Category: Politics

SUPER TRUMP: AN ACTION FIGURE WITHOUT A CLUE

Well, score one for Team Trump. They said their guy would blow everything up, and that’s just what he is doing. Take a look at the headlines:

• Refugee Ban Causes Worldwide Furor (Washington Post)
• Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide (New York Times)
• Donald Trump’s Immigration Order Sparks Confusion, Despair at Airports (Wall Street Journal)

I suspect there are 63 million arms pumping away over all this turmoil. After all, one person’s furor, chaos and despair is someone else’s sweet sound of a draining swamp. Yet, as it has been written – or should have been if it hasn’t – any fool can light a fuse (or drain a swamp); the hard part is replacing the ruins with something better. On that end, there has been only a bewildering mixture of wanton hyperbole and silence.

This administration is not high on details. If it had been, Trump might have a chosen a date other than Holocaust Remembrance Day (Friday) to sign an order suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days, indefinitely barring Syrian refuges and blocking citizens of Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Politico reported that a Twitter account methodically posting names of Jews refused asylum in the United States and subsequently murdered in the Holocaust was retweeted thousands of times on Friday.

According to nonstop news accounts, Trump’s order provoked pandemonium at airports where numerous legal residents were denied admission from foreign trips. An Iraqi interpreter who served in the U.S. military for over a decade, was put in handcuffs at New York’s JFK airport and detained until a judge ordered his release. According to a Politico report, an Iranian scientist on her way to Harvard Medical School to work on a cure for tuberculosis, was not allowed to board her plane.

Trump’s executive order drew intense criticism from world leaders, a number of Republicans, representatives of most major religions and the CEOs of nearly every Silicon Valley high tech corporation which employs foreign nationals. The White House was anything but contrite. The president’s senior advisor, Kellyanne Conway tweeted Saturday night: “Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact. Promises made, promises kept. Shock to the system. And he’s just getting started.”

Nobody from Trump’s office, of course, even attempted to connect the dots between the hastily and sloppily drafted executive order and the goal of protecting Americans from terrorism. None of the 9/11 terrorists were from the seven countries named in the order. Other countries that have produced numerous terrorists, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were untouched by the order. The result is a cruel illusion of security at the price of keeping law abiding foreign nationals from entering the country. The National Basketball Association is hardly a hotbed of political activists, but the Milwaukee Bucks made a point of starting Thon Maker, a Sudanese immigrant, Saturday night as a protest over Trump’s xenophobic order.

The problem with all of this, for the country and for Trump, was captured in Kellyanne Conway’s tweet: “. . .he’s just getting started.” These people are still in campaign mode. They are pushing the narrative of Trump the Superhero, the guy who can singlehandedly “Make Gotham Great Again.” What they are ignoring is the reality that a four-year term is a marathon, not a sprint and, despite the campaign lore of Trump’s invincibility, he can’t go it alone.

He’s been in office less than 10 days and Republican congressional leaders are struggling valiantly to keep a lid on their dismay over their party’s president. Several key lawmakers broke the vow of silence over the weekend and publicly criticized his immigration order. Consistent with superhero fashion, it was drafted and released without consulting Congressional Republicans.

As former president Barack Obama can attest, you can only go so far with executive orders. Trump was dealt a winning hand last November: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. But the president’s solipsism is not conducive to making that legislative advantage work for him. According to a secret recording from last week’s Republican meeting in Philadelphia, there was considerable angst voiced over Trump’s lack of any details concerning a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) “That’s going to be called TrumpCare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.” The colossal disaster of Trump’s immigration rollout this weekend did nothing to lower the anxiety level of House Republicans.

Instead, the president managed to throw even more energy into a growing resistance movement with spontaneous protest rallies across the country. There is widespread anger over the harm inflicted on innocent immigrants and foreign nationals, with no persuasive evidence that the plan will do anything to reduce terrorism. Most speculation, as a matter of fact, leans in the opposite direction, that anger over the move will be used as a terrorist recruiting tool.

For the moment, however, the White House is content to cling to the campaign fiction that Trump’s superhero powers, alone, will win the day and eradicate evil. For those who no longer read comic books, the time will soon come when measurable, quantifiable results will determine the success of this presidency. Right now, all indications are that such a test will be Trump’s kryptonite.

AN IMPORTANT LESSON LURKING AMONG THE RUBBLE ON FACEBOOK

I found something pretty incredible on Facebook the other day. It was hidden in the clutter of proclamations, declarations and protestations that dot our daily dose of social media cognition. It was unaccompanied by bold headlines and offered no sharp-edged sarcastic graphics. In plain, quiet 12-point type, the words almost seem to whisper. This is what they said:

“Just a thought but today, once again, I was reminded to use caution (when) speaking with family, friends and relatives. Those words might be the last thing that you ever have a chance to say to them. If you truly care, be careful. Sometimes hurt feelings become anger. Choose wisely.”

The message was written by a guy I barely know, someone I went to high school with 50 years ago. I can’t precisely place him, although I have a vague recollection of the two of us shooting spitballs in study hall. Now I am marveling at the wisdom and well-timed relevancy of his advice.

