Tag: politics

A Bully Pulpit or a Bully’s Pulpit?

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Have you ever been bullied? I have. I would assess the situation and decide whether to fight back or ignore the bully (or even better, make fun of him—it was usually a him) or put some distance between the bully and myself. I just finished reading  Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes about a school shooting prompted by years of relentless bullying. Bullying is indeed very much adolescent behavior, but some people never move beyond adolescence.

Theodore Rossevelt coined the term to describe the office of the president as a “bully pulpit.” He meant bully in the now semi-obsolete British use of bully as an adjective, meaning excellent, outstanding.  He used that pulpit to promote conservation and other good causes during his term of office. He used that pulpit to exercise moral leadership, which we expect to hear from a pulpit. Most of the presidents who preceded or followed him did likewise.

As a verb, bully is defined as treating someone in a cruel, insulting, threatening, or aggressive fashion, and as a noun, it is someone who regularly engages in that type of behavior.  We are told, in our adolescent days, to stand up to a bully, but it’s not always that easy.  Bullies often travel in packs and gang up on those who can’t win by fighting.  Or they have some kind of power. A principal can be a bully. A teacher can be a bully. A boss can be a bully. It’s about having power and choosing to exercise it in ways that are self-centered and destructive. Or at least demeaning

No one has more power in this day and age than the president of the United Staes.  Until now, we have had a variety of presidents, but the only one prior to Trump that was a bully was Andrew Jackson—who adorns Trump’s office. Trump has given a new meaning to bully pulpit. Knowing that such people existed and could charm their way into office, the authors of the Constitution created guardrails to rein in abuse of

So how do we, individually, collectively, stand up to a bully?

I know not everyone can risk their livelihood, their safety, their communities to stand up to bullies.  But there are people who can and do.  Governors in blue states. Celebrities who took on Disney over the firing of Jimmy Kimmel. Ordinary citizens who cancelled their subscriptions to Disney’s media empire, causing its stock to tank. (That’s one of the safest and most effective ways to tackle bullies with financial power!) Law firms doing pro bono work for those who struggle under abuse of power. Universities that (unlike mine) stand fast to their belief in academic freedom and the First Amendment. Cities, churches, and individuals who shelter immigrants and assert their rights.

I belong to a significant minority of people who are free to protest, challenge, or otherwise defang the bully. That minority consists of old people with pensions and Social Security who cannot be bought, bribed, coerced, or otherwise persuaded to go along with the bullying because they have so little time left and are so much more aware of their legacy.. We can speak up without fear of reprisal.  At 84, I don’t have a lot to lose, and much to gain by trying to ensure that my grown daughters and grands live in a world where bullying is constrained, not performed, by law enforcement, where we are free to express our opinions with nothing more at risk than disagreement. We can attend protests, write letters, annoy legislators without fear of reprisal, or file lawsuits, as my friend Eleanor and I have done In exchange for that freedom of old age.  Along with the privilege of being old, there is a moral obligation to use it.

And the rest of you?  Encourage us gray panthers as well as other brave souls who defend our rights and those of others.  Use your power of consuming and investing to reward and punish bad behavior by private firms. VOTE and get others to the polls, especially in primaries and special elections. Use the power to embarrass.  When I was president of  Clemson’s Faculty Senate, I used to remind my fellow senators that the most powerful weapon we had was the power to embarrass, and we needed to use it selectively and effectively.

Every day for the rest of Donald Trump’s term, find one small act of resistance that you can use, whether it is changing your brand of detergent or supporting a candidate or attending a protest or attending a school bord meeting to protect the freedom to read. The time is now. Our nation’s future is at stake.

Women’s Equality Day

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Twenty-five years ago, when I put together my holiday essays in a book called Economics Takes a Holiday, I sorted them by month.  I came to August and there was no holiday. Somehow, I had forgotten about the Celtic holiday of Lammas, August 1st, the celebration of first harvest.  But there was an even more important omission.  I failed to include Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the 19th amendment, which can be celebrated on either the 19th (ratification by the 36th state) or August 26th, when it was officially added to the Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.  Man is a troublesome word in English. Sometimes it means a human being and other times it means a male human being. I took four years of Latin in high school.  Despite the patriarchal, misogynistic, authoritarian, slave-owning culture of the Roman empire, Latin did distinguish between a homo as a human being and vir and mulier as, respectively, as a male human being and a female human being. Jefferson must have missed that lesson.

