Ron DeSantis’ accelerating descent into polling single digits is not deterring him from adding to his massive tome of misinformation. When the going gets tough, Ron invariably reverts to spewing dangerous B.S. about public health. This has been his go-to since he was first sent to Tallahassee. This time his attempt to kill his constituents is about the newly released Covid vaccines.
 
In Florida, the weekly number of reported new Covid cases was almost 24,000 as September began, up from 7,320 in June. The state, which leads the nation in Covid hospitalization rates, saw 2,280 people hospitalized in the week ending September 9. Its overall pandemic death toll is now over 90,000.
 
Despite these numbers, DeSantis is backing his surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who is warning Floridians to steer clear of the new Covid vaccines. In a demonstration of loyalty to his boss worthy of the most servile of Trump flunkies, Ladapo claims, falsely, that the new boosters were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
Both DeSantis and Ladapo are Harvard alums. That means that they are either (1) consummate liars willing to subjugate the lives and health of their citizens to their political ambitions, or (2) that Harvard should be bounced from the Ivy League.
 
This anti-vaccine lunacy is nothing new for Ladapo. He once claimed that a healthy diet is preferable to getting vaccinated. He has been censured by both the FDA and CDC for harming public safety by “fueling vaccine hesitancy.” Ladapo was forcibly removed from a state senator’s office during the pandemic for refusing to wear a mask despite the senator’s having a serious medical condition.
 
Aspiring authoritarian DeSantis accuses Big Pharma and the government of being guilty of “medical authoritarianism” in pushing vaccines on an unsuspecting public. Pot, meet kettle. He goes on to tout Florida’s freedom from vaccine mandates. He says that, if elected president (good luck with that!), he won’t allow the government to fund Covid boosters.
 
Given the resurgence of the virus in Florida and nationally, reckless claims such as this mean that Floridians and others who lend credence to these untruths are putting themselves at risk. Undeterred, DeSantis continues to double down on his “advice,” adding to it a polemic against mask mandates and other Covid safety measures.
 
As with virtually everything else intended to harm the public in the name of so-called “freedom,” all of this extreme right-wing hogwash, humbuggery, hokum and hooey finds its origins in Trumpism, the ideology that says that the pursuit of power justifies any means of securing it. Of course, it helps that millions of voters have been conditioned by Fox News and its malevolent right-wing media spawn to accept as gospel the garbage they gush.
 
It’s also incredibly dangerous for society at large. Covid anti-vaccine hysteria is spilling over into vaccinations writ large. The number of children being protected against childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio et al. is steadily declining.
 
Moreover, the “freedom” that DeSantis, Dr. Ladapo and their reactionary fellow-travelers espouse neither include a woman’s right to sovereignty over her own body nor transgender care. In April 2023, DeSantis signed a 6-week abortion ban with very limited exceptions: Abortions for pregnancies involving rape or incest would be allowed until 15 weeks of pregnancy, provided a woman has documentation such as a restraining order or police report!
 
DeSantis himself disclosed last year that he has been vaccinated. However, he refuses to say if he has been boosted.
 
It is a sad commentary on the direction of this country that the Republican Party has substituted lies, hypocrisy, rank opportunism and a yearning for autocracy for honesty, patriotism and democracy. The only solution to this metastasizing cancer on the body politic is at the ballot box. Otherwise, the harm these despicable creatures are doing will only escalate.
 
Dick Hermann
September 24, 2023


Note: If you want to attend my book talk about Eminent Riaprians: Finger Lakes Luminaries and Leading Lights, at 6:00 PM, Monday, September 25th at the Wood Library in Canandaigua, NY, click on https://woodlibrary.librarycalendar.com/event/book-talk-local-author-richard-hermann to register for the program
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​Avert your eyes from the hot mess that is today’s U.S. House of Representatives. The political party erroneously continuing to be called “Republican” behaves as if its role in the slower, lower chamber should be to shame itself as much, and as publicly, as possible. Every successive utterance by its leaders is a competition to see who can make more of an ass of him/herself than the next guy/gal.
 
