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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 4, 2018

Last week we were on the road, so I didn’t post any music, but we’re back, so here goes. When this song came out I listened to it over and over, and to this day I don’t think a lot of the verses make a whole lot of thematic sense. There’s lots of allusions, and there’s a pervading sense in the song that there’s been a loss of something, innocence maybe, but I defy anyone to explain it in a coherent way. But that’s okay, it’s still a great song, and here’s two versions. One from, if I’m not mistaken, the year it came out (I remember listening to it over and over my senior year in college)

and one more recent, with a much older Don McLean. It should be noted, however, that the crowd, or a major portion of it, is quite young (compared to McLean, anyway), and they appear to know all the words, proving once again that we had the best music ever. Anyway, take your pick, or watch them both.

 

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Looking back: The First Gilded Age

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Having finished Grant,about which I recently wrote, I am now slowly but steadily plowing through The Republic for Which It Stands, a massive history of the Gilded Age, from The Oxford History of the United States, written by Richard White. I highly recommend it. You could build an entire semester course around it.

I don’t know if it’s still true that the Gilded Age (defined for purposes of this book as 1865 to 1896) is fly-through territory when American history is taught in our schools today, but I suspect that it is. In my day they taught us that those terrible carpetbaggers were put in their place and, eventually, so were the monopolists, but we were spared the gory details. We skipped from war to war, and the war against Native Americans didn’t count, so there wasn’t much to say about this period.

As I’ve been reading this book, I’ve been struck more than once by the parallels between then and now. So, since this is my blog, and no one reads it anyway, I’m thinking of writing a few posts about those parallels.

One surprising thing I’ve learned, and I am surprised I’ve never run across this before, because I’ve read a lot of history, is the change from then to now in what it means to be a “liberal”. A liberal in 1876 was, roughly speaking, a Paul Ryan type, right down to his willingness to sacrifice other alleged principles in the cause of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. I don’t know when the meaning flipped, presumably it was a long, slow evolution. Anyway, it is somewhat jarring to have to mentally readjust when I see the word “liberal” in this book.

First, one minor difference between the two periods. It truly was a pundit heaven, because Both Sides Really Did Do It! Nowadays, one party has the sole monopoly on race baiting and immigrant hating (plus a dollop of LGBT hate, which the Gilded folks pretty much swept under the rug), but in the Gilded Age, the parties split the pie. Democrats hated black people. Republicans hated Catholics and immigrants. Everyone hated the Chinese. So, just about all black men (sorry girls, no vote for you) were Republicans, and just about all Catholics and immigrants were Democrats. The Chinese simply were not allowed to vote. Give the Democrats their due, they at least gave some of the fruits of the endemic corruption to their immigrant base, while the Republicans pretty much abandoned their black supporters (who continued to support them in the North until at least the Great Depression) in 1876.

I’m on page 406 as I write this, meaning I’m not even half way through, but so far, there are no heroes in this book, and many dimly known, but generally favorably viewed figures, have feet of clay. Actually, some of them are all clay. The cartoonist Thomas Nast, for instance, was a perfect pundit for his times. He didn’t play favorites. He was a racist and anti-immigrant, thus landing safely on Both Sides. Even Wyatt Earp, it turns out, was a “a pimp, probably a horse thief, an embezzler, an enforcer at bordellos, and a gambler”, before he went into the law enforcement business, which was, at the time, more of a protection racket. Once again, it looks like the Landmark Books let me down. I don’t remember any of that, and I’m pretty sure I read one about Earp.

I’m going to return to this occasionally, for some more specific compare and contrast. It’s worth pointing out that it sort of turned out okay, at least to a certain extent. The Progressive Era reversed some of the excesses of the Gilded Age, the New Deal others, and the Civil Rights movement, others, though over the course of the past 38 years (i.e. since the election of Saint Ronnie) many of those gains have been reversed or nullified, leaving us where we are today. There’s always hope that this repetition of history will be succeeded, as was the Gilded Age, by a somewhat more enlightened and less corrupt period. It remains to be seen whether that can be done in an age in which mass propaganda can be so much more effectively disseminated.