The Declaration of Independence assumed an even narrower view of man., It meant a white male property owner. It took a Civil war and four constitutional amendments and several Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act to broaden our definition of man.  T

As we celebrate the right to vote, women are once again fighting for women’s rights, the right of reproductive choice and control of our bodies, which we have enjoyed for fifty years.  I was married in 1962 in my native state of Connecticut where contraception was illegal.  That law that was not being enforced. Fortunately, condoms could be purchased for the prevention of socially transmitted diseases and birth control pills could be prescribed for menstrual irregularity, both of which were apparently epidemic in the state.  In 1965, SCOTUS handed down a ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut overturning the state’s contraception blue law on the grounds of a right to privacy inherent in the 14th amendment. That case set the stage for Roe v. Wade.. 

Only in recent years have we learned the extent to which assumed rights are fragile—voting rights, civil rights, privacy rights, safety rights. A major difference between the contraception ban in Connecticut before 1965 and the new abortion laws was enforcement. There was no enforcement in the earlier era, but now some states have established criminal penalties for doctors, clinics, and women for having abortions—even miscarriages that someone claims were actually abortions.

How did it finally happen after 72 years of agitation that women got the right to vote?  The movement was launched in 1948 at the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention with a Declaration of Women’s Rights. Soon that agenda had to take a back seat to the battle over slavery.  In 1868, after the War of the Rebellion, as it was sometimes known in the north,, the lesser-known 15th amendment was ratified. It prohibited the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Efforts by women to explicitly include gender were ignored.

Four other significant events took place in the intervening years that helped the suffrage cause. One was the settlement of the west, which was less conventional about women’s roles than the east. One by one, western states gave women voting rights.  Another was the 1913 constitutional amendment requiring direct election of senators by the people instead of appointed by state legislatures.  Western senators had to court the women’s vote, and increasingly, so did presidential candidates in states where women could vote.

The third event was the service rendered by women in so many ways for the war effort during the first world war.  They could fight, nurse, or do men’s jobs while the men were away, but they had no say in the government they were serving.   A fourth and final factor was the victory of the female-dominated temperance movement in enacting prohibition, passed in 2018. Many men and especially liquor interests saw a link between suffrage and prohibition, but when liquor became illegal even without women being able to vote, the opposition lost its steam. 

Back in the days before the 19th amendment, when my great-grandmother was marching for women’s suffrage, there was a split in the movement over strategy. Two splits, in fact.  One was whether to over focus on suffrage or push the ERA.  Realistically, the ERA would probably not have made it, but suffrage did.  Sometimes compromise is the best path.  But if the ERA had been enacted as a Constitutional amendment, then or later, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The other split was more tactical.  Get the right to vote state by state or focus on Congress and a Constitutional amendment? And the answer was yes.  It took both to get the 19th amendment through Congress and ratified by 36 of the 48 states. In August 1920, Tennessee put the amendment over the top by a single vote by a first term young representative responding to a request from his mother.

The majority of Americans value their civil liberties and those of their fellow citizens, not to mention immigrants and refugees.  For almost 50 years we have taken these rights for granted—freedom of religion, a right to privacy, the right to vote in free and fair elections, the right to engage in peaceful protest. The right to an equal and not separate public education. More recently, we have added the freedom to marry a person of the same gender or a different race. 

When one Constitutional right is threatened by the courts, all rights are at risk.  As Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister during the Nazi era,  wrote:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The 19th amendment in 1920 was the culmination of a 72-year battle. Tennessee, the 36th state to ratify, passed it into law by a single vote, giving the required ¾ majority on August `19th. The Secretary of State in Washington enrolled in the Constitution on August 26th, giving us not Women’s Equality Day but Women’s Equality Week.  A fitting length for such a long labor before it was birthed. Only one of the original suffrage leaders was still alive in 1920 but too ill to vote.  My great-grandmother Alice Stewart, who was born in the 6th year of that battle, marched in New York for the suffrage movement in 1913 and lived long enough to vote in 1920 and 1924. Given my birth family’s Republican leanings, I am guessing that she voted for Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

There are lessons in that struggle about compromising and holding firm, about strategy and tactics, and about the truth of Reinhold Niebuhr’s dictum that nothing worth accomplishing is ever accomplished in our lifetimes. Therefore, we are saved by hope. As we struggle to keep hope alive and make a difference in democracy, voting rights, and human rights, let us hold up and retell the stories of these past struggles to revive our commitment and determination.

