Let Us Embrace National Decline

The failure of democracy and speedy national decline of the American republic is a useful and perhaps necessary counter to the astonishing hubris and self congratulatory nature of our various elites.  It could not have happened without the arrogance and stupidity of so many people here from the rather blatant self-interest and treason of the Republicans to the weakness of the Democrats and their unwillingness to stand on principle to the obvious corruption of the judiciary (looking at you Justice Cannon, Alito & Roberts).

On the bright side, we should applaud the tremendous and world historical rate of decline of a formerly great country now destroyed.  Lets embrace our failure and look forward to the day when we can benefit from the tourists coming to witness the ruins.  Americans will rise to this challenge and be sure to greet these onlookers with souvenirs made in China.

All the Ways the Democrats Failed

One benefit of the Trump victory is that it may finally put an end to the Democratic party.  I have been tired of these people for a long time now.  Here are just a few data points.

- It was Bill Clinton who started off the whole globalization thing with NAFTA

- The Democrats did nothing to prevent the right-to-work bullshit.

- When McConnell stole the supreme court slot of Merrick Garland, the Democrats did nothing.

- It was Obama who bailed out the financial system in a way that rewarded the rich and left the poor hanging.

- When Hilary ran, it was clear that she was only interested in helping her rich friends on Wall Street.  

- The only reason I voted for her was because Bernie Sanders, the independent I supported, asked all his supporters to vote for her.

- When subsidies and tax breaks destroyed the domestic visual effects industry, the Democrats did nothing. 

- In the first two years of the Biden Administration, we could have ended the filibuster and added term limits to the supreme court but the democrats could not be bothered.

- When the supreme court installed Bush Jr as president, Al Gore and the Democrats did not complain or in any way fight.  They just rolled over.

- When the Republicans were stuffing the supreme court with obviously unqualified candidates, the Democrats did nothing.

- Most of all, Merrick Garland refused to act to prosecute Donald Trump for his crimes.  

- There are many other issues, including climate change and health care.

The Democrats have proven time and time again they dont have the desire to fight for us.  They should have shut the government down rather than just kicked the can down the road.

Images courtesy of Midjourney

Anarchy, Oligarchy and Tyranny c/o The Financial Times

The Financial Times has a good article on the failure of the American Republic using analogies to the Greek political science terms of anarchy vs oligarchy vs tyranny.  You can read the entire article here (although it may be behind a paywall).

https://www.ft.com/content/a7eea0af-bf9f-4635-812b-271c30620e72

Here are two paragraphs that I thought were entertaining:

The anarchy can seem fun, at least for a while. With some luck, chaos can bring political fruit. At a convention, where one spectacle soon displaces the next, these different guises of democratic collapse can give one another cover. The strongman act of Trump and Vance distracts from their blatant dependence on the wealthy. Their threat to deport migrants shrouds the reality that none of the relevant oligarchs was born in the US, that Trump married two migrants and that Vance married the daughter of migrants.

In practice, though, the Republicans’ anti-republic is contradictory. The different variants of repression can be equally celebrated so long as they are all directed against an imagined enemy. But the plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants (anarchy) would get in the way of deporting millions of people (tyranny). As the billionaires claim power ever more openly (oligarchy), they put pressure on the aspiring authoritarians who are supposed to be the strongmen (tyranny). The people who want a strongman don’t want him to be a puppet. Signs of strain were certainly evident at the convention. 

Image courtesy of MidJourney

Maybe I Understand What is Going on With Boingo and their "hate site" Designation

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In the process of sending my little letter to Boingo to try and unblock this blog, I may have (almost accidentally) come across what they are thinking here.  In the process of contacting customer service, the phone system asked if I was calling about service at a government facility.  Perhaps it is their policy not to provide access to websites that discuss politics, particularly websites that are very negative about the political situation, which I certainly am.  I would not say that is a hate site, however.  So we will see.  Maybe they can just call me a "political site" and perhaps convince me that they do this to everyone who is political, and then it might be understandable and maybe even reasonable.  However, if they do this to me and not to, for example, the Wall Street Journal, that would not be reasonable.

