Totally Whigged Out

President Trump hung a portrait of one president in the Oval Office, that of Andrew Jackson – “Old Hickory.” Bold, egotistical and one of the key founders, oddly for a Republican president, of the modern Democratic Party (actually organized in the mid-1820s), which he upgraded and restructured during his presidency (1829-1837). The Democrat’s 1829 victory was the result of a populist surge (“sovereignty of the people”) against “elitists” in what would become the Whig Party (in 1834… no Republicans yet). Dems were powerfully aligned against big government, sharing a deep commitment to an agrarian way of life and very mistrustful of urban values. They elected a “frontier president” who acted in accordance with frontier values.

But a more thorough examination of Jacksonian Democratic Party policies explains why his portrait appears on Trump’s office wall, and ironically appears on our twenty dollar bill: “Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individual—the artisan and the ordinary farmer—by ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency, which they distrusted.” Wikipedia. 

Back then, the total population of the United States was about 13 million, with over 70% being farmers. But besides the fact that we were then primarily a nation of farmers – today less than 2% of modern America is engaged in farming – Jackson’s presidency was almost entirely based on domestic issues. The United States was hardly a global power, and given the state of communications and transportation in that day, our nation was almost entirely self-sufficient and isolated. Foreign trade existed, of course, but was not a particularly significant segment of our economy. Jackson’s presidency thus had very little impact beyond our borders. Yet Jackson redefined and reinforced the power of the presidency like no other.

Jackson’s fiery temperament, his unbridled ego, made him a lot of enemies along the way. Historically, presidents who leaned toward the autocratic did not fare well in American politics. One conservative magazine, The New Republic (3/25/16), made this observation about Donald Trump’s egotistical approach to the presidency: “Have Americans ever placed anyone with the curious characterological make-up of the Donald in the White House before? To find comparable presidents, we have to go back to the nineteenth century: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and John Tyler. While these four nineteenth-century presidents were all more qualified than Trump to set foot in the White House—each had previously served in a high-elective office—they did share his reckless temperament. This history lesson should make Americans wary of Trump, as three of the four were doomed to unsuccessful one-term presidencies.” The member of that quartet who served two full terms? You got it. Andrew Jackson.

Biographer Jon Meacham, interviewed in the January 27^th Washington Post addressed the fascination that other American presidents shared over their admiration of Jackson: “In the long view, Jackson has been a source of inspiration for very different presidents. Franklin D. Roosevelt saw himself as a latter-day Old Hickory battling Wall Street during the New Deal — so much so that the 1937 inaugural stand on Pennsylvania Avenue was a replica of the Hermitage, Jackson's Tennessee house. Harry S. Truman adored Jackson, kept a bronze of him in the Oval Office, and once drove from Missouri to Nashville to measure Jackson's old clothes to make sure a statue of Old Hickory was historically accurate. And Truman once wrote this: ‘Jackson looked after the little guy who had no pull, and that's what a president is supposed to do.’ (Which is, by the way, one of the best definitions of the American presidency I've ever encountered.) Ronald Reagan liked Jackson's theatrical flair and hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office, just as Trump has now done.”

Rising as a military hero, Jackson became one of the most polarizing figures in American history. His track record of racial intolerance is hard to believe in a modern era, and that he is now Trump’s apparent model seems to give greater insight into Trump’s policies regarding immigration and the treatment of inner city racial minorities: “After narrowly losing to John Quincy Adams in the contentious 1824 presidential election, Jackson returned four years later to win redemption, soundly defeating Adams and becoming the nation’s seventh president… As America’s political party system developed, Jackson became the leader of the new Democratic Party. A supporter of states’ rights and slavery’s extension into the new western territories, he opposed the Whig Party and Congress on polarizing issues such as the Bank of the United States. For some, his legacy is tarnished by his role in the forced relocation of Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi…

“Jackson made it clear that he was the absolute ruler of his administration’s policy, and he did not defer to Congress or hesitate to use his presidential veto power. For their part, the Whigs [the opposition; see below] claimed to be defending popular liberties against the autocratic Jackson, who was referred to in negative cartoons as ‘King Andrew I.’” History.com. He challenged the continuation of a central bank, and tensions between Jackson and South Carolina almost started a civil war. He even went so far as to ignore Supreme Court rulings he found distasteful.

