Tag Archives: trump

politics

Lying with numbers

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“The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century.”

These are the words uttered by President Donald Trump in his first address to Congress on February 28th.   It seems scary.  It suggests that there is a huge problem in America, where crime is out of control, and where “carnage” rules the day.   Here is the problem.  It isn’t true.

Yes, the Uniform Crime Reports recorded 15,696 homicides in 2015, an increase of 1532 or 10 percent  over 2014. But the claim offered by the president leaves out the fact that the homicide rate in the United States has been falling consistently since 1992.  The claim by the president is manipulative, it takes a one year increase, and makes it sound like there is something sinister going on.

But he did say murder “rate,” so let’s look at the actual homicide rate (calculated as the number of homicides per 100,000 Americans). Here the change does not seem so dramatic.  The homicide rate in 2014 was 4.44 per every 100,000 Americans, and increased to 4.88 in 2015.  Yet this is rate is less than half of what it was in 1991, when the homicide rate was 9.79 per 100,000 people. There were roughly 250 million Americans in 1991, whereas in 2015 the population increased to more than 320 million.

Homicide Rates, US, using FBI UCR Data.

The claim that it is the largest single-year increase in nearly half a century is also factually inaccurate.  It is a lie.  There have been several increases in the past half-century when the raw number of homicides increased by more than 1532, and the murder rate increased by more than 0.442..

  • In 1990, it increased by 1940 homicides (increase of .763) over 1989.
  • In 1986, it increased by 1633 homicides (increase of .633) over 1985.
  • In 1980, it increased by 1580 homicides (increase of .473) over 1979.
  • In 1979 it increased by 1900 homicides (increase of .780) over 1978.

In each of these examples, the homicide RATE was more than double what it is today.   Moreover, there have been several years since 1992, where there have been increases in homicides over the prior year, such as an increase of 592 in 2005, but the over-all trend has been a large decline.   If we look at the data from 1990 to 2015, we can see that the increase in 2015 is relatively minor, and if anything, appears as if 2013 and 2014 were somewhat lower than the rate from 2010 – 2012.

The president’s statement is a lie.  It is manipulative, and it is intended to fit his narrative of law and order.  This is no surprise for Donald Trump. He has routinely made false claims, and then repeated them so many times that people begin to believe they are true.  By taking a small blip in a 25 year period of almost continual declines in crime, the president is trying to make it appear that the nation is facing lawlessness in the streets.  He can use this to try to counter the numerous public complaints against abusive behavior by law enforcement that have been at the forefront of American politics since 2014.

Don’t fall for the lie.  Don’t let him gaslight you into questioning reality.

politics

And that was Day 6.

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Thursday is one of my teaching days.  I have three classes, with two 75 minute breaks. Yet each time I went to class today I came back to breaking news. It was insane.  Over and over.

It actually started when I got to the office, before before my first class, with the following:

“The Media is our opposition!” says the NAZI-in-chief advisor.  Yes, there is a neo-Nazi advising the president in the White House.  Oh, excuse me.  #AlternativeFacts alert:  “an Alt-Right” advisor.  Yeah,whatever.  A Nazi.

Off to class.   75 minutes later…

The four top senior staff in the State Department resigned. The career diplomats who are the primary under-secretaries of state all up-and-left, once Exxon’s CEO became Secretary of State.   You know, the people who actually run things, and have all the institutional knowledge in making foreign policy.

I shook my head, and went on a brief walk around the quad.

Hold on.  there is an #AlternativeFacts Alert.  They were fired, they didn’t resign.  Or did they?
Off to my second class. (In case you were wondering, it was a discussion of what is a search, under the Fourth Amendment, comparing the Trespass Doctrine with the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy docrtrine).  But I digress.

75 minutes later, back to the office.  New York Times News Alert flies across my screen.

We are going to tax all imports from Mexico 20% to pay for the “Wall.”

Holy crap — better stock up on Tequila and Dos Equis. And heck, Mexico is only our second-largest trading partner.  And that means, we the taxpayers (you know, those things HE doesn’t pay) will pay the added cost of this tax.

Oh wait, the commander in tweet can’t raise taxes.  Congress does that.  But who knows.

