The Most Dangerous Man in the Country

 

Over the past 13 or so years Mitch McConnell has proven himself to be the most dangerous man in the United States. While he has been a party apparatchik ever since he steamrolled Walter Huddleston it is only with his rise to power as Minority Leader that he became able to use his political wiles and profound knowledge of arcane Senate rules to promote minority rule of our legislative process.

Upon the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency he famously promised that his main role would be to make President Obama a one term President. Due to the popularity of the President he was unable to fulfill that promise but he was able to engineer a Republican majority in the Senate and a rise to Majority Leader.

His efforts at faking negotiation with President Obama over the Affordable Care Act dragged out the length of time it took to get a bill. He kept offering hope that a compromise could be reached while all the time never intending to make any significant concessions. But he did extract some concessions. The public option fell by the wayside as a result of his machinations before the President realized there was nothing more to be gained and pushed ahead with what was left. The decimation of the bill eventually led to the court decision to eliminated the public mandate. These two acts by the Minority Leader hamstrung the ACA and created many of the faults that people later found disappointing about the bill. With the help intended for the working people who could have benefited from the public option fractured and sources of revenue to support the bill eliminated it limped on to passage. It is a tremendously popular package that insured millions of people and, even now, President Biden is proposing that the public option be made a part of the bill and that its coverage be extended.

Senator McConnell also brought the court case that resulted in the infamous Citizens United ruling which threw into the garbage years of Campaign Finance regulations to limit the power of large, well-heeled interests. Through his leadership he gradually eroded campaign finance laws to hide the identities of those who made political contributions to political organizations so the people couldn't see who is attempting to control their government.

He has been true to his word to block every bill proposed by Democratic administrations while at the same time using Senate rules to confirm a vast number of Conservative Republican Judges to the Federal Bench. The objectives of Reactionary Republicans to control the Federal Judiciary has been largely realized during his Senate leadership but possibly the most vile thing he has done is to refuse to bring the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court seat vacated upon the demise of Antonin Scalia to the floor for discussion. His control of what comes to the floor for discussion short circuited the constitutional process of confirming Federal judges.

For four years he enabled the Presidency of Donald Trump who could never have been successful without the machinations of Senator McConnell. He made sure that Trump's objectives were hand-carried through the Senate. Then when the House of Representatives impeached President Trump he controlled the examination process in the Senate to encourage acquittal. When the House impeached the President again he pooh-poohed the charges and refused to even allow a trial with witnesses allowing President Trump to escape again.

Now, having lost his Majority when President Biden was elected, he is choosing to allow the former President to allege the election was rigged calling into doubt the sanctity of the vote and causing the nation to split with the most egregious of the protesters spouting conspiracy theories which the Senator is allowing to pass because the Republicans know if the truth comes out they'll never be allowed to hold office again. Even when those conspiracy theorists and criminals attacked the Capitol while our elected representatives were performing their duty to confirm the President he still gave the insurrectionists cover. Even now he refuses to allow an investigation to move forward by using his favorite too, the filibuster, to thwart rule by the majority of the people.

The result of all of his conniving has been to weaken the ties that bind us and cause what may be irreparable damage to our Republic. His venality will be legendary. Even now he is blocking the President's efforts to help our country and it's citizens recover from decades of crushing inequality and a world-wide pandemic.

And he is our Senator. Elected time and again by the people of Kentucky. My Take is that it is time for him to go before he destroys the foundations of our Democratic Republic. The most dangerous man in the United States.

Short cuts

A few headlines I found interesting this morning.

 

 

 

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cicadas-brood-x-eating-foodies-delicacy/?ftag=CNM-00-10aac3a 

 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-has-and-hasnt-changed-since-george-floyd-was-murdered/

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/23/999202593/once-nearly-extinct-the-florida-panther-is-making-a-comeback 

 https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2567668/the-beatles-get-back-release-date-and-other-quick-things-about-the-peter-jackson-documentary

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/us/politics/arkansas-republicans-sarah-sanders.html

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-capitol-siege-government-and-politics-09db9c7d605ec1af56b78bb7ba25a685   (it seems the GOP is being disengenuous about its objections to this investigation.  Susan Collins has had the fear put into her over her job and is lining up with the party line).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYihtRX2FK0   (Devin Booker is turning into quite the star).

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/two-doses-of-covid-vaccines-provide-protection-against-india-variant.html  (an apparent rejection of the arguments of the anti-vaxxers and proof the protection from the vaccinations is widespread).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/23/nyregion/undocumented-immigrants-poverty-nyc.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage  (a refutation of the argument against continued government benefits.  Some countries actually have a wage replacement benefit for times such as this).

