The GOP's Plan for America: Let it Burn

Gail Collins had a nice column in the NYTimes about how pathetic it is that we can’t find the funds to fix our crumbling infrastructure. It was motivated by the recent Amtrack tragedy which could have (should have) been prevented by the installation of a simple set of safety devices, the kind that every other industrialized country has on its rail system. To compound the frustration we all feel, Republicans in Congress reacted by refusing to fund a program that would put such safety systems in place. Their actions will postpone any installation to 2020.

You’d think that the loss of life and horrific damage done by the Amtrack wreck would have goaded Congress into action. Instead it produced a truly retrograde reaction. Many of the commenters on Ms. Collins’ piece made reasoned arguments about how to raise revenue, how to sensibly allocate government resources so that basic transportation problems can be solved, how poorly America’s transportation systems compare with other modern nations and made many other sensible suggestions.

Alas, they are barking up the wrong tree. Explaining to Republicans in Congress how desperate the state of our infrastructure is will not bring about a change of heart or an increase in funding. The degradation of the transportation system is part of the larger plan, along with the parallel moves to defund education, strip away support for science, undermine the effectiveness of agencies like the EPA, HHS, NASA, FDA and basically starve every other aspect of government except the military.

The goal is uncomplicated: make sure government cannot function. Stoke anger and frustration at the lack of services. Offer privatization as the only option. Ramp up voter suppression and gerrymandering to ensure the continued majority in DC and state houses. Enact appropriate legislation, in the form of bills pre-drafted and packaged by ALEC.

I wish this was just a paranoid rant. It’s not. Anyone who doesn’t think this is a real, consciously crafted and cleverly enacted plan hasn’t been paying attention.

ALEC: Uncovering the Mole in our State Legislatures

ALEC stands for American Legislative Exchange Council. It is an organization that, in principle, outlines issues that, in their opinion, need attention from legislative bodies. They work with state legislatures, identifying issues, drafting bills and lobbying with members of state legislative assemblies to pass them.

In principle this seem reasonable. It really isn’t possible for the typical state legislator to become familiar with arcane issues on matters like how much fertilizer is safe in the water tables, what kinds of compensation is reasonable for damage to the environment caused by corporate error, what sorts of labor or health concerns should be part of decisions in permitting new businesses, what sorts of topics should become taught in schools, what restrictions should be put on women’s health issues, what kinds of taxes should be reduced or raised.

But ALEC does not approach these important topics in a neutral or bipartisan manner. The measures they support, the manner in which they operate and the lobbying they do is and always has been tilted toward right-wing, pro-business causes. And, in recent years, they have become astonishingly effective.

ALEC, quite literally, now runs the state legislatures of dozens of states. They, quite literally, are busy writing the laws of the land. They are partisan in the extreme.

They have become rather like Fox News. As Fox operates as the propaganda arm of the Republican party, ALEC functions as its legislative branch. Over 2000 members of state legislatures around the country are members of ALEC — and virtually all of them are Republicans and virtually all are extreme right-wingers.

This has been known for some time but the extent of their operations and the insideous way in which this organization has taken over the legislative process in dozens of states has not really been appreciated — until just the other day when a local TV station in Atlanta did the best damn job of investigative reporting I think I’ve ever seen.

No description of it can match watching the full 6 minuets of the report on WXIA TV.

A Pulitzer is surely heading their way, of this I am sure. This video needs to go viral, so take a look and forward it as widely as possible. ALEC is undercutting democracy. They are a truly dangerous organization.

And, even more astonishing, as the video makes painfully clear, by blatantly misrepresenting themselves and their mission as an “educational” organization ALEC has managed to have been granted tax-exempt status from the IRS.

Religious Bigotry Redux

So Jeb (the smarter?) Bush came out in defense of businesses that refuse service to gay individuals if they are acting on the basis of their religious beliefs. He said that, in his mind, this was not a complicated issue, merely one that built on principles of religious freedom. He, like most of the defenders of discrimination, made the same reference to instances where a florist or a caterer refuses to provide services at a wedding of a gay couple.

I assume that we’re talking here, not about explicit examples like florists and weddings, but about basic principles of law and the rights of individuals to practice their religion. Laws are designed to apply broadly to all relevant circumstances not to tightly circumscribed episodes. We should be debating, not specifics like florists and weddings, but deep principles concerning religious freedom and whether they apply broadly to any and all circumstances where services may be withheld because of genuinely held religious belief.

