tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82619949758953239872024-02-20T05:43:59.825-08:00books, etc.There's nothing as good as a good book.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.comBlogger299125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-44913160895228544292024-01-08T20:08:00.000-08:002024-01-09T15:28:55.753-08:00The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All / Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson, eds. -- Chicago: Open Court, 2003<p> In the year 2000, Open Court Publishing launch a series titled, "Popular Culture and Philosophy" with the book <i>Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book About Everything and Nothing. </i>Open Court has gone on to publish scores of books in this series. As someone interested in both philosophy and Tolkien's <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, I was pleased to receive as a Christmas gift Volume 5 in the series, <i>The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.</i> Books in the series are anthologies by authors, largely philosophers, who seek to tease out the philosophical themes that appear in whatever pop culture subject is the subject of the book. <i>TLotR and Philosophy </i>is the only work in the series that I've read. This is perhaps a reflection of my distance from so much of pop culture -- nothing to be proud of, just a fact. Whether I'll read other works in the series is an open question, but I'm glad to have read this one.</p><p>As with most anthologies, the articles are uneven. Perhaps my biggest complaint is that too many of the authors spend an inordinate amount of time describing major events in <i>TLotR</i>, as if someone reading this work would not be quite familiar with the fact that, say, Gandalf battled a balrog in Moria or Boromir was slain defending Merry and Pippin. But setting this aside, many of the articles do a good job of exposing philosophical ideas in <i>TLotR</i>. There are five parts to the work, titled, I. The Ring, II. The Quest for Happiness, III. Good and Evil in Middle-Earth, IV. Time and Mortality, and V. Ends and Endings. Each part contains three articles, except for the last which contains four. </p><p>Stand out articles include Eric Katz's article "The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality." The comparison between Tolkien's One Ring and Plato's Ring of Gyges is an obvious topic for philosophical discussion. In Plato's <i>Republic, </i>Glaucon argues that anyone with a ring that made them invisible would eventually use it for immoral ends, even an otherwise moral person. Socrates responds that the moral person would prefer a life of peace and integrity to whatever would be gained by illicit uses of the ring. Tolkien's characters better reflect this latter theory, though they present a more complicated response to the One Ring than Plato imagines for the Ring of Gyges. Katz examines the reactions of numerous characters to the One Ring and shows how they respond according to their established character. Each does experience a least a moment of temptation (except Tom Bombadil), but they each resist, except for Gollum and Frodo. Gollum because he is murderous to start with, and Frodo because he simply can't overcome the force of the ring he has carried so long. This suggests that the adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not Tolkein's view.</p><p>In Scott A. Davison's article, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil," persuasively argues that evil is not an independent force in opposition as thought by Manichaeans, but merely the absence of good. In that sense, <i>TLotR</i> isn't really a story of "good versus evil," it is a story of an effort to keep corruption at bay. Though Davison doesn't make much of this observation, Tolkien makes shadows a stand in for evil. This is true not just in <i>TLotR</i>, but in <i>The Silmarillion</i>, Tolkien's realm of the god-like Valar, is originally illuminated (as is all of the world) by two trees. How this might be isn't explained, but one can't imagine that these would be specific spatial sources of light. Instead, their presence would bring light to all the world from every angle, leaving no place for shadows. It is only when the two trees are destroyed by Ungliant and Melkor that the Sun and Moon are created, illuminating the world, but still casting shadows. Evil has entered the world and shadows come into being.</p><p>Aeon J. Skoble's article, "Virtue and Vice in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>" is rather unique in the anthology. The other articles in the anthology largely start with features that appear in the novel and go on to observe their philosophical import. Skoble turns this on its head. His article reads more like an introductory essay on ethics, particularly virtue ethics, with illustrations of his points taken from <i>TLotR. </i>That is, he centers the philosophical ideas as opposed to elements of the novel. If all of the articles were like this, the anthology would make an interesting text for an introductory Philosophy course (of course with the pre-requisite that students read <i>TLotR.</i> As it is, the anthology might be better described as literary criticism appropriate to an English literature class. </p><p>The final article, by John J. Davenport, entitled "Happy Endings and Religious Hope: <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> as an Epic Fairy Tale," is a real stand out. Davenport makes use of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-stories" and other works by Tolkien to support Tolkien's claim that <i>TLotR</i> is "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." This has always been something that has escaped me. Certainly, some elements of the novel can be seen as religious and specifically Catholic, but to say it is "fundamentally" so, seemed a stretch. </p><p>Davenport claims that the essentially religious message of the work is that "evil cannot stand forever, that its misappropriation of divine power and right destroys itself in the end. But this does not come about without our participation, our willingness to sacrifice, and our faith (beyond all rational hope) that our mortal efforts will be met with the ultimate response, and day will finally come again." The "ultimate response" that Davenport refers to is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe" -- a sudden "turning" at the end of fairy-stories that provides an "unexpected deliverance...experienced not as an achievement..., but rather a divine gift." The resurrection of Christ is seen as the great eucatastrophe of the Christian faith, and the sudden unexpected appearance of Gollum at the Cracks of Doom is the great eucatastrophe of Middle-Earth. This makes Tolkien's claim that his work is "fundamentally religious" somewhat more plausible. Of course, one might also argue that despite how seemingly hopeless things are, the future is always essentially uncertain. There's nothing necessarily religious about that. </p><p>Other articles in the anthology certainly deserve reviews here, but as they are each short, I'll instead recommend picking up a library copy and sampling them at your leisure. As you should expect, some will be weaker than others, but anyone interested in Tolkien and philosophy will find them entertaining. </p><p> </p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-24659220706041024892024-01-08T13:14:00.000-08:002024-01-11T00:20:21.048-08:00Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man / Mary L. Trump -- New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020<p>I've not been particularly enticed to read any of the books coming out about Donald Trump and his administration. I guess I get enough of him reading the daily news, but Mary Trump's memoir showed up in the Little Free Library outside my condominium complex. It looked like a quick and easy read and my brain was in a down-cycle, so I took it home. </p><p>Mary Trump is, of course, Donald Trump's niece. She was part of a the close knit family born of Donald's father, Fred Trump. She also received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Adelphi University. The combination puts her in a unique position to comment on Donald Trump's thinking and behavior. There was a time when psychologists and other media pundits were "diagnosing" Donald as exhibiting a narcissistic personality. Caution required us to recognize that a proper diagnosis would require more than observing Donald's public behavior. It would require a more in depth examination by a qualified professional including personal interviews. Mary gives us the closest thing we'll ever get to that. Not only has she known Uncle Donald from countless private, family gatherings, she grew up knowing his father, mother, his siblings, children, nieces, nephews, personal friends, and employees. For the book, she conducted numerous, sometimes taped interviews with these people. Her professional conclusion is not surprising: Donald is not just narcissistic, he's a sociopath. </p><p>But the main thrust of the book is not Donald. It's the Trump family. The two figures that loom largest in her narrative are Fred Trump and his eldest son "Freddy." Freddy was Mary's father. He was what some might call "the black sheep" of the family, much maligned by his father and often ostracized by his siblings. He struggled with alcoholism and eventually died of a heart attack at the age of 42. Much of Mary's book reads as an effort to restore her father's reputation. </p><p>As the eldest male among the Trump siblings, Freddy was expected to carry on the family business, but he had little interest in this. He preferred a more relaxed and social lifestyle: boating and fishing with friends. He eventually earned a pilot's license. For a short time, he was a commercial pilot for Trans World Airlines. Still, his reputation in the family was so low that even his mother disparaged him, saying to Mary, "Do you know what your father was worth when he died? A whole lot of nothing." </p><p>The comment "a whole lot of nothing" gives a pretty good clue to the family values extant in the Trump family: a person's worth can be measured by their wealth and what they are willing to do to acquire it. According to Mary, these values stemmed from her grandfather's single-minded pursuit of money. Mary describes Fred too, as a sociopath, distant and uncaring, concerned mostly that he have a male heir to whom he could bequeath a fortune and who would then expand it. The family's patriarchal values are exemplified in the family's tradition of naming the eldest son "Frederick" (or "Friedrich," if you trace the sires back far enough). In Donald, Jr.'s case, "Donald" lives on. The Trump family seems to think of itself as a royal dynasty.</p><p>When Freddy failed to live up to his father's expectations, Donald became the new heir apparent to the family business. Donald was an unruly child that had to be sent to the New York Military Academy to try to learn a little discipline. Unfortunately for the world, the discipline he learned was how to manage his amorality in a way that would allow him operate effectively in the world. Most of all, Donald cultivated the "killer" personality that his father so highly valued. On Mary's assessment, Donald is a chip off the old block if there ever was one. He has been, however, not nearly as adept in business as his father was. Instead, Mary claims that Donald merely cultivated an image of success which was his only real talent. His actual fortune was a product of his inheritance and the assistance that his father gave him along the way. Fred even participated in the creation and maintenance of Donald's image. </p><p>As Fred aged, Donald became something of a tyrant among his siblings. In his father's declining years, he even attempted to have his father's will changed to give him basically the whole fortune. Luckily for the siblings, the attempt was made during one of Fred's more lucid times, so it failed. The siblings were especially lucky as they were concerned mostly about remaining in the good graces of their father to avoid being disinherited. Mary herself was disinherited for simply being the child of a deceased son. Fred had no concern for his grandchildren. Had Donald succeeded in gaining control of the estate, the siblings' bondage to the will of a sociopath would have continued for the rest of their lives. </p><p>Mary's book only lightly touches on the unscrupulous (even illegal) business activities of Fred, but as a grandchild, Mary was more or less unaware of them until she was contacted by reporters for the <i>New York Times</i>. They were working on a massive investigation of the Trump business and hoped Mary would provide them with some documents and insight. It is somewhat surprising that Mary does not make more use of what their investigation discovered. The article they finally wrote (NYT, Oct. 2, 2018) provides clear and unassailable evidence of the chief motives and methods of Fred and Donald. They conform to Mary's assessments.</p><p>Very little in <i>Too Much and Never Enough</i> is surprising in what it says about Donald's personality. All that Mary writes is entirely consistent with his public behavior. Even his supporters are likely to recognize the character traits she describes, but instead view them as virtues or as lamentable quirks. Still, it's worthwhile to see an account from someone with a deep, personal connection to Donald and with professional credentials confirm what the lay public at large can see.</p><p>One final note, the documentary evidence and public behavior of Donald's three eldest children seems to indicate that the kind of relations within Fred's family have been reproduced in Donald's family. Both are rich family units with children subject to an authoritarian, sociopathic father. What seems to hold them together is mainly the family's wealth. It makes me want to re-watch the 2003 documentary film <i>Born Rich</i> which interviews several children of phenomenally wealthy parents. Ivanka Trump is one of those children. </p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-47477875280779209662023-12-28T22:08:00.009-08:002024-01-07T00:33:31.216-08:00The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited / Benny Morris -- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004<p>Thirty years after the 1947-49 War in historic Palestine, the Israeli government began declassifying the archives of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli security forces. This gave rise to a new understanding of the war. The Israeli historians who made use of these archives became known as "the New Historians." This review covers two books by two of them: <i>The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited</i> by Benny Morris and <i>The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</i> by Ilan Pappe. (The review is available on this blog under both titles.) </p><p>In reviewing the work of the New Historians, one must first understand the original narrative of the 1947-49 War. The narrative was virtually unchallenged in Israel and in Western countries until the late 1980s. It remains widely accepted today, but due to the work of the New Historians, serious scholars no longer accept the narrative. </p><p>Morris and Pappe address three elements of the original narrative: (1) 1947 Israel was a modern David surrounded by Arab Goliaths, (2) the Arab countries launched the war on May 15 after rejecting the UN Partition Plan, and (3) Palestinians left their homes of their own free will at the behest of Arab leaders.</p><p>I. Benny Morris: The Palestinian Refugee Problem </p><p>The first edition of Morris's book<i> </i>was published in 1988. He began writing it as a history of Haganah, the Jewish militia which later became the Israeli Defense Force. Morris was given special access to Haganah's archives, but authorities later denied him access when they understood where his work was leading. At the same time, other Israeli archives from the war period were becoming declassified. This allowed Morris to continue his work. </p><p>Morris's conclusions are not completely inconsistent with the original narrative. He accepts that the Israeli leadership at first was not entirely certain of their ability to prevail in a war with the Arabs and that many factors resulted in the depopulation of Arab communities. Most significantly, he believes the Jewish Agency had no premeditate plans to "transfer" Arabs out of areas under Jewish control. </p><p>According to Morris, the Israeli leadership's initial concern about security was alleviated as they saw near universal success of their military operations. At first, they sought to secure communication lines between Jewish settlements, especially between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and to provide an adequate defense of the small number of isolated Jewish settlements. This was accomplished relatively quickly. In all, only two Jewish settlements were lost during the war. It quickly became clear to the Jewish Agency that the Arab population in Palestine was no match for the Jewish forces. </p><p>One should distinguish, however, what was known by the leadership from what was believed by the general Jewish population. Many in the Jewish community had fled, or were descendants of those who had fled, from pogroms in Eastern Europe as well as Shoah survivors. Living in what was for most of them a foreign land among a suspicious indigenous population, including overtly hostile elements, could not have fostered a sense of security; however, the population's perception of the danger was not in line with the actual relative military capabilities of Arab and Jewish security forces.</p><p>Immediately following the UN's adoption of the Partition Plan, a low intensity conflict between Arabs and Jews began. Arab irregular forces engaged mostly in small skirmishes and sniper attacks on passing Jewish convoys. Some volunteers from neighboring Arab states, known as the Army of Rescue, also participated in these attacks. In quick response, Jewish militias (Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang) attacked villages from which they believed the Arab attacks emerged. Their responses frequently were disproportionate and not always directed against the responsible parties. An escalating cycle of violence ensued. This prompted a significant number of Arabs to flee their homes in fear of and in response to Jewish assaults and/or anticipated Jewish political control. </p><p>Among the most significant observations made by the New Historians is the implementation of "Plan Dalet" or "Plan D," by Haganah. Plan D was composed of 13 specific military operations designed to occupy and exert control over Arab populated regions, both inside and outside the UN boundaries of the prospective Jewish state. The plan was finalized during the sectarian violence in early March 1948 and was implemented in the first week of April -- six weeks before the British Mandate would end on May 14. </p><p>For the first time since the passage of the UN Partition Plan, significant military assets were mobilized in coordinated attacks against an enemy. One might identify November 29, 1947 as the start of escalating sectarian violence and the first week of April as when Israel launched a coordinated war against the Palestinians. May 15, which is considered the start of the war by the original historical narrative, would mark, instead, the date when neighboring Arab countries joined in the defense of the beleaguered Palestinian population. </p><p>Morris's <i>Revisited</i> (2nd) edition was published in 2004. It was prompted by the release of additional archival material and Morris's desire to respond to criticism that he had not adequately examined the pre-war discussion among the Jewish leadership of transferring the Arab population out of Palestine. Morris devotes a new chapter on the discussion of transfer. He concludes that while there was pre-war interest among the leadership in transferring the population, the connection between that interest and what actually happened is "more tenuous than Arab propagandists would allow. " According to Morris, the flight of refugees was mainly the consequence of local decisions made by specific military commanders in their efforts to secure the territory they were occupying for the Jewish state. Additionally, some Arab directives to flee and decisions by the Arab upper class to wait out the war abroad played a role in the departure of Palestinians. In any case, Israel's leaders recognized that their military operations were sparking the unexpected flight of Arabs which would serve the interests of a secure Israeli state. As in the first edition, Morris continues to argue that the depopulation of Arab communities was a complex event that involved many factors. </p><p>Morris does accept that Israel's military operations were the primary motivating force. He estimates that 600,000-760,000 Palestinian Arabs "departed their homes" between November 1947 and October 1950. He documents 392 Arab cities, towns, and villages that were "abandoned" by their populations and 186 Israeli settlements that were constructed in their place. Jewish and Israeli forces variously assisted, encouraged, directed, and forcibly expelled Palestinians from their homes in the course of different military operations. Morris's detailed accounting of this massive demographic shift is perhaps what made his first edition so ground breaking. </p><p>Morris acknowledges that numerous atrocities were committed by Haganah and especially by the dissident Jewish militias, Irgun and the Stern Gang. These atrocities -- massacres of tens of villagers at a time and sometimes more -- had a significant impact on the decisions of Arabs to flee their homes. In the context of the war, the Jewish leadership simply allowed the flight of Arabs to unfold as a fortuitous consequence of war. No official "transfer" policy was needed. Morris does, however, identify some instances in which the leadership gave explicit expulsion orders. He also recognizes that the leadership routinely approved expulsions after the fact and directed the destruction of buildings.</p><p>According to Morris, the Israeli leadership was surprised to see the mass exodus of Arabs, but they were insistent that very few refugees be allowed to return to their villages, and they made great efforts to ensure "infiltrators" would not return to their homes. Even reluctant members of the leadership -- members of the more dovish party, Mapam -- eventually came around to accept the "transfer" of the population and the prohibition of its return. </p><p>With regard to the three elements of the original narrative under discussion, Morris (1) rejects the claim that Israel was a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) makes no real claim about what should be considered the start of the war, and (3) ambiguously assesses the motives for the flight of the Palestinians. His work is noteworthy in that it broke the taboo that prevented an honest examination of Israel's origins. Morris remains a Zionist, however, and rests his moral conclusions on the legitimacy of the foundation of Israel and the consequent need to secure the state through force, even if this involved producing hundreds of thousands of refugees and inflicting tens of thousands of casualties.</p><p>II. Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing</p><p>The primary sources used by Morris are almost exclusively drawn from the Israeli archives. His secondary sources are overwhelmingly in Hebrew. This has lead to criticisms that he overlooks some important perspectives on and information about what was taking place. Morris argues that these other perspectives are based largely on interviews and oral histories conducted too long after the events to be reliable. In contrast, Ilan Pappe's work, <i>The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</i> makes use of these additional sources, along with many of the same archival sources used by Morris. Pappe even makes use of both editions of Morris's work. </p><p>Pappe's conclusions about Israeli actions and intentions are much more critical. In his first chapter, he discusses the history and definition of the term "ethnic cleansing." The reminder of the book is essentially an effort to show that while the expulsion of the Palestinians is a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, it has been ignored in discussions of past ethnic cleansings. He often quotes the use of the term "cleanse" and its derivatives in Jewish documents and diaries that describe the expulsion of Palestinians. </p><p>Pappe writes of the compilation of the "Village Files" by Jewish Arabists in the 1930s. The files were a comprehensive registry of all the Arab villages in Palestine with details about their geography, economy, populations, leadership, and their relations with their Jewish neighbors. The Files' main proponent in the Jewish Agency thought the creation of the registry would "greatly help the redemption of the land." As Jewish forces moved against Arab villages, the Village Files were invaluable, giving them detailed intelligence about their targets and even allowing them to identify specific individuals for assassination.</p><p>Pappe directly implicates the head of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion as the primary directing force in planning and approving the expulsions. A small group of advisors called the "Consultant Committee" or simply the "Consultancy" was formed in February 1947, months prior to the passage of the Partition Plan. It became Ben-Gurion's most important advisory group. He and members of the Consultancy recognized the need to ensure a majority Jewish population of 70-80% inside the Jewish state. Consequently, they would need to transfer Arabs out of Jewish controlled areas, including to neighboring states. The tactics they adopted for expelling the population began with forceful "retaliation" against Arab violence, mainly against snipers shooting at Jewish convoys, but as early as in December 1947, this evolved into a more pro-active "engagement" or "violent reconnaissance" which did not require a pretext. The aim was to intimidate the population and encourage flight.</p><p>Between the assembly and use of the Village Files and the proceedings and diaries of the Consultancy, Pappe's case for the premeditated expulsion of Palestinians is strong. Certainly, Morris and Pappe agree that the Israeli leadership made a conscious decision to prevent displaced people from returning to their homes. This confirms either the leadership's intentions to expel the population or its legitimation of expulsion after the fact. In any case, Morris and Pappe together provide sufficient evidence that the flight of Palestinians from Israeli controlled areas was not mainly a function of Arab directives to leave.</p><p>By May 15, 1947, or soon after, most of the largest cities with Arab populations were occupied by Jewish forces and virtually emptied of their Arab inhabitants. Haifa, Tiberias, Safad, and Baysan lay in regions designated for a Jewish state. Jaffa and Acre lay in regions designated for the Arabs. West Jerusalem was to be governed by an international administration. Pappe refers to the expulsion of inhabitants from these cities as "urbicide" to distinguish it from (on his accounting) the more than 500 Arab villages that Jewish and Israeli forces ultimately destroyed or converted into Jewish settlements. </p><p>This demographic change began shortly after the UN adopted the Partition Plan. The only significant disagreement between Morris and Pappe is whether the Jewish Agency consciously planned the expulsion or merely raised no meaningful objection to it and retroactively approved it. From the point of view of the refugees, the distinction is unimportant.</p><p>Plans for the expulsion of the Arab population could be made confidently because of the known military and political weakness of the Arab population. According to Pappe, Jewish Arabists were reporting to the Consultancy that there was virtually no interest in war among ordinary Palestinians. Many Arab villages reached peace agreements with neighboring Jewish settlements to stay out of the impending conflict. Furthermore, the British Mandatory Force effectively disarmed the Arab population in a crushing counter-insurgency campaign between 1936 and 1939. The Arab leadership was exiled to the Seychelles for years after. In any case, political authority among Palestinians historically did not extend far beyond the village leadership, making the coordination of defensive measures nearly impossible. In general, the Arab population of Palestine was uninterested in war and extremely vulnerable.</p><p>Pappe argues that the armies of neighboring Arab states were not nearly as threating as the original narrative would have it. The combined number of Arab forces were roughly similar to the number of the Jewish forces, but were less well-equipped and lacked an effective single command structure. There was competition, suspicion, even animosity, between the Arab states, particularly between Egypt and Jordan and between Syria and Jordan. </p><p>The Jordanian army was the most well-equipped and well-organized; however, Jordan's King Abdullah and David Ben-Gurion came to an agreement before May15th in which Jordan would control the West Bank (at least that part the Israelis would not conquer). Abdullah publicly announced that his forces would not invade the region set aside for the Jewish state, but would only occupy the Arab region. This alleviated Israel's greatest concern. The disposition of Jerusalem, however, was not agreed upon by Abdullah and Ben-Gurion. It was here that the most significant fighting took place between the Jordanians and the Israelis.</p><p>Egypt was potentially a significant force. Yet according to Pappe, it mobilized only 10,000 soldiers, 5,000 of which were untrained members of the Muslim Brotherhood that were released from prison to fight in Palestine. Initially, Egypt made progress by occupying territory populated almost exclusively by Arabs or that was virtually uninhabited. For a time, they were able to isolate a small number of Jewish settlements in the Negev, but their advance into Palestine was halted after just one week. Israeli forces then steadily drove them back to Egypt, leaving them to occupy only the Gaza Strip.</p><p>Syrian forces amounted to only a few thousand fighters. They managed to capture a kibbutz just across the border, but did little more after that. Syria's participation in the war was mostly token. Lebanese forces operated by and large defensively in Western Galilee, a region that had been allocated for the Arab state. By the end of the war, Israel had completely expelled Lebanese forces from historic Palestine. Iraq provided a small number of fighters who were relatively effective in defending a number of villages in the northern region of the West Bank.</p><p>Pappe concludes -- and the outcome of the conflict confirms -- that Israel was not only well-equipped to defend itself from its Arab neighbors, its forces were simultaneously able to expel and prevent the return of the great majority of the Palestinian population from areas they captured.</p><p>With regard to the three elements of the original narrative, Pappe concludes that all of them are entirely false. (1) Israel was not a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) the war was launched by Israeli forces and was well-underway before the Arab armies joined the fight, and (3) not only were Arab directives not responsible for the flight of the Palestinians, but the Israeli leadership had a long, well-established plan to expel as many Arabs from the prospective Jewish state as they possibly could. Israel executed that plan diligently. </p><p>Pappe's penultimate chapter is titled, "The Memoricide of the Nakba." "Nakba" is the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians refer to the 1947-49 War. He argues that the memory of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been consciously erased. In years just after the 1967 War, Israel's Ministry of Information was especially active in creating the narrative that helped erase the memory of the Nakba. In a speech in 1969 to students at the Technical University in Haifa, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't know the names of these villages,...because these geography books no longer exist....There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Pappe describes how the Naming Committee of the Jewish National Fund renamed places under Jewish control which explains why they are missing from the geography books.</p><p>And they are not just missing from the written record. They are gone entirely, often covered over by new settlements or national forests planted by the Jewish National Fund. The Fund has also been responsible for the creation of parks and resorts in place of destroyed Arab villages. Many new Jewish developments have "green lungs," i.e., wooded areas that once were neighboring Arab villages. The erasure of the evidence of a previous Arab population continues today.</p><p>One final point regarding the original narrative deserves attention. The narrative also asserts that the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Plan while the Arab leadership rejected it. The latter is certainly true. The Arab population had been struggling for self-determination as early as the mid-19th century. They allied with the British in the First World War on the promise that Britain would support their independence after victory. Much of the British controlled territory was granted independence (Iraq in 1932 and Jordan in 1946), but Palestine remained under British control. </p><p>Through the 1920s and 1930s, Britain facilitated the colonization of Palestine by mostly European Jewish colonists. By 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine reached roughly one third of the whole and they owned roughly only 7% of the land. Nonetheless, the Partition Plan designated 55% of land and most of the best land to the Jewish state. The Arabs had no formal role in ratifying the plan. In essence, the Partition Plan was the culmination of a decades-long colonial enterprise. In this context, it's quite natural that the Arabs would not accept it.</p><p>The Jewish Agency's "acceptance" of the plan, however, was significantly qualified in that they did not accept the plan's borders. Announcing the acceptance of the plan was a strategic decision that would provide the State of Israel international recognition. At the same time, the Agency declared its intention to set its own borders. Its early invasion of regions designated for the Arab state demonstrated that the Jewish Agency also rejected the plan's agreed upon borders. Furthermore, a significant segment of the Jewish leadership of the time desired all of historic Palestine for the Jewish state, rejecting a two state solution entirely. The 1967 War was in part motivated by this desire. That war completed Israel's occupation of all of historic Palestine and produced hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinian refugees. Nearly a quarter of a million people were force out of the West Bank, unable to return. </p><p>Two years after the 1967 War, the <i>Times of London</i> reported Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as writing, "Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the Partition Plan. Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949. Now the six-day generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights. That is not the end. After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones. They will extend beyond Jordan -- perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to central Syria as well." Whether there remains interest among the Israeli leadership of expanding Israel further is an open question. There has always been talk of expanding north to the Litani River in Lebanon and the Jewish settlement of the West Bank appears to be leading to eventual annexation. </p><p>What distinguishes Morris's and Pappe's views is their attitudes toward the goals of Zionism. For Morris, they are fundamentally sound. What is at issue is how those goals are to be accomplished and perhaps the final borders of Israel. For Pappe, Zionism is a colonial-settler enterprise that has committed horrendous atrocities and denied Palestinians the fundament rights due any people. But the facts of the stories they tell are largely the same. It is these facts that the New Historians finally brought to light, regardless of how those facts are judged. </p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-53555082790369682362023-12-28T22:08:00.008-08:002024-01-07T00:44:34.185-08:00The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine / Ilan Pappe -- Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006.