Trump: A Clear and Present Threat to Roe v. Wade

Donald Trump has said that he will defund Planned Parenthood, and in an interview with Fox News declared that the best way to overturn Roe v. Wade "is by electing me president."

Some disaffected liberals who may be considering voting for Trump as a form of protest due to their unhappiness with the way the Democratic primaries have worked out (and we all know who I'm talking about) might comfort themselves by saying, "Yeah, but what are the chances he could actually get Roe v. Wade overturned?"

Those chances are actually pretty good, as it turns out.

Consider the case of Oklahoma. That state just passed a bill that calls for three years imprisonment for ANY doctor who performs ANY abortion. This new law is clearly unconstitutional, and runs in direct contradiction to Roe v. Wade. But here's the thing--the Republican lawmakers who passed the bill KNOW it is unconstitutional. They KNOW that every lower court will strike it down, and that they will be forced to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. And this is precisely what they want.

With the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate refusing to even consider President Obama's moderate pick to replace deceased Justice Antonin Scalia--which itself is unprecedented and arguably unconstitutional (and not at all comparable to filibusters of the past, often cited by Republicans to obfuscate the unprecedented nature of their actions)--the anti-choice forces are hoping that Scalia's seat will have  been filled with a hardline, anti-choice conservative by the time the case makes its way to the SCOTUS. Both Democratic nominees still in the race have strong pro-choice backgrounds, so the only chance the anti-choice forces have of fulfilling their wish is the victory of the man who has said outright, for the whole nation to hear, that he is the best chance the anti-choice Right has of getting Roe. v. Wade overturned.

So for that segment of the liberal-minded electorate who may be thinking of showing their dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party by casting a protest vote for the Orange Chameleon, and who haven't yet been dissuaded by his ecstatic use of racist, sexist and Islamophobic rhetoric, or his dangerous appeals to jingoistic nationalism (surely you haven't been fooled into thinking that the man who refuses to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, has called for nuclear proliferation, has promised to revive the use of torture and suggested the murder of  the families of terrorists is really a dove?), or even his frightening encouragement of political violence that is reminiscent of the rise to power of so many dangerous demagogues of the past, then surely if you have a mother, sister, daughter, or any woman in your life who you care about, and who you trust to make decisions about her own body and health, you will not vote for a man who has promised to take the right to make those decision away and instead to place them in the hands of a bunch of old men who think it's their right alone to make life-changing decisions for the women of this country.

*UPDATE*
Oklahoma's Republican governor, perhaps in a fit of reason, vetoed the bill in question. Make no mistake, however; this is not the end of this issue. The anti-choice forces will merely move the battle to another state, and then another, until they find a governor who is willing to go along with them.

Trump: A Comparison of Autocrats (or, Does This Sound Familiar?)

Tell me, does any of this remind you of Donald Trump?

"I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts...at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked person breaks down..."

Throughout the Primaries Trump has moved from one target to the next, whoever he sees as his greatest threat being hammered down before moving on to the next greatest threat. Thus we have attacks on "Low Energy Jeb". When he's gone, Trump turns his malignant gaze to "Little Marco" who is "trying to be Don Rickles". Then, when Rubio is out of the picture, we get "Lyin' Ted" and his "crazy wife". If a particularly damaging new story comes out, he averts his attention to the threat of the moment, going on another anti-press (and anti-intellectual) tirade. If he gives a bad interview, well then it's time to turn his scorn on the interviewer for the next few days. Always aware of the enemy of the moment, and always ready to unleash a "barrage of lies and slander" until their nerves break.

"The power which has always started the greatest...political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word...All great movements are popular movements, volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses..."

Trump plays on emotions, particularly fear and anger. No critical thinking necessary, and reason is a vice; whatever you feel in your gut should guide you.

