Gun Haters are Becoming Gun Owners

Legitimately armed protestors at the Michigan State Capitol, April 15, 2020

Gun Haters are Becoming Gun Owners

“It’s no long the economy, stupid!” It’s America’s post-industrial culture war!

A recent NY Times polls tells us that American democracy is under severe threat… but approximately half the nation also believes that our democracy no longer works as a viable political system. Further, Republicans own more than double the number of firearms owned by Democrats. Guns are the number one killer of American children and teens, but the American guns-are-more-important-than-our-kids culture of violence, supported by a litany of distorted Supreme Court, suggests that guns (including assault weapons) are locked into permanence in our society. Token gun control legislation rarely slides by Supreme Court rejection standards. So, knowing that the “opposition” is well armed, many of that cohort are prepared to use their weapons in support of white Christian nationalism, guess who’s buying guns?! Liberals too?

That culture war thang is the driving force. The great divide? Non-college educated males in search of a new definition of masculinity, Christianity, geography and gender vs Breadwinning/ politically strong women, a knowledge-based economy and our educated minority. The are more women in college and many professional fields than men! Physical strength as a job metric is a vestige of an earlier era; even wars are fought with machines as easily run by women as by men. Notice that race was not the main factor! Young male suicides are up with the notion of “worthlessness” at the core. We know that guns are a male thang… not a priority among women or the educated. See a pattern yet? Bottom line, knowing that we cherish guns more than ever, America is arming itself on steroids.

Part of this fractionalization comes from the normalization of hate-speech and carrying guns in spaces unheard of just a few years ago, unpermitted concealed carry, stand your ground laws proliferating… or as Jennifer Carlson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Guns in Society at Arizona State University and a 2022 MacArthur fellow, puts in the October 27th Los Angeles Times: “There’s a new reason your neighbors bought a weapon — gun culture 3.0… Americans on the left and the right are starting to arm themselves against perceived threats of political violence…

“The rumors and conspiracy theories in Hurricane Helene’s wake came armed and dangerous: Government relief was a green light for property confiscation; funds had immediately run dry; the storm itself had been engineered by the government for the benefit of Kamala Harris’ campaign. Meterologists suffered death threats. In North Carolina, FEMA workers stopped knocking on doors out of fear that militia members were after them. In Tennessee, a church-group volunteer stood between federal helpers and angry open-carry gun-toting locals. And at least one arrest, of a man armed with a rifle and a handgun, took place in North Carolina.

“The paranoia in hurricane country, with its undercurrent of violence, is just the latest sign of a new wrinkle in American gun ownership, something scholars have started describing as gun culture 3.0. The 1.0 version is firearm ownership based on hunting, often animated by a mythologized Western frontier. Gun culture 2.0 is self-defense-oriented, motivated by overwhelming concerns about violent crime that emerged in the 1960s. For years, gun-owning Americans have told pollsters that the No. 1 reason they own guns is to protect themselves in dangerous situations.

“But that broad motivation conceals a shift in what many — though not all — gun owners feel they now need protection against. Borrowing from the militia movement, which identifies government tyranny as a key reason for firearms ownership, Gun culture 3.0 is all about perceived political threats unleashed by those no longer invested in normal guardrails — whether rogue government agents or rogue private individuals…

“[A] study published this summer in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that new gun owners are much more likely to be motivated by political concerns with regard to protective force than other issues: They want protection during rallies and demonstrations, and they are especially worried about violence from people who don’t share their political beliefs. Black gun owners — long-standing or new — in particular worried about police violence… These data points suggest that Americans across the spectrum are turning to firearms as a tool of last resort to regain — as ‘bad feminist’ and new gun owner Roxane Gay recently put it — ‘ways to not feel out of control.’ And our divisive and distrustful politics are driving them there.