<p>Thirty years after the 1947-49 War in historic Palestine, the Israeli government began declassifying the archives of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli security forces. This gave rise to a new understanding of the war. The Israeli historians who made use of these archives became known as "the New Historians." This review covers two books by two of them: <i>The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited</i> by Benny Morris and <i>The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</i> by Ilan Pappe. (The review is available on this blog under both titles.) </p><p>In reviewing the work of the New Historians, one must first understand the original narrative of the 1947-49 War. The narrative was virtually unchallenged in Israel and in Western countries until the late 1980s. It remains widely accepted today, but due to the work of the New Historians, serious scholars no longer accept the narrative. </p><p>Morris and Pappe address three elements of the original narrative: (1) 1947 Israel was a modern David surrounded by Arab Goliaths, (2) the Arab countries launched the war on May 15 after rejecting the UN Partition Plan, and (3) Palestinians left their homes of their own free will at the behest of Arab leaders.</p><p>I. Benny Morris: The Palestinian Refugee Problem </p><p>The first edition of Morris's book<i> </i>was published in 1988. He began writing it as a history of Haganah, the Jewish militia which later became the Israeli Defense Force. Morris was given special access to Haganah's archives, but authorities later denied him access when they understood where his work was leading. At the same time, other Israeli archives from the war period were becoming declassified. This allowed Morris to continue his work. </p><p>Morris's conclusions are not completely inconsistent with the original narrative. He accepts that the Israeli leadership at first was not entirely certain of their ability to prevail in a war with the Arabs and that many factors resulted in the depopulation of Arab communities. Most significantly, he believes the Jewish Agency had no premeditate plans to "transfer" Arabs out of areas under Jewish control. </p><p>According to Morris, the Israeli leadership's initial concern about security was alleviated as they saw near universal success of their military operations. At first, they sought to secure communication lines between Jewish settlements, especially between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and to provide an adequate defense of the small number of isolated Jewish settlements. This was accomplished relatively quickly. In all, only two Jewish settlements were lost during the war. It quickly became clear to the Jewish Agency that the Arab population in Palestine was no match for the Jewish forces. </p><p>One should distinguish, however, what was known by the leadership from what was believed by the general Jewish population. Many in the Jewish community had fled, or were descendants of those who had fled, from pogroms in Eastern Europe as well as Shoah survivors. Living in what was for most of them a foreign land among a suspicious indigenous population, including overtly hostile elements, could not have fostered a sense of security; however, the population's perception of the danger was not in line with the actual relative military capabilities of Arab and Jewish security forces.</p><p>Immediately following the UN's adoption of the Partition Plan, a low intensity conflict between Arabs and Jews began. Arab irregular forces engaged mostly in small skirmishes and sniper attacks on passing Jewish convoys. Some volunteers from neighboring Arab states, known as the Army of Rescue, also participated in these attacks. In quick response, Jewish militias (Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang) attacked villages from which they believed the Arab attacks emerged. Their responses frequently were disproportionate and not always directed against the responsible parties. An escalating cycle of violence ensued. This prompted a significant number of Arabs to flee their homes in fear of and in response to Jewish assaults and/or anticipated Jewish political control. </p><p>Among the most significant observations made by the New Historians is the implementation of "Plan Dalet" or "Plan D," by Haganah. Plan D was composed of 13 specific military operations designed to occupy and exert control over Arab populated regions, both inside and outside the UN boundaries of the prospective Jewish state. The plan was finalized during the sectarian violence in early March 1948 and was implemented in the first week of April -- six weeks before the British Mandate would end on May 14. </p><p>For the first time since the passage of the UN Partition Plan, significant military assets were mobilized in coordinated attacks against an enemy. One might identify November 29, 1947 as the start of escalating sectarian violence and the first week of April as when Israel launched a coordinated war against the Palestinians. May 15, which is considered the start of the war by the original historical narrative, would mark, instead, the date when neighboring Arab countries joined in the defense of the beleaguered Palestinian population. </p><p>Morris's <i>Revisited</i> (2nd) edition was published in 2004. It was prompted by the release of additional archival material and Morris's desire to respond to criticism that he had not adequately examined the pre-war discussion among the Jewish leadership of transferring the Arab population out of Palestine. Morris devotes a new chapter on the discussion of transfer. He concludes that while there was pre-war interest among the leadership in transferring the population, the connection between that interest and what actually happened is "more tenuous than Arab propagandists would allow. " According to Morris, the flight of refugees was mainly the consequence of local decisions made by specific military commanders in their efforts to secure the territory they were occupying for the Jewish state. Additionally, some Arab directives to flee and decisions by the Arab upper class to wait out the war abroad played a role in the departure of Palestinians. In any case, Israel's leaders recognized that their military operations were sparking the unexpected flight of Arabs which would serve the interests of a secure Israeli state. As in the first edition, Morris continues to argue that the depopulation of Arab communities was a complex event that involved many factors. </p><p>Morris does accept that Israel's military operations were the primary motivating force. He estimates that 600,000-760,000 Palestinian Arabs "departed their homes" between November 1947 and October 1950. He documents 392 Arab cities, towns, and villages that were "abandoned" by their populations and 186 Israeli settlements that were constructed in their place. Jewish and Israeli forces variously assisted, encouraged, directed, and forcibly expelled Palestinians from their homes in the course of different military operations. Morris's detailed accounting of this massive demographic shift is perhaps what made his first edition so ground breaking. </p><p>Morris acknowledges that numerous atrocities were committed by Haganah and especially by the dissident Jewish militias, Irgun and the Stern Gang. These atrocities -- massacres of tens of villagers at a time and sometimes more -- had a significant impact on the decisions of Arabs to flee their homes. In the context of the war, the Jewish leadership simply allowed the flight of Arabs to unfold as a fortuitous consequence of war. No official "transfer" policy was needed. Morris does, however, identify some instances in which the leadership gave explicit expulsion orders. He also recognizes that the leadership routinely approved expulsions after the fact and directed the destruction of buildings.</p><p>According to Morris, the Israeli leadership was surprised to see the mass exodus of Arabs, but they were insistent that very few refugees be allowed to return to their villages, and they made great efforts to ensure "infiltrators" would not return to their homes. Even reluctant members of the leadership -- members of the more dovish party, Mapam -- eventually came around to accept the "transfer" of the population and the prohibition of its return. </p><p>With regard to the three elements of the original narrative under discussion, Morris (1) rejects the claim that Israel was a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) makes no real claim about what should be considered the start of the war, and (3) ambiguously assesses the motives for the flight of the Palestinians. His work is noteworthy in that it broke the taboo that prevented an honest examination of Israel's origins. Morris remains a Zionist, however, and rests his moral conclusions on the legitimacy of the foundation of Israel and the consequent need to secure the state through force, even if this involved producing hundreds of thousands of refugees and inflicting tens of thousands of casualties.</p><p>II. Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing</p><p>The primary sources used by Morris are almost exclusively drawn from the Israeli archives. His secondary sources are overwhelmingly in Hebrew. This has lead to criticisms that he overlooks some important perspectives on and information about what was taking place. Morris argues that these other perspectives are based largely on interviews and oral histories conducted too long after the events to be reliable. In contrast, Ilan Pappe's work, <i>The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine</i> makes use of these additional sources, along with many of the same archival sources used by Morris. Pappe even makes use of both editions of Morris's work. </p><p>Pappe's conclusions about Israeli actions and intentions are much more critical. In his first chapter, he discusses the history and definition of the term "ethnic cleansing." The reminder of the book is essentially an effort to show that while the expulsion of the Palestinians is a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, it has been ignored in discussions of past ethnic cleansings. He often quotes the use of the term "cleanse" and its derivatives in Jewish documents and diaries that describe the expulsion of Palestinians. </p><p>Pappe writes of the compilation of the "Village Files" by Jewish Arabists in the 1930s. The files were a comprehensive registry of all the Arab villages in Palestine with details about their geography, economy, populations, leadership, and their relations with their Jewish neighbors. The Files' main proponent in the Jewish Agency thought the creation of the registry would "greatly help the redemption of the land." As Jewish forces moved against Arab villages, the Village Files were invaluable, giving them detailed intelligence about their targets and even allowing them to identify specific individuals for assassination.</p><p>Pappe directly implicates the head of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion as the primary directing force in planning and approving the expulsions. A small group of advisors called the "Consultant Committee" or simply the "Consultancy" was formed in February 1947, months prior to the passage of the Partition Plan. It became Ben-Gurion's most important advisory group. He and members of the Consultancy recognized the need to ensure a majority Jewish population of 70-80% inside the Jewish state. Consequently, they would need to transfer Arabs out of Jewish controlled areas, including to neighboring states. The tactics they adopted for expelling the population began with forceful "retaliation" against Arab violence, mainly against snipers shooting at Jewish convoys, but as early as in December 1947, this evolved into a more pro-active "engagement" or "violent reconnaissance" which did not require a pretext. The aim was to intimidate the population and encourage flight.</p><p>Between the assembly and use of the Village Files and the proceedings and diaries of the Consultancy, Pappe's case for the premeditated expulsion of Palestinians is strong. Certainly, Morris and Pappe agree that the Israeli leadership made a conscious decision to prevent displaced people from returning to their homes. This confirms either the leadership's intentions to expel the population or its legitimation of expulsion after the fact. In any case, Morris and Pappe together provide sufficient evidence that the flight of Palestinians from Israeli controlled areas was not mainly a function of Arab directives to leave.</p><p>By May 15, 1947, or soon after, most of the largest cities with Arab populations were occupied by Jewish forces and virtually emptied of their Arab inhabitants. Haifa, Tiberias, Safad, and Baysan lay in regions designated for a Jewish state. Jaffa and Acre lay in regions designated for the Arabs. West Jerusalem was to be governed by an international administration. Pappe refers to the expulsion of inhabitants from these cities as "urbicide" to distinguish it from (on his accounting) the more than 500 Arab villages that Jewish and Israeli forces ultimately destroyed or converted into Jewish settlements. </p><p>This demographic change began shortly after the UN adopted the Partition Plan. The only significant disagreement between Morris and Pappe is whether the Jewish Agency consciously planned the expulsion or merely raised no meaningful objection to it and retroactively approved it. From the point of view of the refugees, the distinction is unimportant.</p><p>Plans for the expulsion of the Arab population could be made confidently because of the known military and political weakness of the Arab population. According to Pappe, Jewish Arabists were reporting to the Consultancy that there was virtually no interest in war among ordinary Palestinians. Many Arab villages reached peace agreements with neighboring Jewish settlements to stay out of the impending conflict. Furthermore, the British Mandatory Force effectively disarmed the Arab population in a crushing counter-insurgency campaign between 1936 and 1939. The Arab leadership was exiled to the Seychelles for years after. In any case, political authority among Palestinians historically did not extend far beyond the village leadership, making the coordination of defensive measures nearly impossible. In general, the Arab population of Palestine was uninterested in war and extremely vulnerable.</p><p>Pappe argues that the armies of neighboring Arab states were not nearly as threating as the original narrative would have it. The combined number of Arab forces were roughly similar to the number of the Jewish forces, but were less well-equipped and lacked an effective single command structure. There was competition, suspicion, even animosity, between the Arab states, particularly between Egypt and Jordan and between Syria and Jordan. </p><p>The Jordanian army was the most well-equipped and well-organized; however, Jordan's King Abdullah and David Ben-Gurion came to an agreement before May15th in which Jordan would control the West Bank (at least that part the Israelis would not conquer). Abdullah publicly announced that his forces would not invade the region set aside for the Jewish state, but would only occupy the Arab region. This alleviated Israel's greatest concern. The disposition of Jerusalem, however, was not agreed upon by Abdullah and Ben-Gurion. It was here that the most significant fighting took place between the Jordanians and the Israelis.</p><p>Egypt was potentially a significant force. Yet according to Pappe, it mobilized only 10,000 soldiers, 5,000 of which were untrained members of the Muslim Brotherhood that were released from prison to fight in Palestine. Initially, Egypt made progress by occupying territory populated almost exclusively by Arabs or that was virtually uninhabited. For a time, they were able to isolate a small number of Jewish settlements in the Negev, but their advance into Palestine was halted after just one week. Israeli forces then steadily drove them back to Egypt, leaving them to occupy only the Gaza Strip.</p><p>Syrian forces amounted to only a few thousand fighters. They managed to capture a kibbutz just across the border, but did little more after that. Syria's participation in the war was mostly token. Lebanese forces operated by and large defensively in Western Galilee, a region that had been allocated for the Arab state. By the end of the war, Israel had completely expelled Lebanese forces from historic Palestine. Iraq provided a small number of fighters who were relatively effective in defending a number of villages in the northern region of the West Bank.</p><p>Pappe concludes -- and the outcome of the conflict confirms -- that Israel was not only well-equipped to defend itself from its Arab neighbors, its forces were simultaneously able to expel and prevent the return of the great majority of the Palestinian population from areas they captured.</p><p>With regard to the three elements of the original narrative, Pappe concludes that all of them are entirely false. (1) Israel was not a modern David surrounded by Goliaths, (2) the war was launched by Israeli forces and was well-underway before the Arab armies joined the fight, and (3) not only were Arab directives not responsible for the flight of the Palestinians, but the Israeli leadership had a long, well-established plan to expel as many Arabs from the prospective Jewish state as they possibly could. Israel executed that plan diligently. </p><p>Pappe's penultimate chapter is titled, "The Memoricide of the Nakba." "Nakba" is the Arabic word for catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians refer to the 1947-49 War. He argues that the memory of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been consciously erased. In years just after the 1967 War, Israel's Ministry of Information was especially active in creating the narrative that helped erase the memory of the Nakba. In a speech in 1969 to students at the Technical University in Haifa, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You don't know the names of these villages,...because these geography books no longer exist....There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Pappe describes how the Naming Committee of the Jewish National Fund renamed places under Jewish control which explains why they are missing from the geography books.</p><p>And they are not just missing from the written record. They are gone entirely, often covered over by new settlements or national forests planted by the Jewish National Fund. The Fund has also been responsible for the creation of parks and resorts in place of destroyed Arab villages. Many new Jewish developments have "green lungs," i.e., wooded areas that once were neighboring Arab villages. The erasure of the evidence of a previous Arab population continues today.</p><p>One final point regarding the original narrative deserves attention. The narrative also asserts that the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Plan while the Arab leadership rejected it. The latter is certainly true. The Arab population had been struggling for self-determination as early as the mid-19th century. They allied with the British in the First World War on the promise that Britain would support their independence after victory. Much of the British controlled territory was granted independence (Iraq in 1932 and Jordan in 1946), but Palestine remained under British control. </p><p>Through the 1920s and 1930s, Britain facilitated the colonization of Palestine by mostly European Jewish colonists. By 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine reached roughly one third of the whole and they owned roughly only 7% of the land. Nonetheless, the Partition Plan designated 55% of land and most of the best land to the Jewish state. The Arabs had no formal role in ratifying the plan. In essence, the Partition Plan was the culmination of a decades-long colonial enterprise. In this context, it's quite natural that the Arabs would not accept it.</p><p>The Jewish Agency's "acceptance" of the plan, however, was significantly qualified in that they did not accept the plan's borders. Announcing the acceptance of the plan was a strategic decision that would provide the State of Israel international recognition. At the same time, the Agency declared its intention to set its own borders. Its early invasion of regions designated for the Arab state demonstrated that the Jewish Agency also rejected the plan's agreed upon borders. Furthermore, a significant segment of the Jewish leadership of the time desired all of historic Palestine for the Jewish state, rejecting a two state solution entirely. The 1967 War was in part motivated by this desire. That war completed Israel's occupation of all of historic Palestine and produced hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinian refugees. Nearly a quarter of a million people were force out of the West Bank, unable to return. </p><p>Two years after the 1967 War, the <i>Times of London</i> reported Defense Minister Moshe Dayan as writing, "Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the Partition Plan. Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949. Now the six-day generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights. That is not the end. After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones. They will extend beyond Jordan -- perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to central Syria as well." Whether there remains interest among the Israeli leadership of expanding Israel further is an open question. There has always been talk of expanding north to the Litani River in Lebanon and the Jewish settlement of the West Bank appears to be leading to eventual annexation. </p><p>What distinguishes Morris's and Pappe's views is their attitudes toward the goals of Zionism. For Morris, they are fundamentally sound. What is at issue is how those goals are to be accomplished and perhaps the final borders of Israel. For Pappe, Zionism is a colonial-settler enterprise that has committed horrendous atrocities and denied Palestinians the fundament rights due any people. But the facts of the stories they tell are largely the same. It is these facts that the New Historians finally brought to light, regardless of how those facts are judged. </p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-76217152466265834242023-10-29T12:41:00.007-07:002023-10-29T14:05:21.380-07:00The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, NY: Bloomsbury Pub., 2023<p> In 2010, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway released <i>The Merchants of Doubt</i>, an account of the actions of the fossil fuel industry and their agents to sow doubt in the public mind about the reality and danger of climate change. Their book had a powerful effect on how the public understands the politics of climate policy, and it set the stage for numerous legal actions to hold the "merchants of doubt" responsible for the current and accumulating harms of climate change. Law suits are slowing making their way through state courts around the country. If these cases succeed, the transition toward a clean and reliable energy economy will be much accelerated.</p><p>Among the questions raised by <i>The Merchants of Doubt </i>was how four scientists, who were the leading figures challenging climate action, could deny the scientific consensus regarding the fact and danger of climate change. Oreskes and Conway concluded that they were entranced by the ideology of "the free market." How did this ideology become so powerful? <i>The Big Myth </i>provides a powerful case that it was the result of a decades-long public relations effort by American business and industrial associations.</p><p>The propaganda effort began in the early decades of the 20th century when the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), founded in 1895, fought progressive era regulations to restrict child labor, establish workers' compensation relief systems, and empower unionization. They were, of course ultimately unsuccessful, but their opposition demonstrated the necessity of government regulation to protect the interests of ordinary citizens from exploitation by business and industrial elites. </p><p>Later, in the 1920s, the nation's privately owned electrical grids were failing to bring electricity to rural areas. This led to a drive for "rural electrification" legislation that would create a rational electrical grid system serving urban and rural regions alike. The effort was opposed by the National Electric Light Association (NELA), an association of electric utilities founded in 1885 and which later became the Edison Electric Institute. NELA was successful until New Deal legislation finally established the Rural Electrification Administration and imposed regulations to expand access to electricity. Here we see government action, as opposed to unregulated market forces, being responsible for creating the conditions for expanded economic prosperity.</p><p>The danger of regulations, unionization, and government planning alleged by NAM and NELA was, of course, said to be the slippery slope leading to socialism. They argued that once government intrudes in one sector of life, it will inevitably intrude in every sector. Oreskes and Conway point out that this reveals the false dilemma that lay behind the propaganda: economies must either be laissez faire or entirely controlled by a central authority. The business propagandists never acknowledged that there are countless ways to organize an economy between these two poles. </p><p>Despite the massive market failure that produced the Great Depression, business and industry lobbyists doubled down on their commitment to unregulated capitalism and resisted New Deal efforts to restore economic stability and security. Out of this, NAM developed what Oreskes and Conway call the "indivisibility thesis," i.e., that political, religious, and economic freedom were "indivisible." This meant any assault on the prerogatives of the private sector was also (or ultimately) an assault on political and religious freedom. Later, this "tripod of freedom" was boiled down simply to the inseparability of "democracy" and "free enterprise," though Billy Graham continued to promote a connection between religious freedom and "free markets." </p><p>Business leaders created several organizations, most notably NAM's National Industrial Information Council (NIIC). These organizations were established to propagandize in favor of unregulated capitalism. Edward Bernays, the founder of modern public relations, was enlisted for support. The NIIC played a major role in the the campaign to shape public opinion through films, slide shows, newspaper advertisements, direct mail, billboards, posters, pamphlets, window displays, and other media. In the late 1930s, NAM produced an extremely popular radio program, <i>The American Family Robinson</i>, which promoted "free market" fundamentalism. In the 1940s and 1950s, NAM, with the assistance of Hollywood, was responsible for numerous films and news reels.</p><p>Also in the 1930s, Laura Ingalls Wilder was publishing her "little house" books, particularly <i>Little House on the Prairie. </i>These books contained an intentional and not-so-well-disguised severe libertarian message. The message was in large part due to the editorial influence of Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Lane is considered among the three most important founders of the modern libertarian movement, along with Ayn Rand and Isabelle Paterson or "the three furies" as William F. Buckley dubbed them.</p><p>Oreskes and Conway also provide an interesting account of General Electric's television series <i>General Electric Theatre</i>, hosted by Ronald Reagan. <i>General Electric Theatre</i>, airing weekly from 1953-1962, provided well-produced and engaging stories that promoted unregulated capitalism. Reagan's involvement with the program is widely recognized as what transformed him from a supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal to the "anti-government" ideologue that he became. </p><p>Much of the public relations efforts on behalf of unregulated capitalism came from business interests. As this would easily be seen as self-serving, business leaders sought academic economists to give their ideology independent credibility. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman served this purpose. The careers of each were made possible by financial support from libertarian business interests despite strong opposition from the profession. It is noteworthy, though, that the economic views of each were far less austere than how they were promoted by their patrons. For example, Hayek's book <i>The Road to Serfdom</i>, was republished in a dumbed-down version in <i>Reader's Digest</i> in 1945, where any recognition of the important role of government in economic affairs was edited out. A similar redaction of pro-government passages in Adam Smith's <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> was done by George Stigler for the University of Chicago Press in 1957.</p><p>One reoccurring theme in <i>The Big Myth</i> is that claims that a "free market" will better provide for economic prosperity and general social well-being are belied by the historical facts. Instead, the unregulated capitalism has led to numerous significant market failures (especially the climate crisis), and that nearly all of the material and technological advances that make our lives safe and comfortable today have been the result of either direct government action or public-private partnerships initiated by the public sector. Oreskes and Conway make a powerful case that the popular admiration of "free markets" is a product of special business and industrial interests working for their private gain without regard for the well-being of workers and consumers. </p><p><i>The Big Myth</i> is a massive work (565 pages, including bibliography and index). This review provides only a slim sample of the history of the "free market" propaganda that has shaped so much of our discourse today. It is a brilliant, extensive study that deserves anyone's attention who is interested in the controversies over the present day organization of our political and economic institutions. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-29707383811179144762023-09-06T19:38:00.013-07:002023-12-08T21:53:35.051-08:002024 Presidential Election Prospects<p> </p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s
a little early to be handicapping the 2024 presidential election, but there are
some things that we can reliably expect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Assuming the race is between any Democrat and any Republican, California
is going to vote for the Democrat and Idaho is going to vote for the Republican.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they don’t, then – wow!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something really unexpected will have
happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the state-by-state
results of the 2020 Biden-Trump race and polls showing little change in the
(un)favorability of both candidates, we can narrow down the swing states to
seven: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and
Michigan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These seven are the only
states where the difference between the candidates’ 2020 votes are less than 3%. On rare occasions, a state's results will change more than that in the course of four years, but it's rare, and in 2024, we're looking at a rematch of candidates.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
might reasonably eliminate Michigan and North Carolina from the list of swing
states though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Trump is able to win Michigan,
it is likely he’ll win enough other swing states to secure a victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Trump victory in Michigan probably would require
a Republican wave election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reverse is
likely to be true if Biden is able to win North Carolina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would mean a Democratic wave election, but
more on this below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Realistically, the electoral
math gives us only five <i>true</i> swing states:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b><i>Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona,
Wisconsin, and Nevada</i></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Setting
aside these states, Biden can count on 241 Electoral College votes and Trump
can count on 235.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Biden will need 29 more to get to 270 and win reelection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump
will need 34 more to get to 269 and tie the vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a tied vote, the final result will be
determined by a majority of state legislatures, giving Trump the victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">So, what are the paths to
victory for Biden and Trump?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply put:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Biden needs: [PA & (GA v AZ v WI)] v (GA & 2 swing states).<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Trump needs: (PA & GA) v (PA & 2 swing states) v (GA & AZ & WI).</b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">The current Electoral
College math is in Biden’s favor, but each of these states was extremely close
in 2020. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With so much time until
Election Day, anything can happen in any of those states. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much will depend on the local politics in each
swing state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s turn to that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">NEVADA</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Biden’s best chance for winning a swing
state is Nevada and it’s a very good chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite its vast expanse of uninhabited land, Nevada’s population is extremely
urban which favors Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2020,
69% of the voters lived in Clark County, home of Las Vegas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another 8% lived in Reno and in towns near Lake
Tahoe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Biden won Clark County by 90,822
votes and won the state by 33,596 votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clearly, Biden’s victory was due to his performance in the Las Vegas
metro area.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">Historically, Nevada looks good for
the Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have won all the
statewide races since 2016, except for the Attorney General race in 2018 which
they lost by a mere 0.66%, and the 2022 gubernatorial race which they lost by
1.5%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their record in statewide races against
Republicans is 8-2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the best
news for the Democrats is that Trump lost in both 2016 and 2020 by 2.42% and
2.39% respectively.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">The 2022 race should give the
Democrats pause, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only did
the Republicans win the gubernatorial race, but <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">their House candidate in District 1 (essentially Las Vegas) did
much better than usual. He still lost, but he did well enough to flip the
aggregate votes in the House races to the Republicans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Republican House candidates beat Democratic
House candidates by 3.49%. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">If
Biden can maintain even half of his 2020 advantage in Clark County, he'll almost
certainly win Nevada. Unfortunately for Biden it will do little to reduce the paths that lead to a Trump victory. While Nevada might come into play, because it provides only six Electoral College votes, it just isn't terribly important. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">PENNSYLVANIA</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Biden’s
second-best chance is Pennsylvania.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump
defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a mere 0.75%, but he was defeated by Biden
in 2020 by 1.17%. That tells you how close this election could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> A couple things</span> give Biden a slight edge in Pennsylvania. Voters soundly rejected Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022. Mehmet Oz lost his bid for the Senate by 5.03% and Doug Mastriano lost his bid for governor by a whopping 15.4%. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like in Nevada, Democrats
have an 8-2 record in Pennsylvania statewide races since 2016 (Trump and Sen.
