In a new era, new challenges and new choices for how we want to live . . .

“The decades of economic injustice and immense concentrations of wealth that we call the Gilded Age succeeded in teaching people how they did not want to live. That knowledge empowered them to bring the Gilded Age to an end, wielding the armaments of progressive legislation and the New Deal. Even now, when we recall the lordly ‘barons’ of the late nineteenth century, we call them ‘robbers.’

 “Surely the Age of Surveillance Capitalism will meet the same fate as it teaches us how we do not want to live. It instructs us in the irreplaceable value of our greatest moral and political achievements by threatening to destroy them It reminds us that shared trust is the only real protection from uncertainty. It demonstrates that power untamed by democracy can only lead to exile and despair.   . . . it is up to us to use our knowledge, to regain our bearings, to stir others to do the same, and to found a new beginning. In the conquest of nature, industrial capitalism’s victims were mute. Those who would try to conquer human nature will find their intended victims full of voice, ready to name danger and defeat it. This book is intended as a contribution to that collective effort.”

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, (Public Affairs, 2019).

If they represent us, then . . .

Below are two infographics from a September, 2019 PEW Research Center poll that shows how Americans feel about citizen inequality in the U.S.

Majorities of Republicans and Democrats who say reducing inequality should be a top priority also point to inequality giving the wealthy too much political influence and access and being harmful to economic growth as major reasons why they think reducing inequality should be a priority.

So, if our Senators and Representatives in Congress truly represent “we, the people”, then why is so little being done to address the views reflected in the above poll figures? Do our Congressional “servants” serve us . . . or not? If not, then cui bono? Who does benefit from their actions? If not us, then who? Watch and read the news with a discerning eye. Be aware of what bills are passed in Congress. Perhaps more importantly, be aware of what bills are being held up in the Senate and are NOT being passed? Why aren’t they being passed? What does that answer tell us?

America

While more people are out of work now than at any time since the Great Depression, COVID-19 ravages through the country, and middle class folks are lining up in their cars at food banks, the following news items caught my attention.

I came across this article again recently: These 91 companies paid no federal taxes in 2018, on CNBC. A lot has written about this since then, of course, but even though it’s nearly six months old, the truth of it still makes me seethe as my hair smolders.

Nearly 100 companies in the Fortune 500 had an effective federal tax rate of 0% or less in 2018, according to a new report.

The report looks at the first year since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 went into effect.

The list of companies covers a wide range of industries and includes some of the biggest companies in the United States.

And then there’s this recent news on CNBC:

U.S. billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the nation’s lockdown between mid-March and mid-May [2020], according to a new report.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had the biggest gains.

Bezos added $34.6 billion to his wealth and Zuckerberg picked up $25 billion.

Perfect Example of the Very Stable Logic of Donald John Trump

I was recently re-reading The Art of Questioning: Thirty Maxims of Cross-Examination by Peter Megargee Brown, former President of the Federal Bar Council and Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. (It’s an old book, published in 1987. I bought it on 29 January 1992 while I was working on my novel An Absence of Light.) In it Brown quotes the following question/answer routine often performed by the famed Minsky family burlesque team. It sounds very much like Donald Trump answering a reporter’s question: “Why are fire engines red?”

“Why are fire engines painted red? I’ll tell ya. Fire engines are painted red because newspapers are read, too. Two and two is four. Four and Four is eight. Eight and four is twelve. Twelve inches is a ruler. Queen Mary was a ruler. Queen Mary was a ship that sailed the sea. There are fish in the sea. The fish have fins. The Finns fought the Russians. The Russians are red. Fire engines are always rushin’. That’s why fire engines are red.“

Surveillance Capitalism, the definition

Sur-veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n.

1. A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales; 2. A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modifications; 3. A rogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and power unprecedented in human history; 4. The foundational framework of a surveillance economy; 5. As significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth; 6. The origin of a new instrumentarian power that asserts dominance over society and presents startling challenges to market democracy; 7. A movement that aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty; 8. An expropriation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above; an overthrow of the people’s sovereignty.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, (Public Affairs, 2019).

When We All Vote

I just signed the campaign Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson started on Moveon.org. Check out their work and join us by adding your name to fight for safe and fair elections. Every name that is added builds momentum around the campaign and makes it more likely for us to get the change we want to see.

Go to When We All Vote and sign the petition.

After you’ve signed the petition please also take a moment to share it with others. It’s super easy – all you need to do is forward the link above. Thank you!