Then of course, sometime in the midst of this day, Mexico’s president announced he was cancelling his trip to the US.   Wait!   More #AlternativeFacts.   President Cartman says Mexico needs to respect the US.   Yes, freaking Cartman is in the White House.   “Respect my authoritah.”

Finally, there is the idiot press secretary, who apparently has tweeted his twitter password twice in two days. How exactly do you do that?  You have to be logged in to twitter to post a tweet.   Ok, that provided comic relief.  Of course, he may have been sending a secret message to Russia.

 

And that was Day 6.

Somebody needs to do something.  Maybe House and Senate Republicans need to say enough, and begin impeachment proceedings.  Stupidity has to be reason enough for high crimes and misdemeanors, right?  Or better yet, invoke the 25th Amendment, and remove him for incompetence.   Of course, that will put Pence in charge.  Oy.

Thank you America.  I’m glad you stopped that woman who used a private email server from becoming president.

politics

Welcome to the American spring?

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January 21, 2017. Was this the beginning of the American spring?  Was it a resurgence of democracy in which American people from across the country insisted that they will not allow Donald Trump to take away their rights, and set the country’s progress back a generation?   Was it the beginning of a left-leaning tea party?

Whether it was the beginning of an American awakening, or not, the numbers are astounding.  While it is impossible to get an exact count, there are good estimates that between 3.5 and 4.3 million people marched world-wide.  Washington, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago alone accounted for close to 2 million people.  There were 600 marches across the country, and across the world, with large crowds in places like London and Paris.  The Women’s March was about more than women’s rights though, and there were plenty of men who turned out.  The march was not only a protest against Trump’s election, it was a call to arms.  The march sent a powerful political message to make it crystal clear that people were not going to allow Trump to trample over their rights.   It also reinforced the fact that while Trump narrowly won the electoral college, he lost the popular election by almost 3 million votes.

The march was all the more meaningful given the nationalistic, isolationist, jingoist “America first” inauguration address and all its “carnage” from the day before.  Trump claims to speak for the people.  He argues that his election returns power to the people.  The Women’s March – and the millions of people who turned out, make it clear that NOT all the people are happy with the direction he proposes taking.

But a march is a one-day event.  The real work lies ahead, and the question is will this mark the beginning of a movement?  Will the energy and power of the day of protest be transformed into a political movement, into a political party?  Will the Women’s March on Washington transform into a progressive tea party?  If it is the beginning of a new movement, will that movement learn from the lessons of this election?  Will the left remain in its identity politics bubble in which there is a one-size-fits-all progressivism, that sets to the side any alternative viewpoints?  Will progressives be so fixated that they remain indifferent to conditions outside their self-defined group?  Will the working class be left-behind?  Will all individuals who share different views be shunned and made-fun of? If nothing is learned from November 8th, then it will be for naught.

There is much talk about whether the march will spark a new tea party or will it be like Occupy Wall Street, stridently against something, but never clear exactly what it was for.  I think there is certainly a lot of energy that can come from resisting Trump’s agenda; resisting his embracing of “alternative facts” (lies) and the populist alt-right (a.k.a. white supremacists), but the movement has to be be about more than stopping Trump.  Oh, it is ok, and it is essential to stop him. His authoritarian tendencies, and efforts to delegitimize the media, and to treat facts as fungible represent a fundamental threat to our democratic tradition.  His lack of a popular mandate, losing the nation-wide vote by a margin of almost three million, and the evidence of foreign interference in the election, make the claims of his illegitimacy all the more stronger.  Indeed, reform of the electoral college can and should be a core issue of any new political movement.

But if there will be a successful progressive movement, it has to go beyond just Trump.  I am uncertain whether this weekend will mark the beginning of an American spring.  I’m hesitant to even use the words American spring, given that the Arab spring, the awakening in the Arab world, has not had a lot of positive results.  An American spring, and a progressive political movement must be able to be more than what has defined progressive politics in the past decade.  Diversity and women’s rights are very important, but a progressive coalition must be exactly that, a coalition of multiple-viewpoints.  Will the left be able to see beyond it’s identify politics fixation?  Will the focus on women’s rights and diversity also encompass the concerns of the working class?   It is possible that Trump’s antics, extremism, and efforts to delegitimize the press will be enough to propel a movement, but if it ends up being a bunch of aging hippies and millennials setting up tents on city streets or on campuses, protesting the machine, it won’t end well.

