America has lacked a sane, coherent immigration policy since at least the administration of Chester Arthur (1881-85). And his was no great shakes. Presidents since have tried and failed to come up with a workable regime that is a win-win for both Americans and immigrants. While the Biden administration agonizes over what to do about this consistently intractable problem, desperate migrants are piling up at our Southern border and no one has any sensible and humane ideas about how to handle them.
 
This painful situation should not be allowed to continue. It is also politically dangerous for a president and administration that, in contrast to the Trump fiasco, wants to show compassion while also stanching the flood of people frantic to escape grinding poverty and extreme violence and get into the U.S.
 
The problem is best analyzed by breaking it down into its component parts:

1. Addressing the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers,” already here.
2. Turning the flood of humanity at the border into an orderly flow.
3. Encouraging would-be immigrants to remain in their countries of origin.
4. Educating Americans on the benefits of immigration.

 
Item (1) is relatively easy to resolve. All that is needed is a reasonable path to citizenship that is not prohibitively lengthy or expensive for applicants. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are hard-working, tax-paying and dollar-repatriating folks who already add far more to GDP and American society than they cost. Legalizing their status benefits not only them, but also us.
 
Item (2) is tougher. It will require the investment of modest resources to expand the current administrative process by which we decide asylum cases, along with a return to the pre-Trump asylum regime instead of the viciously biased system he put in place to deny asylum to virtually every candidate. In addition, we need to at least triple the number of Immigration Judges and select them on a merit basis akin to the prior Administrative Law Judge selection process that Trump trashed by politicizing it.
 
It also requires raising the refugee ceiling that Trump lowered so that only a handful of qualified applicants could get in annually. Biden has already taken positive steps in this direction.
 
If we want immigrants to remain in Mexico while they wait for the U.S. to process them, we must assist Mexico in humanely caring for and feeding them. FEMA is experienced in setting up the infrastructure necessary to do this.
 
Item (3) requires a three-pronged approach:
 
First, after we have inoculated our population against Covid-19, we should supply vaccines to Central America and temporarily supplement their public health infrastructure to quickly vaccinate their citizens.
 
Second, we should look to the Marshall Plan as a model for Central America. In a remarkably short time, the Plan stabilized and transformed a war-devastated Western Europe burdened with 40 million displaced persons into a thriving economic powerhouse and secure democracies resistant to Communism and eager for American goods and services. The investment was modest given the enormous economic and political returns. Moreover, in an environment conducive to corruption, on-the-ground American management of the investment resulted in negligible graft. Prosperity is the best antidote to emigration. Biden has already pledged $4 billion for something like this. More will be needed. The money invested in the region will more than pay for itself in reduced border security and immigration processing and related costs.
 
Third, the gang violence that drives many migrants to flee is largely fueled by out-of-control drug cartels kept in business by U.S. demand. Our 50-year “War on Drugs” focused on supply interdiction has been a multi-trillion dollar failure. If only a fraction of the resources being wasted in this unwinnable war were redirected to the demand side, the American market that keeps the cartels going would shrink along with the fear that drives migrants northward.
 
Item (4) is the easiest one to implement. American K-12 and college curricula have shrunk history and civics education to bare survival levels. They need to be reinvigorated. Immigration history and immigrants’ contributions to American society, culture and the economy need to be part of these classes.
 
Admittedly, these are ambitious goals, ones that Republicans in terror of Trump’s tantrums will not support. Nevertheless, they are reasonable solutions to a problem that will only escalate if nothing is done. Bundling these proposals into one bill would likely qualify it for the reconciliation process whereby only a simple congressional majority would suffice.
 
Dick Hermann
April 9, 2021

​On March 28th, CNN aired a documentary, "COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," in which its medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, interviewed six of the principal physicians who advised and assisted the Trump administration on its pandemic response. Interviewees included five physicians whose names and faces became familiar to us last year—Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Robert Redfield, Brett Giroir and Stephen Hahn. This was their opportunity to explain their words and actions during the pandemic and “sanitize” their legacies. Boy, did they take every opportunity to cleanse themselves of the Trump taint.
 
The only one who emerges from the medical sewer into which they meekly followed their bungling boss was Dr. Fauci who, after some early missteps and in sharp contrast to his coronavirus task force colleagues, did not hold back when he disagreed with the lies, misinformation and dangerous inanities about the pandemic that the president spewed forth at his press briefings and rallies. The others stayed silent despite knowing better. Their inexcusable conduct contributed to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. This was no different than what the German enablers and executioners of the Holocaust argued during the war crimes trials after World War II: “I was only following orders.”
 