What the masses needed, he thought, were not only ideas--a few simple ideas, that is, that he could easily hammer though their skulls--but symbols that would win their faith, pageantry and color that would arouse them, and acts of violence...which, if successful, would attract adherents and give them a sense of power over the weak.

Simple ideas to be hammered through skulls: Mexico and China are bad!! We need to ban Muslims!!! I will kick ISIS' ass!!! I will make everything great!!!

Symbols and pageantry: Witness any given Trump rally.

Acts of violence: I repeat, witness any given Trump rally.

...he was intrigued by what he called the "infamous spiritual and physical terror" which he thought was employed by the Social Democrats against their political opponents. Now he turned it to good purpose in his own anti-Socialist party. [People] were assigned to his meetings to silence hecklers and, if necessary, toss them out.

Protestors at Trump rallies being immediately set upon by violent supporters, while Trump smirks from the stage and offers to pay the legal costs if any of his supporters are arrested, and saying things like "maybe they SHOULD get attacked" when asked about the events later.

Other comparisons: The use of a minority group (or groups) as a scapegoat for all, or most, of society's ills (ban the Muslims, and deport all the Mexicans, and our problems will be solved!), and his use of the "Great Man Theory" ("Only I can solves your problems...Only I can make you great...Only I can protect you...Only I will tell you the truth...Listen only to ME...Trust only ME...Not a party, not an ideology, just Me! Me! Me!").

I have started rereading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and I couldn't help making these connections between one autocrat and another. I'm not suggesting that Trump would murder six million people (well, he may do so if he makes good on his threats to nuke the Middle East, but let's assume that he would never actually follow through with that), but I think there is no doubt (based on his public statements) that he would be perhaps the most authoritarian president we have ever had. This is a guy who brags that the military will follow his orders even if the orders are illegal. He promises to crush the free press by changing the law so that people can't report negatively about him. He threatens to strip the "racial enemy" of their very citizenship (i.e. the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants). He says all of this...and his supporters cheer!

It's at times like this that I think of a line of dialogue from film Revenge of the Sith:

So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause.

Hopefully we will never have to witness what a Trump presidency would have looked like, but the fact that millions of people have come out specifically to vote for this man is a sad statement, and a testament to this fact: history is a wheel, and it always comes 'round to the same place again.

sources:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer, ppg. 43, 46, 69 and 70.

Click here to see the scene that I referenced from Revenge of the Sith.

Bernie Sanders supporters are becoming insufferable

Remember when it was Ron Paul supporters who were seen as insufferable little twats? Many Bernie supporters could give them a run for their money.

There's the sexism (calling Hillary a bitch and a cunt, and taking cheap shots at her looks as if her appearance has anything to do with anything) and the racism (when they realized that minorities weren't defecting to Bernie en masse as they had hoped, many Bernie supporters became indistinguishable from Trump supporters, with talk of "stupid" and "ignorant" blacks who can't possible wrap their simple minds around politics and are just voting blindly for Clinton). Bill Maher recently pointed out the irony of Bernie supporters suddenly turning on Elizabeth Warren (who at one time was the very person the liberal wing of the Democratic Party wanted to be their candidate, and who some Bernie supporters would still like to see on a ticket with him) for committing the unforgivable sin of refusing to pick a side during the Primaries.

Just today I was reading an article about Lena Dunham speaking at a Clinton campaign event, and her description of the backlash she has received from Bern-ites over her support for Hillary:

"I have received more hostility for voting for a qualified female candidate than I have ever received anywhere from the American right wing. The fact that other members of the Democratic Party have spoken to me like I was an ill-informed child for voting for someone who represents everything I think this country should be is outrageous."

source: refinery29.com

Then there's the "If I don't get my way, I'm taking my ball and going home!" attitude of many of them, with threats to vote for Trump--a candidate who has used appeals to bigotry to fuel his campaign more openly than any candidate in my lifetime--to "get back" at Hillary, or to not vote at all (which, let's face it, is just as good as a vote for Trump).