Stay tuned for part two. If I ever actually write it, I’ll get down to cases.

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Hurt fee-fees on the right

Monday, April 30, 2018

Has it ever been thus? Over the last few days we have witnessed what should be a strange phenomenon. The institutional press has rushed to the defense of a woman (that would be Sarah Huckabee Sanders) who works for a man who holds them in contempt. She herself holds them in contempt, and habitually lies to them. As to the latter habit, it is one that they should particularly abhor, since their job is to report the truth. At least, that’s what they say their job is.

It would be perfectly alright if they were rushing to defend her against an unwarranted charge, but they are defending her against a comedienne’s observation that she habitually lies to them, something they all must know is true. Not only are they defending her, but they are themselves lying about what the comedienne said, claiming that she disparaged Sanders looks rather than her credibility. For example:

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times praised Sanders for not walking out on the dinner. She accused Wolf of attacking Sanders’ physical appearance, when the joke was actually skewering her propensity for dishonesty. When asked on Twitter to quote the lines to which she was referring, Haberman didn’t answer and unfollowed the questioner.

This is against a backdrop of constant disparagement of all manner of people, including the press itself, by Trump, Sanders, and their ilk, the essential difference being that for the most part they lie in the course of that disparagement. For the most part the same people who have attacked Michelle Wolf accept the barrage of mendacious criticism from the right as simply part of the ordinary national discourse. Liberals and those on the left are simply expected to be punching bags, and no notice is taken when they are unfairly attacked. If I’m not mistaken, it was conservative that coined the phrase “snowflakes” to refer to liberals who objected to being unfairly vilified, but it certainly seems that it’s those on the right who melt in the first ray of sunshine. In fact, they are now demanding that they be kept in the shade:

During an interview on CNN on Monday, frequent Fox News guest and American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp made a case that it is not the job of journalists to inform the public when the president or his spokespeople are lying.

Instead, Schlapp suggested journalists should just provide stenography of what government officials are saying, and let the American people do their best to sort out who is telling the truth — because otherwise the feelings of Trump supporters might get hurt.

“We have political disagreements in this country, and I think it’s wrong for journalists to take that next step,” Schlapp said. “Just present the facts. Let the American people decide if they think someone is lying. The journalist shouldn’t be the one to say the president or his spokesperson is lying, because what that does is to 50 percent of the country, is it makes them feel like they aren’t credible to listen to anymore.”

Yes, while the national press is vilifying Michelle Wolf for telling the truth, Republicans are demanding the right to lie without consequence, because it hurts their dupes’ feelings if they were told straight up that they’re being fed on lies.

This whole episode highlights the incestuous relationship between some elements of the press and the current administration. If the press had any sense of either self respect or respect for it’s self described mission, it would simply boycott Sanders and the White House propaganda machine until she or it commits to telling the truth, at least on occasion. But those jobs are cushy indeed, requiring stenography only, so that’s not likely to happen.

As for Michelle Wolf, she’ll be fine. Like Colbert’s before her, her monologue will wear well, particularly with those of us who think.

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A prediction

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Oliver Willis reportssomething rather astonishing:

Congressional Republicans have released an election year proposal targeting massive cuts to government programs that millions of Americans, including the poorest people, have relied upon.

“A Framework for Unified Conservatism,” the proposal from the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a coalition of more than 100 conservative House Republicans, comes as the party faces the prospect of losing seats because of the unpopularity of the Trump administration.

Since Trump’s election, the party has already been forced to defend seats that have overwhelmingly favored Republicans in the past, and has lost statewide elections in Alabama and Virginia.

But still, the new RSC plan pushes for doubling down on many of the party’s least popular ideas, and further associates Republicans and conservatives with proposals that are extremely cruel.

