The following was
written as a set of responses to a select set of questions,
concerning the American political news of early February 2019.
The questions were
written by Ron Mantegna, for discussion a current events round-table
political discussion, held at Highwood Public Library on the morning
of February 13th, 2019, moderated by Alan Minoff. The
discussion group meets at 10:30 A.M. on the second Wednesday of every
month, lasts until noon, and is normally moderated by Suzanne
Cahnmann.
Topics discussed include
partisan congressional politics, democratic socialism, environmental
policy, recent racial and sexual harassment controversies in
Virginia, the statute of limitations on reporting sexual assaults,
the State of the Union and the response thereto, racial demographics
in America, U.S. military policy, recent events in Venezuela,
Elizabeth Warren's claim to Native American heritage, a potential
second summit between the U.S. and North Korea, the condition of the
economy, transgender troops, and abortion policy.
Q: Are far-left
Democrats making it easier for Trump to get re-elected?
A: No, because the system
is not working, and people know it. Also, because economically and
culturally, Trump is a step backwards, and his policies aren't doing
enough to let technological progress (and the price relief it offers)
to proceed at a normal pace. Taking a farther-left stance is the only
way Democrats can compete against Trump in the Midwest and the Rust
Belt.
Q: How big a worry
should the word “socialism” be for Democrats?
A: Socialism itself
should not be a worry at all; the only people who feel threatened by
calls for democratic-socialist policy in the Democratic party are
people like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren, whom
have openly and repeatedly described themselves as capitalists, while
posturing farther to the left, and all the while, contributing to the
legitimization of a system that is designed to work against the poor.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
has reluctantly described herself as a socialist, but like Kristen
Gillibrand and Gary Johnson, she understands that more worker
cooperatives provide a viable non-profit alternative to public and
corporate institutions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gillibrand want
that to come about through tax incentives, while Johnson would
encourage businesses to cooperativize voluntarily. Economist Richard
Wolff has also recommended that more firms become worker
cooperatives.
There is nothing that is
necessarily “socialist” about “aligning profits with people”;
nor with encouraging more firms to become worker cooperatives.
Workers should have realistic chances to inherit, buy out, and
franchise the companies they work for; and government creation of
Private-Public Partnerships that give CEOs much higher salaries than
the earnings of their workers, only contributes to the income
disparity.
Q: AOC's Green New
Deal intends to provide economic security “for those unable or
unwilling to work”. Your thoughts?
A: We don't have to worry
about that; people should not be required to work. Plenty of people
know how to get by without doing taxable work, technology and
automation will drastically reduce the number of hours people need to
work in order to make ends meet over the next decade, and
technological developments can relieve thousands
of people from having to work. The problem of automation putting
people out of work, is easily remedied, through any or all of the
following measures: 1) provision of a universal basic income
guarantee; 2) jobs training; and/or 3) widespread ownership of means
of production. Through mass production and automated distribution, it
will become much easier to provide people with what they need,
without the vast majority of them ever lifting a finger to perform
any type of labor they find distasteful or pointless.
Socialism
arose to deal with the problems associated with abundance,
not scarcity. If not enough people are working, then that's because
enough goods have been produced, that it is possible for many people
to avoid work. Not only will many jobs die out over the next decade,
those jobs will deserve
to die out, because they can be automated, and thus relieve workers
of their burdens. This will free-up time for workers to improve
themselves, acquire skills, engage in leisure activities, invent
something or start a business, save more, or do whatever else they
would rather be doing if they did not have to work to earn a living.
Q: Can
Dems win by going far left?
A: Yes.
There are over 60 electoral votes in the Midwest that are up for
grabs, since they went for Trump in the general election after
Hillary lost them to Bernie in the Democratic primaries. One major
reason for Hillary's loss was that she declines to visit those states
as much as she needed to, and that is the area where a lot of the job
loss is happening. Democrats will lose if they try to desperately
hold on to states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina.
Q: Should
there be “statutes of limitations” on racist acts and comments by
politicians? Citizens?
A: No. Anything and everything a politician
has done should be considered fair game; racial insensitivity, sexual
harassment, anything. Until national and state governments adopt
meaningful limitations on the number of terms politicians can serve
in office, a high level of scrutiny will be necessary to provide the
level of transparency the public needs to make informed decisions
about the candidates.
Ordinary
citizens should not be subject to the same level of scrutiny as
politicians are (not that that standard is very high right now; it
should, of course, be much higher). But citizens should not be
protected from being fired based on their past behavior either,
because in the private sector, employers – and, to some extent,
customers - have the right to make such decisions (which should, for
the most part, be unaffected by political considerations).