If these so-called medical professionals had any integrity, they would have come forward at the time to inform the public that what Trump was perpetrating with his lies about the gravity of the crisis and his blabbering about miracle cures and dangerous “therapies” like ingesting bleach was nonsensical rubbish. Instead, they kept quiet and went along with what amounted to genocide. One hopes this kind of irresponsible behavior is not what doctors learn in medical school.
 
Here is what Dr. Birx said a year ago about Trump: “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data. I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.”
 
If you have recuperated from reading this preposterous cheerleading drivel about someone for whom the English language is an insurmountable challenge and who has the attention span of a gnat, here is what Brix now told Sanjay Gupta: “There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially."
 
Birx is the 2020s reincarnation of Herbert Hoover. Both had triumphant prior careers before everything blew up in their faces. Hoover’s inability to accept the reality of, and respond to, the Great Depression ruined his legacy. Birx’s complicit enabling of Trump, whom she knew was lying and incapable of managing the pandemic, destines her for history’s Hall of Shame.
 
Dr. Redfield was another of Trump’s principal stooges. His departure as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was greeted by its Atlanta headquarters’ employees as a time for celebration. The rest of these Trump doctors are also not exactly missed by their former agencies.
 
When the time comes for holding the people responsible for this avoidable gargantuan tragedy—and we can hope that must be close at hand—accountability must include not only Trump, but also Deborah Birx and her coronavirus task force associates who were complicit in what amounted to the greatest cover-up in American history. They chose to support a cruel, deranged, narcissistic loser obsessed only with himself over the lives of the American people. When human lives are at stake, hiding the truth is a criminal act.  What Birx and her colleagues did was unforgivable.
 
At a minimum, accountability should ideally include (1) a criminal investigation of Trump and his task force appointees, (2) a civil class action suit by as many survivors of Covid-19 victims against this same group of culprits, and (3) the revocation of the medical licenses of all members of the task force other than Fauci. If they are allowed to continue in the healthcare field, it should be only to empty and clean bedpans.
 
What Trump and his task force did is unforgivable. Anything less than full accountability will only encourage a repeat of this kind of disgraceful behavior.
 
Dick Hermann
April 2, 2021

​When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, it marked at least the fifteenth invasion of that ill-fated land in the last 2,400 years. None of the invaders ever managed to consolidate their temporary victories, subjugate the locals or govern the country. All would-be conquerors had to live in highly guarded urban redoubts, unable to move about freely for fear of assassination. Each invader soon regretted what they did. Even though the U.S. was not seeking to conquer, subjugate or govern the country, it ran into the same obstacles, dangers and regrets.
 
Afghanistan is a land-locked, mountainous region the population of which is an agglomeration of numerous unrelated tribes and groups that have been warring with one another and with outside invaders since time immemorial. Some of them still rely on a medieval barter economy instead of money and modern banking practices. The common threads that run through all of these hostile, disparate elements are (1) a very traditional, ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam, and (2) rampant corruption.
 
Since the U.S. foray into this unconquerable and ungovernable land twenty years ago, we have lost 4,100 lives, suffered 20,000 additional casualties, and frittered away more than $2 trillion, the bulk of which has been illegally diverted into the pockets of crooked politicians, drug dealers—Afghanistan is the world leader in illicit drug production—and Taliban fanatics.
 
Today there are 2,500 American and an additional number of allied troops in Afghanistan. Without the participation of the Afghan government, the Trump administration reached an agreement with the Taliban wherein the U.S. agreed to pull out our remaining troops by May 1, 2021. In return, the Taliban pledged nothing more than to “be nice.” So much for The Great Dealmaker’s negotiating prowess. The Biden administration is now hedging on the pull-out date, at a loss as to what makes the most sense to do.
 
The Taliban currently control more Afghan territory than the government. In the districts it controls, the harshest form of Sharia law has been reintroduced, making women’s lives a living hell. Girls are no longer allowed in schools; women must remain largely behind walls in their homes/prisons and wear head-to-toe burkhas; and honor killings are sanctioned.
 
If the U.S. leaves, the weak, corrupt central government will be unable to defeat the Taliban and will eventually collapse. The calamitous situation that prevailed before the U.S. invasion in 2001 will come back in full force. From a human rights standpoint, this is intolerable.
 