We’ve all been locked into this bizarre, and seemingly endless, political passion play for the last 18 months. Who among us has never chosen unwisely, never treaded or trampled on the feelings of those who don’t share our world view? The instantaneousness of social media is not always compatible with audience analysis and wise choices. Much has been written about how the presidential campaign, and its ongoing aftermath, have strained and destroyed close personal relationships (here, here and here). The New York Times just released a compelling video involving three parent-adult child dyads grappling with the Trump-Anti Trump dichotomy and the toll it took on their relationships. We’ve all gotten so caught up in preaching the righteousness of our beliefs that we needlessly and unintentionally hurt those who see the world differently.

I was so taken with my classmate’s advice, that I went to his homepage to see what other pearls of wisdom David had to offer. I am using only his first name here out of respect for his privacy, since he didn’t sign up to share his comments with my 300,000 blog readers. (Readership estimates calculated by Sean Spicer and Associates.) David heaped praise on the Republican/conservative control of all three branches of government and was critical of former President Obama for “forcing his extreme far-left agenda on an unwilling country by executive orders, left wing judges, and obsequious bureaucrats.”

As a far-left true believer, I disagreed with the content of virtually all of David’s political writings. Yet, there was something refreshingly nostalgic in the tone of his messages. He stuck to the subject matter, to the issue at hand, and never threw daggers or venom-laced sarcasm at those who might hold contrary views. I found it utterly refreshing. It was a throwback to our high school days.

I was on the debate team then. We learned how to argue both sides of an issue, a process that instilled a tremendous respect for differences of opinion. I covered the Minnesota Legislature in the 1970s, back when politicians treated each other with respect and civility, fighting over ideas without assassinating each other’s character. All of that now seems as outdated as rotary telephones and Smith Corona typewriters. We seem to have lost the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

I live in a 55-and-up community where we all smile and wave at each other. The friendliness, however, morphs into cut-throat vindictiveness as soon as the neighborhood list serve detects a whiff of political thought. This week’s “nana na nana” exchange was over who was more obnoxious, Madonna or Donald Trump? The monitor had to shut it down and remind us to avoid political discussions. Here we are, a bunch of geezers in the twilight of our lives, and we can’t carry on a political discussion without sounding like professional wrestlers.

Remember the old “Saturday Night Live” riff on Point/Counterpoint? Dan Akroyd always started his counter to Jane Curtin’s opening argument with, “Jane, you ignorant slut!” It was a funny exaggeration back then. Now it’s standard procedure. I finally went cold turkey on the nightly cable news talk shows because I couldn’t take the shouting, the interruptions and the caustic sarcasm. Then come those daily email solicitations from political groups, all using what Andrés Martinez, an Arizona State University professor, calls “dystopian depictions” of the opposition. Martinez astutely notes that people are more inclined to push a button and donate $20 if they think they are helping to fight evil incarnate, as opposed to a reasonable person with whom we disagree.

Polarization clearly wins for cable programming and internet fundraising. But it also seeps into our psyche where it does absolutely nothing for our humanity. One of David’s political posts defended Trump’s bankruptcy filings on the basis that they were nothing more than a successful business strategy. From the left, there are obviously a number of rational and legitimate retorts that could have been offered. Instead, an alleged liberal, posted this rebuttal: “So a success? Fuck no, and it takes a brainwashed piece of shit idiot to even pretend it’s so. Know what’s good though? You’re old, and will be dead soon. And the world will be better off.”

The angry, young author of that comment deserves to be hit with a speeding spitball. The truth is that the world will be better off when there are more people like David in it, people who stand up for their beliefs without denigrating those who believe something else.

THE ILLUSIVE SEARCH FOR TRUTH IN A TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

We’re not even 100 hours into the Trump presidency and he has uttered a string of foolish, sophomoric lies on mostly trivial subjects, ones that, oddly and pathologically, matter only to him. In other words, whoever had January 21 or 22 in the pool on when this guy would start acting presidential lost. And the rest of the month is not looking any more promising.

Among this weekend’s presidential proclamations:

• There were 1.5 million people at his inauguration, the largest inaugural crowd ever. There were actually about 250,000 people there, dwarfing the 2009 Obama inauguration which drew 1.8 million. The new president’s fabrication became an instant meme; even the Jumbotron at a Dallas hockey game got into the act by flashing, “Tonight’s Attendance: 1.5 Million!”
• After a few rain drops fell at the start of his speech, President Trump said “God looked down and he said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. The truth is it stopped immediately.” (This was, by the way, the first recorded report of God ever referring to Himself with a plural pronoun.) According to the Washington Post and the National Weather Service, the rain continued during the first several minutes of Trump’s speech.
• The President reported that as soon as he finished his speech, there was a pounding downpour. That simply did not happen according to weather authorities.
• President Trump told career intelligence staffers at the Central Intelligence Agency Saturday that the news media totally fabricated a report that he had been critical of their work. Days earlier, Trump’s own tweets had compared CIA employees to Nazis and made fun of them for having been wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

This singularly bizarre presidential behavior on Trump’s part should come as no surprise, although it will for anyone who held out hope that, somehow, the oath of office would transform him from a narcissistic combatant into a more serious statesperson. After all, against all odds and predictions, Trump now holds the most important job in the free world. Why is he still acting like an insecure adolescent, obsessed with constantly proving himself? The answer would fill a PhD dissertation, and I’m sure several are already in progress.

