Ketanji Brown Jackson really is special. During the reading of this book I cried numerous times, and my admiration grew even as I read of her accompliKetanji Brown Jackson really is special. During the reading of this book I cried numerous times, and my admiration grew even as I read of her accomplishments. Yes, Brown had opportunities, but what struck me is how she managed to wrangle those opportunities so they worked toward her ultimate goal, something set young and tender. Let’s face it, talent is nothing unless nurtured, and she worked hers every day.
Despite her drive and talent, Brown still amazes us—that she managed it, and manages it still. But we are so grateful she is there, for this is a woman who knows…what it is like to be Black in the south, what it is like to be a woman in the last half-century in America, what it is like to work collegially with a court at least half of which fundamentally disagrees with one’s view.
She shares a moment similar to one I also experienced, when she realized her grandmother, despite accomplishments that allowed her granddaughter to excel in school, did not have a deep education. In my case my mother, I realized only well into adulthood, did not have the vocabulary to enjoy some literature. These moments stayed with both of us, deepening our respect for what these two women were able to accomplish without our opportunities.
A favorite story she tells is when she was accepted to college. Her grandmother was overjoyed she was accepted to Howard University, one of our nation’s Historically Black College & Universities. But Brown hadn’t said Howard, she’d said Harvard, causing only a moment’s pause in her grandmother’s joy. “Well, I’m sure Harvard is a perfectly good school, too.”
Brown’s mother took her shopping in Florida before she left for Harvard, trying to buy woolens in a southern summer before her first term in the north. The parental concern exhibited makes me want to cry as I laughed, so concerned were they about making life easy for their daughter and such an impossible task it was.
When Brown describes the necessity of working for a large corporate law firm after law school while her husband finished medical school residency in Boston, we hear her especially clearly…for what she says about the white, male culture and lack of concern or accommodation for women who might be breastfeeding a new infant. She says, “Instead [of sharing time with my new infant], I would be spending the day with anxious partners, crusty statues, and the ambiguous work product of long-dead constitutional framers.” Oh yes, we hear that.
The honesty of her relationship with the one man in her life, a blue blood Boston Brahmin if ever there was one, and her lovely girls, Talia and Leila, make us feel part of her huge and gracious family composed of all the close friends she has made over the years. Brown has an especially large and loving circle of people who care about her. And by the end of the book, we understand why. We are among them.
Brown shares her experience going to see American Prophet: Frederick Douglass in His Own Words as a theatre performance. She later brought her law clerks to see it as well, so that they might see what she saw in the performance: that if history must be relied upon in interpreting the law, a question this performance brought into relief was whose history?
This is a book you may want to buy. I got it from the library but I know it is one I will want to reread for the lessons in passion, stamina, generosity, direction and steel. And I want to give copies to most everyone I know. It is not hard to read because it is so improbable—one reads on for the breathtaking ascent to the heights. ...more
Pete Buttigieg has shown himself, over the past several years, to be a spectacularly talented communicator and in this, his second book, he does not dPete Buttigieg has shown himself, over the past several years, to be a spectacularly talented communicator and in this, his second book, he does not disappoint. The book’s title is Trust and we know this key feature to government efficacy is getting depleted at an alarming rate. Some of that has to do with the presidency of Donald Trump (I still can’t believe he was actually elected) but some loss in trust has to do with events over several decades. Remember, if you will, Watergate, the Iran-Contra Deal, Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and the missing nuclear weapons that led to the 2003 Iraq War. And that’s just the Executive Branch.
Mayor Pete is right, that government works when there is trust in the work it does or tries to do. But we shouldn’t be surprised if it cannot do what it is not funded to do. In three short chapters Buttigieg lays out 1) The Necessity of Trust, 2) The Loss of Trust, and 3) the Rebuilding of Trust. One thing humans are very good at, he tells us, are recognizing patterns. We can be fooled by lies, dazzled by gold, failures at memory games but humans are better than many machines at pattern recognition.
Patterns are established in part by predictability, which shapes expectations. When government like the enforcement of laws, or election processes, are not boringly predictable, we lose some trust in outcomes. He points to the lack of trust people of color have realistically developed over the decades…no, centuries. But in Chpt 2, he expounds on cigarette companies, disputes over labor unions, the rise of Fox News and MSNBC, and the both sides-ism that befell mainstream newspapers and TV stations.
