September 9, 2022

The handcuffed Steve Brannon has maybe the best quote from the Trump years, which he is still using. When confronted with uncomfortable, maybe even treasonous, information regarding Trump, he said “flood the zone with sh*t” to defer and deflect the media. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. It was never true. It only mattered that it came quickly and in volume. You can see the strategy at work today as Republicans come up with the reason du jour to excuse Trump’s stealing of highly classified materials, some revealing our most sensitive nuclear secrets.

Maybe the Democrats should take a page from Bannon as we approach the mid-year elections? Maybe they should flood the zone with fa*cts. Abortion kills women. Republicans deny climate change, and vote against actions to mitigate it. Republicans favor guns over children. January 6 was an insurrection. Republicans want to repeal health care, and raise taxes on middle America. Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. Trump is a guilty of fomenting the insurrection and profiting from it. Trump is the subject of numerous criminal investigations. Trump cut taxes on the rich and corporations, exacerbating the national debt. Mitch McConnell delegitimized the Supreme Court. Trump did untold damage to the institutions of government that keep us safe like the DoJ, the FBI and the CIA. Trump lied about and totally mismanaged the pandemic. The Republican Party traffics with white supremacists. Republicans voted against reducing the prices of critical drugs. Republicans have no agenda.

Republicans need to be careful about shoveling sh*t into the wind because the winds are changing.

September 1, 2022

The eighth commandment is “thou shalt not steal.” Stealing is to take or appropriate without right, and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully.” So, stealing is wrong, and we should do everything in our power to stop anyone who steals. You might say we need to “stop the steal.” Donald Trump seems to think that the 2020 presidential election rightfully belongs to him. It was stolen so to speak, and he is looking to stop it.

The ninth commandment is “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” or, in other words, “thou shalt not lie.” Trump is clearly violating the ninth commandment as he falsely claims that others have violated the eight commandment. And now, to square the circle, Trump has been caught violating the eighth, which will require him to probably take the fifth. He literally stole classified documents that belong to the United States of America, and lied about it. Hopefully, we will find out why he did what he did, and what he planned on doing with documents. My guess is he was planning on using them to either sell to the highest bidder, or use them as a “get out of jail free” card. Maybe he just wanted to ingratiate himself to his bromance buddy, Putin.

I have no idea where this is all going to lead. My hope is that Trump settles, which is what he always does, and part of the settlement is that we will never have to deal with him again before we run out of commandments.

August 8, 2022

I love AAA. It is the one bill I don’t mind paying. I can’t count the number of times I have had to call them to charge my battery, repair a tire, give me a tow, or something else. They always respond, and respond quickly. The Democratic Party needs to take its cue from AAA. It needs to respond quickly and effectively before the mid-terms to counter Republican attempts to deflect voters from its non-agenda. Democrats Ned to focus on AAA for the mid-terms…Abortion, Arms and Air. Democrats are energized by Republican attempts to curtail a women’s right to control her own body, their attempts to limit safe and sane gun restrictions on weapons of war, and their abject refusal to deal with and vote for legislation to deal with a warming climate.

President Biden can list a number of substantive achievements in his first two years…the Inflation Reduction Act, the Recovery Relief Act, student loan forgiveness, meaningful gun legislation, reenergizing the NATO coalition in support of Ukraine, the distribution of COVID vaccines, the CHIPS legislation, the naming of a Supreme Court Justice, and the prosecution of hundreds of January 6th insurrectionists. In almost every case, the only thing that Republicans have offered is crickets.

This is an enviable and sellable record, which will motivate some voters, but it will be AAA that drives them to the polls. Women are scared to death by the Hobbs Supreme Court decision. Parents are scared to death sending their children to school. And young people are scared to death about the planet they will be inheriting. These are powerful motivators, and that is a powerful coalition.

August 25, 2022

 ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. Investors are increasingly applying these non-financial factors as part of their analytical process to identify material risks and growth opportunities. Professionally managed assets with ESG mandates swelled to $46 trillion globally in 2021, representing nearly 40% of all assets under management, according to Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services.

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida passed a resolution directing the state of Florida’s fund managers to invest state funds in a manner that prioritizes the highest return on investment for Florida’s taxpayers and retirees without considering the ideological agenda of the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) movement. Likely Presidential candidate DiSantis is saying that he knows more about investing than companies like Citi, Fidelity, Vanguard and many others as well as the pension funds and individuals that choose these investment options in the form of mutual funds, ETF’s and other, professionally managed accounts.

