Maslow's Peak: Reports From the Left
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Pollyanna Goes to Blacksburg

2/1/2019

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I'll be on the road an hour from now, heading from my home in Raleigh, NC to Blacksburg, VA, for my first Better Angels workshop. My rose-colored glasses are perched on my nose, but hey, they're sitting low. I have a clear gaze above them. I'd been observing Better Angels from a distance for months when for some reason I suddenly had to get involved. They didn't have a North Carolina workshop set until March, so I signed up for this one, despite the four-hour drive.  ​ 
Now it seems kismet I ended up registering for the one in Blacksburg. I located what looks like a lovely room in a serene and interesting Airbnb home, and it has a mountain view. Perfect for reflection before and after tomorrow’s day-long workshop. ​​
You'll find a description of the Red/Blue workshop I'm attending, and an account of the organization's mission and work, at the Better Angels website, but here's what I understand so far. Better Angels workshops bring together progressives and conservatives, small groups with an equal number of “Reds” and “Blues,” for a day of moderated discussions and exercises. The intent: strip down our face-value perceptions and truly hear each other. Yikes. 

My sense is the exercises are designed with some simplicity in mind, providing opportunities to listen quietly and learn why folks on the other side personally, individually, hold their political views. I can do that. (Right?) I'll also get to state my own views to a political opponent without being interrupted or derided. Wonder what that feels like...

So, with a fair amount of apprehension, I'm going in. I have to. I think we're getting it really, really wrong in the country right now, and I'm trying to at least get a handle on why. I know one thing; we have begun to casually - or at least routinely - reject the possibility that reasonable people of good will can hold views we find detestable. Now, I have friends who would say that given the outright injustice of some positions, it is right to reject the notion that a well-meaning person could hold them. I really get that. It can be confounding.

But what if we start at a place that separates the actions and rhetoric of policy-makers and other public figures from the beliefs and opinions of individuals who don't hold power. Don't we then have a narrower problem to grapple with; one that shouldn't be tossed aside with the wave of a hand? We all get to our political views in part by way of emotion and personal experience. By the time they are fully formed, our opinions are deeply rooted. Mine are. You cannot tell me that my views on certain issues aren't based on objective moral truths. About them I am perfectly comfortable saying, "I am right." But if I feel only contempt for those with opposing views and default to a self-righteous scorn, I am no longer right. And you would not be either. You could argue that the integrity of your beliefs is so solid you have good reason - even an obligation - to denounce those who disagree, but I'll still say doing so is wrong. Because while evaluations of right and wrong can entail questions of morality and humanity, they can also examine whether something is constructive or destructive; realistic or myopic; effective or impotent. Your convictions may be right, but the condemnation is wrong, either morally, depending on your philosophical bent, or because it Just. Won't. Help.

My being guided by these principles doesn't mean I live up to them. It certainly doesn't make more appealing the prospect of listening to someone who thinks gay people shouldn't marry or that poor people just aren't trying hard enough. I can write about it but interpersonally it's much harder. I recently had an experience white people sometimes have, when another white person assumes you'll be able to connect on a racist level. "Black men don't take care of their children," she says to me. I didn't feel inquisitive, or kindly. I didn't want to break it down in civil terms and help her understand what she was getting wrong. I wanted her out of my sight. I made that happen, abruptly, and made changes in my situation to keep it that way. 

I have no idea if that's the sort of thing I can expect to hear at this workshop. I have no idea how I will react if I do. I hope not to walk away. I hope to be able to sit with it, and I'm not sure why. My gut tells me there will be a value in going to this thing, but my gut is also twisted in knots.
 
From what I've read, and picked up from their videos, Better Angels does not design exercises with the intent of any one participant converting another. The intent doesn't even appear to be about learning to respect the validity of a given argument. Good thing. Because I wouldn't want to go, and because I can't imagine it is uncommon to leave one of these cordial, day-long events still wondering, “How on earth can those people believe that crap??!” But from what I can tell, something happens. Some sort of humanizing, some sort of calming, some sort of renewing of hope... I don't know. 
 
My cynical friends (mwah) like to dub me the chick in the title of this post. And absolutely: I'm idealistic and optimistic. But I hope they'll credit me for embarking on something I won't be able to float through on a cloud of peace. I'm having to override the fear of being repelled by what I see in others, and maybe what I will see in myself. But y’all. If we really mourn the loss of the loyal-opposition model of governing and discourse, and recognize it ain't gonna stage a comeback on its own, what's the alternative? Fury won't change anything. Hand-wringing won't. Resignation won't. Shrouding ourselves in cynicism, however well-earned, won't change anything. The only alternative to going at it with this sort of work is to outnumber and overpower the other side. I know that feels like the right goal to some, who see the divide as intractable, who see real people getting hurt, and who authentically believe it's time to repudiate compromise and force a new paradigm. But if that's your goal, please stop crying about the toxic tone of our discourse, stop accusing others of power mongering, and remember that ultimately, a forced paradigm is a bloody strategy, and what you end up with is not be democracy. 

I'll stress again that as invisible as my humility and self-doubt may be in a lot of what I write, it is there. Yes, I'm proud to be taking this step, consigning myself to sit tomorrow and hear out people whose views, in my estimation, reflect misinformation, prejudice, fear, and callousness. And yes, I'm aware that I'm shamelessly issuing challenges to everyone in earshot to follow my lead. But I mean to describe ideals here, not accomplishments. I'm trying to hold myself accountable as much as anyone else. I mean it when I say I'm worried I'll bolt halfway through the workshop, tossing my rosy shades in the trash, muttering, "There are no better angels here." It's also just nerve-racking not knowing if your head is going to explode and make a mess in front of all those people.

My plan is to attend a couple of workshops as a participant and weigh a deeper involvement. Despite my doubts, I know there's every chance I will want to become a Better Angels volunteer. I'm so curious. 
1 Comment

Inform JAY-Z? Will Do, President Trump. Now Help Me Help You.

1/29/2018

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I will take you up on that, Mr. President. I'll tweet JAY-Z--let him know your policies have created an economy with the lowest black unemployment rate EVER RECORDED! I'll tell him what's up, but first I need a couple of things from you.
I think normally I'd want to look at results from longer than one year in office. I don't have to tell you, Mr. President, that it takes time to get bills through Congress--really, to ramp up any sort new initiative. But you’re so excited about this it's got me excited too. Just... could you specify which of your policies has been most instrumental in dropping the African American unemployment rate? That would help a lot. At the moment I can't put my finger on what you've done to achieve it, and if I'm really going to school JAY-Z, I'll need details. Point me to a policy of yours with this sort of immediate, positive impact on the lives of African Americans and I’ll brag it up.

Also, we should probably provide JAY-Z with some context. A little historical perspective can be so effective in opening one's eyes to the truth. Maybe we should look over, say, the last ten years, and see where your administration fits in. 

Don't worry Donald, I've got this one! I've got some charts and graphs here that really lay it out straight. With you so hyped-up about black unemployment, I'm assuming you've been focused on it for quite a while, am I right? So I’m not showing you anything you don't already know. This is for JAY-Z. 

The two graphics on top (1a and 1b) give you--uh, him--a couple of ways to look at data illustrating the severe rise and fall of the last decade's overall unemployment rates. That was a scary and painful period, wasn't it?
​
The graph on the left (1a) shows the percentage of unemployment (numbered along the left side) and the year (along the bottom). Next to that is a chart (1b) breaking the numbers down by month.  

Below that are two graphics (2a and 2b) showing numbers specifically for African American unemployment over the same period.

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1a) US unemployment 2007-2017 BLS
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1b) US unemployment 2007-2017 monthly BLS


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2a) African American unemployment 2007-2017 BLS
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2b) African American unemployment 2007-2017 monthly BLS

Clearly, Mr. President, you are right to make a big deal out of this. It's been a harrowing ten years. Devastating. You look at this data and get a stark reminder of what we Americans went through during the recession. It also makes clear--since you brought it up--how hard African Americans were hit, with unemployment topping out at a catastrophic 16.8% in March of 2010. 

Now, there's no overlooking the dramatic fall in these numbers that took place during the eight-year term of President Barack Obama. His administration cut unemployment by more than half, from 10% at it’s highest, to 4.7% when he left office. Over five percentage points. And nine percentage points were erased in unemployment for African Americans, down to 7.8%.

But we're not talking about him, are we, Mr. President? We're talking about you, and the policies you rushed through this year to bring that latter number down another point, to its current 6.8%. I’ll focus most on that last percentage point when I'm straightening out JAY-Z.

There’s one last piece of advice I need before I reach out to him. I pulled the numbers for these graphics from the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). No doubt, this is the correct, original source for these numbers. The BLS is the federal agency tasked with compiling and reporting the official monthly US jobs report. 

But you and your supporters, notably the folks at Fox News, spent those eight years deriding that monthly report as fraudulent. You urged us not to believe the reports, said the books were cooked, the numbers were made up, that the methods used to calculate them were deceptive. Each month, when the US jobs report came out, you urged Americans to disregard it. 

Well, your numbers come from the same report, Mr. President. The statistics are calculated the same way now as during President Obama's tenure. In fact, it is much the same, straightforward report that has been set forth by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1925. The only changes in methodology have been to improve their precision and scope.  

So guide me here; either Barack Obama managed to lead the country out of the recession and into a stable economy before you took over, cutting African American and overall unemployment in half, or we can't trust the numbers. Let me know how you want to frame that, in case JAY-Z mentions it.   

Oh – and I've thought of something sure to impress him. If you could . . . do some more policies, something to reduce that embarrassing disparity in unemployment rates by race, you might even score a shout out on his next album.  

​Awaiting your direction.


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Will We Be Ready Soon Enough?

