Category Archives: Health

Trump’s Attack on Higher Education-Go on Offense

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I have made a habit through my adult life of, when possible, avoiding talking about my education. When asked where I went to college, I have usually just said, “in the east.” I did this because disclosing that I went to Yale would often lead to uncomfortable statements about things about which the inquirer usually knew little. I was certainly not ashamed of having attended Yale, but I also didn’t want to be seen as bragging about having an Ivy League education and conversations about it were often awkward.

The same was true of my law school experience at Harvard. Truth be told, my attendance at both Yale and Harvard were the product of teachers who cared enough to intervene on my behalf, to encourage me to reach high, to achieve way beyond what I imagined was possible for me. The result was an enriched life beyond anything I ever dreamed of. I became a life-long learner, driven perhaps beyond what was healthy at times, but determined not to fail. Yale, in particular, taught me that working hard, and harder still, was the key to success.

My Yale experience, in the early 1960s, was extraordinary in many ways. I will not detail them here. My purpose is different. The Yale of today is, I think, quite different and more imposing than the school I attended. I am certain that Harvard College has also evolved well beyond what was already back then a world-class education and research institution.

The current Trump administration’s attack on these and other major research and institutions of higher learning reflects a view of the world that is alien to everything these schools represent. I have just read that the President of the University of Virginia has resigned to avoid damaging conflict with the federal government under Trump. While the details of President Ryan’s situation at UVA are perhaps unique (he says he was doing to step down next year anyway), the fact remains that the Trump assault on higher education will have profoundly damaging consequences throughout our society.

Since I know Yale the best, I will focus on it. Yale has produced a website entitled Yale’s Impact on America. https://www.yale.edu/yales-impact-america

Did you know, for example, that “Yale’s large-scale clinical trials – 38,000 patients are currently enrolled in over 2,000 clinical trials – are yielding key discoveries that translate into life-saving therapies.” The health issues involve patients with heart issues, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes among other life-threatening maladies.

Did you know that chemotherapy was developed at Yale and is used to help about one million people each year? And the first insulin pump was developed at Yale as well, now helping 350,000 patients a year. The first U.S. artificial heart pump was also produced at Yale and helps six million people suffering from heart failure. And “Yale research led to the discovery of esketamine as a therapy for major depression, which the FDA approved in 2019 as the first new medication in decades for people suffering from treatment-resistant depression.”

I subscribe to Yale Today, a daily publication of the University. It is a rare day that some remarkable achievement in science, medicine or other discipline is not detailed there. On June 27:

Yale School of the Environment researchers have pioneered a novel method for measuring how urbanization is affecting biodiversity in cities, a tool that will help scientists and officials better manage human-wildlife interactions around the world.

On June 23:

Cutting-edge lab technique hints at new era for neuroscience

In a new study, Yale researchers unveil a more efficient method of simultaneously capturing the electrical activity of large numbers of neurons — an advance that opens doors to understanding and treating neurological diseases.

Yale is not alone in this. Harvard makes similar discoveries through original research constantly, as do the other major research universities. Trump and his goons don’t know and don’t care about the potential loss of these benefits as they attempt to reshape the country into a low-education, all-white society.

Yale needs to wake up to the reality that defensive posturing is not going to solve the real problem Trump poses. Yale, like Harvard, has massive resources, including obviously the law school’s cadre of brilliant lawyers. It needs to make clear to the administration that if it does not back off completely, Yale will lead/join a coalition of universities across the country to litigate the administration to death, including, I suggest, asserting personal liability against the perpetrators of these obviously unlawful actions.

Trump and his drone followers (male and female) have shown that they believe they can act as they wish without consequence to themselves. It is no loss to them personally if they disregard the First and Fifth Amendments and other laws by demanding submission to their will and then lose in court. They’ll just come back with something else as bad or worse. The universities should test that, I think. Make the bastards work hard. Put them on defense.

It’s not good enough to talk or call Senators. Even if victorious today politically, Trump will be back tomorrow with another outrage. Having been attacked as Harvard has and as have all the others with tax increases on their endowments, the universities need to recognize this is not a one-off situation. Trump is coming for them. Prepare for the end game and go on offense. Trump and gang are not doing normal politics, and the defense must not be based on the premise that they are.

Democrats and others who believe in preserving democracy must wake up and fight the fight that’s in front of them, not some policy-based game of old-fashioned politics. Those days are over probably forever. Just look at the contents of the bill the House just passed by one vote. One of the two political parties is off the range. and we must fight the fight that is staring at us with dead eyes before it’s too late.

Take the offense and use the considerable communications resources of the universities to inform the public of what they stand to lose if Trump’s no-nothings succeed in suppressing the vital work that the universities perform in addition to teaching some of our best and brightest future leaders. Time is short.

Woodward Nails It

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Disclosure: Bob Woodward and I knew each other in college, a long time ago. He was in the class behind me. We were friends then, and I still consider him one. We do not, however, socialize or otherwise see each other on a planned basis. This has been true since we talked occasionally during the Watergate crisis. He once generously referred to me as an advisor. I don’t know about that, but I do have high regard for his achievements as a consistent and reliable reporter on the inside stories of Washington into which he has had unique access and insight over many years and 23 books. If I have criticized (rarely) some of his conclusions, I have never questioned his commitment to truth as best he could discern it, a challenging undertaking in a place like Washington. One doesn’t earn two Pulitzer Prizes for fake news.