Q: Are
Democrats hypocrites on the Ralph Northam issue, given that they have
made “anti-racism” a primary motivator?
A: No,
because Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and other Democratic Virginia
politicians, have called for Northam to resign. If anything, they
should be criticized for failing to call for the resignation of
Attorney General Mark Herring for doing the same thing, and for
failing to call for the resignation of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax
over sexual assault allegations. Democrats are certainly being
inconsistent though, and unreasonably picky about which people they
choose to call out over such inappropriate actions.
Q: How
does the Virginia situation compare with other high-profile figures
who made sexist or racist actions or comments without consequences?
A: The
differences between the Ralph Northam incident and the Brett
Kavanaugh incident are that: 1) there is physical evidence of Gov.
Northam's insensitive behavior, and none in the Kavanaugh “case”
(or, non-case, rather, since no formal charges were filed),
and 2) Northam's “offense” didn't have any direct victims, as in
the case of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey-Ford.
Before
continuing, I should note that in the early 1980s in Maryland, when
and where the incident between Kavanaugh and Blasey-Ford allegedly
occurred, there was not a statute of limitations on reporting
sexual abuse. This means that, even though it's true that the lack of
a statute of limitations didn't stop Blasey-Ford from reporting the
alleged attack, that does not prove in any manner that the statute of
limitations made it easier for her to report the attack. And
that's for one simple reason: she never formally reported the
attack.
Statutes
of limitations on reporting sexual assault should be lengthened (as
New York is trying to do), or repealed (as Illinois recently did).
That's because people who are sexually or physically abused sometimes
suffer from repressed memories; their minds hide from them the very
fact that they have been abused.
That
is why many rape victims don't come forward, because every time they
spoke about it, they were silenced and intimidated, and because they
can't cope with admitting that someone abused them.
A
rape victim may even be suffering from a form of split personality,
fractured identity, or schizophrenia, because the person's mind has
convinced them that the trauma literally
happened to someone else, or to another version of themselves. A
sexual abuse victim with this problem can sometimes be heard saying
things like “I felt like it wasn't even me who that happened to”,
or “I wasn't myself at the time”, or “I'm a different person
now from who I was then”.
And
if they can admit that
they were abused, they can't always accurately remember the details
of their victimization, because the event was so traumatic, that
instead of blotting out
the traumatic memory, they remember only
the traumatic memory, while what happened before
and afterwards
gets blotted out (because those parts of the experience weren't
traumatic, and therefore were less memorable than the traumatic
event).
And
while a rape victim is struggling to cope with being a victim, others
may be telling them that they have a victim complex that is only
imagined. Some people
will even say that the victim should have said something sooner, but
also that they should
shut up about it because they were probably asking for it, and “must
have done something to incite or provoke or arouse the rapist”.
Others
will intimidate a rape victim into silence based on the fact that the
abuser has a career and a reputation to maintain, and a family to
support. This is nothing more than the “banality of evil”, as
explained by Hannah Arendt, who testified at the Nuremberg Trials.
Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann stated at those trials, “I have been
faithful to my country, and have obeyed the rules of war.”
Essentially, his argument was that he was “just doing his job”,
as I.C.E. officials in the U.S. are wont to say after shooting
someone to death. But having a career and a family, and needing to
obey the rules, does not make it OK to rape people, nor to intimidate
them into silence, nor to put on blackface to deliberately mock
people. If everybody with a family to feed did that, the world would
be too horrible a place to live in.
A
person who has been abused or molested – especially a child or a
legal minor – cannot be relied upon to either be capable of
consenting to sexual activity, nor to promptly make a police report
about his abuser, nor to give consistent and reliable testimony about
everything surrounding the pertinent attack, nor to take the
appropriate formal steps to do so without the assistance of legal
counsel. Memory loss, intimidation, and the stigmatization of the
“victim complexes” supposedly possessed by people who acknowledge
that they have been victimized, all
contribute to the “conspiracy of silence” which makes it
difficult to charge and convict sexual abusers, and which delays the
reporting of sex crimes.
That
is why statutes of limitations on reporting all physical
and sexual crimes should be lengthened or abolished. The purpose of
the American government is not to make it more difficult to
sue others, it is to leave the courts open
to all significant controversies, with equal protection for all, and
equal justice under the law, and, thus, equal access to the courts,
and equal right to initiate a lawsuit or file charges regardless of
geographical location or jurisdiction.
Q: What
are your thoughts about the State of the Union?
