The Politics of Compassion, Part One
The Democrats have a lot of problems. One of them is their inability to unify. Unification depends partly upon the leadership presenting a platform, that is a short document that indicates their preferences for an ideal society. The platform should include concrete policies, such as the establishment, modification, or destruction of specific executive departments that would be implemented by the president, if elected, or presented to the Congress, if members should be elected.
The second component needed for victory is voter turnout. Ideally, all eligible voters should be turned out, by providing transportation and an escort, if necessary. Again, specific implementation of this vital component should involve such measures as chartering buses to drive through neighborhoods picking up voters of all stripes. It is much harder for Republicans to object to this measure if the bus picks up Republican voters as readily as it does Democratic voters and preference-blind pickup policy will still favor Democrats ten to one.
The third component needed for victory is propaganda. There is much to say about propaganda but suffice it to say here that the truth is the best propaganda.
Those three components, if implemented with vigor, will ensure victory if our cause is just. There is no need to stoop to infiltration of the enemy camp or consulting Sun Tzu or anything like that. Leave that to the military– they are above politics.
First, to the platform. The slogan might be, “The Politics of Compassion.” Our subject is politics, specifically political power, and there is a need in the consolidation of political power to define an US vs. THEM. This is, unfortunately, not an optional plank in our platform. I say unfortunately because fascism and other undesirable forms of government define US very narrowly and this limits compassion severely. Therefore, the US should be everyone on the planet as well as everyone FROM our planet who might reside, say, on Mars. This would maximize compassion.
Since I have brought it up, the reason I use the word “Compassion” is because it comes from the Buddhist term. And one can immediately divide US from THEM by saying that those who have compassion are with us and those who do not are with the Republicans. Everything else on the platform follows from that.
The purposes of government can be readily divided by the Preamble to the the Constitution. Most of it is readily acceptable to the Republicans but the part about “Provide for the General Welfare” is controversial. Those who have compassion are apt to interpret this clause broadly, and the Democratic platform should include the following aspects of the “General Welfare”: free schooling to the point where a person is qualified to do work according to his innate abilities and serve the general welfare by performing useful work for pay; free health care; food sufficient to hold body and mind together; and housing adequate to protect people from their environment so that they have a safe place to eat, sleep, and recreate. To address the point most at controversy right now in Congress, we will say that the government should set up a two-tier health care system: a basic one that is free, and an optional form that depends on one’s ability to pay. The system in the UK resembles the specific system we should adopt: a National Health and private institutions that are accessed by optional private insurance.
This is not the ideal system, but it most closely resembles one– single payer– which will give the best health care to the greatest number and allow for continuation of the for-profit system which already exists in the United States.
The problem with the current system is that, simply, it is unfair. It is unfair because only an immensely wealthy person would be able to pay for potentially needed care in the worst possible case– that of an inborn genetic illness that is extremely rare and requires cutting-edge research to develop a remedy. Even a person who is relatively well-off would be bankrupted by attempting to research and produce a remedy for a unique illness like that. Most people would agree, however, that a person with a unique genetic disease still deserves care– although cutting-edge research may be rationed.
The only way to have a fair system is to provide for a tax– which has already been shown to be Constitutional– which is progressive, like income tax, and pays for “insurance” for everyone, sick and healthy.
To change the subject– the more important planks of the platform address economic issues. The first is one which is dear to Don the Con’s heart: GDP growth. Current growth is inadequate to address the deficit and our $20 trillion debt. Growth must be increased from 2% to 3%, and specific measures must be taken by the government to achieve at least 3% growth. The reason we need 3% GDP growth is the very reason that Don the Con’s budget assumes that we will have it: to create his fantasy of paying off the national debt in his proposed budget and other documents. He says that only rapid growth can make payments on or pay off our national debt and keep deficits down. The only way Don the Con’s numbers work is if there is sustained 3% growth, but he has not supplied any concrete proposals to achieve that goal. He simply assumes that his tax cuts and deregulation will provide that number. This is absurd. Specific measures must be taken, and they do not involve tax cuts or significant deregulation.
