The largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich

About a year ago I discussed the book Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. One of the tyrants discussed by Greenblatt is the English King Richard III. But what if Shakespeare portrayed Richard III not as the man actually was, but how the following Tudor dynasty portrayed him? Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets (Wikipedia says he was the last of the Yorks) was followed by Henry the VII, the first of the Tudors. And the Tudor line, especially Henry VIII, is the fodder of a great number of novels, plays, TV series, and movies because of how bad they were. My Sunday movie was The Lost King, based on a true story. That story is that the bones of Richard, lost since his death in 1485, were found under a car park in Leicester in 2012 (so we know how the movie ends). The woman behind the excavation was Phillipa Langley, an amateur historian. She lives in Edinburgh and is inspired to do the search after seeing Shakespeare’s play. Phillipa gets help through the Richard III Society, those who believe that the king’s reputation was slandered by the Tudors. She also sees an apparition of Richard, who sometimes answers her questions, and sometimes not. The big one he doesn’t answer is: What happened to the two nephews in the Tower of London? (I’ve read a science fiction story about the boys, posing another answer to what happened to them.) Eventually she gets to the University of Leicester and the City of Leicester. She’s dismissed because she is an amateur, a woman, and claiming that Richard was not what historians and the royal family say he was. Eventually they help her – and then claim the credit. IMDb added that Langley was not the first to accurately conclude where Richard III was buried and how that land was now used. She was the one to act on her conclusion and dig up the car park. I enjoyed this one. Though Shakespeare may or may not have accurately portrayed Richard III, that play is accurate in portraying how a tyrant may rise to power, what happens when in power, and how the tyrant falls. Last evening I was in my car and listened to about ten minutes of the NPR show Fresh Air. The topic of this episode was the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. In this 44 minute segment Terry Gross talked to Tapper. This is the book discussing Biden’s mental decline and the cover-up by Jill Biden and senior staff at the White House in the last two years of his presidency. Tapper says that cover-up – insisting that Biden was mentally fine while covering for him on days when he obviously wasn’t then insisting he was healthy enough for another term – is why we have the nasty guy in the White House. In the part I heard Tapper lays out a pretty good case. That included an excerpt of Biden being interviewed by the Justice Department in October 2023 about what he knew about mishandling presidential documents found on his property. The deposition was the same day that Hamas attacked Israel. I remember the uproar when the interviewer said the DoJ would not bring charges because the jury would see Biden as a forgetful old man and would not convict him. In that excerpt Biden did indeed sound like a forgetful old man. During the last 18 months of Biden’s tenure, on days where he wasn’t good, the senior staff acted as a five-person presidential board. When Biden had to speak publicly on a not-so-good day he speech was prepared for him and he read it from a teleprompter. He could still do that. I didn’t listen to the whole episode, so maybe my question was answered. That question is: Why did Jill and senior staff cover up the decline? What were they trying to protect? Joe’s reputation? Sure. But his reputation would be better if he made a graceful exit before a decline. The chance to keep a Democrat in the White House? That didn’t work. The good of the country? That backfired. As I thought about it I became more disappointed in what the Bidens chose to do. First, of all, they should have prevented him from running for a second term. That was Tapper’s point. Even better, they should have convinced him to resign or used the 25th Amendment to have the Cabinet force him out, handing the presidency to Harris. That would have given her time to show she was presidential material. It would at least given challengers time to mount a campaign and go through the primary process. It would also shifted the “too old” meme onto the nasty guy. Even though what Tapper documented is likely accurate, showing the “too old” messages of the campaign were justified, the book still feels like a hit-job because there is no corresponding book on the nasty guy, detailing his own mental decline and his much more obvious poor mental health and dangerously fragile ego. Alas, too many people – billionaires, Republicans, white nationalists, and the MAGA faithful – like what the nasty guy is doing (at least until the faithful discover his agenda biting them in the ass) and don’t care about his mental state. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on the big bill (no, it’s not “beautiful”) being considered in the House. It hasn’t passed the House yet, and I’ve heard an important committee voted it down. It would also have a hard time in the Senate. But if it did pass... Singer begins her report:

President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" that House Republicans are trying to ram through the chamber would be the "largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history," according to a report published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. The bill, if passed, would lead to at least 13.7 million people losing their health insurance. It would also impose massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—better known as “food stamps”—that would put nearly 11 million people at risk of losing the ability to feed their families. And it will make college more expensive by eliminating subsidized federal student loans, meaning loans would start accruing interest as soon as students take them out rather than once they leave school. And Republicans are doing all of this only to partly pay for an extension of the tax cuts they passed in 2017, which have overwhelmingly benefited the richest taxpayers while giving the lowest-income Americans pennies.

The bill is in a bit of trouble because some Republicans say it cuts too much and other Republicans say it doesn’t cut enough. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that Republicans have found a group they can raise taxes on. Republicans don’t mind raising taxes. They “just hate to be perceived as raising taxes.” And one way to do that is to tax people whose complaints they can ignore. They propose to tax remittances. A remittance is sent by a person in the US to family in their home country. This is usually money the people back home desperately need. The money is usually sent through a financial institution set up to protect the transaction. Republicans propose to tax those remittances at the 5% rate, but only if sent by a noncitizen. This idea has been floating around for a while. It won’t raise much money for covering the huge budget deficit. But it will make immigrant lives harder – which is what Republicans really want. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted tweets by Aaron Fritschner who quoted Brendan Duke who included a chart by the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities. The chart shows the change in income both in percent and dollar amount for various income groups for year 2029. For the top 10% their income increases by 3.4% though for the top 1% that is $52,050 a year. Percentages drop from there. The second 20% (from the bottom) get an increase of 0.6% or $260 in a year. The bottom 20% would lose 0.5% or $100 a year. Duke:

The bill is even more regressive when you look at 2029 when tax cuts for families expire & tax increases resulting from cuts to ACA premium tax credits grow larger.

Fritschner added:

But here is the thing Per JCT, Congress’ official scorekeeper, the bottom 20% of households – tens of millions of Americans – will see a Tax Increase beginning in 2029. Republicans are cutting taxes for billionaires and raising taxes on working people. This isn’t a nit-picky point based on a technicality or an asterisk. It isn’t analysis from a far left group, the White House sent these tables out and posted them on their website.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats:

A tiny Chinese company owned by the same people that own TikTok just bought $300,000,000 of $Trump Coin. Now why do you think they did that? Foreigners are literally bribing Trump with hundreds of millions to get favors!

Also, paulpro posted a cartoon by Christopher Weyant. Two girls are talking. The girl of color says, “My first choice college is the one with an endowment big enough to protect me from the government.” In today’s news was a story about South African president Cyril Ramaphosa visiting the White House. The nasty guy lectured him about “white genocide” which Ramaphosa tried to refute. But like the infamous visit by Ukraine’s Zelenskyy it didn’t go well for the visitor. Last Saturday Oliver Willis of Kos wrote about the Republican fixation on white genocide. This fixation includes the nasty guy admitting fifty white South African refugees not long ago while refusing refugees from other countries. The SA refugees were welcomed because of this false white genocide. Willis explained:

The “white genocide” myth is being invoked in U.S. politics because conservatives long ago embraced the politics of victimhood. Even when the right is in majority control of U.S. political institutions, like right now, it still claims that it’s a persecuted minority. ... This mentality perfectly combines with the conservative embrace of white supremacy. Claiming that a “white genocide” is underway, even when the data disproves it, becomes a way of being racist while simultaneously laying hands on the mantle of victimhood.

