The Ironic Cherry Reads... The Cynic

The Cynic: 

The Political Education of

Mitch McConnell

by Alec MacGillis

I was one of those with my mouth hanging open when Mitch McConnell announced that he would not bring to the floor President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  We should not have been surprised.  If we had been paying attention, and we had, we knew that there was no depth to which the republican Congress would not sink in order to win.  The Obama administration began with McConnell's announcement that his most important goal was to make this Democrat a one-term president.

In retrospect, I believe we don't give Mitch McConnell enough credit, because of his looks and demeanor.  His deer-caught-in-the-headlight, tortoise-y, stiff appearance leads one to imagine that he is, well, doofy.  And late night comedians have made the most of this, doing hilarious imitations.  The media has had no lack of material pointing out his conflicting statements over the years.  As though that would horrify, or even embarrass, McConnell.  It doesn't.

McConnell was the high school nerd that wasn't all that popular, but was drawn to politics.  He had a single-mindedness that no number of losses could derail.  Like the tortoise to which he is so often compared, he continued to plow ahead, setting goals and working at them, all the way back to vice president of his junior high student council.  The other thing he did was observe, and learn.  And he was fearless when it came to attempting to persuade people to his side.

What I did not know is that McConnell began his career as a moderate to liberal republican:  pro-choice, pro-union, pro-civil rights.  Along the way, though, he learned that going negative was the way to win.  And he learned where the money was.

McConnell knows how to get what he wants.  And what he wants is the power he now wields in the Senate.  He may not be likable, but that doesn't matter to him.  His colleagues know that he is the best power broker there is.  Trump thinks he knows how to make a deal?  McConnell is like a card-counter.  He is like a chess champion.  And the goal is winning.  He has no scruples, no guiding ideals.  He will do anything to win.

In his early years he hired Roger Ailes to create ads for his campaign and he hasn't looked back.  There is no dirty trick he will not be delighted to run if it will get him closer to winning, and indeed he takes great pleasure from crushing his opponents.  There have been many races in McConnell's life when he nearly lost.  But he is willing to say and do anything to best his opponent.  He has no scruples.  There is no line he won't cross.  And he is always willing to try something new and egregious.  He plays the odds very, very well.

In the Senate, he knows everything that is going on.  He keeps fellow senators close, and strategizes everything.  He is the master of procedural tricks.  And he doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks of him.  Those republican senators that don't like him nonetheless know he knows what he is doing, and they had better play his game.  AND YET, when the Tea Party came to Washington, people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz who came to government like gunslingers, aiming to take it down, McConnell figured out how to work with them and around them.  He knew how to act like he wanted to get government moving while not opposing tactics like shutting down the government.  He knows when to stay in the background and when to be heard.

We owe as much to Mitch McConnell for the dysfunction in our government as we do to the Tea Party.  He has been the mastermind.  His only goal is to stay in power, and anybody running against him or anyone else in his party needs to be ready for a dirty fight.

He is truly a strange bird in that he thrives on fund raising, as though getting money out of donors proves his self-worth.  He is good at it.  He gets the best -- in other words, the dirtiest -- people to manage his campaigns.  His ads are going to be plentiful, and as ugly as they come.  And, as we saw in the recent Georgia 6th Special Election, that is politics in 2017.

I have said recently that when they go low, we don't have to roll in the mud with them.  But we do have to educate voters that dirty tricks and ugly accusations will be out there.  We have to let them know about the kind of people who are paying to spread the lies, and what they have to gain, and what the voters have to lose.

We also have to learn to stick together.  One of the worst mistakes that Alison Lundergan Grimes made in her run against McConnell in 2014 was to back away from President Obama.  The moment she waffled on that question, McConnell's gang came in for the kill.  That's what he does.  So don't give him, or any other republican, the opportunity to pit us against each other.  We are far better than they are, and we need to be confident when we tell that to voters.

And we need to hit, and hit back, and then do it again, each time republicans are wrong.  That should give us lots of material, right?  Then I wonder why we haven't seen, all over the country, on every television station, ads about the republican health care plan.  And tax cuts for the wealthy.  And how about job losses?  We let Trump and Pence get away with claiming to save jobs at Carrier, but how about the massive layoffs that are beginning at Carrier next week?

And speaking of jobs, South Carolina's Boeing plant, paid for by Nikki Haley with our own tax dollars, celebrated with great fanfare and a visit by the liar-in-chief a few months ago the rollout of the 787 Dreamliner.  All the doting local news stations played the video of Trump promising great jobs blah, blah, blah.  Earlier, Boeing had put out a small -- actually what to most of us would be a rather large -- fortune in advertising, blanketing the media with anti-union ads.  Now they have announced layoffs.  If voters, workers, citizens don't hear us shouting about this from the rooftops, how will they know the promise of jobs was a lie?

