#985: As Goes Florida, So Goes . . . ?

Mark Twain, that most revered and authentic of all American writers, had the ability to cloak profundity in the garment of wit, better than anyone who ever took pen to paper. And, like all true geniuses, he made it look oh so easy and utterly natural . . . like Ted Williams swinging a bat or Lord Olivier playing King Lear.  Twain’s great gift was used to entertain, to make us laugh and above all, to make the reader pause and think.   Yes, some of his chapters and paragraphs are, by today’s political standards, decidedly “un-PC.”  But this should by no means keep anyone from drinking deeply from the well of his artistry.  The man really, truly, understood the human condition with all of its wens and warts. 

My five all-time favorite Twain aphorisms are:

• The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

• Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love Truly. Laugh uncontrollably. Never regret anything that makes you smile.

• A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.

• The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.  And, to my way of thinking, the best of the bunch:

• Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

  I can hear you asking “What in the world do the best of Mark Twain’s epigrams have to do with the title of this week’s blog As Goes Florida, So Goes . . .”  As Grandpa Doc would say, “Vell . . . I’ll tell ‘ya.”  (In truth, Doc didn’t have an accent; he occasionally would adopt one to make a point or begin a story).  The story here is that I was doing my research for this week’s blog, which  was meant to discuss some of the wackier, inane new laws passed by our overwhelmingly MAGA-supporting legislature and signed by Governor “Rhonda Santis.” In the midst of reading some of several of the most noxious bills, I found myself wanting to know if all this crappola was keeping people from moving to the Sunshine State.  This query quickly expanded to the question of which states were gaining and which were losing, the greatest numbers of people over the past two years.  Coming upon an article on the topic published in MarketWatch.com (a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, along with The Wall Street Journal and Barron's), I learned that the top 3 states losing people were:

  • California (A net migration of -407, 633)

  • New York ( −283,792) and

  • New Mexico ( -177,710), while the 3 biggest gainers were:

  • Florida ( +205,163) 

  • Texas ( +144,032) and 

  • North Carolina ( +99,406).

The rest of the states reporting net positive migration are, in order, Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada and Idaho.  With the possible exceptions of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, the rest of the positive-migration states are solidly, irredeemably, hardcore MAGA in their politics and legislatures. (I for one refuse to call it ‘the MAGA wing’  of the Republican Party for I, unlike many, cannot find a solitary remnant of what used  to be nicknamed the GOP . . . they are all MAGA).  And, from where I sit, this bodes poorly for the future of politics in these United States.  For MAGA-controlled legislatures, serving under MAGA-supporting governors, who appoint MAGA-istic Federalist Society judges, can jointly enact just about any measure they please coming out of the autocratic playbook coauthored by the  likes of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Susie Wiles, and Stephen Miller.  

Think I’m going a bit too far?  Well, consider just a few of the things happening here in Florida, the state I have been hanging out in since July 6, 1982:

• We have a state Surgeon General/Secretary of Health, Joseph Lapado, M.D., PhD., who is anti COVID and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines - among other things - and has totally politicized medicine here in the Sunshine State.  As someone who has been gainfully employed on two of the best Institutional Review Boards in America for nearly 30 years, and have reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of clinical trials in the fields of infectious diseases, oncology and epidemiology, I am simply amazed (and scared witless) at the man’s ability to place partisan politics way, way ahead of provable science and medicine.  Whatever happened to “First, do no harm?”

• Here in Florida, as of July, 2023, we have a gun law which allows  Florida residents to carry concealed weapons without benefit of a license - let alone taking a single safety course - with impunity.  This is perfectly in keeping with the MAGA reading of the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment; they firmly believe than any limitation on guns is unconstitutional.

• Just this past week, the 63rd anniversary of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, (a failed invasion of Cuba supported by the CIA) Gov. DeSantis signed a bill (SB 1264) requiring the teaching of “the dangers and evils of communism” in Florida public schools from grades 1-12.  Coming on the heels of so many Republicans in both the House and Senate voting against sending aid to the Ukraine - which is fighting against the Communist expansion of Putin’s Russia - one wonders if DeSantis and his Florida colleagues are living back in the 1950s, when fighting Communism and individuals they deemed to be Communists - AKA “liberals” or “progressives” - was the sine qua non of “true" Americanism. 

• Less than 2 weeks ago, DeSantis signed a bill into law allowing “volunteer chaplains” to counsel students in traditional public and charter schools,  despite warnings from a pastors group, the ACLU and the Satanic Temple that it would violate the First Amendment.  In signing the bill, the governor said: “There are some students [who] need some soul prep, and that can make all the difference in the world. And so these chaplains … come in and provide services.” DeSantis said the law, set to go effect in July, would stand up to court challenges because the program was voluntary and parents would have to provide consent for their children to meet with the chaplains. “No one’s being forced to do anything, but to exclude religious groups from campus, that is discrimination,” he said. “You’re basically saying that God has no place. That’s wrong. That’s not what our Founding Fathers intended.”  And this guy is a graduate of Yale and earned a law degree at Harvard!  His “understanding” of the Founders and the Constitution’s 1st Amendment guarantees is steeped not in knowledge, but in partisan politics.  (n.b.: The new law uses the title ‘chaplain’ but requires none of the specialized training that health care facilities, the military, and most prisons require of chaplains.)

• Florida ranks second (behind Texas) in the greatest number of banned books. In the most recent ranking by World Population Review, the Sunshine State instituted bans on 565 books in 21 of the state’s school districts.  Governor DeSantis is one of the main people leading the charge against called “critical race theory” (CRT). Many of the books that he and his acolytes have targeted have to do with issues related to race. It is important to note that critical race theory is not taught outside of upper-level college and law school classes.

• Florida ranks just behind Michigan in the states with the highest annual premiums for auto insurance; it is the 4th highest in the cost of homeowner’s insurance (if you can find it), and 4th most expensive for annual healthcare coverage.  

• And to add injury to insult, in less than 48 hours, Florida’s new 6-week abortion ban will go into effect. This past April 1, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution's privacy protections do not extend to abortion, overturning decades of legal precedent and effectively triggering the more restrictive law.  On November 5, 2024, Florida voters will vote on a citizen-initiated Constitutional Amendment (#4) which will legalize abortion.  Its text states, in part: “The initiative would provide a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability (estimated to be around 24 weeks) or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider.” The fact that proactive citizens managed to collect more than 1 million signatures  to place this measure on the November ballot is the good news.  The not-so-good news? It will take a supermajority for it to pass, and there is already a measure on the November ballot that would increase the supermajority voter approval requirement for constitutional amendments from 60% to 66.67%. 

So,  keeping all the above in mind, why do so many people pick up and move to Florida?  For the sunshine?  Because it has no state income tax?  Because the governor has his own militia? You tell me.  If this is the future of even half of America, we are in dire straits.  It used to be said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek that "As goes New Hampshire, so goes the rest of the nation.”  What the surreality that is currently Florida portends for the rest of the nation is anyone’s guess.

Let us give the final word to Mark Twain (from his Autobiography, Vol. 1): “Look at the tyranny of party -- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction.”

Coyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone

#968: Don't Know Much About History

Political campaigns - especially on the presidential level - are exercises in exhaustion; tense, highly-scripted affairs in which a single slip up, questionable facial expression or obvious misstatement can exact more damage than a 4th-quarter 15-yard penalty or a three-base throwing error in the bottom of the 9th with no outs. Those possessing robust political memories will easily recall that in the 1960 televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon, Richard Nixon’s sweaty upper-lip and generally wan appearance likely lost him the election; ever the showbiz professional, JFK had spent several days soaking up  rays in Hyannis Port and wearing professionally-applied stage makeup prior to the televised debate. By comparison, Nixon looked like a man running a fever.

Then there was 1976, when incumbent POTUS Gerald R. Ford lost his race against Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter when he, Ford, flatly stated “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” (Of course the Soviets did, in fact, occupy much of the region at the time.) Or the 2004 Dean Scream, in which former Vermont Governor Howard Dean emitted a high-volume, high-pitched scream of ebullience (complete with matching body language) while speaking before a group in Iowa.  That scream not only tossed his presidential aspirations on to the trash heap, but essentially brought his national political career to a crashing end.

               The “Dean Scream” (2004)

Indeed, running for political office is not an activity for sissies.  In theory - if not in actual practice - the requisite ingredients for success are knowledge and education; a modicum of grace, charisma; the ability to connect with least part of the electorate; indefatigable drive; the ability to think on one’s feet; and at least the appearance of compassion, humility and charm.  And oh yes, it occasionally helps to have both a platform and a message.  In today’s hyper cyber political world, the platform is, generally speaking, more important to Democrats than Republicans, and visa-versa when it comes to the message.  Unless, of course, one’s platform is an ad nauseum expression of who you or what you are against, while obnoxiously pinning meaningless labels – “Dangerous atheistic Leftists,” “Marxists,” “Socialists,” “Nazis,” or “Wannabe Dictators.” on the other. 

Up until a few days ago, it seemed as if former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley might be the only credible alternative to Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  Not that she really stood a snowball’s chance in Hades of becoming the party’s nominee; just that she seemed like a a breath of fresh air when compared to the “Man of a Thousand Nasty Nicknames.”  Throughout the sans Trump Republican debates, she came off as poised, easily able to defend herself, reasonably knowledgeable about the issues, charismatic, and not  prone to stepping on her own tongue.  Of course she made it clear that she was a card-carrying conservative, but one with far more compassion and far less craziness than the “leader of the pack.”  Then came last week’s dumber-than-dirt gaff during a town hall forum in New Hampshire, when one of the members of the audience asked her what she believed caused the Civil War:

For those without access to the above YouTube capture, she began her answer with a seemingly humorous quip “Well, don’t come with an easy question.” Then, pausing and pacing the stage, she talked about the role of government, replying that it involved “basically how the government was going to run” and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do”. She continued with a by-the-book state’s rights opinion: “I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people, “It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.” At this point, the questioner said to Governor Haley: “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.” This prompted a retort from Haley. “What do you want me to say about slavery?” she asked. 

The next day (Thursday 12/28) amid wide reporting of her response and in apparent damage limitation mode, Haley said in a radio interview: “Of course the civil war was about slavery.”

According to the Washington Post, Haley told The Pulse of NH radio show: “I want to nip it in the bud. Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery. But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”

 My immediate response to Haley’s comments on “the role of government . . . and the rights of the people” was “Hey Nikki, you want government out of the lives of individuals . . . unless they are women wishing to control their own bodies, members of the LGBT+ community, impoverished individuals or families, anyone in need of assistance, or just generally poor.” This line of reasoning - or lack thereof - intends to say that being gay, poor, a woman who has been raped and a host of other things is a matter of free will. Sorry Nikki, that’s simply not the case.

                   Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

The only major Republican to slam Haley’s response to the question of whether slavery had anything to do with the Civil War was, not surprisingly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who began 2023 as a rising star in the Republican firmament, and ended it running a distant third. DeSantis was quick to criticize Haley at a campaign stop in Iowa campaign stop Thursday morning, telling reporters that she, Haley, is "not a candidate that's ready for prime time. . . .The minute that she faces any kind of scrutiny, she tends to cave." DeSantis said. He then continued with: "I think that that's what you saw yesterday. Not that difficult to identify and acknowledge the role slavery played in the Civil War, and yet that seemed to be something that was really difficult."

The Florida governor, has been instrumental in radically altering how the Civil War, the eventual abolition of slavery and much American history is to be taught in the Sunshine State. Among his more unreconstructed lesson plans for Florida’s students is teaching that “in many instances, slaves developed skills which, in some instances[sic], could be applied for their personal benefit." Just the other day members of his overwhelmingly conservative legislature begun pushing legislation that will fine and punish local leaders for removing memorials to the Confederacy.

 What’s going on here? Do Nikki Haley, who grew up and was educated in South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union), and Governor DeSantis, (who earned a degree in history from Yale in 2001), really know so little about American history (among other things)? If that is so, we have every right to assume their favorite song is Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World, which begins with the words:

Don't know much about History
Don't know much Biology
Don't know much about a Science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be 

 If so, than the “You” that Cooke’s lyrics are aimed would have to be the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.  

Outside of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Representatives Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, about-to-become former Representative Ken Buck and about-to-become former Senator Mitt Romney, most of Donald Trump’s Cabinet and the founder, donors and members of the Lincoln Project, (who has already endorsed President Biden), few prominent, office-holding Republicans have spoken out - let alone found fault with - the putative head of their party.  And it’s not because Trump is, unbeknownst to the rest of us, a top-notch leader with a sound mind and a solid record of accomplishment . . . outside of passing the largest tax-cut for the hyper-wealthy American history.  No, for behind closed doors, the men and women who remain publicly silent, likely know precisely what kind of toxic political excrescence he really is.  By their silence they are putting an overwhelming amount of cowardice on display; seemingly preferring a "leader” who bills himself as "your retribution,” over a man like Joe Biden who, although far from perfect, at least has a fifty—year political track record of being on the side of the angels. 

What do all these poltroons of political mediocrity expect in exchange for their silence?  Getting reelected and then sitting on their fat derrieres doing virtually nothing for the nation for another two or four years?  Filling up their saddlebags for the day when they return to the private sector?  They are the shame of the nation, who collectively seek to prove that Sinclair Lewis was wrong: “It Can Happen Here.”  (Then too, perhaps the illusion to the Nobel Prize-winning Lewis is lost on them; they don’t know much about literature either.)    

                                                                           Don't know much about geography
                                                                           Don't know much trigonometry                         
                                                                           Don't know much about algebra
                                                                           Don't know what a slide rule is for

                                                                           But I do know one and one is two
                                                                        And if this one could be with you
                                                                   What a wonderful world this would be 
                                                                             (Written by: Herb Alpert, Lou Adler, Sam Cooke)

It’s a great song . . . when sung by Sam Cooke, but a horrifying reality when hummed by Trump’s legionnaires. 

 Copyright2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#965: Oh What a Week . . .

Without question, the past 168 hours have contained more news stories and headlines of historical importance, drama, tragedy and trepidation than any in recent memory. Some of these stories and headlines concern people, places and events that will be prominently noted in history books so long as people read and write history. Other stories and events will ultimately become nothing more than mere historic asterisks like 3’7” Eddie Gaedel, the smallest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game. (Gaedel, who had signed a one-day contract with the St. Louis Browns, walked on 4 pitches tossed by Detroit Tiger southpaw Bob Cain, and then was pulled for pinch runner Jim Delsing. The only people who remember Gaedel and that August 19, 1951 stunt some 72 after his single at-bat, are undoubtedly the geekiest of baseball aficionados.)

This past week (168 hours) has seen the passing of Dr. Henry Kissinger, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State at age 100. Unlike Gaedel, Dr. Kissinger will be long remembered. (Actually, America’s first Jewish Secretary of State was Judah P. Benjamin, known to many historians as “The Brains of the Confederacy.” The one-time planter, slave-owner, America’s highest-paid attorney and United States senator from Louisiana, Benjamin variously served as Jefferson Davis’ Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State; at war’s end, he wound up his professional life moving to England, where he read British law and rose to become Queen’s Counsel. He is buried at the famed Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, not far from the graves of Jim Morrison, Marcel Marceau and Edith Piaf.)

Without question, Dr. Kissinger was a titan. Over a span of nearly 60 years, he served, advised and counseled 9 different presidents and even more Secretaries of State. Considering the vast differences of these men and women (Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton) in terms of intelligence, experience, worldliness and weltanschauung (world-view), this is a rather remarkable record. On the plus side, Kissinger, perhaps even more than Richard Nixon, was responsible for bringing China and America closer together; back then it was called “Ping Pong Diplomacy. Unquestionably, his biggest, most grievous negative would be the secret bombing of then-neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. During that war, Kissinger and then-President Nixon ordered clandestine bombing raids on Cambodia, in an effort to flush out Viet Cong forces in the eastern part of the country.

