If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable...

I saw two documentaries this weekend, both a part of the Freep Film Fest (Freep is the nickname of the Detroit Free Press newspaper). Thankfully, I could stream both of them at home. The first was: Ignore the Noise: The Transformation of the Detroit Riverfront. It is just under an hour long. For much of Detroit’s 300 year history (it was founded in 1701) the river was all about commerce and it was essentially the back door to companies along the river. Except for Belle Isle the public didn’t have access to the river. As Detroit fell on harder times after the middle of the 19th century there were attempts to use the riverfront as a way to revitalize the city. The first of those was the Renaissance Center, built in the mid 1970s. It is the tallest building in the city. But it was built with a bunker mentality as a place for white suburbanites, not black Detroiters. And though it was right on the river it didn’t provide access to the river. Then General Motors bought the RenCen (this movie doesn’t say they bought it from rival Ford). GM needed more space for its headquarters. One of the early things GM did was to create the Wintergarden, a glass-enclosed atrium to connect the complex to the river and to improve access from the atrium’s doors to the river. That was part of talk to improve public access to the river from “bridge to bridge” – the four miles from the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor and the bridge to Belle Isle. Another step happened in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton designated the Detroit River an American Heritage River. I think this was the only urban river to get the designation. That provided grant money. Then Windsor got a casino and Detroit was in a tizzy watching so much gambling money go across the river. Detroit had voted down casinos (I think three times) but then Detroit had all the problem gamblers of a nearby casino but none of the revenue. So another vote was held and casinos were approved. There was talk of putting the three casinos on the riverfront. Thankfully, that was abandoned when planners realized it would not increase public access to the river. The next prompt for action was Detroit’s 300th birthday in 2001. There was a fleet of Tall Ships, old sailing ships, that came up the river. Planners saw clearly the only public access was Hart Plaza. People lined the river anyway, even if they had to go through private property to get there. The Detroit River Conservancy was created in 2002 to revitalize the riverfront. It was created separate from the mayor’s office. They raised money with a few key grants. They were responsible for stringing together each piece of property on the riverfront. Some parcels had apartments and the conservancy said you really want to lease your riverfront to the city for free for 99 years, don’t you. A later apartment building went up and could advertise as life on the riverwalk. Another task was cleaning the industrial waste and remains. That included the silos of three cement companies. There was talk for a while about keeping one set of silos and painting murals on the sides. They’re all gone now. That separation from city government turned out to be important when Detroit was the hardest hit city during the foreclosure crisis. Again when Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who had been a big help with the riverwalk, was convicted of embezzling (I was surprised he appears in the film – and not just in old news clips). A third hit was GM’s bankruptcy and a forth was Detroit’s bankruptcy. If the riverwalk was under the control of the city government the project would have been abandoned, rather than delayed. The riverwalk is not complete all the way from downtown to the Ambassador Bridge. It is complete to the Belle Isle bridge, though some of the land near the bridge hasn’t been developed yet. I’ve walked a section of it and it is quite nice. And people – both city and suburban – use it. This is a Detroit success. Just days after watching this film I heard the news that GM will move its headquarters out of the RenCen into the old Hudson site where the second tallest building in the city is being built. This was the site of the largest Hudson Department Store, a huge place. I never made it inside (I didn’t grow up in the Detroit area) and the one time I tried I discovered they closed at 5:30. Lots of ideas were floated for reuse, but in 1998 it was imploded. Then the site sat empty for 20 years. The second move is The Riot Report. The movie begins with the 1967 riots – rebellions – in several, maybe more than 20, major cities, including Detroit. We see images of rioting, police response, fire and destruction in Newark, then Detroit. The March on Washington was four years before. This was a big event in the struggle for equal rights. And President Lyndon Johnson was leading on it, with his Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and Great Society initiatives. He said it isn’t enough to open gates. All should have the ability to walk through those open gates. But every action had a backlash (in this case a “whitelash”). That included Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican candidate for president in 1964 and quite conservative. His claim was Johnson was fueling the unrest. Blacks were saying we have had enough of the systems that oppress us. Whites were saying you have made gains, why wasn’t that enough? The 1960s were still part of the black Great Migration from the south to the north. Cities were getting higher percentages of blacks. But the reporters discussing the black experience were white, male, and middle class. The Los Angeles Watts rebellion happened in 1965. Several more cities were hit in 1966. One voice in this movie said “riot” was not a good word