These days, it is so easy to destroy trust. We don’t have enough shared sources of truth. Once trust is destroyed, rebuilding is hard and must be intentional and purposeful. And this cuts across personal, national and international spaces. American has lost trust in each of these spheres. What Buttigieg is able to do is give us examples of how poor trust levels make ordinary interactions far more difficult and suggest ways to start thinking about rebuilding trust.
I was glad to see him address the scars and wounds of racism in this country, and say that we can no longer be the beacon we once were, before 'white' people were aware of the extent and the results of our racism. We, all of us including people of color, are going to have to face it—bring it out into the open and talk about it for a start—before we can hope to be the country that is leads once again.
And Buttigieg points out that the phrase Reagan often used and which has become a commonplace in American parlance, “Trust but Verify” is actually translated from the Russian originally. Obviously, if one trusts, there is no need to verify. These days, Republicans have taken ownership of the phrase as though it originated with them.
This is such a worthwhile book. Buttigieg writes like it’s his most important job. I appreciate this man....more
As biographies go, this was beautifully written and utterly sympathetic to the unusual man who is Mitt Romney. A Republican from birth, Romney had so As biographies go, this was beautifully written and utterly sympathetic to the unusual man who is Mitt Romney. A Republican from birth, Romney had so many advantages, it is hard to find how/where he could have failed along the line. Handsome, wealthy, with a loving and disciplining family, Romney left home to begin his missionary work...in France. Already he is the golden boy.
But great privilege does not mean life is easy. It is not a truism to say that to whom much is given, much is expected. The challenges may just be bigger, harder. Romney was steady, though. He did not break in front of great challenges...and some notorious losses in politics. He just chose [was offered] other challenges that allowed him to use his talents where he succeeded, including saving the Salt Lake City Olympics from implosion after a corruption scandal threatened to sink it. And afterwards, being chosen as Republican governor in Democratic Massachusetts where he previewed the health care plan that would be rolled out nationally a few short years later.
A talented, fiscally conservative, work-across-the-aisle Republican recommended the auto industry deal with some hard lessons learned by families the world over and Democrats had a field day attacking him. Harry Reid, leader of the House for many years, could be termed a 'dirty fighter,' saving his best lies to sink members of the opposite party. It is hard to love politicians, and in these cases, very easy to hate the way they do not take the best lessons from either party and make them better.
Among the lessons Romney wants to pass on, chief among them may be not to sacrifice integrity at the altar of ambition. "It's not worth it." And I really don't think anyone can argue with that.
Researchers who have studied the effects of power on the brain have found that powerful people become more impulsive and less empathetic; "the neural processes that enables them to simulate others' experiences ceases to function." That did not happen to Mitt Romney. How do we know? Because we have seen the damaging effects of power and can tell the difference.
And I appreciate Romney's assessment of Biden's White House team--"if they'd reached out even once"--they were old hands for an old hand following an old playbook that wasn't producing the results they wanted but they didn't reach out to moderates to get them on board.
I never knew Oprah Winfrey was seriously considering a run for the White House--anything to stop the train wreck of another Trump presidency. She suggested a Romney-Winfrey ticket would spare us all that agony. That is an interesting idea, and it might have worked, but what a different landscape we'd be looking at now!...more
It is unlikely that we have ever heard a history like this one about political leadership in America before, during and after WWII. The focus is intimIt is unlikely that we have ever heard a history like this one about political leadership in America before, during and after WWII. The focus is intimate and at the same time national: the author’s grandmother, Eunice Hunton Carter, was the most widely known Black Republican working as a deputy assistant district attorney in New York City during the second world war. She was instrumental in the conviction of Lucky Luciano of mob control of the prostitution racket in New York City in the 1930s.
Back when the history of Black Americans was still being ignored by the mainstream white press, Eunice Hunton Carter was blazing a path and creating her own weather. Eunice Carter was Black royalty, being the daughter of two leaders, William Alphaeus Hunton and Addie Waites Hunton, who were instrumental in the development of YMCA/YWCA and NAACP from the earliest days.
