Barf to the Future

We all love the notion of the “laws of unintended consequences,” since they seem to define everything around us. Mostly, we point to the muddled mess in the Middle East, which one way or another seems linked to past American foreign/military policies missteps that hovered around this oil-producing region over the last few decades. But writing about that today would be just too “Peter Dekom” for the mood I’m in now. So instead let’s address what we all know is coming, what Google is out to prove in a cross-country trial, and what we are all curious about… if a little concerned that someone is trying to take control of our cars away from us. Self-driving cars.

Some of the most complex algorithms, unbelievably-complex mathematical equations, involve traffic patterns, especially during “rush hour.” A car a mile down the road, making a lane change, can create a congesting ripple a mile back. When you combine that one car with the thousands of other cars either reacting, creating parallel moves or acting in some other slight obstructionist manner that has someone else tap the brakes, well those numbers become fodder for supercomputers. Throw in an accident or two, some road repairs, and watch the calculations multiply.

We aren’t keeping up with expanding and repairing our infrastructure remotely fast enough to meet demands, and while we are in a momentary trough in gas prices, we know that sooner or later, that unrenewable resource (which is bad for the environment anyway) is going to soar in price again. Just think of the waste of fuel and infrastructure as cars crawl or sit stopped on highways, waiting for congestion to break, even with their sophisticated navigational traffic monitoring systems (if you can afford one).

So begrudgingly, we are slowly being guided into a future in which cars can communicate with each other (an interactive adaptive cruise control), probably also with a central coordinating system that just might take over the driving function entirely. Indeed, we would expect that “driving takeover” to clear up that congestion by preventing those little disruptions that make driving so hellish in crowded cities and their suburbs. Zooming off at high speeds? Probably not.

“That self-driving car will not speed off when you get in but rather select a route designed to help you be both productive and on time; a path that ensures no wireless drop-outs, avoids adding congestion to fast lanes, and keeps a pace carefully metered to match the end of your call with your arrival at the dentist’s office for your new crown. For roboto-mobiles, accuracy will be more important than speed. Self-driving cars actually represent not just transportation but a bundle of features, and that is why they may become mainstream much more quickly than conventional wisdom expects. This is also why they will go slower…

“Slower means less of the bad stuff, like accidents and fatalities. When you lower your driving speed, your risk of death plummets. On average, belted drivers have a 60% risk of being fatally injured when the change in velocity is 50 mph and a 17% risk when it is 40 mph. With slower speeds—and with the fewer crashes already inherent to autonomous vehicles, thanks to sensors, automatic braking, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication—we actually have a moon shot at engineering death out of driving. Slower means more of the good stuff, like productivity, leisure, and sleep.” FastCompany.com, April 16^th. Slow but uniform and steady. Snail-cars?

But there are a few consequences that, as Google and others mount their trials, seem to slide into our forward vision. Can its electronics penetrate bad weather or deal with spots where GPS or electronic contact drops out (in forests or in tunnels)? Who decides on the computer system, and how is it paid for? Is it one uniform system or vehicle dependent? Different systems for state or federal roads? In a world where cars are controlled by computer systems, if there is an accident, who’s responsible? If the accident is caused in part by bad maintenance or miss-designed parts, how would such considerations be factored in (allocated)? Who pays for the insurance? Where does the liability get paid? How do you mix cars with computer controls with older models that don’t have such systems? Separate lanes? But doesn’t this cost a fortune in new infrastructure to have those Automated Vehicle Lanes?

Hey, those are all the obvious issues, but try this on for size: there are lots of folks who get car sick if they aren’t driving! “[T]here may be an unintended consequence to our switch away from human-operated vehicles: a lot of vomiting… According to a report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, 6% to 10% of American adults will get motion sickness—with nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and so on—in fully self-driving cars either most or all of the time. Another 6% to 12% of American adults will get moderate to severe motion sickness in a self-driving vehicle at least some of the time. That’s a fairly high percentage of potentially ill riders.

“If you’ve ever been a passenger in a car driving down a windy road, feeling like you’re going to puke while the driver is perfectly fine, this shouldn’t be too surprising. As the study’s authors, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, explain, motion sickness is usually caused by two factors: a ‘conflict between visual and vestibular inputs’ (like facing the side of the car instead of looking straight ahead) and a lack of ability to anticipate movements or a loss of control of movement. Since drivers have more control over where the vehicle is moving, they get motion sick less often than passengers…

“This quandary—swapping safety concerns for sickness—can’t be entirely solved, because anyone who isn’t driving a car is by definition lacking control over the vehicle, and that’s one of the primary causes of dizziness and nausea. But the study authors suggest some fixes.