Or maybe what is going on is that they can't handle the truth and dont want to be accused of allowing free speech to happen if it does not reinforce the illusion that we live in a functional democracy with a justice system and equal opportunity for everyone.  Maybe their clients require them to censor reality.  Its perfectly possible and completely understandable.  Maybe the "hate" is all on their side, they hate certain blogs because they say things that they dont want to hear.

Murder and Bipartisanship

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Not going to do a great job here so work with me. Global climate change will make life miserable for possibly billions of people, it has already affected hundreds of millions. But the cause of this disaster, our political elites and the elites that control them, is decades in the making, and those who are most guilty will live their lives in nearly perfect security, although their children will hate them for their greed because they will know the real story even if they dont admit it. But in this country we are watching a hideous little corrupt nightmare in real time in which the followers of the Republican cult are the victims of the latest coronavirus variant, sweeping through the unvaccinated like a sword of gods vengeance wielded by an angel of justice, who beg for the vaccine as they are intubated at the hospital, cursing the republican murder swine who lied to them and begging for their lives. And you can be sure that the failed and corrupt justice system of this country will not do a damn thing about it, this deliberate murder of thousands if not 10s of thousands if not more of the stupid followers of this so called political party. Probably only those who die or their relatives will see in its true horror what was done to them, but those of us who are not members of the cult have to watch this horror and know for certain that the murder of our fellow citizens will not be avenged. And then there will be a call for "bipartisanship" that we should compromise with these murderers who only want to destroy this country. Who, therefore should we negotiate with? Can we not at least demand that they elect new leaders as the old ones, the Ted Cruz's and McCarthys and so forth, have hands dripping with blood. Shall we negotiate with them? About what, exactly?

A little melodramatic, true, but you get the point. And what is beautiful is that while Trump killed a half million Americans, they were from all political beliefs. But now his representatives in federal and state legislatures and the pundits from hell spout deadly venom and kill their own followers.

What philosophy should I use to explain this? Platonic? Liberalism? Laissez Faire capitalism?

Bipartisanship is So Dead Its Body Isnt Even Rotting

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[... a copy of an email sent to a friend of mine, a strong supporter of bipartisanship ...]

I wrote a many page email to try and create a narrative to explain my point of view. But it was long winded and tiresome. Here is the short more direct version. One party no longer subscribes to tit for tat as you put it. Their constituents have successfully created a party whose strategy is "I get everything; you get nothing". Nothing but total victory is acceptable to them, when you lose you scream bloody murder, when you win its because you were right. Negotiating with the enemy is just a way to run out the clock and fuck them so that they get nothing and you get everything. The hope is that you can sucker the stupid morons, the Democrats, into doing it over and over again. Charlie Brown and the Football. As part of this, the laws are bullshit for other people. When you do something its the right thing to do. If they do anything to oppose you its because they are left wing radicals who want to destroy america. So, it is the right thing to do to destroy the judiciary. It is the right thing to do to strangle black people on the street. It is the right thing to do. Statistically speaking, at the national level at least, this is the policy of the Republican party and there are no other Republicans. They are all Devon Nunes. Every once in a while you get a shill like Collins who pretends to want to do the right thing, but she never does, its just a tactic to make the stupid Democrats waste time before they get fucked again. Ha ha ha! We fucked you! The constitution exists as a way to fuck freedom and steal elections. Everyone knows that. As Matt Gaentz (sp?) says, this is how the game is played, stop complaining. When the other party is in power you fuck the country as hard as possible so that people will get mad at them and reelect you to continue your looting.

