Yes or no for the transphobes ...

I came across this too late to advise me (I voted 10 days ago) but pass it along in case it might be of use to some others.

The states colored magenta on this map are ones where major candidates have allied with the GOP/MAGA campaign of transphobia in this election season. (At least as of Sept. 8 -- I am late to this because I was locked up in post-fracture rehab when this came out. Map may have been updated.)

Trans-advocate Erin in the Morning explains why it should matter to decent people that some otherwise progressive Democrats are hedging or simply turning away from support for the human rights of trans people. 

The gravest long-term threat to transgender Americans is not just the Republican Party. It is also the campaign to strip support for transgender people out of all parties. Republicans fall in and out of power, and when they lose it, rights lost under their control can be reclaimed. 

But if the Democratic Party itself ever flips to being anti-trans, there is no one left to do the reclaiming. There will never be enough lawmakers who both hold power and support trans rights to repeal the damage, and every loss becomes permanent. It is a one-way ratchet, and it is terrifying.

It is not hypothetical, either. In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party, the ostensibly left-of-center party, completed exactly this flip, and since taking power it has enacted more horrors on the trans community than even the Conservatives before it. British trans people now have no major party to turn to. That is the endgame of the strategy currently being tested here in the United States.

In the linked post, she explains for the colored states who the capitulating and/or bigoted Dems are, offering those who might vote for them the choice to avoid them.

I had missed that our California governor candidate Xavier Becerra had put himself on what I think is the wrong side of the panic over trans participation in sports; if I'd known, I'd have skipped voting for him. He doesn't need me.

Of course, that's an easy choice. He's going to win, regardless of what a few of us do as a matter of conscience/necessity. And any Dem in office will be an easier target to drag on to the right side of inclusion than any GOPer. We know that; after all, it took until gay marriage was a foregone conclusion for Barack Obama to get around to supporting us. It was grassroots energy and legal smarts that to won that round, not our fearful Dem leader. 

In a state where the election was a cliffhanger and the choice was a MAGA villain or a chickenshit Dem, I would have a harder time refusing my vote for the latter. We don't vote for heroes -- we vote for whoever would be easier to influence in directions we think are right. I'm glad I don't live in Ohio where the gubernatorial choices really do stink. But I might vote for Acton even though she seems a genuine transphobe. Living in a flawed world ain't morally simple ...

On the meaning of "No Kings"

Someday, the Trump era in these dis-United States will be over. If something like the Democratic Party writ large inherits the ruins of constitutional government, leaders will have to try to figure out how to achieve some measure of accountability for the Trumps, hangers-on, and oligarchs who trashed the nation. And we can be sure that Donald Trump will attempt to hamstring accountability by granting mass pardons to every swindler and crook who enabled his regime. After all, he's selling pardons right and left these days.

And the president's constitutional pardon power, which he enjoys by holding the office, seems close to absolute: it reads “he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” 

The Founders may have thrown off one king, but they erred in embedding this absolutist fragment in the fundamental law they gave us. So long as we have this Constitution, the only way to stop giving the President and his cronies a "get out of jail free card" is to amend this grant of absolute power -- and that's near to impossible. 

But if we're serious about restoring the rule of law to this country, we have to do something to curb the pardon power. Otherwise the crooks win. Brian Beutler offers a potential path forward: 

... the pro-democracy movement [should try] to build mass support for amending the pardon power now, in the midst of a civic emergency. In a dream scenario, the movement succeeds, and Trump loses the unconditional pardon power before he can abuse it to bring the whole Constitution down. In a likelier scenario, where the movement “fails” to accomplish its nominal goal, a Fight The Power -- or (sorry) Neg Your Pardon movement -- could still surface a great deal of ongoing corruption, and use the corruption as a political wedge. 

Do Republicans really want to be caught opposing sensible limits on the pardon power? No autopardons? No preemptive pardons? No pardons without acceptance of guilt or proof of innocence? Do they want to stand for the idea that Trump should be able to pardon himself for accepting bribes? That he should enjoy blanket immunity to commit official crimes, and then pardon himself for the non-official ones? Well, that’s up to them.

Getting something like this off the ground would require three things: first, a respected House Democrat and a respected Senate Democrat ... to write and introduce the amendment, then use procedural privileges to force repeated votes on it. Second, a campaign to advance the idea in all 50 states. Third, aspiring Democratic presidential candidates to endorse it. 

The cause is urgent and morally righteous. It would also be popular. And, as a matter of realpolitik, it would provide Democrats at all levels (including those wannabe presidents) an opportunity to distance themselves from Joe Biden. Republicans will bellow whataboutism: Whatabout Biden, who preemptively pardoned his family? As they hop aboard, Democrats could preempt those cries. ...

Perhaps we can't actually succeed in amending the Constitution to get rid of this monarchical anachronism. But we should be able to make corrupt use of the pardon power stink to high heaven. That's a gift from Donnie the Grifter to the pro-democracy movement. And taking up the amendment fight, even if we can't complete it, is how we (Dems?) show we are serious when we say "No Kings." 

Let's keep this in mind along with all our other demands in this difficult moment.

Trump betrays Ukraine

I find myself thinking about my mother as I contemplate Donald Trump's betrayal of Ukraine. During the 1930s, my mother was a conventional, youngish, white, upper middle class, Republican woman living in a mid-American cultural backwater; that would be her Buffalo, New York. But before the Depression brought her home to help manage the collapsing family finances, she'd graduated from Smith College and traveled in Europe, "on the continent." 

And somehow, unlike most of her social class, she'd become aware that the ascendancy of Nazism in Germany, embodied by Adolf Hitler, was a threat to human decency and life. After World War II when I came along, she had both German refugee and European-origin Jewish friends, though I don't know if they came into her life later, or whether those connections dated from the 1930s. I do know that she spoke of hearing Ambassador William Dodd explain the horrors of Hitlerism to the highly respectable English Speaking Union in the late 1930s.

