Category Archives: Politics

The Supreme Court isn’t always wrong

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

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I only have one data point, named Joe as it turns out, but, as Michele Stern says: One data point may not be proof but it is still a data point.

The Supreme Court ruled against Affirmative Action a couple of days ago (even though they did not couch it in those terms, everybody else seems to). Adam Liptak of the New York Times wrote: In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.

Contrary to most of the columnists and bloggers I admire, I think that the Supreme Court is right. The operative part of the NYT quote above is  what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities and the implication is that giving racial and ethnic minorities special rights protects those minorities. I don’t think it does and I have my reasons.

My only data point is from when I had a development company and we hired a Stanford MBA for the the job of Construction Manager. It was probably in the mid-80s and his name was Joe. Joe was a full blooded American Indian and the job didn’t work out. Not because he he was an Indian – obviously – but because he did not like making decisions that didn’t have clear-cut answers. He didn’t like the stress. When we talked about going our separate ways, he asked me why I had hired him. I told him it was because he was a Stanford MBA and he answered something like Yeh, but I only got in because I am an Indian. I have no idea if that is true or not but he, clearly, thought so and, I suspect, many of his fellow students did also.

I think that Affirmative Action misidentifies the problem. The problem is that a huge proportion of racial and ethnic minorities – we are using racial and ethnic minorities as a euphemism for African Americans and Hispanics here in California – are poor. They come from poor families, poor neighborhoods, and they have almost no exposure to what they need to prosper in our society including useful connections. Most importantly and most powerfully, they come from substandard schools and they get a poor educations compared to their peers from affluent areas.

As an aside, those schools are substandard not as a result of chance, but because of Government Policy. In California, and – I think – every state, schools are primarily supported by the State, but, when State funds are cut, affluent local areas make up the difference or send their kids to private schools. In Portola Valley, where I live, the locals voted to raise taxes to compensate for State education cuts (not me, other locals). Portola Valley is a Liberal – even if somewhat Libertarian – town that prides itself on having voted for Obama and Anna Eshoo, but being able to compensate for for State cuts in Education makes it much easier to ignore those cuts. End aside.

Giving African Americans and Hispanics Special Rights just pisses off those whites – and probably Asians – that feel that the Special Right of Affirmative Action is unfair. That those Special Rights are an attempt – no matter how ineffective – at compensation for the screwing the affirmed minorities got in the first place, is forgotten or was never considered. It is easy to say that those pissed off whites are wrong – or racist – but that doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make them less pissed and, in most cases, it doesn’t make them want  to improve minority education.

For whatever reason, the people of Michigan voted against Affirmative Action and I think the court was right in upholding that vote. Jamming Affirmative Action down their throats would not solve the problem, it would just build resentment and resentment is part of the problem. After what I just wrote, it may not be obvious that I think everybody deserves a good education, but I do. I think that giving everybody the best education that they can absorb should be one of the main jobs of our government; it is way more important than killing illiterate Taliban in Afghanistan. I think that education should be free, good, and equal for all Citizens. It is not only a moral imperative but a better educated Citizenry makes for a healthier country. But, the Affirmative Action that Michigan voted against, didn’t do that, it only made some people feel better about themselves without solving the problem and it made even more people angry and resistant.

My only complaint with the new Section 26 of Article I of  the Michigan Constitution is that it does not go far enough, it should also eliminate legacy Affirmative Action. The idea that an Alumni’s kid should get preference at State schools, paid for by taxpayers, is wrong and unfair and should also be eliminated. Hopefully this Supreme Court ruling will get people thinking about how to solve the real problem.

One suggestion that I have read and that appeals to me is that the top students from every high-school get to go to the top Universities in the State. There are somewhere in the order of 2100 high-schools in California so there would be plenty of room for the top five students from each school. That would mean that the top five students from Woodside High or Redwood High would be automatically eligible for Cal or UCLA or Davis, et al. The top five students from Compton High or Fresno High would also be automatically eligible.