I have just finished War, his latest. As I read the book’s treatment of two international crises during the Biden administration (the latest and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023), my first thought was how vivid was the portrayal of the complexity and stress of the nation’s international relations. The step-by-step negotiations, the dissembling, the uncertainty, the constant risk of escalation to unthinkable disaster – all of it — is laid out in remarkable detail.

The other main thought was how masterful Joe Biden was as leader of the United States’ response to these astonishing complex and fraught situations, while Donald Trump was violating US law by interfering in negotiations to enhance his status as an international king-maker. Biden’s constant masterful probing for pathways to success, considering options for de-escalation, serving as a calming influence while influencing often hostile nations to consider options to avoid calamity was extraordinary to observe.

Woodward’s ultimate conclusions bear repeating, but everyone should read this book, War, to get deep insight into how diplomacy is conducted and how difficult and fraught every interaction can be when lives are on the line. In those details is the ultimate proof of why the presidency should never be entrusted to Donald Trump again.

Woodward quotes Jake Sullivan’s assessment that seems exactly right:

The president has essentially created the necessary permission structure for sustained American support to Ukraine…. Would there be a war in Ukraine today if Trump were president? I would say probably not. Why? There’d be no war because Putin would be in Kyiv…. Trump would have waved him right in. Because when it comes to these dictators, Trump’s basic view: I let them do what they want….

The legacy of the Biden presidency will be the core national security team that he built and kept in place for nearly four years. They brought decades of experience as well as basic human decency. War shows the traditional and novel ways Biden and his core team pursued an intelligence-driven foreign policy to warn the world that war was coming in Ukraine, to supply Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themselves against Russia, and to try to tamp down escalations in the Israel-Gaza war.

The real conclusion comes from Woodward himself, just before the end of the book:

Trump’s war was the coronavirus pandemic and his performance revealed his character. These interviews showed a man with no fidelity to the truth, fixated on re-election and unequipped to deal with a genuine crisis.

Trump was warned by his national security advisers that the virus was deadly and a major threat to the country but he never developed a plan to respond. He did not know how to use his extraordinary executive power to prioritize saving American lives. Through defiant pronouncements, he downplayed and deflected any responsibility for handling it. There was no compassion. No courage….

I once asked Trump, “What’s the job of the president?” He said, “To protect the people.”

It’s a good answer, but Trump failed to do it.

And then:

Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest.

Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.

Add to that the recent New York Times Editorial Board’s assessment:

The Strongman Fantasy (And Dictatorship in Real Life)

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Professor Timothy Snyder, an expert in, among other things, the theory and reality of politics and law, has written an extraordinary summary of the result of electing a “strongman” to power. Professor Snyder, the author of, among other works, On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, wrote this for Substack and encouraged sharing of his thoughts.

Here they are, verbatim but with hyperlinks removed. Pay attention. It may be your last chance.

“Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule.  Why not a dictator who will get things done?

I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh.  I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime.  I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule.  I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.

So I think that there is an answer to this question.

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won’t.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it.

Another pleasant illusion is that the strongman will unite the nation.  But an aspiring dictator will always claim that some belong and others don’t.  He will define one group after another as the enemy.  This might feel good, so long as you feel that you are on the right side of the line.  But now fear is the essence of life.  The politics of us-and-them, once begun, never ends.

We dream that a strongman will let us focus on America.  But dictatorship opens our country to the worst the world has to offer.  An American strongman will measure himself by the wealth and power of other dictators.  He will befriend them and compete with them.  From them he will learn new ways to oppress and to exploit his own people.

At least, the fantasy goes, the strongman will get things done.  But dictatorial power today is not about achieving anything positive.  It is about preventing anyone else from achieving anything.  The strongman is really the weak man: his secret is that he makes everyone else weaker.

Unaccountable to the law and to voters, the dictator has no reason to consider anything beyond his own personal interests.  In the twenty-first century, those are simple: dying in bed as a billionaire.  To enrich himself and to stay out of prison, the strongman dismantles the justice system and replaces civil servants with loyalists.

The new bureaucrats will have no sense of accountability.  Basic government functions will break down. Citizens who want access will learn to pay bribes.  Bureaucrats in office thanks to patronage will be corrupt, and citizens will be desperate.  Quickly the corruption becomes normal, even unquestioned.

As the fantasy of strongman rule fades into everyday dictatorship, people realize that they need things like water or schools or Social Security checks.  Insofar as such goods are available under a dictatorship, they come with a moral as well as a financial price.  When you go to a government office, you will be expected to declare your personal loyalty to the strongman.

If you have a complaint about these practices, too bad.  Americans are litigious people, and many of us assume that we can go to the police or sue.  But when you vote a strong man in, you vote out the rule of law.  In court, only loyalism and wealth will matter.  Americans who do not fear the police will learn to do so.  Those who wear the uniform must either resign or become the enforcers of the whims of one man.

Everybody (except the dictator and his family and friends) gets poorer.  The market system depends upon competition.  Under a strongman, there will be no such thing.  The strongman’s clan will be favored by government.  Our wealth inequality, bad enough already, will get worse.  Anyone hoping for prosperity will have to seek the patronage of the official oligarchs. Running a small business will become impossible.  As soon as you achieve any sort of success, someone who wants your business denounces you.