To increase GDP growth, it is necessary to have both full employment and continually increasing productivity. We are nearing full employment, although it is still necessary to get government organized to provide work for those who are unable for whatever reason to find work of their own. This need not be particularly pleasant but must create the minimum needed, again, to keep body and soul together.
The advent of automation and artificial intelligence in manufacturing and providing services will vastly increase productivity and this is essential to create the 3% growth. The problem is that people will have to adjust to the changing job market that will be a result of improving AI– again, government is the only entity capable of moving people to other jobs when their jobs are replaced by AI. The reason is that private interests cannot provide the breadth of programs needed to retrain everyone affected– in fact, private interests will be responsible mainly for throwing people out of work by replacing them with machines.
Another thing needed for growth is investment in research. This aspect is completely ignored in Don the Con’s budget. It is essential for government to organize and pay for a significant amount of research in all fields. The reason for this is that research done by private interests is biased to serve those interests and the best research only comes from completely disinterested investment. The products of pure and applied research will benefit everyone and stimulate growth, but only if research is financed and regulated.
The final thing that can be affected to increase growth is to make the population of workers younger. This can only be done by recruiting new workers from immigrants, who are by nature much younger than the average citizen. This is because Social Security pensions are a reverse Ponzi scheme: the pension takes from the active workers to pay off retired workers. In a normal Ponzi scheme, the benefits mostly flow to the one person who is running the scam; in a reverse Ponzi scheme, the benefits flow to everyone who contributes to the system. If the mix of workers is too old on average, then the pension payments become onerous.
This post is intended for further expansion in the near future.
You probably haven’t been following the crisis in the Middle East because US newspapers and TV haven’t been covering the incidents closely, but you should be aware that Saudi Arabia (KSA–the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) has made a large step towards war with its neighbor Qatar. KSA and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) issued an ultimatum to Qatar containing some thirteen points, many of which are impossible to meet, and setting a ten-day deadline which expires on July 3. KSA claims that Qatar is supporting terrorism by financing groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the country of Iran. Qatar claims that it is taking precautions to prevent money flowing to terrorist groups, and that it is trying to maintain an independent foreign policy.
The demands include shutting down Al Jazeera, a news network carried on US cable channels. The network is relatively independent although it is financed by the emirs of Qatar, and it produces high quality programs. The problem is that KSA thinks its coverage is slanted to the advantage of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamists in general. Whether or not this is the case, KSA has no right to suppress the free speech of a separate country.
Another demand is that all Turkish troops leave Qatar– within ten days– a physically impossible and psychologically outrageous demand that amounts to interference with the foreign policy of a sovereign nation.
Most of the other demands amount to the same type of interference that are impossible to meet and arrogant in the extreme. Notably absent is any demand that Qatar shut down its huge American airbase and center of operations for the drone war in the region. It is bizarre that KSA would take actions that are essentially a prelude to a declaration of war against a country which hosts a very large American military presence.
What is worse, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are taking an equally hard line on the issue. According to the Guardian, “The UAE has also banned its citizens from using social media to express views sympathetic to Qatar.” This is an action that would be contrary to the US Constitution if it were to be attempted by our government, and it is intolerable to American thinking.
The Guardian story tells of a frightening and confusing sequence of events: Russian hackers, probably not government but free-lance, planted fake news stories claiming that the emir of Qatar made statements supportive of Iran and critical of Don the Con (the US President, unfortunately)– stories which were immediately picked up by media in KSA and have still not been discredited there. At the same time, Don the Con visited KSA and made friends with its aged king, participating in a traditional sword dance and offering up to $100 billion in arms sales ( actual sales are likely to be less than half that. ) After returning to the US, Don tweeted his support for KSA and accused Qatar of supporting terrorism. KSA and the GCC declared a blockade of Qatar, disrupting travel and economic ties. The blockade is entirely ineffective because Qatar can be readily resupplied by air or sea even though its entire land border is with KSA. Nonetheless, the blockade has had a profound psychological effect.