Pat Toomey by 1.5%, both in 2016).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unlike Nevada, Pennsylvania Republicans have a better record in voting
for House candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pennsylvania seems
to swing back and forth in the aggregate vote for Republican and Democratic House
candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Republicans also can take some comfort in a report in <i>Politico</i> that says many people in
the State Party – and possibly the Biden campaign – are critical of the
performance of the chair of the State Party, but thus far, I find no
substantiation of the report which is based on unnamed sources.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">The
Pennsylvania House of Representatives is dead even right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the House members will be up for
election in 2024.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That could make abortion
access an important issue in the state and help Biden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll also get a clue about the importance of
abortion access to Pennsylvania voters this November, when they vote in a
special election for a Supreme Court judge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">If Biden wins Pennsylvania, Trump will need to win Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. If Trump wins Pennsylvania, Biden will need to win Georgia and any two swing states. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">GEORGIA</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">Here’s another squeaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 5.13% in 2016 and lost to Biden by only
0.24% (11,779 votes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Republicans
out-polled the Democrats in statewide races 7-4, and none of the Democratic
wins were by more than 2.81%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 2.81%
win was against Hershel Walker, possibly the most unqualified candidate running for
national office that year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally,
Republican House candidates consistently out-perform Democratic House
candidates statewide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">Democrats
should not let themselves become overconfident because of Biden’s success in
2020 and their recent narrow victories in Senate races by Jon Ossoff and Raphael
Warnock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What should give them some solace
is that Governor Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, then-Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan, and Attorney
General Christopher Carr (all popular Republicans) have testified against Trump
before the grand jury in Trump’s Fulton County RICO trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can expect them to be called to testify
again at the trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lot will depend on
the RICO trial and how it’s covered in the Georgia press.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">Democrats
can also find comfort in that the GOP in Georgia appears to be quite
divided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of its past officers are
actually defendants in Trump’s RICO trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Another is identifiable as an unindicted co-conspirator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, Trump is not likely to get
coordinated support from the Georgia Republican political class, and when a
substantial portion of prominent Republicans say that moderates and
independents aren’t going to vote for Trump, it just might become a
self-fulfilling prophecy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> I</span>f Biden wins Georgia, Trump will need to win Pennsylvania and two swing states. If Trump wins Georgia Biden will need to win Pennsylvania and either Arizona or Wisconsin.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">ARIZONA</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Arizona
is a completely crazy political mess. The statewide races are pretty
evenly split, but slightly favoring Democrats 6-4-1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The 2022 Attorney General race was decided
for the Democrat by 280 votes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For present purposes, I consider that a tie.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, a lot of Arizona voters often opt for third party or
independent candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Sen. Krysten
Sinema decides to run as an independent, there’s no telling how she will affect
the presidential race. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
couple things might help the Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Republican State Party is a big part of Arizona’s crazy political mess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Earlier this year, Republican first-term
State House Member Liz Harris was expelled from her seat by a 2/3 majority for knowingly
arranging for the false and potentially libelous testimony of a hearing witness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response, the pro-Trump/Kari Lake faction
of the Party censured 18 Republican House members who voted for Harris’s
expulsion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They even censured two more
who voted <i>against</i> expulsion, but acknowledged that Harris violated the
House’s ethics rules.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pro-Trump
faction also censured the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for not
reinstating Harris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There may be no
Republican State party in the country so divided as in Arizona.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
thing that might tip the balance in favor of the Democrats is a ballot measure
that pro-abortion access groups are looking to put on the ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they succeed – and I know of no reason
they won’t – it will be a lot easier to get unenthusiastic Democratic voters
out to vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might just be what tips
the balance to Biden. </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #222222;">Still,
Arizona’s politics are complicated beyond description, so anything could
happen.</span><span style="color: #222222; mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #222222;">If Biden Arizona, his chances of winning are of course improved, but not by much. The same is true for Trump. Pennsylvania and Georgia are the big players in the Electoral math.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">WISCONSIN</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">While
not completely insane like Arizona, Wisconsin is razor, razor close. Together,
the last two presidential races in Wisconsin were closer than anywhere else in
the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump beat Hillary Clinton
by a mere 0.77%, but then Biden beat Trump by even less: 0.36%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democrats do have a 7-3 record in
statewide races.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two of the Republican
wins are attributable to just one politician, Sen. Ron Johnson who won his last
race by just 1.01%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That bodes well for
the Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like Pennsylvania, the
aggregate vote for Republican and Democratic House candidates swings back and
forth, so it’s hard to gauge just how much of an advantage anyone might have
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">Republicans
are having difficulty recruiting a candidate to challenge the popular Sen.
Tammy Baldwin in 2024.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their two top
potential candidates have decided not to run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Other potential candidates are relatively unknown, with the exception of
former Milwaukee County Sheriff and Trump supporter David Clark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clark has taken no steps toward running.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without a strong, well-funded Republican Senate
candidate on the ballot, Trump will be on his own to get out the Republican vote.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">As
elsewhere, the abortion access issue might help Democrats in Wisconsin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wisconsinites came out strong in an April
special election for a progressive Supreme Court candidate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Janet Protasiewicz ran primarily on the
promise to protect abortion access.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
won by 11%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only Sen. Baldwin in 2018
racked up a score like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While not a
high-profile race, Protasiewicz’s victory raises the Democrat’s statewide
record to 8-3 and could be a harbinger of the future.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">Wisconsin
was historically part of the Democrat’s “blue wall.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether Trump’s 2016 victory and his near miss
in 2020 have changed that remains to be seen; but like Arizona, there’s no
telling what will happen in Wisconsin – at least for now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">As with Arizona, winning Wisconsin is helpful for either Biden or Trump, but not that much. Keep your eyes on Pennsylvania and Georgia.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">NORTH CAROLINA</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">I began this review with the assumption that North Carolina
is certainly enough a Republican state as to be <i>not</i> included in any
possible Biden path to victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t seriously
doubt that, but the methods I am using to determine swing states and to assess
the two candidates’ chances yields a story more favorable to Biden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump beat Biden by 1.34% which on my
criterion would make North Carolina a swing state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Furthermore, the Democrats’ record for winning statewide races is 6-4,
which should give Biden some hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">A
closer look, however, reveals that all of the statewide Democratic victories
are for State-level offices (Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General),
and all of the victories for the Republicans are for National-level offices
(Senate and President). Additionally, Republican House candidates routinely out-perform Democratic House candidates by sizeable amounts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems North Carolina voters like to put
Democrats in charge of the State and send Republicans off to Washington. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m keeping North Carolina in the Trump column
– at least for now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">MICHIGAN</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">Considering Michigan as a swing state is the biggest stretch
of all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s probably as safe for Biden
as Florida is safe for Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump eked
out a win in Michigan with 0.2% in 2016 and then lost to Biden by 2.78%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democrats’ winning record in statewide
races is 9-1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump’s 2016 super-narrow
victory was the only Republican victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Republican House candidates did out-perform Democratic candidates by 3.56%
in 2016, but they never again beat the Democratic House candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, in 2022, Democratic Gov. Whitmer won
her race by 10.6%, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson won her race by
14%, and Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel won her race by 8.9%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;">To
further aggravate matters, the Republican State Party is suffering a deep
ideological division (a common theme in swing states) and a severe lack of
funding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Party’s chair is Kristina
Karamo, an outspoken Trump supporter who lost the 2022 race for Secretary of
State by 14%. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karamo defeated Matthew
DePerno to become the Party’s chair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>DePerno lost his 2022 race for Attorney General by 8.9% and has been
criminally charged with </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">due
possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine, and
conspiracy </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #363636;">to gain unauthorized access to a
computer or computer system</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">. They represent two opposing wings of the Party. At least two physical fights have broken out between Party officials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">Republican donors have begun to give money
to Michigan’s Republican House candidates through channels not under control of
the State Party, which is so broke it closed its office and is operating out of a condominium unit.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">The
Michigan segment of the “blue wall” seems about as sturdy as ever.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;">CONCLUSIONS?</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fff2cc; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; background: rgb(255, 242, 204); color: #222222;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Biden’s
Electoral College advantage in the non-swing states gives him a head start, but for now Pennsylvania and Georgia look to be the where the race will be decided. There’s a lot about the swing states that should give the
Democrats hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, the
Republican State parties are often divided on ideological grounds and abortion
access could continue to be a salient issue, but all of the swing states are
extremely competitive with a lot of time left before Election Day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other issues could easily capture the
attention of voters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inflation might increase
again, the country might slip into a recession, the Russian war in Ukraine
might disrupt geopolitics and the global economy, Trump’s legal troubles might
take unexpected turns, issues related to immigration could fuel a nativist
uprising, or other social issues could dominate the political discourse in ways
that would change voter choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">What
seems like an advantage now, might easily disappear overnight. What isn’t likely to change is the importance of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada – or
roughly 15% of our country’s population who will determine who our next
president will be. I guess that’s American-style
democracy for you.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-33900924049022936852023-07-31T13:56:00.001-07:002023-07-31T13:59:57.528-07:00The Bodhicaryavatara / Santideva -- Crosby and Skilton, trans., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995<p>The eighth century Indian monk Santideva ranks among Buddhism's greatest writers. His most important work is a ten-chapter poem entitled <i>The Bodhicaravatara </i>(<i>Introduction to the Practice of the Bodhisattva</i>)<i> </i>which concisely expresses the highest ideals and philosophy of the Mahayama tradition. </p><p>The Four Noble Truths are rightly understood as a central -- if not<i> the </i>central -- concepts in Buddhism. Those truths are accepted and venerated by all Buddhists; however, for the Mahayana tradition, the concept of the bodhisattva is equally important. The bodhisattva is a being that has vowed to forever work for the enlightenment of all sentient beings. This amounts to a rejection of the earlier Buddhist traditions which sought to train monks to achieve their own individual enlightenment. </p><p>The first step in following the path of the bodhisattva is "<i>bodhicitta</i>," i.e., taking a vow to seek the enlightenment of all sentient beings. Santideva explores a distinction between two forms of <i>bodhicitta</i>: (1) making the determination to follow the path of the and (2) in fact setting out on the path of the bodhisattva. He goes on to explain the characteristics of a bodhisattva which Buddhists have come to name "the six perfections:" generosity, obedience to the moral law, patience or forbearance, energy, meditative stability, and wisdom. </p><p>The perfection of wisdom is the highest of these virtues. Santideva provides a seminal treatment of wisdom in the nineth and longest chapter of the poem. Wisdom requires a bodhisattva both to exercise the other five virtues and it is necessary for the perfection of those virtues. Most of all, gaining wisdom requires a true understanding of the world. Crucially, this requires a deep and intuitive understanding of "<i>sunyata</i>," usually translated as "emptiness," and the understanding that all things are empty. </p><p>Early Buddhist traditions do make mention of <i>sunyata</i>, but its first full expression appeared in the work of the second century Madhyamaka Buddhist writer Nagarjuna. Santideva's treatment of <i>sunyata </i>is an excellent, concise treatment of Nagarjuna's formulation.</p><p>In the course of the work, Santideva presents a method by which one can develop compassion for others, known as "the exchange of self and others." It is based on the idea that to achieve a sympathetic disposition toward all sentient beings, one should proceed in stages. First, one should imagine that the well-being of someone you love, someone very close to you, is as important as your own well-being. This should not be hard. One should then go on to imagine the same is true for others not so close to you and then imagine the same for people for whom you have neutral feelings. Finally, you should imagine that the well-being of people you dislike is as important as your own well-being. By engaging in this exercise, one can develop compassion for all sentient beings and work more easily for their enlightenment. </p><p>There are few works more important to the history of Buddhism than <i>The Bodhicaryavatra. </i>It is especially important to Tibetan Buddhism and is often mentioned by the Dalai Lama as the most influential work to his own thinking. </p>Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-19062883655874153682017-08-13T17:25:00.000-07:002017-08-13T17:26:18.872-07:00Above Average Carbon Emitters Among Low Income Households<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: left;">
I recently did a little research attempting to understand the effects of Citizens' Climate Lobby's carbon fee and dividend proposal on people in the lowest quintile of income earners. Below is the result of that research.</div>
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<b>Above Average Carbon Emitters Among Low
Income Households<a href="file:///C:/Users/Mattlage/Desktop/Household%20Impact/Low%20Income%20-%20High%20Emissions.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[*]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Alan Mattlage,
Ph.D., M.L.S.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of many strengths of Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s (CCL)
carbon fee and dividend proposal is that it provides a net benefit to 86% of
households in the lowest quintile of income earners (Ummel, 2016). The progressive distribution of benefits is
driven by the fact that lower income households tend to have lower than average
carbon footprints but will receive a modified equal per capita share of the
revenues from the fee (one share for each adult and one-half share for each
child up to two children per family). This
makes the proposal one of the most economically progressive methods for
transitioning to a de-carbonized economy.
See Figure 1. Benefiting 86% still
leaves 14% of the lowest quintile worse off – that’s about 2.8% of all American
households or about 3.5 million households (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). The following is an attempt to understand why
these households are made worse off, how significant the burden is, and what
can be done to relieve that burden.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The short answer is that we cannot know precisely who is
burdened, but there are data that can give us a general understanding of the
circumstances that will tend to make a household worse-off. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Figure 1 – Distribution of
benefits and burdens across quintiles</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Why are households
made worse-off?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The obvious reason households are made worse off is that
their dividend is less than the cost they incur from the carbon fee. This is true no matter which quintile the
household is in. To answer the question
why are 14% of the lowest income households made worse off, we need to
understand why a household might have above-average emissions. Some of those reasons will be particularly
common to low income households. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A net financial loss is probably the result of some
combination of the following factors:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. the household is composed of a single person,<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. the household’s electricity is provided
disproportionately by a carbon-intensive fuel, like coal,<o:p></o:p></div>
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3. the household is located in a particularly harsh
climate,<o:p></o:p></div>
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4. the household is poorly insulated and has inefficient HVAC
equipment and appliances,<o:p></o:p></div>
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5. the household’s transportation costs are particularly
high, and<o:p></o:p></div>
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6. the household buys an unusually large amount of carbon
intensive consumer goods and services.<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. Household Composition<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps the most important factor of all is the
household’s size. Single person
households will receive only one dividend share, while needing to cover the
entire cost of maintaining the household, e.g., utilities, transportation, and
necessary household consumer goods.
Meanwhile, a two-adult household will receive twice the dividend, but they
will share many of the costs of maintaining the household. Consequently, single person households are
likely to be disproportionately represented in those households suffering a
loss no matter what income quintile they are in. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This has been borne out by the household impact study
conducted by Kevin Ummel for Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Ummel compared the net benefits going to two
household types: “minority households” and “elderly households.” Minority households are composed of more
members (sometimes more than two adults which compounds the dividend). Elderly households are, by definition,
composed of only one or two adults. These
households have similar incomes, but the mean benefit accruing to minority
households would be significantly greater than the mean benefit accruing to
elderly households: $148/year for
minority households versus $2/year for elderly households considering all
households (Ummel, 2016, p. 31; U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). For households in just the lowest quintile,
99% of families of four are benefitted, while 81% of elderly households are
benefitted. The mean benefits for these
households are $596/year and $138/year respectively. These disparities show that living in a small
or single person household contributes to a financial burden under the fee and
dividend proposal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. Local Carbon Intensity of Electricity<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ummel also broke down the consumer habits of each income
quintile into nine categories and determined the carbon tax burden for each
category. See Figure 2. The largest single category for all but the
top quintile is “utilities.” Consequently,
households that run on especially carbon intensive electricity would be
disadvantaged by the carbon fee, while households running on clean energy would
tend to benefit (Ummel, 2016, p. 34).
The importance of this factor is suggested by comparing Figures 3 and 4. There is a rough correlation between the
geographic distribution of the carbon intensity of the electricity supply and
the financial impact on households in the lowest quintile.<o:p></o:p></div>
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3. Harsh Climates<o:p></o:p></div>
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Little need be said about this. Households in especially cold or hot climates
certainly will have higher utility costs than households in milder climates;
however, in light of Figure 4, this factor does not seem to be particularly
significant as many regions of the country experiencing harsh climates tend to
enjoy <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Figure 2
– National tax burden by quintile</span></i></div>
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</v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Note: From BEA NIPA Handbook
(https://www.bea.gov/national/pdf/NIPAhandbookch6.pdf): “Private fixed
investment (PFI) measures spending by private businesses, nonprofit
institutions, and households on fixed assets in the U.S. economy. Fixed assets
consist of structures, equipment, and software that are used in the production
of goods and services. PFI encompasses the creation of new productive assets,
the improvement of existing assets, and the replacement of worn out or obsolete
assets.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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relatively greater benefits, e.g. New England, Florida,
the Southwest, and Montana. With
inevitable changes to the climate, many climates will become harsher,
increasing the importance of this factor.<o:p></o:p></div>
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4. Poor Insulation and Inefficient HVAC Equipment and
Appliances<o:p></o:p></div>
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Again, it is obvious that households which live in poorly
insulated housing and have inefficient HVAC equipment and appliances will bear
a greater burden from a carbon tax as more energy will be required to achieve
the same results. This is a particularly
significant problem for poor, low income households. Such households often live in rental
property, the owner of which is unconcerned about energy efficiency since the
utilities are paid by the tenants. Low
income housing stock is significantly less efficient than average. If low income housing were brought up to the
national average, low income households would see a 35% reduction in their
utility costs (Drehbol and Ross, 2016).<o:p></o:p></div>
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5. Transportation<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second largest category is “gasoline,” but while our
common acquaintance with gasoline as a fossil fuel might lead us to think this
would be the most significant factor in establishing a household’s carbon
footprint, it actually makes up less than 25% of the total carbon footprint of
U.S. households. Still, if a household
uses more gasoline than the national average, this factor will contribute to
reducing the benefit they would receive from the carbon dividend and might, like
other carbon-intensive factors, push them into a net loss. </div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Figure 3 – Carbon intensity of energy supply<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Figure 4 – Lowest quintile households
benefited by fee and dividend <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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However, simply comparing gasoline costs between the
lowest quintile and other quintiles might not be very revealing, since a
disproportionate number of households in the lowest quintile likely will not
have cars. This means the gasoline costs
borne by households in the lowest quintile will fall mainly on the car-owning
households.<o:p></o:p></div>
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6. Indirect Costs<o:p></o:p></div>
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Utility costs and gasoline costs are “direct” energy
purchases. For the lowest income
quintile, they make up 50% of the total costs.
The other categories are “indirect” energy purchases that appear as
embodied energy in the goods and services that a household purchases. Any household which purchases goods and
services which are in total more carbon intensive than those purchased by the
average household will find their net financial benefits lowered by these
categories of expenditures, possibly pushing them into a net loss. Because indirect purchases make up 50% of the
lowest quintile’s energy purchases and even larger percentages of higher
quintiles, these purchases are especially important in determining a household’s
net benefit. Indirect costs are the primary
factor that burdens the higher quintiles and benefits the lowest income
quintile, but lowest quintile households that purchase consumer products with
an above average carbon footprint, nevertheless, will be penalized by these
categories of purchases.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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If a household remains well-enough below average in
enough of the consumption categories, it will likely benefit from the fee and
dividend mechanism, despite a high carbon footprint in other categories;
however, if their consumption is in total above average across these
categories, they will suffer a loss. The
worst-case scenario would likely be a single-person household, reliant upon
carbon-based electricity, in a harsh environment, living in a poorly insulated
house, with a long commute, purchasing unusually carbon-intensive goods and
services. Surely not every one of these
conditions need hold to push someone into a loss, but various combinations of
these factors could do so. No single
profile of a low-income household can tell the story for all 3.5 million
households.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>How significant is
the burden?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Forty-seven percent of all households suffer a loss and
their median loss amounts to $195/year.
Among the lowest income quintile, only 14% of households suffer a loss
and their median loss is only $96/year or $8/month. Consequently, the absolute burden is least
for households in the lowest income quintile, but their median loss amounts to
0.79% of their income while the median loss nationally is only 0.25% of
income. So even as the lowest quintile
is much more carbon virtuous than higher quintiles, their low income could make
managing their loss nevertheless more difficult. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are additional considerations that are <b>aggravating factors</b>: <o:p></o:p></div>
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1. steadily rising fee,<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. limited conservation options for households in the
lowest income quintile, and<o:p></o:p></div>
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3. the ability of higher income quintiles to achieve
conservation savings.<o:p></o:p></div>
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CCL’s fees are proposed to begin at $15 in the first year
and rise $10 in each subsequent year.
This means that the households (in all quintiles) that benefit will gain
greater benefits as more revenue is collected, but burdened households will be
made increasingly worse-off. This could
become a significant problem over time for households in the lowest quintile,
unless those households are able to reduce their carbon footprint. In many cases, we cannot reasonably expect
this. Furthermore, if households in
higher quintiles are able to reduce their emission faster than households in
the lowest quintile, less revenue will be collected without a comparable
reduction of costs for the lowest quintile.
Households in the lowest quintile might be left behind in the race to
reduce carbon emissions. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are several <b>mitigating
factors</b>,<b> </b>however. Ummel’s study does not seek to predict how
the quintiles will fair in future years, but another study by Regional Economic
Modeling, Inc. has projected the consequences of the fee and dividend
nationally and regionally. It provides
some consolation that the fee and dividend will boost economic growth and
create 2.1 million jobs in the first ten years.
These potentially could help reduce the harms across the board and
soften the burden for the lowest quintile.
There are, however, more immediately recognizable mitigating factors:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. the pass-through assumption,<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. under-reported high quintile expenditures,<o:p></o:p></div>
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3. price insensitivity among high income quintiles,<o:p></o:p></div>
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4. home ownership,<o:p></o:p></div>
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5. family wealth, and<o:p></o:p></div>
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6. temporary loss of income.<o:p></o:p></div>
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1. The Pass-Through Assumption<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps most significant mitigating factor is that Ummel
has assumed that 100% of the fee is passed on to consumers. This undoubtedly will not happen. For excise taxes generally, businesses
commonly assume roughly 25% of the cost by reducing returns to capital and
restricting or reducing wages (Tax Policy Center, 2017). To some extent, as wages are reduced across
all wage levels and as stockholders tend to be in higher income quintiles, the
costs borne by the business will largely burden households in the higher
quintiles. So, the 14% of low-income
households or 3.5 million households that are projected to lose financially is
an overestimate. Other analyses use
different pass-through assumptions. For
example, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis assumes no costs
are passed on to the consumer (Horowitz, 2017).
<o:p></o:p></div>
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2. Under-Reported Expenditures<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ummel also noted that there is a discrepancy between
expenditures reported in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Consumer Expenditure
Survey and the Personal Consumption Expenditures component of the U.S. Bureau
of Economic Analysis’s national accounts.
The consequence of this is that reported expenditures are known to be
underestimates of actual expenditures.
Utilities, gasoline, and a few other expenditures are reported more or
less accurately, but other categories were under-reported by 47%. Importantly, expenditures made by households
in higher income quintiles are disproportionately under-reported. Nonetheless, Ummel assumes that
under-reporting is uniform across all income levels. In a footnote, he recognizes that this will
underestimate spending among the rich (Ummel, 2016, p. 4-6). Underestimating these expenditures means that
the aggregate revenue will be larger than estimated, and the dividend to the
lowest income quintile also will be larger.
This is especially important as the underestimated expenditures are
indirect expenditures and make up 60% of the expenditures of the highest income
quintile. Again, this will not only
increase the dividend to all households, it will reduce the percent of lowest
income households that are expected to be made worse off by the fee and
dividend. </div>
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3. Price Insensitivity <o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps one of the reasons that expenditures are
under-reported by households in the higher quintiles is that they are less
concerned about their expenditures than less well-off households. Consequently, they do not notice those
expenditures. They also are likely to be
less price sensitive than the less well-off.
They will be willing to make the same purchases even as prices rise
somewhat. According to Randy Schnepf of
the Congressional Research Service, this is true for consumers making food
purchases, “low-income consumers who spend a significant share of their
household budget on food are likely to be … more responsive to price changes …
than high-income consumers with lower food budget shares” (Schnepf, 2013, p.