It should never be forgotten that the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Cambodia from 1965-1973. (For context, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during the whole of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki.). Until the end of his life, Kissinger maintained that the bombing was aimed at the Vietnamese army inside Cambodia, not at the country itself. The number of people killed by those bombs is not known, but estimates range from 50,000 to upwards of 150,000.

We shall not - G-d willing - see his kind again for a long, long time.

This week also sees the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court. A rancher’s daughter from Arizona, she earned a law degree at Stanford, tried to get a job after the passing the California Bar, only to be told that perhaps she should lower her sights and look for work as a legal secretary.  Eventually, she became an icon for future generations of women in the law. A legal conservative - though not as we think of them today, she served during a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket.

Although William H. Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate, served as chief justice during much of her tenure, the Supreme Court during that crucial period was often called the “O’Connor court,” and Justice O’Connor was referred to, quite accurately, as “the most powerful woman in America.” Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no mere coincidence, given the close attention she paid to current events and the public mood.  Among her most important decisions were:

• In Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) she said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.

• In Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002) O’Connor upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor’s opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.

• In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) she broke with Chief Justice Rehnquist and other opponents of a woman’s right to choose as part of a 5-4 majority in affirming Roe v. Wade.

• In Hunt v. Cromartie (2001) Justice O’Connor affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.

Returning to the land of the living, this past week had bit of a unique first: a televised prime-time “debate” between a sitting governor and presidential candidate and another governor who may become a presidential candidate in another 4 years. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and California’s Gavin Newsom spent their ninety minutes on a well-designed stage taking shots at one another about banning books, who has the greatest tax burden (Florida has no income tax), the price of homeowners insurance (Florida’s is the highest in the nation) and who gets along best with Disney. DeSantis’ major advantage was having Fox News’ Entertainer Sean Hannity throwing him softball question whenever Newsome backed the smaller man into a corner.  One positive thing to say about the two: man, do they have great heads of hair!

At one point, as both men were talking over each other and the volume got louder, Newsom played his best Joe Cool imitation, threw his hands open, turned to DeSantis and said with a smile, "Hey, Ron, relax." The one thing DeSantis may have learned from the evening’s 90-minute tussle is that it’s next to impossible to get under the skin of a man who has nothing to lose. As soon as the 90 minutes were up, a panel of Fox hosts spent hours declaring him the obvious and overwhelming winner, while the major cable outlets decided not to report on it until the next day. When they did, a clear majority yawningly gave Newsom a collective thumbs-up.

Donald Trump spent last week further outlining what he has in the works for the next 4 years should he be elected. Besides making personal loyalty to him the key qualification for getting a position in the federal government (hasn’t he ever heard of the Civil Service?) and reversing the “weaponization” of both the DOJ and DOD, the FPOTUS doubled down on his calls to replace the Affordable Care Act, (“Obamacare”) if he’s elected president again. “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a pair of late-night posts on social media.

It seems that he has gotten his hand on an old speech . . . or has forgotten that back when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate they failed to do precisely what he is once again promising to do. Interestingly, only a handful of prominent Republicans have voiced anything even approaching approval of the plan. The reason? The ACA now scores highly with most Americans. As Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., reminded his colleagues just the other day, reopening the ACA fight in 2025 would require Republicans to craft a replacement plan ahead of time, which they have never done.

Over on Capitol Hill, President Biden’s son Hunter played a masterful game of political chess with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which has been misspending tons of time and taxpayer money in their attempt to impeach President Biden.  Hunter’s attorneys “castled” Committee Chair James Comer by telling the Kentucky Republican that their client, whom the committee recently subpoenaed (along with Hunter’s former business associate Rob Walker, and the president’s brother James Biden) would be glad to appear . . . but only if the hearings are held in public.  Needless to say, Comer, his committee colleagues and a clear majority of the Republican caucus are dead set against the demand.  Why?  Because the public would quickly learn that when it comes to real, honest to G-d charges against the Bidens, in the immortal words of Gertrude Stein, "There’s no there there.”  In a letter to Comer, Hunter Biden’s attorney,  Abbe Lowell. wrote: “We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.”  Comer et al realize that Hunter and Abbe Lowell have got ‘em in checkmate.  They just cannot abide by it.  Of course, this does not mean that they will discontinue the current game of political chess; they’ll likely switch to political checkers.  Counselor Lowell, by the way, will be remembered a lot longer than Chairman Comer . . . and for good reason.

We conclude with the one former member of Congress who in future years, like little Eddie Gaedel (number “1/8”) will likely only be remembered by political geeks: the expelled fabulist, George Anthony Devolder Santos. By a vote of 311 (206 Dems., 105 Reps.) to 114 (2 Dems., 112 Reps.), Santos became just the sixth member of Congress to be shown the door . . . and likely the third of this group to wind up being incarcerated. In many regards, Santos is the Platonic Absolute of a MAGAite: venal, hypocritical, mendacious to the  max, larcenous, a moral albino (you figure it out) and possessing all 9 signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I mean, lying is one thing in politics.  But lying for the sake of Botox, Ferragamo and Hèrmes?

As Vanessa Williams noted in a New York Times essay:

In the end, it may have been the luxury goods that brought down George Santos.

Not the lies about going to Baruch College and being a volleyball star or working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Not the claims of being Jewish and having grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and a mother who died of cancer as result of 9/11. (Not true, it turned out.) Not the fibs about having founded an animal charity or owning substantial real estate assets. None of the falsehoods that have been exposed since Mr. Santos’s election last year. After all, he did survive two previous votes by his peers to expel him from Congress, one back in May, one earlier in November.

 I for one am not sure what ultimately brought him  down . . . or made enough of his fellow Republicans (though not a majority of them) to finally show him the door.  Perhaps it was the looming not-too-distant presence of the 2024 elections; an unvoiced  fear of having to answer questions about his presence in their caucus . . . along with questions about their caucus’ all-but-invisible agenda.  Under normal circumstances (if they still exist), a disgraced former member of Congress with a penchant for publicity could look forward to eventually making a fortune on Fox, starting his own podcast or radio talk-show, or having a ghost write him a tell-all book while  spending his hefty advance on G-d knows what.  This probably won’t happen, because soon, he, like his beloved leader, is  going to be spending his every waking hour (and what cash he can put his hands on) proclaiming his innocence in federal court. 

Who knows: perhaps future generations will remember George Anthony Devolder Santos for having been Donald J. Trump’s cellmate in prison . . . 

Oh what a week! 

Copyright2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#951 Article XIV, Section 3: The Constitutional Equivalent of the Manhattan Project?

81 years ago this month (Aug. 13, 1942 to be precise) The United States - along with the United Kingdom and Canada - commenced on what would become known as the “Manhattan Project.” For those who don’t know much about mid-20th century history (or have not as yet seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” starring the Irish actor Cillian Murphey as the fabled yet troubled nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer), the “Manhattan Project” was the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II. The project, which employed more than 130,000 people over a period of nearly 5 years, had profound impacts on world history.  It was a truly monumental effort created, crafted and accomplished in the darkest of all earthly shadows.  Without it, it is likely that the Allies would never have defeated the Axis in 1945; only G-d knows what the world would look like today, in 2023.

To a haunting extent, we are once again faced with an evil that threatens our very future: Donald Trump and the threat he and his MAGA cultists pose to the very future of democracy. In both political and psychological terms he himself is a freak of nature.

Despite having been twice impeached; currently facing 4 separate state and federal indictments totaling 91 different charges; having been found guilty of defamation of character against a woman who accused him of rape; having been caught spreading more than 30,000 lies and mistruths during his four years in the White House; getting his followers to pay his legal fees . . . etc., etc., etc., his supporters trust him more than their families or religious leaders. This essay is not the place to get into a discussion of either the nature of cult leaders and their rabid followers or the psychology behind conspiracies . . . though both deserve a thorough airing.

It seems pretty obvious that behind closed doors, a vast percentage of Republican office-holders despise Trump (who my friend Alan refers to as “The Orange Blob”) and wish he and his MAGA maniacs would just fade away. They know and understand (again, “behind closed doors”) that he represents clear and present danger to America. Sadly, most all of them - save former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - lack the backbone to speak the truth in public. What they pray for is some sort of “magic bullet” that will do Trump in without their having to lift a finger or utter a discouraging word . . . and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Back in 1942, when the future of democracy was in dire straits, the “magic bullet” was underwritten by the FDR Administration, who turned to the sages of science . . . people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe and Ernest O. Lawrence to create that weapon. (Do note that with the exception of Dr. Lawrence, the rest of these distinguished physicists who headed up the Manhattan Project were all Jewish immigrants.) Today, the magic bullet so many seek to put Donald Trump out of democracy’s pending degradation, may well come in the form of Article XIV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

     Prof. Laurence Tribe and Judge J. Michael Luttig

A couple of days ago, Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law and J. Michael Luttig, the longtime (1991-2006) Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, co-authored a remarkable article in the Atlantic entitled “The Constitution Prohibits Trump from Ever Being President Again."  The two august Constitutional scholars - Tribe a progressive and Luttig a conservative who has often been compared to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, began their article thusly: As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.

“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause. …

Tribe and Luttig are by no means the first to discuss - let alone conclude - that Article XIV, Section 3 can and should disqualify Donald J. Trump from ever again serving as POTUS.  Indeed, this legal/political thread has been a hotly debated issue among academics and political geeks since January 7, 2021.  The swirl of approval surrounding the use of XIV:3 to remove the “disability of Donald Trump" has been growing ever since. Many of the most vocal are conservative members of the Federalist Society.

Writing in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, members of the conservative Federalist Society, agree: “In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.”   

This is not to say that there is total agreement ridding the nation of Trump via Constitutional mandate; some are uncertain that it can work.  Since when was there unanimous agreement on anything concerning “the Orange Blob?” And yet, this could be, as they say in Yiddish פֿון הימל קומט אַ מתּנה - “a gift from Heaven.” For Democrats, most Independents and all those Republicans who really, truly don’t want Trump to win the nomination - thus bringing a plague of frogs, lice, vermin and utter defeat at the polls raining on their political parade - this provides the perfect out: keeping quiet and letting the Constitution answer their “behind locked doors” prayers.

As journalist Bill Press, my long ago boss in Governor Jerry Brown’s “Office of Planning and Research” noted just the other day: The language (of article XIV, Section 3) is so clear, not even today’s conservative Supreme Court could read the Constitution any other way. Trump is not only unfit to be president, but he is also constitutionally prohibited from holding that office. Period.    For leaders of the Republican Party, the next step is clear. Follow the 14th Amendment. It’s time to stop entertaining Donald Trump and find another candidate.”

  One gigantic difference between the Manhattan Project and Article XIV, Section 3 of the Constitution is that the former was done under cover of darkness, while the latter is (hopefully) going to be concluded in the bright light of day.

Here’s looking to a better, more democratic tomorrow . . .

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#944: Jefferson Monroe Levy, the 4th of July, and US

The Fourth of July 2023 isn’t even close to what it was - or even meant to be - back when Erica (my “slightly older sister”) and I were kids. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, what we nowadays simply call either “The Fourth” or “Fourth of July Weekend” (even if it comes around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) meant going to the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks War Memorial Park (where we learned to swim and dive as well as attend day camp in the summer) take a blanket, sandwiches and a thermos-full of lemonade - and watch the best-staged, most artistic fireworks display anywhere in the West. How did we know it was “the best in the West?” Simple: when you live within a couple of miles of the best “special effects” departments on earth, it’s bound to be great . . . and incredibly loud. Having the world’s tallest palm trees as a backdrop . . . well, it just couldn’t be any better.  And to top everything off, there would be the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by some star of the silver screen, usually backed by an orchestra from MGM, Paramount, Fox or even (G-d forbid!) RKO.  

Those were the days!  It was both patriotic (remember, there were veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean  “police action” scattered throughout the crowd) and filled with pride for the country that our Founders had created.  Oh sure, we knew we weren’t perfect and not everyone was as acceptable as others (these were still the pre-Civil Rights Act days and Hollywood was not yet free of the horrendous “Black List”); but in the main, we still celebrated the dreams and ideals of our Founders.  We were still, for the most part “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Even as a kid of 8 or 9, I reveled in the thought that we, the Stone family, descended from the Schimbergs and Greenbergs of Maryland and Virginia, and the Kagans and Hymans of Minnesota and Illinois, were all part of the U.S., which we always pronounced as the single word: “us.”  We were among the few whose grandparents and great-grandparents neither spoke Yiddish nor had ever never set foot in New York.  And yet, we certainly never felt ourselves to be more of “US” than those who were of the first generation . . . either in America itself or Hollywood in general.

In the generations of our grandparents, great-grandparents and even more, the Fourth of July was far, far different than what Erica and I remember. While I have read about fireworks being a staple of 19th-century Fourth of July celebrations (signifying the “bombs bursting in air” at the battle of Ft. McHenry - a legacy of the War of 1812), it was the public reading of Jefferson’s magnificent “Declaration of Independence” which took center stage. These celebrations weren’t nearly as jingoistic (propagandistic) as those celebrations of a later age; rather they centered and brought to mind the words, thoughts and dreams of that most literate of all our Founders, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. And even after Jefferson died (ironically on the 4th of July, 1826, the very same day as his colleague/political nemesis John Adams), his words - among the greatest in all human history - were kept in the ears and memories of a grateful public . . . US:

                       Jefferson’s handwritten draft

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government . . .

Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924)

After serving two terms as POTUS (1801-1809), Jefferson returned to his estate at Monticello (Latin for Little Mountain), where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. For more than a quarter century, it was his habit to invite all the people from “down the hill” to attend his 4th of July celebration during which he read the Declaration of Independence from the very bookstand on which he drafted the original document. At the time of his death on the 4th of July, 1826, his estate was in severe disrepair; in 1831, the house and grounds were sold by Jefferson’s heirs (his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to one James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville pharmacist. Three years later (1834), Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862), the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy, bought the 218-acre estate from Barclay for $2,700 (equivalent to $79,100 in today's dollars). Commodore Levy then undertook to have the long-neglected home repaired, restored, and preserved. He also bought hundreds of additional acres that had been part of the plantation, to add to what was left. Levy, it should be mentioned, was part of one of the oldest and most prominent Jewish families in America.

Uriah P. Levy used Monticello as a vacation home.  Toward the end of his life, the Commodore also restored the Charlottesville Town Hall, built in 1852, as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. This bold Greek Revival 800-seat structure is still in use today.

From 1837 to 1839, Uriah’s widowed mother, Rachel Levy, lived there fulltime until her death; she is buried along Mulberry Row, the main plantation street adjacent to the mansion (making her the only Jewish person buried on the grounds of Jefferson’s estate).

17 years after the Commodore’s death, Levy’s nephew, the patriotically-named Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who was a successful three-term New York congressman, businessman, and lawyer, purchased Monticello at public auction for $10,500 (a little less than $312,200.00 in 2023 dollars. He owned, cared for and completely restored the mansion and its grounds until it was purchased by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation forty-four years later  (1923). During the years he owned Monticello, Jefferson Monroe Levy poured nearly half-a-million dollars (over $15,000.000 in todays money) into the restoration of Monticello. Despite only using it as an occasional retreat, Jefferson Monroe Levy revived Thomas Jefferson’s 4th of July custom; on that date, the former Congressman would be there, among all the townies from nearby Charlottesville,  to attend his reading of the Declaration of Independence . . .  from the very same stand-up writing table-cum-podium upon which Thomas Jefferson had originally composed it.

There is far, far more to the Fourth of July than fireworks, hotdogs and beer, or sales at the local mall hyped and hawked by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.  (BTW, July 4, 1776 is not the date upon which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.  In matter of historic fact, independence was formally declared on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams believed would be “the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.” On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final text of the Declaration, but it wasn't signed until August 2 of that year.) 