Speaker/Squeaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (a.k.a., Trump’s “My Kevin”) abases himself by announcing an impeachment inquiry of President Biden notwithstanding that a host of investigations by House committees have uncovered zero evidence of wrongdoing. Pressured to launch a revenge impeachment by none other than the twice-and-very-legitimately-impeached, disgraced former president, My Kevin could not find the spine necessary to resist Trump’s demand for retribution. Spines, as we have discovered when considering Republican House members, are in short supply.
 
James Comer and Jim (Gym) Jordan, the two hapless buffoons leading the House investigating committees, have turned up nothing despite their earnest efforts to smear Biden and link him to his drug-addled son’s misadventures. Nevertheless, they keep on keeping on in a desperate hope that someone somewhere will emerge out of the dismal swamp in which they wallow and provide them with a smoking squirt gun. To quote a relatively sane former GOP president: “Not gonna happen.”
 
As if this adventure in frivolous political Kabuki theater were not enough, the mis-labeled “Freedom Caucus” rabble rousers continue to attempt to shred American Democracy in pursuit of their fever-dream of an autocracy led by their certifiable and preternaturally evil cult hero who will lead them to the promised land, one where the color of their skin will enable them to percolate to the apex of power rather than the totally lacking content of their character. Matt (“she was just seventeen, you know what I mean”) Gaetz, Marjorie (“beware the Gazpacho”) Taylor Greene, Loren (“hey, sailor, wanna vape?”) Boebert and their ill-starred ilk threaten to blow up the system if their extreme demands are not met. From My Kevin’s feeble vantage point, the Freedumb Caucus has the meat.
 
Meanwhile, the nervous nellies who comprise the so-called “moderate Republicans,” the very definition of an anachronism, tremble in terror and remain mute in the face of potential political extinction if they permit this circular firing squad to lock and load. Unquestionably, they will sit on their hands and mute themselves before showing any backbone and protest this lunacy.
 
In past crises, e.g., the Civil War, the Great Depression, civil rights and Watergate, there have always been at least a handful of brave congresspeople who put the good of the country above their personal interests and careers. They stood up, often alone, to assert: “This cannot stand.” Alas, not in today’s Republican Party. Once again, I return to my, by now trite, hackneyed, commonplace, cliché-ish and mightily overused historical analogy: Diogenes would have run out of lamp oil before his search unearthed a principled Republican.
 
Dick Hermann
September 17, 2023

Can it possibly be that the chaos and confusion of the last decade have inured us to the abnormal, the aberrational, and the anomalous? Judging by the daily news, it sure seems that way.
 
What pushed me over the edge was a recent poll in which respondents were asked whether Presidents Trump or Biden had accomplished more in office. Astonishingly, Trump prevailed by ten points! It’s difficult, nay impossible, to believe that Americans actually believe that this man who left the country in a shambles, did better than his normal, mainstream, norm-respecting successor. Did the people who opted for Trump forget about his calamitous mismanagement of the pandemic; his cabinet of grifters, fools and incompetents; his dismantling of essential international agreements; his racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism; his 30,000-plus documented lies; his Muslim ban; the highest personnel turnover of any administration; his weaponization of the Justice Department; his reckless mishandling of classified documents, including war plans and nuclear secrets; and of course, the January 6 culmination of his Herculean effort to overthrow the government and remain in power? I could go on, but you get the point.
 
In contrast, President Biden pushed through a spate of legislation designed to tackle some of the nation’s most vexing problems, including lowering drug and healthcare costs; the largest-ever investment in climate change mitigation; gun safety legislation; the largest-ever investment in mental health services; the Chips and Science Act; the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; the American Rescue Plan; leading America to the lowest inflation rate in the developed world; the PACT Act expanding healthcare coverage for 3.5 million veterans exposed to burn pits; revitalizing NATO and supporting Ukraine in its war for survival; reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (which Trump allowed to lapse); and more.
 