28). In the long run, this is very good
news for households in the lowest income quintile. That households in the higher quintiles will
be relatively insensitive to price changes will mean that the lowest income
households will be better able to keep pace with any conservation efforts made
by those in higher quintiles.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. Home Ownership<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not everyone who is in the lowest income quintile is
poor. Many people have substantial
wealth in their houses. Retirees who
have paid off their mortgage can live comfortably with a relatively low income. Others may have substantial savings
conservatively invested. While their
income is low, they nonetheless could enjoy a lifestyle that involves higher
than average expenditures and large carbon footprints. Nationally, there are 6,896,000 homeowners
with incomes less than $30,000 who are 65 years old or older (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2015). Some of these still might
be carrying a mortgage, but the number is likely small. While they may not have the security of
people in the highest quintiles, their ability to afford the increased costs of
a carbon fee might be similar to middle class households. The existence of these households reduces the
percent of households about which we should be acutely concerned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. Family Wealth<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like homeowners with low incomes, other households in the
lowest quintile are not poor in the concerning sense. They may be nominally distinct households,
but benefit from their wealthy families.
Some college students would be good examples of these “households.” While officially falling within the lowest
quintile, they could have resources that allow them to make above average
expenditures and thereby be among the households that are made worse off by the
fee and dividend. Roughly 20.5 million
students attended college in fall of 2016.
A plurality of them came from the highest income quartile of families,
i.e., families with an income of at least $116,000. 87% of high school students in the highest
quartile went on to college (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017;
Pell Institute, 2016). Again, many
“households” composed of college students from this stratum of society might be
nominally in the lowest income quintile, but well-able to afford an increase in
the cost of carbon intensive goods and services.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. Temporary Loss of Income<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The unemployment rate is currently 4.3% or 6.86 million
people and the average length of unemployment is about 26 weeks. Only a quarter of the unemployed remain
unemployed for longer than 26 weeks (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
2017). Loss of employment will surely
send some number of households into the lowest income quintile for a time. All other things being equal, they will
likely not moderate their consumption habits significantly, if they have some
savings to tide them over the period of temporary unemployment. As household consumption correlates strongly
with income, some number of them likely will be above the national
average. What this means is that some
number of households with large carbon footprints will be in the lowest
quintile only temporarily and will have greater resources in future years to
recoup whatever burdens they experience during their weeks or months of
unemployment. These households will, in
essence, be more likely to have high consumption habits and be more financially
secure than those with chronically low incomes.
Recent research has revealed that in addition to people losing
employment, income is often temporarily lost because of reduced hours during a
business downturn (Morduch and Schneider, 2017). The same situation faces small business
owners suffering temporary losses. We,
of course, should be concerned about all of these groups, but their plight can
be distinguished from households with chronically low incomes and for which we
should be acutely concerned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These six mitigating factors or
categories of households all reduce the number of households and the burden
they would suffer from the fee and dividend.
That is, each will reduce the percent of households in the lowest income
quintile that are made worse off by the fee and dividend, such that 14% is an
over estimate of households that will be significantly or chronically
disadvantaged. Additionally, the first
three factors (the pass-through assumption and under-reported expenditures and
price insensitivity by the higher income households) should increase the
dividend for everyone and the mean net financial returns for the lowest income
quintile.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Finally, data indicate that the
burden among the lowest quintile will fall less on the lowest decile (Ummel,
2016 and Horowitz, 2017).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>What can be done to relieve the burdens that remain?</b> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Despite the expected reduction
in the number of households that will suffer a net financial loss and the
expected reduction in the size of that loss, some households in the lowest
income quintile will continue to suffer losses.
Consequently, it will be important to find ways to relieve those
burdens. One simple way would be to
modify the formula for distributing revenue.
CCL is promoting a modified per capita distribution (one share for each
adult and one-half share for each child up to two children per family). CCL believes the simplicity of this formula will
be a political selling point, but it tends to burden single person
households. Other distribution formulas,
nearly as simple, could be implemented that would protect those households. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Another significant method to
protect people in the lowest quintile would be to reduce their carbon intensive
expenditures. As the largest single
category of expenditures is utilities, significant relief can be achieved by de-carbonizing
electricity generation. This is
precisely what the carbon fee and dividend is most likely to accomplish. With rising costs for generating coal and gas
fueled electricity, wind, solar, and other clean energy sources will gain
greater and greater market share.
Already, coal-fired power plants are closing around the country and are
announced to be retired sooner than initially planned. If, ideally, all electricity was generated
from clean sources, the carbon-based expenditures of the lowest quintile would
be reduced significantly. As this
expenditure is proportionately larger than expenditures by higher income
households, the net benefits to the lowest income households would further
improve. As electricity becomes cleaner,
the carbon fee burden associated with consumer goods would also fall. Businesses will seek to reduce their
production costs by making use of low-carbon inputs, thereby reducing the cost
of the fee to consumers. So, the success
of the fee and dividend would reduce both the fee and the dividend, essentially
making it less and less relevant to household finances. The problem of the steadily rising fee would
be counter-acted by the reduced number of goods and services to which the fee
applies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The increased cost of gasoline
production would stimulate more fuel-efficient transportation. Already, hybrids and electric vehicles are
gaining market share. Countries such as
Norway, India, China, and France have already announced intentions to promote
or move entirely to electric vehicles. These are, of course, foreign markets,
but they indicate the direction that the automobile industry is heading. Virtually all major auto manufacturers are
now producing an all-electric car. While
the upfront cost of new<i> </i>hybrid or
electric vehicles will be beyond the reach of most all low-income households,
more efficient vehicles in the used car market will become within reach. As these vehicles appear on the market, the
carbon-intensity of transportation expenditures by the lowest quintile will
fall. Here, too, the fee and dividend is
designed to make itself obsolete. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
There are a number of ways to
reduce the cost of the fee to the lowest quintile that lie outside the fee and
dividend proposal: local, state, and
federal support for energy efficiency upgrades for affordable housing, support
for “Energy Star” appliances, “cash for clunkers” programs, and progressive
utility rate structures are a few obvious tools. Money for these programs could be raised by
allowing households to voluntarily decline their dividend. Checks would come to them with a notice that
if they chose not to cash the check in a specific time period, the money would
be used to support energy efficiency programs or perhaps research and
development into alternative fuels. Given
that most of the revenue generated would come from the highest quintiles and
that these checks would make up typically only about 0.2% of their annual
income, many well-off households likely would be willing to make this
contribution.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Finally, the costs and benefits
examined here are only financial.
De-carbonizing our economy will benefit vulnerable communities located
near polluting power plants. This is a significant
concern among environmental justice advocates.
Cap-and-trade carbon pricing plans do not address this problem. Under a cap-and-trade system, polluting power
plants can purchase off-sets and continue to operate polluting plants usually
affecting poorer neighborhoods. In
contrast, a fee and dividend plan puts market pressures on all fossil fuel
plants equally, thereby promoting healthier conditions for vulnerable
communities. The study conducted by
Regional Economic Modeling, Inc. for CCL found that CCL’s fee and dividend plan
would prevent 230,000 premature deaths in the courses of 20 years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
While we cannot expect that all
households within the lowest quintile will be benefitted by CCL’s carbon fee
and dividend, it is clear that the proposal is extremely progressive and that
the estimate that 14% of the lowest quintile will suffer a burden is an
overestimation. There are clearly ways
in which the households in the lowest quintile can be protected. Among these is simply the fact the fee and
dividend plan is designed to make itself obsolete, particularly in those expenditure
categories that are most damaging to the lowest quintile. <b> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Sources<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Drehbol, Ariel and Lauren Ross, “Lifting the High Energy
Burden in America’s Largest Cities: How Energy Efficiency Can Improve Low
Income and Underserved Communities,” American Council for an Energy-Efficient
Economy, April 2016.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horowitz, John, et al., “Methodology for Analyzing a Carbon
Tax,” Working Paper 115, Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Department of Treasury,
January 2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Morduch, Jonathan and Rachel Schneider, <i>The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of
Uncertainty</i>, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
National Center for Educational Statistics, “Fast Facts,”
U.S. Department of Education, 2017 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372,
retrieved 6/26/2017. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nystrom, Scott and Patrick Luckowk, “The economic, climate,
fiscal, power, and demographic impact of a national fee-and-dividend carbon
tax,” Washington, D.C., Cambridge, Mass.:
Regional Economic Modeling, Inc. and Synapse Energy Economics, Inc.,
June 9, 2014.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pell Institute, “Indicators of higher education equity in
the United States: 2016 historical trend report,” 2016, http://www.pellinstitute.org/downloads/publications-Indicators_of_Higher_Education_Equity_in_the_US_2016_Historical_Trend_Report.pdf,
retrieved 6/26/2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Schnepf, Randy, “Consumers and food price inflation,”
Congressional Research Service, Sept. 13, 2013.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tax Policy Center, “Briefing Book,” Urban Institute and
Brookings Institution, 2017, http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/who-bears-burden-federal-excise-taxes,
retrieved 6/26/2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ummel, Kevin, “Impact of CCL’s proposed carbon fee and
dividend policy: A high-resolution analysis of the financial effect of U.S.
households,” prepared for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Working Paper v1.4, April,
2016.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017, https://www.bls.gov/home.htm,
retrieved 7/6/2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
U.S. Census Bureau, “America’s Families Living
Arrangements,” 2016, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/families/cps-2016.html,
retrieved 6/26/2017.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
U.S. Census Bureau, “American Housing Survey,” 2016, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive/ahstablecreator.html#?s_areas=a00000&s_year=n2015&s_tableName=Table1&s_byGroup1=a1&s_byGroup2=a1&s_filterGroup1=t1&s_filterGroup2=g1,
retrieved 6/26/2017<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div>
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<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Mattlage/Desktop/Household%20Impact/Low%20Income%20-%20High%20Emissions.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[*]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> I
would like to thank Rebecca Schaaf, Ellyn Dooley, David Brittain, and Danny
Richter for editorial comments and general guidance. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-85326973004774079022017-07-05T11:36:00.000-07:002017-07-05T17:04:59.838-07:00The Trump Administration and Fossil Fuels<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The American media are paying close attention to the
investigations into the relations between Russia and Donald Trump’s
administration and campaign. One of the
animating questions is whether the Trump Organization has financial interests
in Russia or debts owed to Russian banks.
The idea that an American president might have personal interests great
enough to affect foreign policy decisions is too juicy for an “adversarial
media” to disregard, and Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns keeps that
question alive, but Trump’s treatment of Russia can be seen differently when it
is put in the context of many of his other actions and political
appointments. It falls into perhaps the
most consistent pattern of behavior exhibited by an otherwise extremely
inconsistent man. Donald Trump is
consistently defending and promoting the fossil fuel industry.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Consider his appointments. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The leader of Trump’s transition effort seeking to find a suitable
Administrator for the E.P.A. was <b>Myron
Ebell</b>, the Director of Global Warming and International Environmental
Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and he has been the group leader
of the Cooler Heads Coalition. According
to its website during Ebell’s tenure as group leader, “members of the coalition point out
that the science of global warming is uncertain, but the negative impacts of
global warming policies on consumers are all too real. Coalition members also
follow the progress of the international Global Climate Change Treaty
negotiations.” Ebell has been among the
world’s most vocal climate science skeptics.
He asserts that while climate change is happening and humans have a role
in it, the extent of that role is uncertain.
The organizations for which he has worked appear to be funded by the
fossil fuel industry, though a complete record of their finances is not
available to the public.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Next,
we have <b>Scott Pruitt</b>, Administrator
of the E.P.A. He too can be described as
a climate change skeptic. Like Ebell, he
acknowledges that the climate is changing and that humans have a role in
causing that change, but he too denies the conclusions of nearly all of the
world’s scientific societies that the human role is dominant. Ebell is an economist and Pruitt is a lawyer,
but for some reason they feel qualified to reject the scientific consensus on
climate change and continue to pretend that there is some meaningful
disagreement among climate scientists. Pruitt
made his name nationally as a dogged opponent of President Obama’s clean energy
efforts and he filed numerous law suits against the E.P.A. as Oklahoma’s Attorney
General, particularly against President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. So once a leading opponent of the E.P.A., he
is now its head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Then
we have <b>Ryan Zinke</b> as Secretary of
the Interior. As if reading from the
most current edition of the climate skeptics’ script, Zinke intoned the very
same views on climate advanced by Ebell and Pruitt during his Senate
confirmation hearing. Though as a state legislator in 2010, he called for "comprehensive clean energy jobs and climate change legislation," by 2014 he was claiming that climate change "was
not settled science." Zinke appears to
have got the memo regarding how a respectable skeptic characterizes the issue:
it’s happening, it’s partly us, but maybe not so much.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Regarding
public policy, Zinke seeks to reduce the restrictions on selling public land to
the private sector and to defer to the states the ability to manage national monuments. A primary beneficiary of both of these
policies would be fossil fuel companies seeking mining and drilling rights on
public lands. At the end of May, Zinke
ordered the drafting of a five-year plan to expand offshore drilling. Later that month, he repealed the Bureau of
Land Management’s moratorium on issuing coal mining leases. In June, he took the first step to open up
oil and gas extraction from the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve by authorizing
a review of the oil and gas contained in the Reserve and is allowing the
venting, flaring, and leaking of methane on public and tribal lands pending
judicial review. These are all moves
that the fossil fuel industry has long desired.
President Trump’s 2018 budget for the Department of Interior has increased
funding for oil and gas programs, including offshore drilling, despite a
general cut in the Department’s budget, including a cut in renewable energy
programs. Additionally, the American
Petroleum Institute hired Ryan Zinke’s former deputy chief of staff Megan
Bloomgren, potentially strengthening the relationship between the Department of
Interior and the oil and gas industry.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Former
Texas Governor <b>Rick Perry</b> became the
Secretary of Energy, ironically after he had run a presidential campaign that
promised to abolish the department. Perry
once called the science behind climate change “unsettled” and a “contrived,
phony mess.” He consistently questioned
the reality of climate change even as recently as 2014, but at his confirmation
hearing he acknowledged that the climate was changing, attributing it to both
natural and human causes, without stating their relative importance. He went on to say that action to address
climate change must be done in a way “that does not compromise economic growth,
the affordability of energy, or American jobs.”
Since then, he has asserted that the role of humans is not a primary
cause of climate change and has promoted the idea of establishing government
funded “red teams” that would be tasked with undermining established scientific
findings about climate change. He has ordered
a review of the national electric grid to determine if the reliability of its "baseload" power has been compromised by government support for wind and solar
energy. Perry’s remarks indicate that he
assumes it has, so the review can be seen as an effort to undermine wind and
solar energy as they are important fossil fuel competitors and guarantee a
role for fossil fuels in the future. The
man managing the grid study will be <b>Brian
McCormack</b>, a former utilities lobbyist and fierce opponent of renewable
energy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Perry
often is praised for the expansion of wind energy in Texas, but he was also a
strong supporter of hydraulic fracturing and called for the lifting of the
moratorium on deep-water drilling put in place following the Deepwater Horizon
disaster. He signed into law a permanent
extension of tax breaks for “high cost” natural gas in an already relatively
low-tax, low-regulation environment.
Perry might have been an authentic “all of the above” energy proponent,
but his sympathies for fossil fuels are undeniable. He is touting “clean coal” and natural gas,
particularly liquid natural gas, saying that natural gas can be just as effect
as the Paris Accord at limiting greenhouse gas emissions. In the future, Perry might have much less to
do with renewable energy as President Trump’s 2018 budget would cut the budget
of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
by 70%. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Also
in the Department of Energy is <b>William
Bradford</b>, head of the Office of Indian
Energy Policy and Programs. His views on
climate change are revealed in his tweets: “unicorns, money trees, moderate
Democrats, free lunch, & manmade [sic] climate change — things that don't exist,”
and “soon, ‘climate change’ cultists will be pitied as the nuts they always
were.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
(Bradford has a checkered
professional history as a law professor at Indiana University for three years,
and even more briefly at the William and Mary Law School and the United States
Coast Guard Academy. Most recently he
was employed at the United States Military Academy for one month before
resigning. He has a documented history
of lying about his military service and his rank as well as being awarded a Silver
Star. His tweets about unicorns and
climate change are actually moderate in comparison to other racist and sexist
tweets he posted about President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Megyn Kelly, and
interned Japanese citizens during World War II.
His Twitter behavior and general attitudes appear consistent with
President Trump’s.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Alex Fitzsimmons </b>is now a
senior adviser in Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy. He was formerly
at the free market think tank the American Energy Alliance, where he wrote blog
posts critical of state mandated renewable energy portfolio standards, “green
energy cronyism,” and other efforts to promote clean, renewable energy. Recently, he worked to promote oil and gas
production via the “Fueling U.S. Forward” campaign. With Fitzsimmons advising the Office
of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, we have another example of the fox
guarding the henhouse. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Inside
the Justice Department, President Trump has nominated <b>Jeffery Bossert Clark</b> to serve as the assistant attorney general
for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Clark is a strong critic of the E.P.A.
referring to it as “pursuing an agenda of control” and saying that it was "reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the
1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy." He served as attorney for an advocacy group
called “Consumers’ Research,” challenging President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. In one legal brief, he argued against the
E.P.A.’s endangerment finding based on easily debunked criticisms of the
climate science consensus. Clark also
represented BP in suits stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Kathleen Hartnett White</b> is the
expected nominee to head the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. She current works at the Texas Public Policy
Foundation which has the mission “to defend liberty, personal responsibility,
and free enterprise in Texas.” The
Foundation denies that there is a consensus among scientists regarding the
cause of global warming. White has been
promoted to lead the C.E.Q. by coal industry executives and conservative think
tanks. Her views on climate change are
in line with other appointments. She is
quoted as saying that “it is likely” that human activity is contributing to
climate change, but she says the extent to which it does is unclear. For her, the science is not settled. In recent years, she has also heaped praise
on CO2, pointing out that our bodies are built on carbon and that it is
essential for photosynthesis. She is the
author of a paper entitled, “Fossil Fuels: The Moral Case” and is the co-author
of a book entitled, <i>Fueling Freedom:
Exposing the Mad War on Energy</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Within the Council on Environmental
Quality, <b>Mario Loyola</b> was hired as
the associate director of regulatory reform.
Previously, Loyola worked for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and
Liberty. He also worked for the Texas
Public Policy Foundation. As a frequent
writer for the <i>National Review</i>,
Loyola has often asserted that the science of climate change is not certain
enough to inform policy decisions. In
January, he wrote that scientists have an “extremely limited ability to
quantify the relationship between CO2 increases and temperature increases
precisely enough to support an informed choice among policy alternatives."
Loyola’s primary interest appears to be
the rollback of environmental regulations of all kinds. He was a critic of President Obama’s Clean
Power Plan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Finally,
we come to Secretary of State <b>Rex
Tillerson</b>, former C.E.O. of Exxon Mobil.
On the surface, he appears to be the model of an enlightened fossil fuel
executive. Tillerson not only publicly
supported U.S. commitments made in the Paris Climate Accord, he has made cogent
arguments in favor of a carbon tax. His
views on climate change, though, are the skeptic’s current party line: climate change is happening, humans are
partly the cause, but how much? We don’t
know. Prior to Tillerson becoming C.E.O.
of Exxon Mobil, the company was a leading force in dismissing concerns about
climate change and poured a great deal of money into “think tanks” that had as
their missions to distort and confuse the public perception of climate
science. This happened despite a history
of Exxon scientists presenting internal reports confirming the climate science consensus. Support for denialist institutions appears to
have changed with Tillerson’s arrival at Exxon Mobil, though the lack of public
records makes this hard to confirm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Currently,
the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating Exxon Mobil to determine if its reports to shareholders understated the
danger of climate action to the company’s future profitability. These understatements would have been made
while Tillerson was C.E.O. Schneiderman
has gone so far as to write in a legal document that Exxon Mobil’s reports to
shareholders were “a sham.” <br />
<br />
Tillerson’s
argument that the U.S. must retain “a seat at the table” in international
discussions of climate change does not mean he has any interest in agreements that will compromise fossil fuel development.
Even his support of a carbon tax might be a ploy to ensure that he has
the standing to advocate a tax that is high enough to blunt the criticism of
climate activist and low enough to keep Exxon Mobil in business. Finally, Tillerson’s relationship with Russia
reveals a long-standing interest in seeing Exxon Mobil involved in the
development of Russian oil and gas fields, particularly in the Russian
controlled Arctic. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This,
of course, leads us to our original question?
What is Trump’s interest in Russia?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Trump
may have personal financial interests in Russia and he may have an emotional
attachment to personalities like Vladimir Putin, but it is hard not to fold
Russia into the evidence of his administration’s symbiotic relationship with
the fossil fuel industry. After all, Russia
is a petrostate and as of March 2017, Putin is on record denying the role of
humans in changing the climate. Putin has
even asserted that global warming is good for the planet. Drawing from statistics reported over the last
few years, Russia is the world’s largest oil producer, the world’s second
largest natural gas producer, and the world’s sixth largest coal producer. It is the world’s largest exporter of
hydrocarbons. (Given the rapid, recent
rise in natural gas production in the U.S., Russia’s position may have slipped
since these numbers were compiled, but its position certainly must remain very
high.) Consequently, it is in the
interest of international fossil fuel companies to maintain good, working
relationships with the Russian government.
Rex Tillerson has been quite adept at this, receiving the Russian Order
of Friendship award from Putin in 2013 after signing deals with the state-owned
oil company Rosneft to partner in the exploitation of Russian oil reserves in
the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea. The
operation was halted, however, after the U.S. placed economic sanctions on
Russia following its invasion of the Crimea. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Time
and again, the Trump administration has taken actions that both symbolically
and substantively support the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Whether is it killing President Obama’s Clean
Power Plan, reneging on commitments made in the Paris Climate Accords, making
Saudi Arabia his first international trip, boasting about his support for coal,
attacking E.P.A. regulations to limit methane leaks in both pipelines and
underground storage facilities, slashing budgets for energy conservation,
approving the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, opening
federal land for fossil fuel exploitation, or supporting offshore drilling, the
pattern is undeniable – the Trump administration is acting aggressively and often
effectively in the interests of fossil fuels.
It is entirely plausible that his efforts to thaw relations with Russia
is first and foremost a part of that effort.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
President
Trump has yet to fill many important positions in his administration. Given his
track record, we can expect more appointments that will support the interest of
the fossil fuel industry. With a
sympathetic Congress, our best hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are
currently via court cases and the emerging economic strength of clean,
renewable energy. The former will depend
on the forward thinking of state and federal judges. The latter will depend on technological
advances and popular support for a livable future.<o:p></o:p></div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-83989085106144333962016-11-02T16:24:00.005-07:002016-11-03T12:29:47.429-07:00How to Rig an Election<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
There has been a great deal of talk about rigging
elections this year. The Democratic
Party has criticized Republican attempts to institute voter ID laws, Bernie
Sanders’s supporters have claimed that the Democratic National Committee tipped
the scales in favor of Hilary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, and now Donald
Trump is warning us that his election will be stolen by voter fraud. Among these accusations and others, some have
more merit than others, but all of them overlooked the real way in which this
election -- and all our elections -- have been rigged. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>A Brief History</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The simplest and certainly the most effective way to rig
an election is through the private funding of campaigns. Elections in the U.S. always have been funded
primarily privately, mostly by rich people associated with businesses, but the
modern period of campaign finance began in the last years of the 19th century
with the activities of Mark Hanna, a key campaign adviser to William
McKinley. Hanna was especially skilled
at eliciting campaign contributions from bank executives. He expected them to contribute money in
proportion to their bank’s share of the nation’s prosperity. Hanna is reported to have once said, “There
are only two important things in politics.
The first is money, and I can’t remember the second.” With the election of 1896, the excesses of
the “Gilded Age” had come to affect politics as never before. This produced a reaction that brought about a
number of important electoral reforms, including a 1907 law prohibiting
corporate contributions to federal political campaigns. Still, this did not end the influence of big
money in politics. Business owners and other
wealthy individuals remained able to make large personal contributions as well
as illegal contributions, due the absence of a dedicated regulatory agency. They did so for several decades, but again, a
reaction resulted in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 which capped
campaign spending on media buys and required the disclosure of campaign
contributions. The Watergate scandal is
often seen as a scandal about a burglary, but at its heart, it was a campaign
finance scandal. Millions of dollars in secret
cash were delivered to the Committee to Re-elect the President in suitcases and
satchels in order to avoid the disclosure requirements of the Federal Election
Campaign Act. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed the
1974 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act. This placed limits on campaign
contributions and spending. It also established, for the first time, a dedicated regulatory body: the Federal Election Commission; however, in <i>Buckley v. Valeo</i> (1976), the Supreme Court struck down spending
limits for both candidate political committees and independent political
committees. This opened the way for
individuals to influence elections through contributions to numerous political
action committees (PACs), federal, state, and local party committees, and “leadership PACs”
established by prominent politicians. Many
of these committees were exempt from disclosing their donors. Consequently, <i>Buckley v. Valeo </i>undid the most significant elements of campaign
finance reform and established the legal precedent that any amount of
spending was protected by the 1st Amendment.
This was defended (and criticized) with the slogan “money is speech.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As before, the excesses of money in politics led to new calls
for reform, resulting in the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
of 2002 (BCRA), sponsored by Senators McCain and Feingold and Congressmen Shays and Meehan. Importantly, the BCRA (1) made party
political committees and independent PACs subject to federal constraints and it
(2) prohibited the airing of “issue advocacy ads” within 60 days of an election, if the ad mentioned a candidate by name.
It also (3) prohibited all issue advocacy ads that were paid for by
corporations, unions, and non-profit advocacy groups. It should be no surprise, though, that
moneyed interests again were able to skirt the restrictions. They did so by using political organizations
defined under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code. These “527s” were not covered by the
BCRA. Worse yet, all three important restrictions established by the BCRA soon were struck down by the Supreme Court. <i>F.E.C v.
Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. </i>(2007)<i> </i>permitted
party and independent PACs again to raise and spend money without federal
restrictions. <i>Citizens United v.