To me, the Fourth of July should serve as something akin to a “refresher course” in the miracle that is America; its founding principles and ideals, its historic promise, highs, lows and the many challenges and stumbling blocks which have always stood in the path of our Democratic Republic. For many of US, the promise of America is best and most succinctly expressed by the 3 Latin words which make up our national motto: e pluribus unum . . . i.e. “Out of many, one.”

America is unique among the nations of the world when it comes to combining pluribus - people of virtually all ancestries, origins, tongues, religions, histories native myths to make something brand new . . . unum - one people. This has long been our ideality - even when not precisely our reality. Throughout our relatively brief history (247 years and counting), we have accomplished great things as a Democratic Republic. We have also fought with one another, treated “others” as our enemies, sought to bar entry to those we feared or did not understand. We have been through generations when rights were greatly expanded and enjoyed, and times - like now - when rights have been contracted.

No one ever said that being part of US was going to be easy . . . or inexorable; indeed, it has always been a challenge. This was best summarized by Dr. Benjamin Franklin in 1787. According to James McHenry (1753-1816) a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who throughout that convention, kept one of the best and most compendious journals of all the compatriots in Philadelphia. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? “A republic” replied the Doctor . . . if you can keep it.” (McHenry’s journal, by the way, is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.)

And so it is: We are US; a most unique breed. Not necessarily the best . . . just the most unique.

May we continue attempting to live up to - and expanding upon - the very best of the ideals our Founders bequeathed to US.

May this Fourth of July be happy, healthy and most importantly, energizing.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Copyright©2023, Kurt Franklin  Stone

#938: Four Questions #🟦 (Copy)

It’s hard for the approximately fifteen to twenty percent of us - like readers of this blog - who are deeply involved in following “the chess game of politics” to believe - let alone grok - that an astounding 80%-85% of the American public follow it anywhere between “casually and not at all.” The New York Times’ editorial board refers to this as the “attention divide.” According to an astute - though deeply disturbing - editorial published back in October of 2022: “Most Americans view politics as two camps bickering endlessly and fruitlessly over unimportant issues.” If this is true - and I for one have no reason to gainsay their finding - is it any wonder that people like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are being taken seriously as presidential contenders; that more and more state legislatures have passed laws permitting the banning of books in public schools; that at least 14 supermajority Republican state legislatures have passed laws banning drag shows; and that despite more than 60% of those polled supporting a woman’s right to choose, more than 2 dozen state legislatures have already enacted laws banning the medical procedure?.

The precipice at which the American political process - and indeed, Democracy itself - currently lurches, has as much to do with the mega-billions now flooding the undertaking as the quality of its practitioners (at least on one side of the aisle), and the dumbing-down of its content. It’s not that the issues are too complex for the average citizen to follow; it’s more that the average citizen doesn’t feel they have any skin in the game. They don’t know what or whom to believe, and haven’t the slightest idea of what questions to ask of those soliciting their vote. For the 80%-85% who, in the words of the Times’ editorial, follow politics “casually, if not at all,” they can’t tell you why they support candidate X over candidate Y, except for the fact that the former is not the latter. If anyone contemplating suggesting that these folks are, in reality, supporting people who really don’t care a whit about their plight or needs, expect a concussion; this is the typical result of banging one’s head against a brick wall.

I for one long for the day when citizen voters can state positive reasons for supporting candidate X over candidate Y . . . instead of hearing “Well, at least he/she isn’t the other guy/gal.” Perhaps part of the problem is that neither citizens nor members of the professional press ever ask the right questions in such a way as to elicit a response . . . or make the pol at the mike come off as a first-class know-nothing.

Here are 4 questions that should be asked of every candidate at every press gathering or conference:

1. “According to almost every every recent poll - including - Fox News - a clear majority of the American public favors enacting a ban on assault weapons. While 45 percent of those surveyed said they would encourage more citizens to carry guns to defend against attackers, 61 percent said they favored banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Where do you stand on this issue, and how would you vote on any form of sensible laws concerning lethal weapons in the hands of citizens? And by the way, how much money did you receive from the National Rifle Association in the last election cycle?”

2. “A recent survey found that nearly 60% of registered voters prefer political candidates who will take action on climate change — including more than a quarter of Republicans. Do you see this as a major issue affecting the future of the planet? And if not, why not? How much money did you receive from the oil and gas industry in the last election cycle?

3. Many political analysts have suggested that the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterm elections — which were held about five months after the Supreme Court’s decision which overturned Roe V Wade— stemmed partly from public dissatisfaction with the justices’ ruling. And there’s evidence that Democratic voters in particular were energized to vote because of the change in abortion policy. In recent polling nearly three quarters of adults (74%) and 79% of reproductive age women say that obtaining an abortion should be a personal choice rather than regulated by law. Where do you stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose? Will you vote to fine and/or imprison women who receive abortions and/or their physicians who perform them? At what age will you vote to cut off abortions?

4. A recent USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word “woke” as a positive attribute, not a negative one. And yet, Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke.” According to this poll, a 56%-39%, majority, say 'woke' means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct. Republican politicians and voters alike have differing definitions of wokeism — and some struggle to define it at all. The rallying cry has recently been used to denounce everything from climate change policies and socially responsible investing to transgender rights, critical race theory, which books must be removed from library shelves in public schools, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Please explain your definition of “woke,” and justify how legislating so many aspects of people’s lives, education, relationships and individual choices is consistent with the classical Republican agenda of smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

At this point in time, it is more than evident that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is of Grand Canyon proportions. How so? Well, agree or disagree with them, Democrats have a pretty obvious ethical and legislative vision upon which to run. They have pretty clear-cut strategy based on both a a set of ethical principles - such as the moral trinity of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the furtherance of Democratic values - and concrete political goals such as saving planet Earth for future generations, keeping assault weapons out of the hands of everyone save members of the military, supporting our allies and changing tax laws so that the wealthiest individuals and corporations pay what used to be called “their fair share.” These are all things which can be given expression without having to resort to fear and name-calling. Ask the four questions - or five or six or more - and then demand answers.

On the other side of the political gap, it seems there are no answers to the basic questions - just rhetoric and buzz-terms such as “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Woke,” “anti-religion,” and a laundry list of villains like “George Soros,” “Adam Schiff,” “LGBTQIA+” and pejorative nicknames (“Brandon,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Pocahontas.”(  Of course, to those of us who love the history of political nicknames, these show little wit and even less tact. Take for example a couple of the best: “Martin Van Ruin” (after America’s 8th president, Martin Van Buren . . . given that nickname after presiding over the “Panic of 1837”); “Rutherfraud” (America’s 19th chief executive, Rutherford B. Hayes who, despite losing the popular vote in the election of 1876 to Samuel Tilden, still managed to win the Electoral College); and “Slick Willie” (obviously Bill Clinton).

I urge all lovers of Democracy and fearers of Führers - whether journalists or just plain citizens - to dig in and ask the four questions at every press conference, town-hall meeting and Passover seder, and not give up until you hear some answers.  And if the questions are avoided or turned into attacks on the other side, remember to ask the best, most obvious follow-up question of all: “Why won’t you answer the question he/she just asked you?”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone    #🟦

The Judge Who’s a First-Class Payne in the Tuchis #🟦

(Many thanks to Alan Wald, one of my oldest, wittiest and easily, most literate friends, for bringing Judge Robert E. Payne and the case he presided over, to my attention.

First the facts, then the commentary:

    Federal Judge Robert E. Payne

THE FACTS: This past Wednesday, May 10, 2023, Judge Robert E. Payne of the Federal District Court in Richmond, Virginia (the home of my father Henry’s alma mater), handed down a 71-page ruling striking down federal laws blocking handgun sales to buyers over the age 18 and under 21. In the case, John Corey Fraser et al v Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives et al, Judge Payne, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, ruled that statutes and regulations put in place over the past several decades to enforce age requirements on sales of handguns, like the semiautomatic Glock-style pistol, by federally licensed weapons dealers were “not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” and therefore could not stand. A citizen’s Second Amendment rights do not “vest at age 21,” he added.

In his ruling, Judge Payne repeatedly cited the majority opinion in the landmark case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen which, employing a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment, struck down a New York State law that put tight limits on carrying guns outside the home. At the time when this ruling was handed down (June 2022), legal commentators, including the New York Times’ Adam Liptak noted that “The decision is expected to spur a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen existing state and federal restrictions and will force five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, home to a quarter of all Americans — to rewrite their laws.”

The Justice Department is expected to appeal Judge Payne’s ruling in Virginia, which, should it stand, would have a significant, if limited, impact on firearms purchases. The decision, which would not affect state age limits, will take effect when the judge issues his final order, which is expected in the next few weeks.

THE COMMENTARY: In my opinion Judge Payne’s ruling ranks right up there with Mr. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s  1857 Dred Scott decision (which a future Chief Justice, Chas. Evans Hughes, would characterize as the court’s "great self-inflicted wound”); Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision in the Citizens United case (which essentially opened the legal floodgates to all the corporate billions being contributed to political campaigns); and Justice Samuel Alito’s delivery of the Dobbs v Jackson decision (which overturned Roe v Wade) as one of the very worst, most short-sighted and asinine judicial renderings in all American history. Reading through Judge Payne’s decision, the one thing that sticks with you is his justification for ruling against the plaintiffs . . . about their position “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition.” In other words, what Payne was basing his decision on was a stagnant, motionless Constitution; one virtually immune from - and uncaring of - any historic change or growth made manifest through the reality of time and tide. His rendering of the 2nd Amendment (“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”) heeds only its first fourteen words, and virtually nothing of what follows (i.e. “. . . a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”)

Taking a single phrase from the U.S. Constitution without regards to a couple of centuries of court cases and decisions (“commentaries”) is akin to reading the Old Testament (also known as “The Hebrew Bible”) without engaging in the study of the so-called “Oral tradition.” Were it not for this oral tradition - debates, arguments and the parsing of both history and language of the Bible, we’d be stuck with such literal renderings as the so-called “Stubborn and rebellious child” (בֵּ֚ן סוֹרֵ֣ר וּמוֹרֶ֔ה) law (Deut. 21:18-21) which condemns an unruly child ”(one who will hearken not to the voice of its mother or father”) to death by stoning at the hands of the community elders.  Had not this section of the Bible been subjected to centuries of debate and commentary, all those youngsters who,  at one time or another, mouthed off to their parents, would have been sentenced to death.  Instead, centuries of sages turned the literal words into a frightful warning . . . thus abnegating a heartless punishment.

Imagine, if you will, if Judge Payne’s obiter dictum about “not [being] consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” were to be taken literally in a wide range of legal proceedings; to what might it lead?

(And here we return to my friend Alan Wald’s trenchant thoughts for which, once again, great thanks are proffered:

Next, will it be the re-imposition of slavery  because ending slavery is not consistent with our nation’s history and tradition” 

Or re-starting the Holocaust, because it was part of the German nation’s history and tradition

Or the paddling of elementary school kids by teachers in the cloak room:, for this too is part of our nation’s history and tradition.

How about giving smallpox and VD to the First Peoples of America by the first white settlers in America  which is part of many nation’s history and tradition?

Or taking away the right to vote from African Americans and women because this right is largely inconsistent with our nation’s history and tradition?

Feel free to add your own “How’s ‘bout’ to this list.

There is an old rabbinic tradition of never ending a sermon (a drosh) without a dash of uplifting compassion (n’chempta). Not wishing to ignore the sage advise of my early masters, I shall heed their admonition:

This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Santos-Zacaria AKA Santos-Sacarias v. Garland, unanimously  passed a decision that makes history not just for its impact on the law — but for its language about transgender people and non-citizens living in the United States.

Every judge — including the most conservative on the court — agreed with the court's ruling, and traditionally right-leaning justices co-signed the official opinion of the court, which uses proper she/her pronouns to describe a transgender woman who fled Guatemala after being assaulted and persecuted on the basis of her gender identity and sexual orientation.

The opinion also referred to the petitioner as a non-citizen, rather than an "illegal alien" (a dehumanizing term that has been in conservative opinions in the past).

Estrella Santos-Zacaria, the transgender refugee at the center of the case, had appealed a decision to deport her after she twice came to the U.S. seeking safety and a better life.

In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with Santos-Zacaria, allowing her another chance to fight the deportation decision and potentially remain in the U.S. if that bid is successful.

The decision is largely technical, but the language used in the opinion is historic, particularly considering the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ measures across the country.

For the moment, this news fulfills the need for ending with hope and compassion, gives us a bit of emotional respite from the inanity of the Federal Court’s gigantic Payne in the tuchus.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   #🟦

#936: Ten Trillion Here, Twenty Trillion There #🟦

Fairbanks & Chaplin: 1918 Wall Street Bond Rally

Mark Twain, that most notable and quotable of all American authors once wrote “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Because, so far as I know, he wasn’t referring to any contemporary situation in particular, his aphorism is thus both brilliant and timeless; it speaks to human nature in general.

In reflecting on how little time remains until the United States - for the first times in its history - defaults on its debt obligations . . . which, as of this past January, stood at $31.38 trillion and rising . . . Twain’s remark seems all the more tailor-made.

Trying to access blame – to determine precisely which side shoulders the greater burden in the nation’s titanic debt obligations – brings to mind yet another writer of renown:  the occasionally controversial cartoonist Walt Kelly. Kelly (1913-1973) put into the mouth of Okefenokee Swamp-dwelling oposum Pogo, his greatest creation, the immortal words “We have met the enemy and he is us!” (n.b. This is an abridgement of what Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry announced at the Battle of Lake Erie, when his small naval force had defeated the British in 1813: "We have met the enemy and he is ours.")

In other words, Democrats and Republicans alike share a mutual blame for America’s massive debt; it’s just that the former are more “tax-and-spend,” the latter “cut-taxes-and-spend.”  With America's Debt Ceiling about to be breached (it’s already been reached) by June 1, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are about to sit down and see if anything can be done. POTUS wants a “clean bill,” wherein Congress passes an increase in the ceiling without any attached budgetary strings. Period. 

By contrast, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's "Limit, Save, Grow Act" of 2023, as recently passed by the House, would require broad-based spending cuts totaling $4.5 trillion over the next decade. President Biden had said in no uncertain terms that he will refuse to sign the act into law; he spoke truth-to-power when he referred to it as "dead on arrival" in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Speaker McCarthy wants to tie any rise to a series of draconian spending cuts which would most likely affect the poorest among us: veterans, children relying on food-stamps, students being crushed by debts, Medicaid Recipients, etc.  Moreover this act mandates dramatic cuts in monies already allocated for such things as climate change programs and the addition of 78,000 new IRS agents . . . whose purpose is to make sure that millionaires and billionaires are paying their fair share.  

Can you say “stalemate?”

The United States started running up debt long before July 4, 1776.  Someone had to help pay for General Washington’s troops and the creation of the Continental Congress. The Revolutionary War was, to a great degree, financed through the selling of “Continentals bills of exchange,” arranged for by one Hayim Salomon, a Polish-born Jewish businessman living in Philadelphia. Salomon (1740-85) risked his growing fortune to travel to Europe and broker these bills of exchange at rock bottom prices. For his services, Salomon - who also made interest-free loans to many of the Founding Fathers and himself died a pauper at age 46 - charged a measly one-quarter-of-one-percent. (BTW: In 1941, Howard Fast wrote an impressive historical novel about Salomon, called Hayim Salomon: Liberty’s Son. If you are interested, there are still copies available . . . )

From 1776 to the turn of the 20th century, the Treasury Department had to go to get Congress’ approval whenever it needed to engage in deficit spending. Then, in the early 20th century, the debt limit was instituted so that the U.S. Treasury would not need to ask Congress for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills. During World War I, Congress passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 to give the Treasury more flexibility to issue debt and manage federal finances. All over the country, people gathered to buy tens of millions of dollars worth of war bonds to help finance the Great War. The most famous such gathering was on Wall Street, where movie stars Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Marie Dressler, along with then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, reached out to an estimated 20,000 people crowded into Wall Street, doing their best to get them to buy, buy, buy, lend, lend, lend. Within two hours, the assemblage bought more than $3,000,000 worth of bonds. (The actuality at the top of this article is a photo of that historic event.) Similar rallies would occur all around the country.

