Undercutting the New Deal

     Building upon the ideals of fellow-Republican Abraham Lincoln two score years before, President Theodore Roosevelt believed that the Constitution of the Union was the same Constitution of individual liberties facing a new threat.  In the early years of the 20th century, the threat to personal liberties was not secession but the domination of Big Business in the form of large corporations and industry trusts.  In 1901, TR informed Congress that "great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions."  He asserted that the Federal government is a public institution (in the words of Lincoln, "of the people, by the people,  for the people") and therefore had the responsibility to protect everybody by regulating business practices, ending corporate abuses of consumers, and preventing business trusts and monopolies that restrained free trade and fixed higher prices.
     Three decades later, TR's concept of the Federal government as the public institution of the people to protect themselves was furthered by another Roosevelt, this time a Democrat.  Franklin D. Roosevelt reflected a widely held view that the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression were caused by the greedy Wall Street crowd, abusive banks, and short-sighted manufacturers.  FDR argued that it was the role of the Federal government to manage an "economic constitutional order" that protected individuals from unethical and greedy business interests and maintained a balance between legitimate business interests and the right of each American to make a comfortable living.  The power of the Federal government extended beyond just commercial regulation at the national level to include the redistribution of wealth concentration through taxes and public programs that put money directly into the pockets of individual consumers, even the chronically unemployed and poor.
     Ever since FDR defeated  President Herbert Hoover in 1932, conservative Republicans have condemned the concepts of both President Roosevelts.  They have sought to curtail if not terminate government regulations of businesses and the lingering "big spending"programs of the New Deal, such as Social Security, food stamps, and other aid programs in the spirit of the New Deal, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.
     To advance their cause, conservatives have waged a vigorous and persistent ideological war to undercut the conceptual foundation of the New Deal.  They have reverted to the arguments of the anti-Federalists of the 1780s.  They have asserted with increasing anger that Big Government is not the friend or protector of the people but rather its enemy.  The Federal government endangers free enterprise, the freedom to work hard, make money, and enjoy the full benefits of property, so they claim.  Their point of view gained much support following  the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which was blamed on Big Government rather than Big Business.  A popular belief was spread by radio talk shows, 24/7 cable TV news,  and tabloids that Washington curtailed economic growth by over-regulation, excessive environmental controls, high taxes, and bad foreign trade agreements.  It was also accepted that  "give-away" programs to undeserving people discouraged individual initiative, hard work, and full employment.
     The U.S. Supreme Court in numerous cases has upheld the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce and impose taxes.  The core questions are matters of policy:  Congress should regulate what businesses, how, where, and when?  And such questions turn on complex interactions among partisan politics, personalities, and vested interests as well as ideals.  An even more fundamental question centers on who benefits most from the existence or absence of Federal government regulations?

(C) 2019 Stephen M. Millett (all rights reserved)          

D. C. Stephenson: An American Tyrant

Americans typically think of tyrants in the context of ancient Greece and Rome, royal France, or 20th century Latin America, but tyrants could never occur in the U.S.  Yet, we have seen our own kind of tyrants in the sense of political machine bosses and corrupt city and state autocrats.  They have acted like tyrants by insisting upon unconditional personal loyalty and obedience.  They are highly egotistical, mean spirited, and even cruel.  They manipulate patronage for family and friends and exploit public projects for personal gain.  They insist that all public affairs rotate around them as indispensable personalities.   They would put Louis XIV to shame as absolute rulers by divine right.  Paradoxically, American tyrants are most likely to emerge at the city, county, and state levels even though we believe that the best governments are local and closest to the people.  We have yet to see a tyrant at the national level.
    Examples of American tyrants include Boss William Tweed of Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring in New York City and state in the 1860s, Tom Pendergast of Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from 1925 to 1939, and  "The Kingfish" Huey Long, the governor of and U.S. Senator from Louisiana, 1928-1935.
     Another, equally evil but not so famous American tyrant was D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana during the 1920s.  By 1923, Stephenson, known as "Steve" or "the Old Man" at the age of 31, was recruiting an average of 2,000 new members at $10 each per week.  It is estimated that the Indiana Klan may have had as many as 262,000 hooded members, or one-third of all native-born white Hoosier men.  Stephenson packaged the Klan as a secret  fraternal society.  A master salesman, Stephenson peddled 100% Americanism, law and order, honest government, Protestant beliefs, traditional family values (with men as heads of households), and Prohibition.  He denounced corruption, Catholics, the Pope, and immigrants, especially low-life Irish.  Stephenson made a fortune off of the Klan and converted large amounts of cash into political power.The Grand Dragon captured the Republican Party in Indiana and set his eyes on the national party.  In the elections of 1924 Stephenson-backed candidates won the state's governor's office as well as a majority of the state legislature.  Plenty of county officials, too.  By 1925, Stephenson boasted, "I am the law in Indiana."
     Then the Grand Dragon fell even more dramatically than he rose.  In the spring of 1925 he was implicated in the death of a young woman who was a state employee.  He was arrested, indicted, and tried for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer.  The defense argued that she died of self-administered poison.  The prosecution, however, showed that she died from a staph infection caused by human bites to her body.  Stephenson professed his innocence and exuded confidence that no jury in Indiana would ever find him guilty, but it did.  He was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.  He further asserted that he would get a pardon from his lackey, the governor.  He didn't.  In revenge  Stephenson exposed Klan-inspired corruption by state officials.  The Indianapolis Times subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Stephenson, the governor retired from politics, but the Grand Dragon remained in prison.  Meanwhile, the Indiana Klan collapsed as respectable men despite their agreement with Klan tenets rejected an organization associated with such a monster as D. C. Stephenson.