F.E.C. </i>(2010) permitted non-profit corporations to produce issue advocacy ads
mentioning candidate names and air them at any time. Since then, both rulings have been reaffirmed
and broadened by the courts. <i>Citizens United </i>has been broadened to
permit the unlimited funding of PACs by corporations and unions.
Consequently, we now live in the most unregulated, private campaign
funding environment since before 1907.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Two Ways to Rig an Election</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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A private campaign finance system may not be a sure mechanism
for directly electing specific individuals, but it certainly loads the dice in
favor of certain kinds of candidates.
First and most obviously, campaigns which are well-funded have the
ability to conduct larger and better developed political communication
campaigns. They can open offices and hire professional staff members who can then
– with greater resources – conduct polls and focus groups, analyze the
electorate, design effective messages, purchase advertising that will help
shape the issues upon which the election will be decided, and mount an
effective get-out-the-vote campaign. These advantages mean that a candidate
that meets the approval of and therefore receives the financial support of
donors will have a greater chance of winning office than candidates who do not
receive the largess of donors. It is
important to recognize that this advantage does not depend on bribery or
selling one’s legislative power to donors.
The system simply benefits those candidates with whom donors agree. <br />
<br /></div>
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This leads us to the second way in which our private
system of campaign financing rigs (or loads the dice) of our elections. It is true that a relatively large campaign
treasury will not guarantee the election of the candidate, but according to
research done by the U.S. Public Research Interest Group examining the 2000
congressional elections, better funded campaigns won general elections 94% of
the time and the results for primary elections were similar (90%). If we understand
elections as periodic, society-wide events that install thousands of federal and
state officials, the effect of our private campaign finance system becomes clear. If well-financed candidates have a much
better chance of winning an election, officials who get elected will tend to reflect the
preferences of campaign financiers; not simply because candidates seek to
curry favor among the donor class, but because the campaign financiers will
only donate to candidates who are in line with their preferences. This will lead to legislatures and executive
officers that will enact public policies that serve the interests the donor
class and not necessarily the entire body politic, since the interests of these
two groups are not always aligned.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Let’s look at some of the data about this. First of all, people making contributions to
political campaigns are comparatively well-off.
According research by Douglas Phelps, 90% of donations in the
2002 congressional primaries came in amounts at or above $500 – donations much
larger than what the average citizen makes.
These donations were made by just 0.1% of the voting age population. So very few of us make campaign donations and those of us who do usually make rather large donations. Phelps goes on to report that a survey conducted just
five years earlier revealed that nearly 80% of those who donated $200 or more
in the 1996 congressional elections earned more than $100,000 per year. That is, four out of five campaign
financiers were in the top 14% of the country’s income earners and the vast
majority of those who gave larger sums and donated to numerous candidates earned
more than $250,000 per year. That is,
people who were the most influential donors were in the top 1.5% of
earners. It should come as no surprise
that in the decades since these studies were done, <i>F.E.C v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc.,</i> <i>Citizens United v. F.E.C.</i>, and other court rulings have only made this problem worse. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This amounts to rigging not
just individual elections, but to loading the dice for all elections in a way that serves the interests of the donor class. It occurs not because of the conscious actions of
a small conspiracy stuffing ballot boxes or suppressing the vote, but as the natural
and inconspicuous consequence of the election laws that have been put in place by successful politicians.
The result is that public policies passed
into law conform to the preferences of the economic elite and only incidentally
reflect the preferences of the general population. This was demonstrated recently in research
done by Martin Gilens, Professor of Politics at Princeton University and
Benjamin Page, Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University in
their article “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups,
and Average Citizens.” Gilens and his
graduate students examined survey data indicating the preferences of American
citizens regarding 1,779 policy issues. They recorded the political preferences of
citizens with median incomes (typical incomes) and the preferences of citizens at the
90th percentile of incomes (wealthy incomes).
They then compared these two sets of preferences to actual policy
changes that occurred within four years of when the surveys were done. They discovered that policy changes strongly
correlated with the preferences of the wealthy citizens, but correlated with
typical citizens’ preferences only when they happened to be the same as the
preferences of the wealthy. Giles and
Page wrote, “The central point
that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups
representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S.
government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have
little or no independent influence.” Let that sink in. "Mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence" over public policy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The influence of wealth in our political system is greatest at
the highest levels of government, but it exists at the state and local level as
well. Normally, if candidate at lower levels of government conforms to the interests of the wealthy, they become potential candidates for office at higher levels.
Their track record at lower levels is what makes them able to attract
large donations early in higher level campaigns, thereby driving out less
well-funded competitors and then raising yet more money later on. This early pursuit of campaign donations was put in the spotlight by the PAC, EMILY’s List, which is an acronym for “early
money is like yeast.” This is why the
first phase of federal and state-wide campaigns involves prospective candidates
making the rounds of known big donors to try to excite interest. Failing to get support from big money donors
early on means the candidate’s chances for election will be slight and he or
she will not be taken seriously by the media.
The effort to procure this early money has been dubbed “the wealth
primary.” Very few candidates ultimately
succeed who do poorly in the wealth primary.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
What we must keep in mind here is that the private campaign
finance system allows people who can afford to make large contributions much
greater political influence, not just over what our officials do, but over who
our officials are. A single donor who can give
$100,000 dollars in an election cycle has the same influence in the wealth
primary as one thousand donors who can give
only $100 dollars, and of course there are billionaires and multimillionaires who donate much more than $100,000 dollars in an election cycle. The political influence of Tom Steyer and his wife Kathyrn Taylor would be equal to the influence of a city of 672,862 people or roughly Detroit, Michigan, and the influence of Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam would be equal to the influence of a city of 473,572 people or roughly Kansas City, Missouri, if each of their residents including infants and children contributed $100 dollars. Thus, we are left with a
system that does not ensure effective, equal political participation on the
basis of one person, one vote. Instead, we
have a system that affords political influence based on how rich a person is. This is the very definition of plutocracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In summary, it seems clear that the wealthy are able to effect
public policy to their liking, while the rest of the population is excluded from the decision making process.
This is the natural consequence of an electoral system which produces officials
that were made viable for office by the wealthy donor class. While high school civics teachers, media
commentators, and elected officials are largely united in saying that we live
in a democracy, on closer examination we see that it is a plutocracy – a
government that is not of, by, and for the people, but of, by, and for the
wealthiest people. Elections
– the ostensible hallmark of democracy – are, in the U.S., a public ritual in which we
legitimate the officials that have been chosen for us by the wealthy. At best, we are given the role of arbitrating
political disagreements between competing sectors of wealthy people.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Rigging Re-election</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Once in office, officials have numerous ways of rigging their own re-elections. They, of
course, have a much greater ability to load the dice by making contacts with
like-minded wealthy donors and their prominent position gives them a powerful
pulpit for campaigning year-round among those donors.
They generally do not have to worry about establishing “name
recognition.” In a 2012 study, Stockemer
and Praino report that between 1952 and 2008, incumbents running for a seat in
the U.S. House won reelection at rates between 89% and 99%, demonstrating just
how strong the incumbent advantage is. More specifically, Abramowitz, Alexander, and Gunning (2006) found that “the reelection rate of House incumbents
has increased from 87% between 1946 and 1950 to 94% between 1952 and 1980, 97%
between 1982 and 2000, and 99% in the 2002–2004 elections.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The greatest advantage of incumbency, however, is the
opportunity to participate in drawing district lines after the decadal U.S.
census. By carefully gerrymandering districts,
elected officials choose their voters instead of allowing voters to choose their elected
officials. The two clearest techniques
for doing this is (1) to concentrate a large number of voters of the opposition party into a
single district, thereby giving those voters only one representative when their
numbers would deserve more and (2) to dilute voters of the opposition party across several
districts so that they again are underrepresented. In these cases, the elections are rigged state-wide
by the party that controls the redistricting process. This is done by both the Republican and
Democratic Parties. For example, in 2014
in Democratic Maryland, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives
received 42% of votes for major party candidates. That should yield at least three
Republican representatives out of eight for the state, but due
to the district lines, Maryland Republicans have only one representative. In Republican
Georgia, Democratic candidates for the House received 41.5% of votes for major party candidates. That should
yield roughly six Democratic representatives out of 14 for the state, but again due to the district lines, Georgia Democrats have
only four representatives. This undemocratic representation of voters could
be more or less rectified by appointing non-partisan redistricting commissions
with binding authority, but the majority parties in most states prefer to rig
their elections to ensure disproportionate representation. So not only are voters relegated to
legitimating candidates presented to them by the donor class, many of voters
are deprived of any effective role because of gerrymandering. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Other Rigging Techniques</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Of course when we think of rigging elections, we tend to
think of fraudulent voting, stuffing ballot boxes, tampering with computer code, misreporting
results, and numerous techniques to suppress the vote. It is possible that many of these activities
do take place from time to time and one should not minimize their harms. Voter ID laws and the disenfranchisement of ex-felons stands out here, but they other techniques are probably relatively rare and unlikely to tip any but the closest elections. None of them constitute a critical threat
to democratic rule on a society-wide basis. Focusing on election rigging
of this sort distracts our attention from the systemic rigging that generally goes on unnoticed and does have a society-wide effect.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
One voter suppression technique that is seldom mentioned
is restricting ballot access. Unlike many
of the techniques just mentioned, this is a wholesale suppression of the
vote which tends to restrict the topics that can enter the public debate. Voters who seek to cast their
ballots for candidates in parties other than the Republican and Democratic
Parties are often precluded from doing so by onerous restrictions that prevent
their candidates from even appearing on the ballot. The Democratic Party is particularly
aggressive about blocking ballot access.
Party lawyers frequently challenge petition signatures and file court
cases to block their political opponents from even being a choice for the
voters. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Beyond these methods, the Democratic and Republican
Parties both have rigged the presidential elections (and similarly state elections) in
their favor by forming the Commission on Presidential Debates and writing rules
that effectively preclude other candidates from participating in the debates and thus gaining a forum. Finally, the marginalization of alternative political views is reinforced by a corporate media which provides the donor-approved candidates
with billions of dollars of free media; meanwhile, they almost invariably ignore,
dismiss, and sometimes ridicule any competing candidates.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Conclusion</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
What is the most significant conclusion we can draw from
the foregoing? Elections in the United
States are the property of a rich donor class which uses them to legitimate
public officials who then can be expected to act in the interest of the donor
class. Simply put, we do not live in a democracy. We live in a plutocracy as sure as any exists. It is up to us to decide what we do under these
circumstances, but if we truly are committed
to democracy, we must ask ourselves, how are we to behave as citizens of a plutocracy?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Sources consulted for this essay include:</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Abramowitz, Alan I., Brad Alexander, and Matthew
Gunning, “Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S.
House Elections,” <i>Journal of Politics</i>,
68(1), February 2006.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->“Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act,” <i>Federal Register</i>, 68(2), January 3,
2003. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Buckley v.
Valeo</i>, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Citizens
United v. Federal Elections Commission</i>, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Federal
Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc.</i>, 551 U.S. 449 (2007).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Gilens, Martin and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing
Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” <i>Perspectives on Politics</i>, 12(3), Sept.
2014.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Guide to
U.S. Elections</i>, Deborah Kalb, ed., Washington D.C.: CQ Press, 2005.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Lioz, Adam and Gary Kalman, <i>The Wealth Primary: The Role of Big Money in the 2006 Congressional
Primaries</i>, Washington, D.C.: U.S. PIRG Education Fund, 2006.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]-->Makinson, Larry, <i>Speaking Freely: Washington Insiders Talk About Money in Politics</i>, 2nd
edition, Washington D.C.: Center for Responsive Politics, 2003.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i>OpenSecrets.org</i>, accessed November 2, 2016.<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->Phelps, Douglas H., “Leveling the Playing Field,”
<i>National Civic Review</i>, 93(2), Summer
2004.</div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->Raskin, Jamin and John Bonifaz, “Equal
Protection and the Wealth Primary,” <i>Yale
Law & Policy Review</i>, 11(273), 1993.<o:p></o:p></div>
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</span></span><!--[endif]-->Stockemer, Daniel and Rodrigo Praino, "The Incumbency Advantage in the US Congress: A Roller-Coaster Relationship," <i>Politics</i>, 32(3), October 2012.<o:p></o:p></div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-86417994389436768482016-10-28T23:29:00.000-07:002016-10-28T23:29:32.773-07:00Buddhist Symbolism in Tibetan Thangkas: The Story of Siddhartha and Other Buddhas Interpreted in Modern Nepalese Painting / Ben Meulenbeld -- Havelte/Holland: Binkey Kok Publications, 2004Beyond its most basic tenets, Buddhism is not simple. It contains complicated psychological and metaphysical theories that are difficult to understand, except after long study. This posed a problem for monks bringing the religion to communities that had no previous experience with Buddhism's Indic background. In Tibet, propagation of the religion relied, therefore, on stories of the Buddha and his past lives, a form of literature called the jataka. Another method of propagating Buddhism was through art. In the 10th century, when Buddhism was experiencing a renaissance in Tibet, the Indian tradition paintings, called thangkas, representing buddhas and bodhisattvas were used as a teaching aids to convey complicated ideas and to serve as objects upon which one could focus one's mind in meditation. They were easily transported and could serve to set up a portable alter.<br />
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Ben Meulenbeld's <i>Buddhist Symbolism in Tibetan Thangkas</i> provides a fine introduction to the thangka and its common subjects. Moreover, it is a beautiful book with 37 colorful plates reproducing thangkas of a large private collection of modern works painted in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The first chapter provides an introduction to the purpose and creation of thangkas, from their design through their painting and ultimately to their framing. The second chapter provides a brief description of the religious background of thangkas, particularly a recounting of the life of Siddhartha Buddha. It is illustrated with four thangkas. The third chapter is an extremely brief account of Theravada Buddhism. This is a Buddhist tradition that survives in Sri Lanka and in parts of Southeast Asia. As Tibet is not heir to this tradition, the chapter is brief and illustrated with only one thangka of the historical Buddha. Instead, Buddhism was brought to Tibet by Mahayana Buddhists. So the fourth chapter, on the Mahayana tradition is much longer and illustrated wigh 13 plates. This tradition laid great emphasis on the bodhisattva, an enlightened figure who forswears liberation in nirvana to help all other sentient beings attain enlightenment. Many of the thangkas in this chapter depict legendary buddhas and important bodhisattvas that make up a kind of pantheon of Buddhist personalities. The fifth and longest chapter deals with the Vajrayana tradition. It is illustrated with 18 thangkas. The Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism is now the dominant tradition in Tibet. The thangkas here depicted actual figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism along with several other miscellaneous subjects including, the Wheel of Life, a Yogini, a Gathering of Saints, Kalachakras, Herukas, the Mandala of Yama, and two Kalachakra mandalas. The final chapter deals with paubas. These are like thangkas, but include with Hindu themes. It is short and is illustrated with only one pauba.<br />
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Most all of the thangkas follow a very standard rather symmetric design with figures seemingly placed on a two dimensional surface, usually in a cross-legged position facing forward. They hold or are accompanied by items that indicate their identity. In the case of the historical figures in the fifth chapter, the image is much more naturalistic. The figures do not face directly forward, but sit facing obliquely amid a naturalistic background. <br />
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The two greatest strengths of Meulenbeld's work are first, the explanations of the various legendary buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other beings in the Buddhist "pantheon." One is given a good understanding of their primary features and the symbolic objects and hand gestures that are characteristic of the being. Second, are the illustrations themselves. They are simply exquisite. Unfortunately, despite the folio format of the book, seeing the details of the illustrations requires strong lighting and a magnifying glass, and the reproductions are not as sharps as one would like. However, rectifying this shortcoming would involve printing the work in an over sized format using much more expensive reproduction technology. Consequently, having the work in a more manageable format is a compensating virtue.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-21101970084398819402016-10-25T16:36:00.000-07:002016-10-29T14:21:48.330-07:00Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right / Arlie Russell Hochschild -- London: The New Press, 2016It is common for political commentators to lament the political divide that has become a chasm in our country. In 2004, the divide was the subject of Barak Obama's breakthrough speech at the Democratic National Nominating Convention, but since then the divide has only become worse. Among liberals, the main question the divide poses is, "why are so many people in the working class voting against their economic interests?" This question was made popular by Thomas Frank's 2004 book, <i>What's the Matter with Kansas?</i> Frank's explanation was that clever deception by establishment Republicans -- supported by right wing media -- has duped many working class people into betraying their economic interests, and all they get in exchange are empty promises to enact a socially conservative agenda. Other authors have picked up on this theme. Upon closer examination, though, this explanation appears too shallow and demeaning to account for the long-standing allegiance to the Republican Party among many working class voters. Indeed, the explanation seemed too facile to UC-Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, especially as she spent five years in southwest Louisiana getting to know citizens on the other side of the divide. Her book <i>Strangers in Their Own Land</i> is Hochschild's report on her "journey to the heart of our political divide." It is an admirable contribution to the attempt to communicate across that divide.<br />
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Hochschild's contact with conservatives in and around the town of Lake Charles, Louisiana was facilitated by the liberal mother-in-law of one of her former graduate students. Hochschild's Louisiana contact was able to introduce her to what was to Hochschild a warm and welcoming community of conservatives with whom she became friendly in the course of numerous formal and informal interviews. These interviews were conducted over the course of five years. Hochschild's project might be considered a classic anthropological study in which the anthropologist embeds herself in an alien community in an attempt to understand that community from the inside -- that is, from the perspective of the community members. This requires a concerted effort to discard as much as possible the previous, external perspective and social assumptions the anthropologist brings to the study. Hochschild describes this as overcoming "the empathy wall." In doing so, Hochschild claims to have understood the "deep story" of conservatives living in and around Lake Charles. <br />
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By "deep story," she means a perspective that is not necessarily based on simple facts of the world, but on the what seems true emotionally. Some deep story or another, in this sense, predicates everyone's sense of and explanation of the world. One's deep story will predispose one to either be credulous or skeptical of the many dubious claims we routinely encounter. The deep story is critical in constructing our system of beliefs. By discovering the deep story of the conservatives in Lake Charles, Hochschild believes she is better able to understand the motives the people on the other side of the political divide. By doing so, she was able to open up avenues of communication heretofore closed to her. It is clear that her work encourages us not only to appreciate her own effort, but to follow in her footsteps -- to seek a more charitable understanding of those with whom we disagree. We'll look at the deep story that lies behind the conservative worldview a little later.<br />
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To begin to understand the perspective of conservatives, Hochschild investigates what she calls a "keyhole issue:" environmental destruction. Hochschild seeks to understand why people who have been severely harmed by pollution from Louisiana's the petrochemical industry would be so hostile to government regulation. She calls this "the great paradox." Curiously, the solution to the great paradox is one that environmentalists understand all too well. Hochschilds interviewees recognize the damage done to their communities by industry. The first portion of her book recounts the horrific effects she heard described. In one instance, the 700 acres of Bayou d'Inde became so saturated with contaminants from illegal dumping by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company that the property value of the residents crashed and their livelihood from fishing was destroyed. In another, a subterranean salt dome was punctured by the drill from a mining company, Texas Brine, causing a 37 acre sink hole to form which devoured the entirety of Bayou Corne, home to 350 residents.<br />
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While this is not part of the region of Louisiana known as "cancer alley," Hochschild heard story after story of cancer deaths. Everyone in the area knew or was related to someone who had developed cancer. In one instance a man recounts eleven people in his family and close neighbors (including himself and his wife) who died from or were fighting cancer. Hochschild recounts so many tribulations faced by the residents of Lake Charles and its environs that it is bewildering to read of the general hostility to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality; but their hostility is not without some foundation. These residents see government regulatory bodies failing to protect their land and health. <br />
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Indeed, the primary role of these regulatory bodies has been to permit the destruction of people's lives and communities in the interest of the petrochemical industry. Among environmentalists this is said to be a consequence of "regulatory capture" by industry. Due to the revolving door between industry and agency executives, regulations designed to protect people and the environment are merely one consideration balanced against business and economic interests. The role of the regulator is to determine the extent to which exemptions can be made to "balance" these interests. The agencies are reduced to exemption-granting bureaucracies. Hochschild reports that "according to [Louisiana's] own website, 89,787 permits to deposit waste or do anything that affected the environment were submitted between 1967 and July 2015. Of these, only sixty -- or .07 percent -- were denied." In light of this, it is understandable that the residents would see the regulatory agencies as aiding and abetting their suffering. (For an excellent examination of how regulatory agencies function and their failure to protect the environment, see <i>Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age </i>by Mary Christina Wood -- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.)<br />
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This plays directly into the hostility to taxes that is prominent among working class conservatives. Far from providing value for the cost, government merely appropriates the workers' limited income for useless bureaucracies or for welfare programs that they believe go mostly to people other than themselves, including unproductive government bureaucrats. Many of Hochschild's interviewees acknowledge that they or their family and neighbors take advantage of some of these programs, but they do so with some embarrassment and with the attitude that as long as its available and necessary, they might as well take advantage of it. In many cases, they claimed to be willing to forego the assistance, if the entire program were abolished and attendant tax burden were removed. <br />
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The deep story behind these and other attitudes that Hochschild believes she has discovered was confirmed by her interviewees. They imagine themselves in a long line in a open field. The line is moving slowly toward a distant hill. Over the hill is the American Dream. They are patiently waiting their turn, when after a while, people who had been behind them, begin cutting in line in front of them. They are expected to allow this because of the disadvantages these line-cutters (or their ancestors) experienced. Of course, they see themselves as responsible and hard working, and that the line-cutters are getting something for nothing. In this analogy, they are white and Christian, while the line cutters are members of minority groups: black, Latino, immigrants, Muslims, women, and government bureaucrats, often no more disadvantaged than they are. To add insult to injustice, many in the line in front of them turn around to hurl unkind epithets at them: racist, homophobic, ignorant, cracker, redneck, hick, white trash, etc. and criticize them for a lack of empathy. Recently, the President of the United States is actively facilitating the line cutting. He himself is a line cutter. <br />
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Given this deep story and the tribulations faced by a clearly marginalized population, it is easy to understand why working class conservatives feel "anger and mourning" over their fallen status and why they might choose different means to rectify their loss than the means chosen by historically marginalized groups. It is also understandable why they might resent a media that ridicules them, a liberal elite that ignores them in preference to people they see as their competition, and even a Republican establishment that works in tandem with the corporations in a system of crony capitalism. Their condition, while possibly slightly better than minorities and recent immigrants, is not markedly different when compared to the owners and managers of our society who are clearly beyond their reach. Consequently, their dignity requires an even playing field, not vis-a-vis the corporate and government elite, but vis-a-vis their ordinary fellow citizens.<br />
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While Hochschild does not mention meritocracy, her observations support the idea that working class conservatives ardently support the values implicit in a meritocracy. They do not want what they have not earned and they find it morally objectionable that anyone would be required to sacrifice (in taxes) their hard earned money for the benefit of others. Charity must be voluntary or it is little better than theft. This also provides the basis for excusing the excesses of the most well-off and defending them against high tax rates. For the conservative working class, work and business is the essence of social life, and those who have become successful deserve admiration and respect, not envy and disdain. Government intrusion in the market merely interferes with the working of a meritocracy. It is just another obstacle in their path to someday joining the wealthy class. One need not have a highly developed defense of laissez faire capitalism to recognize the relative value of hard work and frugality in markets dominated by small business and service sector employment. In much of the country, particularly in rural areas, this is business environment. Large corporations, even with their downsides, can be believed to be beneficial engines in an otherwise stagnant economy. In the words of one of Hochschild's interviewees, "pollution is the price we pay for capitalism."<br />
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Perhaps the most admirable features of <i>Strangers in Their Own Land</i> are the effort to overcome the "empathy wall" and the goal of seeing those on the other side not as simple cardboard cut outs described in political polemics, but as real people living difficult lives with a genuine sense of dignity and morality. In many ways, this morality is different from people on the other side of the wall, but in other ways it is similar. Indeed, this was the message that Barak Obama attempted to communicate in his 2004 speech before the Democratic National Nominating Convention. <br />
