Warren Drops Out!

Warren Drops Out!

Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential campaign after a poor showing on Super Tuesday, consistent with the previous three states that the candidates contested. I think she was qualified to be the president. She was certainly smart, Harvard law professor and all. She had good experiences as a Senator, was a good debater, and all that aside, she had a poor showing.

               

I’m told that she lost because she was a woman. I heard that at home, I heard it on late-night pundit shows, and I read it in the opinion section of the newspaper. Men, you see, simply won’t vote for a woman for president, I’m told. Hillary Clinton, however, won about three million more individual votes than Trump in the last election. Don’t tell The Donald! Ergo, men will vote for a qualified woman. Don’t tell the pundits

I considered writing a commentary about why women aren’t elected. It is a great topic for a blog. It is also an express ticket to perdition!

It’s safer to write about opening day for the local Little League baseball league. The great-grandson starts Tee Ball this year, dressed in a Red Sox uniform. How bad can that be? The Coronavirus reached pandemic proportions this week. The President has a new Chief of Staff. The Eagles had a massive concert in Houston last night. Austin’s SXSW festival was called off. Schools are closing down for a few weeks and crowds are discouraged. A friend recommends that we all buy one of those cones you put around a dog’s neck to keep you from touching your face. I wonder if sales of Corona beer are down too.

Anyone of those topics is safer to write about than why men do not vote for women or why Warren dropped out.

Don’t forget to wash your hands!!!

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace of day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle![i]

And what of our tomorrows?

Is the great experiment of rule by the people but a candle that’s shown its light a few years only to be extinguished by a return to the rule of the despot and the divine right of the few? The Dane spoke of the death of an intimate, but the thought lingers as we view attempts to deaden our senses and watch daily grasps for uncommon power. We see the march toward executive control, legislative cowardice, and the diminution of a way of life. Out, out, brief candle?

Reaching for hyperbole, you say! Perhaps, but we recently watched the impeachment of our President for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Then we watched, even more stunned, the expected acquittal by the Senate that sat as judge and jury while the House Managers proved the allegations beyond a shadow of a doubt. The answer, known before the question was asked. For a majority of the senators, it was more important to save the leader of a party than to do justice. In two other impeachment trials, the senate also saved their party leader. The candle flickers. A flame dimming?

On December 17, 2019, Mitch McConnell, the Majority leader of the Senate stated “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process. There’s not anything judicial about it, The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.”

One month later, January 16, 2020, the trial began in the Senate. Chief Justice Roberts asked the senators to swear the traditional oath, “Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?” McConnell and the other senators took the oath and signed their names in the oath-book. He and many other senators lied before God and the American people. They had no intention to show impartial justice. The flame flickers.

One of the key functions of Congress is oversight of the Executive Branch, staunchly embedded in its constitutional implied authority. It is understood that the subpoenas of the Congress are to be obeyed. The current president issued orders to everyone in the Executive branch to ignore congressional subpoenas.

Some people did, however, answer the subpoenas of the House during the investigation leading up to the impeachment. They testified that the President had in fact held up military aid to an ally until the President of Ukraine would announce an investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. They have all been removed from office, reassigned to other jobs, resigned, or are waiting for a similar fate. Could this be retaliation for obeying the law? The flame flickers.

Richard Nixon told people in the Executive branch to ignore subpoenas during the Watergate investigation and forced to resign because of it. Our current Senate chose to ignore the President’s non-compliance, his tacit ignoring of the role of Congress as an equal branch of government. This flies in the face of two hundred plus years of the democratic republic we claim to be. The flame flickers.

After the current president was elected, the Justice Department appointed a Special Prosecutor to investigate campaign irregularities as they related to seeking and accepting foreign government information to help win the 2016 election. As a result of the investigation, the Republican campaign chair is in jail, the assistant campaign chair went to jail, many more are indicted, and others await sentencing. Just this week, the President tweeted his displeasure at the DOJ’s sentencing recommendation for Mr. Stone, found guilty of seven counts of brokering with foreign governments to get “operation research” on the Clinton campaign. The President thought the recommendation “a ridiculous nine-year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal….” The Attorney General announced that he was reducing the sentencing recommendation. As a result, three key Justice Department prosecutors resigned from the case and one resigned from the department, causing one of the worse crises in department history and for the rule of law. The Justice Department has always been hands-off to the President. When Nixon tried to interfere in the Watergate break-in, he set off the Saturday-night-massacre in which one AG after another resigned. The flame flickers.