Despite the blockade and harsh words from the Saudi king, it took his government two weeks to come up with the ultimatum. Even more confusing, the American State Department seems to be supporting Qatar in this dispute and undermining Don the Con’s position.
To an ordinary American, there is little reason to support either KSA or Qatar in this dispute. Both countries are essentially wealthy monarchies with retrogressive social policies, oppressive of women and exploitative of Palestinians ( who make up most of both countries lower-class migrant labor forces and receive token support in their struggles with Israel ); both countries export vast quantities of oil (KSA) and natural gas (Qatar). Both countries are Arabic societies, although KSA originates in the radical conservative Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, while Qatar, though Sunni, is more liberal and tolerates interactions with Shia Iran. Neither country tolerates much freedom of speech, although Qatar is more tolerant in this regard and supports Al Jazeera ( which claims to be objective although it presents the Arab side of most issues. )
The problem here is that the blockade and ultimatum are a prelude to war, not a logical step in the direction of cutting off funding for terrorism. Don the Con may have gotten the impression from his Saudi hosts that Qatar is a hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian terrorists, but the truth is that Qatar tries not to take sides and allows Arabs of most persuasions to live and operate on its territory.
War in the Middle East between Qatar and KSA/UAE is hard to imagine, but there is a lot to be fearful of. The US would inevitably be caught up in such a war and forced, most likely, to defend Qatar from Saudi attacks– even though there are American military assets in both countries. There is nothing for the US to gain, and a great deal to be lost, in military conflict here. This is typical behavior for Don the Con– provocation by fake news from hackers ( possibly even paid for by allies of Don’s ) abetted by promises made in private to the king and who knows what kind of lies. It is even unclear whether Don knew that there was an American airbase in Qatar when he claimed that they were supporting terrorism.
There have been very few terror attacks inside Qatar– the last civilian killed was in a bombing in 2005– and some claim that this is because Qatar has paid off al Qaeda and other groups to leave it alone. An article in Doha News says, “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” The American airbase is a high value target because it controls drones which strike at terrorists all over the Mideast, but it is also well secured. Qatar has a very effective internal security apparatus and it is a small, wealthy, and technologically sophisticated country, so even if such an attack were contemplated, it would be hard to carry off.
Bottom line: this is bad and Don the Con has had a hand in making it worse.
This comment comes from an article in the NYT about the Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s proposal to take the Yellowstone grizzly bear off the endangered species list:
Joseph
O’Malley
This administration seems to wake up every morning asking how they can in some new comically villainous way, destroy all that is good in this world. So far, so good. I have grown over the past 6 months to hate this country I call home.
Our Fake Democracy by Timothy Egan
This op-ed in the NYT tells it all:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, as Joan Didion said. We do this as a nation, as individuals, as families — even when that construct is demonstrably false. For the United States, the biggest institutional lie of the moment is that we have a government of the people, responding to majority will.
Mr. Egan goes on to point out that the “health care” bill currently in the Senate, and the one already passed by the House, represent deeply unpopular policies that will gut Medicaid and push over 20 million people off of “health insurance.” As we have pointed out repeatedly in the past, the United States is the only advanced country in the world that doesn’t have single-payer health care. At the risk of boring you, I will again point out that the US consumer pays almost twice as much for health care as in any other advanced country. A reasonable person would rather pay for their health care in taxes– a predictable, constant amount– than take the risk of being bankrupted by medical expenses. What is more, the tax burden would be significantly less than the average per capita cost of medical care. Rather than choosing the reasonable option, our government is trying to eliminate the small tax that is currently being paid by higher-income persons and trying to take it away from Medicaid.
We do not have a democracy because the poorer you are, the less likely you are to vote. The barriers to voting for poor people can be extreme. First, there is transportation to the polls. One would think that the Democrats would have an organized system for taking poor voters to the polls on Election Day, but they do not. There are a few scattered programs here and there, but nothing organized and country-wide. This is absurd and so elementary that it makes me just scratch my head. For all the money spent on everything involved in trying to win an election, this would probably be the most cost-efficient.