In the fantasy of the strongman, politics vanishes and all is clear and bright.  In fact, a dreary politics penetrates everything.  You can’t run a business without the threat of denunciation.  You can’t get basic services without humiliation.  You feel bad about yourself.  You think about what you say, since it can be used against you later.  What you do on the internet is recorded forever, and can land you in prison.

Public space closes down around you.  You cannot escape to the bar or the bowling alley, since everything you say is monitored.  The person on the next stool or in the next lane might not turn you in, but you have to assume they will.  If you have a t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a message, someone will report you.  Even if you just repeat the dictator’s words, someone can lie about you and denounce you. And then, if you voted for the strongman, you will be confused.  But you should not be.  This is what you voted for.

Denunciation becomes normal behavior.  Without law and voting, denouncing others helps people to feel safe.  Under strongman rule, you cannot trust your colleagues or your friends or even your family.  Political fear not only takes away all public space; it also corrupts all private relationships.  And soon it consumes your thoughts.  If you cannot say what you think, you lose track of what you believe.  You cease to be yourself.

If you have a heart attack and go to the hospital, you have to worry that your name is on a list.  Care of elderly parents is suddenly in jeopardy.  That hospital bed or place in a retirement home is no longer assured.  If you draw attention to yourself, aged relatives will be dumped in the street.  This is not how America works now, but it is how authoritarian regimes always work.

In the strongman fantasy, no one thinks about children.  But fear around children is the essence of dictatorial power.  Even courageous people restrain themselves to protect their children.  Parents know that children can be singled out and beaten up.  If parents step out of line, children lose any chance of going to university, or lose their jobs.

Schools collapse anyway, since a dictator only wants myths that justify his power.  Children learn in school to denounce one another.  Each coming generation must be more tame and ignorant than the prior one.  Time with young children stresses parents.  Either your children repeat propaganda and tell you things you know are wrong, or you worry that they will find out what is right and get in trouble.

In a dictatorship, parents no longer say what they think to their children, because they fear that their children will repeat it in public.  And once parents no longer speak their minds at home, they can no longer create a trusting family.  Even parents who give up on honesty have to fear that their children will one day learn the truth, take action, and get imprisoned.

Once this process begins, it is hard to stop.  At the present stage of the strongman fantasy, people imagine an exciting experiment.  If they don’t like strongman rule, they think, they can just elect someone else the next time.  This misses the point.  If you help a strongman come to power, you are eliminating democracy.  You burn that bridge behind you.  The strongman fantasy dissolves, and real dictatorship remains.

Most likely you won’t be killed or be required to kill. But amid the dreariness of life under dictatorship is dark responsibility for others’ death. By the time the killing starts, you will know that it is not about unity, or the nation, or getting things done. The best Americans, betrayed by you when you cast your vote, will be murdered at the whim and for the wealth of a dictator. Your tragedy will be living long enough to understand this.”

Project 2025 – The Republican Doomsday Scenario – Part 2

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The core premise of Project 2025 is that the federal government is the enemy of the American people:

The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead.

The authors of these concepts are very bright people with impressive credentials, but they are wedded to the idea that since the Great Depression, the population has lost its moorings by electing federal political leaders who have betrayed the country’s original values, at least the values they fantasize were the founding principles.

Curiously, the manifesto declares that the situation is so fraught that:

Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s “radical chic” to build the totalitarian cult known today as “The Great Awokening.” And now, as then, the Republican Party seems to have little understanding about what to do. Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril.

The first expressed goal of Project 2025 is thus to “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children,” defined by the Project as “the true priority of politics.” Based on the conduct of the Republican Party, they consider Donald Trump and his family of entitled grifters the model for the American family. I am not making this up.

The Project’s hyperventilation over the “carnage” that Trump referenced in his 2016 inauguration speech continues with this pithy observation:

In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu­ral ones.

I have observed in other writings the curious condition that permits Republicans to keep multiple inconsistent ideas actively working in their minds at the same time without experiencing devastating cognitive dissonance. Here is another example from Project 2025 wherein it observes that Republicans have had long-terms goals of “eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps.” Then,

 But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family. [emphasis added for … emphasis]

Sooo, it seems that big government is evil BUT we should use government power to reshape society by establishing government-enforced cultural rules that control the private behavior of adults.

The Republicans’ concern for the welfare of the American family is touching, until you recall this:

Shooting Deaths Shooting Injuries Elementary Schools Middle/Jr High High schools Other2
2000-01 1,676 515 1,305 320 162 777
thru 2021-22
2000-01 47 18 30 4 3 23
2001-02 18 5 17 2 1 14
2002-03 29 13 24 2 6 16
2003-04 45 16 34 5 3 26
2004-05 63 22 44 9 1 32
2005-06 55 13 50 5 6 39
2006-07 91 28 64 9 12 42
2007-08 23 10 16 2 2 11
2008-09 61 19 52 11 6 31
2009-10 15 5 15 1 2 12
2010-11 32 8 18 4 2 12
2011-12 21 9 16 3 3 9
2012-13 55 42 26 7 5 13
2013-14 55 19 46 7 3 32
2014-15 65 20 43 13 4 24
2015-16 45 9 38 7 4 25
2016-17 61 14 48 8 9 31
2017-18 185 52 89 14 8 64
2018-19 116 34 113 35 14 60
2019-20 126 32 116 33 11 70
2020-21 118 46 145 59 21 57
2021-22 350 81 319 82 37 189

And this:

It seems that Republicans are fine with the “acceptable losses” of children due to school shootings, since they resist virtually every attempt to limit access to guns. And we have just learned that the Supreme Court, ruled by a “conservative majority” of six (half appointed by Trump), thinks automatic weapons, or their functional equivalent, are just fine too. Garland v Cargill decided June 14, 2024.

