​Until the advent of the 21st century, I believed that the U.S. Supreme Court’s worst-ever rulings were two terrible 19th century decisions--Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)—and one 20th century pronouncement--Korematsu v. United States (1944). All three cases found the Court firmly on the side of flagrant discrimination.
 
In this century, the Court has outdone itself when it comes to dismal jurisprudence. Bush v. Gore decided a presidential election by a 5-4 vote of justices who ignored the proscription that the Court does not involve itself in political questions (what’s more political than electing a president?). Citizens United opened the floodgates of billionaire and corporate money to buy elections. Shelby County emasculated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and gave Republicans the go-ahead to engage in unfettered voter suppression designed to steal elections.
 
Now the Court is poised to make even more conscience-shocking decisions by the addition of yet another reactionary judge. Trump and his chief legislative executioner, Mitch McConnell, are once again (see Merrick Garland) pilfering a Supreme Court appointment that will skew the Court even further to the hard right.
 
Forget the naked hypocrisy of such an appointment only a few weeks before a presidential election. McConnell and his partners in crime championed what they labeled a holy writ in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died more than nine months before a presidential election, namely that the voters should decide who should have the right to name a new justice. It would be unseemly, said McConnell and his fellow travelers, to allow a sitting president to make such an appointment in an election year.
 
What was unseemly then is perfectly seemly now, say Mitch and the Mitchspittles. So, it is highly likely that the Court will get its new justice either before November 3 or shortly after an election that may result in a new president-elect and a new U.S. Senate controlled by the other party. And there is nothing the Democrats can do about it. The filibuster no longer applies to Supreme Court nominations. It now appears that only two Republican Senators will join their Democratic colleagues in opposing the nomination. Democratic threats to “pack” the Court and get rid of the Senate filibuster completely are hollow. The Republicans live only for the moment, their sense of history being limited to locking in a right-wing Court majority for decades.
 
At the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, the chief intellectual architect of the Constitution, viewed the legislative branch as a “fence” that would surely restrain a madman, maniacal, authoritarian president from running roughshod over the nation. “Checks and balances” built into the foundational document, he was convinced, would assure that Congress would rein in a corrupt, runaway executive. Unfortunately, Madison failed to consider the possibility of an obsequious Senate Majority Leader who cared not at all for defending Congress’ legislative prerogatives against presidential usurpation and who was willing to be a doormat for an unconstrained president contemptuous of constitutional boundaries.
 
If the new justice is seated in early November, she will take part in oral arguments about the future of the Affordable Care Act on November 10th and will likely vote along with at least four of her right-wing colleagues to deep-six it, including pre-existing condition protections. Don’t believe for a minute that Trump’s recent empty executive order pledging (falsely) to protect this essential benefit is anything but a bogus, panicked attempt to delude voters into believing that he is suddenly on the right side of an issue he has spent his entire presidency opposing.
 
So this is where we are today. Republicans will push the Court further rightward, render moot Chief Justice John Roberts’ occasional inclination to cast a swing vote in favor of justice, and enable the stripping away of the remaining laws that protect Americans from the depredations of unchecked reaction. At risk will be Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to control her own body (Republicans espouse a selective version of “right-to-life” that ends at birth), the right of all eligible Americans to vote, and everything else that the advancing arc of history has accomplished to improve our lives.
 
Dick Hermann
September 25, 2020

​Early on in the pandemic, it appeared that technology was going to be the seamless substitute for in-class learning and the great equalizer that would realize the goal of educational equity. Instead, it has starkly revealed the failures of remote learning. We now know that digital schooling is only as good as a family’s connectivity, equipment and parental ability to help kids as well as each school district’s technological competence. Last spring, the equity gaps widened, particularly among Black, Latino and disabled students. The disconnect between the promise and the reality is profound. The digital divide is a chasm.
 
Schools that recently reopened to on-site learning and then abruptly closed when Covid-19 cases among students and staff spiked were caught flat-footed when they had to fall back on remote learning. This should never have happened. By buying into the Trump and (Education Secretary) Betsy DeVos pressure to reopen to onsite learning and their politicizing of education at the expense of sound and safe policies, schools hung themselves out to dry.
 
