Category: Debate

Left and Right commentary on center-column political news.

Now is the Time for Trump to Go

By Chase Wheaton

Everybody watching the news Wednesday, or was following along with events on social media, were quite literally watching history unfold before their eyes. For the first time in our nation’s history, a sitting United States President incited a mob of his supporters to rioting and insurrection at the United States Capitol, as an attempt to overthrow our democracy and the will of the voters, because he is a privileged and egotistical narcissist that refuses to accept the reality that he lost his bid for reelection. Sound dramatic? It’s meant to. There can absolutely be no underplaying what occurred yesterday. These events were the result of years and years of Trump’s hateful, dangerous, and violent rhetoric, dating all the way back to 2011 (when Trump began perpetuating the racist ‘Birther Movement’ conspiracy theories about President Obama), as well as the byproduct of the tens of millions of people that have continued to support him as he has degraded and demeaned the humanity of millions of others, and of our American democracy.

Unfortunately, this exact incident is what many of us have been trying to warn Trump supporters and Republicans about since he first ran for office in 2016. While the specific details of the tragedy that unfolded yesterday, and the general realization that our democracy could have been overthrown, should certainly come as a shock to many, the simple fact that Trump incited his supporters to insurrection, and the fact that they listened to their leader and did what they were told, should not come as a surprise at all. Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Sadly, Trump showed the nation who he truly is back on October 19th, 2016 when he refused to commit to accepting the results of his presidential election against Hillary Clinton, who accurately described his response as “horrifying.” Since that night, and because his cult-like following of supporters have made it clear that they approve of such behavior, Trump has continued to spout his trademark hateful language and has blatantly given his own self-serving interests priority over the needs of the American people and our democratic government. Words have power, especially when those words are deluded conspiracy theories from the depths of the Internet that are, in turn, repeated by the President and a number of U.S. Senators and Representatives, and we unfortunately saw the effects of those lies come to fruition yesterday on the steps of the United States Capitol. Make no mistake: Donald Trump and his supporters are as much to blame for the domestic terrorism that occurred yesterday as are the insurrectionists themselves.

Now that we’ve all witnessed one of the darkest days in American history (again, not an exaggeration), it’s time for Trump’s supporters and the Republican Party to accept what Democrats, progressives, people of color, LGBTQ folks, and so many others have said all along – that Donald Trump is a dangerous man who inspires hatred and violence in all who listen to him, who is unfit to serve as President of the United States, and who cannot be allowed to finish his term. Trump’s behaviors, actions, and statements make it crystal clear that he poses a threat to our democracy and that, per his own statement, yesterday’s events are “only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again”. With that mindset, Mr. Trump doesn’t deserve to spend another 13 minutes in the Oval Office, much less another 13 days, and so, while several Democratic officials and a few Republican ones have begun calling for Trump’s removal from office, it’s high time that all Republicans put the sanctity of their oath to the United States Constitution above their loyalty to this demagogue and use any legal means possible to remove Trump from office. I mean, if he cannot be trusted to post on social media sites without spreading blatant and violent misinformation, how can he be trusted to oversee our executive branch of government?

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Cracked Lens of the Shining Beacon

By Stephen Macaulay

At 3:44 am, January 7, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, President of the Senate, took the gavel in hand and closed the joint session of Congress that certified the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President and Vice President of the United States.

Was anyone surprised at the outcome?

***

“Schoolhouse Rock” Revisited

The process is one that most of us probably missed during “Schoolhouse Rock”: the procedure for certifying the presidential election. The Electoral College was established under Article II and Amendment 12 of the U.S. Constitution. States choose electors based on the results of the general election. 

The electors create what are known as Certificates of Vote, which are sent to Congress, which then sits in joint session to certify the election.

There is a second place they are sent: The Office of the Federal Register (OFR), which is under the National Archives and Records Administration.

The OFR puts these electoral documents on public display for a year. Then they go to the Archives of the United States.