Tariffs Again?

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump is not the only president to wax ecstatic over tariffs.

Here is what Wikipedia had to say about the so-called Tariff of Abominations two centuries ago: ” The Tariff of 1828 was enacted on May 19, 1828, and aimed to protect Northern industries by imposing high duties on imported goods, with rates reaching as high as 50% on certain items. This tariff was designed to bolster American manufacturing by making foreign products more expensive, thereby encouraging consumers to buy domestically produced goods.”

 It was signed by soon-to-be departing President John Quincy Adams but enforced by Trump’s favorite president (other than himself) Andy Jackson.  When John C. Calhoun argued that the Port of Charleston didn’t have to enforce a tariff the state disagreed with (the Nullification doctrine of states’ rights), Jackson said he would send federal troops to enforce it.  He also refused to renew the charter of the nation’s central bank, the Second Bank of the United States, because the bank’s president had supported his opponent in the 1828 election. (Sound familiar?)  While there was some compromise on tariffs, the combination of the two led to a severe recession in the 1830s.

Fast forward to the 1920s.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was enacted in 1930 and signed by President Herbert Hoover, just six months after the stock market crash on Black Friday in October 1929.  To quote Wikipedia again, “Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.’s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. “The combination of financial disaster and disruption of world trade repeated itself, plunging the nation into a severe depression.

Apparently, it takes a hundred years to repeat the same mistakes. Trump’s tariffs and quarrels with the banking system, both with the Fed chair and with trying to loosen the already loose bank regulations that led to the financial disaster of 2008, look all too familiar to anyone who has more than a nodding acquaintance with U.S. economic history.

As philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Efficiency: First Among Equals

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Brace yourself, dear readers.  My economist self wants you to hear my confession.

For many years I taught introductory economics, as well as more advanced classes. I taught the introductory classes because a colleague and I had a multi-edition principles text, and it was important to road test it regularly. In one of the earlier chapters it was customary to introduce the claim, which was in most mainstream textbooks, that economics was value-free. Economics was just a set of tools for making choices about how to use resources wisely that was useful for all of us as workers, owners, consumers and citizens. A few pages later, we introduced them to goals, which we insisted were not values.  Microeconomic goals (WHICH WERE ASSUREDLY NOT VALUES!! were efficiency, equity, and freedom. The next semester, students were introduced to the macroeconomic goals (WHICH WERE ASSUREDLY NOT VALUES!!) of full employment, price stability (as opposed to inflation) and economic growth.

Having defined the goals, it was easy to discover and implement decisions processes, anticipate the effects of changes in the marketplace or in government policy, and prepare our students for life in a capitalist society.

If economics were a religion (which it might be), my heretical self might be seeking penance for the sin of inflicting this mindset on innocent adolescents, but I was just expounding on doing what my colleagues and I routinely taught.  If I were to start over, I would hope that some of those students would question who set these goals.  At least for macroeconomics I had an answer. The Employment Act oi of 1946 created a Council of Economic Advisors to serve the president and guide him in pursuing these “self-evident” goals.  Actually, I feel less penitent about the macroeconomic goals, although the powers that be seem to worry more about price stability than full employment and never question the conflict between growth and sustainability. But it is the microeconomic goals that I feel called to challenge, and especially the presumed incompatibility of efficiency and equity.  (Freedom we will save for another day.).

Not all goals are created equal.  Efficiency is the primary goal, equity gets a greeting card on some holidays, and freedom is loosely defined and somewhat hard to pin down.  Efficiency is defined in economics in either of two ways getting the most (most WHAT?) out of our available resources or satisfying our wants/needs/desires at the lowest possible expenditure of time and effort. Want to insult an economist? Just tell him (more hims than hers) that his proposal or idea pr practice is INEFFFICNENT.  You will not get nearly the same reaction if you claim it is inequitable.  In fact, Economist Arthur Oken argued that these two goals are constantly in conflict. Equity means a leveling of incomes and assets, but it threatens efficiency because it reduces work incentives.  Some of those who pay more taxes to provide benefits and those who receive more government benefits will just drop out of the labor force. A  nation of idlers! Parasites on those who continue to work and pay taxes! Reducing work incentives Is clearly inefficient.

