Seventeen Solutions – use government to spur innovation

his is a continuation of my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.

9. Use government procurement to spur innovation

We frequently hear the claim (as part of the drumbeat to eliminate regulations) that we need to get government out of the way and business will unleash its creative zeal. Nader says that it isn’t a case of government doing too much, which supposedly has the effect of stifling innovation. It’s the case that government does too little, it doesn’t harness its purchasing power to drive innovation.

In 2010 the gov’t spent $528 billion on goods and services. The goods included office equipment, cars, drugs, foods, energy, electronics, appliances, paper, building materials, and road pavement. Here are ways the gov’t could harness its purchasing power.

Requiring gov’t buildings to be energy efficient would open new markets for alternative energy, speeding development of such sources. Obama has been doing some of this. Alas, in the case of energy, much of the gov’t is beholden to the fossil fuel industry (and after Trump ran on restoring coal, do you see him putting solar panels on the White House?).

Gov’t can instantly create a large market for a product. That improves a supplier’s economy of scale and lowers the risk of investing in new technology. And it can do so before there is much of a consumer demand.

Because the gov’t buys so much of a product, such as computers, it doesn’t have to accept what the suppliers offer. It can demand or encourage suppliers to be more imaginative, more efficient, and more responsible. It can boost the adoption of new products. It can require greater safety, a cleaner environment, and taxpayer savings (and, as Obama has done, demand fair treatment of LGBT workers).

For example, the patents for car air bags were issued in the 1950s and ‘60s. But carmakers were reluctant to put them in cars – until the gov’t specified the cars it purchased must have driver-side air bags, which it did in the late ‘80s.

Why doesn’t the gov’t do more of this? I’ve already mentioned political influences, such as the fossil fuel industry blocking the installation of solar panels on the roof of every gov’t building. Other reasons: Most purchases focus on initial cost, not life-cycle cost. The gov’t also doesn’t pay much attention to energy efficiency, environmental care, and social cost or benefit.

There is also bureaucracy. President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that all paper should use recycled content. But orders are ignored or undermined by inertia and incompetence.

Nader mentioned another type of bungle. The Department of Justice took Microsoft to court for abuses of its operating system monopoly. The outcome was an agreement that had far too many holes for Microsoft to weasel through and an expiration date. The gov’t could have been more effective if it used its purchasing power to demand such things as requiring the operating system be more open to third party vendors, stopping discriminatory pricing, providing support to those third-party vendors, and perhaps auctioning off licenses to some of Microsoft’s intellectual property to provide competition. The gov’t doesn’t need to be a passive consumer.

The gov’t needs to recognize its purchasing power and how it can drive benefits for consumers. Nader proposes purchasing guidelines.

1. Improve government employee health and productivity.
2. Spark innovation and benefit society as a whole.
3. Lessen our energy demands, advance consumer safety, and reduce environmental damage.
4. Reduce long-term economic costs.
…
Sound procurement policies represent a way for the biggest consumer – We the People – to say to the biggest sellers. Here is what we want to buy. Take it or leave it.

Seventeen Solutions – restore civil liberties

I left off this series two months ago. Writing about the election got in the way. Since I don’t want to write about the latest nasty person nominated to the nasty guy’s administration it is appropriate I get back to this series. That’s especially true since this series discusses an antidote to the nasty guy’s agenda, even if the GOP controlling the government is less likely to go along with it. This is a continuation of my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.

8. Restore civil liberties

Erich Fromm says there are two basic freedoms, from which we get the Bill of Rights. The first is freedom from dictatorial authority. The second is a freedom to shape our community’s and country’s present and future. This second one is spelled out in freedom to speak and to petition government. Democracy depends on both.

A big threat to these two core freedoms: the politics of fear. Trump wielded fear effectively in this election as did Bush II 15 years ago, but Nader says Obama also effectively used this fear. Associated with fear is panic which, after the 9/11 attacks, we had plenty of. Wrote Nader:

This kind of atmosphere is poisonous to healthy social discourse, it can destroy any democratic society’s capacity to respond wisely and resourcefully.

A president promoting fear can usually drown out dissenting voices.

But there is no cost-benefit analysis. Is the amount of money spent combating terror appropriate to the size of the threat? Usually not. Part of that is there is no analysis of how much of a threat there actually is. But a president can shout “Terrorism!” and the money flows, as does the power.

All that money spent against a comparatively small threat means money not spent on things that are desperately needed, such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure. In addition, that money usually gets spent to enrich cronies (see: Halliburton). And all that power flowing to a president means the loss of civil rights.

Throughout our national history wars and threats of wars usually mean the rule of law is weakened as the president claims more powers. The powerful president usually can find reasons why it is necessary to curtail civil liberties.

The big recent example is the Patriot Act, which needlessly authorized snooping on citizens. Nader lists other similar acts and what both Bush II and Obama have done with them.

Nader’s solution in this chapter leaves me dissatisfied. Congress, says Nader, should assert its control over the president and threaten impeachment if the president uses war or terrorism to grab more power. Nader describes an incident in which he believes Obama should have been impeached.

My complaint of Nader’s solution has a couple parts. First, Congress has, in many cases, specifically given up its check on the president because Congress doesn’t want to take the political heat (or wants to put that heat on the president). They’re unlikely to demand the return of that power.

Second, my calculations change with the recent election. It now looks like Congress and the president will work together to curtail civil liberties. They won’t be a check on each other. And they’ll soon reinforce the courts to approve those lost liberties.

Restoring civil rights is necessary. But this isn’t the solution.

Happy birthday dear blog

It was nine years ago today that I started this here blog thingie. Three years before then, when Massachusetts was ordered to offer same-sex marriage, I had started sending out blurbs and links out news articles to family and friends. My niece was the one who suggested that a blog would be better. She said something about RSS feed.

This particular post is number 3300. Yes, a lot. The number of posts in a year hit a high in 2009 with 459 posts. Last year was a low at 285, though this year is at 219 and, with only six weeks to go, likely to come in lower. The posts get automatically get emailed to 9 people. Most posts are read by another 10-20 people by opening a specific post. Readership stats suggest another 30-100 people (it changes each month) read posts by opening and scrolling through the main blog page.

