Trump

Day 545 Wednesday July 18, 2018    1,033 Days to Go

Yesterday I heard a piece on NPR (National Public Radio). They were interviewing an author on the political life of Wisconsin. It covered the last 50 or 80 years at least. The author spoke of how there was a progressive element and a conservative element to Wisconsin. That the two got along and advanced various ideas and projects. For example, the first charter schools came out of Wisconsin and was used as a model throughout the country.

Then we got to the modern day, to Scott Walker. Walker dropped out of Marquette shortly before graduating. It is not clear why. At the time he told a friend that god had told him to cut taxes and stop killing babies. He worked his way up to governor and decided to pass legislation to weaken the State government unions, all but fire and police. This resulted in huge protests and a recall movement that almost succeeded. He took money from the Koch brothers pact, Americans for Prosperity and told someone at that time that it was his intention to go after the private unions in a few years. His plan he said was to divide and conquer. A few years later he got a “right to work” law passed. That is a law that says if you are in a union shop you don’t have to pay union dues. Conservatives like to call this freedom, but they know that many people will choose not to pay their dues and it will weaken the unions.

Since Walker has been in office union participation has dropped from 14% of the work force to 6 or 8%. This is a crowning achievement for conservatives. This is the kind of thing they crow about. What is the effect? Does this help or hurt the economy of Wisconsin?

The author went on to say that unions help people earn more money, not just the union members but everyone in the economy. In other words people have more money, if people have more money they spend that money, if they spend that money the economy does better. This isn’t rocket science. This is plain easy to understand fact.

If your government helps to strengthen the economy by supporting unions and building infrastructure, and basically helping people the economy does better. In the case of modern day Wisconsin one has to look no farther than across the river to Minnesota where the governor there has done the things I mention. The contrast is stunning.

Non farm jobs have grown 11% in Minnesota versus 7.9% for Wisconsin.

Median household income up 7.2% in Minnesota versus 5.1% for Wisconsin.

Hourly wages up 2.4% versus 0.3%.

(This is for the time period since 2010.)

Walker has tried to fudge numbers, claiming jobs that weren’t in Wisconsin in his numbers and other tricks to obscure the fact that these “good conservative ideas” suck. The rich got a tax break, but they would be better off with a more vibrant economy. People like Walker and his conservative economic pals fail to understand a basic point of economics – a rising tide lifts all boats.

On to other fascinating conservative idea. Remember Obama the appeaser? This spouted by right wing zealots who didn’t even know what the term meant? Or how about the pictures of Obama not facing the flag when Rick Perry was standing there with his chest puffed out like he was getting an anal probe? Or how about their making fun of Hillary Clinton with her Reset Button with Putin? Many of those same people are now stunned that Trump looked weak beside Putin. That he capitulated to Putin. That Putin smirked (he has never smirked before that I know of) as Trump talked.

Well, Trump cleaned all that up, He mis-spoke. It should have been a “n’t” thrown on the back of that “would.” It should have been “wouldn’t” not “would.” Okay? Situation all cleaned up. Okay?

What?

It’s not?

Pourquoi? (That French for WTF?)

Okay let’s review.

There were servers in Trump Tower that were communicating directly with Alfabank during the election. Alfabank is run by one of Putin’s pals. There was a lot of activity on those servers before primaries and before the RNC (Republican National Convention.) Trump asked Russia to find Hillary’s supposedly missing emails (they weren’t missing btw.) That very day the Russian military intelligence started doing just that. Shortly thereafter various folks connected to the Russian government wanted a meeting with the Trump team and got it. The specific reason was to give Team Trump supposed dirt on Hillary. The Russians set up a web-site DCLeaks to disseminate the emails they got. Then when it was published that the website was a Russian operation they switched to Guccifer 2.0 to make it look like it was an individual. Roger Stone, long time friend of Donald Trump, quit the campaign and contacted Guccifer 2.0 with the express purpose of getting Hillary’s emails. Why did he quit the campaign? As far as anyone knows it was to try and build a wall of deniability. He still kept in contact with Trump and the campaign. Then there is Nicholas Farage, the guy who was key in promoting the British exit from the European Union and came over, inexplicably to a rally Trump had and called Trump a Silver-backed Gorilla. Mr. Farage was seen and photographed leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Julian Assange of Wikileaks is holed up. Mr. Farage has no explanation why he was there. I mean he is asked as he was leaving the embassy and he says he can’t recall. All of a sudden Wikileaks is publishing the emails of Hillary’s that they obtained from the Russians.