There's the insane double standard imposed upon Hillary in which Bernie is allowed to get up on stage day after day and not-so-subtly imply that she is an evil corporate whore who will sell out your children's futures, and no one has a problem with this. But let Hillary say the most innocuous thing and people go, "Can you believe what a bitch she was when she was talking about Bernie?!?!?!" It's a well-document phenomenon--when men are forceful they are seen as strong and confident; when women are forceful they are seen as hectoring shrews.

Bernie's supporters trend younger than Hillary's, so it could just be their immaturity showing through rather than genuine sexism or racism on their part, but either way it is very ugly. It also reflects poorly on the person they support, whether said reflection is justified or not.

When it comes to politics passions run deep. Heck, this may be many Bernie supporters' first time at the rodeo, and thus they are getting a hint at their first real tasted of electoral defeat. Whatever the case may be, it's time to face the facts (and the delegate math): Barring some strange turn in events Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for the White House, and the real enemy--the Orange One--awaits. It's time to get over this intra-party fighting over who is more pure and gear up for November.

How We Can Improve Our Election System

A few ideas about how we can improve the election system here in the U.S.:

A One-Year Election Cycle

Would-be candidates would be forbidden from forming PAC’s, taking campaign contributions or actively campaigning in any way until the November of the year prior to the election. Election Day doesn’t fall on the same day of the month each election year, so the one year mark could be set at November 2^nd, which is the earliest possible day that an election could be held (i.e. the Tuesday after the first Monday of November). Assuming that primary season would still begin in February--and that the parties still held their conventions in June--that would give candidates about three months to prepare for primary season, which itself would be approximately four months long.

Campaign Finance Reform

No more dark money, and no more corporate donations. Campaign donations can only be made by individuals, whether directly to a candidate, a PAC, the DNC and/or RNC, etc. PACs must be transparent about who is giving them money, and how they are using it. Unions can vocalize support for candidates, however donations must be made individually by any members who wish to do so. There should be a reasonable cap on how much money any one individual can donate to a candidate; this will help even the playing field and prevent millionaires and billionaires from singlehandedly funding a candidate’s entire campaign.

Automatic Voter Registration

Upon registering for a state I.D. or driver’s license all eligible citizens would automatically be registered to vote. Some states, such as California and Oregon, already have similar practices. Prior to an automatic registration bill being signed into law in 2015 California has an estimated 6.6 million eligible voters who were not registered. Automatic voter registration would prevent problems when unregistered voters--some of whom may not even realize there is a problem with their registration record--leave their registration status unresolved until just before an election.

Make Election Day an Election Weekend

Holding elections on a Tuesday, when most working Americans are…well, working, has the potential to disenfranchise many voters who cannot get to the polls during normal polling hours. Some states have laws on the books allowing workers to take time off to vote if certain conditions are met, but most states do not. A solution would be to have a three-day Election Weekend, Friday-Sunday. People who may not be able to get time off during the week would now have the opportunity to vote on the weekend. Voters who follow the Sabbath (understood to begin at sundown on Friday and end at sundown on Saturday) could vote early on Friday, late on Saturday, and all day Sunday. Those who attend church on Sunday would potentially have all of Friday and Saturday to vote, as well as Sunday after church service.

Compulsory Voting

This one I’m not strong on. There are obvious downsides to making voting compulsory, but an argument could be made that the pros outweigh the cons. Voting for president would be compulsory for all voters unless they have a valid reason why they cannot vote, i.e. religious objections to voting, mental, physical or intellectually disabilities that make it unreasonably difficult for them to vote, etc. Eligible voters who fulfill their obligation, or who can give a valid reason why they could not do so (as discussed above) would be eligible for a tax credit. Eligible voters who do not vote, and do not have a valid reason, would be ineligible for this credit.

