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Rant 610: Meanwhile, Under the Radar...

11/27/2020

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Just because Donald Trump, only the fourth president in 100 years to lose his re-election bid, is devoting his limited energy and attention span to subverting our democracy doesn’t mean his minions aren’t busy elevating his and their customary cruelty to a new level. Trump’s stooges are feverishly at work screwing the most vulnerable among us. Here’s just a few of the malevolent things they are doing on their way out the door into a well-deserved oblivion:
 
Continuing the Immigration Assault
 
For four years, the Trump administration has vandalized immigration. They have made getting into this country legally almost impossible. Their guiding principles have been malice, racism, lies and contempt for international law and human decency.  They don’t even try to hide it. Now they are at it again in a last ditch attempt to destroy the few human lives their viciousness has not yet touched.
 
In September we learned that an ICE prison in Georgia was sending immigrant women for unnecessary hysterectomies that the women didn’t consent to or even realize were happening. Congress’s attempt to investigate this criminal outrage is being stymied because those victims who have agreed to testify are suddenly being deported.
 
Similarly, Cameroonian asylum seekers who allege they were physically assaulted, pepper-sprayed and threatened into signing their own deportation orders are being fast-tracked for deportation so that they too cannot be called to testify about what they have suffered at the hands of Trump’s immigration goons.
 
Not to be outdone in vindictiveness by ICE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced that it is making it harder to become a naturalized citizen, effective December 1. The new citizenship test has 128 questions vs. 70 on the old one. Many of the new questions are more difficult than the current ones. I challenge members of Congress, especially Republicans, to answer them correctly. As Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) recently stated: “Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government — You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive.” Sheesh!
 
One More Kick in Disabled People’s Teeth
 
It isn’t enough that candidate Trump back in 2016 mocked a disabled reporter for his disability or that millions of coronavirus survivors are likely to have lasting disabilities. The Trump toadies at the Social Security Administration have just issued final rules making it much harder for disabled individuals to receive Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits and to put in jeopardy the SSDI and SSI benefits of people currently receiving them.
 
They are replacing the impartial, independent corps of administrative law judges (ALJs) who decide these cases with internal agency lawyers who are Social Security Administration employees beholden to their bosses’ edicts. Expect the number of needy, deserving people who will be denied these essential benefits to skyrocket.
 
The second rule increases the number and frequency of "continuing disability reviews" (during which beneficiaries must prove they're still disabled). This new rule is intended to make it easier for the government to throw people off the disability rolls.
 
Both rules will go into effect in December.
 
As with everything Trump and his cronies do, the result in all these cases is callous cruelty. The viciousness of these reprobates knows no bounds. Expect more of the same before they’re gone.
 
Dick Hermann
November 27, 2020

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Rant 609: The Final Daze

11/21/2020

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“It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.”
--Bishop Berkeley, 1750
 
What a sad, repulsive, classless, no character man is Donald Trump. The man-baby in the White House cannot accept that the American people resoundingly rejected him at the polls in a free, fair and honest election marred only by massive Republican voter suppression of minority voters nationwide. Every time one thinks Trump cannot go lower, a new bottom calls out to him like a mythological siren. For Trump there is no bottom.
 
His final repellant acts as president violate the oath he took as well as common decency, honor and humanity. Having abandoned any pretense of performing his presidential duties, he stages coups d’état at the Defense and Homeland Security Departments, installing unqualified bootlickers in place of the people he fired by tweet. He spouts wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and alleges a stolen election rampant with nonexistent voter fraud—laughable given that the alleged wrongdoing only affected him and no other Republicans down-ballot. Some conspiracy! He launches clown car election lawsuits, unsupported by any evidence, that get laughed out of court.
 
The worst elements of this awful man’s scorched-earth approach to his final days are:

  1. his disinterest in and lack of any action whatsoever to tackle a pandemic raging out of control in the country he swore to protect. Despite the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths surging, all he cares about is wreaking vengeance and havoc on his government and his people. It falls to the President-elect to behave responsibly while the lame-duck incumbent wallows in self-pity and false accusations. His execrable conduct will be rightly condemned by history, but that is small recompense for the millions of Americans suffering now because of his behavior;
  2. the threat to national security of Trump’s refusal to allow a transition to the new administration. The 9/11 Commission noted that the 2000 transition delay contributed to the delayed intelligence that might have helped us obtain an early warning of Al Qaeda’s plans to attack us. Trump’s advisers had to talk him down from launching a military attack on Iran. His decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan opens up that country to becoming a terrorist haven once again;
  3. his wholesale adoption of two Nazi tactics that aroused the German public and paved their way to power and dictatorship: the “stab in the back,” i.e. that corrupt politicians were guilty of sabotaging the army in the field at the end of World War I, turning a sure victory into defeat. Trump has adapted that to his rigged election falsehood; and “the Big Lie,” a Joseph Goebbels invention that in its Trumpian manifestation asserts that the election was rigged and Trump really won. Both, of course, are total twaddle. The problem is that Trump’s followers believe this poppycock to the detriment of our fragile democracy and the rule of law. His contamination of our democracy is not something we will easily correct; and
  4. his all-out assault on democracy represented by his effort, after all else (lies, conspiracy theories, distortion, disinformation) failed, to overturn the election through subversion, namely attempts to persuade Republican state legislatures to pick their own slate of electors in defiance of the popular will. The incalculable damage this sabotage does to America will long outlast Trump.
 
