I Grieve For Houston

I cannot take my eyes off the weather channel and CNN coverage of the disaster besetting my beloved home for 45 years and the suffering of all my friends there with this massive catastrophe.
You may have noticed a press conference held by their respected mayor as the disaster unfolds.  Sylvester Turner, an excellent Democratic state representative and son of  Houston's Acres Homes community is calmly advising his fellow citizens of help forthcoming to save them from further harm with nearly 50 inches of rain in a period of a week, typically a years worth of rain for this tropical climate.  Sylvester is a Harvard educated black man who loves his diverse city.  His presentation is followed by information from Houston's Hispanic police and fire chiefs and Anglo Republican County Judge.  This is bipartisanship and multiculturalism at its very finest.  This is my beloved city where we raised and educated our four children.  I'm very proud of their bravery and resolve.

What was so impressive was how the Hispanic leaders smoothly switched from English to Spanish in their presentations, representative of the so very treasured multi-cultural environment that is Houston.  It will be very tough and very expensive but Houston will rebuild and once again prosper for its people because the residents there really show love to one another even under these most difficult circumstances.   It is a model for much of  a very racist and bigoted red  U.S.A.

But rebuilding will be challenging because it is at sea level or slightly above and decades of ignoring reality in its face regarding its primary industry, oil and gas as major contributors to the climate change have to be reconciled with jobs and prosperity.

This is the message I want to be heard by my Delaware friends.   Houston, for all its goodness ignored reality and science, though much of its industry is very science based.  It welcomed and actually ushered in the oil industry which has driven so much of our national economy.  Not unlike Delaware's welcoming of chemicals as the basis of its corporate economy.  Now both Houston and Wilmington face the challenge of both mitigating the local environmental damage but also the demise of these lucrative industries which provided prosperity and comfortable livelihoods for their citizens.

Further, Houston, in the interest of fulfilling the demands of an increasing population partaking of the prosperity, built residential and commercial properties with abandon.  In Houston's case, no zoning exists to protect and provide sensible design for communities both residential and commercial.  Yes, standards of construction and development exist, but were both loosely regulated by city and county government and often skirted for economic advantage for developers and builders.  Houston as also been known as a developers paradise.  Growth was its primary goal and boy howdy did it ever happen.

The result has been concrete where grass and soil should be to absorb water draining from gully washer rains this tropical climate produces.  Yes, bayous were engineered to mitigate drainage but the planners didn't or couldn't account for the massive growth this 4th largest American city experienced.  Houston began to experience flooding beyond normal expectations starting 30-40 years ago.  Planners simply couldn't/didn't account for all that explosive growth.  And planning was always skirted to foster growth.

Exxon and much of the oil and gas industry have understood the climate change impact their production of carbon for much of these 30-40 years, but covered it up.  The oil and gas industry is heavily populated with environmentalists; The Sierra Club and many other environmental groups are populated by informed oil and gas industry employees and have always been robustly active in Houston.   They  warned, but corporate America didn't listen and because of the prosperity created, much of the Houston area citizenry simply didn't want to hear the warnings.

Who can criticize this very human phenomenon ?  The conflict between commercial prosperity and more esoteric and sometimes futuristic consequences is an age old conundrum.  Crystal ball readers have and never will be as popular as those bearing gifts to enhance prosperity.  It simply is a human failing.  But one Houston and Delaware must confront.

Some of my fellow Delawareans have heard in recent days about AddicksBarker Reservoirs in Houston and the release of water cause more flooding during the current catastrophic flooding.  This is because there are now flaws in the structure of the dam threatening breakage of the walls.  Houston has been warned for several decades about this infrastructure problem in the hands of the Corps of Engineers.  The warnings have been ignored in the interest of growth and prosperity.