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

To help you understand your new world environment, this is essential reading. It can be heavy lifting sometimes. But stick with it. It’s extremely enlightening. And I found it to be a sobering message about the unprecedented challenges we face as citizen of this American democracy, and our new world of global surveillance. Highly recommended.

Knowing the Truth

Novelists typically aren’t held to the same truth standards as journalists. Our “business,” after all, is imagining stories that have never been told before. Mostly, our truths are in the realm of authenticity, making our characters “ring true,” our dialogue seem “natural,” our stories tell the truths of human nature. But being factual isn’t necessarily an essential element to the larger truths we often try to address in our stories.

But lately I’ve been thinking a great deal about “the truth” in reality in this moment of our lives we call the everyday. This is a time in our history when curating “fact” is absolutely essential if we are going to survive as a democratic society and culture. Or, in this time of Covid-19, if we are going to survive at all, literally.

The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Today the digital revolution has made instant global communication second nature to all of us, and as a result recognizing an untruth, or partial truth, sooner rather than later, has become a critical survival skill.

To that end, I’m listing several fact-checking sites offered on the Internet. They are just a few tools among many we need to get into the habit of using in our pursuit of knowing the truth and recognizing the lie. This is excerpted from The 8 Best Fact-Checking Sites for Finding Unbiased Truth.

Media Bias/FactCheck (MBFC News) The website is a bias rating resource, with multiple fake news checking apps and extensions integrating these ratings into their own systems. The site’s reputation means that it has long been a resource that internet users can visit to check the bias in their favorite news websites.

Snopes Snopes started out as a site that mainly dealt with urban legends, myths, common misconceptions, rumors, and conspiracy theories. However, it has expanded to encompass general fact-checking of viral misinformation, including political statements.

PolitiFact  A non-partisan fact-checking website that focuses on political claims made in the US. This includes statements by politicians, political topics such as immigration, and general political news. A global edition of the site tackles stories from other parts of the world.

PolitiFact is a Pulitzer Prize-winning website and was acquired by the Poynter Institute in 2018—a reflection of the site’s commitment to truthful journalism.

FactCheck.org  Not only is FactCheck.org a fact-checking website with an established history of journalistic rigor, but it also partners with Facebook to combat viral fake news. It is a non-partisan fact-checking website which focuses primarily on US politics. It is also a non-profit project—meaning it focuses on information, not the pursuit of profit.

TruthOrFiction.com  TruthOrFiction.com is one of the longest-running fact-checking sites out there. While it initially focused on looking at internet hoaxes and rumors, it has extended its range to include general fake news as well. This includes political stories and viral content.

What’s wrong with America when the majority–even a supermajority–cannot get Congress to heed the will of the people?

Professor Tim Wu who teaches law at Columbia university wrote in the New York Times on March 5, 2019, that “Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.” Below are some excerpts from his article, The Oppression of the Supermajority.

“About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.”

“In our era, it is primarily Congress that prevents popular laws from being passed or getting serious consideration. (Holding an occasional hearing does not count as “doing something.”) Entire categories of public policy options are effectively off-limits because of the combined influence of industry groups and donor interests.”

“It is not a concession to populism, but rather a respect for democracy, to suggest that two-thirds of the population should usually get what they ask for.”

A misbegotten concept, a tortured idea partly born of slavery, still haunting us today.

I’ve written here before about whether or not it’s time to abandon the long-compromised tool of the Electoral College as a framework for fair and just elections in the U.S.. The subject has come to the forefront again.

As Jamelle Bouie states in his column in The New York Times this morning, The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy, “On Sunday, Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, said he would sign a bill to join the National Popular Vote interstate compact, whose members have pledged to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. The Maine Legislature, likewise, is mulling membership and will hold hearings to discuss the issue.”

In his column, Bouie writes clearly about how the Electoral College system is contorting our national elections today. And he writes about the sometimes jumbled set of circumstances that brought about the creation of the Electoral College during the closing days of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It was a compromise concept, and after George Washington’s election during which it seemed to function as hoped, it immediately began to create entanglements in subsequent elections. It has been controversial ever since.

The concept of one-person-one vote has been distorted by the Electoral College since it’s inception. It needs to be reconsidered–seriously–and abandoned.

An existential threat, and our responsibility.