Project 2025 provides many examples of what it would change by government edict. I will address many of them in subsequent posts.

Meanwhile, women of America and everyone who believes in science and the principles of individual liberty, separation of church and state, among others, try on for size these pieces of Project 2025 about the American “family”:

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi­tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and con­servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, princi­pals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds.

Every threat to family stability must be confronted. This resolve should color each of our policies. Consider our approach to Big Tech. The worst of these companies prey on children, like drug dealers, to get them addicted to their mobile apps. Many Silicon Valley executives famously don’t let their own kids have smart phones.2 They nevertheless make billions of dollars addicting other people’s children to theirs. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create the digital dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue.

In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the hero­ism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support.

Recall that this part is just about the first prong of Project 2025. These people are deadly serious about using the power of the federal government to reshape the United States into a Christian Nationalist version of Gilead.

If The Scots Can Do This, Why Can’t We?

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A November report in the BBC News indicates that a solar-powered boat has been developed and launched in the Philippines. http://tinyurl.com/52vyjys4

Aside: [I Googled this story and found no indication of coverage by any major U.S. news outlet online or otherwise.]

This is a solar-powered version of the “banca” boat, a traditional vessel typically made of wood and powered by a diesel engine, notorious polluters.

Stromness-based Aquatera, an Orkney company, said this was the first of its kind to be powered by renewables. The banca forms the backbone of coastal communities in the Philippines, providing lifeline sources of food, water, and livelihoods through tourism and fishing.

The new version can carry six passengers and two crew and travel up to five hours with a maximum speed of 11 knots. It has a cold-storage facility for the delivery of perishable goods and temperature-sensitive commodities, such as vaccines, to remote communities.

Ian Hutchison, director of Oceantera, said:

Through this initiative, we plan to work with local businesses, communities, and partners to help establish fossil-fuel-free transportation networks across the Philippines and wider South East [sic] Asia.

The project was included in the Renewable Energy-Powered Marine Transport for Island Communities project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

One small step for man ….

Can We Save Ourselves?

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It’s hard to figure out what’s worse: the collapse of the common understanding of how adherence to the U.S. Constitution defines our nation or the collapse of our common understanding of what it’s going take for mankind, as a species, to survive on our dying planet. It’s the classic Hobson’s Choice: both bad.

A recent article (November 2023) in the Washington Post discussed our use and abuse of plastics, the once-miracle material that now threatens to destroy everything. http://tinyurl.com/45cbc7xm  Here are a few mind-numbing facts assembled by Journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, author of “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” and the newsletter “News From a Changing Planet:”

Between 1950 and 2021, humanity produced about 11 billion metric tons of virgin plastic — that’s the weight of 110,000 U.S. aircraft carriers. Only about 2 billion tons of this is still in use. The rest — some 8.7 billion tons — is waste: 71 percent has ended up in landfills or somewhere else in the environment, including the ocean; 12 percent has been recycled; 17 percent has been incinerated. At the rate we’re going, global plastic waste will rise 60 percent by 2050.

As things stand, from 2010 to 2050 alone, the world could generate enough to cover all of Manhattan with a pile of plastic more than two miles high.

Microplastics have been found in breast milk and in our blood. Around the world, up to 60 percent of all recycled plastic is collected by waste pickers, often members of poor and marginalized communities, who suffer from inhaling caustic fumes from burning plastic and drinking water heavily contaminated with microplastics.

The author strikes a note of optimism by citing a 175-country agreement in 2022 to “develop a legally binding international treaty to end plastic pollution by 2040.” This is the classic “agreement to agree” scenario, if we can. The author maintains that a combination of a mere nine policies “could reduce annual plastic waste by more than 87 percent.”

I will spare you the agonizing details of what’s possible and let you read for yourself. Then you can decide whether you think any of this will happen. Just note this:

U.N. negotiators just finished meeting again in Nairobi to begin crafting the actual treaty, in hopes of completing it by the end of next year [2024], though progress seems to have stalled, a result of excessive influence from oil and gas industry lobbyists, according to nongovernmental organizations. [emphasis added]

Those folks will no doubt be joined by the likes of Amazon and, in the DC area, Giant Foods, whose packaging practices have zero apparent regard for the efficient use of cardboard and plastic packing materials. As the world’s number-one plastic polluter, we should be able to count on U.S. leadership in this effort to save the planet, but don’t count on it.

It will take, I suggest, a massive public uprising to compel industry to pay attention to this existential threat to the survival of our species. Given everything else going on in American politics right now, such an uprising seems a pure fantasy.

