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On January 15, 1942, The US Senate Committee investigating waste in the US war effort, and headed by an increasingly recognizable Democratic Senator from Missouri named Harry Truman, released its first report cataloging stunning fraud and mismanagement of preparations by the Armed Forces to enter WWII. It would be the first of 50 reports by the very thorough committee, reflecting the testimony of 1798 witnesses. Incredibly, each version required unanimous consent by the group to be made public. When asked how a committee composed  of both Republicans and Democrats, many with polar opposite policy inclinations, could reach such consensus, GOP Senator   Owen Brewster declared it was a cinch when “the facts were known.”

It’s difficult to imagine any question today, up to and including “does the sun rise in the east,” where our hapless, bickering, fully parochial pols could come to such consistent agreement. Oh, yea, Senate pay raises… maybe. Anyway, point is, looking back on how the Truman Committee identified and remedied epidemic graft in the country’s war effort, one is surely wistful for lawmakers with even a fraction of the earnestness toward addressing challenges other than their re-election or weekly fund raising efforts.

Trumpism is the consummation of two Obama terms worth of  the Fox/AM viewpoint that governance is responsible for “taking our country away from us.” So it’s no surprise that the Capitol’s halls are filled with men and women more concerned with nihilist optics than anything substantive. Yet and still, government auto pilot can only do so much and, after all, the GOP is in charge of everything right now.

The fact that the posers outnumber the doers within the Republican House caucus means the Democrats are actually responsible for any legislation with tangible affects on making the trains run on time. And the doers will only become more scarce after November because, by and large, they come from more contested districts and face stiffer Democratic challenges.  Louie Gohmert enjoys the  job security only a district of the walking dead can provide.

In the Senate, the GOP, even with an ever so slight majority, appears far more  able to reach consensus and impose its will when it wants to, as the confirmation deliberations on the Kavanaugh nomination Tuesday will aptly demonstrate. That Democrats find themselves in the position of having to convince folks back home of their legislative good faith speaks to the ineptitude of their leadership to competently present basic facts most could agree on.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Chuck Schumer, but did the GOP refuse to even consider the Supreme Court nominee of a POTUS in good standing nearly a year before his term ended? Is that not a fact? A truth? Like water is wet, or sugar is sweet? Yet here the Dems. are, worried about being perceived obstructionist – even though Trump has described them in no other way since…always – if things don’t move apace. The pressure for hasty hearings comes even though but a modest slice of the judge’s papers and past positions have been provided for consideration.

I doubt it’s reckless obstructionism to have concerns about a lifetime appointment for somebody with more than 20 years of participation in shakey constitutional areas such as torture (Abu Gharib), special counsel inconsistency (all in for Whitewater and all out for Mueller), and, as a W Bush White House counsel, promotion of pro-life litmus tests for judicial nominees.

So prolific was Kavanaugh’s pre-appointment career that Sen. Durbin (D-Ill) recently compared him to Forrest Gump, omnipresent throughout every event, or scandal, since the early 90s. Kavanaugh seems, observes Durbin, to “show up at every scene of the crime.”

Viewed within this context,  the White House’s efforts to withhold 146,000 pages of Kavanaugh-related data takes on a sinister tone. Coupled with McConnell’s rush to get hearings over with, one is hard pressed to think anything but the worst. Yet the most pressing priority coming out of the Minority Leader’s office appears to be making sure everyone knows his people will give Kavanaugh a fair shake.  This for a nominee Schumer himself stated couldn’t be more divisive … back in 2006 when W appointed Kavanaugh to a federal circuit court judgeship!

Just like in 1942 when a future POTUS saved thousands of American boys’ lives by uncovering countless flaws, oversights and plain corruption in the production of US weaponry, the facts are available for lawmakers to consider regarding this pivotal SCOTUS nominee. Sadly,  tragically, and fully consistent with its guiding light for governance so far this century, the GOP views facts as inimical to its aims. And just as depressingly, the Democratic leadership, apparently still flummoxed by a desire to attract voters they feel the Party let down in 2016, seems able to live with that. Truman, referring to his committee’s accomplishments years later, would simply assert “we followed where the facts led us.”  I suppose after Kavanaugh is sworn in, Schumer may bemoan “we gave up where the trail of evidence ended.” BC

 

