THIS GUY AGAIN

 After almost a year of the Joe Biden presidency, it's easy for a progressive to feel a sense of whiplash: on the plus side, the mere exiting of Donald Trump and all the corrupt and incompetent people he surrounded himself with  was a cause for relief and celebration.  Sanity was restored, with Biden cutting an elderly but good natured figure who would bring common decency back to the White House.  And while at first it appeared that the Republican party, other than Trump, did well in the 2016 election (they actually gained seats in the House of Representatives), when the Democrats pulled off a post presidential election upset by winning two senate seats in Georgia, giving them a narrow control of the Senate, things were looking up. Shortly after taking office, Biden passed a stimulus plan that cut child poverty in half.  He also just passed an infrastructure bill, something that Trump tried to do in vain for years.  Plus, even though the Supreme Court appears to be lost to progressives for decades, he's managed to appoint more lower court judges in his first year than Trump did.  

But, on the negative side, Biden's promise to put the pandemic behind us has proven hollow.   While this can be blamed on both the variants of covid and the conservative resistance to vaccines, it still makes him look bad, as a weary country about to face another deadly pandemic winter takes its anger out on him.  Add to that the fallout from inflation (especially in gas prices), the rise of violent crime and the general perception by the public that the economy is doing poorly (it's actually doing quite well) and it's easy to see why his approval ratings are low (although not lower than Trump's were at the same time in his term).

But from a progressive perspective, there has been nothing more frustrating from this presidency as the Build Back Better Bill.  First proposed almost a year ago, this was a bold multi trillion dollar package that would nationalize child care and paid parental leave, while also working to transition this country away from fossil fuels.  In its initial form, it would have been the most progressive bill passed since the new deal, and by raising taxes on the rich to aid the poor, it would have been the first genuine attempt to even this country's shameful class imbalance since Ronald Reagan's massive tax cuts for the rich and gutting of social programs drastically increased that imbalance back in the 1980's.

But then the Democrats discovered that a slim majority in the Senate meant that these welcome changes couldn't pass without serious revisions to the bill.  Not when every Democratic vote would be needed, and one of those Democrats was Joe Manchin of West Virginia.  From the beginning Manchin has demanded cuts to the bill before he would vote for it.  For months those cuts were made with a meat axe, with the cost of the bill sliced by more than half, muting the positive effects of it. Barely a week would go by in the past year without Manchin preening for the press while demanding more and more spending reductions in the bill. For a while, it almost appeared that Manchin had been placated, but just yesterday, in an interview on Fox News, he said he still opposed it, citing national deficit and inflation concerns.  He did this even after Biden had reached out to him personally, and even after every study of the bill found that any impact it would have on inflation would be minimal.  None of that mattered, Manchin shot the bill down.  It's a bit hard to understand just what Manchin's game is here: is he showing off for the Republicans before switching parties?  Is he killing the bill because he's afraid that the climate change provisions might hurt his coal rich state?  His national deficit concerns are really ridiculous, given that the bill's spending would take place over a decade, making its yearly amount a mere fraction of our nation's defense spending. (Congress just passed a $768 billion defense bill for this year, and that number won't be going down in the next ten years!)

So is it all over for the bill?  Hopefully not.  There's still a chance that a reduced version will be introduced that will win him over.  At this point, it would probably be best to let Manchin himself write the bill, which will probably be a hollowed shell of its former self, and sullen progressives in congress will have to support it just to avoid a total loss.  And once again, the concerns of the poor and middle class will be ignored in this country, as they have been for decades.

ANOTHER DESPICABLE ACT

 

Ever since Donald Trump left office there has been a stream of terrible stories about just how corrupt and incompetent our former president was.  Most have dealt with just  hard he was pushing to overturn the twenty twenty election (from verbally pleading with election officials to considering calling a state of emergency), and while those are all upsetting (especially given that Trump will probably run for the presidency again in twenty twenty four),  another kind of recent revelation has really stunned me.

Recently, Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows released his book about his time working in the White House.  At first, it appeared to be a standard issue tome that would sell well with conservative readers. Trump himself even gave a positive blurb to the book.  But then Meadows went and mentioned an important, unknown detail: that the former president had tested positive for covid three days before his debate with Joe Biden and that he openly exposed Biden to the virus during the debate without any kind of warning.  This ran counter to the administration assertion that Trump's positive test came after the debate. The host of the debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, later said Trump was not tested before the debate because he arrived late.  He added that they relied on the honor system (always a mistake when Trump's involved).  And, of course it wasn't just Biden that was exposed, the Washington Post has found that Trump came in contact with five hundred different people without warning any of them of the possibility of infection or taking any precautions.  Perhaps most appalling, the day after that positive test he met with military families, putting all of them and their loved ones in danger.  This from a man who claims to love the military!

