​Political parties traditionally form around philosophies and issues they believe will advance society’s quality of life, economic prosperity and well-being. They often champion dramatically different means of achieving those ends, but there generally is consensus regarding the goals.
 
But then there is today’s Republican Party, the first political party in a century whose core principles no longer envision a better world. Quite the contrary. They risk the lives of Americans—via their policies that promote guns, disease, and environmental devastation.
 
In its latest of a recent barrage of actions that consciously put American lives in jeopardy, Senate Republicans forced President Biden to withdraw his nominee for the position of Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Why? After a 25-year career in ATF, nominee David Chipman became an advisor to a number of gun control organizations. Heaven forbid that someone concerned about gun safety should be in charge of the federal agency tasked with gun safety.
 
The Party of Death supports and actively encourages gun-toters and inevitably, gun violence, through its advocacy of open carrying of guns, including automatic weapons suitable for little other than mass killings. In Texas now, you do not even have to have a permit or any weapons training to strut around with your guns showing.
 
They are staunch defenders of the right to life…but only up until birth. After that, you take your chances. If you believe that life begins at conception, then Republicans will vigorously defend your right to life for less than 1 percent of your tenure on Earth. The other 99+ percent of your time here, you need to keep a very low profile because the POD is doing everything it can to do you in.
 
The ink was not yet dry on President Biden’s speech in which he mandated Covid-19 vaccinations for all federal employees and contractor personnel, as well as businesses employing at least 100 people, before the Republican National Committee said it would go to court to challenge Biden’s executive orders. In essence, the POD is arguing on behalf of the Delta variant (the virus has no standing to sue on its own). This is, of course, in line with the many Republican governors who inveigh against vaccinations and masks as some kind of affront to one’s personal freedom to (a) die, and (b) kill others. POD governors are so incensed about Biden’s attempt to save lives that many are vowing to defy federal directives to get vaccinated and wear masks.
 
South Dakota Governor and super-duper Covid spreader, Kristie Noem, tweeted that her state, which has put out a red carpet for the virus, would “Stand up to defend freedom,” adding, “@Joe Biden see you in court.” Georgia Governor and voter-suppression enthusiast, Brian Kemp, tweeted that he would “pursue every legal option available” to stop "this blatantly unlawful overreach.” Ask them to distinguish between Covid vaccines and other vaccine mandates that they support and they cannot do it.
 
Despite fires, floods and storms of biblical proportions and unprecedented frequency, there are still prominent Republicans claiming that climate change is a hoax. Eventually, the warming temperatures will kill many more people than even Covid-19. The POD apparently welcomes that.
 
On top of all this, the POD does not want millions of Americans to have health insurance coverage. Despite the popularity of the 12-year old Affordable Care Act, they still rage against it.
 
What can explain the POD’s contempt for life? Does it fear losing the support and campaign contributions of the funeral industry? Being pro-death also makes no sense politically. Americans by large majorities support gun safety, abortion rights, Covid vaccinations and mask-wearing. The Trump base, fueled by the Big Liar/Sorest-Ever Loser and the poisonous bad-faith right-wing media, only comprises about one-third of the electorate. You don’t win general elections by promoting mortality.
 
What makes even less sense is that the POD’s vigorous opposition to life-saving measures aimed at overcoming the pandemic is killing its own voters. The unvaccinated are, by a huge margin, disproportionately Republicans. Go figure. It looks like the POD has a death wish. If you vote Republican, better get your affairs in order.
 
Dick Hermann
September 17, 2021

“Years ago someone pointed out that Texas is hell on women and horses. He was wrong about horses, for most horses are considered to be valuable, and are treated very well.”
--Larry McMurtry
 
I’ve been to Texas twice, both times on business. I thought San Antonio was a marvelously fascinating city, a blend of some of the best of two cultures. Discovering that the Alamo was in the middle of the city and not in the middle of a desert was a revelation to someone who grew up watching Davy Crockett. In contrast, a week in insanely hot Houston (which felt like a year in Purgatory) signaled to me that if this rapidly growing, concrete megalopolis fueled by fossils was the future, I much prefer the past.
 