The heightened concern about Biden’s age is another conundrum hard to understand. Trump is only three years younger and quite obviously in far worse physical and mental condition than Biden. Trump consumes a horrible diet and does not believe in exercise (riding around in a golf cart doesn’t count). His daily diatribes and incoherent interviews demonstrate a severely compromised mental capacity that looks to be deteriorating with every new outburst. In fact, the age concern should be all about Trump.
 
Republicans’ eternal quest for false equivalences, e.g., equating Hunter Biden’s possible indictment for tax evasion and gun ownership while a drug addict with Trump’s 91 (and counting) felony indictments, is “whataboutism” carried to an extreme.
 
Perhaps the most shocking development is the disdain of Trump and his followers for democracy and their desire to replace America’s greatest contribution to Planet Earth with authoritarianism. Trump late last year called for “terminating the Constitution.” Yet this is the person tied with President Biden in recent polls.
 
This is stunning. Given the balance sheet noted above and his contempt for the Constitution, how can anyone prefer Trump? It is mind-blowing. Moreover, his professed intentions should he re-claim the presidency are chilling: bailing on Ukraine; another round of playing footsie with murderous thug dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un; dismantling NATO; replacing thousands of dedicated civil servants with MAGA cronies; and weaponizing the Justice Department (once again) to serve his personal grievances. He has vowed to use a second term to “lock up” his political opponents and pledged to be his supporters’ “retribution.”
 
Yet, none of this appears to be siphoning votes from this mad man intent on destroying America.
 
Dick Hermann
September 8, 2023
 
Note: I will be presenting a book talk on Mother’s Century on Wednesday, September 13, at 7:00 PM at the Cherry Hill, New Jersey Central Library, 1100 Kings Highway North…and a book talk on Eminent Riparians on Monday, September 25, at 6:00 PM at the Wood Library, 134 North Main Street in Canandaigua, NY. If you happen to be in either area on those dates, you are cordially invited to attend.
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“Pay the man, Shirley.”
--Norman Chad
 
America is suffering a severe, across-the-board labor shortage. The worker deficit is especially acute across some of our most essential professions. Absent congressional action on fixing our dysfunctional immigration laws, some of these scarcities cannot be resolved.  Others, however, lend themselves to a simple solution that can be immediately implemented. Here are three examples:
 
Law Enforcement. In August, the entire Goodhue, Minnesota police department resigned, citing low pay. The seven-person force earned $22 per hour. In a 2022 survey, two-thirds of law enforcement professionals stated that police recruitment and retention is the largest issue facing law enforcement. The number of police officers nationally has decreased while the population has increased. According to the 2021 International Association of Chiefs of Police Survey on police retention and recruitment:

• 78% of agencies reported having difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates.
• 65% of agencies reported having too few candidates applying to be law enforcement officers.
• The Police Executive Research Forum’s Survey on Police Workforce Trends found an 18% growth in resignations in 2020-21, compared to 2019-20.
• Many departments are seeing officers retire as early as possible and collecting lower pensions due to increased workload and burnout. Retirements increased by 45% in only one year.

 
Education. Heading into the 2023-24 school year, districts are short more than 300,000 teachers. Teachers leaving the profession cite low pay, long hours, piling on of additional responsibilities, having to buy supplies out of their own pockets, shoddy treatment and disrespect by administrators and parents, the strains brought on by the pandemic, and anti-education political initiatives (see, e.g., Florida). 70 percent of teachers work a second job to make ends meet. Impossible demands on top of abysmal pay are driving educators away.
 
In the 21st century, central district offices have devoted more resources to hiring more administrators than teachers. Administrative bloat is rapidly becoming as much of a problem in K-12 as it is in colleges and universities.
 