Upon his inauguration, Jackson swept bureaucrats from key posts across the federal government with ample popular support: “Jackson's summary dismissing of so many career bureaucrats in the executive branch led to considerable opposition. These men he was dismissing and replacing were men of means; elites, men of status, as it were, and they would be quick to oppose Jackson on every front. Gradually, these men joined other dissatisfied factions and coalesced into a political party all their own; an opposition party, an anti-Jackson party with the strangest of names: the Whigs…

“The new Whig party attracted an eclectic mix of members including Southerners fighting for state's rights, nationalists, agriculturalists and Northern free trade capitalists, and a host of others, all unified in their dislike for Andrew Jackson. They were also active on many fronts, both progressive and conservative, seeking to maintain American uniqueness, holding to strict moral codes, such as no consumption of alcohol or mail on Sundays, while at the same time seeking internal improvements to roads, bridges, schools, and reforming prisons.” Study.com. The anti-Jackson legacy was at the core of the Whig ascension to power.

But Jackson’s Democrat successors, his handpicked Martin Van Buren (the Whigs won the popular vote over Van Buren but the Electoral votes sealed his victory… sound familiar?) and James Polk, attempted to continue Jackson’s imperious definition of the executive branch. Whigs railed and mounted a push to reestablish the supremacy of the Congress. But Whigs, formed as a party pretty much dedicated to anti-Jacksonian policies and little else, did not last long.

“In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, [William Henry] Harrison and [Zackery] Taylor, elected president. Both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party later that year.” Wikipedia. Millard Fillmore was the last Whig president. But the utter incompetence of Whig presidents ultimately resulted in the dissolution of the Whigs… eventually replaced by a new party, Republicans, “founded by anti-slavery activists, modernists, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers in 1854… The Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern States for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.

“There have been 19 Republican presidents, the first being Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 to 1865, when he was assassinated, and the most recent being Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, 2017.” Wikipedia.

Can a president so focused on imposing his individual vision on American government sustain in a modern era? Is an American rejection of globalization, a withdrawal from internationalism, viable in the 21^st century? How do those who oppose this vision organize to defeat Trumpism? How committed is the GOP to support the new president’s view of America? Is Trump’s embracing of Jackson’s imperious persona likely to move the United States to the brink of another American civil war as did Jackson’s battle with South Carolina? We do live in interesting times…

I’m Peter Dekom, and looking at Mr. Trump’s heroes and values tells us much of what we can expect in the next four years.

Rule 19 – Be Nice

No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of a Senator. Senate Rule 19

It went viral when the Senate, using Rule 19 on February 7^th, voted 49 to 43 to shut down Massachusetts Senate Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, in her statements against Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions. Sessions, who ran afoul of a Senate vote when he was nominated for a federal judgeship 30 years ago because of track record that suggested racism, faced yet another confirmation process before that same body. But there were two profound differences from then to now: Sessions was still a sitting U.S. Senator (Republican from Alabama), and the Senate, controlled by Republicans, was hell-bent to confirm him.

The application of a century-old Senate rule effectively banned Warren from any further statements from the Senate floor on the subject of the Sessions confirmation. Her sin: reading a letter (see above) from Coretta Scott King (Martin Luther King’s widow) written in 1986 – and entered into the Senate Record at that time – in opposition to Sessions’ appointment to that federal judgeship. The BBC (February 8^th) explains: “Ms Scott King's letter alleged that Mr Sessions was unsuitable for that role because he had ‘used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters’… Ms Warren also quoted the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who called Mr Sessions a ‘throwback to a shameful era’.