We just endured a State of the Union Address filled with intentional lies about the economy, the country’s relationship to other countries, the positive results of the tariff wars and … The flame flickers.

The President is a master of reality TV, programming and marketing. He is the Elmer Gantry of the political world, rousing his followers to frenzy in rallies around the country. Nearly fifty percent of the people in the country think he is doing a good job. About fifty percent of the Democrats think Republicans are horrible people with horrible policies. More than fifty percent of the Republicans think Democrats are horrible people with horrible policies. It’s true that there is a conservative-progressive split among the voters. We have always had that. We have always had one party trying to beat out the other. The issue is that instead of trying to heal the nation, reduce the division and compromise on programs to improve the country, the President and his followers keep digging a bigger gulf between the two parties. Our government, our rule of law, our upholding of the Constitution, are based on a trust that human beings will uphold truth and deal fairly with each other.  The flame flickers.

Any time we vote in a different party to govern the country we expect different policies. That is part of the process. When the people in the states elected their presidential electors and a Republican won, it should be expected that taxes would be on the table, that regulations would be cut, that trade policy would be altered and the court would be in play. What we don’t expect is a wholesale trashing of our core values of honesty and fair play, of our proven history of keeping the world safe from war by building strong alliances with like-minded nations. We don’t expect all the leader’s confidants to end up in jail, or that the President will interfere with the Justice Department. No, a president can’t do “whatever I want.” The flame flickers.

We have seen and experienced this before. Hitler’s party had one of the largest vote majorities in the history of Germany. Then he moved into the Chancellor’s office and created a nation, in only a few years, based on his personality and his hatred on non-Aryans. The largest majority in Italian history elected Mussolini. He then ruled the nation as a personality bent on immolating the Nazi party of Germany. We saw the devaluation of the rule of law in Poland, the Czech nations, Russia, and East Germany. They say that you can only rule so long as the people let you. When the people had finally had enough of dictatorship rule, the Wall came down and Ulbricht was no longer the party head of East Germany. The flame extinguished!

Can we endure another year of lying and cheating at the highest levels of our government? Can we endure another year of placing more credence in the words of a Russian despot or dictator from Turkey than we do in our own intelligence community, or defying Congress at every step? We don’t have much choice. Do we have to endure another four years of the same malevolence after that? We have a choice to make. We have a republic if we can keep it. We have a Constitution to protect. We have a rule of law to lead us. If we can’t do what is right to right the nation, the only solace we will have is that tomorrow the sun will come out.

The sun’ll come out tomorrow,

so ya gotta hang on ‘till tomorrow

come what may.

Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love ya tomorrow!

You’re always a day away![ii]

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[i] William Shakespeare – Macbeth – Act 5, Scene 5

[ii] Meehan & Strouse – Annie – Opening night on Broadway, 4/21/1977

Does Right Matter? Part II

It was a foregone conclusion. President Trump would not be found guilty and would not be removed from office. The Majority Leader of the Senate announced the verdict before the trial began, and Senator McConnell has complete control of his caucus. So why bother?

The House impeached the President along party lines. Then the House Managers presented their case to the Senate which was sitting as judge and jury. The President’s defense counsels presented their rebuttal with equal vigor and legal tenacity. We saw some of the best trial lawyers in the country joust with each other for the better part of a week, trying to convince the senators to convict or not convict. In the end, Mitch McConnell prevailed; the Senate did not find the President guilty nor oust him from office. The Republican Senators would not remove the leader of their party, except for one braveheart, no matter the facts of the case. The vote to acquit lasted 22 minutes. It was anticlimactic. And, it matters!

Yes, it matters. If a president holds up crucial military aid to an ally because of major policy differences, it is not an impeachable offense. To do so for personal political gain, however, as President Trump did, that is impeachable. In the end, many senators stated that the House Managers proved their case; the President had done wrong, but they didn’t consider it severe enough to remove him from office. The next time a police officer pulls me over for doing 80 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone, I am going to admit that I did it, but argue that the crime doesn’t rise to the level of receiving a ticket or going to court.