The framework contains an attack on two of the most popular government programs: Social Security and Medicare. The Republicans often try to portray themselves as allies of the social safety net, their new plan would end the promise of Social Security for Americans that turn 65, pushing them to wait until age 70 to receive their benefits. In addition, the plan calls for raising Medicare eligibility to age 70, while also privatizing portions of the program.

The ads the Democrats could run about this practically write themselves, but alas, I fear that, nonetheless, they never shall be written.

Everyone with brains agrees that the Democrats have to offer the voters more than a promise that they are not the party of Trump, yet no one really expects them to actually run a coordinated campaign in which issues like social security, Medicare for all, pay equity, higher minimum wage, and maybe even a guaranteed jobs program, are emphasized. As I write, the DCCC is still at work recruiting Blue Dogs (rich ex-Republicans preferred) to run against real Democrats. I continue to believe that the Democrats are intent on finding a way to turn the wave into a teeny little splash that just may rock the Republican boat, but will not come close to sinking it. If they do take the House, they will have a paper majority but a Democratic minority, unable to even pass popular legislation that Trump would have to veto.

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Arithmetic Lesson

Saturday, April 21, 2018

The City of Groton, distinct from the Town of Groton (I decline to address the absurdity of the existence of both of these entities) has announced a tax decrease:

The Groton City Council is considering a budget for the coming fiscal year that would lower the city’s tax rate by 0.72 mill, or $72 for every $100,000 of assessed value.

Mayor Keith Hedrick’s proposed $16 million budget would remove the Water Pollution Control Authority from the general fund, covering those costs with user fees rather than taxes.

“We’re steadily working on trying to reduce taxes. We’re maintaining services and we’re reducing taxes at the same time,” Hedrick said.

via The New London Day

To borrow and adapt a phrase from Dean Baker, fans of logic might beg to differ with the mayor (who is, I should add, a good guy). The City is not reducing taxes, it is simply redistributing the tax burden. When people pay for municipal services, no matter the way in which the payment for those services are assessed, they are paying a tax. To borrow from Shakespeare, a tax by any other name still would smell as rancid. In the case of the City, there is no indication that the total amount it will be recovering from its citizenry will be going down. The only question is: who will be the losers and who the winners when this redistribution takes place? The Day goes on to report:

Based on data collected so far, more than three-quarters of city residents would benefit from shifting WPCA costs from taxes to a user fee system.

“Now you will be paying sewer charges not based on the value of your home but based on the amount of water that you use. We think that’s more equitable,” Hedrick said.

So, let’s think about this. Unlike much other consumption, water consumption is fairly uniform across income groups, as it’s usually a function of the number of people in a dwelling unit. Moreover, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to limit water usage below a certain point, so trying to reduce one’s user fee in this area is even harder than keeping the heating bill down. There’s obviously exceptions, but that’s the general rule. That would appear to mean that people whose homes are worth the most will be gaining the most from this change, while those least well off may be seeing an increase in their taxes. That implies, roughly, a redistribution of the tax burden from the better off to the less better off. This may be offset, in whole or in part, by increased income from commercial entities, like Electric Boat.

In any event, it is inaccurate to call this a tax decrease. If the same amount of money goes into the city’s coffers, than it has not decreased taxes, it has simply redistributed the tax burden.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 20, 2018

I suppose there are some that might call this a bit schmaltzy, but I think it’s a great song, and John Denver tended to be underrated. He and Mama Cass team up here to sing at an event encouraging young people to register to vote, and what she has to say sounds pretty timely, except the part about it not mattering who you vote for. I doubt she really meant that; it was just sort of an obligatory nod to civic verities. 1972 was the year when the Democratic coalition started to fracture and the Republicans started becoming quite effective in getting people to vote against their own interests. They were aided that year by the desertion of the unions, led by George Meany, who couldn’t stomach supporting a man who didn’t want to wage a purposeless war. Anyway, back to the music.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NKdknYaSHgE
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Is nothing sacred?