1/14/2018

2 Comments

 
by Julie Boler
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I jumped out quick on Facebook. Saw the first, breathless "OPRAH 2020" posts, and shot off one of my own, begging, “please don't start slobbering over rousing speeches by stars and dubbing them our next, best hope.” ​
​The comments I got back were a mix of "thank you for saying that," and "we'd be crazy to overlook Oprah," and honestly, some of the latter ones were compelling. I was reminded of my feelings of awe, watching Winfrey deliver a soaring commencement address, and of how impressed I was with her founding of a leadership academy for South African girls. I think some of her most serious work can disappear behind her outsize personality and pop culture profile.
 
It also hit me that I should have focused more attentively on Oprah’s whole Golden Globe speech before popping off about public reaction to it. I’d only seen snippets and highlights. I sat down and watched it from start to finish and it stirred me. She centered our country’s current situation within the context of recent US history, using a perspective both social and personal. And she’s charismatic—she helped me feel we are strong and unified and can prevail. I understand better why it moved so many people.
 
Without question, Oprah Winfrey has decades of wide-ranging experience. Through her endeavors she has undoubtedly fostered positive change in the world. Her Golden Globe speech was powerful. But this is not a Winfrey For President post. On the other hand, it’s not an Oprah Don’t Run post either. When it comes to the next presidential campaign, we're still safely snuggled in the seat of hypotheticals, probabilities, and conjecture. I'm going to bask in that as long as I can. The job of carefully evaluating official candidates will come soon enough.
 
I think progressives share an unspoken sense of the responsibility we will have once that soon enough arrives. We do know this; the next election will be profoundly important whether or not Robert Mueller has made his way high enough by then to force a personnel change at the top. We know such a change won’t solve everything. No matter how far down the line of succession this current bunch has to go to replace their latest mistake, that great office will continue to be stained as long as they are in it.  
 
We'll have a number of concerns to juggle as we select our next nominee, and electability is a major factor. That is surely one reason for the clamoring for Winfrey to run. We have to win in 2020. The task of getting it right is daunting, our responsibility nerve-wracking.
 
But we have time, and the prospects are plentiful. If you don't see that now, remember, you don't have to yet. Relish that. When the time comes, let's see who steps up and listen to what each of them has to say. We will make the right choice, as long as we do a few essential things.
 
We must be extraordinarily patient and thoughtful as we’re deciding which candidate to support. As the campaigns start in earnest, we'll all have gut reactions, initial conceptions, early favorites. We can’t let those early impressions harden too fast. Let the information flow in. We must listen so closely to everything they say. These people are running for president. We have to demand more, better debates and town halls and in-depth interviews, with hard questions and time provided for real answers. Let’s show each sponsoring media outlet that we are willing to--want to--stay tuned and sort through the details.
 
We have to read. Please, people. Not just the blog posts and social media commentary but the articles. Not just their headlines and lead paragraphs, whole articles. We have to dig deeper. Go to the candidates’ websites and click past the neat little summaries of issue stances and on to more substantive policy statements. If a website doesn’t go that deep, ask for more, and pay attention to what you get back. Meanwhile look for more on their positions elsewhere.  
 
Keep remembering, these people are running for president. How much time will we make for this process, coming soon enough? This whole thing is up to us. How much work will we put in? I don’t mean canvassing for your candidate once chosen, or getting out the vote. Before that. Will we make enough time to truly hear out the folks who are asking for our votes? They must make their case. Let’s be slow to line up behind any one contender. This will be hard. I know I will probably have an early sense of where my support should go. But I can pledge to try to take it all in first.
 
There’s another thing we have to do if we’re going to set things right. I feel both the urgency of it and a dread that we won’t do it. We have to be nice to each other throughout the process. Does that sound trite? It isn’t. Should it go without saying? It doesn’t. Let’s hope we’ve learned our lesson. Paying attention to how we treat each other throughout such a trying, far-reaching endeavor is not shallow or banal, it isn’t automatic or easy, and this does need to be said. We have to do this together. We have to be patient, treat each other well, and keep our eyes on the prize when there is conflict.
 
So lower your voice - no really. Dude. Lower your voice. Breathe and wait before hitting send. Be nice. Cultivate humility. Walk things back. I made myself do that here, about the Winfrey speech. It's hard, but, as it turns out, not that hard. I bet practice will make it even easier. Let’s practice this stuff now before soon enough arrives.  

Is all this even possible??? I don’t know. These are the things we always say we will do. Will we finally do them? I don’t know. But we have to try.
 
So, Oprah 2020? Why not? Who knows? But she'll have to take one of hopefully many spots on the stage and set about convincing us. Who will be up there beside her if she goes? Who else is out there? Let's wait and see. Let’s ease into this slowly, let the field develop, listen hard, read everything, ask for information, make an informed, studied choice, and treat each other with kindness in the process.
 
Soon enough is coming.
 
Let's be careful out there.
 

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Let's Keep an Eye on Paul.

3/19/2017

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by Julie Boler

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​​House Speak Paul Ryan, (R-WI) promoting legislation requiring drug tests for anyone applying for federal unemployment benefits.


As you may know, GOP governors & legislators in several states have pushed for laws like this one, requiring drug tests for folks wanting food stamps, unemployment, and other forms of public assistance.

That hasn’t really turned out well for them.

Matter of fact, politicians who push for these laws get bit in the ass and abandon the requirements sometimes, because there’s this thing where applicants show lower rates of drug use than the general population.

A few Republican state leaders have admitted their surprise at results like this.  I think the reason they’ve been caught off guard is that, like Speaker Ryan, they have a vague image of those who apply for public assistance as low-life moochers on drugs, trying to scam the government.
That leads to their confusion.
 
Some of us are less surprised. Because we have a vague image of those who apply for public assistance as . . . regular people. In tough life circumstances. Doing the best they can. Sometimes so desperate they need help just to stay afloat. Sometimes finding themselves in the midst of whole generations of such desperation, wondering how to find their way out, only hoping in the meantime to keep the lights on and their kids’ bellies full, and something coming in to pay the rent with while they look to replace a job they’ve been laid off from.
 
Anyway. Everyone has their own perspective.

And hey, we could be the ones wrong.
But so far, the drug-test/social-experiments GOP leaders in a handful of states have done have indicated there might be more accuracy in our vague image than in theirs.
Just to mention.

But back to this new bill – the drug-test-before-unemployment-benefits bill that House Leader Paul Ryan is so giddy about being “another one head(ing) to President Trump’s desk.”

I'm curious. Why spend the money, after seeing Republicans at the state level deeming it a waste - even an embarrassment -  on legislation like this?  

Why now?

You don't suppose . . . could it simply be a device of some kind? Like, legislation as propaganda, designed to crystallize their vague notion in the eyes of the voter? Maybe in the run-up to the budget battle that lies ahead?

Because there's nothing like stoking suspicion about the very character of the poor to give folks a taste for axing programs that provide assistance to families for rent and heat, after-school programs, legal aid, and job-training.

And that’s the real Ryan goal, hardly hidden; the long game: tossing programs such as this, that coddle the poor, with hot meals for seniors, apples, grapes, and carrots for poor kids, and, you know, job training and such.

There are some moderate legislators who are aghast at the near-apocalyptic shades of the budget battles to come, shades provided by the president’s own austerity-on-steroids budget just released.

Some of these folks, even in the GOP, will need convincing. So let's see what kind of openings that gives us. Let's see what sort of convincing we might do. 
​
Why don’t we kind of keep an eye on the machinations ahead, as a contingent of Congress gets steely-eyed about pushing their heartbreaking agenda forward. It seems a little scary, what with the "vague notion" they are guided by. And they can be pretty smooth and convincing when they get stuck on  a theme.

​So let’s pay attention.

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My Own Little Building Seven.

2/2/2017

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by Julie Boler
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Listening to Donald Trump's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast today, I considered the concerns that seem to drive some of the key players camped out in the Oval Office these days. 


We know who they are, and from whence they came. As Trump spoke, some things about them fell into place for me. Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller aren't terrified of terrorism, they are terrified of Sharia law.
​

We already know this, of course. They are downright paranoid about it. But it hadn't occured to me that they might have more apprehension about an overrun of non-violent, educated, middle-class Muslims, than of fire-breathing bad actors from the same faith. They wouldn't dream of presenting such a priority of anxiety to mainstream society, but by embedding into Trump's remarks a few too many dog-whistles to the farther reaches, they have shown their hand. And I wonder if they "bungled" the roll out of the Executive Order partly to begin prepping people for their fight against what they see as the real Muslim menace. ​

It has been said by some mighty smart folks that the reason for the shocking implementation of this . . . pause, was to soften resistance to the also severe vetting they plan to put in place permanently. They know that the harsh new immigration and refugee policies they have in mind would have been unacceptable to many Americans if they'd started from that place. By starting with something more outrageous first, any stepping back they do makes them look like the picture of reasonableness.

If they meant only to temporarily tighten restrictions in order for this new administration to have a chance to evaluate and strengthen our current policies, the suspension would have been placed on the giving out of visas to new applicants, not turning away those who have already been screened and awarded one. They would have called a halt to the refugee process at the application or vetting stages, not turned away those who have gone through a year or more of vetting and been approved to enter the country.

I don't think any of us are deluded about the smarts and awareness of this crew. They know that so-called homegrown American terrorists, radicalized from afar, are much more a threat to our national security than the spectre of a trained member of ISIL pulling off a pose as a desperate family man from Syria, successfully maintaining that posture for a year and a half, somehow producing documentation of his stable and non-violent past, and infiltrating the country to set up a cell. So is it really the Radical. Islamic. Terrorists. of which they are most afraid? 

They know the citizenry is. And t
hey probably do have some fear of foreign terrorists hitting our soil. But I wonder if that fear isn't overshadowed by a greater fear, of all Muslims, the terrorists, sure, but also the families, community leaders, and professionals. Using their drastic move over the weekend, Trump and company were able to do more than just set folks up for a new level of screening. They were also able to plant the seed that we should be looking as hard at the Middle Eastern traveler who easily and appropriately passes the screening for a visa as we are at the the one with the trappings of the duplicitous bomb-maker. By following the intensity of the first move with a willingness to make common sense adjustments, they've turned rejection of acceptable applicants into the norm, and providing waivers into the exception.