In just a few short weeks, the Texas legislature, for decades a source of relatively harmless mirth chronicled brilliantly by the late, great socio-political commentator, Molly Ivins, went completely bonkers and enacted three new laws that will define it as a deadly, out-of-control coven of villains intent on bending the arc of history into the fetid swamp of neo-fascism. In breathtakingly short order, the Republican-dominated body--

• banned abortions upon detection of a fetal heartbeat (typically six weeks, before most women even know they are pregnant) with no exceptions for rape or incest, and deputized private citizens to serve as vigilantes/bounty hunters, allowing individuals to sue an abortion provider or anyone who may have helped someone get an abortion after the time limit and seek financial damages of at least $10,000 per defendant;
  
  
• authorized Texans to openly carry a gun without either a permit or training; and
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• made it much more difficult for minority and low-income citizens to vote.

 
This is a trifecta that would warm the hearts of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy if they actually had hearts. It certainly appealed to the three Trump justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who joined with the Court’s two holdover “Doctors No”—Justices Thomas and Alito—to allow the Texas abortion ban to become law for the time being despite its language that flies in the constitutional face of the half-century old Roe v. Wade decision. As long as the Texas law remains on the books, it means that back-alley abortions awash in coat hangers will be the only option for the state’s indigent women. It also means that once reproductive health clinics close their doors, the other important services they provide—free mammograms, STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, etc.— will no longer be available from them.
 
The new gun law was vigorously opposed by every law enforcement organization in the state. Not only does it make it harder for police to do their jobs. It also puts their lives, and the lives of every state resident and visitor, in danger.
 
With respect to voting, the legislature’s Republican majorities, fearing that their days in power are numbered due to the demographic changes Texas is experiencing, decided to rig the system and put major obstacles in the way of traditionally Democratic constituencies seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Despite the 2020 election being a model for how to conduct a free and fair vote, the legislature raised the false flag of “election integrity” in order to start the steal of the 2022 and 2024 elections.
 
It’s impossible to ignore what happens in Texas. It’s big and brash and mightily influential. After all, one-third of our presidents since 1964 hail from there. Worse, other deep red states look to Texas for their lead regarding what they can do to diminish their own citizens’A quality of life.
 
There is no easy counter to what Texas is doing. Congress and President Biden appear paralyzed in the face of the outrages wrought by the Texas legislature this summer. At this writing, the Justice Department is planning to file a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law. However, the eventual outcome is uncertain. Maybe the time has come to beg Mexico to take Texas back.
 
Dick Hermann
September 10, 2021

​What do Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey and Kristi Noem have in common? If you say they are all (1) Republican governors (of Florida, Texas, Arizona and South Dakota, respectively), or (2) Trump wannabes, you are correct. However, the tie that really binds them to one another is that (3) they are all complicit in deaths of constituents.
 
Knowingly and with intent, these four governors are forcing the residents of their states to engage in high-risk behaviors that have already resulted in thousands of deaths. While they have a considerable way to go before they come close to the number of Covid deaths perpetrated by their Dear Leader, Donald Trump (medical experts say that 80 percent of Covid deaths during Trump’s watch could have been avoided if he had not totally mismanaged the national response), even one avoidable death is too many.
 
This “Gang of Four” is leading the charge of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. They proclaim some perverted notion of “personal freedom” as the rationale for not getting vaccinated and not taking the modest safety precaution of wearing a mask. Worse, some of them aggressively issue edicts prohibiting mask mandates, even in schools. That makes them the most reprehensible of murderers—child killers, since children under 12 cannot get vaccinated. If you ask DeSantis, for example, to explain why every Florida student must present a Certificate of Vaccination against seven other diseases in order to enroll in school, he has no answer. I guess for him, freedom is a selective concept. It also does not matter to him that his anti-vax, anti-mask insanity is jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of Florida children who are immuno-compromised or have other underlying conditions that make both their susceptibility to Covid-19 and their survival should they contract it problematic.
 