Lately, readers sit in America, France, Poland, Germany, China, Portugal, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Australia. Every so often a new country shows up in the readership map. In the last month that was Yemen and Sudan.

Alas, very few of these readers leave a comment. In these 3300 posts there have been only 229 comments, which comes out to comments for only 7% of entries. There have been no comments in 2.5 years. I do get regular comments from the people the post is emailed to, though these don’t show up in the blog archives. The most frequent replies I get are from my friend and debate partner.

I’ve been writing the blog long enough that it covered the last year of Bush II. I’ve written about the battle over marriage equality, the latest shenanigans of the GOP (lots of growth predicted here), Christian fundamentalism (though not as much lately), the acceptance of LGBT people and our rights, bigotry, corporate takeover of America and the world, and myself. One recently added label is Building Community, exploring ideas of how we live together. I’ve used 643 different labels on posts (which don’t appear on the emailed version). Only 248 of these labels appear in a sidebar on the webpage with the number of times each has been used.

The truth is irrelevant

The Oxford Dictionaries has chosen its 2016 Word of the Year: post-truth. It means “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The word has been around for a couple decades. It was chosen this year because its usage jumped significantly, especially when discussing politics.

A few of the words from the shortlist:

Adulting – the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks.

Alt-right – an ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.

Chatbot – a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.

Glass cliff – used with reference to a situation in which a woman or member of a minority group ascends to a leadership position in challenging circumstances where the risk of failure is high.

Another chance

I said I’m not going to get into the details of the nasty guy’s transition, but there are a few larger ideas at play.

There has been lots of news that white nationalist Stephen Bannon is a director of policy in the nasty guy’s transition team. The nasty guy had been on Bannon’s radio show and analysis of those appearances show that Bannon is a master manipulator and the nasty guy is easily manipulated. Hoo boy!



Frank Gaffney is reportedly being considered for a big role in national security (though the incompetent transition team denies it). Surprising nobody, Gaffney is described by the SPLC as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.” Gaffney recommends that the nasty guy had better get started with purging the intelligence community of those not loyal to the supreme leader. Perhaps Gaffney won’t get the job? May not matter. The nasty guy has been saying similar things.



Who’d a guessed? Support of progressive organizations is surging. For example, in the five days after the election the ACLU got 120K donations totaling $7.5 million. Democratic operatives are strategizing which group runs point on which issue, such as women’s health, deportations, and attacks on Muslims.



Melissa McEwen of Shakesville has heard a lot of people saying now that the nasty guy won the election let’s give him a chance to do the job, let’s see what happens. McEwen replies, nope. Reasons for her refusal:

* We are already seeing what is happening and, like adding Stephen Bannon to the team, we already know it is bad.

* The nasty guy was given endless chances through the campaign. Every time he showed himself to be a bigot he was given another chance.

* Black victims of police and other vigilante violence are not given another chance. Tamir Rice, the black boy in Cleveland gunned down because he was holding a toy gun – his life was defined in one brief moment. He didn’t get a chance.

* Where does giving him a chance end? What are the dealbreakers? What is the accountability? What prevents offering a chance from becoming complicity?

* Would you give another chance to your kid’s soccer coach if he was accused of abuse?

* What is your threshold? How many indecent things do you need to see?

Painful ancestry

One of those other things I’ve been wanting to write about…

I read the memoir I’m Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming. His acting career got a big boost when he played the Emcee on Cabaret. For that he won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Many of his roles have been sexually ambivalent, some transgender. He is bisexual and lives with his husband. Though his acting career is mentioned in the book, that’s not what it’s about.

In 2010 Cumming was invited to be on the British TV show Who Do You Think You Are?. The show explores a mystery in a person’s ancestry. Cumming and the show settled on his maternal grandfather. He was in WWII but never returned home. The family received word that in 1951 he died of a shooting accident in Malaya (now Malaysia). What really happened? Cumming wrote about the key sites in his grandfather’s life where filming was done and what he learned about his grandfather at each stop.

At the same time Cumming was dealing with the abuse he suffered from his father while growing up. Near death from cancer the father lobbed one more emotional grenade at Cumming, just as filming for the TV show was about to begin.

While Cumming’s descriptions of abuse are hard to read I found his story of recovery to be fascinating.

Evidence of corruption

I’ve decided I don’t want to talk about every annoying thing the nasty guy is doing. For one thing I couldn’t keep up. For another, I would rather write about other things, such as the big ideas (and opera and books and protests and...).

But before I drop my scrutiny of the transition, here are enough things to show where all this is heading. Which is not a surprise.

Box Turtle Bulletin has been listing many of the hate crimes that have occurred in the last week, a big spike in frequency since last week’s election. Some of them are listed here. The reason appears to be attackers saying our bigoted candidate won, which means half the country agrees with our bigotry, which means we’re allowed to act on it.



Steve Bannon has been nominated as Chief Strategist. We were horrified when this former editor of Breitbart News was hired onto the campaign. We’re horrified again that he’ll have a job in the White House. While at Breitbart he showed that he is extremely bigoted. Every incident his site covered was sensationalized with layers of conspiracy slathered on. He is a white nationalist and very much shows the nasty guy’s intentions.



As for the rest of the Cabinet, most career bureaucrats don’t want the job. The nasty guy was repudiated by economists, intelligence officers, and military strategists. But he’ll surround himself with smart people! Melissa McEwen of Shakesville replies: “No, he won't. And he was never going to.”



The nasty guy is not placing his investments or properties into a blind trust or doing a complete divestment. Instead, he is turning it all over to his children. That makes for a massive conflict of interest. To top that off, he wants his children to have security clearance.

Since he has refused to disclose his tax returns we may never know whether he makes a decision (such as tax policy) for the good of the country or the good of his wallet.

So the nasty guy as accumulated more evidence of corruption in six days of transition than Obama’s eight years of presidency – or in Hillary Clinton’s entire career. Amazing there was a media frenzy over Clinton’s appearances of conflict and very little over the nasty guy’s actual and glaring conflicts of interest.