“Some think political violence resolves itself, that it is its ‘own worst enemy,’ because the backlash it causes renews people’s commitment to civility, and a fundamental, despite-our-differences unity. But waiting for political violence to shock Americans back from the brink can’t be the only way to stem the division and fear behind gun culture 3.0.

“In Tennessee when armed antagonists approached aid workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the woman who stepped between them listened. ‘People just need to be heard,’ she told a reporter, ‘I said, ‘I hear you.’ ’ But she also pointed out what they could see for themselves: storm victims being helped, not exploited… We can depolarize everyday life, calling out divisive behavior and labeling disinformation for what it is, even among our political allies, and working — no matter how hard it might be — to approach those on the ‘other side’ with curiosity. Maybe even compassion… Neither gun ownership nor gun limits will address the underlying fear and polarization that feeds gun culture 3.0. We have to address our withered capacity to live with one another.” We live in a country where so many can picture shooting someone with opposing views without a twitch of guilt… by dehumanizing them first. For further background see my October 6th The Legitimized MAGA Politics of Violence blog.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that hating people for their beliefs, justifying killing or silencing them, has become a new normal should trouble us all.

How Protecting Profits for the Richest Pharmas and Healthcare Institutions is Sinking US Healthcare

How Protecting Profits for the Richest Pharmas and Healthcare Institutions is Sinking US Healthcare

From Medicare to Medi-Icouldcareless

A bad as my October 3rd We Have the Best Healthcare in the World, if You are Rich blog may have depicted the sad performance of the American healthcare system may have been, the numbers emphasize how much of an under-performer it is, and how much worse it is trending. Yet, medical care issues drifted into the back pages of campaign rhetoric, even with the threat of disruption to our failing healthcare system approaching catastrophic proportions. But there is no question that our current healthcare system makes little sense, especially when compared to that of any other developed country. Writing for the October 20th Yahoo!Finance, Adriana Belmonte provides the supporting numbers:

“The overall cost of healthcare remains a major problem. Healthcare expenditures grew 4.1% in 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion and accounting for 17.3% of US GDP…. The ballooning costs highlight the crux of the US healthcare conundrum: The US spends more on healthcare than any other developed country in the world — an estimated $13,493 per person. Yet it falls behind in overall healthcare performance, access and affordability, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes, according to the Commonwealth Fund… ‘The cost of healthcare is always a pocketbook concern for Americans,” Paul Shafer, assistant professor at Boston University's Department of Health Law, Policy, and Management…

“An estimated 20 million Americans collectively owe $220 billion in medical debt, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker… In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it would erase medical debt from credit reports using funding from the American Rescue Plan… KFF found that among insured adults with medical debt, 35% indicated they did not fill a prescription for medicine due to cost within the last 12 months (compared to 7% of insured adults without medical debt), while 41% didn’t go to a doctor or clinic for a medical problem due to cost (compared with 9% without medical debt)… Medicare accounts for 10% of the federal budget, a share projected to grow to 18% by 2032, according to KFF. Medicare Advantage, the privatized option under Medicare, makes up 22% of the total spending and has become a lightning rod for criticism from medical providers who say insurers running these plans too often delay and deny care while getting paid too much by the federal government.” And yet, medical bankruptcies are so “American,” even for those with health insurance.

No other country on Earth has per capita or GDP expenditures and percentages anywhere near those in the United States. We could do so much better, but for the most part, progress has been slow: three steps forward, a GOP pushback of one or two steps back. Smug healthcare giants, if they cannot stop this movement totally, have the lobbying/ campaign contribution machine to drag fairness out of play and slorp at their profit margins. But fixing an inane system is critical. And no, this is no more “creeping socialism” than public schools.

Margot Sanger-Katz, writing for the October 28th The Morning newsfeed from the NY Times notes that even without additional legislation, and control of our Congress is beyond determinative, our President will “influence how many people have health insurance, how much many pay for it, the prices of prescription drugs and more through regulatory power alone… [But Congress could well be the decider] During the pandemic, Democrats raised the subsidies that help 20 million Americans buy their own insurance. Poor Americans can get covered without paying a cent, and even people making north of $100,000 got help with premiums. But if Congress does nothing, the new subsidies will expire at the end of next year. That would likely leave more than three million uninsured — and would make nearly everyone insured through Obamacare pay more.”