A: I
thought Trump's address was boring, and virtually devoid of positive
proposals, or any good ideas about what the government should do, or
even any hope for a better future. It's difficult to argue that we
can't do better as a nation than a Trump presidency. But as the
current president, Trump cannot help but make the argument that we
can't do any better, even if he tries not to. Trump's address failed,
and he is plainly incorrect that “the state of the union is
strong”.
Trump
patronized a young girl with cancer who collected funds for her
treatment, which she only had to do because she was taken off of a
public health care plan (a fact which Trump neglected to mention).
Trump took credit for the U.S. for winning World War II that
rightfully belongs to the Soviet Union (whose forces killed 80% of
the fascists in Europe during that war).
Trump
has practically taken personal credit for lowering unemployment,
which he admitted just four years ago was at 41.2%. It's not that the
unemployment rate fell from
41% to the current rate; it's that Trump started using the U3
unemployment rate instead of the U6. U6 includes more people, like
the seasonally employed, the underemployed, people without residences
who work occasionally, and more; so the drop in unemployment is
largely attributable to plain and simple fudging of the numbers. One
cannot accuse Trump of misleading us about unemployment numbers,
without acknowledging that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is at least
part-right in her analysis of how bad unemployment is.
Trump
also patronized minorities by neglecting to consider the possibility
that the low Hispanic and black unemployment rates that the country
is currently experiencing, might be, in part, due to people being
pressured into seeking
employment. Being coerced into working for a business, especially one
that has recently been bailed out by the government, is not a purely
voluntary decision. Our society pressures people into working a
regulated job and paying taxes, even those individuals can be
productive and self-sustaining on their own, based on the idea that
they are tax cheats.
Not
everyone who avoids work is lazy; some people avoid particularly
difficult and taxing labor because it's safer and more healthful to
avoid it. People who know how to avoid work should be left alone, and
left free to reap the rewards, rather than being pressured into
selling their labor to someone for profit.
Q: How
effective was the Democratic response by Stacey Abrams?
A: It wasn't effective,
but it was more effective and substantive than Trump's speech. It
wasn't necessarily wise to have someone deliver the State of the
Union response who is both
currently out of office and
has never served in a national elected office, but Abrams delivering
the response can be rationalized by her popularity, the necessity of
winning Georgia as perceived by Democrats, and the need to mobilize
Democratic voters at the state and local levels.
Although
Abrams was correct to call for increasing voters' access to polls,
she neglected to mention that we need to restore the right to vote to
people who have been incarcerated but have served their time. To fail
to mention the voting rights of the incarcerated is to neglect the
significant diminution of black voter turnout in the South which is
attributed to convicted felons still lacking the right to vote. On
the other hand, I would guess that Abrams decided to omit those
people out of concern that it could make African-Americans seem like
violent criminals, so I understand why she would be reticent to
mention them.
Still,
Abrams's failure to mention the voting rights of ex-offenders – as
well as the fact that, in her speech, she appealed to Reagan and
Obama to promote “reasonable border security” over open borders –
suggests to me that the Democratic Party is still run by a
neo-liberal oligarchy. That oligarchy is every bit opposed to real
socialism, as it is to a system which would feature a combination of
free markets, free trade, open borders, and a free flow of people
into the country (unless and until they're suspected of a real
crime).
Given
Abrams's support of gun control, Trump's willingness to confiscate
guns, and Trump's supporters' ability to win immigration arguments
with Democrats by citing Obama's record number of deportations,
suggest to me that Abrams and the Democrats will offer a very weak
and inconsistent argument against the Trump Administration. Citing
Obama as an inspiration on immigration policy, is sure to prompt the
Republicans to do the very same thing, and rightfully claim
that the Democrats didn't criticize Obama while he was breaking
deportation records.
These
facts lead me to believe that the Democrats will offer no substantial
alternative to the Republicans in 2020, as far as Libertarians,
staunchly progressive Democrats, Greens, and Socialists are
concerned.
Q: How
important a role does race play today in our politics (on both
sides)? Is one party helped more than the other by “playing race
cards”
A: Race
plays a very important role in politics, as well as in the
institutional hierarchy which minimum wage laws intended to impose
(and succeeded in imposing) upon the labor force, and in the
relations between racial gangs in the prison system and in organized
crime.
Neither party is helped by playing race cards, because
while Republicans look like racists for focusing on race, Democrats
focusing too much on race tends to distract from economic issues and
divert attention to “identity politics”.
Democrats
are able to get away with this by feigning sympathy for people of
color and patronizing them, while Republicans are able to get away
with it by replacing discussions about race with discussions about
citizenship status and religion (and discriminating people based on
those factors instead
of race).
Q: Statistics
show that ethnic minorities will be a majority in the U.S. by 2024,
and beginning in 2019, more non-white children will be born each
year. Your thoughts?