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/arts/television/bob-dylan-birthday-comedy.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage  (because it's Bob Dylan).

Picking Your Pockets

 

Picking Your Pockets

I read the other day where our erstwhile Attorney General was suing someone, the United States Treasury I think, because there are qualifications in the Covid Relief Bill that prevent states from using the money to fund tax cuts. Those Republicans really don't want you to have that money nor do they want the money to be used to fund activities by the state for the  

benefit of its citizens. They would much rather the money be used to gorge the wealthy and leave you to take the crumbs from the table. Seems they want you to be afraid that you will lose not only your salvation but also your right to be called an American if your government tries to help you out.

My parents were born in the Gilded Age. For those of you who missed that day in school, it was a time when wealthy people had managed to buy Congress and the Presidency. The disparity between wealthy and poor had become so great that the working poor were little more than serfs to their liege lords. If your name wasn't Rockefeller, Vanderbilt or Carnegie you were barely making it until you died. Usually at a pretty young age.

Dad was born on the West End of Louisville and didn't really have it too bad for a few years until the Great Flood took everything they had. Dad's family, a large one, ended up living on a shanty boat on the river but later was able to move to a home on the shore. But that was little help since the depression had started when Wall Street crashed. They had very little. He told me of picking up coal that had fallen off the trains in order to be able to have some heat. This would have been in the 1920s and 1930s. He lived in poverty until the biggest works project in history came which was World War II. Then the Navy took over his room and board.

Mom was born into the mountains of Leslie County and she has told me many times of how the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration put people to work  

building public buildings and roads. They built Ky. 80 which ran past their house. Until then Wooton Creek served as part of the road. Mom left the mountains in 1939. First to Florence and then to Louisville where she went to work as a comptometer operator in a factory. She and her family were brought up dirt poor while the big money from U.S. Steel and others raped the mountains for their timber and coal leaving total devastation in its wake. Most of all they left the people as poor or poorer than they were before the big money from up East came.

They met after the war in Louisville and birthed me. The point here is that they revered President Roosevelt so much that they gave me the middle name of Franklin. People of that generation had a picture of Roosevelt on the wall right beside Jesus. Sometimes it was just Roosevelt. Roosevelt took office during a time of massive unemployment and soup lines. Homes and farms were being foreclosed on with people losing everything they had.

Does any of this sound familiar? Have you seen the miles long lines of people lined up for food. They may have a fancy car but they don't have money for food or rent. If you don't take anything else away from this I want you to remember this.

THE DISPARITY IN WEALTH IS GREATER NOW THAN IT WAS IN THE GILDED AGE. I'm not lying. Look it up.

And the wealthy have once again bought our Congress and the Kentucky Legislature is solidly in their pockets. They need to keep you poor and barely making it so that you'll be thankful for those crumbs and won't have enough energy to pay attention. They're doing a great job of that too.

They manage to keep the voters in line by telling them they don't have enough sense to know when and how to have their own babies while, at the same time, picking your pockets. They tell them the world's best universities are indoctrinating their children to become Communists and Socialists. These are the same universities that educated and built the richest country in the world. But wait! Some want to build new schools that will indoctrinate your children in a different direction that will keep the rich people in power and teach them that poor people are poor because they just aren't smart enough or don't work hard enough. To top it all off the new Gilded Age people want to do to the entire earth what Big Timber and Big Coal did to Kentucky. Strip it of all the wealth and leave nothing but a smoking heap and poor people.

My parents lived it and told me about it. I haven't forgotten and I can see what is happening.

My Take is this. We need another Roosevelt.

 

No More Time

 

No More Time

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Hosea 8:7

I've been planning to write this column on Climate Change for quite some time. Now Bill Gates has a new book out and I thought I'd better get with it so I wouldn't sound too derivative. I have watched and read a large number of things about Climate Change and even went so far as to name last year the year I would focus on that issue. As the old saying goes, “If you want to hear God laugh just tell Him your plans.” Certainly, the pandemic and the response to it became so overwhelming that it sucked all the oxygen out of whatever room you happened to be in. We still don't know if we are going to get ahead of this virus but even as consequential as it is Climate Change is going to make it look like a Sunday in the park.

Yes, that's a pretty bold statement. We just passed half a million dead in the United States alone within the last few days but the costs of Climate Change could easily beat that by an exponential factor. We still have those who say it is a hoax perpetrated by China to disrupt the hegemony of the United States in economic markets all over the world. That is a bigger lie that the one that said Covid 19 was a hoax.

