Category Archives: Random Blogging

The Best People

Among the many boasts we’ve become accustomed to hearing from Donald Trump is his repeated insistence that he hires “the best people.” I thought about that boast in the wake the Vice-Presidential choices made by Trump and Harris: JD Vance is one of the most disliked VP candidates of all times, while the selection of Tim Walz has been greeted with widespread enthusiasm.

When it comes to fitness for office, Vance has almost no experience in elective office, while Walz has served in Congress and as Governor of Minnesota. (Even Sarah Palin–to whom he is often compared–had more governing experience than Vance.)

Trump’s choice of an unsuitable running mate is not an aberration. As a recent article in The New Republic put it, the selection confirms that Trump picks the very worst people. The article reminded readers of the many “incompetent and corrupt” members of his administration:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who resigned after squandering hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private travel; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who resigned “after being embroiled in one ethics controversy after the next,” as CNN put it; Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who “resigned under the weight of more than a dozen federal investigations into his actions,” according to The Washington Post (Zinke is back in Congress, of course, where he is speculating that the recent attempt on Trump’s life was part of a government “plot”); Mike Flynn, the national security adviser who lied to the FBI in the Russia probe and went to jail (Trump pardoned him); swamp thing and Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, who went up the river for tax and bank fraud (Trump pardoned him too); alt-right guru Steve Bannon and trade troll Peter Navarro, who were convicted of contempt of Congress; would-be Batman villain Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress (Trump commuted his sentence before, ultimately, pardoning him too).

The list went on. And on. And Trump seems incapable of learning from his mistakes. (Of course, he is also incapable of admitting that he makes mistakes..)

Having run the administration with the highest turnover rate in history presumably gave Trump plenty of experience to avoid making the same mistakes, but it’s not like later-term personnel were much better than their predecessors in his own estimation. John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, was a “dope” who “Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped.” Mark Esper, Trump’s last confirmed defense secretary, was “weak and totally ineffective”; Attorney General Bill Barr, who parted ways with Trump only after belying his claims of widespread 2020 voter fraud and later said that Trump “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office,” was “Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy” (though once Barr endorsed him this year anyway, the magnanimous ex-president retracted the “Lethargic” label).

There is no love lost between Trump and those who entered and left through the revolving door that was his chaotic administration. CNN has identified twenty-four members of that administration who are warning voters against a repeat. Even Mike Pence–sycophant extraordinaire–has refused to endorse him.

His first secretary of defense, James Mattis: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”

His second secretary of defense, Mark Esper: “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”

His chairman of the joint chiefs, retired Gen. Mark Milley …. “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

 His first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson: “(Trump’s) understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of US history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.”

His presidential transition vice-chairman, Chris Christie: “Someone who I would argue now is just out for himself.”

His second national security adviser, HR McMaster: “We saw the absence of leadership, really anti-leadership, and what that can do to our country.”

His third national security adviser, John Bolton: “I believe (foreign leaders) think he is a laughing fool.”

There are others quoted, but this sample is representative.

So much for the hope that this buffoon would be restrained by “adults in the room.

The adults have all run for the hills.

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Why Definitions Matter

You may have noticed that we Americans have trouble communicating. We may–or may not– talk to each other, but talking is not the same thing as communicating.

One of the reasons we are so polarized is that we not only occupy different realities, we use the same words to describe very different things.

I’ve previously pointed out that “conservative” does not accurately describe a radical MAGA movement filled with White “Christian” Nationalists. Labeling every social program, no matter how modest, as “socialist” confuses modern mixed economies with soviet-style, authoritarian regimes. But the problem goes beyond propaganda and intentional misdirection, because we can’t solve our problems if we can’t describe those problems accurately.

In an article awhile back Vox illustrated that problem. The first paragraph was eye-opening:

A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1%, according to an important new dataset shared exclusively with “Axios on HBO.”

The article then noted that the official unemployment rate excludes people who might be earning only a few dollars a week, along with people who have stopped looking for work for whatever reason–perhaps a lack of available jobs or child care. The definition of “unemployed” that we use affects our evaluation of the severity of the problem. As the 2020 article pointed out, that year, if we had identified as unemployed anyone over 16 years old who wasn’t earning a living wage, the overall rate would have been 54.6%. For Black Americans, it would have been 59.2%.

The Axios article gave the backstory of our current measurement metric:

The official definition of unemployment can be traced back to the 1870s, when a Massachusetts statistician named Carroll Wright diagnosed what he referred to as “industrial hypochondria”.

By restricting the “unemployed” label to men who “really want employment,” Wright managed to minimize the unemployment figure.

Wright went on to found the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he brought his unemployment definition with him.
To this day, to be officially counted as unemployed you need to be earning no money at all, and you need to be actively looking for work.