In particular, in describing those days, she pointed to the British capitulation at Munich in 1938 when the United Kingdom acquiesced in Hitler's dismemberment of the helpless country of Czechoslovakia. Rather than the "peace in our time" which the English prime minister called this betrayal, she assessed the events differently: "I just knew Munich would mean war for Europe and us all eventually," she told me. I believe this was not entirely hindsight bias; there were people in the 1930's who saw war coming.

Mother followed, with horror and terror, newsreports of Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland (alongside Stalin's Soviet Union) and then, in 1940, the collapse of western Europe before Hitler's armies. My parents had vacuum tube radios through which they listened to reports from the Battle of Britain, the German aerial assault on London when the UK was the last European hold-out. And then Hitler turned on his former ally, invading Stalin's Russia in June 1941. Mother remembered suddenly feeling sure she was seeing the turning point in the war. 

In December 1941, Germany's Japanese ally attacked the US base at Pearl Harbor; Germany declared war on the US; and the war spread worldwide. Mother remembered being confident in eventual Allied victory. She spent the war years rolling bandages for the Red Cross and acting as a volunteer ground spotter for the Air Force which was testing a newfangled devise called radar.

She was proud of her war work and proud of her country which she credited with defeating fascism.

• • •

Like me, Donald Trump was born just after that war. Maybe he didn't have good parents. Apparently none of what the world had just gone through was any part of his upbringing.

Donald Trump's betrayal of Ukraine communicates to Putin -- and Xi Jinping -- that he will do nothing to defend not only Ukraine, but also his own country. He's only interested in stealing whatever he can for himself; the tech bros who prop him up are cut from the same flawed cloth. 

I seldom think much of New York Times editorials, but their response to Trump's willingness of help Russia sell its oil and bombard Ukrainian cities drew an unusually clear denunciation: 

... Over the past two weeks, Mr. Trump has taken a sharp turn toward appeasement. Desperate to reduce gas prices before the midterms, he is now helping Mr. Putin wage war.

On Oct. 9, Mr. Trump announced he would lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports to the United States, a step that will help Russia’s economy and war production. On Friday, he went further, signing an executive order that waived other sanctions. He has also taken steps that do not have a clear economic rationale and instead seem designed simply to please Mr. Putin. Among them are new service restrictions for Starshield, the Elon Musk-run satellite network that Ukrainian forces use to defend against Russian airstrikes. ...

Let us be clear about the scope of Mr. Trump’s cynicism. He is aiding an autocratic leader and dangerous adversary of the United States who is waging a brutal war against a democratic neighbor. Mr. Trump is doing so partly in the faint hope that gas prices, which have jumped because of his reckless war in Iran, will fall over the next two weeks and help Republicans avoid big losses in the midterm elections. He is damaging America’s national interest, and likely sacrificing Ukrainian lives, for his own political interests.

The stakes in Ukraine are much larger than the fate of one nation. The war is a test of whether authoritarian expansion can succeed by military force in the 21st century — or whether the West can rally to protect democracy and innocent lives. 

Trump's perfidy is not unique to our time. There were plenty of Americans in the 1930s who looked at Hitler's Germany and thought "none of our business and maybe I can make a buck ..."  

But there were also plenty who came together, across race and class, who organized and fought in the hope of a better country and a better world. There are lots of us still who want better than Trump's ugly plutocracy. Let's keep working together to get there. Vote and protect the vote in our time. 

Policing the bathroom ...

 

"I'm your Republican congressman. Now that we're in charge, I'm checking to make sure there's no trans people in the wrong bathroom. ... "

Made by the Progress Action Fund.

Founded by Obama Administration alum Joe Jacobson, the Progress Action Fund produces & runs hard-hitting ads to defeat Republicans in swing districts. When Republicans go low, we go lower, because in politics you have to put your opponent on defense & shape the narrative. As President Lyndon Johnson said, “while you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.  

Pass it on ... Republican hate campaigns have made this fair game.

On voting for public school governance

Once upon a time, I managed, very successfully, a campaign for a candidate who sought election to the San Francisco Unified School District board. In retrospect, I'm not exactly proud of that. We made sure that our candidate was visible everywhere in the city we could think of, won endorsement from every 2-bit political club we could find, and was listed on every organizational slate card we could afford. The candidate was ubiquitous. Nobody really knew anything about the candidate's intentions -- which were good, but irrelevant to getting elected.  

I've voted in this year's school board election -- and I did precisely what we urged voters to do in that long ago campaign: I checked out endorsements from entities I generally like (Pissed Off Voters is a good one) and filled in the little dot without knowing anything much about any of them. Or, since I'm not a parent, much of anything about the SFUSD.

Parents and kids line up for school opening

I share this discouraging truth because I want to pass on here observations about our public schools from someone who does make a practice of knowing what goes on within them: experienced local journalist Tim Redmond. 

The School Board voted last week to approve a new assignment policy that will make it difficult for any parent to send their kids to anything except a neighborhood school. Board President Matt Alexander made a classic statement: He said that parents have been thinking about their own kids, “but now it’s time to think about all kids.”

That’s what a School Board member should say. When my kids were at McKinley Elementary, the amazing, wonderful, hero principal, Bonnie Coffey Smith, used to remind parents all the time that “all of our kids are all of our kids.”

The problem is that San Francisco neighborhoods are segregated, not just by race but by income and wealth. It’s worth noting that folks in the real-estate industry have cheered this decision: It means homes in neighborhoods near “good” schools will be worth even more money.

Throwing money at government programs doesn’t always work—witness the cops and the military, where more money often means more waste and less effective results. But when it comes to education, by any metric, better funded schools do better for their students. More money means better outcomes; it’s a pretty straight-line correlation.