“Mr Sessions' nomination process has been dogged by allegations of racism… The Alabama senator has denied the allegations, and his supporters have pointed to his vote to extend the Voting Rights Act.” Pretty clearly, there are numerous instances of Senators decrying other Senators where the Rule was not invoked. Here are a couple of those from Senate Republicans cited by Amber Phillips in the February 8^th Washington Post:

May 2016. Republicans are in charge of the Senate, and Democrats have stalled a defense bill over concerns it was written too quickly and without their input. Cotton, a freshman senator with a little more than a year of experience under his belt, smashed through decorum to blast then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his ‘cancerous leadership.’

‘I'm forced to listen to the bitter, vulgar, incoherent ramblings of the minority leader,’ ‘Normally, like every other American, I ignore them. I can't ignore them today. . . . When was the last time the minority leader read a bill? It was probably an electricity bill. ... This institution will be cursed less with his cancerous leadership.’…

It's summer 2015. The Republican Party is in the midst of a showdown with itself over whether to fund an obscure government agency that helps fund risky U.S. investment abroad, the Export-Import Bank. As… reported at the time:

Cruz got wind that Senate Republicans were going to try to start up the bank as part of a three-month transportation funding bill. He marched onto the Senate floor and accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of lying to him -- a pretty incredible breach of Senate decorum.

‘What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again was a simple lie,’ Cruz said. ‘We now know that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and makes an explicit commitment, that he is willing to say things that he knows are false.’…

[In 1979,] Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) called Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) ‘an idiot’ and ‘devious.’ The Post's Derek Hawkins reports Heinz reportedly stormed to the front of the room with a rule book and showed him Rule 19. There are lots more examples, but you get the picture. And yet in none of these was Rule 19 actually invoked, much less voted upon. Why?

“Historians and Senate aides have an easier time coming up with moments when it perhaps should have been invoked but wasn't, than when it actually was invoked.

“There are a few reasons for that. Rule 19 is actually sort-of tricky. Like a referee watching for fouls, calling someone out on Rule 19 requires a senator to declare a violation in real time -- and then for a majority of senators to vote in agreement that said senator violated it. In many recent instances where Rule 19 could have been invoked, Senate leaders have decided going through all that trouble just wasn't worth it.” The Post. Oh, and one more thing: we have not been so polarized, with civility a seeming relic of the past, since the Civil War. Compromise just plain does not exist in politics today.

Folks might wonder why free speech is being limited on the floor of the Senate, but the rule, passed at the beginning of the 20^th century, was enacted over actions and not words. TheWeek.com (February 9^th) explains: “As it turns out, Rule 19 dates back to a different — and perhaps more violent — time in the Senate, The Washington Post reports. In 1902, a fistfight erupted between South Carolina's two Democratic senators after the senior senator, Benjamin Tillman, accused his protégé, John McLaurin, of working with Republicans on some issues. McLaurin had fallen victim to ‘improper influences,’ Tillman alleged, prompting McLaurin to storm into the chamber and accuse Tillman of a ‘willful, malicious, and deliberate lie.’

“Naturally, the pair started throwing punches. ‘Efforts to separate the two combatants resulted in misdirected punches landing on other members,’ Senate historians recalled. Rule 19 was adopted shortly afterward, apparently to keep senators in line (or at least more docile) during floor debates.” Alt-Right Breitbart news cheered Warren’s censure, noting that she was warned several times by Republican presiding officer, Steve Daines (R-Montana), while outraged Democrats suggested that this vote only reinforced Warren’s stature across the land.

Whatever your political bent, it does seem a bit strange to apply Rule 19 to stop a free and open debate about someone being considered completely outside of that person’s capacity as a U.S. Senator. Why does a sitting senator get a “get of criticism free” card when he/she is being considered for Attorney General? Doesn’t make sense, and I suspect Elizabeth Warren’s punch is purely verbal. By the way, Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General by a 52 to 47 vote on February 8^th. How times change.

I’m Peter Dekom, and using a rule created for one purpose to stifle debate for an entirely different purpose does seem to be a rather nasty affront to the very notion of democracy.

