Author: Mark J. Heinicke

Democracy’s Deathbed: the U.S. Senate

[Most of the content below is probably familiar to you, but I wanted to put it all together in one place to get a sense of how much of an impediment to democracy and human progress the United States Senate is—at least as it presently operates.  Conceivably it could be reformed to conduce to the betterment of the American people, but the current rules exacerbate the harm from an already non-democratic structure dictated by the Constitution.]

Grave arithmetic: if you think the Electoral College is bad, just consider the Senate

At times, it looks as if a coalition of white supremacists and QAnon cult members, together with right-wing government-hating, racist and xenophobic gun nuts,  whipped into a fact-free frenzy by Donald Trump, is what we most have to worry about in preserving our democracy.

If only.  The Capitol riot was a symptom of a societal breakdown a long time in the making. What we’re looking at now is a tipping point, a massive destabilization of the American public and the institutions on which it relies (with little thanks from a clueless majority of voters). It’s come to the point where such observers as MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan only half-jokingly wonder if the U.S. is becoming a “failed state.” (URL to YouTube is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mzFqKZe60o

There are plenty of villains to blame for this scary predicament—my favorite being social media—but one key contributor is the workings of the U.S Senate.  If we need big change quickly enough to stave off shocks to the system of which the January 6 riot at the Capitol is a brief forewarning, then something drastic has to be done  with the Senate.

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The Fix for the Economy You Never Hear About: Slaying the Budget Deficit Myth

Forget the mantra, “how are you going to pay for it?”

On page 182 of  The Deficit Myth,  author Stephanie Kelton quotes Alan Greenspan expressing the key idea that underpins Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)—that’s the theory that shows we can dispense with pointless agonizing over federal budget deficits. Deficit spending is the bugaboo that looms menacingly over every proposal to spend big on some government program—the bugaboo that elicits the refrain, “How are you going to pay for it?”

The bugaboo can be easily slain, and  conservative Alan Greenspan was just the man for the job.

The Greenspan quote at the end of this paragraph is an answer he gave to famous deficit hawk Congressman Paul Ryan in a hearing about entitlement reform.  Ryan was hoping to elicit Greenspan’s endorsement of privatizing social security—Ryan’s premise being that government-supported Social Security was insecure due to  impending deficits, and that “personal retirement accounts” were the remedy.  Greenspan, however, disappointed him. His answer was, “I wouldn’t say pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure. There’s nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.”

Whoa! Was Greenspan—chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time, and self-described “lifelong libertarian Republican”—really pulling the rug from under Paul Ryan’s cherished agenda to wrest safety-net programs away from the federal government and hand them over to his big-money donors? Was he really saying that the federal government could pluck money out of thin air to fund an entitlement?

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Biden’s Challenge: to Unbreak America

Taming a raging fire

If someone tallied the number of times Joe Biden used the words “unity” and “together” in his inaugural address, it would have run over a dozen, but whatever the score was, it’s a measure of the dominant theme of Joe Biden’s inaugural address: in unity is strength, and unity is achievable.

And yet, when Biden spoke to the reality of political conflict at this time, his words were those of hope, but his tone was plaintive. “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire,” and “we must end this uncivil war.” These phrases hang in the air like pleas for reconciliation.  But who will answer them?

Of the host of challenges facing Joe Biden, from a pandemic out of control to the plundering of the planet, the “raging fire” of politics and the fuel that feeds it are the most fundamental. We will get past the most toxic phase of Covid-19 in a matter of time. But most of the other problems—economic inequality, racial injustice, an inequitable health care system, environmental breakdown, our allies’ mistrust—will remain intractable without an end to the uncivil war.

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“Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban

European leaders have a point—up to a point

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire condemned decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, et al to shut down Donald Trump’s social media accounts.  Le Maire accused Big Tech of forming a “digital oligarchy,” and called for public regulation of big online platforms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized a “breach” of the “fundamental right to free speech” as “problematic.”

I get it. “Digital oligarchy” is apt.  I applaud the efforts of Europeans to hobble Big Tech as they have been doing and will continue to do; we should have been doing a lot more of it on our side of the Atlantic. If it weren’t for the unshackled free market ideology dominating American politics for the last 40 years, we might have been doing it.

Nevertheless, maybe they should butt out of the Trump social media lockdown controversy for the time being . . . at least until the dust settles around the transition to the Joe Biden administration.

The old analogy of “freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” applies in this situation.*  If Angela Merkel had had to live in a country with its leader shouting ‘fire!’ every day for four years straight, ultimately leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol building by a lawless, violent, gun-toting mob bent on overthrowing the government, she might be willing to bend a little to the practicality of muting that voice as soon as possible, whether by Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, or my local mail carrier (I’d rather entrust the power to her than to the aforementioned, but that’s going to have to wait for The Revolution).

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Watch Out! Article V Constitutional Convention Nears Reality

Overhaul of the Constitution sounds tempting: don’t bite

There are some things that liberals don’t like sitting like bedrock in the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, the Electoral College to elect the president, and the assignment of two senators to each state.  Then there’s the First and Fourteenth Amendments when extended by the Supreme Court going back to the 1880s to give the same protections to corporations as to real breathing humans.

Liberals, as well as many conservatives, also dislike the scope of powers conferred on the U.S. President that have expanded over the years. At least they dislike them when the president belongs to the opposing political party. (As a Virginian, I would like to point proudly to our Senator Tim Kaine’s principled crusade to limit the chief executive’s license to conduct wars, starting with the Obama Administration.)

How might these anti-democratic features of the Constitution be remedied? In fact, Article V of the Constitution provides for a method to completely overhaul the Constitution.