I saw a crawl on CNN a week or so ago that announced that gas prices were now the lowest they had been in twelve years.  Really?  I keep a pretty close watch on gas prices and I know here in Charleston, before the election, I was paying somewhere under $1.60.  I also know that shortly after the election, the price jumped up by some twenty cents.  Since then they have jumped up and then crawled down, with them finally holding steady for a while around $2.00.  Check it out at SC Gas Buddy.  When the media swallows false information, we need to get in their faces.  Campaign managers, party officials and we citizens need to make sure the news is accurate.

The Cynic is a slim book, but an awfully important political education.  Mitch McConnell, incredible as it is to believe, was determined to become a force in politics, and he has indeed.  He has set the standard for political warfare.  If we are going to win against a cheater, we need to understand the cheater and the system.  This is a good place to start.

Overwhelmed... and Back Again

It is just over a month since the Women’s March.  It was an inspiring, uplifting time after weeks of dread.  I had written a few times about how we would have to stand together if we were going to fight the mean-spirited who punched down in order to gain power and wealth.

And then, after January 20, a friend formed a group, one of the many activist groups forming to save our country from the despot.  We called it SWAT:  Strong Women Against Tyranny, and during our formative meeting, she pulled out what she called a guide compiled by a group called Indivisible.  This guide and the group had been coming up more and more frequently, but I tend to resist reading ideological treatises, and, to be honest, it looked like a lot of pages.  But I understood what she was saying.  This was a group who had compiled what had been the modus operandi of the Tea Party.  This was a how-to that made sense.  This was about getting together for democracy.

After the Women’s March, there were a couple of women making the rounds of the news shows that huffed and puffed in outrage that they had not been allowed to join in sponsoring the march.  They claimed they represented many of the values that we marched for.  But they were anti-abortion.  They were told they could march with us, but they could not function as organizers.  Because the essential idea of the Women’s March was that we all support each other.  This was a group that was speaking to individual rights, to freedom, and in order to represent this March, you had to accept that we are all entitled to our beliefs and our right to exercise those beliefs.  To me, this was the Women’s March in its essence.  And that is the essence of Indivisible.

I was heartened by the spirit of the movements, Indivisible and others, that were fighting against the tyranny that had taken over our country.  Rachel Maddow interviewed Tara Burnette from South Carolina, who has joined with Indivisible in the activism.  She voted republican, but she disagreed with the Trump administration on education, and she stood with others who had their own causes and concerns.  She told Rachel, "The state of South Carolina cannot be silent anymore."  I was so proud.  And when Trump came to town to do a victory lap at Boeing, another good friend moved me to go with her to protest.

It was a wonderful protest.  The speakers were inspiring, the signs told the story of our fight.  Two hundred of us showed up carrying signs and wearing our passion for democracy with pride.

But we were relegated to an area called the “free speech zone.”  It was miles from where Trump was celebrating and of course implied that free speech was not welcome outside those gates.  Over 200 of us showed up to protest, but the object of the protest would never have to see us.  And at a point near the end of our rally, someone yelled out, “There he is.”  Sure enough, it was Air Force One, a huge phallus piercing the skies over North Charleston.  On this day, it was a blatant fuck you reminding us who had the power.

The local TV news coverage was pretty awful.  Channel 5 news, which news team always does tend to drool over the Sanfords and Grahams, was so salivating over the president’s visit that they had assigned every one of their first-line reporters to Boeing.  They threw a couple of their second-line reporters out to interview and report on the protest.  It was announced that there were 100 protesters, and "dozens" of counter-protesters (there were six).  Someone interviewed one of us at the protest, and someone else gave the same amount of time to the counter-protesters.

It was discouraging, but I just decided to boycott Channel 5 news.   I am 5'1" and I am always the short person standing behind the tall person, but this day I was front and center.  I was tickled that Channel 4 news actually held the camera on me and my sign -- “I felt safe until January 20” -- for a few seconds.

But, since then, I haven’t written a blog.  I’ve tried to keep up with the news, and I have truly been excited by the amazing people who have shown up at town halls to hold elected officials accountable.  I write, but I don’t often show up at events, and when I do I rarely speak.  So I continue to be impressed with the smart and determined people who are asking the tough questions and refusing to let politicians hide behind rhetoric.  But fact was, I wasn't feeling a lot of energy for the fight.