You might wonder why there is this tutorial.

Several reasons.

To point out to some people who were involved in Wednesday’s national embarrassment that there is a U.S. Constitution. That there is a careful process of certification. That this entire procedure is part and parcel of what has made the United States of America a special place for more than two centuries.

Maybe they skipped civics.

And to let some of these people know where they can spend their time now it is established that the man from whom they took their marching orders is no longer in office: Gazing at the documents that show that the people of the United States of America and their designated electors have made Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the President and Vice President, respectively.

***

That was written Wednesday before an angry mob, goaded on by the angry man who lost the election, attacked the United States of America. Extreme? Not if you see the photo of the law enforcement officials, guns in hand, behind the barricaded doors of the House of Representatives. 

While I had thought about deleting that explanation, when Mike Lee, Republican Senator from Utah, took to the floor of the Senate last evening to make his remarks regarding the curious claims of Ted Cruz, Republican Senator from Texas, that there needed to be a commission that would run for 10 days looking into the security of the election, he cited Article II, Section 12.

In Lee’s words: “Our job is to open and then count. Open and then count. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

Lee had proffered a booklet containing the Constitution when he made those remarks. I wonder if there are any copies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

***

The most-telling admission of the lack of seriousness of the results to overturn the election (let’s call it what it was) came from Kelly Loeffler, Republican Senator from Georgia, who had signed on with the Hawley/Cruz Putsch Planners. Realize that Loeffler, that very day, had been handed a pink slip by the voters of Georgia. Arguably, she would have nothing to lose politically were she to maintain her allegiance to something — or more accurately, someone -- other than the flag.

But Loeffler, who would undoubtedly be one of the many who’d have angry tweets written about her were it not that Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been given a time-out, appeared shaken to realize that words have consequences, and when those words are not true, when they are about fanciful conspiracies, then there can be things like angry mobs attacking the U.S. Capitol.

She saw the consequences. She withdrew her support of the efforts to, as she had it on the homepage of her website (probably to be taken down by now), “give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.”

She knew there was nothing there. And she probably knew that had the Senators not been escorted out of the chamber earlier in the day by armed police, the mob wouldn’t be discerning: she would have been in the same danger as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. That would have been real.

***

A word about the rule of law.

Rudolph Giuliani is the former associate attorney general in the Reagan administration. He was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted the likes of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for financial fraud, organized crime figures, and other people who broke the law. He was lauded for his forthright efforts to uphold the rule of law. After the horrible events that occurred on September 11, 2001, Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, became “America’s mayor,” as he stood up to the forces that were attacking the core values of the United States.

Shortly before the Capitol was stormed, Giuliani, now Donald Trump’s personal attorney, told the crowd at the “Save America Rally,” “Let’s have trial by combat.”

The personal attorney of the President of the United States.

“Let’s have trial by combat.”

That’s not in the Constitution, either.

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Words Do Not Equal Violence

By Andrew Boyd

When my now wife and I were early in our dating relationship, some 25 years ago, she took a position as a “scab” at the Detroit News in the midst of a writers’ strike. I recall listening to a local NPR affiliate interview with the union’s leading spokesperson, who justified physical violence as a response to verbal violence, and I thought “no.”

The next morning, I was dropping my wife off at the curb and as she sought to navigate the picket lines, same said person put a megaphone to her ear and yelled a series of pejoratives. A minute or so later, people were pulling the two of us apart. Wait, did I just expose my hypocrisy? Yes, although one might argue the proximity of the megaphone threatened real physical damage. I’m not perfect, and I failed to live to my own standards, not for the first or last time. 

Silence isn’t violence. Words aren’t violence. Violence is violence, and those who commit it are due their punishment. Left, right, center.

British psychologist Havelock Ellis observed that all civilization has, from time to time, become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. We’ve been taking a pickax to that crust for the better part of two decades, and there are more fingerprints on that tool than we can reasonably name in this column. 

