A Political Party in Disarray

On stage with his appointees 11-24-20 is the man with a halo

‘America First’ may be gone but what will replace it?

The Democratic Party is in disarray. Worse than the loss of seats in the House of Representatives their lack of unity translates into a two year, perhaps four years, of grid lock in the congress. The Republicans are dancing with joy.

There is a reason for the lack of unity in the Democratic Party. The moderates and the “progressives” have totally different goals for moving the country forward.

The Green New Deal is a list of the liberal agenda items as listed in the Washington Post on February 19, 2019. It is after all a 21st century version of FDR’s New Deal.

All great ideas but are they realistic? Listed below are four of them.

“Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.”

“Overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in – (i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; (ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and (iii) high-speed rail.”

“Spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible.”

“Working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible.”

Moderates see a public option over Medicare for All, keeping illegal entry into the U.S. a criminal offense, reform the police rather than defunding the police as more reasonable solutions that more Americans are likely to support. Those are the ideas that Joe Biden’s primary advisers are likely to support because they reflect his views.

Joe Biden needs the support of those liberals/progressives to push his agenda through the congress. He also needs the support of moderate Republicans in the Senate.

Remember it was President Barack Obama who said there are not red states and blue states. There is the United States. As great an orator as he was his adversaries wanted to make him a failed one term president.

Given the Democratic Party divide and the GOP determined to make Biden’s presidency a failure, it is difficult to see a success path for the Biden presidency.

Unknown Los Angeles

Los Angeles has many places of historic significance that many Angelenos are not familiar with. Historic Bunker Hill was a community of wealthy people with very large sumptuous homes overlooking the downtown that was abandoned as the wealthy moved west to Hancock Park and Beverly Hills. The Bunker Hill homes were ultimately torn down and the area became an area of high rise office buildings.

Forgotten but still there is a group of mansions in what became known as Angelino Heights. Carroll Ave Victorian Era Residents were built in the 1880s and 1890s. Many were destroyed when the Hollywood Freeway was built. There are no signs directing sightseers to the street. The house that sits at 1345 Carroll Ave in Angelino Heights is known as the Sanders House and is most famous for being featured as the spooky setting for Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. The 3,532-square-foot Queen Anne style house was originally built for a local warehouse operator named Michael Sanders in 1887. Many are occupied and none are open for tours. The two block street is lined with the mansions. The street is not gated and anyone can park there.

I learned of the street when we signed up for a city tour. This was not the tour offered in the front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The tour gave us only a drive-by. Later on my own I drove around the neighborhood for about a half hour before finding the street.

A Step toward Fascism in America

Editorial, The Hartford Courant, November 21, 2020

Trump’s effort to steal the election is a step toward fascism in America. If you call yourself a patriot, you can’t support it.

A vain, angry man who is refusing to accept reality has his finger on the button.

A sulking, bitter man who is refusing to accept the will of the people leads the world’s most powerful democracy.

A man who dwells in the world of lies and deceit is firing those who will not blindly do his bidding.

It’s been long clear to many that Donald Trump, in sowing division, discrediting uncomfortable truths and fomenting a cult of personality was walking the same path dictators have in the past. Just look up Matyas Rakosi (Hungary), Francois Duvalier (Haiti) or Benito Mussolini (Italy), since the past holds important lessons that too many seem willing to ignore.

And now, facing defeat — the moment when character is revealed — Trump is showing his true colors in a way that even those who for four years have looked past his flaws cannot ignore. The alternate reality Trump is working hard to create — that the election was tainted, that it was stolen from him by Joe Biden — is a dangerous narrative that threatens the core of our Democracy. There is no evidence of any widespread or systemic fraud. When Trump’s own head of election cybersecurity sad that, he was fired.

That false narrative is Trump’s justification to pave a path toward fascism in America, a path that calls for upending the will of the people. And those who are going along — repeating the lies, looking for ways to undo the vote or even standing silent in acquiescence — risk supporting fascism over freedom. The problem in Nazi Germany wasn’t only that there were German people who thought exterminating Jews was acceptable. It’s that there were many who knew it wasn’t but stood by quietly and let it happen.