Yesterday, Paul Ryan said that the Russian hacking did not effect the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. As far as I know, there has been no actual analysis of that, but I don’t know I’d say if you have a foreign power spreading lies to the majority of the voting population and you have a company, Cambridge Analytica, targeting voters with ads for Trump and against Hillary, I’d say that it had an effect. A huge effect but if not then I guess the Republicans wouldn’t mind if it was done to them in the next election?

The definition of treason is aiding, abetting, and giving comfort to the enemy. Some say we aren’t at war with Russia and therefore whatever Trump did can’t be treason. Our intelligence agencies say we were attacked. To my way of thinking if you are attacked you are at war. Of course, if you are attacked you have two choices: you can fight, or you can roll over.

Trump and the Republicans have chosen to deny and roll over.

It’s pretty simple.

1,033 Days to Go

PS Decisions, decisions

Day 543 Monday July 16    1,035 Days to Go

Claude Lanzmann died on July 5, 2018. He created the documentary Shoah in 1985. Shoah is the Hebrew word for The Holocaust. Lanzmann was French. In the 1980s he realized that many people involved in the Holocaust were dying. He spent twelve years documenting what these people experienced on both sides: prison guards, survivors, those pressed into service, those who witnessed what happened. His film was nine and a half hours. It was shown in two parts. I saw it over two days in the little arts theater in Georgetown in Washington DC.

There are so many things I remember from the movie. It started with a man on a train running his hand across his throat as if being cut and then casting his arm to on side several times, as if shaking off water from his sleeve. There was no explanation.

Lanzmann interviewed a Nazi prison guard and asked him to sing an old song that the guards sang. He stood at Auschwitz with someone and asked if this is where the fence was. It was. He stood on one spot and asked if this was inside the fence. Yes, it was. He moved several steps and asked if this was outside. Yes, it was. So he said, this was inside the fence and this over here was outside? Yes, that was correct.

He spoke to farmers who worked the fields outside Auschwitz. Yes, they smelled the smoke. They described the smell.

When he interviewed people he let their words stand in their native tongue and ran subtitles: Hebrew, Yiddish, German, French, English – whatever, you got to hear the people speak. On the second night a person was speaking in Yiddish. They went on and on. Several people around me understood what this person was saying.  The people around me were nodding their heads and even laughed a bit. There were no subtitles. I was waiting for the translation. The subtitle finally came. It only said, “It’s a long story.” Damn. I’ve always wondered what was said.

As the movie bore on and on you got the sense of the size and scope of The Holocaust. One such interview was with the man who was forced to run the train into Auschwitz. He was the person who opened the whole movie. The man who had run his hand across his throat. Lanzmann asked him how many trains he ran everyday (3). He asked how many cars were on each train (45?). He asked how many people were in each car (50?). He asked how long he was forced to run the train. (I forget.) He asked what the man was trying to say with his hand motions? The man said he was trying to signal to those on the train to jump  off because they were going to be killed. He said he could only do this when the guards weren’t watching.

It was a powerful, unemotional, fact based, movie. There was no background music, no theme songs, no dramatic lighting. It laid out minute after minute, hour after hour; what had happened. It was hoped it would never happen again.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the groundwork being laid for it to happen again.

1,035 Days to Go

PS Reflections in the Western Bay 5:30 am