An environmental engineer by the name of Jim Blackburn has brought the science of this dam issue threatening hundreds of thousands of nearby residents for decades.  All of Houston's elected officials and county officials are well aware of Jim's science and systematic forewarning but have looked the other way because it will require massive investment to shore up the walls.  This means tax money and you know Americans and tax issues.  Anathema to even liberal political leaders who don't want to face the heat.  Yet another very human trait. But now Houston has to face up to the truth of  infrastructure spending or absence thereof.  

So, Delaware.  Be forewarned.  Here no one wants to talk about sea level rising, a climate change reality we face in a big way.  But we have to both talk about it, as well as toxic waste in our rivers and land from years of industrial pollution.  It is either face it now or face even more dire consequences as my beloved Houston is currently facing.   We owe it to future generations, though I realize this is a really vague, elusive concept.

Lessons to be learned from Houston's tragedy, both man made and made by nature.

More Deplorable Than Many Imagined

60 + million of us imagined the deplorable situation America finds itself in because we had civics classes in school apparently many didn't, read history, talked to relatives who like some of us, experienced Nixon and Reagan and before them, the depression, fascism and WWII.   We are the people who think critically and understand republican democracy compared to authoritarianism.

The other 60+ million didn't and mostly still don't.  They really don't care about democracy.....they only care about their own small bubble.  That goes too for the few million Stein and Johnson voters who do not understand the give and take of democracy and also live in their own little bubbles and ultimately, gave us the Presidential choice of the first 60+ million above.  They live in their own authoritarian  mental space with a dose of greed and selfishness in the case of the libertarians.



So, here we are.  Yes, the deplorables were properly defined and are on the sidelines, if not the marching columns, cheering on the Nazi's, KKK'rs and Alt righters trying to move us to violence so they can vent their rage through these deviants. 

The Deplorable rage is about privilege and bigotry learned I guess from their parents and some peers.  Their rage is about their own failure to secure the economic future they envisioned when they mostly didn't educate themselves beyond high school thinking they didn't need to be more learned or more informed to succeed in life and career.

Life has not gone well for most of them and they are willing to bring down the grand American experiment and those of us who were engaged in trying to perfect and improve it to prove their power.  Theirs is the power to destroy, disrupt, reverse and build roadblocks to move forward.  They are the people of NO.  They are the people of me, not WE. 

We will defeat them with love, generosity and non-violence.  And when we finish, we'll lift them up and give them a chance strive for their dreams, if they have any.

Republicans:Where Have The Conservative Statesmen Gone?

Watching the shit storm in D.C. and having seen Dunkirk, the amazing film this week, I am reminded that conservatives once produced some great statesmen and women.  One thinks of Winston Churchill among them.

Churchill had the humility and pragmatism to reach out to the liberal icon Franklin Roosevelt for desperately needed help to save England  from the ravages of fascism from the Third Reich.  Roosevelt and America were more than reluctant to reengage in a European war given our horrific losses in WWI.  But Churchill was persuasive and persistent and FDR committed our nation to two nearly impossible military tasks in both the east and west.

Churchill was a classical politician with a huge ego and massive ambition.  But he swallowed some of that ego in asking for help because he was also a realist with the facts in front of him.  It was particularly galling for him as a very strident anti-socialist to have to reach out to a liberal who had some very pernicious socialist ideas.  But for his countrymen he put the personal aside and pleaded.

In doing so, Churchill became a hero of both the left and right, particularly as the tide turned from military disaster, such as Dunkirk to success in latter war years crossing from the U.K.to the shores of Europe.

Now lets look at conservatives in America, embodied by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.  Here they are doing their damnedest to defend  the first American Fascist President and explain him to us.  I don't need to explain Trump to my readers.  He and his fascist gang resorted to collaboration with Russia, hostile to the Democratic candidate who had the temerity to call Putin out on Ukraine and Syria and challenge his illegal interventions.   Ryan and McConnell are silent on this treasonous collaboration.