A blind and deaf man can tell you a large chunk of white America feels a decreasing obligation to regulate legal authority, particularly its application to minorities. Whether it’s unarmed black men shot by police, undocumented immigrants rounded up in raids proliferating around the country, or bus passengers being asked if they are citizens, there now exists a decided lack of empathy for those charging various law enforcement agencies with abuse.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported the State Department was denying passports to US citizens born decades ago near the southern border in Texas. Apparently at the behest of the White House, State is calling into question the validity of birth certificates because a couple of midwives and doctors may have vouched on several occasions – again, decades ago – for couples who had children on the other side of the border but wanted them recognized as US citizens. To read and hear, not just Fox/AM universe opinions on the matter, but those of neighbors and even old friends, forces one to reckon with the realization that millions, not only have slight concern for the plight of Hispanics being targeted in the nastiest, most vindictive ways right now, but applaud the targeting.

The same holds true for unpunished police brutality toward African-Americans. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve read or heard “why don’t they just cooperate,” in the aftermath of a harrowing video,  I’d be on easy street. And if you added a buck kicker  for every “my kid wouldn’t be in that situation” response to the question of what if that were your son, there would be a Big Man Racing stable of thoroughbreds. That so many feel actual hatred for pro athletes simply taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest a fully documented national disgrace, clarifies a divide only possible when complete refusal to consider another’s position exists, which by the way gets inches from Webster’s definition of racism.

Walking in another man’s shoes appears an endangered attitude in both coastal suburbs and flyover expanses alike.  Empathy seems a Trump era casualty, particularly toward those identified within six degrees of separation from, say, MS13…or Black Lives Matter, or the villain du jour, Antifa. It has been said the best protection of individual freedom is a vibrant community. But if the death of community is the utter inability of one part to place itself in the other’s situation, then American liberty is surely on life support.

We are a nation governed by the rule of law. Therefore, legal authority means primacy to impact the freedom of others. The fact that one with the law’s power ultimately has to justify exerting it means little in real time to those under the boot. Understanding one’s rights provides little solace when being tased and beaten… “stop resisting,” particularly when no money exists to pursue justice.  One doesn’t have to be a pampered snowflake to suffer a good long while from mental trauma after such an ordeal. The ability to seek redress – compensation – for suffering such a wrong is what is supposed to supply the brakes on abuses by law enforcers.  Far easier said than done, especially when the POTUS is cheerleading excesses.

Democracies can’t survive citizenries unconcerned with protecting themselves from abuses of power. It’s that simple. Dictatorship 101. When law enforcement, and the military, wherever deployed, feel unrestrained by guidelines for personal behavior and the protection of populations they come into close quarters with, nobody is safe because now absolute power exists. In that equation  only good graces and better natures assure a fair shake.

Dictators always divide and conquer. They never rise with a promise they will keep everybody down. Certain groups are isolated for persecution, labeled as threats to the welfare of other constituencies, who embrace the selective repression as required for their security. Fear is the best motivator; nothing else is usually required. And most important to the tyrant is not the enthusiasm of those who support crackdowns; it’s the silent acquiescence of the rest that emboldens atrocity.

Most important to understand about personal freedom’s vulnerability is that it can be attacked in so many different ways, by endlessly different means. Hitler had the SS, Stalin the NKVD. The Shah had SAVAK, and the Ayatollah, the Revolutionary Guard. And now Trump is grooming ICE for his particular dirty work. Pick your poison; the common denominator is the authority to act, and the elimination of strictures on how and to whom it may be applied.

Where we are is a function of how much we care, and who we care about. I have a close Jewish friend, who is all in with Trump. He posted on FB the other day about a wonderful PBS documentary on the special stories of Jewish GIs in WWII, the emotions of their cause and the horrors they witnessed. My friend honored his father, a bombardier as one of that special group.

I responded by observing the obvious disconnect he exhibits between recognizing the horrors of despotism 70 years ago and being oblivious to all its burgeoning incarnations today. After the standard gaslighting of my concerns, he scolded me for trivializing the holocaust by comparing the inanities of family separation, or refusals to condemn “blood and soil” parades, with the deaths of six million.

My friend’s cluelessness is why the subject deserves fervent attention. History’s lessons are there to teach and provide for solutions… or to be ignored. And the results of yesteryears’ grievous mistakes can be avoided if the locksteps of the past are recognized… or, of course, disaster can be repeated. Our choice, our consequences. BC

 

Anyone paying attention as John McCain conceded the 2008 Presidential election to Barack Obama was struck by the chasm between the candidate and his supporters. The Senator’s words were eloquent and conciliatory, awash in higher purpose. The people had spoken, said McCain, and it was nothing but patriotic to acknowledge what the numbers made clear. The fact that a black man had ascended to the highest office was grasped graciously; the moment in history not escaping him. Black America had every reason to be proud and the new President could count on his full support in the day’s ahead, promised McCain. It was the perfect speech, delivered with the graceful conviction of a man more interested in the well being of his nation than humoring his own disappointment… And it went over like a lead balloon.