Moreover, the Taliban will be incapable of, and/or uninterested in, suppressing al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization that used the safe harbor of Afghanistan to plan the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. This time it is not only al-Qaeda that we must worry about. It has been joined in the country by ISIS and the indigenous Haqqani Network, Islamic jihadists that will have the freedom to plan and organize new terrorist attacks on the West.
 
There are no good answers. This is one of these impossible situations that fall into the category of “damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” Staying or leaving are each highly problematic. If we leave Afghanistan, it must be done with the stated commitment to return with overwhelming force (in keeping with the Powell Doctrine) if we find that the Taliban are hosting anti-Western terrorists that we must root out and destroy.
 
The calculus will come down to which option is the least distasteful. It is a very close call.
 
Dick Hermann
March 26, 2021

The Eternal Victim is now whining that he does not get enough credit for Covid-19 vaccine development. Trump’s latest bleat from behind the gold-leaf-suffocating Mar-a-Lago is an outlandish claim that, without his brilliant leadership, there would be no vaccines for “at least 5 years.”
 
Like virtually everything that spews out of his potty-mouth, this is nonsense.
 
Although Operation Wrap Speed contributed to rapid vaccine development, let’s set the record straight:

• We knew about the full coronavirus genome sequence on January 10, 2020.
• The next day, pharmaceutical company scientists around the world began working on a vaccine. Before the end of January, both Moderna and Pfizer were working on their mRNA vaccines.
• By February 15, vaccines were in development at 29 companies.
• The Cares Act, which allocated $9.5 billion for vaccine development, became law on March 27. Operation Warp Speed was first announced on April 29.
• Pfizer, which didn’t take any money from Operation Warp Speed, began its phase 1 vaccine trials a few days later. 

​In other words, at least one vaccine already existed when Operation Warp Speed launched.
 
The Trump administration contracted to buy 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, a miniscule number given that there are 330 million Americans (255 million adults). When Pfizer offered to provide an additional 100 million doses, the Trump administration inexplicably declined the offer.
 
So much for credit where credit is due.
 
Instead of trying to manage the greatest health crisis this country has faced in more than a hundred years, President Trump fell flat, telling us not to worry, the virus will go away “like a miracle;” advocating wacko and dangerous cures like ingesting bleach; mocking common-sense science-based precautions like masks and social distancing; holding super-spreader events; and generally acting more irresponsibly and recklessly than any national leader in any other nation. He led this country to the forefront of failed nations when it came to the virus. More Americans by far contracted Covid-19, were hospitalized, and died than citizens of any other country. Once the vaccines received FDA approval, Trump’s last act as a presidential flop was to botch vaccine distribution. In all pandemic respects, the U.S. was the worst in the world.
 
Instead of acting responsibly, he spent his time lying about a “stolen election” and attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power that has been the bedrock, and one of the proudest achievements, of this country dating back more than 200 years. Nothing was more important to him—certainly not the lives, health and welfare of his citizens—than clinging to the presidency by whatever means he could find or invent.
 
Today the U.S. is number one in total vaccinations, far ahead of the rest of the world. Do you really believe that we would be in this position if Donald Trump were still in office?
 
Dick Hermann
March 19, 2021

“I am not throwin' away my shot”
--Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

Recent polls reveal that 49 percent of Republican men say that they will not get vaccinated against Covid-19. That means that the quest for herd immunity—when a sufficient majority of the population gets vaccinated and we can mostly put the pandemic behind us—may go unrealized. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief coronavirus advisor, says that close to 90 percent of the country may need to be vaccinated in order to reach that goal. In any event, we are left with tens of millions of people who remain to be convinced that vaccination is vital.

U.S. public health and economic revival depend on the Covid-19 vaccines. The initial supply problem that the Biden administration inherited is quickly receding as a roadblock. The new administration has done a good job getting manufacturers to accelerate production. That leaves skepticism about the vaccines along with outright refusal to take them as the remaining obstacles.

​Responsible Republicans, a diminishing cohort, are worried about this. They are taking steps to launch a campaign to convince their fellow party members to get vaccinated. Frank Luntz, the dean of Republican pollsters, is putting together a focus group in an attempt to come up with persuasive messages.
 