Trump has four goals in mind with his indecent conduct: (1) to delegitimize a legitimate election. Sadly and inexplicably, his supporters actually believe this nonsense; (2) to make President-elect Biden’s job more difficult; (3) to desperately cling to office because come January 20, 2021, he loses his protection against the 10 criminal and civil investigations and cases awaiting him; and (4) to bring the country down in flames with him if he doesn’t get his way.
 
Equally vulgar is the way senior Republicans have once again fallen in line behind this reprehensible man masquerading as a president. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, stooges all who have bought into Trump’s con/coup, deserve the condemnation of all Americans and of history for their disgraceful conduct. They dishonor the oath they took to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and they run roughshod over the rule of law and democratic ideals for which so many Americans have fought and died. Of course these patsies know better, but they cower in fear of being tweeted against by the autocrat they chose to follow and his loyal base. They are beneath contempt.
 
I supported President Ford’s blanket pardon of Richard Nixon. I believed the country had been through enough and did not need to countenance the prospect of more Nixonian anguish. This time, however, is different. Trump and his enablers need to face justice for their criminal and treasonous conduct. A reckoning must be had. Accountability is as American as apple pie.
 
Dick Hermann
November 21, 2020

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Rant 608: A Biden Cabinet Dream Sheet

11/12/2020

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Consider this thought experiment a “dream sheet” proposal of what could happen come January 20, 2021. President-Elect Joe Biden has the opportunity to put together the best, most capable and most diverse government ever. The contrast with the current dismal crop of “yes-men” and nebbishes would be stunning.

​Moreover, this is an opportunity to both rename existing departments and agencies to better reflect their missions, and establish new ones to meet present and future demands. The following list is designed to do that:


Cabinet Departments
  • RENAMED. Department of Agriculture & Food Security: Etherin Cousin (former director, World Food Program). The pandemic demonstrates the importance of ensuring that all Americans have a right to food.
  • RENAMED. Department of Commerce & Industry: Mary Barra (CEO of General Motors). Commerce, a mishmash of unrelated functions, needs its title to reflect its most important missions.
  • Department of Defense: William McRaven (Admiral, USN, Retired)
  • Department of Education: Michael Bennet (Senator, former Denver Schools Superintendent). Bennet did a fantastic job in Denver.
  • Department of Energy: Larry Culp (CEO, GE Renewable Energy). Renewables are the future.
  • Department of Health & Human Services: Leana Wen (former Baltimore Public Health Director)
  • Department of Homeland Security: Val Demings (former Orlando Police Chief)
  • Department of Housing & Urban Development: Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta Mayor)
  • RENAMED. Department of Interior & Climate: Jay Inslee (Washington State Governor). Climate change issues are real and must be elevated to the prominence they deserve.
  • Department of Justice: Amy Klobuchar(Minnesota Senator)
  • RENAMED. Department of Labor & Employment: Richard Trumka (AFL-CIO President). Employment merits equal status with the organized labor focus that has dominated heretofore.
  • Department of State: Susan Rice (former National Security Advisor)
  • Department of Treasury: Richard Cordray (former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Ohio Attorney General). Although Elizabeth Warren would be the first choice for Treasury, her appointment would allow Massachusetts’ GOP Governor to appoint a Republican to her Senate seat. That’s too high a price to pay.
  • RENAMED. Department of Transportation & Infrastructure: Kancheepuram N. Gunalan (President, American Society of Civil Engineers). The perfect place to mobilize  and coordinate a national program to build and maintain our public works.
  • Department of Veterans Affairs: David Petraeus (U.S. Army General, Retired)
  • NEW. Department of Crisis Management: Richard Levick (the dean of the crisis management profession). The pandemic exposes the need for a national planning and reaction agency. Homeland Security does not encompass these kinds of crises.
  • NEW. Department of Intellectual Property: Jay Erstling (former Head, Patent Cooperation Treaty Office, World Intellectual Property Organization). IP now plays a central role in economic growth and has become an international competition we cannot afford to ignore.
  • NEW. Department of Science, Technology & Innovation: Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur). The need for such a coordinating department is acute. No great power that has denied science and expertise has ever endured.
Why three new departments? Two--Science, Technology & Innovation and Intellectual Property--are about investment for future growth and protecting American ingenuity. Both will also contribute to bringing down our runaway deficits and debt and elevate U.S. intellectual property protection from the backwater it has been to date. A Department of Crisis Management will “think and plan forward” and not allow the U.S. to be caught off-guard.