Her grandson, Stephen L. Carter, a lawyer and award-winning novelist, had plenty of material to use for this book because Eunice’s every move was covered by a mostly adoring Black press, first as a member of Harlem “sassiety” and especially after she ran for office [and lost]. Not winning public office left her open to accept another opportunity. A special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, was appointed to try the mob in NYC court; he hired twenty lawyers. One was Eunice.
What so fascinates me is the way we get all turned around in party politics at this time. Democrats in New York were crooks, all part of Tammany Hall’s criminal coterie…and racist. Republicans were racist also, but at least made noise about giving opportunity to qualified Black Americans, for honoring those who fought in WWII and for ending discriminatory practices. Eunice never had all the opportunities her talents promised and was never paid what she was worth, but she was respected.
This book presents a look at 1940s and 50s history that we have never had the opportunity to read: what life was like for Black people, even well-educated and well-traveled Black people. The author tells of Governor Dewey running again and again for president with fervent and furious campaigning help by Eunice Carter, and finally, famously, losing to Truman.
The author is careful and generous with his grandmother’s memory. He picks out her many failures to advance–she was a striver and had a thirst for responsibility– and tries to be evenhanded with the reasons for those failures. There was plenty of blame to spread around: Eunice was charming and ‘regal’ is a word that is used by observers, but perhaps not as warm and ordinary as those who make friends easily. She was honored and admired.
Her own family life seemed a little like her own, growing up: the children were left to someone else. Schooling was distant, with limited opportunities to spend what we now call ‘quality time’ with parents. Eunice had a son, Lisle, Jr., who became an important federal appointee later, in the late 60s. Eunice was a Republican in a time when Democrats were in ascendancy. She never got her appointment to higher office in Washington, though she wouldn’t have said no if the opportunity called. ...more
This is the stuff of nightmares, and David Grann will once again astonish readers with his ability to synthesize material from god-knows-where and preThis is the stuff of nightmares, and David Grann will once again astonish readers with his ability to synthesize material from god-knows-where and present what looks like a whole piece of sail. But...the winds and waters of south America sound so astounding they cannot be believed. Can you imagine what these folks went through? Nights I slept thinking of the pleasure of my soft bed, knowing I could not have endured...When the end of Grann's telling came, and I am showing the greatest restraint by not telling you what came after their shipwreck, I was open-mouthed at the conclusion.
I am not going to go through the details. The whole point of this book is details. Let me just say that when I heard of this book I naturally enough thought it was about a gamble. I would never have signed on with a ship called 'The Wager.' And I would have been right....more
This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going on much too long. Some of the same stuff we read about today with horror is in this book.
Delisle is a wonderful cartoonist who includes enough detail to make us feel as though we have a good portrait of a place. Trash and smells come through, gorgeous shiny domes of gold are clearly depicted. But Delisle has no axe to grind so he is almost the perfect cipher. He just draws what he sees and what he sees is breathtaking.
His wife is a doctor with Médicins San Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders and they work in conflict areas. Therefore, she works in Gaza so one may assume Delisle will have the viewpoint of "the oppressed." He never got to Gaza because of restrictions on his movement, so he concentrates his energies on Jerusalem. There is plenty to see there.
I highly recommend this book for insights gleaned while viewing a place from someone else's eyes. ...more
Do I really need to tell you to read this book? It is not dense, but it is uncomfortable-making. That is a good thing. If you ever dared say you werenDo I really need to tell you to read this book? It is not dense, but it is uncomfortable-making. That is a good thing. If you ever dared say you weren't sure what a microaggression is, you will have example after example of the kind of rubbish Black Americans have had to put up with, like, forever. It pains me, but you can bet it pains them a great deal more.
There is so much we need to learn about the lives of Black Americans, how they were, how they are. I recall thinking when I was a teen that we white people were not privy to the mysteries...there seemed no way to get that knowledge unless one lived together in one neighborhood. And we did not. Shame, in all senses of the word.
One paragraph hit me like a club:
As a measure of the enduring role of caste interests in American politics, the shadow of the Civil War seemed to hang over the 2008 election. It turned out that Obama carried every state that Abraham Lincoln had won in 1860, an election with an almost entirely white electorate but one that became a proxy for egalitarian sentiment and for the future of slavery and of the Republic. "The cultural divide of the Civil War on racial grounds," wrote the political scientist Patrick Fisher of Seton Hall University, "can thus still be considered to be influencing American political culture a century and a half later."
Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of Willi Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of William and Ellen Craft, uncovering details that make the whole feel very real indeed. The world was in turmoil in 1848, you won’t be surprised to learn. But I wasn’t prepared for how the moment is mirrored in what is happening today: the sharp divides, fake news, screaming denunciations and posted threats.
Ellen and William Craft, two slaves owned by different masters, decided one Christmas that the time was ripe for them to escape to the north using a plan they’d prepared in four days. She would dress as a young man and he would be her manservant slave. She’d had experience traveling with her master and so knew how things outside her plantation worked. He was tall and capable and calm under stress, but their plans were upended more ways than one.
The Crafts were received with warmth by abolitionists in Philadelphia though they were cautious to the point of near-refusing the generosity of a Quaker family, the Ivins: “I have no confidence whatsoever in white people. They are only trying to get us back to slavery,” Ellen later reports. Later, Woo describes the sentiment among escaped slaves that included Frederick Douglass in Boston:
“once back in the States [from England], Douglass had grown increasingly angry, disillusioned, and impatient with American abolitionists, who moved so slowly and too often betrayed their own prejudices, subtle or not. Even some in [social reformer and journalist William Lloyd] Garrison’s closest circle were know to utter racial expletives on occasion.”
Once the Crafts were [safely? no…] on the lecture circuit in New England, I sought out Woo’s own explanation of how she did her research. Several of those interviews are on YouTube and in each, the questions and her answers are slightly different, but one comes away with the sense that the narrative propelled research into the time. The Crafts wrote their own personal histories, but with many pieces that Woo wanted to know missing.
The Craft’s escape from slavery wasn’t that long ago, a fact that continues to horrify me. We’re talking the length of two human lives ago. Crazy. But it’s been as chaotic and tempestuous and argumentative in the United States before now, and what we have learned is that people in general do not change until they are absolutely forced to change. Witness slavery. Witness environmental protection. There will still be breakouts of resistance against change going forward, but gradually we will come to see slavery and environmental degradation as great wrongs.
This story of escape is dense. There is so much Woo is telling us that we did not know that three hundred some-odd pages does not feel too long. We sense the depth of research and know there is more to mine from this story. Context is everything. Woo writes sentences that hint at interesting side trails; she names names in the places the Crafts overnighted. Even though it probably should be self-evident that by the 1848 the antislavery movement was well established, this feels new.
One thing that stuck with me is that Ellen Craft was ‘owned’ by her blood sister when she escaped. In fact, Ellen was gifted to that sister Eliza upon Eliza’s marriage because the wife of Ellen’s father and mistress of the house in which she worked was angry that people kept mistaking Ellen for one of that mistress’ white daughters. She looked so much like the husband…But forever after Ellen Craft would not speak ill of Eliza, her sister by blood and her mistress at the time of her abscondment.
Woo speculates that the names of Ellen and William Craft are not better known because their lives were complicated and had no period of ‘happily ever after.’ Perhaps that is true. Certainly it casts a pall over their American story to know how hard it was for them right to the end, and how one obstacle overcome only showed a higher mountain right behind. But it is also true that in America, white folks do not like to be reminded of times when they relied on the labor of slaves to build their fortunes. That could be a reason their story is not retold in schools and in theatre.
This totally fascinating book well deserves the raining plaudits. ...more
Of all the theories I’ve examined in the past several years that might explain the ghastly social and political division in our society, the one propoOf all the theories I’ve examined in the past several years that might explain the ghastly social and political division in our society, the one proposed by political commentator and opinion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer Will Bunch was one I hadn’t considered. His thesis, the insistence that we all attend college at age 18 or our employment futures are doomed, is one he insists is wrong-headed. The fact that colleges have become profit centers for bankers should give all of us pause. The lack of financial assistance and the subsequent vast raft of unpaid college debt is surely a burden on us all.
After WWII, the GI Bill offered inexpensive educational opportunities for returning servicemen and was so popular that the federal government attempted to extend similar possibilities to the general population in conjunction with state schools.
