California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Why Is Trump Spewing Lies and Misinformation? Because It Works!

by John Lawrence

What does this say about the electorate? A portion of them are dumb as Hell. They don't want the truth. They want entertainment, and Trump gives it to them. Whether it's Haitians eating dogs and cats or whatever. The stupider and less true, the better. Why don't other Republicans speak up and point out the stupidity of Trump's assertions? Because, in their minds, it's a winning strategy. They don't care if they win by telling lies or telling the truth. They just want to win. They just want power. Truth be damned. Democracy cannot last if a large proportion of the voters are a bunch of stupid ninnies who will vote for the person who entertains them the most. Democracy is predicated on having an intelligent and educated electorate. It's no wonder that most Trump voters are not college educated and most Kamala voters are. That's the difference between those who have a brain in their head who mostly vote Democratic and those who don't who mostly vote Republican. Trump is the perfect candidate actually because he appeals to the large segment of the electorate who just want to be entertained and will go along with any bullshit he says without critically examining it to determine whether it's true or factual.

Critical thinking is something that supposedly is learned in college. Hence the split between non college educated voters who mostly vote for Trump and college educated voters who will mostly vote for Kamala. An uneducated electorate are like sheep being led to slaughter. They think the economy under Trump when he was President was better than it was under Biden. Really? Trump gave $7 trillion worth of tax cuts mostly to the rich and added that much to the national debt. Biden, in addition to bailing out people and businesses during the pandemic was responsible for the Inflation Reduction Act which was a huge investment in the American people in terms of jobs. Then there was the Chips and Science Act which not only created jobs, but kept critical infrastructure in the US rather than depending on foreign suppliers. I could go on ... $35 a month insulin for Medicare recipients and blah blah blah ... To boot inflation has returned to normal, and I believe Biden is still President, isn't he?

Then there is the border where illegal crossings are at the lowest level since Biden took office as President.. NPR reported: "President Biden issued executive actions severely restricting asylum claims at the border, and migrants who cross are more likely to be removed from the country expeditiously. ... Due to this rule and Mexico’s beefed-up enforcement, unauthorized crossings in June [2024] hit the lowest level since President Biden took office in 2021." Why isn't Kamala touting this? Inflation is down and illegal border crossings are down, and yet Trump is considered by many to be better for the economy and immigration. Really? It's not Trump but those members of the electorate who have their heads up their collective asses. Trump is just doing what he thinks is a smart, winning strategy. It doesn't have to do with the truth or anything else as long as he thinks he can trick the voters into voting for him. These Trump voters don't care about facts. They just want to be entertained, and Trump is doing a good job at that. Smart guy, that Trump. Let's give him his due. However, democracy is predicated on an educated electorate which is capable of actually knowing what is good for them and their fellow citizens and what's not. Trump voters, who may be responsible for choosing the next President, are neither educated, critical thinkers or capable of telling truth from fiction.

Off the Top of My Head

Problem With American Democracy: Voters Will Never Vote for a Tax Increase Even if It Would Prevent One Person Dying in the Street

by John Lawrence

Question: would you be willing to pay more taxes if it would house the unhoused? Hell, no. What's more, voters don't want even a shelter in their neighborhood. Any time one is proposed, a NIMBY group pops up to protest its location. People don't want to give up even a small portion of their income to help unfortunate Americans. That's the main reason why they vote Republican. They think Democrats will raise their taxes. Other countries like Sweden have high taxes in order to help people. They're called social democracies or welfare states. That's anathema in the United States. The philosophy in the US is "Devil take the hindermost." There is support for those at the top of the economic spectrum, but little if any for those at the bottom. In the US it's all about competition, and those who have failed in the competitive game of life don't deserve our help especially if that means we will have to pay higher taxes. We want tax relief not human relief for those who have lost out in the game of life. I've got mine, and I don't want the government taking one penny of it in higher taxes.

Since heat is becoming a major cause of death due to climate change, the unhoused will be dying on the streets in even greater numbers. But Americans couldn't be less sympathetic. If they were willing to have their taxes increased by one penny, the homeless problem could be solved. It will not be solved simply by building more housing. Housing in our economic system will be priced according to the market not according to affordability. Building more housing will not lower the price of market rate housing. There are too many other factors at play. Such as corporations buying up houses, fixing them up and renting them out. This trend will turn the younger generation in particular into a nation of renters, not a nation of middle class home owners. The younger generation cannot even afford starter homes! The investor class realizes that housing is an economic asset that offers more of a return on their money than even the stock market. Housing is an asset class, not something that satisfies a human need. Investors make money off of the debts of other people, especially the young. Mortgages, credit card  debt, rents - these are the investments that make rich people richer. There's a reason why bankers are rich. They make money off of human debtors. Eliminating debt eliminates the profits of the rich. No wonder there is so much resistance to Biden's student debt relief programs.

One of the Great Society's programs was the War on Poverty. In those days - the 1960s - the poverty stricken were at least presumably housed. Today we have a subclass of poverty - the homeless - which has become a veritable culture of homelessness. This is a culture that is beneath poverty. Even in Huxley's Brave New World, the lowest class, the Epsilons, were bred to be menial laborers. He didn't have the imagination to believe that there would be a class even lower than the Epsilons - the homeless. Presumably, Huxley's Epsilons were paid laborers; the homeless are people, primarily, who don't work at all but subsist on handouts, handouts which, however, are not sufficient to put a roof over their heads. The homeless are a class of expendables. They aren't valued enough as human beings to engage the charitable instincts of most Americans so that as a society we would be willing to see everyone housed, well fed and on the road to a productive life. Instead we blame the homeless themselves for their predicament. Charity is one thing; raising taxes to provide charity is quite another. So as a society we are willing to have people urinating and defecating on the streets, expending societal resources to clean up their trash and being treated to the spectacle of having to step over people zonked out on the sidewalk to get to our favorite restaurant.

Off the Top of My Head

Character Assassination: That's What Donald Trump Does Best

by John Lawrence

It's not about what either candidate will put their energy into in order to make the lives of Americans better. It's all about destroying the character of the other party. Has Trump said one thing about what he will try to do to make the lives of average Americans better? Of course not. It's all about him, and he's all about ridiculing and attacking Kamala and Tim Walz. Trump is about stoking hate and fear. Oh, you better be afraid of Kamala and Tim because they are so radical. They're so left wing. They're socialists. So what do those labels actually mean? Nothing. According to Republicans, if you actually want to help people, you're a socialist.So according to them, the best thing for the country is NOT to try and help people. If anything you should give more trillions of dollars to the military and slash taxes for the rich, because, as we all know, it's only the rich that can make the US a better place. Meanwhile, the rest of the civilized world does not only try to make the lives of their people better, they actually care about doing something about climate change which will probably destroy the lives of the next generation if more isn't done about it.

So American democracy is about the candidates propitiating the wants of the least common denominators? Or about electing someone who has successfully assassinated their competitor's character? That's what democracy is all about? And God forbid that a candidate even mentions climate change or that Americans should have to give up their gas guzzling cars, their hamburgers or even their plastic straws. Meanwhile, climate change is already destroying the lives of millions of people and inconveniencing millions more. But "leaders" are still attributing weather disasters to "thousand year" floods. However, thousand year floods are occurring on a yearly basis. Democracy really doesn't work if you have to pander to the least common denominators and they are a bunch of ignoramuses whose only interests are self interest. But that's how Americans have been taught to be - self interested.

Meanwhile, one might think that American elections are all about raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

By law, major presidential candidates in France may not spend more than 22.5 million Euros (about $25 million) on their campaigns. We in the United States have no such limits.

Joe Biden spent $1.6 billion to win the 2020 presidential election. That is 70 times more than Macron spent on his bid, yet the U.S. population is just five times larger than France’s. There is no end in sight to the amount of money in American politics. Biden spent three times more than Hilary Clinton did in 2016. One could argue that the high stakes in the 2020 election justified big spending, but that argument applies equally to France in 2022 when there is a war raging on two NATO borders to its east. The only reason France spends orders of magnitude less than the United States in its elections is because the French have limits.

Not only that, but there are time limits for campaigning in major European countries. In France, the official election campaign usually lasts no more than 2 weeks. In countries which have parliamentary democracies, there is no voting for President. You only vote for members of parliament. This in itself would tend to decrease the division of the electorate into two opposing groups as has happened in the US where the country is divided into two warring camps. In the US all races not only for President but for members of Congress are winner take all. This also tends to divide the electorate into two warring camps. To further exacerbate American elections, we have the antiquated system of the electoral college so that the election for President hinges on the results in just a few battleground states. The Presidential election is not determined by the popular vote resulting in the fact that the US is a democracy only in the minimalist of terms.

Off the Top of My Head

Democrats Are Not Married to Joe Biden

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden engaged in an unremitting debacle last night. Debates are about more than just words and points. Joe Biden looked like death warmed over - a gray pallor. Donald Trump had color in his face and walked and talked like a normal human being. Joe Biden shuffles. That's for starters. Then Biden spoke in a monotone, rushing his words and then stumbled over them and then lost his trains of thought. Debates are about more than scoring verbal points. They are about eloquence and articulation. Joe Biden had nothing to offer in these areas. Then there were the repeated Biden cliches - "and by the way" which he repeated ad nauseum. His defensiveness - "The idea ...". And there were more. Biden's delivery was so poor and expressionless that Trump's demeanor triumphed by comparison. Trump had no problem finding his words albeit his words were filled with lies. Trump sounded normal and looked normal. He was animated whereas Biden looked stiff and frozen - death warmed over. Sorry to say it because I was a big Biden fan and think his accomplishments are in the class of the few greatest Presidents.

What's important now is to get someone else in there. Almost any youthful, normal Democrat could beat Donald Trump. Also any normal Democrat would continue Biden's policies. We don't need Joe Biden in order to continue Joe Biden's policies. The stakes are so big for this election in terms of the policies of any generic Democrat versus the policies of Donald Trump which would be disastrous for the nation and for the world. Just the fact that Trump would disable any climate change policies is enough to vote against him. The world is simultaneously burning up and being drowned in floods. Trump would guarantee that climate change would not only continue unabated, but would be accelerated.

My pick would be Gavin Newsom, a very impressive, well spoken and knowledgeable Democrat. Newsom could easily beat Trump in my opinion and would continue for the most part Biden's and Democrat's policies.This election should not be about Biden's ego. It's about the fate of America and the world. Biden's domestic policies have been excellent, but I have reservations about his foreign policy. The two wars in Ukraine and Israel have hurt him, and I don't agree with how Biden has handled them. He has too much of a Cold War mentality. Biden is at least somewhat responsible for setting up a new Cold War axis with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea on the other side. I think that some other President could possibly ameliorate this situation. We don't need another Cold War at this point in history.

The President of the United States is too important a position for a joker like Trump to be in it. I believe any normal Democrat could beat Trump. It's all about Trump's policies versus generic Democratic policies and which are better for America and the world. We don't need Joe Biden to continue Joe Biden's policies. He should step aside for the good of the country.

Off the Top of My Head

Will the Antiquated Electoral College Finally Bite Us in the Butt in 2024

by John Lawrence

Doesn't everybody agree that the President should be elected by popular vote? In more than half (65) of the world’s 125 democracies, the head of state – nearly always called a president – is directly elected by voters. Thirty other democracies are classified as constitutional monarchies, and in the remaining 30, including the U.S., the head of state is indirectly elected. Shouldn't the American President also be elected by popular vote? But that's not the way we do it due to an antiquated, sclerotic and archaic electoral system that was implemented over 200 years ago before widespread, mass communications. In those days the fastest way that information could be communicated was by horse and buggy or just by horse. That system may be responsible for the upcoming worst disaster in American history in which the popular vote would have elected Joe Biden but in which the electoral vote elects Donald Trump. Every State is allocated a number of votes equal to the number of Senators and Representatives in its U.S. Congressional delegation—two votes for its Senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts. Most States have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electoral votes to the Presidential candidate who wins the State's popular vote. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.” So it comes down to an arbitrary game devised centuries ago which bears little if any resemblance to the result of a majority vote among American citizens. This is pretty bad for a country who champions democracy in the world.

The electoral college presages a race for President of the US which comes down to the outcomes in five battleground states. These states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The rest of the states are reliably either Republican or Democratic. One of the pitfalls of the electoral college is that minorities of voters are not counted in most states. The majority of voters in these states determines who gets all the electoral votes from that state. This totally skews the vote for President. If a majority of voters in those battleground states vote for Trump, Trump will be elected no matter the results of the popular vote taking into account the votes of people in other states. Of course the minority vote of people in all states is discounted. This is democracy? Let's not kid ourselves. This is a foolish game. There have been five United States presidential elections in which the successful presidential candidate did not receive a plurality of the popular vote. In these cases, the successful candidate secured less of the national popular vote than another candidate who received more votes, either a majority, more than half the vote, or a plurality of the vote. The two most recent elections in which this was true were the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore, and the 2016 election, Clinton v. Trump. These arguably were the two most disastrous elections in human history because Bush led us into two disastrous wars and away from preoccupation with climate change, Gore's strong suit. Also the election of Trump gave us arguably the worst President in American history.

The problem is that Trump is poised to win again this year based on the electoral college while losing the popular vote to Biden. You have to give it to Republicans - they know how to manipulate what can only be called at this point a corrupt electoral system. The sclerosis of America is that it can never come to terms with something that is wrong when it is enshrined in the Constitution and then go ahead and fix it. They are committed to playing the same old game out of veneration for tradition and the past.This year it may be the final straw for democracy in the US if Trump is elected but loses the popular vote. It is unconscionable to many that a man who has dozens of indictments against him including one of trying to overthrow American democracy can even be allowed to run for President, but that in and of itself may be the downfall of American democracy. The outcome of the 2024 Presidential race comes down to an antidemocratic game in which Trump may well triumph.

Off the Top of My Head

What I Didn't Hear in Biden's State of the Union Speech

by John Lawrence

President Biden went on and on about taxing the rich, but he didn't make the concomitant declaration of "middle class tax cuts." Those are the words I didn't hear - TAX CUTS. These are the code words that Joe Six Pack wants to hear. Joe Six Pack could care less about "child tax credits." While those are probably the most responsible words and the most responsible way to handle tax benefits for the middle class and the poor, those are not the words that the majority of uncommitted voters want to hear. Those are the code words. Republicans always promise tax cuts period. Of course most of those tax cuts always go to the rich as the Trump tax cuts did, but the Joe Six Packs of the world do not make that distinction. All they care about is that they will get their tax cut no matter how paltry. That's why Biden should promise not only taxing the rich but tax cuts for the middle class. Trump will promise tax cuts for everyone. Biden should make the easily understood distinction of tax increases for the rich - as Biden has repeatedly said, those making more than $400,000 a year - and tax cuts for everyone else. Whether or not this makes economic sense or the best use of the saved money, this is politically the best way to neutralize the only economic policy Republicans have.

While taxing the rich makes good red meat rhetoric, it doesn't register on or resound with the naive, unsophisticated average voter's mind the way tax cuts does, and we must assume that the majority of voters are naive and unsophisticated based upon the fact that polls indicate that the majority of voters favor voting for Trump at this point. Any American citizen who has any understanding of what President Biden has accomplished would almost certainly think that he deserves a second term. Even if he doesn't finish it, his administration will give a push for the continuation of his policies which are far more in the interests of the average American than are Trump's. If it's up to Kamala Harris to finish Biden's second term, Biden's policies will almost certainly prevail through out that term.

The policy of tax cuts for the middle class will go a long way towards guaranteeing that Biden will be elected for a second term. Certainly some of the money gained from taxing the rich could be used for tax cuts for the not so rich in addition to child tax credits. The other policy that President Biden should espouse has to do with the border. It's not enough to blame Republicans for the fact that recent bipartisan legislation that would supposedly "fix" the border has not been passed. Biden should just come out and say he wants the border to be fixed in such a way that no one will be able to come across the border illegally. Certainly this is possible for a country that has 800 military bases around the world and a trillion dollar a year military budget. It's almost ridiculous that the world's most powerful nation that purports to be the policeman of the world cannot even police its own border. Taking a much stronger position on the border - in particular the illegal crossing of the border - will take that issue away from Trump who will promise that under his administration not one illegal entry will be permitted. Let's get beyond the trivial issue of whether those crossing the border are "illegals" or "undocumenteds." It's not about descriptive words; it's about policies. Use the words that most Americans use, not those that are politically correct. Take a page out of Trump's book. Biden's words should be much stronger on this issue. This is what the American people want, and Biden should take this issue away from Trump.

In summary, Biden needs to be much stronger on these two issues - tax cuts and illegal border crossings - taking these issues which are the only issues Trump has, away from him. Whether or not Biden or Trump can get anything passed in Congress on these two issues depends on whether or not either President ends up with a Congress, both Houses of which are composed of their own respective parties. No President has complete control of what gets passed by Congress. The average voter, however, thinks these issues are entirely in the President's hands. No one know this better than Joe Biden. However, when running for President, a person can promise anything and can fight for it if elected. Biden needs a second term if for no other reason than to deny Trump a second term which might presage the end of democracy in America.

Off the Top of My Head

Democracy and Fanaticism Cannot Coexist

by John Lawrence

Democracy presupposes that rational actors with different interests can peacefully resolve their differences by means of some rules based system which includes, for example, voting. The rule of law represents the congealed rationality of bygone days. However, when major actors in a political system are irrational and when their followers become fanatics, democracy is probably imperiled. Today we have one of the candidates for the highest office in the land who is irrational and his followers are fanatically devoted to him. It's hard to conceive why any rational society much less a democracy would let someone who arguably tried to overthrow that democracy run again for the highest office in the land. Take Richard Nixon for example. What if after he resigned he had decided to run for President in the next election cycle? Unthinkable, you say. Maybe so, but Richard Nixon's offenses were minuscule compared to Trump's. It seems that nothing in the American Constitution or rule of law is preventing someone who tried to overthrow that Constitution from taking power again. It should be cut and dried as the situation evidently was in Richard Nixon's case. Nixon was the only President who resigned from the Presidency, but nothing in the Constitution would have prevented him from running again. Why didn't he?

The leaders of autocratic societies are laughing up their sleeves at this American dilemma. Are Americans so tolerant of free speech that they entertain not only the speech but the candidacy of a person who tried to overthrow the Constitution of that society? Any society can be measured on a scale the end points of which are total freedom and total stability. Some societies, notably more autocratic ones, value stability more than freedom. Others value freedom more than stability. Obviously the US belongs to the latter variety. However, there is a point at which too much freedom threatens the viability of that society itself. Has the US gone beyond that point? Arguably, yes, when its allies cannot even rely on the President's word and policies involving war and peace. President Biden has committed himself to supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. America's allies in Europe are all on the same page with this policy. Who's not? The American House of Representatives who must vote on the expenditure of money for this cause. Obviously, Biden looks weak if he cannot even deliver what he has promised as the leader of the Free World. European democracies are looking askance.