Already on the agenda: dismantle net neutrality, embrace climate change, lower taxes (on the rich), phase out Medicare. That means the nasty guy and the GOP controlled Congress aren’t rolling things back to 2008, they’re rolling things back to 1968. At least.

But checks and balances! McEwen asks: from who? The GOP Congress that didn’t stand up to him during the campaign? The corporate media that provided such unbalanced coverage he won the election? The Supremes, after his nominations sail through?

Our pain will be far less than their pain

At the end of last week and through the weekend I got a few emails inviting me to an event today. After a busy weekend I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go.

That busy weekend included the opera I saw on Saturday and a Trumpet Summit concert by Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings. It featured compositions for up to 8 trumpets. On some pieces a few trumpeters sat out and we heard a brass quintet or a couple trumpets and organ. There was also a tympanist on a couple pieces. All that noise in a lofty stone church made for a glorious concert.

Back to today’s event. It was a press conference called by Michigan United. Their banners say such things as “Justice and Dignity for All” and “Put People and Planet First.” The emails I received were from my church friends because the event was held at Central United Methodist Church, at Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit. This church has a long history of civil rights activism. The welcoming pastor told us that Martin Luther King spoke from the pulpit two weeks before being murdered. In addition, Rev. Ed Rowe, Pastor Emeritus of Central and Co-Chair of the Detroit chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, has linked up with Michigan United.

I took my notebook intending to take notes of what was said. But as we got started, Ryan Bates, head of Michigan United said democracy is not a spectator sport and called us up to the front for pictures. Well, kinda. We were to serve as backdrop for the speakers while the TV cameras rolled.

Because I didn’t take notes I don’t have a list of the organizations or individual speakers that took part. Bates was the first speaker. He said the purpose of the press conference was to show that a variety of organizations and clergy were opposed to Trump’s policies. His son, now four months old was born prematurely. Under Obamacare that is no longer considered a pre-existing condition, a reason to deny health insurance. And when Obamacare is repealed?

The next speaker, who I think is Latina, spoke of an incident at her daughter’s school in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit. Students in the cafeteria started chanting, “Build the Wall!” The chant grew in volume and participants. The daughter caught part of it on her phone and sent it to her mother. Both are scared. The daughter is now facing harassment for her part in publicizing the event. Or maybe because she is Latina.

Some of the other speakers: An undocumented gay man is the head (I think) of an organization that provides legal help to those facing deportations. A Muslim woman is part of an Arab organization providing similar services. The local vice president of the United Auto Workers said we cannot respond to hate with hate. Our response is love.

Rev. Ed Rowe, of course, spoke. He explained that we had racism all bottled up. Then Trump shook the bottle and popped the cork. Now we have an opportunity to not just bottle up racism, but to deal with it. That got me thinking that perhaps my church, which is multiracial, perhaps should study and then teach others about racism.

Rowe called for a return to offering sanctuary to those who need it. He reminded us that when we impose ourselves between those who need sanctuary and their oppressors we might get hurt in some way. But our pain will be far less than what is endured by those seeking sanctuary.

The last speaker was a local Imam. Yes, that united. The whole event was about 50 minutes with TV cameras running the whole time. There was at least Channel 7 and Channel 2 (the local Fox affiliate). I talked to another attendee who said he wondered how the stations would condense a 50 minute event into a 3 minute news spot. I said that if they cover it at all is good. Just knowing such an event happened is important.

In addition to the TV stations the event was recorded by Wayne State University (I don’t know whether students or staff). That should be publicly available in a few days. The Michigan United site included a link to a tweet that has a picture of the event. I’m not in the frame.

Shortly after I got there another social justice United Methodist asked me if I knew the new significance of the safety pin. I said I had seen a bit of it, but didn’t know what it was about. He told me that people, especially white people, are wearing safety pins as a way of saying to those who aren’t white or Christian that when you approach us you will be safe.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go because I still feel a bit overwhelmed with taking care of Dad’s house and preparing it for sale. But the nasty guy forced the issue. If I’m to respond to him I need to do it as part of a group. And it looks like I can lend my voice to this group. I don’t yet know frequent their events will be and how many I will be able to attend.

With me in the background I feel like I’m committed. If the national situation does get really bad this is evidence I’ve attended at least one protest of the nasty guy.

Opera for today

I went to the Michigan Opera Theatre last evening for a wonderful musical and theatrical experience. It was the local opening night of the new opera Silent Night, music by Kevin Puts and libretto by Mark Campbell.

During Christmas Eve and Christmas of 1914 at the start of World War I there was an informal truce along the Western Front. Pope Benedict XI had proposed it earlier that December. The military leadership condemned the idea. About 2/3 of the soldiers did it anyway. Some simply didn’t shoot. One area in particular took it further – the British soldiers sang a Christmas carol, the Germans responded. When the British sang O Come, All Ye Faithful and the Germans joined in with the Latin Adeste Fidelis they came out of their trenches and met in no man’s land and shared chocolate, wine, and photos of girlfriends.

This scene closes Act I of the opera, though the composer avoided existing carols (in spite of the title). The scene starts with a Scotsman singing a song and another on bagpipes joins in. The composer said he found bagpipes are really loud. To be able to hear anything else they had to place the actual piper almost in the parking lot and have an actor onstage pretending to play. It is a beautiful scene.

The opera starts with the announcement of war and German, Scottish, and French men answering the call. Then comes a horrific battle scene and the local lieutenants begin to realize the war was not going to be over quickly, as everyone had been assured.

There was a turntable in the middle of the stage as no man’s land. It was sloped – turned one way we could see the action on it, turned another and it became the side of a trench. Encircling it were the shacks for the Scottish and German soldiers and the damaged church used by the French. When a scene focused on one of them that particular enclosure was brought around to the front.

At the start of Act 2 the truce is still in effect and each group brings out the bodies of enemies that had fallen in their trenches and time is taken to give them a proper burial. The higher brass finds out what happened and are furious. Each of the three battalions is shipped off to another part of the war – because these soldiers became friends they would be more hesitant to kill.