This is unlikely to work. The only thing that could change minds and get us to where we need to be as a country would be if Donald Trump went on Fox, Newsmax and OANN and (1) urged his followers to get the shot(s), and (2) told them why it is so important. He needs to tell them that all of the vaccine studies have found that there is nothing particularly worrisome about them and that all three of the vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are safe, highly effective, keep people out of hospitals and dying, and have only minor, passing side effects.
 
Fat chance of him doing that. It was revealed recently that Donald and Melania Trump secretly received their Covid-19 vaccinations in January. Doing so clandestinely rather than in public, like Presidents Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton and their respective first ladies did, was purposeful, given Trump’s long history of flirtation with the anti-vaxxer crowd followed by his constant downplaying and politicization of the virus. Unfortunately, although Trump retains enormous influence over his cult following, he never rises to the occasion by providing a positive role model.

Persuading the hesitant, overcoming the science deniers, and converting those who think that we have already turned the corner and thus there is no need to get vaccinated are the keys to beating back the pandemic. It does not help that, at this writing, 16 Republican state governors are re-opening their states, a reckless move that will not end well. A vigorous public relations effort needs to be the highest priority of both the administration and the dwindling population of sensible Republicans, as well as healthcare providers, clergy, media and all other influencers.

If we cannot achieve herd immunity, the herd may be culled of the very folks who refuse vaccination.

​Dick Hermann
March 12, 2021

​“You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown”
--Petula Clark
 
Not anymore. American downtowns, especially those in major cities, may be about to become ghost towns. The pandemic, combined with advances in communications technology like Zoom, have made working from home not only viable, but also preferable for many employers and their employees.
 
Employers have discovered that working from home means that they don’t have to lease as much space to accommodate a workforce that only rarely, if ever, needs to show up at the office. Employees have found that they don’t have to spend hours every day commuting, saving them not only time and stress, but also money they would otherwise spend on gas, parking, bus, rail or subway fares and suitable office clothing. A recent study by the car-buying website, CoPilot, found that Northeastern Ohioans working from home gained 4.1 hours per day by not commuting during the pandemic. That’s more than 213 hours per year of time freed up for family activities, hobbies, exercise, relaxing, etc. The 2019 Urban Mobility Report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute found that the average commuter spends nearly seven full working days per year in traffic delays.
 
A major public benefit of remote work is much less air pollution due to fewer cars on the road. It’s a win-win for almost everyone involved…everyone except commercial real estate owners, public transit entities, restaurants, stores and food trucks that cater to downtown office workers, and cities that see their property and sales tax revenues declining.
 
A recent study concluded that the daytime population of downtown Washington, DC is down 95 percent during the pandemic. Roughly 90 percent of vertical office space in downtown Seattle is currently leased but empty. Downtown Indianapolis looks like ground zero after a neutron bomb was detonated: lots of buildings, but no people. Similar statements can be made about virtually every major city.
 
The Building Owners and Managers Association, the trade group representing the commercial real estate community, is approaching panic mode. Surveys of its members reveal the pessimism consuming the industry as it contemplates post-pandemic reality. A recent Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis pulse-taking of senior-level real estate executives discloses a startling level of doom and gloom: Only 41 percent of respondents were confident that the demand for physical office space would decrease only slightly. The remainder were not even that optimistic. Another recent survey of hundreds of CEOs found that almost 70% planned to cut back permanently on their office space. The rosiest prediction was that companies would move to a hybrid work environment where telework would be combined with days physically in the office.
 
A great deal of commercial space is likely to go empty post-pandemic. Owners and investors, however, will still have to pay the carrying costs—mortgage payments, real estate taxes, property insurance, utilities, etc.—but will see a dramatic reduction in rental income. A bonanza for bankruptcy attorneys will be a disaster for landlords.
 
Twenty years ago, I consulted with an early proponent of telework. My client found that (1) employee productivity rose by 15 percent, (2) morale skyrocketed, (3) turnover plummeted, and (4) it could function with 20 percent of its former square footage needs. By moving to remote work, it saved an average of $11,000 per employee per year. It never went back to the status quo ante.
 
Given the likelihood that there is going to be a ton of vacant space, how can it be repurposed, if at all? There are a great many ideas floating around, some of them deriving from the 500 shopping malls (one-third of the U.S. total) that have gone belly-up in the last decade. Other businesses that require large square-footage have moved into mall spaces: fitness centers, churches, public libraries, motor vehicle departments, theaters, museums, art galleries, indoor farms and medical clinics, as well as farmers’ markets in mall parking lots.
 