It came over me that it's the respectable Muslim with a visa that they are really afraid of. They see a threat in the reputable Syrian doctor, outspoken about her love of America and desire to live here. They fear the influence of the visiting imam from Iran, coming to mentor a protege. They distrust the Yemeni academic arriving for speaking engagements. A Somalian scientist, attending a conference. An Iranian CEO traveling here for business. Could these actually be the Middle Eastern influences that our new Executive Branch sees as the greatest threat to our way of life?

Amidst all the flak the Trump administration took for the ostensible sloppiness of launching this Executive Order, and the supposed oversight of failing to include key players in its planning, Kelly Ann Conway immediately made the rounds to clarify that no, actually, we've been planning this for months. Many of us had a reaction of, then why did it go so wrong? followed by, did it really go wrong? But today I've fallen into a loop of thoughts that I don't recognize, that are usually repugnant to me: "could this be more of a long-game play than it looks like, even at a second or third glance? Could this all be part of a dark and carefully orchestrated 'big plan'? Come on, Julie."

One of the reasons most conspiracy theories lack credibility is that they suppose such machinations could be carefully planned and kept secret by legions of people from various fields across numerous borders. In reality, to pull off something so impactful, with far-reaching international implications, sure to spur outrage and major push back, the conspiring would have to be done in a tight inner circle, wouldn't it? It would have to be a circle made up of folks who each had a deep appetite for brazen power plays. The group in on it could not include cooler-headed bureaucrats. Any information would have to be shared only on a need-to-know basis, with needing to know being strictly defined. The plan's success would be dependent on a set of architects who were ascendant, driven, and single-minded. It would have to be sprung suddenly on the less ferocious players needed to institute it. The same radical-first-move-reasonable-second-move manipulation aimed at the general public would also have to be used on the level-headed administrator and the front-line official. So.

Oh my. How could remarks at a prayer breakfast by a very green, socially inept president lead me down such a path? Check out the speech, then you tell me.

(video followed by transcript)
​(Trump introduced by Mark Burnett, producer of The Apprentice TV show.)
TRUMP: Thank you, Mark. So nice.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much, thank you. (APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much, it’s a great honor to be here this morning. And so many faith leaders — very, very important people to me — from across our magnificent nation, and so many leaders from all across the globe. Today we continue a tradition begun by President Eisenhower some 64 years ago.
This gathering is a testament to the power of faith and is one of the great customs of our nation. And I hope to be here seven more times with you.
(APPLAUSE)
I want very much to thank our co-chair Senator Boozman and Senator Coons. And all of the congressional leadership; they’re all over the place. We have a lot of very distinguished guests. And we have one guest who was just sworn in last night, Rex Tillerson, secretary of state.
(APPLAUSE)
Gonna do a great job.
(APPLAUSE)
Some people didn’t like Rex because he actually got along with leaders of the world. I said, no, you have to understand that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He’s respected all over the world and I think he’s going to go down as one of our great, great secretaries.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you, Rex.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you as well to Senate Chaplain Barry Black, for his moving words. And I don’t know Chaplain whether or not that’s an appointed position — is that an appointed position? I don’t even know if you’re Democrat or if you’re Republican, but I’m appointing you for another year, the hell with it.
(LAUGHTER)
And I think it’s not even my appointment, it’s the Senate’s appointment, but we’ll talk to them. You’re very — you’re — your son is here. Your job is very, very secure. OK?
(LAUGHTER)
Thank you, Barry. Appreciate it very much.
I also want to thank my great friends the Roma. Where’s Roma, beautiful Roma Downey, the voice of an angel. She’s got the voice — every time I hear that voice; it’s so beautiful. That — everything is so beautiful about Roma, including her husband because he’s a special, special friend. Mark Burnett for the wonderful introduction.
So true, so true. I said to the agent, I’m sorry, the only thing wrong — I actually got on the phone and fired him myself because he said, you don’t want to do it, it’ll never work, it’ll never, ever work, you don’t want to do it. I said, listen. When I really fired him after it became the number one show, it became so successful and he wanted a commission and he didn’t want to this.
That’s when I really said — but we had tremendous success on The Apprentice. And when I ran for president, I had to leave the show. That’s when I knew for sure that I was doing it. And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out.
The ratings went down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster and Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?
(LAUGHTER)
But we’ve had an amazing life together the last 14, 15 years. And a — an outstanding man and thank you very much for introducing. Appreciate it. It’s a great honor.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I also want to thank my dear friend, Vice President Mike Pence, who has been incredible.
(APPLAUSE)
And incredible wife, Karen.
And every time I was in a little trouble with something where they were questioning me, they’d say, “But he picked Mike Pence.”
(LAUGHTER)
“So he has to know what he’s doing.”
(LAUGHTER)
And it’s true, he’s been — you know on the scale of zero to 10, I rate him a 12, OK?
So I wanna thank you, thank you very much, appreciate it.
(APPLAUSE)
But most importantly, today I wanna thank the American people. Your faith and prayers have sustained me and inspired me through some very, very tough times. All around America, I have met amazing people whose words of worship and encouragement have been a constant source of strength.
What I hear most often as I travel the country are five words that never, ever fail to touch my heart, that’s “I am praying for you.” I hear it so often, “I am praying for you, Mr. President.”
(APPLAUSE)
No one has inspired me more in my travels than the families of the United States military. Men and women who have put their lives on the line everyday for their country and their countrymen. I just came back yesterday, from Dover Air Force Base, to join the family of Chief William “Ryan” Owens as America’s fallen hero was returned home.
Very, very sad, but very, very beautiful, very, very beautiful. His family was there, incredible family, loved him so much, so devastated, they were so devastated, but the ceremony was amazing. He died in defense of our nation. He gave his life in defense of our people. Our debt to him and our debt to his family is eternal and everlasting. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
We will never forget the men and women who wear the uniform, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
From generation to generation, their vigilance has kept our liberty alive. Our freedom is won by their sacrifice and our security has been earned with their sweat and blood and tears. God has blessed this land to give us such incredible heroes and patriots. They are very, very special and we are going to take care of them.
(APPLAUSE)
Our soldiers understand that what matters is not party or ideology or creed, but the bonds of loyalty that link us all together as one. America is a nation of believers. In towns all across our land, it’s plain to see what we easily forget — so easily we forget this, that the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success.
I will tell you that and I tell you that from somebody that has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success. Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people.
And I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith; they don’t have money, at least, not nearly to the extent. And they’re happy. Those, to me, are the successful people, I have to tell you.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I was blessed to be raised in a churched home. My mother and father taught me that to whom much is given, much is expected. I was sworn in on the very Bible from which my mother would teach us as young children, and that faith lives on in my heart every single day.
The people in this room come from many, many backgrounds. You represent so many religions and so many views. But we are all united by our faith, in our creator and our firm knowledge that we are all equal in His eyes. We are not just flesh and bone and blood, we are human beings with souls. Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God.
(APPLAUSE)
It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, the God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember.
(APPLAUSE)
Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is also a right under threat all around us, and the world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways. And I’ve never seen it so much and so openly as since I took the position of president.
The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out. OK? That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out.
(APPLAUSE)
Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it. They’re tough. We have to tough. It’s time we’re going to be a little tough folks. We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore. It’s not going to happen anymore. We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion. Acts of wantonness (ph) (inaudible) just minorities. Horrors on a scale that defy description.
Terrorism is a fundamental threat to religious freedom. It must be stopped and it will be stopped. It may not be pretty for a little while. It will be stopped. We have seen…
(APPLAUSE)
And by the way, General, as you know James “Mad Dog”, shouldn’t say it in this room, Mattis, now there’s a reason they call him “Mad Dog” Mattis, never lost a battle, always wins them, and always wins them fast. He’s our new secretary of Defense, will be working with Rex. He’s right now in South Korea, going to Japan, going to some other spots. I’ll tell you what, I’ve gotten to know him really well. He’s the real deal. We have somebody who’s the real deal working for us and that’s what we need. So, you watch. You just watch.
(APPLAUSE)
Things will be different. We have seen peace loving Muslims brutalize, victimize, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers. We have seen threats of extermination against the Jewish people. We have seen a campaign of ISIS and genocide against Christians, where they cut of heads. Not since the Middle Ages have we seen that. We haven’t seen that, the cutting off of heads. Now they cut off the heads, they drown people in steel cages. Haven’t seen this. I haven’t seen this. Nobody’s seen this for many, many years.
TRUMP: All nations have a moral obligation to speak out against such violence. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it and to confront it viciously if we have to.
So I want to express clearly today, to the American people, that my administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in our land. America must forever remain a tolerant society where all face are respected and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure.
We have to feel safe and secure. In recent days, we have begun to take necessary action to achieve that goal. Our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world. But these are those and there are those that would exploit that generosity to undermine the values that we hold so dear. We need security.
There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle, not right. We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation. You look all over the world and you see what’s happening.
So in the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty. And that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination. We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values.
We will be a safe country, we will be a free country and we will be a country where all citizens can practice their beliefs without fear of hostility or a fear of violence. America will flourish, as long as our liberty, and in particular, our religious liberty is allowed to flourish.
(APPLAUSE)
America will succeed, as long as our most vulnerable citizens — and we have some that are so vulnerable — have a path to success. And America will thrive, as long as we continue to have faith in each other and faith in God.
(APPLAUSE)
That faith in God has inspired men and women to sacrifice for the needy, to deploy to wars overseas and to lock arms at home, to ensure equal rights for every man, woman and child in our land. It’s that faith that sent the pilgrims across the oceans, the pioneers across the plains and the young people all across America, to chase their dreams. They are chasing their dreams. We are going to bring those dreams back.
As long as we have God, we are never, ever alone. Whether it’s the soldier on the night watch, or the single parent on the night shift, God will always give us solace and strength, and comfort. We need to carry on and to keep carrying on.
For us here in Washington, we must never, ever stop asking God for the wisdom to serve the public, according to his will. That’s why…
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
That’s why President Eisenhower and Senator Carlson had the wisdom to gather together 64 years ago, to begin this truly great tradition. But that’s not all they did together. Lemme tell you the rest of the story.
Just one year later, Senator Carlson was among the members of Congress to send to the president’s desk a joint resolution that added, “Under God,” to our Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a great thing.
(APPLAUSE)
Because that’s what we are and that is what we will always be and that is what our people want; one beautiful nation, under God.
Thank you, God bless you and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
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VOTING: MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF

11/3/2016

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by Julie Boler

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Not sure how to cast a vote
this year? 
Follow these four 
​​simple steps.