Healthcare. Emergency medical technicians in the U.S. average about $33,000 per year, barely more than the poverty level for a family of four. EMTs in “red” states earn even less. Few occupations can mean the difference between life and death like that of an EMT. But low wages are forcing EMTs out of their jobs in droves. Similar to not paying reasonable wages to cops and teachers, not paying for indispensable EMT services makes no sense.
 
I learned about supply and demand in my first day of freshman economics in college. If demand for labor is high, but the supply of workers is low, employers need to offer higher wages to being the two curves into equilibrium. It’s too bad that the government officials responsible for tolerating these worker shortages never took microeconomics.
 
The solution is to pay people what they are worth to society. Other countries understand this. American politicians apparently do not.
 
The average annual salary for a Canadian police officer is more than US$76,091. An entry level constable earns US$50,000. Canada does not have a cop recruitment or retention problem.
 
Starting pay for teachers in Switzerland is almost $75,000, roughly twice as much as the U.S. average. Switzerland is not experiencing a teacher shortage. The Alpine nation realizes several powerful collateral benefits from offering attractive salaries: (1) Teaching attracts high achievers to the profession; and (2) Swiss students at every level score much higher on reading, math, science and every other test that measures academic achievement than their U.S. counterparts. Top-notch teachers make a difference.
 
A Canadian EMT in Ontario can earn an annual starting salary equivalent to US$60,000. Those who reach the top of their profession—Critical Care Paramedic—can earn more than US$100,000. Canadians flock to this profession.
 
It should be obvious that all three of these professions are essential to our safety, health and intellectual development. Try doing without them and see what happens. We are perfectly willing to compensate the so-called “learned professions,” particularly medicine and law, at what amount to princely rates. Why them and not cops, teachers and EMTs, all of whom are at least as critical to our well-being?
 
Dick Hermann
September 1, 2023

​Wednesday evening’s “debate” among Republican vice presidential aspirants—since none of the Ethereal Eight laid a glove on the hefty elephant not in the room, they clearly are not running for president—was painful to watch. Personally, a couple of anesthesia-free root canals would have done just as well. The moderators—Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum—were pitiful, so intimidated by the raucous, live, MAGA audience that they dared not ask a question about Inmate No. P01135809 until well into the second hour, and then only when one of the rapidly shrinking candidates raised the matter. They moved away from the Trump questions as quickly as possible. They never asked a follow-up question on any subject, and they lost control of this farce in record time. Insurrections are not that big a deal at Fox. Surely even the GOP’s propaganda outlet can do better than these two spineless ciphers.
 
Assessing winners and losers is difficult when the traditional calculations don’t apply. If they did—assume a rational person seeking to vote for rational people—then Nikki Haley clearly prevailed. Her answers on a national abortion plan, runaway deficits, and foreign policy (where she undressed Vivek Ramaswamy), and her gravitas were impressive. In a pre-Trump Republican Party, she would be a star. If in fact two-thirds of Republicans are not MAGA (a suspect number I question), then she might have a distant shot.
 
But we no longer live in a rational world delineated by a respect for facts, truth or character. Instead, and this is the big problem in evaluating these candidates’ debate performance, we can only do so by putting ourselves in the MAGAverse and weighing the wannabes’ performances from the perspective of what appeals to the alternate universe in which Trump’s devotees percolate.
 
With that in mind, the clear winner was the obnoxious, irritating and off-the-wall Vivek Ramaswamy. He came out of nowhere, a biotech billionaire who views himself as a mini-Trump and models the latter’s abominable behavior. The live audience loved him. Like Trump, he was the only non-politician on the podium. In contrast to Trump, who inherited more than $400 million and gave new meaning to business failure, his wealth is self-made. Expect to see him jump in the polls, primarily at the expense of the rapidly fading Ron DeSantis, whose inexplicable debate strategy mirrored his baffling campaign tactics.
 