Other societies have no such problems. For example, the Chinese society values stability much more than they value freedom. It would be very unlikely that the Chinese would countermand a policy expounded by Xi Jinping. President Biden is in the position that a carefully thought out policy involving the preservation of democracy in Ukraine is being countermanded by a man who not only tried to overthrow democracy in the US, but is running for President again and is telling Congress not to vote the money for the continuance of Biden's policy in Ukraine. It's the tail wagging the dog. Despite 91 criminal indictments, the US system is so free that it cannot prevent this from happening. It goes to show that the American Presidency is weaker than the Presidencies of almost every European country. At least in Europe, for the most part, their societies are going along with supporting Ukraine financially. They also in the past looked up to the American President for leadership. Now they are finding that hard to do.

Trump has broke all the rules and created a followership of cult like fanatics who relish this fact. Trump and his followers are not rational actors willing to resolve their differences with the rest of the American population in a civilized manner following the traditional rule of law. Despite the fact that Biden has done more for the US than very few other Presidents, Trump is ahead in the polls to become the next President of the US. Rational actors and their followers should have favored a President in his reelection bid over a person who attempted to overthrow the American Constitution, but they're not. Hence, a good percentage of Americans are not rational actors to whom the rules of law of a 235 old Republic mean nothing. American politics has become a politics of fanaticism and American freedom is tolerating it. Too much freedom and too little stability in a political system does not bode well for the long range viability of that system. In addition the upcoming election for President will come down to very narrow margins in a handful of battleground states. Has the archaic American system finally hamstrung itself to the extent that the popular vote will mean nothing  ... again?

Off the Top of My Head

There's Never Enough Money for Peace; There's Always Money for War ... Until There Wasn't

by John Lawrence

President Biden wants $106 billion for wars in Ukraine and Israel and to strengthen the border after spending $112 billion on war in Ukraine alone since 2022. Of this $61.4 billion would be for the war in Ukraine. Biden thinks it's outrageous that the American Congress won't just fork over the money to continue this war. While he thinks it's unconscionable that the Republican House won't fork over the money, it's completely conscionable that they should fight tooth and nail over any money allocated for peace in the world. After all we're the United States of America. We can't just go back on our - or is it Biden's - word about war. We can be wishy washy about peace or about helping people either inside or outside the US, but a President's word must be Golden about war. After all democracy is at stake ... or is it? Well, in a democracy, it's possible, although unlikely, that money won't be voted for war. After all, Biden is not an autocrat. He just can't continue a war if Congress doesn't vote the money for it.

One phrase unlikely to be heard regarding the war in Ukraine is "sphere of influence." Why? Because it's taken for granted that a large country's sphere of influence extends outward over smaller, surrounding countries. Take the US for example. The US' sphere of influence extends over the whole western hemisphere. When a socialist leader was chosen in Argentina in a democratic election, the US undermined his regime. Salvadore Allende was elected President of Argentina in 1970, He had pledged to nationalize the mostly U.S.-owned copper companies, a large industry in Chile. Allende threatened US interests in Argentina, and this would not be tolerated, democratic election or not. The U.S. spent $8 million on covert actions between 1970 and the 1973 coup which ushered in the repressive Pinochet regime, according to a 1975 Senate report. So the US is all for democracy until its interests are threatened. In fact there is a long history of US intervention in Latin America. But according to western thinking, Russia, a super power with nuclear weapons, should have a sphere of interest of zero.

The United States participated, directly or indirectly, in Latin American regime change more than 40 times in the last century, according to historian John Coatsworth. That figure doesn't include a number of failed missions like the 1961 Bay of Pigs assault in Cuba. Some of the more stinging U.S. moves included the ouster of democratically elected governments in Guatemala in 1954, in Brazil a decade later and in Chile in 1973. If the US' sphere of influence includes all of Latin America, one might consider or even be as bold as to ask the question, what is Russia's sphere of influence? Would it include a country on its border that arguably had once been a part of Russia? Most of Ukraine fell to the Russian Empire under the reign of Catherine the Great; the Crimean Khanate was annexed by Russia in 1783, following the Emigration of Christians from Crimea in 1778, and in 1793 right-bank Ukraine was annexed by Russia in the Second Partition of Poland. So much for history.

The question must also be asked does the fate of Ukraine in the current war affect one way or another US interests? What are US interests in Ukraine? According to Joe Biden it's all about the idea that any country should be free to join NATO if it so desires. Is this something that the US should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve? Might the money be spent in some other way that might better promote peace in the world? Russia obviously considers Ukraine to be in its "sphere of influence." The architecture of the war as designed by Joe Biden is that the US would supply weaponry to Ukraine to fight a defensive war to push Russia out of its territory. At the same time the war was not meant to expand to a larger conflagration that would imperil a world war. The consequence of that is that all the dying and property destruction would be by Ukrainians and in Ukraine. This is a formula for disaster if the war should become a war of attrition which it has. A whole generation of Ukrainian men mostly are being wiped out. Of course a lot of Russians are dying too, but property destruction is taking place mainly in Ukraine.

Joe Biden has personalized the war in Ukraine as a vendetta between himself and Vladimir Putin. This does not bode well for a future peace settlement, and a peace settlement must come at some point or Ukraine will essentially be destroyed by an ongoing war of attrition. Ukraine obviously wants to expand the war to Russian territory with the help of more advanced US weaponry, something that Biden has resisted giving to them because he wants the war contained within Ukrainian territory. He doesn't want an expanded war which could develop into a World War. This is to his credit, but it leaves Ukraine in the position of being totally dependent on US weaponry, and, since the US is a democracy and not an autocracy, ironically if the House of Representatives will not allocate the money for the continuance of the war in Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war. Is there any kind of back channel communication going on about a peace settlement?

At this point a good hard look should be taken at trying to have a peace settlement of the war in Ukraine. The alternative is either a war of attrition which will grind Ukraine down to the point that, whether or not it becomes a member of NATO, it will be a defeated nation. Or Ukraine could lose even more territory to Russia if the war grinds on especially if it grinds on without advanced US weaponry. It has become a proxy war of the US with Russia and a personalized vendetta between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. This dos not bode well for the future of a peaceful world which needs to cooperate in the war that really needs to be fought - a war which threatens the whole human and animal world - the war against climate change. For that war all nations including the US and its erstwhile enemies - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - need to cooperate. The whole human race needs to be on the same page. But if history is any guide, the human race much prefers the drama of war than it does the quotidian banality of peace.

Off the Top of My Head

Ceasefire Now in Ukraine!

by John Lawrence

The US proxy war in Ukraine is teetering on the brink. If the US does not provide more money and weapons, Russia could march right past the lines as they now exist and take over all of Ukraine which, of course, was Putin's original goal. However, if there were to be a peace deal now with the front lines becoming a de facto border, Russia would have much of what it wants which is eastern Ukraine, which is mainly Russian speaking, plus a land bridge to Crimea where Russia has its deep sea fleet anchored in Sevastopol. Besides that there would be no more death and destruction which is something not even taken into account by the powers that be. So now while Biden is gung ho for continuing the war, the demands of democracy are such that he alone does not control foreign policy. I like President Biden. I think he has done more on domestic policy then any President since FDR. But on foreign policy I don't agree. He has a Cold War mentality about Russia. He has demonized Putin and not given him what Russia most wants - respect as a great power. This was evident on the lead up to the war when the US would not even consider Russia's main demand - that Ukraine not become a member of NATO. Of course the history of Russia and Ukraine was not considered either.

During the reign of Catherine the Great, she extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward to absorb New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers – the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under her rule, some 200,000 square miles (520,000 km²) were added to Russian territory. Catherine made Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after her first Russo-Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire (1768–74), which saw some of the heaviest defeats in Ottoman history. In 1786, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo–Turkish War. This war, catastrophic for the Ottomans, legitimized the Russian claim to the Crimea.

Of course this is nothing new. Americans are notoriously ignorant of other people's history. Biden is no exception. His ideas were forged during the Cold War. They do not take into account much more than the idea that America is good, Russia is bad. The fact is that there is more or less a stalemate in the war in Ukraine. If the fighting continues, it just means that more Ukrainian civilians will die and have their lives destroyed as well as their real estate. So far no or very few Russian civilians have died and very little Russian real estate has been destroyed. What's wrong with this picture? Pretty much everything. It doesn't make sense that US money is fueling actually not the winning of a war against Russia but the destruction of Ukraine. This is stupid. If US foreign policy gave a hoot about Ukrainian lives, not to mention real estate, it would pursue a peace deal based on a cease fire and a de facto recognition of the lines as they exist at present. This would mean that Russia would control eastern Ukraine - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson and Crimea - which are the historical borders, and the rest of Ukraine would remain under Ukrainian control and possibly become a member of NATO. UN peacekeepers could patrol and guarantee the border with a plebiscite at a later date to determine the final situation. Ending the war now would accomplish the most important thing - not one more Ukrainian would be killed or wounded. But that does not even seem to be a consideration either for Biden or Zelensky.

Off the Top of My Head

Four Things That Would Make America a Better Democracy That Will Never Be Implemented

by John Lawrence

They are 1) Elect the President based on popular vote. Eliminate the electoral college. 2) Eliminate gerrymandering. 3) Eliminate the filibuster. 4) Eliminate the Second Amendment. These four things could all be done; there is nothing structurally standing in the way. It's just that the only practical way that they could be accomplished is to scrap the whole Constitution and start over. Many other countries have done just that. Sometimes that's accomplished by having a revolution, but a revolution is not always necessary. Numerous countries change their constitution each year. Already this year we have observed new constitutions in Fiji and Zimbabwe and constitutional amendments in Brazil, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Mexico, Switzerland and Tonga. A typical constitution lasts only 19 years, which means that, on average, 5 constitutions are replaced and 30 are amended each year.

The US Constitution is 236 years old. Is it outdated? You bet. But the obstacles to amending it or replacing it are all but impassable, not to mention unthinkable. The result is that the US as a political system is getting to the point of being unworkable. Right now the government is planning to shut down as the Republican controlled House cannot come up with a budget. The two parties are completely at odds. Biden is seemingly the last person capable of constructing a compromise between the parties that has allowed the country to move forward at least on some levels. The US voting system known as first-past-the-post practically guarantees that there will be a two party system. Third parties, while almost never successful at electing their candidates, act as spoilers to the other two major parties. This distorts the democratic will of the people by electing the party least favored. Another voting system could rectify this defect, but the US will never implement another kind of voting system at the national level although some entities have done so at the local level.

The US Constitution is regarded by many as the political equivalent of the Bible. It is unthinkable that it should be revised or amended. Thomas Jefferson made an effort to revise the Bible. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine. Needless to say the Jefferson Bible did not make the New York Times best sellers list or the eighteenth century version of that. There are various groups working on a new Constitution for the US, but there is no consensus that a new one is necessary just as there is no consensus that a new and revised version of the Bible is necessary.

Off the Top of My Head

These Two Things Do Not Compute: Shutting Down the American Government and Lecturing the World About the Virtues of American Democracy

by John Lawrence

The US power structure dominates the world in terms of its military bases. The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. The US also controls the world's financial transactions. The dollar’s role as the primary reserve currency for the global economy allows the United States to borrow money more easily and impose painful financial sanctions. With the US' dominant position in world affairs, you would think that it would be impossible for a handful of representatives in Congress to shut down the entire US government. But that is exactly the situation the US and the world is in. The US is the leader in world affairs. Yet the leader can't even keep the lights on. Other countries are looking at this. Nixon called the US a pitiful, helpless giant. He said, "If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world." So what is the US when its government shuts down? Exactly that: a pitiful, helpless giant. Its military personnel on the 750 military bases won't get paid. How's that for demoralizing the military? Service members will continue to report for duty, though they will not get paid during a shutdown. And many of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who work for the Department of Defense will likely be furloughed, says White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. Air traffic controllers will not get paid either although they will be required to report for work as well. Does that portend more close calls at airports?

The world is watching. American diplomats are fond of lecturing other world leaders about the pitfalls and shortcomings of their governments. However, their governments probably would not be caught in the pickle of a complete government shutdown. Nor would the governments of the civilized world, with the exception of the US, contemplate putting a person with 91 criminal indictments into the position of their President. The US is much in the need of updating. It is giving democracy a bad name in the sense that the national dialogue is turning into a clown show. Trump's rallies are providing entertainment for his base which is an audience that is more addicted to being entertained than it is to supporting a leader who is devoted to improving their lives. This reminds me of Hitler's rallies which were designed as pageantry for its entertainment value. It sure enthralled the German people. People are loyal to a leader who entertains them, who moves them, not one who will use the legitimate levers of government to improve their lives or to make the country and/or the world a better place. Joe Biden is the opposite. He has made the country and the world a better place despite not being very entertaining. That's why he's not leading Trump in the poles. Trump's base (cult) are excited by Trump. Biden's base, if you could call it a base, are ho hum. Oh well, I guess he's done some good, but I'm not excited. For Trump's base excitement is the sine qua non.

Getting back to the military NPR reports the following:

Separately, the Department of Defense says post and base services would be closed or limited, while elective surgeries and procedures in its medical and dental facilities would have to be postponed. Commissaries would remain open overseas but close in the U.S.

And certain Pentagon activities, like operational planning and military recruitment, will be paused.

Defense officials warned earlier this week that a shutdown would strategically "play into the hands of U.S. competitors" because it would cost time as well as money. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh called it "the worst thing that could happen."

"The U.S. military's going to continue to do its job and protect our national security interests, and of our allies and partners as well," she said, adding that a shutdown would make those efforts harder. "When you don't have your full operating capacity to be able to help with the mission, to be able to conduct an exercise or training, of course, that gets to our national security and readiness."

Kirby agrees that a prolonged shutdown could harm national security, especially when it comes to delayed management of DOD contracts for things like maintenance, logistics and procurement.

So five Republican representatives can act collectively as dictators to threaten national security as well as domestic tranquillity, and there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. This is democracy in action? This is the vaunted "rule of law"? What exactly is this except a fly in the ointment of democracy or in any system that purports to be a democracy and what does this say about the world's military and financial leader? Other countries are watching this spectacle.

Off the Top of My Head

Is the World Engaged in “A Battle Between Democracy and Autocracy”?

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden thinks so. Here's what he said: "But we emerged anew in the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force." Politicians tend to look at the world in binary terms. It's all black and white. Their system is bad; ours is good. In reality there's a lot of gray; it's not simply black or white. If Biden were to be absolutely truthful, he would have to say that the US has a version of democracy and so does China. America's version would be decried by the founders who were totally against what they called "factionalism." Jefferson abhorred political parties. This is from history.com:

"Today, it may seem impossible to imagine the U.S. government without its two leading political parties, Democrats and Republicans. But in 1787, when delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia to hash out the foundations of their new government, they entirely omitted political parties from the new nation’s founding document.

"This was no accident. The framers of the new Constitution desperately wanted to avoid the divisions that had ripped England apart in the bloody civil wars of the 17th century. Many of them saw parties—or “factions,” as they called them—as corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that they wanted to discard in favor of a truly democratic government."

The US' version of democracy is based on a two party system with a voting system called first-past-the-post. Neither parties or voting systems are mentioned in the Constitution. The first-past-the-post voting system essentially precludes third parties. The effect of a third party candidate is that of a "spoiler." He or she takes votes away from the party he or she is most closely associated with which tends to elect the least popular candidate if the third popular candidate were not running. This has had disastrous effects on American popular elections as it did in 2000 when Ralph Nader running as a third party candidate took votes away from Al Gore with the result that George W Bush, who subsequently lied us into the Iraq war, was elected President. Gore would have gotten the US further along the road of climate change mitigation.

The European parliamentary multi-party system is arguably more democratic than the US two party system because more parties with varied interests can be represented. Their head of government, the Prime Minister, equivalent to the US President, is not popularly elected but is elected by members of parliament. The US tends to identify heads of government not popularly elected with undemocratic systems yet Presidents in the US were not popularly elected until the 17th Amendment was passed in 1912. China has a version of democracy in which the President is not popularly elected but is elected by the highest legislative body - the National People's Congress. Yet the US keeps insisting that China is an autocracy but the parliamentary systems of Europe are OK as was the US before 1912. China has multiple political parties but is dominated by one party - the Chinese Communist Party. The question is to what extent is the Chinese one party system less democratic than the American two party system in the sense of which system most closely represents the needs and wants of its people.

Democratic elections are held in China at the local or county level. These Congresses elect officials at the provincial level and they in turn elect the National People's Congress. The people vote democratically for officials only at the local level. Officials at higher levels are only indirectly democratically elected similar to the US system before 1912 or the parliamentary system. Voters have selected U.S. senators in the privacy of the voting booth since 1913. This system of “direct election” was not what the framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind, however, when they met at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Article I, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, as written by the framers, provided for election of senators by state legislatures, something Donald Trump sought to exploit. Election of officials by the democratic vote of a body that was democratically elected by the people is arguably democratic in some sense just as the election of head of government by a parliament is arguably democratic. Therefore, it can be argued that China has some version of democracy. Moreover, eight minor political parties in addition to the Chinese Communist Party exist.

One can quibble about how democratic a political system is. The point is that there is no absolute version of democracy so different systems have to be judged on their own merits. A one party system is not necessarily less democratic than a two party system which is not necessarily less democratic than a multi-party system, all things considered. How well the system functions to meet the needs of its own people, the historical evolution of the present system and how well established is the rule of law which exists in conjunction with the democratic election of leaders and representatives should also be considered. For instance, in China stability is a primary value whereas in the US freedom is a primary value. According to Keyu Jin in The New China Playbook, the Chinese people don't mind video surveillance in public because it minimizes street crime. On the other hand in the US video public surveillance is considered an infringement of freedom even though much street crime has been solved by both public and private video cameras .

Off the Top of My Head

Should the President Be Popularly Elected by Direct Vote of the People?

by John Lawrence

In the US the President is popularly elected by the people after having been filtered through the archaic electoral college. In a parliamentary democracy the head of government equivalent to the US President is indirectly elected by the parliament not by a direct vote of the people. In China the president is also elected by a majority vote of the National People's Congress, the highest legislative body very similarly to how the heads of government are elected in parliamentary democracies. In Russia the President is nominally elected by a popular vote of the people similarly to the US although the system has been manipulated in such a way as to keep Putin in power. So what are the drawbacks of a popularly elected President by a vote of the people? The main drawback IMHO is that in the US an incompetent but popular boob like Donald Trump can be elected to the most powerful office in the land and arguably in the whole world. The election for President of the US is a popularity contest, and there is no requirement of experience or competency. In parliamentary democracies as well as China, supposedly the indirect election of President or its equivalent, "head of state," is an election by a meritocratic body of lawmakers. Therefore, it is more likely that a competent President or head of government will be elected.

