Before the start of the season

I’m home again. I went to a handbell event, this one on Mackinac Island.

I’ll first describe the setting. Mackinac Island (French spelling) is near to the bridge that connects the two peninsulas of Michigan. To get to the island one must take the ferry from Mackinaw City (English spelling) on the Lower Peninsula or St. Ignace from the Upper Peninsula. Mackinac Island has a fort that controlled the straits (the connection between lakes Michigan and Huron. The island was designated the second national park (after Yellowstone) but was later demoted to a state park. Though much of the island is protected park land, there is a little downtown area, lots of cottages, a second home for the state governor, and several hotels to serve a thriving tourist industry. An important aspect fuels that tourism: cars (motorized vehicles in general) are banned from the island. All transportation is done by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriages and wagons.

Here is a picture of that bridge, taken from a spot a bit west of the hotel. The total length of the bridge is about five miles.

Grand Hotel was the site of our event. That also deserves a description. This is a huge hotel (almost 400 rooms) that sits on the hill above the town. It originally opened in 1887 so that railroad and steamship companies would have an upscale place to take (second generation) rich passengers. I took a tour with the hotel’s historian who also described what it takes to run such a place. Their season is May 1 to November 1. During the winter they even shut off the heat. During the summer they have 800-1200 guests a day. That means they serve 3,000 to 5,000 meals a day to guests and staff. Much of the food for the day leaves Eastern Market in Detroit at 2:00 am. The truck may be put on a barge to get to the island, but it can’t drive off that barge – all that food is transferred to horse-drawn wagons to get it up the hill. The tour concluded with a glimpse of the huge kitchen.

I said the season begins May 1 and the calendar still says April as I write this. Yes, we were there before the official start of the season. That means I got my room for about 40% of the expensive high season rate. We were their first guests of the season, so some things were not quite ready – the main entrance was being repaired, so the red carpet was still rolled up nearby, awnings for the porch were still in the main parlor, parts of the facade was being painted, so our view was interrupted by a couple cranes. Their famous geraniums (all bath products are geranium-scented) had not yet been planted in their boxes across the front (during breakfast we watched the dirt-filled boxed being installed in their frames). The swimming pool still had snow in it. The main dining room didn’t open for dinner until our second evening, so we needed to go down the hill to one of three open restaurants. But if you didn’t call the taxi office by 5:00 there was no way to get a horse-drawn taxi to take you down the hill. A lot of horses were still in their winter homes off-island. Many of the shops were still closed, though a few of the fudge shops were open.

Yes, Grand Hotel was the setting of the 1979 movie Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jayne Seymour. Reeve’s character is fascinated by Grand Hotel and does a bit of time traveling back to 1912, where he falls in love with Seymour’s character. He is transported back to the modern era when he finds a modern penny in his pocket. I thought about that as I looked around the hotel and my room – computers at check-in, electronic thermostats, hair dryers, single piece tub inserts, modern phones, giant modern photos in the halls, and (gasp!) wall mounted televisions. Grand Hotel in 1979 (when TVs were banned) might be close enough to 1912 for the time travel trick to work, but Grand Hotel in 2018 is not.

The event organizers had arranged with one of the two ferry companies to sort out which luggage goes to our rooms and which is bells and equipment to go to our event site. Things mostly went smoothly. Even the ferry company had just started its season the day before I went. The ferry company offered a new offsite parking lot this year. Instead of paying $25 a day at the pier one could pay $5 a day about a half-mile away and use their shuttle service. Since it was new their ticket office hadn’t yet figured out how to describe how to get there, didn’t yet have maps, and didn’t yet have signs. One agent gave directions and I couldn’t find it. I went back and got directions from another agent. The second set, while better than the first, was also inaccurate.

The hotel offers a continental breakfast, full of sugar and carbs, and not suitable for my diet. I mentioned this at check-in and was told I could talk to a server. So for three mornings I had a generous plate of ham and cheese for my breakfast.

The event is what we call a bell festival. All or part of 28 bell choirs, about 270 people with bells, equipment, and tables, filled the hotel’s theater. Our invited conductor rehearsed five pieces with us Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, getting all of us to play together and do so musically. In the afternoon we performed our concert to whatever crowd (maybe 150) who could squeeze in along one side. Our director is good at this kind of event and the concert came off quite well. That many bells together is a glorious sound. Also part of the concert was a husband-wife team who played a couple pieces for just eight bells, holding two bells in each hand. They had done an hour-long concert Friday night.

Friday evening was our first dinner. Grand Hotel has a dress code for the evening, though it wasn’t yet enforced. I had taken my sport jacket, so wore it with a tie. The dining room is elegant and the waitstaff is in full dress. I was impressed when a steady parade of waiters came out the kitchen door so each table could be served each course at about the same time.

On the way home I had lunch with Barb, a second-cousin, and her husband. Her grandfather and my grandfather were brothers. It has been a long time since I’ve seen her at a family reunion and since our parents are gone such reunions are much less likely. I shared a chart from my genealogy database showing our joint ancestry. She shared photos of family reunions, one from the 1990s and one from the 1950s. For photos of the later reunion I helped identify my side of the family, she identified hers. For the earlier photos we had to rely on names written on the back. I was surprised Barb had photos where the names were in my mother’s handwriting. I’m sure that was from a time when my mother sat down with her mother-in-law and a stack of photos and asked for the name that went with each face.

The most impressive photo Barb shared was from 1918. It showed both grandfathers with a third brother in their military uniforms posing for a professional photographer. We’re pretty sure the photo was taken after the war because the third brother joined the Army about four weeks before the Armistice and was honorably discharged four weeks after that. I’ll share that one with family after Barb is able to scan it.

Two scientists with a cure

The talk around abortion can get really weird. Jim Bakker, one of the early TV evangelists who has spent time in jail, said:

The thing we have done in America, we have killed our babies. We have killed the future of America. I told you the other day about a story, someone said they asked God, “Why haven’t we had a cure for cancer?” And He said back, “I gave you two scientists that had the cure and both of them were aborted.”

I’ve heard similar arguments before. My reply is:

God sent two scientists who had the cure, but both of them were black and didn’t get the education they needed in public schools.

Readers of the blog Joe.My.God supply more responses.

… they were homeschooled by fundamentalist parents who don’t believe in science.

… they were gay bashed.

… they were incarcerated for pot possession.

… they were shot by police for holding a cell phone.

… their research wasn’t funded because of anti-choice groups on the grant review boards.

… they were deported for being black Muslim lesbians.

… they were gunned down in a classroom before they turned 18.

… they got cancer in their youth, which would have inspired them, but they didn’t have health insurance and died.

… they enlisted in the Army to escape poverty, were sent overseas to protect America’s oil interests, and killed by an IED.

… they were in the womb of the mistress of a pro-life, pro-family married Republican and were aborted before the hush money could clear the bank.

… they were born as girls in the Arab world and didn’t get an education.

I’ll add one more:

… they were women who couldn’t get contraceptives, got pregnant, and to keep on the job went for an abortion, but it was illegal and botched, and they died.