I’m hopeful that leadership will emerge, and from that a  true broad-based democratic movement.

politics

The American experiment at risk

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men [and women] are created equal, that they endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
 
Those immortal words, penned by Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776 provide the foundation of the American experiment. Jefferson continued, writing “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. “
 
Today is a turning point in American history. It is once again a day where there is a peaceful transition of power, yet in many ways it is unlike any other. Today we witness the first time in our history where the transition of power shifts to an individual who lost the popular vote by almost three million votes in an election in which it is almost certainly a fact that foreign interference by Russia and ethical wrong-doing by the Director of the American FBI impacted the results. Today we see the rise of a man who is an acknowledged sexual predator, with authoritarian tendencies, and who displays evidence of narcissistic personality disorder. 
 

This is not a day to celebrate. It is not like any other inauguration. Sure, I’ve been disappointed before, but never once before in my life have I had feared for the future of the American republic. Our democracy is at stake. Our liberties are at stake.  This is not being over-dramatic and partisan.  It is not sour grapes that Hilary lost.  There are simply too many examples of reckless behavior, too many indicators of an individual whose personal business interests are clearly more important to him than the public good.  He has threatened the civil rights and liberties of entire classes of people, he has such a thin skin that any public criticism results in a temper-tantrum on twitter.  These are not jokes. And his behavior has given the signal to others that such behavior is acceptable.  In the last two weeks alone, there have been bomb threats at more than 60 Jewish Community Centers across the country.  There were hundreds of hate incidents reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the two weeks after the election.   This is no joking matter.

I will not celebrate.

I will not normalize this troglodyte.  

I will not stand quietly while our rights and liberties are trampled.

Know your rights.  Carry a copy of the Constitution.

Resistance is not futile.  It is democratic.  I pray that the second paragraph of Jefferson’s Declaration do not come to bear.  Eleven years later, the American democratic experiment evolved into a new constitution in which “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish domestic tranquility provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”   That Constitution is worth fighting for.

politics

Intelligence briefings? I don’t need no stinking intelligence briefings

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Who really needs daily intelligence briefings?  Apparently not the next (gulp) president of the United States.  I’ll admit, when I first saw this reported, I assumed that it was fake news.  But nope, it was word for word from his own mouth, from this morning’s interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News, as reported in the NY Daily News:

“I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years. Could be eight years — but eight years. I don’t need that,” he continued.

“But I do say, ‘If something should change, let us know,'” he said.  Trump went on to suggest that it’s not necessary for him to receive the briefings with the daily frequency that past President-elects have had because other key advisers are getting the info.

“In the meantime, my generals are great — are being briefed. And Mike Pence is being briefed, who is, by the way, one of my very good decisions,” Trump said. “And they’re being briefed. And I’m being briefed also. But if they’re going to come in and tell me the exact same thing that they tell me — you know, it doesn’t change, necessarily.”

Wow.   There is so much here, it isn’t even funny.  “My generals are great, and being briefed.”  Is this the workings of a president, or a demagogue, surrounded by “generals,” who are “great”?   Forget the fact that we are supposed to have civilian control of the military, this guy is doing the exact opposite.  He has named  a general as secretary of defense who is colloquially known as “Mad Dog.”  His national security advisor is another retired general, Michael Flynn.  And now General John Kelly is going to be the Director of Homeland Security.  Look, it is not as if former generals haven’t served in cabinet level positions before (witness Gen. Colin Powell), but Trump is surrounding himself with generals, and is satisfied that if they are briefed on issues, he is good.

What is missing here is that there is an incredible value in a president being surrounded by a variety of different people, with different agendas and perspectives.  Trump isn’t doing that.  Not at all.  And by not receiving daily intelligence briefings, by not taking time to personally absorb the myriad of issues that a president faces, he will be unable to critically evaluate the issues, ad the advice he is being given from “his generals.” But don’t worry, “they are great.”

God save us when the first real international crisis occurs after January 20th.

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