​All polling signs point to a midterm election result that should warm Republican hearts (assuming they still have one) and send Democrats scurrying to download Chopin’s funeral march. A combination of American attention spans, inflation and the inability to mount effective campaigns that counter Republican lies may be doing Democrats in.
 
Anger over the Supreme Court's Dobbs abortion decision that aroused the ire of women has waned since the summer. In the immediate aftermath of that indefensible ruling and follow-up by states that enacted draconian laws restricting abortion, the level of rage was at a fever pitch. GOP candidates were so frightened that they took down pro-abortion statements from their websites and back-tracked their absolutist positions regarding the issue. But rage dissipates quickly, even more so in an era when many citizens have the attention span of a gnat.
 
Ire over Dobbs has receded, the victim of weekly reminders of how much more life’s basic necessities now cost. Although the causes of this inflation are many and complex, Americans invariably look for someone to blame and that makes the President a perfect target. No matter that Republicans don’t have a clue about how to bring down prices and won’t be able to do anything at all to ease inflation’s effects. When, as seems likely, they retake the House of Representatives and replace Speaker Pelosi with the hapless, two-faced Kevin McCarthy, their policy proposals (assuming they have any) are likely to be jokes.
 
And then there is crime, also a hot issue that, for reasons that make absolutely no sense, favors Republicans. Democrats cannot seem to counter the Republican barrage of false claims about crime despite all of the evidence in their favor. There are three obvious responses to the lies Republicans push about crime-ridden Democrat-run cities and high crime rates in blue states. They are there for the taking; only Democrats are not taking them: (1) WalletHub’s 50-metric analysis of the safest and least safe states paint a picture that Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops: Seven of the ten safest states are blue; the other three are purple. ALL TEN OF THE MOST DANGEROUS STATES ARE DEEPLY RED. (2) More guns = more crime, and it is Republicans who want everyone armed to the teeth. What did they think was going to happen when their policies result in millions more guns on the streets? (3) Republicans are so soft on crime that they still back their grand master, who is under investigation for such a long litany of high crimes that there isn’t space available to list them all here.
 
There are 399 Republican 2020 election liars (much more accurate than the gentler term, “deniers”) on congressional and statewide ballots this November. However, instead of blasting them for their shameful perfidy at every opportunity, Democrats talk little about this shocking assault on democracy. The message this sends is that this existential threat to America is not that big a deal. Democrats should be saying that Republican lies about stolen elections demonstrate that they hate America and want to replace our two-and-a-half-century democracy with an authoritarian dictatorship.
 
Midterms are almost always brutal for the party in power. In 2010, the racially-fueled Tea Party movement decimated Democratic ranks. In 2018, it was Trumplicans who lost bigly.
 
The remarkable thing about this year’s midterms is that after the unprecedented damage Trump and the party he transformed into a conspiratorial cult have done to this country over the last six years, that this collection of liars, sycophants, white supremacists and fascist-admirers without the hint of a constructive idea or interest in bettering people’s lives can be competitive, much less triumphant. But that is the bizarro world in which we live.
 
Brace yourselves for two years of political stalemate generated by Republican stunts around the debt ceiling, government shut-downs and universal obstructionism that will frustrate any attempts to address the problems afflicting our country. It is staggering to believe that this is what voters really want.
 
Dick Hermann
October 28, 2022

It is difficult in a limited space to document all of the innumerable duplicities that the Republican Party is showering down on the electorate. Here is a small sample:
 
Inflation 1. They blame Joe Biden for rising prices, but defend oil company windfall profits and conveniently ignore the pandemic (aggravated by Trump’s denials and incompetence), supply chain disruptions and Putin’s Ukraine war that created a global inflation epidemic. In Germany and the UK, for example, inflation is running at 10+ percent, higher than the U.S. rate.
 
Inflation 2. They also blame Biden for injecting too much money into the economy via the April 2021 American Rescue Plan, conveniently ignoring their own Tax Relief Act passed with bipartisan support only four months earlier that juiced the economy to the tune of $900 billion.
 
Inflation 3. Republicans’ inflation reduction plan calls for—wait for it—tax cuts for the wealthy without paying for them. Yet again arguing (for the umpteenth time since “Reaganomics” first reared its ugly head) that the trickle-down hooey that has been proven wrong every time would benefit the masses and jack up federal tax revenues. In addition to fitting in with the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) this would, of course, only aggravate inflation. Note: This is the same bonehead proposal that brought down UK Prime Minister Liz Truss after only six weeks at Number 10.
 