However, some of these alternative uses won’t work as well in downtowns where the vacancy square footage is more vertical than horizontal.
 
Some downtown office buildings may be suitable for redevelopment into housing because they already have the plumbing and electrical capacity that residential buildings require. K-12 and higher education may also be able to use vacant office space. While these are worthy projects, they won’t come close to filling up the tens of millions of vacant square footage that will become available post-pandemic.
 
Downtowns, where millions of Americans spent the bulk of their waking hours, will be forever changed by the pandemic. The huge cultural upheaval in the way we work will mean that the new, nowhere near as vibrant normal will result in a very different downtown scene.
 
Dick Hermann
March 5, 2021

“It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks.”
--Molly Ivins
 
1935 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Federal Power Act, directing the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities can ignore the federal law. Freedom from federal regulation was and is holy writ in Texas. For the next 40 years, the Texas electricity industry is completely unregulated.
 
Meanwhile – each of the lower 48 states are members of one of two electricity grids: the Eastern Interconnection or the Western Interconnection.

When one state or region suffers an electricity crisis, the Interconnection allows it to get electricity from other states that are members of its Interconnection. This is true for every state except Texas, with a few exceptions: El Paso and small portions of the Panhandle and East Texas are members of one of the Interconnections. They experienced no problems during the recent deep freeze that buried the 90 percent of the state reliant on ERCOT.
 
2011 – A severe winter storm blankets Texas, causing the state’s electricity grid to break down. The legislature orders a study of what went wrong. The study recommends weatherizing the vulnerable components of the system. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issue a report concluding that Texas power and natural gas companies are unprepared for cold weather and recommend installing extra insulation, heaters and wind breaks. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies do nothing.
 
2014 – Frigid temperatures cause Texas power plants to freeze up, bringing the state’s grid to the brink of collapse. The state utility commission urges energy companies to identify weak points and take action. They resist. The commission backs off. The feds revive their 2011 recommendations. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies again take no action.
 
2021 – History repeats itself the third time in a decade. A major storm bashes Texas, fuel sources buckle and the grid collapses, putting 9 million homes into a deep freeze, killing at least 80 people and leaving four million Texans without water.
 
Current Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Railroad Commission Chair George P. Bush, who oversees the oil and gas industry, have a consistent history of ignoring, dismissing and watering down every effort to tackle the state electric grid’s shortcomings. Taking his cue from his Republican cult leader, toasty warm in his Palm Beach citadel, Governor Abbott, a very vocal climate change denier, blamed the grid problems on renewable energy sources (wind and solar) that provide only 10 percent of the power that fuels ERCOT. It is no coincidence that Abbott, Bush and AWOL Senator Ted “La Cucaracha” Cruz (R-Cancun) are deeply embedded in the pockets of the Texas oil and gas industry.  
 
Former Governor Perry, most recently Trump’s Secretary of Energy (and by every expert assessment the worst Energy Secretary in the department’s 45-year history) said: "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business." In other words, freezing to death is a small price to pay for no federal regulation, which every other “red” state accepts as essential to keep its citizens warm and watered. Instead, Texans were left to burn their furniture and belongings for heat and melt snow to flush their toilets.
 
The nation should learn from Donald Trump’s politicization of a pandemic, resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, that Mother Nature does not care what your politics are or where you live. She will do what she does without any thought to how this will affect you.
 
Solutions--There are steps that need to be taken immediately to avoid a repeat when the next inevitable storm hits:
 

1. Sens. Cruz and Cornyn and their House counterparts from Texas should introduce legislation to hook ERCOT into the national grid Interconnections.
2. The Texas legislature should enact legislation and provide appropriations to weatherize the grid and its power suppliers.
3. The Texas debacle should also be a wake-up call for the nation to invest the necessary resources to modernize the national grid system, much of which is 70-plus years old, and turn it into the “smart grid” that energy experts have been advocating for years.

​Dick Hermann
February 26, 2021

​These are, in today's Republican Party, spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue. Without any level of human integrity, devoid of self-respect, self-reflection, without courage, and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence.
--David Jolly (R-FL), former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
 
It strains credulity that, following the events of the past several months and the masterful prosecution of the House Managers’ case against Donald Trump, any honest juror could have voted to acquit the Perpetrator-in-Chief. In stark contrast, the Trump defense team was bumbling and inept. Sadly, Trump could have sent stadium cardboard cutouts to represent him and the result would have been the same.
 