“A heads-up transparent display could ensure that visual and sensory inputs aren’t in conflict, as could non-swiveling seats that restrict head motion. Fully reclining seats could also be useful, since they let people sleep, reducing the chance of nausea. Another nausea-reducing method cited by the authors could mimic vehicle motion and force with stimuli imposed around the passenger video screen.” FastCompany.com, April 15^th. Tell me it just ain’t so, Chuck! Maybe, I’ll just read a book or watch a movie while the car drives itself. What? That could make me sicker?! Oh no! But maybe they’ll allow texting while puking!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I can still hear the words of SNL’s Roseanne Roseannadanna (the late Gilda Radner) echoing in my mind: “Well it just goes to show you, it's always something, you either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe."

Conservation Is No Longer a Conservative Value

GOP tough guy – Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt – was a kick-ass, turn of the 20^th century President. A corporate reformer and advocate of American intervention in global conflicts (a militarist who said, “Speak softly but carry a big stick”), Roosevelt took “conservation” as a fundamental conservative value. “Roosevelt has… been deemed the country's first environmentalist president. In 1906, he signed the National Monuments Act, protecting sites like the Grand Canyon and preserving countless wildlife sanctuaries, national forests and federal game reserves. He also made headway with the nation’s infrastructure, instigating 21 federal irrigation projects.” Bio.com.

So Teddy must have been rolling in his grave at a late March non-binding Senate vote, split pretty much along party lines (guess which side the GOP was on) “51 to 49 to support an amendment to a nonbinding budget resolution to sell or give away all federal lands other than the national parks and monuments.

“If the measure is ever implemented, hundreds of millions of acres of national forests, rangelands, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and historic sites will revert to the states or local governments or be auctioned off. These lands constitute much of what’s left of the nation’s natural and historical heritage.

“This was bad enough. But it followed a 228-to-119 vote in the House of Representatives approving another nonbinding resolution that said ‘the federal estate is far too large’ and voiced support for reducing it and ‘giving states and localities more control over the resources within their boundaries.’ Doing so, the resolution added, ‘will lead to increased resource production and allow states and localities to take advantage of the benefits of increased economic activity.’

“The measures, supported only by the Republicans who control both houses, were symbolic. But they laid down a marker that America’s public lands, long held in trust by the government for its people, may soon be up for grabs.” Will Rogers (President of the Trust for Public Lands) writing an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, April 2^nd. So we might sell our legacy land-holdings for raw exploitation in this generation, to pay of the profligacy of this generation’s stupid, senseless and failed wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and idiotic deregulation that tanked our entire economy… and leave what to future generations? Are you as outraged by these votes as I am?

It seems that the GOP is bucking the populist tide on this one, reneging on their own conservationist roots, in order to cater to the pools of wealth – direct campaign contributions and slushy Super-Pacs – from business interests anxious to get their hands on all those natural resources for prices that are probably as low as they will ever be.

Rogers points out that most Americans want to treasure and keep those natural resources: “Land protection has long been an issue for which voters of both parties have found common cause. Since 1988, some $71.7 billion has been authorized to conserve land in more than 1,800 state and local elections in 43 states. Last year, $13.2 billion was approved by voters in 35 initiatives around the country — the most in a single year in the 27 years my organization has tracked these initiatives and, in some cases, led them… But this consensus is being ignored, and not just in the nation’s capital.

“In November, for instance, 4.2 million Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment to provide $22 billion over the next 20 years for land and water protection. But some legislative leaders want to use the money mostly for programs other than the land protections voters expected.

“New Jersey voters also approved a constitutional amendment in November to dedicate corporate business tax revenue to preserve open space, farmland and historic places in the nation’s most densely populated state. Again, support was lopsided, with 65 percent of voters in favor. But Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, is now proposing to divert a quarter of the funds to purposes other than land acquisition and preservation.

“And in Maine, money approved by voters for a popular state program called Land for Maine’s Future is now caught up in a political tussle. The program was founded in 1987 to conserve land and has protected 560,000 acres. It has enjoyed wide support; in 2012, new bond financing was approved by 60 percent of voters casting a ballot. But Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican, is refusing to spend about $11 million unless his plan to increase timber harvesting on state-owned lands is approved.

“What’s often lost in these debates is that these public lands provide enormous economic benefits… In 2013, the country’s national parks, wildlife refuges, monuments and other public lands had an estimated 407 million visits, which contributed $41 billion to the economy and helped to support 355,000 jobs, according to a report by the Department of the Interior last year.

“It is difficult to understand the hostility of some elected officials these days to public lands, given the historical, bipartisan commitment to protecting our land and heritage. This summer, millions of Americans will get outdoors and enjoy these wise investments.” In the end, the massive money required to campaign in a world of unlimited political contributions to SuperPacs, the higher limits for direct campaign contributions, has slanted a once conservation-driven party to begin to thinking about selling off our heritage resources and lands to the highest bidder… and lose those assets for all time. Aside from the contribution to overall environmental damage, we would be betraying all the generations to follow by desecrating their rightful inheritance.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while there are just and reasonable compromises to be made to foster a reasonable commercial operation, what is being contemplated in the formerly hallowed halls of Congress is a betrayal of the worst kind.

