybody from everywhere, and that won't work. That would be pretending that it's 1795.

Joe Biden is saying that enough's enough. He's not eschewing our international role, like his predecessor would prefer. He just knows when it's ridiculous to stay in a place where you're not wanted, even though you may be doing some good.

The British tried the same thing in the 19th Century. The Soviets tried the same thing in the 20th Century, and partly cost Jimmy Carter his job, bringing on the disastrous Ronald Reagan. We tried the same thing for the first 20 percent of the 21st Century. Everybody failed. They failed because Afghanistan is mostly mountains, the same way Vietnam is mostly jungles. People there know how to hide, and where.

You can't find them all. You can't bomb them all. But leaders had to show that we were trying. It was posturing through invasion.

We went in anger because someone managed to evade flight regulations and use jetliners to bomb the World Trade Center and Pentagon. "We are coming," said John McCain on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

Again, we thought that military technology would win the day, that cleaning up that problem would be short, sweet, and decisive. It was none of them.

Because we'd learned, but not enough to prevent posturing which cost lives. We'd learned that half a commitment in Vietnam could forestall, but not prevent, an undeniable movement. It could invade, but not change, the dominant culture.

But we were angry. Somebody had to do something. America had been attacked for the first time ever! Using the CIA or the DSA or some other invented, surreptitious cadre to find the perps who didn't kill themselves to accomplish the unthinkable wasn't enough. There had to be a display. We had to see the counterattack.

Not to mention the anger that the Afghans had. They had foreigners in their country for twenty years. They must have rolled their eyes and gotten back to work on repelling invaders the same way their forebears had--passively, with ambushes and religious fanaticism that most of us find unfathomable, either because of its intensity or because it isn't Christian, making it impossible be accepted or even understood.

The public also lost interest. After the original surge, almost no articles were written about Afghanistan per week, per month. Columns emerged as afterthoughts. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew why things needed to be done.

The Taliban knew what to do: Play the waiting game. Just like in Vietnam, they knew Americans don't like the long game when it comes to war. We're tantalized by our technology, whether it works or not.

The Washington Post is warning of a possible disaster if we leave. Oh, so we should stay? We should continue to put our people at risk and keep losing them a drip-drip-drip at a time? Twenty years wasn't enough to prove that futility?

Twenty years wasn't enough to persuade the population of Afghanistan that it's in their best interests to avoid the ancient, horribly repressive rule of backward groups like the Taliban? Then it will never be enough. Time to go. Biden is right.

Time for a reset. Time for a reconsideration of intervention. The last country we saved, the last people we truly saved, live in Kuwait. We saved them from one dictator and preserved the government for a king 30 years ago. We didn't do it for high-minded, democratic reasons, though Bush-41 touted the "free people of Kuwait." We did it for the oil.

The first time we tried making the world safe for democracy was in 1917. We got there just in time, then stood there at Versailles and watched the French (mostly) set the stage for the next world war. The League of Nations, which we did not join, did not work. World War II worked nicely after devastating a considerable part of the world, creating the United Nations. But that organization is limited in what it can do: Try reading Samantha Power's (UN Ambassador under Obama) book The Education of An Idealist for further clarification.

Oh, we support the troops, all right. But wouldn't the best support be to keep them from wasting their time, and their lives?

The pullout has been called a gamble. No, it isn't. The gamble's over. We gambled that we would make a lasting difference. It's been twenty years. Whatever lasting difference has either been established, or won't be if it takes a hundred.

Instead, we leave used up, worn out, worn down. Humbled. What will we learn?

• Don't do this anymore?
• Is this our accepted burden after all, and casualties are the accepted price of limited wars?
• Be more strategic and not idealistic so we pick our spots better?
• Define 'winning' from the start and don't deviate from that? (Meaning we should have left when Osama bin Laden was killed)
• Get the real story first and stick to the facts instead of being awash in hubris, as in Iraq?
• Don't do it alone, or practically alone?
• Do it but with overwhelming force?
• Stop listening to warmongers who think blowing up countries saves them?
• Leave domestic politics out of it, reserving judgment to the President, ignoring the War Powers Act, like most presidents have?
• Let Congress start it, like it says in the Constitution?