Therefore as far as I am concerned, we stop complaining and we start fighting. Term limits, End the filibuster. Pack the court. If we own the senate, then goddamn it, own the senate. Remove citizens united. Restore the fairness doctrine. Put the motherfuckers in jail where they can learn moral improvement and become better people. Game theory has proven time and again that you cant compromise with people of bad faith. There is no point in discussing racial equality with Nazis. There is no point in discussing it with Republicans, either. The good old days of the bipartisan approach to the US Government is so dead the body isnt even rotting anymore. Now its just a matter of whether we live in a right-wing authoritarian and racist society or we dont. Some of us are tired of being treated like garbage, we intend to fight back. Lets see if the constitution actually has any value or if it is the joke people think it is like the high-sounding constitutions of your other, shithole countries. Enforce the law on the criminals of the previous administration. Use the power we earned to pass the legislation necessary. We have two years. Bernie Sanders, my favorite democratic socialist jew from brooklyn, has warned the Democratic party that it is time to deliver results. If not, people will be real mad and the Democrats can kiss winning an election goodbye.

I say this for your own good!

Signs in Santa Barbara December 21 2020

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Signs from my neighborhood in Santa Barbara Dec 21 2020.

... and in context ...

How we Finance Education and the American Dream

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Dear [REDACTED]

You were the kind person to explain the reality of what an educational loan is when I was confused and the information finally got through the layers of self-deception and for that matter, the layers of belief that I was programmed to have. And the core of that belief was: if you want to go to school, there will be a way to pay for it. This of course is not true. What I want to talk about here is what this policy, this system of educational finance, implies about our country and its fundamental mythology.

There is a school of public policy that believes that we can build better systems for our people by understanding how the world works, how we serve justice, how we decide to tax or not tax, how we elect representatives, how we decide to subsidize certain industries, how we feed our people and look to see empirically and theoretically what impact those policies have. It is implicit to this philosophy that ultimately we can distinguish between better or worse policies even though we may not be wise enough to predict the implications up front. The law of unintended consequences continues to screw up our best laid plans. Its complicated out there in the real world. When things go bad sometimes it is because people are being evil, but usually they are just wrong. Or the context changed. Or maybe people were not thinking it through. I have a favorite example and it involves the fairness of our elections. Every Southerner is familiar with various schemes to disenfranchise people of color and people who are poor. We have been doing it for a long time and we are good at it. One way we do this is to finance the election infrastructure by county, not by state. Well its not a surprise to learn that some counties are richer than others and that furthermore wealth is correlated with race. Furthermore, it turns out that some of the election systems are not as robust and have a higher percentage of either a misfire when a voter accidentally does not vote for their chosen candidate or when a ballot must be thrown out for technical reasons. And so it turns out that in a close election, this may be all you need to rig the game. That is the implication of the hanging chad, those chads did not hang at random. Those chads were associated with the cheaper and older voting systems in those predominantly black and poorer counties.

But my point is not about who won that election, or how that system came to be, my point is that we can not be blind to the implications of our system of financing election infrastructure, not after 2000. As a Southerner I was really annoyed. Fix the goddamn voting machines, I thought to myself. I am tired of hearing about it. Yes it will cost a little money, deal with it. How we chose to finance that part of our system of government turns out to have implications that are important. We may not be able to end racism or feed the hungry but at least in this case we can make our elections just a little more fair. We should do it.

How we pay for education in this country is a non trivial part of who has access to education and also to who has access to elite education. Because, in case you had not noticed, America is incredibly elitist. Its not that there arent a few exceptions who through merit or luck can transcend their origins, it can and does happen. But the odds are not great. I laugh when I hear that a justice is an "originalist" because I am from Virginia and in Virginia elections were always for the several hundred families, all intermarried, who were the equivalent of landed gentry, plus a few merchants and bankers and craftsmen if they were well liked. I am very fond of Virginia on a number of different levels and I am proud to be from there. The first rule of an elite who has power is to see to it that they maintain power for their class and set. Not everyone realizes that one reason the military is so important to a Southerner is because it is a recognized way to improve your lot in life, to pay for an education, to have a career if you were not born with one. In 21st century America things are different than they were in 18th century Chesapeake. Now you may need a Doctor of Philosophy just to have a good middle class life. And you may need to be a member of certain clubs to run for office even though there is nothing on paper that says you have to belong.