Understanding Reaganomics

It is a popular cry that President Ronald Reagan’s tenure as president of the United States in the 1980s created the halcyon days of job creation and tax cuts. The terms “Reaganomics,” “supply side” and “trickle down” economics all stood for the underlying concept of reducing the burden of taxation and regulation on the rich which would cause them to loose cash and create lots of great new jobs for those below. These economic concepts have been replaced in current campaigning by those wanting to put “I’m like Ronald Reagan” on their resumes as “enabling the job creators.” Same theories and obviously, if implemented, we can expect similar results.

So the April 10^th Washington Post, reacting to one announced candidate’s claims (Rand Paul), engaged in some serious fact-checking to see, looking carefully at writings by Paul’s unofficial advisor, Stephen Moore of The Heritage Foundation, who claimed that Reagan created tens of millions of new jobs and that governmental revenues actually rose as a result of the Reagan tax cuts. The Post: “When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, individual tax rates were as high as 70 percent. His first tax cut, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, slashed the top rate to 50 percent—and then a 1986 tax overhaul brought the top rate down to 28 percent. Those were certainly dramatic changes, though as we shall see, Reagan also raised taxes repeatedly…

“First of all, revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), which is the best way to compare across years, dropped from 19.1 percent in 1981 to a low of 16.9 percent in 1984, before rebounding slightly to 17.8 percent in 1989. One reason the deficit soared during Reagan’s term is because spending went up as a share of the economy and revenues went down.

“We can get even more specific about the impact of the 1981 cut in rates. A Treasury Department study on the impact of tax bills since 1940, first released in 2006 and later updated, found that the 1981 tax cut reduced revenues by $208 billion in its first four years. (These figures are rendered in constant 2012 dollars.) The tax reform act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue neutral, reduced revenues by less than $1 billion four years after enactment.

“But Reagan’s tax increases in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1987 boosted revenue by $137 billion. Overall, that’s a revenue loss from Reagan’s various tax bills, but it also shows that Moore is crediting to Reagan’s tax cuts revenues generated by Reagan’s tax increases.” Interesting. And don’t forget that there was a recession over 1981-82. In fairness, as cycles go, Reagan also presided over some good economic times later.

But what about claims about job creation under President Reagan, and how does that compare with the results during other presidents who did not believe in that trickle-down effect? We know that jobs usually follow overall population growth (see the chart above for the natural growth patterns), and we also know that politicians like to take credit for natural job growth as a result. Yet the actual numbers are interesting. “There were 90.9 million jobs at the start of Reagan’s presidency — and 106.9 million at the end, according to the Labor Department. That’s a gain of 16 million jobs, or 2 million per year in office. Bill Clinton can maybe claim ‘tens of millions’ with the 23.1 million jobs created during his time in office, but not Reagan.

“Under Clinton, 2.9 million jobs a year were created. Ironically, Reagan actually trails Jimmy Carter on the presidential list of most jobs created per year, even though he defeated Carter on charges of mishandling the economy. About 2.6 million jobs a year were created in Carter’s single term.” The Post.

The really good news for candidates claiming they are following in Reagan’s path to create jobs by the millions and economic growth unparalleled: virtually none of those who will wind up voting for such candidates will ever look behind the promises and the slogans to the hard numbers and the established objective facts. While it’s time for American voters to start living in the real world when they make their political choices, political trends suggest quite the opposite. I guess more people should read these blogs!

In the end, “it’s always the economy, stupid,” and here is the big story for the 2016 elections: insecurity generated from too many new low-paying jobs, worries about losing a job or losing opportunities for growth and advancement. The contracting middle class, movin’ on down the economic ladder. “‘There is a very big difference between the psychological self-definition of class and anything approaching a useful economic definition of class,’ said Richard Reeves, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. ‘Policy in the end will hinge quite importantly on what you mean when you’re talking about the middle class and who you mean.’

“And that’s the political challenge for Democrats and Republicans looking to inspire voters with policies to address what President Obama calls ‘middle-class economics.’ Any appeals have to involve both cents and sensibility… Middle-class anxiety has been driven by several factors: increasing instability in incomes, a sense among many Americans that they are failing to keep up with the gains of previous generations, and an increasing gap between themselves and the very rich.” New York Times, April 10^th. Indeed, and lot of the future of job-growth in this country will depend on whether people believe the repackaged and relabled failed economic policies of the past or understand that there really does need to be a new approach.

I’m Peter Dekom, keeping it real and looking at the facts behind the claims.

Right – Left – Middle

I watched as GOP candidates scrambled desperately at the most recent National Rifle Association meeting,  telling the assembled group that we should be arming Americans, fostering “stand-your-ground” laws and getting out of the way of gun-owner’s rights and focus on disarming Islamic militants. Didn’t matter whether they were merely fiscal conservatives or chasing that determinative centrist segment that seems to define the genuine American body politic, to run as a Republican these days requires embracing socially conservative “Tea Party” policies that alienate voters during general elections but are fundamental to making it through the nominating process.