One thing seems certain, when the end comes, it won’t be pretty. The worst dystopian stories you’ve ever read will seem like child’s play. We almost at the irrevocable tipping point on climate change, so add the destruction of the oceans and all the rest and you can begin to imagine what will happen. This is not a movie, and there will be no miraculous “save” just before the end.

No Way to Run a Government

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USAToday reports that Republican Senator Tuberville’s hold on over 400 military promotions (excluding four-star nominees) has ended. https://tinyurl.com/yeyvkxk5

The former football coach turned U.S. lawmaker in one of the world’s most important deliberative bodies has stymied the promotions for 10 months while trying to force the Pentagon to yield to his desire to stop the Pentagon from giving service members time off and pay for travel to have an abortion. The policy was put into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

Thus, we have a government in which a single Senator, one of one hundred, can stymy the earned promotions of hundreds of military personnel vital to the nation’s defense because he, one Senator out of a hundred, objects to a Pentagon policy. Not coincidentally, note that the policy he wanted to thwart directly helps only women. And, of course,

The retired college football coach said he has no regrets blocking the nominations in protest of the Pentagon’s policy.

Of course he has no regrets. The Senator will now try to force the Pentagon to his will by having Republicans in the House, where they have a very slim majority, to force the Pentagon’s hand through the annual defense spending bill. After all, who needs defense when you are trying to impose your religious views on the entire government? Even Mitch McConnell apparently thought Tuberville was off base on this one, calling his action “dangerous.”

Among other preposterous and grossly irresponsible aspects of Tuberville’s blockade was that it led a group of senators to spend five hours in November on the Senate floor trying to secure individual votes on each promotion. Apparently, the great deliberative body had plenty of time on its hands, so no problem jumping through procedural hoops trying to overcome the obstinate resistance of one Senator.

This is no way to run a government. A single legislator, elected by 1,392,076 voters, representing 1.7 percent of the 80,821,083 total votes cast for Senators in 2020, is able to dictate policy to the entire government. I rest my case.

Guns Shows & the American Curse

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[The following is a guest post by Nadine Godwin, a longtime friend and former editor of Travel Weekly among other gifts. She routinely spends huge time investigation important issues that are being considered in federal agencies and preparing/circulating alerts, often with drafts of comments. Her messages to a select list of recipients date back to 2017]

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has proposed a rule that would effectively, for the first time ever, require almost anyone who sells guns on the Internet or at gun shows to obtain licenses to make those sales.

This matters because holders of federal firearm licenses are required to conduct background checks on their buyers, to sell only guns with serial numbers and to record the sales.

Currently, gun sellers on the Internet and at gun shows don’t have to be licensed, which means they don’t have to do background checks. This circumstance is often called the gun show loophole, but the loophole is way bigger than gun shows.

These days, nearly a quarter of all gun sales occur without background checks or adherence to the other rules associated with a license to sell firearms. Furthermore, up to 80% of firearms used to commit crimes are obtained from unlicensed sources, i.e., without background checks.

Meanwhile, Americans overwhelmingly (87% to 90%, depending on the poll) favor expanded background checks for gun buyers. I support the ATF proposal because I am one of that huge majority.

The deadline for comments on the ATF proposal is Dec. 7. 

Background + some details of the proposal

Sellers on the Internet and at gun shows aren’t licensed now because the relevant law, the 1968 Gun Control Act, was too vague about which gun sellers must be licensed. Besides which, Internet selling wasn’t a thing in 1968.

As a result, brick-and-mortar operations have gotten licenses, but other sellers have not been pressed to do so. Gun traffickers, individuals with dodgy backgrounds and buyers with lethal intent could thus make their purchases essentially unnoted. It is easy to see how this increases the odds for gun violence.

For the good news (my view), the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed last year, set the stage for expanding background checks.

Whereas the 1968 legislation required licenses for those with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit,” the 2022 Safer Communities law requires licenses for anyone who deals in guns “to predominately earn a profit.” That language isn’t very specific either, but it does contemplate licenses for anyone selling guns for profit even if profits aren’t a significant portion of the seller’s livelihood.

It was left to the ATF, the only federal agency with a mandate to regulate the gun industry, to create the rule that makes clear which sellers must be licensed, based on the updated language found in the 2022 law.

For starters, the ATF proposal states, a person is presumed to be in the business of selling firearms if among other things the person:

    • Repetitively sells or offers for sale firearms within 30 days after they were purchased,
    • Repetitively sells or offers for sale firearms that are new, or like new in their original packaging, or
    • Repetitively sells or offers for sale firearms of the same or similar make and model.

Furthermore, the proposal says, it will be presumed a person intends to “predominantly earn a profit” if among other things the person a) promotes a firearms business, however casually; b) keeps records documenting profits and losses; c) obtains a state or local business license for the sale of firearms, or d) buys a business insurance policy that covers firearms inventory.

The rule, if finalized, will apply to gun sales in flea markets and mail-order businesses as well as in the oft-discussed Internet and gun show venues.

The ATF estimates that anywhere from 24,540 to an astonishing 328,296 unlicensed persons selling guns for profit would be affected by this rule.

Geez, a lot of people sell guns!

What to do

The proposed rule wouldn’t require universal background checks for gun sales (our feckless Congress must legislate that), but it gets us a lot closer.

If you support this enhancement to ATF regulations, please speak up by filing comments by Dec. 7 here: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/ATF-2023-0002-0001.