The first debt limit was instituted by Congress in 1939. Congress consolidated limits on specific forms of debt (e.g., separate caps on bonds and shorter-term debt) into one aggregate debt limit. The first federal debt limit was set at $45 billion and gave the Treasury Department wide discretion over what borrowing instruments to use, so long as total debt did not exceed that level. From then until now, Congress has raised the debt ceiling with every passing war (whether Congressionally mandated or not) and crisis. During the 4 years of the Trump administration, the president and Congress increased America’s debt limit by nearly 25%, due in part to an unprecedented tax cut which he sold to both Congress and the American public by claiming that it would pay for itself by greatly increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to 6% per annum. He was wrong.

Indeed, raising the debt ceiling used to be most commonplace, least dramatic event of a congressional session. Why even during the Trump years, Congress increased the nation’ ability to borrow on 3 separate occasions. In matter of fact, when asked about threatening spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, he told reporters “I cant think of anyone using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge.” (Someone should have asked a follow-up question, like “Mr. President, can you explain to us precisely what the ‘debt ceiling’ is? Come to think of it, of all 46 presidents in American history, he likely knows more about debt than any of his colleagues . . . real estate empires are, after all, colossi of debt.)

Speaker McCarthy’s insistence that the House will never accept a “clean” bill unless the White House accepts massive spending cuts is, in the words of President Biden, “D.O.A.” . . . “Dead On Arrival.” The MAGA branch of the House appears to believe that they can actually sell the American public on this toxic witches’ brew. How is that possible? Don’t they know that raising the debt limit has virtually nothing - NOTHING - to do with future spending? That cutting spending from the next budget will have no effect - NONE, NADA, GORNISHT - on what we have already committed ourselves to spending? Or, even worse, don’t they really care? Are they more interested in winning the next election - even if it means seeing the American economy go up in smoke, thus triggering the loss of millions of jobs, trillions of dollars of losses in people’s retirement savings, a major stock market crash and ensuing global depression? Are they looking to finish that which January 6, 2021 began . . . the overthrowing of the government? Nothing provides greater fodder for revolution than economic uncertainty and collapse. But do remember, all fodder is, when one puts it under a microscope, nothing more than manure.

               $1,000,000,000,000,000.00!

To be certain, there are a couple of bizarre, dystopian suggestions on the horizon. Some economists (none I trust) have stated it's time for a break-the-glass option: a trillion-dollar coin. The coin — which wouldn't need to be bigger than an average coin, and can be made quickly — as part of a potential debt-ceiling loophole. The Treasury Department can mint platinum coins of any denomination. That's led to a school of thought that says Secretary Yellen should simply mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it to pay off the debts until a more permanent solution can be found. Even conservative economists have found the notion to be “beyond silly.” The first problem, of course, is that it would have to get past Treasury Secretary Yellin; the second that the courts would, in all likelihood, shoot it down. But this is precisely the kind of simple-mindedness that MAGA Republicans believe they can sell their base on . . . even if they themselves know it is twaddle.

Then, there is a theory being discussed behind closed doors at the White House ,that the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X-date. This theory rests on the 14th Amendment clause stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some legal scholars contend that this language overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion and requires congressional approval to raise or lift. Top economic and legal officials at the White House, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department have made that theory a subject of intense and unresolved debate in recent months, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

It is unclear whether President Biden would support such a move, which would have serious ramifications for the economy and almost undoubtedly elicit legal challenges from Republicans. Continuing to issue debt in that situation would avoid an immediate disruption in consumer demand by maintaining government payments, but borrowing costs are likely to soar, at least temporarily.

Oh how I wish I had paid better attention to Dr. Daniel Suits’ class in “The Politics of Economics” 50+ years ago! All I know at this point in time is that playing “Debt Chicken” is an incredibly dangerous, economically lethal, game.

As of today, all I can hear is Ella Fitzgerald singing “Something’s Gotta Give.” Where oh where are the adults? There’s far, far more to politics than winning another term . . . or the White House, or taking back the Senate. Whatever happened to doing the right thing for the nation?

To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen (after whom a senate office building is named): “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone #🟦

#935 Let's Heed Florence Kahn's Advice (Satire) #🟦

           Rep. Florence Prag Kahn (1866-1948)

Of the more than nearly 225 Jewish men and women who have served in the United States Congress, one of my favorites, without question, is Florence Prag Kahn, who represented what would eventually become Sala Burton’s, Barbara Boxer’s and Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco. In interviewing the three for my mammoth biographic works The Congressional Minyan (2000) and The Jews of Capitol Hill (2010) they all remembered with great fondness the many hours they had spent with their young children (and now grandchildren) at the Julius Kahn Playground and Clubhouse which was named after Florence’s late husband Julius, himself a member of Congress for 24 years. Located at Jackson and Spruce, the “JK” is the nation’s largest urban park.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 9, 1866, her parents, who had immigrated from Poland in the early 1860s, were actually friends with the Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Florence Prag Kahn lived a life of firsts:

• The first Jew born in Utah

• The first woman to graduate from Berkeley (class of 1887)

• The first woman to manage a congressional campaign (for her husband Julius, in 1899)

• The first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives

• The first woman to serve on both the House Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees.

Additionally, she was largely responsible for the funding of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges, and was so instrumental in the early funding of the FBI that its director, J. Edgar Hoover, always referred to her as “The mother of the FBI.”

Politically adroit, fearless and frumpy, Rep. Kahn also had a dry sense of humor and was known to possess the quickest wit on The Hill. Once, when asked how she was able to pass far more significant legislation than most of her male colleagues, she famously responded: Don’t you know? It’s my sex appeal, honey!” When assigned to the committee on Indian Affairs, she flatly turned it down, telling then-Speaker Nicholas Longworth III (the husband of T.R.’s daughter “Princess Alice” Roosevelt) “The only Indians in my district are made of wood and sit outside cigar stores . . . and I can’t do a damn thing for them! Put me on Military Affairs!” Then there was the time that New York Representative Fiorello LaGuardia accused her of being “. . . nothing but a standpatter, following the reactionary Senator Moses of New Hampshire.” Mrs. Kahn is reported to have wriggled loose from her chair, jammed her nondescript hat over her nose, and bellowed: “Why shouldn’t I choose Moses as my leader? Haven’t my people been following him for ages?” The House erupted into gales of laughter, LaGuardia - himself the son of a Jewish mother - included.

My favorite Florence Prag Kahn quip - and the genesis for this satiric posting - comes from the time when the House’s most ultraconservative - and least liked - member acidly asked her, “Would you support a birth control law?” Without taking time to draw a breath, she answered, “Yes I will . . . if you will personally make it retroactive!” I remember doing my initial research on Mrs. Kahn back in the early 1990s. I was occupying a tiny cubby on the top floor of Harvard’s Widener Library. When I came across this line I cracked up and almost fell out of my chair . . . so much so that there quickly erupted the sound of a couple of dozen people “shushing” me. Believe me, it was hard to stop laughing . . .

Frequently, Mrs. Kahn used her rapier-like wit as a cover for her revulsion or distaste; call it the verbal version of Bonaparte’s “iron fist in a velvet glove” . . . firmness being couched not with outward gentleness, but with wit. Alas, such is rarely the case within the halls and walls of Congress. Today, instead of wit and double-entendre zingers, we hear catcalls and shouts of “YOU LIE!” as well as inanities such as “a stepmother really isn’t a mother at all,” or “Women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

       Stewart and Travers in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

The various members of Congress (mostly notably those who are members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”) and nasty “influencers” who make these sort of comments - comments which drip with animus and ignorance - are perfect examples of the sorts of people to whom Florence Kahn was referring - those who would have made far greater contributions to society by never having been born in the first place. Think of the Frank Capra/James Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life . . . but in reverse. In the 1946 film (the best film never to have won an Oscar), Stewart’s character George Bailey sees his life fall apart so quickly that he contemplates suicide.  He reasons that his family - indeed, the entire world - would be better off with him dead. But the prayers of his loved ones result in his guardian angel named Clarence Odbody (played to perfection by Henry Travers) coming to Earth to help him, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows him what things would have been like if he had never been born.  And of course, being a Frank Capra film, everything comes up roses, sweet tea, and scones.

Now let’s reverse that by implementing Rep. Kahn’s sarcastic quip, and granting retroactivity to the births of those who are daily making the world more dangerous, less civil and stupidly intolerant by march, march, marching to the beat of deafening dictatorial drums. These are the merchants of mayhem, whose chief wares are fear, fanaticism provincialism and bigotry . . . four things the world can definitely do without.

Oh if only they had never been born!

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone                                                                                             #🟦

The Historic Importance of January 6th . . . 1941

                     January 6, 1941: “The Four Freedoms”:

It seems like the prime-time presenters on MSNBC (Ari Melber, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell ) have been reporting on nothing but the historical importance of January 6, 2021 for the past year-and-a-half. Who can blame them? After all, that is a day - which, to borrow a quote from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - “which shall live in infamy.” The major difference, of course, is that FDR’s December 8, 1941 “live in infamy” address to Congress, concerned Japan’s bombing of the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor; our “day of infamy” is the seditious storming of the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021.  The people of MSNBC have spent the lion’s share of their on-air time investigating and reporting on virtually every aspect of that day when democracy was nearly destroyed.  It fascinates me no end that no one has mentioned or figured out what, most eerily, happened on Capitol Hill precisely 80 years before (that’s 29,200 days and 700,800 hours before) on January 6, 1941: FDR’s State of the Union Address, where he set out in bold and eloquent detail that which has ever since been known as “The Four Freedoms.”  What makes it all the more eerie - not to mention prescient and breathtaking - is how much FDR’s speech mirrors America and the world 80 years later . . . to the day. 

To be certain, there are a handful of speeches which stand out in American political history:

• George Washington’s “Farewell Address” in 1796.

• Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (“Four score and seven years ago . . . “)

• JKF’s Inaugural Address (“Ask not what your country can do for you . . . “)

But topping them all, in my humble opinion, is FDR’s State of the Union address to Congress on January 6, 1941. For his “Four Freedoms” address, while not white-washed with the good news and optimistic phrases of most annual presidential addresses, set a course and a purpose for this nation that has never since been equaled. As America entered the war these "four freedoms" - the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear - symbolized America's war aims and gave hope in the following years to a war-wearied people because they knew they were fighting for freedom. Indeed, it is the only one speech in American history that inspired a multitude of books and films, the establishment of its own park, a series of paintings by a world famous artist, a prestigious international award and a United Nation’s resolution on Human Rights.

At the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union address on January 6, 1941, he had just been reelected president for an unprecedented third term. At the time, the world faced unprecedented dangers, instability, and uncertainty. Much of Europe had fallen to the advancing German Army and Great Britain was barely holding its own; London was being strafed from the air by the German Luftwaffe on a nightly basis. A great number of Americans remained committed to isolationism and the belief that the United Sates should continue to stay out of the war, but President Roosevelt understood Britain's need for American support and attempted to convince the American people of the gravity of the situation. 

In his State of the Union, FDR articulated a powerful vision for a world in which all people had freedom of speech and of religion, and freedom from want and fear.

The ideas enunciated in Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms were the foundational principles that evolved into the Atlantic Charter declared by Winston Churchill and FDR in August 1941; the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942; President Roosevelt’s vision for an international organization that became the United Nations after his death; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 through the work of Eleanor Roosevelt.

As tyrannical leaders once again resort to brutal oppression and terrorism to achieve their goals, as democracy and journalism are under attack from extremists and conspiratorialists both in the United States and across the globe, and as surveillance and technology threaten individual liberties and freedom of expression, FDRs bold vision for a world that embraces these four fundamental freedoms is as vital today as it was more than 80 years ago.  For those who are interested in reading the speech in its entirety, please check out FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech.

Interestingly, FDR, after consulting with his behind-the-scenes advisors, dictated the speech in a matter of minutes to his secretary Grace Tully.  Unlike presidents ever since, FDR rarely used a team of speechwriters.  This SOTU  came from his heart; it would wind up changing the world. 

               FDR’s Handwritten Notes for the January 6, 1941 SOTU                 

In 1941, there were plenty of people who believed that FDR was a “traitor to his class” - an aristocrat who actually cared about the state and fate of the downtrodden; one who believed that democracy was the most superior form of government. There were also those who found him “too much of a Socialist” (FDIC, Social Security and the Tennessee Valley Authority). He surrounded himself with a stellar brain trust (Samuel Rosenman, Benjamin Cohen, Felix Frankfurter and Bernard Baruch, to name but a few) and listened intently to the advise he was given.  He also understood that the fate of America and her allies was ultimately up to him, and did whatever he could to motivate a nation to do the right thing.  Yes, it is true, his State Department didn’t always do the right thing when it came to the Jews attempting to escape Nazi oppression (which causes many modern-day Jews to throw him on the ash-heap of history); nonetheless, FDR responded to his ilk by telling them that Democracy belonged to everyone . . . not just the WASPS he grew up and was educated amongst.

At the time of the January 6, 1941 State of the Union address, there was both a loud, staunchly vituperative isolationist wing of  the Republican Party (“America First,” led nationally by Charles A. Lindbergh) and a fully-armed batch of Nazi sympathizers (The “German American Bund,” led for many years by Fritz Kuhn, the so-called “American Fuhrer.” 

Today, more than 80 years  after that first, historic January 6th, America is once again beset by isolationists (the MAGA wing of the Republican Party), growing anti-Semitism and conspiracies galore. This time, we are led by a decidedly non-Blue Blood president who like FDR, understands the critical role America can and must play in a world that once again is falling in love with autocracy and fascism.  But unlike FDR, who was accused of being an enemy of America’s hereditary aristocracy, Joe Biden is attacked for being the leader of a “woke” nation; the leader of a left-wing socialist/communist conspiracy which attempts to make “sissies” of us all.  It is just as moronically idiotic today as it was 80+ years ago.  

    jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr 

 Way back in 1849, French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose “ – the more things change, the more they stay the same…  From January 6, 1941 to the same date in 2021, many, many things have changed in and about the United States of America . . . if indeed, not the entire world.  But Karr was and always shall be unerringly correct for in modern idiomatic English, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose means “What goes around comes around.”

Let us work and teach, give voice and vote that which FDR pledged on the first historic January 6 - the Four Freedoms - will continue to go around and come around.  For it is only through maintaining these four indelible freedoms that America can continue being a beacon of bright light for the rest of the world.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

It's Time to Pulverize PLCAA . . . Huh?

Even the most perfervid MAGA-ites have to know somewhere deep in whatever passes for their souls, that the past couple of weeks have been all that Democrats could hope or pray for. (And yes, despite what MAGA-ites believe, tons of Democrats do pray). I mean, consider that during the time that President Biden has been down with relapsing COVID-19, Congressional Democrats have managed to put together the required 50+1 votes needed to pass the “Inflation Recovery Act,” which will have an historic effect on taxes, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, climate change, inflation and ultimately lowering the national debt.  This passed within the  last hour - Sunday, August 7, 2022.  To make matters even more positive, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) convinced his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch  McConnell, to get enough Republicans on board to finally enact PACT Act, a bill to expand health care benefits for veterans who developed illnesses due to their exposure to burn pits during military service.  Then there were this past Tuesday’s primary elections in which the good people of Kansas overwhelmingly voted against a measure which would make abortion impossible in the Sunflower State.  And while yes, a majority of Congressional Republicans who  voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection did lose their primary bids to Trump-endorsed MAGA crazies, this could likely mean that many Republicans will simply stay home (if not vote for Democrats) come November.    