Oh look

A little extra excitement at rehearsal this evening.

I think I’ve mentioned a time or two (or three) that I lead the handbell choir at my church and perform with a semi-professional (meaning we don’t get paid) handbell ensemble. I’ve been playing bells since middle school and have had a lot of great experiences around bells.

Our rehearsal area at the church is in the basement, about a half-floor below ground. Four of us were working on bell quartet music. One looked out the windows and said, “Oh look, a fire truck.” Though we hadn’t seen fire trucks in the church parking lot, there is a firehouse directly across the street.

A moment later, “Look, another fire truck.” A few moments after that the lights went out. That was disappointing because we had canceled last week’s rehearsal because the church had lost power in an ice storm (this is Michigan and ice storms happen in April).

One of the other ringers, who is an employee at the church, used her cell phone as a flashlight. She saw some boy scouts at the other end of the basement heading up the stairs. We did too and were told it might be a good idea to gather coats and evacuate. So we did, joining the boy scouts in the parking lot.

Once outside we could smell smoke and burned plastic. A light fixture was smoldering. This is a fixture high on the outside wall. A bird had built a nest in the fixture and it caught on fire from the heat of the bulb. The lights went out because the fire department shut off the power. They didn’t want to spray water on live wires.

Soon the fire guys got out a hose and sprayed water on the fixture. A few minutes later another guy used his infrared sensor to verify it was out. He then went inside to verify that wires in the wall hadn’t caught fire.

As the firemen packed up the property manager came over to say the power was going to be left off overnight. We wouldn’t be able to resume rehearsal. So we went home.

We don’t do coups

Lately when I’ve written about the latest nasty thing our government is doing I’ve been trying to carefully say “the GOP and its backers” or something similar. I try to get across that these financial backers are a large part of what is driving the meanness in the GOP.

The March-April issue of The Hightower Lowdown by Jim Hightower fills in the details, or at least as many details as he can in five pages. I’m not linking directly to the article because a subscription to the print edition of the Lowdown doesn’t also let me see the online articles.

This issue is a continuation of what he wrote about in February (and I discussed here) about how the Koch brothers are diligent in their dismantling of democracy. Some of the response Hightower got from that issue is, “This is America. We don’t do coups.”

So Hightower relates the tale of a coup attempt against FDR. Wall Street Bankers were upset that in 1933 Roosevelt raised taxes on them to pay for programs to assist the poor. They hired a general to lead an army of disaffected veterans from WWI to march on Washington. But instead of rallying the troops the general took his evidence to Congress, and they investigated. Though Congress issued a report confirming what the general claimed, bankers denounced him and the whole thing was omitted from history books.

But, Hightower says, the coup (way past an attempt) by the Koch brothers is much different. They have been patient – they’ve been working on this for 40 years. A lot of their early moves were quiet with a variety of names behind them. This effort is vast. And they didn’t fire a shot – instead they bought the GOP. That wasn’t a stretch for them. The combined wealth of David and Charles Koch is $122 billion.

Their goal is simple. Property – both existing wealth and the means to get it – is sacrosanct and cannot be restricted by a majority. Put in terms of ranking, their property is more important than you. That means We the People can neither tax the rich nor set rules they must follow, rules such as how to treat workers, consumers, the environment, and society as a whole. This goal is definitely an attack on democracy.

Alas, their arrogance has been amazingly and frighteningly successful.

Towards the big goal the Koch brothers and their rich allies have interim goals: eliminate limits on political spending, suppress voting rights, kill off labor unions, eliminate the right to sue corporations, rip up the social safety net, eliminate regulations, use state laws to prevent undesirable local laws, gerrymander, and pack courts. Which is pretty much everything we’ve been seeing the GOP do over the last few decades.

The Koch brothers have been accomplishing this with a wide array of foundations, think tanks, PACs, and various other ways to funnel cash and misdirect us from the source. They fund the Tea Party and similar groups. They have been donating to higher education with strings attached to push teachings of corporate conservatism. They’ve prompted high school classes, such as “Ethics, Economy, and Entrepreneurship” now being taught in Arizona (one guess to what their ethics are like). The National Federation of Independent Businesses, supposedly to help the little guys, has been subverted to help the big ones. They fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that creates model bills to be passed by controlled state legislatures. They get their names on museums to convince us they aren’t the bad guys. They fund advocacy groups such as the NRA and climate deniers. They became top sponsors of the PBS science show *Nova*. They fund and push court challenges to inconvenient laws. Their reach is vast. Hightower calls it the Kochtopus.

I’ve heard some laments if only Hillary Clinton were president! I’m now convinced that her presidency would have been stymied at least as Obama’s was and the GOP would have taken up its push to end democracy after her four or eight years. She could have only delayed what the Koch brothers are doing.

Legislation by ambush

I spent the middle of my day today in training for being a presenter for the Voters Not Politicians campaign to end gerrymandering in Michigan. I was a presenter while signatures were gathered last fall. Now we’re gearing up for the election so the emphasis is a bit different, some slides in the presentation improved, others discarded. I need to come up with a brief non-partisan introduction of myself, saying why I volunteered. So, the presenter team is ready to go. If you’re in Michigan, please invite us to one of your events or meetings.

In other gerrymandering news…

I’ve written about the case in Pennsylvania where the state Supreme Court declared the maps to be unconstitutional. Since the GOP refused to redraw the maps the Court hired a consultant to do it. These maps will be used for the elections in 2018 and 2020.

But the GOP isn’t done in PA.

A bill had been introduced to amend the state constitution to create an independent redistricting commission, similar to what we are working towards in Michigan. There was a bipartisan majority in the state House that supported it, but (as we would expect) the GOP leadership blocked it from getting a vote.

The next move was legislation by ambush. That bill was pulled apart and replaced with one that allows the majority party to name a majority of the commission’s members. In addition, the governor would not be allowed to veto the maps (the current governor is Dem). It was voted on without debate. This punctured the reform effort.

To actually become part of the constitution this bill will have to be approved by the legislature again after the 2018 election, then go before voters.

On to North Carolina. The US Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling saying that 28 of the state’s 170 legislative districts had violated the Constitution by diminishing the power of black votes. This is one problem with hoping for the courts to fix bad maps – these were maps drawn in 2011 and the maps are only being redrawn now.

And another problem with the court solution is that the GOP got to redraw the maps. And while they fixed the racial problems they used the chance (otherwise not available until after 2020) to strengthen the GOP advantage in other districts. The Democrats filed a challenge. The state court judges said we agree with you, but the next election is already underway.

Torment forever or mercy forever?

There’s a new movie, Come Sunday, on Netflix about Evangelical bishop Carlton Pearson. I haven’t seen it and don’t have a subscription to Netflix. But Pearson was on Sunday’s All Things Considered and the movie’s creators were on The 1A, both on NPR. A few things caught my interest.