Unfortunately, unless his staff finds a way of reigning him in, – and prospects for that are extremely low – we will have to adjust to a new normal: a president totally lacking in basic leadership skills. Google the subject and you will immediately find thousands of treatises on the necessity of leaders establishing credibility and being selective in picking their battles (here, here and here). That is foreign terrain to our new president. The size of the inauguration crowd does not matter one iota. If 12 people or 12 million people had showed up, his presidential powers remain the same. Spending the first 50 hours of his presidency in a urination contest over crowd sizes and weather reports makes no strategic sense, particularly when the news media has hard evidence of his falsehoods.

The problem, of course, goes well beyond the immediate issue of crowd counts and weather patterns. What happens when the president’s words really matter? What if he’s talking about the number of American casualties in battle? Or the substance of a trade agreement? Or how many people are without health insurance? Trump’s disregard for the truth is pathological, meaning he lies constantly, whether he needs to or not. The New York Times reported a story from Trump butler Anthony Senecal, who said the president once told someone that the nursery tiles at Mar-a-Lago were made by Walt Disney. Senecal told Trump that was not true. His boss’ response? “Who cares?”

Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University psychologist, wrote a fascinating book explaining the cognitive process that causes some people to, in effect, create a false reality and believe it is true. In his book, “Stumbling on Happiness,” Gilbert laid out such a thought process. A person knowingly exaggerates an observation to match a fantasy or an expectation. Most people, he said, then differentiate between the fantasy and the actual situation. But some, Gilbert writes, repeat the exaggeration so often that they come to believe it.

Mix that scenario with what Trump, in his autobiography, “The Art of the Deal,” called “truthful hyperbole,” and you have a recipe for converting the imagination into reality. Here is what Trump wrote in that book: “People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.” 

Its innocence, however, quickly dissipates when you lose the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, particularly when your job description includes access to the nuclear codes. Hang onto your seats. This is going to be a long, bumpy ride.

POST ELECTION BLUES? YOU’LL FIND NO ESCAPE IN FLORIDA

Having just returned from a protracted stay in Florida, I’m still trying to untangle the state’s incongruous dualism. There is nothing more radiant than ocean waves glistening under a January sun. Yet, you don’t have to venture far from the beach to find a sea of tacky souvenir shops offering, in almost parody fashion, blow-up sea urchins and plastic alligator heads that glow in the dark. They can be ignored if you try hard enough, focusing instead on the elegant palm trees and luscious greenery adorning Florida’s highways and byways. Then again, such aesthetic vegetation is interspersed with gigantic billboards, split evenly between adult sex shops and personal injury lawyers. Florida folks are pragmatic. If a marital aid breaks at an inopportune time, they know who to call for punitive damages.

And then there’s politics. Florida and its 29 electoral votes have long been the southern belle of presidential elections, drawing more attention than any state below the Mason-Dixon line, and most of them above it. Its hanging chads took center stage in the 2000 legal battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. President Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012. Two of the supporting actors in last year’s Republican primary drama – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – are Floridians. But Donald Trump beat them both and went on to capture the state’s electoral prize in November. With that sometimes-you-win-and-sometimes-you-lose background, you’d think Florida voters would be in a Que Sera, Sera kind of place over the pending Trump inauguration.

That’s decidedly not the case. The most dramatic evidence of the deep personal tension felt by many Floridian liberals came in an unlikely venue. Micanopy is a small, beautifully peaceful, antediluvian town a few miles south of Gainesville. Its main drag is filled with shops selling crafts, antiques and home furnishings. We spent an hour in one of those stores and drew an occasional glance from the owner, who undoubtedly marked us as out-of-towners. She approached us after the other customers had left and asked where we were from. Upon learning that we lived a few miles outside of Washington, D.C., she withdrew into a brief and pensive silence. After mentally calculating the political demographics, she took a chance.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she told us. “This whole thing with Trump. I’ve never been so scared.” My wife, Melissa, and I nodded and smiled, much to the store owner’s relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, “I figured you were safe. You just never know. So many customers are for Trump. It’s just awful. I can’t let on and I don’t even want to talk to them. I’ve never been through anything like this. My candidates have lost in the past and life goes on. But this time is different. I am scared of this guy. Some of his supporters scare me even more. The day after the election, I thought I would close the shop and sell the business so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But it’s been my life. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s not just a Florida thing. New York City is offering employees counseling services and other support for dealing with Trump’s election. Therapists throughout the nation have reported an overwhelming caseload of patients needing help with their anxiety and depression over the incoming Trump administration. Staffers at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline say they have been swamped with calls from people in deep distress with feelings of hopelessness and betrayal over the election.

