​Twelve years of America being led by climate change denier presidents in the twenty-first century has left this country behind the eight ball of climate catastrophe. It may already be too late to reverse the onrushing tsunami of weather disasters piling up here and across the planet. The Western U.S. suffers the triple whammy of sustained drought, oppressive heat and uncontrolled wildfires. The dirty air emanating from these fires pollutes cities three thousand miles away. New York City subway tunnels fill with flood water. Torrential rains vex the South. Hurricane season begins earlier each year, lasts longer, and spawns an increasing number of major storms. And all of this is just in the U.S. Simultaneously, Europe is hit by once-in-a-century floods that kill hundreds. The Middle East swelters under a heat wave that drives temperatures up over 120 degrees Farenheit and leaves an inadequate electrical infrastructure in tatters.
 
It will only get worse.
 
If you think the coronavirus pandemic is a biblical-type curse, just wait until we experience the worst that climate change will produce. While billionaires briefly escape the climate curse in their space ships, the rest of humanity suffers the consequences of both human actions that have brought us to the brink of destruction, and human inaction that dithers while the world hurtles towards an existential abyss.
 
It was unrealistic to expect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, both oil industry alumni, to acknowledge the reality of climate change. Donald Trump, whose knowledge of the implications of global warming is on a par with that of a gnat, was if anything, an active destroyer of the environment. He thumbed his nose at climate change and went beyond the extra mile to make it more difficult to combat its negative effects. While Bush and Cheney were guilty of inaction, Trump was guilty of intentionally reversing course and putting the U.S. in a far worse position than when he entered the presidency. In addition to pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, he took steps to encourage air and water pollution and turned the EPA into the Environmental Pollution Agency.
 
As always appears to be the case, it will be up to a Democratic successor president to clean up the mammoth mess left by his Republican predecessor. That was true of Obama’s needing to pull the country out of Bush’s Great Recession. It is even more of a challenge for Biden, given the immense number of disastrous policies he inherited from Trump, climate regression and environmental devastation being only two of them.
 
The climate problem is that 12 years of Republican presidential denial and aggressive action have put us in position to wave a white flag of surrender in the face of onrushing global warming and its toxic effects. Inexorably, the seasons will become warmer, delicate ecosystems that depend on cooler temperatures will be destroyed, extreme weather events will occur more frequently, and both people and the plants and animals that we steward will suffer escalating illness and death.
 
The current political scene does not lend itself to optimism. Managing an ongoing calamity is not the stuff of political reward. Absent the political will to think longer-term than the next election cycle, we will be relegated to attempting to live with the consequences of what we have wrought. The bipartisan infrastructure bill being considered by Congress is a perfect example of Congressional Climate Change Avoidance Syndrome. It contains only a smattering of band-aids that do little to address climate concerns. Big Oil lobbyists are dancing with joy on K Street.
 
It is astonishing that the congressional Republican caucus still contains members that deny climate change despite the obvious evidence all around them. The more ignorant among them likely actually believe that human-caused global warming is a left-wing, tree-hugger fantasy. Most, however, understand what is going on, but calculate that they will be gone from public life when the climate Armageddon descends upon us. They are perfectly willing to accept the inevitable cataclysm as long as they have left Washington before it happens.
 
All of this doom and gloom, however, does not mean that we should throw in the towel and meekly accept our fate. We must nevertheless make an attempt to mitigate the damage. Whatever we do, however minimal, is better than nothing. The challenge for those who care about climate change is how to push/pull the deniers to go along with them.
 
Dick Hermann
July 30, 2021

The time has come to bring anti-vaccinators and the delusional millions their lies have persuaded to account. They should not be allowed to continue this reckless behavior and evade responsibility for their words, actions—and inaction—in the face of the worst health crisis the planet has faced in a hundred years. Four initiatives are in order:
 
1. Stop coddling the liars and the millions who believe them. Neither our political leaders nor the media have come down hard enough on either the handful of purveyors of misinformation or the people who believe their falsehoods. This misinformation is resulting in the hospitalization and deaths of thousands of people.
 