Also, the whites of South Africa (and no doubt in America) felt the law that distributed land from white to black owners (as in back to the original owners) was an “attack.” And an attack on their land was equivalent to an attack on their body. I thought of the claim of victimhood this way: When those at the top of the hierarchy (and Republicans declare they are) feel challenged in any way they will claim they are the victim, even if their position in the hierarchy is still quite secure. An attack on their position in the hierarchy is to them equivalent to an attack on their body. They feel they are the victim because in their position in the hierarchy no one is supposed to be able or allowed to challenge them. No one is supposed to be able to make them feel uncomfortable. This article in Kos linked to one in Salon by Michael Bader from January 2024 discussing claims of victimhood. Some of Bader’s points: Those claiming to be victims use it as a rationale for striking out at others without guilt. These acts of violence are reframed as revenge or a twisted form of self-care. Conservatives can use fear to claim liberals are trying to replace them. That makes their listeners feel they are victims. That, in their minds, justifies violence. The “victims” become victimizers. For example, if an election was “stolen” stealing it back makes moral sense. They don’t need to feel guilty about hurting others because they quickly come up with a story on how those “others” were first hurting them. Bader also compared the use of “victim” by liberals and conservatives. Liberals identify actual victims, people actually injured by racism, war, or other form of oppression. They try to defend these victims and care for them. Conservatives use victimhood as propaganda, to stir up a mob. They then use the mob to get rid of the democratic norms that restrain the political aims of the conservatives. Those political aims are always to oppress some other group. Because of that incitement to violence claiming to be a victim is dangerous. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos, in her Caribbean Matters series, reported that Pope Leo has Louisiana Creole ancestry through his mother, Mildred Martínez. Her parents were described as black or “mulatto” in historical records. They lived in New Orleans Seventh Ward, a Catholic area and melting pot of people with African, Caribbean, and European roots. The pope’s brother John Prevost said that while growing up in Chicago he and his brothers always considered themselves to be white. Passing for white has a long history in the US. But his ancestry would have marked him as “colored” in Louisiana as recently as 1982.

We are our own Calvary

My Sunday movie was The Boy and the Heron by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. It was released in the US almost a year ago and won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, making Miyazaki the oldest person to receive an Oscar. It finally came to streaming at a good price. The boy of the story is Mahito. I would guess he’s in his early teens. The time is World War II. The movie opens with a hospital on fire. Mahito becomes frantic because his mother is there. A while later he and his father go to their estate in the countryside where Father owns a factory making war material. They are met at the station by a woman who looks a lot like Mahito’s mother and is pregnant. She says Mahito is to call her Mom. They settle into the estate where there are several elderly women who take care of things. They live in a very Japanese style house. Mahito is put into the Western style house nearby. A heron takes a big interest in the boy and its actions lead him to a nearby tower with lots of mysteries. Then the step-mother wanders away. Mahito tries to find her. And things get weird. The first bit of weirdness is the heron has teeth. Mahito goes from one fantasy world to another, each with symbols of life and of death and with beings who will help and who will harm. But he doesn’t want to return to his own world without his step-mother. By the end I wasn’t sure of everything that had happened and why. I felt the payoff wasn’t a match for all the difficulty Mahito went through. That feeling reminded me of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away from two decades ago. I didn’t get that one. In both cases I suspect cultural references that a Japanese person would get and I don’t is the reason. As with many Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films this one was beautiful. For an animated film there were also many scenes that were quite complicated – such as a big flock of pelicans. However, I noticed the characters were usually more simply drawn than the intricate backgrounds of their environment. Even though it got weird and I didn’t get a lot of cultural references and I don’t care much for fantasy because its rules can be so arbitrary – even with all that I enjoyed it. I regularly read Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine and have just finished the November/December 2024 issue. I normally don’t write about it when I finish an issue because it can be twenty stories and articles and I’d have a hard time writing about all of them. One of them in this issue is worth mentioning. It is an Alternate View column written by Richard Lovett titled How the Science of Moral Understanding can Reduce the Polarization in Politics. That’s quite a claim for a three page article. I don’t see this article at the magazine’s online site (though there is an interesting second Alternate View article on mitochondrial DNA and aging and how there might be a way to slow aging down). First, Lovett discusses a study by Kurt Gray, director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His point is that people of both political parties vastly overestimate the degree the other side actually holds them in contempt. We’re less hostile and more willing to work together than we’re portrayed to be. Lovett turned to Jonathan Haidt of the New York University Stern School of Business, who says liberals and conservatives share basic values, though prioritize them differently. Haidt sees five core values: (1) protecting the vulnerable, (2) fairness, (3) the need to bond into groups for the common good, (4) respect for authority, and (5) “purity” – avoiding things that contaminate the body (examples are a vegan’s dietary code or a fundamentalists sexual code). Liberals emphasize fairness and protecting the vulnerable. Conservatives also emphasize respect for authority, also seen as preserving the social order (and I see as preserving themselves at the top of the social hierarchy). Gray thinks there are more than five basic values (they’re not named). He also says Haidt’s first value of preventing harm is the most important. How we weigh the different values comes with tradeoffs. And this is where disputes come. How do we handle competing harms? In the gun debate do we minimize harm to ourselves and loved ones or the harm to the whole community? In the abortion debate do we minimize harm to the mother or the potential baby? In both cases we can’t minimize both harms. Recognizing that is the first step to reducing polarization. From there Lovett gets into a discussion of “active listening.” There are likely sources elsewhere that explain it in more detail. Michael Harriot wrote a thread about the greatest black on black crime in US history. On May 23, 1861 three slaves were donated to the Virginia Confederate Militia. As soon as they could they ran to Union Gen, George Butler. These slaves were legal property. Butler saw their crime as stealing themselves. But now they were under Butler’s protection he saw them as a tool of war, in the same way as a rifle. He was allowed to confiscate them. The Confederates threatened to sue for the return of their property. Butler replied since the owners intended their use to be against the United States he didn’t have to return them. Want them back? Take an oath of allegiance to the United States. When slaves heard about it they stole themselves to Union forts, where they were placed in refugee camps. Lincoln wanted nothing to do with this situation. But there were so many fleeing slave Congress passed the Confiscation Act, backing up Butler. About 100,000 people unslaved themselves, arriving at more than 100 camps. These became known as Contraband Camps – the refugees were no longer property but not citizens.

These "Contraband Camps" were the origin story of many Black towns, HBCUs and neighborhoods. They produced 200 K-12 schools, 12 HBCUs, & 1000s of Black veterans. Harriet Tubman freed more people while living in SC's contraband camp than as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Black neighborhoods in KC, Nashville & St. Louis were contraband camps. Mary Peake, a free Black woman, held reading classes [illegal at the time] under a tree at the original VA camp until classes got too big. But no one calls it the "Grand Contraband Camp" anymore. They call it Hampton University.

Contraband camps were the focus of the push for the 14th and 15th Amendments defining citizenship, due process, and the right to vote. They invented the American education system we know today. Harriot, who is black, looked at the current political situation and asked, what if we again stole ourselves? What if we build a camp? What if black people declared independence from white thought and permission? So Harriot is announcing the building of a new online Contraband Camp, to open when Biden’s term ends. And with that it sounds like he is leaving Twitter. Malcolm Nance, writing on Substack, has recommendations to resist the coming tyranny. He came up with these through studying the French Resistance in WWII. Nazi Germany invaded Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France on May 10, 1940. The three little countries were taken over within days, France capitulated after a month. Well, the French government capitulated. A large number of citizens resisted, organized, and fought back. We in America now face tyrannical rule. Even though only 31% of the electorate voted for the nasty guy, we must assume he will use all available powers, including the military, for evil. But we don’t have to and cannot wait until this evil begins. We can start resisting now. Choose a Resistance Posture. Secret or public? Either way it should be bland until you need to be openly defiant. The regime wants us swamped with disinformation and conspiracy theories. News media may participate. So help to collect and disseminate high quality news. Don’t be fooled by the lies. Pay your taxes. Don’t give the regime a reason to attack you. Law enforcement may see the tyrant will protect them. They may see abusing citizens as lawful. Be as careful interacting with officers as a black man needs to be. Do not argue or debate with a MAGA person. Just don’t. The nasty guy has perfected the simple slogans and his followers consider liberals to be “wordy.” So when you must interact with MAGA people ditch the logic and simple language. Example: “Trump is a tyrant.” Get off corporate social media and scrub your history. They own everything you posted there. Bluesky is not corporate owned. There are apps to transfer to it. Talk to your friends in person, not through social media, text, DM, or video chat. There is no corporate record and is actually beneficial to a relationship. Do not engaged in violent protests. If you own a gun keep it locked away and use it only in a direct threat (and know your local laws). The regime wants a violent response because that gives them extra permission to outviolence you. Be prepared for the economic hardship the nasty guy has been promising. Stock up if you can. Keep track of your family. If your resistance profile is defiant, put the number of a good lawyer on your phone. “Politically, no one is coming to your rescue in a dictatorship. You are your own Calvary.” Nance said in the opening that the French Resistance started as individuals that soon organized. He didn’t say anything in his suggestions for us. However, I see that as where our power will come from. Then it becomes “We are our own Calvary.” Back to that bit about getting off social media. I wonder if that includes this blog. It is hosted by Blogger, which is owned by Google. They’re not great with social responsibility. Perhaps I should stop writing and even delete all 5373 posts? One reason why I’m reluctant to destroy all that work (I do have copies on my computer) is in the last week there have been over 2000 views of this blog with 28% from Singapore and 16% from Hong Kong, both with restrictive or authoritarian governments. There are even a few readers in Russia. I hope my writings help them.