It’s a safe bet that this level of angst has to do with more than differences of opinion over tax policy or climate change. By campaigning against what he called “political correctness,” Trump, intentionally or unintentionally, validated the misogyny, racism and homophobia that progressives have been fighting for decades. For people affected by identity politics, this is deeply personal.

A man who sexually assaulted women and made disparaging comments based on race, religion and nationality will become president of the United States by the end of the week. A bully who delights in punching below his weight and demeaning anyone who gets in his way will soon be the leader of the free world.

Those of us who are bothered by our new reality have been counseled by Trump voters to “get over it and move on.” They are half right. We will never – and should never – get over the fact that our new president is the antithesis of the character and values we struggled to instill in our children: kindness, inclusiveness, fairness, decency and honesty. He is who he is. We need to accept that and move on. As of 12:01 p.m. Friday, we’re playing for keeps. It’s no longer about obnoxious early-morning tweets or a Fox news soundbite. Now it’s about policies and programs, legislation and executive orders. We who believe that America’s greatness lies in its diversity, including all of those struggling in the shadows, need to focus on keeping our dream alive.

Yes, this week’s inauguration represents one of the finest attributes of America’s unique democracy: the peaceful transfer of power based on the will of the electorate. Yet, another equally powerful piece of our system is one that allows citizens to rise up in agitation and peaceful protest when leaders betray the values and principles that made our country great. That’s why Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington is just as important to this inauguration as Friday’s swearing in.

Although our candidate lost, her campaign theme continues to thrive. Starting with Saturday’s march, and continuing every day for the next four years, we are, indeed, Stronger Together.

LET’S GUARANTEE AN ANNUAL INCOME FOR EVERY AMERICAN

Here is a radical notion that deserves serious attention: guarantee every adult citizen an annual income for life. This socialist-sounding plan has not exactly received a Palm Sunday reception from the mainstream political class. There are encouraging signs, however, that it will eventually reach the table of public policy, as soon as we admit that there is no magic bullet of a jobs program that will cure the cancer of income disparity.

As noted here earlier this week, our country’s employment problem is chronic and structural. It’s not about a lack of jobs; it’s about jobs that don’t pay enough to support the middle class. That’s why, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, nearly half of recent college graduates are underemployed in jobs not requiring a degree and not paying much above minimum wage. A jobs program will do little to resolve this dilemma. Technology now allows companies to produce products and services with far fewer workers than in the past. Since capitalism is all about maximizing return on investment, this trend is not only unstoppable, it’s growth is a certainty.

The basic concept of a guaranteed annual income, or GAI, is simple. People would get a monthly allotment from the federal government, just like Social Security except that the payments start at 21 instead of 62. Like any public policy, the meat and the meaning of the program lie in the details. For example, some conservatives, including the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, have proposed replacing entitlements like Social Security and Medicare with a GAI starting on a citizen’s 21st birthday. Murray’s proposal, recently laid out in the Wall Street Journal, would give everyone $13,000 a year. They could earn up to $30,000 annually without a reduction in their GAI payments. That benefit would then be incrementally reduced until it reached $6,500 a year at the point of someone having an annual pay rate of $60,000 or more. Murray’s scheme would also eliminate every current social welfare program, including food stamps, housing subsidies and Medicaid, in exchange for lifetime cash payments.

As you might have guessed, the math of Murray’s plan is not all that progressive. The trade-off for a GAI, namely the elimination of every entitlement and welfare program, is a net loss for the middle class. A good counterproposal from the left might be to keep all current programs in place and give everyone making less than $60,000 a year an annual payment of, say, $30,000. And then look for middle ground. The significance of Murry’s piece in the Journal is that a leading thinker on the right acknowledged a truth still denied by most elected leaders, namely that our world has changed so much because of technology that we can no longer cling to the work ethic that has driven economic thought for the past 200 years. Wrote Murray, ”. . .it will need to be possible, within a few decades, for a life well lived in the U.S. not to involve a job as traditionally defined.”

That is precisely the lens we need to be looking through in search of a long-term solution to our employment problem. The concept of a GAI is not new. It was a popular issue in the early 1970s, supported by Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and, to a limited extent the guy who beat him, Richard Nixon. The hurdle it could never clear was that such payments would be an incentive not to work and, therefore, an impairment to the country’s productivity. We are in a different place now. Productivity can be achieved by robots and software programs. Why not raise taxes on the billionaire investors profiting from this new paradigm and return a dividend of sorts in the form of a GAI to the folks adversely impacted by the change?

As radical as it may sound, it is not terribly different in form or substance from the ad hoc corporate socialism doled out under our current system. Existing federal welfare payments are making it possible for large corporations to employ low wage workers with no benefits. In just one example, identified by Forbes, Walmart employees receive $6.2 billion a year in federal public assistance through food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing. This is precisely the same policy transaction incorporated in the GAI; low-paid workers subsidized through federal funds. It’s a win for the worker, the employer and the economy.