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

What’s going on with the Red Sox? They keep winning. I know they let us down and won a few pennants a few years back, but they’ve returned to form in the past few years. Maybe they’re just setting us up for the most spectacular late season collapse in history.

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Meanwhile, below the radar

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Recently Mitch McConnell let it be known that he would not let a bill designed to protect the Mueller investigation get to the floor. In this I think he erred, and I’m not speaking from the perspective of a person who cares about the Constitution, but from the perspective of a right wing Republican who wants to destroy the middle class, the environment, Social Security, Medicare, public schools, etc. You know, the perspective of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the Republican Party.

If the genius had set out to choose the most unqualified people to fill his cabinet and other federal posts, he could not do better than what he has done. Let’s start with Robert Redfield, the nominee to head the Center for Disease Control:

>Redfield, a physician and a researcher in HIV/AIDS at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, was investigated in 1993 for allegedly misrepresenting data in a clinical trial as he worked to develop a potential AIDS vaccine. In an era when public health officials were desperate to find an effective treatment for the raging AIDS pandemic, Redfield, an Army officer and researcher at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, even announced positive results at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in 1992, to great fanfare, according to Laurie Garrett, writing for Foreign Policy.
>The results were trumped up. A US Defense Department investigation concluded that Redfield’s “overstatement” was an error, and the military scrapped the program. “Either he was egregiously sloppy with data or it was fabricated,” Craig Hendrix, a former Air Force officer who was a whistle-blower in the vaccine inquiry, told NPR.
>More troubling, Redfield also helped instigate a compulsory program to test all military troops for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, without allowing for confidentiality. He was also associated with Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy (ASAP), an evangelical Christian group that backed mandatory testing and isolation for those who were infected.

via [The Boston Globe](http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/04/18/controversy-shadows-trump-pick-cdc-director/PEYTDOB8UhtZHwtZgzZtWL/story.html)

Not only are his appointees dedicated to serving the interests of the most despicable elements in our society, they are also totally corrupt as they do so. Add this to the well known examples of Scott Pruitt and Ben Carson (not to mention the genius himself):

>A broadband deployment advisory council created by the FCC to help shore up the nation’s broadband coverage gaps has been plagued by scandal, resignations, and accusations of telecom sector cronyism.

>When he first took office, Trump’s FCC boss Ajit Pai breathlessly and repeatedly claimed that one of his top priorities as agency head would be to shore up broadband availability gaps and close the digital divide.

>“I look forward to working with my fellow Commissioners on this aggressive agenda to connect Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide, to allow broadcasters to innovate and better serve viewers, and to reduce unnecessary regulations,” Pai said in a Medium post early last year.

>…

>Pai’s panel this week also made headlines when one of its former chairs was arrested for a scam that bilked investors out of $250 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Ann Pierce, who served as CEO of Quintillion Networks, was charged with wire fraud after investigators discovered a fiber deployment scam built largely upon forged contracts.

>Pierce, who was charged with wire fraud and surrendered this week in New York to FBI agents, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Pierce was was appointed by Pai last April to chair the committee, resigned from her role as Quintillion CEO last August , and stepped down from her chair position on the BDAC last September.

>”The Commission was fortunate to have an excellent and deep pool of applicants to serve on the BDAC,” Chairman Pai noted when he appointed Pierce last year. Apparently, that well wasn’t quite deep enough.

via [Motherboard](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xdqdx/ajit-pais-broadband-advisory-panel-plagued-by-corruption-accusations)

Then there’s the [CIA pick ](http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/04/17/trump-cia-pick-faces-rocky-confirmation-over-torture-role/fkwTGFXgfjjSUgQbjxutyI/story.html)who mocked a prisoner as he was tortured.

Everywhere you look there is self dealing, depravity, and corruption. It is pretty much impossible to name an appointee who is not dedicated to subverting the mission of the agency to which he or she has been named.