As Bunch explains it, Ronald Reagan was one of the first to express disdain for the leftist student protesters in the 1960s that the country was basically funding to go to school since the Second World War. Reagan tried to impose tuition increases and reminded taxpayers that ought not “subsidize intellectual curiosity,” but should focus on workplace development, an attitude that entered Republican consciousness and traveled underground until we saw it rear its head in 21st C Wisconsin with the rise of Scott Walker.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker left college in his third year, he was so set on school being a road a to a job. Once he got a job, with the Red Cross, what need did he have of an education? [Many of us, looking at his career and justifications for policy set while he was governor, might have much to say on this subject.] His under-financing of state schools within Wisconsin since his ascension to the governorship had tremendous impact on staff and educators, to say nothing of students. To witness the impoverishment of a state, one need look no further. The rural folk complained about the clueless ‘educated,’ all the while the actual educated were leaving the state to its misery by getting jobs elsewhere.
“College started becoming more expensive and less accessible right at the very moment it became critical for getting a job,” writes Bunch. Funding for higher education fell routinely in the 1980s and continued that trajectory: “in 1980, a Pell Grant covered 75 percent of the cost of attending instate public university, but today it’s roughly 30 percent.” No longer was higher education considered ‘public good.’
The way funding was withheld from colleges and universities so that the promise of advancement via a debt-free education crumbled. If education were no longer available to ordinary folks without extraordinary funds, they claimed to become centers for “meritocracy.” The deserving, whether exceptional in talent, brains, or need, became the focus of college admissions.
Those with lower incomes “couldn’t afford” school that didn’t promise immediate employment; those with slightly higher risk profiles but no more money entered the debt economy. The change in prospects for younger folks put increasing pressure on their parents to pay for educations whose costs increased annually while state funding decreased in direct proportion.
Bunch suggests the rise of radio was a contributing factor in exacerbating division in rural America. All-day national talk radio was some of the only programming rural folks in many states could access, broadband not being universally available in the countryside. Blanket broadcasting is still happening in Pennsylvania with its wide rural expanses and radio talk show hosts appear to be hyped-up evangelists for grievance about the college-educated.
By the mid-2000s the college dream of meritocracy and affordability had come apart. High-wealth individuals like Jared Kushner were entering the best universities (Harvard) without proven intellectual gifts. College was a business, a business the entire country was paying to keep afloat. Goldman Sacs was even purchasing student debt by the early 2010s, not unlike their willing exposure to sub-prime housing loans. This was the currency of our disablement, the scam of higher ed.
The collapse of trust in the basic agreement—I pay tuition and you give me a job—parallels the widening gap between college graduates and high-school graduates. Political attitudes appear to be defined in its greatest sense by whether or not one attended college or simply high school. Bunch, a father himself, finds the whole discussion about college costs absurd. How can 18-yr-olds ever get out from behind the debt? High school students are essentially blank slates who have little clue what the world offers. Bunch suggests that perhaps instead of paying their debt, we give them a chance to earn their way into college through national service.
It is a good idea, an idea whose time has come and gone and come again. The idea will probably be the source of much further division among political parties, but if there were people seriously thinking about how to go about it, I think it may be time to get it started. Perhaps the naysayers can keep their kids on the corporate track, if they want. The rest of us can give our high school leavers the chance to spend a little time learning about the world firsthand, earning a wage, learning how to work, figuring out what they don’t want to do while thinking about how to keep the world from coming apart at the seams. It wouldn’t be wasted. Count me a supporter....more
Before Tony Horwitz died suddenly, in 2019 at the age of 60, he wrote about things that mattered. He brought a sense of humor to interesting and sometBefore Tony Horwitz died suddenly, in 2019 at the age of 60, he wrote about things that mattered. He brought a sense of humor to interesting and sometimes difficult subjects. He wrote this stand-alone short book about the XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, a subject which is/was dear to my heart. It seemed there was no length the petroleum companies would not go to persist in this outdated fuel.