The music was harsh and horrible sounding when it needed to be. There were also many moments of transcendent beauty. Before going to the theater I listened to an online preview from the local classical music radio. The host talked to Kevin Puts and played some of the excerpts. The composer said that the dialogue was written in English, then translated into the language of the character. The Scots sang in English, the Germans in German, and the French in French. A part of a religious service was in Latin. All of this was displayed in English in the surtitles. The composer, though, had to figure out how to turn each language into singing that sounded natural in that language.

Each character singing in his or her native language is relatively new to opera (though this is far from the first). For example, When Madame Butterfly of Puccini was written in 1903 the Japanese and American characters all sang in Italian (and I first saw it in Germany – what a mix of nations!).

Though the composer wasn’t at the performance (Atlanta was doing the same opera the same weekend), the librettist, Mark Campbell, was. Before the opera began I heard him talking to a group (probably students) in the lobby and listened for a bit.

The idea for the opera came from the head of the Minnesota Opera. He saw the 2005 movie Joyeux Noel and thought it would be a great opera. He raised the money and commissioned Campbell and Puts to adapt the movie into an opera.

I heard Campbell say he had been hired for a specific job, essentially take it or leave it. However, he said, he was a pacifist and would do what he could to make sure war was not glorified, that we saw that it was horrible. Puts, also a pacifist, agreed with that general direction. Their overall message: Once you’ve met someone and gotten to know them it is harder to shoot them.

Puts said he was hired on the strength of his symphonies. He had not written an opera before this one. This one was so successful it won the Pulitzer Prize for music and got him two more operas to write. One has already been premiered, the other is still being written.

This opera is part of a series of operas for today, new or recent operas written on topics appropriate for modern audiences. Last year’s production of The Passenger at Michigan Opera Theatre also fits this category. I attended that one almost exactly a year ago. I hope to attend more of these kinds of operas.

I bought my ticket when I got to the opera house yesterday evening. I named the general price range I wanted. The box office agent decided I was close enough that she gave me a senior discount, about 45% off. Not bad! I went on in for the Opera Talk, given an hour before the opera starts. For this, those interested sit in a section of the main floor.

Once the talk was over I went up to the Mezzanine, where I always sit. The usher asked if stairs were a problem. They’re not. So up we went … and kept going. She finally pointed down a row in the back mezzanine. I said this was not what I wanted, even if it was a discount I didn’t want to sit this far back. So I went back down to the box office, though talking to a different agent. I said I didn’t want to be so far back. The conversation got weird. She said she had something in Row A (great seats in the mezzanine) but some people don’t like to sit so close because they have to tilt their heads back so far to read the text above the stage. Huh? I asked for the seat map, which she had declined to show me before, and pointed to the mezzanine. Oh, no, sir, the ticket you have is for the main floor. Oh. I decided to keep it. That meant first ticket agent didn’t ask whether I wanted main floor and the usher on the mezzanine who guided me to the proper aisle, the usher in that aisle, and the usher who climbed steps with me didn’t notice the ticket said main floor.

This opera resonated with me in an extra dimension. Veteran’s Day was, of course, the day before. I decided to honor my most recent direct ancestor who had been a veteran. That was my father’s father, who had been in the Army in France for the end of WWI. To honor him and to mark the 50 years since his death in 1966 I searched through my stash of family photos collected from Dad’s house, scanned a few, and sent them off to family. Not all of them were of the war. This one is, at least I think so. Nothing is written on the back, so I don’t know the date or location.

When I wasn’t caught up in the story and music I did think a bit that this was my grandfather’s war.

Thoughts of fleeing

Wednesday morning I wrote:

I’m not moving to Winnipeg any time soon for a simple reason. I have responsibilities here in Michigan.

My sister’s wife called me out. If I didn’t have those responsibilities, would I move? So I’ll explore that question.

Towards the end of the Bush II years I thought about moving out of the country. Canada was obvious. Melbourne and someplace in New Zealand sounded good. I wasn’t to the point of actually exploring what would be involved and certainly not house hunting or packing. (There was once when I used the internet to check house prices in Nanaimo, BC, a ferry ride from Vancouver, but that was more about an interesting place to retire – that was about the time I retired from the auto industry – not a thought of fleeing.)

In my thinking I imagined scenarios in which I had to leave stealthily, having drained all of my various savings accounts, used the money to buy diamonds because currency couldn't be taken across the border, and only when I’m safely across do I mail my house key to family members with a note explaining what I had done, that I won’t be able to come back, and would you be so kind as to put the house up for sale.

I can’t say I had read lots of stories about escapes from East Germany or the Soviet Union, but the influence and plot line were there.

So, yeah, I’ve thought about it. I’ve even talked a time or two with my friend and debate partner – we’d buy houses on the same street and wondered whether life would be better in Toronto or Montreal. Whatever city it would have to be one with a great orchestra – which most major Canadian cities have.

But things didn’t become bad enough for me to consider it seriously, to actually do it. Then Obama came along and things have been looking pretty good.

My sister-in-law’s question becomes: Is it bad enough now? The answer is no, or not yet.

I mentioned yesterday that pundits of all types are sifting through the tea leaves to pontificate on What It Means. I now turn to Aphra Behn of Shakesville and her answer, which is to the point and directed at (straight) white male pundits. If your analysis doesn’t feature racism and misogyny it is wrong.

The nasty guy was endorsed by the KKK. A favorite slogan of his supporters was “Trump that Bitch!” Since Obama became president hate groups have proliferated. They have been loud supporters where at rallies crowds roared their approval of breaking up immigrant families, oppressing Muslims, and “doing something” about black neighborhoods. The political effect of this is not zero.

No, Bernie Sanders would not have done better. The nasty guy’s anti-Semitic rants were as strong as his anti-Muslim rants. No, Hillary wasn’t a “weak” candidate. She trounced him in three debates and had the stamina for non-stop campaigning. And compare her credentials – lawyer-advocate, First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State – with his – alleged business success. Every woman who has been passed over for a less qualified man knows exactly what that’s about.

As for low minority turnout you had better be denouncing the racism behind the voter suppression efforts that played a major part in Wisconsin and which Republicans bragged about in North Carolina.