Pearson is a fourth-generation preacher. He led a church in Tulsa, OK with attendance near 5,000. A Big Deal. But he got stuck on a central piece of the Evangelical message: the reason for believing was to avoid damnation and hell. He thought this message was wrong. Hadn’t Jesus already died for the sins of the world? Isn’t it better to invite people into to church by saying they’re already safe with God? Invite them in with love instead of fear.

That change in direction is the subject of the movie. It includes the reactions of the associate pastors, Pearson’s mentor, the choir director, and the congregation. Later, Pearson is declared a heretic.

Henry, one of the associates, asks Pearson what if you’re wrong? What if there really is a hell and we are responsible for sending people there?

In the All Things Considered interview Pearson answers that question.

We are dealing with at least 2,000 years of entrenched indoctrination - at least 2,000 with Christianity, 6,000 if you include Judaism. The concept, though, of a God who has terrible anger-management problems - freaks out with these tantrums, and throws earthquakes, and volcanoes, and tsunamis, and cancer and AIDS on people is a very frightening presupposition.

It worried me for years - not the love of God, not the cross of calvary, but that eternal torment, not just punishment that you eternally, while mercy endures forever - we love to quote that scripture. His mercy endures forever. How can mercy endure forever and torment endure forever? One would cancel out the other. And I believe that I'm actually trying to correct the thinking of my people - God's people, the Christian church, Judeo-Christian ethics - change our belief about a God who is angry and who we need Jesus to protect us from. Now, that's radical. It's revolutionary, and it's evolutionary.

In the 1A discussion (I don’t have a transcript to quote) we hear about Reggie the choir director who is gay. Those discussing the movie appreciate that Pearson struggles against the teaching that because Reggie is gay he is going to hell. This is another place where Pearson’s understanding conflicts with the denomination’s leadership.

I’ll add just a bit more. All that teaching about hell and inviting members through fear is a sign of ranking. The leadership tells the members do what I say to avoid eternal punishment. It is spiritual violence – we control your access to heaven. It is that constant threat that keeps the members attempting to be obedient. What Pearson offered broke that fear, broke the hierarchy, and a life without ranking.

A tax cut I neither need nor want

Those browser tabs have accumulated again.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville points to an important finding of a recent Washington Post poll about voter opinions. Among white voters their preference for the GOP over the Dems has gone up five points since January. The margin is now 14%. Wrote McEwan: “White people are eating up Republicans' white supremacy.”



McEwan has an observation about all that data Cambridge Analytica and similar companies have scooped up. It’s a trove of information on people’s vulnerabilities that can be used to extort of turn them.

Anyone who's ever used Facebook messenger to have an affair. Anyone who's got a secret Facebook page to flirt. Anyone who gossips with work colleagues about the boss. Anyone who disclosed anything on Facebook, to what they thought was a closed audience, that could be used against them with their employer, including sexuality, beliefs, illnesses. Anyone who uses Facebook to catfish, or has been embarrassingly catfished, or who has used messenger to talk to a dealer, or arrange any kind of nefarious or criminal activity.

Personal shameful (or stigmatized) behavior has always been used to cultivate or turn assets, and now the record of many people's personal shameful (or stigmatized) behavior is in the hands of any bad actor who pays for it.

I had to look up that bit of internet slang. Being catfished means being lured into a relationship through a fictional online persona.



Love those activist Florida kids. This batch appear to be from Gainesville rather than Parkland. Eight students, ages 10-19 sued the State of Florida over failing to keep them safe from the impacts of global warming. The students are teaming up with Our Children’s Trust out of Oregon.



Billionaire Seth Klarman gave more than $7 million to the GOP during the Obama years. But now Klarman says:

The Republicans in Congress have failed to hold the president accountable and have abandoned their historic beliefs and values. For the good of the country, the Democrats must take back one or both houses of Congress. … I received a tax cut I neither need nor want. I’m choosing to invest it to fight the administration’s flawed policies and to elect Democrats to the Senate and House of Representatives

McEwan included in a post a brief video showing the reach of the damage of a nuclear bomb going off over the White House. And who tweeted the video? Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik. This is not normal.



I had written recently about the fondness the Evangelical church has for the nasty guy. There’s a flip side to that story. Those of Millennial age and younger are leaving the Evangelical church in droves. Part of it is the support for the nasty guy. The rest is that the youth don’t like the positions their elders have taken on same-sex marriage, treatment of women, abortion, climate change, evolution, and more. There are also the sex scandals the leaders seem to routinely get into. There are now online movements #exvangelicals and #emptythepews to help those people who leave the denomination.

Best friends forever

When I began to work out my understanding of ranking I concluded that many conservative churches were preaching hierarchy (with their men on top) rather than preaching love. My opinion was based on their awful treatment of women and LGBT people (who subvert the hierarchy). They are great supporters of the patriarchy.

I had also come to understand they support the nasty guy because he also is a strong supporter of the patriarchy. This seems backwards because the nasty guy, with his multiple marriages while constantly cheating of his wives, appears to flout the morality and family values the church people claim to prize.

Daily Kos member Dartagnan quotes and comments on an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Rodney Hessinger, history professor, and Kristen Tobey, professor of religion and social science at John Carroll University. They all agree with me.

The professors note that Southern antebellum families were big on authoritarianism, which showed in their slave ownership. So to win over these men evangelicals emphasized the patriarchy in their message. They became a predominant religion in America.

Dartagnan notes the evangelicals push the perception they are “‘outcasts’ standing bravely against the evil forces of the world.” It creates “a group persecution complex that solidifies their community.”

In the nasty guy they see common cause – he is also an “outcast” and his abusive attitudes towards women match the patriarchy of the church.

Chronic illness is better for business

I had reported that the nasty guy and the GOP were working out ways to undo the Democratic gains in the last federal spending bill. One route is to ask Congress to vote on a list of freezes. Even though only a simple majority is needed, two senators, Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska, said no. They and the rest of the GOP struggled to get a deal and don’t want to go back on votes that benefit their constituents. They also know if they blow up Dem projects they’ll get no help on the budget deal due in October. And for that one they can’t squeeze by on a simple majority. Or want a shutdown fight just before the election.

Even so, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is proceeding with creating a list of budget items to be rolled back. He’ll have it ready for Congress by the end of the month.

Perhaps he’s preparing for the alternate option – just don’t spend the money.



The people working in gene therapy are looking for “one shot cures” that will get patients back to health. But Salveen Richter of Goldman Sachs wrote to gene therapy companies:

The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies. While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

Translation: Controlling a chronic illness is better for business than a cure.

An example of that is HIV. It can now be controlled with medication, but can’t be cured. Will a cure be suppressed because it kills off a long-term revenue stream?



Melissa McEwan of Shakesville took a look at the nasty guy’s bragging tweets in the leadup to bombings in Syria. He had said:

Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!”

Some will see this as standing up to Putin. Finally! McEwan and others see it differently, as in: here’s a “friendly” warning so that you have time to get your assets out of the way. Always looking out for the interests of Russia.



