9-12 Unity?

September 11 is always difficult for me. Even though I personally didn't lose any friends or family on that day in 2001, I grew up in New York and worked several summers in the literal shadow of the World Trade Center. I always have to fight off a miasma of sadness on the days surrounding it. I usually refrain from making any comments, occasionally posting an image of my phone alarms, set for the times of the attacks. 

On September 11, 2001 I was seriously hung over when I found out what was happening. I was less than two months away from being thrown out of my own home and had just been ejected from the religious group that I had been involved with for decades. On Mondays nights I stayed up all night drinking so I wouldn't have to interact with my then-wife on Tuesdays, my day off. After hearing commotion downstairs, I stumbled into the living room where my kids were watching CNN. One of them told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. At first I thought it was a small single-seater that lost control, but it soon became obvious that it was something worse. There's no question that 9-11 was a day filled with horror, but I hear a lot around this time of year about how Americans were united on 9-12, and how that unity has faded away. But were we united?

"We" is a tricky term. Who is included in "we"? What I remember from the days following 9-11 was that a lot of Americans were united in a ramping up of xenophobia and an irrational thirst for retribution. What I remember is that every Muslim American became a target of hatred. There was no recognition that Islam is a religion that exists on a continuum, from secularized children of immigrants, to Americanized families who have been here for generations, to those who are observant, and yes, including violent fanatics and fundamentalists too. The hatred of the "other" wasn't narrowly focused on jihadists either, nor did it home in on all Muslims. Anyone who looked vaguely "Arab" was target, or any convenient brown-skinned person, even American citizens. The Islamophobia metastasized into a broad based fear of immigrants and calls to seal our borders and cut off immigration from all but a few "safe" countries. "We" were unified in our hatred and fear...for a certain value of "we". 

"We", in order better keep an eye on "them", supported the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies far reaching powers of surveillance and detention. Just for "them" you say? Let me introduce you to FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Originally passed in 1978 in order to legalize surveillance of foreign nationals alleged to be engaged in espionage, it was expanded, amended and reinterpreted in the wake of 9-11 and now includes the ability to wiretap US citizens in certain circumstances. 

And let's not forget the fact that we overthrew two foreign governments, one, Afghanistan, because it harbored bin-Laden (we eventually found him in the territory of a supposed ally, Pakistan) and the other, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, based on lies about the intelligence. Afghanistan is fresh in our minds, just having been retaken by the Taliban, whom we displaced 20 years ago, but Iraq is no success story. In addition to being overrun by the so-called Islamic State, it has moved into the orbit of Iran, a nation that is far from being an ally. The initial toppling of two governments was relatively easy, but we had no plan for what to do next, and ended up propping up corrupt governments and getting bogged down in civil wars that had questionable national security value to us. Not only were Americans dying for reasons that were foggy at best, but "the troops" were deified to the extent that one couldn't criticize the military, or even its mission, without being branded as unpatriotic. The military's influence has grown so big that it wasn't until a third president who campaigned on extricating us was elected that we actually got out. 

Post 9-11 unity was an illusion.

Joe Biden - President from Hell?

He's suffering from dementia. He's a puppet. He's a traitor. He's incompetent. Impeach him. 25th Amendment him. There's plenty to dislike about President Joe Biden; his fifty-years-out-of-date handsiness, his behavior toward Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, his support of the Clinton era crime bill, his initial support of the invasion of Iraq, his tendency to shoot from the hip and propensity for "gaffes". Biden was far from the first choice of a lot of people during the 2020 Democratic primaries, but he prevailed over the rest of the Democratic field for several reasons. Despite the high profile of some of the more progressive-liberal candidates like Senators Sanders and Warren, the majority of Democratic voters were not supporters of the far-reaching systemic changes favored by the left wing of the party. Biden was in many ways a compromise nominee. He wasn't the favorite of a large percentage of primary voters, but he was someone the majority could live with. He was the "safe" candidate. 

Many of the labels that have been hung around Biden's neck are justified, he's been in politics for over four decades. Anyone who has been around that long is going to take unpopular stances, and some of their decisions are going to turn out to be wrong. But some of the more incendiary and insulting descriptions are nothing more than mud-slinging by political opponents. Accusations of dementia seem to be convincing to many of those who vote Republican. His sometimes disjointed speaking style is cited as evidence of his mental decline, as is his difficulty in recalling details when answering questions. We all know about his stutter. Anyone who has been around someone who has a pronounced stutter knows how difficult it can be to speak under pressure. Beyond the stutter, those who have never had to speak in public without a script, or answer questions which have complex answers, have no idea how difficult that is. Reading from a script or teleprompter is completely different than speaking off the cuff or responding to difficult questions. 