because it means destruction without reason. When the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots were commemorated in 2017 the word rebellion was decided to be a better fit. I’ll try to use it. Whites had sympathy for blacks in the south for resisting Jim Crow. But whites turned against blacks when they rebelled. There was lots of fear of blacks moving into white neighborhoods and their violence coming with them. In 1966 conservatives followed Goldwater’s playbook. When the rebellions happened in 1967 Johnson was in a political trap. He saw a commission to investigate the rebellions was a way out. Of course, many said, sure, another commission. That’s a way out, not to solve the problems. Johnson created the commission on civil disorders to figure out why it happened. He required members of the commission to be supporters of the Civil Rights act and the Vietnam war. The 11 members included politicians, business people, a woman, and two black men. One of them was from the NAACP. It was named the Kerner Commission for the chairman, Otto Kerner, governor of Illinois. Some thought Johnson could pull strings to get what he wanted out of them. That’s not what happened. Johnson essentially had three questions he wanted the commission to answer about the rebellions: What happened? Why did it happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? Some members wanted to look at root causes. Others wanted only to support police in how to crush the next uprising. Those wanting to look at causes prevailed. So the commission toured the country, visiting the cities where there had been rebellions. They sent teams to these cities to listen, then write reports of what they found. Sure, they talked to white people. They spent more time talking to black people. They saw the terrible living conditions. They saw the faces of the people who lived in those conditions. This was quite amazing for the 1960s. The black people said they knew how to protest Jim Crow with civil disobedience. But the rules of segregation in the North were not written into laws. They didn’t know how to protest something unwritten through civil disobedience. They had to protest in the streets. Youth saw the Civil Rights law has passed, yet their lives hadn’t changed. They had nothing to lose. Black people understood police were there to protect white interests. And whites didn’t want black people around. So the primary purpose of police was to patrol the boundary between white and black neighborhoods and keep blacks docile. They were frequently brutal. Their purpose was to remind black people: We’re in control. You’re supposed to be afraid of us. One would think that if the war on poverty wasn’t working the police would try something new. Instead, they doubled down. The situation was waiting for a spark. And the police had plenty of opportunities to provide it. They did so by overreacting. One solution was to integrate police (fifty years later we see how well that went). Some witnesses to the commission, such as J. Edgar Hoover, blamed the riots on outside agitators and Communists. They said our blacks wouldn’t behave this way. But the commission saw no Communists. When the report was published the reason for the rebellions was clear: white racism. The report said it that plainly. Black people were not crazy, they had good reason to act the way they did. The report indicted institutions and systemic power that supported that racism. It said racism threatened America. It proposed solutions to correct institutions. It was a report for white America to read, learn from, and act on. Failure to act would mean continued black rebellion. Other solutions included guaranteed basic income, open housing, and new jobs. It would cost about the same as what Johnson was spending in Vietnam. The report was published in paperback and sold widely. There were lots of media coverage of the report. The blurb for this movie seemed to imply it was buried. No, it wasn’t. It was in the hands of the public. When the report was published Johnson was in a box. Conservatives would not accept the conclusion. But Johnson couldn’t reject it without annoying liberals. So he refused to receive it. As for all those fine proposals Johnson claimed he didn’t have the money the proposals said should be spent. Congress said we’re waiting for bills to come from the president (a fine passive-aggressive stance) and Johnson offered none. Vietnam threatened Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. His presidency would be known, not for the good he did, but for Vietnam and riots. He had formed the commission to enhance his presidency. Instead, the report sunk it. In 1968 Johnson declared he would not run again. In a way, Johnson was right about not having money for what the report recommended. White people didn’t want to pay taxes to help rioting blacks. When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 rebellions flared again. Many blacks thought King’s efforts to end racism through non-violence hadn’t worked. The predictions of the Kerner report were fulfilled. A couple things came from the Kerner report. There was a fair housing law passed in 1968, but it was toothless. Also, news reporting as diversified. Black people reported on black people. Robert F Kennedy ran in 1968 saying he would take the Kerner report seriously. He was assassinated. Nixon (famous for his racist Southern Strategy) rejected it. He claimed Johnson’s programs had failed (when they hadn’t gone far enough or hadn’t even been tried). He said rioters should not be rewarded. Time to stop these programs. He ran on a war on crime, which made all the things blacks were rebelling against worse. The Kerner report was dead. The Kerner report is still relevant. As the nasty guy’s first criminal trial gets underway Charles Jay of the Daily Kos community asks:

While this might be unprecedented in U.S. history, other democracies, including France, South Korea, and Israel have charged, convicted, and even jailed former presidents and prime ministers. So why are we having such a hard time wrapping our head around this as a country?

Jay reminds us that President Harding was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal and escaped being implicated by dying. And Nixon avoided indictment and trial by being pardoned by Gerald Ford. Jay then lists the Republican politicians who dismiss the nasty guy’s trial and proclaim the American people are rallying behind him (well, some are). Israel’s Netanyahu has so far avoided a trial, but Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were convicted. In France former presidents Jacques Chirac and Micolas Sarkozy were convicted. In South Korea four former presidents and one still in office were convicted. Another committed suicide while under investigation. In Italy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted, through is sentence was reduced to probation. In Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is being investigated for plotting a coup carried out by his supporters. He has been banned from running for office until 2030. We wish the US Senate had done the same for the nasty guy in 2021. Jay concluded: “If other democracies can hold their leaders accountable, there’s no reason why we can’t do the same.” Jay also wrote “Tax cuts for the rich are a bad deal for corporate elites—and everyone else.” But that’s not quite the sense of Jay’s article. That can be more accurately described as: Supporting a fascist regime because they’re willing to cut taxes and overturn consumer protections is bad for corporations and their owners. First, some of the other things the nasty guy has said he would do would crash the economy and make the workforce problems worse by deporting workers. Second, a fascist regime will eventually come from them for insufficient loyalty. See Disney and DeathSantis as the most famous such situation. An Associated Press article posted to Kos on Tax Day discussed the difference between the tax policies of the two major candidates for president.

“For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress,” Biden told donors in California in February. “Not a joke.” In 2015, Trump declared as part of his candidacy, “I'm really rich.”

Biden releases his tax forms. The nasty guy has refused. Biden will make sure the 2017 tax giveaway will expire next year. He’s talked about raising other taxes on the wealthy while pledging those earning $400K or less will not pay more taxes. He talks about tax fairness. The nasty guy talks to billionaires about how much he will cut their taxes. I don’t think he talked about taxes paid by the middle class or poor people. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Richard Stengel of The Atlantic writing about paywalls. More than 75% of America’s leading media are behind paywalls. Almost 80% of Americans ignore paywalled sites and seek out free media.

Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.

In the comments of another roundup are some good cartoons. One by Bill Bramhall shows a TV news host saying, “A court decision upholding a 1692 law banning witches is causing problems for Republicans.” A cartoon posted by Fiona Webster and written by Adam Zygus shows Lady Liberty getting an ultrasound by a doctor with the nametag SCOTUS. On the screen is a fetus labeled “Trumpism.” The doctor says, “This baby will likely kill you, but you’re legally required to carry it to full term...” Kos user exlrrp posted a meme that shows a crowd of red hats and says, “They will never admit he’s guilty, because that will mean he’s made fools of them all.” In the comments of a third roundup is a cartoon by Drew Sheneman showing a woman with a sign reading, “My Body My Choice.” An elephant tells her, “If you wanted rights you should have been a corporation or an embryo.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Grant Snider showing the hierarchy of humor. From the top: Paradox, Dark humor, Self-deprecation, Slapstick, Modern art, Irony, Illogical humor, Scatological humor, Logical humor, Impractical joke, Practical joke, Double entendre, Puns, Dumb jokes, Cats. Your ranking may be different. Ellis Rosen posted a cartoon of a corner of an art museum. There are four images of the same woman, one has white horizontal lines through it, another shows a small image on a big canvas, a third shows an upside down image too big for the canvas, and the last shows the bottom of the image all crumpled. The docent tells patrons, “In this series, the artist is in dialogue with her printer.” Irena Buzarewicz posted a cartoon by Dave Coverly showing a king looking down on a mob with pitchforks and torches. An aide says, “Oh, you don’t need to fight them – you just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.” As part of Mark Sumner’s seven less reported stories for Kos he discussed a walkability score put out by Walk Score. There is also a nature score put out by the Washington Post. I tried it for my address. I live in generic suburbia, though next to a park. My home’s walkability score is 4 our of 100, as in almost all errands require a car. I’ve mentioned this problem of suburbia. I also got a bikeable score of 55 because there is some bike infrastructure. No public transit score was given. It listed nearby parks, but didn’t include the one I actually live next to. I would think my nature score would be decent because I live next to a park. But that’s behind the WaPo paywall. I tried the address of my friend and debate partner. He got a walk score of 99, a walker’s paradise, a transit score of 65, and a bike score of 94, a biker’s paradise. I doubt his nature score would be as good as mine.