With respect to the liars, the First Amendment does not protect their incendiary words. It is not an absolute. It is not a license to say anything. It does not protect speech that poses an imminent danger of physical injury to individuals. If Covid-19 does not fall within this exception, then nothing does. When the right to free speech runs up against the health of every American, the former must be restricted. While the courts have not specifically addressed the question of whether lies that jeopardize public health fall within the exceptions to the First Amendment’s free speech protection, perhaps the time has arrived to test that proposition.
 
Regarding the lied-to, it is time to label them for what they really are—self-centered naifs whose rejection of science and facts is jeopardizing the lives of all of the rest of us. Public officials and media pundits have been far too easy on these folks, believing that the misinformation they have soaked up can be squeezed out of them by appeals to logic and gentle persuasion. They live in a conspiracy-laden bubble that no entreaties to their supposed common sense can burst.
 
2. Impose legal accountability on the liars for putting the health of 330 million Americans at risk. Individuals who place others at risk of bodily harm should be charged with the entire array of criminal conduct statutes available under federal and state law. It is not a stretch to argue that those who intentionally expose people to the possibility of dying are chargeable with attempted murder. Let the courts sort out the legal nuances. In the meantime, this should make the miserable SOBs who perpetrate lies about vaccines and minimize the deadly dangers of Covid-19 supremely uncomfortable, not to mention straining their pocketbooks. The misinformers should be prosecuted for the incalculable damage they are doing to society. If they do not voluntarily stop, the justice system must button their lips for them.
 
In addition to the customary penalties meted out by the judicial system, part of their punishment should be public acts of contrition, i.e., admitting that they lied, that the vaccines are safe and effective, and that every American has a duty to his and her fellow citizens to get vaccinated.
 
3. Sanction the deniers. A handful of employers are beginning to get the idea that they have the power to force their employees to get vaccinated. New York City just mandated that its 42,000 public health workers must get the shots if they wish to continue being employed. There are many things employees are required to do to keep their jobs. This is just an additional prerequisite. If they continue to refuse the jabs, they can seek employment elsewhere. American employers throughout the economy should do likewise.
 
France is prohibiting the unvaccinated from going to restaurants, bars, cafes, and theaters or to ride in trains and planes. The only exceptions are for religious or health reasons. Of course, this requires proof of vaccination, something our lunatic fringe on the right is hysterical about.
 
4. Use the newly enlightened in PSAs. The most powerful vaccination advocates are those who refused to get vaccinated, then caught Covid-19, barely survived, and changed their tune. Public Service Announcements featuring converts who stared into the gates of hell are far more effective than the urgings of President Biden, members of his administration, politicians or healthcare professionals.
 
Those who persist in refusing to be vaccinated put everyone, even the fully vaccinated, at risk. You don’t get the shot only for yourself. You also do it in order not to infect others. A private action (in this case, inaction) that imposes public costs is intolerable. Resisting the shot is likely the most disrespectful act toward our fellow Americans since slavery.
 
No one—not the liars nor the multitudes who buy into their lies—has the right to behave irresponsibly in the face of a public health emergency. They are putting millions of Americans at risk of death. If Covid-19 is not controlled, we will have to accommodate ourselves to living with this incredibly dangerous virus forever. It is inevitable that it will mutate again and again and become even more transmissible and deadly than the current highly lethal Delta variant that now accounts for more than 80 percent of U.S. Covid-19 cases.
 
Dick Hermann
July 23, 2021

​There is a good reason why Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of empires.” It took the United States twenty years to learn this bitter historical lesson that dates back almost 2,500 years. While leaving this ungovernable country to fend for itself has been the inevitable consequence of every starry-eyed invader since Alexander the Great, the manner of leaving speaks volumes.
 