Looking back at recent presidents, Bill Clinton is one who comes to mind who appeared at ease answering questions and holding forth on government policies. Part of that is due to Clinton being extremely adept at the minutia of government. He was unusually involved in the nuts and bolts and less of a delegator than other modern presidents. He was also a consummate bullshitter. Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan seemed to be good communicators, but both men had a speaking style that communicated confidence and both were able to redirect questions and avoid specifics by spouting pre-prepared mini-speeches which didn't always answer the question. Gerald Ford and both of the Bushes came across as terrible public speakers, not because they didn't know what they were talking about, but because they lacked the debating skills and smooth delivery of Reagan, Clinton or Obama. Trump, on the other hand was great at demagogic posturing and could talk without a break for two hours, but in press conferences would resort to fabricating "facts" and outright lying when backed into a corner. Biden is more in the mold of the Bushes when it comes to his handling of questions and his ability to mentally access facts and figures. 

Of course, once his detractors grab on to the idea that Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, it's easy to jump to the next step:  that he is a puppet, controlled by Speaker Pelosi or Vice President Harris. They need no evidence for this; once they have made up their minds that he doesn't have the capacity to function intellectually, they feel that it's obvious that someone else is pulling the strings. Actual evidence points to someone who surrounds himself with experts and delegates appropriate authority to his subordinates, but who makes his own decisions. 

This brings us to a seemingly contradictory stance - that President Biden has engaged in treasonous behavior and should be impeached or should resign. Impeachment has only been used four times in our history. The first time, President Andrew Johnson avoided removal by only one vote in the Senate. Bill Clinton was never in danger of removal after his impeachment, nor was Donald Trump after his first impeachment, and he had already lost the election before his second impeachment. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and removed. Removal of a sitting president is a long shot. Not only would a majority of the House of Representatives vote to impeach him, which would likely require the other party to control the House, but two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict and remove, an extremely low probability scenario.  In my opinion Donald Trump's actions more than warranted impeachment and removal, he solicited aid from a foreign government to undercut a potential (and eventual) political rival and supported and encouraged an unsuccessful coup attempt. Those were clearly corrupt acts. But even early in Trump's term there were calls for impeachment, before Trump had had the chance to do anything. There were similar calls from Republicans to do the same to Biden, days into his term. From fringe Republicans to talk show hosts, every time Biden takes an action that they don't like, or isn't successful, somebody is calling for impeachment or resignation. The Constitution doesn't list incompetence or policy disagreement as grounds for impeachment. Biden opponents act as if he is the first president who had to deal with a crisis, made decisions that went horribly wrong, or took legally shaky actions. We have Congress, we have the courts, and we have elections. 

In all likelihood, the most vocal Biden detractors are simply reacting to the resistance to the Trump presidency. They know that what they are saying is demagoguery, but they also know that it will rile up the pro-Trump and anti-Democratic masses, who don't know or understand that their leaders don't believe what's coming out of their own mouths. They also can't distinguish their own cult-like worship of Trump from what Biden's support is: an acceptance that once the primaries were over, Biden was the best option available, that we know he has faults, and that we don't like a lot of his policies, but we like enough of them to prefer them over Trumpublican hegemony. 

 

The Politicizing of Public Health

There have always been people who distrusted mainstream medicine. Many of these people cited religious objections to vaccinations (my ex-wife was one of these), and there were also many people who trusted more in "natural" remedies. But these people have always been a small minority. The fact that the vast majority of the population were vaccinated against the most deadly of diseases ensured that the likelihood that the unvaccinated would contract one of these diseases was vanishingly small. Occasionally we would hear about an outbreak of mumps or chicken pox, but usually it was among an isolated anti-vax community. For the most part Americans accepted that vaccinations were the best way to guard against epidemics and to minimize the harm that a virus would cause in an infected person. This has changed drastically in the last two years.

You hear a lot these days about "trusting the science", but science isn't a dogma, or a rigid set of facts, science is a method of reaching conclusions. Science questions assumptions and tests new ideas. Large swaths of the country don't understand this and point to examples when the scientific consensus was wrong to cast doubt upon scientific conclusions and guidance. One of the examples that crops up frequently is DDT, a pesticide that came into agricultural use in 1945, and was banned in 1972. DDT was an effective tool in the control of malaria and typhus, spread by mosquitos and fleas respectively; it was approved for agricultural use by the FDA. As time went on, opposition to its use led to more rigorous testing and an EPA ban on the use of DDT in 1972. The lesson that some people take from this is that the FDA was wrong, therefore we shouldn't believe that anything that they approve is safe. The lesson that should be taken is that the FDA was wrong, but due to scientific questioning of assumptions and rigorous testing, the scientific consensus changed and corrected its incorrect assumptions. 

