Colleges/Universities Must Unite And Stand Up To Trump

The following is just part of an excellent article by Erwin Chemerinsky (dean of the law school at the University of California - Berkeley) in The New York Times:

On Wednesday, the Trump administration sent letters to nine major universities proposing a “compact.” As The Times reports, the agreement would, among other things, require these universities to freeze tuition rates for five years, limit the enrollment of foreign students and be bound to specific definitions of gender. It would also require them to prohibit anything that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

In exchange, these universities would receive “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants.” The schools were warned that they were free to go a different route if any of them “elects to forgo federal benefits.” A senior White House adviser indicated that the administration wants to extend this compact to all institutions of higher education.

This is extortion, plain and simple.

It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it. If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold. The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education.

President Trump is trying to circumvent the legislative and judicial branches of our government by presenting this as a deal with schools. Nothing in the Constitution or federal law authorizes the president to do this unilaterally. The Supreme Court has been clearthat Congress can set conditions on federal funds so long as the requirements are constitutional, clearly stated, related to the purpose of the program and not unduly coercive. Mr. Trump’s compact fails every part of that test.

There is a basic principle of constitutional law — the unconstitutional conditions doctrine — that the government cannot condition a benefit on a recipient having to give up a constitutional right. But that is exactly what the compact would do. When it calls for universities to effectively ban anything deemed to punish or belittle conservative ideas, it tramples the right to freedom of speech.

The core of the First Amendment is that the government cannot use its power to discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint expressed. But this provision would do just that in treating conservative ideas differently from liberal ones. And any restriction on belittling an idea is obviously unconstitutional; there always is a right to disagree with an idea, even in strong language. (As with “belittle,” the meaning of “conservative” is vague, leaving the definition up to the whims of members of the administration.)

I’ve seen a copy of the compact and note that it would violate the First Amendment in another way: requiring universities to have policies prohibiting “all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives,” to abstain from “actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.” It would be hard to come up with a more explicit attempt to restrict freedom of speech. . . .

We all learned long ago on the playground that trying to appease a bully only makes things worse. It’s equally hard to imagine how higher education will recover if colleges and universities begin conceding to Mr. Trump’s illegal compact.

Strong Plurality Supports Terminating Musk's Government Subsidies And Contracts

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 6th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,533 adults (including 1,397 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters.

Are Democrats Passing Up A "Golden Opportunity" ?

(This caricature of the Democrat's donkey symbol is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

John Avlon in The Daily Beast made a statement yesterday that bothers me. He said, "America seems resigned to a Seinfeld election in 2014 -- a campaign about nothing." His point is that neither party is running on national issues, and both parties seem content to let each candidate try to frame issues on the local level.

Now I can understand why this is happening with Republicans. Poll after poll has shown they are on the wrong side of most national issues -- and while they are wrong on most issues, they are not stupid. They know their best chance is to keep these issues out of the campaign this year.

But I am mystified as to why the Democrats would take this path -- and yet that is the path they are trodding. Here is what Debbie Wasserman-Schultz told a breakfast gathering last Thursday:

“A midterm is a much more localized election. You are going to have issues that they'll focus on in Arkansas that will be different from what they focus on in California. [Republicans] want to nationalize the agenda… They oppose all the things we should be doing that we should be doing to move the economy forward.” 

I think this is a serious mistake. First, she is wrong about the Republicans. They have been struggling to find a national issue that works for them, and so far they have failed. They thought Obamacare would be that issue -- but record numbers of people signed up for insurance under that program, and multiple polls have shown that although Americans are not real happy with it, they don't want it repealed. They tried to scare people with the national debt, only to find out Americans are much more worried about unemployment and the faltering economy (both caused by GOP policies). Now they are trying to scare people about immigration. That's not going to work either, since most people are in favor of real immigration reform -- not just the closing of the border (which is all the GOP wants).

On the other hand, the Democrats are on the right side of most national issues -- issues that poll after poll has shown is supported by a significant majority of the American public. If the Democrats were smart, they would be trying to nationalize this election (and not localize it as Wasserman-Schultz seems to think is proper). How could they do this? I believe they should get together and sign a new "Contract for America" (much like the Republicans did back in 1992) -- and then run hard supporting that contract. Here are some of the things I think should be in that new "Contract for America":

1. Protect Social Security by fully funding it far into the future (by raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax), and by promising no cuts to benefits.