We’re not suggesting that there aren’t valid remedies to challenge potential issues connected to the administration of any election. But this has gone way beyond that. As the legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign have fallen one by one, the paranoid rhetoric has ramped up.

And so have efforts to replace Democracy with dictatorship.

The initial unwillingness of elections officials to certify results in Wayne County, Michigan, the alleged interference of Sen. Lindsay Graham in the certification process of the results in Georgia and now suggestions that Republican legislators in key states could simply ignore the election results and nominate pro-Trump electors are unparalleled threats to democracy.

This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats anymore. It’s about those who believe in democracy versus those willing to risk living under a fascist regime.

If you’re among those who voted for Trump — and there were many — you may have had good reasons. In a recent Courant story, reporter Mike Hamad chronicled the rise of Trumpism among disaffected middle-class voters. But supporting Trump’s efforts to unravel a clear and unequivocal result must be resisted by anyone who calls themselves an American or a patriot.

There may be a lot we as Americans disagree on these days. But if the will of the people to choose who leads is no longer a shared value, we are in deeper trouble than we imagined.

It’s time to stand up and be counted. That goes for people in Trump-leaning towns. That goes for local talk show hosts who parrot lies and conspiracy theories. And that goes for anyone who posts falsehoods on Facebook or Instagram. You are aiding and abetting fascism. Time to stop.

It’s also time for majority Democrats to listen harder to the voices of those who have drifted to the right. There is a growing perception that the Democrats are beholden to wealthy elitists on the one hand and progressives on the other. Those in the middle are clearly looking for someone who can speak to the hopes and fears of every working American.

Over the next two months we will write a new chapter in American history. We’ll either put partisan interests aside and reinvest in democracy or we will allow a bully to continue down a dangerous path. It’s time to appreciate what the flag really means. It’s time to be a real patriot.

Can the American Democracy Survive?

The next two months are a test of the American democracy. The question will be can the democracy withstand the pressure of a president who wants to destroy the system?

Adolph Hitler attained power in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month, giving expanded authority to president President Paul von Hindenburg who had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues.

In 1933 with the death of Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler became absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader.” The German army took an oath of allegiance to its new commander-in-chief, and the last remnants of Germany’s democratic government were dismantled to make way for Hitler’s Third Reich.

Donald Trump is not known to do a lot of reading but he knows how Hitler destroyed the German democracy and obtained absolute power. Trump has already insisted that all secretaries and all department heads must swear allegiance to him. That is the reason Mark Esper is no longer the Secretary of Defense, Chris Krebs is no longer Director of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, and Doctors Birx and Fauci have been sidelined in the Corona Virus Task force.

Trump has not obtained the needed electoral college votes to obtain his second term as president. So now he is using every arm twisting and threatening way he can conger up to induce Republican controlled legislatures to send delegates to the electoral college meeting to vote for him even though he did not win the popular vote. And it might work.

If this election is fraudulent then all elections in the future might also be fraudulent. That would mean that the American democracy is dead. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Kim Jong-un are among the dictators who are smiling and saying “We told you democracy doesn’t work. The United States government collapse proves it.”

Civil War or Autocracy?

Is this what the start of a civil war looks like in America in 2020?

Thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters of all stripes, including right-wing and far-right groups, rallied in Washington, DC, on Saturday to protest the election results and fights erupted between Trump supporters and Biden supporters.

Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control. An autocrat is a ruler who has absolute power. That is the dream of Donald Trump.

In an extension of Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden, Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said the administration plans to remain in place for another full term. But it won’t be his last term.

I wish it wasn’t so but Donald Trump will not be giving up the presidency. Somehow he will be inaugurated for his second term on January 20. And I predict he will be inaugurated for his third term on January 20, 2025. By that time the congress will have will have been sidelines and on the way to elimination as an unnecessary waste of time and Trump will remain in office for the rest of his life with absolute total power. We have the GOP to thank for this. By 2025 some Republicans will realize their error. History will note the end of the American democratic republic in history books written in other countries. In 2025 there will be controls on the “free press.” The constitution will be a memory by the end of Trump’s third term.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, said Tuesday that “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” And Trade Advisor Peter Navarro said Friday that the White House is operating “under the assumption” that Trump will serve a second term in office.