Horwitz showed what it was like to work for the pipeline, to be exploited by pipeline and to be opposed by the pipeline. For those who always thought the XL pipeline is "probably the stupidist thing mankind has thought up," this book's for you....more
Remarkably revealing and useful for understanding what it is like to be an actor before one hits it big in the movies. The only reason I gave it less Remarkably revealing and useful for understanding what it is like to be an actor before one hits it big in the movies. The only reason I gave it less than five stars is that the later years in her life were not so much part of this. I can understand why, but that is why it is hard to write . Anyway, she did a brilliant job considering the forces arrayed against organizing one's thoughts and finding the time to do a project like this. I admire her more for having pulled it off without melting down completely. ...more
She has reason to be angry but she is only occasionally lashing. I know our history was hidden from us because i raised it also, in high school. Why dShe has reason to be angry but she is only occasionally lashing. I know our history was hidden from us because i raised it also, in high school. Why didn't we know more about Black people? ...more
I don’t quite know what to make of this book. I read it because I now live in a state a large portion of whose population is deluged with far right TVI don’t quite know what to make of this book. I read it because I now live in a state a large portion of whose population is deluged with far right TV and talk radio. A large number of people do not have broadband and therefore often do not know there are newspapers and TV stations which make an effort to substantiate news.
There is a disparity in information: the rural areas have been kept the equivalent of “barefoot and pregnant” by a state legislature that couldn't figure out how to fund failing schools and provide broadband.
This book is a study of Jennifer Silva’s time interviewing residents of a former coal town in Pennsylvania, finding out what their lives are like, how they see their personal and professional trajectories, and who they vote for and why.
Not being a social scientist, I found the stories Dr. Silva shares with us confounding. Maybe someone can come up with solutions for these folks, but the reason they don’t vote is that they basically don’t trust anyone after the life they’ve led. In one of the first couples described to us, Silva writes,
“They are not single-issue voters who prioritize social issues such as abortion or fund control over economic interests, not do they place themselves into clear-cut categories of Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. Most of the time, as they attempt to come to terms with their past traumas and future anxieties, they do not think about politics at all.”
Right. Silva’s mentor/thesis advisor might have anticipated this and suggested a less-stressed environment. If Silva was just wondering what was going on in towns like Coal Brook, I would understand that, too, but she admits she’d been hoping to find out what white rural conservatives were thinking about politics when she began.
Soon enough she found out her interviewees were unschooled and inarticulate on the subject of “politics.” She did hear, though, these white residents’ dissatisfaction with Black and Latin “newcomers” to the coal region, former city dwellers and immigrants. So she changed her focus a little to include the newcomers. That was smart, and refocused this work into something approaching Arlie Russell Hochschild’s award-winning Strangers in Their Own Land.
Maybe someone, after reading outcomes for poor white folks who grew up in an abandoned coal town or poor city dwellers who moved in to live inexpensively and get away from inner-city violence, will figure out a way to point these folks in a different direction, in the direction of a life that is more fulfilling and less crushing. But this is way outside my wheelhouse....more
I am grateful to the author for taking the time to recount the dispiriting shenanigans of lawmakers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania over a period of yearsI am grateful to the author for taking the time to recount the dispiriting shenanigans of lawmakers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania over a period of years: the late 2000s to the early 2010s. Perhaps I should amend that to include Philadelphia, of whom there were several standout criminals among the Harrisburg gang. Author Bumstead still is a political reporter in PA, and he must have thought, "this needs to be recorded for posterity," it is such a blowout case.
Later, Bumstead did another book Keystone Corruption Continues: Cash Payoffs, Porngate and the Kathleen Kane Scandal, still focusing on the deep stew of corrupt officials in PA, and I have to admit it is hard to take in. It must have been hard to catalog the ways people hired to represent the people can go so astray and not lose one's sense of purpose. But there you have it.
Anyway, this is the kind of thing that makes one shiver at night and hug one's children close.
Fiona Hill has written such a brilliant book for us, telling the story of her upbringing and the crazy loops on her way to the White House.She is a RuFiona Hill has written such a brilliant book for us, telling the story of her upbringing and the crazy loops on her way to the White House.She is a Russia specialist, and she has written such a book on Putin that he was flattered at her description of him as efficient and controlled.
In the end, she worked in the White House for three Presidents, so far, but she was the one who kept up riveted to our seats as she described the chaos in the Trump White House during the first Trump impeachment. It would curl your toes, to hear her describe the vanity and impulsiveness of DJT.