Ryan and McConnell were silent on the Trump gang's  overt racism, appeals to violence in political rallies, mysegeny, advocacy of sexual abuse and promises they knew he and they could not keep such as healthcare repeal.   They were silent when the Trump family brought their greedy pursuit of greater wealth into the White House with shameless self dealing, both immoral and illegal.

Ryan and McConnell's naked, shameful support for voter suppression and distortion of democratic processes to enable their power grab already showed compatibility with the Trump abuse of democracy.  Opportunistically they saw a collaboration with Trump would enhance their mutual ascent to greater power, wealth and influence at the expense of democracy and the needs of the people of America.  No thought of country or compassion for those just trying to make their way in life seeking some semblance of economic and social stability seems apparent.  They are in pursuit of their own power agenda and the rest of us be damned.  There seems nothing in either leader's character to suggest a commitment to justice or compassion.  Theirs is a commitment to some vague notion that small, minimal government services as somehow serving humanity in need of fair wages, healthcare, education and justice.  This is the current Republican Party of NO and REPEAL with a proud history of abolition of slavery and the Teddy Roosevelt era of populism and environmentalism.

Now they are discovering that reversing  what is left of our democratic protections and a fierce opposition to their dismantling of what is left of our social order is no easy task.  They have failed to produce legislation to dismantle the work of Barrack Obama and the Democratic Party in spite of insatiable hate for his and their successes in restoring a collapsed economy, reduction of a war machine drowning us in blood and debt and improvement of a tragic joke of a healthcare system.   Their resentment of America's first African American President is boundless and it is now displayed in all its ugliness.

Yet,  the opportunity to reveal whether statesmanship from them is even a remote possibility lies right in front of them if myopia doesn't prevent their recognizing it.   If they have the humility and pragmatism of one of their icons, Winston Churchill, they will reach out to Democrats to both rid our nation of the early forming cancer of fascism and begin to address the social, structural and economic problems in particular besetting their own ignorant base.

I am not hopeful they will rise to the task before them.   I can be open to the remote possibility of redemption of their past commitment to elevation of the wealthy and suppression of the non wealthy as somehow not worthy.  This seems to be based on a theological notion that the latter group do not deserve humane treatment because of defects in character as ordained by some creator somewhere.

Churchill put magical thinking and ideology aside to become one of our great Statesmen.  History and facts informed thinking seems beyond Ryan and McConnell's grasp.  Should their behavior continue, can we as a national survive this travesty?  Only in spite of them, not because of them.  

We Must Initiate A National Reconciliation Summit

 Our nation is in crisis and jeopardy of fragmentation, or worse.  I propose that congress put a moratorium on all legislation and our national political leadership convene an extensive summit meeting to begin the process of reconciliation between left and right, Republican and Democrat, liberals and conservatives.  We simply cannot go on like this any longer.

Gridlock has evolved to near civil war.  Right now mostly a war of words, lawsuits, political contests and legislation.  It is taking us nowhere.  We have huge issues to resolve is we are to continue as a functioning democracy or at best, a facade of one.

These issues include what kind of economy we want going forward, how will that economy provide for productive, life sustaining employment for all needing to provide for themselves and families?  Do we want a federal system on some kind of loose confederation of states ?  What level of protection of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to we want going forward?  Is there a more fair system of raising funds for government services than the current taxation system?  How much safety net of social services do we want from our federal and state governments, if any?   How will the health and education of our populace be provided?  How do we guarantee equal treatment and equality of our citizens?  What are the duties of citizenship?  How do we protect religious liberty?

I propose that the first phase of the summit operate for at least 6 months along with the legislation moratorium, meeting daily with the goal of crafting a  Bill of Reconciliation to be ratified by both houses of congress and each state legislature dealing with the major issues dividing us, along the lines of the previous paragraph.

Initially the summit would be convened consisting of the Speaker of the House and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders and  the Chairs of the Democratic and Republican Parties and a liberal and conservative from the sitting Supreme Court. This first phase would be moderated by co-moderators Obama and Bush, recent ex-Presidents.  Legislators would go home for 6 months (excepting crucial votes to keep government services running) and during this period run town hall Reconciliation sessions for input.