Each senator has a reason for his or her vote. Nearly half are convinced that the whole effort on the part of the House Democrats was because they disliked Trump, couldn’t overcome the reality of his election and disagreed with his policies; they believe the animus went way back. Others are scared to death that they will the primaried if they vote for removal from office, and they want to keep their jobs. The President has stated that Senator Romney, the lone Republican to vote guilty, should be removed from the Republican Party. To be fair, some senators just hate Trump and others are blindly loyal members of the Trump cult. Whatever the motives, the impeachment saga illustrates how divided the country is. That really matters.

Our experiment with a democratic republic hinges on the idea that we can all disagree on policies, but that we will reach compromise positions in favor of a more perfect union, a better tomorrow for the next generation, or something as simple as better infrastructure. Some claim that what unites us is larger than what divides us. That may have been true a few years ago, but I’m not sure it’s true today. We don’t have one or two things we disagree about, as in the past, but we seem to have hundreds.

We saw the divide at the State of the Union address: the President refusing to shake hands with the Speaker, her non-traditional introduction of the President, then her tearing up of the speech at the end, and Members walking out during the address. Those are neither normal protocol nor good manners. We saw the divide when supporters cheered even when the President lied about policies and his achievements. We saw the divide when detractors didn’t cheer for the administration’s real accomplishments. The tension in the great hall of the people was palpable. We may have been watching the apotheosis Founder’s dream of a government of and for people who want to work together to form a more perfect union achieved by devotion to the Constitution and the rule of law, rather than rule by a person or party. I fear for our democracy, for our culture, and for our future.

Does Right Matter?

It is hard not to write about the impeachment of Donald John Trump, President of the United States. It is one of the most historical events in the history of the republic. Yet, too many are not listening, too many are divided on the issue and too many don’t care. However, we must care!

I have watched the first half of the Senate trial for hours. I keep switching the TV from CNN to Fox News to MSNBC and back to CSPAN. I’m a political junkie, always have been. I taught high-school Civics back when they did that, so the addiction is long, deep, and wide. We saw and heard the House Managers’ presentation and we must gird ourselves for the President's defense. Each side gets 24 hours to make their case.

There isn’t any dispute of the facts of the case, yet. The House Managers presented a marvelous civics lesson on the constitution’s impeachment clause, the Framers’ arguments for and against it, the meaning and power of its inclusion, and the actions that rise to its use. Law School classes on Constitutional Law will, for generations, read and study the presentation of the case; how it was formatted, how each action that constituted an infraction of our governing document was illustrated, and how the actions of the President were considered impeachable. No matter if you are '
Republican, Democrat or Independent, if you agree or not, Representative Schiff’s summation of the second day, was a tour-de-force. And the Senate listened.

At the end of the trial, after both sides present their case, after senators submit their questions, and perhaps after witnesses testify, the 100 senators will cast their vote, which will decide if a duly elected President of the United States should be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Each Senator weighs the evidence; did wrongdoing occur. Each Senator will consider the reaction of their constituents; for many, a “wrong” vote could mean the loss of the next election. Each Senator will consider his or her duty to vote along party lines; for many that could mean the loss of committee assignments or lack of campaign funding. Each Senator will consider if the actions of the President rise to the level of removal from office; many don’t but for others there is no question. Each Senator will decide between right and wrong, between truth and lies. Each Senator will decide, for generations to come, the relationship between the Congress and the Executive branch of government. It is not an easy vote.

Franklin, famously, told us we have “A republic if you can keep it.” Can we? Alexander Hamilton wrote in Article 65 of the Federalist Papers that impeachment is for “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” It is interesting that one must not have broken some law to be impeached.

Adam Schiff, who led the group of House Managers making the case for removing the President from office summarized the second day of presentations in what some called “a closing statement for the ages.” Even those who disagreed with him were rapt. He proffered that right matters. “If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the Framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we are lost. If the truth doesn’t matter we are lost!”

Does right matter? Yes, it does. Does truth matter? Yes, it does.

There are other arguments and other facts to consider. The President’s team now gets to defend him.

Democracy isn’t easy!

Truth!