An old man who has burned every bridge

I finished the book The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr. It is the story of Baxter, a black man doing the job of the title for the Canadian railway in 1929. He is also gay. The book won the Giller Prize in Canadian literature. I’m sure I heard it while listening to Canadian radio, which I do for a few hours each weekday. I’m sure it was the gay angle that intrigued me enough to buy the book. Baxter wants to go to dental school and has saved up about 90% of the needed tuition. He also is about ten demerits from being fired. Will he keep the job long enough to earn through tips the rest of his tuition? Will someone find out he’s gay, prompting enough demerits to fire him? Not a lot happens in the story. Baxter cares for his passengers, responding to their every need (even the ones that are unreasonable). He cleans. When they are at meals he makes up or puts away their bunks. He has a rare tryst with a male passenger. And, because he’s on call all the time, he doesn’t get much sleep. From the sources the author says she consulted I’m sure this is an accurate portrayal of what black men had to endure while working for the railroad. For that the book is a useful read. Beyond that, the story isn’t really gripping. Spoiler alert this paragraph: Much of the book is a five day trip from Montreal to Vancouver. Once the train is into the Rockies it is halted by a mudslide over the tracks. The train is stopped for a few days while the way is cleared. I would think within a couple hours they’d figure an estimate of how much time would be needed to clear the track. I kept wondering why they weren’t rescued – when the train didn’t arrive at the next station, why didn’t that station call or telegraph the previous one? Why wasn’t a train dispatched to find what was wrong? Why didn’t this train back down the mountain and switch to another route or the passengers loaded into buses to drive over the mountains? (Was there a road through the mountains in 1929?) Not much happened during the long stop – no big change for any of the characters – and Baxter got even less sleep. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Rep. Matt Gaetz is proposing a resolution that will be a Republican purity test. The bill says in its entirety:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that former President Donald J. Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

The resolution will either prompt Republicans to fall into line or leave themselves open to nasty guy threats. A similar resolution is being prepared for the Senate. Einenkel doesn’t say that this resolution is being introduced just before the Supreme Court is to take up the case of whether the nasty guy has lifelong presidential immunity. The answer to that question will affect the case that accuses the nasty guy of inciting the insurrection. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that because of the failed immigration bill, the attempt to impeach DHE Mayorkas, the stalled aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and general incompetence, Republicans again show their loyalties.

Tom Friedman’s Tuesday opinion piece in The New York Times, acidly titled “The G.O.P. Bumper Sticker: Trump First. Putin Second. America Third,” explains just how damaging and consequential the Republicans’ actions this week have been to the nation.

Dartagnan supplies details to show the bumper sticker is accurate. Mark Sumner of Kos explains that Moscow Mitch has lost control of the Senate. The reason is: Moscow Mitch. For several years now Mitch has demonstrated the rules, traditions, decorum, and civility of the Senate and of the Constitution meant nothing to him. If an action would bring him and his party more power he did it. Merrick Garland isn’t on the Supreme Court. Amy Conan Barrett is. The judiciary is packed with nasty guy appointed hacks. During both of the nasty guy impeachments he declared the perpetrator guilty and voted for acquittal. During all this Mitch was being watched. And his students, his fellow Republicans, learned the lessons well. So when Mitch appointed Sen. James Lankford to lead negotiations for an immigration bill, then Mitch threw Lankford under the bus, that treachery was seen as both a Mitch hallmark and as a weakness.

The Republicans who want what little power McConnell still holds can read that move. They read it as desperation. They read it as weakness. They read it as an old man who has burned every bridge coming to the end of his time without honor, respect, or an ability to exert his will.

Mitch is now calling for passing the Ukraine aid bill, hoping it will define his legacy. Sorry, his legacy is already defined. His students learned well. The “Democrats in disarray” trope has been a favorite of media for a good long time and trotted out during every election cycle. Sumner reported that after this past week media is now using the term or its cousins for Republicans. Their articles and headlines are using such words as: unrest, chaotic, bungled, dysfunction, fiasco, missteps, mess, shooting blanks, misfired, and even disaster.

Even The New York Times joins in with an article about “deepening Republican disarray.” And, okay, they didn’t use “chaos,” but give them a break. They probably bought “disarray” in bulk, and now they need to use it up somewhere. ... Overall, any week where Republican chaos can be so obvious that it causes the news media to momentarily halt the Dems-in-disarray storylines seems like a good one. The only thing left to complain about is … alliteration. Couldn’t someone pull out a “Republican rat’s nest” or even a “MAGA muddle”?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk (who recently wrested control from a despot):

Dear Republican Senators of America. Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.

In the comments Pia Guerra posted a cartoon showing a scene I mentioned a couple days ago of Rep. Al Green in a hospital gown and with a thumb down doing a wheelie as he zips by and bowling over Speaker Johnson. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the results of an NPR/PBS/NewsHour/Marist poll...

65% of Americans overall say Trump should not be immune from prosecution, including 91% of Democrats, 65% of independents, and even 31% of Republicans.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted David Graham of The Atlantic discussing that neither Johnson nor Mitch have a grip on their caucus.

But the Trump wing of the Republican Party isn’t interested in policy—it’s interested in sending signals. The MAGA crowd would rather impeach Mayorkas, even if they know he won’t be convicted and it won’t change anything, than enact a law that actually affects the border. The point is expression, not legislation.

Kev also quoted Donald Sherman, writing for Slate about the case before the Supremes about removing the nasty guy from the ballot and the threats of violence if he is.

If the Supreme Court allowed concerns about civil unrest or violence to deter enforcement of the Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, then Black Americans and millions of others would never have secured the rights enshrined after the Civil War. Brown provoked immediate backlash from many white Americans, including violence, riots, and the founding of segregation academies throughout the South—with effects still seen today. Because the court did not cower in the face of this resistance, our country continued forward on the path toward a more just and democratic society.

In the comments is a cartoon – more accurately Black History Month Art posted by David Cay Johnson – that has appropriate photos and signatures and the words, “Harriet led, 1849, so Rosa could sit, 1955, so Ruby could walk, 1960, so Michelle could inspire, 2008, so Kamala could run, 2020, so Ketanji could rule, 2022. Sumner reported that Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have no intrinsic value – they’re not based on anything – but they do have a cost.

As a new report from the Energy Information Administration warns, “mining” for cryptocurrency now consumes up to 2.3% of electricity produced in the U.S. What’s more, that power includes some of the dirtiest electricity in the nation. It’s also directly affecting the cost of electricity for consumers while putting money in the pockets of the companies mining for “digital gold.”

“Mining” means using large banks of computers to solve the intricate equations that underlie these currencies. Powering all those computers is what using all that electricity. These companies can hit the jackpot in other ways, When Texas suffered record breaking heat, crypto mining companies cut back on their electricity use and Riot Platforms sold off $32 million in power credits. They also extend the working lives of power plants run on dirty energy but because they don’t send the power to consumers they avoid reporting emissions under the clean air act.

A 2018 study from Nature Climate Change projected that greenhouse gas emissions from crypto mining alone were enough to push the average global temperature 2 degrees Celsius higher in the next 30 years.

Meteor Blades of Kos wonders whether we are about to say goodbye to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above the 1850-1900 baseline. Eight months – the amount of time the average has already been above 1.5C – or even a year or two isn’t enough to definitively say the world has crossed that threshold. But we’re running out of time to keep the rise that low. Carbon dioxide and methane still accumulate. And we’re doing precious little to slow it down. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community wrote that the Pennsylvania chapter of Moms for Liberty used to have 200 members. This week the chapter met and three people showed up. They voted to dissolve the chapter. In the farewell announcement to Facebook the leader, Janine Vicalvi, said “Between homeschooling and working two jobs, it’s just a lot.” That prompted Pennyfarthing to respond, “You mean Vicalvi’s kids aren’t even enrolled in the schools she’s trying to ruin?” Pennyfarthing noted that in other places participation is down and in the last round of school board elections Moms for Liberty endorsed candidates tended to lose. So ... Goodbye!

Claiming persecution is a buffer from criticism

A few days ago I heard on the NPR program Fresh Air host Tonya Mosley spoke to Michele Norris, a former NPR host and now author. Norris wanted to explore what Americans really think about race. In 2010 she came up with the Race Card Project. She put postcards in public places which asked people to put down their thoughts on race in six words. Over the years she got a half million responses. People are hungry for this conversation. From the responses she created the book Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race And Identity. The audio is 37 minutes. At the top of the show were some examples of six words as they were included in the audiobook. A couple of them:

Mom's racism took my love away. My dad's prejudices live in me.