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Furthermore, Hochschild is able to distinguish species of thought within the people she interviewed. In Part 3, Hochschild describes "the team player," "the worshiper," and "the cowboy." One can see these personalities in wider political discourse. The team player is a loyal member of the Republican establishment, well-acquainted with the ideology of conservative politics, particularly deregulation and reduced taxation. The team player places trust in the party and its allied institutions in its contest against the Democrats and their allied institutions. The worshiper places his or her faith in God and the Church above any other social or political institution and is in common cause with the conservative (read Republican) movement insofar as he or she believes God, the Church, and Christian morality is under attack from a secular (read Democratic) society which has largely dominated government and our main cultural institutions. Finally, the cowboy is the classic rugged individual, willing to resist social forces larger than himself or herself in defense of his or her dignity. Team players might be just as familiar to many as Democratic Party team players, differing only in that they are motivated by a different ideology, while worshipers and cowboys cut an honorable figure, if one accepts the values that they accept. But clearly, liberals must scale the empathy wall before allowing themselves to adopt this point of view. Hochschild's work should help liberals understand that conservatives must not be treated as a monolith, but that they are as various as any political grouping and as people, they have legitimate interests and are deserving of basic respect.<br />
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This, however, introduces one of two criticisms that I have of the work. Hochschild consciously sought to study "the geographic heart of the right." For her, this turned out to be Louisiana which cast only 14% of its votes for Obama in 2012, has 50% of its residents supporting the Tea Party, and is second only to South Carolina in Tea Party state and federal legislators. Furthermore, she studied only people in a particularly, environmentally hard hit parish, Calcasieu Parish. While this admittedly would provide her a clear picture of people on the other side of the political divide, it is also a rather rare -- perhaps unique -- corner of the other side. Hochschild wondered if her subjects were "odd-balls," not representative of conservatives in other locales, but she was reassured to find that the same relationship between environmental damage and politic ideology held across the country. In an appendix she writes, "The Louisiana story is an extreme example of the politics-and-environment paradox seen across the nation." But this is precisely what should concern her. An extreme example is by definition an odd-ball. Working class conservatives, Tea Party supporters, and Trump supporters live in communities all across the country, each with their own local history: Peoria, Illinois; Manchester, New Hampshire; Grand Junction, Colorado; even Seattle, Washington and New York City. So her exploration of "the heart of the right" may not tell us as much about the right as she suggests.<br />
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My second criticism of her work is its relative neglect of the elephant in the room: race relations. The deep story that was being told to her studiously avoided discussions of race. When it did arise, her interviewees reported not being racist. After all, they rejected David Duke, did not use "the N-word," and did not hate black people; however, the deep story of a lot of other southerners would include a long history of slavery at the hands of white people, followed by apartheid, Jim Crow, and now the incarceration state. Granted, Hochschild was acting in the fine tradition of anthropology in attempting to understand her subjects from their own perspective, but the family legacies of racism, particularly in the South, and the barely disguised (and sometimes undisguised) racial animosity among Tea Party members, the Alt-right, and Donald Trump's campaign seems to demand that the question of race be seriously dissected. Hochschild's subjects may not consider themselves racist and they may not be racist on their own understanding of the concept, but they also might be simply disingenuous or in denial about their own subconscious motivations. It seems that Hochschild was simply too polite to really explore this hot topic, possibly because she might lose access to her subjects.<br />
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Nonetheless, <i>Strangers in Their Own Land</i> is a remarkably valuable look into a world that academic authors seldom approach dispassionately, much less with sympathy. A dispassionate approach is necessary to understand and address the political divide that has paralyzed nearly every attempt to address important social, political, and economic problems. Additionally, a sympathetic approach is necessary in order to demonstrate respect for a population that objectively speaking has suffered grievous harm from our social, political, and economic order. Hopefully, Hochschild's work will initiate a new phase of social and political analysis that will bridge the chasm that separates us and bring us greater understanding, peace, harmony, and justice.<br />
<br />Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-68696934491583153042016-10-24T15:05:00.000-07:002016-10-24T18:39:42.250-07:00The Words of My Perfect Teacher / Patrul Rinpoche -- Padmakara Translation Group, trans. -- New Dehli: Harper Collins, 1994In the 8th century, Buddhism came to Tibet. Among the first and most important Indian emissaries was Padmasambhava, who is venerated by all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, but particularly by the Nyingma tradition. Anticipating the persecution of Buddhism, Padmasambhava is believed to have hidden Buddhist texts to be discovered by future generations. Many of these "treasures" are claimed to have been found. Some are physical texts. Others are "mind treasures," recovered in the course of meditation. Among the most significant treasure hunters was the 18th century monk Jigme Lingpa. In the course of a long period of meditation, Lingpa is believe to have received a teaching from Longchen Rabjam, a 14 century master and scholar of the the Nyingma tradition. The teaching is understood, however, to have originated with Padmasambhava. Lingpa set it to writing as <i>The Heart Essence of the Great Expanse</i>, a cycle of teaching that become central to the Nyingma tradition and was passed down from teacher to student for centuries. In the 19th century, Patrul Rinpoche put into writing a portion -- the preliminary practices -- of this teaching as he learned it from his guru, Jigme Gyalwai Nyugu. It is titled <i>Kunzang Lama'i Shelung</i>, or <i>The Words of My Perfect Teacher</i>.<br />
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<i>The Words of My Perfect Teacher</i> is an extremely popular exposition of important ideas of the Tibetan tradition. Its popularity stems in part from it clear, direct prose. Divided into three parts, <i>The Words</i> provides an account of "The External Preliminaries," "The Internal Preliminaries," and "The Swift Path of Transference." "The External Preliminaries" explain how ordinary human life is uniquely situated to bring about liberation in that beings in lower realms (animals, pretas, and hell-beings) experience too much suffering and delusion to achieve enlightenment, while beings in higher realms (asuras and devas) experience too little suffering (and delusion) to seek enlightenment. Second, "The External Preliminaries" point out the impermanence of all things, particularly human life, underscoring the importance of seeking enlightenment as one has a rare chance in this human life. It goes on to point out the ubiquity of suffering, how karma applies to our actions, the benefits of liberation, and the methods for following a spiritual teacher. These preliminaries are "external" in that they largely describe the context in which one finds oneself in pursuit of liberation and overt techniques to do so.<br />
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"The Internal Preliminaries" addresses techniques for controlling and developing one's mind to further one's progress to enlightenment. This begins with "taking refuge" in the Buddha, the Dharma (the teaching), and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists). "Taking refuge" might be understood as placing one's faith in these three "jewels." Just as a traveler might place his or her faith in a map maker, in the map, and in his or her fellow travelers to reach the destination, the Buddhist places his or her faith in the three jewels. Furthermore, The Internal Preliminaries discusses what is perhaps the most critical aspect of mental development: the development of bodhicitta (the enlightened mind). This is an attitude of unconditional love and compassion for all sentient beings. Developing bodhicitta will purify one's past negative actions and generate the strength to pursue the path to liberation. The techniques involved in developing bodhicitta involve in part concentration and meditation on mandalas and mantras.<br />
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The practices involved in The Internal Preliminaries require a spiritual guide, i.e., a qualified teacher. In the Tibetan tradition, these teachers directly descend from the Buddha through Padmasambhava, known as the Second Buddha. Some are believed to be reincarnations of important bodhisattvas. The Dalai Lamas, for example, are thought to be reincarnations of Avalokitesvara. Reliance on a spiritual guide is a salient feature of Tibetan Buddhism, sometimes called "Lamaism," though some authors reject this as an overestimate of the importance of the veneration of the spiritual guide. In any case, <i>The Words of My Perfect Teacher </i>(in its title alone) does emphasize veneration of the spiritual guide and presents the guide as critical to one's progress toward enlightenment, though when one does not have access to a genuine lama, a simple monk or even lay Buddhist can serve as at least a beneficial substitute.<br />
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The third part of <i>The Words</i> describes the transference of consciousness at the time of death. Five sorts of transference are possible: transference to the dharmakaya, the sambhogakaya, and the nirmanakay, as well as "ordinary transference" and transference performed for the dead by a spiritual guide. Transference to the dharmakaya is the supreme transference, where the person's consciousness becomes one with the true and auspicious qualities of the Buddha. The dharmakaya is the abstract, cosmic Buddha-nature. Transference to the sambhogakaya occurs when one's consciousness becomes one with the Buddha-nature that is instructive to all bodhisattvas, and transference to the nirmanakaya occurs when one's consciousness is capable of becoming reborn as a buddha in a worldly realm. Ordinary transference involves rebirth into "a pure land of great bliss" and transference performed by a spiritual guide at the time of death will prevent rebirth in a lower realm. The rituals involved in this last transference are described in the <i>Bardo Thodol</i> or <i>The Tibetan Book of the Dead</i>. <br />
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The content of <i>The Words of My Perfect Teacher</i> are limited to the expounding the preliminary practices in the larger work <i>The Heart Essence of the Great Expanse</i>, which continues by describing the rest of the path to liberation. The continuation involves three phases: the generation phase, in which one visualizes oneself as a buddha and employs mantras and mandalas in meditation to make spiritual progress; the perfection phase, in which the meditative practices become a living experience; and the Great Perfection, in which one comes to understand the ultimate nature of the mind and immediately experience Buddha-nature itself.<br />
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<i>The Words of My Perfect Teacher</i> certainly lives up to its reputation. I have read few expositions of the central ideas of Buddhism that are clearer or more simply expressed. I would recommend to readers who don't necessarily have a deep background in Buddhism, though it is a classic which anyone interested in Buddhism would benefit from reading. Of particular interest are the chapters on impermanence, training the mind through meditation on impartiality, love, compassion, and sympathetic joy, arousing and developing bodhicitta, practicing the Six Perfections of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, and wisdom. These ideas, however, are presented along with chapters dealing with culturally specific religious ideas which will strike a Western reader as superstitious or at least mythic. Nonetheless, taken as an anthropological text, even these make for fascinating reading. <br />
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<br />Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-26305543111984508682016-10-19T13:30:00.000-07:002016-10-22T19:10:13.878-07:00The Tibetan Book of the Dead / W.Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. -- Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, trans. -- N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1960The Evans-Wentz edition of <i>The Tibetan Book of the Dead</i> or <i>Bardo Thodol -- </i>as it is more properly titled -- was first published in 1927, but it gained enormous attention in the 1960s and 1970s when interest in Eastern philosophy was rising in the West. Traditionally, the text is believed to have been composed by Padmasambhava, an 8th century Indian Buddhist scholar who was among the first Buddhists (if not the first) to bring Buddhism to Tibet. Anticipating the persecution of Buddhism in the 9th century, Padmasambhava is believed to have hidden numerous texts to be uncovered by future generations. In the 14th century, Karma Lingpa is said to have discovered one of these texts, titled <i>Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, the Natural Liberation of Intention</i>, part of which is the <i>Bardo Thodol</i> or <i>Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State</i>. This English translation of the title is apt, as the text describes the experiences of a recently deceased person as he or she passes from one life to the next. Furthermore, the text is read ritually in the presence of the deceased in order to focus his or her disembodied consciousness on liberation with the hope of achieving a more fortunate rebirth or escaping the cycle of rebirth entirely.<br />
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The intermediate period (bardo) between lives is said to last 49 days. This period is divided into three stages: the Chikhai Bardo, the Chonyid Bardo, and the Sidpa Bardo. During the Chikhai Bardo, the consciousness of the deceased is confused. Consequently, the reading of the <i>Bardo Thodol</i> in the presence of the deceased's body is intended to focus his or her attention on the Dharma, allowing the deceased to achieve immediate enlightenment. Immediate (or sudden) enlightenment is thought to be possible by Tibetan Buddhists and it is particularly possible during the bardo between death and rebirth. The Chikhai Bardo is known as the Bardo of the Moment of Death. Enlightenment and liberation come to the deceased if he or she is able to recognize the clear light of reality that appears during this stage. If, however, the deceased becomes frightened of the clear light, he or she will go on to experience the Chonyid Bardo, known as the Bardo of Reality. <br />
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During the Chonyid Bardo, the deceased is visited by peaceful and wrathful deities. In the first five days the deceased is visited by peaceful deities, namely, the five dhyani buddhas: Vairochana, Vajrasattva, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, and Amoghasiddhi on successive days and each accompanied by their consorts and retinue. With the appearance of each dhyani buddha, the deceased has the opportunity to recognize reality and attain enlightenment. If, however, he or she fails to do this, then all of the deities, their consorts, and retinues appear on the sixth day, presenting another opportunity for enlightenment. Failing this, the deceased is presented on the seventh day with a final chance for enlightenment by peaceful deities: the "Knowledge-Holding Deities" from the "holy paradise realms."<br />
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The deceased then experiences seven days of wrathful deities (or hekula). The first five of these deities are in fact the same peaceful deities that appeared earlier, but now appearing in their wrathful forms. On the 13th day, eight other wrathful deities appear to the deceased and on the 14th day, four female "door keepers" appear along with numerous additional wrathful deities. In the Tibetan tradition, hekula are guardians, representing a person's determination to defeat the obstacles to enlightenment. So while they appear fearsome, they offer the deceased additional chances for sudden enlightenment.<br />
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Failing (or fearing) to recognize reality when presented with it face-to-face during the 14 days of the Chonyid Bardo, the deceased enters the Sidpa Bardo, known as the Bardo of Seeking Rebirth. Here, the deceased flees from the terrors of the previous bardo and seeks escape from the terrible face of reality that appears to the person encumbered with bad karma. The deceased is attracted to wombs out of which he or she might be reborn into the realm of samsara. The text explains how the deceased should go about closing wombs to avoid rebirth in particular bad circumstances and how to choose a womb out of which to be reborn. One's karma, however, will tend to determine where one is reborn. One might be reborn in any of the six realms as a denizen of hell, a hungry ghost (preta), an animal, a human, a demi-god (asura), or a god (deva) depending upon one's karma.<br />
<br />
The <i>Bardo Thodol</i> is considered among a genre of literature known as a tantra. These works are central to the form of Buddhism common to Tibet known as the Vajrayana. Tibetan Buddhism is often considered a form of Mahayana Buddhism, but the veneration of the tantras justifiably separates Tibetan Buddhism from Mahayana Buddhism. The Vajrayana emphasizes a number of ideas that make this clear. First, the possibility of sudden enlightenment distinguishes Vajrayana from the Mahayana tradition which emphasizes the need for numerous reincarnations to build up the necessary merit to achieve enlightenment. Second is the veneration of the lama or teacher. All forms of Buddhism recognize the importance of respect for the Buddha and other spiritual guides, but the Vajrayana takes this veneration much more seriously. The trisarana, or "three refuges" which Buddhists embrace, are composed of the Buddha, the dharma (the teaching), and the samgha (the community of Buddhists). Taking refuge in these three "jewels" is something like offering a basic profession of the Buddhist faith -- that is, committing the Buddhist to an intent to gain enlightenment. In the Vajrayana, a fourth jewel is sometimes recognized, i.e., the specific teacher who initiates the follower to the path. Third, the Vajrayana is characterized by an elaborate set of symbols that is used to educate and focus the attention of the Buddhist on the path to enlightenment. This has generated a rich body of art used in its rituals. Fourth, throughout India and the cultures it has influenced, there is a belief in the magical, superpowers of enlightened beings called siddha. Such beings play a prominent role in the Vajrayana. Much of these aspects of Tibetan Buddhism are consonant with the shamanistic beliefs of the Bon religion that had been practice in Tibet prior to the coming of Buddhism.<br />
<br />
The <i>Bardo Thodol </i>exemplifies the importance of many of the above distinguishing features of Vajrayana Buddhism. Upon death, sudden enlightenment is the goal of the elaborate rituals conducted by the "spiritual friend" (or lama) who reads the text in the presence of the deceased's body with the expectation that the disembodied consciousness of the deceased is capable of hearing the guidance the lama is offering. These practices seem like so much superstition to a materialist way of thinking; however, adept practitioners of the Vajrayana emphasize the symbolic nature of the seemingly magical elements of their tradition. The symbolism in the Vajrayana is, of course, lost on many lay practitioners. Consequently, the tradition is characterized by both common teachings and esoteric teachings. The former is meant for the layperson while the latter is meant for the adept. In light of this, one can see the importance of the rituals and descriptions in the <i>Bardo Thodol</i> in two ways. First, one can understand them literally as efforts to assist the deceased in achieving liberation or a preferable rebirth. Second, one can understand them as disguised (symbolic) efforts to manage the grief of survivors and remind them of some of the basic tenets of Buddhism: life is temporary, attachment to it produces suffering, and the acquisition of merit and an clear understanding of reality will bring about a better future circumstance or even final liberation.<br />
<br />
The<i> Bardo Thodol</i> is a fascinating window into a much misunderstood tradition of Buddhism. Much of the text is gripping and colorful. Unfortunately, it will be rather puzzling to anyone without a fairly good background in Buddhism and particularly Vajrayana Buddhism. <br />
<br />
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<br />Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-14846147868354558512016-10-03T16:03:00.000-07:002016-10-03T16:03:24.910-07:00Buddhism for Beginners / Thubten Chodron -- Boston: Snow Lion, 2001When I picked up <i>Buddhism for Beginners</i>, I had very high hopes. Having recently read <i>Buddhism: One Tradition, Many Teachers</i> which Chodron co-wrote with the Dalai Lama, I was expecting a clear and concise treatment of the most important elements of Buddhism, written for the novice. That is, I was expecting a shorter and more popular version of <i>One Tradition, Many Teachers</i>. To a certain extent, that's what it is, but unfortunately, it also contains a great deal of material on the more religious, non-falsifiable elements of Buddhism. Others may, of course, welcome this, but my own interests lay in the moral, psychological, and philosophical elements. Chodron's <i>One Tradition, Many Teachers</i> is among the best expositions of these elements that I have read and having a more readable version that could be recommended to "beginners" would be a real asset. Unfortunately, Chodron deals with these elements only in the first third (50 pages) of the book. Still, these pages are well worth recommending. Most of the remainder will likely strike a critical Western reader as, at best, a anthropological or sociological gloss on the quaint beliefs of a pre-scientific culture. This is not to say that the remainder does not contain any interesting material. Indeed, their is a fair share of Buddhist ethics and psychology in the later pages, but it is scatter among discussions of such things as past lives, karma, ritual, and sundry friendly advice on being a Buddhist in a non-Buddhist society.<br />
<br />
The scatter-shot character of the work is likely a product of its format. One hundred and forty-nine pages of text are divided into 21 chapters, and each chapter is composed of answers to questions posed to Chodron by both Westerners and Asian. A question is first posed as a section heading in bold, followed by usually a three paragraph answer. In many instances, this provides us with a clear and concise answer to the question. In other instances, it begs elaboration. In general, it causes the work to lack a larger, well-developed treatment of Buddhism.<br />
<br />
In the end, I would recommend the first 50 pages to beginners, but direct them to her masterful work <i>Buddhism: One Tradition, Many Teachers</i>. There, here literary style is more demanding, but it is likely accessible to most readers and it certainly pays enormous dividends. Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-17973225541706054712016-07-22T23:22:00.000-07:002016-07-22T23:22:37.627-07:00The Republican Convention (2016)<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The Republican Party convention is over and I’m sure you
have read, heard, and/or watched plenty of commentary on it. What I have read has been entirely negative,
even from conservative sources. I
suppose this only confirms the law of karma.
Anger and hostility will naturally produce ill feelings in those who witness
it, but it was a bit chilling to see how the law of karma did not seem to apply
to the delegates at the convention. They
clearly relished the animosity pouring from the podium. The important question to be answered in
November is how representative of the American electorate are the Republican
delegates? My expectation is: not so much, and that Donald Trump’s acceptance
speech has only made his election less likely.
Two surprising remarks and the overall theme of his speech stood out
that bring me to this conclusion.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first surprising remark was Trump’s reference to
“LGBTQ” people. (That he included queers
goes beyond even what the mainstream LGBT press tends to countenance.) Describing the victims of the recent mass
murder in an Orlando gay night club as “wonderful Americans,” Trump promised to
protect them from the “violence and oppression of a hateful foreign
ideology.” Additionally, he scheduled
Paul Thiel, the openly gay founder of Pay Pal to speak earlier that night, but Trump’s
remarks show him walking a fine line between a genuine endorsement of the civil
rights of LGBTQ people and a tepid gesture toward inviting them into his
coalition. One should note that later in
the speech he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices in the image of
Antonin Scalia, who can hardly be called an ally of LGBTQ rights. Furthermore, Trump was careful to fold his
remark about LGBTQ people into his promise to protect all Americans form foreign
terrorists, but describing that threat as a “hateful foreign ideology” surely
must have rankled American homophobes.
It would be hard to know if Trump distinguished American homophobes from
foreign homophobes. Add to this the
absence of any mention of restrictions on abortion, and social conservatives
must be wondering about his commitment to their causes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Trump did promise to overturn the restriction on tax
exempt organizations (particularly religious organizations) which prohibits
them from directly advocating political candidates. The rationale for the restriction was that
tax subsidies should not be available to fund partisan politics. Overturning this restriction would certainly
be welcomed by many politicians as it would open up a vast new source of campaign
funding. It would also we welcomed by
church leaders who seek greater political influence, but I doubt that this is
an important issue to grassroots social conservatives. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Social conservatives have long been skeptical of
Trump. So Ted Cruz’s prominent refusal
to endorse him, Trump’s failure to call for abortion restrictions, and his
seemingly tolerant attitude toward LGBTQ people might well have widened a
fissure in the Republican Party. This
year, gay rights may have become a potent wedge issue for use by the Democratic
Party and that wedge soon might be driven deep enough to cause havoc in the
Republican Party for years to come.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second surprising remark has not been noted in any
commentary I have read, but I believe it too will have a lasting impact on the
Republican Party. In a long and
sometimes rambling speech, short on specifics, Trump spent a great deal of time
condemning multilateral trade agreements in favor of bilateral agreements that
he promised will benefit American workers.
So this second surprising “remark” was actually a surprising paragraph
or two in the course of his speech and Trump provided unusual detail to support
his position. He specifically named
NAFTA and the TPP as bad agreements.
Both have come under fire from labor Democrats and populist Republicans,
but they are favored by the neoliberal, free traders in both parties, including
Barak Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Tim
Kaine, and until recently, by Hillary Clinton.
The popular sentiment against the
TPP has led many politicians to withdraw or moderate their support for the TPP,
but it is hard to imagine that their hearts are really against it after so many
years of extolling these agreements and “free trade” generally. </div>
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Certainly Trump’s long denunciation of NAFTA
and the TPP might have been intended to appeal to working class voters, particularly
Sanders’s supporters, and I suspect he would welcome the chance to be the
primary negotiator of a host of new bilateral “deals,” but it isn’t clear to me
that he genuinely opposes the substance of these agreements. His critique of NAFTA and the TPP must have
struck neoliberals in the Republican Party like Thor’s hammer. Rejecting these agreements makes possible
precisely those protectionist policies and trade wars that free traders fear
most. If Mike Pence was meant to assuage
the doubts of establishment Republicans, Trump’s speech surely must have
resurrected and enhanced those doubts; and if his supporters come to see
rejecting mulitlateral trade agreements and adopting protectionist trade policies
as important planks in their political agenda, the division over trade in the
Republican Party could easily become the cause for the irreversible separation
of populist Republicans and its neoliberal establishment. We then have three feuding factions in the
Republican Party: social conservatives,
populists, and neoliberals. How they
come together in the coming months and years isn’t clear at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, the overall theme of Trumps speech – “law and
order” – is politically and culturally the most important aspect, not just of
his speech, but of the entire convention. I think Trump now understands that this, more
than anything, has brought supporters to his campaign. His appeal for law and order began early in
his campaign with a call to build a border wall and deport “illegals.” It was followed by a call to establish domestic
order by prohibiting the admission of Muslims to the country. It has recently incorporated outspoken
support for our police in the face of widespread accusations of violations by
police of the human and civil rights of Americans and of the excessive use of
force by police. Howevver in his speech,
Trump refined his pitch for law and order in what appears to be an attempt to
make his positions less controversial.
Regarding his wall, Trump insisted that it would be merely one element
in a larger immigration policy – one which would permit, even welcome,
immigration through legal means. Regarding
his ban on Muslim immigration and refugee resettlement, Trump reduced the scope
of the ban to only those countries that are experiencing political turmoil. Both policies – even unqualified – have
achieved significant support among many people.
Trump and his convention presented them as methods by which America
could be made safe again. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Trump’s support for our police is likely to become a
mainstay of his future campaign. Perhaps
more than anything, police shootings of citizens and citizen shootings of
police in a context of racial division and escalating protests will promote
within voters the sense of insecurity that the Trump campaign has been
attempting to foster. Providing
unconditional support for our police is likely to seem to a lot of voters the
necessary response to an unravelling social order. Most of all, it plays into the public image
that Trump has been cultivating – that he is a strong leader. He seeks to reinforce this image at nearly
every chance he gets. This came out in
full force during his speech.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Building his wall, destroying ISIS, and bringing law and
order to America’s streets are all to be accomplished “fast,” “quickly,” and
even “immediately” through tough and, if necessary, violent measures. Against ISIS, there appeared to be no measure
that would be too violent. The degree of
violence would surely amount to a massive commitment of resources tantamount to
a full scale war. With regard to his
immigration policy, Trump promised that his measures would take effect
immediately upon his inauguration and become effective quickly. This suggests that he would issue an
executive order to increase significantly the deportation of “illegals.” As there is an estimated 10.9 million undocumented
people in the U.S., the deportation force and its legal apparatus would need to
be enormous. Finally, with regard to
bringing law and order to our cities, Trump again promised immediate action that
quickly would make them safe. Given
Trump’s description of the state of our crime in our cities, this would require
an unprecedented enhancement of police operations and resources. Indeed, even hoping to accomplish this from
the Oval Office could only mean mobilizing the National Guard. If we take each proposal in Trump’s speech
seriously, we should expect a new, potentially endless war in the Middle East
with profound global repercussions and martial law at home. The most important question now is how many
Americans would welcome this?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Trump’s call for this kind of action might be nothing
more than posturing to rally his base.