A: The
only reason that whites becoming a minority in the U.S. presents a
political problem, is because the Democrats and Republicans who claim
to value the Bill of Rights and civil liberties, are busy maintaining
the current system of majority voting.
Protecting
the rights of majorities in an unlimited manner is not
an American value. The rights of individuals should always be
protected, without regard to whether they are in the majority or the
minority (whether we're talking racially, politically, in terms of
religion, or whatever else).
Q: Will
there be another shutdown? Is there a “national crisis on our
southern border”? Is Trump doing a service by making immigration an
issue that we, and Congress, can no longer ignore?
A: There will
not be another
shutdown, because yesterday (February 12th,
2019), Democrats agreed to $1.4 billion in funding for a steel
barrier along that border. I predicted several weeks ago that the
Democrats would decline to impeach Trump, and even agree to pay for
his wall, and I was right. The Democrats have shown themselves to be
spineless, and their eventual capitulation was predictable from the
moment last month when they agreed to fund the Border Patrol.
Trump
is not doing a service
to the American people by making immigration into an unavoidable
issue. He is doing nothing more than scapegoating immigrants and
foreign countries for most American problems; from drugs, to
infectious disease, to religious conflict, to economic and trade
policies, to unemployment.
Trump
is deliberately playing-up the threat supposedly posed by immigrants
coming from Central America, in order to create an illusion that they
present a military-level threat to the United States. Without proving
that such a threat exists, it will be difficult for Trump to justify
declaring a national emergency, citing such a military-grade threat
as a basis for such a declaration). Additionally, without such a
declaration, it will be difficult for Trump to justify deploying U.S.
troops on U.S. territory, without it being declared an
unconstitutional move and an inappropriate use of U.S. soldiers
during peacetime.
The
threat posed by Central American drug gangs is also being overplayed.
The C.I.A. is the largest drug cartel in the world, and the U.S.
sells weapons and drugs to regimes all over Latin America. People are
coming here from Honduras, in part, because Obama's C.I.A.
orchestrated a coup of that country in 2009, when it colluded with
forces conspiring to oust Manuel Zelaya from power.
If
America doesn't want sovereign countries to be undermined and
destabilized by rebel groups, as it claims, then America should stop
funding and arming the rebel groups in those countries, and then
wondering why people are trying to escape their home countries where
those rebels are fighting their elected governments. If America
doesn't want immigrants coming here, then America should stop bombing
foreign countries, sabotaging their economies, and declaring their
elections invalid.
The
Trump Administration is deliberately making the immigration crisis
worse; by preventing people from coming into the United States and
then declaring asylum, by funneling migrants into dangerous points of
entry, and by suing volunteers who leave food and water out to help
migrants survive their trek across the desert.
Just
like how the government allows heroin supplies to be cut with deadly
fentanyl in order to make it more dangerous – and just like how the
government allowed bootlegged liquor supplies to have toxic wood
alcohol added to them – Trump is “proving” that illegal
immigration is dangerous, by deliberately making it
more dangerous. That's manufacturing evidence, and it's deceptive.
Trump
may be correct that he's making it easier to come in legally, but
he's also trying to turn the victimless crime of crossing a border
into an act that a person should not be allowed to undertake and
still survive. Unfortunately, the Democrats offer no alternative.
Q: What
are the chances for substantive bipartisanship? Will low approval
ratings give Trump incentive to work with Pelosi for high-profile
deals, like infrastructure? Does Pelosi want to work with him?
A: If
it's not only a rumor that the Democrats just signed on to a $1.4
billion deal to give Trump his wall, then Trump will begin working
with Democrats more, regardless of his approval ratings.
I
now suspect that Pelosi and Schumer have wanted to work with Trump to
fund Border Patrol and build the wall since the beginning, especially
considering that, a month or two ago, Trump cited Schumer's previous
consideration of support for the wall as a reason why Schumer should
capitulate.
I
hope that Democrats refuse to fund the wall, and find some way to
cancel the deal to allocate $1.4 billion to that cause (if such a
deal has already been made).
Infrastructure,
and potentially also veterans' issues, are some of the most likely
topics on which bipartisan compromise could be made, but disagreement
on immigration might continue to be an obstacle to such compromise.
However, I hope that disagreement on immigration grows,
and I do not consider infrastructure projects to be a rightful
authority of the federal government, so I would not be bothered if
federal infrastructure reform were delayed due to partisan conflict
or a government shutdown. Infrastructure would best be handled in the
states and localities which are primarily affected by such projects.
Q: “Great
nations do not fight endless wars”. Are we OK with pulling out of
the Middle East? Out of South Korea?