The crowd was all out to even humor their candidate. Every sentence was met with a chorus of “nooos”, and outright boos when Obama’s name was mentioned. Nobody was in the mood to be conciliatory, the apocalypse was nigh. Had Sarah Palin, fidgeting a few feet away, looking like she had swallowed a very bitter pill, grabbed the mic from her running mate and screamed the election was rigged and she conceded nothing, the room would have exploded in rapturous resentment.

Good guys don’t just finish last, they lose to uppity troublemakers like Obama. This was not a group looking to widen any tents, next time they’d get a guy or gal (few cared Palin couldn’t pass a 5th grade current events quiz) not afraid to throw punches and get a little dirty. Right then and there, as an American Hero accepted defeat like – a hero – the Republican Party base made clear the low road was exactly where they wanted to travel henceforth. The demonization of John McCain had begun.

Not a day went by during Obama’s first term that Fox/AM didn’t vilify traitors to the “conservative” cause. Like white civil rights volunteers of the 60s, who Jim Crow bottom feeders denounced as enemies of their own people, Rush never met a moderate Republican he didn’t want to abase; RINOs were scum, and needed to be purged.

Of course the Fox/AM definition of moderate applied to anyone uncomfortable with Obama as a Kenyan, or Cass Sunstein as a secret agent of totalitarianism. Once the Tea Party was consumed by Ailes and company, Fox/AM personalities were increasingly relied on to determine just who was “us” and, more importantly, who was “them”. John McCain ever so gradually moved fully out of favor, “maverick” becoming a derisive term on Hannity and The Factor. Website commenters grew emboldened, and personal. “Songbird McCain” started making the rounds as stories suggesting his stay at the Hanoi Hilton was far more comfortable than the myth created by NBC et al. began to proliferate.

When Romney was trounced after Dick Morris, who had become an every night guest on the Fox prime time trioka, promised a landslide, the narrative went fully off the rails. The game had to be rigged; how else to explain a second Obama term? The crisis was existential, liberal “progress” had stolen “our” country. It was no longer enough to vote against the Obama agenda, rhetoric must be unhinged, candidates for 2016 had two options…nasty and nastier; truth was optional at best, ends justified any means. The GOP core had gone rotten and anyone looking to lead them better put grievance and resentment before all else or, as Jeb Bush quickly learned, his $100 million war chest proved worthless, their campaigns would be over quicker than Bill O’Reilly could settle a harassment claim.

The rest is sorrowful history, which has us now in uncharted waters, reeling daily from a head-to-toe Fox/AM creation. It’s easy to wave off the indignities coming from the White House as John McCain prepares to lay in state at the Capitol. Trump’s infantilism is now normalized, expected, really. One can readily imagine L’Enfant Terrible screaming to nobody in particular he wants that f***in flag back to full staff! And his silent treatment toward granting the nemesis his clinical narcissism and insecurity alone created standard Presidential courtesy is merely a repeat of previous tantrums he’s thrown, most notably with Germany’s Merkel, who fully uncovered his unworthiness for office.

Yet and still, it’s a bad mistake to simply stop at Trump  in these situations because the behavior is so much more than a sad reflection of his own frailties. In fact, dissing McCain right down the line is a no brainer freebie he gets to throw to his wretched core, who always demand the worst. They are the client his survival depends on, and kicking a dead man for easy points has no real downside.

By Trump’s warped calculus, had he acted like any other POTUS, that is, with dignity and respect, what would it have achieved? The fake news would still be calling for his head, and the news cycle would ignore him. Remember, any news is good news. Moreover, Trump’s base now hates McCain, probably more than anyone but HRC and Obama. Ten years of hourly attacks will do that.

People say this is Trump’s GOP, it’s not. It’s Fox/AM’s laboratory. Trump merely panders to its sedition better than their wildest dreams could have conjured. But worse for all of us than Trump is a legacy, embodied by the GOP roster, that codifies his sociopathic spasms as standard operating procedure for governance, fully in service to a base of despicables, who spit on an American hero’s dead body for giggles.