I have published a fictionalized history of the Indiana Klan in my recent novel, The Listener, which is available both as an e-book and paper copy at Amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/Listener-Novel-Stephen-M-Millett/dp/1731227310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546985622&sr=8-1&keywords=the+listener+stephen+millett


(c) 2019 by Stephen M. Millett  (All rights reserved)    

Non-Creative Destruction of the Free Market Economy

In 1942, the eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter coined one of the most profound terms in modern economic theory:  "creative destruction."  In his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, he argued that free market capitalism is always a messy work-in-progress.  It is an economic system that is inherently unstable due to the dynamics of entrepreneurship, competition, technological discoveries, innovations, and productivity improvements.  These systemic characteristics destroy existing products and markets while providing greater value to consumers.  Because he approved of thses characteristics as modes of positive economic behavior, he said that in the long run such destruction of old businesses was creative of new and better products.  It was actually creative, even though some interests and individuals were damaged, while on the whole many people benefitted.  He saw economic growth as spurts of creative destruction along with entrepreneurship and innovation.
     Unfortunately, history tells us of many negative modes of economic behavior.  The free market system is unstable for many bad reasons, too.  Businessmen can destroy their own enterprises along with the whole free market economic system  with absolutely no creativity.  Schumpeter ignored the dark side of American capitalism: the abuses and stupidity of too many bad business practices, personal greed, and the creation of monopolies to eliminate competition and fix higher prices.  In the American economic system there is extraordinary pressure on enterprises to show attractive short-term profits -- to make money, as much and as soon as possible.   Americans prize immediate successes.  The fixation on short-term goals often leads to short-sighted decisions and corporate policies, and investments.  Managers get bonuses for quarterly profits even at the expense of long-term business growth.  There also have been corrupt businessmen who have deceived customers and investors through false claims and down-right lies.  They often cover up their greed and selfishness with false reports and falsified tax returns.  In he pocess they can destroy customer and investor confidence with ripples through the entire economic system.  Consumers will stop spending and investors will sell off stocks when they lose trust in business.

In a national democracy with a nation-wide economy where individuals are workers, consumers, investors,  voters, and taxpayers all at the same time, does the government have the responsibility to protect the people by regulating business practices and policing non-creative destruction of the free market econmy as though they were victimized by common criminals or attacked  by hostile foreign invaders?  Too many conservatives and business people would say "no way" and "over my dead body."  Along with plenty of innocent dead bodies as well.  If left entirely on its own, the greed, selfishness, and stupidity of a few players would make the free market system so unstable that it might destroy itself.





Copyright 2018 Stephen  M. Millett  (all rights reserved)      