It’s not simple and it’s not easy. Truth is hard to get your hand around, yet, we must. It seems harder today than decades before. Some want to confuse us with misdirected facts, visuals that seem real but are photo-shopped. We have reached a point in public discourse where many accept leaders that lie blatantly, repeatedly, and with disregard for its effects.

Truth can be a noun, an adverb, an adjective, or a verb. Rhetoricians can worry about the distinctions. The public wants to assume a strong correlation between truth and reality when our leaders speak. We accept scientific facts as truth; light and heavy objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum, electricity is a charge moving through a wire, water flows downhill, and hot air rises. In the past, we trusted the word of our governmental leaders, most of them at least. We accepted the word of our teachers because they were better educated than most of us, at least when we were young. It’s not that easy anymore.

The powerful nations use the power of social media to create confusion about our democratic system, to lie to us about those they don’t like, and to influence our electoral processes. They did it in our last two elections and they did it this week during elections in Taiwan. We know this because we have the facts to prove it. Yet many don’t care.

A third to nearly half of the American population, including members of Congress, refuse to believe that Russia interfered in our elections or that they are doing it again as we prepare for the 2020 election. The Congress, even with the urging of the Department of Homeland Security refuses to pass laws or allocate money sufficient to secure our electoral databases and systems. Even with the overwhelming evidence that electric companies are shutting down fossil fuel generating plants because of high costs, the government continues to support the coal mining industry instead of alternative sources of energy. The cable news channels sell their viewpoint on current events rather than sticking to facts. Government spokespersons call lies alternative facts.

At the highest levels of government, it seems acceptable to lie several times a day to millions of followers. Our leaders lie not only to their own citizens, but also to the leaders of the rest of the world, and god knows who else. Does it even matter anymore?

I guess it depends on who you ask. We assassinated a military leader of Iran last week, who by all accounts deserved what he got. Our leaders, however, could not come to us with one voice and tell us why we killed the despotic general when we did. On Face The Nation, yesterday, Secretary of Defense Esper stated that he had not seen any credible intelligence that indicated that the Iranians were about to blow up four of our embassies. He stated that Trump merely said he “believed” that there “probably could have been” attacks planned. What was the urgency? Does it even matter? Yes! If the government is not telling us the truth, it matters!

Foreign leaders don’t trust our government anymore because of the lies that have come from our leaders. It matters. The fourth estate is labeled as fake news. The media, whose job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, all the while getting to the truth, is called the enemy of the state. Those are words that Hitler and Stalin used on their way to creating dictatorships.

Presidents who lie to the public are not the creation of the current times. Nixon lied to the American people about the Watergate break-in and tried to cover it up. It resulted in his resignation. Lyndon Johnson lied about our involvement in the Vietnamese war. He did not seek reelection. Senator Gary Hart dared the press to find him committing adultery. They did. He, a leading presidential candidate, dropped out of the race and changed forever the relationship between the press and the private lives of politicians. John Kennedy lied about his serious health condition and his dalliances with movie stars and other women of note. He died before the truth became public. However, there is something different going on today. Too many people are buying the lies, drinking the Kool-Aid!

The bromides tell us that the truth will set us free. Not today! Another says that if you tell the truth you won’t have to remember what you said. Nobody cares! Another tells us that in the end truth will prevail. People ignore it for a better story! It is too simple to blame it on social media. Not enough bother to check the daily news anyway! It is too simple to blame it on 24/7/365 news updates. Too many cable TV and talk-radio shows spew lies and hatred, not the truth. It is too simple to blame it on low attendance at weekly religious services. That phenomenon started in the ‘60s. It is not a simple problem but it needs fixing.

The American experiment relies on the populace’s strong belief in our republican democracy. It requires a belief that our leaders, at all levels, will be square with us, that what they say can be trusted. The system can tolerate some misspeak because of a lack of data or understanding. It can tolerate some exaggeration to make a point, up to a point. It cannot, however, sustain for long, barrages of daily lies from our leadership cadre or the lies of other nations trying to influence our thinking and blending reality with myth.

We believe in free speech, strongly. People can say nearly anything they want, true or false, mean or nice, hate-filled or commending. That doesn’t mean that they should lie, convolute the facts, brag about accomplishments not attained, or threaten non-believers.