In recent history in the US, the least competent but most popular person has been elected President based more on their personality and charisma than on their competency or knowledge of the job. It is more likely that a guy who "you would like to have a beer with" is elected President than someone who is more experienced and/or intelligent. Adlai Stevenson was branded as an "egghead" which effectively ended his political career. The leading Democratic figure of the 1950s, Stevenson was known for his wit, intellectual speeches, and liberal political convictions. For many Americans in the mid-twentieth century, he symbolized conscience in politics. Stevenson lost the Presidential election twice to Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II war hero. In 2000 Al Gore lost the election to George W Bush who promptly lied the US into war with Iraq. Gore, who was a staunch advocate for climate change mitigation, presumably would have employed government resources in that direction rather than fighting a fruitless war. Gore actually won the popular vote but was defeated by a combination of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House that were then taken down by Ronald Reagan. So much for science taking precedence over popular ignorance and prejudice. Reagan also ran up the national debt substantially as did George W Bush and Donald Trump. Then when Democrats are elected President, Republicans cry bloody murder over the national debt while doing their best to prevent Democrats from spending any government money to actually help people. Fortunately, Joe Biden has been very successful in getting legislation passed to mitigate climate change among other accomplishments. But, his popularity as a candidate in 2024 in on the line as a majority of the American people don't want him to run again. Trump, despite 91 criminal indictments, is running neck and neck with Biden, one of the most accomplished Presidents in American history. One wonders whether the sclerotic American electoral system can withstand the challenges brought by popular but unscrupulous candidates for the Presidency by those you'd "like to have a beer with." Finally, the electoral College has all the disadvantages of indirect elections and none of the advantages.

Off the Top of My Head

Does China Have Some Version of Democracy and Capitalism?

by John Lawrence

The Chinese Communist Party in reality is just the Chinese Party. It is communist in name only. Kishore Mahbuboni in the book, Has China Won, says "...is America making a fundamental error of perception when it views the CCP as a Chinese Communist Party? This would imply that the soul of the CCP is embedded in its communist roots. Yet, in the eyes of many objective Asian observers, the CCP actually functions as the Chinese Civilization Party. Its soul is not rooted in the foreign ideology of Marxism-Leninism but in the Chinese civilization." China has had a capitalist economic system ever since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in about 40 years mainly due to the component of its system that represents private enterprise. It also has state owned enterprises but they have not been mainly responsible for China's rapid growth in GDP.

Xi Jinping has been President of the people's Republic of China since 2013. He is not popularly elected by the general public. Instead, he is elected by the National People's Congress (NPC), constitutionally China's highest state body, which also has the power to remove the president and other state officers from office. Elections and removals are decided by majority vote. This is not dissimilar to how the head of parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is elected. The British head of government is not elected by a popular election of the people either. He is elected by members of Parliament similar to most other parliamentary democracies. The US also originally had a system in which the President and Senators were not elected by a popular election of the people. Passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913, the 17th Amendment modified Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators and the President. Prior to its passage, the President and Senators were chosen by state legislatures. The Chinese government has been based on a meritocratic bureaucracy for thousands of years. The popular vote elects the first representative body who elects the next higher body until the National People's Congress elects the President.

The cleavage between communism and capitalism is basically an historic artifact. Capitalism won. Almost all nations of the world have capitalistic economic systems including China. None of them have systems that are identical to the US. They all have some versions of capitalism and democracy. Prior to 1912 the US had a system similar to China's in that the President was not popularly elected but was elected by a vote of the states' senates. Today in order to maintain international tensions, US politicians keep up the dichotomy between the US and China by insisting that China's leaders are not elected democratically and that China has a communist economic system. The truth is that China has a version of democracy and a version of capitalism just as the US does. Vested interests in the US are responsible for maintaining the fiction that Chinese is communist and autocratic. In fact US democracy is vulnerable to being overthrown by a demagogue like Donald Trump which almost happened on January 6, 2020. The US is still vulnerable as a near majority of Americans prefer Trump to Joe Biden, a man who has passed landmark legislation like only a very few American Presidents have accomplished.

US democracy is also vulnerable in the sense that its first past the post voting system almost guarantees that third party candidates will be spoilers as happened in 2000 when Ralph Nader took votes away from Al Gore. Despite that Gore won the popular vote. If Nader had not been in the election, Gore would have overwhelmingly won the popular vote. However in the electoral college, which is an outdated feature of American democracy, it came down to who won the popular vote in Florida. The Supreme Court stopped the hand recount giving Bush the Presidency. There is still controversy over who would have won if that hadn't happened. In any case the Bush administration lied us into the disastrous Iraq war, something Gore probably would not have done. Also Bush was a fossil fuel guy while Gore was knowledgeable about global warming and would have pursued that agenda . History might have turned out differently, and more importantly the future history of planet Earth might turn out differently if Gore had won.

Chinese philosophy is based on Confucianism which emphasizes duty to family while the US is based on individualistic ethics emphasizing individual freedom. Keyu Jin writes in The New China Playbook, "According to the World Values Survey, which explores people's beliefs and values in more than 100 countries, 93% of Chinese participants value security over freedom, as compared to only 28 % of Americans. Such differences can be fully understood only by taking culture and history into account. In China, an interventionist state is rooted in paternalism, a hallmark of government in China since Confucian times, more than 2500 years ago;..." Although China's private enterprise capitalism has resulted in the fact that 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty in 40 years, GDP growth is not the sine qua non of Chinese capitalism. Under Xi China is turning a corner and reining in certain aspects of unbridled growth in order to mitigate certain unsalutary aspects of unfettered enterprise while emphasizing producing economic benefits for the 13% of the Chinese population still in poverty. So China is much more apt to put its finger on the economic scale while the US has more of a hands off policy on private enterprise. The downside of this is the unregulated growth of toxic social media and potentially artificial intelligence in the US. The US could mitigate the spoiler effect of third party candidates for President by adopting a different voting system. The current first past the post voting system practically guarantees that there will be a 2 party system with third parties acting as spoilers, something which could result in a second Trump Presidency despite 91 criminal indictments. Replacing first past the post with a voting system such as approval voting would eliminate the spoiler effects of third parties. It could be implemented simply by a vote of Congress since it would not violate any aspect of the Constitution. However, in the sclerotic American Congress it is unlikely that there will be any major changes in the US Constitution which is well past its "use by" date.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrasting the Chinese, EU and American Economic Systems

by John Lawrence

Since 2001, China has pursued a “going-out” investment policy. At first, the PRC (People's Republic of China) mainly encouraged SOEs (state owned enterprises) to invest overseas but in recent years, China's overseas investments have diversified with both state and private enterprises investing in nearly all industries and economic sectors. After Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, China opened up its economic policy with the result that approximately 800 million people were lifted out of poverty in about 40 years. This turned China into a capitalistic nation ruled by the Chinese Communist party although the word "communist" is largely an anachronism at this point. China developed a unique economic system comprised of state owned enterprises and private enterprise. It has been the private aspects of China's system that have mainly driven the huge increases in GDP to the point where China is likely to take over the US as the world's largest economy in terms of GDP in a few years.

There are 4 components of GDP: consumption, investment, government spending and profit from exports. Some of the reasons for China's becoming an economic powerhouse are that consumption is only 38% of GDP whereas US consumption is nearly 70% of GDP. While Americans consume, China produces, exports and invests. I would characterize the US as having a Taylor Swift economy, an economy based on consumption of entertainment and other disposable items with no lasting value. It has been reported that Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie have been at least somewhat responsible for keeping the American economy afloat. When you add in social media and professional athletics, much of American consumption is immediately disposed of as soon as the event is over. In the EU consumption is about 52% of GDP so somewhat larger than China's but much less than the US.

Chinese investment is 43% of GDP while The US' is about 16%. EU investment is about 25% of GDP so midway between the US and China. At 21.4% EU government spending is larger than either the US (17.6%) or China (16%). Like the American government the Chinese government doesn't spend a lot of money on welfare. Chinese families are basically savers and provide a lot of the same services to their own intergenerational extended families which are provided by EU governments. The American ethos is largely individualistic and so many family members who can't provide for themselves fall through the cracks. This is one reason for the homeless crisis in the US.

The Chinese economy is bolstered by the fact that it is a net exporter (2.5% of GDP) while the US (-2.7%) and the EU (-2.7%) are net importers which subtracts from their GDPs. China also exports capital and manpower in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen China’s connectivity with the world. It combines new and old projects, covers an expansive geographic scope, and includes efforts to strengthen hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure, and cultural ties. As of October 2019, the plan touches 138 countries with a combined Gross Domestic Product of $29 trillion and some 4.6 billion people. Supporting a diverse array of initiatives that enhance connectivity throughout Eurasia and beyond could serve to strengthen China’s economic and security interests while bolstering overseas development. 

The Chinese political system, nominally communist, has the same elements of democracy that the early US political system had which is that locally elected bodies select the next higher political body with 3 successive iterations so that the National Assembly is chosen by the provincial assemblies at the next lower level. The original American Constitution had a similar feature in that the Senate was not chosen directly by the people but by state legislatures. State legislatures continued to elect senators until adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 which provided for popular election of senators. The Chinese system tends to meritocraticy with the best and brightest ascending to the top levels whereas the more democratic American system has within it the possibility of electing complete idiots like Donald Trump whose ascendancy served to prove how vulnerable the two party system really is. By contrast the Chinese emphasize harmony and stability which are attributes of their main philosophical inheritance: Confucianism.

Off the Top of My Head

American Democracy Teetering on the Brink

by John Lawrence

So what are the possible outcomes? Let's assume Trump is the Republican nominee. Option 1: Trump is convicted and goes to jail before the 2024 election. In this scenario, Trump will probably lose the election for President. Independents will be aghast. Trump's base will not be able to organize sufficiently to carry out another assault on the seat of American democracy. There will be sporadic outbursts. In jail Trump will not have the media exposure he has outside of jail. Option 2: Trump is indicted multiple times but not convicted before the 2024 election. Trump probably still loses the national election, but is in a position as a free man to organize another insurrection, this time on a much larger level than the one on January 6, 2021. This could amount to civil war. Option 3: Trump loses the election and subsequently goes to jail. This could also result in a dangerous situation because Trump still has access to an outsize megaphone and continue to rile up his base before he goes to jail and cause trouble leading again to a possible civil war.

As long as Trump is a free man, he can continue to foment a revolution. He can continue to advocate for violence towards his perceived enemies, even those that are a legitimate part of the judicial and legal system. He is already attacking Jack Smith, the special counsel, who is prosecuting him on multiple counts regarding January 6 and also the document handling fiasco. Trump continues to insist that the American legal system is not legitimate. He continues to undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law. His followers essentially consist of a cult who want Trump exonerated irrespective of his purported criminality. As long as Trump is free, he will continue to whip up his followers and lead them to the brink of civil war. Who knows if in addition to Trump's calls for revolution, there is also a parallel movement going on to organize for a response to Trump's being convicted and put in jail or if Trump loses the election regardless of whether he has been convicted or not. Trump's followers are bound and determined to put Trump back in the White House by any means necessary. They will do whatever Trump eggs them on to do.

The United States' continued existence as a democracy cannot be taken for granted at this point. The Republican controlled House can throw the US into chaos if they decide not to authorize the budget. That in and of itself could shut the country down. There is a good chance that they will not authorize the continuance of government spending. There are many other ways that they could partner with Trump to bring the country down. Are some elements of the military also in league with Trump? Who knows. It seems that they were on January 6 when they wouldn't send troops to protect the Capitol on a timely basis. Obviously, some people in the military establishment sympathize with Trump. The influence of Fox News and other conservative media continues to amplify Trump's messages. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech enhances Trump's ability to foment a possible civil war. Trump's base who have grievances going back to loss of the Civil War combined with Trump's perceived grievances reinforce each other. An aggrieved leader and his aggrieved followers represent a volatile mixture

Trump almost succeeded in overturning the American government on January 6. Only Mike Pence stood in his way. Notably, firearms were not a part of the insurrectionists' arsenal as they invaded the Capitol. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that next time they would bring their fire arms. Could another mob do what they did on January 6, and also be successful at it? Or could they be successful at the State level? These are tenuous times during which a number of scenarios involving Trump trying to take over the American government could play out. His base will never accept the outcomes of any indictments or even convictions. How will they react when he is sentenced to jail for the rest of his life? Or will the prosecutors chicken out when it comes to conviction and putting Trump in jail. If Trump is successful in fomenting a civil war, an unlimited right of Free Speech will be largely to blame. Can Trump be sentenced to shutting his mouth?

Off the Top of My Head

Barbie and Taylor Swift Prop Up US Economy

by John Lawrence

The Federal Reserve has credited Barbie and Taylor Swift with propping up the US economy. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia announced this month that Taylor Swift's tour helped boost travel and tourism in the region, a claim also made by several other U.S. cities regarding the musician's widely popular concerts. The US consumer is amusing itself to death. Meanwhile, the earth is burning up or in fact boiling. One would think that, if the climate situation were so dire, there would be an 'all hands on deck' effort to fight the war on climate change. But, nope, Americans are propping up the economy and in so doing are contributing even more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere thus hastening rather than retarding climate change. Even as some American cities - namely Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs - are sweltering under temperatures greater than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, even with the handwriting on the wall, Americans are dealing with this crisis by going to the movies and to Taylor Swift concerts. Taylor had better beware that she may get a container of coke thrown at her or even chicken nuggets while she struts about the stage. Cardi B got so mad when a "fan" threw her drink at her that she threw her microphone at the fan.

Newsflash: Americans attending Taylor Swift concerts aren't the same Americans who fought World War II. The era of Americans foregoing consumer delights in order to commit themselves to a long hard slog in the name of world peace, freedom and democracy is over. In fact, politically speaking, a major portion of Americans, not a majority hopefully, would rather be entertained by a clown like Trump than to have to ask themselves what they can do for their country as John F. Kennedy suggested. "Ask not what your country can do for you," Kennedy intoned. Well, that question has been answered. What this country can do for Americans is to provide them with entertainment like Barbie and Taylor Swift. And "what you can do for America" is to go to the movies and attend concerts spending your money in order to keep the economy afloat.

The U.N. chief issued a stark warning on climate change this week: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” António Guterres declared in a news briefing, as scientists confirmed that July is set to become Earth’s hottest month on record. But, boiling or not, most Americans just want to be entertained and to consume all the merchandise that goes with it. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have been moving markets, quite literally. The Federal Reserve has tracked the striking effect of Taylor Swift's tour on host cities. One analysis estimates it could generate almost $5 billion in global revenue. When Beyoncé comes to town, hotels, hair stylists and bartenders all get a boost, according to Yelp. "Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city," the [Federal] reserve wrote in the Beige Book, which is published by the regional banks to share information about the state of the economy.

Have Americans degenerated to the point that when given a choice between letting the earth boil and become unfit for human habitation and entertaining themselves, they would choose to entertain themselves. This is literally "amusing ourselves to death." Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment. Postman was on to something. In the current scenario, though, citizens' responsibilities are being exchanged for consumers' entertainment. In America, as we have been promised, our only responsibility is to enjoy our freedom even if that means that we succumb to the future of a boiling earth.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Turn the US From a Two Party System into a Multi-Party System

by John Lawrence

Very simply by changing from a first past the post (fptp) system in which the candidate with the highest number of votes wins to approval voting. In the first past the post system a voter can only vote for one of the candidates who are running. In the approval voting system a voter can vote for more than one candidate. In both cases the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. Taking Presidential elections as an example, the fptp system generates the 2 party system. Third party candidates mess up the system because they take votes away from the party they are most closely associated with. Ross Perot took the 1992 election away from George H W Bush since some voters most closely associated with the Republican party voted for Perot while most Democrats voted for Clinton. The second choice of most Perot voters was probably George H W Bush. Perot took 19% of the vote. Clinton won with 43% of the vote, and Bush lost with 37% of the vote. If Perot had not been in the race, Bush probably would have won. If the fptp voting system had been replaced with approval voting, voters could have voted for Bush and Perot. In that case Perot still wouldn't have won, but he wouldn't have taken votes away from Bush. For example if all the voters voting for Perot had Bush as their second favorite and voted for both candidates, Bush would have had 19% more votes thus winning the election. Perot would still have 19% of the vote and Clinton would still have had 43% of the vote, but Bush would have won having garnered 37 + 19 = 56% of the vote!

Making this simple change in the US voting system at all levels would result in a flourishing of third, fourth and fifth parties. These parties would not take votes away from the winners of the election, but would give information about which alternatives were on voters' minds in addition to the platforms presented by the major parties. Eventually, one of the multitude of parties might even replace one of the two major parties. This change of voting systems would let a multitude of parties and ideas flourish instead of cleaving all voter concerns into two parties. It would result in a loss of power for the 2 major parties and do much to decrease the divisiveness in American politics. It would allow real participation by minorities in American politics. The fptp system encourages the division of American voters into two camps in a system where hate and divisiveness can flourish. Approval voting would eliminate the possibility of third party candidates being spoilers in elections and taking votes away from the candidate who would have won if the third party candidate had not been running.

The change from the fptp system to the approval system could be done very simply. Nothing else about the American system would need to be changed, not the ballots, not the counting of votes. The only change on the ballot would be from "vote for one" to "vote for more than one." This change would encourage a multiplicity of candidates and viewpoints and would enrich the American political system. Third parties would be welcomed instead of feared. It would also tend to diminish the role of money in politics as the two party system encourages wealthy donors to give to only one of the two parties. If a viable multi-party system were in place, they would need to spread their money among a multiplicity of parties. Parties with a small number of supporters would be in the position of adding to their membership and growing into major parties based on their ideas and not on their war chests. There are many other improvements that could be made to the American democratic system, but none could be implemented more simply and have such far reaching results. And it doesn't mention in the Constitution which voting system should be used.

Off the Top of My Head

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) Says Americans Need To Stop “Electing Idiots.”

by John Lawrence

Did the Founders design a Constitution that was idiot proof? Not according to Liz Cheney. Is this a flaw that is inherent to democracy? Not necessarily although it seems to be a flaw in the American system of democracy. There are other forms of democracy that may be more idiot proof. For instance, a democracy in which there are background requirements for political representatives such as education and experience. It is important to have a President who is educated and experienced in areas related to government. The Senate and House of Representatives also should have education and background requirements. Any corporation requires education and experience requirements for jobs. Why should the government be any different? The Hill reported:

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) suggested Monday that the problem with American politics is that “we’re electing idiots.”