Politics is blood sport, and it has a way of bringing out the worst in people on the margins socially, emotionally and ideologically. We saw that in full measure this past summer, and again, to a much lesser degree, yesterday. In neither case would I lay the responsibility legally at the feet of anyone whose rhetoric may have played a role. We can’t equate speech with physical violence. It’s not right on principle, and on the basis of that argument, I cannot support the notion of impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment.

Here we are talking about the difference between legal and moral obligations, a critical important distinction. Are Trump’s fingerprints on that pickax? Yes. So, too, Hillary with her “deplorables” invective, and Maxine Waters, and media who run cover for BLM and Antifa activist rioters, and popular voices on both sides of the aisle.

I’m not happy with Trump. Indeed, I’m deeply, deeply disappointed. His narcissism would seem to know no bounds. He shirks all responsibility for the power and purpose of his words. Managerially and ideologically, I’ll still take him six days a week and twice on Sunday over the likes of Joe Biden, but it’s fair to wonder about the net gains or losses for the Republican Party over time.  

Trump bears no small moral stain, but none that rises to the level of legal or constitutional action, IMHO. I feel bad for Pence, though. That guy has probably endured assaults to his character that would lay low a lesser man, like me. He didn’t deserve the opprobrium leveled at him by DJT in this refusal to take extra-constitutional action. Perhaps he’ll arise as the new voice of a more principled conservative movement that stands stalwart in the face of the morally bankrupt swamp.   

In the meantime, please, everyone, talk and act with care, and imagine that the person with whom you disagree, even vehemently, may not in fact be your enemy.  

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Special Comment: “Unacceptable” Is Too Weak A Response

By The Editors

After 2 pm the American Capitol was invaded. Their objective was to subvert a Constitutionally defined act of the United States of America.

Sounds like treason. Not like doing their Constitutionally protected “peaceful protest.”

Let’s be clear.

These are supporters of Donald J. Trump, the duly elected 45th president of the United States.

Trump had made a speech to his supporters. He said, in part, "And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."

Let’s call it what it is: An incitement to riot.

And riot they did. And at this moment, riot they continue.

“This is our House! This is our House!”

“U.S.A!”

“U.S.A!”

This is America?

Many Republicans, who had ginned up the protest, are now crying crocodile tears about how this is “unacceptable.”

Many of his top supporters have been asking Trump to speak out, to tell the people to stop. To leave the Capitol. He can’t be reached.

How many of these can be surprised?

He is the President of the United States. Does he look at the screens of his TV sets in the Oval Office with a smug, self-satisfied smile and see how some of the physical jewels of the Republic being stormed, and think he’s not leaving?

“I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

On Sunday we heard Trump trying to have the Secretary of State of Georgia “find” a sufficient number of votes so that he could win the state. By one.

Is that lawful? Sounds like election tampering, which is illegal Federally and in the state of Georgia.

That is grounds for impeachment. And presumably an incitement to riot is, as well.

But for too long there have been people saying that things must be done carefully, ever so carefully, lest the Base be upset.

There’s the Base invading the Capitol.

How’s that working out?

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Victory for Ossoff and Warnock Doesn’t Leave Manchin Behind

By Michelle Naranjo

Even as ballots were being counted in the first frenzied moments after polls closed for the Georgia senatorial run-offs, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was brought up as a potential obstacle to a new Democratic Senate majority.

Victory in Georgia for Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff was never a sure bet. Results for Warnock came in so fast, it was almost disconcerting to learn of his victory so quickly since we have had such a drawn-out presidential election. Violent supporters of President Trump overshadowed the mid-afternoon moment of triumph for Ossoff.

But they both won. 

It has been two months since the repeatedly contested presidential election. As the final ballots in Georgia are still being counted, the U.S. Senate and Congress were to debate electoral college certification. Protestors stormed the steps of the Capitol; many have forced entry. 