And neighborhood schools mean more inequality in funding.

The dirty secret of SFUSD is the role that PTAs play in providing extra cash for better enrichment, lower class sizes, and better facilities at schools that serve the kids of wealthy parents. Some PTAs raise more than $500,000 a year for relatively small elementary and middle schools. The parents at schools in working-class neighborhoods can’t possibly match that. So those schools don’t get the same benefits.... 

A serious program for neighborhood schools should involve the basic concept of equity: The schools in areas that have been underfunded and marginalized for decades due to a legacy of historic racism should get the most money. 

That might anger the parents in the rich neighborhoods, who want their money to go to their kids, not to all kids—but that’s the price they have to pay for “neighborhood schools.” 

Could candidates for the San Francisco School Board proclaim these realities loudly? Maybe they try, but they remain inaudible to most voters. There's so much else, with more cash, clamoring for our attention. (Matt Alexander certainly has carried such a message, but I would not know that if I didn't encounter him in other contexts.) 

I end up questioning whether electing a school board really serves the city. Yet we'd probably be worse off without giving parents and teachers someone they can yell at who has needed some level of broad endorsement from the voters. We certainly would not want the Mayor's office to predominate in school policies. Does any reader have thoughts?

Even the NFL says so: It takes all of us

Since my busted leg keeps me from doing more, I'll just pass this on:

An update from California's Central Valley ...

Saturday scenes in the Mission

Hey, there's an election going on!

Most of us have our ballots. Let's get this done.

The owner is this car is opinionated. As it happens, I agree.  

Whoever owns this car has not confined themselves to just voting. Like good citizens, they are sharing their opinions. How very San Franciscan!

Friday cat blogging

Janeway sleeps where she chooses, unbothered by a brushed back ear. Or the wishes of the legs she has appropriated.

 

Mio is aware that he is watched. We're warm furniture.

Republican decodes Democrats and much more: an unlikely oracle

Sarah Longwell listens to voters with a political messaging consultant's perspective and she knows whereof she speaks. How to Eat an Elephant – One Voter at a Time became a best seller because she translated what she learned from hundreds of voter focus groups -- Trump supporters and Trump critics -- into smart, appealing, and graceful campaign wisdom. This is book an easy read and very worth the time of anyone working to defeat MAGA -- and that project won't be over, even if we win a blue wave on November 3.

People out of my world -- folks loosely left of the Democratic Party -- are likely and probably rightly suspicious of Longwell. After all, she's a former Republican operative and the publisher of The Bulwark, the landing spot for Republicans who couldn't stomach their former party's fascist turn. But she's a dyke (that does help; we view our society from slightly outside) and committed to electing even Democrats she can barely stand if that turns back MAGA. I find her determination to ground her politics in listening to infuriatingly muddled American voters a sign of democratic (lower case "d") integrity.

I'm not going to try to summarize this book. Some of it I very much disagree with. But I really do urge you to read it if you aspire to use the Democratic Party to turn back fascism. I will share some charming tidbits. And then I'll take up one of her observations that that meshes interestingly with my experience over 30 years of deep electoral campaign involvement. 

First, some slightly random teasers from the book, not meant to convey a unified message, but to encourage your curiosity: 

• It’s true (sort of) that voters are the problem. But they’re also the solution. Which is why we need to persuade them by developing policy and messaging frameworks that grow the pro-democracy coalition. It won’t be easy. But there isn’t an alternative.

• The irony is, in elite Democrats’ good-hearted attempts to be maximally inclusive, they end up with a set of rituals and language that baffles most Americans and creates a barrier to connecting with voters.

• Trump’s revolutionary effect was that, first, he made his supporters stop pretending to care about virtue. And then he made them embrace vice. ...  Character doesn’t just not matter—bad character is a marker of authenticity when authenticity is the coin of the political realm. The snake who admits he’s a snake is now deemed more trustworthy than the politician who acts—and might actually be—virtuous.

• I’m struck by how personal and visceral COVID vaccine resistance has become. A woman in Alaska told me flatly: “I got the eight shots I got in the ’60s and I have managed to make it this far with those eight freakin’ shots and I am not getting another one pumped into this body.” This isn’t a policy disagreement. This is bodily autonomy fused with institutional betrayal. The grammar of hidden knowledge has colonized the most intimate domain: what goes into your own body. ...

• To do what I’m talking about, Democrats need to toughen up. Stop crying and start sweating. Sorry, you don’t get Fridays off. Democracy’s at stake. Sorry, you can’t work from home all the time. America is at stake. Put on real pants and go to the office. The fascists are outworking you. They’re out-organizing you. Out-communicating you. You’re talking about microaggressions when you need to prioritize the macroaggressions being committed on a daily basis against the American experiment.

• More good news: This is the kind of moment when new leaders emerge. The old guard is exhausted. The appetite for change is overwhelming. The voters are ready—desperate, even—for something new.

If these quotes whet your appetite, pick up this book. 

• • •

Now to one of Longwell's observations, only glancingly developed, which I think those of us trying to preserve the possibility of a participatory US democracy should attend to. She writes:

The Republican operative world I came up in was mercenary and entrepreneurial. We started companies: consulting firms, media ventures, direct mail operations, opposition research firms, PACs. The incentive structure was clear: deliver results, make money, climb the ladder. There was less hand-wringing about process and more focus on outcomes. If something worked, you did more of it. If it didn’t, you moved on. The culture was competitive, sometimes cutthroat, but it was honest about what it was. We worked weekends.  

The Democratic world, as I have observed over the last decade, operates via a different set of cultural norms. People default to starting nonprofits, advocacy organizations, think tanks, and foundations instead of for-profit companies. The culture is mission-driven rather than financially incentivized. There’s a lot of talk about work–life balance, making sure everyone feels included, centering the right voices. The vibe is values first, process oriented, unionized. There’s a lot of talk about mental health. Employees agitate for four-day workweek. ...