“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney said at an event with the cultural and community center, 92nd Street Y, New York. “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”

Cheney, who is a staunch opponent of former President Trump, offered the reflection in response to a question about whether she would run for president if polling showed that it would hurt Trump’s third White House run.

“I don’t look at it through the lens of, you know, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do,” the former congresswoman said. “I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

Cheney, who is a staunch opponent of former President Trump, offered the reflection in response to a question about whether she would run for president if polling showed that it would hurt Trump’s third White House run.

“I don’t look at it through the lens of, you know, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do,” the former congresswoman said. “I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

“I really believe, and I’ve never believed something as strongly as I know this, that the single most important thing for the country is that Donald Trump can’t be anywhere near the Oval Office again,” she said.

The question is how do you accomplish "not electing idiots" within the constraints of the American system? Or should the American system be redesigned to accomplish this goal? Perhaps the first item should be to educate the populace in such a way that the voting pubic contains as few idiots as possible. If the electorate is a bunch of idiots, then they will elect someone who looks like them - namely, an idiot. The second thing is that perhaps people running for office should be required to take a test, the results of which would show their knowledge of the position they aspire to whether it's the Presidency, the House or the Senate. Americans are subjected to testing all through their educational experience. Corporations that hire American workers are very interested in their test scores. They want to know whether or not the person they are hiring is an idiot. Why doesn't this apply to politicians as well? Otherwise, running for election comes down to a popularity contest and very often a blood sport. Is this the kind of person who should be running our government?

Off the Top of My Head

Is Voting a Necessary Component of Democracy?

by John Lawrence

Many people consider voting the sine qua non defining characteristic of democracy. However, the inventors of democracy, the ancient Greeks, did not. Their legislative body, the Council of 500, was chosen not be voting but by lot, in other words randomly. Arguably, random selection is more democratic since it guarantees a legislative body which actually represents and reflects all of the people. Voting, at least in the US, does not result in a legislature that reflects the actual composition of the electorate because the candidates need a lot of money even to get on the ballot. Random selection requires no money, just a complete list of all citizens. A legislature which reflects the actual composition of the electorate is more democratic than one that reflects only the composition of the moneyed class. Therefore, voting must be disassociated from democracy in the larger sense. So let's ask the question how is the Chinese legislature, the National People's Congress, chosen? It is chosen by the people by voting although the nominees are chosen by the Communist Party. It could be argued and debated how well the National People's Congress reflects the actual composition of the electorate. It could also be argued which system, the American system or the Chinese system is more democratic in the sense that the national legislative body represents and reflects the actual composition of their respective electorates. My guess is that the American two party system is only slightly more democratic than the Chinese one party system. Someone should do a study and comparison.

In addition to getting money out of politics, random selection, which is also known as sortition, would end the districting system and gerrymandering. The House would reflect the composition of the US electorate. Instead of an elaborate system of voting and majority rule, all you would need is a data base of all 330 million Americans and a program for random selection. Voting systems in and of themselves are controversial (which of the several available voting systems should be used), and majority rule is notorious for leaving out minorities.  The US system know as first past the post practically determines that the US will be a two party system. Third parties contribute the "spoiler effect," which we've seen all to often in Presidential politics, for example, when Ross Perot and Ralph Nader ran as third party candidates. They just take votes away from the party that they are closer to on the political spectrum helping the other party to win. The Chinese have a one party system and the US has a two party system which is probably only somewhat more democratic than the Chinese system if the measure of democraticness is that the legislature represents a reflection of all the people. The European parliamentary system is a multiparty system where minorities are better represented than in the US or Chinese systems, and hence, is more democratic than either of them. A further benefit of random selection us that extremists and extreme parties are unlikely to be over represented in the outcome. In fact political parties would have no reason to exist if the legislature was chosen by sortition.

Rousseau says in The Social Contract, " 'Election by lot,' says Montesquieu, 'is of the nature of democracy. ' I agree , but how is it so? 'The lot,' he continues, 'is a mode of election which mortifies no on; it leaves every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.' "Montesquieu , by the way was one of the chief architects of society that the Founders took as an example in their design of the US Constitution. Sortition was used in the Athenian democracy. With few exceptions, all magistrates were chosen by lot, beginning with the archons in 487–486 BC; likewise the Boule (council) of 500 and the juries of the law courts were chosen by lot. Sortition is used in the American system for jury selection.

My reform of the American system would be #1) The legislature should be chosen by sortition to serve 4 year terms. Pay would be high enough to induce the average person to want to serve. The only requirement would be US citizenship. #2) The Senate would be chosen by sortition among the people who met certain educational and experiential background requirements. The term would be 6 years. #3) The Supreme Court would be chosen from among the people with even more stringent background requirements especially in law and government. The term would be 8 years. #4) The President would be chosen by means of an electoral system with an advanced method of voting like approval voting. The electoral college would be abolished. The President would serve for 4 years with the possibility of serving two terms if the people elected him again. At any level of political participation people could opt out of the pool of which otherwise they might be randomly selected. We have already seen in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump how extremists can be elected by purveying false information and outright lies creating a cult following. The elimination of political parties altogether would transform politics from the Chinese one party system, the American two party system and the European multiparty system to in fact a more democratic no party system.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Americans Want Republicans and Democrats to Alternate Election Cycles

by John Lawrence

Democratic Presidents get elected and hand out a bag full of goodies, but there's no plan to pay for them. Then the American people elect Republicans because Republicans say in effect, "You don't have to pay for the goodies the Democrats gave you, and, furthermore, we'll even give you a tax cut." So is there any wonder why Democrats and Republicans alternate being elected? Or why the national debt keeps increasing? Goodies not paid for followed by tax cuts followed by more goodies followed by more tax cuts. The American people are wise to keep alternating these election cycles between Republicans and Democrats. Now that the Republican accusation of "tax and spend" aimed at Democrats has been followed by Democrat protestations of "tax the rich and spend", the wind has been taken out of Republican sails. Most of the national debt has been racked up by Republican tax cuts which mainly have benefited the rich. But as long as the Republican middle class has gotten teenie weenie tax cuts, they're more than satisfied. With Trump as their champion, Trump could even reduce taxes on the rich and increase them on the middle class and the Republican middle class would still love him. He's very special.

So why is the increasing national debt even an issue? For sure it never has to be paid off by our children or grandchildren ad infinitum. There are 2 reasons though why it is important. #1) The interest on the national debt is a budget item and it keeps increasing crowding out other budgetary items. #2) The Treasury debt assets held by other countries represent funds that can be used to purchase US assets. Of these #1 is probably the most worrisome. Interest on the debt could be controlled by the Fed and the Treasury working together. The Fed can buy Treasuries thus reducing the amount on the market or held by other entities. When interest is paid on Treasuries held by the Fed, it reverts to the Treasury Department so basically Treasuries held by the Fed are interest free - they cost the government nothing! Secondly, the Treasury Department can set the interest or coupon values for Treasuries very low. There is no need to raise the rates paid on Treasuries to reflect market interest rates because there is no need to sell any particular amount of Treasuries. Treasuries are just a safe warehouse for funds regardless of their coupon values and so there will always be a market for them, and the Fed can always by any unsold Treasuries. This is just a policy that has been in effect for years called quantitative easing. It's a tried and proven policy, and there is nothing new or revolutionary about it.

So let's examine the composition of the national debt. Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently. The nation’s fiscal pictured changed in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history reducing revenues by the equivalent of $19 trillion over a decade in today’s terms. Although Congress raised taxes in many of the subsequent years of the Reagan administration to claw back close to half the revenue loss, the equivalent of $10 trillion of the president’s 1981 tax cut remained. The George W. Bush administration, empowered by a trifecta in 2001, enacted sweeping tax cuts that will have cost more than $8 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. These legislative changes—the Bush and Trump tax cuts—are responsible for more than 90 percent of the change in the trajectory of the debt ratio to date, and will grow to be responsible for more than 100 percent of the debt ratio increase in the future. The Trump tax cuts cost $7.8 trillion. The national debt is approximately 32 trillion,and, toting up the figures listed above, it can be seen that approximately $26 trillion of this is due to the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts.

So politicians of both parties have colluded to give the American public everything they want: goodies plus a free lunch when it comes to taxes. American voters just need to alternate administrations! Americans don't vote for a President based on all he's done for the American people. Case in point: after all Joe Biden has done for the American people (in terms of goodies), Americans will probably elect a Republican President in 2024 so they won't have to pay for it. They will get a tax cut instead. And tax cuts are the gifts that keep on giving year after year ... mainly for the rich! Some might say this phenomenon of incentivizing voters to alternate the party in power is a flaw in American democracy. Keeping the same party over several election cycles might result in more consistency in government policy, but democracy is messy. The question is is it too messy. Is there a better way?

Off the Top of My Head

The Difference Between Chinese and US Philosophy

by John Lawrence

Western philosophy is predicated on the individual and the philosophy that the best society is one in which the individual is completely and totally free. Freedom of the individual is the bedrock of the US Constitution which spells out individual rights but not individual responsibilities. Freedom is spelled out in John Stuart Mill's book On Liberty, but it goes back even further than that all the way to the life of Jesus who, as demonstrated in the New King James version of Luke, when his mother was looking for him famously said to her,  “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” So for Jesus the freedom to pursue his career took precedence over familial responsibilities. Chinese philosophy places the emphasis on the fact that familial responsibilities should take precedence over individual freedom. That is the basic philosophical difference between US and Chinese philosophy. Confucius, who is the penultimate philosopher for Chinese society, had a different view regarding the relations of human beings to society. According to Roger T. Ames, Theorizing the Person in Confucian Ethics,"How or in what way (dao) do persons in their roles become consummately humane (ren)? This was the perennial Confucian question asked explicitly in all of the Four Books: in the Great Learning, in the Analects of Confucius, in the Mencius, and again in the Zhongyong. And from the time of Confucius onward, the answer was a moral, aesthetic, and ultimately religious one. Persons (necessarily plural) become humane by cultivating those thick, intrinsic relations that constitute our initial conditions that locate the trajectory of our life narrative - its whence and whither - within family, community, and cosmos."

The Chinese emphasis is on harmony and stability whether at the familial level or at the societal level. Western society emphasizes individual liberty in the hope that the societal level will take care of itself. The US Constitution emphasizes individual rights; there is no mention of individual responsibilities. There is the hope that individuals competing among themselves will end up with the result that society will flourish, but there is no direct connection as there is in Chinese philosophy. Article 53 of the Chinese Constitution states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the Constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property, observe discipline in the workplace, observe public order, and respect social morality." Article 54 states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China shall have the obligation to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not behave in any way that endangers the motherland's security, honor or interests."

While the Chinese Constitution also grants political rights such as freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, and religion and also economic rights, the Constitution also emphasizes obligations and responsibilities. Article 51 states: "When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People's Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens."

There is an emphasis on order, social morality, not infringing on the interests of others or society in general. Americans find this emphasis on social cohesiveness and stability too restraining and inhibiting of their rights as guaranteed in the American Constitution. The US Constitution's emphasis on individual rights without a concomitant emphasis on responsibilities has produced major instabilities in American society. The fall back position for the US is complete dependence on the rule of law and the preservation of American institutions rather than a libertarian view of freedom. Basically, the US, in order to preserve US democracy has had to come up with an almost Chinese position regarding societal stability. The January 6 insurrection and subsequent indulgence in free speech by certain actors to and beyond the point of truth telling has resulted in a continuing threat to US democracy. Certain members of American society are pushing Constitutional guarantees of free speech and gun rights to the point of undermining US democracy in general. Perhaps the American Constitution needs to be rethunk or at least amended. The Republican party threatens the destruction of American society unless they get their way.

Off the Top of My Head

The Dystopian American Democracy

by John Lawrence

As set up by the Founding Fathers, the mechanics of the American electoral system inevitably lead to a two party system. This is as opposed to a parliamentary democracy as exists in most other democratic nations. Third parties never make it in American democracy precisely because they take votes away from the party whose views they most closely resemble. Example: the Presidential election of 2000. Since with the American voting system, a voter can vote for one and only one candidate, voters waste their votes voting for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning. Ralph Nader ran as the Green party candidate and won almost 3 million votes, votes which most assuredly would have been cast for Gore if Nader weren't running. As it was, Gore won more popular votes than George W Bush who eked out a victory because of the antiquated electoral college system. If Gore had also won the 3 million votes that Nader received, he may have had enough electoral votes to tip the balance. These voting mechanics have enshrined what is called plurality voting or the first past the post system into law. If the approval voting system had been in effect in 2000, Gore would have won. Approval voting is a system in which a voter can cast votes for all candidates he or she approves of. That means that all those who voted for Nader would also probably have voted for Gore giving Gore 3 million more votes.

Why the two party system, which is the inevitable result of plurality voting, is so toxic is that it leads to a government like we have today in which the two parties are diametrically opposed to each other. Instead of working in the best interests of the American people, the two parties end up fighting each other for power. This produces gridlock and a seesawing back and forth regarding policy depending on which party controls which branch of government. The dystopia that results from this winner take all system is that compromise becomes impossible. All the energy goes into winning and making the other party lose. It is all about the competition between the two parties and not about finding solutions to societal problems that benefit the American people. Another factor is that the plurality system of voting at best leads to majority rule. That means that at best each party represents a majority of the American people and not minorities at all. Certainly neither party needs to seek the votes of the poorest Americans who usually don't vote anyway, and, if they did, their interests need not be served by the winning party.

The American system has become a dystopia precisely because one party is only interested in winning, and, if the other party is in power, in making that party lose the next election. They do this by denying insofar as possible that party from making any constructive changes which might benefit the American people. As the American people get disenchanted with the ruling party because it can't bring about constructive change, they inevitably vote for the other party hoping that they can do what the ruling party wasn't able to based on their campaign promises. In a multi party system such as a parliamentary democracy, a party whose only purpose is to deny the ruling party the ability to bring about constructive change and thereby gain power for itself is less likely to be able to pull this off. A center party is more likely to win. The two party system is more likely to breed two extreme parties diametrically opposed to each other with each party vying for power.

Fortunately, because of his skill and dexterous maneuvering, Joe Biden has been able to bridge a lot of gaps in getting things done for the American people. However, it wasn't without the other party's determinattion to make him fail. Republican leader Mitch McConnell said this about President Obama: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." How they endeavored to do this was to make Obama fail at everything he promised in his campaign to do for the American people. If Obama wasn't able to accomplish his campaign goals, the American people would become disenchanted with him and put Republicans back in power. This is why Republicans never compromise with Democrats in the best interests of getting good things done for the American people. They only see these things as "wins" for the Democrats and hence "losses" for themselves. On the other hand, Democrats are somewhat more magnanimous in that they will vote with Republicans some times when they are in power. Example: Democrats voted 3 times to raise the debt ceiling when Trump was in power even though they objected to the $7 trillion that Trump added to the national debt by giving tax breaks to the rich. The only reason Biden was able to accomplish anything or any American President is able to accomplish anything is when their party controls all 3 branches of government. Even then the other party can filibuster making a mockery of the idea of democratic government.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Didn't Democrats Raise the Debt Ceiling When They Controlled Both Houses of Congress?

by John Lawrence

What is clear is that Democrats can only get new legislation passed when they control all three branches of government. This legislation usually increases spending on social programs. Likewise, Republicans can only get their legislation composed - usually of tax cuts - when they control all three branches of government. Both cases usually require the government to deficit spend, the former because of increased government spending, the latter because of decreased government revenues from taxes. So whichever party controls Congress and the Presidency and passes a budget requiring increassed deficit spending should also at the same time raise the debt limit. Make sense? So now we're in this dystopian dilemma that, after Democrats passed Biden's budget requiring a huge amount of government spending, Republicans, who now control the House, effectively want to repeal Biden's budget or else they won't agree to raise the debt ceiling. What a conundrum! These problems would never come up if the party that deficit spent also raised the debt ceiling to accommodate the deficit spending.

Congress has raised the debt ceiling twice under Biden, by about $3 trillion. Republicans voted three times to raise the debt ceiling under President Donald Trump, who added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt. "Republicans in Congress raised the debt three times when Donald Trump was president and each time with Democrat support, but now they won’t raise it, even though they're responsible for more than $8 trillion in bills incurred in four years under the previous administration," Biden said. The 115th Congress (2017–2019) featured unified Republican control of the government with GOP majorities in the House and Senate, and Republican President Donald J. Trump in the White House. So Republicans had no problem with raising the debt ceiling during the Trump administration which added $7 trillion to the national debt. Please note that Democrats could have filibustered the debt ceiling increases during the Trump administration because Republicans did not have a filibuster proof Senate, but they didn't

Raising the debt limit is not about new spending; it is about paying for previous choices policymakers legislated. However, if the previous choice were made by a government controlled by the Democratic party in a two party system, there is every reason to get those choices reversed when the Republican party comes into power and vice versa although Democrats have never tried to bring the country to the brink of default, a game of chicken which Republicans have been all to eager to engage in. They were successful in doing this when Obama was President. Having seen that chaos and mess as vice Preesident, Biden is not willing to engage in negotiations this time around hoping that more sensible heads will prevail. It didn't used to be this way. Sometimes called the Gephardt Rule in honor of Representative Dick Gephardt who introduced its first version, the rule used to provide that when the House agrees to a budget resolution, the Clerk shall prepare a joint resolution suspending the debt limit for the fiscal year covered by the budget resolution. In other words the debt ceiling was automatically effectively raised to accommodate the budget. This all changed when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. When Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1995, he nullified the ingenious “Gephardt rule” that deemed the debt limit to be increased whenever a budget passed. This eventually led to the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns, when Republicans refused to increase the limit because the president was a Democrat. In 2011, a showdown over the debt ceiling during Barack Obama’s presidency led to the Budget Control Act and ten subsequent years of austerity budgets.

So the simple answer to the question posed by the title of this piece is that, although Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress during the first two years of the Biden administration, they did not have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Therefore, they could get a budget passed under the budget reconciliation rule which prevents a filibuster, but they could not raise the debt ceiling because that is subject to the filibuster. Oh what tangled webs these politicians weave! Nothing makes clearer the need to end the filibuster than another round of hostage-taking of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Add this to the mounting problems of American democracy. Congress has created an arcane jumble of chaotic rules which threatens government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Go figure.

Off the Top of My Head

The US has a "Version" of Democracy

by John Lawrence

Nowhere in the world does a pure democracy exist not even in the US. Witness one judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was not even democratically elected to that position, is the would be dictator over one issue - abortion medicine. How can this be democracy? None of the Supreme Court Justices who will make the final decision on this matter were democratically elected. They were all appointed by Donald Trump as was Kacsmaryk. Not only that, but this or some other appointed judge could decide unilaterally to take other drugs off the market. What else could they decide? The rule of law in the US is in shambles. Mini dictators in the form of appointed judges can hold sway over a whole host of issues. In fact the US does not even make the top ten list of the most democratic countries in the world according to the Economist Intelligence Unit which compiles an annual list in its Democracy Index. Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond has a similar list, maintaining that any democracy must include four key elements:

1. A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections
2. The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life
3. Protection of the human rights of all citizens
4. A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens

The US ranks 36th on a list Ranking Countries by Quality of Democracy behind such countries as Costa Rica, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Uruguay, Slovakia and the Czech Republic!