A: I
favor pulling troops out of South Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria,
Afghanistan, Germany, and all other countries farther than 100 miles
from U.S. shores. I favor dismantling some 800 overseas military
bases, and removing U.S. troops from some 150 countries.
U.S.
troops have not been fighting I.S.I.S. as much as our government
claims they have; our troops have mainly been working with
I.S.I.S. to try to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's regime. Reagan
said you shouldn't underestimate the irrationality of Middle East
politics; but that's not because “they've been fighting each other
for centuries”, they haven't. The same quotation from Reagan also
suggested that the real irrationality lies in American
foreign policy, which assumes it can fund and arm the right rebel
group, to oust the right regime in the right country, and somehow
achieve world peace.
I
support pulling troops out of Syria, but doing so will only prove
self-defeating if we replace U.S. soldiers with private contractors
or mercenaries. Regardless of concerns that a lack of U.S. presence
in Syria will lead to a power vacuum, we never should have gone into
Syria in the first place, we don't know what we're doing there, and
every time we decide what we're doing there we're proven to be lying
about it. It's time to come home.
However,
we should be cautious not to congratulate the president for removing
troops from Syria and South Korea, only to re-deploy them on the
U.S.-Mexico border, or to Venezuela for a coup to help install Juan
Guaidó as president of
that country. To move troops around the world in this manner, is like
a child refusing to eat the food on his plate, and instead, moving it
around with his fork, so as to give the illusion that he is doing as
he's told. We must not allow the president to deceive us like that,
if that is his intention.
Q: Is
Senator Elizabeth Warren's candidacy dead because of her false claims
of Native American heritage?
A: No. Her campaign is not dead, and
she shouldn't have apologized, because she does have Native American heritage. Her genetics test
revealed that she has a Native American ancestor somewhere between
six and ten generations back.
Indigenous
tribes have the authority to determine whom to admit and whom not to
admit, and they have the right to exclude Warren if they so desire.
Warren is not lying; the data that the genetics test revealed were
widely misinterpreted by various news sources.
Right-wingers'
focus on Elizabeth Warren's race – aside from it being a major
distraction from more important things, like what Warren's policies
are – is proving them to be every bit as focused on race and
identity politics as the liberals and leftists whom they detest for
doing the same thing (except that the liberals and leftists do it in
order to defend marginalized people of color, not to
dehumanize them).
This
“Pocahontas” controversy is also, conveniently, serving as a
distraction from the fact that right-wingers apparently do not
remember the history of institutionalized racism in the United
States. After the Civil War, many southern states passed “grandfather
clauses”, imposing voting restrictions upon African-Americans, but
exempting those whose grandfathers had the right to vote before the
U.S. Civil War (or other designated dates). This effectively excluded
nearly all blacks from voting, the majority of whose grandfathers had
been slaves before the Civil War. Effectively, these laws kept
people from becoming free voting men, based on their ancestry;
essentially, based on “the sins of their fathers”, not on
anything bad they had personally done during their lifetimes.
Additionally,
before the Civil War, state laws regarded free people of color or
mixed race as legally white, if they had less than one-quarter or
one-eighth African ancestry. The following century saw the “one
drop rule”, which whites claimed in order to justify subjugating
anyone and everyone who wasn't 100% European. It should be
plain to see, from these facts, that the experience of many people of
color in America, is that no matter how many generations one's family
has been interbreeding with whites, some whites will never
stop treating mixed-race people as if they were not white at all, and
therefore (in their mind) not human, or at least as undeserving of
equal rights and equal treatment.
Growing
up poor in Oklahoma in a family she knew had Native American
heritage, effectively makes Elizabeth Warren mixed-race. Her critics
have apparently forgotten that not everyone in America is 100% white,
or 100% Native American, et cetera, but that some people have
heritage from multiple ethnic groups. It would be presumptuous to
tell Elizabeth Warren that she did not have similar experiences to
other people of mixed European and Native American heritage growing
up. Therefore, it would be difficult to assert that she is “not
Native American”, or only a fraction Native American, because
being “a fraction Native American” does not erase any past
treatment she may have received which could have been influenced by
the assumption that she was Native American.
I
wish Senator Warren would walk-back her apology, and reiterate the
fact that her genetics test revealed a Native American ancestor
between six and ten generations back. Once the Republicans finish
demanding to see her papers, and analyzing her blood (like perfectly
normal people with honest intentions often do), I hope they can learn
to criticize her on issues of substance, instead of complain that she
doesn't look as “Indian” as the stereotype they imagined in their
heads.