Efficiency versus equity is another false binary.  We need both.  As a result of this false idolatry of efficiency we have an income distribution that is more like that of a third world oligarchy than a prosperous democracy.  The very rich can use their wealth to redirect government policies to their benefit rather than the needs and desires of the confused and misled majority.  We have outrageously expensive health care costs and a severe shortage of affordable housing, a minimum wage that has not been increased since the Clinton administration, falling life expectancy and a growing environmental crisis.  Other nations that choose to strike a healthy balance between these two goals are more prosperous and more democratic.

When we name these “goals” as the values that they are, values that are the driving forces in our political economy, the choices are much clearer.  The values of efficiency and equality that both support a healthy economy and a democratic polity are not enemies, but partners.

Read my 2023 book, Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtues and Democracy, available from amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

Head or Heart Again

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Before the election in 2025, I wrote a political post about head and heart and the role each played in our choice at the ballot box.If you speak Myers-Briggs, you might call it Left Brain/Right Brain, T or F for short. No,. that’s not true/false, it’s another dichotomy, thinking/feeling. Or sometimes reason and emotion. We could take on all of he four Myers-Briggs binaries–introvert/extrovert, Intuition/Sensing, and Judging/perceiving, and judging/perceiving, but let’s save those for another day..

We use both halves of our brains, sometimes one more than the other, although we tend to have a preferred first response. A classic example is being at the scene of the accident. The T, left-brained person sees it as a problem to be solved. Everybody out of the car? Police? Do we need a medic? Meanwhile, the right-brained F is feeling empathy and compassion and trying to offer comfort..At our best, we humans try to cover both bases. But if not, we can pair up, the left-‘brained person (more likely a man but not necessarily) can problem solve while the right-brained persons offers consolation and hope.Ultimately, everyone at the scene will engage both halves of the brain.

Challenging the assumed superiority of thinking or reasoning or logic over empathy or affection or compassion led to some useful answers to bothersome questions in multiple fields of thought. I am mainly aware of the the effect of this challenge to my own academic discipline, economics, but I am sure it has influenced other and ethics.( Or as one of my economist friends said, shouldn’t that be economics or ethics?)

The standard textbook in economics introduced the young scholar to homo economicus (economic man), the basis of a simplistic model of how we make economic decisions about money, spending, working, marrying, having children, investing, retiring. and so forth. Homo economicus has two sterling qualities. He is a fully informed master calculator who can do cost/benefit analysis in his head, or occasionally on a spreadsheet. And his sole goal is to maximize his personal self-interest, to get as much out of life as he can with the least expenditure of effort or money.or both. I personally find this person to be rather obnoxious, but I have encountered people who do seem to conform to that model much of the time….

There has always been an undercurrent in economics suggesting that the average actual human does not exactly conform to that model. That undercurrent can be traced from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (a precursor to his Wealth of Nations) through Keynes’ animal spirits to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman’s work earned him the only Nobel prize in economics awarded to a psychologist. Back in the 19th century, Charleston Dickens satirized economic man in his novel Hard Times, in which a paterfamilias subjected his family to cost-benefit analysis of every decision and couldn’t understand why his wife gave up and his children left home at the earliest opportunity.

What were those challenges to homo economics? First of all, most of us can only acquire a limited amount of information about all the details of all t he choices we have to make every day. There goes the assumption that our hero is fully informed. In fact, we make better choices when we employ what is called bounded rationality, limiting our options to a small number.. Second, we often lack the complex calculation skills to determine which choice would most meet our needs an desires. Finally, many of us feel that there is more to life than narrow self interest. There is family. There is culture. there is community. There is play. There is being in nature. Some of the best things in life really are free! We care with and for others and they do the same. It’s called altruism, and it messes up those tidy one-person decision models concerned only the decider’s self-interest..