Equity gaps and disdain for health and safety are only two of the three problems schools are encountering. Technological complexity is the other. In many jurisdictions, even prosperous ones where education is highly valued and adequately funded, technological failures have been rife. In Arlington, Virginia, one of the nation’s wealthiest communities with one of the top-rated schools systems, students were unable to access their classrooms remotely on the first day of school. There was no excuse for a technology collapse when the school system had months to prepare for the new academic year and ample opportunity to make sure its technology platform was up to speed. The superintendent said the connectivity problem was due to a firewall issue related to the large volume of traffic trying to access Microsoft Teams at the same time. How this was not anticipated bespeaks a failure that should have been foreseen and dealt with long before the beginning of the school year.
 
In neighboring Fairfax County, also a premier educational mecca and the 11th largest school district in the U.S., the first week of school was marred by a ransomware attack that may have compromised the personal information of thousands of students and their families. This was apparently part of a coordinated cyberattack on school systems nationwide. While it is a sad commentary on the world we currently inhabit, this kind of disruption was also predictable and should have been guarded against. The fact that it was not is an indictment of school system technology offices and their leadership. Unless we commit to doing more than paying lip service to the importance of education, we condemn ourselves and our children to a second-rate experience that has no place in an advanced, industrialized country that must compete with the rest of the world.
 
Arlington and Fairfax Counties are just the tip of the technology failure iceberg. Ransomware and malware attacks shut down learning in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Ohio. A number of school districts have had to recall thousands of devices they had distributed to students in order to resolve problems. Preventing stuff like this from happening should be the highest priority at a time when distance learning is the only solution. This requires taking technology seriously and committing sufficient resources to securing both the best state-of-the-art equipment, inexpensive broadband available to all, and the best people to design, implement, coordinate, manage and troubleshoot these systems. In the absence of national planning and support, these responsibilities fall upon state and local governments and school systems.
 
Unpreparedness is only one aspect of the technology problem. The principal technology schools use—virtual teleconferencing—is unable to work with any of the other key components necessary for a viable distance educational experience: content management systems, assignment organization, interactivity, reading comprehension, etc. This requires teachers, students and even parents to become IT experts if they have any hope of student success. Teachers are overwhelmed with the volume of information thrown at them, much of it technical and impossible to follow.
 
The rest of the world’s advanced economies have experienced few problems implementing remote learning. This is yet another core area where the U.S. earns a failing grade to go along with its failures to contain and mitigate the pandemic, revive its depressed economy and provide sufficient relief to the tens of millions of Americans abandoned by our government’s incompetence and ideological cravenness.
 
We needed a national policy framework that school districts could follow for the suggested types of software and the interoperability between them. Once again, Donald Trump was not up to the task. Teachers, students and parents deserve better.
 
Dick Hermann
September 18, 2020

“We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight…in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender.”
--Winston S. Churchill
 
“[The pandemic] is a Democratic hoax.” “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” And so on.
--Donald J. Trump
 
In May 1940, Great Britain faced the greatest existential threat in its long history. French forces were collapsing before the German juggernaut. The Germans were preparing to invade Britain, soon to be the last holdout against Nazi oppression. On May 10, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and immediately painted a grim verbal picture of what Britain faced. He didn’t pull punches. He understood that his people needed to know the truth in order to prepare for and manage what lay ahead. Inspired by his unmatched, soaring rhetoric—“I have nothing to offer but blood, tears, toil and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind… many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, ….”—his people rallied around him, defiantly endured the Blitz, prevailed against unbelievable odds in the Battle of Britain, and ultimately, with the assistance of its Soviet and American allies, buried Nazism and won the war.
 
May 1940 was arguably the finest month any leader in history has ever had. It was marked by telling the unvarnished truth to the British people. In return, they responded with patriotic zeal, an absence of panic and a fierce resolve to survive and triumph.
 
Contrast Donald Trump’s approach to the greatest existential threat to the United States since the Civil War, as starkly revealed in Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage. Trump, in 18 taped interviews, told Woodward that he played down the Covid-19 threat because he “did not want to panic” the American people. He knew how dangerous the coronavirus was as early as January, then frittered away months before reacting. His half-baked Chinese travel ban (43,000 travelers from China entered the U.S. after the travel ban) was the only timid step he took early on to try to contain the virus. At the same time, he consistently lied about the danger. He pushed dubious cures and suggested injecting bleach, among other insane notions. He held six rallies following his January briefings about the seriousness of the situation, during which he disdained basic safety measures like wearing masks and socially distancing, a reckless advocacy he still espouses today. He went ahead with these rallies knowing full well that not taking the most elementary safety precautions spreads the virus and risks severe illness, suffering and death. Politicizing safety and health while knowing the danger is a crime against humanity. He puts his own supporters’ lives on the line for political gain.
 