(To participate in the profound process of sustaining a living democracy,
you need to
 know three things, and do one thing.)

KNOW:
Where to vote, who’s running, and which way to vote. (Follow steps 1-3.)

1. WHERE TO VOTE: Search: "(your county, state) elections board". Examples: “Duval County, FL elections board” or “Clark County, Nevada elections board”. Here you will find the location and hours of your polling place, your state’s ID requirements, and your assigned congressional and judicial districts. You will also find a sample ballot. This can be enormously helpful for following the two steps below. 

2. WHO’S RUNNING: You may have decided which presidential candidate to vote for. But your sample ballot will list other elected offices you’ll be voting to fill. This year’s ballot may also include a local referendum, asking the public to decide an issue like whether to fund a new civic project, or allow certain development plans to go forward. Familiarize yourself with the questions, and use step three to find answers. Then you’ll enter the voting booth with confidence in your opinions.  

3. WHO AND WHAT TO VOTE FOR: it’s easy to locate trustworthy advice about unfamiliar races and ballot measures, even at the last minute.

  a. Search: “voter guide” or “2016 endorsements” on the websites of organizations you personally trust. Guided by the issues you care about, you can find voting recommendations made by advocacy groups from the Sierra Club to the Chamber of Commerce to the NAACP. Look for endorsements made by newspapers and other news sources you find credible and reliable. Check the official website of your preferred political party.
  b. Search: "(your state) 2016 election endorsements (keyword)”. For keyword, plug in anything from an individual candidate’s name, to terms like “teachers”, “Christian”, "small business", or “LGBTQ”. You can find issue-specific endorsements for many races.
  c. Search: For background on ballot measures found on your sample ballot, search with the name of the referendum followed by “editorials” or “opinion”. 

DO: 
​Show up on Tuesday!

We are so fortunate in the US: Just by taking these small, doable steps every election, we each carry our own individual share of the burden of living in a free society. Consider the alternative! Vote!
 

 

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Which Proxy War Will Our VP Candidates Fight?

9/30/2016

2 Comments

 
By Julie Boler

Vice presidential candidates Mike Pence and Tim Kaine will debate next Tuesday night (10/4, 9pm). The debate will air on all major networks, so, bright lights, big arena. The VP hopefuls each have an opportunity to articulate their own ticket's vision. They can tamp down the extraordinary racket of character issues and controversy, and discuss foreign and domestic policy in serious terms. They can help voters make a less emotional, more informed choice on November 8th.
 
Or they can add to the noise.

 
No doubt, it'll be tempting to look for righteous standing in these character wars. And sure, evaluating integrity, comportment, and fitness for office is critical. But this electorate is, well, not at risk of being short-changed on fodder for that test.

On Tuesday, these two men will each have less than 45 minutes of on-air talk time. Substantive policy discussion appears to be MIA elsewhere. They should leap at the chance to prove themselves the sort of politician (lately described wistfully by other politicians) with whom one can disagree without viewing as a menace to democracy, or a joke.
 
Democrats never expected to feel that Mike Pence could win a measure of respect simply by stating germane viewpoints, without rancor or silliness. Republicans could not have foreseen the day when they'd be glad for a sane, on-topic performance by Tim Kaine. But that day has come. Supporters who believe in their candidate ought to see as a triumph any seized opportunity to lay out a comprehensible explanation of their ideas.

To be sure, watching an authentic, high-stakes battle of wits and political philosophy – especially so late in an election cycle - is normally a source of stomach-churning, nail-biting, partisan anxiety. But for those American voters who are decent, rational, and currently appalled, it would come as a relief.
 
What viewers should hope to see addressed in some form Tuesday evening is simple. The two parties are directly opposed in philosophy about five central issues; the economy, foreign affairs, social policy, the environment, and immigration.

  • On the economy, Tim Kaine must make the case for stimulus spending, progressive taxation, and close regulation of macroeconomics. Mike Pence has to champion cuts in domestic spending, lower tax rates with a flatter distribution, and an ever-freer market. 
  • Look to Kaine to define liberal social policy as guided by individual license and equal rights. Pence will want to share a rationale for social policy based on traditional Judeo-Christian values. 
  • The hawk vs dove metaphor has outlived its usefulness in describing the foreign policy differences between the parties, but they remain stark. Listen for the Democratic candidate to expound on a complex approach to national security that emphasises relationships, strategic public communication, diplomacy and narrow military action. His Republican counterpart should seek to defend an approach more concrete and absolute, one that draws from the ideal of “peace through strength”, with a bent towards wider military action.
  • The two major parties’ representatives should also be prepared to convincingly defend their widely divergent views on immigration and the environment.
  • Questions about the tension between intelligence gathering and privacy might also arise. In contrast to clearcut right and left issues, this one has created bedfellows strange enough to beg that a nuanced stance be expressed by each candidate.

Raucous talk about character has truly interfered with voter ability to evaluate policy. Americans who intend to vote but remain undecided obviously believe that whatever the personal foibles of Trump and Clinton, either is still a viable contender. Our would-be presidents have a responsibility to re-center the dialogue now, regardless of what comes from their competition, or from reckless talking heads. If they are finding it hard to stick to that, the least they can do is delegate it to their running mates. The expectation from the top of each ticket should be that the VP candidates spend their time during this debate engaged in enthusiastic efforts to stand in proxy for their boss’s policy positions, rather than taking up arms in the ongoing, exhausting character clash.
   

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Some of Them Are Sweet As We Are.

8/29/2016

1 Comment

 
by Julie Boler
PictureUs and Them - Richard Willson
Last week, on the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's escalator-enhanced announcement of his candidacy, a video from that night made the rounds. It shows Trump, in an interview with Bill O'Reilly (see min. 1:55), asserting that babies born to illegal immigrants (also known, in the bigotry community, as "anchor babies") are not US citizens, 14th-Amendment dictates on birthright citizenship be damned. Trump promises to deport all illegal immigrants, but concedes that he’d work to expedite the re-entry to the US of certain deportees. Which deportees? "... the good ones. And there are plenty of good ones."

Growing up in Evansville, Indiana, in the 1970's, my grade-school-rebel self objected when my white classmates used the n-word. They appeared to have a tacit agreement that while one shouldn't call anyone that, or say it around strangers, when talking about black people among young white peers, its use was unremarkable. I disagreed. Whenever I heard it, I complained that it was a mean, bad word, and that it was wrong to say it. (Well, and I'd yell, "Stop saying that!" - one reason I always heard "You're so bossy!" at such an early age.)

Countless times then, one of my little friends would adopt a patronizing tone and explain how they’d been taught by a father or aunt or older sibling that the word didn't apply to all black people. "It just means the bad ones. There are good ones," they'd expound, "and bad ones." Trying to reassure their troubled playmate, they'd say, "Don't worry, Julie, (n-word) is only for the bad ones."

I don't remember the extent of my vocabulary at the time, but I do remember thinking, if not in so many words, that beyond using slurs, it was dehumanizing to say "good ones and bad ones" when talking about people.

PictureMississippi schoolgirls at naptime.
My siblings will recognize the title of this post as a quote we have cherished for decades, for its comedic value. It was the earnest declaration of a preteen neighbor who lived in the North Carolina apartment complex we’d moved to in the early 80's. This young lady was not an especially clever thinker, but her heart was in the right place. Her breathless, drawling that "Some of them are sweet as we are!" was inspired by some especially positive experience with a black person, the details of which I have since forgotten.

That this was a revelation to her was very interesting to us, and because her personality was so guileless and, well, 
sweet, it had its charm. And sure, it was good she’d figured out such a thing. But the enjoyment of the memory dulls a little when considering what her exclamation laid bare. It betrayed her presumable view that some of them are not as sweet as we are. (Okay, I still get a giggle out of that.) And it raised the question of whether, heretofore​, she'd imagined that… er… none of them are sweet as we are. The "we" and "them", even when used by the kind-hearted, always rankles.

During his announcement, Trump famously said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with (sic) us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

As outrageous as that statement was, I was more bothered by the next one. It gave me again the feeling I'd had as a schoolgirl: the good old, surely-you-don't-mean-people-here feeling. In the statement, and I've reread the transcript to confirm my memory, Trump uses "it" to refer to "the bad ones". "They're sending us not the right people. It's coming from more than Mexico. It's coming from all over South and Latin America (sic), and it's coming probably -- probably -- from the Middle East."
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One might point to such language when engaged in a dialogue about current levels of racism in the US, which often focus on overt events like Klan rallies or acts of violence by white nationalists. It's like the practice by some manufacturers of bras and pantyhose of calling their beige shade selection "nude"; or the fact that descriptors of race aren’t used in news stories except to differentiate people of color; or the observation, "You don't sound/act black." Such pervasive dismissals illuminate a constant undertone of undying racism.

Meanwhile, on he goes: Trump continues to use the "good ones" and "bad ones" terminology in his campaign. And it continues to hit my ear like the utterance of a sheltered, Southern thirteen-year old, or of a pretend-grownup fourth grader, on a playground in the 70's Midwest. ​
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Fighting A Straw Hillary - The Way To Go For Some

5/28/2016

1 Comment

 

by Julie Boler

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It must be scary to run for office against Hillary Clinton. Hard to face the prospect of competing head-to-head against someone with her chops. Just a non-starter for some folks, it seems, to think of doing it that way. ​

Why not create a workaround? One that gets you out of something as forbidding as comparing policy proposals with someone like her – maybe a workaround like character assassination, for example.