Their first order of business would be to settle on the issues to be reconciled.  Their next order of business would be agreement on a body of bipartisan solutions.

These solutions would then be debated and reconciled by a  convention of all sitting governors with a 2/3  affirmative vote or better.  This would be the second 6 months of the Reconciliation project.   The final Bill of Reconciliation would be referred to all state legislatures for ratification, again with a 2/3 affirmative vote or better.

Once these are ratified by state legislatures, it would have the force of the law of the land.   The final product might be voted on as a series of amendments to the Constitution though frankly I think a Constitutional Convention process should be avoided given the toxic atmosphere we are in now, which would bog the entire project down much like the ERA. And frankly,  this latter process would take years which in my opinion we do not have before total fragmentation occurs.

I know, I know. This all sounds like fantasy land, but isn't something like this idea worth a try to genuinely get a non-shouting conversation going to restore democracy in America and save our country and get it on a positive track?

Boards Of Directors Are A Problem, Not A Solution

America is experiencing organizational catastrophes causing much of our public distrust of them and one another.  This crisis is not exclusively owned by congress, political parties or government.   Among those organizations are boards of directors charged with running public universities, school districts, corporations of all kinds and  pension trust funds for public employees.  Look at the make up of most of them.  Middle aged and old white men.  Clearly representative of one very narrow demographic.

Let's examine some of their problems and some solutions to restore public confidence in institutions in America.
Problems?
School boards are elected by a very narrow cohort of the population.  Candidates are often put forward by interest groups around board activity, policy and business.  These elections are often held at obscure times with candidates who are even more obscure even to a tiny share of the electorate who are motivated to vote in these elections. 25 of 46 states have cut their public education state funding from -24% to -.05 %.

Public university boards are mainly political appointments made by state executive administrations and governors.  These appointments are often rewards for campaign contributions and support.  Student loan debt in 2017 stands at around $1.4 billion with 44 million borrowers. 

Corporations boards are nominated by incumbent boards, founders and large investors and venture capitalists.  In 2016 American corporations were hoarding $1.9 trillion in cash and no one can explain why.  Corporations historically have been borrowers, but apparently the model has reversed.

Pension boards are most often appointed by elected officials such as governors and mayors in the case of public institutions. Moodys reports that state and local pension funds in 2016 are shortfalling by $7 trillion.

All of these institutions are is crisis.  School boards are rife with political factions causing divisive disagreements, education system ideological disputes, re-segregation and major funding crises.  University boards malfeasance has caused massive cost inflation, off the charts tuition and fee increases, massive student debt and obscene spending on stadiums and amenity facilities which have put research and faculty on the back burner.  Example, look at the new football stadiums.  Public corporations boards engage in self dealing, neglect of ethical oversight and massive ignoring of societal damage caused by their decisions.  Just look at the record of commercial banking during the '08-'09 collapse of the financial sector and the more recent example of abuse by Wells Fargo.    Pension funds at all levels are in crisis with terrible overestimation of investment returns and underestimation of  future funding requirements and allowance of raiding of their trust funds by associated government entities.  Just look at the state of Illinois and cities like Detroit and Dallas.

Solutions?  Certainly I am a layman when it comes to organizational finance.  But I've served on a couple of small corporate boards and several non profit boards and have at least a sense of potential solutions.  School boards need representation from teachers, students and parents they serve and a closer match to the community demographics.

Public university boards need student and faculty representation and less influence from alumni with respect to athletics and physical facilities and more with respect to academics and cost management to emphasize affordability.

Corporate boards need major regulatory reworking to increase representation of women, minorities and workers.  They also need greatly increased board responsibility and accountability regarding the impact the organization has on the community, including environmental and economic impact on their decisions and that of their management team.