There are lessons in this rethinking of our model of human choice that impact public policy choices as well as our personal choices.If we rep;lace Homo economics with homo not so sapiens, we find that we may need to revise the way we present choices to citizens and taxpayers. The first Medicare drug coverage programs offered way more choices than sick people and their caregivers could adequately evaluate. People often need a default that can make a decision for them if they forget or can’t decide. Usually the default is the one that works best for the average person. Making wise choices is itself a demand on our scarce resources of time and attention that might be better–or more joyfully!–employed elsewhere

A 20th century British philosopher, Mary Midgeley, applied the same challenge to to the practices in many fields ofdeveloping “universal”;explanations, including philosophy, history, biology and ethics–even physics in its evolution from Newton to Einstein! These theoretical models must be qualified by the diversity of context and circumstance, diversity and complexity, that challenge overly simple explanations to life’s complex questions.

Lie my blog? You may like my book. Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtues and Democracy. Available from amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

Speak Up, My Silent Generation!

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Sandwiched between the Greatest Generation (born 1902-1927) that saw us through the Depression and World War II and the Baby Boomers/Me Generation (born 1946-1964) is my generation, (1928-1045)  known as the Silent Generation.  Silent, perhaps, because there were fewer of us and we lived in fairly pleasant times. Life was pretty good for most of us. 

We weren’t entirely silent.  We cheered the election of John Kennedy and supported Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to civil rights and the war on poverty while opposing Vietnam. In college and after, I remember protesting everything from letting women wear Bermuda shorts on campus and making them observe curfew in dorms to Vietnam We had lots of babies (I contributed three) and women explored new careers after ignoring their mothers’ recommendation of teacher, nurse, secretary. We had TV and Rock/n’ Roll, the pill and polio vaccine.  It was an era of, as they say in  New Orleans, to “laissez les bons temps router.”  (Let the good times roll.) It was the best of times, just as the millennials —our grandchildren–are coming of age in the worst of times.

As we did in the 1960s of fond memory, it is time for our small but powerful generation to stand up and speak out.  Now in our 70s to 90s, many of us are financially secure and not vulnerable to threats from the emerging police state. I recently listened to a retired general on TV who would like to continue working part time as a consultant but can’t be hired because he spoke out against the Trump administration and lost his security clearance. But he has another kind of security, financial security, and as a retired military person a strong sense of patriotic duty, he is using his time to fight Trump instead.

We have resources that can be put to work to retrieve our democracy.  We have money. We have time. We have experience and skills.  We can shelter immigrants, boycott businesses (Washington Post, CBS, Fox News)) that kowtow to Trump. WE can volunteer for community groups to provide mutual support while also engaging those who live in the other world of Trump and Fox News. We can vocalize our opinions, contribute to ACLU  and PBS and private foreign aid, attend protests, annoy our representatives in state legislatures and Congress, support candidates or run for office, and file lawsuits (I am a party to one against our Trump-like City Council). What we cannot do is sit at home and say “Woe is me” Withdrawal is not an option, it is amoral obligation for those of us for whom the danger is smallest.

Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister in Nazi Germany, left us these immortal words: \

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When your great0grandchildren want to know what you did in the face of this challenge to our democracy, what will you tell them?

Trust but Verify

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Or in an Arabic saying, Trust Allah but tie up your camel.  In a world of hackers, scammers, shooters, liars, and broken promises, in whom can we trust? Our national motto is “IN God we trust, but some of us need to have an actual person in whom to trust as well as institutions that we can trust.

The word used for faith in Saint Paul’s dictum “Faith, hope, love, these abound; but the greatest of these is love.”  If faith is a matter of factual belief, then it is most helpful to me. I do believe the earth revolves around the sun and smoking can cause cancer, but I do not believe that the myths of any of the major religions are true in the same literal sense. I trust science because that approach to knowledge has created major safeguards to avoid any false propositions to be confirmed.  Science doesn’t give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it does pretty well at offering truth and nothing but. I more or less trust science. 

The opposite of faith in either meaning, belief or trust, is doubt. When we no longer trust the systems and institutions that have served us well in the past, we tend to retreat to what theologian Paul Tillich described as a limited defensible fortress. His fortress was one of ideas, but it can also include people and institutions.