In office he might be different, but the anger and hostility that
animated the Republican convention and the machismo on display by Trump himself
is a reflection of currents in our society that pose a grave threat to peace,
freedom, and even prosperity. Perhaps nothing better illustrated Trump’s
macho arrogance as when he periodical interrupted his speech to present his
profile to the television camera, with a scowl and jutting chin. It seemed to be a calculated imitation of
Benito Mussolini.<o:p></o:p></div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-65319142029342505292016-07-18T23:07:00.003-07:002016-07-19T10:16:43.025-07:00The Republican National Convention (Day One)<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The Republican Convention was both an embarrassment and a
bit frightening. Donald Trump told us
that he would be putting on a more “entertaining” convention than past conventions. I can’t say that was true
for me. At the same time, it wasn't any less entertaining than conventions of the
past that I have seen. It was embarrassing,
however, to see that one of our two major political parties can’t offer us an
evening in which the issues of domestic safety and national security can be
discussed in an intelligent way. The speeches offered little more than a partisan focus on a unique
event (the mayhem in Benghazi) and indignant calls for retribution against inflated
enemies, foreign and domestic. It was
frightening to hear rhetoric in speech after speech that seemed at very least jingoistic
and sometimes fascistic – and I don’t use that term lightly. One of the more chilling moments was when a speaker
called upon a new generation of patriots to recognize that the arena of war was
here in America. It was not clear whether his perceived enemy was foreign fighters infiltrating America or American citizens not
conforming to his ideology. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The theme of the evening was “Make America Safe Again.” So one should not be surprised that speech
after speech stressed that America is unsafe, despite the decline in the crime
rate and the paucity of terrorist attacks in comparison to other
countries. Terror attacks were a persistent theme in the speeches, along
with insecure borders. Of course objectively speaking, if
they were serious about making America safe again, they would be
talking about auto safety and public health, but politics is about who controls sovereign power. So terrorism -- which is mainly a political threat to those in power -- is more important to the politically powerful than are the real dangers to
Americans. Those who hold power will
always decry terrorism first and foremost and inflate its significance as a
danger to citizens. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Speech after speech was written to promote fear and to uncritically extol the valor of the police and the armed forces. I do not doubt and I deeply respect the individual valor and self-sacrifice of law-abiding police officers and conscientious members of the armed forces. So it saddens me to see their dedication to ideals greater than themselves used all too often to prop up injustice. Even more worrying is that the convention's speeches frequently identified a wide spectrum of
people as enemies. They usually were not named explicitly, but by implication they included “illegal aliens,” Black Lives Matter activists, and of
course, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Explicitly naming “our enemies” as “radical Muslim terrorists” also was a persistent theme, and while Rudy Giuliani was at pains to distinguish this group from all Muslims,
Trump’s previous statements give one little confidence that his supporters
agree with Giuliani in practice. The main
prescription for “making America safe again” was “strength” as opposed to the "weakness" that was said to be the hallmark of the Obama administration and which could
be expected of a Clinton administration.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The idea that the Obama administration and a prospective Clinton
administration would be weak or too reticent to employ violence against enemies
should be astonishing to anyone but proponents of the most violent response to social and political conflict. To name only the most prominent uses of force by the Obama administration: the administration was painfully
slow to de-escalate the war in Iraq and periodically re-escalated that war. It conducted an air war against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya. It is participating in the war in Syria, both directly and through proxies. It expanded the war
in Afghanistan and it has escalated drone strikes around the world. Hillary Clinton has strongly supported all of these efforts and shows a strong willingness, even a commitment, to engage in additional war and violence. But the "weakness" of Obama and Clinton was a major theme tonight. It is clear that the convention speakers selected by Trump were pleased that he would be yet more belligerent than Obama and Clinton. The obvious conclusion is that in this election
cycle, the Republican Party has been taken over by a more extreme group of jingoists
and militarists than have been seen on the political stage since at least the 1960s.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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There were occasional references to Jesus, Christianity,
and “our Judeo-Christian tradition.” I
am not a Christian as most people would understand that description, but I was
pained for the Christians I know and respect that their religion would be appropriated
by people who seem so opposed to the beautiful ideals and teaching of Christ. How vengeance and violence
could be associated with a religion whose most edifying tenets are love, peace, and non-violence has always
baffled me. Has Christianity in America
really become merely a tribal affiliation of American chauvinists with no
relation to the universal love espoused by Christ? If the Republican Party convention is our
authority, then the answer is yes, most definitely. The phrases “America first,” “American
exceptionalism,” and “the greatest country God ever created” (as if God
might have bungled the creation of other countries), was heard in the
convention speeches. There seemed no question in the minds of the speakers that this ancient religion that proclaims a message of universal, impartial love and respect held a special place for America and that it justified brutal assaults on its enemies. For many Republican Convention speakers, God
was clearly on the side of the American Christian soldier marching to war, a song
which I don’t think Jesus of Nazareth ever would have sung. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am still convinced that Donald Trump will not be
elected president, but one should not be complacent about our long-term political future when, in the most powerful
country in the world, a faction so belligerent and convinced of its divine
righteousness takes control of one of the country's two political parties. I expect women, with the help of Latinos in
Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada and blacks in Florida, Virginia, North
Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, will sweep Hillary Clinton into the White
House, but that won’t make the angry, hostile members of this subculture change the way they think. We must find ways to bring people toward the conviction that national and international disagreements must be resolved peacefully though political agreements or everyone will suffer.<o:p></o:p></div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-27363668690948832462016-07-07T22:43:00.003-07:002016-07-08T12:42:34.408-07:00The 2016 Democratic Primary and Presidential Election<div class="MsoNormal">
I recently read several speeches given in the decades
leading up to the American Civil War.
They expressed many shades of opinion, from abolitionism to the defenses
of slavery. They addressed both the
substance of slavery and the politics related to its suppression, existence,
and extension. As I read, what stood out
for me was a subset of those speeches that reflected the debate between
abolitionists and anti-slavery politicians who nonetheless sought accommodation
with the slave holders. The
accommodationists largely sought political stability, but I'm sure some believed
that compromise was a tactic necessity for reaching larger goals. This made me think of the current debate that
is taking place within the Democratic Party over how, in the words of Bernie
Sanders, “to transform America.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many writers have observed that the debate between Sanders’s
supporters and Clinton’s supporters is a reoccurring debate between “purists”
and “pragmatists.” I don’t think this
distinction is apt, but the arguments based on this distinction arise often. They surfaced dramatically in the 2000
presidential campaign when Green Party activists ran Ralph Nader for
president. Despite the Green Party
holding many views on critical public policy issues that were diametrically
opposed to Al Gore and the Democratic Party, many Democrats believed that Ralph
Nader’s supporters were “self-indulgent purists,” who out of their purity were
sacrificing political progress or at very least opening the door to political
regress. The same criticism is now being
leveled against Sanders’s supporters in an attempt to persuade them to stop
expressing their views and instead support Hillary Clinton. Too often these arguments (and the arguments
used to rebut them) reflect the one dimensional (left-right) simplicity of the
popular understanding of the political landscape. A more accurate understanding of the political
space would reveal numerous issues, each with multiple dimensions. Arraying people along a single political
spectrum and then dividing them into only two categories (purists and
pragmatists) obscures the complexity of politics. Real political actors stand on principle on
some issues and are willing to compromise on others. Take for example, Sanders’s principled
position on the death penalty and his willingness to compromise on gun
regulation or Clinton’s principled position on gun regulation and her
willingness to compromise on a $15 dollar and hour minimum wage. We all have different and complex opinions
about a variety of issues and we all make different judgments about long and
short term benefits of particular public policies and political actions. Who is or is not pure or pragmatic are questions that are too crude to describe our politics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let me illustrate the artificiality of the purist-pragmatist
distinction. In 2001, I was engaged in a
debate within the Maryland Green Party over a party guideline which called upon
Green Party candidates to limit the size of any single contributor's contribution to $100 and donations by the candidates themselves to $400. This was seen by some in the Party as
imposing a needless handicap on our candidates in pursuit of “purity.” In contrast, I and others believed that it
was the only strategy available that could successfully challenge the
domination of money in politics. In our
view, we were pragmatists. <br />
<br />
The root of
the disagreement within the Party was in large part related to the goals we had
in mind and how to achieve them. The
proponents of higher limits sought a better chance to get candidates elected in
the current election cycle. They argued
that the more money the candidate had, the stronger the campaign would be, and
by electing such candidates, a law requiring public financing for political
campaigns would be made more likely. Furthermore, in their view, higher or no limits
on campaign donations would net more money for the campaign. However, in our view, there was little to no
chance that our candidates would be elected. (Normally, third party candidates get no more than 2 or 3% of the vote in
state-wide elections, even when running without contribution limits.) Even if a candidate was (or a few
candidates were) elected from the Green Party, our political influence in the
Assembly would not be sufficient pass public financing for political campaigns. Consequently, we believed the strategy outlined
by the proponents of higher limits was doomed to failure.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As a positive alternative, we argued that the strength of a
Green Party candidate would come from highlighting how big money corrupts our
political system and undermines the political influence of the vast majority of
citizens. Establishing low limits on our
candidates’ donations would bring the issue to the public. My analysis of several Maryland Green Party
campaigns showed that whether a Green Party candidate established a $100 dollar
limit or a $1,000 dollar limit had no significant effect on the total amount
the campaign acquired. The loss of
donations above $100 dollars due to the self-imposed limit was made up for by
the number of people willing to make a contribution to a campaign adopting a
$100 dollar limit, particularly when the candidate emphasized the donation
limit to potential donors. By running a $100 dollar campaign, we were creating an opportunity for proponents
of public financed campaigns prominently to enter the political space on their
own terms. This would be both an equally
effective short term strategy of funding Green Party candidates and a more
effective long term strategy of bringing about campaign finance reform. It would also significantly differentiate our
candidates from the Republican and Democratic Party candidates, form a
coordinated body of voters willing to work to transform our campaign finance
system through electoral campaigns, and build the Green Party for future
campaigns. It remains, of course,
debatable whose strategy would be more successful, but that there can be such a
debate demonstrates the meaninglessness of the “purity vs. pragmatism” debate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Contrary to much received opinion, one can as easily argue
that Sanders is the pragmatist in the current campaign, if the goal truly is to
transform America. During much of her
campaign, Clinton insisted that she was a “pragmatic progressive” who got
things done and that political compromise was necessary for governing. Setting aside the difficulty in understanding
the meaning of “pragmatic” and “progressive,” Clinton’s recognition of the
necessity of compromise “to get things done” inside government is clear and
usually correct, but compromise is fraught with drawbacks. Proponents of compromise often sound like
Henry Clay who fashioned the Compromise of 1850. Clay defended his bill on the Senate floor by
observing that the country was divided between forces for and against slavery
and that for the contest between these forces to be resolved, each side would
need to give something to get something.
It was a classic defense of compromise.
The compromise gave California admission to the country as a free state,
but it strengthened the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. It abolished the slave
trade in D.C., but confirmed the right to own slaves in D.C. In the present political context, the country
is said to be divided into “red states” and “blue states.” Today proponents of compromise are in the
same position as Clay. For a president from
the Democratic Party to “get things done” requires fashioning legislation that
is to some extent acceptable to the Republican Party. Proponents of compromise will declare
incremental victory, but there are proponents of compromise on both sides of
the aisle. Consequently, incremental victory
is also incremental defeat. One gives a little to get a little. It isn’t
clear if progressive forces on balance make any headway and even less clear
that they are transforming America.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During the debates over slavery, abolitionists made up a
small minority in Congress and in the country.
Yet their principled stand against slavery divided both the Democratic
Party and the Whig Party. They brought
the issue of slavery starkly before the public with powerful moral and
practical arguments. One cannot be
certain what might have happened if the abolitionists had silenced themselves
in favor of the more conservative Free Soil and Republican platforms of the
1850s, but Wendell Phillips pointed out that all of the arguments
made by the anti-slavery forces originated in the earlier arguments of the
abolitionists. A similar dynamic has
been unfolding for a couple decades now.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 2000, the Green Party’s platform advanced most of what
Bernie Sanders has been advocating in his campaign (along with additional
public policies that reflect social democratic sensibilities). The Green Party continued its advocacy of
these positions in 2004, 2008 and 2012.
As in the 1850s, one cannot be certain what might have happened without
the Green Party’s campaigns, but in 2011 the Occupy Wall Street movement was
launched. Though famously without a
defined platform, many of the actors in the movement called for prescriptions
that appeared in the Green Party’s platforms, and these prescriptions are now
openly discussed by the corporate media due to the Sanders campaign. I don’t mean to overstate the role of the
Green Party in bringing about the changes in public discourse. I only mean to emphasize that sustained, uncompromising
arguments in favor of particular public policies can have a role in changing
public discourse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The role of movements like the Green Party, Occupy Wall Street,
and the Sanders campaign is historically common and politically effective. There is a common belief that political
movements must take a backseat to electoral politics during elections. The thought is, “you can’t be transformative
if you aren’t elected.” What this fails
to recognize is that political movements are the motivating cause of political
change and electoral victories are merely the proximate cause. Indeed, electoral victories aren’t always necessary
for the success of a political movement.
Take for example the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This legislation contained goals set by the
civil rights movement at least as early as the 1950s. The act was passed by a Congress that was
essentially the same as in previous years.
In the 1964 congressional elections, only 7 new Senators were elected
and 97 new representatives. Assuming all
of these new members replaced opponents of the Voting Rights Act, their votes
were nonetheless not necessary to reach a majority in favor of the Act. What actually brought about this legislative
success was not victories at the ballot box.
Instead, the civil rights movement stirred the conscience of sitting
members of Congress and persuaded them to change their votes or perhaps members
of Congress simply saw that the civil rights movement was becoming so strong
that their political future required that they accede to popular demand. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course in other instances, changes to office holders are
important for the passage of legislation, but significant changes to who holds office
come about because of pressure from political movements. After the defeat of Michael Dukakis in 1988,
members of the Democratic Party (the Democratic Leadership Council or DLC)
determined that the conservative movement which had its origins in Barry
Goldwaters’s 1964 presidential campaign and later dubbed “the Reagan Revolution” had
become so well entrenched that the Democratic Party’s future depended upon
adopting a more conservative platform and by appealing to business and corporate
donors. Running Bill Clinton against
more traditional labor Democrats, the DLC won Clinton’s victory in a three-way
presidential contest. Within a year of
holding office, Clinton used his political capital to pass NAFTA in 1993, a
crime bill in 1994, and welfare reform in 1996.
Each of these measures was originally championed by Republicans and
other conservatives in Congress. One
might be tempted to attribute the passage of these bills to Clinton, and no
doubt he played a role, but he was mostly the instrument of a conservative
shift in the electorate. The
conservative movement was able to effect a change in the Democratic Party.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These two examples – the Voting Rights Act and the laws
passed during the Clinton administration – demonstrate the power of political
movements to effect change. Electoral
victories and defeats are merely epiphenomena in relation to the movements that
bring them about. This brings us to the
“political revolution” that Bernie Sanders has been promoting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just yesterday, Bernie Sanders was reported as saying, “the
goal isn’t to win elections, the goal is to transform America.” This stunned those who believe that electoral
success is necessary to bring about change, particularly House members who seem
to be constantly thinking first and foremost about elections; but as history
shows, the motivating cause of change, particularly transformative change, is
the formation of a powerful political movement.
If one’s goal is transformational change, pragmatism usually requires
that one concentrate on building a movement and not just winning elections and
passing compromised legislation. This
was the shocking message that Sanders was bringing to House Democrats. It would be counter-productive were Sanders
to veer from the task of transforming America by silencing the movement's message in
support of a single candidate who appears not to be dedicated fully to
transformational change. Happily, the
movement for a political revolution appears to be holding together, despite
failing to nominate Bernie Sanders; meanwhile, movements that that support
factions in the Republican Party and the ideology of neoliberalism in both
parties appear to be weakening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Four important political movements have found an
intersection in the Sanders campaign: the
labor movement, the movement to address student debt, the movement for
universal health insurance, and the environmental movement. Three efforts are significant to the labor
movement: defeating and repealing neoliberal international trade treaties, increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, and addressing the country’s profound
disparity of wealth. Sanders made these
issues central to his campaign and generated great enthusiasm for them in the Democratic
electorate. So much so, that Clinton has
changed her views (or at least her rhetoric) in a number of ways to roughly align
herself with most of these positions.
This was not entirely due to Sanders’s campaign as her embrace of some
of these policies predated the Sanders campaign, but nearly everyone agrees that Sanders has "forced Clinton to the left." The same can be said of Sanders’s and
Clinton’s positions on student debt.
Sanders has been expressing the full aspirations of students with his
call for “free college education,” while Clinton is advocating “affordable
college education.” With regard to
health care, Sanders again articulates the full aspirations of the movement,
while Clinton advocates expanding the Affordable Care Act. Sanders also made environmental issues central
to his campaign, coming out against fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline, and in
support of a carbon fee and dividend plan.
Clinton insists that she is on board with the environmental movement,
but her record here is quite mixed. On
the positive side, she has promised support for an infrastructure that will
provide renewable energy to 100% of America’s residences, but she supports
fracking and remained neutral at best during the debate over the Keystone XL
pipeline. Most recently, her appointees
to the Democratic Party platform committee voted down a call for a carbon fee
and dividend plan. All this shows how
the most significant motivating movements inside the Democratic Party have
raised up a political candidate and are pressuring the establishment wing of
the party. These movements are calling
for transformational change and are coalescing in opposition to the neoliberal
and corporate control of our society, including the Democratic Party.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One important movement popular among progressives is the
Black Lives Matters movement. It has
forced its way into both the Sanders and Clinton campaign. Both candidates point to previous sympathy
for criminal justice reform, but it is clear that both have raised it to a
critical priority due to the movement’s effectiveness. The Black Lives Matters movement shows how a
docile political establishment can be pressed into action by concerted
grassroots action. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The movements that animate the Republican Party are
different, of course, and they are by and large waning. They have maintained a successful coalition
for several decades and have been able to elect a huge number of officials at
all levels of government. The coalition
appears, however, to be coming apart. It
has been composed of social conservatives, libertarians, militarists, white
supremists, nativists, and neoliberals (who reside in significant numbers in both
parties). Following the election of
Barak Obama, the more radical elements of these movements coalesced into “the
Tea Party,” bankrolled by the libertarian Koch brothers. This movement has had its predictable effect
on Republican office holders. In fear of
a primary challenge, many have adopted quite radical "Tea Party" positions. Again, this is an instance when a movement
has been able to achieve success without always winning office; however, over
time, the extreme views of the Tea Party have created fissures in the coalition. The Tea Party movement is showing signs of
reaching its peak influence.
Furthermore, the relative popularity of Donald Trump within the Republican Party has alienated many
of the coalition’s most powerful elements, deepening the divide between the
factions. It is not clear whether the Republican
Party coalition can be held together following the likely defeat of Donald
Trump or even if it continues to exist today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Under the circumstances of a rising social democratic
movement and the decline of the movements in the Republican Party, it makes
good sense for Bernie Sanders to concentrate on building the social democratic
movement and not focus only on elections.
This is particularly true as the administration of the Democratic
Party’s presumptive nominee is likely to take much more cautious steps toward
transforming American politics than the rising movements would like. In all likelihood, Clinton will be elected
president. Respected poll analyst Nat
Silver gives her an 80% chance, and it is hard to imagine that Donald Trump’s
astonishingly high unfavorable ratings (60%) can be turned around. Furthermore, the electoral map strongly
favors any Democratic Party presidential candidate. In the last quarter century, democrats have
won five of six presidential elections (counting the 2000 election as a
“victory” for Al Gore based on the national popular vote and what the outcome
would have been had all of the votes been counted in Florida). Furthermore, if Clinton wins all of the states that Democratic presidential candidates have won in each election since 1992, she only needs Florida to win the Electoral College votes. If she loses Florida, there are a host of other states that combined will put her over the top. Consequently, there is no good reason for the
proponents of transformational change to silence themselves in hopes of greater
electoral success on the part of a candidate with a clear neoliberal record.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, I should say something about the two-party
system. Much of the pressure to accept
compromise and “pragamatism” relies on the argument that a worse candidate
might be elected. Setting aside that
this is currently quite unlikely, one should recognize that voting not only
adds a tally to a candidate’s total, it serves to give them the illusion that
their policies are favored by the voter.
It provides them with a degree of political legitimation when the voter in
fact might not favor their policies nor feel they have a legitimate claim to
authority. Given the power of money to
determine who can appear on our ballots in November, the winner of an election
can hardly claim democratic legitimacy.
Not voting for one of the two establishment-sponsored (plutocratic) candidates is a
way of refusing to accord them the basis for claiming a higher degree of
legitimate authority. Additionally, the
two-party system will not be dismantled by members of those parties any more
than the private funding of campaigns will be ended by candidates who are
successful at raising private funds. By
voting for third party candidates, one escapes the trap of legitimating
officeholders that one finds illegitimate and one builds an electoral
organization that can demand the transformation of our politics to a
multi-party democracy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Regardless of these considerations, one might still be
convinced that voting for “the lesser of two evils” is rational. I believe this is true at times; however,
it is never true for the vast majority of voters during presidential elections. Given that our electoral process involves
state-by-state elections of delegates to the Electoral College, one’s vote for
the president counts only in a few swing states. In nearly all states, one is free to vote
one’s conscience without fear that “the greater of two evils” will be
elected. If voting one’s conscience
becomes common enough for this to happen, then the movement for a multi-party
democracy will have been (or will be on the verge of being)
successful. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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Much to the surprise of many of my fellow Green Party
members who have heard me make the case for voting for Green Party presidential
candidates even in swing states, this election has me concluding that there is
a strong argument for swing state voters to cast their vote for Hillary Clinton. I don’t expect this election to
be close, even in traditional swing states; but one issue stands out for me
that makes me dread the election of Donald Trump: the unfolding sixth great extinction of
species on the planet.<br />
<br />
It is not
controversial that our population and global industrial society have initiated
a precipitous decline in the number of species the planet harbors and that if this
decline to continues, we will witness one of the six great extinctions of life
on the planet that natural history has recorded. During the last great extinction, 66 million
years ago, 75% of all species were wiped out.