I am sure that there are other good ideas out there, but traditional Affirmative Action isn’t one of them.

Liberalism, Civil Rights, and LBJ

Americana, Politics

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It has been about 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. During that time, my memory of the man who made it happen, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, has faded. And, let’s be honest here, we liberals wanted it to fade…fast. To paraphrase Marc Antony, The evil that Lyndon Johnson did lived after him, the good he did was oft interred with his bones. But only in our memories is that true. In the bright light of now, the good that Lyndon Johnson did is pervasive and the evil is fading.

Of all the presidents that come to mind – of all the people, really – Lyndon Johnson is the one with whom I have the most ambivalent feelings. That was my opening line, but the more I think about Johnson, the less ambivalent I become. Somewhere towards the end of my post, I was going to say And – and it is a huge and – he escalated the Vietnam War in which 58,286 Americans died and 153,303 were wounded. He did escalate that tragic war, but he didn’t start it. Truman started it when he gave the French Colonial Forces air support, Eisenhower started it when he wouldn’t sign the 1954 Geneva Accords. Kennedy started it when he sent in advisors, and Johnson, who couldn’t do anything halfway, escalated the hell out of it. It became Johnson’s War. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself.

For that, most Liberals – including me – find it hard to forgive Johnson. As an aside, I was so disappointed in the Vietnam War that I didn’t vote in 1968, even though Hubert Humphrey, the democratic nominee, was an early and strong proponent of Civil Rights and would have made an excellent President. I am very sorry for that now. End aside.

Besides Vietnam – and there really doesn’t have to be a besides – Lyndon Johnson was crude and, often, embarrassing to us effetes. He just looked crude – especially after the refined Kennedys – with his big, goofy, ears and a big nose. He acted crudely, calling his dick Jumbo, narcissistically showing the press his gall bladder surgery scar, lifting his beagles up by their ears. Shit, he even talked crudely, with his deep Texas’ Hill Country accent.

For years, we ended up interring Johnson’s greatness with his bones and only remembered the evil. We forgot his greatness, he was bigger than life; he was Hamlet more than Willie Loman.

During the 1960s Democratic Primaries, before I could vote – minimum voting age was 21 in those days – I was hoping that Johnson would be nominated. I don’t remember why for sure, maybe it was because Johnson was the only guy besides Estes Kefauver, I had heard of before the primaries; maybe it was because I have always been a sucker for smooth-talking Southerners; but it was probably because I was captivated by stories of Johnson and Rayburn meeting in Rayburn’s office, drinking Bourbon and Branch Water, plotting how to turn the country liberal during the Eisenhower years. As an aside, it was one of life’s minor disappointments when I learned that Branch Water was just a Texas way of saying Tap Water. End aside.

In that Liberal era, the 30s through the 50s, Southerns were liberal or, at least, Populist. The New Deal rested on Southern support and that support came with racism even with Liberals like Lyndon Johnson. The only time I have lived anywhere near the South was when I was in the Army, stationed in Texas – at Fort Bliss – and seeing the all-pervasive, undisguised, racism first hand was a shock. I shouldn’t have been shocked though, racism was the water the whole country swam in. In the South, it was more overt, but – everywhere – nice people, good people, admirable people, so-called-thoughtful people, thought Negroes to be inferior. Negroes were considered sweet and hardworking, but simple. Think Uncle Remus.

Then, it was very easy to be a Racist and a Liberal (I never even saw a black person in anything but a subordinate role until I started going to Jazz Clubs in the late 50s). Of course this is an oversimplification – President Harry Truman had desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948 and the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 – pressure was building for fairness and neither Black People nor a growing minority of Whites liked the status quo. By the 60s, that pent-up pressure was changing the world. In music, movies, writing, art, architecture, everywhere. Lyndon Johnson, now President, changed with it. That is also an oversimplification also; episodes of fairness can be found throughout Johnson’s life. He probably learned it even before  he was a janitor, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College, certainly Johnson’s sense of fairness, his compassion, must have been there by the time he became a teacher at a Mexican-American school in south Texas. Still, he voted with the racist Southern Caucasus most of the time.