Yeah, I know. Give me a better question, then. Or maybe a better answer than any that could be provided to the above.

More than two thousand dead. Take a bucket of water and stir your hand in it. Wait one minute. Goes back to where it was. We waited twenty years.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

 

A Union Fails in Alabama. Why?

Sometimes I just wonder. Sometimes I want to know why people won't do what's good for them.

Fear must be the answer. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Fear of doing something that makes someone else uncomfortable, if only for a while but for good reason.

A union tried to organize in an Amazon workplace in Alabama. It followed the rules and didn't deviate. There were plenty of workers who were tired of what Amazon was doing to them: Mainly, controlling their whole worklives. 

They needed room to breathe. They organized.

They got shot down, decisively, by more than 2 to 1. Amazon workers make $15 per hour, which of course is what social justice advocates have been fighting for--the "Fight for 15"--for years now. It's double the rate of the federal minimum wage rate, which is an embarrassment and a disgusting tokenism, as bad as not having a minimum wage at all. $15 per hour is a major advantage, and Amazon exploited that to the max, as well as its advantage in holding worker meetings In which it stressed the benefits of operating without a union.

The employer stressed that the workers can still make that kind of money without paying dues, and they get health insurance as well. But what about the possibilities of making more money, with collective bargaining? What about some control over the health insurance provider? What about controls on worker observation so that people feel they don't have eyes on them every second of every day?

But then, it's Alabama. It's the Deep South. Attitudes are different. I learned that personally.

I worked for unions in Arkansas and Texas. It hasn't taken what Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans did to unionization here to repress membership and reduce power. The combination of tradition and reluctance has taken its toll.

People do not brag about being in a union in those states. Their attitudes are far more reserved, even apologetic. Someone like me barges in there and discovers that the brakes are put on right from the start.

Never mind that there is no need to take that approach. There is no need to apologize for standing up for oneself and declaring that your dignity be observed. To do that, there is only one thing to do: Get to the bargaining table and start making proposals. And to do that, there is only one thing to do: Get the numbers you need for recognition and keep building on them.

There was more at stake at Amazon in Alabama than just money. There was a feeling, one that follows people around wherever they work, every single day: the idea that no one, in end, has your back--or that someone always has your back. Nothing unfair can dissolve that. You'll have a defense regardless.

But paternalization wins out more often than not. People are drawn in by the friendly, conciliatory mannerisms which have little, if any, substance to them but which tend to calm justifiable fears. 

I said this once to new teachers in Missouri, for which I was castigated (for style, I think, since I was pretty assertive at that moment; when I speak, I can be pretty assertive) but I still so stand: In the end, will the principal stand up for you or for himself or herself? Whose job will they go to the wall for? Will you feel that much better when they, with a smile, guide you to the door for the last time and wish you good luck? Will you be less out of a job? Don't you need protection, then?

People are easily played: our last president knows that. He's bamboozled millions for years. He knows they're gullible. Say the right thing at the right time, and you deflect them from understanding that their money can be his, or get transferred to someone with more power than they have, and they won't know it until their coffers are empty. Then it's too late.

Unions do not solve all problems. They cannot win all cases. But they can provide a bulwark of protection by guaranteeing that employers live by what they promise on paper, not by clever persuasion. The relationship then reverts to two indelible words: We agreed.

You can be as cynical as you want about it, but you can also conclude that, because of federal law in fact, not only are union leaders elected, but the elections are protected from unfair interference (they weren't once, but that's ancient history) by the Landrum-Griffin Act. In other words, it's as democratic as you can get.

Except the issue was, and usually will be in such elections, that Amazon complained about the authenticity of several hundred ballots. As long as you're winning, you might as well control the process as well. That's to warn other subsidiaries that might have more union certification votes that they would do well to complain ahead of time, too.

