Let It Go

The time has come to let the Build Back Better bill go. It just isn’t going to happen in its present form.

With all of its good intentions and focus on gaps that need filling and things that need doing, it’s just too big, and that is its critical flaw. The complaint is made that there is too much focus on the number and that not enough has been done to sell the elements of BBB. But the number, in trillions, is the dominant note, and it’s just too much for many legislators to swallow. Maybe smaller bites - selected elements as standalone bills - would fare better.

The number issue, though, reminds us that this situation is all about math. Math is beautiful sometimes, cruel at others, but it has no political party, it just IS. The Democrats can complain that one or two of their number in the Senate are spoilers, but the shoe could just as easily be on the other foot – and has been. Remember how John McCain cast the final deciding vote that saved Obamacare from repeal?

Now it’s true that the current legislative math is apparently based on faulty formulas embedded in the Senate rules. These rules are either undemocratic or useful, depending on your point of view, but they are what they are until they’re changed. The loss of BBB, if that’s what happens here, is not totally because the Democratic Party failed, or because Joe Manchin is a squirrel. The math was simply against it.

There is no shame in shifting priorities. President Biden’s decision to focus on voting rights is an effort to change many faulty formulas related to elections. That may seem like an impossible task too. But this is where it has to start: changing the math in Congress and in state houses.

I personally am getting tired of hearing that the Democrats are going to lose in 2022 and 2024. It’s like deciding which team will win the World Series or the Super Bowl, or which horse will win the Kentucky Derby. We can say that future Republican wins are more likely, based on historical voting patterns or faulty rules. But as Yogi used to say – the original one, not the cartoon character – it ain’t over till it’s over, and in the case of elections, the game has barely begun. Sometimes underdogs beat impossible odds. So-called sure winners can have bad days. And as I often say, the next Civil War will be fought at the ballot box, and that’s exactly how seriously the fight has to be taken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Justice - Denied or Served? Now What?

Many are upset about the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, the AR-15-toting teenager who shot two people to death and injured a third during protests related to the police shooting of a young black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I didn’t watch the entire trial, but the jury apparently accepted Rittenhouse’s tearful testimony that he was just trying to defend himself.

To those who believe this was a failure of the justice system, I submit that there was nothing wrong with the system, it just didn’t come out with the result many wanted. It was true that the prosecution made mistakes, and there were allegations that the judge had his thumb on the scale, but the system worked, just not perfectly, because there are human beings involved

But it’s likely not over for Mr. Rittenhouse. He could be spending a lot more time in court, facing civil actions from the shooting victims’ families. The legal bar is lower in civil lawsuits, where unanimous jury verdicts are not required. Rittenhouse may not have been guilty of murder, but he could be judged responsible for shooting the three people.

His criminal acquittal, however, has given rise to concerns about the encouragement of vigilantism. Will others appoint themselves to protect property during protests and bring their guns?

Unfortunately, this whole story dovetails with another one: the attacks on jewelry and other high-end stores by large and apparently organized mobs of looters. If what has been going on in the San Francisco Bay Area begins to look like a successful business model to criminals, police departments across the country may find it a challenge to deal with, and their so-called helpers may start arriving to fill in the gaps. The merchants may arm themselves too. And sooner or later, there will be more shooting, and more death.

I look upon these organized looting crimes as mini-January Sixes, which they are in a strictly physical sense: mobs attacking poorly defended targets. To me, these are truly alarming situations requiring the development of comprehensive response plans – and soon.

 

Threats Are Not Idle

 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it with these stories about public servants getting death threats from people upset with their policies, actions, or perceived inaction. It’s one thing for some folks to get angry, but when they pick up the phone or hit their keyboards to threaten election officials or even school board members with firing squads, haven’t they crossed a line from free speech into felonious behavior?

The thing that makes me angry is that most of these offenders don’t have the slightest intention of carrying out their threats. They don’t have to invade the Capitol. All they need are words, but they aim them with enough accuracy to strike real fear into their targets, some of whom feel they have to go into hiding. Some threateners say things like, “I know where you live, and I know the names of your children.”

According to an investigative story by Reuters, law enforcement, especially at the local level, isn’t doing very much about this. One police agency said it was impossible to trace an anonymous call, but reporters tracked down that caller and others with ease. Even more surprising, some of the people they found were actually proud of what they had done.

Cable and broadcast news play back some of these messages, so laced with bleeps to cover the obscenities that they’re almost unintelligible. Still, words like “traitor” do get through.

Some may blame the former President for opening the door to this, but I’d like to see more of an effort to blame the actual threateners. My own fear is that if nothing is done, we will start accepting these things as normal modern background noise.

There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear, as the song lyrics go. But what seems clear to me is that there has been a dramatic rise in apocalyptic thinking. Civil war isn’t enough for some folks, they believe that they are soldiers in the battle against Satanic forces and that the streets will have to run red with blood – preferably, not their own, of course.

Hey, I like good horror movies and those cautionary tales about the future that awaits too, but I don’t live in them. Real life is already offering us apocalypses: a pandemic, climate change, and a collapsing supply chain, just to name a few. We should have plenty to occupy us all, even the drama-deprived. There is no need to make stuff up.

But it would please me greatly to see some high-profile prosecutions of those who make these off-the-scale threats, wherever they fall in the political spectrum. Words can be weapons too.

.