By passing seminal legislation, Congressional Democrats have also forced Republicans to show their true colors just 15 weeks before the upcoming mid-term general elections. Voters going to the polls will have to choose between Republicans who are against lowering the cost of prescription drugs, against veterans suffering from life-threatening illnesses they contracted while fighting for their country in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, against doing anything to curb inflation or global warming and in favor of protecting the rights of those who manufacture and sell military-grade weapons to civilians or those who are far more in step with what a clear majority of Americans favor.

Another piece of legislation about to hit the floor of Congress is a bill cosponsored by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), Dwight Evans (D-PA) and Jason Crow (D-CO). Called the Equal Access to Justice For Victims of Gun Violence (H.R. 2814), this bill would repeal the 17-year old Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), ensuring justice for victims and survivors and removing barriers to holding irresponsible gun industry actors accountable.

PLCAA was a top legislative priority for the corporate gun industry when President George W. Bush signed it into law in 2005. It contributed to the gun violence epidemic by enabling the gun industry to evade accountability at the expense of victims and survivors of gun violence who are denied the right to hold industry actors accountable. Put in lay terms, it means gun dealers and manufacturers are immune from lawsuits, and victims can’t sue them in court. This unique immunity is like no other in our nation. Car manufacturers, food producers, and tobacco companies all have to meet a safety standard and act with due care — or else they run the risk of being sued.

So why are guns any different? Because some politicians, for decades, prioritized profits over people. That’s why they’ve bent over backwards to protect the NRA and any other gun lobbyist who will write them a campaign check or endorse them in exchange for legislation like PLCAA.

In 2013, Representative Adam Schiff put the original Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence into the Congressional hopper.  Today, after nearly a decade, it stands a chance of passage . . . especially in light of all the recent mass-shootings across the country.   In a recent email many received from  Rep. Schiff, he wrote: “Five of the largest gun manufacturers made over one billion dollars in the last decade from selling assault-style weapons to civilians. While our nation’s bloodshed has increased exponentially, their profits have also skyrocketed, and yet the industry has complete legal immunity from civil lawsuits by victims and families even when their negligence contributes to the problem, all because of PLCAA.  That must change, and it’s why I have repeatedly introduced legislation to repeal PLCAA, the Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act. The NRA is already attacking me and working to prevent this bill from passing, which is why I’m reaching out. Keeping our Democratic House majority is critical to ensuring this legislation not only gets passed, but makes it to President Biden’s desk.”

From recent polling, it is clear that a majority of Americans are in favor of a ban on Assault Weapons.  And yet,  just this past Tuesday (August 2), all the House could muster was voted 217-213 (an almost total party-line vote) in favor of H.R. 1808, which would ban these military-style weapons (all but 5 Democrats voted in favor of the bill; all but 2 Republicans [Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Chris Jacobs of New York] voted against it.  You had better believe that Democrats will be campaigning against those who voted against the bill.  The same goes for the upcoming vote on H.R. 2814.  Though it will likely pass the House and likely not even make its way to the Senate floor, if properly explained to the American public, it could bring additional voters to the polls come November.

Getting rid of PLCAA is terribly important; it could force manufacturers of assault and other military-style weapons to spend more and more of their inflated profits on those who have been maimed and murdered by their products, on paying compensatory damages to victims rather than stock by-backs for the sake of their shareholders.

Please, consider writing, emailing or calling your Congressional representative and/or senators and demand that they pulverize PLCAA by voting in favor of H.R. 2814. Let’s help take power back from the merchants and manufacturers of mayhem and return it to the people . . . where it belongs.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Guns, Guns, and More Guns

     Justus D. Barnes in  “The Great Train Robbery” (1903) . . . the first Western

Assigning attribution or “literary parentage” to a particularly well-known epigram rarely yields THE TRUTH. As a rule of thumb, the wittier the wheeze, the more parents there are. One of the greatest - and unquestionably snarkiest - epigrammatists of the past hundred years, Dorothy (Rothschild) Parker (“Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses”), best summed up literary attributions with a hilarious aphorism of her own: “If with the literate, I am/Impelled to try an epigram/I never seek to take the credit/We all assume that Oscar said it.”  The “Oscar,” to whom she refers is, of course, Oscar Wilde, generally considered, next to Shakespeare, to have been the most clever and skillful of all English-language scops.

Here in America, the four people who generally sit atop the “literary parentage” list are the aforementioned Parker, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. Parker generally comes in first, with Franklin second, Twain third and Jefferson fourth. My all-time favorite Parkerism is “You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.” One of Franklin’s best known quips is “A penny saved is a penny earned.” As for Twain, one his best was “A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots” But it is Jefferson who is awarded attribution for a statement that will undoubtedly be heard over and over in the coming days and weeks as we proceed with Congress’s attempt to pass some sort of gun safety legislation: “Half a loaf is better than none.” (n.b. It is likely that the real originator of this expression was the 16th century British writer John Heywood who had been famous for more than 35 years before the birth of the “Bard of Avon”).

When it comes to Congress trying to enact a bipartisan bill dealing with gun control (some prefer calling it “gun safety”) Jefferson (or unknowingly, John Heywood) are hitting the headlines of news articles and and being quoted in speeches and newscasts with great regularity.  Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson published a recent op-ed piece which just about says it all: We’ll get less than half a loaf on gun control. We should take it.  A few days after Robinson’s piece hit the streets, Senate negotiators announced that they had struck a bipartisan deal on a narrow set of gun safety measures with sufficient support to move through the evenly divided chamber.  The deal (the specifics of which we will look at in the next paragraph) included far, far less than gun control advocates and nearly all Congressional Democrats would have wanted. At a time in our political history when the walls of political partisanship are taller and and more impregnable than those which surrounded the Biblical Jericho, it nonetheless represented a significant step toward ending a years-long congressional impasse on the issue.  Or, in other words, half a loaf . . . or even less.  

The agreement, put forth by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and endorsed by President Biden and top Democrats, includes enhanced background checks to give authorities time to check the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21 and a provision that would, for the first time, extend to dating partners a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns. It would also provide funding for states to enact so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous, as well as money for mental health resources and to bolster safety and mental health services at schools.  What it does not include are a majority of things a clear majority of the American public support: a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks. At the same time, it is nowhere near as sweeping as a package of gun measures passed almost along party lines in the House last week, which would bar the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under the age of 21, ban the sale of large-capacity magazines and enact a federal red-flag law, among other steps.

While Congress has not passed new gun-control restrictions in the wake of public mass shootings in recent years, hundreds of measures have passed in statehouse across the country during such moments. Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, high-profile mass shootings have been followed by a jump in state gun-control laws in the next year or two years, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on state legislation compiled by RAND, a nonprofit policy research group.

As much as the idealist in me rebels at the thought that this is the best 10 senators can come up with, the political and historical realist in me understands that this is likely the “new reality”, where even less than half a loaf is about as good as it’s going to get . . . at least for the foreseeable future. Unless and until the N.R.A. suffers a fall which even financial bankruptcy cannot touch, they will continue holding conventions, selling goods and continue working as hucksters for the weapons’ industry. They will continue getting their followers to mouth their disingenuous bromide about the only thing capable of stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, warning how the government is about to take away all their weapons, and willy-nilly buying up politicians left and (overwhelmingly) right.

To end on a positive note: the outpouring of public outrage after the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde has led to tens of thousands to take to the streets from coast-to-coast demanding that Congress - in the words of President Biden and so many others - “do something.” With this week’s announcement that the Senate might actually enact the “Half-a-Loaf” gun safety bill, perhaps it will light a spark which one day will see more fully realized measures passed into law - ones which finally resurrect the Assault Weapons Ban, rescind the legal immunity gun manufacturers currently enjoy (which makes it nearly impossible for them to be sued for crimes committed with the weapons or ammunition they sell), and put books and lesson plans back into the hands of the nation’s teachers instead of guns, guns, and more guns.

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

One Person's Religious Exemption is Another's Civic Mandate

According to most modern-day Republicans, America’s Founders were, for the most part, a bunch of pro-life, Christian fundamentalists who would have little or no argument with today’s right wing office holders. Not only is their knowledge of America’s Founders deeply flawed; it reveals an astounding lack of understanding of what makes America truly great.

Consider that among America’s most important founders, and early presidents, Washington, Madison and Monroe were Episcopalians; the Adamses,  both pere et fils were Unitarian; Jefferson (who like John Adams and James Madison could read and translate the Old Testament from Hebrew to Latin and from Greek to English)  and Benjamin Franklin non-denominational Deists. None - we repeat none - would have understood - let alone accepted - the hard-core “born-again” Christianity of their modern successors. They really, truly believed in the separation of Church and State, and would have found the incursion of one upon the other to be both noxious and deeply dangerous. Yes, they certainly did believe in the G-d of creation; nonetheless, they also had a deep and abiding faith in both human reason and the discoveries of science. 

Today, those who argue that the federal government oversteps both its rights as well as its licit moral and legal boundaries by mandating COVID-19 vaccines ought to learn from history; had it not been for General Washington mandating Small Pox vaccinations for all his troops before going into battle, this essay would have been composed in the Southern-most colony of the British Empire. According to the U.S. Library of Congress's Science, Technology, and Business Division, the smallpox inoculations for all of Washington's forces who came through the then-capital of Philadelphia and then through Morristown, New Jersey, following the Battle of Princeton, began Jan. 6, 1777.  As noted above, had not Washington done so, this week’s essay would have been composed in the Southern-most colony of the United Kingdom . . .

But alas, not that many citizens in early 21st century America know jack about our early history; about how George Washington mandated that all his troops be vaccinated against Small Pox, thus saving a revolution. Today, a small but garrulous minority - aided largely by the conspiracy theorists predominating a right-wing social media blitz - argues that mandating vaccinations against COVID-19 is a flat-out abridgement of individual rights and freedoms. (As opposed to not smoking on airplanes, wearing seatbelts or vaccinating children before they can attend public school.)  As we have seen, such utter נאַרישקייט (nareshkeit - that’s Yiddish for “lunacy”) has led to thousands upon thousands of needless deaths. Unlike G. Washington and his loyal troops, these modern Americans find no truth coming from the ivy-covered halls of science. Their preference is following a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, all the while praying for recovery from the immediate agency of the Divine. Of course in reality, this approach has far more to do with partisan politics and the winning of elections than with religion versus science. Although the number of so-called hard core anti-vaxxers is getting smaller all the time (thank G-d), there are still those who steadfastly proclaim that  they have every right to receive a religious exemption from said vaccines. In fact, for every law which has been enacted at some level, there is a group that demands its religious values permit them to abrogate the law or clause in question. As Washington Post contributing columnist Kate Cohen wrote in a recent piece: “A person can claim a religious exemption to the equal opportunity clause that’s required in all federal contracts; to the contraceptive coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act; and, in some states, to the requirement that a child be immunized to attend public school.”  We’ve all read about bakers refusing to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples because they believe that to do so would be going against the word of G-d.  Where does it end? This seems crazy. Obviously not everyone agrees with every law, but that’s the bummer and the challenge about living in civil society. In a democracy, if you feel strongly enough, you can set about finding like-minded people and then try to change the law. Or, if that doesn’t work, and you truly believe it’s a sin to, say, fill contraceptive prescriptions, then (a) don’t be a pharmacist or (b) risk getting fired. Wouldn’t G-d appreciate the gesture? For now, let’s return to the issue of vaccines and masks. By keeping an angry, largely unlettered minority believing that scientists, progressives and Democrats (frequently referred to as “Socialists”) are purposefully injecting vaccines and salad dressings with GPS trackers and various poisons, keeps that minority within the Republican fold . . . thus keeping Republicans in charge of the three branches of government.  

So let’s get this straight: according to these משוגעים (m’shugoyim - that’s Yiddish/Hebrew for “screwballs”), it is both good and perfectly legal to keep government from imposing on individual liberty and freedom when it comes to the wearing of masks, getting vaccines and mandating social distancing, but not so when it comes to a woman’s right to choose whether or not to get an abortion . . . under any circumstance, whether it be rape, incest or the health of the mother? And then, adding even further insult to injury, legislating precisely when life begins? According to the Texas Legislature (and soon the legislatures of George, Mississippi and Florida), a viable life begins at precisely 6 weeks . . . a time when a vast majority of women have yet to discover that they are pregnant. According to Texas, after six weeks, abortions are illegal, and anyone who assists a woman in any way, shape or form to terminate a “viable fetus,” can be arrested, tried and sentenced. (And whosoever notifies the authorities about these “assisters” may receive a reward of up to $10,000.)

In other words, what Texas has done in passing this onerous legislation is to, essentially, incinerate Roe v. Wade. Publicly, those legislators (the majority of whom are men) who vote in favor of such draconian laws, say they are doing so with G-d’s blessing . . . that abortion - regardless of the circumstance - is  murder.

These are the folks who self identify as “Pro-Life.”  I have never understood this.  How can it be that the vast majority of “Pro-Life” legislators consistently vote against such things as food stamps, funding for healthcare and universal pre-K education, cannot and will not lift  a finger to fund clean air, clean water or dozens of other things which are necessary for life?  By their actions it would seem that they are of a belief that although life begins at conception (if not even before - like the moment one considers engaging in sexual congress), it ends with birth.  If so, let’s call a spade a spade: they are not “Pro-Life” - - - they are stridently “Pro-Birth” and nothing more.

Recognizing that many readers of this blog are “MOT” (“Members of the Tribe”), permit me a few words about the beginning of life from a Jewish legal perspective. Jewish law (halacha) has a nuanced view of abortion. While it is true that many פרומע יידין (frume Yidd’n - Yiddish for “pious Jews”) have not been overly worried by these and other efforts to curtail legal abortion, in America, the pro-life narrative is largely articulated by the Christian right; there are important differences between how Judaism and Christianity view the span of time between conception and birth.

Jewish law does not consider the fetus to be a being with a soul until it is born. It does not have personhood. Furthermore, before 40 days, some poskim, (deciders of Jewish law), have a low bar for allowing an abortion. The Talmud, in Yevamos 69b, cites the view of a rabbi named Rav Hisda that “until forty days from conception the fetus is merely water. It is not yet considered a living being.” Moreover, if there is a threat to a woman’s life, the safety of the mother takes precedence over continuing the pregnancy at any stage. Many sources illustrate this graphically and rather unambiguously, and all modern poskim, or religious deciders, agree on this. In fact, in certain circumstances, a fetus that endangers the life of the mother is legally considered a “murderer” in active pursuit.  Jewish law prohibits killing in all cases — except if one person is trying to murder another. If an individual is trying to end someone’s life, killing that person is actually a requirement. How much more so, a fetus (not yet a full person) who threatens the mother’s life may be aborted.

In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides (one of the greatest physicians of his day) writes: “The sages ruled that when complications arise and a pregnant woman cannot give birth, it is permitted to abort the fetus in her womb, whether with a knife or drugs, for the fetus is considered a רודף (rodef - a murderer in pursuit]) of its mother … If the head of the fetus emerges, it should not be touched, because one life should not be sacrificed for another. Although the mother may die, this is the nature of the world.”

In other words, when a fetus endangers the life of the mother, unless it is in the process of being born, abortion is a halachic (Jewish legal) requirement.  How very different from that of the fundamentalist Christian perspective . . .

One of the biggest differences is that Jewish law has never, and will never, be decided on the basis of contemporary political needs.  Although there are centuries-old disputes within the world of Jewish law on how various laws and enactments should be interpreted and/or adjudicated.

Whether it comes to vaccines, climate change or choice, there is a lot to be learned from ancient texts. One of the most insightful comes from an ancient sage known as Rabbi Tarfon:

“It is not up to you to finish the task, but you are not free to avoid it”.

Sounds like something the Founders might have said . . .