QOP (“QAnon Old Party”) cowardice and contempt for their country once again trumped decency and concern for constitutional democracy. The Reichstag rubber-stamp Republicans who were too terrified of their cult leader’s wrath to hold him accountable for attempting to overthrow the government and threatening their very lives, signified their complicity with Trump’s attempted coup in which five people died. In so doing, they abandoned any right to participate in governing.
 
It is clear after that shameful Republican performance that Democrats must go it mostly alone in order to pull America out of the depths to which it was allowed to sink during the Trump travesty. That means, as step one, moving rapidly to enact the American Rescue Plan. Step two should be getting rid of the filibuster that gives Mitch McConnell’s malignant minority unwarranted power to stymie any legislation Democrats pursue to rehabilitate the nation.  Absent that, you can bet the mortgage that McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and their 242 colleagues whose votes against impeachment and conviction demonstrate that they have no intention of cooperating across the aisle. They have blood on their chicken feathers.
 
The QOP is now nothing more than a modern re-creation of twentieth century fascist parties. They embrace the same themes, the same beliefs, the same drive for domination, and the same blind and slavish devotion to a malevolent madman. Any urge on the part of President Biden, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer toward bipartisanship must be abandoned now if they want to get anything constructive done. At best there are only a handful of true Republicans worthy of their attention. For example, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), actually appears interested in being constructive. His proposed Family Security Act is something Democrats can enthusiastically endorse. But that is probably where any cooperation should end. Otherwise, Democrats will be whistling against the wind and become sorely frustrated in their sincere efforts to move the country forward.
 
The QOP’s latest display of gutless groveling is all Democrats need to realize that trying to make nice with these Quislings is a fool’s errand. Any lingering doubts about their sincerity and decency were blown up immediately after their latest shameful spectacle of spinelessness. The moment of awareness came when McConnell, the Janus-faced leader of the see-no-evil crowd, stood up in the well of the Senate and blasted Trump, expressing the hope that the criminal justice system will bring him to account. Has there ever been a greater demonstration of hypocrisy?
 
The proto-fascist wing of the Republican Party, led by “despicable he’s” such as “Cancun” Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham, prevailed. No publisher would take on a Profiles in Cowardice book because there are simply too many QOP candidates for its pages. It’s time to stop expecting “Republicans” to finally do the right thing despite all evidence to the contrary. No Democrat should succumb to the fantasy that these aiders and abettors of Trump’s criminality are people with whom they can do business. Go it alone, Democrats. Reserve bipartisanship for a future Congress peopled by individuals with integrity who value decency, honor and the preservation of the republic.
 
Dick Hermann
February 19, 2021

​The Biden administration’s attention to climate change and the technological revolution that boosts climate policy will have a tremendous side benefit: forcing one of our top-level enemies—Russia—to its knees.
 
Russia and Vladimir Putin are overly dependent on fossil fuels for economic and political survival to a greater extent than any other nation outside of the Middle East. Russians not only need oil, gas and coal to light and heat their homes and fuel factories and transportation; they also rely heavily on oil and gas exports for revenue. If these go south because the rest of the developed world is moving beyond fossil fuels, Russia will suffer greatly and may not survive in its present authoritarian guise.
 
Russia’s export revenues from fossil fuels account for half of its annual budget. As Europe, the U.S., China and rapidly expanding Asian economies such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan embrace climate change policies, this essential funding source will dry up. Plummeting demand during the pandemic has already devastated the country’s export revenues. It is unlikely that global demand for energy resources will return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon due to the large number of employees who will continue to work from home and a predicted decline in commuting and business travel, among other factors. Russian GDP will have a difficult struggle to move back into positive territory.
 
Oil and natural gas sales account for approximately two-thirds of Russia’s total export revenues. They contribute more than 30% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). At the same time, the Russian ruble is falling in value, making it more expensive for Russians to buy the goods and services they need. The ruble is currently approaching a level at which Russia will experience the lowest purchasing power parity (PPP) relative to the U.S. of any country in the world. Declining PPP will lower living standards.
 
A falling ruble also means a sharp increase in import prices, which adds to inflation. To combat this, Russia must raise interest rates to levels that are going to precipitate an even deeper recession than Russians are currently experiencing.
 