Indeed, as Mitt Romney discovered in the last election, the speeches you have to make to get the GOP nomination really come back to haunt you in the big final vote. It seems odd, given that overall centrist reality of the average American voter, that nobody clearly embraces just that middle-of-the-road vote. The GOP is sadly encumbered by an out-of-date white-dominated, rural traditionalist constituency tugging desperately to move the nation back into the pre-WWII values of a nation that was not defined by big urban centers, complex technology, environmental devastation, cultural diversity, extreme economic polarization and a merciless level of global competition.

Fiscal conservatives perhaps rue the day that they coopted Evangelicals (the white rural traditionalists) to gather enough votes to allow big business and the wealthiest segment to push lower taxes and less regulation – their real business goals – through Congress. Perhaps, given the size of their political losses in the 1960s, they felt they had no choice. The SuperPac business donors, knowing that the mega-rich are a tiny elite that by themselves would never have enough weight to have passed their desired financially-driven legislation, have bought heavily into socially conservative issues – issues that they really don’t embrace – simply to insure that their money-driven agenda is surrounded by enough supporting votes.

But GOP fans, today there are plenty of people in the middle (including a pile of Blue Dog Democrats) who are worried about excess government spending, don’t support heavy taxation or undue regulation, but are actually embarrassed by anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-secular, anti-equal-rights-for-women, anti-scientific-fact religious “zealots” pushing a socially conservative agenda that they abhor. These are the critical votes that actually determine who wins the presidential election.

And let’s face it, with Hillary Clinton now formally in the presidential race, absent even more embarrassing disclosures, she is likely the Democratic candidate – a centrist who could easily have passed as a Republican in the 1950s and 60s. As I like to say, my two favorite Republican presidents in the late 20^th century are Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton. But Hillary’s presence on the political scene, in addition to reflecting a possible new American political “dynasty” (an issue also facing GOP candidate Jeb Bush), is a seemingly worn incumbency, a candidate who has been around for too long, and not particularly charming or likeable with enough scandals sticking to her to make the upcoming election more of a mud-slinging fest than we have ever seen before.

The Clinton advantage, however, is that she is a rather clear centrist. The closest that the GOP can come to that position, at least so far, is Jeb Bush, but it is precisely that centrism that declared candidates, Rand Paul and well-funded Ted Cruz, are attacking. Willing to shut down government, railing against big business willing to defy “religious freedom” laws meant to advance anti-gay policies, rather openly, social conservatives are now militating in favor of economically destabilizing platforms that hurt American business to force their social agendas. That it was precisely the big GOP corporate players that forced states to dilute those “religious freedom” laws that angered Tea Party Evangelicals.

“Whit Ayres, a pollster and the author of ‘2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America,’ argues that Republicans must come to terms with the fact that the public has shifted in a liberal direction on same-sex unions and homosexuality generally: ‘Public opinion has rendered its verdict on the morality of gay and lesbian relationships. The only question is whether the Republican Party will acknowledge and adapt to this new reality.’…

“[Jeb] Bush, the leading prospective establishment candidate, told attendees at a fund-raiser in Palo Alto, Calif., on [April 10^th] that he supports ‘a big, diverse country’ and that he is opposed to discrimination ‘based on sexual orientation.’… Bush’s comments may not sound earthshaking to Democratic liberals, but in the context of intraparty Republican warfare, his words are fighting words.

“Before the religious freedom controversy, Republicans of all stripes had quietly struggled to resolve growing intraparty tensions away from the public spotlight…. Republican strategists and policy mavens are wary of the potential divisiveness of a public battle between the party’s mainstream and its cultural right that could split the party, even though many agree that such a split is inevitable.” New York Times, April 10^th.

Jeb Bush is trying to unsettle these social conservatives – not enough to defy the NRA, obviously – but enough to generate the kind of support that big business can throw in his direction. His immigration leanings also anger the Base. But will his attractiveness to the Republican establishment be sufficient for him to overcome the rather strong Evangelical Tea Party Base that remains bitter over that same GOP-establishment-Romney nomination and ultimate loss in the last presidential election?

Rich power blocs were willing to allow their socially conservative segments to push their agendas, without much concern for what such agendas might be, until they began to threaten those businesses directly. “For the first time in recent memory, key members of the corporate establishment, including businesses with close ties to the Republican Party, have publicly defied social conservatives in nationally publicized confrontations.

“Leaders of companies like J. W. Marriott and Walmart – both Republican mainstays – were at the forefront of the drive to force Republican governors and the Legislatures of Indiana, Arkansas and Georgia to amend or back off entirely from the enactment of so-called religious freedom legislation, which could be construed to allow discrimination against gays.

“The result was a major victory for party centrists, including Karl Rove; Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee; and their corporate allies, all of whom have been conducting a guerrilla war to wrest power over the party agenda from the Tea Party and the religious right.” NY Times.