Crime 1. Republican candidates on the November ballot have turned to crime as one of the  leading issues with which they are bashing their Democratic opponents. This is rich coming from the party that has beatified the Second Amendment and advocated that every American be encouraged to carry an assault weapon everywhere they go. What did they think would happen if guns were everywhere? Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to rise, killing both Republicans and Democrats without distinction. The Republican position is that guns don’t kill and more guns don’t kill more.
 
Crime 2. Crime-fighting Republicans see no double standard in raging against high crime in Democratic-controlled cities while ignoring the data that show that rural, red state crime is skyrocketing.
 
Crime 3. Republicans see no evil in their completely lawless criminal leader snatching the most highly classified and super-sensitive national security documents extant and spiriting them off to his Florida resort which, for six years now, has been the target of virtually every intelligence service on the planet.
 
Crime 4. 205 House Republicans voted against mental health grants to schools after insisting that mass school shootings happen not because of easy access to guns, but rather because of students with mental health problems.
 
Abortion. They eagerly embraced the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and lauded states that subsequently embraced a total ban on abortions, only to take to the hills after their take-no-prisoners anti-abortion talk prompted serious voter concern about their extreme positions.
 
Disaster Relief. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis begged President Biden for billions in federal disaster relief after Hurricane Ian laid waste to the Gulf Coast. Yet in 2013, when DeSantis was in Congress, he voted to deny disaster aid to New York and New Jersey following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.
 
Shameless Louses 1. Despite a straight party line vote against the American Rescue Plan, congressional Republicans are taking credit for the Plan funds flowing into their districts.
 
Shameless Louses 2. Despite voting against the Infrastructure bill, congressional Republicans are taking credit for infrastructure projects in their states and districts made possible by the bill.
 
GAGA, but not for MAGA. Although Republican officeholders proclaim that they have the interests and values of their MAGA voters at heart, they have done nothing to help those same voters. They are still obsessed with sending seniors to the poorhouse by slashing Social Security and Medicare and defending exorbitant drug prices charged by Big Pharma. They remain pro-corporation and anti-labor. They oppose food stamps for the poor. Any help the MAGA base has received came from Democrats.
 
Immigration. They denounce Democrats for “open borders” while opposing any legislation designed to tackle the immigration problem.
 
Election “Integrity.” They lie claiming a stolen election notwithstanding 62 court decisions that found no evidence of such, and invent solutions for this non-existent problem so that they can lay a foundation for stealing future elections.
 
Democracy. They claim they are defending democracy while planning for an authoritarian future.
 
The list could go on.
 
The Republican Party poses an existential threat to America. This dangerous collection of quislings and charlatans should not be allowed to subvert our democratic republic. The only way to stop them is at the polls. Go vote!
 
Dick Hermann
October 22, 2022

​The 2022-2023 Supreme Court term threatens to be perhaps even more consequential than the prior term, which witnessed the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the weakening of barriers between church and state, the reining in of federal regulatory authority, the denial of climate change, the exaltation of the Second Amendment over public safety, and other appalling decisions that gave a clear indication that the Court’s conservative majority is virtually an arm of the Republican Party.
 
What, asks the majority of Americans, could possibly be worse than that? The answer is a case called Moore v. Harper. At issue is a dubious constitutional argument heretofore relegated to the extreme outlying precincts of the authoritarian wing of the Republican Party. If endorsed by the Supreme Court, this “Independent State Legislature” theory would open the door to dramatically changing our elections, including allowing state legislatures to overturn the popular will and substitute their own slate of presidential electors for those chosen by the people.
 
The Constitution authorizes the states to administer federal elections, subject to Congressional overrule. The question arises as to the meaning of that delegation. The Elections Clause (Article I, §4) states: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, ….. In addition, the Presidential Electors Clause (Article II, §1, Clause 2, states: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….
 
The debate conjured by Trumpian zealots intent on stealing future elections turns on the word “legislature.” Both general understanding and Court precedents going back many years is that it refers to a state’s general lawmaking processes, including not only legislative action, but also whatever a state’s constitution says about subjecting legislation to a governor’s veto, a voter referendum, and state court action to ensure that legislative enactments comply with the state constitution.
 
Would be election thieves argue that these federal constitutional clauses give state legislatures exclusive authority to regulate federal elections, period. In practice, this would mean that state legislatures could not be stopped by whatever the state constitution says about a governor’s veto, a citizen referendum or a state court’s authority to approve or disapprove legislation.
 
If the Independent State Legislature theory had been effective in 2020, Donald Trump would have been able to steal the election and stay in the White House despite having been stomped by Joe Biden in both the popular vote and Electoral College. If the Supreme Court endorses this theory, it would allow Republicans to run roughshod over the will of voters. Should Trump somehow weasel out of his mounting legal challenges, is not yet strung up, is not behind bars, and runs for president in 2024 and loses, no big deal. Republican state legislatures could ignore the popular vote and legitimate electors and legally substitute their own slates of sham electors.
 