Russia is already struggling. Low oil prices in effect since 2014 have set back the country’s economy and all attempts at achieving healthy economic growth. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark for Russia's main export, is now $15 below the level envisaged by Russia's current budget plan. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has driven Russian inflation to levels that would be unacceptable in the West. Inflation has more than doubled since the pandemic began.
 
Taken together, a sustained period of anemic and even negative GDP combined with high inflation portends poorly for Russia’s political stability. Add in excessive dependence on fossil fuels, the absence of any climate change policy, and dwindling oil and gas export revenues, and the result will be a diminution of Russia’s ability to be a player, much less a mischief-maker, on the world stage. This is all good for the United States.
 
Vladimir Putin has been propped up by oil and gas export revenues for years. Without them, he will be in trouble. Popular unrest protesting the jailing of dissident leader, Alexei Navalny, and the severe economic disruptions caused by a declining standard of living, has erupted in more than 140 Russian cities. Expect civic discontent to escalate as oil and gas revenues continue to decline.
 
The opportunity to severely weaken one of the West’s principal enemies is an additional incentive for the U.S. and Europe to opt for robust climate policies already justified by science and reality.
 
Dick Hermann
February 12, 2021

​Democrats and the few Republicans still committed to preserving American democracy have proposed two solutions to the challenge posed by the millions of our countrymen and women who have succumbed to the grievances, hate, anger, fear and delusional fantasy world nurtured by the disgraced former president (DFP):

1. Get the congressional Republican leadership to “tell the truth,” i.e., that President Biden won the election fair and square. Good luck with that. With the dust barely settled from the January 6 assault on the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the DFP’s “ring” and lick his “boots.” Mitch McConnell, who in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, blamed the DFP for inciting it, has since retreated into the Republican fold and folderol that we have come to know so well over the last four years. Like McCarthy’s, his spine and other vital body parts are also in a lockbox. The “Party of Lincoln” has morphed into the “Party of a Different Lincoln”—George Lincoln Rockwell, the late Führer of the American Nazi Party.
2. Enact legislation that speaks to the discontents of the DFP’s base. The argument goes that if tangible benefits and opportunities flow to them from the federal government, they will change their tune and mend their ways. They won’t. To believe otherwise is optimistic, but naïve in the extreme.

 
Neither solution will work. Like the white supremacists that overwhelmed Germany and much of Europe in the interwar years, we cannot reason with our own domestic version of these hostiles. That makes them a lost cause. Aside from picking off a handful of these deluded folk, the vast majority will remain credulous and in thrall to their cult leader, the DFP. Once a fascist leader has been elevated to cult status, his worshippers will follow him through the gates of Hell.
 
Twentieth century history teaches us that constant vigilance and, when appropriate, swift recourse to the criminal code is the only way to keep these people from further assaults on the Constitution and renewed attempts to overthrow our democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule. The Weimar Republic governed Germany for 15 years following World War I, until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and quickly snuffed out the nation’s failing attempt at democracy. Weimar collapsed in large part because it allowed anti-democratic forces to run riot in the streets without fear of punishment for their violent acts. We cannot allow the same thing to happen. We must not falter in our monitoring of white supremacist groups and individuals. When they are identified, any indication that they intend to commit acts of violence must be addressed immediately.
 
The fact that so many of their conspiratorial plans are shared on social media puts them squarely within the language of the federal criminal code’s section on interstate communication of “a threat to injure the person of another” (18 U.S.C. §875). In addition, they would also be subject to punishment under 18 U.S.C. §2383, “Rebellion or Insurrection.” These tools must be applied vigorously. Appealing to their grievances won’t work. They are far past listening to or even understanding such appeals.
 
At the same time, we must address the decline and, in an increasing number of schools, the absence of both history and civics education. While the adults who have fallen for the hate-filled rhetoric and contempt for democratic values of the DFP are a lost cause, their children are not. There is still time to raise a generation of Americans who can comprehend and appreciate fact-based reality and the values that really make America great. A grounding in civics and history is the only path at our disposal if we want to counter the alternate universe in which their parents reside.
 
If we do not do this, they too will be fodder for the same perverted untruths that have consumed their parents and taken them to the dark realms of lies and fakery in which the DFP wallows, waiting in the wings to once again incite them to violent assaults on the fragile norms that successfully governed us and maintained order for almost two-and-a-half centuries.
 
Dick Hermann
February 5, 2021