The Curse of Sarah Palin

     A milestone of contemporary American politics was hit on September 24 and 25, 2008, when CBS aired Katie Couric's interviews with Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP candidate for Vice President.  At the time, many people were appalled by the Alaskan governor's superficial knowledge of American domestic and foreign issues.  They should not have been.  The curse of Sarah Palin was that it was not what you knew or how much experience you had but rather what you believed in that counted most.  She expressed a feeling of frustration and indignation that reflected the mood of many Americans who would later support Donald Trump.  And still do.
     The idea that candidates for public office should be well informed is now seen as elitist.  It reflects the values of well-educated Americans who dominate the professions, high skilled occupations, and most middle management in manufacturing and services.  They are the American urban upper middle class.  They place the accent on proven competency for any position of responsibility, regardless of race, gender, ethnic origins, religion,or personal orientation.  They respect preparation, analysis, and rational problem-solving.  These same people get denounced as liberals, do-gooders, and snobs.  By 2018 they might even be accused of constituting the Resistance.    
      Gov. Palin called Barack Obama a socialist.  Name calling was certainly not new.  What was new was the deliberate use of disinformation and blatant lies to attack political opponents.  For example, Palin popularized the wrong idea that Obamacare would create medical review panels that might deny coverage to the chronically ill and dying.  She called them the death panels, and her followers believed her.
     Her beliefs morphed into the Tea Party movement that merged with the alt right to support Donald Trump.  In 2016 they captured the Republican Party.  Today, President Trump consistently exploits disinformation to shore up his base of supporters, which might be as large as one-third of the American active electorate.  This base includes white men of the Baby Boomer Generation who are still fighting the battles of the 1960s, unrelenting Republican partisans, anti-regulation vested interests, the very rich who hate income taxes, people with lesser education and skills who have lost once well-paying jobs due to  technological changes and industry restructuring, deeply religious people who adhere to a rigid reading of the Bible, and rural populations in decline who have nowhere else to go.  They are anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-Muslim, anti-free trade, anti-immigration, and pro-military.  They worry about the Iranians, ISIS, and the North Koreans, but not the Russians.  They blame their own troubles on the snobbish urban elite that looks down on them, assertive minorities, Hispanic immigrants, and social deviants.  They greatly fear violence in the forms of crime, riots, and acts of terrorism (but not so much school shootings).  They see conspiracies everywhere and dread social upheaval.  And yet, if the U. S. were to have a violent revolution or a new kind of civil war, wound it not come from the Trump supporters after the eventual political fall of their hero?  After all, they are the people who are armed to the teeth and warn "Don't Tread on Me"

(C) 2018 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)            

The Great American Fearleader

President Donald Trump has emerged as the Great American Fearleader.  He exploited American fears in 2016 to win votes and he continues to manipulate them for his growing political power and his own personal glorification.  He consistently makes inflammatory statements and does things that further flame the fears that in turn solidify his political base.  He then presents fake solutions to those fears that make him look like a great American savior.  Whatever he does, he will claim that he has indeed made America great again.

Let's look at just three example.

In 2017, Trump denounced the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as the "Rocket Man" who threatened the U.S. with nuclear missiles.  He flamed global fears of North Korea setting off a nuclear holocaust with massive American retaliation that might draw in China and Russia, too.  Then Trump met with Kim in June 2018 in a highly staged diplomatic adaptation of reality TV and announced that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat to the U.S.  He incorrectly claimed that Kim had in good faith assured him of North Korean denuclearization, but subsequent negotiations have shown that the North Koreans have no intension of abandoning their form of nuclear deterrence.  Will the North Koreans eventually come to verifiable nuclear disarmament?  We shall see.

Trump has said that unfair trade agreements have allowed foreign countries to exploit American consumers and workers.  He claimed that trade with China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico was to blame for offshore manufacturing and the loss of millions of American jobs.  To restore fair trade, if not tree trade, Trump has imposed tariffs on goods from these countries, which in turn have imposed tariffs on American goods that are likely to hurt further millions of American farmers, workers, and consumers.  We have now a trade war.  No doubt Trump will come up with some kind of solution that appears like a great American victory.  We shall see.

In 2016 he condemned the flow of Mexicans into the U.S.:  "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."  He characterized illegal immigrants and furthermore all Hispanic immigrants as poor people and criminals who would victimize Americans because the U.S. had become the "dumping ground" for all the world's problems.  He further warned of Muslim immigration that would allow terrorists into the U.S. to kill Americans.  So Trump instituted by executive orders a ban on immigrants from selected countries.  In 2018 he encouraged the give-no-quarter crack down on illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande River by separating children from parents.  Now he promises to reunite immigrant families and still maintain border security.  He asserts that nothing less than a wall will secure Americans from the exploitation of foreign people.  We shall see.  But how long will it take?    

(c) 2018  Stephen M. Millett.  All rights reserved.  