Yesterday, Friday, I entertained the thought of taking the day off, not checking my emails, maybe even not turning on the news.  But I turned the TV on at 1, and he was there, at the perennially ugly CPAC convention, and he was in his element.  He was talking about the press, and making his outrageous accusations, and telling his devotees that the press should be made to give up their sources.  And then I got online, and saw that the New York Times and other major media outlets had not been allowed in to the afternoon’s meeting with press secretary Sean Spicer.

My heart fell.  I don’t know a lot of history, but I know more than Trump.  The words I was hearing were the words that come when a dictator is wresting control of a democracy.  The actions were the actions of a third world tyrant.  

But then I read a message on Facebook.  A wonderful activist had sent me a message saying she was proud of me, and I wondered whatever for?  I checked around and realized the letter to the editor I had sent to The State had made it into the day’s paper.  And then she posted my letter, urged others to write comments in support.  Anticipating possible hateful remarks she told me not to look at the comments.  She said, “We got this.”  A day later her caring and nurturance still makes me smile.

That is what this incredible time is about.  It is the safety pins that mean if you are being attacked and intimidated, we will be there for you.  It means if this dictatorship is able to enforce a Muslim registry, we will be there registering our names alongside yours.  It means that even if we are in the lucky majority who aren’t at risk of violence and hate crimes we will defend those who are.  It is the Muslim people who last week took up the cause to raise money to repair the vandalized Jewish cemetery.  And it is people who may not understand but will defend the right to choose one's sexual identity.  It is people who would not have an abortion but believe that every woman has the right to make her own choice.  It is the fight for the freedom of the press.  The right to walk down the street without fear of being frisked or arrested, or shot by an unstable person carrying a gun.  And it is the fight against the sick minds that want to rip families apart in the name of nationalism.

And I remembered that when Donald Trump is under attack, he doubles down.  He doesn’t always win, but he knows how to bluff.  And that is what he is doing now, because he is under attack.  The cards are stacked against him.  I really believe that.  Every day I hear the voices of the lawyers, scholars, and all the rest of us, speaking up for democracy.

And then I get back up and get back in the fight.  

Loving Boeing

Well, Valentine's Day is just around the corner.  And so is another union vote at the Boeing factory in North Charleston.  I know this because, in the way good ole employers have of helping us figure out how to think, Boeing has rolled out some shiny new ads.  Not only that, I saw them during Saturday Night Live, so I'm assuming they especially want to help all their young employees make this tough decision.  And at great expense, I might add.

Here in South Carolina, the people in charge don't want us to waste our money on unions.  Boeing explained that they are just the greatest place to work, they have good jobs with good pay and are just swell bosses.  In one of the ads a very nice looking older man named Scott Hibbs was playing the guitar, and then he told us what a great place Boeing is to work.  And at the end of that commercial, there was the following disclaimer:

VOTE NO

The appearance of any individual employee in this video is not intended to, and does not, indicate whether that individual employee supports or opposes union representation.  Nothing in this video should suggest that any individual appearing therein holds a particular opinion either way regarding union representation.

PAID FOR BY BOEING

So, in case you didn't stop the ad so you could read the fine print, Boeing wants you to know that that nice guy Scott Hibbs wasn't saying he was for or against unions.  If you didn't stop the ad, though, what you mostly saw was "VOTE NO."

I just have to ask myself why a smart employer like Boeing would decide to spend a whole lot of money just to tell its employers they shouldn't waste their money on union dues.  Of course, it did that last time the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers tried to get up a vote for the union.  With Nikki Haley's able pro-big-business, union-busting assistance, Boeing was able to generate enough animosity that the union had to postpone its vote.

Again, why?  If Boeing is such a swell employer, why would they even care if an employee was a union member?  In fact, there are some really great employers out there who are happy to have the union to mediate contracts.

It seems to me that I had heard at some point that Boeing was making employees work consecutive Saturdays.  It seemed that employees with families or even those who wanted to have a weekend off just had no choice.  Just like at McDonald's.

The other thing I heard is a bunch of those great jobs Haley bragged about when she gave Boeing all those tax incentives to come exploit our workers may not be as secure as we would have thought.  According to the Post & Courier, Boeing will be making "job and other financial cuts."  The way I think this might play out is that management might insinuate that joining a union might create an environment in which Boeing might have to let more people go.  And then after the vote they will let them go anyway.  Just sayin'.

In my many years, I've held a few union jobs, and a few non-union jobs.  Without doubt, the best pay and the best benefits came with union membership.  Which is really why Boeing is going to hard-sell their anti-union message.  Don't forget, they moved to South Carolina not just because Nikki Haley gave away the store to score political points getting them here, but also because they were able to take advantage of the absence of a union and pay lower wages than at their Seattle location.