If the American dream is contingent on who can get an advanced degree, then how we pay for it is crucial. The only people who can get loans are people who dont need one is a fundamental philosophy of every loan officer. This is not a level playing field. I am disappointed, one more time, in the harsh reality of America so different from its promise.

Thank you again for your patience and your good will.

State of American Politics December 5, 2020

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I presume I dont have to tell you that the political situation is very bad, although I suppose it is somewhat better than before the election. The Democrats have to win the senate to avoid being destroyed by the Republicans, but they wont. Its possible, but its very unlikely. That means the Senate can block anything Biden tries to do that doesnt fit the executive order format and I dont think he has Trumps sheer willingness to fuck anything to get what he wants attitude. Since the American public is, to a large degree, pretty stupid, the Republicans will see to it that the economy sucks and frankly they have fucked things up so hard they dont have to do much. So, that means the midterms will be lost to the democrats and probably the presidential election as well. The post census redistricting in red states will be business as usual which means it is nearly impossible to regain the statehouses in those states and besides even if the democrats did it would not matter until the next census. McConnell will hold up any approvals for the judiciary, the supreme court will not be fixable, etc. Biden will absolutely pass on minimum justice for right wing criminals because he is one of those limp musnt annoy the nice Republican types. None of the problems will be fixed even if Democrats wanted to, which is not clear.

Other than AOC and a few people like Al Frankin I think the Democrats are in over their heads.

America's decline was always inevitable, Trump sped it up, maybe it will slow down a little bit because we wont have an obvious nut waving his little dick around.

When Biden fails to prosecute the rich and powerful for their crimes I will change my party affiliation from Democrat to Independent.

The only other good thing I can think of (other than Kamala Harris who is a character) is that we now know what we are dealing with in terms of racism and stupidity in the American people. That is not good news, but it is necessary to know these things, I think.

I am very disappointed!

Excellent Ranting Websites

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Many people think I spend too much time reading web sites that make me upset.  They are right of course.  Here is a list of such web sites for your benefit.

1. Pure rant

https://www.rawstory.com/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/

2. Often Ranting

https://slate.com/

https://www.salon.com/

3. Rarely Ranting

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/

https://www.vox.com/

This is a good list.  Please check them out!

How Do You Spell Stoodge?

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What fun it is to see the destruction of the American Republic in real time! A maniac injecting himself with fantasy drugs while Americans die right and left and the inspector generals are fired and Republicans with blood on their hands violate their oath of office in a way that would make a Roman senator turn away in shame. The tax returns are still not released, I guess the right wing supreme court is waiting as long as it can to protect their stoodge in the white house. I went to UCLA and we know all about running out the clock. Golly, they sure moved quickly enough when they blocked Al Gore's presidency and installed their boy! And of course I know, somehow I just know, that McConnell's right wing racist judges will enforce the law and not allow voter suppression, of course, of course. The oath! They will do their sworn duty like all true Republicans, like Rep Nunes and AG Barr if you know what I mean, wink wink. Hey too bad about Mueller, I guess he wasnt compromised enough and constrained by regulations for the True Americans in the White House. Let those Russians go, after all, we all know who guaranteed those loans at Deutsche Bank, now dont we? You DO know who guarnteed those loans this administration is being SO transparent about, right? They have old Trump-y, the quinine king, right where they want him. And lets not worry about arguing that "impeachment" is actually a process that will protect Americans! Never in the history of the American Republic, so-called, has there been a clearer case for removing a miscreant from the White House than the case that the Democrats prepared. It makes me wonder what this world is coming to. Surely, surely, surely someone must worry that all those decades about lying to the third world about how great our system is might affect our credibility. Oh yes, and now the Republicans are saying we must cut even the stupidly inadequate social services this country has because deficit! Oh yes, the deficit-y.

It amazes me that the Republicans would commit treason to keep power but they have. The system failed. It has failed every day of the last 3.5 years and a good case can be made that it failed in November 2000 and this is just the 800 lb chickens coming home to roost.

Implement the voting rights act. Put Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. Tell McConnell, Nunes, Barr, Kavanaugh, Trump and Pence to go home and stay there until we decide what to do with them and for them not to travel without notifying the FBI.