The other candidates seemed to realize that Vivek is the biggest threat to what dim hopes they may have. Thus, he was the object of most attacks while DeSantis, the current second choice, was largely ignored.
 
Governor Ron tried to be the tough guy, vowing to invade Mexico and leave drug smugglers “stone cold dead.” I doubt that even that loony position worked with the MAGA crowd.
 
When the moderators asked for a show of hands regarding whether the minnows would back a convicted felon, Ron nervously looked around to see whose hands went up before raising his. That tells you all you need to know about him, and the other five who had no problem with putting a confirmed criminal in the Oval Office. That in itself should disqualify all six from the presidency and any other public office. Leaders have a moral backbone. These people don’t.
 
I was surprised that Tim Scott did not attempt to distinguish himself. He basically had nothing of note to say. It’s not enough to be a nice guy, certainly not with this mob. For most of the evening, he looked like a deer in the headlights. Late-to-the-Never-Trump-party Chris Christie seemed to forget to focus most of his attention on blasting Trump, instead opting to go after Ramaswamy. Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum, zeroes on both the debate stage and elsewhere, have the combined charisma of a sidewalk. Speaking of charisma, I almost forgot Mike Pence, who is either a 13th disciple or a robot.
 
There were no egregious faux pas moments, e.g., Gerald Ford twice freeing Poland from Communist rule or Dan Quayle comparing himself to JFK. That, however, is only because the Republican Party has become so whacko and out of touch with reality that its candidates can say the zaniest things without shocking us anymore.
 
Dick Hermann
August 26, 2023

​While we observe, scrutinize, analyze and dissect the seemingly unending efforts to finally bring Donald Trump and his co-conspirators to account, we tend to overlook the tragic impact his depredations have on people.
 
His negative effects on people range far beyond the disgust and contempt that the majority of Americans register when contemplating him. His lies about Covid-19 and his inexcusable incompetence mismanaging the pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives and should have been more than enough to send him on the fast track to history’s rubbish heap. However, the damage he continued to do to everyday people did not stop there.
 
The 92-page, detailed Georgia indictment of Trump and 18 partners-in-(alleged)-crime plus 30 (thus far) unindicted co-conspirators elevates the devastating micro-effect of the character assassinations he so blithely hurls about, impulse control be damned, and fundamental human decency being a non-factor in his make-up. A few examples make the point:
 
Atlanta election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, mother and daughter, did their civic duty on election day and with respect to the ballot counting that followed. This is a selfless task that thousands of Americans undertake every election cycle, and is usually accomplished in total anonymity. However, instead of being commended for their non-partisan efforts, they found themselves in the center of the sh*t-storm of lies and false accusations hurled by Trump and his co-conspirators intent on overturning the actual election result. Trump mentioned one or both of them at least 18 times during his inflammatory speeches and rabble-rousing rallies. But the intimidation and harassment did not stop with the chief insurrectionist. Lapsed lawyer Rudy Giuliani accused them publicly of passing around USB ports “as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine” designed to “infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines” (they were actually sharing mints). They were also accused by both men of stuffing ballot boxes for Biden. Freeman was labeled “a known professional vote scammer and political operative.” She is neither.
 
These slanderous accusations turned both women’s lives upside down. They received a barrage of death threats and ever since fear going out in public. The costs to their mental health are incalculable.
 
During the course of a defamation lawsuit filed against Giuliani by Ms. Freeman, he admitted that he had defamed her and her daughter. The outcome of the case being no longer in much doubt, the sentence should hopefully reduce multi-millionaire Rudy to penury.
 
The lives of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family have also been turned inside out. Since Trump’s January 2, 2021 taped phone call to Raffensperger in which he threatened, cajoled and begged the Secretary to find him “just enough votes” to overturn the Georgia result, Raffensperger’s family has received innumerable death threats and has had to engage a security service just in order to go about their daily lives.
 