Here are parts of the conversation between Mosley and Norris: Mosley asked why were a majority of responses from white people. Norris answered:

Well, I think we have this presumption, this assumption, that white people aren't invited to the party when it comes to a conversation about race. So there's no room for them in this conversation. That most of our conversations about race are centered on people of color. And usually, if we're going to have a conversation about race, there's an expectation that it's going to be by or for or about Black people. And to the extent white people are involved, they're bystanders. They're watching over - you know, over our shoulders, saying this is a person of color. They're not expected to lead the conversation and maybe not even be in the conversation. And when we started, I think the website was key because we were gathering stories, but we were also presenting them.

I heard that and thought racism is because of the attitudes of white people and the institutions white people created to enforce the oppression of black people. Yet, white people didn’t think there was room for them in the conversation about race. There’s some strong irony right there. Norris praised the honesty of many of the responses. At least the submitters are grappling with the issue. One example is this woman who starts with the six words, then explains her reasoning.

I'm relieved my son looks white. Michelle Welsh. Severna Park, Md. I'm biracial - white and Pakistani. I look Pakistani. My husband is white. My son is a big, blond, fair-skinned, blue-eyed toddler. We live in an affluent, largely white town. I'm grateful he will never be asked his nationality, be the diversity hire or live with an identity crisis. Is that wrong to want life to be easier for your children, even if it seems like a step backward?

Norris discussed a defender of white privilege. She said many people think some aspects of race just happen – the boardroom is all white because it just happened. People don’t talk about the politics, the assumptions, the decisions that go into who sits in the boardroom. Mosley and Norris turn to another book by Norris, The Grace of Silence. DNA testing is uncovering family secrets, such as racial mixing that was not talked about because descendants could pass as white. Her father was shot by white police officers. He decided to not tell the family about so he wasn’t weighing down his children with his pain. They were giving their descendants the grace of silence. Norris, who is black, told the story of her grandmother who worked as a traveling Aunt Jemima in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. When pancake mix was new these women, portraying the slave cook Aunt Jemima, would travel the country demonstrating how these new convenience products worked. The job paid pretty well. But the portrayal was beginning to conflict with the aspirations of black people in America. The grandmother was part of the shift, even as Aunt Jemima. The company had a script she was to use that had her speaking in slave patois. She ignored it and spoke using the diction for which she had won awards. She showed the people she was educated. But Norris didn’t learn of this from her grandmother, she learned of it doing research. The racial unrest around the death of George Floyd prompted the removal of Aunt Jemima from all packaging. Matthew 5:11-12 in the Bible is part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in particular the end of the Beatitudes:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

For a long time, though especially recently, I interpret that to mean Jesus blessing those who were persecuted because they subverted the social hierarchy and brought down the wrath of those at the top who didn’t like their oppression of others disrupted. I see the central part of Jesus’ message is to care for those at the bottom who are oppressed by those higher in the hierarchy and to do what one can to disrupt that oppression. Of course, I’m not at all surprised that the oppressors turn that understanding upside down. Sarah McCammon of NPR spoke to Candida Moss, professor of theology at the University of Birmingham and author of the book The Myth of Persecution. They talked about nasty guy’s use of the word, one he uses when things aren’t going his way. Moss said:

Being persecuted in Christianity - because Jesus died in this unjust way, because the martyrs were executed - just being persecuted is a sign that what you are doing is right and good and that you have the support of God. And that means that this is a very powerful rhetorical claim. If Christians are succeeding politically, commercially, practically in their lives, then that's because God loves them and supports them. But if Christians are being criticized, if they're being unsuccessful, if people disagree with them, then that's also a sign that they're in the right. Because if they can claim that as persecution, that's a sign that God is on their side. And the problem with that and the way that that functions in Christianity as opposed to other groups is that a powerful Christian group that claims that it's being persecuted can never fully be disagreed with about anything because disagreement is then understood to be a full-blown attack, a kind of religious war. Yeah, it's absolutely a win-win state of affairs. It really is sort of part of the genius of Christianity.

The “genius” of Christianity? To me that all sounds like a perversion of what Jesus the Christ taught. Setting themselves up to say criticism of me means God is with me means there is never a time they think about whether their thoughts actually align with God, there is never any thinking that maybe I’m wrong, never any humility. Also, that bit about succeeding as a sign that God loves them is another perversion of what Jesus taught. This perversion began about 300 years after the time of Jesus, when Constantine was Caesar and made Christianity the state religion. It became baked into Christian theology. And into American identity. And the secularization of America that began in the 1960s and has accelerated since along with all the social progress of that time are considered attacks on Christianity.

When they hear Trump talk about how he's persecuted, if they're already supporters of his, it's a familiar cry - one they've heard from the pulpit on Sundays. They identify with him because of it, and they start interpreting criticisms of Trump through that framework. And that means, for example, that when he gets indicted, as he has been, that just serves as evidence that he is being persecuted. So it's win-win for him. It's like a dog whistle. They hear him say that he's persecuted. They know what that means. They know how unjust it is. However legally justified any of these cases are, there is a substantial proportion of his supporters who will believe that this is nothing other than a crime against justice. For Trump supporters, these indictments are crimes. They are crimes of persecution. It remains a really valuable weapon in the rhetorical toolbox that you can bring out if you're being disagreed with. ... And you can continue to use it as a way to kind of buffer yourself from any criticism, regardless of how powerful you are.

Today I heard on a news report (perhaps on the Canadian station I listen to for part of the day) that the average world temperature has risen 1.5C from the baseline and has done so for the last eight months. That 1.5C level is considered the threshold, above which the climate will turn really nasty. It’s also the level that the countries at a climate conference (the one in Paris?) vowed to make sure we wouldn’t pass. Now we’re unlikely to stop global warming from hitting 2.5C. I write this on a day that temperatures in Detroit hit 57F and are likely to top 60F tomorrow. That is (or used to be) quite rare in Detroit in February. Meteor Blades, in an Earth Matters column for Daily Kos, noted before 2020 Democrats were reluctant to talk about the climate because that was considered a turnoff to votes. In 2020 Biden emphasized the climate. Matthew Burgess, C-SEF director, said climate conscious voters gave Biden enough of an edge that he won. Now research is being done to determine the best environmental message. The Inflation Reduction Act emphasizes the jobs being created in the shift to a greener economy. Lisa Friedman reported in the New York Times:

One of the biggest climate marketing studies of its kind, a public opinion poll across the United States and 18 other countries that was conducted last summer, found that “protecting the planet for the next generation” overwhelmingly beats out other arguments for taking climate action. Researchers found the so-called “urgent generational message” was 12 times more popular than the promise of creating jobs. “At the heart of this is love,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, which conducted the study with other nonprofit groups including Potential Energy Coalition, the Meliore Foundation and Zero Ideas. “People love particular people, places and things,” Mr. Leiserowitz said. “And those people, places and things are being threatened.”

Now candidates need to develop a succinct and consistent message. One of the books I read recently was put out by the Climate Mobilization Project. They suggest asking candidates whether they are willing to declare a climate emergency, opening up the federal government’s resources for dealing with emergencies. So I did. Michigan will have an open Senate seat in November. There are three Democrats running for the seat (yeah, there are Republicans running for the seat, but no). One is well known, the other two I don’t remember hearing about. I sent a message to all three saying if they are willing to declare a climate emergency I’m willing to donate to their campaign. So far I haven’t heard from any of them, but it’s been only three days. Of the three candidates only one, and not the famous one, said anything about climate on their campaign website. Even if I don’t donate, that’s the one I’ll vote for in the primary (and whichever Democrat in the general).

One that puts love of country above all else

My Sunday move was Cowboys from 2020. The setting is northwest Montana, beautiful scenery. Josie – Joe – is a preteen transgender boy. He tells his father Troy, who understands. His mother Sally does not. Mom is so insistent that her child is female that Joe runs away with his father. But Dad has mental health issues. Part of the story is Joe and Troy trying to get to Canada. Another part is Sally working with the cops, saying Troy kidnapped Josie. A third part is flashbacks to show how the situation got so critical, including Sally accusing Troy of being too much of an influence on their child. He uses male pronouns for their child, she uses female. Joe explains to his father that he feels alien in his body. When we see Joe in bed his stuffed toy is a green alien. I had written before of the saying that if a gun is shown in the first act it will go off by the third. I’ve since learned Chekhov was the one who said it. I thought of that because a gun is shown in the first few minutes of this movie. And yes, it is used. I thought the acting was well done, the story engaging, the scenery beautiful, and in all an enjoyable evening. Danny Feingold of Capital & Main posted on Daily Kos noted climate emergencies are affecting both red and blue states, so: “How can we forge a non-ideological consensus to take on the climate emergency?” We don’t have time to vote in a unified Democratic majority, and some Democrats, like Sen. Manchin, are in the pockets of (or co-owners of) fossil fuel companies.