What about a world where women are able to brush off serial abuse and vote for the nasty guy? Why aren’t white women alarmed about that? Why aren’t white men?

A majority of white voters voted for a guy who mocked and attacked the disabled, who threatened religious minorities, who wants to undo same-sex marriage. A majority of white voters voted for hating the Other.

Need more? Let’s put the nasty guy’s policies into context.

You simply cannot wrench away their hatred for NAFTA from their racist claims that undocumented immigrants are taking away their rightful jobs. You cannot take their anti-abortion obsession away from the misogynistic version of Christianity that fuels it. The voters who voted against Hillary Clinton because she “kills babies” are more concerned with controlling women than in addressing the reasons that women seek out abortions. That’s misogyny. That’s the context.

Behn concludes:

Trump was elected in a wave of backlash against progress of many sorts, against the reality that white able-bodied straight male Christian privilege is no longer a guarantee of power and preference in the United States. This is not incidental; it is fundamental. Those who analyze this election as if it existed outside of patriarchal white supremacy, that it all comes down to deracinated economics or ungendered media coverage, or whatever, are a danger. They are enabling the very things they ignore.

To fix a problem we must first understand it.

Listen to us. Learn from us. And then, let’s attack the hate together.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos takes on the idea that people voted for the nasty guy in spite of his repeated bigoted views against everyone who isn’t a male white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (been a while since I’ve heard that term). Nope. People voted for him because of his racism. How is it the most unfit candidate won the White House? Racism and misogyny. And that whole “Make America Great Again” thing – it isn’t about uplifting those who voted for him. It’s about providing those voters with someone to look down on – something useful when GOP policies make their economic situation worse.

Sumner concluded by quoting Ijeoma Oluo of The Stranger:

We have elected violent white supremacist patriarchy into office because the vast majority of white American voters chose to elect violent white supremacist patriarchy into office.

The nasty guy said today he wants to be everyone’s president, for all of us to come together. Nice try, buddy. But no. If you want be the president of everyone you have to act like it (which, we see above, will seriously annoy your base).

Want to be everyone’s president? Then don’t do things like this:

Ken Blackwell was brought onto the transition team to head domestic policy. Blackwell is from the Family Research Council, which has been tagged as a hate group for their virulent attacks on LGBT people. A commenter adds that Blackwell, in his role of Secretary of State in Ohio, was instrumental in suppressing the black vote.

Be everyone’s president? Then soundly condemn stuff like this:

Police are investigating a wave of alleged hate crimes against Muslims, Hispanic Americans, black people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT community in the wake of the US election.

Attackers professing support for Donald Trump have been accused of numerous attacks in the 24 hours following his shock victory, including death threats, physical assaults and racist graffiti.
…
Maha Abdul Gawad said she was shopping in a local Wallmart on Wednesday when another woman approached, pulled off her hijab and said: “This is not allowed anymore, so go hang yourself with it around your neck not on your head.”
…
A woman in Delaware described overhearing four white men near her at a petrol station discussing Mr Trump’s victory and “how they’re glad they won’t have to deal with n*****s much longer”.

Back to my answer to the opening question. Is it bad enough now for me to consider leaving the country? The answer is: not yet. But it looks like it could come to that. I agree with my sister-in-law that I have an advantage she doesn’t. Most of the time I can pass for straight. I don’t go into gay bars. I don’t walk down the street holding a husband’s hand. My answer is: not yet.

I’m aware I run the risk of waiting too long and have to live out my stealthy fantasy.

Overturn

My sister and her wife are terrified of what the nasty guy and his homophobic sidekick will do once in office and just as terrified of the way he has made it respectable for citizens to say and act on those homophobic opinions. She has sound reasons for her fears. Under the nasty guy and a GOP controlled Congress we could see:

* Pro LGBT rules in various gov’t agencies overturned. This includes non-discrimination protections for federal jobs and contractors, federal guidance on transgender students and bathrooms of choice, and rules in HUD and HHS.

* The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that pushed the idea that discrimination of LGBT workers was sex discrimination and a violation of Title VII. The nasty guy will be putting new people on the EEOC.

* Once enough new Supreme justices are in place, Congress could pass a law banning same-sex marriage. When it is challenged it would go to the Supremes, who could uphold it.

* The GOP has been refusing to fill federal court vacancies, creating quite a backlog of openings. These openings would now likely be speedily filled. And they won’t be friendly to us or any progressive cause.

* VP Mike Pence will push for a national License to Discriminate law, the one that burned him as governor of Indiana. He’ll have more conservative courts to uphold it. Pence won’t stop there.

* Integration of LGB people in the military may be far enough along that it may escape reversal. Integration of transgender people is not as complete and its future isn’t assured.

I know this list won’t make sister sleep any better.

Keep the vision of the society we wish to live in

Other bits of news:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory trusted the political analysis of the state’s Christian conservatives and went all out for the state’s “bathroom bill” that targeted transgender citizens. McCrory didn’t listen to what happened to Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, where a similar license to discriminate bill essentially killed his political career (until he jumped on the nasty guy’s coattails).

At the moment McCrory is on the low side of a very close race to keep his job. He’s down by a few thousand votes and the state won’t certify the results until all provisional votes are counted.



Recreational marijuana was legalized in California, Nevada, and Mass. and lost in Arizona. In Maine the measure is too close to call. Medical marijuana was legalized in Florida, Arkansas, and North Dakota.

Gun control laws passed in California, Washington, and Nevada. Higher minimum wage laws were passed in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington.



Michael Moore has a five point plan. My summary:

1. The Democratic Party failed us. Take it over.

2. Fire all pundits who pushed a narrative rather than seeing what was really happening.

3. Any Congressional Democrat not ready to be obstructionist as possible must step aside.

4. Stop saying you were “stunned” and “shocked.” It only means you weren’t paying attention to the despair of your neighbors.

5. Hillary won the popular vote, which means a majority want action on climate change, equal pay for women, debt-free college, raising the minimum wage, universal health care, and they don’t want us invading other countries. The majority of voters agree with the “liberal” position.