I am adding a few sample messages, prepared by gun safety groups, that you can use for inspiration.

Finally, please share this letter with anyone you think might want to comment, as well.

Thanks

Nadine Godwin

P.S. For those who would like to know more about this proposal, I am also adding a helpful explainer. It was prepared by Giffords, a gun safety advocacy group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was shot in the head and nearly killed while meeting with constituents in Arizona in 2011.

SAMPLE MESSAGES:

From Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

I strongly support the proposed rule to ensure that individuals who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms are licensed, thus requiring them to complete background checks for all firearm sales and maintain records of those transactions, and that dealers who have lost their licenses may no longer sell firearms to the public.

A recent study found that more than one in five gun sales in the U.S. are conducted without a background check, amounting to millions of off-the-books gun transfers annually; many of these transactions are facilitated by individuals who profit from the repetitive sale of firearms yet avoid the oversight required of licensed dealers.

This is a public health and safety issue, and I urge the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to finalize the rule in order to prevent further firearm transfers to prohibited purchasers.

From Everytown for Gun Safety

Our background check system was created to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who are not allowed to purchase or possess them. But loopholes in the system — like the ones that allow unlicensed gun sellers to sell guns online and at gun shows without running background checks on their buyers — undermine it.

That’s why ATF’s proposed rule must be finalized. It will help close loopholes in our background check system that have, for decades, been exploited by bad actors like gun traffickers, straw purchasers and other prohibited persons, including domestic abusers and convicted felons.

I support the proposed rule because it makes clear that firearms dealing can take place wherever and through whatever medium guns are bought and sold — whether at a gun show or at an online marketplace — and that conduct, such as selling guns of the same or similar kind and type, constitutes firearms dealing. Such gun sellers will need to become licensed dealers and, as licensed dealers, run background checks.

More to the point, the proposed rule will save lives. That’s why I support the proposed rule and why I encourage ATF to finalize it.

Another canned message prepared by Everytown for Gun Safety

I support the ATF’s proposed rule (Docket No ATF 2022R-17), which would dramatically reduce the number of guns sold without a background check.

I urge the ATF to finalize this rule as soon as possible. Guns sold without background checks — both online and at gun shows — are a huge source for gun traffickers and people looking to avoid a check. These guns often end up trafficked across state lines, recovered at crime scenes in major cities and used against police officers. This contributes to the gun violence epidemic plaguing our country.

The long-standing lack of clarity around which sellers must become licensed and run background checks has made this problem all the worse.

I support the clear commonsense standard laid out in this rule: Anyone offering guns for sale online or at a gun show is presumed to be trying to make a profit and should therefore be licensed and run a background check on each customer. This rule will save lives and should be urgently finalized.

GIFFORDS

COURAGE TO FIGHT GUN VIOLENCE

 FACT SHEET: FEDERAL REGULATION TOEXPAND BACKGROUND CHECKS

THE PROBLEM

Under current federal law, certain individuals with a history of felony convictions, domestic violence, or involuntary mental health commitments are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms. This law is enforced primarily through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which licensed gun dealers, those holding a Federal Firearms License (FFL), are required to contact, either directly through the FBI or indirectly through state or local law enforcement, to determine a person’s eligibility to possess firearmsbefore selling or transferring a firearm to them.

There is, however, a significant loophole that exists when guns are sold by unlicensed individuals. Only those sellers who are required to obtain an FFL through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) must perform background checks via the NICS system. As a result of this loophole, unlicensed gun sellers frequently sell guns without background checks online, at gun shows, and through unregulated person-to-person sales.

This loophole makes it far too easy for people prohibited from purchasing or possessing guns to circumvent the laws on the books and obtain guns. Up to 80% of firearms used for criminal purposes were obtained fromunlicensed sources, meaning no background check was required. With the rise of social media and the expansion of internet access, new avenues for unlicensed gun sales have opened up via websites like Armslist.This expansion of access has made the background check loophole an even more salient issue, and in fact,nearly a quarter of gun sales in recent years have occurred without a background check.

“ENGAGED IN THE BUSINESS” AND CHANGES MADE BY BSCA

Fortunately, the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) provides a remedy for the above issue. The 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA) mandates that all those “engaged in the business” of selling firearms acquire an FFL. This status triggers federal laws and regulations that licensees must follow, including the requirement that they conduct a background check on potential purchasers. Before the BSCA,the GCA was unclear as to the level of sales activity that distinguishes someone who sells guns occasionally-and is thus not subject to licensing requirements-from someone who is “engaged in the business” of firearm sales and qualifies as a firearms dealer.

The BSCA updated the definition of “engaged in the business.” Now, instead of including only those who sellguns with “the principal objective of livelihood and profit,” the law includes anyone who deals guns “topredominately earn a profit.”

giffords.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Will We Learn?

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Two cases in point.

Case One:

The Yale School of Public Health reports that

Some “non-menthol” cigarettes that are being marketed as a “fresh” alternative in states where traditional menthol cigarettes are banned use synthetic chemicals to mimic menthol’s distinct cooling sensations, researchers at Yale and Duke University have found.

The synthetic additives could undermine existing policies and a U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on menthol cigarettes expected later this year that is intended to discourage new smokers and address the harmful health effects of tobacco use.

https://tinyurl.com/35r7t7wz

….