The other problems that constitute barriers to voting are harder to deal with: lack of desire to vote, barriers to registration, lack of “time”, gerrymandering, and so on. Just solving the transportation problem would increase motivation to vote, especially if the transportation effort is advertised.
Many other countries have solutions for those barriers to voting that have made it possible for poor people to vote, and they have more representative democracies as a result. There are also countries with systems that are much worse than that in the United States, but it seems silly to point out that we are better off than the people of North Korea, for example. No rational person would accept our system because it is better than the worst possible system.
The bottom line is that our democracy is compromised, and the consequences could be fatal. A few wealthy people may survive, but they will have blood on their hands.
Comments from a NYT article urging “Let’s Not Get Carried Away” investigating Don the Con:
Gibert Kennedy
Aiken, South Carolina
I agree that made up scandals such a Benghazi corrode our political discourse. However, I don’t think we should minimize the possibility that the Trump campaign worked with the Russians in swinging the election. There are s a lot of serious circumstantial that indicate collusion:
– Trump looks into the camera and asks Putin to find and release more Clinton emails.
– Kushner meets Russians in secret on islands off the SE coast of Africa
– Trump’s close campaign stand-ins Flynn and Sessions lie about their contacts with the Russians
– The transition team (if I remember the sequence correctly) seeks to set up a secret communication channel to the Russians that can’t be heard by other American agencies.
– The strongly pro-Putin characters in the campaign team like Manafort and Flynn, and Page
– Trump won’t release his tax returns.
– Trump is actively hindering the investigation.
– The only person Trump is loyal to is Flynn.These aren’t silly Tweets. These are significant activities that appear to link the campaign to Russia in deceptive ways. Nobody would be investigating if Trump had simply held transparent meetings with the Russians with an agenda to improve relations. This looks for all the world like the Trump campaign worked with a country hostile to the US to get help in winning a campaign. We need to run this to ground.
Franklin
Florida 36 minutes ago
Proof of collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign already exists. Roger Stone of the Trump campaign met with the Russian hacker known as gussifer. Rudy Gulliani of the Trump campaign predicted a “surprize” just before the Democratic Convention started which occurred when the Podesta e-mails were released to the media by the Russian hacker through Wikileaks. A Russian billionaire, who is a Putin loyalist, and his private jet plane were at three separate campaign stops of Trump at exactly the same time as Trump and his plane were in the respective cities. This is hardly a coincidence. The collusion was so evident that when the Convention’s Republican Platform Committee voted to insert a very tough plank on Russia getting out of Crimea, Paul Manaford, Trump’s campaign manager and his staff, interceded with the committee and the tough plank was removed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other Trump campaign staffers met w/ Russian intelligence or Russian nationals as they admitted only after it was reported in the press. Finally, the “why” on Trump’s indifference and denial of Russian interference and collusion can only be fully answered when we learn the degree and extent to which Trump has been financially compromised by loans and bailouts from Russian billionaires. As one of Trump’s sons said, Trump doesn’t need loans from American banks because Russian loans and financing is available.
A piece in the Guardian reports that a man named Richard Burt, who is a known lobbyist for Russian interests, was invited to dinner twice by Jeff Sessions (“Redneck Jeff”) during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Burt, who has represented Russian oil and banking interests in Washington for several years, attended two dinners that Sessions held to discuss foreign policy strategy. Mr. Burt also helped write a speech for Don the Con in which he appealed for “easing in tensions” between Russia and America. That speech, given in April 2016, was attended by Soviet Ambassador Kislyak as well as Mr. Sessions.
Unfortunately, when Senator McCain asked Jeff Sessions last week whether he had any contacts with lobbyists for Russian interests, he denied any such meetings. So it seems that either Mr. Sessions has amnesia or he doesn’t care to let people know how extensive his contacts with Russian lobbyists have been. The Russians are extremely subtle, and any American who registers as a Russian lobbyist should be considered a potential spy– or at least, someone who is pushing for Russian strategic interests and at the same time, gathering information that might be useful to his Russian handlers.