With clear evidence that the youngest segment of potential conservative voters are rather significantly opposed to intolerance and exclusionary politics, either the GOP will evolve into that centrist party of fiscal conservatives, diluting and perhaps extinguishing the retrograde Tea Party over time, or that segment of new and existing fiscal conservative voters are ripe for the picking by something new and exciting… in the middle.

There is enough concern for what is perceived to be overly generous social benefits programs – excluding the sacrosanct set-asides for the elderly – such that many in the Democratic party would like to see some belt-tightening… even as more and more middle class Democrats find themselves tumbling down the economic ladder. We’re really good at lying to ourselves as nine out of ten voters describing themselves as “middle class,” a statistical impossibility.

Yet for political realists, it may well be a time for Blue Dog Democrats and fiscally-conservative Republicans without a social agenda to separate themselves from their parties’ extreme and voter-alienating segments. It may be time for a new, third party dedicated to the middle, one that would reflect the reality of the voters that actually do make the choice for who will be president. But political change in America is increasingly difficult to implement; our unworkable, grid-locking, American political party system is likely to remain hopelessly useless and intact for the foreseeable future, not remotely reflecting the wishes of the majority of Americans.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I finding it amazing that so many in this great nation are willing to allow the nation to unravel to push agendas that really are not embraced by the majority of Americans… and not care.

Big Shots, Bigger Statistics

We live in a gun-obsessed culture, with pervasive availability of weapons of every size and description and a proclivity to use them to take human life. One of our other obsessions: sharing pictures and videos taken on pervasive smart phones shared on even more pervasive social media. Perhaps it was inevitable that these two pervasive forces would collide, but who would have predicted the violence of that impact? Particularly when some proximate amateur videographers recorded scenes that were once, in times gone by, both sacrosanct and profoundly secret rituals, moments recorded only on biased police reports, written by the men and women uniformed in blue, brown, gray or black who pulled the triggers. Most were justified, but exactly how many were not?

Who wants to think that a significant number of those sworn to protect public safety are vastly deeper threats to that desired security? Why do we believe that such sworn deputies of law enforcement uniformly place their own biases and emotional problems in a jar by the door to their lockers when they don their police specials and climb behind the wheels of their intimidating cruisers?

Yet without these mostly esteemed officers of the law, especially in crowded and seething urban environments, how quickly would our lives devolve into violent chaos? We all know the names of the victims, mostly African American, the cities and towns where riots ensued, the media moments, the officers exonerated and those convicted (not many), but this is not the story of individuals; it is an examination of who we really are, what we really think and how we really behave when the cameras are not rolling.

Is this a question of racial and ethnic bias? A heavy focus on black lives? Hispanic and the lives of other “people of color”? Is it the product of under-training, understaffing and less-than-ideal supervision or a genuine and pervasiveethos of “us vs. them,” which infests police officers of every color and ethnicity? Has this been the hidden story of America for decades, perhaps even centuries, that has politely littered our society in those shadows of life where questions are/were never asked?  Has this behavior accelerated along with the bigger polarization that has infected our body politic, hastened more by increasing urbanization and growing percentages of minorities rising and falling in the new America during impaired and often desperate economic times? And without these pernicious and pervasivevideos, would these murderous events have continued, perhaps grown, far from any viable public scrutiny?

Over the past decade, according to a Washington Post/Bowling Green State University report, 54 police officers have been charged with crimes for shooting alleged perpetrators while on official duty. 54 charges among thousands of police shootings over that same period. Only 54 wrong-doings out of that total? Is that even a statistical possibility? These experts tell us that numbers so small tell us something is wrong, very, very wrong, with our system of justice, with any statistically valid accountability for police shootings that seem to surface only where there is some strong and undeniable evidence, frequently these days a video recording, of police misfeasance.

“When prosecutors pressed charges, The Post analysis found, there were typically other factors that made the case exceptional, including: a victim shot in the back, a video recording of the incident, incriminating testimony from other officers or allegations of a coverup… Forty-three cases involved at least one of these four factors. Nineteen cases involved at least two…

“Among the officers charged since 2005 for fatal shootings, more than three-quarters were white. Two-thirds of their victims were minorities, all but two of them black… Nearly all other cases­ involved black officers who killed black victims. In one other instance, a Latino officer fatally shot a white person and in another an Asian officer killed a black person. There were a total of 49 victims.

“Identifying the exact role of race in fatal shootings and prosecutions is difficult. Often, prosecutors pursued charges against a backdrop of protests accusing police of racism. Race was also a factor in court when federal prosecutors stepped in and filed charges­ against officers for allegedly violating the victims’ civil rights. Six officers, all white, faced federal civil rights charges for killing blacks…

“In interviews with more than 20 prosecutors across the country, they said that race did not factor into their decisions to bring charges against officers. The prosecutors said they pursued cases­ based on the legal merits.