Then McEwan looks at that pardon of Scooter Libby. He’s the only guy in the Bush II administration that was actually held accountable. A nice gift from one prez with contempt for the law to another. It is also a signal to those under investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Fall on your swords to protect me and I’ll pardon you. Yeah, that’s obstruction of justice, but done in a way hard to prove.

What does freedom have to do with democracy?

Yesterday I saw two more films in the Freep Film Festival of documentaries. One in the afternoon in Royal Oak, the other in Midtown Detroit in the evening.

The first was Freedom for the Wolf. Early in the film they finish off the phrase: Freedom for the wolf means death for the sheep. It is actually an old phrase – as in Ancient Rome old. The film looks at five countries around the world with illiberal democracy, where there is only the appearance of democracy. They have elections, but…

We first visit Hong Kong. Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1999. At the time Hong Kong was promised free and fair elections. But Beijing screened the slate of candidates. The locals said that’s not democracy. In 2014 the protests became the Umbrella Movement. The name came from the umbrellas used to shield protesters from police pepper spray and became a symbol of the movement. The protesters soon occupied the downtown area, living in tents.

In the film we see some of the encampments and scuffles with police. We also hear some voices from those who support the Chinese government and from the protesters. The government was able to turn public opinion against the protesters by recruiting workers who couldn’t get to their jobs because the downtown area was barricaded. Also recruited were taxi drivers who lost income when they couldn’t take riders to downtown. Faced with counter protests (some with people brought in from the mainland) the movement crumbled.

Some government arguments are familiar to me: We must maintain order. To me that is a government saying we must maintain order – with us remaining in control. That order, that ranking, is paramount. Another government argument is new to me: Why would you want to jeopardize your economy, your income, your wealth, your way of life? You have all these things! Why does it matter who is in power? You are still well-off. Don’t screw it up.

In contrast to Soviet Communism, modern authoritarian regimes, such as China, have pretty good economic wealth along with their tyrannical rule.

An online search brought up a couple websites that can provide some background. Here’s a news article that includes a timeline and the Wikipedia entry.

On to Tunisia. The Arab Spring spark was lit here in 2011. Protesters toppled the dictator. But it hasn’t gone smoothly since. Yes, there are elections. But Muslim conservatives seem to have outsize control of who is on the ballot – we can’t have him, he blasphemed Allah! This influence also prompts the government to temper their reforms.

The film explained the dilemma. Though the dictator was gone, the laws and security apparatus were still in place. It takes time to dismantle the bad things and create and nurture democratic institutions. Democracy is messy, uncertain, and slow. After a while citizens want a solution and certainty now. Add into that societal elements who like and gain from the previous laws. Because of all this uncertainty Tunisia is the source of the most recruits to ISIS.

The third stop on this world tour is India. The BJP, the Hindu nationalist party, took control of the government in 1998 and held it until 2004. They’ve led it again since 2014.

One might think with Hindus at 80% of the population they wouldn’t need to pull rank on other groups, in particular Muslims and Christians. But pulling rank – insisting that India is for Hindus and their religion is superior to all others – is what the BJP is all about. Whenever anyone does that some pretty absurd claims come out. We heard one speaker say that the Hindu religion is older than Christianity and Islam (likely true), so that the religion in pre-Christian Rome was Hindu! Um, Zeus (or maybe Jupiter) may have something to say about that.

Non-Hindus are pushed into the slums in the major cities where the government services, such as law enforcement and assistance for the poor, tend to disappear. The locals tend to develop their own governments, which frequently are made up of Godfather type characters.

One of the BJP supporters really annoyed me after a while. His soundbites were usually such things as we can’t be racist. See, the non-Hindus have freedom, they can do what they want. I wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth. I’ve heard a constant stream of this nonsense out of a lot of conservatives, how they don’t acknowledge the policies they enact make it very difficult for minorities to escape the slum.

The film showed how the BJP provoked the minorities to riot. They would do this a few months before an election. The police would crack down and the party would have a great campaign issue for that upcoming election.

Then to Japan. I’m already aware that Japan has a strict hierarchy and values conformity. This film repeated the phrase, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” However, this particular story was the weakest of the bunch. Japan has had a longstanding law against dancing. It was originally passed because dancing led to other inappropriate behaviors. A night club (likely one of several) promoted dancing anyway. The cops raided the place and intimidated the clientele. The situation ended with some official stating the police had acted inappropriately.

Finally to America. At the start of the film I (and probably lots of others) wondered if our own country would be included. It was.

The story started in Baltimore with the Freddy Gray incident and the general police violence against black men. Then we went to Ferguson. The story continued in Dearborn, which has a large Muslim population, as the country prepared for the nasty guy’s inauguration and the protests around it.

The main point of this section was about the definition of freedom. In recent polling (which I guess was about 18 months ago) people were asked what the word “freedom” means to them. Rarely did people connect it to democracy. For a lot of people it means to have and to experience what I want. As long as I’m satisfied I’m not particularly worried what happens to anyone else. This circles around to the Hong Kong story – as long as you have economic wealth and stability, why worry about who is in control? Never mind that so many of my fellow citizens are frozen out of that economic wealth.

The results of the poll did not get into the idea that for many people freedom means being free to act on their bigotries. I suspect that would not be something people would admit to.

This segment on Tunisia got me thinking about America and what comes after the nasty guy. How quickly will we be able to recover? Will we be able to have a process to hold his loyalists accountable or remove them from power? Will we be able to go through laws and perhaps also the Constitution and cleanse them all of the forces that brought the nasty guy to power (similar to what happened in Germany after WWII)? Will we be able to retire all the conservative judges he appointed?

The second film of the day was Last Days of Chinatown. The title will need a bit of explanation because the film is about the history of the Cass Corridor in Detroit. I saw it, appropriately, at Wayne State University, which is at the north end of the Corridor.

Woodward Ave. is the main street of Detroit. It runs from the riverfront north-northwest to Pontiac. To the west is Cass Ave. Then Second, Third, and sometimes Fourth before getting to the Lodge Freeway. These streets, from downtown to the WSU Campus is the Cass Corridor. It is less than two miles long and maybe a half-mile wide.

I moved to the Detroit area in 1978 and to the western suburbs in 1979. I started attending a church there in 1980s. Over the next couple decades on two or three Saturdays a year this church would take lunch to the Cass Community United Methodist Church in the middle of the Corridor. We might serve as many as 200 meals. Yeah, at that time this was the roughest area of Detroit. Yet, the sanctuary of the Cass church showed the area had a rich past – the stained glass windows were by Tiffany.

We stopped serving lunches at the church only because Cass Community Social Services opened a big facility a few miles north and we served lunches there. CCSS does marvelous work, and worth supporting.

In the 1950s this was a white neighborhood. A nearby Skid Row was demolished as a way to clean it up. At the same time a Chinatown was also demolished. The Chinese were told money was coming so they would relocate, but that money never actually appeared. So the people of both Skid Row and Chinatown moved into the Cass Corridor. For a while this was the most diverse neighborhood in the city. White flight turned the neighborhood (and the whole city) black. The crack cocaine epidemic pretty much emptied it out. The buildings became blighted. Cass Corridor was a symbol of the worst of Detroit.