The Garrison State Today

     On February 24, 2017, Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association told the Conservative Political Action Conference that "Right now, we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us....Among them and behind them are some of the most radical political elements there are.  Anarchists, Marxists, Communists and the whole rest of the left-wing socialist brigade."
     This is an example today of the concept of  the garrison state identified by Prof. Harold Lasswell in 1941.  Lasswell was describing the totalitarian regimes of both the fascist right (Hitler and Mussolini) and the Communist left (Stalin).  His concept became further developed as the siege mentality, whereby a whole society can believe and act as though they were captives within a besieged city (or country).
     We continue to see many examples of governments in which the leaders persistently cry out against foreign threats and internal subversion.  They not only exaggerate the threats, they exacerbate them in order to foist a sense of great danger that will convince people that they need to support the government's policies.  These include higher military spending, the law and order crackdown of dissidents, the promotion of traditional social and religious values, and the suppression of free speech and press.  In the end, the goal is not so much to protect the country as it is to promote the interests of certain internal groups and to maintain the individuals and the party in power.
     President Donald J. Trump, with the solid support of his base, including the National Rifle Association, is the current leader of an emerging garrison state in the U.S.  He is encouraging the siege mentality of Americans by emphasizing the dire threats of radical Islamic extremists and terrorists, ISIS, the nuclear threat of North Korea, the nuclear threat of Iran, proposed restrictions to the Second Amendment, and the dangers of illegal immigrants, especially Hispanics, to the safety and security of Americans everywhere.  He discourages the freedom of speech and the press by denouncing stories that challenge him as "fake news" to be disbelieved and rejected.
     Trump is not concerned with unifying the American people.  On the contrary, he feeds contentious divisions and social unrest with fear and anger to increase the siege mentality.  He himself and his White House staff display symptoms of deep paranoia.
     By scaring people, Trump is promoting an agenda that is highly favorable to certain interests and individuals in the U.S.  He does this through increasing budgets for Defense and Homeland Security, restricting immigration, constructing a wall along our border with Mexico, permitting the private exploitation of public lands in the West, rejecting global climate change in favor of fossil fuels (especially oil and coal), and passing tax "reforms" that provide tremendous concessions to large corporations, corporate executives, stock investors, investment portfolio managers, and other very high income and wealthy people. 
     Those people of the Trump base without so much material but with high emotional interests  indicate that they are OK with the crumbs from the table according to supply-side, trickle-down economic theories.  They continue to trust Trump and long for making America great again, which they see as crushing all of Trump's and their own enemies, foreign and domestic, real and imagined.
     It is obvious that high income individuals and the interest groups of the Trump base will gain much in material advantages from the siege mentality.  But how will the base of true believers also benefit?

(c) 2017 Stephen M. Millett (all rights reserved)  

Politics Are Personal

     In my book American Ways, I identified the four corners of American politics:  money, issues, organizations, and personalities (pp. 168-171).  These four corners have provided the foundation of American politics since colonial times, but at different times some of these corners have appeared more prominently than others. 
     Money has always been important to pay for electoral campaigns.  It has also played a major role in competing interests trying to win advantage through contributions and favors in the public arena; in return for their support, they see the kinds of regulations and taxes that they desire.  They may also get repaid through government patronage and contracts.  The border between money as a form of freedom of speech and money as corruption has always been hazy.
     Issues have included both concrete matters, such as the gold standard in 1896 and the continuation of the New Deal in 1936, and abstract ideals, such as states' rights, personal liberties, and limited government.  They include political, social, and economic ideals and ideology. 
     Organizations relate primarily to political institutions and parties.  They provide the structure for the processes of American representative democracy.  Congress, for example, passes laws according to very specific rules of order.  Parties give cohesion and continuity between elections and the organization with which to get voters registered and delivered to the polls on election days.  For some political leaders, party loyalty may be more compelling than issues and maybe even money.
     During the 1980s, Speaker of the House "Tip" O'Neill claimed that all politics are local.  My corollary is that all politics are personal.  The personalities of candidates go a long way in attracting financial supporters and voters.  Successful political leaders often exude exceptional personal charm.  They can be poignant, charismatic, and entertaining.  They can arouse public emotions, either inspirational optimism or angry indignation.  Once in office, in complex negotiations over public policy the ability of leaders to trust each other and engage in productive inter-personal dealings count for a great deal.
     It presently appears that personalities are extremely important to President Donald Trump.  He was a well-known TV personality with high ratings before 2016 and he continues to crave public adulation in the White House.  He is very wealthy and not much concerned with money (besides his own).  He is not doctrinaire, contrary to much of his rhetoric; he is more interested in practical results than ideological purity.  In this regard, Trump is at odds with the rigidly opinioned Freedom Caucus in the House.  It has been reported that Trump does not care for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who highly values the integrity of the U.S. Senate and the long-term unity of the Republican Party.  Trump likes to make deals in public policy like he made real estate deals.  Therefore, he likes people he can relate to, joke with, respect, and ultimately trust.  Such a person may prove to be a Democrat:  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.  Looking forward, the compromises finally reached on Obamacare, immigration, budgets, and taxes may be reached through the social dynamics of the streets of New York.

(c) 2016 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)