George Takei also has things to say, which he did in a series of tweets:

1. We may not have prevailed, but we must not despair.

2. This does not feel like the America we love and honor.

3. We must reaffirm the values we cherish: equality, justice, and the care of our planet.

4. We must stand up to any divisive acts and look for the most vulnerable among us.

5. Keep the vision of the society we wish to live in.

6. This country has lived through slavery and grave injustices. We’ll find our way through this too.

7. In the toughest days we find our true mettle.



I didn’t know this was a thing. After women of Rochester, NY vote, many of them take their “I voted” sticker and place it on the grave of Susan B. Anthony. This year the line for doing so had hundreds in it and was an hour long. The city’s mayor kept the cemetery open until well after voting closed.



There were thousands of people many in many cities across the country protesting the nasty man’s victory. The protests in Manhattan focused on Trump Tower.



This is the second of the last five presidential elections in which the candidate with the most votes didn’t win. Time to get rid of the Electoral College – or at least make it more reflective of the country by getting rid of winner-take-all. The good news is that such a change doesn’t have to come from Congress (since the GOP benefited both times why would they want to?). The downside is what the Michigan GOP considered – assign the Electoral College votes according to which party won each highly gerrymandered congressional district.



It is not completely dark for progressives. Democrats in office are becoming more diverse, such as Catherine Cortez-Masto (Harry Reid’s replacement) who is the first Latina in the Senate, and Tammy Dickworth who is the first Thai-American there. Democrats made gains in western state legislatures, including taking back the New Mexico House. We gained a majority in the North Carolina Supreme Court and kept a couple others (including Kansas!).



Yesterday I wrote about the GOP to-do list. My comments were on the mild side. For example, I suggested the GOP would privatize Medicare. It looks like they would rather kill it. They’re not too fond of libraries either.

This togetherness stuff

There are lots of pundits looking over the last couple days and pontificating at length about What It Means. Most, likely all, have no idea what they’re talking about. So I’ll add my own and be just as knowledgeable.

First some facts (through Twitter and posted in a blog, so original source is unknown):

231,556,622 eligible voters

46.9% didn't vote
25.6% voted Clinton
25.5% voted Trump

Wow.

And the voter turnout from Wisconsin:

Clinton lost because Dem voters didn’t show up. In Wisconsin that’s almost a quarter million missing Dem votes. If about 10% of the missing had voted in three states the results would have been different.

Many have noted (though not in the media) this is the first prez. election without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. A key part of it was gutted in 2013. And Wisconsin was one of those states that instituted voter restrictions and saw a big drop in Dem turnout. New Hampshire, another close one, also had new restrictions.



Melissa McEwen of Shakesville notes how hard Hillary and her supporters worked:

Three times as many field offices. An expansive ground game. The colossal GOTV effort. The tens of thousands of words of policy. The open letters from experts in their fields. The writing, the art, the flash mobs.

As for the nasty guy:

All he had to do was repeat bullshit talking points about her and disgorge disgusting bigotry during unscripted stream of consciousness garbage monologues, and then coast to victory on a wave of hatred.

I had written a while back (the Windows search utility can’t seem to find anything written in the last two years, so no link) that if you allow a person to look down on another he’ll empty his pockets for you. Insecurity, and its desire to feel important by belittling others, is a strong human force. That appears to be a huge component to the nasty guy’s win. And his appeal to bigotry is much stronger than Hillary’s “Stronger Together.” If one is insecure and in need of building up by tearing down others this togetherness stuff just doesn’t resonate.

An example of what McEwen said: America’s white supremacy groups are delighted with the results. We’re not extreme. Millions of our fellow citizens agree with us. This wasn’t just the nasty man’s doing. It was also the result of the rest of the GOP who are in office refusing to condemn his statements.

Getting busy on the to-do list

After I posted this morning I ate breakfast and went to bed. I did manage to sleep for about 75 minutes.

It has been rather easy to think of what is on the GOP to do list for the next 2-4 years. Remember that soon we won’t have the Supreme Court to protect us. This is definitely not a complete list.

* Repeal Obamacare. And no, there won’t be a replacement. Senate Majority Leader said today that repeal is high on the agenda, though I’m sure they’ll save it for January so Obama doesn’t veto it. This likely means 20 million people who recently got health insurance will lose it again. Surely, some of those 20 million voted for the nasty guy. While Dems may be able to filibuster repeal in the Senate (unless McConnell goes all hypocritical and ends filibustering) there are several parts of Obamacare that the nasty guy can change through executive order, causing its collapse.

* Defund Medicaid and all support services for the poor.

* End legal abortion.

* Privatize Social Security.

* Privatize Medicare.

* Gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and every law that prevents banks from doing whatever they want.

* Gut worker safety laws.

* Overturn Obama’s decisions on Dakota Access (the one currently being protested in South Dakota) and Keystone pipelines.

* Gut clean air and clean water laws and Obama’s executive orders that are trying to make energy generation become cleaner.

* End incentives for renewable energy.

* Preempt new state and local minimum wage laws.

* Gut the Voting Rights Act and implement voter suppression. Appoint justices who think gerrymandering is just fine.

* Abolish all campaign finance limits while maintaining secrecy rules.

* Convince the media to not write anything bad about them, essentially gutting the First Amendment. From the way the media treated the nasty guy and Hillary during the campaign there may not need to be a lot of convincing.

* Gut spending on roads and bridges.

* Give the rich a big tax cut.

* Get rid of all gun-free zones.

* Increase the militarization of our police forces and increase protections of officers who kill civilians.

* Gut spending on education, especially education of *those people*. This includes making sure those people can’t afford to attend college.

* Privatize schools.

* Start a war with ISIS.

* Overturn Obama’s executive orders protecting illegal immigrants who came here as young children.

* Overturn net neutrality, allowing big internet companies to favor themselves over smaller sites.

* Come as close to instituting Fundamentalist Christianity as the state religion as they think they can get away with.

We like to think the country has moved on and what is listed below aren’t issues anymore. But some people still think so and these are people the GOP listens to and will have a big say in choosing future Supreme Court justices.