These are only a handful of examples of the devastation wrought by Trump and his accomplices on the lives of ordinary Americans. There are many more folks whose lives have been disrupted and destroyed by this criminal gang. Undeterred by warnings from the judges in his innumerable pending trials, he continues to defame and threaten judges, prosecutors et al. Meanwhile, his followers post the names of jurors and jeopardize their lives and safety as well. For this alone, the entire lot deserve to rot in prison for the rest of their unnatural lives.
 
I have to pinch myself every day when I wake up and realize that Donald Trump, one of the vilest and most reprehensible individuals on the planet, could very possibly be returned to the White House next year. What kind of country is it that can countenance such a horrendous possibility?
 
Dick Hermann
August 18, 2023

​No person shall…hold any office…under the United States,…who, having previously taken an oath,…as an officer of the United States,…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
--US Constitution, 14th Amendment, §3
 
This reads as if it were written with coup leader Donald Trump in mind. However, the problem is the language of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
 
There is no current legislation on the books that provides for enforcement of the disqualifying language of Section 3. Absent such legislation and despite his thus far failed attempts to overthrow the government, Donald Trump is free to run for and serve as president even if he is convicted of his numerous alleged crimes and finds himself in prison.
 
The nightmare of Trump back in office must be avoided at all costs. He came close to destroying the country his first time as President. If he is re-elected, then the survival of our democracy may not even be a close call. The American experiment could be over.
 
However, what is also relevant is language from the 1st Amendment:
 
Congress shall make no law…abridging the right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
--US Constitution, 1st Amendment
 
We the people can invoke our 1st Amendment right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances. And what bigger grievance can there be than the threat of a second act of Trump’s horror show?
 
There is precedent for invoking this 1st Amendment right. The earliest nationally organized petition drive dates back to 1830 (a generation before ratification of the 14th Amendment). Harriet Beecher Stowe and other women leaders unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to stop the removal of Cherokee Indians from their ancestral lands. The most significant petitions were ones submitted in the 19th and early 20th centuries by women seeking the abolition of slavery and later the right to vote. The latter played a significant role in the women’s suffrage movement right up until passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
 
What is needed is a petition signed by tens of millions of Americans in which we ask Congress to invoke Section 5 and declare Trump ineligible for office.
 
The petition could be offered both online and door-to-door. It should shun sponsorship by any politically affiliated organizations.
 
I do not have any experience doing anything like this. I hope that some of my readers do, and would be willing to take the initiative to get this started.
 
It would likely require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to bar Trump from running. The current lineup of 51 Democrats plus the four remaining Republicans out of seven who voted to impeach him following his failed coup d’état would be five votes short. We would also have to pick up at least four Republicans in the House. Daunting challenges, admittedly, but a worthwhile endeavor.
 
No one who did what Trump has done should ever be permitted anywhere near the presidency. A drive unprecedented in the number of signatories and coincident with the many indictments seeking to hold Trump accountable for his many criminal misdeeds may not induce Congress to act, but could have a major impact on public opinion as the election approaches. For that reason alone, it is worth the attempt.
 
Dick Hermann
August 11, 2023

​The third time’s a charm, but not so much if you are (1) a Groveling Old Party’s presidential hopeful, (2) a Capitol Hill clown, or (3) a Fox News propagandist.
 
Donald Trump’s third indictment generated the by now expected feverish overreaction by all three of these representatives of the neo-fascist wing of the American Right. It is telling that none of these three gaggles of grandiloquent gadflies bothered to offer an actual defense of any of the now 78 counts of wrongdoing the totally discredited 45th and hands-down worst-ever president is going to have to answer to at trial. There are two reasons for this: (1) there is no legitimate defense (except insanity) to the overwhelming and detailed evidence outlined in the indictments; and (2) asserting any defense would be an admission that there might be a criminal there there and risk any hope of political or media survival in the face of millions of Trump cultists whose delusions about the Orange Menace must be respected.
 