It’s not a simple problem, but it starts with us telling the truth and then demanding that our leaders tell the truth when they speak to us or tweet to us. It’s a simple start, but most are.

The Propensity Model!

I don’t know how to code!!! There, I said it, Step 1. There must be a Twelve-Step program for people like me; “Non-coders Anonymous?” The last time I had anything to do with code I was working on my Boy Scout First Class badge. We had to learn to send Morse code with a key and with two flags. A lot has changed since then.

I read an article recently that asked a simple question: what is the most important thing we should worry about related to the future of our country. Assuming that we do a good job reducing greenhouse gases and we are still here in ten years, it suggested that we should concentrate on AI because it will change how we live, work and think.

AI (Artificial Intelligence), in the simple terms I can understand, is a set of algorithms that allow machines to think and learn in much the same way humans think and learn. A friend defines artificial intelligence as “when the computer disobeys the programmer.” At this point, I’m a bit confused because …  

If I can’t code, imagine how trying to understand the world of AI makes me feel. Anything beyond point-and-click is confusing. Most of us just need to be able to download an app that will help us get through our day, like counting how many steps we took this week compared to last week. The more I read about AI, however, the more I’m intrigued by its goodness and suspicious of its ability to control everything important. I can’t define the future, but I will know it when I see it.[i] I’m convinced that it involves AI for many years before it too is replaced.

Computers changed the world in a few years and even more quickly with the universal introduction of Windows for desktops and then laptops. Today, nearly all of us use computers on a daily basis. Some of us call them telephones, but they really are just platforms for apps: games, maps, search, and yes, a phone. Somebody decides what we might find interesting and writes some code that makes the magic happen. I have all kinds of apps on my phone. I bank on my phone. I pay bills on my phone. I goggle on my phone too often, I text other people too much. I use my phone to reserve parking spaces in downtown garages or feed the parking meters and sometimes hail rideshare drivers to give me a lyft back to the parking garage. I buy plane tickets on my phone and store my boarding pass on my phone. Well, you probably do all that too, so you know what I’m getting at. Most of these things happen because of AI and 5G networks.

To do all these things, people who code use a “Propensity Model.” The sophisticated algorithms decide what needs to be learned based on the propensity of previous actions. Knowing how some people think and make decisions, I’m not sure about the basic concept of the Propensity Model. Those of you who really understand the technology of all this can stop laughing at this point

AI already powers everyday activities, such as the map on your phone that shows a red line where traffic is slow and for how long. That line is produced by some magic machine that measures the speed with which phones are moving down the highway and sending that information to other magic boxes that post the information on electronic signs along the highway. Grocery stores can eliminate checkout lines because once you sync your phone to a shopping cart the items that you put in the cart are added up and charged to your credit card when you exit the building. I’m not sure how well that operates at the outdoor farmers market. We use Clipper Cards for rail and subway use. Airline tickets and boarding passes go directly to your phone – no more paper. Bridge tolls and some HOV lanes use pictures of your license plate to adjust your Fas Trak or E-ZPass account or fine you if you aren’t in the system. We experience these things on a regular basis and don’t think much about them, but they wouldn’t happen but for AI. The new 5G networks allow all of this computing to happen 100 times faster than the 4G system most of us still use.

A recent article pointed out that within three years US manufacturing workers with college degrees will outnumber those without one.[ii] That has serious implications for workers without a college degree and for those with low-skill levels. McDonald’s is experimenting with AI-powered kiosks for ordering and with robots that will cook your happy meal. However, those with degrees or even advanced degrees aren’t exempt from the effects of AI. Lawyers, for example, are threatened by AI’s ability to do better research and write better briefs than humans. Doctors should be nervous about AI’s ability to do robotic surgeries from an office across the country. Smart walls are causing an evolution in teaching methods to ripple slowly across the country and the profession. Innovation is changing the world of work as well as making it more convenient to get through life.

The Brookings Institute points out that the concentration of innovation in only a few areas of the country leaves the heartland with a dearth of new opportunities. Ninety percent of the nation’s innovation-sector economic growth in the last few years is concentrated in only five metropolitan areas: Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, and Seattle.[iii] As a result, their share of the innovation employment sits at 23%. The bottom 90% of metro areas (343) lost one-third of the innovation jobs in the last 12 years. That economic division cannot be sustained if we want equality of opportunity for all our children.