The revival began when Dan Gilbert, head of Quicken Loans, moved his company downtown. His young employees wanted to live nearby (and I think I heard he subsidized their housing when they did). Gilbert owns a great deal of downtown and his businesses have made him worth at least a billion. Then Mike Illitch, also a billionaire, started buying property at the south end of the Corridor. He has now built Little Caesar’s Arena there (with a hefty chunk of city and state money).

For a while some residents thought all this development would be a good thing. Then they realized what was happening. The LCA is a playground for the rich. The poor need not apply. The Illich family has big plans for the Corridor. New neighborhood designations. Luxury lofts. Upscale businesses. Walkable streets. We’ll even rebrand it as “Midtown” and erase the Cass Corridor name to avoid its association with poverty, but also erase its rich history.

And the poor? Those who have lived in the Corridor for years, call it home, and can’t afford to move? Those who are elderly? Those who are homeless and live in shelters? Hmph. Well, you’re not going to live here.

The film shows us a few of the evicted people. They were given an apartment – it looked like it didn’t come with furniture. They were a long way from what they knew and no way to get around, even in their new neighborhood or to a job they might have. Uprooted and cast aside.

Yes, the Cass Corridor was full of poverty. Yes, the buildings were dilapidated and the whole area desperately needed help and renewal. But this was home to many people. And they weren’t consulted about their home or their future. Just pushed out.

The value of art

The Freep Film Festival is happening. For those not from around here, “Freep” is the nickname of the Detroit Free Press, the more progressive of the two local newspapers. For the last few years the newspaper has sponsored a festival of documentary films with a variety of related events. The first couple years all the films had something to do with Detroit or Michigan. Starting last year they dropped that requirement, though many of the films do focus on the area. Out of the more than 50 films (I didn’t count), I may see three – one this afternoon, two tomorrow.

Today’s film was Beauty and Ruin. It’s about how the Detroit Institute of Arts got caught up on Detroit’s bankruptcy four years ago. It is fitting I saw the film at the DIA, in their lecture hall.

The film includes a history of the DIA. Back in the late 19th Century there were 100 art museums opened across America in the span of maybe 25 years. And all these art museums needed art. Detroit, a very rich city at the time, built a museum, outgrew it within 45 years, and built another. The museum in Detroit was a bit different than in other cities – it was owned by the city, not an independent non-profit foundation. City money bought some of the art. In the boom years that didn’t matter. In the bust years …

One of the people in this story said it is not possible to accurately talk about Detroit without talking about racism. Black people came North for jobs and many got work in the auto plants. But the oppression they knew in the South continued here. There were race riots in 1947 and again in 1967. Detroit hit its peak population in 1950 (1.8 million). Since then 95% of the white population has fled to the suburbs. The population is now above 600,000, a bit over a third of what it had been.

And when whites fled, they took their middle class tax dollars with them. Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s the city was able to muddle through. But the auto industry hit a downturn well before the big financial crisis that brought on the Great Recession in 2007. Detroit was his especially hard with foreclosures. And, in a highly irresponsible move, the city government started borrowing money to pay basic expenses. And those loans likely had some shady elements.

So Detroit was assigned an Emergency Manager by the state, usurping all local elected officials. He uncovered the size of the debt and initiated the largest municipal bankruptcy. He looked over the city’s assets – ah, an art museum, with lots of famous art. I’m sure we could tap that resource for a few million bucks.

And so the tussle began. On one side Graham Beal, head of the museum, talked about the value of art, both in dollar amounts (the city forced the museum to get everything appraised), what it means to have such art available to all of the citizens, and the role the museum plays in attracting talent to the city. If the art were sold it wouldn’t go to another museum, it would be snatched up by a Chinese or Russian oligarch, whose wealth would make such a purchase seem like a pittance, and the art would disappear into a private collection.

On the other side were the city pensioners, those who had worked for the city for 30-40 years and faced getting their pensions and health care drastically cut. What’s more important, a Picasso or actual people? We heard the pensioners tell their story, sat in on some of their meetings, and saw their protests.

One of the talking heads revealed it was a manipulated and false choice. If the DIA – the building and all the art in it – was sold all of the money would have gone to creditors and the pensioners would have still taken the same hit. The choice that was not presented was between the pensioners, who were mostly black and highly dependent on this money, and the creditors who were already rich.

Finally, a Grand Bargain was worked out. The city’s philanthropic organizations chipped in $50 million and the DIA was put in private hands. With that on the table the state, usually quite willing to let the city sink on its own, chipped in an equal amount. Then the pensioners were told we’re going to chop your pension and health care by this huge amount. You can vote no, but if you do your final settlement will be less (and we get to portray you as the group that scuttled the deal to save the art). They grumbled, but approved it. Even the most vocal creditor approved it (we saw him on camera too). So the DIA was saved and Detroit completed bankruptcy. And now the city, at least the cultural core, is doing pretty good.

Afterward we met the filmmaker, Marc de Guerre. He said he started the project as a history of the DIA, the largest of those museums started in the late 19th Century. Then the bankruptcy happened and the DIA got drawn into it. So he felt he had to change the focus of his story.

The audience was able to ask questions and share comments. One of the pensioners spoke. They’re still not doing well. Their income has been slashed. They can’t afford health insurance. And after the Grand Bargain was done the world forgot about them. Want another documentary subject? Here you go.

The DIA is open late on Friday evenings. So after the film I went over to the painting featured in the film as the most expensive piece in the museum, The Wedding Dance by Bruegels the Elder.

Does he encourage violence?

The last time I was in a bookstore, about a month ago, there was a prominent display of a new book, How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. I thought of buying it, but I thought it would be, because of its accuracy to what the nasty guy is doing, too depressing. Perhaps I’ll feel differently next time.

Mark Sumner, writing for Daily Kos, examines one idea from the Levitsky and Ziblatt book – four signs a candidate is likely to be authoritarian.

* Does the candidate appear to reject the democratic rules of the game?

* Does he deny the legitimacy of his opponent?

* Does he tolerate or encourage violence?

* Does he express willingness to curtail civil liberties of his opponents and the media?

Richard Nixon is the only candidate in the last century who showed any of these four signs. The nasty guy has shown all four.

Sumner adds the nasty guy didn’t wrap himself in a cloak of democracy which he threw off after the inauguration. His campaign, from the start, showed all four signs.

And for enough people that was the attraction.

The rest of Sumner’s post is about the GOP reaction to the nasty guy’s talk of firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller – more accurately the GOP lack of reaction. Yeah, they talk, some of them. But they aren’t saying, “If you fire Mueller, we’ll do …” They certainly aren’t saying they’ll open impeachment hearings. So there won’t be any consequences. And the GOP will be glad the investigation is over and the nasty guy is still in office.

Yes, the Constitution has a system of checks and balances. But, says Sumner:

What the Constitution didn’t plan for was a 40-year siege a long-term plan to make competent government into the enemy, remove all constraints of tradition or bylaw, and replace representatives of regional citizens with an ALEC-ized monopoly, all marching to the same script.