Leave Redistricting to Independent Commissions

While I have focused primarily on presidential elections until now, congressional and legislative elections are also important, and in many states are tainted by partisan politics and Gerrymandering. We should leave the job of drawing up congressional and legislative districts to independent, non-partisan (or bipartisan) commissions. No party should be able to draw up districts to rig the game in their favor simply because they control a state legislature.

Eliminate the Electoral College System

The candidate who gets more votes should win. That’s about all I have to say about that. For more detailed criticism of the Electoral College system you can click here.

Obama, the Job Killer?

It’s an oft-repeated claim by the Right: Obama is a job killer. If we don’t put a Republican in the White House soon, a “job creator” who can reverse the devastation that Barack Obama has wrought upon the U.S. economy, America may become a dystopian wasteland in which roaming gangs of cannibals prowl the streets, hunting their fellow man for sustenance…or something like that. Okay, that last part may just be the plot of a script I wrote called Cannibal Carnage. I sent a copy of it to several production companies about eight years ago, and I’m still waiting to hear back from them. Fingers crossed!!!

Much of the blame for Obama’s “job killing” has been placed on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare, which all of the current Republican candidates running for president promise to repeal in toto if they are elected in November. What they will replace it with…well, don’t worry about it. They’ve got a plan, but you’ll have to put them in the White House if you want to see it.

Bobby Jindal, ex-Governor of Louisiana and amateur exorcist, once said of the ACA, “Why not delay all of the mandates in Obamacare [which] has become such a job killer in our economy.” Ted Cruz, Canada’s least favorite son, said, “It’s been a disaster. It is the biggest job-killer in this country; millions of Americans have lost their jobs.” Marco Rubio said that the ACA was a “certified job-killer”. So, is Obama in general (and the ACA in particular) really a job killer? Is Obama a Marxist who has crushed businesses large and small in an attempt to destroy capitalism?

Let us begin by looking at what President Obama was faced with when he took office in January, 2009. Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, inherited a 4.2% unemployment rate (courtesy of Bill Clinton). When he left office the nation was in a recession and unemployment was at 7.8%. I guess “trickledown economics” didn’t quite trickle down the way it was expected to. When Obama sat behind his desk in the Oval Office for the first time he found himself sitting at the helm of a nation that was losing 700,000 jobs a month, and whose stock market was sinking faster than the Titanic.

An economy in freefall can’t be turned around on a dime, and over the first nine months of Obama’s presidency the unemployment rate continued to rise, peaking at 10.1% in October, 2009, two months before Obama’s greatest “job killing” bill, the ACA,  would be passed by the Senate. Since then the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9%, the lowest it has been since February, 2008. Here is a graph showing the official unemployment rate over the last ten years (recession period shaded gray):

 Source: MacroTrends

“But how can this be?”, some of you may be asking. Didn’t Donald Trump say that the real unemployment rate may be as high as 42%? Trump’s claim seems to have been gleaned from a column by Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman. Politifact explains Strockman’s reasoning thusly:

Stockman calculated that there are currently 210 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 68 -- what he calls a "plausible measure of the potential workforce." If you assume that each of those people is able to hold down a full-time job, he wrote, they would offer a total of 420 billion potential working hours. However, during 2014, Stockman noted, only 240 billion working hours were actually recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Using this formula Strockman calculated that the unemployment rate was really 42.9%. However, as the same Politifact article makes clear, Strockman’s calculation treats people working part-time hours as partly unemployed,  and doesn’t account for the valid reasons why many part-time workers may be doing so by choice, e.g. parents unable to work full-time because of child-rearing duties, students who are balancing work and school, and the disabled.

“Okay,” you may concede, “the official unemployment rate, also called the U-3 rate, may be 4.9%, but what about the U-6 rate, which includes those who are officially unemployed as well as those who are working part time for economic reasons and those who are ‘marginally attached’ to the work force?”

And I would ask, “Why are you speaking like that? Talk like a normal person!”