​Clinton's current opponent is making an art form of creating such a workaround, but he isn’t the first. His version may be the worst ever in degree of malevolence, but the format has been there a long time. Clinton seems to be good at beating out this sort of sideways, ignoble challenge, and the last one to try it was unsuccessful. Here’s hoping that pattern holds.
Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton properly. He made the surely unstudied decision to take Hillary Clinton at face value, at her word, in the context of her real background and qualifications, and argue his case. 
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​She did the same, affording him respect as an opponent, and weighing in on every difference between them intelligently and often persuasively. In the end he got more votes, but they conducted a campaign of ideas, policy positions, and philosophical perspectives. It was a tough, emotional campaign, and it got grimy at times. But neither of them ever tried to de-legitimize the other with hints of intrinsic personal flaws. They sought to explain their own ideas, listen to the other’s, and conduct a fair fight. ​​​
Obviously, we aren’t seeing that sort of campaign occur between Clinton and Trump. But honestly, Bernie Sanders didn’t appear to relish such a respectable match-up either. And I don’t know why that is. 
 
While trading worst-election-ever woes recently with a friend of mine - a Bernie fan - he said he felt the low moments of this thing started in the primary, when - as he put it - "the DNC was doing its worst to keep that damned Democratic Socialist out of the top seat." That prompted me to reflect on the primaries through the prism of what we're seeing now, and two things have occurred to me.
 
One, it's clearer to me than ever that Bernie Sanders beat himself in that race. No matter how pushy and entrenched you consider the DNC to be, their maneuvering didn't keep Bernie Sanders from being a competitive primary contender. The proof? Sanders was a competitive primary contender. He just didn't win.
 
My second thought is that he didn't win because for whatever reason, when faced with running for office against Hillary Clinton, he chose to run against the idea of Hillary Clinton, rather than against her political views and objectives. I wonder if he was even conscious of doing this. Was he more confident running against her reputation than laying his views out next to hers and selling them? That was my suspicion during the primaries; that he hadn’t fleshed out his proposals enough to challenge hers, and was relying on emotional rhetoric to win support instead. The worst part was that Sanders’ idea of Hillary Clinton was in sync with the conservative idea of Hillary Clinton.

Interpersonally, Sanders and Clinton treated each other with mutual respect, often even apparent warmth. They both made note often of the places where their politics overlapped. But mentally scrolling back through the content of his case against Clinton, it's hard to find Sanders charging her with anything other than moral failure.
 ​
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I hate to reduce the Bernie Sanders campaign to unpreparedness, but his trouble can’t be chalked up to the DNC. There is no support for the hapless underdog argument that Sanders was strong-armed out of the nomination. A look back at the hard-fought, noisy, brightly-lit 2016 Democratic primaries hardly yields a picture of a David and Goliath scenario. There was no silencing of an upstart; no sense of pressure (obviously!) for Democrats to fall in line quietly. Bernie wasn't forced to campaign from the fringes with homemade signs while Hillary stood alone, center stage. In fact, Bernie’s supposed outsider (!) status gave him more currency than it did disadvantages. There were several dozen high-profile, nationally-covered speeches, town halls, rallies, and interviews, and of course, the debates. The campaigns both had equally well-funded ground games and air time, and equally high-end trappings and accouterments, like slick and attractive websites, ads, slogans, logos, etc. 

Sanders may have started out a seeming long shot, but he quickly blew past O'Malley and Chaffee and Webb and fired up what was for many millions a breathtakingly exciting movement. It should still cheer his supporters to note how he didn't allow money in politics and a powerful party structure to keep him out of the running. Sanders was an unexpectedly strong candidate - a powerful adversary to Clinton. He showed a dazzling ability to raise competitive funding through individual small donors.There is no case to make that he would have won with a big enough platform - he had one, and was able to stay in contention to the bitter end. If it was the intent of the DNC to use Establishment muscle to keep Sanders out of the running in the 2016 Democratic primary, they did a lousy job. 

The only thing that kept him from being truly competitive against Clinton was that his strengths were more rhetorical than policy-based. That's it. He simply did not demonstrate a breadth and depth of knowledge in the areas pertinent to the responsibilities and opportunities of leading the executive branch. And in place of that knowledge, he ran on casting doubt about Clinton's character.
 
His expressed foreign policy ideas, especially regarding Syria and ISIL, consisted mostly of the proposition that "Muslim countries need to get more involved." He never said "more involved" than what: he didn’t offer assessments of what Jordan was doing compared to what Turkey was doing compared to what Lebanon was doing. He addressed the dynamics of the various competing factions inside Syria in this way during one debate: “...you have this side fighting with that side, that side fighting with this side..." While there are a number of groups with complex alliances, much reporting has been done about who they are and what their objectives are. Up to date, insightful information about the status of these conflicts is handy. Sanders appeared content describing the situation as “a mess”. Listening to him talk about foreign affairs, I frequently felt I knew more about things than he did. I'm a blogger. I don't want to know more about foreign affairs than the president. 
 
Meanwhile, his responses on this topic, as shallow as they were, always managed to include a characterization of Hillary Clinton as a hawk. He didn’t challenge her by practice and plan. For example, he didn’t vocalize objections to her positions on drone use. He couldn’t; when forced to be specific, he granted that drones are a tool that we need to have. He said, like Clinton, that what needs addressing in that regard is policy and transparency. He didn’t describe alternative solutions for international crises which he said Hillary had approached with a heavy fist. For example, he would criticize Clinton as a regime-change enthusiast when referencing the air strikes she supported in Libya, but he wouldn’t say what he would have done in her position. He couldn’t; he has granted the complexity of weighing such a decision when a hostile foreign leader is imminently poised to commence genocide. But immediately coinciding with this acknowledgement of the lose-lose nature of the dilemma, he was unrestrained in casting Clinton as less committed to peace than himself.  

In terms of financial sector reform, the real differences between Sanders and Clinton boiled down to some approachable disagreements on strategy, tactics, rules, terms of measurement and assessment, concentrations of authority, even language. Their values around these issues are shared. They both proposed ways to use the leverage of federal regulation and the courts to continue efforts to defang Wall Street. There are legitimate cases to be made for one regulatory tool over another. Instead of acknowledging their shared goals, and arguing over strategy, Sanders chose to question Clinton's integrity and motivation. Her proposals were consistent with her voting record in the Senate, and they were too detailed to be dismissed as lip service. So it is shocking to remember how, instead of comparing her ideas to his, and saying his would work better, Bernie said, in effect, “She’s trying to trick you. She has no intention of doing any of this. She’s lying when she says she wants to help you.”
 

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I do not believe Sanders believes that about Clinton. He has known and worked with her for years. When you hear from people who have known and worked with Clinton for years, this whole perennial, election-season idea of Hillary Clinton vaporizes. Her colleagues talk about her dedication, humility, compassion, honesty, and commitment. This is the way Sanders himself describes her now – now that she’s running against Trump. ​
When she was running against him though, he didn't say she was a trusted colleague with honest dedication to similar goals, with whom he disagreed on the nuts and bolts of certain proposals. He employed a “where there’s smoke” tone and proposed that as a presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton was engaged in a mercenary bait-and-switch, pretending she cared about consumer issues and wealth inequality, just to get elected and have ever more access to personal wealth and power. So we see that this is what goes in some circles for making a political case against Hillary Clinton.
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Between this innuendo, and his full-throated sloganeering, Sanders gave Clinton a run for her money:
 - "Break 'em up!" temporarily edged out “Dodd-Frank doesn’t go far enough because it doesn't touch hedge-fund management or insurance."
 - "Free tuition for all!" garnered more excitement than "We need means-testing for tuition and student debt forgiveness so that everyone who wants to go to college can afford to."
 - "Single payer!" was more of a draw than "Let's build on the ACA and fix its problems, with an eye toward ultimately making a successful sell of universal healthcare to the American people."

Now, politics matters, and there's a lot to be said for charisma. You have to inspire people. And it is legitimate to compare policies in terms of reach. But there was no reason for Sanders and his campaign to meld legitimate political challenges into dark questions about Clinton's idealism, her altruism - about her very motivation. It’s extraordinary, in retrospect. 
​
​The Democratic Party primary voter is a savvy animal. Bernie wasn't silenced. Hillary won on the merits of her arguments. Bernie lost because his campaign, weak on substance, bought in to the concept that instead of waging a contest of ideas, one way of running for office against Hillary Clinton is to engage in relentless, nebulous, negative commentary.

​Let’s hope that works for Trump about as well as it did for Sanders. 
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The Revolution Will Not Be Ratified

5/17/2016

1 Comment

 
by Julie Boler
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Chaotic primaries and quixotic donations aside, nothing is inherently wrong with Bernie Sanders’ choice to stay in the primary race to the convention.

​The Clinton campaign will survive. In the abstract, even where a primary candidate’s efforts might compromise a likely nominee’s odds in the fall, if the candidate is still winning states and challenging the front-runner’s ideas, there shouldn’t be an automatic expectation to withdraw.
 
Concern that Sanders’ criticisms of Clinton will be snagged by the other team and used against her are understandable, but unnecessary. No general election candidate ever beat an opponent by quoting barbs thrown during the primary. A 2016 undecided voter (?!) won’t be drawn to Trump over Clinton because Sanders accused Clinton of being too moderate. And Trump didn't need Sanders’ complaint that Clinton isn’t trustworthy to get him started on that - he was already in line with the rest.
 
At this point, there is also no onus on Sanders to unite the party. His thought is to reform the party, and we’re still in the primaries. For now, it’s a false analogy to judge Sanders as a Nader-like spoiler. So far, (that's as of 5/17/19, for the record) there’s no indication he’d do anything to sabotage a general-election Clinton campaign – in fact he’s explicitly promised to help defeat Trump.
 
There is, however, a glaring (disturbing actually) reason why Sanders’ persistence does no service to the electorate, and may be doing harm. The entire Bernie Sanders for President campaign is based on a false premise.
 