Repealing Science

Funny how so many of us believe defying nature in how we treat the environment or rail against the laws of physics, biology and chemistry is disturbing to nature. Here’s the shocking news; nature could care less.  Doesn’t matter what we believe, what we do or what damage we wreak; nature started with nothing, has endured collisions with asteroids, witnessed huge volcanic eruptions, nuclear blasts and catastrophic military conflicts… without an “emotional” or “punitive” reaction. Nature just is. The laws of physics, biology and chemistry just are. They don’t get repealed or amended by popular or electoral college votes or orders from prelates or presidents. Nature just doesn’t care.

So when some leaders declare that global climate change is a hoax, fomented by the Chinese to force us to deploy capital to fight pollution thus making us less competitive against them, nature doesn’t rail or react. She (had call nature something, so…) doesn’t smirk or laugh or punish. We pollute, and the laws and physics and chemistry just react in accordance with those rather immutable laws of nature.

Storm surges rise. Global temperatures rise. Ice melts. Insects migrate. Disease follows. Drought attacks some places while floods decimate others. Animals and people die. Farms dry up and blow away, forcing hordes to migrate simply to survive. If the Biblical interpretation that God would never permit another global catastrophe following the Great Flood were indeed correct, then global climate change, and the rather obvious damage it has already caused, would have long since been have stopped in its tracks. God does not seem to be complying with this human mandate. But wait, there’s another area where the new administration seems hell-bent on repealing science.

With the President-elect’s appointment of vaccine-skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead a commission of inquiry as to the safety of our program to vaccinate children, a rather unsubtle attempt to show that vaccines cause autism despite decades of hard research showing no evidence to support this position, it’s a pretty strong slap in the face to pediatricians sworn to do their best to keep babies and children alive and safe. And no one expresses the frustration of the medical community at this attempt to repeal science better than does New England pediatrician, Dr. Daniel Summers, in his January 11^th Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post. Here are some salient excerpts:

“The idea of creating a commission to study one of the most settled subjects in medicine confirms a gnawing fear I’ve had since the earliest days of Trump’s presidential campaign. Drowned out by the noise of his outrageous statements and intemperate tweets is the fact that Trump believes vaccines cause autism. He has loudly proclaimed that misinformed belief for years, long before he was ever considered a serious candidate for the White House.

“He is unambiguously wrong about this. In the words of my colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics in a statement released shortly after Trump’s meeting with Kennedy, ‘Vaccines are safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines save lives.’

“To believe otherwise requires a couple of different things. First, it requires the rejection of a huge amount of medical science. Not merely one study or two, but study after study after study confirms that vaccines are safe, and that there is no connection with autism. If that mass of evidence doesn’t convince you, what can medical science produce that will? If you reject those data, which data can be found that will somehow prove trustworthy?

“But the implications of a vaccine-autism connection go beyond that. If vaccines genuinely cause autism like their opponents claim, one of two things must be true of pediatricians like me who administer them. Either we are too incompetent to discern the relationship between the two, or we are too monstrous to care. One cannot believe that autism is related to vaccination without simultaneously indicting the overwhelming majority of physicians, nurses and other medical providers in this country. Even your local Rotary Club is in on it.

“By saying that immunizations cause autism, Trump is training his sights on me and every other provider who delivers the same care I do.

“I encounter the effects of the anti-vaccine movement on a regular basis. Mine is an office that asks parents to agree to protect their children by having them immunized according to the standard schedule for early childhood, but there are a few shots they can opt out of later. Despite ample evidence of its safety and efficacy, many parents choose not to give their children the vaccination against the carcinogenic human papillomavirus, leaving their sons and daughters at increased risk of several different cancers. When I ask why, they mention vague things they’ve heard about ill effects…

“Preventing measles isn’t a matter of avoiding some minor ailment. The disease killed over 100,000 people in 2015. Even in patients who recover there is a risk of severe brain damage years after getting over measles. Why on earth would parents opt for that risk when there’s a safe way of protecting their children? Why allow your son or daughter to remain vulnerable to the potentially devastating effects of invasive Haemophilus influenzae or diphtheria?