With the least effective healthcare system in the developed world, and beyond doubt the most expensive, access to all those wonderous American medical inventions and treatments is clearly based on maintaining profits to the biggest players in the American healthcare network… a priority that overrides healthcare itself. Some glaring disparities – like the fact that even with recent efforts by the Biden administration to bring down the cost of prescription drugs; for the most part, Americans pay more than two to three+ times more for the same medications than any developed nation – have made reducing those costs, opening the door to more leverage in healthcare systems when negotiating with pharmas, an issue with supporters from both sides of the aisle. But there is staunch MAGA cadre in Congress that sill prioritize profits over healthcare.

It is equally clear the MAGA is also more focused on the budget deficit and continuing their press for massive additional tax cuts for the rich, continuing and enhancing their 2017 corporate tax reduction legislation, by contracting Medicaid and Medicare (as well as Social Security), and leaving much of those healthcare policies to already cash-strapped states instead. Efforts to repeal or further severely contract the very popular Affordable Care Act, with or without a replacement, just will not die. The rising national slam to reproductive healthcare has created the highest maternal and infant mortality rate in recent memory. The rich get the best, the rest, not so much.

I’m Peter Dekom, we are a nation that has made no meaningful effort to stem gun fatalities (the greatest killer of our children and teens), to care for women in desperate need of what was once normal reproductive medical care and one where healthcare remains deeply subordinate to industry profits.

Cache Kash for Cash

Cache Kash for Cash

Is the GOP Congress Bloc a Legislative Body or a Trump Hand Puppet, Parrots or People?

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”

Former Trump Attorney General, Willam Barr in his memoir.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections… We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.” 

FBI Director Nominee, Kash Patel

I was watching Face the Nation on December 1st. Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz was on, and as he described “the corruption” that defined today’s FBI, he was simply mouthing the exact words repeatedly uttered by Donald Trump on point. I opened my eyes and saw it was Ted. I remembered his post on Twitter on April 22, 2016. “Donald Trump can’t be trusted with common sense. Why would we trust him in the White House.” Called him “Lyin’ Ted.” And yet, Cruz’ words were parrot-like imitations of Trump. Carl Hulse, writing for the New York Times on December 1st, asked burning question, the answer suggesting whether the Republican Senate would join the US Supreme Court in its presidential immunity ruling and enable the ascension of a true autocrat to rule the United States:

“President-elect Donald J. Trump’s determination to crash over traditional governmental guardrails will present a fundamental test of whether the Republican-controlled Senate can maintain its constitutional role as an independent institution and a check on presidential power… With Mr. Trump putting forward a raft of contentious prospective nominees and threatening to challenge congressional authority in other ways, Republicans who will hold the majority come January could find themselves in the precarious position of having to choose between standing up for their institution or bowing to a president dismissive of government norms.” Trump even promised engaging a special commission to establish that the 2020 was “stolen.”

If you had the slightest hope that Trump’s term would not be driven by retribution and revenge, destruction of a federal government that, while flawed and in need of some prudent culling and restructure, fulfilled our policy needs, and that he would not really pursue anything to make Trump’s designated rich even richer, let me disabuse you of that misguided belief. I’ve blogged about several of his nominees, wildly unqualified, even dangerous, yet while Trump theoretically claims to be the “law and order President,” his greatest foes are mostly Republican federal law enforcement officers with tons of experience and seniority, none hated more than the prestigious Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Assuming he can in fact remove the existing head, FBI director Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed during his first term in 2017 for a theoretical 10-year term, Trump has nominated ultra-loyal, 2020 election denying, extreme MAGA conspiracy theory mongering and FBI hating, Kash Patel, former chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, to replace Wray. Patel as FBI director is akin to placing a wolf to guard the henhouse. His antipathy to the most prestigious federal law enforcement agency, his bias very likely to unravel the FBI (provoking the desired mass resignations) indeed seems as another loyalty test for the MAGA majority Senate… perhaps even an unsubtle slap in the face to Congress. Can they really approve a man they know is Trump’s instrument of destruction for the FBI?