So where does that leave us? Perhaps the answer is to reframe the need for urgent climate action in the most American of ways: as one that puts love of country above all else.

We are all under threat from a common enemy, one that doesn’t “distinguish between races, creeds, religions or political affiliations.” A solution, proposed by former Republican Reps. Ryan Costello and Francis Rooney in an op-ed for Politico, is for environmental organizations to actively engage in right-of-center communities. Get the citizens wanting climate action and their representatives might follow. Dartagnan of the Kos community wrote that the Supreme Court disallowing affirmative action in college admissions may not turn out as expected. The key passage in Roberts’ decision is how the student might write their essay and how it would be used by the college:

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.

All minority students have faced stereotyping and discrimination because of the way the appear to the white majority. Minority students have already been writing about this in their admissions essays. And college admissions officers and high schools counselors now know this is the way around the affirmative action ban. Many colleges will now suggest this as a topic for the student’s essay. A majority of white people believe discrimination against them exists. A much smaller percentage say they have actually experienced it. That reverse racism has been disproven makes no difference in people believing it is true. And hard right organizations have sent letters to those 200 highly competitive colleges threatening lawsuits of they don’t comply with the Supreme Court ruling. So even if white kids are discriminated against, they can write about it in their essays too. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quotes an article by Kate Shaw in the New York Times. Here’s part of the quote.

Since Justice Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court has sided with religious plaintiffs in every major religion case except a few exceptions on the shadow docket, representing an essentially unbroken streak of wins for Christian plaintiffs. This last point is significant. Where historically some of the court’s most important religious freedom rulings have protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the big winners in the recent cases have been practitioners of mainstream Christian religions.

I cleaned out a lot of browser tabs that are for things on Twitter I can no longer access and I don’t care very much if I never get the links back. Yeah, I’ve still got a few tabs for tweets that I might discuss without linking back to the original. Then there are tabs for threads I know I can get through the thread reader. Like this one by Michael Harriot from late April. He beings with a link to an article on ProPublica showing a stopped train with a black child crawling beneath it. When a train blocks a crossing for hours kids risk their lives by crawling underneath. The train could start at any moment. And ambulance and fire trucks are frequently blocked. Harriot explains that many towns historically segregated by race. His first example is train tracks. The less desirable housing was downwind from the noise and smoke of the trains. That’s where we get the expression, “wrong side of the tracks.” If a town with two high schools finds they have to close one, they aren’t going to send the white students to where the black people live. So a lot of black kids have to “cross the tracks” to attend school. Many had to face long walks and obstacles the white students didn’t have to face – like reservoirs that sometimes had high water or a ravine that didn’t have a convenient bridge. And in the 1950s many black neighborhoods in cities were wiped out through eminent domain so a freeway (for white people) could go through and become another barrier. Harriot takes on the false narrative that black people don’t value education. His rebuttal starts with black districts get about $2K less per student. White school libraries have more books. Yet, most black students attend these black schools. Another way this is racist is black people pay taxes too. Black people do value a good education. But that’s not what’s available to them.

If the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes

My Sunday movie was more a combination of concert and documentary. It was Identity: A Song Cycle presented by Against the Grain Theatre. Shortly after George Floyd was murdered, baritone Elliot Madore of Toronto realized he needed to come to grips with being biracial. He posted his thoughts to Instagram. With composer Dinuk Wijeratne and poet Shauntay Grant they created this song cycle. Madore’s singing seems somewhat classical, but the accompaniment is a jazz trio – piano, bass, and percussion. Wijeratne is one of the instrumentalists, I think piano. It was filmed in a studio with a relaxed atmosphere. In between the songs are pictures of Madore as a boy as he discusses his identity. He grew up in a loving family with a single mother and doting grandparents. He was eight before his mother said anything about his father. On being shown a picture of the man his reaction was hey wait, this guy has dark skin! He heard from his father briefly when he was 16 and has yet to meet him. Is he white? Culturally yes. Is he black? His skin is dark enough that some think he might be Italian or Spanish. But he doesn’t have any of the culture. For a long time he didn’t want to talk about his identity. He had imposter syndrome. One of the songs talks about being half this, half that, and I’m tired of the boxes and categories and tags. He is tired of friends and colleagues insisting the he is white (as in why would you want to give up your cultural superiority?). He is thankful for the black colleague who said, “Welcome home.” This video has been available for about six months. I finally saw it on the last day before it is set aside for a while. Sorry, you can’t find it and view it right now. I’ve now seen a couple things by Against the Grain Theatre. Both have been impressive and quite different. The earlier piece was Handel’s Messiah with each of the solos done by a different singer, most of them indigenous and singing in their own language and many with stunning Canadian scenery as backdrop. They’ve also done a new interpretation of Bluebeard’s Castle by Bela Bartok. Instead of Judith playing mind games with Bluebeard about what happened to his previous wives, this one imagines Judith sinking into dementia. It’s an intriguing concept, but it was done live and not recorded, so I haven’t seen it. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated today. The peaks in the number of new cases per day over the last several weeks are looking pretty good! They are 1022, 847, 774, 584, 427, and 349. In the same week that the peak was over 1000 there was one day with 16 deaths and one with 14. Since then the deaths per day have been 14 and under, mostly in the single digits. The big news of the week has been Fox News firing Tucker Carlson. There are lots of media stories about it such as this one by Hunter of Daily Kos. There is speculation of why the network booted its most popular host. The most obvious reason is the $787 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting, which happened just last week. Joan McCarter of Kos also discusses the reasons for the firing. Was it about Carlson’s lies over the ongoing coverage of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack? That was two years ago. But... Ray Epps, an insurrectionist, was accused by Carlson of being an FBI plant. Epps’ harassment has gotten so bad he’s on the run and now he’s suing Fox. Leah McElrath tweeted that perhaps Carlson’s ouster is to give the network respectability during these lawsuits and in advance of the 2024 election. Or it was because the discovery process for the Dominion case uncovered skeletons in his closets. Keeping those from coming to light might be a reason why Fox settled. Those skeletons may be related to how Carlson harassed female staff. Now that he’s gone McElrath said a thought that has crossed her mind is the nasty guy asking Carlson to be vice nasty. Others have suggested he might run for the top job. Hunter looked again at the idea that Carlson was booted because of the lies that made up his show. Why would Fox News put up with his lies for all these years only to dump him now? Hunter cataloged those lies: Promotion of “Great Replacement” claims. Promotion of election hoaxes. Of anti-vaccine hoaxes. Of violent far-right figures. Of conspiracy theories against conservatism’s enemies. Of Russia over Ukraine. He demanded retaliation against Fox reporters who discredited the Big Lie. He defended the Capitol attack. And he attacked the gender of M&Ms. One voice I read during the week warned us that though Carlson is gone from Fox that does not mean his voice will go silent. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the Russia propaganda machine is quite disappointed that Carlson has been booted. Clips from his show had been a regular feature of Russian broadcasts because they could say, “See! A prominent American broadcaster agrees with us!” So Tucker, need a job? Russia would gladly hire you. Or maybe you cold put on a Russian uniform and fight in Ukraine? Charles Jay of the Kos community reported that the abortion pill ruling puts the Supreme Court in a bind. The case asks the justices whether restrictions can be placed on a drug the FDA approved decades ago. It’s a bind because the case is between Big Pharma (big corporations in general) and religious rights. Siding with corporations is why the Federalist Society nominated the conservative justices to the court. Their conservative corporate values also came with conservative religious values, which were on display when Roe was overturned. But those religious values will be in conflict with the corporate values. As for the abortion pill, an Associated Press story posted on Kos reported late Friday, just before their extended deadline, the justices ruled it can remain available without restrictions while the case is being litigated. It is still before the conservative 5th Circuit Court and will likely be back before the Supremes next year or the year after. Joan McCarter of Kos reported another Supreme corruption scandal. This one involved Justice Neil Gorsuch. He had a Colorado property he wanted to sell, but had no takers. Nine days after his confirmation it sold. He properly disclosed the sale but carefully did not disclose the seller was Brian Duffey, CEO of Greenberg Taurig, a powerhouse law firm with regular business before the court. The legacy of Chief Justice John Roberts: Corruption. The old saying, I think applied to Al Capone, is that if the law can’t get him on his crime, get him on his taxes. Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee may be trying to make that also true for Justice Clarence Thomas. If those gifts from Harlan Crow were as expensive as they appear to be then they were way above the annual gift tax exclusion. With the House in Republican hands doing something about the corruption in the Supremes is likely not possible. And Wyden’s attempts likely won’t cause Thomas to behave or respond to invitations or subpoenas to appear before a Senate Committee. But Wyden sure can create a big public relations mess going into the 2024 election year. Jesse Duquette tweeted a cartoon of Thomas in an alley doorway saying, “Pssst, hey you... wanna buy a ruling?" In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Filipovic on Substack discussing why conservatives are obsessed with gender identity.

