Commentary & Opinion

Elections are one of the great things about our democracy. Every two years, or every four years, we take a look at our nation’s direction, and the direction of our communities, and we decide if we want change, or if we want to stay the course.

I was delighted that President-elect Biden named John Kerry as special envoy to deal with the climate. Our earth and climate have been taking many hits. Unless we heal the damage and deal with global warming, things will get much worse fast. But talking about the threat of climate change paralyzes some people who make it harder to get anything done. So I’d like to focus on the positive.

Remember in 2009 when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Russia with a big, red, plastic button that she thought said “Reset”? Well, she presented it to her counterpart in the Russian Foreign Ministry only to be informed that the button read “overload” and was more reminiscent of an industrial emergency stop button than any sort of reset.

I’d like to give thanks for those whose lives we can save and whose futures we can restore. To do that, there’s no choice between defeating the virus and rebuilding the economy; we've got to do both.

Vaccines are a modern medical breakthrough and have helped save countless lives across the world. While this is widely acknowledged, a vocal minority has crusaded against all vaccines – including the inoculations for COVID-19 that are now undergoing clinical trials.

As the world continues to grapple with the deadly coronavirus pandemic, some potentially good medical news has developed.  In recent weeks, two major pharmaceutical companies claim to have developed vaccines that are far more successful than anyone had expected in protecting the public from COVID-19.

Mr. Biden has indicated that he will refuse to authorize the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. This is a matter that goes back to virtually the last decade, and it has been through the courts, through Congress, etc. This could be a major issue with Canada, but one that I am certain they anticipated given Mr. Biden’s views on the environment. The question for Canada will be on balance will Mr. Biden be a more friendly President than Mr. Trump. He certainly will be less insulting and obnoxious.

I gave my first commentary back in 2005. In it, I identified Alan Greenspan and John Kenneth Galbraith as economists occupying two ends of the spectrum of economic policy choices discussed within the economics profession in the US. I ended the presentation with the following sentence:

So, here we are. The election is over. Sorry, President Trump. The results are clear. Joe Biden won fair and square, and by an electoral college margin that you defined as an historic landslide when you won in 2016.

The Governor charged communities to re-examine their police departments, and several pieces in the local paper described the disproportionate treatment of African-Americans, ending up with the question whether police are racist. I like and respect the authors and there’s a lot of wisdom in those pieces but, to make progress, I question focusing on blame. Segregation was “inherently unequal” regardless of what the officials thought they were doing. Blame is about fault. I want improvement, not some Grand Inquisitor looking for purity. That makes everything harder.

As the nation – and the world – tries to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, the fight to combat the ongoing climate catastrophe caused by global warming must be a priority. 

The election results in the US, although still being contested by Republicans clearly shows that Mr. Biden won the popular vote and electoral college votes. 

Just because our ancient stories are myths doesn’t mean that they aren’t true.

So perhaps the most pressing sports question in my household has nothing to do with the NFL, or the NBA, or about college football. It’s not about what happens to March Madness this year, or even if the Summer Olympics are still on. It’s about rec basketball. More to the point, will we have rec basketball this year?

The dust is settling from the 2020 U.S. election season.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to address aspects of how we can heal from the damage of the Trump years. We’ll have to change the politics to communicate with each other, the economics to take care of the whole country, policies to protect the climate, gun rights to define where and when they belong, and we have to get to know each other better.

Last week American voters chose a new President.  The impacts of President Trump’s tumultuous presidency may last long after he leaves the White House.  For example, this week the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the question of the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act – known as “Obamacare.”

What a week, thank God it’s over.

So I watched hours and hours of coverage of the election between 6:00 PM on Tuesday, November 3 and 4:30 PM on Wednesday, November 4.   I got about 2 and a half hours sleep over night on Tuesday and woke up early enough (at 4:15 AM)  to see the counting of votes from Milwaukee Wisconsin flip that state from a Trump to a Biden majority giving Wisconsin’s electoral votes to Biden.  By then I had endured the loss of Florida, North Carolina and (I feared) Georgia.  I also saw the apparent re-election of Thom Tillis in North Carolina, John Cornyn in Texas, Joni Ernst in Iowa and the loss of the Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama.   These early results dashed my hopes for a Senate majority and with it hopes for judicial reform and a whole series of hoped for progressive legislation.

Depending on where you live, there are a few hours left to vote. If you haven’t, it would be an excellent use of your time.

Regardless of the election results, the verdict is in on New York State’s system of running elections: It fails and is in desperate need of overhaul.

The Province of  Alberta, Canada has announced that it  will be starting a pilot program at one of their land borders and at the Calgary airport, permitting incoming citizens and visitors to take a COVID test which if it results in a negative outcome will eliminate or reduce the need to quarantine.  This certainly makes sense, and hopefully it will spread to other Provinces so that we can begin the process of actually reopening the border. 

How many of those reading this have seen the 1915 D.W. Griffiths film BIRTH OF A NATION?   This film is a classic.   It is also a disgusting celebration of the Ku Klux Klan.   Purporting to tell the story of both the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, this film presented the racist view of Reconstruction.   Unfortunately, that was the view that dominated American historiography from 1900 to the 1960s.   This analysis was known as the “Dunning School” after a professor at Columbia University William A. Dunning.   He and his Ph D students developed a “story” about Reconstruction after the Civil War that had at its jumping off point the “inability” of black Americans to “handle” the right to vote and other political opportunities.  This led, according to the writers in the Dunning School, to corruption, mismanagement of government, and social atrocities such as the legalization of intermarriage.   Manipulated by people coming South (dubbed “carpetbaggers”) and white Southerners (dubbed scalawags) who joined with carpetbaggers and ignorant blacks to form “radical Reconstruction” governments, the freed slaves brought a reign of corruption and debauchery down on the South.   Historian Claude Bowers summarized the views of the Dunning School in his 1929 book The Tragic Era, The Revolution After Lincoln.   Some have argued that he wrote the book to flesh out the theme of Griffith’s movie.

Tuesday, November 3rd is Election Day. Do you have a plan to vote?