Other countries' leaders told their people the truth and no one panicked. Instead, their honesty triggered a determination to contain and mitigate the virus so they could get their lives and economies back on a normal footing. Look where they are today while America flounders, saddled with the worst coronavirus record in the world under this sorry excuse for a leader.
 
Donald Trump is no Churchill. By lying to his people about the virus and playing games with his government’s response, he is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. This is without doubt the greatest crime in the history of the presidency.
 
Sadly, I doubt that Woodward’s condemnatory revelations will change a single November vote. Trump supporters, for reasons inexplicable after all the damage and carnage he has wrought, are baked into their unworthy candidate. When I read the polls, I am blown away by the fact that Trump still retains any support. He deserves none.
 
Dick Hermann
September 11, 2020

The “law-and-order” theme Donald Trump has invoked in hopes it will win him re-election appears to be based on the 1988 edition used so effectively by George H.W. Bush rather than Richard Nixon’s and George Wallace’s first use of this fictional leitmotif back in 1968.
 
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis emerged from the 1988 Democratic National Convention with a huge 17-point advantage over Bush. That lead, however, evaporated quickly once Bush went all “law-and-order” on Dukakis. The centerpiece of his wildly successful effort to paint his opponent as “soft on crime” was the infamous Willie Horton ad that flooded the airwaves for more than two months up to election day.
 
Horton was a convict from Massachusetts (where Dukakis was governor) serving time for murder. While out of prison on a temporary furlough, he committed robbery, rape, and assault. The Bush campaign effectively exploited Horton to stoke fear and racial anxiety among white voters.
 
While the situation is quite different in 2020, the Trump campaign’s goal in invoking law-and-order is the same as that in 1988. However, the circumstances today are more complex:

• The chaos, violence and dystopia are all happening on Trump’s watch. He is the responsible party. He is, after all, the incumbent.
• Trump’s own lawlessness renders his law-and-order mantra a sick joke.
• Trump’s June assault on peaceful protestors in Washington, DC in order to clear them from Lafayette Park so he could have a photo-op holding a bible (upside down) in front of a church is not exactly consistent with a concern for law-and-order.
• Trump’s promotion of violence by armed right-wing, white supremacist  zealots who have attacked and killed protesters shows that he is only interested in selective law-and-order.

 
Nevertheless, Trump’s attempt to scare the daylights out of the electorate is a serious threat to the Biden campaign. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris must continue to address it forthrightly every day. In order to neutralize Trump’s smears, they must condemn every instance of looting and violence by whoever is perpetrating this illegal behavior. They must also hammer home the fundamental truth that this is happening on Trump’s watch and that he—and he alone—owns it.
 
Biden/Harris must also set forth their plan to deal with violence while drawing the contrast with Trump, whose only “plan,” such as it is, is to foment as much violence, disorder and mayhem as he can, believing it to be his prescription for election victory (along, of course, with extreme voter suppression and social media trolling and election administration hacking help from his mentor, Vladimir Putin).
 
Every single time Trump and his minions lie about Biden’s position on any issue, Democrats need to respond immediately, loudly and unambiguously with the truth. Trump cannot be permitted to get away with electoral murder.
 
Finally, Biden must continue to bring the conversation back to Trump’s complete and utter inability to manage the pandemic and its devastating economic consequences. He needs to point out in detail the many points along the road to this unprecedented disaster where Trump botched this test of leadership, rendered America the worst in the world, and crashed the economy.
 
Democratic vigilance must also go beyond Trump’s attempts to deflect, deny, delay and divert from his colossal incompetence and be able to respond rapidly to the lies and manipulations perpetrated by Trump’s congressional and White House enablers.
 
Trump is running the dirtiest campaign in American history. Cleanup crews must be right behind him.
 
Dick Hermann
September 4, 2020