* Reinstitute the ban on LGBT people in the military.

* Overturn same-sex marriage.

* Force LGBT people back in the closet.

I was at the Ruth Ellis Center this evening and as I washed pots a thought went through my mind, a bit of resignation and challenge. You voted for the nasty guy? OK, fine. Go for it. Let’s check back in a couple years and see how well you and your community are doing. Will you still like your choice then? How much pain will be inflicted on your community, country, and world in those two years (or will it happen only to those who are beneath your notice)?

At the risk of activating Godwin’s rule… I said this morning that the GOP has the White House, the Senate, the House, and will soon have the Supremes. They also increased their control over state legislatures. Will that be enough? Will that amount of control and poor outcomes convince citizens that the GOP has lied to them over the last three decades, that the policies sold to citizens never had the ability to improve their lives? Or will the GOP still be able to successfully claim, as was done in Germany in the 1930s, our policies are great, but they won’t benefit you until we purify the citizenry, getting rid of all who work against us?

My church, which is in a working-class suburb just west of Detroit, has a goal of giving 150 baskets full of supplies for a full turkey dinner. This is up from 130 baskets last year. I intend to sponsor one of them. I’m pretty sure we’re doing it because of the extreme need in the area and not for bragging rights – see how many baskets we did! But I doubt there are many voices asking this question: Why are circumstances in this community so dire that our church feels the need to give out 150 baskets while surely barely making a dent in the need? And what should we do about it?



The gov’t of Canada sent out a tweet last night:

In Canada, immigrants are encouraged to bring their cultural traditions with them and share them with their fellow citizens.

It quickly went viral. Shortly afterward the official Canadian Immigration site crashed.

But those wanting to flee the nasty guy and the havoc about to be unleashed in Congress should know (according to USA Today):

Would-be Canadian immigrants must have a solid reason for wanting to come to their northern neighbor.

Winnipeg will have to wait

I’m not moving to Winnipeg any time soon for a simple reason. I have responsibilities here in Michigan.

Yes, I’m devastated by the news that Hillary isn’t going to be president. As for that other guy, just like Bush II he will never be my president and I will not refer to him as such.

This is an image from 2004 from a newspaper in England. It sums up my thinking right now.

We’ve lost the White House, the Senate, the House, and will lose the Supreme Court. Though Ruth Bader Ginsberg seems to have a soul of iron I doubt she can last four year. It’s going to be awful.

So, to all of you who voted for this nasty man, a question: When the GOP has control of the entire federal government is the change you are demanding actually going to happen? Who do you blame when it doesn’t? How are you going to believe the GOP when they blame liberals for why your situation in life likely gets worse?

What are you going to say when that nasty guy’s thin skin gives him an itchy finger and he starts wars across the globe?

I was at rehearsal last night, getting home close to 10:00. I turned on the TV (a 1982 model that gets used maybe a half dozen times a year) and let it warm up (needed to get rid of the visual snow). While I waited for that I went to my computer and started browsing the blogs, especially Daily Kos. It led to a frustrating few hours.

The TV channels had talking heads, not news. There was no map in the background with the states colored blue and red. Daily Kos had a series of blog entries that never gave the overall picture and soon collapsed into comments such as saying the Canadian Embassy won’t open until 9:00 tomorrow. Another site listed their predictions for each state, but not actual counts and displays of which state for which candidate. I kept checking it because it had occasional tweets of vote counts, in particular showing that Michigan had that nasty guy ahead by 30K votes, but Dem strongholds of Detroit and Ann Arbor with about 130K votes hadn’t reported yet. The tiny bit I’ve seen this morning is Michigan is still a toss-up, not that it makes a difference.

I shut it all off at 1:00 and went to bed. Because of the dread I didn’t sleep well. This morning I checked a blog to get the bad news, but otherwise I avoiding everything, including NPR. I’m still a bit sleepy, though doubt I’ll sleep. I’m going to try anyway.

Wake me in 2020.

Perpetual motion

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is famous for union trashing and for not getting very far in this year’s GOP primary. He doesn’t seem to have that Twitter thing down. He tweeted:

If you like the past 8 years, vote Hillary Clinton.

Some of the responses:

Or if you’re a principled conservative vote for the racist molester who clowned you in the primaries.
– James

I love we have marriage equality, healthcare and a system that works for me, thanks and I will!
– Jaydestro

Remember last year when you encouraged people to unite against Trump? What a joke.
– Sconnie Trader

Obama is more popular than you, in your own state. Try again Scott.
– Maria Lia Calvo

Science says there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, something that runs without adding energy. But there can be one in politics – the Clinton Scandal Machine. It runs constantly without adding any facts.

Start with the assumption that Clinton is corrupt. Therefore everything she does must have criminal intent and she needs to be investigated. With endless investigation evidence appears (which doesn’t prove anything). Therefore she is corrupt and she must be investigated.

But a real investigation – Trump’s ties to the Russian gov’t – gets ignored, as do real issues, such as immigration, economy, and education.

There must be a pony. Dig! There must be a pony. Dig! There must be ...

The Obamas hosted a Halloween party at the White House. One of the kids came dressed as a lame duck.

Terrifying either way

I try to ignore Halloween. I don’t have kids. I avoid sugar. There isn’t much else. But today there weren’t any good movies in theaters – except maybe Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’ve never seen. But it was sold out. I even tried to go to the church to do some cataloging of music (desperate, I know), but it was closed. So I turned off the front room lights and had my supper in the kitchen and read my current book (I’ll tell you about it when I’ve finished it). After 8:00 I went down the street to visit a neighbor who had a metal fire pit in his driveway and kept it well stocked. A few neighbors (and dogs) had gathered. Not many kids came by. Those that did came up to the fire and were offered treats. I stayed about 45 minutes, until the party broke up.



Melissa McEwen of Shakesville shares her fears about November 9th and after:

If Trump wins, his supporters are going to be terrifying because they have been empowered. If Trump loses, his supporters are going to be terrifying because they feel disempowered.

And that has been precisely his goal. It's no wonder he feels like he's winning no matter what the polls say.