What is clear today is that Manchin is hardly the stumbling block our Republic has before it. 

Senator Joe Manchin may be from a deeply red state and has a voting record that tips towards being a Trump supporter, but just barely.

He is a labor supporter, gaining the support of unions and those who support workers’ rights. 

The actual foes are the arrogant members of both the House and Senate who demanded that the presidential election be questioned, elected officials who allowed and encouraged conspiracy theories and voter suppression. These are the same people who allowed Brian Kemp to cheat in the Georgia gubernatorial election two years ago.

After this fateful series of elections, failed court cases, seditious behavior from seated supporters of Trump in the House and Senate, the impressive diversity of Democratic representatives is the path forward. 

Manchin won’t work against fellow Democrats if he gets some of what he wants. That can only be beneficial to his colleagues, who also want to raise worker’s rights. He may be a conservative Democrat, but he has also managed to hold on to his seat in West Virginia: quite the feat. What Warnock and Ossoff bring to the table is not a threat to him and might even enable him to accomplish more. 

——

Democrats Take the Senate and Manchin Becomes Big Man on Capitol Hill

By Todd Lassa

Democrat Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was trending on Twitter late Tuesday night as the most important Senator, even before urban precinct ballot counts in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections had begun to flip the fortunes of Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff as cable news networks eagerly awaited results after polls closed. Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Ossoff decisively beat two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. 

Manchin is a Democrat who has served deep red West Virginia in the Senate for 10 years and now has the potential to become to his party what Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has been to the GOP, although more so. Sitting in the late centrist-Democrat Robert C. Byrd’s seat, Manchin becomes a true swing vote, likely to defeat along with 50 Republican Senate bills that come from the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the Senate as well as those that come up from “The Squad” wing of the House. 

The Democrats’ victories push their party to a 50-50 Senate count, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker on votes to give the party an effective majority over Republicans. Lame duck President Trump and GOP leaders tried to paint Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House as the road to socialist damnation. But Georgia Democrats, led by likely 2022 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams and aided by such groups as Black Votes Matter, turned out about 4.5 million voters total by Tuesday, many of them using mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, President Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud in each of the swing states he lost apparently stifled Republican turnout, and his attack specifically on Georgia’s preference for Biden almost certainly prompted many supporters to stay at home.

The Reverend Raphael Warnock says he will remain leader of the Atlanta church once pastored by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and becomes the first Black senator from Georgia, the 11th Black senator in the history of the nation and one of three in the 117th Congress, with Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, as Kamala Harris moves from the Senate to the vice presidency. 

Manchin’s power on Capitol Hill ultimately depends on where the GOP goes from here, what with Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., about to be demoted to minority leader and already distancing himself from the Trump administration while attempting to warn fellow Republican senators against challenging Electoral College votes for President-elect Biden Wednesday. So far, 12 Republican senators have indicated they plan to defy McConnell and challenge the results from their respective states, including lame-duck Senator Loeffler of Georgia.

By Todd Lassa Democrat Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was trending on Twitter late Tuesday night as […]

Twitter Trump Handed the Senate to the Democrats

By Bryan Williams

In thinking about this column, I tried to find a theme. The one that kept coming to my mind was “Let the chips fall where they may.” Ever since it became clear in early November 2020 that President Trump had lost the election, he and many Republicans have gone on a journey of lawsuits and arm-twisting with a goal of making those chips fall where they wanted them to.

Trump and the loyal Republicans in Washington spent the last two months losing the Georgia Senate runoff. What did they expect when they blurted out, “Don’t vote because the system is rigged, but please vote to defeat these socialist Democrats?” Huh?

I voted for Trump in November and I didn’t hold my nose. He won me over because I was able to separate Twitter Trump from the Trump who presides. I generally agreed with his policies. He cut taxes. He was prudent with the use of the military. He confronted China and engaged North Korea’s Kim Jong-un (with mixed results, but hey, he did more than most other presidents). Trump’s administration got us out of the Paris Climate Accord and Iran Nuclear Deal, which I think were both stinkers. He also had much success in advancing peace in the Middle East.