Here in Charleston, the Chamber of Commerce and the Charleston Regional Development Alliance are spreading the anti-union word that a union at Boeing would be bad for Charleston.  Note that besides cheer-leading for Boeing and other big businesses and telling us that a "yes" vote could very well be bad for all of us, Chamber CEO Bryan Derreberry adds, "A 'no' vote doesn't guarantee continued growth in South Carolina."

So I would encourage anyone at Boeing who is wondering whether they should vote to unionize on February 15, don't ask the employer that holds all the cards whether they think you should have some of that control.  Ask a union member.

From time to time I have union members doing some work at my home:  AT&T, UPS and others.  They have all been proud union members.  They understand that whatever they pay in union dues, they get it back in job security, good wages, benefits, and working conditions.  A union means it is not each employee standing alone against management.  It means that management can't change the rules of the game without input from employees.

Boeing is spending a lot of money right now to convince its employees that they don't need to have that input.  "Trust us" may not be the argument you want to bank on. 

When Nikki Became a Hero

Once again today I heard a news commentator refer to Nikki Haley's heroic stance on taking down the Confederate battle flag.  It has me worried.

You know, they say even a broken clock is right twice a day.  That makes it one more time than our governor has been on the right side of a debate.

We need to remember that while she is basking in national glory, that she will continue to oppose any attempt to regulate gun use, and that while the symbol of the Confederate flag may have fueled the fire of hate, it was the gun purchased by Dylann Roof that killed nine innocent people.  And while we may find that it was a clerical error that allowed the purchase, it is the attitude that our right to carry a gun is to be protected above all else that made the error all that likely to happen.

We also need to remember that Governor Haley has during her tenure here prevented nearly 200,000 South Carolinians from having health insurance through federal Medicaid expansion.  And that she has continued to curtail food stamp eligibility.  And that she has worked unceasingly to prevent workers from joining together to bargain for a living wage and liveable working conditions.

She has never missed an opportunity to remind us that she has brought jobs to the state, but she has given over $1 billion to Boeing, while doing little to encourage small businesses.  Her jobs program has resulted in less economic growth than all those states who do not give away the store to big corporations to win them over.

She has opposed a gas tax during a time of lower gas prices while our roads and bridges crumble, missing a jobs opportunity that would also bring much needed infrastructure improvements.

We need to keep an eye on Nikki Haley.  She is as ambitious as Lady Macbeth, and she has been handed an historic opportunity to take the national stage.  And to those in the media who don't live here with her she has become today's hero.  And she will take full advantage of that, and she will be helped along by those big corporations she has been courting, and by the most radical right-wing of her party.

The Threat of a Union

Why, we wonder, do people vote against their own interests?  Why are we so vulnerable to the attacks on unions by right-wing politicians?

One of the greatest fears we have in this country is loss of our livelihood.  There may have been a time in your life -- there have been a few in mine -- where I was looking at losing a job, or not being able to find a job, alongside a nearly empty bank account.  Terrifying.

Add to that financial disasters, like that of the mid-70's, with gas lines and prices doubling, tripling and quadrupling.  Employers squeezing unions, forcing them to choose between cuts in benefits and layoffs.  We hear about how Obamacare has forced employers to cut staff from full-time to part-time, but that has been going on (check with your elders) since the seventies.

All it takes is an economic pinch for corporations to take advantage of our fears.  And since the seventies, it has worked.

The other strategy that has worked quite well for corporations is painting the union itself as the bad guy.  Politicians and lobbyists have no problem twisting the truth to make it appear that unions will cause us to lose our job security.  That unions are corrupt, pocketing your dues to benefit themselves.

It is the same argument, ironically, that is used against taxation.  If not for taxation, we would have higher employment, better wages, more job security and -- my favorite -- better government services.

It's all nonsense.  But if you say it often enough to people in insecure times it is going to work.

In Little Accidents, a 2014 movie recently released on DVD, there are fierce pressures by members of a mining community on the only surviving witness to a deadly accident caused by negligence to cover up the company's responsibility.  The palpable fear is that the government will force the closure of the mine and loss of work.  People willing to risk their lives in order to earn a living.

Loss of work is the fear of any whistleblower.  Edward Snowden had to weigh the consequences of what he knew would be a major attack on the government's credibility, with major fallout.  But in smaller ways, most of us reach points in our lives when we could complain about something that is wrong, or close our eyes, even participate.  And most of us rationalize why we should just do as we're told.  Because otherwise we would lose our jobs, our homes, our friends, our families.  It is not so easy to take a stand.