One can see why when one appointed judge can dictate an issue for the whole country! The Washington Post reported:

As a lawyer for a conservative legal group, Matthew Kacsmaryk in early 2017 submitted an article to a Texas law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions.

The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post.

Yet to hear American politicians talk about it, you would think that the American Constitution is sacrosanct, paramount and equivalent to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. You would think that it is so perfect that it is unthinkable that anyone would want to try to improve it in any way. People take a sacred oath to defend it. It is inconceivable to want to try and replace it like many other countries have done with their constitutions over the years. It is like the Bible, something that cannot be transcended without being accused of heresy, treason or worse.The American Constitution has not been updated in 234 years! On the other hand the current Constitution of France, for instance, was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and it replaced the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of 1946 ... .

Meanwhile as Republicans exploit every conceivable loophole in the American Constitution, and the Second Amendment is literally tearing the nation apart, the US seems to be making it clear that it is a Republic rather than a Democracy. As Benjamin Franklin said when asked what the US government represented, "It's a republic, my dear, if you can keep it." He didn't even pretend that it was a democracy. While we criticize foreign dictators, we have a homegrown dictator by the name of Matthew Kacsmaryk right here.

Off the Top of My Head

Problem of American Democracy: Will It Devolve to Tribalism?

by John Lawrence

The US was settled by western Europeans - white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. All the Founding Fathers and writers of the Constitution consisted of these folks. When the Europeans came here there were 100 million Native Americans. A few years later, due to war and disease, there were only 10 million. 90% of Native Americans were wiped out. African Americans were brought here as slaves and completely subjugated, first due to slavery and secondly due to Jim Crow laws up to 1965. So western Europeans predominated in the US right up to late in the 20th century. From the 1880s to the 1920s many of the immigrants were Eastern and Southern Europeans fleeing poverty. They were preceded by the Irish in the 1850s due to the potato famine. This was the era when the motto, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore" really held true. Then in 1920 or thereabouts the door to immigration was slammed shut. The western Europeans who ran America were afraid that these new immigrants would outnumber them and take over. Tribalism had reared its ugly head. About the same time eugenics was elevated to the point that the Supreme Court allowed the states to sterilize people that they considered undesirable. In Virginia Carrie Beck was sterilized.

Now that African Americans have escaped the bounds of Jim Crow and other Persons of Color have come to predominate in many positions of power, the remnants of the western Europeans who controlled the US up until the last 30 years or so are feeling like they're losing their grip on power. Democracy, as it was set up by the WASP Founding Fathers, only worked when the citizenry were also predominantly WASPs.Although its ideals were lofty, it was never meant to include African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans or other Persons of Color from around the world. The point could be made that democracy only works when it is enacted completely within one tribe, and, when other tribes are incorporated into the community, it doesn't work so well. What is happening today is that the WASP tribe is losing its grip on power, and so is attempting to put democracy aside and just revert to a society in which WASPs hold the reins on power. That is what the Republican party and especially the election deniers are all about.

Election deniers and conspiracy theorists are simply using a dog whistle because they just can't come out and say that what thy are really about is reverting to a tribal state in which they maintain the power that WASPs have always been accustomed to. Donald Trump is just the symbol of this.Election denying is just a euphemism for white western European power. The harsh reality is that the remnant WASPS would rather have an autocracy that they control rather than a true democracy consisting of African Americans and other Persons of Color. They don't want the true history of the US which includes other harsh realities taught in class rooms. The history they want taught is circumscribed to include only Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln and other WASPs but certainly not the realities of African and Native Americans and what happened to them at the hands of the WASPs.

So now what is at stake is the creation either of a true democracy which includes as full citizens and people allowed to enter positions of power those of African descent and other Persons of Color. What is at stake is a true Rainbow Coalition. The alternative is what the election deniers are trying to bring about which is an antidemocratic autocracy in which the descendants of WASPs prevail. That is basically what the Republican party represents - the descendants of WASPs. This is predominantly what the US has always been controlled by up till recently, and they want to continue in that mold. That's why the culture wars are heating up and what is taught in school is so important. If history is taught in such a way that it includes the realities of all Americans and not simply WASP Americans, it is taught in such a way that it does not reflect so favorably on WASP Americans. If non WASPS are given full citizenship or even if they are compensated for some of the inequities they have experienced in the past, this is threatening to the WASPs who would like to maintain the facade that they are good people and have always been good people. What is at stake is which version of reality will predominate in American society and who will be allowed into the Sanctum Sanctorum of American political power. Either the US becomes a true democracy or it reverts to a tribe controlled by the descendants of WASPs only.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems With American Constitution/Democracy: It Spells Out Rights But Not Responsibilities

by John Lawrence

Americans like to emphasize their rights, but don't talk much about their responsibilities. As far as the Constitution is concerned, there are none. As far as corporations are concerned, their only responsibility is to maximize profits by any means necessary. So the environment is not even a concern. Global warming is not even a concern. The only concern as far as business is concerned is business. "The business of America is business," so said President Calvin Coolidge in a 1925 speech. Corporations are supposed to maximize profits presumably as their responsibility to their shareholders which excludes about 50% of Americans who don't own any shares. We've already talked about a right and responsibility to work as a balance to Article 25 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Rights should be balanced by responsibilities. Unfortunately, in the American Constitution and even in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, they're not. In the very last article of the UN charter we find the only mention of "duties":

"Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

So no responsibilities are spelled out except the obvious one of not infringing on anyone else's rights. There are no explicit duties in return for all the considerable rights and freedoms spelled out in the UN Charter. There is no obligation to work or pay, if possible, to contribute to the " food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services" that one has a right to expect. It just doesn't add up.

So where does this leave the homeless in America. Unlike the UN charter, the American Constitution does not guarantee the right to housing or anything else. Either you pay for it or work to create it or else. The City of San Diego has proposed a "data analytics program" to solve the homeless problem. Now they are going to spend perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars not on anything that would directly help the homeless such as actually giving them the money for rent, but to some firm for some technology. They've been doing the same thing for years. I remember 20 years ago they paid someone $100,000 for a plan to end homelessness. What happened to that? KPBS reported: "In a statement after the vote, Fletcher said the county will continue to tackle the crisis that exists on the streets, "but we must invest in preventative actions like this one that stops people from becoming unhoused. This new technology will do it." New technology indeed.

If the city designated certain areas where the homeless could legally set up their tents, this in and of itself would get them off the public streets. Instead, the city criminalizes the homeless for living on the streets. But where else can they go? Legal campgrounds with basic amenities like toilets and showers would immensely improve the homeless' lot at rock bottom, minimal expense. The City owns lots of land parcels where this would be possible. Buildings are expensive. Vacant land that the City already owns is not. Most homeless people don't want to be "sheltered" except in case of very bad weather. They like the individual freedom of having their own space even if that is a tent. Some have animals which are forbidden in shelters. Some like to consume substances which are forbidden in shelters. Some don't like to be snooped on which is what happens in shelters. Why doesn't the City get this?

What the City is deathly afraid of is that, if they really made the homeless comfortable like in a campground,say, the City of San Diego would become a homeless magnet attracting homeless people and other people, who just wanted to save money and not pay exorbitant rent, from all over the country. Many people, not only the down and out, would prefer minimum amenities at a campground to paying $2000 a month in rent which is about the minimum rent in San Diego. The powers that be don't want to make camping out a permanently acceptable lifestyle. But why not? Not everyone needs a structure to live in to have a reasonably normal and happy life. With a gym or YMCA membership you have access to shower and rest room facilities. Using public transportation supplemented with a bicycle you can get to a job. A cell phone expedites communications and even banking. It's just that the City fathers and mothers find it abhorrent that people could actually prosper in an unhoused environment with minimal amenities at least for a period of time. They don't want San Diego to become the homeless capital of the US.

Off the Top of My Head

Problem of American Democracy: Constitution Guarantees Freedoms Without Demanding Responsibilities

by John Lawrence

There is nothing asked of an American citizen by the Constitution. It just gives citizens all kinds of freedoms - freedom of speech, assembly etc - without saying what the responsibilities or obligations of citizens are. It is just a free lunch for citizens. They have no responsibility either to the state or to their fellow citizens. This has led to the situation where every free agent is totally in it for theirself without regard to the interests or plight of anyone else. For instance the rich have no responsibility to alleviate the suffering of the poor. The poor must independently pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is the philosophy of liberal individualism. There is no responsibility for any American to the community as a whole. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights enumerated the many rights which enlightened governments should guarantee to their citizens. The US guarantees the political and civil rights, but stops short of guaranteeing Article 25: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Article 25 is a step too far for the American way of life which guarantees political and civil liberties, but not economic liberties because that would encumber some better off individuals to be responsible for some less better off individuals, and the philosophy of liberal individualism promotes individual initiative without any sense of responsibility for anyone else. What's mine is mine, and no one else including the government has a right to take any of my stuff away from me and give it to anyone else even if they are starving, homeless and sick.

In 1997 the InterAction Council decided to come up with "A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities" to counterbalance the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They stated in the introduction: "Globalization of the world economy is matched by global problems, and global problems demand global solutions on the basis of ideas, values and norms respected by all cultures and societies. Recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all the people requires a foundation of freedom, justice and peace – but this also demands that rights and responsibilities be given equal importance to establish an ethical base so that all men and women can live peacefully together and fulfill their potential. A better social order both nationally and internationally cannot be achieved by laws, prescriptions and conventions alone, but needs a global ethic. Human aspirations for progress can only be realized by agreed values and standards applying to all people and institutions at all times."

In other words we are all in this together so it's not enough to "get government off our back." In return for the wonderful freedoms government guarantees to us, government should ask for something in return both to the society as a whole and to our fellow citizens. It's not enough to be free and equal although the meaning of equal is up for debate. The motto of the French revolution was Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. At least there was a mention of "brotherhood", Fraternite, in the French motto even if the French have argued whether or not it means that they have any responsibility to their fellow French men and women. There is a growing realization that freedom must be balanced with responsibility. Otherwise, American democracy is just a big free lunch. You get all this stuff guaranteed by the Constitution including the rule of law with an elaborate court system which protects you from bodily harm, thievery and much else, but there are no explicit responsibilities on your part. It's as if your Dad gave you the keys to the car and said, "Here take it. It's yours" without asking for anything in return.

Article 7 of the Declaration of Human Responsibilities says: "All people have a responsibility to protect the air, water and soil of the earth for the sake of present inhabitants and future generations." There is a lack of responsibility on the part of some Americans who want to maximize quarterly profits without any consideration of the environment or global warming.The US Constitution allows them to do so. It makes no demands on them in this regard or in any other regard. The American way is to seek one's self-interest without regard to fellow Americans or the environment and self-interest in most cases means to maximize profits even when the maximizer is a billionaire with more money than they could ever hope to spend. Some Constitutions not only specify rights but duties as well. The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogota, Columbia specifies among other things that one has both a right and a duty to work if able-bodied.

Americans are only tuned into their rights, but not their responsibilities because the Constitution makes no demands on them in this regard. This leads to and is partly responsible for the break down of the American democratic system. Too many disaffected people feel lost in a society which basically tells them, "You're on your own Buddy. Don't ask me for help." Too many people don't want their tax money going to help the homeless, the mentally ill or those who are barely scraping by. Societal stability is not as important as protecting someone's right to own a gun. Too much freedom without responsibility can lead to the breakdown of democracy, but the US is not really a democracy. As Ben Franklin said, "It's a republic, if you can keep it."

Off the Top of My Head

How Liz Cheney Can Defeat Trump in the 2024 Election

by John Lawrence

Run for President as a third party candidate. She will siphon off enough Republican votes to insure Trump's loss. She has the name recognition and chutzpah to run for President. She's already raising money with her super PAC - The Great Task. There are enough disaffected Republicans that will vote for her, and, even though she would probably come in third in a Presidential race, she could guarantee that Trump or a Trump-like candidate would lose. Therefore, a Democrat will win. Cheney obviously has no affection at this point for the Republican Party, a party that oversaw her defeat in a landslide for her incumbent Congressional seat in Wyoming. She is more interested in a win for America and the principles of the Constitution, and, as an American patriot, she is committed to Trump's losing the 2024 Presidential election.

The US has a history of third party candidates handing wins to the party that they are least aligned with. In 1992, Ross Perot ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for President of the United States. Perot was a Texas industrialist who had never served as a public official, but he had experience as the head of several successful corporations and had been involved in public affairs for the previous three decades. Although Perot received no votes in the Electoral College, he won several counties, placed second in two states, and ended up far ahead of any other non major party candidate finishing in third place overall, receiving close to 18.97 percent of the popular vote, the most won by a third-party presidential candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. His presence in the race may have been enough to deny George H W Bush a second term.

Even more salient was the 2000 Presidential election. The 2000 presidential campaign of Ralph Nader, political activist, author, lecturer and attorney, began on February 21, 2000. He cited "a crisis of democracy" as motivation to run. He ran in the 2000 United States presidential election as the nominee of the Green Party. Nader siphoned off enough votes from Al Gore, who was the Democratic candidate, that George W Bush won the election despite the fact that Gore won the popular vote and despite the fact that, at Bush's request, the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida which would have nailed the state of Florida for Gore and the Presidential election itself.

Third party candidates can wreak havoc for the party that they're most closely aligned with. In 2000 Nader was more aligned with Democrats than Republicans. Yet he helped cinch the race for the Republican since he siphoned off Democratic votes. The same goes for Perot in the 1992 Presidential election in which he helped defeat the candidate of the party he was most closely aligned with - in this case the Republican party. Liz Cheney knows all this. She's no dummy. She knows she can guarantee a Trump defeat in 2024 if he should run by running for President herself as a third party candidate. No doubt Adam Kinzinger and other influential Republicans will join her in an effort to overthrow the Republican party which has become the party of Trump. Liz is well known enough that she does not suffer from any name recognition deficit. Polling shows that in the neighborhood of 30% of registered Republicans are disenchanted with Trump and Trumpism. They are appalled at the January 6 insurrection by devotees and sycophants of Trump. Liz Cheney can guarantee that the United States of America will be able to turn over a new leaf and start a new day with a new party dedicated to the principles of the rule of law and the American Constitution - sort of what the old Republican party used to be like. She is in a position to relegate Trump to the dustbin of history if he should somehow escape the grip of all the lawsuits he's now entangled with.

Off the Top of My Head

If Huge Numbers of People Believe Something, Does It Make It True?

by John Lawrence

Huge numbers of people believe Trump won the election. By all objective measures, it's a false belief. Huge numbers also believe some particular religious doctrine. Does that make it true? When it comes to religion though, there are no objective measures. Did God actually give Moses two stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments at the top of Mount Sinai or was it Mount Horeb as it says elsewhere in the Bible. Or was it Mount Serbal or Mount Catherine where Christians built a monastery in the belief that one of these mountains is where Moses received the stone tablets. Biblical scholars cannot even agree exactly which mountain corresponds to Mount Sinai. Or, is it possible that Moses had the stone masonry skills to have carved the stone tablets himself and then just told the story that he had received them from God? After all if people believed the tablets were created just by Moses and not by God, they would have given the Ten Commandments a lot less consideration as something they should be concerned about.

The January 6 Committee is attempting to prove that Trump knew he had lost the election, but misled his followers to believe in what others have called his Big Lie. Is there a willingness on the part of "followers" to believe anything their "leader" tells them? We'll never know the factual truth about Moses and the stone tablets, but we actually have factual data about the truth or falsehood of Trump's contention that the election was stolen from him. As Bennie Thompson, chair of the January 6 committee said, "Numbers don't lie." It doesn't matter what millions of Trump supporters believe because beliefs have to be measured with respect to objective facts whenever they're available, and in this case they are. With respect to religion we are free to believe whatever we want since there are no objective facts available no matter how hard anyone wants to believe that their beliefs are in fact the true facts.

So why do people believe stuff that isn't true? Why did all those people believe that the Emperor's new clothes were in fact a most wonderful set of threads? It took a little boy to point out that the Emperor was in fact naked. People will tend to believe whatever a person in power tells them because they don't want to be punished either directly or by other believers who could make them social outcasts for not believing what all of the rest of them believe. You don't want to say the Emperor is a fake if the Emperor could throw you in prison or worse. People didn't contradict the Roman Caesars when they told them they were actually gods. A lot of the wars have been between groups with contrary religious beliefs. After the Protestant Reformation, there followed the Thirty Years war in Europe between Catholics and Protestants. The war in Yugoslavia was among three religious groups: Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Muslims. They were all ethnically the same southern Slavs, the only difference among them which resulted in them killing each other was in their professed religious beliefs. Croats were largely Roman Catholic, Serbs were mostly Eastern Orthodox and Bosnia is majority Islamic. Different religious beliefs have resulted historically in human beings killing each other.

Trump's Big Lie resulted in his true believer followers almost fomenting a successful coup on January 6. It also helped Trump and other Republicans raise huge amounts of campaign cash from his followers based on their belief that the election was stolen from their "leader." Tolerance among people with different religious beliefs is a necessary component if earthlings ever hope to attain Peace on Earth, Good Will Among Men (and Women). Democracy is based on an accurate counting of votes. It's all about the numbers. It's not about beliefs. It's not about believing what some leader tells you to believe. Objectivity and science establish what is undisputedly true. Fortunately, democracy has a way to establish what is objectively true. Religion doesn't.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 4: The Easter Bunny Approach to Good Citizenship

by John Lawrence

Voters usually turn against the party in power in the mid term elections. Why? Because the party in power has promised voters all kinds of Easter goodies, and they haven't delivered on all of them. They haven't delivered all of them because the job of the party out of power is to prevent the party in power from doing so. Meanwhile, the party out of power promises voters a different bag of goodies if only they elect them. After all the party in power hasn't delivered all of the goodies promised. The result is the voters vote for the party out of power in the mid term elections. They've gotten all the goodies they're likely to get from the party in power, and their vote is cast in such a way that they are expecting a new bag of Easter goodies that has been promised by the party out of power if only the voters will vote for them which they willingly do. Why? Because voters don't vote for the party most likely to provide the country with good government. They don't vote for the party that is most likely to provide them with intelligent government. They vote for the party that has promised them a new and different bag of Easter goodies than the party in power which hasn't fulfilled all its promised goodies.