It’s also the same concept used by Donald Trump and Mike Pence in persuading Indiana’s Carrier Corporation not to move 800 jobs to Mexico. In exchange for keeping those jobs in Indiana, Carrier got $7 million in tax credits and other incentives, another form of a government employment subsidy, and quite an expensive one at that. The epilogue of that story, by the way, shows how badly we need a comprehensive solution to this problem. Part of the agreement was that Carrier would invest another $16 million in its Indiana plant, supposedly earnest money showing its commitment to American jobs. A few days ago, company executives said a portion of that investment will be used to automate the plant so that more jobs can be eliminated.

Structural problems need structural solutions, not sloppy patchwork fixes. It’s time for policy makers to accept the fact that employment alone is no longer a sufficient engine to drive our economy. It’s also time for all of us to rethink just what it means to lead a good life, recognizing that self-worth is not tied to a paycheck. The most direct route to that destination is a guaranteed annual income.

THE EMPLOYMENT PROBLEM: IT’S ABOUT THE PAY, NOT THE NUMBER OF JOBS

My New Year’s wish for serious policy makers is that they abandon the illusion that the economic problems of the middle class can be fixed by the right jobs program. The simple truth is that technology has wiped out millions of good-paying jobs, and millions more are on the chopping block. Most are not coming back, and those that do will be at a much lower pay rate. The result has been a severe widening of the income gap between workers and investors, between capital and labor. In the space that follows, I will outline the current employment problem and show how it resulted from deep structural economic changes, as opposed to cyclical alterations that might well be modified by a federal job creation effort. Later this week, I will take up the matter of what to do about it.

Our elected leaders are still in deep denial over the seismic structural shift that has profoundly altered the nature of employment in this country. In their view, the job market took a severe jolt from the 2008 recession and a couple bad trade agreements. They see that unemployment is down now and pretend that everything will be fine once we bring those lost jobs back to our shores. As hopeful as the premise is, there is absolutely no evidence to support it.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that manufacturing output is now close to the prerecession level, but 1.5 million factory jobs appear to be lost for good. Compounding the problem is the fact that a large number of the jobs that did come back pay significantly less than they once did. As the Journal put it, automation technology now allows manufacturers to “function, and even thrive with fewer employees than ever before.”

Here is just one example of how this playing out, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: A Michigan company called Ranir moved its electric toothbrush manufacturing plant to China. A few years later, in an attempt to lower labor costs even further, it retuned one-fifth of that production to Grand Rapids. This is precisely the kind of move that Donald Trump has made the cornerstone of his job creation pledge in his effort to make America Great Again. In fact, Ranir is cranking out 13,000 American made toothbrush heads a day for Wal-Mart and other retailers. The work, however, entails only four actual humans whose jobs involve monitoring the computers that control the robots that are doing the actual work. This is the new industrial food chain: from well-paid American workers, to low-paid Chinese workers, to no-pay robots. Clearly, the days of $25-an-hour manufacturing jobs as a mainstay of our economy have ended. The plants may return from off-shore, but the jobs aren’t coming with them.

The nation’s 1.7 million truck drivers, many making $70,000 a year or more with full medical benefits, will likely be the next large group to be replaced by technology. In another decade, perhaps sooner, the trucking industry is banking on having employee-free fleets of driverless vehicles. High on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ list of jobs endangered by technology is that of mail carrier, once a highly sought lifetime guarantee of economic security. Also vulnerable, says the BLS, are radio announcers and disc jockeys who are being replaced by automated playlists. Same goes for newspaper reporters, a job class already reduced by more than 30% due to the product’s digital platform. The BLS sees further reductions as a result of the ability of computers to generate stories, a process currently in limited use by the Associated Press. Even insurance underwriters are going the way of the dinosaur, replaced by software programs. These, and many more good middle class jobs like them, are heading for extinction, with no apparent successor in sight.

What does that mean for our economy? Try wrapping your head around this statistic: The average annual pre-tax salary for the bottom half of American workers (by income) is $16,197. That’s only $1,000 a year above what a teenager working 40 hours a week at McDonalds makes, based on the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In other words, our problem is not an absence of jobs; it’s the lack of jobs that pay well. Unrestrained, free market capitalism has run amok. Corporations are making gigantic profits with minimal labor costs, thanks to mechanized, non-human production.

Statistically, we are now approaching full employment. Yet, the average worker on the bottom half of the income range is paid close to the poverty level, an amount almost identical to what it was 40 years ago. Meanwhile, those in the top 10% of that pay range saw their income increase by 231% over the same period. There isn’t a jobs program proposed by Donald Trump or anyone else that even pretends to close that gap. On Wednesday, I will discuss a potential solution for this dilemma. Please stay tuned.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER RUSSIA’S THEFT OF OUR ELECTION?

The biggest guessing game in Washington right now is what it will take for the Democrats to throw a major league temper tantrum over the antics of the incoming administration. How about a conclusion by the CIA and FBI that Russian espionage helped elect Donald Trump? Wait, that actually happened, didn’t it? It was easy to miss because the reaction from the loyal opposition was more of a whimper than a wail.