Q: Democrats
are proposing a “Green New Deal”. Why is the environment so low
on the radar screen of most Americans, while so many scientists
believe that the Earth is in crisis?
A: One
factor is the fact that most Americans whose opinions matter in the
eyes of the governing body - because of their money and their high
voter turnout - is retired people. And frankly, they don't have a lot
of time left on this planet, so they have less incentive than young
people do, to make sure that humans and other life forms can co-exist
on this planet without destroying it.
The
planet is approaching a point of no return, regarding carbon
emissions, around the year 2030. Despite the statements of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, that does not mean that we have to get to zero
carbon emissions worldwide within 11 years; it means that after 2030,
carbon dioxide should not be emitted without equal and commensurate
offsets (such as planting trees, or engaging in other actions
that lower our carbon footprint).
Right-wingers'
insistence that the public policy on global climate change be
ignorance, is making it difficult to set the facts straight
about this subject. It is also making it difficult for Americans to
get behind adopting international climate agreements voluntarily.
That's because right-wingers are willing to criticize Agenda 21 and
Agenda 2030 purely on the basis that they risk undermining American
national sovereignty because they come from the United Nations. And
they are correct to point that out, but they criticize the
implications on sovereignty without considering that many U.N.
programs and international climate agreements are voluntary.
The
same effects of Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 – some of which are
desirable - could be replicated without encroaching on national
sovereignty. That can be achieved by codifying the same policies into
law on a local or state level. That way, we could have local, popular
laws all over the country, to make sure that human development does
not threaten endangered animals, and to ensure that new wealth and
large buildings are both spread out geographically, in order to (at
the very least) prevent income disparity from getting any worse.
Yet
right-wingers' refusal to admit that climate change does not
solely involve warming,
and their fear that
the only way to implement good environmental policy is through
socialism, is just perpetuating the problem, and turning their
pessimism about improving environmental quality into a
self-fulfilling prophecy; one which allows them to pollute and waste
as much as they please, without any responsibility to compensate
others who did not agree to suffer the consequences of other people's
pollution, but whom nonetheless have to cope with them.
Republicans'
scientific ignorance is stalling progress and compromise on
the environmental issue. Hopefully it will not take them until 2025
to admit that there is a problem, when they realize that the North
Atlantic Ocean has been dangerously overfished.
Q: Is
Trump's second summit with Kim Jong Eun a good idea? North Korea says
they won't denuclearize. What's the risk that Trump will agree to
pull out without getting concessions from Kim?
A: America
is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against any
other country, and it vaporized hundreds of thousands of civilians
upon impact. America is the last country in the world that has any
leverage or clout from which to admonish North Korea for possessing
nuclear weapons.
American
belligerence and domination is the very reason why “rogue nations”
like North Korea and Iran (which are nowhere near as much of a danger
to America as we are told) seek nuclear weapons in the first place;
to defend themselves against American aggression.
To
blame North Koreans for defending themselves would be more irrational
than any ridiculous claim that was ever made about the birth of Kim
Jong Il.
Trump
should pull U.S. troops out of North Korea, regardless of whether Kim
agrees to denuclearize or not. I believe that Trump is ready to act
like a giant baby over this issue, and I believe he is prepared to
allow U.S. servicemen to die if Kim doesn't allow Trump to humiliate
him, in the event that a second U.S.-D.P.R.K. summit does indeed take
place.
Q: What
do you make of America not recognizing Venezuela's Maduro?
A: I
do not recognize the authority of the United States, nor Vice
President Mike Pence, nor any country in Europe, to determine the
leadership of the people of Venezuela; that responsibility lays in
the hands of the people of Venezuela alone.
The
U.S. is currently blockading Venezuelan oil ships, effectively
preventing them from unloading and selling their oil. The U.S. is
blockading Venezuelan oil exports, while blaming socialism for
Venezuela's decline. Well, socialism is not blockading Venezuelan
ports; America is.
Moreover,
the U.K. decided to steal Venezuela's gold, on the assumption that
Maduro is not a legitimate leader, and thus not qualified to ask for
it back, and not trustworthy of delivering it to his people. Western
media report this, as if the leadership of Great Britain were more
concerned about the Venezuelan people's welfare than their own
financial solvency.
This
is yet another example of the U.S. and its Western allies conspiring
to delegitimize a nation's election results, invade it, and coerce
whomever's left to rule that country into surrendering a significant
amount of its oil supply. Trump even admits that he'd like to go back
to a “to the victor go the spoils” model of war, in which the
United States will brazenly admit to taking oil as payment for
supposedly liberating some obscure segment of the people (and who those people are exactly, maybe we'll find out later).