So the mid term elections are coming up. Republicans have done their job of obstructing many of Biden's campaign pledges. He did get an infrastructure package passed and got enormous COVID economic relief for citizens, but his hallmark campaign platform pledge, the Build Back Better plan has gone unfulfilled, thanks largely to the Republicans and two Republican wolves in Democratic sheep's clothing. The fickle voters do not assess how Biden has handled the chores of government, whether or not he's handled them in an intelligent and proficient manner. Their fickleness only assesses whether or not they've gotten all the Easter goodies Biden and the Democrats had promised. They have not. Therefore, it has been decreed by pundits, one and all, that Democrats don't have a snowball's chances in Hell of getting reelected in the Halls of Congress come this November.

Voters would rather elect a nincompoop like Trump who knew nothing about government except for the fact that it made him the most powerful man in the Free World, and, therefore, he could do and say most anything he wanted. He also promised voters the Republican bag of goodies - lowered taxes. Thoughtfully, Biden has carefully changed the Democratic meme from raising taxes on everyone to raising taxes only on the rich thus depriving Republicans of their main accusation towards Democrats: "They will raise your taxes." However, Biden doesn't seem to be getting very far in fighting inflation by raising taxes on the rich. Why? Because most Congress persons and Senators are the rich, and they've been lobbied very thoroughly by the rich. Of course this is all very legitimate. It's the American way of doing government unlike the Russian way where a rich businessman just offers cash to a member of parliament if they'll vote a certain way. In America the rich lobby and make generous campaign contributions in order to get Congress persons to vote a certain way. There's also an implied, though not explicit, wink, wink, nod, nod that the Congress person will get a lucrative job on a Fortune 400 Board when they retire from Congress in order to spend more time with their family. Of course this is not considered corruption, but the result is the same. In Russia politicians and government officials do the bidding of the rich; in America politicians and government officials do the bidding of the rich. What else is new?

Off the Top of My Head

Two Contradictions in the Narrative About the War

by John Lawrence

1) That Saudi Arabia is a good friend. Then why do they refuse to pump more oil to relieve the gas crisis? 2) That it's a war between democracy and autocracy. Then why is the world's largest democracy, India, on the side of Russia? Let's take #1 first. If Saudi Arabia is our great friend, they could end the gas crisis tomorrow simply by pumping more oil. This they refuse to do. So whose side are they on? For all the criticism of Putin as a butcher, we forget that Mohammed bin Salman, affectionately known as MBS, had Jamal Khasoggi butchered. Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi citizen living in Northern Virginia and writing columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy. He was killed during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. His body was dismembered, and his remains have never been found. Then Donald Trump, defying Congress, proceeded to sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudis. Reuters reported:

"The Trump administration informed congressional committees that it will go ahead with 22 military sales to the Saudis, United Arab Emirates and Jordan, infuriating lawmakers by circumventing a long-standing precedent for congressional review of major weapons sales.

"Members of Congress had been blocking sales of offensive military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for months, angry about the huge civilian toll from their air campaign in Yemen, as well as human rights abuses such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey."

I repeat whose side are they on, and what values do they and our vaunted "western values" have in common? But enough on the Saudis.

Let's take #2. India, I repeat, the world's largest democracy, is on the side of Russia. At least they have not sided with the US, NATO and the west even though they supposedly share our democratic values which are totally at odds with "autocratic values." The narrative that the war in Ukraine represents a war between democratic values and autocratic values is totally bogus. India has long been a purchaser of Russian military equipment and was an ally with Russian support in its war with Pakistan. India’s friendship with the then-Soviet Union became official in 1971, after the two countries signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. That year, the Soviets backed India in a war with Pakistan that ultimately led to the independence of Bangladesh. The US backed Pakistan. Now India is taking up the slack by buying more Russian oil, oil that isn't being sold to the western world which needs it badly to get gas prices back to normal. China is buying more Russian Ural crude oil as well.

As the world rallies to condemn Russia, India remains silent on the sideline. In addition to India some other countries siding with Russia or at least remaining neutral are China, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Algeria, South Africa, Angola, Morocco. Nearly half of all the countries that abstained from condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the U.N. General Assembly are in Africa, and many are reluctant to join sanctions against Russia. In fact, only 28 out of the 54 African countries (just over 51 percent) represented in the U.N. voted in favor of the resolution. So not all countries are willing to turn Putin into a pariah and Russia into a pariah state. Even South Africa, which has a parliamentary democracy and is a strategic partner of the United States, was not willing to condemn Putin.

However, the war ends, it is important for world peace and the fight against climate change, let alone globalized markets, that some sort of constructive alliance among all countries be enacted taking the security interests of all countries into account. The problem with NATO is that it didn't do that. In fact the expansion of NATO eastward rubbed Russia's nose in the fact that it had lost the Cold War. Some American leaders gloated over that fact. Instead Russia should have been accepted into the community of nations. If Finland right on Russia's border can remain nonaligned and neutral without threat of invasion, perhaps that would have been the best course for other nations on Russia's border as well.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Is Democracy Doomed by the Constitution Itself?

by John Lawrence

According to the Constitution, state legislatures have complete control over their state's electors so, even if the popular vote is for a Democrat, a Republican controlled state legislature can choose electors dedicated to the Republican candidate for President. The electoral college was established by Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution and modified by the 12^th and 23^rd Amendments. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states:

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

The 12th amendment is irrelevant to our discussion as it has mainly to do with how electors should deliberate and the number of which are chosen by each state. The 23rd amendment gives citizens living in DC the right to vote. The Constitution makes clear that state legislatures have complete control over the selection of electors, and, therefore, that state's control of its votes for President regardless of the popular vote in that state. In fact the following is true:

"Currently, all states select electors through a popular vote (although how that vote works can differ), but that was not always the case throughout American history. In many states, the state legislature selected electors, a practice which was common until the mid-1800s."

Many "battleground states", those where the popular vote is close, have Republican controlled legislatures. When the same party holds both legislative chambers and the governorship, that party has state control. Republicans have state control in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Florida and Ohio as well as 19 other states mostly in the south and midwest. State legislatures that are Democrat controlled are mostly on the west coast and northeast. In the next Presidential election red states that have state control of their legislatures and governorships could change the rules about how they choose electors and decide that they will choose Republican electors regardless of the popular vote. Of course they would be sued and the suit would wind up in the Supreme Court which is majority controlled by Republicans and conservatuves. One of the tenets of conservatism is a strict interpretation of the Constitution. They are called "strict constructionists." There is absolutely no doubt that a strict interpretation of the Constitution gives state legislatures complete control over the selection of electors. If rules need to be changed in those states to allow for the selection of electors not to be made by popular vote, that can easily be accomplished in states in which both the Houses of the legislature and the governorship are in Republican hands such as in the battleground state mentioned above.

So while the US Congress has been concerned over the years with voting rights such as the 15th and 19th amendments to the Constitution which gave voting rights to African Americans and women, respectively, and the Voting Rights act of 1965 which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, the real test for nondiscriminatory election of the President of the U.S. will come up in the 2024 election in which many red states will avail themselves of their rights as states to select electors. In the final analysis expanding voting rights legislation such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act are irrelevant to the outcome of the election. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would make illegal voting rules that discriminate on the basis of race, language, or ethnicity and empower voters’ to challenge discriminatory laws. The Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747) is currently in the Senate and would solidify comprehensive voter protections, including a minimum of 15 days for early voting, mail-in ballots, and making Election Day a national holiday. It would require eliminating the filibuster to get these laws passed in the Senate.

If states pursue what is their right according to the Constitution to change electoral law to allow them to choose electors not in accordance with popular vote, it will precipitate a Constitutional crisis in 2024. If Trump runs and is elected due to these changes at the state level, the Supreme Court will uphold the election results and Trump will be elected despite the popular vote. This is the scenario that Trump clumsily tried but failed to succeed with in 2020. Next time it could succeed and be perfectly legal. All this goes to show that the U.S. Constitution is fundamentally flawed. Minimal changes that would bring it into the modern world would be elimination of the electoral college so that Presidents are elected by popular vote, the elimination of the filibuster so that the Senate operated as a democratic institution and elimination of the Second Amendment so that every nut case doesn't have the right to own firearms.

Off the Top of My Head

The End of Democracy?

by John Lawrence

The changes to voting rules by state legislatures in certain states where the legislatures are Republican controlled has been characterized as a mechanism by which a Republican such as Trump could be installed as President regardless of the popular vote, and this would be the end of democracy. But would it? The Constitution itself gives total control of the Electoral College to state legislatures. It states:

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector"

In other words state legislatures have total control over how electors are selected irregardless of the popular vote, and this principle is enshrined in the Constitution! The election of President is not now nor was it ever determined by the popular vote. The "Electoral College" was supposed to be a deliberative body which "filtered" the popular vote and was free to countermand it if the wise men of the Electoral College chose to do so. So the seeds of the issue of "autocracy vs democracy" were sown in the Constitution itself. Reforming voting rules to allow more people to vote is not the central issue here if Republican controlled state legislatures can appoint Republican electors who can install a Republican President regardless of the popular vote. This is all perfectly legal in accordance with the Constitution. It's how the Constitution was designed. It favors states' rights baby!

The US Constitution itself is anti-Democratic. Unless it is rewritten and updated, it will be the source of the collapse of American so-called democracy. It was never meant to make the US a democracy in the first place. America is a republic, not a democracy. Get used to it. If you want a democracy, the first thing is to make election of the President solely contingent on the popular vote like every other democracy in the world. The next thing is to eliminate the filibuster which is the most anti-democratic mechanism ever thought up by human beings. In a democracy you are supposed to have majority rule. The filibuster prevents that in the US Senate. As opposed to the Constitutional provision of state legislature control over the electoral college, the filibuster is not even in the Constitution. It was just added as an afterthought by means of a rule in the Senate put there by Aaron Burr. According to Brookings:

"[I]ts emergence was made possible in 1806 when the Senate—at the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr—removed from its rules a provision (formally known as the previous question motion) allowing a simple majority to force a vote on the underlying question being debated. This decision was not a strategic or political one—it was a simple housekeeping matter, as the Senate was using the motion infrequently and had other motions available to it that did the same thing."

The filibuster was used extensively to deny African American rights. The Washington Post reported in an article, For 100 years, the filibuster has been used to deny Black rights:

"The most famous such use of the filibuster was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opponents of the Act filibustered for a record-breaking 60 working days. Millions of Americans watched as CBS’s Roger Mudd reported live from the steps of the Capitol on white Southern senators’ efforts to kill the legislation.

"But the modern filibuster’s first civil rights fatality actually occurred decades earlier in the searing 1922 defeat of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. The Senate’s abandonment of this landmark legislation in the history of anti-Black violence is little remembered today, but it set a path for partisan and ideological battles in the century since and continues to reverberate in our legal system."

So if autocracy takes over from democracy, it won't be because some group acted in a way that was outside of their Constitutional rights. In particular if a Republican state legislature assigns all its electoral votes to Trump despite the popular vote in that state having a majority for Biden, that's totally within the Constitutional rights of that state so to do. The filibuster, however, is not enshrined in the Constitution. It's a pure convention, a relic that the Senate has decided to keep in place despite the fact that it's anti-Democratic. There's no justification for it whatsoever. In fact, just because Manchin wants to keep it so that a future Republican controlled Senate will not change it is hooey. They can go ahead and change it at any time they have a majority in the Senate regardless of whether or not the Democrats decide to keep it. That's the ironic and moronic aspect of Manchin's position.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 3 - The Two Party System

by John Lawrence

In short a two party system degenerates into the far left vs the far right. This is what's happening in America today. The only thing worse than a two party system is a one party system. In a multi-party system like most European democracies have, you can still have a far left and a far right, but you have numerous gradations in between. In a two party system people are diametrically opposed to each other and go head to head. The US is plagued by a winner take all society in which the voting system itself plagues democracy. In each district there is one and only one winner. This makes it possible for Republicans, for example, to out primary each other by becoming even more extreme. Why does all the action occur in the primaries? Because the districts are so gerrymandered that one party is almost guaranteed to win in these so-called safe districts. I don't think democracy is doomed, but the American version thereof may be. In America third parties are doomed by the very structure of the voting system. In districts in Europe, for example, that are not winner take all, in which multiple candidates from multiple parties can be elected in the same election, more than one voice can be heard. The result is that the outcomes of elections are not so extreme.

The winner take all system suppresses minorities. The historical minority in American politics, namely black people, have not been able to have much of a voice in electoral politics because of, among other reasons, gerrymandering and winner take all voting systems. The majority always wins and minorities end up with no representation whatsoever. We've seen this in Presidential politics when the only effect a third party candidate like Ralph Nader had was to take votes away from the party he was closest to politically giving the party farthest away from himself politically the win. In 2000 Nader took enough votes away from Al Gore so that George W Bush won the election. This led to Bush lying the US into the Iraq war with disastrous results. In the 1992 Presidential election Ross Perot ended up with 18.9% of the votes. This probably cost George H. W. Bush a second term and elected Bill Clinton President. Taking popular votes away from a candidate can cost that candidate electoral votes. In many states the electoral votes are winner take all so that whoever gets the most popular votes, even though not a majority, wins all the electoral votes.

The solution for the US is not only voting reform - eliminating gerrymandering primarily, but to do away with the district by district winner take all system. This will give voice to minority representation. It's something that might be of interest to European descendant whites as pretty soon they will be in the minority. The US doesn't necessarily have to adopt the European Parliamentary system. There are other variations of voting systems that are not winner take all and that support multi-party winners. A little humility, please, about the superiority of American democracy. It's badly in need of reform.

Off the Top of My Head

Oh No, Joe, Say It Isn't So

by John Lawrence

Despite prior commitments to Joe Biden and House Democrats, Joe Mancin is a "No" on Biden's Build Back Better bill which will provide child care, eldercare, universal Pre-K and more. Dr. No made his position clear yesterday. He's tired of farting around aka negotiating. Democrats need all 50 votes in the Senate to pass the bill. 49 are on board and this gives Mancin extraordinary power. It's his way or the highway. Mancin has said he would support a bill totaling $1.5 trillion, but the house and Senate Democrats have been gingerly "negotiating" with Joe for more. Here's an idea: take what you can get and go home. Cuz you ain't gonna get no mo. Let Mancin write the bill. Throw in voting rights as well, and pass both in the same bill by reconciliation. Mancin has already essentially written a voting rights bill he would support. Again it's not everything progressives want, but it's better than nuttin.

Conservatives have traditionally broken inflation on the backs of the poor. The Phillips curve which is gospel among conservative economists says that you need to increase unemployment in order to rein in inflation. Problem is at this time there is hardly any unemployment. So what else can you do to keep poor people poor? Don't give them any more government benefits. That's the ticket. Of course, progressives say the Phillips curve is hogwash. All you need to do is to extract money from the economy by taxing the rich. But tell that to rich corporation who are spending billions on lobbyists to convince quasi conservative Democrats like Joe Mancin otherwise. And then there is conservative activist Paul Weyrich who famously said, "“I don’t want everybody to vote . . . our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Translate that into economic terms and you get, "I don't want everyone to be middle class. Who would do the necessary back breaking labor to keep the economy growing if not for the poor."

So conservatives don't want the poor to vote and they also don't want them to work their way into the middle class. They want to keep the poor poor so the economy has a goodly supply of backbreaking and menial labor which it badly needs, especially if you want to buy American. Otherwise, we would have to export the backbreaking labor to other countries where there is a plentiful supply of poor people. Right now conservatives are aghast at how the shortage of labor is fueling demands for higher wages. This is a blow to their very way of life which is predicated on keeping the poor poor. They don't want to be flooded with immigrants to take the menial labor jobs so those who came in 20 years ago can progress to the middle class like Joe Biden wants them to do. The best way to keep them poor is to not give them any more government benefits.

So progressive Democrats in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate have been screwed once again. The whole deal was that both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill were supposed to pass in tandem. Then after farting around (excuse me, "negotiating") for months and months, finally Joe Mancin has put the kibosh on Build Back Better after successfully delinking the two. Screwed again. Lucy with the football. So here's the solution. Stop negotiating. Let Mancin write the bill and then everybody genuflect. And while you're at it, throw  Mancin's voting rights, bill written by him, into the package and pass the whole ungodly stew by reconciliation and be done with it.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 2

by John Lawrence

How is Roe vs Wade like the Iran nuclear deal? They both can be overturned by a new President, Supreme Court or Congress. There is no such thing as "settled law." Another example: the Paris climate change agreement which Obama signed on to and Trump pulled out of. A nation that can't keep its agreements either internally or externally is a nation with no direction, a nation not so much making progress as going over and over again the same ground. We go back and forth and round and round while other countries go forward in the same direction.This whole process is more crucial due to the fact that 1) other countries are losing trust in us if they can't count on us to keep our word and 2) if we're not all on the same page regarding climate change, the earth will be a goner in just a few years. Some countries are already experiencing disasters that they are ill prepared to deal with.

Some of the issues are pretty straightforward. Instead of the US getting its panties all in a wad over Ukraine, the situation there is mainly of concern to Russia since Ukraine is right on Russia's border, and, by the way, used to be part of Russia. Would the US tolerate a hostile government in Mexico? Let Russia deal with it. It should be none of our business. Reagan promised Gorbachev that NATO would not start absorbing countries further to the east. Now that's just what NATO is doing with its cultivation of Ukraine for admission to NATO. The National Interest reports:

"Indeed, Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin have complained bitterly about the expansion of NATO towards their borders despite what they had believed were assurances to the contrary. “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?” Putin said at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007.“No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?”

"As the newly declassified documents show, the Russians might have had a point. While it was previously understood that Secretary of State James Baker’s assurance to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “not one inch eastward” during a February 9, 1990, meeting was only in the context of German reunification, the new documents show that this was not the case.

"Gorbachev only accepted German reunification—over which the Soviet Union had a legal right to veto under treaty—because he received assurances that NATO would not expand after he withdrew his forces from Eastern Europe from James Baker, President George H.W. Bush, West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the CIA Director Robert Gates, French President Francois Mitterrand, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British foreign minister Douglas Hurd, British Prime Minister John Major, and NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner."

Obviously, Russia is very concerned about Ukraine becoming part of NATO with the prospects of advanced weapons being placed on its border. So why make a big deal over whether or not Ukraine or part of Ukraine is taken over by Russia? The US has long considered itself to have hegemony over North and South America and has overthrown governments in South and Central America. Let Russia have some degree of hegemony in its corner of the world. There are more important issues which require the cooperation of the whole world - climate change and pandemics to name two.