The Haleys, Scotts, Ramaswamys, DeSanti et al. fell all over one another in their haste to scramble to Trump’s side and proclaim that the pursuit of accountability for the party’s  frontrunner is but a nefarious political witch hunt by a weaponized Justice Department intent on neutering the formerly randy Republican. “Unfair!” “Double standard!” “What about Hunter Biden?” yelped the amoebae as they flagellated wildly, hoping against hope that a demonstration of blind fealty to the MAGA base delusions would somehow launch them out of the depths of Brownian ooze to percolate up in the polls (against overwhelming evidence to the contrary). This strategy is a mighty strange way to behave toward the guy they need to stomp in order to prevail in the primaries. No matter. They were history even before they threw their headgear into the circus ring. Their best hope at this point is either a Vice Presidential anointing or an obscure cabinet post such as Secretary of Utter Chaos or Director of Government Retribution in the Second Coming.
 
Republican House members have added a new dimension to America’s mental health crisis. This time they distinguished themselves in three wackadoodle ways: (1) reacting to Trump’s third indictment as one would expect: hysterical fuming about a two-tier justice system and how unfair it is to persecute America’s premier persecutor; (2) comparing Trump’s legal woes to those of Hunter Biden, which is akin to equating the known universe with a speck of sand; and (3) going completely bonkers with utterly preposterous hearings ranging from farcical attempts to prove that Joe Biden is an arch-criminal to taking seriously the idle ravings of a crazed witness who claims that the Biden administration is covering up the existence of the bodies of alien pilots at Roswell, NM and Area 51. Watching the hugely hapless committee chairs, James Comer (of the Kentucky Homer Simpsons) and Jim (“Gym”) Jordan, Ohio’s answer to Mulder and Scully, one could only either collapse into uproarious laughter, manifest shame before the shade of James Madison, or keep repeating the mantra, “you cannot make this stuff up.”
 
And then there was Fox News’ collection of GOP Goebbels clones. They gave new meaning to the term “strident” with their hare-brained conspiracy theories and propagandistic shrieks about the injustice of it all. As always, they could not tear themselves away from Nazi allusions that are completely out-of-touch and out-of-place given the current circumstances.
 
Oh, and I should also mention Ron DeSantis’s additional contribution to the Western canon. If elected (good luck with that), he wants to appoint the seriously unbalanced Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. head of either the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Food and Drug Administration. Ta ta American healthcare.
 
Rest assured, as the Republicans dig deeper into the political netherworld, it will get even zanier. Guaranteed.
 
Time to take a deep breath and fantasize about the Deep State.
 
Dick Hermann
August 6, 2023

​The disgraced ex-president and his Grand Old Prevaricator party are absolutely correct when they declaim about a “two-tiered” justice system. Only they got the two tiers wrong. We have a justice system that treats Donald Trump like a delicate flower to whom the rules don’t apply in quite the same way they do to the average schmos who run afoul of the system.
 
You can see this double standard at work in a recent court filing by the lawyers for Jack Teixeira, the reckless, self-aggrandizing youth who posted highly classified documents online. He has been in jail ever since his indictment and arraignment more than three months ago. His attorneys argue he should be let out of jail as he awaits his classified documents trial, citing Trump’s release. In contrast, Trump, who stole the most sensitive government secrets and perhaps even monetized the missing ones–search warrants for the Kremlin and the royal palace in Riyadh are in order–rambles all over the country projecting  (and lying) that his enemies are doing to him exactly what he is accused of doing. He is even permitted to fulminate, unmuzzled, threatening his foes with violence if he is convicted of his countless crimes and jailed for his transgressions. While we should never make light of the Constitutional right to free speech, viewing Trump’s threats as protected speech is a flagrant perversion of the First Amendment.
 
The difference between the two, say the courts, is that Teixeira is a flight risk whereas Trump, who flies around on a private plane, is not. Does anyone really believe that if imprisonment loomed, Trump would not skedaddle to Russia, Saudi Arabia—or even North Korea, where he says he is loved?
 