2. Protect Medicare by promising to defeat any attempt to privatize or abolish it (and promise to fight attempts to weaken it by cutting payments to doctors and hospitals).

3. Raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (and tie future raises to the rate of inflation).

4. Eliminate the tax break that corporations get for shipping American jobs overseas.

5. Eliminate unnecessary subsidies for corporations, so that corporations making millions or billions in profits actually pay a fair income tax.

6. Eliminate the special capital gains tax that allows the rich to pay less than many in the middle class, and tax all income the same (as earned income).

7. Support equal pay for women.

8. Eliminate discrimination in the workplace.

I could have added some more things, like closing the loopholes in background checks for gun buyers (which is supported by a huge majority of the public). But some cowardly "blue dogs" would not sign if that was included, and I was trying to come up with a contract that all Democrats could sign on to -- and I think any Democrat should be able to agree with the 8 points above.

The beauty of this is that all of the above points are not just supported by a majority of Americans, but a huge majority of Americans -- and that is even true in the red states. And the Republicans are on the wrong side of all of those issues (and would have trouble defending their opposition to such a "contract").

Are the Democrats passing up a "golden opportunity" by localizing the 2014 election? Absolutely! Nationalizing the election with a contract like this would drive home to the voters just how out of touch and extremist the Republican Party really is.

Expensive Words

For the last three years (2010 through 2012), half-term governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been a paid pundit for Fox News. The bosses at Fox News evidently thought Palin could bring them new viewers and boost their ratings. They were wrong.

Fox created a special on Palin, and it bombed in the ratings. Even the right-wingers who love Fox News didn't want to watch it. And she didn't do much better when appearing as a guest on Fox News shows. The two shows she did the most appearances on (Sean Hannity and Greta Van Sustern's shows) are the shows that lost the biggest percentage of viewers since the last election.

Obviously, Americans (even right-wingers) just weren't interested in the word-salads offered up by the woman from Wasilla. So it doesn't come as any surprise that Fox News has refused to renew Palin's contract. Palin has said she made the decision to leave to investigate other opportunities. That's hard to believe. The Fox News gig was the easiest money Palin ever made, and I think she would have stayed for many years if she could have.

But Fox News finally realized that Palin's 15 minutes of fame was over -- something most Americans knew a couple of years ago. And Fox couldn't drop her fast enough after the contract was up. But their failed experiment with Palin turned out to be a fairly costly mistake. They had paid Palin one million dollars a year for the three years -- for a total of three years and three million dollars.

The folks over at Smart Politics have done some math for us, and determined just how expensive Fox' gambit with Palin really was. It turns out that for the three million dollars, Palin gave them a total of 189,221 words -- 72,986 words on Hannity's program, 67,987 words on Van Sustern's program, and 48,248 words on other Fox News shows.

When you divide the number of words uttered by Palin in her three year stint into her three million salary, you get the amazing fact that Fox paid her $15.85 per word. Those are some pretty expensive words, especially considering they were purchased from a brain-dead has-been who seldom made sense with those words.

I would say that I hoped Fox News had learned something from this folly, but they just signed a new contract with Karl Rove -- after his embarrassing election night meltdown. That makes me think they haven't learned anything at all.

Entitlement - A Dirty Word ?

A few days ago, I posted the graphic above about Social Security. My purpose, of course, was to defend Social Security as an excellent government program that has worked exactly as it was supposed to (keeping millions of elderly Americans from slipping into poverty after their retirement).

But one of my readers called me out on part of what the graphic says -- that Social Security is not an entitlement. The reader said there is nothing wrong with the word "entitlement", and we should stop allowing the right-wing to demonize and redefine words -- making them sound dirty. After giving the matter some thought, I have to say that he is right. There is nothing wrong with feeling entitled to a check from Social Security after paying into the program for most of a person's life.

Here is how that reader, Jayhawk, puts it on his own blog called On My Mind (which I highly recommend):

Liberals (or “progressives”) have espoused a variation of this image, one which goes on to talk about privatization, which is a different subject altogether. At any rate, they are vigorously denying that the Social Security program is an“entitlement.”

One definition of “entitlement” is “a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group,” but there is nothing inherently “dirty” about that, really. In any case, that is a secondary definition, established by common usage fairly recently in historical context and the primary definition is “a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.” Which is why Social Security absolutelyis an entitlement.