In the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, the medical community was flying blind. No one really knew the best ways to prevent transmission or to treat an infection. Guidance regarding masks and social distancing changed frequently, as new facts came to light. This could have been a moment when politicians of all parties came together for the good of the country, but it was not to be. 

The incompetency of the Trump administration dominated the approach to the pandemic and doomed its execution. Rather than getting all his experts in a room and agreeing on a strategy, Trump simultaneously abdicated any responsibility for a federal response and narcissistically took on his usual "only I can fix this" persona.  Infectious disease experts and epidemiologists were trotted out to make public statements and shortly undermined by ignorant pronouncements by Trump. Rather than lead by crafting a consensus, he sowed doubt of medical experts' views among his followers. At the same time, he insisted that the on-the-ground response be left to the states, who he undermined as well by suggesting that his followers "liberate" states where governors issued mask mandates or shutdowns of businesses. All the while he took credit when things went well and excoriated others when they didn't. By giving his own ego and image priority over public safety he set the stage for the widespread skepticism of the main "win" in the fight against Covid-19: the fast development of a Covid vaccine. 

The damage had been done. Rather than elation that a vaccine was now available, enabling businesses to open and make people safer, disinformation about the vaccine itself began to circulate, with ridiculous claims about how the vaccine was more harmful that the virus itself. While the last time I checked, a majority of adults had been vaccinated, it's a slim majority, less than 55%, with some states significantly less than 50%. And many of the anti-vaxxers are not content to quietly pass up a vaccination, but loudly and obnoxiously rage against vaccinations and those who champion them. And because infections and deaths are rising, predominantly among the unvaccinated, masks mandates are back, concerts and other large events are being cancelled, and businesses are suffering. The skeptics are now insisting that masks don't work, when the use of masks coupled with social distancing and hygienic practices corresponded with the reduction in infection and deaths. How different would things have been if then-President Trump had actually lead, by expressing confidence in his experts and coordinating with the states instead of knee capping them? We'll never know, but I strongly suspect that many of those politically opposed to the vaccine would be first in line for the needle. 

Trumpworld has always been a bizzaro world of opposites. Cult-like Trump sycophants unquestioningly believe things that he says that are easily shown to be lies, but point to his opponents as cultish. Despite the obvious and really unarguable reality that the vaccine has been politicized by Trump and his followers, some Trumpists insist that it's the Democrats who have undermined vaccine confidence and politicized the process. Speaker Pelosi's skepticism that the Trump administration was competent enough to produce and distribute a safe vaccine, especially in light of his musings about injecting bleach or shining light inside the body, was interpreted retrospectively to be undermining and politicizing the vaccines that were eventually produced, which she was a vocal cheerleader for. Ignoring the fact that Republicans and Rightists would hardly be expected to be moved by anything Pelosi said and Democrats and Liberals would be more likely to listen to medical professionals. Reality isn't a strong suit with Trumpists.

So, here we are, when we thought it would be over with mass vaccinations, with people still dying because they don't believe what the experts say. 

Local Control

One of the defining policies of conservatism is the principle of local control. At least until recently. The principle of local control is that whenever possible state, city and county governments, as well as school boards, should be making the decisions that effect them. States rights, a version of local control, was one of the arguments that southern states used to fight against the national push to eliminate slavery throughout the United States. Cities and states that object to civil rights legislation or voting rights laws cite the preference for local control. Local control has been one of those lines that differentiate American  conservatism from liberalism, with liberals generally supporting national solutions while conservatives favoring the rights of states and cities to set their own rules. 

This is not a black and white issue. There are some things that are best handled locally, while others need consistent treatment across state lines. There are a lot of grey areas and differences of opinion on where the line should be drawn. But the Republican Party has lost its interest in and support of, local control. Today's example is an executive order by the governor of Florida to prohibit school districts from imposing mask mandates. I don't believe that it's arguable that a school district is in the best position to make appropriate decisions for their students and teachers. Sure, there likely isn't unanimity on a school board's decisions, but they are elected by the people in their school district and are answerable to them, not to the governor. Districts in different regions would make decisions that might vary from each other - dictates from the central state government are simply inappropriate.