Pension fund boards, particularly those serving public sector employees need much more fiscal and actuarial expertise.  They also need a balance of this expertise and employee/pensioner advocacy to assure sustainability and financial stability.

All these boards have some 'splainin to do.  Public schools are spending way less to educate way more kids; this makes little sense.  Public universities are driving many of these kids into a life time of financial struggle rather than financial improvement by being better educated.  Corporate boards are hoarding trillions of cash with record earnings while complaining about paying too many taxes and doing little to expand employment opportunities for the aforementioned kids.  Pension funds seem to offer a very unstable and potentially bleak future for those who work harder and longer than any other western nation citizen.

From the beginning to the end of life, these boards simply are failing America.  It is time to rethink them.

Democrats Need To Do Their Work On Main Street

 I am generally moved by Matt Taibbi's writing in Rolling Stone.  This time he's missed it.  He thinks messaging is the solution.  To some degree he's right, we need great improvement here to win, but its source and targets must improve massively along with the content.

By source I mean Democrats need to rely on main street messengers, right in our neighborhoods.  Messengers from the DNC, DCCC and DSCC are all well and good.  But the most impactful messengers are your Democratic neighbors and local neighborhood organizers.  There is solid research to prove this and a massive body of history of local Democratic party success.  The organizers used to be called, maybe somewhat disparagingly Ward Healers.

 Ok, don't use that term, but you get the idea.  The local people representing the party that serve the base and party build with the unengaged.  Forget the Deplorables.  Nearly half the electorate don't participate in Presidential elections, and more don't participate in local elections.   Ward Healers did it by offering a hand in solving local problems.... in tandem with local Democrat elected officials. .Mundane stuff but hugely important to the much discussed working class we're criticized for neglecting.  Help networking for a new job; getting trash collected, landlord disputes, bus line changes, a closed feed store in rural country, local tax collection issues.  These kinds of things that impact the daily lives of people.  This is where the Ward Healers got their voteser  Helping people out with the mundane but critically important to the working families the party talks so much about.  This is where we get the new blood for our party.

This is where you build loyalty and a sense of value in peoples lives, not TV and internet ads, twitter feeds and DNC press conferences.   Yes these latter things are useful, but they are tools to put in the hands of local organizers to reach people, reach into their lives and their hearts.  And it is needed not just during campaign cycles, but 24/7/365 in your neighborhood.   In the local vernacular, dialect and cultural ethos.

Communications experts have well proven that word of mouth information (and disinformation) is the ultimate goal of any external communications to people.  Stuff that gets passed along at local barber shops, bars and grocery stores.  And this is where the Democratic party has eroded its influence, excepting in some select urban neighborhoods in Chicago, New York and Atlanta.  Republicans have perfected it is rural and ex-urban America.  You might note it works really well for them out there.  They get tremendous turnout.

The so called consultant experts have no concept of this or the ultimate power of word of mouth, the ultimate driver of results, affinity, loyalty and voter turnout when the chips are down.

Messaging needs to be local, localized as well as national and nationalized.   Democrats need to think of the rank and file as their sales force.  This is where the difference is made.  This is where we lost those 70,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.   Not in the fancy models of the techies running Hillary and the DNC's campaigns in 2016.  And this is where Trump trumped us.  He recognized it and what did he do.....had rallies to energize the great unwashed.  Rallies that were talked about before they were held and long after the stadiums and gyms emptied.  Local stuff, organized by local people. You need to get this people.  This is how you win school board elections, property tax referendums, justice of the peace campaigns and local county commissioner races.

Peer pressure and peer support is what "Better Together" should have meant, not some vague notion of kumbaya on a theoretical level of a better society. The blame of our failure is mostly owned at the local party level, not the DNC. It was the local party leadership that let the neighborhood organizations wither and failed to build a local bench of party volunteer to keep it going.  Yes, DNC money can help.  Yes, we might need to find some money to pay neighborhood organizers.   It can help a lot, along with some DNC training expertise and skill sharing.