“In his final months in [his first term in] office, Trump unsuccessfully pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director at either the FBI or CIA in an effort to strengthen the president’s control of the intelligence community. William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, wrote in his memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that an appointment to Patel as deputy FBI director would happen ‘over my dead body.’…

“The selection is in keeping with Trump's view that the government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him… Patel ‘played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,’ Trump wrote Saturday night [11/29] in a social media post.” Eric Tucker and Alan Suderman, writing for the November 30th, Associated Press.

If we’re looking for signs of likely future Trump administration corruption, combine Trump’s power to exempt certain economic sectors from immigration sweeps or tariffs for their imports with the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling for “official acts,” and you can see precisely how loyalists can be rewarded and neutral or critical cadres punished. Add the extra-legislative DOGE (Musk and Ramaswamy) as they “recommend” budget cuts, particularly to healthcare and Social Security supported by Trump, and see how well those parrots are trained.

As we can plainly see, Trump is baiting the Republican members of the Senate to prove their loyalty to him by confirming the worst, least competent, angry, conspiracy driven major federal nominees in recent memory. Internationally, leaders of even friendly nations are beginning to circle the wagons against Trump’s threats and bully tactics… his global opponents are wondering how to marginalize the power of the United States given this global revulsion to Trump’s tactics. And given the pattern of American leadership inconsistency, you have to wonder how many nations will ever trust the United States to honor its treaty commitments and mutual defense obligations… ever again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I think the world would really like to know whether the GOP members of Congress were elected to represent the people who vote for them… or Donald Trump.

 

 

Tooth and Consequences

Tooth and Consequences

Robert Kennedy, Jr’s medical track record – he has no medical credentials – should give us all pause. He is Donald Trump’s pick to head a huge federal agency, one that touches every aspect of our healthcare: the Department Health and Human Services (HHS). If confirmed RFK, Jr., would run most of the federal sub-cabinet agencies that vet food and drug safety, covers many federal social programs, and the operation of all federal health programs outside of the military. He would be one of the most powerful people in government. HHS is one of the largest federal cabinet-level agencies with well over 80 thousand federal employees. A failed presidential candidate, disavowed by the entire Kennedy family (yes, that Kennedy family), RFK, Jr has become America’s conspiracy adopter in chief, bringing quacks and antivaxxers adoringly to his door. Unfortunately, his family name gave him credibility where it clearly was not merited. Like in this reality in Samoa in2019.

“In 2013, 90% of babies in Samoa received the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination at one year of age… The 2019 Samoa measles outbreak began in September 2019. As of 6 January 2020, there were over 5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths, out of a Samoan population of 200,874. Over three per cent of the population were infected. The cause of the outbreak was attributed to decreased vaccination rates among newly born babies, from 74% in 2017 to 31–34% in 2018, even though nearby islands had rates near 99%...

“In June 2019, American anti-vaccination activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [had] visited Samoa to meet with local anti-vaccination activists including Taylor Winterstein and Edwin Tamanese, whom he called a ‘medical freedom hero. Kennedy also discussed vaccines with then-Prime Minister Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi, and campaigned against the vaccine on social media.