The issue here isn’t simply the right of a fundamentalist Christian to refuse to be a party to a homosexual union, it’s whether any deeply held religious beliefs, ones grounded in relevant scripture, can be a legal basis for denying services to any individual whose actions and behaviors violate those beliefs.

The issue became a hot-button topic because of the current concerns about gay marriage. But it isn’t about whether homosexuality violates someone’s religious beliefs. It’s about religious freedom, which is protected by the constitution, and civil rights which are protected by the constitution.

Jeb’s position is, whether he realizes it or not (I’ve got a guess about this), is that religious freedom trumps civil rights. Those who disagree argue that civil rights preempt specific religious convictions.

So I have a question: how would Jeb feel if a devout Muslim shopkeeper refused to serve his wife if she entered his store alone, unaccompanied by her husband/protector?

Just askin’ … you know, kinda curious. After all, it’s not a complicated issue.

Xero to Sixty - Finally!

My novel is done. Xero to Sixty can be purchased at Amazon in either a print or e-book version.

It’s a life-arc tale that starts in 1959. Xerxes (“Xero”) Konstantakis flunks out of Columbia U. and, torn between the expectations of his Greek immigrant parents and his own urge to find an angle, runs away with the circus. The circus, real and metaphorical, becomes the touchstone for his life.

With Sinatra’s “My Way” echoing in his head, he takes us through the end of the 20th century accompanied by an assortment of friends, gypsies, acrobats, lawyers, poker players, con artists, a couple of Mafia hoods, a genial Irish gangster and the denizens of his very own underground poker club. He learns it’s not about going legit – it’s about being the best degenerate you can be.

A little background. The first section is partly autobiographical. I did, indeed, flunk out of an Ivy League university (Penn), hitch-hike across the country and end up traveling with a circus. The rest of the story is a blend of episodes from my life, those from the lives of friends and my imagination.

The idea for it began some years ago when my friend Mike Z. came to see me. He had been diagnosed with a virulent form of cancer and wondered if I could help him write his life story. We spent six months having lunch on a regular basis and recorded all the conversations.

Mike was the manager, and owned a small piece, of The Playstation, the most successful underground poker room in New York City. I’d played there for years and in its predecessor, the Diamond Club. Places like these make for interesting friendships.

When I started writing I realized that to make the novel work it needed build-up. Ii couldn’t be just a litany of Mike’s tales of life on what he liked to call the “dark side” that started in the poker rooms of Gardena and ended in the New York underground clubs. So I decided to take snippets from my life, interweave them with Mike’s and juice it all up with a bunch of colorful characters, some of whom are based on people I’ve known and others just pulled out of my imagination.

Mike, unfortunately, died on the operating table. He never got to see the finished product. I’m still in touch with his widow, Susan, and I’m keeping my original promise; she’ll get ten percent of all the royalties.

One last tidbit. There’s a character in “Xero” named Ranjani. The name is that of the waitress who served Mike and me at many of our lunches. I loved the sound of her name and promised her I’d weave it into the novel. I did. If she stumbles across this blog entry or finds the novel, I hope she’ll get in touch.

Why I'm Against the TPP

The TPP is much in the news. Everyone is either for it or against it and all the “fers” and “agins” are passionate. Hillary keeps getting hammered with questions about where she stands — which, wisely, she’s ducking. President Obama and Senator Warren are at loggerheads over it. Remarkably, Obama’s efforts to get the treaty “fast-tracked” are being blocked by members of his own party who are showing a most unusual reluctance to back one of his programs.

I haven’t read it. I don’t know anything about the overall structure of the treaty, I certainly haven’t seen the fine print (no one has) and I have little or no sense of the complex, interlocking, international legal elements. But like everyone else, I have an opnion and one held passionately.

I’m against it. For one reason. The Republicans are for it. The GOP has not been for a single thing in decades that would provide a boost to the lives of ordinary Americans — or the lives of ordinary anyones living anywhere. If this treaty has anything like the impact that NAFTA did — which is why people like Warren and Bernie Sanders are concerned — then the primary effect will be to further the vast and growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us.

If the GOP’s for it, it behooves every caring person to oppose it.

Some Marxist we got in the White House, eh?