Brian Dickerson, opinion columnist for the Detroit Free Press, wrote about the different ways the US Constitution can be changed. The only one used so far is an amendment passed by 2/3 of each chamber of Congress and ratified by ¾ of the states. There are several amendment efforts underway, such as requiring Congress to balance the federal budget. There are as many horrible ideas trying to get into the Constitution as there are good ideas.

Another route is a Constitution Convention. Quite a few states have called for one. But there are a couple dangers. First, delegates may be sent to the Convention with specific instructions, but it is likely they’ll ignore instructions once the process is started. Second, with so many GOP controlled legislatures the chances for a GOP controlled outcome (abortion and same-sex marriage bans) are way too high.

Even so, Dickerson sees a big hole in our Constitution. He pulls an idea from The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution by Ganash Sitaraman, law professor of Vanderbilt University. Those who wrote the Constitution were pretty good with the checks and balances – with the assumption citizens were relatively equal economically. But they “neglected to provide ‘constitutional structures to manage the clash between the wealthy and everyone else.’ … Campaign contributions, well-financed lobbying efforts, and collusion between regulated industries and the government employees who regulate them have tipped the scales in favor of the wealthy minority.” In another essay Sitaraman wrote, “The fundamental problem is that our constitutional system might not survive in an unequal economy.”

Sweet and secret financial rescue

Judd Legum on Twitter summarizes an article from Think Progress. Jared Kushner, the nasty guy’s son-in-law who works in the White House but can’t get security clearance, owns an office building in Manhattan. He supposedly “divested” it when he started working at the WH, but not really. The building is outdated, has a high vacancy rate, it is bleeding money, and a $1.2 billion mortgage comes due in 10 months. He bought it just before the Great Recession. The Chinese, Qataris, and a few others have refused to rescue Kushner’s investment. But somebody has! No idea who.

Big question: Who wants to, and can, spend $1.2 billion on a bad investment to receive the thanks of the son-in-law of the nasty guy?



A big spending bill was passed last month. Since the GOP wanted to boost military spending Democrats were able to get a boost to all the agencies to help the poor and working class. The nasty guy signed it, grumbling about Democrats all the way.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports the nasty guy and the GOP are now working out how to undo all that spending that Dems bargained into the bill. They have a few options.

* The nasty guy could freeze spending on a budget line item. He can do that for 45 days in which Congress is working (which actually spreads it out over months).

* He could ask Congress to vote on these freezes. Those need only a majority to pass, no filibuster. But Republicans would have a hard time before voters if they vote for programs that help their constituents and then vote against them.

* Or he could simply not spend the money. He already has a record of doing that. And the GOP already has a record of ignoring him when he does it.



This is a curious dynamic…

Markos, the head of Daily Kos, explains: Among GOP voters the nasty guy’s approval rating is pretty steady at above 80%, currently at 88%. Yet the approval of the GOP Speaker of the House and GOP Majority Leader in the Senate has stayed pretty low. Both, according to GOP voters, are under 25%. How do Ryan and McConnell campaign to keep their jobs?

But if you’re a congressional Republican, with a demoralized and dejected base and nothing of substance to run on, what do you do? You can’t really talk about a tax law that has done nothing for rank-and-file voters. You can’t talk about repealing Obamacare, because oh yeah, that didn’t happen. You can’t talk about reining in deficits, because unified Republican control of Congress has now delivered trillion-dollar deficits through Trump’s entire term. You can’t even talk about competent governance, because every budget in the Trump era has needed Democratic votes to pass, hence giving the minority party outsized power!

The one thing they can run on: They put the nasty guy on the ballot by saying if you voters let Democrats take over Congress they’ll impeach the guy you love. Even though you hate Ryan and McConnell you had better vote for them.

So the one thing Dems are not campaigning on is impeachment. Why help the GOP base? With that out of the way there is a lot the Dems can campaign on – which is everything else.



Recently on the TV show Late Night with Seth Meyers political reporter McKay Coppins, who writes for The Atlantic, revealed that the nasty guy sometimes calls him and will say the next bit should be attributed to “a senior White House official.” And Coppins will print it.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville finds this alarming. That’s because the nasty guy is a compulsive liar. Which means Coppins and his fellow journalists are enabling those lies.

We’ve heard stories of the chronic chaos and incompetence in the White House with relentless leaking. Now consider that the leaks and stories of chaos are from the nasty guy. McEwan concludes:

We are vulnerable because we are being denied relevant information — namely that Donald Trump is feeding lies to the media who then report those lies as though they may be true.

We are vulnerable because we have an expectation of safety and security and normalcy, all of which Trump has undermined and continues to subvert with the assistance of the compliant cadre of stenographers who have abandoned all pretense of challenging power on behalf of the powerless.

We are vulnerable — and we are fucked. Because our president is a goddamned liar, and, instead of reporting that, the media endeavors to conceal it.

What could possibly go wrong?

This is supposed to be none of their business. The US Department of Homeland Security is looking for a contractor to help create a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top “media influencers.” Am I enough of a media influencer to be scooped up? Is that a good or bad thing? Forbes reacts: “What could possibly go wrong? A lot.” As in identifying what voices write about being the first step in censoring or shutting down voices somebody doesn’t like.



In the midst of the teacher protests in Oklahoma, Gov. Mary Fallon said the teachers were asking for too much as they demanded better pay and benefits, as well as schools in adequate repair with intact textbooks. Fallon grumbled that the teachers were like “a teenager wanting a better car.”

These teachers have, of course, been hearing a lot of sarcasm from actual teenagers during regular school days. So a couple days after Fallon’s comment the teachers, 36,000 of them, flooded the Capitol. For one of their chants they waved and jangled car keys and said, “Where’s my car?”



Enjoy statistics? The Washington Post with the Kaiser Family Foundation has the results of a recent poll about those who have been attending rallies. In the 1960s protesters tended to be students. Now they tend to be older, white, well educated, and wealthy (as in upper middle class). 20% of Americans attended a rally in the last two years. Among those attending rallies, 70% disapprove of the nasty guy, only 20% are GOP, and 83% of them are certain they will vote in November.

New and newish operas

I was at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor last night for an opera. The Kerrytown Concert House was an actual house and much of the first floor is now a concert venue seating maybe 90 people. The opera was As One, with two singers and a string quartet for accompaniment (all that would fit on the small stage). I thought at times the voices were a bit too big for the space, but that’s a minor quibble.

I think the piece could be described as a song cycle, not really an opera. There is a story and the singers were also marvelous actors (their faces were quite expressive), but not much of a plot. What prompted me to attend is that story – it is about a transgender woman and her transition. The libretto was written by Kimberly Reed, who is transgender, along with Mark Campbell. The music is by Laura Kaminsky.

The two singers are a baritone as Hannah before and a soprano as Hannah after. The expected way to do this would be for the baritone to sing about life before transition and the soprano to sing about afterward. Instead, both singers were onstage nearly all the time singing about two aspects of one person, the male body and the female mind.