What
is happening in Venezuela, would be like if the U.S. Senate got
together and elected a leader from among themselves. It would
be like if the Senate elected Chuck Schumer president, after two
members of his party had insisted on remaining seated in office after
they were revealed to have won their elections fraudulently. It would
be like if Chuck Schumer essentially declared himself president, and
tried to abolish the U.S. House of Representatives, against the
wishes of the Supreme Court.
That
is essentially what is happening in Venezuela, except replace Chuck
Schumer with Juan Guaidó,
replace Senate with the Venezuelan National Assembly, and replace the
House with the Constituent Assembly. An American congressman
recently called for abolishing the Senate; so, if anything, it
is the House that should be abolishing the Senate, not the other way
around. That's because the House exists to represent the population,
while the Senate intended to represent the states. And also because
senators serve longer terms, and represent wealthier and more
specialized interests than House members. Generally speaking, the
upper house of a legislature entrenches power to a greater degree
than the lower house does.
Additionally,
Juan Guaidó – the
president of the upper house – attended George Washington
University in Washington, D.C., a university known for having a significant C.I.A. presence on campus, as well as one of the five most militarized campuses in America. Guaidó's
presidency is not only illegitimate; it is an orchestrated coup by the U.S., in concert with other foreign powers who want destabilization in Venezuela. It is practically a repeat of the C.I.A.-aided coup back in 2002 (under the Bush Administration) which
saw the two-day kidnapping of Hugo Chavez, before his return to power.
I
predict that Trump's baseless proclamation that Guaidó rules
Venezuela, will go down as one of the greatest blunders in the
history of State of the Union addresses. That is, unless the Trump
C.I.A. succeeds in its mission to carry out a coup there (perhaps
with the help of a draft, to compel young people to fight). I hope
that Trump comes to his senses and learns to respect the right of the
Venezuelan people to manage their oil and their elections by
themselves.
Q: On
paper, our economy looks great. But how have tax cuts, dramatic jobs
increase, tariffs, and interest rate increases worked out so far for
middle-income Americans?
A: The
Trump tax cuts benefited the wealthy to a much greater degree than
the middle class and poor. I attribute the increase in employment to
increased poverty and thus increased desperation to work, and to the
picking and choosing of official government unemployment measures as
a way to distort the truth about how many people are not only
working, but are satisfied with their job and can rely on it for the
hours they need.
The
tariffs failed, as tariffs always do, because they have only
frustrated our allies without cause. The tariffs acted as, in effect,
a bailout for American steel. Next, the agricultural sector was quick
to notice that a round of bailouts might have been beginning, and so,
they asked for their own. This not only could have been predicted,
but was
predicted, in economist Henry Hazlitt's Economics
in One Lesson.
Additionally, tariffs (as well as sales taxes) unnecessarily
politicize trade, and deter foreign investors from investing here, if
they in any way object morally to what America does with the money it
gets from those tax revenue sources.
It
is sort of
a good thing that interest rates have gone up, since that might make
investments more secure, but it is still being set by a private
corporation with unduly delegated authority from Congress, which
disguises itself as a bureaucratic central board. If banks were free
to compete to issue currency at low interest rates, then loans would
be less expensive, and money would hold its value for longer. Any
economic policy which does not recognize these facts, does not care
about Americans' right to determine their own financial destiny.
Ninety-nine
percent of Americans do not own stocks, and 60% of the stocks are
owned by 1% of investors. The Dow Jones is not an indicator of the
well-being of the economy in general, nor is the G.D.P., nor is the
minimum wage.
The
economy is only working for the super-rich, and the tax cuts made
that problem worse than it already was.
Q: The
Supreme Court allowed Trump's ban on transgender individuals serving
in the military to go into effect while specific cases work their way
through the courts. What are your thoughts on this?
A: It
sounds exactly like Trump's policy at the border: punish everyone en
masse, and let people
drip through the system as slowly as possible, to discourage them
from enlisting (or immigrating). What more do I need to say?
Effectiveness
on the battlefield should be the only criterion for admission or
expulsion.
Q: Americans
are not making enough babies to replace ourselves. What can be done?
A: If
America doesn't have enough people, then we could let millions of
immigrants and refugees come here. Whether we do that or not, we can
automate manufacturing and distribution, so that we can sustain
larger numbers of people, while progressively needing less and less
human labor (and more automated labor, including delivery of goods by
drone) in order to accomplish that.
Think
of how much food and medical care we could deliver to retirees, if
internet purchasing, robotic delivery drones, robot surgeons, and 3-D
printed organs were more affordable and accessible. Ending subsidies
of all kinds, curtailing the duration of intellectual property
protections, and lowering sales taxes and tariffs and trade barriers,
could help make that happen, without needing to devote any more
extorted taxpayer funds to science and technology.