More recently, Gene Ludwig, a former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, founded the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity.  According to calculations by that institute, in January of 2020, when the official rate of unemployment was 3.6%, the true rate was seven times greater — 23.4%. Whether you agree with Ludwig that the higher number is the “true” unemployment rate is less significant than the fact that most Americans don’t understand what the official number measures.

What would be helpful–what would allow us to actually communicate about jobs and wages– would be a report that broke down the data into categories: these are people actively searching for jobs who don’t have one; these are people whose jobs don’t pay a living wage; etc. That sort of report would allow voters and policymakers to focus on the actual issues involved. As it is, a single number that excludes everyone who has any sort of employment–whether part-time or poorly paid–obscures reality.

We can’t fix a problem we can’t properly define.

Insufficient jobs and insufficient wages are two very different problems. The Biden administration has done an admirable job of creating new jobs, and various economic reports indicate that the administration has also presided over significant wage gains, but few of us have the time or ability to delve into the official data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and to calculate what percentage of workers has escaped the “under-employed” category.

This problem of accurate–or at least agreed-upon–definition isn’t limited to employment figures. Some years ago, I was looking into arguments about the U.S. balance of trade, and realized that those official calculations only included tangible goods–not services or other intangibles. So if we were sending printed books (or cars or widgets) abroad, those got counted; but if Americans were selling publishing rights (or providing design services) to consumers in other countries, the value of those exports wasn’t included. (I don’t know whether that is still the case.)

What was that bible story about the Tower of Babel?

We live in a very complex society, and wide differences in culture, education and expertise add other complications to even the most sincere efforts at communication. But–assuming we elect people in November who are committed to running a functional government–we really need to look at the way official data is compiled and reported.

Using the same words to talk about the same things would be a start….

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History Is Rhyming…

Note: yesterday’s “extra” post was an accident. Sorry for the assault on your inboxes!

Like many readers of this blog, I subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson’s daily “Letters from an American.” Having come through an education system notoriously light on comprehensive history, I find her daily expositions of America’s past very enlightening–especially when I learn about the details of past events that bear an uncanny resemblance to our current quandaries.

A recent Letter made me think of the quip attributed to Mark Twain, to the effect that while history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, it frequently rhymes.

Richardson was comparing our current divisions with those that triggered the founding of the Republican Party–and the Civil War. The GOP, ironically, was formed to fight slavery and uphold the premise of the Declaration that “all men are created equal.” In the years since the Civil War, we’ve seen the parties change places–the Democrats have become the party defending human equality, while today’s GOP looks very much like the combination of racists and plutocrats that characterized the old Democratic Party.

What really struck me was the sense that we’ve returned to that age-old fight. The parties may have switched sides, but the nature of the battle remains depressingly familiar.

After providing details of the events leading up to the demise of the Whigs and the formation of a new Republican Party–a party formed to combat the notion that some humans are superior to and entitled to rule over others by virtue of their skin color– Richardson compared that era to our own.

When voters elected Lincoln president, the fledgling Republican Party turned away from a government that catered to an oligarchy trying to overturn democracy and instead reinvented the American government to create a new, active government that guaranteed to poorer men the right to be treated equally before the law, the right to a say in their government, and access to resources that had previously been monopolized by the wealthy.

The present looks much like that earlier moment when people of all different political backgrounds came together to defend the principles of the United States. In today’s moment, when someone like J.D. Vance backer billionaire Peter Thiel says, “Democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted,” and the Republicans’ Project 2025 calls for replacing democracy with Christian nationalism, it makes sense for all people who care about our history and our democratic heritage to pull together.

Richardson noted that there are some in the GOP who recognize the threat posed by a MAGA party that looks a lot like the Confederacy.  She quoted Olivia Troye, who served in the Trump White House, and who is now working with Republicans for Harris. Troye has called upon Mike Pence to endorse Harris, and is quoted as saying that

“[W]hat is happening here with the Republican Party… is dangerous and extreme. And I think we need to get back to the values of…observing the rule of law, of standing with our international allies and actually providing true leadership to the world, which is something that Kamala Harris has exhibited during the Biden Administration.”

(As an aside, I’d be shocked if Pence had the spine to endorse Harris…I’m pretty sure that his one moment of integrity in refusing to go along with Trump’s coup exhausted his ability to do the right thing. I hope I’m wrong, but I think his four years of utter, embarrassing sycophancy are more consistent with his character than that one example of moral courage…)

Richardson’s comparison of that pre-civil war era with our own is apt. There are differences, of course, but the choices Americans face today certainly “rhyme” with the choices that confronted Americans then. Once again, We the People are facing a frontal challenge to the most basic premises of our founding documents–premises that we have admittedly never quite lived up to, but that we have (mostly) continued to pursue.

