So, why haven't I been blogging?

A funny thing happened on the way to writing my last blog a couple of weeks ago. I stopped to think. And, I kinda got stuck.

Now, imagine me with my mouth open, my eyes glazed and my brain in a kind of permanent short circuit. That’s what I get for following the news.

Did Donald Trump say those things? And did he do it again? Did the Russians really make such a poor investment? Did all our foreign allies really not throw anything at the President?

Well, even before the investigations started looking like they would get into high gear - or at least out of first gear - I began to think I really should write something about Mike Pence, our heartbeat away guy. So I read his local papers, and some commentary and some magazine articles, and I looked up some of the laws in his state dealing with health care and abortions and other things.

Long story short, I discovered that Rolling Stone had already done a far better job in writing about Mike Pence than I ever could. So, hats off to them.

Then I started adding up how many days Trump has been on vacation, and how many weekends he has been at his golf resort/private Florida club/undercover Russian contact point. Were those tourists taking pictures of his secret high-level meetings really Soviet spies? If you can declassify anything because you are the President, can he simply declassify everything his team gave to the Russians and - presto- no crime!

Heck, why didn’t Richard Nixon pardon himself? Answer - Donald Trump was smarter! Choke on that, you loyal Republicans who are lining up behind the Trumpster in such a tight lock-step that there isn’t enough room to breathe.

Then my mind took a quantum leap. What, I began to wonder, is a Republican these days. A little voice whispered it’s just someone who comes from a gerrymandered district, so out of touch with the mainstream that they have redefined the party.  And, not a math teacher in the bunch.

The next stage of my bewilderment was blame. I blamed Hillary and the rest of the Democrats for running a really lousy campaign, and for ignoring a big chunk of the country. I blamed the younger Democrats for not doing more to take a real role in picking a candidate and taking over the machinery of the Democratic Party. 

Then I blamed the people who might have changed the outcome of the election had they actually bothered to vote. Finally, I blamed the Republicans who held their nose and just voted for Trump because they didn’t like any of their other candidates any better, and at least they had seen him on TV.

So, after blaming everybody for Donald Trump - well, almost everybody - I realized that if you spread the blame around far enough, no one is really responsible for him. That’s what kept my eyes glazed and my mouth open so long...picking out the best candidate to get most of the blame.

And, it finally came to me. It was as clear as the nose on my face.

The Republican Party is supposed to stand for something, and what it stands for isn’t supposed to change with every exit poll and every primary. You could say it stands for lowering taxes for the rich. Or you could say it stands for a new detente with the Russians.

Or it stands for breaking existing deals and trade arrangements with other countries, while saying it is perfectly fine for the United States to demand those countries live up to all their agreements. 

“We will demand you pay more of your national treasure into paying higher salaries for NATO troops in your country,  and we can impose tariffs whenever we want on your imports,” is probably the new theme, just as soon as they can find someone to smooth out the contradictions.

Well, that is of course, an exaggeration. There are honorable Republicans, people who really believe what they say. And there are some dumb government policies that deserve to be changed. Can’t argue with that one.

Still, I would like to see some of them say what, if anything, they think the President is doing. Maybe something about not running the country like a family business, or maybe something about leaving hundreds of necessary jobs unfilled.

Or maybe just adopting a policy about anything that doesn’t change from week to week. 

You know, just show me the health plan you have - the one that covers more people at lower cost and provides better care.

I’m still waiting for that one.

All Politics Is Local (or How To Read The Mail)

Let us take a moment to look away from the Trumpster and his “see no evil, hear no evil” followers and take a look at some other things that are slightly askew in our Democracy. I will try to do this more often, if only to take a break from the endless flow of outrage which, in the end, doesn’t get me very far along the path to good government. 

I could ask why, but that would break my resolution almost before it starts.

So, let’s take a look at an experience we have all shared, although it is so insignificant that many people have probably forgotten it. It involves going to the mail box. 

I got a post card in the mail the other day, from my State Senator. It’s a good bet that every other family in New York State got the same kind of post card.

Why do I say that? Because it was addressed to The Freedman Family or Current Resident.

This was from Sen. John Flanagan, because I live in his district. You can see how his name could be swapped with any other state senator, because there is a big empty space on the post card where you can fill in a name. And, you can do the same thing for every member of the State Assembly. 