House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., normally no shrinking violet when it comes to pitched rhetoric, responded to the bombshell with these uncharacteristically modulated sentences: “This is not (about) overturning this election. This is about making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

In the Senate, incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said the unanimous consensus by the country’s top intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump win was “simultaneously stunning and not surprising.” He and Pelosi then pushed for a bipartisan congressional investigation. Watergate and 9/11 eventually had their investigations, but they were preceded by well-deserved rhetorical flourishes aimed at setting a moral tone for the country.

Obviously, such an inquiry is necessary. But from the standpoint of leveraging power and public opinion in dealing with Team Trump, particularly as a minority party, it is far from sufficient. I’ve never been an advocate of frivolously jumping into battles. Anger is not a strategy, but used sparingly and selectively, it can be an effective tactic, particularly when laced with a dose or two of righteous indignation. Given the enormity of evil associated with Russian spies pressing their fingers on the scales of our democracy, it’s hard to think of a better time to let loose with that tactic. As Rabbi Hillel so wisely and rhetorically asked, “If not now, when?”

Now is the time for Democratic leaders to fan out to the networks and cable shows, talking points in hand. Now is the time for them to scream from the rooftops about an election that was stolen from the American people. Now is the time to avoid mincing words. It’s time to call Donald Trump out as Vladimir Putin’s puppet, the candidate backed by the Kremlin’s finest chicanery. Now is the time to take to the streets, not because we don’t like Donald Trump, but because his election was rigged by the Russians and, therefore lacks legitimacy.

One of the first things I learned as a union negotiator is that if your side is suffering a power deficit, as ours always did, you have to find a way to create power. Right now, through a confluence of circumstances, Democrats, who are sorely lacking in political power, have an opportunity to gain leverage. But they have to rise above their post-election shell shock and timidity. Russian spies helped elect Donald Trump, for God’s sake. Why tiptoe around it? If nothing else, a strong offense could pull Trump off his transition game, sending him into late night Twitter defense, a play that brings a cringe to even his most ardent supporters. Better yet, it could build enough steam for the Senate to torpedo the confirmation of Putin’s buddy, Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

There is power in the moral high ground. It captures peoples’ hearts and minds, rallying them to a noble cause. No, it is not likely to stop a Trump presidency. But it can alter the narrative. And as we learned from this election, the right narrative delivers power. Instead of the outsider riding into Washington on his white horse to shake everything up, we can make it about Russian skullduggery producing a U.S. president who had 2.8 million fewer votes than Putin’s nemesis, Hillary Clinton. To those who say, “Get over it. Trump won; he is our president,” a reminder is in order. Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, by much wider electoral vote margins and without interference from a foreign adversary. Yet, the legitimacy of his presidency was challenged by Republicans from Day 1, all on the basis of utter balderdash. Every blatantly false claim imaginable – from being a Muslim to his birth in Kenya – was used to challenge the authenticity of the country’s first black president.

Although despicable, the Republican strategy was effective. It weakened his administration, particularly in the early years. Democrats may be hesitant to follow that path because it left such a stench in the political atmosphere. But there is one huge difference between then and now, namely a genuine, real life, honest-to-God basis to challenge the legitimacy of the 45th president.

FBI Director James Comey, a Republican and obviously no friend of Hillary Clinton, today joined the CIA and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in declaring that Russia’s interference in the election was done to help Trump win. Couple those findings with Putin’s autocratic history as a dictator who has had his political opponents imprisoned and murdered, and you have a compellingly strong basis upon which to challenge the legitimacy of this president.

Unfortunately, the Democratic response has been limited to meekly calling for an investigation, as if we were dealing with some sort of bureaucratic screw up, as opposed to one of the most extraordinary events in our political history. The party’s leaders are understandably in a bit of post-election disarray right now. For the sake of the country, they need to quickly get past it. And then work up some passionate outrage over Russia’s theft of our election.

TRUMP DROPS A DIME ON CHRISTIE TO PROTECT THE RUSSIANS

In trying to defend the Russians against accusations of hacking the Democrats’ emails, Donald Trump first suggested that the culprit could be a 400-pound guy “sitting on his bed.” Now he says it might have “been a guy in New Jersey.” Put the clues together, people. Trump is clearly fingering Chris Christie. There just aren’t that many 400-pound New Jersey Republicans with a propensity for dirty tricks. (See Bridgegate.)

Pity the poor governor from the Garden State. Once the GOP’s king of the hill, before being vanquished by the president-elect, Christie spent all fall clinging to Trump like a hostage to his captor. He was rewarded for his blind subservience by the then-dubious distinction of heading up Trump’s transition team. Of course that was back when not even The Donald thought he would ever have anything to actually transition to. Within days of his unanticipated victory, Christie was summarily transitioned out. He has now been reduced to playing Trump’s imaginary foil in his unwavering and unnerving defense of Vladimir Putin. Poor Chris Christie. He was, for one brief shining moment, a credible presidential candidate. Now, to Trump, he’s a just a fat guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey, tying up bridge traffic and hacking John Podesta’s emails.