Other than a Supreme Court with a backbone and a populace that says No to Trump’s ambition the path is clear. Over 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. That is not a majority but is a substantial minority.

I fear this could be the end of the world’s greatest democracy.

Return of the “Hoovervilles”

From History.com “During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance. When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles.”

Now in 2020 thanks to Covid-19 millions of people have lost their jobs
and after on dose of help (the CARES Act) those people are about to lose their homes. Those without adequate savings to tide them over to a time when their jobs will recur may be facing the same fate as the homeless of the 1930s. The National Alliance to End Homelessness says that as of January 2019, well before the virus there were an estimated 567,000 homeless people in the United States. The largest numbers are in the West Coast states.

Hoovervilles are already occurring in Los Angeles as the tented homeless live along freeways, beneath freeway underpasses, and on major boulevards. Others with motorhomes have parked along boulevards in industrial areas hoping that the police will not tell them to move their rigs.

Articles about the homeless in the Los Angeles Times are numerous. Four of those articles in November alone.

Homelessness is up in Los Angeles County for the third time in four years, a result of an ever-growing number of people who cannot afford the region’s high housing costs. This year’s homeless count is 66,433 people. That’s up 12.7% from 2019.

Proposition HHH was sold to L.A. voters as a funding mechanism to get at least 10,000 Angelenos, and likely more, off the street and into permanent housing. That housing is supposed to come with accompanying services, like counseling, to help people stay housed — it’s called “supportive housing.”

Sadly many people have no sympathy and seem to believe that the homeless are all on drugs/alcoholics, are likely to harm their children, and they are all thieves. Consequently that supportive housing was never implemented.

Solutions are using the Los Angeles Convention Center and abandoned buildings far away from residential neighborhoods to house the homeless.

Wait a minute that solution is not the answer for those who refuse to live in the provided housing for a variety of reasons including mental illness, and fear their lives are in jeopardy from other homeless people.

Society’s solution for those refusing help is chasing them away from places we see from our cars.

“And that’s the way it is.”

Homeless in a upper income neighborhood near my home.

Poor Losers Club

Pictured are three presidents who skipped their successor’s inaugurations.

Bad loser Donald Trump is not likely to attend the inauguration of Joe Biden. He would not the first president to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration. In the past, three outgoing presidents — John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829 and Andrew Johnson in 1869 chose not to attend their successor’s inaugurations.

In the instance of John Adams a re-election a tie between Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr, which meant that the election decision next moved to the House of Representatives. After more than 30 ballots, the House of Representatives finally decided the race for Jefferson. For reasons that he never made public, he chose to skip Jefferson’s inauguration, leaving on the early morning stagecoach out of Washington that morning to begin the journey back to his beloved Quincy, Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, faced multiple challengers, notably from Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but he failed to obtain a majority of needed electoral votes. With the election at stake, the Clay electors switched their support to Adams, and the House of Representatives voted to make Adams the next president. Later, Jackson declared a “corrupt bargain” had taken place and vowed to run again in 1828. The election of 1828 featured a contentious rematch between the two men. Adams’ supporters accused Jackson of being a military tyrant and a bigamist. Rachel Donelson Jackson’s divorce to Lewis Robards in 1793 had not been granted, which technically made her an adultress. She was granted a divorce the following year, but Adams’ camp claimed Andrew Jackson was morally unfit to serve as president.

Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. In turn, the new president committed himself to obstructing the will of the Republican Congress at every step. In November 1868, the nation elected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Johnson’s nemesis, to the presidency by a wide electoral margin. In the popular vote, Grant owed his slim majority of 300,000 to the votes of nearly a half million freedmen in Southern states.

Donald Trump will probably be in Mar-a-Lago on January 20 surrounded by his family and friends. And the world will move on wondering how Americans could have fallen for a circus barker.