President DeSantis wants to tell companies how to invest. He wants to tell teachers what books the can use, and what can’t be in those books. He wants Florida’s schools to stop teaching stuff they are not actually teaching. He wants to punish companies like Disney who don’t tow the line. He is a bully with an ideological agenda. He may be right for Florida, but he is far too Right for the rest of us.

August 26, 2022

I think it is absolutely disgraceful that we are allowing people who earn below $125,000 a year to walk away from $10,000 of debt they incurred by attending college. This is patently unfair to all of the students who had their parents pay for the educations. This is obviously unfair to the students, who had their fathers buy their way into Ivy League schools like Penn and Harvard. Before you know it, we will be allowing billionaires to declare bankruptcy multiple times over in order to skate on the debts they incurred.

I am also concerned about the added inflationary pressures that this policy will create. The government will no longer be collecting principal and interest payments on $10,000 per person. That’s about $100 per month. This is roughly equivalent to cutting taxes by a trillion dollars for the top 1% of earners and corporations. I am sure these people are going to go out, and buy themselves an EV with their new found liquidity, driving up the price of EV’s for the rest of us.

This is unfair to those tax payers who decided to not seek higher education because they couldn’t afford it. In order to level the playing field for all, the federal government needs to do away with all of the job training programs that it administers like Job Corps for younger workers. The government needs to get out of the education business like offering GI loans to veterans and Federal Pell Grants for students who demonstrate real financial need. These programs are not fair to those of us who are unable to use them.

Finally, the federal government needs to turn the job of higher education over to reputable educators like the now defunct Trump University. Trump demonstrated that private citizens who know nothing about education can provide an educational experience like the much maligned Ivies. For example, students who go to the Trump U.’s of the world will get a crash course in Latin, and will learn phrases like “caveat emptor.” They should be saddled with debt like a Trump casino.

August 11, 2022

The conservative, right wing of the United States likes to beat up on universities in the same way that it beats up on the media, the deep state, the FBI, Democrats, and anyone else that it doesn’t agree with it. They say that higher education is infused with liberal ideologies. Most universities are probably left leaning to a point, but there is a reason the curriculum is referred to as liberal arts. Students are not indoctrinated. They are educated on how to distinguish fact from fiction, and how to draw their own conclusions. For some reason, the Conservative establishment finds this to be dangerous and subversive. So how is it that we are in the grips of a conservative revolution if all the universities are turning out are Commie Socialist Democrats?

The Supreme Court is filled with graduates of elite universities, who somehow avoided or resisted the brainwashing that they were subjected to. Eight of the nine Justices went to either Harvard or Yale law schools. As undergraduates, only Thomas and Barrett were not Ivy Leaguers. Clearly, the Ivies are not doing a very good job of turning their students to the dark side.

The Republican political establishment is rife with Ivy League graduates, who are anything but liberal. In recent memory, both Bush’s went to Yale even though they found this to be politically inconvenient. Today, we have radical Righties like Cruz, Hawley, Cotton and Stefanik, all of whom attended Ivy League institutions. I won’t even mention the person who shall go nameless.

The reality is universities are complicated places, and complications don’t fit conveniently into the Conservative narrative. Ironically, it is the Right that has colleges and universities like Oral Roberts and Hillsdale, whose mission it is to teach conservative dogma. There are many, great Catholic schools in the country that no one would be accused of being liberal. Higher education is not monolithic. Conservatives graduate from good schools because of the schools, and not despite the schools.

August 8, 2022

The state of Indiana just passed a bill to ban abortion in the state. It is the first of its kind and probably not the last. Major companies in the state have already announced their intentions to investigate relocating elsewhere or, at a minimum, not expanding their operations within the state. There will be numerous opportunities for western Massachusetts to cherry pick companies from Indiana and elsewhere.

Eric Lesser, hopefully our next Lieutenant Governor, needs to be on the next plane to Indiana with a group of civic leaders to pitch these companies on coming here. Our state supports women. Our state supports education and healthcare. In western Massachusetts, we have a great, year-round climate, a reasonable cost of living, an educated workforce, great schools, and great hospitals. Hopefully, we will have high speed train service to Boston soon. Recreational opportunities abound with quick access to the ocean, mountains, lakes, and rivers.