And when Nikki Haley builds her right-wing creds by union bashing, she is touching that same nerve.  Fear that leads to isolation, that leads to rage, that turns the fear around from being afraid your employer will let you go to anger at the union rep that has shaken your faith in the security of your life and livelihood.

Haley has used the union issue to garner fame and a future from her corporate handlers.  She has done it by creating fear in people who just want to make a living.  She knows that if unions were to get a fair hearing, employees would listen, and just might consider letting them in.  And Boeing, despite their pretense of being open to unions, would lose the power to make the demands on its employees that it currently holds.

Good for Boeing to be able to sound reasonable and let people like Nikki Haley do their dirty work.  Which she does happily.

Meanwhile, though, we need to provide a platform for workers to tell their stories, to tell us what they would want from union membership.  We need to hear the things they are afraid to say in public while they are not protected by a union.  As long as South Carolina's workers live in an atmosphere of fear, the information vacuum will work both ways, and Nikki Haley will continue to thrive from the power she holds.  

He Said She Said They Said

I took the plunge and went to Mark Sanford's campaign website today.

Apparently, he can't find anything negative to say about anything Elizabeth Colbert Busch said.  So his strategy is to attack her through anyone she may have sat in the same room with, or who may have been mentioned in the same newspaper she may have read pretty much since the Clinton administration.

I know.  This is bizarre, but it really speaks of Sanford's desperation.  And his really weird reasoning processes.  Not to mention the lack of respect he has for the intelligence of his voting public.

For example, one of the two items on page one of the Sanford for Congress website claims that Colbert Busch is refusing to debate with Sanford despite the fact that a debate is scheduled for April 29th.  Apparently, the Sanford campaign made up a story that his opponent had agreed to a debate on the 17th and then claimed that she backed out. And then claims that she has "no time for debates."  And then, in case you hadn't yet got the point he adds:  "Since Colbert Busch won't debate...."  Even though she in fact, will.

The real point of this no-debate nonsense, though, is to highlight all those commie pinko left-wing liberals that she would rather be meeting with in DC on the day of that fictitious debate.  The point being that she is actually fund raising among people of her own party, while claiming that she will bring an independent mind to the issues facing Congress.  Which I guess means that Sanford will not.

I don't know.  I think when it comes to infamous people supporting your campaign, I would have to go with a few of Mark's big dollar donors.  You've probably heard of David Koch, of Americans for Prosperity fame, who while helping fund Mitt Romney's run for the White House, also released a letter to members of Congress warning them not to support aid to Hurricane Sandy victims.  Then there is perennial Rick Santorum fan Foster Friess, whose real claim to fame may not be so much his great wealth or bad judgment in backing candidates, but his cute comment about how back in his day, women used to put Bayer aspirin between their knees for cheap birth control.

Other donors to Sanford's campaign are billionaire and hedge fund manager extraordinaire, Richard Chilton, Jr., and the ever hilarious Fred Malek whose scandals just have to be enumerated, as did Elspeth Reeve in The Atlantic Wire last year:

Every year or so, poor old Fred Malek, the GOP fundraiser, has to suffer through a callback to his youthful indiscretions, like that one crazy time in his twenties that he and his friends were caught drunkenly barbecuing a dog on a spit, or the wacky moment in his thirties when he counted the Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics so President Nixon could demote them, or the hilarious time in his sixties when the Securities and Exchange Commissioned ordered him to personally pay a $100,000 fine for allegedly using taxpayer funds to reward a political supporter. *(Youth!)

Finally, let's not accuse Mark of just having out-of-town big name friends.  Thomas Ravenel, who Sanford was forced to suspend from his position as Treasurer in 2007 after indictment on federal charges of cocaine distribution, has no hard feelings.  He donated $500 to the campaign.

I think I'll take a liberal's support over that cast of characters any day.

The other item on the home page of the website features all that fear-mongering the-union-is-coming-to-take-your-jobs nonsense with regard to Boeing's move to North Charleston.  There is a strident cartoon that features how stupid we are here in South Carolina.  There are two notable things about this article:  first of all, it doesn't mention how many gazillion dollars our current governor and friend of Sanford gave out in tax breaks to the Boeing corporation, and secondly, it has absolutely nothing to do with Colbert Busch.

So Mark Sanford, whose lies put South Carolina in the national headlines more than once during his gubernatorial career, wants us to just trust him one more time.

But the best he can do on the front page of his website is spin more lies about his opponent.

Who will you trust?

Vote

Elizabeth Colbert Busch

May 7