All four of these low characters have national political ambitions. For those to bear fruit, they need to suck up to the Trump base, a demongraphic that demands that its candidates be hostile to science, logic and humanity and believe in wild, laughable conspiracies. In pursuit of them, the Four Horses A***s of the Apocalypse are perfectly willing to sacrifice the health and lives of the people they represent.
 
DeSantis, arguably the worst of this contemptible bunch—and that is saying something!—is even fundraising off his disdain for community health, selling cheap goods on the Internet that mock responsible behavior, e.g., T-shirts bearing the phrase, “Don’t Fauci My Florida.”
 
Fortunately, there are sensible school districts in these states that are mandating anti-Covid steps designed to keep their students and employees safe. An increasing number of companies are also defying their governor’s politicization of public health measures and mandating that their employees be vaccinated. Providentially for the health of Floridians, at least one court has for the moment shot down the governor’s murderous executive order. That has not prevented DeSantis from defying the court order and withholding salaries from school boards that are doing the responsible thing and mandating masks.
 
As if this imprudent behavior by these governors were not enough, DeSantis gets Covid medical advice from the California physician who is pushing the veterinary horse paste drug, Ivermectin, as a treatment for Covid. This same doctor calls people who wear masks “retarded.” He joins Dr. Scott Atlas on De Santis’s advisory team. You may remember Atlas as the Trump advisor who opposed taking any action against the virus, instead advocating that it be allowed to run its course.
 
Note: Ivermectin, an equine deworming treatment, is ineffective against Covid and can cause severe adverse reactions in humans. Calls to state and local poison control hotlines have skyrocketed in the last month. Honk if this reminds you of Trump recommending ingesting bleach and UV light suppositories. Unbelievably, some doctors are actually writing prescriptions for Ivermection for their patients. Hopefully, state medical boards will revoke these physicians’ licenses. If Fox, social media or your physician tries to push this snake oil on you, just say “neigh.”
 
How did America get to this point? Regrettably, there is no vaccine against depravity and stupidity.
 
Dick Hermann
September 3, 2021

​The horrific ISIS suicide bomb attacks outside Kabul Airport that killed at least 13 U.S. servicemen and 95 Afghan men, women and children prompted President Biden to say that we will hunt the killers down and “make them pay.” At this writing, the National Security Council and the U.S. military’s Central Command are planning for how we will turn the President’s words into action. They need to factor in the following considerations:
 
ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the version of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, is the mortal enemy of the Taliban. As amazing as this sounds, ISIS-K believes the reactionary Taliban are too “liberal” and do not adhere rigorously enough to Islamic law and principles. It is not far-fetched to imagine that the Taliban would welcome a U.S. initiative to rid Afghanistan of ISIS terrorists. It may be a stretch, but given that cleansing the country of ISIS is very much in the Taliban’s interest, there is a possibility that the Taliban might share intelligence regarding ISIS havens and hideouts. It is likely that they know better than we do where these jihadists hang out.
 
Our capacity to launch drone and/or manned air strikes on ISIS positions has been substantially reduced in recent years. In addition to relinquishing our bases in Afghanistan, we have also closed down the air bases we once maintained in neighboring countries. The closest U.S. base is in the Persian Gulf, almost 2,000 miles from Afghanistan, a distance increased by having to avoid Iranian air space. An alternative to conducting such long-distance operations would be to reposition one of the two carriers in the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet close to Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast, which would place American air power within only a thousand miles of ISIS-K targets.
 
No ISIS-K hideout should be off-limits to American air strikes. Neighboring countries should be warned that if they allow the jihadists sanctuary in their lands, the U.S. will nevertheless seek them out and strike at them wherever they are. We know that ISIS-K fighters are concentrated in two small provinces just east of Kabul, bordering Pakistan. The days when we permitted groups such as the Taliban to slip over the Pakistan border to safe havens must be past.
 
Ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban’s mortal enemy should be viewed as an opening to get some concessions in return from the Taliban. For example, continuing to allow Afghans who aided the U.S. over the last 20 years to leave and authorizing the U.S. to use Afghan airports to fly them out. Any future agreements with the Taliban must be on a quid pro quo basis and not a repeat of the disastrous Trump/Pompeo deal where one party—the Taliban—got everything it wanted while the other party—the U.S.—received nothing in return.
 
The U.S. should do everything it can to forge a coalition of like-minded nations to go after ISIS-K. Multilateral support is always better than going it alone.
 
The need to respond powerfully to this ISIS attack is acute. We cannot allow atrocities such as this to go unanswered or unpunished.
 
Dick Hermann
August 27, 2021

Valid comparisons are being made about the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan and the disgraceful helicopter evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon embassy roof 46 years ago at the end of the Vietnam War. What is happening in Afghanistan is far worse.
 
Before looking at the endgame, we should examine the background to our involvement in both distant places.
 
We had no legitimate security interests in Vietnam. Our initial reason for fighting there was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s refusal to allow elections that had been agreed to in the 1954 Geneva Accords because it was apparent that Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh would win in a landslide. The next two decades were an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. and the Vietnamese.
 
In contrast, we have vital security interests in Afghanistan. If the Taliban resurgence reconstitutes a safe haven for al Qaeda and ISIS, from which these terrorist organizations can plan new attacks on the U.S., we will be right back where we were on September 11, 2001. And given the abysmal performance of our intelligence agencies—their inability to predict that the Afghan government and armed forces were houses of cards that would collapse at the first hint of Taliban aggression once our token military presence ended—they will be unlikely to even know that the jihadists are back in the country, much less where they are and what they might be planning.
 
Blame for the Afghan debacle and the inevitable human tragedy that will follow—the execution of thousands of Afghanis who worked for the U.S. military and contractors and the total subjugation of women—rests with four U.S. presidents. Joe Biden does not “own” what is happening by himself. George W. Bush quite properly went into Afghanistan in order to neutralize al Qaeda and hunt down Osama bin Laden. Bush then foolishly rejected a negotiated surrender offer from the Taliban, instead unreasonably demanding unconditional surrender. Barack Obama subsequently succeeded in killing bin Laden because he appropriately ignored Pakistan’s protestations of a violation of its sovereignty.
 
Both presidents, however, made three disastrous mistakes:

1. Allowing the Taliban to have a safe haven in Pakistan. Whenever the Taliban came under U.S. military pressure, they slipped over the border to safety in Pakistan. The U.S. is Pakistan’s largest foreign aid donor. We provide billions in military, civilian and humanitarian assistance. What do we get in return? A country that actively aided and abetted our enemy. How we could allow that to happen is inexplicable. Bush and Obama should have gone into Pakistan with overwhelming military force to annihilate the Taliban.
2. Believing that Afghanistan was a candidate for nation-building. They should have understood from 2,500 years of history that Afghanistan’s intense tribalism, forbidding topography, and unrivalled corruption make the notion of nation-building a laughable pipedream. Alexander the Great couldn’t do it. The British in the 19th century failed to do it. The Soviet Union in the 1980s was forced out of the country, defeated by the rag-tag Afghan precursors of the Taliban despite its overwhelming firepower and military technology.
3. Throwing at least $88 billion at training the Afghan army. How could our presidents and their advisors have been so naive as to believe that the Afghan army would fight to defend a monumentally corrupt government that treated its soldiers with disdain and disrespect, often going months without paying them, instead diverting their pay into their own pockets. The lessons of Iraq, where an earlier ghost army vaporized when under attack because they had no stake or interest in defending a monster like Saddam Hussein and his corrupt dictatorship, were sadly never absorbed by either our leaders, their national security advisors, or our intelligence agencies.