But yes Virginia, all politics is local and we've forgotten that.  Matt, you're too taken with the national level messaging as our major deficiency.  We need to rebuild local neighborhood messengers.  The lack of messengers in the neighborhoods is the major deficiency.  A party dealing with the mundane, daily problem solving in peoples lives will bring value and loyalty and deflect some of our really disturbing racism and racial/economic resentment that we have to work around to move people in a direction that they perceive will improve their lives.

Trump & Foreign Policy: A Clear And Present Danger

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the security, safety and stability of our country.   Here I am referring to his conduct of foreign policy, without a policy and without consent of his Party, my Party or the American people writ large. His domestic issues leadership is a subject for future blogs.

Any thinking person can look at his chaotic twitter rants on foreign policy issues and leaders. Any thinking person can look at his meetings with foreign leaders, allies and competitors alike.  Any thinking person can read the uncoordinated statements from him, his Vice President, his utterly unqualified Secretary of State and his Defense Secretary, his UN Representative and in all of this, only conclude that he poses a threat to our very security and physical safety.

I will not regurgitate all of the above to you in the interest of brevity.  Even you Authoritarian fascists electing and supporting him can find an abundance of misstatements, threatening rhetoric, insults in his demeanor and words with foreign leaders.  Behaviors which destabilize relationships with allies and now former allies as well as competitors, which you fascists regard as standing up for America.  The public record and google can supply an immense inventory of these thoughtless events in the past 90 days.

He's alienated the U.K., Germany, NATO and the EU and our neighbor, Mexico.  He's insulted them without provocation.  He has committed boorish behavior with foreign allies such as Germany and Mexico.    He has terrified South Korea, Japan and we really don't know about China, because no transparency was offered regarding the content or results of their leadership visit last week.  He and his Secretary of State have met with foreign leaders without media transparency, causing us to read foreign press to find out what he and they are doing and saying to one another.

Most alarming of all, in the space of a week he has bombed Syria and mega bombed Afghanistan with virtual carte blanche given to his military commanders so as to not interrupt his golfing schedule.  And increased ground troop commitments in both Iraq and Syria and perhaps Afghanistan without advice and consent of Congress or media transparency.  And simultaneously Trump has threatened Iran regarding what he views as a bad deal with them and questioned their long term nuclear intentions without evidence or information.  Quite a week of international hostility.

Oh, wait, maybe the foregoing was not the most alarming.  Maybe most alarming was his sabre rattling and naval armada misstatements without being informed by his Navy of what was actually going on in the waters off North Korea.  We citizens are given to speculate as to who is more crazy, Kim Jong Un  or Donald Trump.  We do know from his words that he is equally ia verbal bully with that Dear Leader with the bad haircut.  Wait, they both have bad haircuts.  I'm talking about the North  Korean haircut.  This event, still ongoing, is terrifying if you are paying any attention.

In single days he's enunciated one tactic or another and then been contradicted by his press secretary, Secretaries of State and Defense and U.N. Representative.

Someone wrote and I agree, this is the first time since as a kid I was told to protect myself from an nuclear blast by curling up under my wooden desk at school that I have felt terror when bedding down at night, not knowing if WWIII was beginning the next morning.

I referred to clear and present danger Trump represents in the top of this article.  Ironically, these words had their origins in a Supreme Court case in the early 1900's referring to anti-war activists accused of posing a threat to our nation with their criticism of efforts to gear up for WWI.  I hope you see the irony in my accusing our utterly unhinged, chaotic and ill informed President failing in his attempt to bring his version of business style leadership to our terrified populace.  His supporters are terrified by people of color threatening their privilege.  His detractors, like me, are terrified by his lack of judgement and absence of advisers to compensate for that deficit and mental/emotional stability to understand  the world the rest of us live in.

I fear for us.  This must end.  Ending eventually is not a reasonable option.  It must end now.