I wrote yesterday about the (empty) can of worms FBI Director James Comey opened to put Hillary Clinton back on defense about her emails. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said what Comey released, which might hurt Clinton's chances, is bad enough. But what Comey is intentionally hiding, and thus protecting Trump, is worse. Reid alleges he has seen information that shows coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian gov’t.

It seems Comey knows something about the Russians and their meddling. But he doesn’t want to say what it is because that would be too political this close to an election. But making vague and unprovable allegations against Clinton isn’t?



Recently Senator John McCain was spouting off that the GOP won’t confirm any of Clinton's Supreme Court nominees. But it isn’t just McCain. Senator Ted Cruz is saying something similar, as is Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute and Michael Paulson of the National Review. Wrote Paulson, “The the Supreme Court should be smaller so that it can do less harm.” To which I reply: Less harm to whom? So, yeah, never confirming any of Clinton's Supreme Court nominees is a real GOP policy.

If Clinton becomes president and Dems take the senate (and revoke the filibuster on Supreme nominees like they did for federal judges) I suspect a few of the old justices may retire in the next two years, giving Clinton a chance to replace them.

I voted

I’m now at the age where Michigan says I may always vote by absentee ballot. My city makes that very easy by simply mailing the ballot to me. It has been sitting on my desk for a couple weeks now. Today I filled in the little ovals.

Doing it at home offers a big advantage: I’ve got Google and the internet ready to go. I also have all the races right here – I’m not surprised by a county clerk or school board race. Some of the resources I used:

The Michigan Progressive Voter Guide is published by Between the Lines, Michigan’s LGBT newspaper, with input and endorsements from Equality Michigan (LGBT advocacy), National Organization of Women, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, Michigan League of Conservation Voters, AFL-CIO, and United Auto Workers. It also shows endorsements from American Conservative Union and Michigan Right to Life as reasons to reject a candidate.

The main page will ask for your zip code. It then presents endorsements for national and state-wide races, then a chart of US House and State House races that are in that zip code. On the left side of those charts you can click on a PDF file which has endorsements for the entire state, with a page per congressional district.

Their endorsements begin, of course, with Clinton/Kaine for president and VP.

Another state-wide race of importance: This guide endorses Ish Ahmed and John Austin for State Board of Education. This one is critical because it was Austin who championed recommendations for how school districts are to treat transgender students. Austin did a good job of making sure everyone was heard, both through a comment website and public testimony. And he heard a lot. He and the rest of the state board approved the guidelines over strong GOP objections. Austin should keep his job for this effort.

The state-wide races include trustees for three public universities and justices for the state supreme court. For all of these races this guide chose the Democrat. The GOP is still not our friends. I was tempted to vote straight party, but I specifically wanted to mark my ballot for Clinton and Austin.

I am disappointed in one aspect of this progressive vote guide. It doesn’t explain its endorsements. I suppose for 14 House seats and the huge number of legislature seats the explanations could have made the guide unwieldy.

I also used endorsements by the Detroit Free Press. They strongly endorsed Clinton and are sharply critical of Donald Trump. I’m glad they agree with me, though my reason for linking to this endorsement is because it links to their other endorsements. And I needed someone’s view of various judges and county races.

I took the paper’s advice for most things, though not for a Trustee for Michigan State University. They endorsed a Republican, even through the candidate “does not fully appreciate the importance of diversity in a school’s student body.” But the paper doesn’t explain why the other candidates are worse.

The county-wide races were easy – for each of the offices of Sheriff, Clerk, Treasurer, Register of Deeds, and Commissioner the Democrat is running unopposed.

The races for local school board and trustees for the local community college were harder. I found a suburban paper with stories about these races, but the stories quoted the candidates spouting platitudes (We must keep our schools strong!) and very little to distinguish the candidates.

I also looked at ballotopedia, but that site had nothing useful. There is a Michigan Voters Guide that allows comparing the views of two candidates – if they bothered to reply. I decided not replying to such sites was a reason to cross a candidate off the list.

Fostering confusion

Texas and Wisconsin Voter ID laws were overturned (or at least made a lot less strict) by courts. But officials in both states are still not complying. Some of that is intentionally fostering confusion (a friend of suppression). Some of it is outright lying. Other suppression tactics:

* Refusing to open polling sites on reservations in Nevada. In some cases voting requires a 275 mile round trip.

* Refusing to open an early voting site at the university in Green Bay, Wisconsin. A clerk actually said it is because students lean towards Democrats.

* Also in Wisconsin, switching the deadline for absentee ballots – not postmarked by 8:00 on election day, but received by the clerk by that time on election day.

* In North Carolina, sending mailers to bad addresses and, when returned as undeliverable, challenging the voter’s registration. They made a mistake of doing that to 100-year-old Grace Bell, who raised a ruckus.

Rigged election you say?

Six hundred days

Mark Sumner, writing for Daily Kos, notes that when FBI Director James Comey opened that latest can of worms on Hillary Clinton’s emails…

He had literally no idea what was in the emails, no reason to think they’re related in any way to his investigation. What he did know was: The emails were not on Hillary Clinton’s server, the emails were not from Hillary Clinton, the emails were not to Hillary Clinton, and the content of the emails is completely unknown because Comey didn’t even both to secure a search warrant before he dashed off his hugely ill-advised letter to Congress.

Peter Daou of Shareblue adds this whole email thing was manufactured by the GOP. To take down Hillary they needed a scandal, any scandal, and Hillary’s emails was it. At this point that “scandal” has now been in the news, as in the big media outlets, for six hundred days. It is to the point that Donald Trump can’t talk about her emails for more than five minutes at his rallies because his audience loses interest. We’re tired of hearing about it.

The American people have a sense of proportionality. 600 days on emails to the exclusion of issues that affect their daily lives makes them more inclined to support Hillary Clinton, not less.
...
Trump and the GOP are sure to overreach. The jolt of a new round of unhinged attacks against her will further energize her supporters to go to the polls. And if 600 days of relentless email coverage didn’t derail her, 10 more days won’t do it either.

A guess here… The next prez. will appoint a new FBI Director. If he hasn’t been fired before then.