I wouldn't say this is a completely fair description of either side as I've observed them over 30 years of (mostly paid) work in progressive campaigns. But I also think there is some truth.

I've seen plenty of Republican campaign efforts which weren't the pure capitalist enterprises that Longwell describes here; they were just rip offs off of candidates and causes by campaign firms that had made a profitable industry of extracting tribute from the gullible and the semi-powerful. I've also seen plenty of the same from Democratic consultants who may have once had their day, but deliver very little value while skating on reputation. (Looking at you, James Carville.) 

Longwell's description of the Democratic side is something I've seen -- but it misses the essential truth of Democratic campaigns which Longwell is now living.  These campaigns, except possibly at the most local level, are inherently coalition efforts, unlike the Republican ones where the base will toe the line. The Dem base -- both funding and activist -- consists of mission driven fractions which agree (or not) to play alongside each other for a season. They are an arena of multiple cultures -- unions, civic groups, religious groups, racial justice advocates, enthralled candidate fans. Getting them to work together productively IS the campaign. 

When Dems win, it looks obvious and easy -- but it never is. And the building of the really large coalitions is largely imperceptible to participants. When it works, we work hard. We exude attractive purpose. We all think our fraction won the day, even when we are vaguely grateful for the larger whole. And the big Democratic coalitions are held together by mission, not primarily money. 

• • •

One other throwaway line from Longwell that I can't resist raising up. 

One of the stranger things about the success of The Bulwark is that it’s basically free. As [her colleague] JVL likes to say, “You can’t save democracy from behind a paywall.” ...  Despite not charging for almost anything The Bulwark puts out, we still have a robust paying subscriber base. What are they paying for?

Long ago, I was part of another movement/community which worked the same way: the Catholic Worker as founded by Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. The cost for a subscription to its newspaper remained from its Depression era origin: "a penny a copy; more if you can, less if you can't." And the cash flow funded not only the paper, but multiple "houses of hospitality" for a community of the otherwise unhoused.

Some people have always known that financial stability flows from mission; the anomaly is that American society and democracy has forgotten this.

Trump makes all moments feel existential

Day in and day out, Jay Kuo chronicles "the condition our condition is in" at The Status Kuo. (Thanks, Kenny Rogers.) He's good at it, as befits an accomplished lawyer, chair of the Human Rights Campaign, Broadway show composer, and doting father.

Sometimes he waxes reflective -- which isn't easy in these times. In The Violence Is the Point,  he takes a careful long view of our ambitious autocrat in chief. 

... Historians and political scientists reviewing the regime’s recent escalations would recognize a familiar pattern.

In “On Violence,” which grew out of a 1969 essay, political theorist Hannah Arendt argued that power and violence are opposites. Power, as she defined it, belongs to people acting together, and it lasts only as long as the group holds. Violence, by contrast, stands in for power once that cooperation starts to slip. “Violence appears where power is in jeopardy,” she wrote, “but left to its own course its end is the disappearance of power.”

Political scientists have since measured the same dynamic. Governments’ use of repression to answer threats to their power and the status quo is so common that scholars gave it a name: the Law of Coercive Responsiveness. Christian Davenport, the University of Michigan political scientist most associated with the dynamic, notes that dissent “has increased repression in every single investigation of the topic,” making it “perhaps the only law” in the study of how states and dissidents interact. His study of the United States from 1948 to 1982 found something more unsettling. Repression tracked the threats that officials declared through speeches, hearings and laws more closely than anything protesters actually did. When those political threats were present, he wrote, “repression increased, regardless of behavioral threats.” A Somali “takeover” of Minnesota, an “invasion” at the border, two dead citizens branded “domestic terrorists”—in each case, the regime manufactures the threat and the crackdown follows. 

So we're recipients of escalating efforts to rub horrific state violence in our faces -- a home invasion by security thugs at a Somali Congresswoman's residence, a proposed public execution, a "whimsical" invocation of nuclear destruction of Los Angeles and San Diego.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s “Strongmen” follows authoritarian leaders from Mussolini to the present, from their rise through their rule to their fall. She identified Trump’s reliance on violence years ago. In the tradition of the fascists, she wrote, he uses his rallies to “train his followers to see violence in a positive light.” That’s why he’s switched from invoking Mobile, Alabama, as a target of nuclear annihilation to a bit about two blue California cities.

Last August, I wrote in The Big Picture about “sadopopulism,” the term coined by historian Timothy Snyder, now at the University of Toronto. He describes it as a kind of “populism where people actually don’t get anything except more pain.” The regime cannot deliver real gains, so it rations suffering and offers its base the consolation of watching others hurt more. I argued then that public opinion “is a barometer of whether Trump’s policies, including sadopopulism, are working or failing.” The barometer now reads failure, and so the regime has doubled down and is escalating.

... We’ve moved from UFC bouts on the White House lawn, to turning nuked California cities into a crowd pleaser to the ultimate spectacle of a planned public execution. In each case, the audience matters as much as the event, if not more. A Law & Society Review study of American executions from 1833 to 1937 found, for example, that the audience was itself part of the event, and that it could grant or deny legitimacy to the execution and to capital punishment as a whole. That’s the very reason why, in December, Hegseth hopes to give Hasan’s execution an audience of anyone with an internet connection. ...

Trump is flailing; all he can think of to do is kill someone.  On the other hand, he's a total chickenshit. His instinct is to TACO, to shy away from the worst in the hope of living to fight another day. 

If unrest reaches a boiling point, history suggests a TACO moment may follow. But just as we witnessed and endured with Jan. 6, the damage to our democracy and the rule of law before Trump finally backs down could be considerable. ...

There's much reason to worry that Trump can make things worse before they get better. but that's all the more reason to do all we can to strip this evil nutcase of as much power as we can in the present.  Read it all from Jay Kuo. 