But the fact is these stories come and go, because Trump, and the Mueller investigation, are like shiny objects that distract the national press from what’s going on beneath the radar. If you really consider the nature and quality of Trump’s appointees, along with the fact that he has no interest in policy and no fixed principles of any sort, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that Michael Pence is the genius’s Dick Cheney. So long as Trump continues to distract, Pence and his ilk can continue to impose the Koch agenda, with a dash of fundamentalist imposition of religion on the rest of us. True, they may pay a price at the ballot box, but the damage will be done by that time, damage they may not have been able to do with a less distracting fellow in the White House. So, they have an interest in keeping Mueller in place, so we can all talk about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and Russia, while forgetting all about Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, Robert Redfield, Betsy DeVos, and all the other appointees that are systematically destroying our country.

So Mitch, rethink your position. So long as Mueller sticks around, you can continue to destroy the country and rest assured that the national attention span will assure that no one really takes notice.

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What I wouldn’t give for a real satisfying wallow

Monday, April 16, 2018

In my younger years, I spent many happy hours wallowing in Watergate, and I must confess that today’s news about Sean Hannity revived those happy feelings, if only for a while. But that was then, and this is now, and no thinking person can sustain a good wallow.

This is mainly because back in the days of Watergate, anyone with a brain knew that it was going to end up in satisfying fashion. Once I heard that Nixon had been taping himself, I knew with certainty that 1) the tapes would be wrested from his grasp, 2) they would prove beyond doubt that he was guilty, and 3) he would be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, or, (and I really preferred he be impeached), he would resign. I’ve compared it in the past to a Greek tragedy. You know from the start that things are fated to go bad for the protagonist; it’s only the details that the play explores.

I’m not claiming that I was specially insightful. I think lots of people could see how it would play out. But the key point is that we could be certain that the votes to convict in the Senate would be there, even though that meant a number of Republicans would have to turn against Nixon. In those days, while Republicans were still the bad guys, they were not (at least not all of them) the evil guys, and there were many of them that wouldn’t hesitate to put their country over their party. So it was a sure thing that once the facts were in (because everyone knew Nixon was guilty) he would have to go, and he would be made to go.

Similarly, we all know that Trump is guilty of something, in fact, of a lot of things. It’s better than even odds that he and his gang conspired with the Russians to tamper with the election. (Good article on that here) Beyond that, we know that he was involved in all manner of other illegal activities, with money laundering being pretty much a sure thing. On the surface, at least, things are spinning out of control for him, and if ever there was a time to wallow, this is it. I’ll admit, on days like this the urge to wallow is hard to resist, but something always pulls you up short from a truly complete wallow. When Nixon fired his prosecutor, the reaction, even from his own party, was such that he was forced to appoint another one as dogged as the one he fired. That won’t happen when Trump fires Mueller. Sure, people will take to the streets, but Trump will ignore them and the Republicans will, almost to a person, observe that really he shouldn’t oughta have done it, but what can you do? His criminality will go unchecked, and even if the Democrats take over the Congress and Senate and summon up the guts to impeach him, it’s highly unlikely that a single Republican will vote to convict. 

So, this is not going to end up well. At this point, we can only hope that it doesn’t end up as badly as it might. So, wallowing just isn’t the pleasure it was in the good old days.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 13, 2018

For several years I posted a music video every Friday. The rules were that it had to be something I liked, and it had to be a non lip synced actual concert version. After a while I stopped, because, quite frankly, it was getting harder and harder to find good stuff that I hadn’t put up before.

Well, a few days ago I was browsing through Youtube and I decided that there’s a whole bunch of new stuff out there, so I’m going to try to reactivate this feature. For all I know, I’ve put this one up already, but I thought I’d start with it, because it’s striking that at this point the guys that Randy is talking about, the ones who were “the worst that we’ve had” are now, not only “hardly the worst that this world has seen”, but no longer “the worst that we’ve had” to the point where they hardly stand out.

While I’m at it,here’s Randy with an even more timely tune:

 

Okay, if I keep this up, I’ll try not to repeat Randy for a while, but the fact is he’s one of the great ones, and vastly under appreciated.

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