It’s a premise that feeds the worst kind of political cynicism, typified by the misguided disappointment some on the left heaped on Barack Obama once he was in office.
 
It’s a premise whose central theme has gone largely unexamined by millions of voters. It’s routinely accepted by town hall hosts, debate moderators, and the anchors of Sunday morning news shows, who congratulate themselves for challenging Sanders’ assertions with a followup question or two.   

The fundamental proposition of the Bernie Sanders campaign is that Bernie Sanders is a radical. That he is a revolutionary. That he is preeminently prepared to effect major reforms in US governance.

It’s a premise that says Sanders’ proposals are so unfettered by the constraints of conventional thinking, his vision so soaring, his supporters so enterprising and committed, he is poised to forge a previously inconceivable transformation to our current system. 
The Sanders campaign submits that the chief means of reform,
more important than experience or expertise,
more important than depth of knowledge or painstaking policy development,
is the courage to discard orthodoxical thinking and reject a philosophy of cumulative progress and incremental change. This premise insists that a combination of radical thought and political moxy can provide the locomotion necessary to overcome practical barriers to change, and that Bernie Sanders is uniquely qualified to employ such power effectively in the Executive Branch.
 
Intoxicating stuff.

But here is the problem.
There is nothing ground-breaking or original about Sanders’ ideas. He is not a pioneer. He is not a revolutionary.

None of Senator Sanders’ overarching goals set him apart from the liberal mainstream. They can all be found in the Democratic Party Platform, policy positions of freshman to senior members of Congress and the legislation they have toiled over and pushed and sometimes passed: access for all to college, healthcare, and a living wage; the overturn of Citizens United; codified, enforceable solutions to environmental problems; and, absolutely, robust regulation of Wall Street.
 
Certainly, Sanders’ preferred models for these ideals in practice do sit to the left of what the country has so far supported. He wants single-payer health insurance, free college tuition across the board, a $15 federal minimum wage, a carbon tax and a ban on fracking. He hasn’t revealed how he is equipped to advance such policies in our current political climate, but his message is clear: liberals fail to achieve greater progress because of a lack of imagination and a shortage of political courage.

Meanwhile, though, throughout the years, across the Democratic party, many Presidents, presidential candidates, members of Congress, and other progressive leaders perennially raise and scrutinize such ideas. In a case where any one of them believes any one of these models to be ideal, they push it forward and fight for it.
 
There are no new ideas coming from the Sanders camp. And the barriers to liberal progress are not reticence or dispassion.
 
The most conspicuous weakness of the Sanders premise is exposed by his failure to articulate concrete proposals in areas of his central focus. While Sanders can passionately spell out all the ways Wall Street has devastated our economy and vow to dismantle the framework of power held by financial institutions, actual strategies never materialize. In the absence of detail, his approach can’t be evaluated. And where he has occasionally shared rough ideas about how to move forward, Sanders does not differentiate himself from the average Democratic party leader or elected official, and certainly not from his opponent.

​Elsewhere in America, Hillary makes plain her plan for Wall Street reform. Even within the constraints of interviews, debates, and speeches, she has provided more detail than Sanders, and has ensured easy access to the details of her financial reform positions by publishing them on her website. On the Clinton site, while the first thing you find on her "Issues" pages are the brief, fairly canned, requisite policy summaries, at the end of the summary you also find a link to her detail-rich elaborations, laid out on supporting Fact Sheets that are accessible without being reductive. The voter may embrace Clinton’s positions or not, but will find the means on the Fact Sheets to make a judgement based on Clinton's appreciable output of information and analysis. On Sanders' site - even on this, his cornerstone concern - content is limited to the aforementioned brief, fairly canned, requisite policy summary on an "Issues" page.

At least their disagreement about whether or not to reinstate Glass-Steagall has made for lively debate. Here’s how that’s gone, paraphrasing minimally:
 
Sanders: The big banks must be broken up! We need Glass-Steagall to prevent another economic disaster!
 
Clinton: Glass-Steagall no longer addresses our post-recession needs. It separated commercial banks from investment banks, but it didn’t provide deterrents to or consequences for exceptional risk-taking by either sector. It will take more than any one piece of legislation to prevent another economic disaster. I propose we introduce risk-fees tied to the size and type of loans and investments made by either sector; and better exploit the provisions in Dodd-Frank to empower regulators to identify which banks threaten to grow “too big to fail”, then force them to downsize, reorganize, or disband. And we need new legislation that provides for oversight of financial industries like insurance, mortgage lending, and hedge fund management, which - with the backing of big-bank funding - actually created the recession.
 
Sanders: The big banks must be broken up! We need Glass-Steagall to prevent another economic disaster!
 
To be fair, when pressed, Sanders has mentioned some of the same ideas Clinton has proposed, but he hasn’t challenged her stance on Glass-Steagall besides saying he’s in disagreement. If he has a plan to address the questions Clinton raises, a more progressive and hard-hitting alternative, he might oughta produce it before June.
 
Sanders’ credibility as Top Minimum-Wage Champion is also in question. Both candidates have lauded the work of the Fight for 15 advocacy group, and supported efforts on state and local levels to raise their own minimums to $15 an hour. But on the federal level, Sanders' ostensibly hyper-progressive demand for a $15 minimum is deceptive.

Last year Secretary Clinton joined with President Obama in throwing support behind the most coordinated and widely-supported Congressional effort to push through a raise on the minimum wage in years. In April of 2015, 303 US Senators and Representatives came together and signed on to new legislation that proposes a raise for a federal minimum wage that the GOP has kept locked-in at $7.25 since 2007. This high-profile, popular bill provides for an increase to $12 per hour by 2020. Hard to say whether Republicans in Congress will budge, but the hope (and strategy) is that this groundswell of unified Executive, Congressional Democratic, and advocacy group support will finally overcome some opposition. You'll be hearing a lot more about this bill as it moves forward, so keep an eye out. It's called the Raise the Wage Act of 2015. 
 
But wait, guess what, more to the story. Less than three months from the introduction of said Raise the Wage Act, Senator Bernie Sanders, apparently finding the dogged work of 303 of his colleagues and the support of the POTUS pale proof of concern for beleaguered workers introduces a competing (with his fellows) bill, the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act of 2015, which proposes to raise the wage to $15 by 2020, rather than $12 by 2020. He's tired of pussyfootin' around it seems, these people need $15 by 2020, and I can make that happen! His secret weapon – the thing that will propel his bill past the widely-supported, endorsed by the president one, and right on through Congress?

Well, he doesn’t say. Presumably the thinking is this: contrary to the collective judgement of hundreds of Democratic Senators and Representatives, including the most experienced and successful veterans of Congress, the only useful tool in the negotiating toolbox that will break through and make headway - on this issue, at this juncture - is the use of a Sanders for President truism, “If you start by asking for a full loaf of bread, at worst you’re gonna get a half loaf. [? At worst, you get nothing.] If you start by asking for a half loaf, you’re going to get crumbs. [Or you could half, depending.]”

This strategy doesn’t signal that Bernie is more progressive than Hillary, or that he cares more about American workers. It's no sign that he understands better than Hillary the egregiously insufficient level of income provided by $12 an hour: she has been at pains to iterate that even $15 would not be a living wage. Sander's decision to go out on a limb by taking a "let's overbid and bargain down from there" approach is also not evidence that he has the chops and experience (and connections, there's the rub!) to get a wage raise pushed through. On the contrary, unfortunately. Slapping down a counterproposal to his own team's proposal robs him of the connections, wide-support, co-signers and votes he needs to make anything happen. Doesn't that signal a President Sanders would be less collaborative than a President Hillary, that he'd operate in the realm of theatrics rather than the realm of results, actually impeding progress towards a living wage? 
 
These are just a couple of examples of the story behind the Sanders campaign's underlying premise that a President Sanders would conceive and execute reforms far more advanced than those of a President Clinton, leaping over her proposed baby steps to swiftly overhaul our system of government. 

The premise is false.
 
Now, why again is all this so important? How can erroneous claims made by a primary candidate who is no longer numerically competitive do harm? Senator Sanders’ ongoing proclamations that he provides a bold, viable alternative to Secretary Clinton’s purposeful, measurable objectives are fodder for deep disenchantment by a whole contingent of voters on the left. They are a perfect fuel for the type of energy spent by true believers decrying and dismissing all practical efforts, even the good fight waged over hostile turf. They help grow the evergreen far-left inclination to malign liberal politicians who govern, passionately, as facilitators, collaborators and diplomats, rather than as activists, agitators and zealots. These claims delay again the learning of lessons from our collective experience shifting from the heady exhilaration of the 2008 campaign to the realities of executive branch administration in a time of extraordinary Congressional opposition. They certainly beg the question of just how a Sanders supporter would view the sort of adjustments and concessions a President Sanders would have to make in order to function in the Oval Office. Just like every president before him. Just like the next Great Left Hope.  
 
Of course the follow-up premise to the one that says Bernie Sanders is a revolutionary, is the one that says Hillary Clinton is a bureaucrat who embraces a style seen by some as - at best - grounded, pragmatic, and content with small gains, and at worst, cautious, complacent, and reflective of a watered-down social vision.

But a thoughtful review of the Clinton point-of-view on our country's future reflects absolutely no lack of conviction, failure of imagination, or fear of conflict! Read her editorials and thought pieces; listen, not just to her stump speeches but the quieter, in-depth remarks; rewatch her interviews and debate performances. And really tune in to the writings, policy remarks, and debates to come. Know who this woman really is, the person you may end up glad to support in her hopeful journey to the Oval Office. Decide for yourself, obviously, but there may well be some pleasant surprises there. There may be evidence that it makes sense to challenge previous conceptions about the motivations and intentions of Secretary Clinton.

In a way, in the context of our current political climate, incrementalism might be said to require more conviction and passion than would a revolution. Incrementalism requires a coupling of such moral ambition with the level discipline and patience necessary to bear through periods of heavy opposition, suspended action, and fallen-through deals; and remain on a path towards progress.