How Happy The Trump Supporters Must Be

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Every time a child is murdered and their body thrown into a dumpster by ICE.  Our own little Gestapo!  What America stands for! 

Constitutional Amendments and So Forth 1

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I understand that most of the following is not practical.  Yes, we get it, we understand, already!  But these are not normal times and besides, it is fun to list the issues if for no other reason to go back and see where we stood and where we stand.  For those who think that we are only unhappy with Republicans, I am happy to report that yes, that Satan on Two Legs, Obama, was guilty of some of the following, and the people call for change!  Change at once!

So in no particular order:

1. Fix the electoral college.  I see no reason to give the Republicans an apparent 3-5% advantage over the elected vote.  Now how to fix it is more complicated and lets leave that for another time.

2. Fix the judiciary.  The simplest way is to insist that those justices who were not confirmed by a supermajority (2/3rds or 3/4s) need to be reconfirmed or are automatically removed.  Also, all justices need to thoroughly vetted in contrast to the, for example, charade that took place with Kavanaugh.

3. Add more requirements to who can become president.  At the very least, require that any candidate have served in the federal government or the US Military as an officer for at least one term.

4. Term limits on justices.  15 years?  20 years at most?

5. Improve and make more explicit the terms of impeachment.

6. Add some sort of official reality check on statements.  Maybe an OMB or CRS but for basic truth telling.

7. Tighten the rules on record keeping.  Pruitt is the classic example of someone who did not keep records of meetings, did not even keep records of what meetings he kept, etc as a way of avoiding being held accountable.

8. Tighten the rules on foreign interference in our government and our elections.

9. Remove the DOJ restriction on indicting a sitting president.  W.T.F. did that come from?

10. Have some rules for what makes an election invalid and require a do over.  Certainly this election and the one with Bush in 2000 should have been redone. 

11. Tighten the rules about whether a president can fail to fill positions mandated by Congress.  As you probably know, Trump has worked hard to destroy some agencies.  So lets make this clear, positions are to be filled not ignored.  Agencies are not to be moved to Low Fuck, IN as a way of destroying them.

12. Change the statute of limitations so there is time to put Wall Street and political criminals in jail.  Why should there be a limitation at all for these assholes?

13. Change the rules so that a sitting Justice can be investigated, unlike the insane abomination that said Kavanaugh was exempt.

More to come.

Faiilure of our Elites Part I

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It seems to me fairly obvious that our self-appointed elites have failed us. The old money, the new money, the wall street criminals, the neoliberals, other foreign policy elites, they all failed. Middle of the Road Mainstream Democrats, all obvious failures or we would not have had the war in Iraq and Donald Trump, the betrayal of the Kurds, the crimes against humanity that happen every day with our Gestapo/ICE. All signs that the elites failed.

Certainly no one could interact with their elected representative(s) as I have, and think that they give a hoot about what their electorate thinks.  No one could look at the Republican voter registration attacks or the Electoral college and think they live in a democracy.  Did I mention gerrymandering?

So given that they have failed, what is the price of failure.  Well if we examine historical precedent, it is usually prison, exile and/or execution.  Sometimes all three.

Their assets will go a long way to paying for education, infrastructure and rehabilitation of those who were raped and helping to compensate the families of the murdered.

Things I May Have Learned From the Experience (second draft)

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A woman I only know on Facebook said how happy she was that I had given up on politics because now I could be funny again.  If only she knew what I was really like.  Maybe I should get a date before she finds out?  

But it is true that my attitude has changed about politics and I think I have learned some things.  Most of my friends wont agree with these but that is just too bad isnt it?  Maybe they learned something else?  This is what I learned.  

For those of you who are too fragile to handle my reality, go to the end, because I say a few positive things.   I mark such items with an (*).

1. Protests dont matter, at least peaceful protests dont.  Yes, it does build morale, and I suppose it is better than doing nothing, but not by much.  You are ignored, it makes no difference that I noticed.  Go ahead and protest all you want, I will certainly be with you.  But know up front, you are going to come home and discover that you were laughed at by those in power.