“If enough parents refuse to have their children vaccinated, the herd immunitythat protects the nation as a whole will wane. There were a record number of measles cases in 2014, the majority in people who were unvaccinated. Does anyone want to share the experience of the Spanish parents whose unvaccinated son died of diphtheria in 2015, after that country had been free of the disease since 1986?

“Of course not. But vaccine-preventable illnesses will only stay at bay if parents are appropriately reassured that the means of preventing them are safe and effective.

“Will that be the conclusion of a Trump-created, Kennedy-led commission? I have absolutely no confidence that it will be. The mere creation of the commission, meant to investigate a question that has already been asked and answered many times over, is ominous, even aside from the anti-vaccine agenda both men unmistakably share. Given Trump’s disdain for facts that inconveniently conflict with his opinions, to believe the commission will land on the side of vaccination requires an optimism bordering on the deranged.

“Instead, what is likely to happen is that confidence in one of the greatest benefits to public health in human history will be further eroded. Its findings will certainly be as unfounded, perhaps fraudulent, as the anti-vaccine efforts that have come before it. But this time they will bear the seal of the President of the United States.”

So if this happens, how many children will die or become permanently disabled? How much will diseases that we have under control reignite and spread into epidemic proportions again? How many new diseases will be left without a search for an effective inoculation? But as I said, if a few people die… even a few million… it just is. Nature just applies her rules, and goes on… without emotion, judgment or concern. Her rules always apply. No exceptions. Ever.

Outgoing President Obama put it pretty well, using this point in several speeches: “And those aspects of [Donald Trump’s] positions or predispositions that don’t match up with reality he will find shaken up pretty quick. Because reality has a way of asserting itself.” Hey Donald and Robert F, take a look over your shoulder. That’s just reality trundling along behind you… you might call it “nature.” And she doesn’t care what you do. But I do and so should the American public.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while life as we know it will suffer if we continue to pretend that the laws of nature are different from what they truly are, nature will continue to remain totally disinterested in the outcome.

Easier to Talk About Repeal than to Do It

There are aspects of Dodd-Frank (a federal consumer protection statute passed in 2010) that were specifically created to protect the public against the very specific failures that gave rise to a mega-trillion dollar global economic collapse in 2008. While the law may have created regulations that went beyond the horribles of the “too-big-to-fail” institutions that sucked down public bailout money like heroin addicts seeking a hit, there are a number of regulations that are downright necessary.

Like: 1. preventing lenders from giving mortgages to those obviously unable to pay the monthly load, 2. bundling bad mortgages and transferring 100% of the risk to stupid institutional buyers, or 3. simplifying the mortgage processes to make them understandable to consumers. But the biggie was creating a regulatory schema for the derivative marketplace (which has grown to be even larger than our stock market), which took a bad subprime mortgage disaster and multiplied the negative aspects many times over to make it into the greatest global financial catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Donald Trump has already written executive orders to dilute the impact of Dodd-Frank, and a GOP-controlled congress seems hell-bent on repealing the entirety of the law. If they do, any serious market collapse would fall squarely on a Republican doorstep, so you have to wonder if they have the guts to follow-through on their repeal threat. Assuming the United States doesn’t break apart before then, if Dodd-Frank is repealed or emasculated, a market collapse from unbridled greed-driven institutions pushing the envelope (gee, they wouldn’t do that, would they?) seems inevitable without reasonable restrictions and oversight.

The GOP’s intentions are very clear: “Trump will use a memorandum to ask the labor secretary to consider rescinding a rule set to go into effect in April that orders retirement advisers, overseeing about $3 trillion in assets, to act in the best interest of their clients, Cohn said in the White House interview. He said the rule limits consumer choice.

“Trump also will sign an executive order that directs the Treasury secretary and financial regulators to come up with a plan to revise rules the Dodd-Frank law put in place.” FoxNews.com, February 3^rd. Yeah, you really want a financial advisor who can put his/her interests above the interests of the poor clients paying for fair and unbiased advise.