No kings indeed

So many outrages ... so much to note with horror. DJT sticking his ugly mug on US passports is nowhere near the Mad Toddler's most egregious offense against our democracy and our human decency. 

But I appreciated Adam Gopnik's restrained reflections on the new image in the New Yorker.  

... The President is not a substitute tyrant or king, whose face, like that of the monarch of England (the enemy in the historic event celebrated this year), appears on currency, coins, and postage stamps, but just one more citizen who happens to have been handed a very big job. As that leftist provocateur Ronald Reagan once said, “You don’t become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.”

... The absence of a living monarch on our money, or on our travel documents, was not an accident haphazardly arrived at but a declaration of equality meant to be flourished and displayed. In this way, a reasonable case can be made that the constant volley of insults to the dignity of our democracy is as grave as the bad policy choices: policy choices can change; the decorum of democracy, once defaced, can never be wholly restored.

So, pity the poor passport! To see it so reduced by the whims of a would-be autocrat at the soothing of a cynical sycophant [that would be little Marco Rubio] undermines our faith not just in free travel but in freedom itself. A U.S. passport should bear the image and the imprint of no officeholder of any kind; it should merely let us pass on our journey through the world freely and without hindrance, just as the old one does. 

No Kings - October 17. 

Team work and friendship

Odds are, most of my San Francisco friends will have seen this, because they too will have been on Brad Newsham's mailing list for the visual protests he has been creating on our beaches for the last 20 years. But others may not have have seen it and you might appreciate this tribute to community and creativity and one team member that demonstrates the best of this area. You can find the whole story on Facebook under Brad's name.   

She knows

A Honduran friend who lives in Mexico posted this. I think more North Americans, especially folks in the USofA, might find this exhortation from a champion of global justice worth raising up:  

The rest of the world gets it. Many Australians, not the most pacifist or internationalist of Anglophones, get it: 

In 2025 Navi Pillay received the Sydney Peace Prize and in 2026 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting international law and peace. 

Navi could not be a more deserving winner. Born under apartheid, she fought for justice in South Africa, women’s rights across the world, helped establish rape as an act of genocide, worked for victims of the Rwanda genocide and called out a genocide in Gaza. 

This woman, whose career has included investigating and calling out the most horrible things that humans do to each other, nonetheless believes in the possibilities we can make together.

Though there is too much avoidable human and animal suffering, too much exploitation, too much greed and too much repression around the globe, many -- perhaps most -- peoples live and work in hope of better lives for those who come after. They look forward, not backward ...

I grew up in a country which looked forward, even as it was oblivious to its many advantages and riches. We have lost that. We need to be reminded that we can walk together with others toward a more just and peaceful world.

And then continue the project of hobbling the Orange Toddler ... 

The death penalty to front of mind again

Once again, Americans find ourselves unable to look away from our country's erratic and often irrational enthusiasm for legal killings.

The state of Tennessee ineptly tried to execute convicted killer Christa Pike -- and after torturing her with failed poison shots, sent her to a medical center to be resuscitated and she's back in a state prison. Now what? 

Meanwhile, that preening tough-guy clown Pete Hegseth wants to broadcast the execution of military murderer Major Hasan Piker on a livestream. Hip hip hooray for the firing squad!

Opposing the death penalty is something I've put some time into. In 2012, I was field director for California Prop. 34 which would have ended state executions, while consigning the over 500 imprisoned convicts awaiting capital punishment to sentences of life without parole. The measure failed by popular vote, 52-48. Collectively, the voters wanted to continue the option of legal executions. 

We threw a menu of arguments out to the voters:

• Death cases are wasteful and cost too much because of delays and litigation expenses

• Death is irreversible; some innocent people have been condemned, often because of poverty or bad lawyers

• Death sentences are too often bigoted and racist

• Convicted murderers could be held in prison for life ...

These arguments didn't carry the day. Why did many Californians vote to continue state killing?  

Probably the most important reason we lost that campaign was that we didn't have enough campaign cash to force the issue into the voters' attention. It got lost among the plethora of propositions. In California, you can't pass a new idea without enough money to put it in front of voters through paid media. 

But also, there really was a substantial fraction of the people who believed that a free society needed the option to kill offenders against its good order.  

In my role as field director, I had an unusual opportunity to learn what ordinary people who were honestly concerned by Prop. 34 might be thinking. One of our campaign tactics was to offer a series of "telephone town halls." A prominent local leader (then-Congresswoman Barbara Lee was one) agreed to talk in an open forum with callers about the death penalty and the proposition. 

Unsurprisingly, we screened the calls; the death penalty evokes violent emotions. We didn't want to put people in to talk who couldn't keep their cool while expressing their opinions. I did a lot of the screening, talking with callers before we put them on the air. I'm glad I did. 

Though we got plenty of callers who just wanted to say that they thought death sentences were not fairly applied or who had particular beefs with the criminal justice system, there were also many others who just felt that some crimes created such a rupture in communities that the perpetrators had to die. Their entire understanding of justice would be undermined if murderers could not be executed. 

I didn't think this was the sort of society I wanted to live in, but I came to understand that this was how morality worked for some good people. The experience was educational for me. I could disagree without dismissing their seriousness. How do we live in a world with such differing ideas of justice among well meaning people? Keep talking I guess.

After Prop. 34, although it failed, California has not resumed executions. That electoral effort didn't assemble a majority vote. But the campaign did convert and rally most of the print media outlets in the state to the cause of abolition. And by the time we have lived through the Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom administrations, both governors who opposed executions, it looks very unlikely we'll dive back into the practice. There are rumors that Newsom will commute the sentences of the 563 prisoners still living under the threat of execution, changing their status to "life without parole."

I wouldn't be surprised if current events cemented majorities in big blue states against the death penalty. Tennessee's stupid cruelty combined with Hegseth ghoulish (and unpopular) firing squad wet dream are doing their part to change opinions.