Hundreds of municipalities across the United States and some states – Massachusetts and California – have already restricted the sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes.

In a study published Oct. 9 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the Yale School of Public Health, the Center for Green Chemistry & Green Engineering at Yale, and Duke School of Medicine identified a synthetic flavoring agent known as WS-3 in the newly introduced “non-menthol” cigarettes that delivers similar, or stronger, cooling sensations as menthol but without the minty aroma or taste.

….

Flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes tend to reduce tobacco’s harsh effects making them particularly popular among young people and those just starting to smoke. Historically, menthol cigarettes have also been aggressively marketed towards African Americans, with up to 90% of African Americans who smoke using menthol cigarettes.

It seems likely that this “gap” in the regulatory regime for death-dealing cigarettes results from the regulations being based on specific chemicals rather than on the effects of flavor-enhancing chemicals regardless of type. The lesson to be learned from this, yet again, is that industries looking to make money regardless of impacts on public health will always look for an escape route and finding such routes is always easier when the “thing to avoid” is named rather than relying on the effects of the danger factor or the way it influences behavior.

The historical conduct of the tobacco industry, among others, should be a lesson for governments at all levels that you have to think very deeply about what you’re trying to prevent and how such prevention may be avoided. This doesn’t seem that hard.

Case Two:

The Virginia Highway Use Fee (the “HUF”).

I only recently learned about this assessment even though we bought a highly fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle in late 2020. The fee is not a lot of money, but the purpose of the fee is offensive and counter to other goals, or what should be other goals, as we try to offset some of the worst environmental effects of our dependency on automobiles.

The fee is $25 a year. The Virginia law provides a way of saving, maybe, $5 of the fee but is very complicated and, in my judgment, not worth the effort that involves obtaining another “reader” for your windshield, taking and reporting readings, etc. No thanks. Not to save $5.

More troubling is the motivation for this fee.

According to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles,

     You pay the HUF if you register a:

    • Fuel-efficient vehicle, which is a vehicle that has a combined fuel economy of 25 miles per gallon (MPG) or greater
    • Vehicle made in a year in which the average combined MPG rating for all vehicles produced in that year is 25 MPG or greater
    • Low Speed Vehicles, pay an annual $25 HUF

The highway use fee (HUF) helps make up for the fuel taxes that drivers with fuel-efficient and electric vehicles spend less on, because they’re not using as much fuel.

Among the vehicles exempted from the HUF are:

  • Vehicles with a combined MPG rating less than 25 MPG
  • Autocycles
  • Motorcycles
  • Mopeds

The HUF was started in 2020 but in July 2022,

the state launched an alternative program to let drivers pay the fee at a per-mile rate — a cost savings for those who drive less than the average amount, which officials peg at 11,600 miles annually. For drivers of battery-powered cars, that fee works out to a penny per mile. [https://tinyurl.com/yh4kt6tx]

In plain English, Virginia wants to penalize you for using a fuel-efficient vehicle (like a hybrid or fully electric, that, by the way, costs more than a regular gas-using vehicle) by forcing you to pay taxes based on gasoline consumption you don’t use, BUT you can potentially reduce the penalty slightly by signing up for the complex pay-per-mile program.

Or you can have what’s behind Curtain No. 1.

Seriously, this crazy scheme is a product of multiple conflicting forces, including Congress’s failure to increase gas taxes since 1993, the attraction of fuel-efficient vehicles and the inability of states to see the clear alternative of just taxing vehicles sufficiently to provide the revenue they need for road maintenance without depending on gasoline consumption. The current system must be beloved in the hallowed halls of the oil companies as it disincentivizes the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles.

The more one looks at these systems of regulation, the more our government looks like something created by the Keystone Kops. If you don’t know what they are, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Cops

 

Guns In Schools – American Shame

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If you haven’t seen it recently, or ever, you should watch the YouTube video of Jeff Daniels’ answer to a college sophomore’s question: why is America the greatest country in the world? It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HKbygLjJs, from a great TV show called The Newsroom, well worth watching in its entirety.

I don’t know whether the data Daniels cites in the excerpt is accurate today but in general terms it likely is. That’s a hard pill for many Americans to swallow. Fear and loathing are rampant throughout the country, especially in the so-called “red states,” where Republicans promote the decline of the United States for political gain but have no solutions to offer except blaming others for what are distinctly American failures.

No better example exists than the data on guns in schools. Guns are seized in U.S. schools each day. The numbers are soaring. https://tinyurl.com/55hxzkm5

More than 1,150 guns were seized in K-12 schools last year

Nationwide, 1 in 47 school-aged children attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported on by the media in the 2022-2023 school year.

One high school student described his school as a “war zone” following the discovery of two guns at school in the first five days of his junior year. Both pistols were loaded.

That student’s experience was typical of “students of every age in every state throughout the school year, a bleak reflection of a society awash in firearms.”

Last school year, more than six guns were seized each day, on average. Nationally, 1.1 million students attended a school where at least one gun was found and reported by the media. Data collection limitations, including the fact that many school districts don’t bother to track the information, make it clear that those figures grossly understate the true magnitude of the danger.

A Washington Post survey of 51 of the country’s largest school systems showed that 58 percent of seizures in those districts last academic year were never publicly reported by news organizations. Those same districts said the number of guns recovered on campus rose sharply in recent years, mirroring the growing prevalence of firearms in many other public places.