You can also see the double standard at work among Trump’s prosecutors. The evidence of his misconduct is so obvious and copious that the question must be asked: what is taking everyone so long? It’s been 30 months since he was caught on tape attempting to overturn the 2020 Georgia election results. That case was already a slam dunk when the tape went public. It’s been an equal amount of time since he committed high treason, trying to overthrow the government and cling to power despite being resoundingly rejected by the public to the tune of 7 million votes. Even aside from the Capitol attack and insurrection he perpetrated, there is enough evidence to condemn him to a life in an orange jumpsuit to match his comb-over.
 
And then there was the fake elector scheme, organized and operated from the White House in the interregnum between the election he decisively lost and the inauguration of the man who trounced him. The double standard with respect to that vile conspiracy was emphasized this month in the indictment of 16 fake Michigan Trump electors by that state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel. She too put Trump above the law by not indicting him, the mastermind of the conspiracy to steal the election. The question must also be asked: why haven’t the AGs in the other battleground states where the fake elector scheme flourished indicted Trump and his co-conspirators?
 
Assuming that the Trump nightmare will one day be behind us, this double standard of according far more leeway to the powerful than the rest of us merits a careful reassessment. There is no justification for any American to be above the law and cut the slack that Trump enjoys.
 
Also, Republicans, before you barricade yourselves in the two-tier glass house of cards you have constructed with your incessant lies about our justice system, better set aside those stones.
 
Dick Hermann
July 29, 2023

​Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is receiving a lot of well-deserved praise for masterminding the reopening of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia just 12 days after a section of the highway collapsed. Initial estimates were that it would take many months at best to repair. Commuters and businesses quickly went from despairing to rejoicing. Disruption of lives and commerce was minimal. The public astonishment at this feat is such that Shapiro is being talked about as a future presidential candidate.
 
In 2017, when it took 43 days to fix a 92-foot section of Interstate 85 in Atlanta, that relatively short time frame during which the heavily traveled highway was closed was also considered impressive.
 
Both of these “achievements” have met a pretty low bar. Most of us of a certain age have lived for decades in a country that has lost the ability to do big things in anything remotely resembling a timely manner. We take for granted that if something as modest as widening a highway shoulder is underway, traffic will be disrupted for months, if not years.
 
It wasn’t always this way. Ground was broken for the Pentagon, (still) the world’s largest office building, two months before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and the first of its full complement of 40,000 workers began moving in only nine months later. Construction was completed in just 16 months. George Bergstrom’s brilliant architectural design made it possible to get from anywhere in the Pentagon to anywhere else in the building in just seven minutes.
 
The construction manager was Army Corps of Engineers Colonel Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in Oppenheimer). He did such a phenomenal job that President Roosevelt had him promoted to general and  put him in charge of the largest scientific and engineering endeavor in history, the super-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. It took only three years to go from theoretical concept to the successful Trinity test detonation in the Jornada del Muerto (the aptly named “Dead Man’s Journey”) desert of New Mexico.
 
How low our expectations have since become.
 
We have been beaten down to such an extent that we are both impressed and astounded at what happened in Philadelphia. Today our modest expectations are such that we hail the temporary repair and reopening of a tiny, 104-foot section of highway as a dazzling achievement. That’s all you need to know about the state of affairs in America in the third decade of the 21st century. We have not only apparently lost the ability to do big things (see, for example, the Interstate Highway System and putting a man on the Moon in less than a decade), we have also lost the ability to tackle and complete more humble undertakings in anything remotely resembling a reasonable timeframe.
 
Let’s hope that the lessons learned from Josh Shapiro’s example spurs the 35,000 new infrastructure projects underway across the country, thanks to President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (enactment of which was itself a monumental accomplishment), to move forward intelligently and swiftly with more than all deliberate speed.
 
Dick Hermann
July 26, 2023