Let us be clear. All Americans– both right- and left-wing– are under attack by Russian agents who intend to sow dissension and disunity, confuse us, lower our standard of living, subvert our way of life, and generally interfere with the functioning of American institutions. We are virtually at war with Russia, and the war is being prosecuted with vigor and intelligence by Vlad “the Impaler” Putin, a former KGB agent who pines for the former Soviet empire. The sooner we get rid of the extreme right-wing leadership in our Congress, White House, and state houses that is impairing our government and offering aid and comfort to our Russian enemies, the better. The soonest this can happen in a “smooth”, institutionally sanctioned fashion is November 2018. Until then, the Democratic minority must agitate vigorously, exercise our First Amendment rights, and scream as loudly as we can that we are under attack and Don the Con is an agent of our enemy.
This was located in a web site called “PollHype”– “The Red, White, and Blue Review”– which contains nothing but unabashedly pro-Donald stories, bashing everyone who criticizes the Don:
During an exclusive interview with “Fox & Friends,” Trump blasted the former president and his aides for the organized marches since his victory in the November 2016 election, and for the troublesome leaks that have impeded on his messaging.
“I think that President Obama’s behind it because his people are certainly behind it,” Trump said. “And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, you know, some of the leaks – which are very serious leaks, because they’re very bad in terms of national security.”
While the president doesn’t have concrete evidence proving that Obama is to blame, he’s not the only one who believes that his administration could be the culprit behind these acts.
A former senior intelligence official disclosed to Fox News that he suspects ex-CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – among other top officials – could be connected to the leaks.
However, the president isn’t too distressed by his shocking revelation, although he doesn’t see an end to these protests in sight.
But I also understand that’s politics,” Trump explained. “And in terms of him being behind things, that’s politics. And it will probably continue.”
The only reason I clicked on it is because it was included in a list of “sponsored” (paid advertising) sites that claimed “These 24 pictures of Donald Trump will change your mind”, illustrated with a photo of the Don standing close behind a blonde, well-endowed young woman– cropped to cut off the area below his chest, suggesting that his hands might be somewhere they should not. Clearly, the photo was intended to lure Donald-haters into clicking on it, hoping to see him groping some young victim. However, the twenty-four photos are all anodyne pictures of Don, including childhood photos, of his family, and of a few business associates. The web site consists entirely of puff pieces plugging Don’s virtues and bashing anyone who dares to criticize him.
So, here’s a web site probably paid for with campaign contributions that came from anonymous sources in large amounts… in service of Don’s re-election campaign, which was declared active on the day he was inaugurated this January last, seemingly ages ago but not even quite five months now. That’s right. Don the Con is accepting contributions to his campaign for re-election. Democrats need to gird their loins and get organized… and above all, get out the vote. And for G-d’s sake, stop clicking on that clickbait!
Irrigation Pumps Behind A Razor-Wire Fence
From the NYT today:
A former senior official said Mr. Mueller’s investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates. The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would likely have been done in exchange for some kind of financial payoff, and there would have been an effort to hide the payoffs, most likely by routing them through offshore banking centers.
As the trolls fighting Don the Con’s fall are saying: “There’s no There there.” Well, the reason we haven’t found the There is that people are trying to hide their complicity in this Russia-Trump collusion. You can’t seriously make us think that we haven’t found the There in six months of investigation because it isn’t there– it’s just hidden, carefully disguised as transactions like the estate that Don the Con sold to a Russian cut-out for an enormous profit (tens of millions of dollars) back in 2008, at the same time that other real estate prices were tanking because of the Great Recession. Remember that Don really stepped up his friendly talk about Vlad “the Impaler” Putin back in 2007; this has been going on for a very long time. In fact, the Russians have been cultivating Don the Con ever since American banks stopped lending to him back in the nineties. They saw then an opportunity to tie Don financially to their coat-tails, and he has been on their payroll ever since. This treason has been going on for a very long time.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 