While leaving vs. staying was a problematic decision regardless, when the Biden administration opted to leave the country, it needed to do it well. It has not and now needs to do everything possible at this eleventh hour to correct it.
 
According to NBC News, when the U.S. contingent left its principal facility, Bagram Air Base, it did so in the middle of the night without informing its Afghan army ally that it was going. Moreover, it cut the electricity to the entire base, an inexplicable act that was unwarranted and which should result in court-martial. This is no way to treat those we are leaving behind.
 
Estimates are that the Taliban now control up to 85 percent of the country, leaving the government—if that is what the collection of corrupt, incompetent and clueless characters in formal positions in Kabul can be called—with only a few remaining urban areas. It is only a matter of time—and not very much time at that—before the Taliban take over the entire country. When that happens, the tens of thousands of Afghans who interpreted, translated and otherwise assisted U.S. forces and contractors, and their families, will face a very dire future. Many of them will be tortured and executed.
 
The U.S. has a moral obligation to these people to get them out of Afghanistan immediately. That is not happening. Why not can be attributed to a president strangely unwilling to use his bully pulpit to demand that the State Department bureaucrats at the center of the visa-granting process get this done immediately, or else. Anything less is unacceptable.
 
The State Department’s inability to move at more than a snail’s pace is nothing new. Nor is its reluctance to implement policies with which its career bureaucrats disagree. This goes back at least to the late 1930s when the Department, under the direction of Assistant Secretary and overt anti-Semite, Breckenridge Long, condemned millions of European Jews to death by dragging its feet and actively denying visas to the desperate.
 
There is absolutely no excuse for this disgraceful behavior. I contacted both the White House and State Department regarding this matter. The White House response was a flaccid irrelevancy, a lifeless communication that avoided the question completely. The press office at the State Department did not respond at all.
 
Is there no one in the Biden administration who understands the urgency of getting these people at risk out of harm’s way? Is there no one there who remembers the shameful way in which the Vietnam War ended, with frantic Vietnamese hanging from helicopter landing skids as the choppers were evacuating the last Americans from the Saigon embassy rooftop, U.S. Marine guards pushing our allies off with rifle butts?
 
Although history may not exactly repeat itself, as Mark Twain said, “it rhymes.” We are in danger of repeating that dishonorable episode, one of the lowest points in American history.
 
Dick Hermann
July 16, 2021

​In 1991, the national debt was $3.665 trillion and the debt-to-GDP ratio was 60 percent. The percentage of the debt owed to foreigners was skyrocketing. Economists, the media and the handful of politicians who purported to care about debt were freaking out. How, they asked, were we, our children and grandchildren ever going to pay this off? The hand-wringing over the out-of-control red ink was intense.
 
Little did they know.
 
Then came 9-11, two wars that we haven’t paid for (President Bush 43 actually urged Americans to keep spending), three unwarranted and unpaid-for tax cuts that disproportionately benefitted the wealthy, the Great Recession, Covid-19 and the transformation of that increasingly rara avis, the deficit hawk, into a flightless sparrow. The result? Today the national debt is approaching $30 trillion and the debt-to-GDP ratio is pushing 110 percent. We are about to owe more of it to foreigners than to Americans.
 
Thus, it was thrilling to finally have a president who told us that his ambitious infrastructure initiative, the American Jobs Plan, would be paid for by raising taxes on billionaires and millionaires who have been the tax code’s most favored folks dating back decades. Finally, they would ante up just like the rest of us. These new revenues would be used to build and fix the deteriorating bridges, dams, water and sewer systems, etc. and to criss-cross the country with broadband similar to the New Deal’s successful rural electrification program of the 1930s.
 
Not so fast.
 
President Biden’s fixation with bipartisanship has resulted in an infrastructure bill that, on the debit side of the ledger, is the same old same old. Just when we thought we could believe that, for once, a President and Congress were going to do something real to actually pay for a new initiative, they instead fell back into their comfort zone of bull. Just like their predecessor can-kickers, they propose to pay for the almost $600 billion in new spending in the bill with smoke and mirrors.
 