“After the measles outbreak started, anti-vaxxers (including Kennedy) credited the dozens of measles deaths to poverty and malnutrition or even to the vaccine itself, but there was no evidence for these claims, and clinicians reported that Vitamin A deficiency or immunodeficiency did not appear to be a substantial contributing factor to the outbreak…

“In 2019 there [had been arising number of outbreaks] throughout the Pacific region, including in Tonga, Fiji, the Philippines and New Zealand, but only Samoa suffered casualties, due to its low vaccination rate… UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate that the measles vaccination rate among newly born babies in Samoa fell from 74% in 2017 to 34% in 2018, similar to some of the poorest countries in Africa. Ideally, countries should have immunization levels above 90%. Vaccination rates dropped to 31% in Samoa, compared to 99% in nearby Nauru, Niue, Cook Islands, and American Samoa.” Wikipedia. Samoan babies died in unprecedented numbers as many families had eschewed vaccinating their babies and relied on RFK Jr’s holistic advice and belief that herd immunity would solve the issue.

After Joe Biden distributed the COVID vaccines in the US (notably developed during the Trump administration, but with no distribution plan… leaving that to the states), RFK, Jr lauded Trump’s later COVID approach, in which the ex-President suggested that social distancing and closing businesses, mandating vaccines and masking in many sectors, were unnecessary and deleterious to the American economy. RFK, Jr continued to insist, dramatically and incorrectly as the numbers clearly proved, that the vaccine caused more harm than good. He was cheered by antivaxxer conspiracy theorists, whose efforts have pulled mandatory school vaccinations (required for over half a century) into a “voluntary only” process in lots of American public schools. A new MAGA campaign platform was born. Anti-science skeptics were beginning to triumph is the worst possible way,

RFK, Jr’s next crusade, in his challenge to “make American healthy again,” particularly if he is confirmed as HHS Secretary, is to eliminate the use of fluorides from tap water across the land. Fluoridation has long been viewed as toxic by a small cadre of American conspiracy theorists. As noted by Saima Iqbal in the November 27th Scientific American, RFK, Jr “fueled a fluoride furor on social media when he called the mineral ‘industrial waste’. Kennedy… inaccurately claimed fluoride exposure could lead to arthritis, bone cancer, thyroid disease, IQ loss and neurodevelopmental conditions. He has said he would advise against adding it to tap water—a practice that currently reaches more than 209 million Americans.

“It remains unclear whether the incoming Trump administration could effectively ban water fluoridation: current laws let state and local governments make the decision. But at the federal level, fluoridation opponents could deploy the Safe Drinking Water Act, which regulates water contaminants nationally. They could also take advantage of a recent federal court decision: In September a California district court judge ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to set stricter regulations on tap water fluoride levels, arguing that the HHS’s national concentration recommendations might lower children’s IQ scores. But the judge leaned heavily on a recent controversial scientific report that had been rejected twice in peer review for a lack of rigor.

“‘His conclusion was misguided—and an overreach,’ says Charlotte W. Lewis, a pediatrician and dental care researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She notes that widely accepted research shows water fluoridation to be an effective disease-prevention measure, especially for people in communities with less access to dental care.” But medical professionals have noted that those who get unfluoridated tap water, particularly in poorer areas where routine dental care is not accessed, are particularly vulnerable and that “a widespread crackdown on this naturally occurring mineral could be a disaster. To see how, we turn to the sobering case of Juneau, a city in Alaska that voted to stop fluoridating its water in 2007, citing many of the same fears that RFK touts today.

“In a 2018 study published in the journal BMC Oral Health, researchers examined the dental records of adolescents in the Alaska community who sought Medicaid dental care in the years surrounding either side of the ban… They divided them into two treatment groups: a 2003 group, when public drinking water had optimal levels of fluoride, and a 2012 group, well after the fluoride ban… The results were damning. On average, the 2012 group had a significantly higher number of cavity-related procedures for adolescents than the 2003 group. Similarly, the odds of someone 18 years-old or younger undergoing the same type of procedure was 25 percent higher in 2012.