There’s a lot wrong with American society today, but most of it is fixable–if we elect public servants who are honorable and who–in the words of Olivia Troye–are committed to the rule of law, to standing with our international allies, and capable of providing what has been called servant leadership.

Richardson reminds us that we’ve been here before, and the good guys prevailed. If we want to preserve the country they saved–if we want to turn back the White Supremacists and plutocrats of today’s GOP–we’ll vote Blue in sufficient numbers to drive the lesson home. A Blue wave would–ideally– lead to the disintegration of MAGA and a return of the GOP to normalcy.

Or perhaps, as with the Whigs, the creation of a new, saner political party.

I can live with either result.

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Morning In America?

Remember Reagan’s “Morning in America”? I do–and it was the first phrase that came to mind when Kamala Harris and her just-announced choice for Vice-President, Tim Walz, appeared together at their first event, in Philadelphia.

The folks that the late Molly Ivins dubbed “the chattering class” have been almost uniformly enthusiastic about the choice of Walz, offering a wide number of reasons. I was excited and gratified by that choice for two rather different reasons: first, as a policy nerd (I know–you hadn’t noticed!), I especially love his strong support for public education. (I agree with most of his other policy positions too.). Second, he’s a mensch. Long before he entered politics, when he was still a high school coach, he sponsored his school’s first gay-straight alliance–understanding that having a straight, married, macho coach as a sponsor would send a strong anti-bullying message to those teens who might be inclined to pick on gay kids.

But what really has me pumped up is that both Harris and Walz are such happy warriors. They smile. They joke. They laugh. (Has anyone ever seen Donald Trump laugh? He snickers on occasion, but–unlike normal people– he never laughs. And his idea of “jokes” are almost always cruel put-downs of someone who has displeased him.)

The reason this new team and their joyous approach has made me so much more positive than I was a few weeks ago was perfectly described by Bill Kristol in a recent essay in the Bulwark. Kristol isn’t usually one of my favorite political pundits, but–as the saying goes–he hit this one out of the park.

As he noted, in their first appearance together, Harris and Walz were happy warriors.

I want to believe that being happy warriors is superior, not just morally and aesthetically but also practically and politically, to being sullen and resentful ones. We’ll see if that’s the case in the year 2024.

I’ll add that Harris, Walz, and Shapiro weren’t just happy warriors. They were distinctly hopeful and future-oriented ones.

Again, I want to believe that’s what most Americans want. That we want leaders who live in the present and will work to make America better in the future, not figures who scowl at the present and fear the future. And certainly not candidates who justify extraordinary mean-spiritedness in the name of an embittered nostalgia for an imaginary past.

To which I respond “Yes yes yes!!”

I am so very tired of the politics of nastiness and incivility, tired of the thundering diatribes of theocrats (aptly described as members of the Handmaid’s Tale faction of the GOP), of the insistence that America needs to return to the “verities” of a time that never existed except in the minds of unhappy White guys…I have to believe that most American voters are equally tired of living in the GOP’s gloomy, rancid, hate-filled fantasy world.

Kristol made another very important observation with which I entirely agree.

Finally, I was struck that the mood in Philadelphia was, if I can put it this way, all-American. Watching Shapiro and Walz and Harris—an Easterner and a Midwesterner and a Californian, men and women of such different backgrounds and religions and races—I thought: You know, this is America. 

It’s an unoriginal thought, to be sure. And as I thought it, an unoriginal—and for that matter an out of date and out of favor—phrase for some reason popped into my mind: the “melting pot.”

The image of the “melting pot” has never really described America. Many people have suggested better images—a mosaic, for instance—to capture American openness and pluralism and integration. Still, for some reason the phrase stuck in my mind.

In much the same way, images of that introductory gathering in Philadelphia made me think of “Morning in America.” Not the same morning that Reagan envisioned, rather obviously, but the dawning possibility that America might return to a politics  that celebrates the art of the possible– a politics of inclusion rather than exclusion, a politics that moves us, however incrementally, toward the vision of human equality outlined in the Declaration of Independence. 

A forward-looking politics.

Maybe the morning sun will even shine in Indiana……

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An Extra Message–And An Ask

Apologies for cluttering your in-boxes, but we have only three months until the election, and I wanted to share this important message from Hoosiers for Democracy– a grass-roots movement founded to combat voter lethargy and encourage turnout by Indiana’s Democrats.

Here’s the request I received last night. I hope you will consider making a donation. Even small amounts help!!

_______________________

Dear friends and colleagues,

Rachel, Barbara and I are thrilled about how Hoosiers for Democracy is growing and the impact it is having on educating voters as well as empowering them to act in service of preserving our hard won freedoms and resisting extremism. Our subscription list is growing, and we are expanding our network of allies across the state that help us amplify our message.  After we publish a post, we immediately get emails from campaign managers and other grass root movements asking us to be sure to include them in our next post in our “What You Can Do” section.  We are living proof that “all that rises must converge”.