In some cases, quick action by other students and school administrators almost certainly prevented mass murders of students and teachers. But reports indicate that some school districts are more concerned about avoiding scrutiny and causing alarm than they are interested in protecting students and school staff.

Police in Golden Valley, Minn., complained in March that middle school officials waited five days to notify them of two boys who appeared to be posing for social media pictures while holding a gun in the school bathroom; a spokesperson for the Robbinsdale Area Public Schools district said officials have worked since then to improve the school-police partnership.

That sounds like, “we take our peoples’ security very seriously. Their safety is our top priority.” Those are probably the most common, and meaningless, clichés in modern American language.

In 51 of the 100 largest school districts, representing 6.3 million students, 515 guns were found during the last school year. Only 42 percent of those seizures were reported publicly. In DeKalb County, Ga., (includes Atlanta) with a 2020 population of 764,382, only two of the 24 guns were reported.

The 47 districts for which The Post was able to obtain five full school years of data saw a 79 percent increase in guns found on campuses over that time frame [past five years]. In many communities, the number of guns found has more than doubled, a trend that mirrors a precipitous rise in school shootings.

While many instances of guns in schools are the result of gross parental negligence, or worse, that is far from the whole story.

The gun brought to Rome High on the fourth day of school was stolen in Alabama. According to media reports, a gun stolen in Las Vegas found its way into the hands of a 16-year-old at a Lawrence, Mass., high school; another 16-year-old brought a gun stolen in Georgia to his Manchester, Conn., high school; in Columbus, Ohio, a high-schooler showed up with a gun stolen in Martin County, Fla.; and in Nashville, a 17-year-old came to school with two loaded pistols in his backpack, one of them stolen out of Madison, Ala. An 18-year-old was arrested at a high school in Ames, Iowa., for possession of a 9mm semiautomatic pistol that was stolen from the center console of a pickup truck in Cape Girardeau, Mo., according to a police report. The teen said he bought the gun from a stranger at a gas station in Missouri, seeking protection, the report said.

While it is tempting to blame the problem in large part on teenage “craziness,” the data indicates that many younger students are involved:

… authorities found guns on at least 31 students age 10 or younger during the 2022-2023 academic year …. As is the case in most school shootings, the majority of those guns were brought to campus by children who could not legally purchase a firearm on their own.

Common Threads

Several common themes leap out from the Washington Post and other reports about kids bringing guns to schools:

  • School administrators are often slow to act and slow to inform parents about incidents.
  • Administrators are sometimes more interested in protecting the school’s “image” than in protecting students and staff.
  • Administrators sometimes refuse to respond to legitimate questions about these incidents, despite their role as public officials with responsibility to protect students and staff.
  • Parents whose carelessness/indifference and/or active support for gun culture are usually not held accountable for the conduct of their children.
  • Kids who bring guns to schools are often sheltered from consequences because they are minors.

That last point raises a bigger question. American society generally is based on the view that minors are not fully accountable for their behavior. This policy is based on the science of brain development and a concern that “immature” behavior” attributed to individuals will haunt them later in life and that this is unfair.

Why, exactly, such accountability is unfair is unclear. Also unclear is why it is more appropriate to be concerned about the perpetrators than about their actual or potential victims, many of whom will be traumatized, possibly forever, by their encounter with a fellow student armed and prepared to kill.

There are other consequences too. Teacher shortages because teachers feel disrespected, unsupported, and endangered. Budget issues arising from lawsuits against school systems that failed to do the right, and difficult, thing when confronted with a gun situation. Distracted students wondering when the next threat will walk into their classroom when they should be paying attention to the lesson. And more.

I urge you to read the full Washington Post story that inspired these thoughts. https://tinyurl.com/55hxzkm5 Every American should be concerned that our submission to the prevailing gun culture has led us to a dark place where young school children must undergo training in case their school is the scene of a shooter. And to a place where school administrators are free to simply refuse to communicate about their failures and their self-interested conduct at the expense of students’ safety.

Teachers in dozens of communities raised similar concerns about school safety after gun incidents last school year. In Harper Woods, Mich., in June, the teachers union accused school officials of trying to cover up an incident in which a student with a gun escaped the school staff and evaded metal detectors; in April, the Massachusetts Teachers Association accused a superintendent of “total disregard for the safety of students and school personnel” after a student posted videos of himself on social media that showed him wielding a gun on campus. The Southbridge, Mass., school system disputed the union’s account and said it was working with police on lockdown drills and other safety procedures.

The WAPO story recounts how students evade security systems and why students are often wary of reporting what they see. Once it becomes clear that the school is more interested in its reputation than in preventing gun violence, most kids are not going to risk being called a “rat” when they report someone who is handled with kid gloves and often back in the school soon after.

The graph below tells the story as well as anything. It does not, of course, measure the trauma experienced by students and staff who managed, by luck or whatever, not to be killed or wounded. This is the price we pay for the American obsession with guns.

One of the comments submitted to the WAPO story argued that the data prove that the “fraction of criminal violators in school populations” is so low, we should stop “propagandizing” about the problem. One response posted said: “Gosh, when you put it that way the blood stains almost fade away…” But, of course, they don’t. Ever.