“Children born after the fluoride ban were the hardest hit age group, receiving not only the most tooth decay treatments, but also having the most expensive treatments on average… Additionally on the economic side of things, the researchers found that dental care costs for adolescents soared by 73 percent as a result of the fluoride policy, even after adjusting for inflation. In sum, it seems clear cut that removing fluoride caused tooth rot to surge — and with it, medical costs.” Frank Landymore in the November 29th Neoscopeon on Futurism.com.

Trump must be aware of these medical realities, so why would he even pick RFK, Jr for this cabinet post? Given that so many of the government social programs are in HHS… programs MAGA adherent and tax-cut yearning billionaires mislabel as “entitlements”… could it be that Trump knows that HHS would unravel under RFK, Jr, giving Trump and his DOGE budget-cutters an open road to slash and burn HHS into oblivion?

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s apparent dramatically inappropriate cabinet nominees appear to be part of his intentional kakistocracy (government by the worst), a hidden effort to tear the federal bureaucracy apart in order to funnel the savings into deregulation and tax cuts that benefit him and his mega-rich cronies.

Kicking the Can Down the Road, Cutting Taxes for the Rich, Borrowing Along the Way

Kicking the Can Down the Road, Cutting Taxes for the Rich, Borrowing Along the Way

Using Educational Quality as a Metric: We Have Totally Unraveled What Used to Be the Best

The future for growth and success in America did not used to be determined by your status at birth. While Europe was filled with hereditary titles of nobility, truly “old money,” military and educational institutions of higher learning populated by the scions from the highest reaches of society, the United States didn’t start out that way. The Continent was rife with barriers, religious discrimination, clearly defined class structures where opportunity was often limited by your generic pedigree. The “New World,” populated by indigenous peoples unable to resist Western diseases and military supremacy, offered what to Western migrants appeared to be a blank slate, filled with natural resources and that currently evaporating intangible: hope. Upward mobility if you worked hard enough.

Maybe the political pundits missed it of late, but hope was in short supply, upward mobility had been relegated to the history books and the schism between the monied classes and everyone else had become a canyon wider than the Grand Canyon itself. Knowing that blame fomented class warfare and populist revolutions, those with unlimited finances using the uncapping of using vast wealth to spread a tsunami of publicly spewed propaganda (via the infamous 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United vs FEC), recreating the perception of America. Although they were the obvious culprits in tilting the playing field severely in their favor, those with money were quick to redirect the blame towards religious, racial ethnic and academic constituencies. Not themselves.

Eschewing traditional but inconvenient economic principles, those at the top of the success ladder rejected the notion that a nation at war must make sacrifices (“guns or butter”). The military industrial complex (Eisenhower had warned us of this greedy powerhouse) touted the possibility of “guns and butter” to support the Vietnam War and the later wars we mounted in Central Asia and the Middle East. Government could cut their taxes while accelerating the necessary military expenditures. The mythology of supply side economics (also “trickle down” theory) told us that the rich were the “job creators” who would “float all boats.” It was never true, but instead of austerity which needed to be imposed most on the richest in the land, tax cuts passed… and those jobs never arrived.

Federal deficits soared, state coffers were sucked dry, and the necessary belt-tightening was relegated to the vast bulk of the nation… sparing those at the top with special tax benefits and rules, statutes that made playing in the world of mergers and acquisitions the greatest redistributor of wealth in US history. At a state level, that belt-tightening led to cutbacks in support for medical health and, most of all, public education. Averages for public primary and secondary educational performance began to plunge in this country when compared to other developed nations. States couldn’t handle deficits – they did not control money supply; the feds did – and simply cut school funding and, for higher education, shifted the cost burden for tuition from the state and the individual educational institutions and to students and their families. Over the last 50 years, tuition has risen at triple the inflation rate… and student loans now exceed our entire credit card debt.

But metrics can also be somewhat misleading, as Taija PerryCook, writing for the November 16th Snopes tells us: “For example, U.S. News ranked the U.S. as first in its widely-cited 2024 Best Countries report, which reportedly surveyed the views of ‘close to 17,000 global citizens.’… On the other hand, a report by WorldTop20 — a project associated with New Jersey Minority Educational Development, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group cited by the World Population Review (visible upon clicking the U.S. on the world map at this link ) — found that, in 2024, the U.S. ranked 31st worldwide in education.