The first part is about childhood. Hannah before (the pre-transition name is never used) had a paper route and would sometimes wear a blouse under the jacket. She was criticized in school because her penmanship was too feminine. Sex education was, of course, an embarrassment, though when the male teacher taught the boys about female anatomy Hannah was fascinated. She tried to be the perfect boy. She pretended to be constantly reading about the Transvaal to hide that she was reading about transgender, and what a relief to find there were others like her.

The second part is about being a young adult and going through transition. She is delighted when seen as a woman. When starting hormone treatments she thinks the physical changes aren’t happening fast enough, while the mental changes were hard to handle. She decides to not go home for Christmas and after the holiday she gets a Dear Son letter with thanks for the gifts. She spends Christmas day in a coffeeshop and has to figure out how to flirt. She escapes a violent assault – the soprano sang about the encounter as the baritone listed trans women who have been murdered.

The third part is one extended song almost all by the soprano. She spends time alone in a cabin in Norway and figures out how to make herself happy.

After the performance the singers, acting director, and music conductor talked about the show and took questions from the audience. The singers talked about a man and woman on stage together and they’re not playing lovers. Yet they had to be intimately involved to play two aspects of one person.



Last weekend I saw the articles in the newspaper about the live stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar being shown Easter Sunday evening. But when it was actually on I forgot to watch. So when I went to YouTube this evening to find something to listen to (an amazing number of classical music pieces available) I was pleased to see it listed as a recommendation for me (how’d they know?). And seeing it this way means I missed the commercials (and from the timings I missed 40 minutes of commercials).

What, you say? A classical music fan like me watching a rock opera? Well… yeah. The album came out when I was a teenager. My brothers brought it home and played it. It was widely discussed and shared in my church youth group. The college I attended showed a movie every Friday (usually a year or two after it was in theaters) and this was one of them. So it was a part of my youth.

John Legend and the gang did a pretty good job! Though I thought Alice Cooper as Herod was rather tame. He got the part because (the newspaper said) his portrayal was so menacing. I kept waiting for the menace to happen.

As I frequently do I looked at the story through the viewpoint of ranking. Jesus was working hard to eliminate ranking, as seen by his defense of Mary Magdalene. The Jewish and Roman leaders were working to maintain their high rank. Many of those following Jesus, especially Judas, were trying to flip the ranking with Jesus on top instead of the Romans. They were disappointed when Jesus didn’t do it. Jesus died because his message was too much of a challenge to those of high rank. And Judas got used. He was also disappointed, so helped those of higher rank maintain their position. He hoped that would boost his rank, but he was cast aside when his usefulness was done.

He was respectable. You’re not.

This morning I heard the last little bit of an interview of Mychal Denzel Smith on On The Media, a radio show heard on NPR. The segment was about how Martin Luther King Jr. is being subverted by modern culture. Smith has written an article in The Atlantic about other aspects that were discussed before I tuned him. I’ll start with the bit I did hear, which doesn’t appear to be in the magazine.

Back in 2013 I wrote about power and responding to it:

Charity that provides food, clothing, and shelter for the poor is good, but is of limited help. It does see an oppressed person through a period of difficulty. But there are two major drawbacks to charity.

* Charity cannot replace justice.

* Charity allows the giver to believe he or she has done enough, leaving the oppression in place.

Smith decried that Martin Luther King Day has become a day of service. The man who worked to dismantle oppression is honored with charity – which leaves the oppression in place.

I am disappointed that this day of service, this misuse of the great man’s legacy, was initiated by our black president. Alas, I didn’t catch this contradiction before now.

Now from Smith’s article:

Many people recognize King’s moral authority. But that can get misused.

King’s authority was crafted into representing the perfect black manhood. That’s something few can reach – and shouldn’t have to. Modern black men with sagging pants can’t match King’s black suit and white shirt. He was respectable. You’re not. He represented true black culture. Today’s black youth are seen as a perversion of that culture and thus can be dismissed.

If King’s philosophy, tactics, demeanor, and style are the standard, the people who fashion themselves as serious political thinkers have no reason to engage anyone who is not mimicking King. As such, they can limit the parameters of the debate to their sanitized, cuddly version of King’s politics. And without an infusion of differing viewpoints, the status quo is protected, and American institutions can continue their oppression unabated.

Dealt from a stacked deck

Back in December I wrote about mathematical ways to show district maps are gerrymandered. In that previous post I wrote about the Pennsylvania case, which was before the state Supreme Court. It showed the map created by the GOP in 2011 was highly gerrymandered.

Now Voters Not Politicians, the campaign to end gerrymandering in Michigan that I’m a part of, has done a similar study for Michigan. Dr. Dan Magleby, professor political science at Binghamton University, used census data and a mapping program to randomly generate 10,000 district maps of Michigan. This is similar to the study that was done in PA. He then randomly selected 1,500 maps and did some statistical analysis on them.

The GOP likes to claim the maps elect more GOP members of Congress because of “self-sorting,” which means we tend to live in areas where the other people are similar to ourselves. Magleby used mean-median difference as a measure of bias towards one party or the other. Then he charted how many of those 1,500 maps showed each bias value. He got a typical statistical curve centered on -1.7. This is the amount of bias expected from self-sorting. The whole curve stretches from -0.2 to -3.5. And the current Congressional map has a bias of -6.7.

The campaign’s conclusions:

* The current map is highly biased. We’ve been dealt from a stacked deck. The current system is grossly unjust.

* The expertise and technology to draw fair maps does exist.

So visit the campaign website to donate or volunteer (or both!).

Stories untold

We’ve heard a lot from the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A slight revision: we’ve heard a lot from the white students. I appreciate what these students have been doing to stir the national consciousness with their Never Again campaign. But they’re not the whole story. Out of more than 3,000 students 11% are of color. And they say it is time to hear their stories.

So they’ve started posting Stories Untold and saying why their voices matter.

Many of these students are from neighborhoods that have a lot of violence. They want the movement to be about more than guns in schools. They want to include minority communities.

The number of police on campus has increased. The students of color feel less safe. They recognize the intersection between gun violence, police violence, and immigration enforcement. Mass violence is not the only gun problem.

Voices should not be silenced.



Another way our media is failing us. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville posted a headline from the Washington Post: “Should you worry about trade? Some Americans will feel pain from China more than others.” McEwan and her army of commenters tell us all the ways this headline is wrong.

* We’re all going to feel pain.

* But even if it were only “some” Americans, it is disgusting to imply that if you don’t feel the pain, no need to worry about anyone else.

* We’ve been told that the economic insecurity of rural white America (a garbage narrative) was a big reason why they voted for the nasty guy. This article says I don’t need to care that the trade war might make things worse in rural white America.

* This headline implies the trade spat began in China and not with the nasty guy. The spat doesn’t have to happen.



Oklahoma teachers are on strike. The legislature offered a pay raise. The teachers said not good enough. We need new textbooks and our schools need lots of repairs. They’ve started tweeting pictures of the state of their textbooks. One shows a history book without a cover. The book says the current president is George W. Bush.