Fantasy? Sure, but it’s not all that far outside the realm of our new normal. Is it just me, or does our new normal really resemble a bad dream sequence, or maybe an old “Twilight Zone” episode? The first half of the weekend was devoted to an esoteric battle between the CIA and the FBI over whether Russia interfered with our presidential election in order to help Trump win or just to mess with us. The second half was filled with Trump defending the Putin crowd from any wrongdoing and preparing to nominate as secretary of state an oil company executive with close ties to Russia.

I keep having flashbacks to my elementary school years. At precisely 1 p.m. central time on the first Wednesday of every month, an air raid siren went off and we had to crawl under our desks until it stopped. This was how we prepared for a Russian attack. It was traumatic for me. I was too big to fit under my desk, so I sort of curled up next to it, certain that I would be the first to die when the bombs started dropping. Fast forward 60 years: these sneaky Russians have moved on from bombing elementary schools to screwing with our elections.

I get the fact that the cold war is over, but Putin’s regime has been a stubbornly unpleasant thorn in our side for years. The Washington Post’s incredible reporting Friday that the CIA has evidence of Russia’s interference in our presidential election was blockbuster stuff. It was almost enough for me to crawl under my desk. I could fit there now but am way too old and arthritic to get up again.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when credible reports of Russian election tampering would have triggered a strong, swift bipartisan response on the part of our country’s political players. And the Republicans would have been out front banging the war drums. Yet it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell more than 48 hours to issue this remarkably tepid statement: “The Russians are not our friends.” His initial reaction to the Post’s report was to express doubt over the accuracy of the CIA’s findings, echoing with subdued language the more verbosely articulated sentiment of President-elect Trump who called the claim of Russian interference “ridiculous.” By this morning, however, McConnell reversed course and supported the call for a congressional investigation.

Of course, long-time Republican Russian critics like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were not swayed by Trump’s affinity for Putin. Both were quick to criticize Russian interference and call for a thorough investigation. Neocon hawk and former UN Ambassador John Bolton would have ordinarily joined that chorus. However, he is now looking for a top state department job in the new administration. He told Fox News that he thinks the Russian election flap may be a “false flag” planted by the Obama Administration in order to rile the Russians. That motion appeared to die for lack of a second.

That pretty much leaves Trump and his hangers-on sticking with the Russia-can-do-no-evil position. Putin is one of the few players on the world stage never to get so much as a vindictive late night tweet from the incoming president. Trump is fond of recalling how Putin once described him as brilliant. If that’s all it takes to influence this administration, O.J. Simpson should get himself a thesaurus of superlatives and a pardon application. And when he’s done, he should pass them both on to poor old Chris Christie.

PROTECTING WORKERS FROM A NEW FOXX IN THE HOUSE OF LABOR

In keeping with what headline writers are calling our new “post-factual” world, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-NC, the incoming chair of the House labor committee told Reuters this week that unions are no longer needed because there are so many laws in place to protect workers. Her assertion approximates the level of accuracy in the absurd and discredited claim that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex slave ring out of a D.C. pizza joint.

The way things are going right now, it would not be a surprise if some disgruntled worker marched into the district with an AK-47, demanding that Fox’s committee enforce his right to a dental plan and paid vacation. The truth of the matter is that those rights don’t exist without a union contract. As they used to say in this town during the days of civility, the Distinguished Committee Chair from the Great State of North Carolina is badly mistaken.

The United States has always taken a minimalist approach with respect to protective labor legislation, giving wide berth to market forces (also known as managerial discretion) and collective bargaining in determining an employer’s workplace practices. Since union penetration in the private sector is hovering between six and seven percent, that means the vast majority of the country’s workers are pretty much at their bosses’ mercy when it comes to pay, working conditions and job security.

Yes, there are some minimal guarantees and protections imposed by law, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to what most other industrialized countries have done to protect workers. For example, the last major piece of protective labor legislation in the United States was the Family and Medical Leave Act. Adopted in 1993, it required employers to give their workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to care for sick family members or themselves. Most other countries mandate more than 12 weeks of fully paid leave for the same purpose.

Throughout Europe, employees are protected by law from unfair discharges. A worker is able to contest a firing before a government tribunal or an appointed neutral third party. Discharged European employees are entitled to severance pay by law. The United States is the only country adhering to the common law principle of “employment at will,” meaning that, absent a union contract or a claim of discrimination, workers can be fired for any reason or for no reason. There is no law mandating severance pay.

The new House labor chair certainly can’t be talking about pay when suggesting that legal protections for workers have eliminated a need for unions. The current federal minimum wage is an utterly unlivable $7.25 an hour. The battle for a $15 an hour minimum has been spearheaded by organized labor and has had success in a limited number of very progressive blue states and municipalities. Ironically, two days after Rep. Foxx talked about the abundance of legal protections for workers, President-elect Donald Trump nominated as his labor secretary a fast food company CEO opposed to increasing the minimum wage.