Most jobs, as we know them, will go away. We, of a certain age, who saw the high school diploma give way to the college degree or advanced trade skill certifications as the basic licenses for a good job is about to see robotics take away employment opportunities. Politico recently indicated that the slowness of the US transition to 5G has more to do with the lack of a trained workforce than with technology. Today we are short at least 20,000 skilled pole climbers who can install the needed cells.[iv] So, what to do?

The most logical place to start is in the PreK-12 school system. It may require nationwide retraining of our teachers to use the new technology. They must understand coding so they can teach it from the early grades on, be able to use AI every day in the classroom, communicate with kids using the new technology, and be comfortable with rapid change. The blackboard gave way to the greenboards, which gave way to the whiteboard. Those obsolete systems are now giving way to the whitewall, connected to the internet. If our schools don’t operate in an AI/5G modality, how will our country make the huge leap that we need to make to catch up with other countries of the world? It may have taken nearly 120 years to replace the typewriter with the home computer, but yesterday’s computer is already obsolete. Big changes come about when people take big steps forward with big ideas. We, as a nation need to take some big steps.

Brookings Institute suggests that the government develop a competitive program to identify a few metropolitan areas into which they would pour billions of dollars for innovative projects, business development, and scientific development. The idea is that big projects will attract even more companies to fill the supply chain. The idea is that larger metro areas would encourage people to stay in their heartland areas and attract people back from coastal cities. This is a novel idea, but a big idea. Can the country still think big? Do you remember when JFK suggested that we put a man on the moon in a decade? It galvanized the nation. Would that audacious goal be acceptable today? We know that Space is the next war zone, yet we scoff at the idea of a Space Force as a new branch of the armed services. We know that we need to get gas cars off the road and planes out of the sky, yet we debunk the idea of a system of fast trains linking major cities of the US. We don’t think big anymore.

In 1978, 80% of Chinese people lived in rural areas. Today 60% live in urban areas, where the jobs are located, where innovation takes place, where it is easier to make a good living. The migration to the cities has left the rural parts of the country poor, without innovative companies, and with a lack of jobs. China’s problems are very similar to ours. Could we learn from them? Their national government has decided that they need to create metropolitan areas in their heartland.[v] These will be large urban areas of about 120 million people, almost as large as the total population of Japan, and larger than most European countries. To make these large metro areas clean and safe, the government is investing $800 billion in the high-speed rail, so that no one will commute more than 15 minutes to work, they are moving toward autonomous electric vehicles, smart grid technology, powerful 5G networks, and big data technologies. Homes and apartments will be built with AI capabilities. Each one will contain appliances and other objects all tied together with IoT.[vi]

In 2008, China built a 70-mile demonstration line of fast-trains for their Olympic Games. Since then they have built 15,000 miles of fast-train tracks that connect the nearly 200 cities of over one million people each. The trains travel at 180- 200 miles per hour on average. Think of going from New York City to Chicago in three or four hours, think LA to Chicago in 12-13 hours. Think 35 trains a day from Paris to Nice in about 5-7 hours, think Beijing to Shanghai in 5 hours. The US does not have one mile of fast-train track. We certainly do not have the technical knowhow to build a new train system. We don’t think big anymore.[vii]

One has to wonder what the US must do to train hundreds of thousands of its youth to become facile with the burgeoning AI technology, how schools and universities must change what they teach and how they teach it. Technical schools will change how they train practical skill sets. The government must set national goals for developing and installing new technologies. We really don’t have ten or fifteen years to think about it. Our competitors are already well beyond us.

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[i] Mr. Justice Potter Stewart – Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964 – “I may not be able to define pornography, but I know it when I see it.”

[ii] American Factories Demand White-collar Eduction for Blue-collar Work – Austen Hufford – Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2019

[iii] Atkinson, Muro and Whiton – The case for growth centers: How to spread tech innovation across the country, December 9, 2019

[iv] Politico – December 29, 2019

[v] The Rise of China’s Supercities: New Era of Urbanization – Morgan Stanley – October 10, 2019

[vi] The Internet of Things is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects,   that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

[vii] Countries with high-speed trains: Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan.