It wouldn't have mattered, of course. Because of unknown boogeymen, hundreds of Amazon workers in Alabama missed out on a great opportunity to protect themselves and their jobs for the remainder of their careers. They remain liable to the employer, and the employer alone, for their job statuses. They don't realize it, but it's like playing with loaded dice. Every so often, without prior knowledge or warning, it's just going to come up snake eyes.

Even though it's in their best interests. Even though it's the best thing they could do for themselves. Drives me crazy sometimes.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Shut Up and Dribble" No Longer Works, in Business Either: So Says MLB

It's amazing how people can brazenly want things both ways.

Here's Mitch McConnell, the beneficiary of so many business contributions to keep doing things that undermine democracy, like deny Merrick Garland, the current Attorney General, his rightful chance to get onto the Supreme Court. So now he's utilizing the gift that democracy gave him to mouth off about businesses weighing in on Georgia's post-election legislation. It's designed to guarantee that, potentially, fewer people of color don't get to determine their representatives again. 

Some businesses are protesting. Their leaders have a social conscience, it turns out.

"It's just stupid," he said, as if they committed some kind of ghastly faux pas or something. Of course, he wants it both ways.

In conjunction with the infamous Supreme Court decision of Citizens United in 2010, allowing businesses to contribute as much money as they want, often without much if any accountability, to whatever candidate they wish--and being businesses, far more often a Republican candidate, almost automatically in fact--McConnell certainly does want corporate donations in bushel baskets as big as they come. But then he wants it to stop right there.

He wants the money, but not the commentary. The politicians will handle that, I guess. They'll do the explaining.

Citizens United retreated to the days of Buckley v. Valeo (1976), in which the Court determined that giving money did, in fact, constitute "speech." I say what I like, then, when I throw money at it, in the same way I say what I like when I buy anything else.

But don't corporations have trained spokespeople and public relations wonks? Can't they make their scripted commentaries about the monies their bosses spend, regardless of their destination?

In fact, wouldn't it be interesting for them to get deeper into the debate? Then we could tell better where their true sentiments lie.

This situation has McConnell befuddled. Political commentary without donations? What next?

Unacceptable. "Shut up and dribble," sneered Laura Ingraham to LeBron James when the latter came out aggressively in favor of Black Lives Matter. I guess more opinions make things too complicated for her. Or maybe he just didn't enlist Fox News' propaganda department to amplify his sentiments.

Yeah, right. That's gonna happen. But that no longer works, if it ever did. That's master-to-slave talk. That's trying to put someone in their place. That's the last thing that'll happen now.

Believing that corporations aren't supposed to contribute verbal reactions as well as money is, well, let me quote McConnell--just stupid. They're Americans. And the Supreme Court has anointed them with 'person' status, so--why can't they act like political people, too?

And--watch this--they can change their minds. They can choose to support both political parties some of the time or all of the time in making donations. And they can explain why.

They can oppose putting the Major League All-Star Game in Atlanta, Georgia, objecting to what's clearly an attempt by the racist-controlled state legislature to make it more difficult for Black people to vote. It can say, definitively: In support of all the Black people who fly in the planes that bring you to the games, watch the game itself and drink soda on a hot July night, we don't think it's a good idea to patronize racism. We'll take our game elsewhere, where that isn't happening. Denver will be just fine for that.

Not only that, but MLB has a tribute planned for Hank Aaron, home run king and my baseball hero, who passed away earlier this year. It's too bad that one of his baseball playing cities, Atlanta, happens to be the one abandoned for this embarrassment. But as sportswriter Michael Wilbon pointed out, moving the site as a protest for limiting people's rights to vote is actually an even better tribute to Aaron, who quietly but clearly advocated for equal rights and who fielded not only fly balls but death threats as he closed in on Babe Ruth's record. 

Delta, and Coca-Cola, and Major League Baseball stand to make just as much money, if not more, by such stances. The television coverage will be the same, except it's being shown on Fox, so don't count on any sideline commentary.

Georgia loses out. Tough beans. The governor can object as much as he wants: He's part of this awful Jim Crow wannabe. It's another shot across the bow of bigotry, brought by big-time sports: If Black people play, don't expect us to ignore it. I salute Major League Baseball.