This latest example is part of a national trend for state governments that are dominated by Republicans to nullify actions taken by predominantly Democratic cities within those states. We see, especially in places like Texas and Florida, governor and legislatures preempting local decisions regarding homelessness, firearms regulation, sanctuary cities, rights of transsexual individuals, workplace unionization, menu labelling, removing Confederate statues, affordable housing, implementation of sales taxes, cutting police budgets, and voting accessibility. 

Like the interest in deficits, national debt and fiscal responsibility that Republicans only care about when the Democrats are in power, this about face on local control is just another example of hypocrisy in the modern Republican Party.

Social Security Misunderstanding

It's time for another lesson on Social Security, what it is and what it isn't. Periodically you'll see social media posts or memes claiming that your social security has somehow been stolen, or wondering "where all that money went", or complaining about all the money that "you paid in". 

The biggest misconception about social security is that it's some kind of savings account where you put money in and you get it back when you retire. It's not even much like a retirement account, an IRA or a 401(k), where you do exactly that. The money that is deducted from your paycheck isn't in a vault somewhere with your name on it, waiting patiently for you to retire. It is helpful to think of Social Security, not as a retirement account, but as an insurance policy, with your payroll contributions similar to an insurance premium. Furthermore, the insurance that it is similar to isn't life insurance, but more like auto or medical insurance. It's plausible that you may never make a claim on your auto insurance policy. You may go your whole life and never have an accident. Where does all that money go? You don't get it back at some point if you decide to sell your car. No, your premiums go toward paying out the claims of people who do have accidents. (And paying the salaries of insurance company employees of course) Social Security is very much like that. While you, as a non-retired worker, are paying payroll taxes with every paycheck, there are people who are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. Their benefits aren't being paid out from an account with their names on it, but from the money that you are contributing now. 

What about the people who die before they can start collecting benefits? Where does that money go? It doesn't go anywhere, because it wasn't there to begin with. All the payments that the unlucky person who died young made had already been paid out to retirees when he was alive and still working. He can't put all the payroll taxes he paid over his lifetime into his will for his family to inherit. (Spouses and sometimes children of deceased persons who would have been eligible for benefits can claim benefits based on the deceased's earnings record, this is different than treating the payroll contributions themselves as an asset which can be passed on in a will or otherwise transferred)

Another popular misconception is that the looming insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund is due to the fund being "stolen from" by Congress, presidents, or both. The Social Security Trust Fund is not a bank account, or a Scrooge McDuck-like vault full of cash. What it is is a way of accounting for the annual surpluses. The Trust Fund is not the money that you and every other wage earner contributes. What it is, is the difference between what is collected by way of payroll taxes and what is paid out as benefits. Until very recently there was always more collected than what was paid out. So, what do you do with that money? You could put it in a savings account. But when money goes into a bank account it isn't physically in the bank, the bank uses that cash to loan money to businesses and individuals. The money that an individual or business has in the bank is only there on paper, you can get it out when you need it, but it's actually being used by the bank and they're profiting off its use. What the US government does, rather than putting the Social Security Trust Fund in a bank, or investing it, is lend the money to itself. By law, the annual surplus is invested in US Treasury bills that earn interest. This way, rather than leaving the collected cash in the hands of a third party, who can profit off that cash, the Social Security Administration holds Treasury bills, while the government can utilize the cash it receives from the purchase of the Treasury bills. Neither Congress nor any president has "stolen" from the Social Security Trust Fund. The money is there in the same way that your money in a bank is there, even though it may have been loaned out to a local business or homeowner. So, why do we hear about the Trust Fund becoming insolvent?

Very recently (in may have been this very year) the payouts for benefits exceeded the funds collected by way of payroll taxes. Therefore the surplus will not increase as it did in the past. The Trust Fund balance still is not decreasing (yet) because of interest payments on the Treasury bills from the general fund to the Trust Fund. Going forward, the difference between collections and benefits will need to be paid for by cashing in the Treasury bills that the Trust Fund holds. Eventually, possibly as soon as 2034, the balance in the Trust Fund will be depleted to the extent that there will only be enough income from payroll taxes to fund around 75% of benefit payouts. What will happen? No one really knows. Possible solutions include increasing the retirement age, or raising the payroll tax percentage; possibly taxing a greater proportion of benefits. 

Yes, there are problems on the horizon for Social Security, but the reasons are somewhat more complex than Facebook memes suggest.

Voter Supression

Aside from the way the Electoral College skews the "will of the people", most of us, until recently, had a reasonable expectation that our votes would be counted. This reasonable expectation fed the assumption that the way to get things done the way you wanted them done was to elect people who held the same views as you did. 