​The ultimate premise, that Clinton - intentionally or obtusely - has opted for a harder road and gradual progress; while Sanders has the clarity and fervor it takes to strike out on a more defiant yet somehow equally viable path - that is the least supportable proposition of all.
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              


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Outrage Warning: NC Election Law Update

10/25/2014

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​by Julie Boler
PictureNC Rep. Bob Steinburg (R)
Constitution-loving Americans across the political spectrum should be horrified by the way some members of the NC General Assembly have interpreted their lawmaking role. When asked last year by local filmmaker Eric Preston why he favored getting rid of Sunday voting during the NC Early Voting period, NC House Representative Bob Steinburg blithely explained that he based his position on his own religious beliefs. He is opposed to voting on Sundays, he stated, just as he is to hunting on Sundays, because, according to his faith, Sunday is a day of rest.

Of course, nobody is asking Steinburg to vote on Sunday. And as Preston pointed out, there are folks in the state who have very different religious beliefs, and that in fact, there are African-American churches who actually make the voting process a part of their ministry. 

As Preston expressed to Steinburg, "The Sunday before elections, (these churches) take church buses full of people to vote, which makes it easier for them." He then asked Steinburg, "Do you feel they shouldn't have that opportunity?"

Steinburg: "They have six days a week to get everybody out to vote. On Sundays, that's the Lord's day. They can be celebrating the Word and so forth, but I don't think that's a day to be traipsing people to the polls...if they've got the will, there's other days they can do it. They can meet at the church on Saturday. Or on Friday. Or Wednesday, or Tuesday; whatever the case may be. But Sunday? No."

It's hard to argue with that. There are six other days of the week on which we could all vote; days that wouldn't offend Representative Steinburg's personally held religious tenets.  And he gives some great suggestions. There's Friday, as he mentions, and you've got those perfectly good Tuesdays. How hard could it be to find a day of the week to traipse to the polls, that wouldn't offend Representative Steinburg's religious sensibilities?  
But for some reason, I just decided to look for one of the Early Voting sites in my county that still have some Sunday hours. I'm going to head over there tomorrow and vote. May God have mercy on my soul.


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Will Liberals Allow Liberal Foreign Policy Room to Grow?

5/28/2014

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In a major foreign policy address today, President Obama tossed aside the Reagan paradigm of “peace through strength,” replacing it with the more evolved ideal: 
strength through peace. 


 Skeptics on the left may be forgiven for responding to the President's speech with sharp accusations that he has said it all before, yet has failed to actually govern with said principles. But stated policy has to be articulated in ideal form, and with this address, the President is declaring his (continued) intent to administer a foreign policy based on restraint, diplomacy, international alliances, transparency, and non-military support of democracy abroad.  

Mr. Obama reiterated—as all presidents do—his allegiance to the official US protocol for use of military force: for national security only; not to pursue our own gain or further our own vision. History always proves whether such declarations are based on authentic guiding principles, or whether, as in the administration immediately preceding this one, they are empty rhetoric. Stated policy, even when exposed as duplicitous, has value, if only to make starker its hypocrisy. But in this administration we have already observed the use of diplomacy, restraint, and multi-lateralism as dominant foreign policy tools.

Going forward, when compelled to use military force for our national security, 

the President said this morning, we should be guided by our ever-clearer understanding, hard-won in Iraq and Afghanistan, that “we must never create one more enemy than we leave on the battle field." He urged Americans to view the economic and practical assistance we provide to developing countries to improve access to education, expand the availability of electricity and water, and support the development of better methods of farming and delivery of medicine not as an afterthought; not as 'a nice thing to do' existing apart from national security," but as a critical piece of what makes us safe, of what "shrinks the space in which terrorism grows.”  

Certainly, if this is the policy to which Mr. Obama is committed, he has work to do. He still has serious, controversial, and complex problems to tackle, some involving significant loss of public confidence, as with public access to information about intelligence gathering and drone use; and the continued existence of the US military prison at Guantanamo. These are problems even many ardent Obama supporters feel he has taken too long to solve, or to which he has in fact contributed.  

But perhaps it is more realistic to reserve judgment on the pace of Obama’s efforts to implement foreign policy based on his stated ideals. As in nearly every other realm of the federal government Obama was elected to administer, the state of foreign affairs in January of 2009 called first for a focus on undoing years of egregiously destructive policy. The national security framework bestowed upon the Obama administration was created and implemented by forces driven by macho, phobic, and mercenary motivations. And importantly, this framework was hardly a departure from those advocated by decades of previous presidential administrations.  


In light of this context, President Obama has earned a measure of patience, and current efforts to implement a more progressive foreign policy must be recognized as ground-breaking. They must be evaluated by how they have performed against threats unprecedented in nature and scope. They must also be judged by how they have fared against extraordinary Congressional obstruction. 

Today President Obama explicitly proclaimed a commitment to a progressive vision of US foreign policy. Pressure from the Left to see this vision realized will be important.  But it should be balanced by an appreciation for the value of the commitment itself. Because ultimately, this presidency will be seen as one that significantly advanced progressive American ideals.

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GOP: SNAP is a terrible program that works too well.  

11/2/2013

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Benefits for SNAP (the federal food stamps program) went down Friday, and will decrease again drastically if Congressional Republicans have their way.  So far, budget negotiations have not been about whether to increase or decrease food stamp benefits, they have only been about how many billions to cut.  And the GOP is defining the debate by telling the timeworn fairy-tale of the Government-Spending Money-Trap Moral-Decay Monster.

If you are hearing it said that SNAP benefits must be cut; to address rampant waste, fraud and abuse - a classic chapter in this tale - be aware that in fact, the federal food stamp program, maintained in the US since the Depression, proves decade after decade to be a model of integrity and efficiency, operating with about a 3% level of waste and fraud, almost unheard of for a program this size.  While it's a cinch to sound credible accusing a government program of being rife with abuse and fraud, if they were asked (come on, Democrats!), Republicans would be unable to prove anything of the kind about SNAP. 

"We want to work with our Democratic colleagues in Congress to implememnt reforms in the SNAP program to cut back on waste, fraud, and abuse."
 - Rep. Steve King, (R), Iowa   

      

"We want to ensure that truly vulnerable families receive the support they need in a more efficient and effective manner."
 - Rep. Steve Southerland, (R) FL

If you’re hearing it said that SNAP has become bloated, serving people who fall far outside the realm of "the truly needy", be aware that in fact, eligibility criteria are based on income and federal poverty guidelines using the same formulas as always.  We aren't spending more because people who make more are now getting benefits.  There are simply many more people who don’t make enough to get by.

This Republican tale-telling does a disservice to the general public, but also to hard right conservatives with real philosophical objections to an economic model that uses tax revenue for social spending.  Why aren't they asking to be heard right now, too?  Where are the voices of those who want a safety net, but want it realized by components of the free market that include charity and philanthropy; those who believe that hunger, even on the scale it exists in this country today, could be addressed effectively with for-profit ventures that don't involve government contracts?  Ideas driven by authentic concerns, with solutions more creative than “just cut it so bad people can’t use it,” would at least encourage a more substantive dialogue.  

"Why does the safety net need reform?  Because people are getting tangled up and stuck in it.  The House addresses this by ending benefits for individuals that, quite honestly, don't qualify for them."
 - Rep. Randy Neugebauer, (R) TX
 

"Asking people to work in return for food stamps is not any kind of cruel and unusual punishment.  The dignity of work has been a pretty common theme throughout all the ages."
 - Rep. Mike Conaway, (R) TX

My own feelings about the latter economic philosophy are obvious, but I’d sure rather have an argument in those honest terms than one relying on specious claims of fraud, cheap phraseology about who is or isn’t deserving; or, worst of all, more muck from the Myth of the Moocher Class.  Republican House members are espousing and exploiting a fear of the moocher that is only barely still acceptable among their constituency, and not at all among its representatives.  It’s based on lingering stereotypes that sprang from gut provincialism, festering in a time before comprehensive information about class norms was widely accessible.  When leaders with the resources of the modern day member of Congress internalize and articulate those fears, at televised hearings, in tones utterly dripping with frankness and reason, as though they have no way of knowing otherwise, it is hard to forgive.  
Democrats in Congress must keep telling the real story.  It is simply not true that people receiving food stamps sit around idle, gorging on luxury foods billed to taxpayers, growing ever more fond of being poor, losing their incentive to work, purposely making less than their earning potential so they will qualify for benefits.  Ever since social safety-net programs were introduced, such a picture has been painted.  It has developed for some into preoccupation with a fear that millions of Americans will find living at this level, with means and status so low that they qualify for food stamps, is tempting enough to vanquish any motivation to succeed.  

Even before we had a chance to study and answer such questions, some could see it was an unrealistic concern.  Nutrition assistance in the US is a bare-bones benefit.  There are purchasing restrictions, and the allowances are modest. There is social stigma associated with using food stamps.  These benefits don't provide people with anything they want out of life, except survival.  There's nothing enjoyable about making so little money you qualify for food stamps.  

But because this question has been a fundamental concern for some, and does have huge policy implications, it has been rigorously studied and explored.  These questions have always been asked, and there are now decades of research to answer them.  There is no evidence that negative societal outcomes, or the degradation of character, can be associated with food assistance.  In fact, there is plenty of evidence to show otherwise.  Such information is easy enough for the layperson to find.  Members of the US Congress cannot be excused for ignoring the literature - wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary – addressing these fears.  Let them at least put up applicable research and shoot it down.  Let them explain why their fears are unabated.  But they can’t pretend it is legitimate to wonder - in the face of more than half a century of accumulated knowledge in behavioral and social psychology – if maaaybe receiving free supplemental nutrition coupons is so intrinsically rewarding that eventually, long-suffering productive citizens will be unable to lure legions of their fellow Americans away from the seductions of poverty. 