Selected Agencies and Individuals
  • Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection: Pete Buttigieg (former Mayor, South Bend, IN)
  • Centers for Disease Control & Protection: Dr. Ashish Jha (Director, Brown University School of Public Health)
  • Chair, Council of Economic Advisors: Jared Bernstein (Chief Economics Advisor to the Vice President, Obama Administration)
  • CIA: Tom Ridge (former Pennsylvania Governor and Secretary of Homeland Security)
  • EPA: Molly Wallace (Managing Director, Global Science, The Nature Conservancy)
  • NASA: Ellen Ochoa (Astronaut, Director of the Johnson Space Center)
  • National Security Advisor: Leon Panetta (former Secretary of Defense, Office of Management & Budget Director, CIA Director & White House Chief of Staff)
  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence: John Brennan (former CIA Director)
  • REVIVED & RENAMED. Office of Technology Assessment & Future Planning. Mitch Daniels (President of Purdue University and former Indiana Governor). The government’s only “futures” think tank was eliminated by Speaker Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s in one of the most short-sighted moves ever undertaken by Congress. It represented the best that government ever produced.
  • NEW: Coronavirus Czar: Dr. Antonia Novello (former Surgeon General & UNICEF Special Representative for Health & Nutrition)
In addition, the obvious candidate for Democratic National Committee Chair is Stacey Abrams, whose amazing work flipped Georgia Democratic. While Tom Perez did a decent job as DNC Chair, he bears some responsibility for the Democrats’ poor down-ballot performance.

Diversity:

    Men: 18
    Women: 11
    People of Color: 12
    Republicans: 6 

Dick Hermann

November 12, 2020


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Rant 607: Election Reflections

11/6/2020

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The 2020 election is not only the most consequential since at least 1860, but is also the one generating the most reverberating observations:

  • The most stunning outcome of the 2020 election is that almost 50 percent of Americans, despite observing four years of criminality, lives lost, children torn from parents, a disregard for the rule of law, the attempted destruction of our delicate democracy and abysmal behavior, still voted for Donald Trump. The takeaway? While Trump may be gone, Trumpism is not and will continue to be a powerful voice of unreason on the right. Unless a way around it is found, it will be extremely difficult to govern, given a divided Congress and a Senate whose Republican members will continue to be dependent on conspiracy-obsessed constituents for re-election and thus disinclined to reach across the aisle to get productive things done.
  • Mitch McConnell will not change his spots just because Donald Trump is history. He will be just as obstructionist as ever. Dems, however, do have a strategy they can pursue: cultivate the handful of GOP Senators who pass for “moderate:” Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney and perhaps Ben Sasse. If they can persuade two or three of them, then aspirational policies like tackling climate change, infrastructure and immigration reform might have a shot.
  • Trump’s ridiculous claims of a vast Democratic conspiracy to steal the election is belied by the party’s failure to flip the Senate and its loss of seats in the House. In one sense, Trump is just about the only Republican who lost.
  • Biden had no coattails. In fact, he had negative coattails resulting in a potentially hostile Senate, a reduced House majority and antediluvian state legislatures that will continue to dominate redistricting for the next decade.
  • The polls could not have been more off the mark.
  • The pundits whose superficial analyses demonstrated a depth of cluelessness should be consigned to history’s also-rans.
  • Voting overhaul. There is no excuse for long lines. There is no logic in disallowing the counting of mail-in and early-voted ballots until election day. Counts need to begin earlier so that results don’t have to wait ad nauseum. The need for a reinvigorated Voting Rights Act is acute. It should reinstitute and expand Justice Department pre-clearance reviews of any proposed registration and voting changes by any state.
  • Disinformation is formidable. Republicans used it with great effectiveness in Miami-Dade County, Florida and it made the difference in carrying the state. Democrats had no answer to the hysteria Republicans raised about socialism coming to America if Joe Biden were elected. The appeal to anti-Castro Cubans, anti-Maduro Venezuelans and anti-Ortega Nicaraguans who came to these shores to escape socialist oppression was powerful.
  • Social Media needs some controls. It was used to great effect by Republicans hawking conspiracy theories and lies.
  • Playing by the rules disadvantages Democrats and incentivizes Republicans to continue to lie, cheat and steal elections and court seats. I am not advocating that Dems sully themselves by stooping to play in the GOP moshpit, but some strategic rethinking of how to counter this vileness needs to occur.
  • Russia should not go unpunished after it once again attempted, this time with far less success, to intervene and interfere in our democratic process. This is war and we have unilaterally disarmed. That has to change. We need to go on offense.
  • Kudos to the federal and state agencies tasked with election security. They did a terrific job. The lessons of 2016 really resonated. And a pat on the head to state and local election administrators and volunteers who performed a thankless task under extreme duress magnificently.
  • The U.S. Postal Service slow-walked ballots to many counting locations. It needs to be depoliticized. Never again should a president and postmaster general be allowed to subvert it in an attempt to steal an election. A bipartisan commission should select the postmaster general. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night [nor Louis DeJoy] should stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
 
Dick Hermann
November 6, 2020

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    Author

    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

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