As the head of the Carl’s Jr hamburger chain, Labor Secretary-to-be Andy Puzder found himself on the receiving end of countless DOL complaints over the firm’s alleged failure to comply with the country’s exceedingly low standards on pay and work hours. This is not a guy who is apt to obliterate the need for unions by forcing companies to treat their workers fairly. He has already indicated he wants nothing to do with the Obama labor department’s move to nearly double the wage threshold for overtime eligibility. A new rule was set to take effect Dec. 1 requiring employers to pay time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours in a week to nearly everyone making under $47,476 a year. That would have meant a raise for more than 4.2 million employees. However, the rule change was held up by a last-minute injunction from a federal judge in Texas. Nobody expects the Trump administration to pursue an appeal.

On the other end of the spectrum from those forced to work more than 40 hours a week is a growing contingency of part-time workers who toil below the safety net of most government regulations. A recent study showed that the number of people involuntarily working part time because they could find no other work has increased by 44.6 percent since the pre-recession level of 2007. In most cases, this means lower pay, no benefits and a constantly shifting work schedule that makes it almost impossible for these employees to hold a second part-time job to make ends meet. With the exception of a few cities like Seattle and San Francisco, no government entity has seriously attempted to protect these folks.

Despite the false campaign-induced hopes of many in the beleaguered working class, it is abundantly clear that the Trump-Puzder-Foxx team is not about to enact new protections for workers. Instead, they will attempt to weaken or eliminate the few that are now in place. That means, with all due respect to Congresswoman Foxx, the only real protections for employees will be those they and their unions manage to negotiate. With this corporate crowd in charge, the need for labor unions and collective bargaining has never been stronger.

FINDING OUR WAY FROM THE ASHES OF DEFEAT

The defeat this week of a right wing Republican governor in North Carolina was much more than just a consolation prize for progressives. It was a well-timed reminder of how movement power can withstand severe electoral setbacks, particularly when it comes to matters of justice and human rights. While Republicans won every other contest in the Tar Heel State, Gov. Pat McCrory bit the dust largely because of what was seen as his unyielding opposition to LGBT rights.

McCrory conceded Monday to his Democratic opponent in an election that had been too close to call. In the end, he lost by 10,000 votes (out of 6.8 million), while Donald Trump carried the state by four percentage points and the incumbent Republican senator won reelection by six points.

The general consensus among political observers is that the governor was done in by what came to be known as the Bathroom Bill. The legislation, signed by McCrory in March, was about much more than bathrooms. It initially targeted the transgender community by allowing public restroom use only in accordance with a person’s birth gender. In its final form however, it prohibited cities from enforcing discrimination bans on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Flash back now, for just a moment, to those dark, gloomy, I’m-moving-to-Canada days of 2004. Not only did an unpopular George W. Bush manage to win reelection, Republicans picked up seats in both the House and Senate. But wait, there’s more. Constitutional amendments prohibiting same sex marriage were on the ballot in 11 states, and they all passed overwhelmingly. Bush’s political strategist, Karl Rove, was credited with the wildly successful plan of pushing the anti-marriage amendments as a turnout lure for social conservatives, many of whom might not have made the trip to the polls just to vote for Bush. I still remember that deep feeling of hopelessness and angst after the election. Not only did we have four more years of George W., the notion of marriage equality appeared to be dead and buried. Gallop validated the malaise a few months later with a poll showing that only 37 percent of the country supported same sex marriage.

Yet, something altogether different was happening. Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign and other LGBT groups, not only did the movement never stop, it picked up momentum and steam. They won marriage equality laws in key states like New York and Maryland. Men married men. Women married women. The sun came up the next day, and attitudes quickly changed, with a speed unparalleled in the history of civil rights. Other states followed suit. By 2012, Gallop’s annual tracking showed for the first time that a majority of Americans supported gay marriage. In large part, those rapidly changing views fueled the 2015 Supreme Court decision that declared marriage equality as the law of the land.

That very same LGBT movement was responsible for the defeat of North Carolina’s Bathroom Bill Governor. The well-oiled and brilliantly strategic Human Rights Campaign has had staff on the ground in North Carolina all year. Having already succeeded at planting the notion of gay and transgender rights as a basic fairness issue in the country’s psyche, they moved quickly to convert it into a business issue. Entertainers and professional sports teams canceled events because of the law. Business decided against relocating to North Carolina. Top corporate giants like Pepsi, Google, Apple and American Airlines all put the heat on the state over this discriminatory law. Although McCrory didn’t initiate the legislation, he made the political miscalculation to support it in order to curry favor with social conservatives. It became the albatross that ended his career.

The moral of the story should be clear. Despite how it felt at the time, all was not lost in the 2004 election. If the Human Rights Campaign had cashed in the chips on election night 12 years ago, several hundred thousand marriages would never have happened and a homophobic governor would have had four more years to wreak havoc in North Carolina. To be sure, movements have their ups and downs. But the quest for justice, fairness and equality never ends. It’s not the destination that changes, it’s the roadmap. It is up to us to find the right route and follow it, with our eyes always fixed on the prize.