That’s because it’s so generic. Except for the space left for my senator’s address and phone of his local office, website and e-mail address, every single word on the post card can apply to every assembly and senate district in the state.

The front side, with my address, says New York has passed A BUDGET THAT PUTS FAMILIES FIRST. Nothing wrong with that.

The back side tells me in big type that the state budget helps families, and in smaller type tells me that the best way to improve the lives of New Yorkers is to fight for policies that makes the state a better place to live and raise a family.

Nothing wrong with that, either. Every Republican and every Democrat in the legislature can be proud of doing it. As far as that goes.

Then it lists nine specific things the budget does. And, it’s magical. Why? Because the first thing it tells me is that we have a historic $4.2 billion tax cut for middle class families.

The other eight items are kind of the same. They talk about more tax cuts and more government spending. At the same time. Which, I guess, means there was so much extra money raised last year by outrageously high taxes in New York State that we were able to soak away enough cash to lower taxes and spend more this year.

Or, maybe the pay of state workers was cut. Or New  York was able to buy gas for its fleets of cars and buses for a nickel a gallon. That might do it.

Gosh, I wonder what kind of magic will be done in two years, when the next state election cycle roles around.

So, how did we voters do? Well, after cutting $4.2 billion in taxes, we gave an extra $1.1 billion in school aid statewide, gave another $1.1 billion to college kids in the form of tuition assistance grants, gave millions of homeowners another $453 million in property tax rebate checks, and gave yet another $47 million in tax relief to expand child care tax credits.

Not that there’s anything wrong with all that spending and all those tax cuts. It’s just that the post card leaves out a few zeros.

The budget approved nine days late on an otherwise uneventful Sunday in April this year is a $163 billion spending plan. Add up all the cuts and extra spending on the post card and they don’t hit 10 per-cent of the budget.

So, it’s a nice post card as far as it goes, but, it really doesn’t go very far. Still, its what the legislature calls “constituent service,” because it lets us know what they are up to. Again, it’s not Mr. Flanagan’s idea. He is just doing what everyone else does.

I certainly didn’t expect a meaningful discussion of how we plan to re-build our state roads and bridges over the next 10 years, or how we plan to finance the small start-ups that will be creating jobs in the 2030’s, or how we are going to rewrite the criminal code to deal with cyber crimes. But, hope springs eternal.

The card did give me one other bit of information. It’s in the box where you and I would normally put a postage stamp.

No, there is no stamp on this post card. Just a few words: U.S. Postage PAID New York Senate.

Sad, But True

To the shock of my liberal friends and the amazement of my conservative friends, I find myself - using some really twisted ivory-tower logic - agreeing with President Trump.

James Comey should have been fired.

Now, before I explain how I got into this corner, let me add that he was fired in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time, and the consequences will be bad, really bad, for the Republican Party and for many of the GOP office-holders who hope they can just stand on the balcony, looking down on the mess, and hope they can avoid getting dragged down into the chaos.

There. A  nice, run-on sentence with a mixed metaphor and a lack of coherence. I feel better already.

But, first the sad truth.

James Comey, the former head of the FBI, has been playing out a classic Greek tragedy. We’ll call the show “Hubris in the 21st century.”

It’s not that hard to see. Comey, like a lot of men and women who end up in powerful positions, found himself making a really classic mistake. He thought that he was more important than his organization.

It plays out all over the country, all the time, and often in ways too small and too isolated to be really noticed. A school principal who pretty much runs his or her own show, over-reaches with discipline and random directions, and unleashes enough chaos that eventually parents - or, worse, the media - start asking the school board about the problems, and the principal is gone.

Or the lawyer or doctor in a one-man practice (term of art, it could be a woman as well) who knows what has worked for years, and decides that they know exactly what to do all the time. When a disaster comes, they are amazed that it started with a little problem that just got bigger and bigger, and they ignored it because, well, because they could, and they were in charge.

Or an elected official who overstays his welcome, and runs for four or six or eight terms, until they are shocked, shocked when they are rejected. I’ve also covered lots of school boards that had to deal with old buildings that needed some repairs, and were amazed to see their $50 million bond issue go down in flames. A new school board usually passed a $35 million bond issue two years later.