Corporations are a way of life, unfortunately, an offshoot of the bigness of America. Some make things easier, some do not. Some are all too aware of the tune that they make the common consumer dance to. So when some of them are aware enough to make a principled stand for voting rights, that stand should be heralded and shouted into the sky.

That's all they've done. And that's plenty.

And to the whiners? I don't need to tell you to 'shut up and dribble.' You can just shut up.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Still A Place for Compromise: Vaccine Passports Can Bring Joy

It's not like I looked for a compromise, but one's just jumped out at me. Why not explore it?

It's about vaccine passports, which are becoming the social whisperer of the month. I really, really, like the idea.

It's a way of giving businesses, cultural centers, and schools--damn near everybody--the opportunity to open at full capacity. Just make sure everybody's been vaccinated. Nobody can get sick from anybody in the building. Voila!

But, of course--and this is not an absurd notion--it violates a couple of what might be sacrosanct notions found in either the Constitution or a consideration of its meaning:

• The right of privacy: Whose business is it, anyway, whether I got a vaccination or not? Am I considered smart if I did, and stupid if I didn't? Who are you to assume that? and
• The freedom to determine my destiny as I please. I might think this whole thing is still a hoax. I might still not know anyone who's gotten Covid-19. I might walk around perfectly safe myself. I thought this was a free country!

Two governors, in decidedly Republican states, Texas and Florida, have already cancelled vaccine passports: They're not going to approve one by executive order, nor will they sign any bill passed by their legislatures (as if they would do that anyhow). That number will, of course, increase as we go.

And Republicans are soooooo supportive of small businesses, which would gain to benefit by such a development! But what members of that party do and have done continue to befuddle me with their hypocrisy and illogic, so I will not continue down that road.

Maybe they see that the Biden administration would serve to gain significantly from such a development. That's purely and cynically political. It's also very, very short-sighted. To me, if I were them, the idea that business would recover is something to get behind us then wait for developments that are more generic to Democrats and jump on them to be critical--and re-establish a larger base to take over Congress in 2022. But what do I know?

Here is an opportunity to restart our massive economic engine, get people back out into the streets, create more interstate commerce with increased shipping of goods to be sold. Here is a chance to get America back.

And it can still work, if only in certain states. It can be leveraged in with a time factor.

It's taking time, as we know too well, for Covid vaccines to be injected into arms, though the administration is increasing the rate of vaccination at a greatly agreeable pace. It's taking time to achieve herd immunity.

But it's also true that, by the day, thousands and thousands more are clearing the two week probation for the second vaccination to be absorbed and made wholly potent. Those people, say the Center for Disease Control, can mingle with others with like guarantees. 

Then let's do that. Let's allow businesses and cultural centers and schools and colleges to screen for that and at least get them started. Everybody else has to mask up, and the establishment makes the judgment about whether they allow those folks to partake or not.

But let's put a sunset date on it, like say October 1. By that time, an overwhelming number of Americans should be getting the vaccine--except those who still believe it be a hoax or are insistent that vaccines are harmful.

With that sunset date, it might get people who are hesitant to reconsider. They can start enjoying the things they used to do in public before October 1, and if not, well, they have to wait, but not wait forever. And those who are concerned about the spreading of the virus (think Michigan) can at least go to some places and not worry so much about it.

After October 1, if you're still not sick, you probably won't be. And if you haven't received the vaccine, it's not because there weren't enough doses or that nobody could reach you. But it won't make much difference anyhow.

The civil libertarians can go about their business, secure in the knowledge that their rights will be restored after a brief delay. In the meantime, the rest of us can proceed with our lives in a newly enriched way, with a new joy, with a new enthusiasm that's been missing (admit it) from nearly everything.

We all want to "get back to normal," whatever that may be for us. Normal means to go to our favorite places, invite others to join us, and be with loved ones without hesitation. All of this is now a patchwork quilt, knitted together by a government that's doing a workabout, competent job of reversing the selfishness and craven attitudes of the previous gang of rogues and incompetents.

The above date is, of course, negotiable. But it's a way through to enjoying ourselves again. I hope someone thinks about it.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.