It's theft and attempted bribes all the way down

via Nathan Newman

Trump is desperate as the midterm elections come closer. He has reached the bribery stage of trying to hang on to power. He has cooked up ... 

• $90 payments to some 20 million Medicare recipients. I actually know people who got this. The money was heisted from a fund designed to explore ways to make Medicare a better program.

• $500 checks to about one million on people who have Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) insurance. ACA coverage became so popular under Biden that funds put aside to advertise the program were unused. The same recipients will learn when they go to reauthorize their coverage next year that their premiums will have been raised an average of 15 percent. 

• $5000 bribe he offers to all if somehow the voters keep his MAGA minions in control of the House and Senate in the midterms. Anyone who believes Donald Trump pays up on his promises hasn't been paying attention. I doubt if even his MAGA crowds in the GOP states he is now touring believe this one. The cost would be $1.2 trillion with no source specified. Apparently Americans don't believe him.

Dumb and dumber. And when it comes down to it, it's our money he is stealing.

We voted!!

   

Have you voted yet? Now is the time!

 

The California Federation of Teachers offers a neat tool which will tell you where you can deposit your ballot right away! Looks like this; click this link.

Send Connie Chan to Congress

It's an unfortunate trait of some politicians to be able, even when right on a particular issue, to make themselves still in the wrong. Scott Wiener exemplifies the type. If he wins election as my Congresscritter replacing Nancy Pelosi, he'll mostly vote in ways I won't find objectionable. He damn well better -- this is San Francisco. But ambition has long made him not a leader of San Franciscans, but an abettor of our tech plutocrats. They are paying for his campaign. And they want him as a voice for them within the Democratic Party in DC.

I want someone in Congress who stands up for the unique eccentricity of the City by the Bay. Though Nancy Pelosi is a plutocrat herself, she got that. Speaker Emerita Pelosi is now one of Connie Chan's lead endorsers along with dozens of Democratic office holders. 

Connie Chan is an immigrant, born in Hong Kong, arriving here at age 13. Coming out of the westside Richmond District, she's been a practical progressive on the Board of Supervisors since 2021. On the job, she's shown she learned how to navigate the push and pull of being a legislator with opinionated constituents and responsibilities to the city as a whole. 

Chan at a teacher's rally at USF

Chan bills herself as a champion of working people. Her partner is a San Francisco firefighter. She has overwhelming support from organized labor, as well as the backing of dozens of community organizations.

This is not an election I find complicated. Will San Francisco opt for one of its own or for the front man for the tech and real estate bros who want to make the city a rich man's playground?

The President has lost it

 

The truth is simple; he's an ignorant, generally malevolent, old guy who has lost his marbles. The contents of that brain always rattled around a bit, but they've gotten looser. There's little left but greed and id. 

 

And the people need to say so loudly, because the media won't. In fact, to sustain the only business model they know, journalism pretends he's functioning within the bounds of normal when he's batshit crazy. 

Trump on his Iran war: 

They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.

Jennifer Rubin puts the reality succinctly:  

Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence...

... Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. ...

... Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions. ...

... The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism....

... Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, ... put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence). ...

We see it; long experience has convinced me that when the people lead, our "leaders" will eventually follow. When will the big media admit that he has no clothes?

Midterm elections: who votes

One month out from the midterm election date, it might be worthwhile to share some historical facts about the shape of these contests. Who votes in midterns is not quite the same as who votes in presidential years.

These data come from USA Facts which seems a reasonably unbiased interpreter of census and other data. 

Every four years, a pattern repeats: fewer Americans vote in the midterm elections than did in the presidential race before it. It’s a pattern that’s persisted for decades. ...but in the last two election cycles midterm turnout was higher than it was for much of the past four decades. 

... Since 1980, presidential elections have had an average reported voter turnout of 63%. Midterms averaged 48%. Generally, voter turnout drops by an average of about 15 percentage points between a presidential election and the following midterm.

But the 2018 midterms were an exception: turnout fell eight points, the smallest drop in four decades....

Maybe there is something about a Trump and MAGA regime that gooses some voters to turnout in non-presidential years? 

 • In the most recent full election cycle, young people not only had the lowest presidential vote turnout, but they were also the least likely to vote in the midterms. Less than 30% of 18 to 24 year olds voted in the 2022 election. Conversely, people 65 or older had the highest turnout and smallest drop-off. ...

• The likelihood of voting rose with a person's family income in both presidential and midterm elections. The drop between the two, however, was largest among people in families earning between $40,000 to $75,000 a year.  ...

• Married Americans living with their spouse voted at higher rates in both presidential and midterm elections than any other relationship status ... Among other marital statuses, widowed Americans had the smallest turnout drop, eight points, while those who were never married had the largest at 20 points. ...

I wonder whether this is also true for married same sex couples; we're becoming a larger fraction of the married every year.

• Fewer than 40% of Hispanic citizens voted in the last midterm election. Asian turnout dropped the most, falling 20 points from the presidential election. White voters had the highest turnout in both elections. ... 

• Naturalized US citizens born in Canada or Greenland report voting at higher rates even than native-born Americans. European-born Americans voted at similar levels to native-born, while Latin American- and Mexican-born voted at lower levels.

• While African-born citizens voted at similar levels to native-born Americans in the 2020 election, their turnout dropped by 31 percentage points in the 2022 midterm, the largest drop of any of the demographic groups in the data.

Don't let anyone claim this is "a color-blind society." In the most basic activity of civic belonging, race and ethnicity clearly still matter. 

So does economic well-being.

• Renters and unemployed people voted below the national average in both elections and had steeper drops in turnout in midterms than most other groups.

• Americans with a disability also voted less than average in the presidential election, but their midterm drop-off was among the smallest of any group, 11 points, bringing their midterm turnout close to the national average. 