I used to trust the rule of law and the legal system, but recent events have raised serious doubts about the ability and willingness of elected officials to enforce courts decisions. I used to trust financial systems, but they are no longer as well safeguarded as they once were. Right now, I trust the accuracy of election results, but I’m not sure that the elaborate safeguards that protect the election process can be trusted in the future. I have serious doubts about crypto and artificial intelligence and ensuring peace by always being over-prepared for war. I used to trust the full faith and credit of the United States Government, but that was before our national debt grew to be as big as our GDP and growing faster. I used to trust the evening news, but now I have to seek confirmation.

Trust breeds hope, even optimism.  Doubt creates fear, and pessimism.  What can we as individuals do to reverse the direction of living under a cloud of doubt, at sea without rudder or compass, and no land in sight?

My answer, at least a partial answer, comes from three great minds.  One is Ben Franklin, who at the signing of the Declaration of Independence said, “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.”  The second is theologian Joanna Macy, who argues that neither optimism nor pessimism is the foundation of any strategy—optimists believe that everything will be all right, and pessimism believe we are doomed and powerless to stop it.  She calls us to active hope, to fight the good fight, knowing that what we seek to accomplish may not be accomplished in our lifetimes. (Especially mine. I am 84!) We a called to active hope, to pick out parts of the perceived doomsday machine and throw a monkey wrench into the works.  The third piece of wisdom comes from Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. “

Together the sages Franklin, Macy and Mead call us into community, to find people we can trust and work with them to reclaim our democracy, our rule of law, and our country. And to do it is peaceably lest we become like those who lost or stole our trust (civil disobedience is fine,). Friends. Religious communities. Nonpartisan organizations. Women’s suffrage took 72 years. Civil rights came slowly and are being rapidly demolished  in many ways.

Finally, there is a matter of picking your fights—what issues and what tools.  Ask yourself what gifts you have and what issues you are passionate about. Those two questions may steer you in the direction of people, information sources, and communities that can get you out of the fug and on the path

My gifts are writing, speaking, and organizational leadership. My issues are protecting democracy. economic justice, and reproductive rights. I am careful about whom I trust, and I depend on several organized communities that share those goals and can offer me support and companionship. 

What are your gifts and issues? Do you have such communities? How can they help you use your gifts and passions to practice active hope?

Woman Without a Party

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment


One of the big binary polarities in the United States is the two-party system. You might think it was in the Constitution, but it isn’t. The political system evolved early into the Federalist (strong central government) and the Democrat-Republican (small and decentralized government) parties. Others have arisen, but unlike most other democracies, we seldom see any sign of an effective third party. Their official names are Republican and Democratic, but their identity labels are conservative and liberal. I freely acknowledge that I vote Democratic most of the time, but it is far from fully reflecting my values and priorities.
I am a civil libertarian, wanting to protect the rights we have under the Constitution, like free speech and due process and the right to bear muskets. And especially the right of women to control their own bodies. Neither embryos nor corporations embody the defining characteristic of a human being, which comes from being born of a woman. I do send money to the ACLU, but it isn’t a political party.
I am a fiscal conservative. I believe that we should decide what we want the government to provide and raise enough revenue (on average, allowing for recessions and expansions) to pay for it. Neither of the two major parties qualifies as a hospitable environment for a fiscal conservative. Democrats create too many entitlements with built in growth when they are in charge, and Republicans never met a tax they couldn’t cut, especially if it falls more on the wealthy.
I am a social progressive, believing in diversity and inclusion and respect, which come from my faith tradition but are essential ways to live together in peace in a nation of immigrants. Democrats do get some points there. Protecting voting rights and money in politics are two of my big issues as a social progressive. I may not vote the same way you do but I will go to the wall to protect your rights.
I am an economic populist, believing in strong unions as a counterweight to corporations, a more equitable distribution of income and wealth, and adequate basic public services like health care, education and transportation to give more people access and opportunity. Both parties claim to be “for the working people,” but when the chips are down, they depend on big corporate donors to finance their campaigns. I also believe in protective regulation to save us from the destructive behavior of large corporations who subscribe the belief that, as Vince Lombardi might say, “Profits are is not just the best thing. They are the only thing.”
Finally, I am an environmentalist. This is the only earth we have, and we have trashed it long enough. Let’s show Mother Earth some respect I love the Green Party but their platform is very focused.
If I can’t find between these two parties one that honors all those dimensions of my politics, what would be the next best thing? The two-party system is not embedded in law or constitution. Third parties could capture enough votes to be represented in the electoral college. The obstacle is the custom (nowhere embedded in law) that the winner of the plurality (not majority) of votes in a state gets all that state’s electoral votes. (It was Thomas Jefferson’s idea because he wanted all the votes from Virginia to become our Third President. Shame on you, Tom.) The chance to have some electoral votes to bargain within the Electoral College and create a coalition government would certainly make organizing a third party an attractive option.
I need more than two choices. I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. Can we “debinarize” our democracy and become a little more normal like other democrztic countries?