Putin’s One Weapon: The ‘Intelligence State’ ,
Russia’s leader has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries.
By John Sipher
Mr. Sipher, a former chief of station for the C.I.A., worked for more than 27 years in Russia and other parts of Europe and Asia.

Build Central America, Not a Wall
Help fix these broken countries so fleeing north won’t seem so urgent.
By The Editorial Board

Both of these stories appeared in today’s (Feb. 25th) New York Times. It’s important to note that each of these articles deals with one of the biggest threats to global peace (and yes, even prosperity) in the 21st Century: instability. Political, economic, and social stability are absolutely necessary for achieving and maintaining a functioning democracy. Any threat to stability is an existential threat, and we need to deal with it swiftly and wisely. And creating stability were none exists, should be high on the list of any democracy’s responsibilities.


Food for thought. There will be a lot more ahead of us. We need to pay attention.

“This planet will not be secure or peaceful when so few have so much, and so many have so little — and when we advance day after day into an oligarchic form of society where a small number of extraordinarily powerful special interests exert enormous influence over the economic and political life of the world . . . Inequality, corruption, oligarchy and authoritarianism are inseparable.”

I’ve left off the attribution for the above quote for the moment. Before you know who said it, ask yourself: Do I believe this? If I do, how do I believe that we, in this nation, should go about remedying this unjust imbalance? This is a daunting question. I’m firmly convinced that a large part of the answer involves you and me–personally, beginning with our will to be a part of that change. We can’t leave it up to someone else and expect that change to happen. The will of the people is the heart of Democracy. This is OUR challenge.

Who said the above statement? Bernie Sanders. He was quoted in this Opinion column by Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times. During the next year and a half we’ll be taking the measure of the men and women who say they want to lead this country as the next President of the United States. There will be a lot of quotations ahead of us to mull over.

A Mischief of Grief of Our Own Making

The Migrant Caravan: Made in USA

Roberto SavianoMarch 7, 2019 Issue


Hondurans living at the Iglesia Embajadores de Jesus shelter in Tijuana while waiting for their US asylum applications to be processed, December 2018

The link in the title above will take you to an article in the new issue of the New York Review of Books. United States history in regard to Latin American has largely been patronizing and ham-fisted throughout it’s long, turbulent course. In this article, Saviano has done an excellent job of illustrating that the law of what-goes-around-comes-around is alive and well in our current troubles with our neighbors to the South.

I’ve followed our often inept relationship with Mexico and other, mostly, Central American, countries since I was in high school, and years later I wrote about the Guatemalan troubles of the late 1980s and early 1990s in my novel Body of Truth. Unfortunately, those troubles are still with us today. The circumstances have changed–a little–but the human suffering remains the same.

I wish we had the national will to take our relationship with these countries more seriously. It’s a national failing that we haven’t and don’t. I hope that will change.

Only in Texas . . .

This excerpt below is from The Texas Tribune which is doing a great job telling the story of Texas politics. That story is often gob-smackingly nutso, as you can see in the excerpt below. You can read the entire article here.

Sen. Angela Paxton files bill that would allow her husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to issue exemptions from securities regulations

Billed as a consumer protection effort, the proposal would allow approved individuals to serve as investment advisers without registering with the state board — a felony under Texas law that Ken Paxton was charged with in 2015.

by Emma Platoff Feb. 16, 20196 PM Republish

Angela Paxton celebrates her victory over Phillip Huffines in the Republican primary for state Senate District 8 on March 6, 2018.
Angela Paxton celebrates her victory over Phillip Huffines in the Republican primary for state Senate District 8 on March 6, 2018. Laura Skelding for The Texas Tribune

Texas Legislature 2019

The 86th Legislature runs from Jan. 8 to May 27. From the state budget to health care to education policy — and the politics behind it all — we focus on what Texans need to know about the biennial legislative session.More in this series 

In what state Sen. Angela Paxton describes as an effort to safely expand Texas’ burgeoning financial tech industry, the freshman Republican from McKinney has filed a bill that would empower the office of her husband, Attorney General Ken Paxton, to exempt entrepreneurs from certain state regulations so they can market “innovative financial products or services.”

One of those exemptions would be working as an “investment adviser” without registering with the state board. Currently, doing so is a felony in Texas — one for which Ken Paxton was issued a civil penalty in 2014 and criminally charged in 2015.