• Veterans and government workers stood out at the other end. Both voted well above average in both elections with drop-offs at or below the national average.

It's not clear in this data whether blue (Democratic) states had more or less drop off than red (Republican) states. Maybe it can matter whether people feel they have something/someone vital to vote for -- or against?  I sure hope so.

AI leads to brain rot?

I found this New York Times exploration of the implications of AI interesting. You might also. Gift link.

Other findings of this study presented in graphic form are less discouraging about where the AI boom is leading us. AI-native young people may be able to use it to assist solid learning. Or, as seems too common today, maybe not.

 

We seem fated to find out. 

There's much to vote on: local San Francisco ballot measures

Yesterday I worked my way through the 13 California state propositions voters are up against. Whew! 

Here I'll survey the 10 local measures San Franciscans face on the November ballot. A lot of discernment is asked of us. This exercise, as it always does, makes me wonder whether so much direct democracy -- direct legislating by the people -- has the results we might wish. But Californians like our system, so here we are again.

San Francisco local measures have letters, rather than the numbers used for the State offerings. Here we go:

Measure A: Proponents claim this one would clean up accreted inefficiencies and oddities in the current shape of city government, many derived from a 30 year old city charter which was a fix for the same sort of problems when we passed that one. City government has become a bit of a Winchester Mystery House, as anyone who has had to deal with it has discovered. Measure A is a complex set of tweaks and fixes supported by the current ruling establishment: Mayor Lurie and his tech bro and real estate sponsors. The outspent opposition is the Coalition on Homelessness. I confess to having a lot more trust in that organization than in the current city government. As I often feel, the devil will be in the details. I don't trust 'em. NO

Measure B: For a Public Bank ... this is my Supervisor Jackie Fielder's hobby horse. She has managed to line up Supervisors, labor, and civic organizations in favor. Seems worth trying. YES on B

Measure C: Increase City Contributions to the Housing Trust Fund. This is such a no-brainer that the only opposition are local Republicans. Anything that might increase housing availability for regular non-billionaires is okay by me. YES

Measure D: Would increase the number of voter signatures to get a measure on the ballot from 2 percent to 8 percent of the electorate. This looks to me like an effort to hobble direct citizen input into policy. I get the impulse. But I've run signature collection efforts. They are hard and expensive. Would legitimate grassroots efforts to put questions on the ballot be priced out? Quite likely. The big boys will always be able to pay to play. Let's keep San Francisco its fractious self. I'm a NO

Measure E: This one untangles city contracting processes. As with Measure A, I'm instinctively sympathetic. City government is an over-complicated mess. But do I trust the current powers that be? No, I do not. Guess I'm a suspicious NO

Measure F: Allows reorganization of city government by the present mayor and his corporate appointees. Again, I get the impulse. City government is a mess. It has accreted epicycles of poor management. But do we trust Daniel Lurie and his billionaire backers to preserve a San Francisco which represents the City's remarkable quirky diversity? I don't. Again, NO

Measure G: Reopen Sunset Dunes Park to cars. Hopefully this time will be the charm and this bad idea will finally go away. We've already voted it down twice. I understand there are folks who live in the Sunset District who find the park inconvenient, but this has been one of the great improvements to the city in the recent decade. NO

Measure H: Parcel tax to fund MUNI. We need public transport; this is a city, not a suburb. And so we have to pay for it. Only opposition is the Republican Party. 'Nuff said. YES

Measure I: Set aside part of a transfer tax on real estate sales of over $10 million too be used for affordable housing. This has an "only in San Francisco" feel. We passed a similar measure in 2020 but the current powers that be have evaded turning over and using the money. Housing and tenant advocates, community organizations, and some of labor support this one. Some construction unions say no. But really, let's make the richest us among contribute to the community's needs. YES

Measure J: Ensures the city gets a cut when big real estate deals happen through foreclosure. Transfers of commercial, industrial and large residential properties would trigger the tax. Seems reasonable. Nobody comes out against this expect Quentin Kopp (a name that will trigger longtime San Franciscans). YES

This survey highlights that Mayor Lurie and the billionaires think this election is an opportunity to use San Francisco residents' discontents to cut back on the vigorous citizen engagement with the local government which has always characterized this quirky, sometimes manic city. I, for one, don't feel that government by the plutocrats has earned our trust. (After all, I live in the Mission, turf they leave to rot.) So let's use the election to slap back at our overlords. 

Vote NO on D, E, and F and let 'em know, they must do better. 

Thirteen (!) California state ballot propostions for your perusal

It's that time again. California voters will receive our mail-in ballots this coming week. A responsible citizen therefore has to sort out a blizzard of direct democracy propositions and local ballot measures in order to cast a vote.

Frankly, as usual, many of these are things most of us should not be having to vote on; our elected leaders should sort out policy and take the consequences if we the people don't like the result. But people and causes with lots of money put their concerns on the direct ballot, and then it is our job to try to vote responsibly. Here I'll pass along how I come down on the state measures; your mileage may vary.

State Ballot Propositions

Prop. 1:  Authorizes $11 billion in bonds for housing affordability; it's always hard to tell whether anything real comes of these programs, but we have to try. YES

Prop. 2: Funds the State's "Rainy Day fund." State taxes bring in wildly different amounts year to year because some of our highest earners are gambling tech bros, financiers, and other inventing speculators. The Rainy Day fund enables the state to smooth out a wildly differing income stream. Voting for it feels like endorsing an undesirable boom/bust economy, but that is what California lives on. So YES.