“Other studies offer a more-detailed assessment broken down by subject and parameter and compared to other countries of similar wealth, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries. For example, according to the average scores of 15-year-olds from 37 member countries in 2022, the U.S. ranked above average in science and below average in mathematics.”

But the OECD used standardized testing to generate more reliable numbers: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy, that was initiated in 2000 to measure comparative educational performance across many comparable (and mostly developed) nations. “In the 2024 OECD findings , the U.S. ranked 20th out of 41 countries in education overall. In 2015, results from the Programme for International Student Assessment — which tests 15-year-olds across dozens of countries every three years — placed the U.S. 38th out of 71 countries in mathematics and 24th in science.” Snopes.

You can look at those numbers, tracking “averages” to measure our relative educational performance, but when you are supposed to be on the cutting edge of scientific and engineering invention and entrepreneurial success, adhering slightly above or below “average” doesn’t cut it. So instead of rekindling upward mobility and making American great again, current political vectors embrace a conservative push to eliminate the US Department of Education and press for a new austerity to justify another round of tax cuts for the rich. In my mind’s eye, our educational standards for the most accessible level of education continue to fall. But did we really start out as first about 50 years ago?

“There was also no indication that the U.S. ranked first globally in education in 1979, which could be in part because international ranking was rudimentary at the time. However, one 1992 report published by The National Center for Education Statistics ( part of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences) found that, after administering science and math tests to 10-, 13- and 14-year-olds from the 1960s through 1988 across six to 18 countries (depending on the subject and grade level), the evidence suggested, in general, that: Students from the United States have fared quite poorly on these assessments, with [their] scores lagging behind those of students from other developed countries. This finding is based largely on analyses of mean achievement scores and related rankings of countries participating in each survey.” Funny how those years were also filled with efforts to fund wars while cutting taxes.

The politics of blame, kicking the can down the road while letting essential governmental obligations to infrastructure, healthcare and education deteriorate with outdated necessities and lower per student expenditures (corrected for inflation) … but we choose to cut taxes for the rich… where the only results are a dilution in the quality of life, higher deficits and barriers to upward mobility reinforced with bias and blame.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you really want to make America great again, stopping cutting taxes for the rich, and invest in infrastructure, healthcare and that once expected path to upward mobility, EDUCATION.

Immigration – Now What

  

Immigration – Now What

Trump’s Migration Headache with Help from Stephen Miller and “Apartheid-Experienced” Elon Musk…

The panic in regions of the United States with high Latino populations is palpable. Even those who are citizens, by birth or marriage, or are skilled workers with green cards, are hearing the vituperatives and plans from top Trump advisors like Stephen Miller, who wants purify the blood of America by removing such individuals… revoking anything that legitimizes their presence. He wants to ship off anyone even with legally acceptable temporary status. Farmers are panicking that they will not be able to harvest their crops. Builders are quivering in fear that their construction projects will stall and even fail. Restaurants and hotels are wondering where they will find replacements at comparable pay when their tried-and-true Latino staff are rounded up for deportation. American-born Latino children are worried that their parents will be deported, leaving them helpless and alone. For even those businesses able to find citizen replacements, the resulting cost increases will body slam the economy and send costs soaring.

Trump wants to detain and deport a body of undocumented aliens that is four times the population of Chicago. He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 – which provides a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a law which limits the use of military personnel under federal command for law enforcement purposes within the United States – to use our military domestically to take measures necessary to protect national security from external threats (undocumented immigrants) which are not subject to the same limitations. This vague national security exception is generally viewed as an imminent and immediate threat to American security.