 
Donald Trump’s major contribution to the Afghan mess was negotiating a disastrous deal with the Taliban. During the negotiations, he invited Taliban thugs to meet with him at Camp David on 9/11/2019, a terrible idea that his staff had to talk him out of. The “deal” had the U.S. pledge to leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 in return for…nothing. Trump followed it up with a phone call to Taliban leader and chief butcher, Mullah Barador, after which the easily duped president bragged about what a great guy the murderous mullah was and what a wonderful relationship he had developed with him. Shades of Kim Jong Un.
 
Don’t fault Joe Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan. All four war presidents wanted to do that. His three predecessors lacked the guts to bring it off. He also is not to blame for the bureaucratic mess that is the 13-year old Special Immigrant Visa program for Afghanis who assisted us. The State Department’s visa bureaucracy has a 90-year history of hostility to refugees. Heads should roll for this disgrace. But he is accountable for badly mismanaging the evacuation of Americans and our Afghan allies who may now pay with their lives.
 
When the failed Bay of Pigs invasion blew up in his face, President Kennedy immediately went on national television and said: “We intend to profit from this lesson. There's an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan… I'm the responsible officer of the Government…” Biden said “the buck stops with me” with respect to the pullout, then blamed everyone else for the botched evacuation.
 
What is also being lost amid the chaos at Kabul airport is that thousands of our Afghani helpers are nowhere near that facility and have no hope of getting there. They are in Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Jalalabad and other cities distant from Kabul. Nothing is being done to get them out.
 
Some of this tragic fiasco might have been avoided if our policymakers and their congressional overseers had ever bothered to read the hundreds of reports issued over the past thirteen years by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), especially the eleven “Lessons Learned” reports that warned of what actually ensued. SIGAR’s 200 employees sounded the alarm about Afghanistan countless times. Unfortunately, no one listened.
 
We now need something like an Afghanistan Review Commission to determine how and why our 20-year involvement in the Afghan quagmire went so terribly wrong and how we can avoid similar disasters moving forward.
 
Dick Hermann
August 20, 2021

​Forty years ago, a visionary with the wonderfully classical name of Marcus Bacchus made a mad dash down route A1A, the Florida state highway that runs along the state’s Atlantic beaches. He was on his way from Melbourne, Florida to a meeting with officials at Florida Power and Light (FPL) in Miami. Bacchus brought with him a detailed set of plans for a wave energy machine designed to harness ocean power and convert it into electricity. He was so excited that when he found himself stuck behind slow-moving vehicles, he passed them on the right shoulder. When he arrived for his meeting, FPL gave him short shrift, barely glanced at his detailed diagrams, and blew him off as a crackpot.
 
He was anything but.
 
Following his rejection by FPL, Marcus tried to pitch his idea to other utilities as well as the federal and coastal state governments. Their reactions mirrored that of FPL. They would not even consider his proposal.
 
His timing was unfortunate. It coincided with the beginning of the Reagan Era, when one of the first official acts of the new president was to order the solar panels that provided much of the White House’s energy needs removed, a symbolic tip of the hat to his climate change skeptical party.
 
In the intervening years, the United States half-heartedly pursued a range of alternative, renewable energy initiatives despite the clarion calls of scientists that the day of climate reckoning was fast approaching. Fossil fuel industry lobbyists dropped oceans of money into politicians’ pockets in a successful effort to ward off the renewable threat to their paymasters’ lucrative livelihoods and luxurious lifestyles. The downsides of continued reliance on high-polluting and carbon-emitting energy sources were suppressed by both industry and the craven politicians that did its bidding, no questions asked. Consequently, American renewables research and development has been late to the table. Opportunities to lower costs and create jobs were irretrievably lost. Renewable industries that could have positioned America in the forefront of global climate leadership were suppressed. Instead of leading the world into the future and reaping the rewards of so doing, we wallowed in the fantasy world of climate change denial.
 