Prop. 3: makes higher taxes on high income residents permanent to fund schools and healthcare. If we want a common good like education, we have to go where the money is -- and it is rich people that have it. The California Teachers Association came up with this plan. YES

Prop. 4: Allow state and local governments to establish public campaign funds. This is a good government measure, trying to reduce the dominance of big spenders in elections. The League of Women Voters and Common Cause like it. YES 

Prop. 5: Would reform the state's recall process so that if any office holder is recalled, the successor would be chosen in a separate election. Currently, choosing the successor is part of the recall itself; that's how we first got Arnold as governor. Recalls are messy money sinks, but this is probably a better process. Unenthusiasticaly, YES

Prop. 37: State loan program to help home buyers. Private enterprise isn't working? YES

Prop. 38: State bonds for cancer research funding.  This looks to be some particularly sympathetic researchers asking us to fund their work. The question why these folks and not others seems appropriate. I'm torn, but YES

Prop. 39: Require voter ID at polling sites. Californians get on the voting rolls by providing ID when they register. Why should everyone have to do that every time? This seems one more conservative effort to make voting harder for people who aren't good at navigating red tape. NO

Prop. 40: This would require the estimated 200 Californians whose net worth exceeded $1 billion at the start of this year to pay a one-time 5% tax. It was added to the ballot through the efforts of the union SEIU/Healthcare West. The establishment hates it. I suspect many people love it. Sure. Let's make 'em pay more. They have the money; too many of us don't. YES

Prop. 41:  This one is a poison pill which aims to undercut Prop.40's billionaire tax. It purports to limit everyone's taxes, but mostly aims to prevent the billionaires from having to pay up. NO

Prop. 42: Another poison pill aiming to kill Prop. 40's billionaire tax. This one reclassifies assets that would be used to calculate the taxable wealth under Prop. 40. Some very rich people don't want the Prop. 40 billionaire tax; as a result, you are voting on this. NO

Prop. 43: This would make it harder for cities and counties to raise local taxes by requiring a two-thirds affirmative vote rather than the current simple majority. The rich people want to put government out of business. Vote NO

Prop. 44: Seeks to ensure that community clinics spend ninety percent of their funds on patient care, not on administration or overhead. Proposed by the union SEIU/Healthcare West. Sure. Vote YES

Addendum: Since posting this, friends have engaged me in a vigorous conversation about Prop. 44, making the argument that it might prove disastrous to the economies of rural clinics. And they may be right ... The more I look at this thing, the more I see a bitch fight between an aggressive union and a stubborn governor which never should have gone to the voters. We hire legislators and government executives to weigh the possibilities and the implications of things like this and figure it out. They didn't, so the proposition is yet another union weapon in their fight with the powers that be. And here we are, asked to sort something out we are unlikely to understand. I'm disgusted. No recommendation -- my cop out.

 I'll get to the local San Francisco measures (A through J!) in another post.

Can this legal system survive Trump?

Another day, another legal kerfuffle raised up by the Trump regime. Okay, I admit I probably read too many substacks written by lawyers. Naturally lawyers think legal proceedings are where it is at. For most of us, most of the time, there are plenty of other aspects of life of equal or greater importance -- perhaps whether the developing El Nino weather system is going to flood large parts of the California coastline this winter.

But like many others, I try to keep up with the legal deluge. This morning David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo laid out where he thinks we are; he's not optimistic about the courts as a defensive line against the authoritarian, but he tries to define what he thinks they can do -- which is more than nothing.

In the defining legal struggle of our time — whether the federal judiciary will sustain the rule of law long enough to preserve the essential core of a democracy for us to repair, rebuild, and re-enlarge after Trump II — the jury is still out.

Important developments in three different cases yesterday — the Alien Enemies Act, third-country deportations, and Trump’s collusive settlement with the IRS — point in very different directions.

On the face of it, not much unites the cases or offers a common theme or collective takeaway. But in stepping back and reviewing the last 20 months of Trump II legal battles, yesterday’s developments are datapoints in favor of a tentative working theory that appeals courts are slowly coming around to the urgency of the current moment.

In the first six months of Trump II, district judges were on their heels, caught off guard by the ferocity of the rampage against the rule of law and still tethered to old norms and expectations for the Justice Department that no longer held true. It was a brutal stretch of watching the Trump administration seize some key early wins and capture important legal ground.

After being collectively kicked in the teeth, district judges pretty quickly adjusted to the new reality — but appeals courts failed to back district judges in key respects, missed the urgency of the moment, and surrendered more ground to the lawlessness.

More recently, appellate judges have begun to turn, too. Two glimmers of hope yesterday came at the appeals court level, with the en banc D.C. Circuit looking poised to allow U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to resume his contempt of court inquiry in the original Alien Enemies Act case and the 11th Circuit handing Trump a loss in his bogus settlement with the IRS.

That still leaves the Supreme Court, which — with a few notable exceptions — has been Trump’s greatest enabler. It played true to form yesterday with an emergency intervention that will allow the administration’s brutal third-country removals policy to continue past the election and until it rules after oral arguments in December.

Unlike the lower courts, the Supreme Court will not eventually come around. While we’ve already seen examples — most prominently on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and the USPS mail-in ballots rule — of the Roberts Court refusing to endorse some of Trump’s worst excesses, the high court is too deeply compromised and its six-justice right-wing majority too invested in the GOP’s partisan fate to emerge as a reliable bulwark.

But the appeals courts may buy us some additional time by slowing the speed of the descent. 

Kurtz looks at reality unblinkingly in this. He neither dismisses legal struggle against fascism, nor puts excessive weight on what a democratic people under siege can win in the courts. Courts and the laws may not save us, but their work can set an honorable standard. They can impose friction on the authoritarian project. 

Besides, courts can avert some of the sheer cruelty of the Trump/Miller project. Erudite Partner and so many others work to accompany people trying to navigate the morass of immigration courts. There too winning time may all that can be achieved, but time can preserve human decency and even life.

And meanwhile, the anti-MAGA majority can work to stymie Trump in other arenas, most immediately in the November elections. We can do this. And then we rebuild and re-found this country.