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

In the Majestic Words of JFK (Or Ted Sorensen, or Winston Churchill or George St. John)

Without question, one of the most majestic and awe-inspiring of all presidential inaugural addresses was the one delivered by the then 43-year old John Fitzgerald Kennedy on January 20, 1961. It was also one of the shortest - a mere 14 minutes. That speech contained such gems as:

• 'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'

• 'If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.'

• 'Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.' and perhaps the most magical of all presidential phrases:

• 'And so, my fellow Americans - ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.'

The inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) represented a seismic change in American politics.  He was, after all, more than a generation younger than his predecessor, President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969).  He was also the first president born in the 20th century and brought to the White House, a dash and flair, an energetic youthfulness and élan unlike anything America and the world had ever seen before. JFK and his picture-perfect family had it all: wealth and movie-star good looks; sophistication, 50-mile hikes and above all, breathtaking charisma.  He only lived a brief 46 years; unbelievably, he has now been dead for nearly 60. 

Kennedy’s image is that of a fire-breathing progressive.  In truth, he was anything but.  Rather, he was a slightly right-of-center moderate Democrat whose greatest accomplishments - Medicare, the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts - were mostly completed by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was likely American political history’s most masterful legislative prestidigitators.  What Kennedy had in spades over Johnson - and most all of our presidents before or since - was the ability to motivate people of all ages to get off their backsides and give something back to “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”  The motivation of which we speak was of course wrapped up in the ultimate sentence of JFK’s  inaugural address: to "Ask not what your country can do for you, [but rather] ask what you can do for your country.”  Ironically, those words for which he is best remembered may well have not come from his pen . . . or that of Ted Sorensen, his brilliantly poetic 33-year old speechwriter.  According to Chris Matthews, the former press spokesman for Speaker Tip O’Neil,  chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and former MSNBC news host, that phrase likely came from either from one of Winston Churchill’s war-time speeches or George St. John, who was JFK’s headmaster at Choate  in the early 1930s.  In his 2011 book Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,  Matthews, who interviewed many of Kennedy’s Choate classmates, notes that they frequently heard headmaster St. John tell his students precisely the same thing.

I well remember listening to JKF’s inaugural address on the radio in Miss Cook’s class that January afternoon in 1961.  (The next day would be our father’s 45th birthday).  The new president sounded so young; his Boston accent was like something we only heard in movies; hearing Robert Frost read the poem The Gift Outright was especially rewarding . . . I was terribly smitten by great poets, thanks largely to “Granny Annie,” my mother’s mother. (Actually, Frost had written a brand new poem for the event entitled Dedication.” He approached the microphone, but blinded by the sun's glare on the snow-covered Capitol grounds, Frost was unable to read it. Thinking quickly, he instead recited "The Gift Outright," a poem he had written in 1942.)

I also well remember wanting desperately to join the Peace Corps and go out on a 50-mile hike. Alas, one needed a minimum of a B.A. in order to join the former, and their parents’ permission to participate in the latter. (I was but 11 at the time and possessed neither the degree nor parental permission.) Nonetheless, JFK inoculated in many of us a desire to be active, to give something of ourselves back to the country of our birth. JFK would be the reason why many of my generation became involved in what used to be known as “causes.” It’s something woefully lacking in today’s world . . .

        Post-war: able to get back into tailored clothing!

As a child, I well remember going to either the Union (train) Station in downtown Los Angeles or what was then known as the Los Angeles Airport (where parking was still both unpaved and free). In my recollection, both places were filled with uniformed soldiers, sailors, and marines rushing to make connections. In our neighborhood, there were many men who still bore the scars and halting gait of men who had been injured in the war. Unbeknownst to us - children living lives of relative privilege, many of our parents were actually in the 91%-92% income tax bracket and yet never tried to start a revolution. They were children of the Great Depression who survived a gruesome war and helped rebuild both a nation and a world. For some, it was a matter of noblesse oblige; for most, it was part of the obligation of being a patriotic citizen.

Where have those times gone?

I for one firmly desire to see Congress and the Biden administration institute something akin to “National Service; a series of programs and policies meant for the masses to join, thereby repairing our country while answering JFK’s challenge to “ask what we can do for our country.” In one of the very few conversations I ever had with my father about his 6 years of service during WWII, I remember him telling me that perhaps the best part of being in the service (outside of winning the war and coming back alive) was working alongside and getting to know people he otherwise would never have met. “I learned so much about people who were vastly different from myself . . . and they about me. Imagine: I was the first Jew many of these lads had ever met . . .”

Let’s face it: for quite some time, Americans have been growing further and further apart, whether the dividing lines be race, religion, politics, ethnicity economics or a combination of any or all these things. We frequently take sides, “knowing” that our problems or shortcomings are due to others with whom we have next to no contact with - let alone or knowledge of. This is a loss for all of us. If there were some way for people to work together for the common good, perhaps we could revive the dream of JFK: to ask what we can do for our country. I for one couldn’t care less whether the words come directly from JFK, Ted Sorensen, Winston Churchill or George St. John or Bob Dylan. If America is to survive, we must all find a way to work together.

Interestingly, the one person in the Biden Administration who has spoken most about reviving a national service program is Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He is all all in favor of expanding the Peace Corps (which still exists), as well as Vista and other such programs. Ironically Elaine Chao, Secretary Pete’s immediate predecessor at DOT (she is the wife Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) served as the head of the Peace Corps during the first Bush Administration. Perhaps Buttigieg and Chao should get together with President Biden and his Chief of Staff Ron Klain in order to begin the process of creating a new National Service agenda for all of America.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

There's More to President Grant Than War, Whiskey and Dishonest Dealings

Today is the 4th of July; America’s 245th birthday. It is, of course, a day of fireworks (“The bombs bursting in air”), backyard barbeques and for some of us, watching for the umpteenth time Peter Stone’s magnificent musical 1776, starring William Daniels (John Adams), Howard Da Silva (Benjamin Franklin) and Ken Howard (Thomas Jefferson). For American historians, it is the time to write yet another essay, hopefully shedding even greater light on this magnificent experiment in liberty and representative democracy called America. At this time of year, Presidential historians are, as is their wont, surveying anew the presidential ranking of all 45 of the nation’s Chief Executives - from Washington to Trump. (#46, Joe Biden has not yet made the list as of today he’s only served in office 165 days.)

                             Ulysses S. Grant: America’s 18th President

When it comes to Presidential ranks decade-by-date, there are many givens: Lincoln, Washington, FDR and TR have ranked numbers 1-4 as long as anyone can remember. Then too, those at the bottom of the list - Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding and John Tyler - haven’t budged; they are still the worst of the worst . . . with the exception of Donald J. Trump who now enters the list at 41 out of 45.  (BTW: Barack Obama debuted at #12 in 2016 and as of the latest polling, has moved up to #10). There are some surprises: Dwight Eisenhower, as an example, has moved all the way from 9th to 5th best over the past 2 decades.  The president whose reputation has improved the most in the past two decades? That’s Ulysses S. Grant, who started at No. 33 and is now ranked 20th. Grant has had a number of sympathetic biographies in recent years, and these days gets more credit for Reconstruction and his diplomacy than condemnation for his supposed dipsomania and alleged corruption.

That Grant loved bourbon (likely “Old Crow”) was well known to just about everyone.  According to one tale, a leading politician told President Abraham Lincoln that the man he was about to appoint his commanding general was nothing more than a rotten drunk.  “He is not himself half the time; he can’t be relied upon, it is a shame to have such a man in command of an army,” the man told Lincoln. “So Grant gets drunk, does he?” queried Lincoln, addressing himself to one of the particularly active detractors of the soldier. “Yes, he does, and I can prove it,” was the reply. “Well,” returned Lincoln, with the faintest suspicion of a twinkle in his eye, “you needn’t waste your time getting proof; you just find out, to oblige me, what brand of whiskey Grant drinks, because I want to send a barrel of it to each one of my generals.”  That might have ended the crusade against General Grant . . . not the historic stereotype . . . which may or may not be true.  

At the end of  1930, Scribner’s Magazine began publishing what would prove to be a short-lived series of “alternative history” pieces. The first installment, in the November issue, was “If Booth Had Missed Lincoln.” This was followed by a contribution from none other than Winston Churchill who turned the concept on its head. It was piece bafflingly titled “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg”—but, as we all know, Lee didn’t win the Battle of Gettysburg.  Reading Churchill’s story brought out the zaniness in parodist James Thurber, who then wrote “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox” in The New Yorker in December of that year. The next month Scribner’s published a third essay (“If Napoleon Had Escaped to America”) before bringing the series to an end. All three pieces were soon forgotten, but Thurber’s parody became one of his most famous and beloved works, and is still being performed on stage.  I urge you to you read If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox and have a good laugh . . .  So much for Grant’s affinity for whisky.  Politically, his presidency was long associated with corruption . . . most notably (and ironically) the so-called “Whiskey Ring,” a scandal uncovered in 1875 involving whiskey distillers, agents of the I.R.S. Treasury clerks and various members of the Grant Administration.  Although Grant appointed the nation’s first “special prosecutor” to look into the case (who discovered, tried and sentenced the culprits), the president and his time in office were nonetheless forever tarnished. In the eyes of history, he may have been a successful commanding general, but was definitely a worthless drunk and criminal.

Presidential historians, it turns out, have begun finding out that U.S. Grant was far, far better than his reputation or personal stereotype would have us believe.  He was responsible for bringing hundreds of thousands of former slaves into American society, and see that the  South not get away Scot-free with their moral and political transgressions.  Although deeply flawed, the “Reconstruction Era” did make it possible for government to get back on its feet after the War.  Grant had a lot to do with making the politics of that difficult program possible.

Then too, Grant was far better read and far more philosophical than historians have given him credit.  He was a damn good writer whose prose was praised by none other than the great Mark Twain who came to Grant’s financial aid during the former president’s final days by convincing Merrill Lynch to put up $50,000.00 to buy the rights to Grant’s autobiography, which Twain would then publish. (Twain accomplished what he sought out to do; most regrettably, Grant put the finishing touches on his autobiography just 5 days before dying in July 1885 at age 63.  The two-volume work was published at the end of that year.)

One of the Grant’s most prescient and chilling messages was delivered in a speech he gave at the Annual Reunion of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 29, 1875.  Its most revealing passage sounds like something could - and should - be spoken on this year’s Fourth of July observance.  We will conclude with these words, think about them, and then prepare to watch 1776:

I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics, but it is a
fair subject for soldiers in their deliberations to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Now in this centennial year of our national existence, I believe it a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion.

Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that the State or Nation, or both combined, shall furnish to every child growing up in the land, the means of acquiring a good common-school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistic tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards, I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee will not have been fought in vain. 

And may Ulysses S. Grant’s name, deeds and reputation grow with every passing year.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

The Talking Cure

                        Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Anyone who has spent even a bit of time learning about the history of Freudian psychoanalysis, is familiar with the term “The talking cure.” In a nutshell, the good Dr. Freud was speaking with a colleague of his, Dr. Josef Breuer one day and Breuer told Freud about a patient he called “Anna O” (in reality, Bertha Pappenheim), who was experiencing “hysteria.” Breuer excitedly told Freud he had discovered that if he hypnotized Anna, she'd reveal all sorts of information she didn't recall when she was conscious — and her symptoms would lessen afterward. Freud tried this “talking cure” in his own private practice, but found patients would talk pretty freely to him without hypnosis, provided they were in a relaxed position — specifically, lying down on a couch — and if they were encouraged to say whatever came into their heads, a process known as “free association.” Once a patient talked at length, Freud could analyze what the person said to figure out what past traumas were likely causing the patient's current distress. Thus was born Freud’s “Talking Cure.” It was a boon to the nascent world  of psychoanalysis . . . not to mention the sale of couches!

As important as the Talking Cure has been to  psychoanalysis, one must keep in mind that it is not - nor ever has been - a panacea; sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Let’s just say that it can be a valuable arrow in Freud’s quiver.

The United States Senate has its own version of the Talking Cure - a tradition which occasionally offers a helping hand to those in the minority, but frequently acts as a political hindrance or impediment to those in the majority.  Here, of course, we are referring to one of the most nettlesome of all legislative strategies: the filibuster.   

Likely stemming from the Dutch /ˈvrɛi̯bœy̯tər/ meaning either a “freebooter” or “a pirate,” the Senate website defines filibuster as “An Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions."  The term filibuster was first used in the 1850s when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill. In the early years of Congress, representatives, as well as senators, could filibuster bills. However, as the number of representatives grew, the House amended its rules placing specific time limits on debates. In the 100-member Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue. Prior to 1917 the Senate rules did not provide for a way to end debate and force a vote on a measure. That year, the Senate adopted a rule to allow a two-thirds majority to end a filibuster, a procedure known as "cloture." In 1975 the Senate reduced the number of votes required for cloture from two-thirds (67) to three-fifths (60) of the 100-member Senate.

                James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes  to Washington” (1939)

For non-political geeks, the greatest exemplar of the term filibuster is Jimmy Stewart playing the young idealistic Senator Jefferson  Smith holding the Senate floor hour after hour so as to keep a handful of his more corrupt colleagues from destroying his dream - creating a national boys’ camp.  Most will recall the hoarse, reeling Smith collapsing on the Senate floor after setting some sort of record for “talking the bill to death.”  In reality, this is a tactic which actually did exist: the “talking filibuster.”  The all-time record for the longest filibuster of ‘em all belongs to the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who  spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, according to U.S. Senate records.

Thurmond began speaking at 8:54 p.m. on Aug. 28 and continued until 9:12 p.m. the following evening, reciting the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, President George Washington's farewell address and other historical documents along the way.  So long as he stayed on his feet, it  really didn’t matter what he spoke about. Using what might be called a “tag-team” strategy, Thurmond and several of his colleagues (all Southern Democrats) managed to hold the floor for an amazing 57 days (March 26 -June 19), the day the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed.  Among the other filibuster champs, several were, believe it or not, progressives: Wisconsin Senators William La Follette, Sr. (18 hours, 28 minutes in 1908) and William Proxmire (16 hours and 12 minutes) who managed to stall debate on an increase of the public debt ceiling in 1981 and Oregon’s Wayne Morse (the “Tiger of the Senate”) who spoke for 22 hours and 26 minutes to stall debate on the Tidelands Oil bill in 1953.

Today, the “talking filibuster” is a remnant of the past.  Just calling for a filibuster on a given bill (most always by the minority party) makes it possible to stall legislative activity against a particular bill while continuing to be in session.  In 2003, Senate Democrats threatened a lengthy filibuster to block several of then-President George W. Bush’s nominees. Republicans discussed invoking the parliamentary move since, like a nuclear explosion, it cannot be controlled once it is unleashed. Former GOP Senate Majority leader Trent Lott coined the term “the Nuclear Option” because both parties saw it as an unthinkable final recourse, just like nuclear war. During a standoff over George W. Bush nominees in 2003, Republicans discussed invoking the parliamentary move by using the codeword “The Hulk" since it, like the superhero alter ego, cannot be controlled once it is unleashed. Senators who wanted to give the maneuver a more positive public image, call it “The Constitutional Option.”

Well, now that Democrats and Republicans are living and working in an equally divided Senate (where only V.P. Harris can break a tie), the idea of minority Republicans reverting to the filibuster has both sides wondering what to do.  Some - mostly the progressive left - want to get rid of the filibuster altogether; others want to go back to the days when cloture requires 60 votes; then there is President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, his assistant, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, and  the so-called “institutionalists.”  They realize that they simply do not have the votes to change Senate rules (it only takes a majority vote).

If the Democrats managed to end the filibuster (as of today, they don’t have the votes) the first thing they would no doubt do is pass their voting rights bill, (S.1), which would counteract curbs Republicans are placing on mail-in and absentee voting, streamline national voter registration and end the partisan drawing of congressional lines. Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has argued Democrats could possibly get around the filibuster for this one bill. But most people agree that once a party ends the filibuster for one bill, it'll be hooked and do it again and again.