Of lesser concern, but still a huge problem, state legislators would have carte blanche to gerrymander and suppress the vote as contemptibly as possible without any opportunity for opponents to challenge their nefarious machinations in court.
 
The fate of our democracy has never before been threatened by any Supreme Court case or decision in our history. Moore v. Harper does that, and has a good chance of establishing this preposterous and dangerous theory that makes a mockery of Checks and Balances and the rule of law. Three current Supreme Court Justices—Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas (of course)--In various dissents and concurrences, have already signed on to the Independent State Legislature hooey. Two more and you can say so long to future free, fair and honest elections, not to mention American democracy.
 
Dick Hermann
October 14, 2022

President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program prompted raucous celebrations all across America’s 5,000-college landscape.  Not by affected students so much, although there was some of that. The vast majority of the celebrants were likely college administrators, specifically those whose principal concern is revenue.
 
As has often been the case in the past six decades, a well-intentioned, albeit misguided federal college cost-reduction program is licensing colleges to continue raising tuition fees regardless of how they are impacted by costs. Since the early 1980s, tuition has outdistanced the inflation rate by a country mile. Colleges know that this is a great deal for them.  With unlimited loan money available from the federal trough and the likelihood of some periodic government debt forgiveness, they can continue to raise tuition an average of 8 percent a year (for the past 50 years!).  They have no incentive to control costs. 
 
And higher education is nothing if not agile when it comes to drowning students and their families in debt. Especially in a time like the present when the ostensible justification for hiking tuition is being handed to them on a silver platter, namely the highest inflation in 40 years. Life may be a tough challenge for everyone else, but these are salad days for college administrators.
 
For one thing, more money tsunami-ing across college transoms mean that our Institutions of Higher Earning can continue to hire more administrators. They have been doing this at such a feverish pace in the 21st century that administrators now outnumber faculty at the majority of America’s colleges and universities. Over the last 30 years, the number of academic bureaucrats has doubled, vastly outpacing enrollment. Here are some administrative job titles I found in searching university websites. I defer to anyone who can explain what these jobs actually entail:

• Assistant Director of Affinity Group Leadership
• Educational Talent Search Academic Advisor
• Coordinator of Community Standards
• Senior User Experience Analyst
• Office Concierge
• Associate Dean of People
• Director of Disruption
• Nourishment Consultant
• Chief Visionary
• Assistant Director of Retreats and Discernment
• Assistant Director of LoveWorks
• College Mobilizer
• Discipleship Coordinator
• Hall Minister in a University Residence
• Summer Sacristan
• Modality Manager
• Coordinator of Interpretive Teaching

 
These are just some of the positions that parents pay for when they send their offspring off to college. They are also paying for costly buildings in which to house universities’ bloated bureaucracies. When you approach many colleges from afar, the number of campus construction cranes may delude you into believing that these communities have just won the competition for the next Olympics and are building new stadiums and arenas.
 
Moreover, administrators are, to put it mildly, handsomely compensated. Taking my alma mater as representative, annual compensation is as follows (from IRS filings):
 
8 earned more than $1 million.
6 additional administrators earned more than $500,000.
7 additional administrators earned more than $250,000.
An untold number of additional administrators earned more than $100,000.
 
Not bad, unless you happen to be a hard-working parent straining to make tuition payments.
 
If government and society really want to make college affordable, there are many ways to do so. Every public institution and virtually every private college receives tons of taxpayer money every year for research and development, contracts and numerous other campus activities. In addition, the tax benefits these institutions receive are massive, and include not only exemption from income taxes, but also from property taxes. All of this means that the potential for effective carrot-and-stick approaches to college cost reduction is immense.
 
So why do Congress and Presidents look the other way?
 
One very key reason is the proliferation of higher ed lobbying. Hundreds of colleges and universities have opened Washington, DC offices and hired armies of lobbyists to make sure that the powers-that-be in Washington and state capitals make nice. This is in addition to the proliferation of academic trade and professional associations that bring higher ed institutions together to form powerful lobbying organizations. Moreover, according to Open Secrets, individuals associated with academia contributed close to $100 million to 2020 political campaigns (colleges and universities cannot form political action committees).
 
Since Congress is not likely to ban lobbying and public financing of political campaigns is not going to happen anytime soon, it is only parents, students and alumni that can hold universities and politicians’ feet to the fire.
 
Dick Hermann
October 7, 2022