Conservatives who push and support these bills claim to be concerned about “gender ideology” perverting young minds — telling boys they can be girls and vice versa, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, giving children hormones and genital surgeries. This is all pretty dishonest. Members of the conservative movement aren’t concerned about women’s sports (otherwise they’d be funding them), children’s health (otherwise they’d be fighting the number-one killer of children), or women’s rights (otherwise they wouldn’t be virulent misogynists attacking women’s rights at every turn, banning abortion, and electing rapists to office). They care about liberal “gender ideology” for one reason: Because they want to impose and enforce their own right-wing gender ideology on the public.

Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tweeted a cartoon of a grumpy man saying, “I don’t want big gov’t coming in and taking away my freedom! I just want it to take away hers.” McElrath linked to an article in Tech Crunch that reported the Missouri government set up a website to allow citizens to report on “transgender concerns” – otherwise known as a snitch site. The response: citizens spammed it until it crashed.

Investigate the Investigators!

I’ve heard my sources say the nasty guy and his minions – especially Attorney General William Barr – are trying to investigate the investigators. I’ve been puzzled about how they would go about doing that. Then indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provided an example. Reporter Noga Tarnopolsky tweeted a thread about what is going on. After being indicted Netanyahu spoke. He attacked the justice system. He attacked the press. He called for an uprising of the people, railing against what he calls trumped up charges. He said the public has already lost faith in the police and the justice system. He railed that he got the worst press coverage of anyone in the history of Israel. He vowed he won’t let lies win in his country. He said investigators weren’t seeking the truth they were seeking him. “There is one thing that must happen: the Investigators must be investigated!” Only accountability will restore public faith in the justice system.

Any of this sound familiar? Perhaps coming from a certain big mouth on this side of the Atlantic?

Obviously (and it was obvious to many long before now), Netanyahu is an authoritarian.

Just to dispel any doubts: Since the investigators charged Netanyahu with a crime, he – like authoritarians everywhere – concludes that it is the investigators that must be corrupt and we had better expose that corruption before the country (meaning himself) is harmed.



Dawn Onley of Our Prism on Daily Kos asks an important question. The most loyal demographic of the Democratic Party is black women. So why are the first two primaries in lily white Iowa and New Hampshire? The order of primary states matters because momentum matters. Why should Kamela Harris have to wait a month after the first big two to get to states (Nevada and South Carolina) where a higher concentration of voters look like her?

Presidential candidate Julián Castro adds:

We’re right to call Republicans out when they suppress the votes of African-Americans or Latinos, but we’ve also got to recognize that this 50-year-old process was created during a time when minority voices had zero power in the party.

A couple years ago North Korean leader Kim Kong Un wanted meetings with the nasty guy because such appearances would promote the idea that Kim was a legitimate world leader. Those meetings were supposed to be about nuclear disarmament and they have been so much not going well that Kim is frustrated. In response to a hopeful tweet from the nasty guy North Korean official Kim Kye Gwan replied:

We are no longer interested in such talks that bring nothing to us. As we have got nothing in return, we will no longer gift the U.S. president with something he can boast of, but get compensation for the successes that President Trump is proud of as his administrative achievement.

We’ve gone from Kim needing the nasty guy to give him legitimacy to Kim not needing and not wanting the nasty guy.



Journalist Heather Bryant tweeted a thread in which she notes that news organizations are considering editor’s notes for greater transparency. Bryant proposes a few. Here are a couple of them.

To go with a story about labor, unions, and workforce discrimination:

Editor's Note: This company is currently resisting or outright fighting unionization efforts of staff that would help them in regard to these issues.

To go with a story about sexual assault and whether the allegations will ruin the man’s life:

Editor's Note: This media company has known and/or covered up for one or more men who have discriminated, harassed or assaulted women who work or wanted to work here.

Bill in Portland, Maine includes in his weekday post Cheers and Jeers on Daily Kos has a By the Numbers feature. In today’s numbers:

Number of times Pete Buttigieg’s Rhodes scholarship has been mentioned in U.S. publications this year, according to HuffPost: 596

Number of times Cory Booker's Rhodes scholarship has been mentioned: 79

A referendum of the voters

I've been hearing about the Michigan affirmative action case just decided by the Supremes. My regular (gay) news sources didn't discuss it, so I went to the source, that being SCOTUSblog. According to its reporting the 6-2 decision essentially says that voters have a right to determine issues related to race.

The race issue, Kennedy said, is not so sensitive that it cannot be made the topic of political conversation and submitted to a referendum of the voters.

I see so many things wrong with that statement. Yes, I'm saying a Supreme Court justice got it wrong (and it won't be the first or last time). At a time when so many people are freaking out about a black president Anthony Kennedy is saying race relations are not sensitive? And when have we had an intelligent political conversation about race? Certainly the GOP hasn't had that conversation since Richard Nixon pulled his Southern Strategy to win the presidency. And that bit about "submitted to a referendum of the voters" sounds like an endorsement of tyranny of the majority.

I'll let other legal minds ponder the racial and policy implications, such as this one that debates whether affirmative action is about upholding diversity or is reparative justice. I have a different burning question to ask.

If it is permissible for voters to ban racial preferences is it also permissible for voters to ban same-sex marriage?

Have the Supremes given us a hint on how they might rule in a marriage equality case when it gets to them? Bases on the rulings last summer court after court has been saying marriage is a fundamental right and using that as a basis to confirm same-sex marriage. So is education not a fundamental right? Did we miss something about the Constitution's inclusive language and now find it applies to sexual minorities and not racial minorities (and I'm very aware lots of people try to claim the Constitution indeed does not cover racial minorities -- and apparently a few justices do too). Are these two cases different? If so, in what way?

Not much further to march

Joshua DuBois, former director of the White House faith-based initiative, has a feature article in Newsweek to go with the recent anniversary March on Washington. He frequently hears (and sometimes said), "We've come so far, but we have so much further to go" in terms of race relations.

But he now believes that phrase is getting in the way of progress. He gives his reasons:

* When Martin Luther King Jr. talked about "one day" when the races will be at peace, he didn't mean hundreds of years from now. He meant within a generation or two -- which has passed.

* The original march had focused goals, many of which have been reached.

* The goal isn't endless marching, but to seize the opportunities within reach.

* The percentage of black men who have dropped out of high school has been cut in half over the last 40 years. A couple percent more and it will match the white dropout rate. Within our grasp.

* Life expectancy of black people is up. Some hard work and it will match the life expectancy of white people.

* Yeah, we've lost ground in the percent of young black men behind bars. But Attorney General Eric Holder is proposing practical solutions. We can do this.

Get black youth into college with intact Pell Grants? Face down legislatures who want to disenfranchise black voters? Get rid of "stand your ground"? Reconnect black men with their families? All of this is achievable, not in some distant future, but here and now. Get to work.

What is your responsibility?

The first stop today was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It wasn't busy there today (see below) so I was able to get in without a reservation (I also happened to arrive at the same time as a family with an extra ticket, but we all went in before our appointed time). Yes, the topic is grim, but important. As one comment in the brochure puts it, “It happened. Therefore it can happen again.” At the end of the exhibit they point out it has happened again. One of those places was Rwanda. That brochure also says, “What is your responsibility now that you've seen, now that you know?” Genocide doesn't just happen. There are always warning signs.

There was one big thing I learned. In the 1930s Germany would have been quite content to send all its Jews into exile. As one who has studied music I heard a lot about composers and musicians who fled Germany – Arnold Schoenberg and Wolfgang Korngold are two names of many that readily come to mind. They were able to come to America because of their prominence in the arts. Back to that bit about Germany willing to exile its Jews. One big problem – no other country (including America) would take millions of Jews. They were also too anti-Semitic for that to work. That included British controlled Palestine.