But, for whatever the reason, when Lyndon Johnson became president, he became a great champion of Civil Rights. He signed the The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He not only signed those landmark bills, Johnson was the only reason they were passed. They passed because Johnson cajoled, browbeat, and traded favors with Southern Democrats to get them passed. He knew it was going to ruin the Democratic Party for a generation and he got three major Civil Rights Acts passed that changed our world. When he said, I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order, he was telling the truth.

He was also a transformative environmentalist, signing – hold on to your hat (or skip ahead) – the Clean Air Act, 1963; the Pesticide Control Bill, 1964; a Water Quality Act, 1965; the Water Resource Planning Act, 1965; a Water and Sanitation Systems in Rural Areas Bill, 1965; the Solid Waste Disposal Bill, 1965; Air Quality Acts, 1966 and 1967; and laws forming the National Water Commission. Not all of these were Johnson’s babies, most of them weren’t, but he gladly signed the bills.

He signed laws to give aid to education with Head Start in 1965 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which provided additional funds to schools based on the population of low-income students. He signed the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the National School Lunch Act of 1968, and he signed Food Stamps into law with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He was instrumental in establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts and he appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court.

Along the way, he advocated and pushed through Congress, two major Health Bills; Medicaid and Medicare. (Yeah!! for Medicare, just ask anybody over 65.)

Now, fifty years later, I am starting to remember that Lyndon Baines Johnson in that short time, from 1964 to about 1967 – became one of our greatest and most influential Liberal Presidents. With that burst, he  might also have become the greatest Civil Rights President in our history.

World War I and Cold War II

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

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Those that don’t read history are doomed to repeat it. Yet, those that do read history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everybody else repeats it. From a share by Vern Smith of a United Humanists facebook post.

When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.  Napoleon 

I am reading Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War by Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan was an advisory and speechwriter for President Nixon and is way to the right of me, so I am a little surprised that I am reading him. I am even more surprised that I agree with him much of the time. Buchanan’s main premise is that World War I was unnecessary and that the draconian demands – by the Allies in a righteous  fit – put on Germany after the War, led to World War II.

I half agree with him on World War I, after all, England’s king,  George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert), was related to Germany’s king, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and they were both related to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. In many ways, they stumbled into a war that almost nobody wanted. Of course, very few people had any idea how horrific WWI was going to be and, when the carnage was over and the allies had won, the Allies wanted Germany to pay. But Germany didn’t think that World War I was all their fault and they didn’t really feel that they had lost as much as they agreed to stop fighting. Compared to northern France, Germany was relatively untouched, after all, and – in many ways – life in Germany, right after the war, went on as if nothing had happened.

However, at the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was stripped of 13% of her territory and 12% of her population. The Germans had lost the peace and were humiliated. They were seething. That seething provided the energy to bring Hitler to power, it became the motivator for Germany’s rise from their indignation. Instead of being the war to end all wars, World War I became the setup for World War II.

I think that the same thing happened when we won the cold war. Like Germany, Russia didn’t really think the Cold war was all their fault and that they were punished for making peace. The Russians thought that they had lost the peace more than they had lost the war. We stripped Russian of its buffer zone, moving NATO all the way to the Russian border. There are Russians living outside of Russia all around Russia – in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Estonia where one-quarter of the population is Russian, and in Latvia with about one-third of its the total population being Russian – and they had been betrayed by the peace.

By all accounts, Russians are thrilled with the way the Russian bear is roaring, they love Vladimir Putin. They think he is bringing Mother Russia back its dignity. Various politicians and pundits are worrying about the Cold War coming back if we don’t ________________ (insert your own theory). I think that they are almost right, except that the Cold War is already here and has been since Russia’s Duma recognized Abkhazia and the Russian Army rolled into Georgia in 2008 (during the administration of George Bush the Younger, for those with short memories).