Then he lost in November and Twitter Trump took over and the wheels really fell off. Georgia voters noticed, and to their credit, organizers there were able to turn out the Democratic vote in volume not seen in decades.

It wasn’t all Trump’s fault. Incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were weak candidates in my opinion. Loeffler is a rich white woman who was appointed and never chosen by Georgia voters, to begin with. Perdue refused to debate Ossoff, which was a huge mistake. Also, my theory that the younger or more vigorous candidate usually wins held true in the case of Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff.

So now we have government run by the Democrats. It wasn’t inevitable, but Trump and his loyal Republicans made it inevitable with their odd behavior of the past two months. Will the Dems muck it up with their newfound power? As the outgoing President said so often, “We’ll see.”

By Bryan Williams In thinking about this column, I tried to find a theme. The one that kept […]

With COVID Relief Still Under Debate, Where Do We Go from Here?

By Nic Woods

President Donald Trump signed late Sunday evening the omnibus funding package, including $900 billion in coronavirus relief that Congress passed last week after denouncing the $600 relief checks to taxpayers as “disgraceful.”

The amount – $600 – is paltry, but so is the $2,000 Trump and Democrats in the House of Representatives sought, but Congressional Republicans blocked. 

The $2,000 may have helped six months ago, but it is all too little now for the households that need it most.

The relief the bill claims to offer does not make up for lost wages from closed businesses and, for those facing eviction, $2,000 is only a drop in a bucket that has grown larger for months. For small businesses that have really taken a hit (many of which were never able to receive funds in the first round “stimulus” bill) any relief may come too late to delay the inevitable. 

Many iconic places across the nation have already closed for good.

While an abomination, but also an opportunity for discourse that should happen post-COVID, along with health care, separating life security from job security is a conversation long overdue. If anything, the pandemic has shown what our country looks like when unfettered capitalism fails us all.

Because the “invisible hand of the market” does not work if supply and demand are as out of whack as they have been since March. As Harvard Business School economist Michael Luca told The New York Times back in October, “if a market is not safe, people won’t participate in it.” 

So COVID-19 has only exacerbated a process that has been occurring for much of the past 50 years. Secure, well-paying jobs with benefits were going the way of the dodo bird prior to 2020. Now service jobs – which have become a pillar of our economy, but also tend to require close contact – are in deep trouble. Retail and hospitality will continue to suffer unless they can guarantee worker and customer safety, and even large companies that did well during the outbreak are shedding jobs. 

Even the gig economy, which so many have relied on to make ends meet until jobs open up, has become oversaturated, with more shoppers, personal assistants, delivery persons and drivers than individuals or companies that need them.

But one thing is for sure. People who are not used to living in full, constant survival mode are going to be increasingly disgruntled having to scrounge for food, shelter, and clothing while others are making out like bandits. And it is something we must start talking about, because it is not just affecting the working class anymore. In a global pandemic, everyone is affected. 

And money protects no one when only some have it and others don’t. So, to those who fear socialism? What if a little is necessary to save capitalism from itself and keep the destitute from aiming their pitchforks at your door?

Nic Woods dedicates this column to the memory of anthropologist, activist, and author David Graeber, who died Sept. 2. Graeber’s work laid the groundwork that inspired Woods to write the column.

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Trump Signs $900-billion COVID Relief Package

By Todd Lassa

President Trump signed the $900-billion COVID-19 emergency relief Sunday night while enjoying an extended Christmas weekend at Mar-a-Lago. He had left Washington last week while erstwhile Senate Republican allies fumed because he wanted $2,000 checks to taxpayers, calling the $600 checks in the bill, and items he considers excessive “a disgrace.”