Beneficiaries of the Social Security entered into a contract that for all of their working lives they would pay money into a trust fund and that once they were no longer working they would receive that money back in the form of a retirement stipend. Having upheld their end of the contract, workers are entitled by contract to receive those benefits, and the government is bound by contract to honor their side of the deal and pay the stipend to which the contractees are entitled.

The second statement on that image, about the “problem” of government borrowing from the fund, is a canard. In fact, the trust fund has invested its surplus in the safest place possible anywhere in the world; in US Treasuries. That is not a problem by anyone’s definition of problem, since the investment with the absolute lowest risk of loss world wide is US government debt. No one has ever lost one cent by investing in US Treasuries, so how is that a “problem,”pray tell?

I never can understand why liberals allow the other side not only to define the argument for them, but even to distort the meanings of individual words, and not push back.

Liberals should be standing up and asserting that “entitlement” is not a dirty word; that an entitlement represents an obligation on the part of the US government no less binding than monetary debt. We should be shouting that in making the claims that they do about entitlements, conservatives are demanding the this nation default on its debt as surely as if it were to refuse to pay on bonds due for redemption; that they are demanding that the government refuse to honor contracts made in good faith.

Instead, we accept the premise of the big lie made by conservatives and hunker down in a defensive crouch, whimpering that “Social Security is not an entitlement.”

I don't disagree at all with this. I have paid into the Social Security program since the mid-sixties. I did so because of an agreement with the federal government -- that if I would pay a percentage of my income throughout my working life, then they would provide me with a check during my retirement years. I kept my part of the bargain, and I have the right to expect the government to keep their part of the bargain. I am "entitled" to that.

As Jayhawk says, "entitlement" is not a dirty word. It is just the expectation that a contract will be honored.

New Republican Contract For America

Back in 1994 the Republican Party announced a "Contract for America" that laid out their plans if they were elected. The American people fell for this proposed contract and the Republicans were able to seize control of Congress. Sadly, the Republican policies were enacted and, after the election of George Bush, accelerated. And the effects on this country was disastrous.

Now in 2010 the Republicans want to take control of Congress again. But this time they are not announcing what they want to do. They are just trying to demonize the Democrats and their efforts to pull the country out of the recession caused by the Republican policies. This is because the Republicans have no new policies or "contract" to divulge. They are still clinging to the failed Republican/Bush policies of the past.

The Republicans know the American people do not want a return to the Bush policies of the past. That's why they are basing their hopes on slandering Democratic initiatives and hiding their own ideas (which would be great for the richest Americans and terrible for everyone else). But the Democrats are not going to let them get away with that. They have taken the policies the Republicans would like to enact and put them in the form of a new Republican contract. Here is that contract:

NEW REPUBLICAN / TEABAGGER CONTRACT ON AMERICA

1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act (Health Insurance Reform)

2. Privatize Social Security (or phase it out altogether)

3. End Medicare as it presently exists

4. Extend Bush tax cuts for the rich

5. Repeal Wall Street Reform

6. Protect those responsible for Gulf oil spill (and future disasters)

7. Abolish the Department of Education

8. Abolish the Department of Energy

9. Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency

10. Repeal the 17th Amendment (providing direct election of senators)

All of the above have been proposed by the teabagger wing of the Republican Party and endorsed by at least some elected Republican officials. If you would like to see these insane proposals actually enacted, then you should vote Republican in November. But if you are smart enough to know that these things are protecting ordinary Americans from the greedy rich and corporations and must be protected, then you should vote Democratic this Fall.

Don't fall for the Republican lies and slanders. Don't let them take America backwards to the failed policies of the past.

GM Gets More Than UAW In New Contract

Last week the UAW went out on strike against General Motors, ostensibly to protect American union jobs. The strike only lasted two days before an agreement was announced and workers returned to work. Since then, both the union and GM management have lauded the new contract.

Now some details of the new contract have been made public. It's easy to see why management likes the newly proposed contract, but I'm a bit mystified as to why union leaders think it's good for their workers.

Even though workers were willing to use the most powerful tool in their arsenal -- a nation-wide strike, it looks like GM's management was able to bully UAW leaders into giving them everything they wanted.

Management was able to dump their obligation for retiree healthcare onto the union, lower wages for thousands of workers and gain approval to close two plants (and maybe several more). It sounds to me like the union needs some better negotiators. If this was the best they could do, why bother to miss two days of work?

Union leaders hailed this as a victory for the union movement in America. I disagree. I think it is indicative of the sad state of unions in this country.