Houston, Texas is a city of 2.3 million people and growing rapidly. As a matter of fact, Texas is now the fastest growing state in the union and we have just witnessed the complete paralyzing of that 2^nd largest state by a snow and ice storm. The electrical grid went down due to demand when the frigid temperatures, unknown in many parts of Texas, rendered inoperable gas and oil machinery. The fossil fuel advocates tried to blame it on wind power but there was an infinitesimal number of those producers that failed. Why did this dramatic weather even happen? It happened due to the disruption of normal weather patterns that have existed in Texas for centuries. Now look at the terrible weather events that have hit Houston in the past decade.

Wildfires in California that burn the vegetation and then mudslides that wreak havoc on residential communities. California is called the breadbasket of America due to the production of so much of the food that we eat and drought wiped out much of that this past year. The avocado shortage got all the press but if you were paying attention you saw grocery prices jump 25% to 50% or more. Climate Change. It is here, it is impacting us and it's going to get much worse no matter what we do. We have dawdled so long that all we have a chance to do is limit how bad it can be.

Recent years have seen floods in the upper Midwest that prevented farmers from planting and then drought that killed what managed to grow. No, these are not normal weather cycles. These are the effects of Climate Change. Here in Kentucky we may be somewhat insulated from the worst effects but those of us who grow food and farm are experiencing the impact of the unpredictability of the weather.

Now, consider New Orleans, Miami, Charleston, New York and other coastal areas that are subject to the vagaries of the seas. A few years ago we saw a tropical storm inundate New York City. North Carolina is still trying to recover from floods. I could go on and on but these things are only harbingers of what is to come.

Diseases that have previously only known in sub-tropical or tropical climes are moving north with the changing weather. Right now President Biden is introducing legislation that will attempt to alleviate some of the suffering and some of the effects and the costs are in the trillions of dollars. Look at where we are financially as a nation right now and ask yourself from where will the resources come?

What happens when the demands at home become so much that we can no longer afford to keep naval fleets all over the world. As a matter of fact, what happens if the sea level rises even a little bit where our naval bases are? How will Climate Change affect our ability to do business and generate taxes to operate our government? Will we have to cut social services at a time when the need will be greater than at any time in our lives and maybe in the life of humanity? We can get through this but not by doing things the way we have been doing. Likely we will have to change economic models if we are to survive as a free nation. We will no longer be able to afford to allow 1% of our population control 90% of the resources. The possibilities boggle the mind and will require the participation of our entire nation if we are to be able to pass a free nation on to our children and grandchildren.

My Take is that I could go on and on boring you with “what ifs” and statistics but there is not enough space here. As a nation we are going to have to get smarter and you and I are going to have to get smarter too. We have no choice but to do so or witness the decline of our nation and our species. Climate Change is here and it is awesome in its power.

That's What Friends Are For

 

That's What Friends Are For

I got the first shot of my vaccination for Covid 19 this morning, January 6^th. This was far sooner than I expected to receive it but the opportunity arose on the spur of the moment and I took it. I rarely act that quickly. I was in line a half hour after being notified of the possibility. I am greatly appreciative to the person who notified me and to LCRMC for administering the vaccinations. I was not the first one there. I would estimate that there were possibly as many as 75 people there before me. I was very uneasy standing in line with all of those people in an enclosed space but everyone was at least masked and socially distanced. I have noticed that of late many more people are wearing masks and zealously being socially distanced and I am appreciative of that. It seems that about everyone now has known someone who has been very ill with Covid 19 or has passed on. That will change a lot of minds.

I had asked friends who have some sort of access to the medical community to give me a heads up if any vaccinations became available and one did that withing 24 hours. That is the value of friends and networking. Let me take this opportunity to remind people that no man is an island. We all depend on each other regardless of what some would tell us.

I have been diligent about keeping up with the vaccines and the state of their distribution so it is possible that I have been more informed about what is going on. For instance, I was aware that doses of the vaccines were being distributed to people in group 1A. If you don't know what group you are in you need to find out. No one cares more about your health that you do. I also knew that sometimes, when everyone in a group has been vaccinated, the extra doses were made available to the public. Due to the stringent controls on how the vaccines are stored there is every effort to use up the ones available in order to not lose them due to expiration.

I will admit that this is not a fair and just way to distribute the vaccines. A just and fair method would have registered every citizen and scheduled the vaccinations according to need. Indeed, that was once the plan and there was an office in the White House dedicated to that purpose but, alas, it was disbanded shortly following President Trump's inauguration. He told the public that he knew where to find doctors and, besides, he knew more about the topic than anyone. That office would have put forward a national plan to deal with the pandemic and set up the distribution chains into the states. That was not done and this administration just allocated the vaccines to the states and said the ball is in your court.

Speaking of the Lake Cumberland District Health Department the job of contact tracing and administering large numbers of doses of the vaccines proved overwhelming and there is not yet any coherent system of letting people know when they can receive the protection afforded by the vaccines. Congress asked in the last stimulus package for money to fund these measures for the health departments but, as you know, it was held up in the Senate. So, if you want to blame someone now you know who to blame.