The Occasional Rant!

I like to keep up with current affairs. I like to do modest research on current events. My high school teachers made me this way, what with required subscriptions to US News and World Report or Newsweek magazines, and their weekly quizzes about the current goings-on. It stuck. I did the same thing to my students when I taught high school Social Studies; weekly quizzes about current events. That's all to say that I think I keep up pretty well. This isn't about current events. It illustrates, however, that if one spends too much time spouting off on one subject, it's easy to miss other issues hiding in plain sight.

A friend asked me, in so many words, why I didn’t rant about the Congress sometimes, instead of just grumbling about the current administration. I gave it some thought. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I hadn't kept up on the current goings-on in Congress. Then I recognized that the Congress hasn’t done much to keep up on, nothing that would get your attention anyway. I am trying to avoid talking about the impeachment proceedings. Herein begins the harangue.

We the people send 535 plus people to the Congress: one hundred Senators and 435 voting members to House of Representatives. (There are others in Congress that represent our territories, commonwealths and the District of Columbia, but they don’t vote.) We send them to make laws, provide oversight of the Executive Branch, approve federal judges and generally do our bidding. Henry David Thoreau said, “That government is best which governs least.”[i] The resident of Walden Pond might think that the 116^th Congress is doing just fine. Some say the country is safest when Congress isn’t in session. I don’t know who the “some” are, but I tend to agree with them.

As of last month, the House had passed 400 Bills and sent them to the Senate where they languish. The Senate leadership has sent 72 bills to the President for his signature. [i]Ten of those bills involved renaming post offices and Veteran buildings. The Majority Leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell doesn't pay much attention to the bills coming from the Democratic-controlled House. Put another way, over 300 bills have been Mitch’ed.

The nation has infrastructure problems. The roads and bridges are crumbling from neglect; the electric grid is old, unmaintained, and insecure. The cost of drugs is too high, hospitals take the majority of the healthcare dollars, family-practice doctors are underpaid, and our mortality rate declines each year. School outcomes trail other developed nations, colleges are too expensive, and student debt mounts. Heavy manufacturing is down by historic levels. Technology reduces the need for low and moderately skilled labor, puts the mom-and-pop businesses out of business and rural small towns lose reasons to exist. Other countries are surpassing our ability to lead the AI revolution, and we aren’t ready to utilize G5 fully. Homelessness is on the rise, homebuilding is too slow to meet the need, and current laws limit the government’s ability to address the issues. That’s just for starters.

The first bill sent to the Senate during the 116^th Congress was HR1. It would outlaw all of the various state laws limiting the right of people to register to vote and to actually vote. It would appropriate money to help reduce the hacking of voting machines by the Russians. It also includes provisions to better control election financing and ethical practices. HR5 provided anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans. HR6 provided protection of “Dreamers,” young immigrants who came to the US illegally with their parents. There were other bills that dealt with background checks for gun purchases, lowering prescription drug prices, the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and a bill to ensure internet neutrality. That's just for starters.

Maybe I shouldn't blame the Congress, but save the wrath for the Senate. The House is doing its job. Mitch McConnell isn’t doing his. This Congress has accomplished almost nothing of substance, except the overwhelming partisan approval of 150 new judges by the Senate that will change the course of jurisprudence for the next thirty years. They don’t even take votes on many things they agree on. They seem to be afraid to tackle the serious problems of the nation, so they work at the edges rather than grappling with core issues. The drive to impeach the President doesn’t encourage members to work together, but still… The most important accomplishments of this Congress bolster the argument for term limits.

Harry Truman called the 80^th Congress the “Do-Nothing Congress,” even though they passed 906 public bills. Perhaps we ought to dub the 116^th the “Mitch Doesn't  Want To Do Anything Congress.” They’ve accomplished their goal, with another year to go. Who knows, they may have an epiphany before the next election. My friend was right. The Members of Congress are not doing what we send them there to do.

Thus ends the rant!

I feel somewhat better!

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[i] Ella Nilsen – Vox – 11/29/2019

 [ii] Henry David Thoreau – Walden – Ticksor & Fields, Boston – 1854

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