Off the Top of My Head

If Trump Didn't Commit Treason, What is Treason?

by John Lawrence

It's clear Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and fomented a coup to keep himself in power. I'd like to know why that isn't treason and why Trump is not in jail. It would have to be done by Democrats because now the government IS Democrats. Republicans don't even participate except to try to roadblock everything Democrats try to do. So Democrats would have to put Trump in prison, and I think they are afraid to do so. Wishy washiness is their name. First Trump's famous call to Raffensberger, Secretary of State of Georgia, in which he implored him to "find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have". Then his attempt to corrupt the Department of Justice in order to get it to declare the election was corrupt, then his attempt to get Pence to not certify Biden's victory and on and on. There is so much documented proof that Trump did all of these things and more not to mention fomenting a coup on January 6. I repeat why isn't he in jail and being tried on charges of treason?

Trump is not only not in jail, he's contemplating another run for President in 2024. The US cannot withstand another run for President by Trump. The scenarios for future coups will make January 6 look like a dry run. Republican states have already changed laws making it more likely that state legislatures can take over elections and select their own slate of electors if they don't like the outcome of the voting process. Trump and his cronies have already cast doubt on the validity of elections. Poll workers have already received death threats as has anyone else connected with the democratic process or anyone who stood in the way of Trump's attempted coup. The January 6 committee will dig up enough dirt to put Trump in jail, but I doubt if they will go all the way and get that done. Democrats are too afraid of the reaction of Trump's supporters if they put him in jail. They're afraid it will look like a partisan effort. Well, it will be because there is no Republican support for chastising Trump in any way whatsoever. But that shouldn't stop Democrats and maybe Liz Cheney from doing the right thing.

Finally, just tell me what treason is if it is not all the things Trump did to overthrow a democratically elected government in the US. No wonder the rest of the world doesn't trust us.

Off the Top of My Head

The Dumbing Down of the American Electorate

by John Lawrence

It seems that about half the American people want rational, competent government which advances the interests of the American people and plays a constructive role on the world stage. The other half wants a government based on their pet peeves. They are amenable to being swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation. The former are mainly Democrats; the latter, Republicans. This is nowhere better exemplified than the 2016 election in which competence and experience in the form of Hillary Clinton was defeated by resentment and lies in the form of Donald Trump. In contrast to China which promotes the best and brightest to high positions in its government, the US form of democracy allows for politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator which has no knowledge or information about anything beyond the worship of symbols like the American flag. This is clear from the visuals of the January 6 insurrection in which the American flag was displayed ad infinitum as if that is what made these people true patriots who could demand that their hero, Donald Trump, should be President in defiance of every provision of American constitutional democracy.

Republican politicians pander to this group of no nothings and stoke resentment against intelligence and rationality which they define as elitism. Joe Six Pack is easily swayed to vote for someone like himself, a high school graduate who flunked civics class if he was even required to take a civics class. American history was taught from the point of view of white Europeans with hardly a mention of the lands stolen from Native Americans nor the travails of African American slaves who provided the labor to build most of the country and make white southern plantation owners rich. The diaspora of southern Confederate attitudes to much of the rest of the country other than the coasts has provided the grist for Republican politicians to convince this diaspora to vote against their own economic interests and to fully indulge their anger and resentment against those they call elitists who have much more knowledge, education and intelligence while at the same time really smart lawyers and operatives work to advance the interests of the very rich unbeknownst to the Joe Six Packs who voted for them.

When half the country votes based on conspiracy theories which the Republican party amplifies, what is the solution? More education for one thing. The January 6 insurrectionists sent to jail for their crimes need to be reeducated. They should be required to take a course on contemporary issues of American society and also a course on World Problems. Many Americans are so insular that they never even stop to consider what's going on in the rest of the world. It's not enough to start educating children; many adults need to be reeducated. If this smacks of what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs, it bears the similarity in the sense that many American adults do need to be reeducated, and their sentences should require it because many of them have been miseducated in southern schools which elevate states' rights to a primary position in American democracy. Problems of American Democracy, a course my father taught at Highland Park High School, should be required from kindergarten through college. The American people need to become more sophisticated as citizens if democracy is to have a future. Otherwise, Republican politicians will continue to pander to the least common denominator stoking their resentments while stealing their futures unbeknownst to them. Competence, intelligence and good hearts will continue to be defeated. Republican politicians' skill set consists of getting their followers to vote against their own interests while pandering to their resentments. Democratic politicians, for the most part, actually want to help the American people and not just the ultra rich.

When one country promotes smart people to high positions in government, and another country is prone to electing people based on lies and conspiracy theories, which country do you think will prevail on the world stage? One party in this country is acting intelligently trying to advance the interests of the average American while the other party does everything in its power to stands in its way while basing its appeal on misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories. How did democracy ever descend to this level?

Off the Top of My Head

The Shortcomings of Democracy

by John Lawrence

What other countries are concerned about is the specter of Trump coming back in 2024 and reversing everything Biden will have accomplished specially with regard to climate change. An American government no matter how well intentioned and competent cannot maintain itself in power for a long time. It can be replaced by a malevolent and incompetent one in relatively short order. It almost makes you look on other forms of government with envy. Angela Merkel was in power in Germany for 16 years. She was a steady hand on the tiller. Trump tried to rip the tiller out of the ship and he may come back to try and do it again. It's not only China which has long term stability, but China has been pretty consistent in delivering for the Chinese people over a fairly long term. Their government is stable no matter what else you want to say about it. They also promote the best and the brightest to high positions in the government. Trump put in place agency heads that were dedicated to destroying the agencies they were in charge of and many were incompetent political cronies to boot.

Coherence, cohesion - these are values that do not apply to the American people. The American people are freedom fanatics, freedomaholics. In most other advanced societies the value of freedom is balanced by the value of social responsibility. When freedom is way out of proportion with other values, you have a society that can come apart at the seams which is what is happening to American society. The American system engenders a two party system by its very nature, and almost inevitably it develops into two parties which are diametrically opposed to each other. A parliamentary system of government gives rise to  many parties, and that is less likely to devolve into a major societal divisions.

The other thing that contributes to the divisiveness of American society is the American predilection for guns. The supposed right of every American to own and use a gun creates a situation where angry people with a penchant for freedom are more likely to use their gun if they don't get their own way. If they sense that some people are on the other side of a divided society, they feel justified and entitled to use their guns to demand that society conform to their values much in the some way that a divided society resorted eventually to a civil war in America's past. Right now militias and paramilitary units roam the streets similar to the situation in Germany that predated World War II. If a society can't control or prohibit the private accumulation of guns, if it even encourages it, nothing good can come from this situation. All the preliminary conditions are in play for eventual uprisings which, if organized and controlled from above, can have disastrous consequences for civil society.

Off the Top of My Head

US Is Not a Democracy. It's a Republic if We Can Keep It.

by John Lawrence

Benjamin Franklin said, “It's a republic, if you can keep it.” when asked if we had a monarchy or a republic. We almost didn't keep it when Trump tried to turn it into a monarchy with him as the first monarch. However, the US is not a democracy. A democracy would be a nation governed by a majority of the people. There are a lot of reasons why this is not the case. #1 States' rights: The Federal government is not a national government. It's not a central government with power over the whole nation. Because of states' rights, the US federal government is a weak form of government that shares powers with the states which can veto an administration's agenda if they feel so inclined. States can overrule the central government. A country with a strong central government can set its agenda at the national level and then pursue it without any obstructions from various states or regions or provinces. All things being equal, a nation with a strong central government will surge ahead of one with a weak central government in a competitive enironment.

#2 Representative instead of direct democracy. A representative democracy does not necessarily govern in the same way a direct democracy would. Representatives are subject to lobbying which distorts their votes and makes them represent their donors more than their constituents. Opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want gun control, affordable health care and addressing the issue of climate change among other things. Yet the US government does little if anything regarding these issues because vested interests are funding politicians to vote "No" on these issues.  #3 Gerrymandering or political party control of district boundaries. When a political party controls district boundaries they can draw the districts in such a way as to favor the electability of their party's candidate. They can also practically guarantee that their party's candidate will be elected in perpetuity.

#4 The Electoral College. The electoral college makes it possible for a Presidential candidate to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote and hence the Presidency. Again it's minority rule not majority rule.

#5 The winner-take-all two party system eliminates representation for minorities. The way the US districting system is set up, it is impossible for third party candidates to win. They can be spoilers though taking votes away from the party that they're closest to ideologically. A parliamentary system is more amenable to multiple parties being represented.

#6 A Constitution set in stone whose barriers to change are seemingly infinite. The Constitution can be amended but not change except for amendments. The amending process requires a two thirds vote, not a majority vote, and hence is undemocratic. Other countries have procedures whereby the whole Constitution could be changed or updated or rewritten.

#7 Lack of continuity: Elections every 2 years can change the direction of government or the government's agenda or lack thereof. #8 Gridlock: An administration's agenda can't go forward due to the filibuster. In short, while other countries are surging ahead, America has the political equivalent of constipation. Gridlock is the outcome of a divided country controlled by the minority.

Fareed Zakaria wrote in an article in the Washington Post, The decay of American democracy is real:

"One aspect of the United States’ power remains substantially diminished: its role as a beacon of democracy. Among countries surveyed, 57 percent of people said the United States is no longer the model for democracy it used to be. Young people worldwide are even more skeptical about America’s democratic institutions.

"In one fundamental way, things look worse now than in prior periods of crisis. After Watergate, many were surprised that the world looked up to the United States for facing and fixing its democratic failures. It was a sign of the country’s capacity to course-correct. But imagine if after that scandal, the Republican Party, instead of condemning Nixon, had embraced him slavishly, insisted that he did absolutely nothing wrong, settled into denial and obstructionism and proposed new laws to endorse Nixon’s most egregious conduct? Imagine if the only people purged by the party had been those who criticized Nixon?

"The decay of American democracy is real. It’s not a messaging or image problem. Until we can repair that, I’m not sure we can truly say America is back."

 

Off the Top of My Head

Without Majority Rule Is The US Still a Democracy?

by John Lawrence

The US Senate is not ruled by a majority. Arguably that makes the US not a democracy or a democracy in name only. The filibuster is an artificial rule that precludes majority rule in the Senate, and, therefore, in the US since the Senate is a representative body of the people. A majority of the people want gun control, but, because the Senate is not a democratic institution, there is no gun control. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019 found that 60% of Americans say gun laws should be tougher. Conclusion: the US is no longer a democracy. Strong majorities of voters across party lines view access to clean water, a quality public education, adequate food, and housing as basic human rights that should be secured by the federal government. A survey by Harvard University found the following: "The right to clean air and water, for example, was considered important by 93 percent of those surveyed; protection of personal data, by 93 percent; the right to a quality education, by 92 percent; racial equality, by 92 percent; affordable health care, by 89 percent; and the right to a job, by 85 percent."

The filibuster precludes democracy. It is not in the Constitution. Neither is the right to own a gun. The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." At the time of the American Revolutionary War, militias were groups of able-bodied men who protected their towns, colonies, and eventually states. They were state based armed groups that later became the National Guard. It was these groups that were allowed by the Constitution to bear arms, not every idiot who came down the pike. Other more mature societies regulate gun ownership the way the US regulates drivers.

NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

The US is falling apart because groups with lots of money are lobbying Congress to perpetuate their income stream from gun sales regardless of what the majority of US citizens want. Yet the US lectures other countries about human rights. Is it a human right to own a gun? I don't see it listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. What is listed is the following:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The controlling interests of US society are not the majority of the people. US society is controlled by wealthy interests which lobby Congress providing them with financial incentives to do their bidding. One of the main reason companies lobby Congress is to preserve their rights not to have to pay for externalities. Externalities are byproducts of the production process that pollute the environment. It would lower their profits if they had to pay for them. William D Nordhaus writes in The Spirit of Green:

"One prominent example is the activities associated with the Koch brothers and their companies. Koch Industries is a privately owned company holding companies with major environmental impacts and with revenues of around $115 billion in 2017. As reported by the Center for Public Integrity, one of Koch's holdings, Georgia-Pacific, is significantly impacted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision on dioxin. They write that Koch has intervened 'in various regulatory proceedings to dilute or halt tighter federal regulation of several toxic by products that could affect its bottom line, including dioxin, asbestos and formaldehyde, all of which have been linked to cancer.' According to Greenpeace, 'Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions, from 1997 - 2018.'"

So it's understandable why Republicans especially don't want Joe Biden's climate change agenda to pass even though a majority (actually two thirds!) of Americans want the government to do something about climate change according to a Pew poll. "A majority of Americans continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities and believe that the federal government falls short in its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change." But since the Koch brothers and others like them have the Republican party in their pockets, the filibuster assures them that nothing will get done. And this is happening in a democracy where democracy rule supposedly prevails? The US, sadly to say, is no longer a democracy if it ever was.

'Manchin Must Wake Up' or Face Up: Progressives Demand Floor Debate on Pro-Democracy Bill

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) talks with a reporter in the Ohio Clock Corridor before a news conference in the Capitol after the vote to advance the January 6th commission failed, on Friday, May 28, 2021. Schumer also discussed the the For the People Act, and upcoming legislation. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

"79% of West Virginia voters support the For the People Act," said Common Cause. "Why doesn't Sen. Joe Manchin?"

Julia Conley, staff writer

June 7, 2021

Demanding that lawmakers go on the record regarding their views on the For the People Act, pro-democracy campaigners on Monday called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the voting rights bill up for a full debate on the Senate floor.

"The 14th and 15th Amendments—granting citizenship and the right to vote to formerly enslaved people after the Civil War—were passed by Congress on party-line votes. We ask Senator Manchin—should Congress not have passed those?" —Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause

The day after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) published an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, falsely claiming passage of the For the People Act (S. 1) would be an example of "partisan policymaking" and vowing to vote against the measure because of its lack of Republican support, Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn demanded that the fight against disenfranchisement "does not end with an op-ed."

 

Hobert Flynn called on Schumer to bring S. 1 to the floor for a vote and demanded that Manchin "allow the debate to take place on the floor and not just in the op-ed pages."

 

"If Senate Republicans try to filibuster such a motion to proceed to a full floor debate, Senator Manchin should not join such a filibuster," Hobert Flynn said regarding the congressional maneuver which Manchin supports and which all but guarantees the For the People Act will be voted down, as the Democrats would need 10 Republicans to join them in passing the bill. 

 

As Hobert Flynn noted, Manchin insisted in the pages of the Gazette-Mail on Sunday that the For the People Act is a partisan measure, even though 79% of his own constituents including 76% of West Virginia Republicans support the legislation.

 

In an email to supporters, the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats emphasized that when Manchin claims the bill doesn’t have bipartisan support, "he isn't talking about the two-thirds of voters that support it. He is referring to the right-wing politicians and corporations fighting against the right of Americans to make their voice heard."

 

Moreover, Hobert Flynn suggested, Manchin is vastly overvaluing bipartisanship when it comes to passing legislation to guarantee Americans basic rights.

 

"The 14th and 15th Amendments—granting citizenship and the right to vote to formerly enslaved people after the Civil War—were passed by Congress on party-line votes," said Hobert Flynn. "We ask Senator Manchin—should Congress not have passed those? Republican intransigence on voting rights is not an excuse for inaction and Senator Manchin must wake up to this fact."

 

The For the People Act would implement automatic voter registration nationwide, stop states from purging voter rolls, restore voting rights to people who are formerly incarcerated for felonies, and enhance access to the democratic process in a number of other ways. 

 

By vowing to oppose the bill, Hobert Flynn said, Manchin is giving tacit approval to "the Republican strategy for the 2022 elections—not to find a platform that attracts more voters but to pick and choose who votes and who doesn't."

 

"When he comes to the realization that Republicans in the Senate are not acting in good faith, [Manchin] is going to have to make a decision about whether he is more committed to an unattainable quest for 10 Republican votes; or to the millions of Americans—particularly Black and brown Americans—who will be disenfranchised if he doesn’t support the For the People Act," said Hobert Flynn. 

 

The Common Cause leader's statement came as the nationwide grassroots coalition People's Action released a letter to senators demanding they bring the debate over the For the People Act to the Senate floor.

 

"We desperately need the Senate to lean in and save and reform our democracy," wrote the group, which includes 40 state-level and local member organizations. "We cannot wait for action on this any longer. We urge Congress to make this pro-voter, anti-corruption legislation a priority NOW."

 

 

The calls for congressional action came as 14 states have enacted at least 22 voter suppression laws so far this year, with Republican legislatures working to pass dozens more. 

 

"Most of us believe that voters pick our leaders—our leaders do not get to pick their voters," wrote George Goehl, Bree Carlson, and Sondra Youdelman of People's Action. "This, however, is not what we are currently experiencing. Instead, a handful of extremist politicians put up barriers to silence our voices based on what we look like or where we live."

 

With a "backlash against democracy" in full force, the group added, "The Senate must bring this legislation to the floor for a vote immediately."

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The Beginning of the End of Democracy as We Know it?

by Robert Reich

Sunday, June 6, 2021

This morning, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced in the Charleston Gazette-Mail that he’s a “no” on the For the People Act – and a no for ending the filibuster. 

This is a direct in-your-eye response to President Biden’s thinly-veiled criticism of Manchin last Tuesday in Tulsa. 

If it means the end of the For the People Act, it would open the way for Republican-dominated states to continue their shameless campaign to suppress the votes of likely Democratic voters – using Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud as pretext. That’s the beginning of the end of American democracy as we know it. 

Manchin’s support for extending the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to all fifty states is better than nothing, but it would depend on an activist Justice Department willing to block state changes in voting laws that suppress votes, and an activist Supreme Court willing to uphold such Justice Department decisions. 

Don’t bet on either. We know what happened to the Justice Department under Trump, and we know what’s happened to the Supreme Court.

So without Manchin, is the For the People Act dead? Probably, unless Biden can convince one Republican senator to join him in supporting it. 

Would Mitt Romney or Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins be willing to do so and buck the voter-suppressing, Trump-dominated GOP? Or will history record that Republican senators were more united in their opposition to democracy than Democratic senators are in their support for it? 

The optimist in me says Romney will do it because he’s an institutionalist who’s appalled the authoritarianism that Trump has unleashed in the GOP. The cynical realist in me says no way. 

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Represent a Diasporized Ku Klu Klan

by John Lawrence

America First was also a credo of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization. This assertion rated true by Snopes. Now Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are embarking on an "America First" tour of the USA. It seems that the US can not get over its racist past. Republicans are basing their party on lies like that Trump won the election. Maybe the biggest lie was the one Thomas Jefferson wrote when he penned the preamble to the Constitution: All men are created equal. That was patently a lie because Jefferson himself was a slave owner as was George Washington and many of the other Founding Fathers.Obviously, Native Americans were not created equal. Neither were African Americans. So why did Jefferson create the first BIG LIE which Trump and the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene are only perpetuating. On the other hand the sentiments embodied in Jefferson's preamble can be seen as aspirational and that is the tack the Democratic party is taking at the present time. Let's make this a country where all men, women and children are in fact created equal.