Trump has responded to this revelation by doing what he usually does; lying.  He called the reporting on the book "fake news", and Meadows himself now appears to agree with him, contradicting his own book.  But, because the timeline between  when Trump first tested positive and when he publicly admitted it has always been hazy, it stands to reason to assume that our former president avoided telling the public about his positive test.  Former New Jersey Governor Chis Christie, a former Trump supporter who now seems to be the only Republican willing to openly challenge him, has said that he definitely believes that it was Trump himself that gave Christie covid while he was prepping the president for the debate.  And, in classic Trumpian sociopathic style, Christie also says that Trump called him when Christie was near death from the virus to make sure that he didn't tell other people that it was Trump who spread the virus to him.   

Ever since Trump entered the presidential campaign in twenty fifteen, pundits have compared his popularity with the Republican base to a cult, with his passionate supporters attending rallies and cheering his every word.  After his June twentieth rally last year in Tulsa Oklahoma, in which thousands of supporters stood next to each other maskless and screamed at the height of the pandemic, I said that the Trump cult could now be called a death cult in which followers risk their own lives to express their adulation.  To me, it couldn't seem to get any worse.  But now,  once again, he's hit a new low, openly endangering the lives of military families and possibly thousands of others because he didn't want to admit to the world that he himself had contacted the same virus that he had been downplaying since it first arrived.  And, as always with Trump, this new information will do little to shake his popularity with his base, who will shrug off the threat he placed on innocent people by echoing his cry of fake news.  Truly, this man's ability to get away with despicable behavior without consequence is utterly depressing.  And the fact that he very well may run for the presidency again in twenty twenty four despite this latest news shows just how far our country has sunk since he first threw his hat in the ring, in what seems like an eternity ago. 

RESPONSIBILITY

 With the rise of another covid variant, the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe Vs Wade, and more news coming out about how much Donald Trump tried to steal the last presidential election, it's almost easy to not notice that there was another horrific school shooting in our country which resulted in the death of four teenagers.  Sadly, these kind of shootings  have become so common that news coverage of them end quite quickly.

But this shooting seems different,  oh sure, both sides have already put out their usual talking points, with Democrats pushing for tougher gun laws and Republicans making a few vague comments about the need for better mental healthcare without offering any way to expand such care.  Same as usual.

But this shooting has,  raised the possibility of charges for the shooters parents, and questions about whether or not the school acted responsibly issues that are rarely brought up.  Today, the fifteen year old shooter's parents were booked on four charges of involuntary manslaughter, to which they pleaded not guilty.  The charges were based on the fact that not only did the shooter's parents purchase the gun for him, they were also warned by the school about some disturbing, violent drawings that he had made at school.  (he had also searched on his phone for ammunition at school, which the parents shrugged off.  His mother even seemed to encourage it.) Amazingly, they did nothing about their child's dark thoughts, and, according to the woman prosecuting them, didn't even lock up his gun after hearing about them.

This case raises some interesting questions about responsible gun ownership and parental responsibility.  Now, I do have some sympathy for them in that parenting teenagers can be very difficult.  I remember from my own teen years that I had several male friends (and even a couple of female ones) that were obsessed with violent movies and music, and sometimes they would draw pictures not unlike the ones that this boy drew, and, of course, none of them every actively acted out on those dark obsessions.  Really, embracing a dark view of life is a common thing that many teens go through.  It's not entirely unreasonable to believe that this shooter's parents just thought that he was going through a phase.

But the fact that they never even tried to hide the gun that they had bought for him as a present makes it hard for me to completely exonerate them.  Even though their purchase of the gun was legal, surely the fact that their son was going through a potentially violent stage should have convinced them to at least lock the gun up, if not keep somewhere out of the home.

And what about the school?  A few hours before the shooting, the school requested that his parents take him out of the school and to immediate counseling, but they strongly requested that he be allowed to stay, and so he did, with tragic results.  Really, this seems to be almost as much the school's fault as the parents.  This was a student who was exhibiting violent thoughts and who was potentially armed.  Surely there are times when the safety of all the children in school is more important than the desires of one set of parents.  In other words, I think it's reasonable that a child to be not allowed to remain in  school, even if his parents really want him to stay.  When you hear stories about how other high school students are suspended or expelled for less disturbing behavior than this, it seems tragically absurd that the school didn't do more to prevent this tragedy.  The case will probably come to court sometime soon, and we'll see if a financial settlement to the parents of the children that were killed is possible.  While similar lawsuits in the past have failed, it's possible that this time the school's actions will seem so irresponsible to a judge that the lawsuits may be upheld.

Let's face it , tougher gun laws are not going to be passed anytime in the near future in this country.  That's because, even though a majority of Americans support the passing of such laws, most of them do not feel strongly enough about them to vote for politicians that would pass them.  Gun control just isn't a big issue in most elections, and with Republicans poised to retake the House of Representatives next year, there's no chance of anything changing on that score.  So I'm glad to see at least that the parents in this case are being held responsible, and hopefully there will be some criminal consequence for them.  Even the most pro gun people accept the notion that gun ownership is something to take seriously and responsibly.  Surely, keeping a firearm out of the hands of a potentially dangerous teenage boy is criminally negligent.