Read normally, we’re not really facing that kind of emergency; border crossings have plunged of late. But with a MAGA-supporting Supreme Court, I suspect these legal interpretations will go the way of Roe v Wade. Even as most of undocumented aliens have lived here for many years. Simply put, while there will be an ocean of litigation with lots of conflicting judicial decisions, Trump seems to own and control the conservative majority of that Court. Trump also wants to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to eliminate any due process requirements based on asylum claims.

Watching “Border Tsar” nominee, Tom Homan (pictured above), expound on his goals, he almost seems to be salivating. Criminals will go first, but then, a massive detain and deport effort is expected to add $88 billion a year to the federal budget. Think how much housing could be built for that number. Those top military officers who don’t believe that they should be using our armed forces as untrained border agents are labeled woke, facing discharge under the new administration. Assuming we can build the detention centers, round “them up,” arresting any “sanctuary city majors and governors who resist,” this effort will take years, and estimates are that the US could lose 400,000 or more citizen jobs in the process.

Trump has threats for governments that will not accept plane or shiploads of people being force- returned to their countries of origin. “Some countries, such as Venezuela, don’t take deportation flights from the United States. Others might resist taking in a sudden surge of migrants, especially those with criminal records. The administration could persuade nations to cooperate with a mix of favors and threats — trade deals and tariffs — but that would require careful diplomacy.” German Lopez in the NY Times newsfeed, The Morning (November 27th).

Recently elected Mexican President, Claudia Sheinbaum, is trying hard not to antagonize Trump, but she made it clear that if those tariffs hit her country, she would be forced to retaliate. She even hinted that she might be forced to consider deporting the roughly one million US citizens living in Mexico. Canada is restrained but angry as well. Hard to see how these tariffs can be charged in violation of the three-way trade agreement Trump accepted in his first administration.

Trump has always been hostile to foreign workers, even highly educated and skilled, even where there aren’t sufficient US citizens to do the relevant work. “Donald Trump’s bids for the presidency have long been defined by incendiary anti-immigration rhetoric. On the campaign trail over the last year, the president-elect doubled down on his positions, declaring that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ and repeatedly touting his plan to oust millions of undocumented immigrants, in what he has described as the ‘largest domestic deportation operation in American history.’… Trump has also said he would end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S., and reinstate the worksite raids that were conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during his first term to detain workers…

“Just months into his [first term] presidency, he introduced an executive order that increased scrutiny of H-1B applications with the intent of limiting them to only the most skilled or highest paid of workers. According to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, a pro-immigration think tank, Trump rolled out 52 policies to limit access to visas and green cards for highly skilled workers during his time in office.” Pavithra Mohan, for the November 7th FastCompany.com. Other nations were happy to take these experts.

It will indeed be interesting if Trump is able to mount anything near the level deportations he has targeted. While may seem like he has a compelling case for moving undocumented residents, I wonder how Americans will react when it happens. Are we really that callous and cruel?

I’m Peter Dekom, and those Irish immigrants fleeing the 1845 potato famine have produced generation after generation of extraordinary Americans… following a pattern that seems very much the case with our current spate of immigrants who are ready to work hard for the right to be here… and are not really taking any jobs away from our citizens.

Blogging and Major Surgery

 

Blogging and Major Surgery

So, I picked this post-Thanksgiving time to deal with a personal but major spinal issue that has been plaguing me for a while. As this blog is being posted by my trusty blog master, Amanda Casarella, I should be in post-op after what I hope is a single successful lower spine reconstruction (so much for spineless lawyers!), but it may have been broken into two operations.

After a significant hospital stay (I will write even more knowledgably about American healthcare!) and some serious time in a rehab facility, I hope to be semi-human enough to resume writing by January. In the meantime, and every few days, Amanda will post from a backlog of blogs I wrote in anticipation of my absence. If some of the posts seem a little dated, forgive me, but I hope the thrust of those blogs are still relevant.

Happy holidays to you all!

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless there is BIG PROBLEM, “I shall return” (plagiarized line)!