Anyway, this is one of the best books I've read in several years, being both truthful and interesting....more
I finished this at least a year ago. The book was thoroughly spiked with markers pointing to remarkable notes of historical fact or insights that onlyI finished this at least a year ago. The book was thoroughly spiked with markers pointing to remarkable notes of historical fact or insights that only this woman at this time could make. I hadn't known very much about the institution called League of Women Voters before picking this up but since that time, I have learned much more.
We can see so clearly how imperfect we are and get some notion of what we need to do to make this group work for everyone. For change to be effective, we would have to stay working with an imperfect organization to make it better. You know how sometimes your instinct is to just leave...that you cannot change it all by yourself...and then you see someone who is leading by example?
This book is like that. Real leadership. Real work. Real....more
David Daley wants us to feel good about ordinary citizen attempts to push back on states and national political parties for constraining our voting riDavid Daley wants us to feel good about ordinary citizen attempts to push back on states and national political parties for constraining our voting rights, documented in so many states across our Union.
But in doing so he also shows us how the fight in many states has become more and more bitterly partisan, particularly when savvy grassroots organizing leads to galvanizing wins…and then to resurgent attempts by a weakened party apparatus to find legal grounds to reject the changes sought, reneging on promises made.
A win in this climate is not really a win. It is a way station on a mountain path, a peak not yet crested. Perhaps that is the lesson of this endeavor: we never arrive but must fight for our democracy every. single. day.
Daley has an entertaining style that distracts little from technical, tactical battles being fought in each state. New Voter ID requirements, hurdles to ballot initiatives, restrictions on voter registration or absentee balloting, egregious gerrymandering: these are the things voters around America are worked up about, and fighting against.
Each state has different objective conditions, but in each it appears that the popular resistance is fighting a statewide battle while legislators seeking to preserve their position are receiving instructions and money from their national party. The fight is unequal in funding and reach but also unequal in ingenuity and persistence. It is heartening to see that better funding is not always the sign of a winning hand.
The gerrymandering battle fought in deep-Red Utah resulted in a win for the ballot initiative in 2018 but in 2020 the legislature forced Better Boundaries, Utah’s anti-gerrymandering group, to accept a compromise solution that allows incumbent information to be used when creating maps, and instituting the requirement that legislators do not have to accept proposed maps. This shows the weakness of ballot initiatives. They are easier to pass…and easier to repeal.
In Michigan the redistricting reform petition led by a youthful reformer profiled in the recently released documentary Slay the Dragon got onto the ballot in 2018 and passed with some 61% of the vote. Since then however, the Republican-dominated legislature first tried to defund the commission and then filed in federal court declaring the commission unconstitutional. A call went out early 2020, nonetheless, to all eligible voters in Michigan to apply to become a part of the new redistricting commission. As of this writing in April 2020, over 6,000 citizens have responded to the call to establish a 13-member commission. Applications close in July.
Daley shows us that “when voters are given a choice, fairness wins…more than a three-quarters of the congressional seats that changed hands in 2018 were drawn by either commissions or courts. Fairer districts led not only to more competitive races, but also to election results that were responsive to a shift in public opinion.”
Missouri voters initiated a constitutional amendment mandating fair maps and the state legislature immediately proposed an amendment to disarm the citizens’ initiative. New commission requirements adopted in Ohio continue to give a role to legislators, and to require a role for judiciary if commissioners cannot agree.
At the risk of sounding despairing, I will note that I am a member of the rebellion…in Pennsylvania…to end partisan gerrymandering. We were in the last four months of an accelerating squeeze on the state legislature to pass legislation that will allow us to create an independent redistricting commission based on the California model: eleven commissioners randomly-selected from a vetted pool of regular PA citizenry. The corona virus stopped us cold.
Daley mentions Pennsylvania among his descriptions of states fighting back against legislative overreach, describing the astounding win handed to anti-gerrymandering forces by the State Supreme Court in 2018 who ruled that the 2010 congressional maps and the remedial fix were badly skewed to protect ruling party interests in the state. A special master from out-of-state drew new maps used in the 2018 election for congressional districts, leveling the playing field a little. The fix was temporary and left legislators free to do it all again in 2021.
The fight for fairer state legislative district maps continues in Pennsylvania and that is where we left it in early March when corona came calling. At least now we have time to look around at the changes elsewhere and see where we stand. Zachary Roth of the Brennan Center thinks states are winning the fight against gerrymandering, and I want it to be true. It is a never-ending battle, and we need all those who value liberty to stand with us and demand protection for our rights.