Another thing I learned was that when the camps were opened and Jews were freed, they couldn't return to their home cities. Part of it was that some small towns were completely destroyed. Part of it was because the residents were still quite anti-Semitic and blamed the Jews for their own wartime hardships. Those Jews who appeared were frequently killed.

I'm sure you are thankful I don't have pictures. Camera use was banned.

When I entered I was asked to take an Identification Card. It was a card of a real person who had been caught up in the Holocaust. Mine was for Welek Luksenhurg of Poland, who would have been 16 when the Nazis invaded. The card told me some of his background and I was told I should read certain pages after visiting each floor of the display. We were all warned that there were 500 different ID cards and only 30 of them were about survivors. When Welek was forced into a death-march I figured I knew how his life ended. Thankfully, he was rescued before he died.

The guidebook said to allow two hours. I took more than three. By the end I was quite hungry. The only nearby place to eat that I knew about was the cafe in the Smithsonian Castle. By the time I was done eating it was after 2:30. I thought of heading to other nearby Smithsonian museums, but I could hear a voice from down the Mall.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, so there were big events at the Lincoln Memorial, finishing with Obama speaking. I had thought of joining the crowds after touring the Holocaust Museum, but, as I said, that took longer than expected. Even so, I had planned for it. I saw an item in the newspaper (the Washington Post has been delivered to my room every morning) saying backpacks were not permitted in the western part of the Mall. That left me carrying book, water bottle, and umbrella in my hands.

So, at 2:30 and hearing a voice echo down the Mall, I decided I should join the crowd, even though feet were sore and it was raining. I went as far as the western side of the Washington Monument (no security check required there). By then Obama was speaking. I could hear his voice and see him on a jumbo-tron but there were many words I couldn't understand. So I don't know much of what he said, other than “Keep marching!” Many around me were listening to the speech through smartphones. I could hear there was about a 10 second delay between live and over the phone.

I can say I was a part of the anniversary March on Washington, even though I don't have the commemorative t-shirt, tote bag, laminated wall hanging, or other trinket that a slew of street vendors tried to sell me. I'll only offer a photo as proof. Yes, I remembered to have the telescopic lens with me. Even so I'm sure I was at lest 3/4 mile away.

Since it wasn't quite 4:00 I headed to the Smithsonian Natural history Museum, though that didn't hold my interest long. Then I went across the Mall to the Hirshorn Art Museum (also Smithsonian) for it's last half hour. Most of that art was a bit too far out there for me and a half hour was plenty.

I wandered a bit west of Chinatown for a restaurant for supper (ate in Chinatown two nights ago). Then back to the hotel.

Yesterday's Style section of the Washington Post has a feature article the National Mall and Lincoln Memorial now play in our public life. Since 1939 when Marian Anderson sang from the Lincoln Memorial it and the Mall has become the stage for protests. The National Park Service, which cares for the Mall, receives 3000 requests a year for permits to protest. Some of these require coordination with the Metro system, Capitol Police, Secret Service, and nearby RFK Stadium (for parking). Which “illustrates one of America's more endearing quirks: Federal employees will work their fingers to the bone ensuring that you have the right to tell them how disappointed you are in the system that employes them.”


Warning, if you view the related slideshow you are subjected to a 30 second commercial before you can see the pictures. The pictures, about 3 dozen, are pretty cool.

Civil disobedience or lawlessness?

The tale of Jim and John from Cincinnati who flew to Baltimore to be married on the tarmac has been noticed by Mike DeWine, the Attorney General of Ohio. He will appeal the decision from the judge who decreed that John's death certificate must declare him married. DeWine is up for reelection this fall and his opponent is David Pepper. He scolds DeWine, saying the AG took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.



Terrence Heath has collected about 3 dozen cartoons about the George Zimmerman acquittal in Trayvon Martin's death. Heath grouped them in three parts.



Officials in Montgomery County, near Philadelphia, have announced they are defying the gay marriage ban in Pennsylvania and will grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This comes after the ACLU has sued the ban in federal court and Kathleen Kane, the state's AG, declared she would not defend the ban. Yes, couples are taking advantage of the opportunity, though the ACLU warns later court action could invalidate the marriages. The GOP is complaining how horrible these marriages are. But, strangely, so far nobody is actually doing anything to stop them.

Jim Crow is back

My dad saw that I had written about Trayvon Martin and promptly responded by sending four articles related to the case. I found three of them worth sharing.

The first is by Lisa Sharon Harper of Sojourners. She begins by explaining a bit about the Stand Your Ground law that is at the core of the case. The defense did not use it, but the judge included it in the instructions to the jury and the one outspoken juror said it made a difference. Harper explains what the law means:

Before 2005, Florida’s self-defense laws mirrored those of the rest of the country. A person had no duty to retreat if being attacked inside their own home, but outside the home they had the duty to get the heck out of dodge, if possible, before using deadly force.

In 2005, Florida became the first state to expand its self-defense laws to include any spaces outside the home and encouraged people not to retreat, but to “stand their ground.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates broke down the irony of Florida’s “stand your ground” principle:

“I don’t think the import of this is being appreciated,” he said. “Effectively, I can bait you into a fight and if I start losing, I can legally kill you, provided I ‘believe’ myself to be subject to ‘great bodily harm.’

More that 20 states now have such laws.

Add a few more ingredients into the stew, new concealed carry laws in every state and racial profiling available to citizens. By the latter Harper means that a combination of concealed carry and stand your ground gives regular citizens "immunity from prosecution." That was formerly only available to police.

Back in then 1960s Jim Crow ended with three big advancements. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Food Stamp Act of 1964, which provided economic empowerment.

Three weeks ago the Supremes gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

Last week the House GOP gutted the Food Stamps Act. This isn't law yet…

And the Zimmerman verdict showed that there is a big hole in the Civil Rights Act.

Which means old Jim Crow -- the web of laws that reinforced the idea that some people are meant to be slaves, some are meant to be masters, and only whites are fully human -- is back. That's why Zimmerman's acquittal is a big deal. This realization has sent the black community reeling.

The second article from Dad is by Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell as a commentary for the United Methodist News Service and posted in the blog UMConnections. Caldwell is black. His central idea expands on Obama's call for a national discussion. Caldwell says a part of that discussion should take place in our churches. I agree.

I attend a suburban United Methodist Church. The few blacks that have ventured in our doors (other than for the food pantry or maybe Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the basement) tend to not stick around for very long. I can envision the squawk that would arise if our pastor proposed such discussions in our church. I can envision it because I've heard it before when our church has attempted to deal with other touchy issues (like the presence of gay people). Which only proves such a discussion is vitally necessary and long overdue.

Dad specifically mentioned I should read the comments to this article. A good number of them essentially said, "That trial was not about race! How dare you imply it was!" Again proving the necessity of discussions on race.

The third article is by William Saletan in Slate. He writes that too many people are reading their own biases into the case. They are jumping to the conclusion that it is about Stand Your Ground laws, or about racism, or about whatever cause they champion. Saletan watched all seven hours of the closing arguments to see what the case was really about.

His conclusion is that while Zimmerman is not guilty of murder or manslaughter, he is guilty of being a reckless fool. Saletan lists Zimmerman's mistakes: inferring Martin was a burglar, pursuing Martin on foot, and failing to imagine how is actions would look to Martin -- what's the kid supposed to think when someone starts following him? Saletan also lists a mistake on Martin's part -- misreading Zimmerman and reacting badly. From what Saletan says I'm inclined to let Martin off the hook.

Did racism play a part in Zimmerman's actions? Saletan (and perhaps the court video) doesn't say. Perhaps Martin's reaction to Zimmerman was racist? We again don't know for sure.

This case may not be about racism or guns or the Stand Your Ground laws. Even so, if this case prompts meaningful discussions about those topics, that's great. Let's keep talking.

The impossible question: Why?

Terrence Heath, who is black, recounts when he was in college his father sat him down for The Talk. Nope, not the birds and the bees. This was a full blown course in Black Man 101 -- how to conduct yourself during encounters with police when you've done nothing wrong and are still accused. That is if you want to emerge alive and unscathed. The lessons included how to be deferential and agreeable while being treated like a criminal.

But with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, Heath remembers what his father had to do during Jim Crow.

The old rules required Blacks to be agreeable and non-challenging when dealing with white people, even if the white person in question was wrong. No Black person could never even insinuate that a white person was wrong, lying, or had dishonorable intentions. Under no circumstances was a Black person ever to even appear to assume equality with whites.