We are contacting you today with an urgent request for support of a new initiative we have started focused on registering Indiana Gen Z voters, especially targeting districts that have been identified as flippable. We have 60 days to get this done.  We are emboldened by the new sense of hopefulness about the upcoming election, including the recent surge in excitement, donations, and volunteers in Indiana and across the country. Much of this surge is occurring among the younger voter population, but if past trends continue, Indiana likely still has a problem engaging younger voters. Despite some progress being made nationally towards increasing younger voter turnout in the 2020 general and 2022 midterm elections, data suggests that Hoosiers still have a lot of work to do in educating youth and young adults about the potential impacts of voting and civic engagement on their own futures and on the lives of future generations. We have decided to be a part of a solution to this issue. Our friend, colleague and expert on civic engagement, Dona Sapp, has joined with H4D in developing a targeted and strategic 60-day campaign to register young voters in Indiana.  This campaign is influenced by and in response to disheartening data:

  • Indiana voter participation is consistently among the lowest in the nation. In 2020, Indiana ranked 46th among all U.S. states for eligible voters of all ages who voted.
  • More specifically related to young voter participation, we ranked 44th for the percentage of eligible 18–24-year-olds who were registered to vote and 43rd for the percentage of 18–24-year-olds who voted in 2020.
  • Only 48 percent of eligible 18-24-year-olds in Indiana were registered to vote in 2020, and only 39 percent voted. In contrast, 87 percent of eligible 18–24-year-olds in New Jersey were registered, and 75 percent voted.

It is true that, historically, younger voters are less likely to vote in U.S. elections than other age groups, but this is particularly true in Indiana. There are many varied and valid reasons for this.  Experts tell us that young voters are passionate about issues that impact them, yet many are disillusioned with the democratic process. This is particularly true in black and multiracial communities and among young people who did not attend college.

Two more sobering and heartbreaking stats:

  • Among the 65 percent of registered Indiana voters who voted, Donald Trump received 1,729,519 million votes and Joe Biden received 1,242,416 million votes, a difference of approximately 487,000 votes.
  • An estimated 500,000+ eligible 18–24-year-old Hoosiers are not currently registered to vote. This means that younger voters, who often feel unheard and powerless to change anything, could have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election in Indiana through increased voter registration and participation

But the past two weeks have changed things.  Young people are engaged, and motivated and using their creativity and their culture to impact this election.  We need your help in making sure Indiana young people are registered to vote and get them to the ballot box!

Our 60-day Voting is Your Superpower Campaign is focused on registering eligible Gen Z voters.  Dona has designed iPhone stickers (this idea came from Senator Andrea Hunley when we pitched this idea to her), flyers, cards, yard signs, and t-shirts.  We are partnering with our allies including several Democratic party county/district managers and most of the Democratic candidates on the Indiana ballot to help us distribute the resources in strategic sites/venues across the state.  Our goal is to register 25,000 young people and get a pledge from each of them to register 5 of their peers. Additionally, we will invite volunteers in our next post to help us in statewide distribution. We have a great online form for easy registering and tracking recruits from our substack platform. The ‘swag’ includes a QR code for immediate voter registration.

We have volunteers and vendors at the ready, but we need your financial support.  We developed a budget for the materials and are asking for any support that you may be able to give so we can order these immediately and have them ready for distribution.  Based on how much we can raise in the immediate term, we will strategically order the resource we think will make the most impact for distribution.  Timing is of the essence.

We just got an email from Boone County Dems that they are ready to distribute at some key events and are spreading the word.

We are also in discussions with several campaign representatives in flippable districts who are excited to participate. Additionally, because of Dona’s extensive connections with Indiana schools, teachers and students from several of the high schools in the targeted districts have indicated their willingness to get to work on our campaign, including talking about voter registration in the morning announcements.  We have the organization, volunteers, tools and enthusiasm needed to make this campaign a big success. Now, we need the funding to put our plan into action and maximize the impact over the next 60 days.

If you can help, please reply to Deborah Asberry <debbie@debbieasberry.com>and let us know the amount that you are able to donate so we can monitor the progress.  If you know of another person who would be interested in helping us in this endeavor, please forward this information to them, but let us know whom you reached out to.  No amount is too small.  We trust we can immediately raise enough to get us started in printing and distributing.

Let’s do this!  Thank you in advance.

Debbie Asberry, Rachel Thelin, Babara Burke, & Dona Sapp

Yours in democracy,

Debbie, Rachel and Barbara

https://hoosiersfordemocracy.substack.com

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