Russia is pushing back just like Germany did when its troops marched into the Rhineland, and we will not like it, but there is not much we can do except move troops around and install sanctions. I don’t think that Cold War II will turn into a shooting war but I do think it will involve a lot of pushing around the edges and posturing. It will make it much harder to solve our mutual problems.

The Monuments Men and Ted Nugent

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings, Religion

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Michele and I saw The Monuments Men, a story about trying to save art looted by the Nazis, a couple of days ago. I kept thinking, How did these thugs take over Germany? As I type that question, it seems more rhetorical than an actual question because I do know the rough outline of how Hitler went from the failed Beer Hall Putsch to Chancellor. I somewhat know the facts, but I have a hard time understanding the undercurrent. They were thugs, afterall, and used the language of thugs; acted like thugs.

I really only know Germany through her artifacts; Audis, BMWs, and Mercedei, Leicas and IWC watches. The Germany of refined passion, of Bach and Run, Lola, Run. Her artifacts are so thoughtful, for lack of a better word. How did that Germany let itself be taken over by thugs?

One of my main tenets is that cultures are different but that people – worldwide – are more or less the same. I have a much better sense of The United States than I do of Germany and it doesn’t seem possible that thugs could take over here. It seems impossible that the Ted Nugents or the Duck Breath guys could gain real power. But, when I really think about it, I think that the first step – to take them seriously – is already here.

Why does the press – what we call The media, now – even acknowledge the ravings of a Ted Nugent? He is like a lunatic screaming in the street – the kind of guy we scurry by, heads turned away – except that he is not in the street, he is on the radio or TV. The media acts as if he actually had something to say. Part of it, I think, is that the media loves conflict, even manufactured conflict. It sells newspaper and airtime.

However, there is something deeper going on here. Huge numbers of Americans – and people worldwide – feel that their lives are getting worse and there seems to be no governmental plan as to how they will improve. Our government seems to be incapable of  solving the problems. Problems that I consider real problems; income inequality, gun violence, and climate change. But also problems that I consider phony problems or, even, actual improvements – but lots of people consider them real – like the diminishing influence of the Bible and Gay Marriage.

I listened to Nancy Pelosi on Jon Stewart and he kept asking her what were the systemic reasons that resulted in income inequality, the failure to control gun violence, and climate change, she kept blaming the Republicans and Stewart kept coming back to the question of the systemic reasons. I don’t think she even understood what he was asking, she just seemed completely befuddled. The crowd even booed her, this is the Daily Show crowd who are liberal, who should be her constituency. I like Nancy Pelosi – in March of 2010, I wrote With all the credit that should go to President Obama – and he has done an extraordinary job of getting the Health Care Bill pushed through – without Nancy Pelosi it wouldn’t have happened. Period! – and I was embarrassed, even pissed, and turned off the TV thinking She is not the solution.

When government loses people like me, when I lose confidence that government is going to solve income disparity or set a rational gun policy or forge a coalition to end destroying the world, it is easy to imagine, that people that didn’t like government in the first place, will look someplace else. Someplace where the people with answers are not part of The Establishment. Somebody who has answers that are easier to understand.

All over the world, people are finding those people. We see it in the anti-gay votes in Arizona and the Stand Your Ground laws in Florida. We see it in the resurging Nationalism movement in Hungary and Vladimir Putin being illegally reelected,  in the new wave of persecution and harassment of the Roma in Europe . We see it in the rise of Old Testament-hate-Christianity and old-time Mormonism, in Fundamentalist Islam and ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Against all that I would have predicted, growing up in the 50s and 60s, a growing minority is becoming more religious and superstitious, less scientific. They are more willing to accept the simple, clear answer over the complex muddled answer.