Finally, if you hear it said that a 5% reduction in benefits isn’t all that painful, truly consider the source.  A favorite chapter in the fairy-tale is about how easy it is to live on so little.  If we want to know about the impact of cuts, there are plenty of reliable sources.  Perhaps we should be hearing testimony from program administrators trained to do needs-assessments and impact studies.  Or from case managers who work directly with needy families. But sure, sometimes anecdotal evidence can help us understand how policy decisions may be felt by those affected.  Just make sure you are hearing less from those who want to experiment and speculate on the impact of a 5% funding adjustment, and more from those who will open their own cabinets to see 5% less food.  

"Food stamps have played and will continue to play an important role in taking care of out most needy Americans.  But the program exists to help lift up those who have hit bottom, not keep them there."
 - Rep. Martha Roby, (R) AL

I was reflecting on that impact as I did my own shopping yesterday.  I have more grocery money to work with than I used to.  I still have to mentally add up the price of each item I put in my cart to make sure I have enough to cover my total, and it gets tight.  But it’s nothing like the distress I used to feel grocery shopping when our family was young.  I can still get a knot in my stomach remembering it.  Slogging through the aisles with hungry kids in tow, trying to solve the problem of how to get enough food with not enough money.  I remember the frustrated, primal longing to nourish my family.  I remember trying to appear cheerfully reassuring while churning with feelings of dread, anxiety and inadequacy that were almost unbearable.  I remember all of this going on in the aisle of a grocery store while reaching for a jar of peanut butter.  

It came back in waves yesterday, thinking about the food stamp cuts as I shopped.  When I went to check out, I saw that there were small signs posted at each register informing or reminding shoppers with SNAP cards that their benefit reductions were effective immediately.  The sign explained that cashiers would be glad to check the balance on their cards.  My heart sank realizing there were lots of moms and dads and others who would arrive at the register to see this just after completing the exhausting experience I described.  Because I wasn’t unique - when every item you pull off the shelf or pass up has repercussions for your own hunger or that of your dependents, whether young, elderly or disabled; groceries become more than boxes and cans of food.  There really is both a physical and emotional impact.  

So they will get to the front of the store after the selecting, subtracting, second-guessing, and strategizing, to realize that regardless of how well they'd done, they went over by 5%.  To use the figure the Associated Press is reporting as an example, that’s a reduction of about $36 dollars for a family of four.  That means taking back out of the cart $36 worth of fruit, beans, cereal, meat, and juice.  Kids, perhaps, in tow.  This is not a fairy-tale.

As the nation debates food stamp funding, let's keep it honest.  The program works.  It does what it sets out to do.  It helps poor people get basic food they can't otherwise afford.  The program has low overhead, and measurable positive outcomes.  If you think there is a better way to get food into empty tummies, lay out your plan.  If you think doing so is not an appropriate function of government, make your case.   But don't just sit and spin a scary yarn, or sit silent while others in your party do so.  We don’t need the fairy-tale; the true story is harrowing enough.

-Julie Boler

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Real Voter Impersonator Wives of Texas

10/28/2013

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PictureShhh! Voter Impersonator working.
Whew - that was close!  
An insidious loophole in Texas election law, potentially allowing fraudulent voters to impersonate real, innocent voters, has been slammed shut. At last no more is the Reign of the Voter Impersonator Wives of Texas, characterized by their slithering into polling places using all manner of middle names to cheat the citizens of Texas out of a fair vote! Neutralizing this glaring threat to election integrity, a married woman using her maiden name as a middle name on her driver's license, and her given middle name on her voter registration card, will no longer be allowed to cast a ballot.


When I first heard that the new Texas voter ID requirements presented a snag to married women whose voter registration records did not reflect their married names, I thought it was an unfortunate and unnecessary but minor hurdle for women who had married recently, but had not yet changed the last name on their voter registration card to reflect their new last name.  I figured that it would require the completion of a task by election day that was going to be attended to anyway.

Using my name as an example, I'll explain what I first understood to be the requirement of the new law.  Before I was married, the name on my voter registration card, and on my driver's license and other documents, was Julie Ann Hammerstein.  After I got married, I updated the name on my driver's license to reflect my new last name, Boler. In Texas, the proper form to use on the driver's license would then be be Julie Hammerstein Boler.  If I had completed this change on my driver's license, but had neglected to update the last name on my voter registration records, my driver's license last name would not match my voter records last name, and I would be refused a ballot.  
So I thought.  Knowing that a few recently married women would probably arrive at the polls on election day not knowing about the new requirement, and not be allowed to vote; and knowing that refusing these women a ballot was a pointless exercise in the solving-a-nonexistent-problem phenomenon that is the trendy new strict voter ID requirement, I was a little chagrined.  I hoped that word would get out in time for most newly-wedded women to complete their name change "to-do's" before election day.  And I hoped that Texas precinct officials would have leave to verify new last names with a glance at other paperwork for those who hadn't been informed in time.  After all, there isn't really a Voter Impersonator Wives threat.  

I had the details of the requirement wrong, though.  Using my name again, let's look at how it actually works.  When I was married 28 years ago, I duly updated my voter registration information from Julie Ann Hammerstein, to Julie Ann Boler.  I also updated my driver's licence to reflect my new last name, this time choosing to use a format required by law in some states - Julie Hammerstein Boler.  (Married women who change their last names find that some legal documents require one version, some another, and some leave it up to the woman.)  Under the new voter ID law in Texas, if I have complied with DMV law and used "Hammerstein" as my middle name on my driver's license, but on my voter registration card have used "Ann" because it was left up to me, I would be turned away from the polls.  
Same last name, different middle names, both legally correct.  Same address of course; your address dictates your polling place. Disqualified from voting in this election.  

And what does this rule protect against?  Voter Impersonator Wives!  Just think, people. Without this rule, this could happen in America, right under our noses: a woman who looks exactly like me, has the same address as me, and has the name Julie Ann Boler on her driver's license, could waltz into my polling place and vote fraudulently in my place.  

I have to say, if there is a woman out there who could pull that off, she has earned my ballot.  I would hand it over to her myself.



- Julie Boler
 









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Obama executes a turn.

8/31/2013

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I had desperately hoped to see a sign from this President, as he weighed the question of whether or not to initiate strikes against Syria, that he is the exceptional leader I have consistently felt him to be.  As he spoke in the Rose Garden today, explaining the two elements of the way he feels we should move forward, I was amazed to observe that he has the ability to surpass even my very high expectations.  

His two-pronged approach to the issue, as described in his remarks today, are one, to communicate his resolve to apply harsh consequences to the Assad regime for the murder of over a thousand of its citizens with poison gas, consequences in the form of missile strikes; and two, to acquiesce to demands that he bring the US Congress into the decision-making process.  

You may not agree with the first part.  Obama's position is that actions taken by Assad in Damascus, using chemical weapons against Syria's own civilian population, including hundreds of children, constitute crimes against humanity so horrific and unique from other types or levels of warfare, that they cannot be ignored.  The President was clear he believes we have an imperative to respond to these actions, separate altogether from any consideration of intervention in Syria's civil war, and separate from the question of regime change.  

You may feel otherwise.  But his decision to withhold an executive order to strike unless and until he has the full support of Congress is beyond reproach.  For those of us who feel on the one hand both skeptical and disempowered by the prospect of another American president making a case for military action, but on the other hand cognizant that what happened in Damascus cannot be ignored, Obama has presented what is perhaps the only acceptable proposition:  if we're going to respond to this somehow, let's decide how to do it together. 

How else would you want a president to resolve a question like this, other than each of us meeting personally with him at the White House to explain exactly what we want to have done? 

Reports from behind the scenes at the White House tell us that over the last 24-48 hours the debate between the President's Cabinet members, national security team and other staff and advisers has been robust, and there was significant sentiment against seeking the support of Congress before taking action. I've read about similar processes occurring in this administration's Oval Office and Situation Room deliberations during the couple of days leading up to the decision to start air strikes over Libya, and before giving the "go" to authorize the operation to get bin Laden.  This President apparently demands a frank diversity of opinion, and afterwards may make a decision flouting the advice of even his closest advisers.  In this case it appears there was much agreement about the need to go forward with strikes against Syria, but a variety of points of view about how far to bring Congress into the process.  Obama went with the approach that relinquishes ultimate control of the final decision.  It should be noted that since Congress does not reconvene until September 9, and he is not asking them to return early to address this, he has chosen not to cheapen his argument for consequences for Assad by implying there is a crucial need to act immediately.  He has also clearly not agreed to seek the approval of Congress as a way to shrink from stating his OWN opinion - his point of view could not be clearer: we should launch missiles at military targets in Syria in order to enforce international norms against the use of chemical weapons.

Whatever you think of that, now your argument must go to Congress.  And make no mistake, members of Congress do read your letters and emails, and do track your phone calls.  Whether the legwork is done by staff, and commentary is sorted into piles of rough agreement, or your communication is discovered to be so compelling, articulate or pertinent that it lands on the Congressperson's desk, none of them are ignored (see my post "Yes, They Do Read Your Letters!" 11/19/11.)  Cynicism about whether they do that to inform campaign messaging or whether they actually care is understandable.  But the argument "they don't care what I have to say" is drastically undermined if you don't say anything.  Over the next ten days, you can spend many hours debating this on Facebook, at the dinner table, or in your own head, but remember that the "representative" part of representative democracy doesn't work without your direct participation.  So take ten minutes out of your facebook time between now and the 9th to contact your Senators, www.senate.gov, and another ten to weigh in with your Representative at www.house.gov. 

MSNBC correspondent Chuck Todd, coming on camera to comment after the President's statement, pointed out how extraordinary it is for Obama to make a decision to seek the approval of Congress before taking action.  Todd noted that for roughly 40 years, since Dick Cheney was pulling strings in the Ford administration, Presidents have continuously sought to concentrate ever more power in the Executive Branch.  The fact that Barack Obama just took a stand in another direction reminds me once again that we are watching a presidency with deep historical significance.

From today's remarks, "...but, having made my decision as Commander in Chief...I am also mindful that I am the President of the world's oldest constitutional democracy.  I've long believed that our power is rooted, not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

 - Julie Boler

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