Ha! How naïve.  

Unless you've been living under the metaphorical rock you know that there has been an upsurge in efforts to ensure that your vote doesn't count, or to ensure that you just don't get to vote at all. One of the more insidious, yet perfectly legal, vote rigging strategies is gerrymandering. This is a method of drawing Congressional and other political boundaries so that one party remains in power, even when they receive a minority of votes. There are many examples of this, one local example is how the County Board district lines were redrawn after the 2010 census. At one time the districts resembled jagged pie slices. Each district included a portion of Lincoln, which is in the center of Lancaster County, as well as a slice of small town and farming parts of the county. When the district boundaries were changed, most of Lincoln, which voted primarily for Democrats, was contained within one district while the other six were made up of primarily small town and rural areas, where the people tended to vote for Republicans. The result was a 6-1 Republican-Democrat split, where previously it might be 4-3 or 5-2. You can see the results of this most clearly in Midwest states with populous urban areas. The majority vote in Democrats to statewide offices while the gerrymandered legislature remains majority Republican. 

In several of these states the Republican legislature, immediately after a Democrat was elected as Governor or other statewide office voted to restrict or limit the Democrat's powers. In one state, the limitation in the Secretary of State's authority would  expire at the end of her term, presumably so that a Republican successor would have all of the former power. 

Republican-dominated states, in the wake of the Big Lie of a stolen election, have, in the dubious name of election integrity, imposed restrictions, roadblocks and hurdles to make it more difficult to register to vote, or even to get to the polls. They have set up a multitude of new rules expanding the ways that ballots can be thrown out, with most of the restrictions unsurprisingly affecting areas that historically vote for Democrats. Non-partisan local election officials in some states can be overruled by the legislature, which in some cases has the authority to declare an election invalid. And to rub salt in the wound, the Supreme Court just ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about these laws. Of course it was a 6-3 decision - along ideological lines. Surprise! (It didn't have to be that way, but no, we couldn't bring ourselves to elect the email lady). And the Voting Rights Act 2.0 has been smothered in its crib by the Republicans and the moderate Democrats in the Senate. Surprise! 

Our Democracy is in jeopardy (you reply that "we're a republic, not a democracy and I will slap you through the screen!) - and it's getting more and more difficult to overcome this undemocratic takeover by the minority. You may not like the Democratic Party platform - you may think it's socialistic, or any other Fox News generated bogeyman, but they at least are trying to implement their programs by getting the most votes! They are trying to enact change by the will of the majority, not in spite of it. 
 

Help Wanted

Wherever you go there seems to be "help wanted" signs. Restaurants especially seem to be struggling to fill all necessary positions. A popular explanation for this is that people "just don't want to work", mainly due to the belief that unemployment benefits are so lucrative that people would rather stay home than get a job. But what's really happening? 

Unemployment rates had been steadily decreasing since around 2010 when we hit a peak rate of around 10%, getting as low as 3%. As someone who was a retail manager during those years, I saw how it became increasingly difficult to fill entry-level positions as the unemployment rate fell. It wasn't that people didn't want to work, it was that there were more choices. When there is high, or even moderate, unemployment, most people will stick with a job that they don't like. Part of the reason for this is fear. "What if I quit and can't find another job?" is an understandable question that unhappy employees might ask themselves. Among employees who aren't making entry-level wages, there is the uncertainty about whether a different job would pay the same as the one they are leaving. For a lot of people, it takes something almost catastrophic to get them to leave their job and look for something else. For me, I had been unhappy for several years, but it took getting fired to get me to look for something else. In 2020 that catastrophic event was the pandemic. 

In Spring 2020 many restaurant workers, unable to work remotely, found themselves out of a job. While it's possible, even likely, that some of these folks attempted to ride it out by living on unemployment benefits, many more simply found other jobs. Once restaurants started opening back up and managers realized they couldn't fully staff their business, former restaurant workers fell into several categories:

• People who, before the pandemic, hated their jobs, but were afraid to leave. They found other work and never looked back
• People who, before the pandemic, had no issue with their job, but found other work, and didn't want to change jobs again
• People who, after working in a different industry for a year, realized how hard restaurant work is and realized they could make a living without working so hard and that other businesses were offering competitive wages

And it's not just the restaurant business that's scrambling. A local grocery store director told me recently that last year he had no problem filling positions, but that this year it has been very difficult. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out that when most people are already working, few people are going to be desperate for jobs. It's a worker's market, business owners aren't calling the shots.