2. Calling your Congressperson (or sending email or ...) almost doesn't matter.  It might matter a little bit more than participating in a protest, but that is not saying much.  By all accounts, the helpful assistant will verify your residence, put you in a database, and your opinion is likely to be part of a weekly summary that goes to Congressperson or one of their top aides in aggregate form.  Ironically, my Republican congressman, Duncan Hunter of CA 50, was much more responsive than Salud Carbajal, my current congressman from CA 24 who is a Democrat.  I never hear back from the latter.  From Hunter's office I would actually get a phone call or two, and I was invited to a nice town meeting.  Ultimately it would not have changed his vote on anything, because Hunter is a hardcore Republican, but it certainly felt nice.

3. Your vote is almost useless.  If you are voting for a congressman, you have probably been gerrymandered out of existance.  If you are allowed to vote, it is perfectly likely that those on your side have not been permitted because of the Republican efforts to control voter registration. 

4. There is no point in discussing politics or even facts with a Republican.  They are just going to insult you and couldnt care less what you think.

5. The judiciary has been destroyed by Republicans.  Do not expect justice from there.

(*) 6. On the other hand, Actblue has made it very easy to give small donations to pretty much any progressive candidate and I hope you will do so.  I try to give $25.00 to any cause or person I believe in.  I always leave a tip for Actblue for their incredibly useful service.  I know it is having some impact because the Republicans hate it.

(*) 7. Direct action of some non-violent type is likely to make some impact, even if it only just gets attention.  Doing so requires serious work.

(*) 8. AOC proves that we can run candidates who can make a difference.  Find this person in your area and work for them!  It wont always work, but sometimes it will and it is one of the few things the elite pays attention to.

(*) 9.  Even though I dont believe that protests, calling your Congressman or voting actually makes much of a difference, I plan to keep doing so for its symbolic value.  I expect that I will be characterized as a "crank" for expressing my opinion.  Thats OK with me, I expect it.

What Would a Reasonable Criticism of Greta Thunburg Be Like

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Greta Thunburg spoke at the UN about global climate change and of course there has been a huge reaction from our right.   As we would expect from the right, all the arguments are ad hominem or worse.  So lets ask what a proper response would be if people were actually being constructive here.

In the following, I am not saying that she is wrong and these arguments prove it, I happen to think she is fundamentally correct and serving a useful purpose. 

They might say "We are already in the midst of doing everything humanly possible to ameliorate global climate change, but thank you for your reminder."  Of course that wouldnt work because no one in the world would believe it.

Or they might say "Creating a binding international agreement that affects so many parties and costs so much money today (however much it may save money in the future as well as lives, etc) is by definition incredibly complicated, takes a long time, and in the past has rarely worked".  That would be historically true but one could easily retort "yeah, but not only are you not trying, you are actively impeding progress".

Or they might say, "You are right and we have dropped the ball, but you cant just say "fix it", you have to build a consensus for a solution and that is nearly impossible in this case".  A good response to that is that "We dont care".

But none of this matters.  Greta has the moral high ground. And a Child Shall Lead them.

If By This Time They Dont Hate Trump

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If by this time, someone does not hate Trump and/or think that there has been important damage to the Republic and/or does not think that the Constitution has failed and requires significant changes, then I think it is very unlikely that you or I are going to change their mind.

Unless they have been living in a cave, cut off from the world, then they could only think that the situation was not serious because ...

(a) they only get their news from Fox News and that has got to be a conscious choice on their part, or

(b) they have important philosophical differences from us, and these differences are not going to go away because of anything we say, or any evidence that we show.  They have made up their minds, and that is that.

I mention this because I dont want you (or me) to waste our time arguing with such people.  

Furthermore, unlike the mainstream Democratic party, I dont think there is any point in pussyfooting around this issue.  You may as well take a stand on the issues and get to the heart of the matter.  Pretending to find a moderate center that does not exist is not going to win any elections.  Just ask Hillary.