And then there’s the GOP march to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. A minor problem seems to have arisen: the GOP has been unable to come up with what would replace the old act. “Congress’s rush to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, once seemingly unstoppable, is flagging badly as Republicans struggle to come up with a replacement and a key senator has declared that the effort is more a repair job than a demolition.

“‘It is more accurate to say ‘repair Obamacare,’ ’ Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate health committee, said this week. ‘We can repair the individual market, and that is a good place to start.’… The struggles and false starts have injected more uncertainty into insurance markets that thrive on stability. An aspirational deadline of Jan. 27 for repeal legislation has come and gone. The powerful retirees’ lobby AARP is mobilizing to defend key elements of the Affordable Care Act. Republican leaders who once saw a health law repeal as a quick first strike in the Trump era now must at least consider a worst case: unable to move forward with comprehensive health legislation, even as the uncertainty that they helped foster rattles consumers and insurers.

“Insurers are threatening to exit the Affordable Care Act’s market unless the Trump administration and Congress can quickly clarify their intentions: Will they support the existing public marketplaces, encourage people to sign up and keep federal assistance flowing to insurers, or not?... ‘We need some certainty around the rules,’ said Dr. J. Mario Molina, chief executive of Molina Healthcare, which has been a stalwart in the Affordable Care Act market and is making money under the system…

“Insurers say Republicans’ mixed messages and slowing pace could send premiums soaring next year while making the market much less stable. The deadline to file rates for 2018 is this spring, and insurers say they need time to decide what kinds of plans to offer and to set prices.” New York Times, February 2^nd. Easier to complain and threaten than to do.

There are so many problems with the abstract statements of political candidates suggesting clear ACA alternatives. For example, even Donald Trump’s pledge to allow people to buy insurance from exchanges outside of their states is a non-starter. Sounds good and pro-competition, doesn’t it? But there’s one tiny catch. The only way an insurance carrier can afford to cover its policy-holders under reasonable rates is to use its size and bargaining power to negotiate lower rates from approved doctors, hospitals and other healthcare facilities. That effort is so massive that carriers only enter into those negotiations with local providers, not with every provider across the land.

Thus, a carrier from outside the state that has not so negotiated local rates would pay full freight without discounts. So an out-of-state carrier simply cannot afford to insure beyond the jurisdictions where it has those discounted deals. Oh! Unlike birthday and Christmas presents, it not the thought that counts. Doesn’t look like the GOP can remotely deliver on Trump’s promises without adopting large chunks of the ACA!

How about repealing all those environmental regulations? Good idea? Let’s look at coal production, the first environment target of the new administration. Between congressional action and Trump’s executive orders, coal effluents can now pour into streams without penalties. Coal miners are cheering. But think we are going to become a coal-fired nation again? The economics are all against that possibility. Global demand for coal is dropping like a stone. Natural gas is cleaner and cheaper. It will be interesting to live with lots more pollution, tainted drinking water, polluted streams and accelerated greenhouse emissions… and still not generate the massive new high-paying jobs that the Donald pledged would happen.

It was a whole lot easier when the GOP politicians were on the outside looking in. They could scream about the failures of the ACA – and clearly the ACA needed lots of repairs which even the Dems admit – and how they would fix it all, repeal all those plans, regulations and barriers that impaled businesses from creating lots of new jobs. They could claim that once the environmental regulations were gone, coal miners would get their old jobs back in droves… and those high wages they lost. They could eliminate financial regulations, and we would all be the better for it. Really?

Notice the beads of sweat on congressional faces. Problem is, if they do follow through on their promises, what would really happen? Are we ready for that? I suspect that more than a few elected Republicans wished that they did not have complete control of most of the state governorship, state houses, the presidency and congress. Maybe they are grateful for the distractions of the confirmation process on the Hill. Maybe the public won’t notice the “other stuff.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and our society is way too complicated for the rather simplistic solutions that spout from too many political mouths.