President Biden is likely the lynchpin in this debate. He was a senator for decades and respects the institution, but he's now a president trying to get things done. Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos just the other day he'd like to revert to a "talking filibuster."

"I don't think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it [like] what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days," he told Stephanopoulos. "You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking."

"So you're for that reform? You're for bringing back the talking filibuster?" Stephanopulos asked.

"I am. That's what it was supposed to be," Biden said, a la "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

There is already quite a significant debate over whether or not returning to the “Jefferson Smith” version of the filibuster will solve anything.  Shortly after the president’s sit-down with George Stephanopoulos, CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza wrote an analysis piece flatly stating that A 'talking filibuster' isn't going to solve the Senate's problems.”  Only time will tell.

I personally agree with the POTUS and a growing cadre of Democrats. By going back to the old rule, it would force Republicans to remain on their feet in front of all those cameras, showing themselves to the American public for what they are; obstructionists whose main issue is being against anything and everything the Democrats are for.  Period.  It would b e easy enough to change one aspect of the filibuster rule: mandating that all speechifying must be germane to the topic at hand. In other words, no more reading from the Bible, the White Pages, or Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham (as Ted Cruz actually did in September 2013).

Which brings us back to Dr. Freud who, although unbelievably gifted and insightful, was by no means political.  Nonetheless, he did understand the mind, heart and soul of the politician Fpr indeed, here are his thoughts:

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.” 

Can we talk?

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

March 7, 1965

Fifty-six years ago today (March 7, 1965) the then 25-year old civil rights activist John Lewis (1940-2020) led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers. Lewis himself was one of 18 who were injured badly enough to require hospitalization. Footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice. In response, civil rights leaders planned to take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. Although Wallace ordered state troopers “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march,” approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 7.

In the wake of the shocking incident, President Lyndon Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Within days, the number of people participating in the march - whose ultimate destination was Montgomery - had grown to more than 25,000.  Now led by John Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the horrific event which began on “Bloody Sunday” galvanized the nation.  So much so that Congress passed - and President Lyndon Johnson signed the “Voting Rights Act” on August 6 . . . a mere 5 months after “Bloody Sunday."  The purpose of this act was to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Unfortunately, over the past several years, governors, state legislators and members of Congress (overwhelmingly Republican) have been doing everything in their power to undo or reverse the Voting Rights Act. The majority of those seeking this reversal are motivated by pretty much the same concern: putting as many stumbling blocks in the path of poor and minority voters, a sizeable percentage of who regularly vote for Democrats. Most readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly know that there are important aspects of voting which are protected by the 15h Amendment which in sum states that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Nonetheless, many state legislatures - especially those under Republican control - have been, as mentioned above - been putting significant roadblocks before the rights of minority voters.

Today, in memory and honor of the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” President Biden has signed an executive order to promote additional access to voting. The administration describes the executive order as an “initial step” to protect voting rights — one that uses “the authority the president has to leverage federal resources to help people register to vote and provide information,” according to an administration official. This move comes not just in memory of “Bloody Sunday,” but also as a strong response to Republicans in statehouses around the country who are doing everything in their power to advance voter suppression legislation, including a bill in Georgia that voting rights groups say targets Black voters. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed measures in recent days to increase voting rights, including HR1 -- a sweeping ethics and election package that contains provisions expanding early and mail-in voting, restoring voting rights to former felons, permitting voting on Sunday, and easing voter registration for eligible Americans.

Despite the fact that the decisions of 60 separate courts and Donald Trump’s own Justice Department finding virtually no voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election (the one which the previous president and his staunchest supporters claimed to be as true as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west) Republican lawmakers in 43 states have introduced 253 bills to restrict ballot access. The greatest activity has been in battleground states, especially Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Measures involve early voting, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, mobile voting facilities, and rules to disqualify ballots received after Election Day that cannot be overruled by the executive branch or the courts.

Some restrictions, however, are likely to be adopted in states in which the GOP controls both the legislature and the governor’s mansion. The Iowa state senate recently passed a bill shortening the early voting period. Although Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis declared that his state “did it right” in November 2020, Florida is poised to reduce the number of drop boxes. Texas lawmakers have submitted a slew of bills limiting voter access.  This week, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill whose motive Gwinnett County Republican election official Alice O’Lenick acknowledged was partisan: If House Bill 531 is enacted “at least we have a shot at winning,” she said. The legislation mandates that all counties have the same early voting dates and times: Monday-Friday, during business hours, one mandatory Saturday, one additional Saturday or Sunday. The elimination of early voting in the evening and all but one Sunday is aimed directly at working class Georgians and “souls to polls” initiatives, which usher African Americans to polling places after Sunday morning church services.

An Iowa bill aimed at limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots is headed to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk this week, after passing both Republican-controlled chambers of the state legislature.

The bill, introduced by a Republican state senator, specifically would reduce the number of early voting days from 29 days to 20 days. It would also close polling places an hour earlier on Election Day (at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.).

The bill also places new restrictions on absentee voting including banning officials from sending applications without a voter first requesting one, and requiring ballots be received by the county before polls close on Election Day.

The Republican-controlled Iowa House passed the measure on Wednesday night in a party line vote of 57-37. That vote came a day after the GOP-controlled Iowa Senate, where the legislation was introduced, also passed the bill on a party line vote.

One attorney representing Arizona before the Supreme Court went so far as to admit that these changes and restrictions had virtually nothing to do with guaranteeing that elections could neither be stolen nor rigged: “We are pushing for these changes for they guarantee the success of Republicans in coming elections.”  If anyone needs a new definition of chutzpah, here it is . . .

So what can be done?” Can or will President Biden’s executive order regarding the 15th Amendment put a horse collar around the Republican-controlled states that wish to turn back the clock?  The only thing that comes to mind on this, the 56th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” is for everyone to work just as hard to overturn their state legislatures and replace their governors as they/we did to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris elected in 2020.  

In other words, there’s no rest for the weary.  We simply must keep the spirit of John Lewis and Bloody Sunday alive.

Any takers?  Please let me know.

Copyright©2012 Kurt F. stone

How Low Can You Go?

                                Charles Kushner: Trump’s Mechutan

Unlike a majority of Jewish  people (especially rabbis) residing here in South Florida, I was neither born nor raised in a Lower East Side family where the parents spoke Yiddish whenever they did not want the children to understand what they were saying.  Both I and my slightly older sister Erica (Riki) are 100% Californian. Neither our grandparents nor great-grandparents for that matter were Eastern-European immigrants who came through Eliis Island or Castle Garden and then settled a short distance from their  place of disembarkation. Rather, the earliest generations of Hymans, Greenbergs and Schimbergs were born in 19th century Virginia, Maryland and Minnesota. Their children - our great-grandparents - were native English speakers about as far removed from “Tevya,  Golda and the girls” as can be imagined. The next generation - our great grandparents - raised their families in places like Baltimore, Richmond, Virginia, Chicago and Kansas City. (Granny Annie, my mother’s mother, was born in 1896 in the same St. Paul neighborhood  where just a few days earlier, F(rancis) Scott Key Fitzgerald (F. Scott) had entered the world - not exactly a Yiddishe shetl). As such, neither our great grandparents, grandparents nor parents understood more than 5 words of Yiddish. (I myself did learn a bit of Yiddish with the late Professor Herb Paper out of an urge to be able to read Sholem Aleichem in the original) Indeed, today, whenever we want to speak in front of “Madame” (our soon-to-be 97 year old matriarch) in a language she won’t understand, we (meaning me and Annie) chatter away in Hebrew. (Unlike most America-born, Hollywoodish Jewish great-grandmothers of her generation, she does do reasonably well in French and Italian.) So what in the world does any of this have to do with “Politics & a Whole Lot More,” as the subtitle of this blog has proclaimed for going on 17 years? 

To wit: our purpose is to introduce a Yiddish word that takes a paragraph to explain - a word that soon may become as well known as schmuck, mazal tov, meshuggah, chutzpah, glitch, mensch, shtick and yente - all of which likewise take a brief  sentence or two to explain.  And that word is מחותן (pronounced m’chut’n for a male,  מחותנתטע (pronounced m’chutn’steh for a female, or מחותונים (pronounced m’chutonim in the plural.  Let’s, for the moment, pay attention to the male version (מחותן) of the term.  Derived from the Hebrew word for “groom,” a mchut’n is how one describes the relationship between you and your child’s father-in-law.  A simple example (and getting ever closer to the purpose of this little linguistic exercise) would be to explain the relationship between Donald Trump and Charles Kushner - Jared Kusher’s father . . . the one just given a presidential pardon.  Charles Kushner is Donald and Melania Trump’s m’chut’n, while Seryl Kushner (née Stadtmauer), Jared’s mother and Charles’ wife, is the Trump’s m’chutn’steh; together, they are Donald and Melania’s m’chutonim. (BTW: For those who speak/understand Spanish, the word consuegro/consuegra is pretty close  . . . “the father-in-law/mother-in-law of one’s son or daughter.”). In issuing a pardon to his m’chutan just days before he (please G-d) heads for the exit, Donald Trump has done something which has never happened before in American history and undoubtedly will never happen again.  

Ever since George Washington issued the first presidential pardon in 1795 (forgiving two Pennsylvania men sentenced to death for treason after participating in protests known as "The Whiskey Rebellion”) there have been some forgotten doozies. How many recall that in 1868, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fully pardoned every soldier who fought for the Confederate Army? Or that in 1989, Ronald Reagan pardoned George Steinbrenner, the loud-mouthed owner of the New York Yankees, who had been convicted in 1974 on 14 criminal counts for making illegal financial contributions to Nixon's reelection campaign two years earlier? 

Of course, up until just the other day, President Gerald R. Ford’s pardoning of his predecessor Richard Nixon had been the most notorious such act in all American history. Now mind you, ‘45 isn’t the only president to pardon a family member: Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger (who had pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution charges and served a year in prison). Roger’s pardon was one of 147 issued by the outgoing president on his very last day in office.  45’s pre-Christmas pardons were far, far more than mere gifts to loyalists such as Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and his m’chutan Charles Kushner; they were knockout punches aimed directly at core American principles.  For in addition to these particularly noxious characters, there were three former Republican members of the House of Representatives -  Chris Collins of New York, Duncan Hunter of California and Steve Stockman of Texas — who were guilty of, respectively, insider trading, stealing hundreds of thousands in campaign money and robbing a charity.  These pardons, in the words of columnist/constitutional law professor/professional whistleblower Harry Litman “. . . delivered an especially brutal kick in the teeth to the DOJ.” Generally speaking, in order to receive a presidential pardon, petitioners are supposed to have served their sentences, demonstrated genuine remorse for their crimes and led a productive life afterward. Such requirements are just one more joke to Trump — by a conservative estimate, more than half of his pre-Christmas pardons went to people who did not meet Justice Department criteria.

Ivanka Trump’s billionaire father-in-law Charles Kushner had pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering, and making illegal campaign donations. Moreover, he had confessed to retaliating against his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities, by hiring a prostitute to seduce him. He filmed the encounter and sent it to his sister, the man’s wife. Prosecuted by then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, Kushner served 14 months of a two-year sentence in federal prison.  Christie, who recently referred to Kushner’s crimes as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney,” gained enough notoriety and positive publicity that he was eventually elected governor of New Jersey. His involvement in prosecuting the case also got him kicked off the Trump political jet.  I guess what they say is true: קיין גוטע מעשה ווערט נישט באשטראפט (keyn gute meshh vert nisht bashtraft - viz. “No good deed goes unpunished”) Prior to 2016, Charles Kushner was a major donor to Democrats in New York.  Once Donald Trump started his race for the White House, Kushner switched his allegiance - and donations - to the G.O.P.  And yes it is true, he has long been a major contributor to Chabad and other Jewish educational institutions.  

But Roger Stone?  Paul Manafort?  Michael Flynn? Have they shown or voiced any contrition?  What have they done to indicate any rehabilitation?  Former general Michael Flynn, who served about 2 weeks as Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor, has, of late, been appearing on News Max and OAN urging his former boss to put the country under martial law in order to get the 2020 election overturned!  This is how one earns a presidential pardon?  Or, have the Stones, Manaforts and Flynns done something far more important: put cash into the Trump coffers?  Although there is as yet no hard proof that a crime has been committed by Donald Trump, the history is both clear and ever-present: the man has consistently used his office as a personal ATM. 

There will undoubtedly be more pardons between today and 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2021.  And who knows, perhaps the  final pardons - which easily could be issued to many Trumps (Donald, Don, Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared certainly come to mind) won’t be signed by the man who, up until he left for Mar-a-Lago just other day, sat behind the Resolute Desk . . . but by Mike Pence who may well become “President for a day” just so he can pardon his former boss. Only time will tell.  (BTW: Anyone seeking to purchase a handsome replica of the Resolute Desk, it will set you back $6,118.49.  Ironically, the best venue for purchase is Overstock.com, whose former C.E.O., Patrick Byrne, plays a significant role in the conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.  And by the way, the Resolute replica is made not in the United States, but rather Indonesia.)

In pardoning his m’chut’n - another billionaire real estate tycoon who got his start because his father was very, very rich - Donald Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of two things:

1. דאָס עפּעלע פֿאַלט ניט װײַט פֿון בײמעלע (Dos epele falt nit vayt fun beymele - “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and

2. When it comes to Donald Trump, the answer to the question “How low can you go?” is נידעריקער ווי די נייַנט קרייַז פון גענעם (nideriker vi di naynt krayz fun genem) . . . “Lower than the ninth circle of hell!”

8 days until the Georgia election;

23 days until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated.

Be safe . . . See you next year!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Where’s Smedley Now That We Need Him?

Back in 1852, Karl Marx published an essay entitled The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The genesis for this brief essay was an event which occurred on December 2 1851 when followers of French President Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) broke up the Legislative Assembly and established a dictatorship. A year later, Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III.

    General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940)

In this minor - though fascinating - work Marx traced how the conflict of different social interests manifests itself in the complex web of political struggles. In other words, as is stated in the Hebrew Bible (Koheleth [Ecclesiastes] 1:9), ““There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Unquestionably, the most famous (though frequently misquoted) statement found in The 18th Brumaire is still regarded as one heck of a truism even during the waning days of the Trump Presidency in 2020: that historical entities appear twice, "the first as tragedy, then as farce." Marx, of course, knew nothing of Donald Trump the man; he did, however, know tons and tons about autocrats like Donald Trump. In the 18th Brumaire, Marx was aiming his pen at - respectively - Napoleon I and then to his nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III).

The haunting truth of Marx’s old chestnut came to mind yesterday, when SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) gave the shortest of shrifts to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal brief (along with amicus briefs from 17 other states’ attorneys general and a majority of Congressional Republicans) to overturn - and thus invalidate - the 2020 presidential election. This legal kick in the privates came just days after the Roberts’ Court took all of one sentence to tell Trump et al to take a long hike on a short pier in their case against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Ever since it has been understood that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and Senator Kamala Harris will be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America, Donald Trump and his [il[legal team have filed more than 4 dozen cases in state and federal courts, seeking to have the 2020 presidential election overturned.  Their batting average has been near zero.  For this we can offer prayers of thanksgiving to the American judiciary which, for the most part, refuse to be drawn into any conspiratorial coup.  Come tomorrow, December 14, the 2020 presidential election will have become part of American history; Donald Trump will be a loser,  Joseph Biden a winner and the attempted coup will begin melting into the scummy slag of history. 