The Ku Klux Klan has become normalized in the Republican party which pretends to exemplify our Anglo Saxon heritage. So let's just go back to the era of King George, why don't we? Republicans could change their name to the Tory party. The term Tory or "Loyalist" was used in the American Revolution for those who remained loyal to the British Crown. Since early in the 18th century, Tory had described those upholding the right of the King over Parliament. During the war of independence, particularly after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, this use was extended to cover anyone who remained loyal to the British Crown. The US has already become a neo-feudal society with great wealth concentrated in the upper one percent, and great poverty concentrated among black and brown people. "America First" is just a slogan for perpetuating the idea that those who are superior by dint of their having acquired great wealth should be the nobiity and the lesser among us should just be content with their lot of a few crumbs from the table. They surely shouldn't be given de facto equal rights despite the fact that the Constitution says that they were created equal.

A diaspora is a spreading out of a people or a philosophy. The Ku Klux Klan used to be concentrated mainly in the South. The Republican party is still based there, but the philosophy has metastasized to include white supremacists in the heartland as well. "Republican" is a more respectable name for a philosophy that bears an eerie resemblance to that of the Ku Klux Klan. "America First: really means "white people first." Let's just keep the example that white people were the ones that first officiated over the construction of a so-called democracy, one that denied women, African Americans and Native Americans the vote. The only reason they let in eastern and southern  Europeans was that they needed their labor power. Asians were discriminated against and even put in concentration camps during the Second World War. What has been consistent about America is the fact that white people have held the reins of power ever since the country began. African Americans, who have been here as long as white people have, were first enslaved and then subjected to Jim Crow laws. Native Americans were herded onto reservations.

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land using black slaves as labor power, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

So get the picture? All men, let alone women, were not created equal in fact despite Jefferson's words which he didn't really believe himself. At best they were aspirational. Well how long do some people have to wait for aspirations to become realized? Joe Biden's administration is trying to correct some of these historical wrongs which go back to the BIG LIE that was embodied in the US Constitution with the flowery words of Thomas Jefferson. Today Trump supporters like Marjorrie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz with their America First tour are only trying to perpetuate the BIG LIES that go back to the beginning of the country. They didn't start with Trump. He only exemplified them, and now Republicans are doing their best to carry on that American tradition.

Off the Top of My Head

If Republican Voters Want the Infrastructure Bill, Why Don't Republican Lawmakers?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2021

Is this a failure of representative democracy? Polls show that a majority of Republican voters support Biden's infrastructure plan including the "care" components thereof. Yet Republican Senators are dead set against it, and the bill will probably not garner one Republican vote. It can still pass the Senate based on budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote as long as all Democrats vote for it. Other Biden proposals involving voter's rights and gun control would require at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate under the current rules which involve the filibuster for non-budgetary items. In a representative democracy, a party should represent its voters. Otherwise, you don't really have a representative democracy which the US purports itself to be. So at present the US is in the position of being a government swerving back and forth from a representative democracy as long as Democrats control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and a dictatorship of an elite when Republicans control either party or the Presidency.

The same applies to other issues like gun control, voter's rights and immigration which aren't subject to budgetary reconciliation and must garner 60 votes in the Senate. One of the minimum elements of democracy is majority rule. Because the filibuster is anti-majoritarian, this leaves the American democracy in the position of not really being a democracy at all in terms of non-budgetary items. So the US is on its way to being an authoritarian regime if Republicans control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. All that would be necessary is a President like Trump with authoritarian tendencies. Then the US government becomes a government that's all about the use of power to get its way internationally and domestically, not about making the world a better place. Unfortunately, this leaves the US in the eyes of other nations as being untrustworthy since there is no consistent policy going forward. Other countries have more consistent leadership and hence are considered more trustworthy.

China, on the other hand, has very consistent policies going far into the future. China isn't perfect but most of the Chinese people and the leadership are on the same wavelength. US leadership likes to make a big deal of the plight of the Uyghurs, a Chinese minority that represents less than 1% of the Chinese population. So it's pretty remarkable that the only problem China seems to have with a minority that resents Chinese leadership  is with a minority that composes 0.31% of the population. The US should be so lucky yet the US harps on the Chinese over this situation of which little is actually know by the western world. China has pilled 800 million people out of poverty since 1990, one of the outstanding feats in human history, yet the US leadership continues to harp about the Uyghurs while giving no credit to China on poverty reduction. During the same time period the wages of US workers has stagnated. Kishore Mahbubani, author of the book, "Has China Won" writes: "In contrast to America's stagnation, China's culture, self-concept, and morale are being transformed at a rapid pace - mostly for the better." Rather than China's recent success being an assessment of the comparative values of Marxist-Leninist doctrines vis a vis American democracy, The Chinese Communist Party could more appropriately be called the Chinese Civilization Party since it reflects the 2000 year history of China more than it does Communist ideology.

So the response of the US to the progress of China in the last 30 years, instead of congratulating them on their remarkable accomplishments, is to be fearful that China is getting ahead of us. Well, duh, if you compare a society that is mostly all on the same wavelength and making remarkable steps forward with one that is divided and experienced a certain segment almost accomplishing a coup d'etat in a recent insurrection which threatened the lives of lawmakers in the seat of democracy itself. However, rather than viewing the world situation as a competition between the US and China, a more fruitful approach would be to cooperate with China with regard to climate change and pandemics, two things that affect the whole world and which require fast action, not a lackadaisical approach in which maybe we'll cooperate down the road, but in the meantime we have to compete. There's no time for that. The planet earth has almost passed an inflection point after which there will be no more time available.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden's Agenda

by John Lawrence, March 27, 2021

Biden has a definite agenda and a time table for putting it forward. His first two massive bills, COVID relief and infrastructure will go forward as planned because they can be passed with only a majority in Congress due to the budget reconciliation process. Other bills like voting rights and immigration are more dicey because they are subject to the filibuster. It's clear that Democrats will not get even one vote in the Senate for any bill subject to the filibuster. Biden will keep alive the meme that he "wants to work across the aisle" even though he knows that is impossible because he wants to at least appear moderate and cooperative. He doesn't want to alarm anyone, but push will come to shove inevitably when it becomes time to get a voting rights bill passed which is absolutely necessary if Democrats ever want to hold power again and accomplish anything. The coming figurative Civil War will be over voting rights. If Republicans are successful in rolling back voting rights for the poor and minorities, they will continue to hold power. If there is a Federal voting rights bill that will not only expand the way people can vote as was put into place because of the pandemic but also eliminate gerrymandering, then Democrats will continue to hold power because of the changing demographics of the American electorate. That's why a voting rights bill is so critical.

Republicans have devised different methods for voter suppression over the years not the least of which is gerrymandering. If they control how the voting districts are drawn on the map, they can insure that a Republican will be elected from each district. So expanding the voting franchise in a fair way is absolutely critical. If that is done, Democrats will hold and gain power for the foreseeable future. If not, Republicans will continue to hold power even as a minority party. So the stakes involved are huge. Biden has his timetable laid out. Do the easy stuff first. Two massive trillion dollar bills are the easy stuff because they can be passed in Congress with just a majority and without any Republican votes. When it comes time to pass a voting rights act, Democrats will have to attack the filibuster, and Mitch McConnell will go apoplectic. Be prepared for all kinds of threats from Republicans because they know that their time in power and the time when white people have controlled American politics is passed. America is becoming a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and very diverse society and American political power will reflect that if democracy and majority rule holds sway. Republicans and white people in general will do everything they can to hold onto power. American history demonstrates that.

However, Democrats, who have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, have the power in their hands to change the filibuster rule or to eliminate it altogether, and I'm sure they will do whatever is necessary to pass their agenda. Their only problem is with the two conservative Democrats in the Senate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. They will have to make sure that these two will come on board with whatever the Democrats decide to do. Biden has two of the best leaders on his side in terms of Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate. They will figure out a way to outsmart the Republicans and bring the American people to their side as well. Republicans will be furious, no doubt. Fortunately, they blew their wad with the failed coup attempt popularly known as an insurrection. Now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security is focused on their case. It won't happen again.

Biden only has two years for certain in which to enact his agenda. The special election in Georgia which elected Warnock and Ossof was critical to the success of the Biden administration. Warnock only has two years to serve until the next state election in Georgia to fill his seat whereas Ossoff was elected to a 6 year term. That's why there is a furious attempt to change the voting laws in Georgia so that a Republican senator will be elected there in 2022 and Democrats will lose their majority in the Senate which will again be controlled by Republicans. It was a happy coincidence for Democrats that Ossoff and Warnock were both elected; it was an anomaly for the state of Georgia, and Republicans are determined that it won't happen again. The success of the Biden administration hangs on his first two years to get his agenda done, and, if he wants to get anything done in the last two years from 2022 to 2024, it is critical that Federal voting rights are established which will roll back the white supremicist Jim Crow voting legislation currently being passed in Georgia and other states.

So the critical issue really is the filibuster. If Democrats don't go all out and eliminate it or at least create carve outs for voting rights legislation, they will lose control of the Federal government in 2022, and Biden's agenda will be defenestrated. It's all about the future of American politics and who will hold power - the Democrats who will serve the American people especially the poor and the middle class or the Republicans who will serve the rich and the white supremicists.

Off the Top of My Head

Ending the Filibuster is Necessary for Voting Reform and Other Crucial Initiatives

by John Lawrence, March 18, 2020

Voting reform at the Federal level is necessary to counter all the state efforts to restrict voting. This is as important as Biden's COVID relief bill which was passed by budget reconciliation and only needed a majority vote. It is important to note how precarious the COVID relief bill was because it got zero Republican votes. If even one of the two Senators from Georgia had not won in the runoffs, there would be no COVID relief bill or Democratic majority in the Senate. The Republican party is the party of NO. Biden's trope of "working across the aisle" is a total fiction and he knows it, but he's trying to keep it alive for appearances sake as it makes him seem more moderate. He knows that he will get no Republican votes for any legislation he wants to get passed, but he will seem less extreme if he at least keeps the idea alive. But when it comes right down to it, Biden will do what he needs to do to get his legislation passed into law. He's  not naive.

So Republican Mitch McConnell has threatened a "scorched earth" policy if Republicans ever regain control of the Senate. He even threatened to defund Planned Parenthood. Golly gee! I'll take that in return for comprehensive national voting reform including eliminating gerrymandering and overruling state efforts to restrict voting. Democrats have a lot on their agenda for helping Americans; Republicans have nothing. Here is McConnell’s complete account of the horrors that await the country were the legislative filibuster to perish:

“As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country. We’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side. Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans. Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one. A whole new era of domestic energy production. Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn. Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Massive hardening of security on our southern border.”

Jeesh, Mitch, I'm totally terrified! I say go ahead and abolish the filibuster. When you weigh all the good Democrats can do for the country against all the bad Republicans can do, the scales are tipped heavily in favor of ending the filibuster which is an archaic Jim Crow rule anyway. Any democracy worthy of the name should at least stand for majority rule. The things that Republicans are against are only manufactured pipe dreams anyway for the most part. If we have to give up Planned parenthood and sanctuary cities in return for solving the problem of global warming, I say go ahead and do it. There is so much important business that has to get done that Democrats are capable of doing. Biden learned his lesson under Obama when for 8 years Republicans slow walked him through a futile Presidency. Biden learned his lesson then although he still wants to seem moderate so he will appear to be just that. After Republican intransigence has been conclusively demonstrated, however, Biden will, as a seeming last resort, abolish the filibuster in order to get the job that he came to do done.

The For the People Act (also known as H.R. 1) is a bill in the United States Congress to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. This is the minimum of what needs to be done that will require ending the filibuster. Much needed and much delayed immigration reform will also require that. The question is will the US be a nation that accomplished big things or one in which nothing gets done. Republicans can threaten all they want. Their agenda is a big nothing burger. If HR 1 is enacted into law, they may never be back in power again. Their access to power is based on restricting voting rights. Democratic access to power is based on expanding them. The real question is is the United States going to stand for a real democracy or is it going to retreat into an autocracy. The rest of the world including primarily China is moving ahead while head in the sand Republicans are challenging and threatening Americans with their damaging policies. Biden and the Democrats should not take that bait, and, having learned their lesson from the Obama years, go ahead and do what's necessary to get America on the move again towards a more equitable and rational nation which makes a positive contribution in world affairs.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Are Restricting Voting Laws

by John Lawrence, February27, 2021

Republicans know that, if all eligible voters actually vote, they will lose. So they are busy at work at the state level to enact more restrictive voting laws making it as difficult as possible for people to vote. This will primarily affect Democratic voters, and they know that. They have been using voter suppression techniques ever since black people won the right to vote. They know that making voting easier will encourage more Democratic voters because many of them can't take a day off to go to the polls. So mail-in voting which was facilitated in many states because of the pandemic worked to their disadvantage. They are hurrying to correct that. Since Republicans control many state legislatures which set the voting rules, they are having a field day changing the laws so that they don't suffer any more humiliating defeats.

So Joe Biden needs to make the best of the two years he has during which Democrats control both Houses of Congress. Assuming that a Republican will be elected President in 2024, the nation will swerve to the right and disassemble all the Executive orders Biden has put in place. As a result of this division America will be seen, if it's not seen that way already, as unstable and inconsistent. World leaders will increasingly turn towards China for leadership because what China values most in consistency and stability. The US can't decide whether it wants to be a democracy or a republic. Democrats want a democracy in which it would seem appropriate that every citizen over the age of 18 should cast a vote. This should be made as easy and accessible as possible. Republicans, on the other hand, want a republic in which the levers of power are controlled by white Americans of European descant like they always have been and which the time honored methods of voter suppression of minorities and poor people remain fully in effect.

Paul Weyrich was an American conservative political activist and commentator, most notable for co-founding the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, both conservative think tanks.He famously said: "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Quite a revealing quote. He identifies with "Christians" but chastens them that they shouldn't want everyone to vote. The question I ask is 'what would Jesus say?' Would Jesus want everyone to vote or not? Probably Jesus would be in favor of democracy as compared with a conservative minority that wants everything kept the way it has always been "from the beginning of our country." It makes me doubt the validity of the Christian religion as practiced by the "moral majority" of right wing Christians in this country. Jesus was for the poor and disenfranchised. They're not.

America can not remain a great country on the world stage if it swerves back and forth every two years between Democrats who genuinely want to make America and the world a better place and "America First" Republicans who don't give a hoot about the rest of the world except to dominate it with an outsized military establishment. The US is veering on the edge of autocracy if 74 million voters want Trump as their President in 2024 and Republicans are successful in suppressing 7 million voters because that was the margin between Biden and Trump. Trump did considerable damage not only to the US reputation vis a vis the rest of the world, but also within the US itself. It is a question of whether the US is a fact based country run by intelligent people or a no nothing country based on lies and conspiracy theories while the rich steal everything in sight and Republicans give their hoi polloi supporters political entertainment to keep their anger stoked. The rest of the world has looked to America as the Rock of Gibralter in the past because of its consistency and stability and its promotion of human rights (except the human rights having to do with economic rights). They may be looking now towards China for stability and consistency and be more concerned about intelligent leadership and economic human rights, especially if they observe that America's touting of human rights eliminates those of black people.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of American Consciousness

by John Lawrence, January17, 2021

Is it any wonder that a culture that celebrates the military and identifies patriotism with the American flag has generated a movement to over throw American constitutional government? Most of these people had their mindsets processed through the military establishment or through the military-industrial complex where the processing is just as military oriented. This combined with a perception that the US is becoming a multicultural, instead of a white oriented, society is enough to set them off. Also the state of American mental health is at a low ebb not least caused by the pandemic and the anger generated by the necessity of closing down small businesses or even with the perceived loss of freedom from a mandate to wear masks! The people chanting "USA. USA" and carrying multitudinous flags are the type of people whose notion of patriotism has to do with America being the Number One nation of the world, is identified with American power backed by the world's largest military. These are not people who served in the Peace Corps.

For example the Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia organization. The group describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath that all military and police take in order to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group as "heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists the group's founder as a known extremist and describes his announced plans to create localized militia units as "frightening". According to the SPLC, the group espouses a number of conspiracy and legal theories associated with the sovereign citizen movement and the white supremacist posse comitatus movement.

The bloated US military establishment is funded at a level that is ten times greater than the world's next largest militaries combined. In 2019, the United States spent $732 billion on national defense, which was more than the next 10 countries combined. So it's likely that the mindsets of the Capitol rioters have been processed through an American establishment that encourages their particular notion of patriotism which deemphasizes the idea of democracy and emphasizes xenophobia. It aspires to return to those days when the US was a white dominated country and rues the day that the demographics have changed toward a multicultural one. The American military establishment itself is an anachronism. When you add in the money spent on the US intelligence agencies and the nuclear program which is located in the Department of Energy, not in the Defense Department, the US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its defense establishment and yet it was impotent to prevent a mob of hooligans from taking over the US citadel of democracy - the US Capitol. Clearly our priorities are out of whack. Any ordinary 5th grader could have seen that a Trump rally numbering tens of thousands on the same day that Pence was supposed to legitimate the election results, after lies had been perpetrated ad infinitum that the results were not legitimate, could have been a disaster which it turned out to be.

Democracy cannot prevail without an educated citizenry yet the question must be asked: what kind of education? “If we needed a reminder of the fragility of our democracy, we got one,” said Andrew Delbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation, which promotes liberal arts education. “In the long run, the only force that can save democracy is an educated citizenry -- citizens, that is, who know enough to resist the kind of lies and incitements spewed out by the current president and his enablers.” But the US educational system does not emphasize an education in the humanities. It emphasizes the learning of technical knowledge and skills with an eye on innovation, entrepreneurship and potential profit. You too can invent some product and make a billion dollars. High school graduates are confronted with basically two choices: they can gain a college education while going deeply into debt or they can go into the military where they can get a free college education and even a pension after 5 years of service plus numerous other benefits. Which makes more sense? Young people are funneled into the military which is a command and control structure based on the most powerful leader at the top. Their mindsets are then prepared to want the same thing in civilian society. Trump gave it to them.

Clearly the people who carried numerous flags and chanted "USA. USA." are also of the mindset to chant "We're Number One. We're Number One." They are not the kind of people that want to live in a world where they cooperate with other people, perhaps of a different background or ethnicity, or a world based on US cooperation with other nations. They want to be part of a world in which the US dominates other nations, and the most powerful among us dominate and lead civilian life, just as the most powerful leaders are elevated to the highest ranks in the military and exert unquestioned command over those lower on the totem pole. This is the American mindset that the rioters demonstrate. This is a military consciousness based on American exceptionalism and white supremacy. They can't stand the fact that black and brown people are ascending into positions of power in American government and the world, that there has been a demographic shift in American society that does not favor them and that they will have to live in a more progressive society.