Undertaking
the above mentioned efforts will do wonders to allow people to live
comfortably into old age, without needing to promote the birth of
additional babies whom we are not yet certain we have the means to
take care.
Q: How
conservative is the Supreme Court? It left lower court victories
intact for Planned Parenthood in a legal battle with states over
access by Medicaid patients to the group's services. The dispute did
not involve abortion, but it keeps a hot-button political issue off
the docket.
A: I
cannot say that I know anything about the particular Supreme Court
case that is being referenced, but I do not believe that abortion
should be publicly funded in any way. Churches, charities,
non-profits, cooperatives, and voluntary associations, however,
should never
be prohibited from offering abortion services (that is, unless they
receive public funds and
the public doesn't want them to offer those services).
I
hope that Illinois Republicans will wake up to the fact that they are
never going to have a staunchly pro-life Republican gubernatorial
candidate. I am personally pro-choice, but that fact does not stop me
from saying that total
lack of government involvement in abortion
is the only correct moral position, no matter what side you're on.
In
deference to the Tenth Amendment, states would make their own
policies. But localism, subsidiarity, and county and municipal home
rule, are more important values than the simple assumption that the
Tenth Amendment should always render an unenumerated authority the
purview of state authority. The Tenth Amendment reserves unenumerated
rights for “the states or
the people”
(emphasis mine), not “the states, and
then the people”.
Thus, the authority to determine abortion policy rests with the
people of each state, and they can choose to have no
policy if they wish.
I
do not agree with New York State's law permitting abortion until
delivery, and I also know that there are plenty of people (even
progressive women) who will admit that an “abortion” of a fetus
over six months gestation is never (or almost never) medically
necessary. That said, I also cannot say that I know for sure whether
the survival of a fetus of eight months gestation has ever threatened
the life of its mother.
At
the same time, though, I wish that this issue had never become
politicized, and I believe that pregnant people should have the right
to get abortions, even if it is elective. As long as it is not
publicly funded, and nobody is coerced into paying for it. I don't
think Medicaid should exist,
much less pay for abortions.
Viable
Republicans and Democrats running for prominent offices will
never offer voters
this moderate third option.
Q: How
will the new Congress address health care? Which party has the bigger
problem if Obamacare is killed and millions lose insurance, or
pre-existing conditions are not covered?
A: The
new, and divided, Congress, will address health care in the same
chaotic, meaningless fashion in which they have carried on
“addressing” it for the last decade.
The
question explains it all: The two parties will disagree as to whether
Obamacare has even been dismantled in the first place, and this
disagreement will make meaningful conversation on the topic all but
impossible.
As
usual, the Democrats will refuse to explain what their Medicare for
All bill will entail in enough detail, and as usual, the Republicans
will completely fail to explain the merits of creating free
interstate commerce in the delivery of health insurance, together
with an attempt to reduce drug prices. But reducing drug prices,
coupled with getting rid of trade barriers against the importation of
pharmaceuticals, will achieve an even freer and more interconnected
market for health items in general. That, and taxing profits from the
sales of medical devices, without taxing sales themselves, and only
taxing medical device companies if they receive government
assistance.
Simply
put, the Republicans do
not care that they
have a brilliant, simple health policy that could reduce drug prices,
the costs of living, and maybe even the costs of malpractice lawsuits
in this country. Why? Because Rand Paul is one of the biggest
advocates of such proposals, and having a free market in health would
make Rand Paul look even more credible than he already is. It would
elevate his stature, and increase his influence upon the president
and upon his party.
If
Donald Trump keeps listening to Rand Paul, our politics might become
slightly more sensible. God forbid, we would be in a few less wars
around the world. And I know of few Republicans who would be willing
to put up with such a thing.
Post-Script:
I asserted above that congressional Democrats agreed to fund Trump's wall to the tune of $1.4 billion, but that has not yet been confirmed. The source of that information can be viewed at the following link:
Reports about this are conflicting. The following two articles allege that there will be a deal to avoid another government shutdown, and that the deal
will not include funding for a wall:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-likely-sign-deal-keep-government-open-doesn-t-include-n970951
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown/congress-advances-border-security-bill-without-trump-border-wall-idUSKCN1Q30KU
We may not know what the final deal is, until Friday, February 15th, the deadline to avoid another government shutdown. So please, do your own research, consult multiple sources, check the facts against each other, and come to your own conclusions.
Written on February 13th, 2019
Edited on February 14th, 2019
Post-Script Written and Added on February 14th, 2019
Published on February 13th, 2019