Meanwhile, other nations jumped into the vacuum created by American indifference and now own the climate change opportunity space. China is, of course, our principal rival in the race to corner and profit from climate change technologies. But it is hardly the only country that has left the U.S. in the dust. The UK, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and even Portugal and Chile are also beating us.
 
Wave energy has tremendous potential. Almost three-quarters of the Earth is covered by oceans. Wave energy is green. It does not emit carbon or harmful gases. It is renewable. One meter of wave along the shore can produce enough electricity to power the average American home. Wave energy is reliable. Unlike solar, which needs the Sun to shine, and wind towers, which needs the wind to blow, waves are always in motion and never interrupted.
 
Until now, the downsides have been cost and the corrosive effects of salt water, but those are on the cusp of being solved. Scotland announced last month that it is deploying wave energy machines in the Orkney Islands that will provide electricity to 20,000 homes at costs comparable to fossil fuels.
 
Meanwhile, the U.S., which has the potential to meet more than 75 percent of our energy needs via wave energy, sits on the sidelines, distracted by still having to do battle with congressional and other climate change deniers.
 
Dick Hermann
August 15, 2021

​We have arrived at a decision point in our history. One path is to continue moving forward as a country grounded in our democratic values where the will of the majority prevails. The other is to descend into the darkness of fascist authoritarianism. By its fealty to the “Big Lie” about the last election and other untruths, the Republican Party has committed itself to the latter path, seeing in it its only hope of clinging to power. If democracy endures, the GOP believes it has no hope of ever winning a future election. Thus its relentless push to suppress votes, gerrymander in the extreme, make sure vote counting is in the hands of partisan hacks, and if all else fails, for Republican-controlled state legislatures to overturn results that don’t favor its candidates.

​What this means is that the most important issue before the President, Congress and the country at this moment is voting rights. Absent the ability to conduct free and fair elections in which every eligible citizen can cast a ballot, democracy is doomed.

A growing number of concerned citizens seem to believe that vigorous political organizing—registration drives, making sure everyone has a valid voter ID, and getting every voter to the polls, can overcome the Republican effort to undermine the vote. They are mistaken. The reality is that the GOP tactics—essentially the legalization of cheating—work. Political organizing and voter activism cannot overcome them.

As the Republican Party views it, if it doesn’t cheat, it will never win an election for two reasons: (1) It is out of sync with the majority of voters, as evidenced by its abandoning even the pretense of putting forward a policy platform in 2020; and (2) Only 28 percent of voters identify as Republicans, a number that is steadily declining. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. 

Currently, the Republican Party’s only hope is minority rule. If it prevails in 2022, it will instantly morph into the tyranny of the minority. The party has no platform, no policies, and now that it has abandoned even lip service to responsible governing and become the Trump cult, no principles. For it, democracy is an existential threat.

Thus far, President Biden has been preoccupied with other issues: getting past the pandemic and promoting infrastructure. Both are worthy of attention, but not at the expense of the very political structure that made this nation the last best hope on Earth.

The time has come for him to take to heart the lessons of his predecessors who effectively used the bully pulpit that attaches to the presidency to get voting rights legislation through Congress.

That necessitates the whole or partial elimination of the filibuster. This was an artificial, undemocratic Senate construct that first arose in order to perpetuate Jim Crow laws in the South. Since its emergence, it has been used most often to defeat positive legislation that the vast majority of Americans favor.

The argument against dispensing with the filibuster—that once Republicans regain power in the Senate, they will exploit its disappearance to undo all the positive legislation that Democrats enacted—is irrelevant. If the filibuster remains and Republicans are allowed to destroy our suddenly fragile system, both Democrats and democracy will be historical footnotes.

If he does not want the history books to mark him as the man who presided over the United States’ descent into authoritarianism, President Biden needs to take a proactive role in saving democracy and the country.

​Dick Hermann
August 7, 2021

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

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

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