“So where,” you may well ask, “is the tragedy and the farce?”  The farce, to put second things first, is the attempted coup created by Donald Trump, his autocratic billionaire buddies, a gaggle of different Nationalist, Racist, White Supremacist, uber-libertarian and conspiratorial groups; and all those who wish nothing more than to  dismantle virtually everything ever done or dreamed by former President Barack Obama and his administration. These coup-masters are a frightening cult made up of folks who disdain Ivy League graduates, progressives, immigrants, scientists, most Jews, environmentalists and feminists; they are, for the most part, made up of all those Second Amendment-loving Americans who seek a return to the days of the Cold War when political correctness was unheard of, Ozzie And Harriet were the typical American family, and moms stayed at home in order to raise a family.  It is a “farce,” precisely because it is a misguided dream of yesteryear.  

So far as “tragedy” goes, let’s hop into the “Wayback Machine” and alight on the earliest days of the FDR administration. Shortly after his inauguration in March, 1933, a group of the wealthiest men in America started putting together and funding a campaign which they hoped and prayed would punish - and eventually remove from office - the most aristocratic of all American presidents. Their reason?  Because, as the most blue-blooded member of the Mayflower-Groton-Harvard-patrician breed, he turned out to be very much on the side of the working middle class; a progressive with deep ties to the Jewish/immigrant/rural community. To his classmates and club mates, he became nothing short of an anathema – a traitor to his class and culture. And that is why that group made up of the richest of the American rich sought to overthrow him through a coup in early 1933. They were also deeply afraid that he might raise their taxes. Although not necessarily widely reported in history texts, this group was at the epicenter of what historians have called either “The Business Plot,” or “The Wall Street Putsch.”

It was a dangerous time in America . . . much like the times we have been living through of late. Then along came FDR who soundly thrashed incumbent President Hoover in the 1932 election and then embarked upon an ambitious legislative program aimed at easing some of the troubles. But he faced vitriolic opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. During FDR’s historic “first hundred days,” West Virginia Republican Senator Henry Hatfield (a member of the “Hatfields v McCoys” clan) worriedly wrote a colleague that:  "This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom."

Times were extraordinarily tense.  According to historian Sally Denton in her excellent 2012 book The Plots Against the President, “. . . fascism, communism, even Nazism seemed like possible solutions to the country's ills. . . . Some people even called for a dictator to pull America out of the Great Depression.”  In addition to the bankers who underwrote the “putsch” (one of whom, Brown Brothers/Harriman partner Prescott Bush would eventually become a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and the father of future President George H.W. Bush) thought that they could convince Roosevelt to relinquish power to a basically fascist, military-type government.  It was, in the words of historian Denton, “a cockamamie concept.” The conspirators had several million dollars (and this was in 1933!), a stockpile of weapons and had even reached out to a retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler, to lead their forces.

Smedley Darlington who?  General Butler (nicknamed “Old Gimlet Eye” due to his feverish, bloodshot eyes) was, in 1933, the most highly decorated Marine in American history - the only one to be awarded the Brevet Medal (awarded for “Extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force”) and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. Following “The Great War,” Butler quickly became a household name in America. People trusted him; his name and fame were right up there with Charles Lindbergh and General John J. Pershing. Butler would meet on quite a few occasions with the principles of this plot - including the aforementioned Prescott Bush, bond salesman extraordinaire Gerald MacGuire, Bob Doyle of the American Legion, members of the DuPont family and Singer Sewing Machine heir Robert Sterling Clark.  Their topic was, of course about overthrowing FDR and instituting a Fascist form of government. They then sent Butler out across the country, making speech after speech about the absolute necessity of getting rid of Roosevelt and his band of “communists, socialists, Jewish Marxists and anti-capitalists.”  They would eventually coalesce into “The America First” committee

But somewhere along the way, Butler became convinced that these bankers, heirs and white-shoe, blue-blooded Wall Street attorneys represented a vile danger to our form of government. When he finally got around to asking bond-broker MacGuire what specifically was wanted of him from the group, Butler was told he would be the ideal leader of a vast army of veterans, promising him an army of 500,000 men and all but limitless financial backing, so long as he would be willing to lead a march on the White House to displace Roosevelt.

With time, General Butler moved further and further to the political left, and actually became so anti war that he picked up a new nickname: “The Fighting Quaker.” Finally, unable to remain a part of the crowd of conspirators - let alone leading an anti-Democratic, anti-Semitic putsch - Butler decided he had to do something about it.  But who, he thought, would ever believe what he  had to report?  It was such an outlandish plot as to sound like a story-line from Mark Twain at his fabulist best. Increasingly troubled by MacGuire’s plans, Butler knew he would need someone to corroborate his story if he was going to stop the intended coup. Having previously worked as a police captain in Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a reporter from the Philadelphia Record named Paul Comly French, who agreed to meet with MacGuire as well.  (French, by the way, had gained fame for covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping - one of the most sensational stories of the early 1930s). During this meeting, MacGuire told French that he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America, and that Smedley Butler was the “ideal leader” because he “could organize one million men overnight.”

Armed with French’s mutual testimony, Butler appeared before the McCormack-Dickstein congressional committee, also known as the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, to reveal what he knew about the plot to seize the presidency in November 1934. (The committee’s co-chairs were Massachusetts Democrat John McCormick [1891-1980], an Irish Catholic who would serve as Speaker of the House from 1962-1971 and New York Democrat Sam Dickstein [1885-1954], the Lithuanian-born son of an Orthodox rabbi who would eventually serve 9 years as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court.  The two men did not get along with one another at all.  Whenever McCormack wielded the gavel, Dickstein absented himself; whenever Dickstein led the committee, McCormack was nowhere to be seen.)  

Listening to General Butler, along with the testimony of both French, and the erratic MacGuire, the committee began to further investigate the plot. The final reports of the committee sang a different tune, finding that all of Butler’s claims could be corroborated as factual. However, they also stressed that the plot was far from being enacted, and it was not clear if the plans would have ever truly come to fruition.

Quickly becoming known as the “White House Coup” and the “Wall Street Putsch,” many major news sources derided Butler’s claims, as the committee’s final report was not made available publicly. Those implicated, ranging from the DuPont family to Prescott Bush, laughed off Butler’s claims; they believed that they were “above the law.” Evidence of the validity of Butler’s testimony was not released until the 21st century, when the committee’s papers were published in the Public Domain. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the plot.  And yet, without General Butler, there is every reason to believe that some sort of coup would have occurred and likely succeeded.  When America needed what today we would refer to as a “whistle blower,” Smedley D. Butler was there, doing what he did best: being a hero.  (BTW: General Butler wrote a brief book in 1935 [still in print] that for years, was taught in American public schools: War is a Racket.  It is one of the most profound antiwar essays in all American history.

Despite the fact that Donald Trump will no longer be occupying the White House after this coming January 20, (fingers crossed, lucky Dodger socks pulled tight), he is likely not going to be leaving the American political scene.  He and his henchmen (which include Ivanka, Jared, Eric and Donald, Jr.) have already amassed more than a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in their own PAC - ostensibly to keep paying their attorney fees for cases they cannot win . . . let alone get on any court’s docket.  Mostly, the money will be used to fund the Trump lifestyle as well as keeping him on the campaign circuit supporting those who bow before him and destroying those who have seen through or had the chutzpah to criticize him.  He is by no means finished with his task of destroying America while selling the Trump brand and - who knows - creating his own media empire.  There are dire consequences for both America and indeed, the world - in having an unhinged, amoral narcissist go unchallenged.  The fact that a clear majority of all elected Republicans are either incapable of - or afraid to - stand up like Smedley Butler and tell the truth about this miscreant from Manhattan (actually Queens) is both a curse and a stain on the fabric of civil society.

To all those Senate Republicans who are hinting that they won’t be holding hearings for any of Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees until they are 100% convinced that Trump’s loss wasn’t a case of fraud (i.e. never), I have one thing to say: don’t ever refer to yourself a patriot. You are cultists driven to do whatever your dictatorial master commands - even if it will bring down the American political system. You actually see no danger in declaring the next POTUS illegitimate in the eyes of nearly half the American people. Do you have any idea of how foolish and robotically puerile you look to the rest of the world? Are you that feverishly  fearful of Donald Trump that you would eviscerate the body politic in the hopes that he won’t find someone to challenge you in the next Republican primary?  Where is your spine?

And so, permit me to issue a call for any and all true American patriots (in the real sense of the word) to step into the shoes of General Smedley D. Butler and tell it like it is.

Goodness knows, we need each and every one of you. NOW!

23 days until the Georgia elections.

38 days until the Biden/Harris administration gets to work.

Here’s wishing our Jewish friends a chag chanukah s’maycha! May your latkes (and/or sufgan’yot be delicious and calorie-free . . . And do remember: this is the season for miracles!

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

An October Surprise to End All October Surprises

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, C. 1862

It’s gotten to the point where it’s all but impossible to believe anything anymore. I’ve already chatted up at least a couple of dozen people who have grave suspicions that the President and Mrs. Trump’s (not to mention a lot of high-ranking Republicans and members of his White House staff) having tested positive for COVID-19 is an “October Surprise” - some kind of a hoax; a way of managing the news by trading in last week’s headlines for a new “page one above-the-fold” story. Let’s face it, after last week’s debate debacle and the New York Times front-page headlines about 45’s having paid only $750.00 in federal taxes in both 2017 and ‘18, the Trump team needed to do something - anything - to turn the tide from what’s increasingly looking like a electoral rout.

Around the time U.S. deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic went beyond the 100,000 mark (and well before ‘45’s “Stand back and stand by” charge to the white supremacist “Proud Boys,” I began making notes for a possible satiric piece in which several weeks before the November 3rd election, a desperate White House would announce that POTUS had contracted COVID-19, and the Cabinet, under terms of the 25th Amendment, would then turn the reins of authority over to VP Pence. Then, during the period that Pence would be acting POTUS, he would announce that he was granting transactional immunity - an across-the-board pardon - for Trump, regardless of whatever future federal charges might be waged against him. For reasons which no long matter, those notes never became manifest; the satire yet remains in a computer file. The title was to have been The October Surprise That Changed History.

In the meantime, I have done quite a bit of research on various “October Surprises” in American political history.  The earliest I could find went back to the presidential election of 1864, pitting incumbent Abraham Lincoln and former Union general George B. McClellan (1826-85).  In the spring of 1864 Lincoln was worried that he would go down to defeat.  This was grounded in Lincoln’s concern over Northern anger over the Emancipation Proclamation and the length of the war. Then, two “October Surprises” coalesced, handing Lincoln an overwhelming 55.03%-44.95% victory in the popular vote and a 212-21 swamping of  McClellan in the Electoral College.  What were the 2 surprises?

First,  the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago, nominated McClellan and adopted a peace platform, which called for a negotiated end to the war, as well as a repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Quite a gift for Lincoln’s “National Union” ticket. Then, following quickly on the heels of McClellan’s nomination, was the increase in decisive Union victories: Admiral David. Farragut’s  capture of Mobile; two days after the Democratic convention General Sherman took Atlanta and began marching through Georgia, Ulysses S. Grant made progress at Petersburg, and General Philip Sheridan began his devastation of Virginia.  Goodbye to McClellan, the “Young Napoleon” (who would eventually be elected the 24th Governor of New Jersey in 1878) and welcome back Honest Abe.  This, of course, was not an “October Surprise” planned or prepared by Lincoln; that’s just the way things turned out.

Then there was the “October Surprise” of 1960 near the end of the Kennedy/Nixon joust. Two days before the final debate between Senator Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon, civil-rights leader Martin Luther King was arrested. King was jailed along with 52 other blacks who were trying to desegregate a Georgia restaurant. He was sentenced to four months of hard labor based on breaking probation (King had previously been charged with driving without a license, when he actually had been driving with an Alabama license in Georgia). King's wife, Coretta, was frantic and called Harris Wofford, a Kennedy campaign aide (and future one-term Pennsylvania senator), claiming that "they are going to kill him [King]." Wofford contacted Sargent Shriver, who was married to Kennedy's sister Eunice. Shriver convinced Kennedy that he should telephone King's wife, which he did, expressing his concern. Meanwhile, Kennedy's brother Robert (his future Attorney General) negotiated with the judge and secured a promise that King would be released on bail.

In contrast, Nixon consulted with Eisenhower's attorney general (William P. Rogers), who advised him not to intervene in the matter. The Kennedys' intervention gained JFK support from blacks, including King's father, an influential minister who had previously supported Nixon. The senior King told the press, "I've got a suitcase of votes, and I'm going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap." As Evan Thomas writes in Robert Kennedy: His Life, "Just two phone calls -- one by JFK, one by RFK -- decided the outcome of the election, and determined the course of racial politics for decades to come." Kennedy won the close election, 49.7 percent to Nixon's 49.5 percent.

Lastly, there was the election of incumbent President Bill Clinton and Republican Senator Robert Dole. Clinton planned his own “October Surprise” in his re-election bid. In June, 1996, Clinton met with top FBI and CIA aides in hopes of organizing a successful sting against the Russian Mafia, which had been rumored to be interested in selling a nuclear missile. The operation failed to become a real October Surprise, however. Clinton also hoped he might be able to broker a last-minute deal between the Palestinians and Israelis. The two sides however only agreed to more talks. Clinton nonetheless won reelection, the first Democrat to do so since Franklin Roosevelt.

These are by no means the only “October Surprises” within American presidential history.  This current surprise - Trump’s sudden whisking away to Walter Reed Army Hospital due to a positive rendering on his most recent COVID-19 test, is unlike any other.  Coming on the heels of a failed impeachment, a disastrous debate and the discovery that he had basically skated on his federal taxes for more than a decade (among a plethora of other episodes and events) have put the future of his presidential reelection  campaign - let alone his very future as a supposedly wealthy free citizen -  in dire jeopardy.  Throughout his nearly 4 years in office, he and his staff/enablers have shown an almost genius-level ability to transform today’s nasty, negative headlines into the opposite side of the story. 

Even if it is true that ’45 is sick – as opposed to having made the entire scenario up – it is hard to see how it’s going to help him get reelected.  Then too, there is his moral/legal/ethical culpability - by his  very silence and mismanagement of the pandemic - of nearly 210,000 deaths and the recent spate of positive tests for his closest followers and family members. For months on end, he and his people have downplayed the seriousness of the COVID pandemic, making it abundantly clear that anyone who wears a mask or sticks to social distancing is a wuss . . . a weak-kneed, dastardly milquetoast who is likely a Socialist to boot. The fact that ’45 has continually derided both science and the very statistics involved in this pandemic isn’t going to do him a bit of good.  He has yet to utter a syllable of solace to any of the souls who have died from this disease (despite claiming during an ABC World News Tonight snippet that “To all the people who have lost someone, there’s nobody - I don’t sleep at night thinking about it - there’s nobody who’s taken it harder than me”) he’s spent the lion’s share of his time ignoring and deriding the very scientists charged with creating a cure and convincing the public that vaccines don’t work unless they are used to vaccinate the ailing.

And, to make matters even worse, it now seems clear that ‘45 has kept up a schedule of campaigning, speaking and fund-raising amongst hyper-wealthy, maskless donors inside stadiums, airplane hangars and the gardens  of the nation’s  home: the White House.  Will his having contracted COVID-19 change his outlook or force him to communicate in a more compassionate, understanding way?  As much as I wish it would, I fear the answer is “No, no, a thousand times no!”  He has created - either with full knowledge  or against his will - an  “October Surprise” to beat the band.  While his political opponents (Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff et al) have ceased their negative political ads and publicly urged prayers and best wishes, Trump and his coterie have continued blasting the Democrats, still labeling them “far left ultra Socialists whose only wish is to destroy American society.” 

This is more than sad; it is an utter travesty. 

I for one hope and pray that he finds  his way back to health - diminished though it may be. (BTW: as a medical ethicist, I have been privy to many of the compassionate-use drugs he has been given and have a sense of what they can/may/cannot do.) I wish him all the best and also pray that wherever he winds up, they have world-class medical care like at Walter Reed. He will need it.

30 days until the election . . .

Copyright©2020 Kurt F.  Stone