Progressive agenda

Richard Eskow wrote in the April 1 edition of the Washington Spectator (not yet posted online) that Democrats need to do more than not be the nasty guy. The party establishment seems to be stuck in thinking resisting the nasty guy will get them a majority in November. However, progressives don’t think this is enough, that the party doesn’t have to choose between pursuing the nasty guy’s base or energizing their own left-leaning base.

So Eskow and fellow progressives created the Agenda for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice. They are asking fellow progressives to sign and urging candidates to also sign.

The 11 point agenda does not address foreign policy and national security. It does include:

* Jobs for all, mostly through infrastructure modernization.

* Invest in the green economy, which also invests in jobs and infrastructure. And these jobs can’t be outsourced.

* Support unions and curb CEO compensation policies.

* Opportunity and justice for all, which means to take historical injustices (such as Jim Crow) into consideration to achieve a fair outcome. This includes a fair and humane immigration policy.

* Guarantee women’s equality, including equal pay, preventing sexual harassment, and the right to make their own health and reproductive choices.

* High quality public education, adequate pay and support of teachers, canceling student debt.

* Medicare for all.

* Make corporations and wealthy pay their fare share.

* Global care for working people, reworking trade agreements to protect workers’ rights, consumers, and environment.

* Close the Wall Street casino. Break up big banks, levy a speculation tax, introduce affordable public banking, crack down on exploitative banks.

* Rescue democracy, regulate corporate influence of elections, add public financing so that the people’s candidates can compete with corporate backed candidates, change party rules to ease the way for outsider candidates.

Eskow reports that a few items are popular with sizable numbers of GOP voters. In general the agenda polls well across the political spectrum with a majority in favor.

Perhaps we should be asking our Democrat candidates (maybe GOP too!) to sign the pledge.

Another Washington Spectator article, looks at the nasty guy’s infrastructure plan. Since his plan is to have the federal gov’t contribute only about 13% of what is needed this is what will happen:

* Only rich regions will be able to afford to fund projects.

* If corporations contribute money, they’ll want ongoing profits. We pay forever.

* Projects that that have the most need (perhaps measured by the degree of dilapidation and people affected) won’t get funded. Neither will projects that improve congestion (such as rail) or cross several regions.

Fortunately, Democrats can hold firm so that it won’t pass.

A really big bang

Fabricio Alvarado became a leading candidate for president in Costa Rica when he came out strongly against same-sex marriage. This was just after the Inter-American Court for Human Rights called for all countries in the Americas to support our love.

Fabricio’s opponent was Carlos Alvarado (no relation) who campaigned for same-sex marriage.

And Carlos won, 61% to 39%.



Another example of data manipulation. The Sunday Times of London reported that “London overtook New York in murders for the first time in modern history.” In a Twitter thread Patrick Greenfield has a takedown – and graph. The headline implies that the murder rate in London has risen to dangerous levels (New York is so dangerous!!!). But since 1990 the London murder rate has been rather flat, though there has been a slight rise since 2014. This reporting obscures what really happened. In the 1990s the New York murder count dropped from about 2250 in a year to 600 and has steadily fallen since then to about 300. So there is no reason for Londoners to go into a tizzy over living in a dangerous place. The article appears to be an attempt to smear London’s mayor who is Muslim.



There was a computer failure at Eurocontrol, which does air traffic control for Europe. About half of all flights were delayed. Some wonder if the glitch had a little help in happening – was it a hack?

There are Russian subs lurking around trans-ocean fiber-optic cables. Are they planning to cut them or intercept the messages flowing through them? Russians appear to have been mapping our telecommunication infrastructure, perhaps to disrupt it. And they supposedly have a cyberweapon to crash our electrical grid. As for those 60 Russian diplomats the nasty guy expelled – Russia is allowed to replace them. All this prompts Melissa McEwan of Shakesville to write:

We are in real trouble, my friends. As far as I can tell, it looks like we are fucked if Donald Trump continues to do Putin's bidding, for obvious reasons, and we are fucked if he doesn't, because Putin is prepared to pull the trigger on our infrastructure. Which he may do anyway, once Trump outlives his usefulness.

Immigration judges are not a part of the judicial branch of government, but of the Department of Justice. So their boss is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. These judges face a huge backlog of cases so the AG is trying to speed up deportation cases. He is doing so by creating a quota system, in amongst several other tactics to speed up cases. These quotas will affect a judge’s performance review.



Outrider has created an interactive map to show the size of the devastation after a nuke is dropped on your city. Of course, I checked it out for Detroit. I could choose city, the size of the bomb (4 choices), and whether the bomb is detonated on ground or in the air. The map then shows the size of the fireball, the shockwave, the radioactive zone, and the heat blast. Click on the various zones and it describes the kind of destruction, such as a body is vaporized in the fireball and gets 3rd degree burns in the heat blast.

It’s not much help that the blast from the smaller bombs don’t reach to Dearborn, a suburb between me and Detroit. The death toll for the size bomb that North Korea is reported to have is likely above 80,000. And then there is the big bomb, the largest detonated by the USSR. It’s effects reach almost to Ann Arbor with over a million dead.

Motherboard mentions a couple other maps, the Nukemap and Ground Zero.

Lies have a conservative bias

Feminists in China see lots of censorship thrown in their way. The current little trick they are using is to pair the emojis for rice and bunny. When the words are spoken aloud in Mandarin the pronunciation is “mi tu.”



We’ve heard that truth has a liberal bias. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos says that lies have a conservative bias. He looks at a recent poll about climate change. Recent polling shows that fewer Republicans believe there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Also down is the agreement by GOP respondents that scientists believe global warming is occurring. Yeah, they’re saying we don’t believe climate change is occurring and we believe that scientists don’t believe it either.

Another little bit from the same article: Voters have been asked how they rate the condition of the national economy. From the fall of 2015 through the 2016 election over 40% of GOP respondents consistently said it was very bad, another nearly 40% said it was fairly bad. Practically the day after the election the number saying the economy was very bad dropped by 13% and both continued to fall. Now both the very bad and fairly bad responses are 3% and 6% while the combination of those thinking the economy was fairly good to very good jumped from under 20% before the election to about 90% now.

Across that same time period – fall 2015 to now – the response from Democrats has been pretty consistent, with fairly good ranging from 60% to 52%.

So “facts” depend on a person’s politics (yeah, we knew that).

In another post, polls look at what Millennials think of the nasty guy and the GOP. Over the last 30 months the unfavorable rating of the nasty guy by those age 18-34 has been consistently above 63% and sometimes as high as 78%. Their disapproval for the party has been consistently above 58% and has been as high as 72%. Soon the eligible Millennial voters will outnumber the eligible Baby Boomer voters.

You had better do it our way

In the United Methodist Church the commission to propose a way for including LGBTQ people has completed their work, though it hasn’t been made public yet. The conservative groups have announced the denomination had better do what they want. Details in my brother blog.