“But defense lawyer Doug Friesen, who represented a white officer convicted in 2013 for fatally shooting an unarmed black man, said that “it would be naive” for prosecutors to say race isn’t a consideration… ‘Anytime you have politicians that have to make charging decisions, realistically that is part of their decision-making process,’ Friesen said. ‘They are asking themselves, ‘Is there going to be rioting out in the streets?’ ’ ” Washington Post, April 11^th.

Statistics tell us that racism may be one of the most pervasive factors in the decision to pull the trigger, a belief that being black increases the probability of guilt, shared even with many African American cops, creating a “justifiable judge, jury and executioner” in the field. And thus, it seems, black and other minority lives are just not as valuable as white lives when it comes to snap decisions in the mostly urban environments where these killings seem to occur with the greatest frequency. Within the foreseeable future, 30% of all African American males will have seen a criminal conviction, almost accompanied by incarceration. How many whites simply “get away with it”? And how much reactive anger, a feeling of inevitability, just makes the situation that much worse?

The United States has developed into a money-based plutocracy – at least as most Americans have been impacted – but if you are a person of color, there is even a completely different system of criminal justice, one that has a damned good chance of ensnaring you, sooner or later. Who are we? Human rights hypocrites? Bitching about China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia when we allow such inhumanity to continue in our own country without correction? We have an African American president and an African American attorney general, and this condition still persists?!

Yes, we are seeing an increase in the demand that police officers were body cameras to record these events. But obscured angles, “camera malfunctions,” and a general resistance to being monitored at virtually even significant moment on the job (wouldn’t you feel weird in your own work if you had to record those “big” moments of your job?) push back against this growing requirement. Look at the military vehicles, the automatic weapons and military tactics employed by cops even in small towns. Feel the rippling power, the omnipotent exhilaration of total control and invulnerability. And look at how often we actually deploy that overkill.

But the problem is a bigger issue of how Americans really feel about race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation and religion. Do we actually hate Muslims, fear blacks, look down on gays and abhor Latino immigrants, no matter how much lip service we pay to “equality” and “equal protection under the law”? Listen to the political debates all around us. Hear our elected officials pick issues that are surrogates for prolonging these “human rights violating” practices by creating possible “acceptable alternative interpretations” to allow these wrongs to perpetuate. What do our schools teach? Why are public school budgets being cut? What are the little signals we pass on to our children that teach the wrong message? We have identified the cause, and the cause is in each and every one of us.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we can make a difference, but it starts in your own mind, your own perceptions, your own acquiescence of wrongdoings, and your own messaging and communications.

The Real Trickle-Down Economic Facts

We have pretty definitive proof that that “give rich people lower taxes and they will spend money creating wonderful new jobs for all those down the economic ladder” – trickle-down economics – is a vapid mythology that never happens. But there is another trickle-down reality that is hitting both rich and poor hard in a very, very bad way. And it will cost us all some real money.

The trickle comes during the worst drought this nation has experienced since its founding. Global warming is drying out water sources in the West, even as rains pour down and flood in the East. Farmers facing drought are drawing down exhaustible water supplies from underground, nearby reservoirs and lakes, some of it legally and some of it… well… in defiance of water restrictions. Many of these pockets of clear gold will simply not replenish any time soon. And when you look at some of the traditional surface sources of water, the seriousness of the issue become exceptionally apparent.

For all those climate change deniers in Texas, the bad news is that they are getting slammed by the effective impact of that climate change a whole lot harder than most Americans. North Texas faces a completely dry Ogallala Aquifer and South Texas is watching the Rio Grande become… well… not so grand, and perhaps even becoming a walkway for drug traffickers seeking an easier path across the border.

“On maps, the mighty Rio Grande meanders 1,900 miles, from southern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. But on the ground, farms and cities drink all but a trickle before it reaches the canal that irrigates Bobby Skov’s farm outside El Paso, hundreds of miles from the gulf.

“Now, shriveled by the historic drought that has consumed California and most of the Southwest, that trickle has become a moist breath… ‘It’s been progressively worse’ since the early 2000s, Mr. Skov said during a pickup-truck tour of his spread last week, but he said his farm would muddle through — if the trend did not continue. ‘The jury’s out on that,’ he said.

“Drought’s grip on California grabs all the headlines. But from Texas to Arizona to Colorado, the entire West is under siege by changing weather patterns that have shrunk snowpacks, raised temperatures, spurred evaporation and reduced reservoirs to record lows.” New York Times, April 12^th.

In a special report that describes how eight major river systems around the world are slowly running dry, the National Geographic tells us about another vital American river in the West: “The Colorado River supplies water for 30 million people. It is one of the most contested, recreated-upon, and carefully controlled rivers on Earth. Diverted under peaks, utilized by turbines that create hydropower, and stored by enormous reservoirs, the 1,450-mile-long Colorado faces growing challenges associated with increasing population, declining ecosystems, drought, and expected climate change.” By the time that river hits the Mexican border, it is already just a trickle, and projections of future water realities tell us that it is going to get a whole lot worse.

