Month: May 2018

Americans is not the label of a race, ethnicity or a singular culture.  America is an ideal where all are created equal.  It is characterized by the equality of rights and privileges.  As Abraham Lincoln said American democracy is “…government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Government not by the few, but by all.  According to Japheth J. Omojuiwa of the World Economic Forum (8/19/2016), “Democracy was built on the power and needs of the people.”  But the excessive and rapacious desire for wealth and possessions by the few has shifted power from the many whose needs are not being met. Omojuiwa further states that democracy has been “…sold out to money,” and “…is the biggest threat to it [democracy] today.  Democracy sold out to corruption and greed.  …the dreams of the collective prosperity promised by democracy are being turned into nightmares for the majority and monumental wealth for the privileged….”

Fortunately, Omojuiwa claims that it is not too late, “…transparency and accountability must be the focus in a legitimate democracy.”  We need campaign finance reform limiting the amount of money that can be donated by individuals, corporations and PACs.  We need to regulate or eliminate lobbying.  We need to ensure that all Americans are represented in our government.  The normalization of greed must be unmasked.  Excessively rewarding the manipulation of markets and monies, activities that do not create or innovate, should be halted.  Stakeholders (those who give their time and lives) need to be rewarded at the same level as stockholders (those who only risk their excess money).  The best way to achieve transparency and accountability is to VOTE!  Don’t vote for candidates that run negative ads, vote for those who uphold what is good for democracy.  Denounce greed.  Celebrate honest hard work!

In The Soul of America, Jon Meacham quotes Theodore Roosevelt saying “But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.”

The first thing I noticed about candidate Trump was his use of overly simple language.  His limited vocabulary was highly unusual for a presidential candidate in my opinion and experience.  He also lacked the decorum that I was accustomed to for such a person. Even though, I was perplexed by such behavior, I assumed it was part of his campaign tactics.  However, now that I have experienced over a year of his presidency, I have come to learn that President Trump is no different than candidate Trump in matters of language and decorum.

It has become apparent that the President is not a student of history, democracy, the Constitution or the rule of law.  As a result of this lack of knowledge, he seems to have a simplistic world view in which his gut instinct allows him to dismiss the inherent complexity of decisions and situations.  He likes to be the smartest person in the room and he achieves this by dismissing all the experts and surrounding himself with sycophants.  For me, it is very stressful to have the leader of the free world using his “gut instinct” with complete disregard for knowledge while making decisions that affect me and the entire world.  However, others like this hip-shooting swashbuckler that ignores norms.

I am going to call this the “Harrison Ford Effect.”  Most everyone loves the scene from the Indiana Jones franchise where Indy is frantically running from bad guys through the crowded market when the crowed splits to reveal the big man with the really fancy sword moves.  Indy, at the sight of this unbeatable foe freezes for just a moment and then pulls his revolver and shoots him.  Everyone cheers as this highly accomplished swordsman is taken out by a simple bullet.  Again, most everyone loves when Han Solo (Star Wars franchise) blasts the intercom in the deathstar when he fumbles for words as he is trying to feign being a stormtrooper.  After he blasts the intercom, he says something like “…boring conversation anyway,” and then shouts “…we’re going to have company!”  These two scenes demonstrate our admiration for heroes who survive by using their gut instincts.  But this is the movies and it is not concerned with the unintended consequences of thoughtless decision-making.  In the real world, innocent people are hurt by rash decisions.

The Wall, the Muslim travel ban, the ban on transgendered service people, moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the tax cut that creates trillions of dollars of debt for our children, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and the Iran Nuclear Deal, changes in tariffs and trade, DACA delays and the North Korea talks can affect and have adversely affected many people of the world including Americans, yet were seemingly implemented with little thought.  The greater consequences of these actions are yet to be seen.  The complexity underlying all these changes was seemingly ignored.  These decision were not meant to be made by one person, but by a collection of the best and brightest the United States has to offer.

The President’s narcissism prevents him from conferring with experts and his reported diminished cognitive ability that is apparent in his decreasing use of higher-level language over the last few decades hinders his ability to make critically important decisions requiring complex thought.  These rash decisions in the North Korea denuclearization talks resulted in the characterization of the President as a possible Nobel Prize winner one week to being Charlie Brown when Lucy is holding the football the next week.  We all know what happens!

The President wants to implement the promises that he made to his base, but is unable to consider the negative consequences of such changes.  He needs to know that IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE!  He must surround himself with people who do know and make considered decisions.