It’s true that the U-6 rate, now and always, is higher than the U-3 rate. The current U-6 rate is 9.9%, down from a high of 17.4% in the same month that the official unemployment rate peaked in 2009, and from 14%, which was where it was at in the month that Obama first took office. Another graph showing the unemployment rate over the last 22 years (U-3 in red, U-6 in green):

Source: MacroTrends

As stated above George W. Bush left office with a U-6 rate of 14%  compared to 7.3% when he took office. So we see that both the U-3 and U-6 rates have markedly improved under Obama compared to where they were when he started his first term.

Yet 53% of Republicans still think the unemployment rate has risen under Obama, a misconception happily reinforced by the Right-Wing Spin Machine and the party’s presidential candidates. The truth is that under Obama the economy has had a record 71 straight months of private-sector job growth, while the size of the government, which the Right claims is too big and bloated, actually shrunk.

Here are three charts showing the performance of Bush v. Obama using three different measurements, fig. 1:  private sector job creation,  fig 2: official (i.e. U-3) unemployment rates, and  fig. 3: corporate after-tax profits (this last puts the lie to the Right’s claims that Obama is a Far Left Socialist who has spent seven years destroying business in this country):

fig. 1

fig, 2

fig. 3

Source: ourfuture.org

There is a saying attributed to former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-New York): Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. The 53% of Republicans who think unemployment has gone up under Obama are not entitled to their own facts, to say nothing of the 43% who believe he his is a Muslim,  or the 35% who believe he was born outside of the United States. Neither Obama, nor the ACA, is a job killer. It’s not just me saying that; reality is saying that.

Lastly, let’s talk about the ACA, a bill that the Right warned would lead us down the road to jackboot Socialism, mass unemployment and ultimately the death of the American Dream. Since 2010 the rate of uninsured Americans has fallen from 16% to 9%:

Source: Forbes

That seven point drop isn’t just a number--it’s millions of Americans who no longer have to worry about what will happen if they get sick, Americans who will no longer have to wait until a treatable condition escalates and become untreatable, who will no longer be clogging emergency rooms for illnesses that would be more cost-effectively treated by a family doctor. People no longer have to fear that they will be denied health coverage because they have a pre-existing condition, or that they will be dropped on a technicality if they already have insurance and they get sick, or hit an arbitrary cap on benefits set by their insurer.

How many more Americans would have to access to life-saving health coverage if the governors of the 19 states that have refuse to expand their Medicare programs (nearly all of these states being governed by Republicans) would stop their political posturing? How many people have died, or will die, because a small group of people, many of whom pride themselves on their Christian values, have decided that turning their noses up at the President is more important than the health of their citizens?



sources:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
http://www.macrotrends.net/1339/unemployment-rate-last-ten-years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/20/the-amount-of-misinformation-about-our-economy-is-amazing/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/02/26/is-obamacare-a-job-killer/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/#1efb688820bc
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/11/05/americas-uninsured-rate-is-now-historically-low/#71964ef76f70
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/29/ted-cruz/ted-cruzs-pants-fire-claim-health-care-law-nations/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/30/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-unemployment-rate-may-be-42-perc/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/cruz-claims-%E2%80%9Cmillions%E2%80%9D-have-lost-their-jobs-because-obamacare
http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/02/26/rubio-and-cruz-echo-right-wing-media-with-their/208840
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/08/news/economy/us-economy-jobs-second-best-year-since-1999/
http://obamacarefacts.com/uninsured-rates/
http://historyinpieces.com/research/us-unemployment-rates-president
https://ourfuture.org/20141208/bush-vs-obama-on-the-economy-in-3-simple-charts
https://www.dpcc.senate.gov/?p=blog&id=462
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/14/job-shifts-under-obama-fewer-government-workers-more-caregivers-servers-and-temps/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/02/americans-obama-anti-christ-conspiracy-theories
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/09/01/iowa-poll-republicans-believe-obama-not-born-us/71502150/
http://familiesusa.org/product/50-state-look-medicaid-expansion