This isn’t a little issue that time will erase within my lifetime; as of now, it is an indefinite but prolonged part of our future. “Many scientists say this is the harbinger of the permanently drier and hotter West that global warming will deliver later this century. If so, the water-rationing order issued this month by Gov. Jerry Brown of California could be merely a sign of things to come.” NY Times. OMG, it’s going to get a whole lot worse?!

Indeed, Lake Mead (pictured above; note how far the water level has dropped) is fed by the Colorado River, a wonderful body of water that hovers outside that City-in-the-Desert, Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s hard to describe the desperation that defines Western-states’ agriculture today. How important are such states to America as a whole? Let’s just look at what California alone represents:

California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.

 More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.

California is the nation's number one dairy state.

California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.

California's leading export crop is almonds.

Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.

From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.

California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.

California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions. BeachCalifornia.com

Red alert, America, red alert! This is not a drill, and Californians are not cutting back nearly enough. Farmers are siphoning off water from any source they can find, much of such efforts in open defiance of mandatory rationing. Additionally, ugly politics has cast an undue influence on water allocation in California, but if we can stifle those raspy and malevolent voices, there is a viable path:

“It won’t be easy to rationalize water use in the face of powerful water-dependent interests; though agriculture is a surprisingly minuscule part of the state’s gross domestic product [around 2%], it’s a big political force. But Gov. Jerry Brown and the State Water Resources Control Board have the authority to do what it takes, as the constitution says ‘waste or unreasonable use’ are to be prevented.

“The system is arcane, allowing some people and entities to get surface water nearly free. (This system, involving ‘senior,’ as in inherited, water rights, has never been successfully challenged.) Others, sometimes including cities, can pay 100 times more.

“In most areas, groundwater for landowners is ‘free,’ as long as you can dig a well that’s deep enough. This has led to a race to the bottom: New, super-deep wells, usually drilled at great expense, are causing existing shallower wells, often owned by people with less money, to run dry.

“That’s more than unfair: Groundwater that’s built up over a millennium is being removed too rapidly to be recharged, and in some cases the land is sinking as the water-saturated layers beneath it go dry. Those layers will most likely never be replenished, making this a form of environmental suicide.” Mark Bittman writing an Op-Ed piece for the April 13^thNew York Times.

What we can no longer tolerate is business as usual. We are going to have to move some forms of high-water-consumption agriculture out of California to areas that can support that type of crop cultivation, and if that aggravates some rich farmers, we’re going to have to press the point anyway. Likewise, there are forms of lighter use farming that are sustainable even under expected conditions. We have to press a lot harder than we have… NOW!

I’m Peter Dekom, and people all across this land better understand exactly how our failed efforts to contain greenhouse gasses are going to impact each and every one of us for as long as we can imagine.

Cuban-Americans, a Single Bloc?

What do Japan, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Japan, China and Vietnam have in common? American soldiers fought each and every one of these nations in bloody wars from WWI and WWII, Korea and Vietnam, but the U.S. has an embassy as well as full diplomatic and trading relations with each and every one of them. All such conflicts were at least half a century ago. The closest we got to fighting Cuba was through our arming and funding Cuban nationals in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs attempted invasion of that island nation and a stare-down with the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles a year later. We’ve boycotted, embargoed, sanctioned and opposed Cuba at every level ever since. Although there are nascent shifts in our policy, having the same kind of relations with Cuba that we have with those former enemies is a bone of bitter contention between Republicans and Democrats.

We’ve screamed at nations from Saudi Arabia to China to many developing nations with whom we have trading and diplomatic relations over human rights violations. We have engaged certain East European  nations (for secret CIA interrogation prisons) to allow us to violate human rights, and we are considered an international human rights uber-hypocrite over our detention facilities in Guantánamo Bay, oddly enough in another country – Cuba – we accuse of human rights violations.

We have bowed to a fairly significant Base of aging Cuban-escapees who have settled, for the most part in South Florida, who have vowed never to allow the United States and the current Cuban regime to restore diplomatic relations. Fidel Castro, still alive but having abdicated in favor of his brother, Raúl, stands justifiably accused of torture and execution of dissidents, confiscation of their property and a crushing anti-freedom policy representative of old world communism that exists only in one other country in the world, North Korea.

But trying to compare North Korea with Cuba is virtually impossible. Cuba is a joyous place, filled with laughter and music, filled with more pro-American sentiments than I have ever experience in my many overseas travels. North Korea is dark, hovers near starvation, is home to brutal concentration camps and is addicted to military weapon systems and saber-rattling, bearing little relationship to a country that still relies on sugarcane for much of its economic sustenance.