Indiana shot itself in the foot with an AR-15. Rather than offer them our thoughts and prayers, let’s offer them a better place to do business.

August 7, 2022

“What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America” (2004) is a book by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank, which explores the rise of populist anti-elitist conservatism in the United States, centering on the experience of Kansas, Frank’s native state. In the late 19th century, Kansas was known as a hotbed of the left-wing populist movement, but, in recent decades, it has become overwhelmingly conservative. According to the book, the political discourse of recent decades has dramatically shifted from social and economic equality to the use of “explosive” cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, which are used to redirect anger toward “liberal elites.”

Now that Kansan’s have overwhelming rejected eliminating the right to an abortion from the state constitution, we can now rightfully ask, “What’s Wrong With Arizona?” What is wrong with Arizona goes well beyond Kyrsyen Sinema’s fan girl obsession with the carried interest provision in the tax code that favors hedge fund billionaires. Arizona Republicans have just nominated four, mega MAGA election deniers for its highest offices. Mark Finchem, candidate for Secretary of State, is a member of the militia group, The Oath Keepers. Their candidate for Governor, Kari Lake, is a former TV news anchor. Blake Masters, candidate for the U.S. Senate, had advocated for impeaching President Biden and removing him from office. Masters encouraged people to read “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the manifesto of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, for its analysis of the negative impact of technology on society; he pointed to Kaczynski as an example of a “subversive thinker” who should be more widely known.

Maybe if global warming continues with its attendant droughts, Arizona may become moot. At least we will know what happened. Thirst made it crazy.

August 6, 2022

Believe it or not, another football season is upon us. Players on both offense and defense are sweating through the dog days of summer. Preseason games are only a week away as teams prepare for the start of the season in September. Likewise, it’s also a good time for Democrats to review their offensive and defensive playbooks for the upcoming Fall elections.

The defense is loaded. There are the January 6th Committee hearings, which are the gift that keeps on giving. The Dobbs anti-abortion ruling by the Supreme Court energized the voters of Kansas to go to the polls and “just say no.” The wackadoodle Republican Party in Arizona has nominated a group of election deniers and conspiracy theorists for statewide offices, one of whom is a member of a white supremacist organization. Herschel Walker, J.D. Vance, and Dr. Oz give celebrity a bad name. Mitch McConnell, who will not win back the Senate, decided it was a good idea to hold up veterans payments. Alex Jones, an FOT (Friend of Trump), is now $50,000,000 poorer with more law suits on the way. Trumpian Matt Gaetz is probably afraid to open his mail.

The offense looks pretty good also. After much sausage-making, Biden, Schumer and Manchin got a deal done, which addresses climate change, healthcare, and inflation. This is on top of the original rescue package. Joe Biden forged an international coalition weakened by Trump to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine. He is bringing computer chip manufacturing back to Ohio. Inflation and the price of gas is coming down. COVID has receded from the headlines, and is no longer a burning issue for most Unemployment is at 3.5%, and the economy has regained all of the jobs it lost from COVID. Congress passed meaningful gun legislation.

We will see what impact the plays put in by the Biden administration will have on the midterm elections. As Bill Belichick might say, “It’s on to November.”

August 2, 2022

Republicans continue to outdo themselves. They fought President Obama on the Affordable Care Act, refusing to cast a single vote for the legislation. Then, they tried to repeal and not replace the legislation as many as seventy times. The ACA is wildly popular with a majority of the American people, but not among Republican lawmakers.

Then, the super majority of Conservatives on the Supreme Court, who were put there through the machinations of a Republican-controlled Senate, decided to deprive women of proper, prenatal healthcare. Women are literally bleeding to death because doctors don’t want to face law suits and the loss of their licenses.

Finally, Republicans won the healthcare trifecta by depriving veterans of the healthcare they need due to wounds they received from burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even now, veterans are camped out on the steps of the Capitol.

Why do they hate healthcare so much? The public health statistics in red, Republican-controlled states are well below those in blue states. The average life span is much less in red states than blues states, but nothing seems to matter to these people. As someone once said, “Don’t confuse them with the facts.”