We are herd animals, it is in our DNA, and we want leaders, most of us want to follow somebody. When our leaders leave a void, the screamers in the street, the Ted Nugents, the Pat Robertsons, the Rush Limbaughs, have room to move in. They get taken seriously.

What I kept forgetting, as I watched The Monuments Men, is that thugs can be smart. Being nasty is not the opposite of being smart, they can go hand in hand. Also going hand in hand with thuggery is the crude – as in simple – answer.

 

A prisoner release in Afghanistan and American hubris

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

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Last week, CNN reported  Citing a lack of evidence, Afghan authorities released from prison 65 men Thursday over strong objections from U.S. officials, who said they pose a threat to security forces and civilians.

According to the New York Times, American officials had lobbied intensely with the Afghan government, first in private and then in increasingly acrimonious terms in public, to prevent the release.   

I was stationed in Korea fifty years ago, and I still remember how superior we Americans acted. We wouldn’t allow the Koreans anywhere near the radars or missiles, relegating them to lowly jobs like dog handlers, generator operators, and of course houseboys. Let’s face it, there is no American who knows what is really going on in Afghanistan, no American who knows who is really guilty or innocent – with really being the operative word here – no American in the military, no American in the diplomatic core, no American CIA Afghan expert, no old hand who has been there for three tours, and yet, we think we can tell them what to do.

At the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, that while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.

Think about it for a few seconds, think about the fact that there are damn few Americans who even know the nuances of what is going on in America. Do you think that John Boehner knows what is really going on? If he did, how did he so misjudge the government shutdown? Do you think Obama does, then why can’t he get an Immigration Bill through Congress? And, if he didn’t because getting an Immigration Bill through is impossible, why did he try? Yet, we come into a foreign country and take over, telling the natives to move out of the way, we know what to do better than they do.

As an aside, the country we knew best when we conquered it, was the South after the Civil War. We spoke the same language, had similar histories, and many of our leaders and the Southern leaders had gone to school together (including the military leaders at West Point). After the North won, we moved military and civilian administrators into the South to run the place. Most school children, especially those in the South, know how badly we bollixed that. End aside.

Sending in carpetbaggers and telling people how to run their country just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in the South, it didn’t work in Vietnam or Iraq, and it won’t work in Afghanistan. We have brought in hundreds of carpetbaggers to run Afghanistan, spent billions of dollars, and about the only thing we have changed is raising the property values in parts of Kabul. There are now so many people in Kabul telling the Afghans how to run their country, that the European-style houses – built during the time the Soviets were there – are now selling for California prices, between $350,000 to $1 million dollars (this in a country with the per capita income among the lowest in the world at about $180 to $190 US dollars). According to the owner of Wazir Akbar Khan Property Agency, Rents in Wazir Akbar Khan and adjacent Shar-i-Naw are now in the range of 3,000 to 25,000 US dollars while the same houses rented for 150 to 300 dollars before November 2001, even under the Soviets.

But if there is one area, in particular, that we shouldn’t tell people how to run their country, it is in the area of who to lock up in prison. We are crazy about putting people in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world – with the possible exception of North Korea – even worse, our rate is so much higher that we even have the highest actual number of people in prison. China is second with 1.5 million people in jail, but with a population of less than one-fourth of China, we have an astounding 2.2 million people behind bars and China is not even a democracy. We put people in prison for almost everything, especially if they are people of color (and, let’s face it, those 65 people in jail are people of color). As an aside, it seems that the only thing we don’t put people in prison for is shooting young black men…that is if you are white and live in Florida. End aside.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the release of prisoners is of no concern” to the U.S, and that the prison in which they were held is a Taliban-producing factory. I suspect that he is right, but I know that I really don’t know very much about it. Lindsey Graham thinks he does, however, and he is outraged, threatening to get Congress to cut off aid. I agree with the cutting off aid part, but more importantly, I don’t think we should be telling anybody how to run their country and we certainly shouldn’t be telling them who they should put in jail.