So, what does this have to do with Comey? Well, he put his own ego ahead of his job, his organization, and the clear-cut if unwritten policies of the FBI.

Remember them? Don’t talk about ongoing investigations. Don’t make it worse by continuing to talk, then to talk some more. Don’t tell Congressmen you are investigating a candidate for president - let’s call her Hillary - and then say the investigation is over, to  correct that mistake. Then say it may not be over after all. And then say, once again, you found nothing wrong.

And do it just a couple of days before the election. Bad timing. Bad decisions all around.

There is just a bit of irony in the fact that timing seems to be a thread running through the Trump administration. A bad firing here that seems to imply that he wants to stop an investigation into his Russian ties, a bad timing there that seems to imply he wants to stop an investigation into Russian hacking of the election. More bad timings about random things, oh say that a carrier task force is sailing toward Korea when it is actually going the other way. He could have waited until it turned around, or perhaps been a little clearer and less dramatic. Oh, well. It may be Hubris.

But, in any case, we have Comey getting involved in something he should have been able to avoid with a simple “no comment” or by just not saying anything. But, he thought he was bigger than his job, and likely thought he was bigger than his organization. 

“L’Etat, c’est moi”as Louis XIV is thought to have said - the state, it is I.

“L’FBI, c’est moi” just doesn’t work.

But, here’s another delightful French quote, not heard nearly as much. “Je m’en vais, mais l’Etat demeurera toujours.” That was the Marquis de Dangeau, and it roughly translates as “I am going away, but the State will always remain.” 

Words for Comey to reflect on, and words for our President to think about.

Oh, those Ivory Towers cast long shadows.

The Unraveling Begins

So, the unraveling begins. A lot of people saw it coming, or at least saw signs that it might be coming, but I don’t remember any dead-on predictions on how and why and just where the Trump regime would start falling apart.

It seems to be falling apart at the edges. A comment here, a misplaced fact there. A lie or two, an error or three, and all of a sudden, there are so many tears and pulls around the edges - good grief, does that man have no center - that it’s as hard to know if his core principals are eroding as it is to know what those core principals really are.

But, we have no budget in Congress, only a continuing resolution to keep doing what we have been doing, which is pretty much what President Obama was doing, executive orders excluded of course.

We have a ruling Republican Party that is at war with itself, and we have a lesson in basic human nature.

Human beings have evolved over millennia as a species which is hot-wired to make divisions. It is one of our survival skills.

Socially, we rapidly developed an "Us vs. Them" viewpoint. Our family has food, or our family can take food from them. Our tribe has food, or we can take food from them. Our nation has food, or we can go to war and take it from them.

Over and over again, down through the centuries, from the warlords in China to the Greek city states to the trade wars of the 18th and 19th centuries to the lobbying in Congress for federal aid for specific industries today.

It explains why so many baseball and football teams have faithful fans, even when the teams are terrible. Losing record? "That’s when the True Fan steps up,” and you can fill in the team.

So, what does this mean for us?

Well, the Republicans in Congress were fine as long as the divide they saw was Republicans and Democrats. Now, that they are totally in charge, the division becomes which Republicans will get their way. The Freedom Caucus people who don’t believe in big government, or the moderates who strongly believe in government help for their states.

Soon, about the time that Congress is forced to deal with a real budget that covers spending for a whole year, we will start to see another split - Republican governors who need federal aid to keep their own taxes down and Republican Congressmen who feel that any aid to a state they do not represent is a waste of money.

So, just how much money should we spend on aid to states that are facing erosion problems? Much of the nation is not on the ocean, and even states like New York and Florida are starting to realize they can not hold back a rising ocean forever.

How much should we tax people who do not have trains running once an hour connecting their cities in order to provide affordable public transportation in New York or Atlanta or even Washington, D.C. And just why do we have to impose a tariff that makes corn more expensive just to keep corn growers in Iowa happy?

Us vs. Them is hard when you control all of government.

Leadership from the White House might help. It has helped a lot of times before. Lyndon Johnson’s grade as President keeps going up and up, although he did lose the solid south for Democrats by insisting that integration was important, ethical and - more to the point - something that should be done right away.

But we have Donald Trump in the White House. And, while he is running ads telling us that his promises were kept, it’s hard for me to figure out just which promises those were.

I’m still looking for the jobs his administration has actually created.