Say that again? What we customarily have in mind when we think of amending the Constitution is passing an individual amendment with two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, then ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures.  It’s what’s been done to add all 28 amendments (28 in 229 years) to the original 10 in the Bill of Rights. That cautious procedure is in Article V, but also in Article V is something truly radical: a full-blown Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the states (34 out of the current 50). The Congress would then be required to hold the convention, and a new constitution coming out of it could eventually be ratified by “the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof”—i.e., 38 out of 50 states.

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A Dog that Doesn’t Bark: Silent Sentinels that Keep Us Safe

It’s not just health care that’s collapsing

The U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic shines a glaring light on the inadequacy of the U.S. health care system—so glaring that folks who have shrugged off the howls of critics for decades have been shocked to realize just how fragile it is. Bernie Sanders has been the highest-profile, most strident, and most consistent critic, but he has had a lot of company among progressives. and the pandemic is driving even some centrists into his “Medicare for All” camp.

The mounting crisis prompted David Himmelstein of the CUNY School of Public Health to observe, of a properly-run health care system’s response to a crisis, “You don’t see the results. It’s a dog that doesn’t bark.”*

What has saved the U.S. pandemic response from utter tragedy is the level of expertise and commitment among health professionals—doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, radiologists, lab technicians, and the like—highly educated and benefiting from leading edge research in medical science distributed among institutions throughout the country. Their sacrifices in battling Covid-19 have been heroic. But this cadre of health care professionals has to drag around the ball-and-chain of a system that is structured primarily not to promote health, but to make money for insurance companies who pry open every cranny in the structure to achieve private again. Many private hospitals and specialists also work hand-in-glove with insurance companies to drive up costs and fatten profits.

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Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?

Surprising Solidarities: Jordan, Romney, NASCAR

Michael Jordan, Mitt Romney, and NASCAR have something in common: they have all said, in their own ways, “we have had enough” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

I felt there was change in the air when basketball great Michael Jordan, for years publicly mute on political issues, declared “we have had enough” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

As recently as May 5th, Jordan defended his apolitical public persona by saying “I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

But following the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, Jordan said on May 31st: “I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.”

Those of us who have been puzzled by Jordan’s longstanding refusal to publicly address racism exclaimed, “Finally!”   . . . or words to that effect.

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A Real Chinese Invasion – a Thought Experiment

If they came in ships, it would be different – not so much

What if the Chinese, instead of  deliberately sending a deadly virus into our midst—the paranoid fantasy Trump is trying to sell—they launched an amphibious assault on the West Coast,  in an effort to establish a beachhead in North America from which they can conduct attacks deeper into the land. Trump cries foul, saying that the Chinese never warned us of an impending attack (whose imminence has been visible in the shape of ships gathering at the shore for a week), and goes on to assign the job of fighting off the attackers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, with whatever armaments and soldiers they have available.  He assigns Jared Kushner the role of coordinating the effort.  The federal government will act as a “backstop” for supplies as the need arises, but each state will have to stop whining about their predicament and make its own case to receive the supplies.  While asking, the states should demonstrably show their gratitude—whether or not they get what they are asking for. Just in case they might want something in the future.

The President will hold daily briefings to deny that the scale of the invasion is anything to worry about, and that if it gets much bigger the states should  get a Magic Potion that he knows of to slow down the aggressors . . . and wait until bad weather discourages the occupiers  (“like a miracle”) and sends them home—a victory for which Donald Trump will claim all the credit. Reporters’ questions about the administration’s response will be called too “nasty” to be answered. The nasty press will be accused of spreading “fake news.” People within government who express doubts about the administration’s response will be fired or reassigned to musty basements with no access to their colleagues.

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The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For

[Note: by Liberal Conspiracy Theory I mean not a theory about liberals, but a theory held  by liberals about the Deep Right.]

Who’s dying of Covid-19?

To state the obvious—I know you’ve been thinking it, but are wary of seeming too paranoid—the Trumpian Right is getting just what it wants out of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Steven Miller goes home at night chortling at the latest death toll—OK, he may be sorry about some bigoted Trump fans dying (there’s always collateral damage in a righteous war), but not enough to suppress his glee at the bigger picture.

Those who are dying in the greatest numbers, out of proportion to their fraction of the population:

(1) People in big cities: New York; Philadelphia; Chicago; Detroit; Boston; Baltimore  . . .

(2) Minorities, African-Americans in particular: for example, in Wisconsin 40 percent of Covid-19 fatalities are blacks, and they represent 6 percent of the population.

(3) Prisoners, with blacks being imprisoned across the U.S. at five times the rate of whites.

(4)  The elderly—in the U.S. as of March 16, 80% of Covid-19 deaths were in people age 65 or older.

(5) People with serious underlying health conditions.

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Beethoven at Play: an Antidote to Gloom

Musical frolics, 1800’s Style

One resource to dispel the gloom that may descend upon us during such perilous times is music, particularly of the bright and sprightly kind. Those unacquainted with the whole body of Beethoven’s work may not know how much fun a lot of it is.  There follow here three examples of Beethoven at his most lighthearted.

 I.  This is one I introduced in an earlier post, but it bears repeating, particularly because you cannot watch the pianist (Valentina Lisitsa) without feeling tempted to bounce around yourself.  From the piano sonata Opus 10 Number 3:

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II.  In contrast to the first example above from early in Beethoven’s career, this next is a movement belonging to the great string quartet Number 14 in C-sharp Minor, composed when Beethoven was already deaf and had but a year to live.  Much of this piece has tragic undercurrents, but this is five sparkling minutes punctuated with musical jokes.  Watch from 25:05 to 30:13 for the fun part. Warning: if you opt to watch from the beginning you are in for a magical mystery tour.

(The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.)

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