The president’s signing of the bill also averts a federal government shutdown Monday night, with $1.4-trillion to fund the government through fall of 2021. In addition, the bill provides eviction protection for millions of people, who would have otherwise faced potential homelessness. 

“I will sign the omnibus and COVID package with a strong message that wasteful items need to be removed,” Trump said, according to Politico. He said he planned to send back to Congress a “redlined” version with items to be removed from the bill, which has no effect on its passage.

Last week Trump vetoed a $740.5-billion defense spending bill for the coming fiscal year, because it contained a provision to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders, and online liability protections. Like the COVID relief bill, the defense spending legislation was passed by veto-proof Senate majorities. The Senate is scheduled to return to the Capitol Tuesday. 

For one Coronapocalipse weekend, Trump and Pelosi appeared to be on the same political page, as Pelosi was eager to take up the president’s demand for bigger relief checks, even after months of negotiations between her and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin landed on the $600 figure. The House will vote on a separate bill Monday that would increase the payments to $2,000.

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Getting to a Safe Market Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Cash

By Stephen Macaulay

Although Christmas 2020 is behind us, the current situation vis-à-vis the COVID-relief bill brings Dickens’ classic holiday horror story to mind. While most of us remember that there are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, there is also the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s former partner, Jacob Marley. Marley is condemned to wander the earth wearing heavy chains because of his counting house-based greed and ill-will.

Donald Trump claimed that he didn’t want to sign the bill that was many months in the making and passed by both houses of Congress because, he belatedly claimed, the $600 that will go to adults with an adjusted gross annual income, in 2019, of up to $75,000 is too paltry. He wanted, as the Democrats had been working toward before they thought the best was the enemy of the good and negotiated it down, $2,000.

One wonders whether Saturday night during still another vacation at Mar-a-Lago he’d been visited by Jacob Marley. Or whether he wanted his Sharpie signature to be on something more robust. Bigly.

Without going all Scrooge, there is something that isn’t discussed a whole lot in light of the prevailing pandemic situation: the national debt.

If you want to see something that is both inexplicable and scary, go to usdebtclock.org and watch the number roll up at a rate that is probably best viewed on a gaming machine because it has a video card better capable of handling this rate of change.

As I am writing this the U.S. national debt is $27.5-trillion. By the time you read this, it may be higher.

So the question is, what’s a few trillion dollars more?

The first CARES Act was passed March 27, 2020. That was long before, arguably, the pandemic really hit the fan.

Let’s not just put Trump in the corner for his belated action on the demand for the increase in family funding. Congress is more than derelict in its response to the pandemic.

But here’s the thing. If $600 is too little, is $2,000 enough? Would $4,000 be better? How about more?

What is perhaps not recalled is that the CARES Act provided $1,200 per adult whose income was less than $99,000 and $500 per child under 17, or up to $3,400 for a family of four.

As Nic Woods points out, the economy is not going to get back into full swing unless people feel safe in the market. People — well, this is perhaps too broad a brush, because the images of the people filling airports during the holiday indicates that there are plenty who just don’t care or believe the danger — will not feel safe-ish until the pandemic is under control.

Citizens who are following the rules — wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands frequently — with a Trump-signed check for $2,000 aren’t likely to spend that money at their local small business as they might have, say, last February, because they know what the consequences can be. So they order from Amazon. Which is good for Jeff Bezos, but how about the local economies?

What is really needed is Operation Warp Speed Squared in terms of getting the vaccines into arms so that people can truly be safe and then more likely to go out in the world in a more normal way, as well as testing that doesn’t require idling in a car for a few hours.

Of course, there is nothing normal about current conditions.

Let’s make sure that those who have been blindsided by the pandemic get help, whether they are individuals or owners of a family bakery. Let’s make sure that the first responders as well as those who are on the front lines, from medical personnel to teachers to the people who are working in grocery stores, are given additional support: that woman who is ringing a register at Kroger hour after hour sure as hell didn’t sign up for a job that puts her life at risk. That young guy who is emptying bed pans and pushing people in wheel chairs probably didn’t imagine that his main concern is keeping his parents safe when he gets home from work.