American immigrants are vital to the growth and success of our economy, even though many who are unemployed or economically insecure mistakenly believe that immigrants have taken their jobs.  Donald Trump used and is using this unsubstantiated belief to win the last election and to try to win the  next election .  For example, the reports of the “menacing caravan” from central American in the news lately resulted in about only 200 women and children arriving at our border seeking asylum of which about 1/4 (50 people) will be accepted (from Why Trump Manufactured an Immigration Crisis by Washington Post Columnist Fareed Zakaria printed in Burlington County Times May 9, 2018).

In fact, U.S. immigration is at an all time low. The Pew Research Center Study reports that illegal cross-border migration was at its lowest level on record.  This decline has been a two decade long trend.  For example, from 2009 to 2014 one million Mexican families went back home while only 870,00 arrived.   Furthermore, according to Brookings Senior Fellow William Frey “…census statistics show that current immigration levels (of high-skilled immigrants) are increasingly vital to the growth of much of America, and recent arrivals are more highly skilled than ever before.  Gains through immigration are needed as our nation’s population gets older as birth rate levels remain low.”  Let’s look at some of the positive results of U.S. immigration.

• Immigrants often fill the jobs Americans don’t want.
• Refugees to the U.S. brought in $63 billion more in government revenues than they cost the government.
• Immigration is a major source of population growth and beneficial to the American economy.
• Immigration has no negative impact on crime, it actually reduces crime.
• Immigration may adversely affect some low-skilled natives, but diversity has a net positive effect on productivity and economic prosperity.
• Over the long-term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants (both legal and unauthorized) exceed the cost of the services they use.
• Immigrants contribute as much as $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year.
• Undocumented immigrants have positive effects on the native population and the public coffers.
• Increasing deportation rates and tightening border control weakens low-skilled labor markets, increasing unemployment of native low-skilled workers.
• Legalization decreases the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and increases income per native.
• Legalization of undocumented immigrants boost the U.S. economy.

There is a positive link between immigration and economic growth.  According to Brookings Senior Fellow, Danny Bahar “…while immigration represents about 15% of the general workforce, they account for around 1/4 of entrepreneurs and 1/4 of investors in the U.S. and that over 1/3 of new firms have at least one immigrant entrepreneur in its initial leadership team.  The [negative] impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers is very small.  It mostly negatively impacts the wages of prior immigrants with a similar skill set.  By cutting on immigration, the country will miss an opportunity for new inventions and ventures that could generate the jobs that the President is so committed to bring back.  If the current administration wants to create jobs and ‘Make America Great Again’ it should consider enlisting more migrants.”

Unfortunately, high unemployment areas have greater anti-immigrant sentiment.  And, the less contact a native-born American has with immigrants, the more likely they are to have a negative view of immigrants.  Skill development of the native-born population, not deportation is the answer.  According to Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Fixing immigration is not about mass deportations of people but creating a legal visa system for jobs Americas do not want.  And it is about providing better education opportunities, skills development and retooling, and safety nets for American workers.”  Investing in infrastructure, education and healthcare is an investment in American workers and American families, and immigrants are essential to our collective success.

An older white man, who attends my church, left multiple copies of a document on the table where the adult Sunday School meets that outlines how an older white man may feel in America today.  Because of his beliefs, the author of this outline of statements believes that others see him as a racist, fascist, homophobe, traitor to the working class, infidel, member of the gun lobby, useless old man, reactionary, xenophobe, right-wing extremist, anti-socialist,  and militant.  In it, he pleads for others to help him come to terms with the new him, because he is just not sure who he is anymore because of all the abrupt and new-found changes in his life and thinking.  He doesn’t know what happened.

What happened is that the rules have changed!  The American Dream use to mean that a white male would easily get a job and follow the rules and be either equally or more than well-off then his parents in supporting his family.  But then, accelerated technological change, globalism, gender and minority equality and immigration changed the playing field.  Good paying entry-level jobs are either few and far between or no longer available.   White men feel betrayed by the failure of the promise of the American Dream that they grew up believing in.  And they are angry!

Some angry white men tend to blame feminists, gender equality, minorities, immigrants and LGBT people for their current situation (which partly explains their allegiance to Trumpism’s racism and misogyny), rather than the plutocracy that has overtaken our democracy.  The plutocracy is now enjoying massive tax cuts, while labor unions have been dismantled eliminating the power of collective bargaining.

A similar situation happened after the stock market crash in 1929.  Unemployed men became angry and Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded with the New Deal in 1932.  This legislation worked from the bottom up by implementing substantial government spending to put people back to work.  Conversely, Donald Trump is responding with a trickle down method that has proven not work over the last 30 years.  Trickle down only enriches the few while impoverishing everyone else.

We need legislators who support repairing infrastructure, public education, job training, and affordable healthcare for all, not those who support massive tax cuts that result in stock buybacks that only enrich CEOs and stockholders.  We need a fair and honest government for all.  Focus your righteous anger in the right direction rather than at the people who are in the same boat with you.