The Horrible Situation

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Trump, Pence, Kavanaugh, Nunes, McConnell and others should resign and we should have a complete review of why the FBI betrayed their country.

I personally think that Trump will be reelected because the Republicans are corrupt and the Democrats are stupid and weak.

The Minimum Necessary in the Current Situation

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The time and emotional issues of getting ready to move by the end of the year, of getting any academic applications in before the end of the year, and other things, has meant that I can not spend as much time on this blog as I would like.

From time to time, however, short notes will be posted, if for no other reason than to remind me to go back and do a better, more reasoned, hopefully more humorous treatment of a topic.

Today's short note is my concise opinion for what has to be done to restore democracy and legitimacy to this country. It is the second issue, legitimacy, that is the most tricky and the most controversial. Every government that has ever existed has at one time or another done something that violates its laws, its ethics and the trust it has with the people. We understand that.

But what the politicians and some people do not understand is that you can not do that indefinitely without severe consequences. And the consequences are that the government loses legitimacy in the eyes of the people.  The people no longer believe you, their representatives, that you are representing them. They no longer trust the government to do the right thing. They believe that their government has been captured by the wealthy, that justice is for the rich, and that the system is corrupt.

The point is, you only have to address these problems if you want a country where people trust their government, pay their taxes, obey the laws and fight the wars.

Briefly, this is the minimum I think that has to happen after 30 years or more of betrayal and kicking the can down the road. Everything below is self explanatory.

1. We need to change the constitution to define when an election is invalid and what to do about it. In this case, we have an election that was thrown by a foreign power and resulted in a person who was not elected and who is the least qualified president in our history. We need a way to declare an election invalid and hold another one.

2. We probably need to eliminate the electoral college. Twice in my life time, for a minimum of three presidential terms of office (two under Bush and one under Trump) a person has been put into the office of the presidency who did not, in the opinion of the people, win that election.

3. We need a way to ensure that officials of an administration obey the letter and the spirit of the law. We currently have a head of the EPA that is doing everything possible to see to it that the environmental laws and protections in this country are either not obeyed or destroyed. We have an Attorney General and a department of Justice which is defunding enforcing the laws that protect people's civil rights.

4. We need to have a change in the constitution to make clear what the issues are involving conflict of interest, and what needs to be done before someone is allowed to take office. Full financial transparency and such issues as tax returns being public need to be made explicit.

5. We need a way that is less traumatic to remove people in the judiciary who have been appointed by an administration that is later shown to have been invalid. Between the invalid election of Trump and McConnell breaking the law, we have the right wing nutty boy, Gorsuch, on the court and bigots and right wing nuts being appointed to other posts in the judiciary. We need a way to remove these people.

6. We need to regulate our social media and hold them responsible for their role in allowing foreign intelligence agencies to disrupt and destroy our ability to hold public discourse. That means officers of a company need to go to jail when they have failed to protect us.

7. We need to make countries such as Russia and to a lesser extent the PRC know that their espionage and disruption of our civic discourse is a cause for war.

8. We need to end gerrymandering for political purposes.

9. We need to have national standards for how an election is held, and how the results can be verified.

This is the minimum that needs to be done, in my opinion. But only if you care about people believing that they live in a fair and just country. If you dont care, then we can continue on this path and our country will be, or already has been, destroyed.

No government is perfect, but in our case we have let things go too far.  Business as usual clearly has failed us.  I hope that our politicians and political elite understand this and do something about it, but I doubt they will.

Non Reply Reply from Representative Hunter (CA-50)

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After my fourth electronic message (and one voice mail) I got a response from my representative. It seems oddly to start out as if they actually read my messages (which I doubt). Could it be that they have an assistant do a topic sentence and then supply the boilerplate body of the letter? Or is it all boilerplate? Or am I being too cynical?

Here is the letter.

This letter really alerted me to how much I dislike this man's politics. It reads like a nightmare from hell republican bullshit agenda. How about the environment? How about helping the poor? None of that for our good Republican.

And here is my response, for what little this is worth. What is next I wonder. How do I ramp this up a bit?