But let’s make sure we are providing money to create the conditions that will make the market safe so the economy can get back on its feet. Vaccinations. Testing. Rinse. Repeat.

That debt clock is still racking up numbers. At some point we’re going to have to pay it down. But unless the virus is controlled, there will be continued strains on people: Do you go to work if your kid is sick? On the health care system: Do we really expect all of those hospital employees to continue to work as hard as they have for the past many months? And there will be continued strains on the economy as a whole.

It isn’t necessarily about spending more. It is about spending better. There is a real cost to all of this. We can’t ignore it.

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Defending ‘Defund the Police’

By Chase Wheaton

A few weeks ago, President Obama made headlines and bolstered Republicans’ political arsenal when he referred to “Defund the police” as a “snappy slogan” during a Snapchat interview. While this doesn’t come as a major surprise given Obama’s relatively moderate stance regarding police and criminal justice reform, it serves as a massive disappointment to the Progressive wing of the Democratic party, and more importantly, to the communities that have been ravaged by police violence for many years, as the fight for meaningful criminal justice reform carries on. Not only do these comments by President Obama do irreparable damage to the movement for defunding the police, but they also show how much establishment politicians are disconnected from the community members whom they’re elected to serve and represent.

With all due respect to President Obama, “Defund the police” is not a “snappy slogan”. It is a policy proposal. It is a demand for structural and systemic change. It is a cry for help. The phrase, “Defund the police” arose during the George Floyd protests this summer from those most disproportionately affected by police violence – the Black community and other people of color – and during a state of crisis. 

The world had just witnessed the video-recorded murder of a nonviolent Black man by a white police officer, a tragic reality that the Black community was unfortunately already too familiar with. From this devastation came months and months of protests against police violence, marches for the Black Lives Matter movement, and demands for criminal justice and police reform. These demands, which included “Defund the police”, were created by everyday community members and organizers in the face of constantly overlooked police violence – not by PR companies and career politicians who operate in the realm of campaigns and public perception. In fact, I’d argue that it is the job of President Obama and other politicians to do the work of grappling with public perception and of worrying about how palatable a phrase may be to the general public, not those who are making these cries for help. After all, as Stephen Macaulay wrote in the center column, “When someone [in this case, an armed police officer] is pointing a gun at you [in this case, someone from the Black community], you’re not worried about nuanced phrasing”, you’re worried about doing anything you can “to keep [yourself] from being permanently perforated”. 

The purpose of protesting is to disrupt the culture of our society, challenge the status quo, and make people uncomfortable. As such, the movement to defund police has succeeded. The phrase “Defund the police” has received unparalleled attention from the mainstream media, has led to countless conversations about police violence and criminal justice reform in households across the country, and has already led to several significant changes in funding for police departments around the country. That’s a lot more than can be said of the criminal justice reform (or lack thereof) that was achieved during President Obama’s administration. Ultimately, President Obama’s remarks delegitimize and invalidate these movements, and I hope that he and other politicians remember that their role is to help facilitate and create meaningful and positive change for the most marginalized members of our society, not to stand in the way of progress and act as the gatekeeper to a more just and equitable world.

—–

Words & Power

First Person Essay by Stephen Macaulay

Several years ago there was a massive ice storm in Cincinnati. I was with a colleague and we were going into a restaurant. As we walked across the parking lot my feet slipped out from under me and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back in massive pain, and so 911 was called.

And at some point—of course it seemed far too long to me, as I was prostrate on the ice-covered asphalt—a full-size fire truck showed up. Yes, one of those vehicles with ladders on the side.

The fire crew came out, surrounded me, and fairly quickly concluded that there wasn’t much they could do for me.