If a white person carrying a gun will feel threatened by a black man and may shoot with very little provocation, then Jim Crow etiquette is back. Black fathers must teach their sons to act around any white person the way they used to teach their sons to act around police.

Being a Black man of almost any age in American means being constantly aware of the fear your mere presence inspires some whites, the anger that follows closely on heels of that, and the deference required of you as a result. Should it cause you to be profiled, harassed, demeaned, beaten or worse, you may just have to take it. If, that is, you want to live.

We already teach our sons to follow a similar etiquette above with police officers. We tell them to be agreeable and non-challenging, even if the police are wrong.

Must we now explain to our sons that their very presence is enough to make some people believe they are dangerous solely because they are young black men? Must we now explain to them that some white people will look for any reason to act on those feelings and beliefs?

Must we revert to teaching our sons to conform to some modern form of “Jim Crow etiquette”? Must we now revert to teaching our sons to be deferential to every bigot who may be armed, and may have just enough law on their side to start shooting based on nothing more than how they feel and what they believe?

Last fall, our oldest son got his first hoodie. It quickly became his favorite article of clothing. The moment he put it on, and pulled the hood over his face, I saw Trayvon Martin’s face. I thought of my son in Trayvon Martin’s place.

Sometime during The Talk there is a question from the student that is impossible to answer: Why?



Joshua DuBois of Newsweek writes about the national mood after the Zimmerman acquittal. On the black side it is mothers asking in fear "Can they really just kill our kids?" And on the white side is another fear:

It’s a view that has sympathy for the Martin family, but at the end of the day also has sympathy for George Zimmerman: You know, sue me, but a tall, hooded black man that I’ve never seen before in my neighborhood is maybe a little frightening. And I don’t know what happened next between Zimmerman and Trayvon. But if, God forbid, I, or my husband, or my wife, is ever in that situation, I might like the right to ... Most would shudder to finish the sentence.

So how do we lessen the fear? DuBois has profiles of a couple people trying to do just that. The first is Russell Moore. He is the new head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. This is the denomination that fought hard to maintain slavery and Jim Crow and filled the ranks of the Klan. So, yeah, having a white guy in the leadership of that organization talking about how to heal the fear between the races is a really big deal. "Moore has made it a personal goal to understand the manifestations of racism in the American soul and root it out."

Moore says we are having two different conversations about race. Blacks tend to discuss it in broad terms. But they should be discussing being afraid their son will be the next Trayvon.

Whites tend to discuss the specifics -- how that particular black man frightens me. But they don't see the historical context. Whites don't see that blacks place Trayvon Martin alongside Medgar Evars. There needs to be a conversation and it needs to be at the local level and done with preparation.

Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, felt ill when the verdict was announced. He adds:

You know, here is the key: to be made whole, we have to forgive George Zimmerman. We have to forgive those who believe that what he did was right. … Once we forgive, we can encourage the majority population to walk in our shoes—the shoes of a black mother, a black father, a black son, a black daughter. But first, we have to forgive.

Maya Angelou responds with hope:

Look at the people who are protesting! Look at the people who are standing up for their rights. These aren’t just black people or white people—these are right people. These crowds, some of them are 50, 60 percent white.

John Oliver is Jon Stewart's summer replacement at the Daily Show. He does a great six minute rant about the Zimmerman acquittal and the craziness of Florida law. A choice tidbit:

According to current Florida law you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following [the minor] and choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them, and if at any point during that process you get scared you can shoot the minor to death, and the state of Florida will say, "Well, look: you did what you could."

Who the other students will be

Education in many community public schools is so bad that irate parents are turning to charter schools. Michigan recently raised the cap on the number of permitted charter schools and, I think, the cap goes away in a few years.

Beside the dubious benefit of charter schools -- many are not better than public schools -- they are leading to another undesirable effect. Our schools are becoming more segregated. There are three reasons for this.

* Charter schools serve as neighborhood schools and most of our neighborhoods are segregated. That's an issue we haven't addressed yet. Many charter school companies will intentionally place a school in a minority neighborhood and woo the kids of that minority. That might be good for those kids, but it is still a segregated school.

* The choice of school, from a parent's perspective, depends on both what is taught and who the other students will be. School choice allows bigoted parents to take their kids elsewhere.

* When a charter school makes a choice available, not everyone can take advantage of the choice. Charters are exempt from laws that require schools to offer transportation, food for low-income students, specialists for developmental problems, or teachers for the non-English speakers. Great school, but for poor, autistic, or immigrant kids it's a false choice.

But the idea of school choice has taken hold, even in public schools, a toxic idea.

Now contrast that with Finland. No charters, no private schools, no school choice, no "reform" movement. All schools are public and all are adequately funded.

The majority is looking over its shoulders

Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, puts the recent Beck/Palin rally at the Lincoln Memorial in context. He sees it as conservative leaders realizing that whites will probably not be in the majority sometime in the next few decades. American is certainly not getting swarms of immigrants from England. Conservatives want to "take back America" but one must ask "From whom?" While liberals are an obvious reply, non-white immigrants are also a big part of it. Hitchens also notes that many conservatives are carefully not commenting on the color of Obama's skin -- that would be blatantly racist and would bring harsh criticism. The attacks are instead about his place of birth and religion. That shows up the prevalent fears -- the white majority will be submerged by immigrants and challenged by a religion that is mostly Third World. Beck's message this time was rather wimpy. It probably won't stay that way.

By appointment only

Snow storm in Michigan today so my evening rehearsal was cancelled. That gives me time to write.

I moved to the Detroit area around Labor Day of 1978 to take my first job. My work address was 1 Woodward, which overlooks the Detroit River and had great views into Canada. I commuted from the northern suburbs, living near my college roommate. Most of my commute was by train from which I could gleefully note the clogged freeway the train passed over.

Once a month this company had a luncheon for the professionals and managers in a nearby hall. Each luncheon featured a speaker. One of them was Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. I don't remember what he talked about, though I do remember the line about, "those cornfields north of 8 Mile" implying the suburbs just outside the city was full of hicks.

I didn't stay at that company very long. By the spring of 1979 I had gotten a job at Henry's company in Dearborn, where I worked for 27 years.

As one who took advantage of the cultural institutions of Detroit -- the orchestra, institute of arts, etc. -- I ventured into the city regularly and was puzzled by Dearborn colleagues who bragged about how many years it had been since they last drove into the city. But I didn't grow up in the city and they did.

Coleman Young was the first black mayor of Detroit. He was elected in 1973, not long after the city became majority black, and served as mayor (some say king) until his retirement in 1993. Author Paul Clemens was born in Detroit the year Young took office and has written a book, Made in Detroit, about growing up as a white kid in predominantly black Detroit. I had put this book on my Christmas wish list and my niece bought it for me. She said it looked intriguing and wanted my review of it. So, here it is.

Clemens is a fine writer and tells a fascinating tale. He doesn't try to analyze race relations (well, not too much). He reports on how his experiences are affected by race conflict. One example is the "By Appointment Only" sign in the neighborhood barbershop. That sign only mattered when a black man walked in -- sorry, the next available appointment isn't until next week. The author does comment on how the mayor antagonizes whites to keep blacks voting for him, yet the city keeps declining. Young was asked why the city is in such poor shape and he blames all the people who left -- which had me wondering why he didn't work to make the city more desirable and conciliatory to make fewer people want to leave. The Clemens family stuck it out until the 1990s before bailing for the 'burbs.

I understand a bit more about my former colleagues who saw no reason to cross Detroit city borders. They lived through the racial tensions of the 1950s and '60s (including the 1967 riots) and I did not. They were incensed by Coleman Young. I could ignore the guy.

Clemens describes the location of many Detroit things in the book. I got out a map of the city to note the neighborhoods where his family lived and the various Catholic churches he and his extended family attended. However, many times the author could be elusive. He never names the university where he got his Bachelor degree (Grand Valley State University?), nor the city where he lives a couple years after he gets his Masters (Grand Rapids?). He is even vague about the college in the Cass Corridor (Wayne State University?) where he worked on the grounds crew one summer and the Catholic college (Marygrove?) where he worked once he moved back to Detroit. Why be so elusive?

Clemens reads several black authors, such as James Baldwin, as part of his studies and describes his internal debates with them. At times I wondered where he was going with these thoughts. I kept waiting for him to come up with grand pronouncements on race relations. Perhaps his point is there aren't such things.

Though there are minor drawbacks the story is worth the effort. It’s a book I recommend.