The Taxman Is After You

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Many of my rr readers are South Carolinians. Even if you are not, a similar tax “reform” proposal may be coming to your state, as it has elsewhere. . So here’s the South Carolina version of the latest Republican plan to tax the middle class, and cut fores for the rich proposal.. South Carolina’s new proposal for a flat income tax, H. 4216, seems to be on the fast track for what is billed as a tax cut. Maybe. But not for most of us.

The federal standard deduction, expanded in the first Trump administration, would be cut for state tax purposes from $15,000 ($30,000 for a married couple) to a miserly $,6000 and $12,000, respectively. Then it is phased out until it disappears at an adjusted gross income of $40,000.

But wait, there’s good news. The tax rates would be changed from a two-step schedule of 3% and 6.3% to a single flat rate of 3.99% (just so we can claim to be lower than our neighbors). That’s a tax cut, isn’t it?
Yes and no. The General Assembly giveth and the General Assembly taketh away. The federal standard deduction, which was also followed in South Carolina’s state income tax, gives people at the bottom a little relief and makes the income tax just a little bit progressive.
That’s “economist-ese” for taking a smaller percentage of income in taxes for poor people than rich people. Our other state and local taxes on sales and property, and our fees and charges for government services, are regressive. They take a larger share of income from the poor than from the rich. So, the income tax has provided a partial equalization of the total tax liability across households at different income levels.
According to estimates by the S.C. Department of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, if your family is in the median income range of $50,000 to $75,000, more than 80% of you will discover that your income taxes will go up, not down. Less than 10% of households in the income range of $300,000 to $500,000 will have that same sticker shock, but most will see a steep reduction.
Revenue from the individual income tax is expected to decline by about $216 million in the first full year. Bottom line: This is a tax cut for the wealthy, plain and simple. And unlike the usual justification – attracting business – the personal tax rate will now be lower than the business tax rate.
That’s not the only problem with this bill. With no chance to itemize, citizens with heavy medical expenses and/or generous charitable contributions or lots of interest on their home mortgage and/or student loans will have to rethink their priorities. Medical expense deductions are important for many disabled or elderly citizens, especially if there is a family member in a nursing home. Medicare is not much help there—and the future of Medicare is uncertain.
South Carolina is riding a wave of revenue growth that is overdue for correction. The stock market is flailing, consumer confidence has dropped, tourism prospects (important to our state) are dismal as people from other nations are reluctant to come here, and tariffs are likely to revive inflation that has just returned to more normal levels (not counting eggs).
The state’s definition of income for tax purposes will still be tied to the federal definition of adjusted gross income but that may change if Congress, worried about ballooning deficits, fails to extend the tax cuts from the first Trump administration. The legislature has made a number of commitments, such as higher teacher pay and a larger state contribution each year to protect the soundness of the retirement fund. Legislators may not be able to fund these priorities if revenue from the income tax falters, as it does with either tax cuts or recessions.
This bill needs to go in the circular file and start again.

To Endorse, or not to Endorse

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Both the Washington Post and the LA Times refused to endorse a candidate in the current presidential election.  I don’t know much about the Times, but I have been a faithful subscriber to the Washington Post ever since it became available online. I like their games, their news coverage, their columnist. Their owner’s cowardice, not so much.

Jeff Bezos is a bottom-line kind of guy.  He knows that Harris is the only person fit to serve in this office. If he doesn’t know that, he’s too dumb to own a major newspaper, and I don’t think that’s the case. It’s a matter of pure self-interest.  If Harris is elected, she will not take it out on him because—unlike Trump—she is a fully functioning adult. She doesn’t suffer from toxic masculinity. If Trump is elected, he will make sure that Bezos pays for his failure to make the Nazi salute.

Unbridled capitalism is a recipe for societal disaster.