At the end of the Permian period, roughly 250 million years ago, 90% or
more of all species were wiped out. That
is, life was nearly extinguished from the planet. We are currently risking an event of such
magnitude by our continuing disregard for critical ecological systems,
particularly the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans. Donald Trump appears to be poised to put in
place officials who do not recognize the gravity of this situation. Hillary Clinton, while also not recognizing
its gravity, will likely appoint officials who will take it somewhat more
seriously. This might create openings for
activists to make progress toward mitigating the effects of our ecological folly. At this point, the urgency of the problem is
so extreme that increasing the possibility for mitigating action, even in the
slightest, overwhelms any other consideration. In relative terms, no issue comes close to
averting or at least mitigating a sixth extinction. Consequently, I believe the political
progress that might be made by voting for a multi-party democracy must take a
back seat in swing states this election cycle. If I voted in a swing state and if the contest for Electoral College delegates was close, I would vote for Clinton.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-13792151586150360132016-06-28T19:29:00.000-07:002016-06-28T19:29:32.904-07:00American Orations: The Anti-Slavery Struggle [1st volume] / Alexander Johnston and James Albert Woodburn, eds. -- N.Y.: J.P. Putnam's Sons, 1897According to information on the verso of this volume, <i>American Orations</i> is a series of books in four volumes printing important speeches in American history. The first volume includes speeches on colonialism, constitutional government, the rise of democracy, and the rise of nationalism. The second volume (under review here) includes speeches on the question of slavery. Slavery is also the subject of the speeches in the third volume. The fourth volume important subjects of the post-war era. The speeches found in the present volume are by Rufus King, William Pinkney, Wendell Phillips, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Charles Sumner. Together they provide an interesting look into the salient issues leading up to the Civil War and the manner of oratory of the time.<br />
<br />
New York Senator Rufus King addressed the Senate in February, 1820 during the debate over the Missouri Compromise. His speech is an impressive brief, outlining the precedents and principles giving Congress the power to regulate and ban slavery in newly admitted states, without extending that power to currently recognized states. His argument rests on the constitutional principle that Congress has '"the power to make all needful regulations" governing any territory of the United States. Furthermore, Congress retains the power to admit new states, without limitation on the terms of admission. Consequently, Congress may prohibit slavery in U.S. territories and admit states on the condition that slavery remains prohibited. At the same time, Congress my choose not to exercise these powers. He also explains that the current states, having established slavery prior to the adoption of the constitution, are free to maintain slavery within their borders as their ratification of the constitution was dependent upon the continuation of slavery within their states. King's speech recounts several instances in which states were admitted to the Union consistent with these principles, importantly, the Northwest Territory that would be composed of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota. Among the speeches contained in this volume, King's stands out as well-argued.<br />
<br />
In the same week as King's speech, Maryland Senator William Pinkney rose in rebuttal. Pinkney argued that to admit new states on terms different from the original thirteen was to deny the equality of states and create a different form of union. While Pinkney no doubt reasons from a plausible premise of equality among states, the protagonists of freedom can just as plausibly argue that there is no reasons that the terms of formation and expansion of the union might not be different. Taken together, King and Pinkney provide clear examples of the two sides of the debate during the discussion of the Missouri Compromise.<br />
<br />
The third speech in the volume is by Wendell Phillips which he gave in Boston in 1837 following the murder of Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy printed an abolitionist newspaper in St. Louis until the proponents of slavery destroyed his printing press for a third time. He then set up his newspaper across the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois, but the mob followed him and murdered him while he attempted to defend his press. I'll confess that coming from St. Louis, I have always held Lovejoy in the highest esteem. There are few white abolitionists prior to the war who remained so determined and risked so much as Lovejoy. Consequently, I was rather disappointed in Phillips's speech. While it did eulogize Lovejoy, its primary point was to defend the freedom of the press -- a good cause, no doubt, but I had hoped for a more forceful call to follow Lovejoy's example and raise the profile of resistance to slavery.<br />
<br />
John Quincy Adams's speech, given on the floor of the House in 1837. The occasion of the speech was a bill to authorize money to suppress an Indian revolt in Georgia. Adams pointed out that many of his constituents might not be in favor of such an expenditure and that it was beyond the authority of the federal government to tax them for this purpose. In response, Adams argued that the federal government had authorities in peace and authorities in war. While the authorities in peace are limited, authorities in war know no limits. In modern terminology, Adams was appealing to a "national defense" argument. To make this case, he observed several instances when the federal government intervened on the issue of slavery. This was his real purpose. Early, he had been prohibited from making comments about slavery when a resolution was moved that the federal government had no authority to intervene in the slavery question, due to the "gag rule" previously passed into law. No, in the context of appropriating money to suppress an Indian revolt, he was able to lay out his case for why the federal government had the authority to intervene in the slavery question. The speech provides an interesting glimpse into the subtleties of the parliamentary contest that Congress was engaged in during the 1830s along with the constitutional questions that slavery posed.<br />
<br />
John C. Calhoun's speech recorded in this volume was the last and perhaps the most significant that he ever gave. It occurred in 1850 during the debate of the great compromise fashioned by Henry Clay. The bill -- an omnibus bill -- called for admitting California as a free state, forming a territorial government in Utah without mention of slavery, amending the Fugitive Slave Act, the abolishing the slave trade in Washington D.C., and establishing the border between Texas and New Mexico. The bill failed in its omnibus form, but each element was subsequently passed by Congress. Calhoun's speech was noteworthy for its rigorous reasoning in opposition to the compromise. His main objections were leveled against allowing California to be admitted as a free state and not unambiguously asserting a right that slaveholders might bring slavery to the territories and establish slavery under the territorial laws. This became known as "squatter sovereignty." He argued that by denying the authority of Californians to choose their own laws related to slavery and failing to stand up for the "rights" of the slave holding states, the honor and equal standing of those states were diminished. With the advantage of an modern viewpoint, it seems clear that Calhoun must have understood that slavery could not be saved by normal political means and that he understood that the slave states would eventually need to secede in order to preserve their human property. Indeed, his speech directly threatens secession if the federal government does not accommodate slavery throughout the nation. Of all the speeches in this volume, Calhoun's is perhaps the most significant and the most reprehensible.<br />
<br />
During that same debate, Daniel Webster made a speech that forever separated him from the opponents of slavery. He had previously been seen as at least a lukewarm ally, but his forceful defense of the Fugitive Slave Act outraged his former fellow travelers. The amended Fugitive Slave Act would strengthen the powers of slave hunters and require state and local officials to assist in the captures. The Fugitive Slave Act was justified by a clause in the Constitution which directs that persons "held to service or labour in one state...escaping into another...shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due." Webster found this was sufficient to bind state and local authorities to assist in the capture and return of fugitive slaves. He furthermore referenced the Supreme Court's support for this view. At the time, opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act argued that the clause did not specify "slaves," but on persons "held to service or labour." This reading required the authorities to return indentured servants or other persons who were under contract to perform service or labor. Had it been meant to include slaves, the clause would have said as much. Webster's decision to read the critical clause to include slaves was taken as a betrayal by his anti-slavery supporters. Webster might be praised for standing by what he believed was an honest interpretation of the Constitution, but a reasonable case can be made that no law permitting the enslavement of a person can be valid under a constitution putatively dedicate to freedom. Furthermore, the concept of natural (or human) rights was already well-established, making a free state's assessment of the invalidity of slave labor arguably justified. Webster chose not to avail himself of these arguments and must go down in history as a proponent of a reprehensible positive law at the expense of human rights.<br />
<br />
The next speech in the volume is by Henry Clay, the author of the Compromise of 1850. Here we get his direct appeal to the Senate to pass his bill. It is a classic appeal to everyone to give a little in order to get a little. He understands that no one, perhaps including himself, will be happy with every element of the bill, but that peace and tranquility in the nation requires that the Congress come to an agreement on the vexing issues of the day and that given the profound disagreement within the country on so many of these issues, there can be no agreement that satisfies everyone. Perhaps the most surprising passages in the speech -- at least for me -- were those in which Clay condemned slavery in no uncertain terms. I had always understood that he his attitude toward slavery was ambiguous. He both attempted to have it outlawed in his home state and owned 60 slaves at one point. It appears he thought it an unfortunate evil that should not be extended beyond its current scope, but that it was also a fact of economic life for the well-to-do Southerner. Perhaps much as a democratic socialist might regard his or her stock portfolio today. It is an interesting lesson in parliamentary strategy to recognize that his compromise was defeated in its omnibus form, but that each element passed Congress. Often omnibus bills are crafted to ensure an unpopular element passes, but in this case the aggregated opposition minorities combined to defeat the omnibus bill. Alone, each minority failed to defeat what they opposed.<br />
<br />
The volume includes a second speech by Wendell Phillips. This is perhaps appropriate as he was widely regarded as the most effective abolitionist speaker. It is a masterful summary of the abolitionist movement starting in 1830 with William Garrison's groundbreaking newspaper <i>The Liberator</i>. He provides an account of the contributions of most of the important abolitionists and places their work in the context of the social and political opposition that they faced. He emphasizes that abolitionists have always been a despised minority, but points out how successful they have been in moving public opinion. He shows how many Whigs, Northern Democrats, and members of the Free Soil Party eventually made use of the arguments of the more radical Garrisonians and other abolitionists when it became politically expedient to do so. For Phillips, staking out a principled, though unpopular opinion was a necessity and he relied on its fundamental decency to eventually win popular support. It's hard to say his strategy was mistaken. <br />
<br />
His speech was given in 1853, just three months after the death of Daniel Webster and his unwillingness to speak well of the dead with whom he disagreed is a testament to his principled stand for truth. At one point, he denounces Webster's "treachery," underscoring the abolitionists' dissatisfaction with Webster's support for the Compromise of 1850, particularly his defense of the Fugitive Slave Act.<br />
<br />
One could get tied in knots attempting to understand the legal and constitutional status of slavery, the slave trade, the power of the federal government to regulate it, control it within the territories, etc. The intractability of these legal and constitutional questions is rooted in the contradictory attitudes of the framers of the constitution and the presidents and legislators who labored under the Constitution; but the question of the fate of slavery was for many people prior to the war so monumental that it transcended the constraints of law and the Constitution and posed a profound moral question. Wendell Phillips's speeches make it perfectly clear that he understood this and his voice, as much as anyone's, moved our country beyond the terrible condition that it had inherited from colonial times.<br />
<br />
The final speech in the volume is by Charles Sumner, given in 1853 on the occasion of a debate over the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. Sumner was widely recognized as the Senate's most articulate proponent of the abolition of slavery. He is perhaps best known as the victim of a "caning" by Rep. Preston Brooks on the Senate floor. Two days following a speech given by Sumner, Brooks beat Sumner unconscious with a gold tipped cane. His reason for doing so was that Sumner's speech had insulted another Senator Andrew Butler, who was related to Brooks. It is noteworthy that in the run up to the Civil War, it was not uncommon for Congress members to come to debates armed and on at least one occasion, several pistols were drawn on the floor of the House.<br />
<br />
In Sumner's speech recorded here, he presented a detailed argument that slavery was not properly considered "national," but instead an institution of the states. Consequently, the federal government had no obligation to require officers of free states to participate in the return of fugitive slaves. His argument was based primarily on references to the sentiments of the nation's founders. He then turned to a critique of the argument that the Fugitive Slave Act was required by the Constitution. here is argument was quite strong. Sumner provided a detailed summary of the controversy at issue during the drafting of the Constitution in order to establish the original intent of the Constitution. He makes a strong case that the clause requiring that "persons held to service or labour...escaping to another state" shall be delivered up to whom their service or labour is due was not intended to include slaves. Sumner mentions that an earlier draft of the clause which specifically mentions fugitive "slaves" was rejected and that in a passage in the Constitution the term "service" was adopted in place of "servitude" in order to specify the work of free labor. It is interesting to read Sumner's speech along with Daniel Webster's speech also in this volume. Here, two Massachusetts senators come to completely different interpretations of the Constitution. Perhaps it is my own desire that the Constitution not endorse slavery, but Sumner's arguments seem obviously stronger.<br />
<br />
In all, the speeches recorded in this volume are indeed noteworthy, though not always Earth-shattering. Their seeming moderate nature may be due to the distance we have from the super-charged political environment of the antebellum decades. Nonetheless, one does get a sense that the speakers on both sides understood the gravity of what was at stake. Whether they all truly understood that they were drifting toward what William Seward would call an "irrepressible conflict" isn't so clear.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-59633527323030511342016-06-18T20:07:00.000-07:002016-06-18T20:15:07.186-07:00The Bhagavad Gita / Franklin Edgerton: Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1952 <i>The Bhagavad Gita</i> is among the world's greatest works of sacred literature. It is a portion of the larger Sanskrit work, <i>The Mahabharata</i> which tells the story of the dynastic struggle between the Kaurava and Pandava princes, all members of an extended family. <i>The Gita</i> recounts a critical episode in that struggle in which he two dynasties are preparing to face one another in an epic battle. It recounts the dialogue between the Pandava prince Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna. Arjuna, seeing his family members -- on both sides -- arrayed for battle becomes paralyzed with grief and foreboding of the senseless carnage that is about to occur. Whereupon, Krishna excoriates him for his weakness. In the course of the dialogue, Krishna discusses three forms of yoga: jnana (wisdom), karma (action), and bhakti (devotion). His message is essentially that Arjuna duty is to perform the actions that are appropriate to his station as a warrior and that the death and suffering that is about to occur does not touch the true self or selves of the warriors. What is essential about us is eternal. The climax of the dialogue comes in the eleventh chapter when Krishna reveals himself to Arjuna as God. This chapter is, to me, the very highest expression of mystical monotheism ever set down in verse.<br />
<br />
There are countless English translations of <i>The Gita</i>. The translation contained in this volume is by Edwin Arnold, the illustrious English journalist/orientalist. His most famous work is <i>The Light of Asia</i>, a biography of the Buddha. Originally published in 1885, Arnold's <i>Gita</i> is a fine example of Victorian poetry. It is perhaps not the most literal translation of the original Sanskrit <i>Gita</i>, but it's poetic sensibility makes for exhilarating reading.<br />
<br />
There is much that is contradictory in <i>The Gita</i>. So much so, that an unguided reading can be quite confusing. Here is where Franklin Edgerton's introductory essay on <i>The Gita</i>, included in this volume, provides excellent help. Edgerton is at pains to explain that <i>The Gita</i> is first and foremost a poetical work and that the requirements of consistency that we expect from an academic treatise do not apply. Consequently, we read Krishna's praise of all three types of yoga, with only a general sense that karma yoga is thought by the author to be the highest form of yoga; however, this may only be due to the fact that Arjuna, the primary audience of the treatise, is a warrior who, as a warrior, is expected to act. <br />
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For Edgerton, <i>The Gita</i> offers us an opportunity to compare the virtues of all three types of yoga. Jnana yoga is the path to spiritual liberation that involves a thorough intellectual understanding of reality. It is usually practiced by those who retire into meditation and religious study. In contrast, karma yoga is the path to spiritual liberation that involves embracing an active role in the great unfolding of worldly affairs. There is, however, an important cautionary message in Krishna's advice. While jnana yoga fails -- for Arjuna -- to fulfill his proper role in life and lead to liberation, one can easily mis-tread the path of karma yoga by becoming to passionately involved in the results of action. Karma yoga requires that the actor perform his or her duty without regard to the results. One must act of the sake of the proper action and not for a practical end. Karma yoga, properly pursued, includes the kind of dispassion that is characteristic of the reclusive jnana yogi. There are passages in <i>The Gita</i> which also praise bhakti yoga which has become the predominate form of Hindu worship. It involves an unrestrained love and devotion to God, in this case Vishnu or Krishna as he is manifested in <i>The Gita</i>.<br />
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Anyone interested in the religious tradition(s) of India must, by all means, read and become familiar with <i>The Bhagavad Gita</i>. It is a short and easily finished work, replete with astonishingly poetic visions of God. It will be puzzling, however, to anyone not already quite familiar with the yogic traditions of India. Here is where Edgerton can provide excellent guidance.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-72078467498804064532016-05-15T12:58:00.004-07:002016-05-15T13:01:23.406-07:00The History of Chess in Fifty Moves / Bill Price -- Buffalo, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 2015There are numerous books outlining the history of Chess. Some are short and simple and others are more extensive, particularly Murray's magisterial <i>The History of Chess. </i>Published in 1913, it is a comprehensive tome. Bill Price's contribution to this literature is not particularly remarkable, but certainly serviceable. Anyone looking for an initial, readable tour through the history could do worse. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the work is its short chapters -- 50 in all, not counting the introduction. As the entire work is only 217 pages, the chapters are necessarily very short. Furthermore, the work is packed with attractive color illustrations. Consequently, Price has given us a fairly orthodox, thumbnail history.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-7211863214819438862016-05-13T14:06:00.002-07:002016-05-13T19:53:28.902-07:00Nagarjuna's Middle Way: Mulamadhyamakakarika / Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura -- Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2013The <i>Mulamadhyamakakarika</i> by the second century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna is possibly the most subtle, sophisticated, and important work on Buddhist metaphysics ever written. It is seen as the seminal text of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism and has shaped the conversation about <i>sunyata</i> (emptiness) within the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. It has been translated several times and has received numerous commentaries. In this blog, I have reviewed two such translations/commentaries: one by Jay Garfield and another by Stephen Batchelor. The translation/commentary currently under review is a joint effort by an American philosopher, Mark Siderits and a Japanese professor of Indian Philosophy, Shoryu Katsura. Their commentary is based on four historically significant commentaries, three by Indian philosophers, Buddhapalita, Bhaviveka, and Candrakirti and the fourth, known as the <i>Akutobhaya</i> by an unknown author. <br />
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The work itself explores a number of metaphysical concepts that are important to the Buddhist tradition, e.g., space, motion, the composition of objects and persons, and action. A number of traditional Buddhists doctrines are challenged by Nagarjuna. Broadly speaking, Nagarjuna's project is to demonstrate that any theory or positive assertion about ultimate reality is false. He does so by laying out all the logically possible positions one might hold about a question and systematically showing that none of them can be true. The object of his critique is sometimes known as the "tetralemma:" (1) p is true, (2) p is false, (3) both p and not p are true, and (4) neither p nor not p is true. By the impossibility of each of these statements, Nagarjuna establishes that all things are "empty." Curiously, even emptiness itself is empty.<br />
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Nagarjuna's arguments are often quite cryptic. Fortunately, Siderits and Katsura provide helpful guidance to understanding Nagarjuna's intent. To some extent, the very fact that Nagarjuna refutes all possible positions leads one to think that there must be something wrong with his reasoning; however, the arguments (as understood by the commentators) are sophisticated enough to make it impossible to dismiss Nagarjuna on such a slender basis. One is led to think that he may well be right in claiming that our ordinary capacities of reason are incapable of grasping ultimate reality and that a supra-rational insight is necessary. To reach this insight, Nagarjuna seems to suggest that the inquirer must rise through successive levels of understanding which leads through rejecting specific theories, e.g., p is true, to reach the fourth claim in the tetralemma, that neither p nor not p is true. Upon seeing that this cannot be true, the inquirer is left with the realization that a third ontological category is necessary for understanding ultimate reality: emptiness. But this too, is merely a step on the path toward a final and compete understanding that recognizes the emptiness of emptiness.<br />
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Nagarjuna's arguments lead us to recognize that emptiness itself is yet another theory about the ultimate nature of reality and if it is true, it too must be empty. It is, in essence, the least incorrect theory about world, but as a theory, it can only be conventionally true as ultimate truth is beyond the realm of what can be articulated.<br />
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Having now read three translations and commentaries of the <i>Mulamadhyamakakarika</i>, I have gained quite a deep respect for it. Perhaps the only Buddhist work that stands above it is the <i>prajnaparmita </i>literature itself, from which Nagarjuna drew his insight. For an excellent translation of important verses from that literature, see <i>The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom</i>, translated by Edward Conze.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-89665892450196464562016-04-24T13:54:00.001-07:002016-04-24T13:54:20.113-07:00The Jewel Ornament of Liberation / sGam.po.pa -- Herbert V. Guenther, trans., -- Berkeley: Shambhala, 1971.sGam.po.pa (1079-1153) is among the most important figures in the history of Buddhism, particularly, Tibetan Buddhism, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally. <i>The Jewel Ornament of Liberation</i> is perhaps his most important work. <i>The Jewel Ornament</i> is among a set of works that provide an outline of the path toward liberation, beginning with the most elementary doctrines of Buddhism and proceeding to the most advanced stages of enlightenment. It is written in clear and direct language which makes it an engaging treatise for readers with a limited background in Buddhism. The path begins with truely internalizing the motive to attain genuine enlightment. This is in contrast to other motives, for example, becoming renowned for being spiritually advanced or attaining the superhuman powers that were believed to be gained upon becoming enlightened. sGam.po.pa explains that once one becomes motivated by a genuine desire for enlightenment, one should seek out a community of spiritual friends, viz., people who are also dedicated to the path to enlightenment, and to separate from those who are still entangle in worldly affairs. By surrounding oneself with spiritual friends, one establishes an environment in which progress toward enlightenment becomes easier. The reader should be prepared, however, for long accounts of the more unpleasant aspect of life including decay and death. This is preparatory to recognizing the transitory nature of life and renouncing attachment to the world. <i>The Jewel Ornament </i>goes on to provide illuminating accounts of a number of critical Buddhist concepts: the transitory nature of the world, the viciousness of samsara (the world of experience), karma and its results, benevolence, compassion, and the acquisition and training in an enlightened attitude. <br />
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The last half of the work is an account of the six perfections (paramitas), the five paths to enlightenment, the spiritual levels, and the perfection of Buddhahood and its activities. The six perfections are among the most significant ideas in the Mahayana tradition, especially as it is developed in Tibetan Buddhism. They are generosity, morality, patience, vigor, concentration, and wisdom. By cultivating these virtues, one proceeds along the path to becoming a bodhisattva, i.e., an enlightened being who renounces to goal of perfect enlightenment (buddhahood) for the purpose of relieve the world of suffering and bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment. <br />
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Indeed, there are very few works that compare to <i>The Jewel Ornament of Liberation </i>for its clarity and insight. It stands among the best primary works in the history of Mahayana Buddhism.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-6229629035892717292016-03-14T17:02:00.001-07:002016-03-14T17:02:32.745-07:00American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation--How Indian Spirituality Changed the West / Philip Goldberg -- N.Y.: Harmony Books, 2010In 1981, Rick Fields published a book entitled, <i>How the Swans Came to the Lake</i> which was a history of how Buddhism made its way to the United States. In <i>American Veda</i>, Philip Goldberg presents a similar history for Hinduism or what he calls "vedanta-yoga." While the subtitle suggests that the story of Hinduism transmission would cover Europe and North America, Goldberg mostly describes its transmission to the U.S. Early on, he makes the rather bold claim that vedism, the idea that we, as individuals, participate in a larger consciousness that constitutes the universe, is a "perfect fit" for the American ethos, at least insofar as vedism permits "personalized pathways to the divine." He goes on, then, to describe to growing impact of Vedic philosophies and yogic practices on Americans. Beginning with Emerson's acceptance of an "over-soul," passing through Thoreau's paeans to nature, Goldberg describes the foundation of vedism in American literature. <br />
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The real launch of American vedism begins, however, with the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. From this point on, Americans began hosting a number of gurus from India who introduced the intelligentsia to vedism. Goldberg recounts the impression these gurus had on such figures as Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Gerald Heard. This period is perhaps the first phase of serious examination of the vedic philosophy in America. <br />
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It is followed, however, by a much larger influx of gurus following the elimination of immigration restriction from Asia in 1965 and the journey to India by the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and Marianne Faithful in 1968. The list of celebrities who were influenced by various gurus during the 1960s and 1970s is impressive; however, the scandals associated with many high profile gurus casts doubt on the legitimacy of this paroxysm of interest. To his credit, Goldberg does not shy away from a fair-minded account of this period. What he finally concludes, though, is that despite the appearnce of charlatans, the Western seekers gained a genuine appreciation for vedanta-yoga. In the final chapters he discusses ways in which vedanta-yoga has influence the arts, psychology, and physics. <br />
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<i>American Veda</i> is a fine account of the coming of vedanta-yoga to the U.S. It provides a sympathetic, but honest assessment of that history. It does, however, overstate the extent to which vedanta-yoga has permeated American culture. While the trappings of vedanta-yoga might well be increasingly common and more Americans than ever before may be signing up of Hatha yoga classes, an accurate awareness of the vedic world view is still hardly known in America. Goldberg's points out that a significant number of Americans describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious," and he suggests that this is a product of the transmission of vedanta-yoga to the America. It might, however, be more likely a consequence of the success of science made consistent with a reluctance on the part of people to completely abandon their ancestral beliefs. Goldberg also suggests that the increased interest in vedic (and Buddhist) spirituality represents a kind of Great Awakening of the 21st century. Only time will tell about that. Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8261994975895323987.post-66097955065316974162016-02-25T12:04:00.000-08:002016-02-25T12:07:38.646-08:00Catching UpIt has been quite some time (since June 2015) that I posted anything to this blog. I was for most of that time on sabbatical, drafting a book on Indian Buddhism. Consequently, my writing efforts were directed away from reviewing books and toward writing one. Since coming back from the sabbatical, I have not recovered my habit of reviewing the books I read; however, my hope is to recover that habit. To catch up, though, I merely plan to record here a number of the books that I read over that last few months. After all, this blog is primarily a means to record for myself the books I have read. Perhaps one day, I'll return to the most important ones and provide reviews.<br />
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Powell, James Lawrence, <i>The Inquisition of Climate Science</i>, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2001. This work is a brief (192 page) book describing the concerted efforts by climate change deniers to sew doubt about the fact and effects of our changing climate. It also recounts many of the highest profile attacks on climate scientists by deniers.<br />
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Stern, Nicholas, <i>The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review</i>, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006. This work is a major landmark (if not the major landmark) in the literature related to the economics of climate change. It has been criticized for employing an inordinately low discount rate, but this mainly reflects a moral judgement regarding the importance of the well-being of future generations. <br />
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Nordhaus, William, <i>The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World</i>. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013. The importance of this work is perhaps second only to <i>The Stern Review</i> with regard to the economics of climate change. William Nordhaus (not be confused with his son Ted Nordhaus) is an eminent environmental economist. His analysis of the economic consequences of climate change and climate change mitigation strategies differs somewhat from Nicholas Stern's analysis. Nordhaus applies a higher discount rate making which has the consequence of estimating a higher relative cost for mitigating climate change and he is more sanguine regarding future generations' abilities to adapt to climate change. Nonetheless, he strongly advocates a carbon tax and stresses the importance of acting quickly and decisively to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. <br />
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Jamieson, Dale, <i>Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future</i>, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2014. This work, by a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. Jamieson provides and account of how governments have failed to address climate change in a time frame adequate to preserve the kind of planet that existed prior to the industrial revolution. He acknowledges that we live in the Anthropocene Era, viz., a geological era in which the actions of human beings are having a determining effect on the natural history of the planet. He also provides chapters on the ethics of responding to climate change.<br />
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Medvedev, Zhores A., <i>The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko</i>, I. Michael Lerner, trans., N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1969. This is an account of the period from 1929-1961 during which the influence of T.D. Lysenko distorted Soviet genetics and agricultural sciences. The account is written by a Soviet scientist who had first hand experience with the internal struggles to maintain the integrity of Soviet science.<br />
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Joravsky, David, <i>The Lysenko Affair</i>, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. Joravsky is an American historian, emeritus professor at Northwestern University specializing in Soviet studies. This work is recognized as among the very best accounts of the Soviet science under the influence of T.D. Lysenko. <br />
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Wood, Mary Christina, <i>Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age</i>, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2014. I consider this book the best of the year. It describes the decline of environmental regulations established by the promising environmental laws of the 1970s. According to Wood, environmental regulatory agencies have become captured by the industries that they were designed to regulate. Consequently, their primary role now is to approve exceptions to environmental restrictions -- essentially blessing the very damages they were designed to protect us from. Wood argues that our best response to this is to employ trust law to require Congress and the executive branch to protect the public's interest in a livable environment. Basic to this approach is the idea that the natural world is like a trust, with government serving as its trustee on behalf of current and future generations.<br />
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Speth, James Gustave and Peer M. Haas, <i>Global Environmental Governance</i>, Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2006. This work provides a brief history of the international efforts to reach an agreement on how to protect the climate from anthropogenic changes.<br />
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Kolbert, Elizabeth, <i>Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change</i>, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 2006. This work is among the most important of several books that were published around this time on the contemporary and pending damages that climate change presents. Ten years on, it is depressing to see how little has been accomplished to address the problems that Kolbert describes.<br />
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McKibben, Bill, <i>Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet</i>, N.Y.: N.Y.: Henry Holt and Co., 2010. Bill McKibben may be remembered as the most important voice warning Americans about the damage that we are doing to the climate. His work <i>Eaarth</i> asserts that our actions have already ensured that our planet will become qualitatively different from the one which has been our home. Thus, he slightly alters the spelling of the planet's name. His description of unavoidable changes are clear and illuminating, fully justifying his rather radical observation. McKibben suggests ways in which we might alter our lifestyles in a way that will allow us to live "lightly, carefully, and gracefully" such that we can live reasonably well despite the terrible consequences of our past actions.<br />
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Brechin, Gray, <i>Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin</i>, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. This work is a history of the city of San Francisco and the social, political, and particularly the environmental consequences of its development. The story begins with the devastation produced by mining gold and clear cutting California's forests and concludes with the establishment of the academic institutions that developed nuclear weapons. It provides an unflinching critique of the consequences of the unrestrained economic exploitation of people an nature for private gain.<br />
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Shelley, Mary, <i>The Last Man</i>, London: Henry Colburn, 1826. This little-known novel by the author of <i>Frankenstein</i> describes in three volumes the extinction of humanity as a result of a virulent plague. The story come to us from 1818 when visitors to a "gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl," where they find written prophecies, often of events now just past. Among the prophesies is an account of the last man to perish in the world-wide plague. Though set in the last decade, the world Shelley describes is little different from her own time. It is without electricity or internal combustion engines and the struggle between monarchists and republicans is only now becoming resolved in favor of republicanism. The first volume works primarily to introduce and develop the novel's characters. Its story mostly concerns interpersonal relations and political ambitions. The plague makes no appearance. Indeed, appart from passing mention, it only appears one third of the way through the second volume. From there the novel describes the epidemic decimation of England. The third volume recounts the surviving remnants of the country trekking to Switzerland where they hope to find refuge from the plague. Ultimately three survivors continue on to Rome. The novel ends with the last man determining to sail a bark along the oceans' shores in search of another survivor. "Thus around the shores of deserted earth, while the sun is high, and the moon waxes or wanes, angels, the spirits of the dead, and the ever-open eyeof the Supreme, will behold the tiny bark, freighted with Verney--the LAST MAN." If the Victorians were obsessed with death, Shelley's <i>The Last Man</i> is an extreme expression of this obsession. Not only does every character die, but the entire human race is extinguished. The early volume is graced with the romantic prose of the time and peppered with reflections on life, love, and death, but once the plague appears, there is hardly a page in the novel which is not a meditation on mortality.Alan Mattlagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123037050466769121noreply@blogger.com0