Going forward I still don't know how we are going to vaccinate 330 million people not once but twice without additional resources. I sincerely hope that when President-elect Biden takes office that he put emergency measures in place to accomplish this monumental task. He has said that he will.

Sadly, we knew this was going to happen. We saw it coming with H1N1 and Ebola. Our medical professionals knew it was not a matter of if but when and that is why the office in the White House was established. Our lack of a coherent national plan has cost us the lives of 340,000 of our brothers and sisters. January is predicted to be the worst month of all for deaths and even with the vaccinations we must not lower our guard. It is likely the death toll will reach half a million before we can rest.

But, with the vaccines, there is a bright spot on the horizon. We have a new President coming and a new administration that will be more attentive to such things. A bright spot is that infections from the flu are down a staggering 98% which proves the efficacy of masks, distancing and vaccinations.

My Take is that what is also proven is the value of your network of friends. Value yourself enough to want to help your friends. Talk to them, ask for help. Left alone we are of no use to anyone.

Trans Pacific Partnership

 Take notice here that Pacific Rim nations are forming an trading alliance that does not include the United States.  They are doing this in order to create a hedge against rising Chinese influence in the South China See and environs.  You may (or may not) recall that late in the Obama administration there was an effort to create the Trans Pacific Partnership that included all of these countries plus the United States.  During the Presidential campaign Democrats were forced to abandon this effort due to reactionary comments from the opposition.

 It was not just a trade association but was also a military one in the sense that trade ties make for a larger bully pulpit.  One that would be able to counter Chinese influence and their "Silk Road" initiative.  But, as is often the case with the United States, petty politics interfered to the detriment of national security.

 I sincerely hope that the Biden administration is able to align the United States with these other nations to accomplish the purpose of controlling Chinese hegemony in the Pacific. 

This from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

 

 

Asia-Pacific nations to sign big trade deal

dpa

HANOI, Vietnam Asia-Pacific nations are set to sign on Sunday the world’s biggest free-trade agreement at a virtual summit hosted in Hanoi, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said.

“The signing of the regional comprehensive economic partnership tomorrow is a concrete action that shows the determination to cooperate and integrate in the region,” Phuc told regional leaders and businessmen at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting on Saturday.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership covers 2.2 billion people and 29 per cent of global economic output. Having been negotiated since 2013, it is expected to be signed during an online ceremony on Sunday at the 37th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi.

The world’s biggest trade agreement will include 10 ASEAN member states – Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei – along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

Prior to finalizing the agreement, 31 rounds of negotiations and 18 ministerial meetings took place, while self-imposed deadlines for the deal were missed on six occasions.

A Recent Histor of Presidential Elections

 

A brief history of presidential elections this century includes several in which the winner did not score a majority but claimed the prize anyway.

In 2000 with Vice-President Al Gore running against George W. Bush, Gore stupidly did not want to be linked with the most popular president in our lifetime, Bill Clinton. You may recall that the count went on forever in Florida with the race yet undecided. Bush's brother was governor, the Florida Secretary of State was Republican and they pulled the plug on the count in West Palm Beach County which was heavily democratic. Guess who the lead attorney was for the Republicans? Bill Barr, the current Attorney General. The courts upheld the stopping of the count and Gore conceded rather than drag the country through a constitutional crisis. But think of how things could have been different. The Bush administration disregarded the warnings from the Clinton Administration regarding Al Qaeda and the September 11^th and we were at war. A Gore administration would have carried on the policy of the Clinton administration and there is a high likelihood that 9/11 would not have happened. No Afghanistan, no Iraq.

In '04 Bush took on John Kerry who was leading nearing the election when a scurrilous group launched a series of commercials alleging that Kerry had failed in his duty and that his military record was false. This of the man who commanded a Swift Boat and earned the Bronze Star but it was enough to tip the scales.

Hallelujah, the world became aware of Barack Obama over the next eight years but our own Senator Mitch McConnell thwarted most of Obama's legislation and refused confirmation of hundreds of federal judges. See where we are now?

Then in '16 Hillary Rodham Clinton took on Donald Trump. HRC is likely the most qualified person to run for president in our lives. She was leading up until the time the FBI director announced they were reopening the investigation into her e-mails 10 days before the election. She won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. The difference was in 3 rust belt states with a total vote difference of 80,000 votes over 3 states.

This makes 3 elections since 2000 where Republicans have used nefarious means to win an election. I call them stolen. This is the difference in our country now. We must take nothing for granted this time. If they can steal the election you can bet they will.