Indeed, normalized diplomatic/trading relationships with all of the above former enemy nations has probably done more to vitiate human rights violations, encourage a more open society and raise the standard of living for well over a billion human beings. Germany was rebuilt after WWII; Vietnam and China are Asian economic tigers, embracing modernity with fierce enthusiasm. Saudi Arabia is slowly opening social-cultural doors that this child of desert nomads has struggled with for decades. Maybe some of these moves are not at the speed of change we might prefer, although many European countries have surpassed our own progress back here in the good old USA. There does seem to be a rather direct relationship between opening normalized trading and diplomatic rights and increasing the enjoyment of human rights.

I enjoyed my trip to Cuba, a few years ago with a group of ABA lawyers, a poor proud country, where a monthly average wage of $20 (plus a pile of subsidies from housing and food to medical care and education) generates a lifestyle low on luxury and a yearning for economic opportunity. You can go to a movie theater (where U.S. copyrights are routinely trampled) or a baseball game (their national sport) for 10 cents, but most of life there is relegated to the basics.

The two candidates for the 2016 presidential race most closely aligned with Cubans are GOP Florida politicians, former Governor Jeb Bush and current Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio has strongly opposed normalizing relations with the current Cuban leadership, claiming that recent approaches by the Obama administration to Cuba, offer “ten points for Cuba and .5 points for the United States.” Bush was equally vociferous: “I think it was the wrong thing to do.” Opposing the détente, perhaps even a latent entente, between the United States and Cuba, has become an immutable plank in the Republican platform. Maybe it was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who normalized relations with a scary Maoist China, but they’ll be damned if a Democrat will open another such door to a vastly less-repressive country like Cuba.

Are Cuban-Americans accurately represented by this anti-Cuban sentiment? “The idea of the Cuban American monolith, the notion that the estimated 2 million immigrants and their offspring constitute a single-issue ramrod that for a half-century has forced Washington into a hard line against the Castro brothers’ regime, is crumbling in the classic, perhaps inevitable, way: Time is turning immigrants into Americans.

“‘Over the last 15 years, and especially the last five years, the Cuban American community has undergone a major transformation,’ said Fernando Amandi, whose research firm, Bendixen & Amandi International, regularly polls Cuban Americans. ‘In the most politicized Hispanic group in the country, there is now a cleavage in which the second and third generations, as well as more recent arrivals from Cuba, do not share the hard-line views and staunchly Republican affinity of the historic exile generation.’

“President Obama handily won the vote of Cuban Americans between ages 18 and 50 in both of his elections, according to Amandi’s surveys. His recent research shows that Rubio and Cruz are not necessarily favorite sons at the ballot box. Rubio, who opposes easing the U.S. embargo against Cuba, ‘is literally advocating for policies that separate the more recent arrivals from their families who are still on the island,’ Amandi said.” Washington Post, April 12^th.

The GOP might get the “old guy” vote on this position alone, but that hardly defines the bulk of that Cuban-American vote. As Americans, these ethnically Cubanistas are as concerned with so many other issues that even if there is a catering to ancient Cuban mantras to garner the Hispanic vote is likely to have less impact than the GOP might hope.

Just ask Mike Val­des, 38, who owns Moda, a high-end boutique in which Spanish is used as the main language: “[R]elations with Cuba don’t make Valdes’s political top-10 list. The Rubio and Cruz candidacies ‘put us on the map, finally for something other than Castro, rum or Cohibas,’ he said, referring to the brand of cigars. ‘There’s a lot of problems in this country,’ he said. ‘We need to do for us before we start doing for other places.’ Valdes remains a Republican because that’s how he was brought up, but he’s okay with Obama’s outreach to Cuba and looks forward to normalized trade and travel.

“‘Our grandparents’ generation is passing on, and my generation doesn’t really know their stories,’ Valdes said. ‘Our Cuban part is there when you need it, but we’re losing the accents and the language. Soon, the Cubans will just be Miamians. Eventually, they’ll knock down the Freedom Tower [a Miami symbolic anti-Castro building built to help escapees currently housing an art museum] and nobody will remember what it meant.’” The Post.

How do Cubans feel about it all? “The diplomatic thaw between the United States and Cuba has been accompanied by an unexpected outburst of flag-waving here — of the American flag… The Stars and Stripes has been spotted on apartment buildings and bicycle taxis. It splays across T-shirts and bandannas. On tight spandex pants, its pattern swirls around many a leg. Even a few car air fresheners bear its likeness (with a vanilla scent)… ‘I am seeing things in Cuba I thought I would never see,’ said one middle-age man, ogling a young woman’s nearly painted-on flag pants.” New York Times, April 13^th.

Indeed, in some ways this American internal schism in old, anti-Castro sentiments versus Obama’s current efforts fly in the face of American businesses, stalwart GOP supporters and who are currently excluded from seeking Cuban business opportunities, as they watch idly as Canadian and European companies are all over Cuba looking for deals, as the above picture from a Havana trade fair suggests. Hey, folks, it’s time!

I’m Peter Dekom, and mining the politics of the distant past does not serve the best interests of the American people for the future.