Senate Bill 860, filed Friday, would create within the attorney general’s office an entirely new program — what the bill calls a “regulatory sandbox” — that would allow approved individuals “limited access to the market … without obtaining a license, registration, or other regulatory authorization.” The bill, based on a 2018 Arizona law hailed as the first of its kind, aims to cut red tape for the growing financial tech sector, allowing businesses to market new products for up to two years and to as many as 10,000 customers with scant regulation.

No comment . . . except, well, Wow!

“Amazon paid no federal taxes on $11.2 billion in profits last year”

This headline appeared in the Washington Post today. Following are excerpts from the article.

“Amazon, the e-commerce giant helmed by the world’s richest man, paid no federal taxes on profit of $11.2 billion last year. . . “

“Amazon actually received a federal tax rebate of $129 million last year, giving it an effective federal tax rate of roughly -1 percent.”

” Like many other large companies, Amazon reduces its effective tax rate each year using a variety of credits, rebates, and loopholes. “

“. . . most of the tax breaks used by profitable businesses to reduce or eliminate their tax burdens were instituted at the behest of deep-pocketed and well-connected corporate lobbyists.”

“’Companies haven’t been shy about pouring millions of dollars to prop up a system that benefits them.’”

“Research has shown, for instance, that congressional offices give serious consideration to input from business groups in crafting legislation. Surveys have shown that many staffers acknowledge changing their minds on issues after speaking with lobbying groups, and that they view correspondence from businesses as more representative of constituent opinion than letters from regular citizens.”  [?!?!?!]

*I should add, of course, that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. So it does say something for . . .irony (?) that the reporter was allowed to write the above excerpts. Or, maybe, it just says that when you have so much money that nothing can touch you, neither lies nor the truth matters to you one way or the other.

The Dark Side of Politics . . . The Corruption in Campaign Finance Made Simple in a Five-minute Video.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

This is probably why freshman lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grates on the good ol’ boys club in Congress. Watch this short but riveting video in which she uses a little game of Q & A to create a brutal takedown of Congress’ absurd campaign finance laws. This sharp-witted clarity revealing the ruse behind the shell-game of campaign finance, shows how venal politicians are using it to enrich themselves at the public’s expense. To be fair, there are many honest and conscientious legislators in Congress who are there to act as “public servants” as they were elected to do. But there are also way too many who use their office and their influence to shovel money into their own pockets. This video shows just how ridiculously easy it is to do.

Pinning the tail on the elephant in Texas

Karen Tumulty’s column, Where the Hunt for Voter Fraud is Worse Than the Crime Itself, in today’s Washington Post, points to an underlying reason for the Republicans’ Chicken Little squawking about “voter fraud”. That is, the double-digit turnout in the recent midterm elections is a bright red flag for the Republican good ol’ boys in control of the Texas State House, and it’s not a good sign for the Party color. Instead, it sends the message: your days are numbered.

It may be slow in coming, but times are changing in Texas.

Little guy says “No” to the big guy, and a wail of anguished doom rises from an industrial giant.

“BATON ROUGE, La. — It was a squabble over $2.9 million in property-tax breaks — small change for Exxon Mobil, a company that measures its earnings by the billions.

But when the East Baton Rouge Parish school board rejected the energy giant’s rather routine request last month, the “no” vote went off like a bomb in a state where obeisance to the oil, gas and chemical industries is the norm.”

A School Board Says “No” to Big Oil in this morning’s business section of the New York Times is, I hope, a precursor of things to come. It’s an old cliché, but it’s true nonetheless, that democracy [def.: “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people…”, and, as President Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address, “…government of the people, by the people, for the people.”] cannot survive if “the people” don’t pay attention and participate. When members of Congress, elected by the people to represent the people, start behaving like little lords of the realm, rather than public servants, then, the people and democracy are not served.

But “the people” must stay informed. They must follow closely the behavior and actions of the members of Congress who were sent there to represent them. If instead those members of Congress begin to favor anyone (lobbyists and those who pay them, the special interests of industry and big tech) other than the people, then the people must hold them accountable. They must vote them out of office and replace them with someone who will serve the people’s wishes as promised.

The point is, ultimately, it’s up to “the people” to make democracy function as intended. But if constituents forgo their responsibilities to hold their representatives in Congress accountable, then they will become “subjects” not “citizens.”

I hope East Baton Rouge Parish is a sign of the times ahead. We need many like them in every state in the nation. And, by the way, raise a cheer for the school board. I’m proud that it was a board of education that took a stand against the power of big money. Because without education, citizens don’t even know that they should!