What eventually happened was that a good Samaritan said that he could take me to the hospital. So the fire crew lifted me up and put me in the back seat of a Honda Accord. And I was taken to the hospital.

The situation at the time was that there had been such a great number of emergency calls throughout Cincinnati that what was available had to be sent.

So here’s the thing: Would anyone take a look at that situation and say, “Defund the fire department!” or “Fund EMS!”? In my case, more EMS people and gear would have been appropriate. If the restaurant had been on fire, it would have been the former.

As the old British legal saw has it, “horses for courses.”

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In early December Barrack Obama was interviewed on Snapchat and said, “If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan like 'Defund the police,' but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done.”

Which caused a number of audible and visible members of the Democratic Party to be completely agitated by what is clearly a pragmatic remark, politically, socially and, dare I say, realistically.

If someone is robbing your restaurant, you surely hope that cops are coming sooner rather than later. When someone is pointing a gun at you, you’re not worried about nuanced phrasing if it means that there isn’t going to be a police officer there to keep you from being permanently perforated.

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Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It is one of those things that you can readily imagine being the purview of professors at Ivy League schools, where they debate how many liberals can dance on the head of a pin.

You would imagine that Democrats would be good at it.

But when it comes to messaging, Trump has, yes, trumped them.

Think of the two slogans that resonated in the election that Trump won, not the one he lost in a landslide.

  • “Build the Wall!”
  • “Lock Her Up!”

Although the Wall still remains to be built and Hillary Clinton is free without bond, those chants still echo.

Why? Because they are positive, proactive statements.

They are commands to do something. “Performative acts,” in the words of linguists.

“Defund the police”?

As “snappy” as that might be, it simply doesn’t do the job because it is saying something that people shouldn’t do. If you want to get people on your side, you get them to buy into what they should be doing.

Proof? Well, the 10 Commandments are chock full of “Thou shalt nots.” How’s that working out?

Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

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The Turbulent Winds of Joe’s Presidency Have Just Begun to Blow

By Andrew Boyd

President-elect Biden (there, I said it) was speaking recently to a group of Black Lives Matter activists and mistakenly, I imagine, said the quiet part out loud, in essence imploring the group to drop the “Defund the police” sloganeering, just until after the Georgia Senate runoffs, mind you. Joe isn’t great on the nuance. He’s also the guy who keeps saying stupid crap like police should just shoot perpetrators in the legs.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is an exceptionally talented messenger, and respected as such, I believe. The party would be wise to listen, but its radical left is young, avaricious and impatient for change, and when the old guard says “shhh,” well, they're likely to do what young whippersnappers do, which is to double down. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess. 

The AOC wing (God save us all) has made it plain that when they say defund the police, that’s precisely what they mean. Credit for the honesty on at least this one point, I suppose. Indeed, the prevailing rhetorical winds of the D part blow straight from the mouths of the social justice squad, and it’s going to be an incredibly hard gale against which to tack, particularly for the likes of Joe, who is less the accomplished sailor than the well-oiled old weathervane. Also, he’s got Kamala with a strainer full of Chai Cyanide Evening Brew hanging from a chain about her neck, just waiting to strike. Poor old goat.

Oh, and for the record, while it might surprise some, I too believe that we need police reform, though my prescription runs afoul of the ‘defund’ bit. I think what we really need is more policing, a hell of a lot more, including aggressive stop and frisk, and broken windows policies of the kind a somewhat saner Rudy Giuliani used to astonishing effect during his tenure as America’s mayor. 

Moreover, I think police are overworked, underpaid and asked to do the hardest job there is this side of soldier or Biden’s food taster: to be in near-constant contact with the worst elements of our human nature, and still behave rationally and with infallible precision. Among the roughly 800,000 men and women in blue, there are undoubtedly more than a handful of really bad apples, and they should be sorted appropriately. 

More training, education, rest, and emotional and psychological support is needed; and with that, unquestionably, an absolute maximum of transparency and full accountability within the bounds of the law.

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