In order to get Republicans to agree to the bill, Biden quickly caved on tax increases. Republicans would never agree to them, even on folks like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, or Donald Trump, all of whom pay less than you do, or companies like Amazon that pay nothing at all. Instead, the GOP negotiators proposed increasing the gas tax, the most regressive tax in the federal arsenal, a solution that would fall most heavily on those Americans least able to afford it. The administration fortunately nixed that idea.
 
Here is what our political wizards came up with:
 
First, unemployment benefits will be reduced by $70 billion. Ahh, but no one on the unemployment rolls will see their benefits reduced. Instead, “waste and fraud” will be cut via the magic of improving “program integrity.” Good luck with that. The experts who spend their lives monitoring this stuff estimate that fraud and abuse of unemployment benefits amounts to a fraction of $70 billion. Moreover, they say that benefits will have to be slashed to arrive at that savings.
 
Second, $65 billion will come from the sale of the telecommunications 5G spectrum. The only problem with that is that the sale took place five months ago.  Through the alchemy of accounting, this is suddenly being recast as new money.
 
Third, “repurposing” $80 billion in Covid-19 relief funding. No one has yet identified where to find these mythical dollars.
 
Fourth, $6 billion from the sale of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. However, by law, the Reserve must be kept at a certain level. The only way to do that will be to repurchase the oil later.
 
Fifth, $60 billion from the jump in tax revenue from increased productivity and economic growth resulting from the infrastructure initiative. If you believe this, let me remind you that the Trump administration and its congressional allies assured us that their 2017 $2 trillion tax cut would more than pay for itself in increased tax revenues. We’re still waiting for the first dollar of that increase to be tabulated.
 
The fuzzy math does not end there. There are additional fairy-tale elements in the bill that are just as fanciful as the ones described above.
 
Isn’t it comforting to know that Washington is back to doing business as usual?
 
Dick Hermann
July 9, 2021

Donovan Brazier, hands down America’s best-ever 800 meter runner, won’t be going to Tokyo for the Olympic Games. He finished a shocking last in the 800 track trials final at boiling hot Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Only the top three finishers at trials make the Olympic Team. One race on one day was determinative, despite Brazier’s consistently stellar performances over the last five years, which included a collegiate record, a world championship, and an American record (the old record had stood for 34 years).
 
Brazier simply had a bad day, something to which everyone can relate. For that, he was punished with the shattering of his Olympic dream.
 
The Olympic track and swimming trials are unforgiving. Both select Olympians on the basis of a single race for swimmers and runners and a single field event for throwers, jumpers and vaulters.
 
It should not be this way. Most other countries do it differently, selecting their teams, at least in part, on the basis of overall performance over time. The UK’s system is a model we should consider. The British Olympic Association, in conjunction with each of the 33 Olympic sports national governing bodies, selects the team based on competitors’ “potential to excel at the Olympics.” While this customarily means that the top finishers at the UK trials make the team, it allows for flexibility to select others who might not have excelled at the trials, but whose recent past performances merit consideration.
 
Even in the U.S., several other sports take a different, more equitable approach to choosing their Olympic athletes. Gymnastics, for one, selects several team members on the basis of one or two competitions (the U.S. championships and the Olympic trials—the men’s and women’s teams do the selection a little bit differently from one another) and the rest using other criteria that reflect either performances over time or prowess in a particular gymnastics exercise.
 
Both U.S. track and swimming should follow suit. Since only two swimmers can go to the Olympics in each event, perhaps only the trials winner should get one spot while the other might be based on performances across recent competitions. Similarly, perhaps the top two performers at the track and field trials should qualify, with the third spot going to a competitor who proved himself or herself over a specified time period.
 
It seems grossly unfair to me, a former track and swimming competitor, that a single contest on a particular day should destroy a career of top-tier excellence and Olympic aspiration.
 
Dick Hermann
July 2, 2021