The end of Daley’s book leaves all of us reformers across the country in the same unsettled place. Daley interviews conservative, former Republican writers and pundits and comes to the conclusion that the party is so changed and susceptible to authoritarianism that it may not survive its own evolution. Our democracy probably won’t survive their evolution, either....more
Tim Alberta is a strange creature, a political nerd seemingly without a party. Reading him, he at times appears to have sympathies for old-time conserTim Alberta is a strange creature, a political nerd seemingly without a party. Reading him, he at times appears to have sympathies for old-time conservatives, libertarian outrage, and the broader liberal message. He is chief political correspondent for Politico but covered the 2016 election for the National Review and National Journal. He has reported for the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal as well. He came to Washington, D.C. at the end of the 2nd Bush administration, and had a front row seat at the self-described “Republican civil war.”
The most stressful part of the book revisits the horror show of the past four years—those stomach-churning moments when you wonder how any of us will survive this headless, brainless dog-and-pony show. At points in the book we hear John Boehner say “There is no Republican Party” and Alberta himself conclude, “The party itself was contracting.”
Alberta quotes several people important at one time or another to the party, giving a lot of space to the man I once held responsible for the damage of the past twenty years: Paul Ryan. I don’t know the man, I just know the aura that surrounded him…’youngest’ ‘brightest’ ‘budget wonk’ slavishly flipping through a dogeared copy of von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. It is enough to make you detest the folks so eager to pass on all effort (and blame) by declaring the hungriest should figure it all out while they watch. The Fall of Rome comes to mind.
One thing I appreciate is Ryan’s definition of a ‘paleocon’: isolationist, protectionist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant: “kind of what you have now.”
The end of the book has Karl Rove saying the party is forever, unchangeable by Trump. Kellyanne Conway insists the GOP is now a Trumpian party, which is absurd on its face since no one except Trump can pull off that particular sleight of hand—thank god—so it will die with him. Younger members of the diaspora of the destroyed center predict a third party. Of course there will be a third party, but just how and when it will manifest will be the struggle of the future. What I wonder is how many consequential parties there will be.
What struck me about the story of this internecine GOP battle is how the regular GOP was not supportive of the argumentative and politically insane Tea Partiers that preceded Trump, and they actually hated Trump. One had to suspect it—I mean the guy is a destructive loser—but given Republicans general intransigence and lack of coherence over the years, it was difficult for an outsider to discern.
Their unwillingness to deep six Trump’s candidacy—something they could have done with an iota of moral fortitude, makes me unwilling to give them much brain space. They deserve to participate in the funeral for their party in their own way. I am surprised at my disgust at how deep the rot goes. I suspected both parties were bankrupt, but it has been confirmed by those I blamed for the problem: Paul Ryan again.
Alberta tell us a principal reason that Ryan quit is the he found it impossible to set a good example:
”The incentive structures are too warped, the allure of money and fame and self-preservation too powerful, for individuals to change the system from within.”
We also get disturbing glimpses of the Democratic party, another example of the rot in the system. Eric Holder told a group of Georgia crowd that Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high,” wasn’t right. “No,” Holder said. “When they go low, we kick them.” Cripes.
The Republicans were clever with the Red Map strategy in 2010. Too clever by half, perhaps, but they did figure out a way to win a huge proportion of seats legally, if unfairly. You mean to tell me we can’t do better than the team that is so full of their own crap they couldn’t win a race fairly if they tried? It’s not money, folks. Money makes you comfortable, so in a way, that makes it is a little harder. Get ready to be uncomfortable.
Justin Amash, the Michigan congressman elected in 2010 who defected from the Republican party is quoted in 2018 as saying
"The Tea Party is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. There just aren’t that many Republicans now who are that concerned about spending, about debt, about big government."
If only that were true. They’re dead, they just don’t know it. The Undead.
So in the end I feel worse about both parties and our political future. I know it will all change and there will be the dysfunction of trying to operate a new party with the corruption of the old ones. One just has to be able to stand back and assess from a position of strength, and for that we need to be smarter. When they defund your schools, throw them out. Don’t be ignorant. You’re gonna need every edge you can get....more
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