In Arizona, Trumpie Kelli Ward, soundly beaten by McCain in his final primary race, is running her campaign to replace retiring Jeff Flake by the emerging nihilist playbook, right down to disgusting personal abasement. Her opponent, Congresswoman Martha McSally, is trying to tip toe the line, giving full lip service to building the wall, and scapegoating anyone brown, but maintaining a modicum of respect in her personal comportment. Ward was abominable during McCain’s final days, actually implying he announced his decision to stop treatment with hurting her candidacy in mind. McSally put out a glowing tribute to McCain, and has afforded him the respect he earned. McSally was comfortably ahead of Ward several weeks ago. McCain’s passing is all that has changed since then. Trump will be tweeting an effusive endorsement for Ward any hour. Where the numbers go will provide a barometer to measure the extent of our ruination. BC

There is no more important responsibility of a sitting POTUS than to determine US priorities on national security matters. Since repeatedly consistent judicial precedent has firmly established the Executive Branch  as the “sole organ” of American foreign policy, this duty comes as close as anything to being axiomatic to the Presidency; the public expects it…demands it.

History is filled with examples of aggressive, often contrarian Presidential leadership of the country proving critical to our readiness when the moment of truth arrived. FDR’s steadfast campaign against a powerful isolationist constituency leading up to Pearl Harbor stands out as exhibit A, but many other less famous but important cases can be cited. JFK pledged a man on the moon; LBJ brought Democrats kicking and screaming into the Civil Rights era, which would go far in bolstering US moral righteousness in global affairs; Carter refused to let Camp David fail; and Reagan stood firm against a worldwide No Nuke movement. Indeed, establishing such priorities and employing the weight of the Oval Office to pursue them defines Presidential leadership.

Today’s complex and increasingly disparate world makes possible any number of nasty calamities, but none seems more imminent than foreign cyber attacks against our infrastructure. It doesn’t take an IT engineer to appreciate both the vulnerabilities of our defenses or the determination of our foes. Election systems, power grids, communication networks, financial data, personal records… the list of soft targets goes on and on. One would assume the White House would be all hands on deck to confront what can be reasonably called a red alert situation. One would be wrong!

Far from sounding the alarm, the White House ranges from poo pooing such concerns, to accusing others who express them of ulterior partisan motives meant to harm the Republic. Trump has expressed complete confidence in the word of Putin, while attacking his intelligence agencies as partisan and unreliable. It appears any leadership in enhancing our cyber defenses is going to have to come from further down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Unfortunately, Republicans on the Hill seem as reticent as the President, denying resources and pointing to other priorities… like softening financial regulations on banks responsible for the crisis of a decade ago, and discrediting an investigation unearthing new outrages daily.

So that leaves the private sector, who presumably understands cyber calamity is very bad for business, to fill the void. The biggies, like Facebook, Microsoft and Google are all spending time and capital to identify and resolve online vulnerabilities. All are incredulous that a fully documented Russian campaign in 2016, underpinned by Mueller indictments of 12 Russians, is not being addressed by the government, even as fresh evidence mounts of similar efforts ramping up for November.

Meeting in San Francisco to pool industry insights and modeling, with government representatives absent, Silicon Valley agreed on the clear and present danger, and appears willing to act on its own. “Our government just doesn’t have a coordinated plan,” declared Alex Stanos, former chief security officer at Facebook. If that’s the pot calling the kettle black, nobody cares because all agree the situation is dire. And the players are finally beginning to play. “Bot” accounts are being targeted and removed on Twitter and Facebook. Meanwhile, Microsoft has detected hacking efforts targeting think tanks and politicians. Utilities are being warned of breaches that could compromise the nation’s power grid; new security protocols are being formulated.

Yet and still, without a more unified agenda across government agencies, it’s hard to see how preparations won’t suffer. And that kind of effort simply can’t happen without focused and determined White House leadership. Nothing is “more important than having the commander in chief, the chief executive of the United States, clearly verbally assert the threats and challenges,” said Obama official, Evelyn Farkas.

Of course Trump’s calling card is his refusal to focus. And he’s made clear time and again his inability to view any concern about foreign cyber attacks as distinct from support for Mueller’s “witch hunt”. In fact, based on his public positions, the President appears to accept foreign intrusions as merely reciprocical pay back for similar US efforts, simply par for the course within the international state of nature.

One of the worst things about this Administration is the now uniform wariness of top officials to make public statements on important issues for fear of being contradicted by a President uninformed about his own policies and unconcerned about publicly slighting his own people. This appears to be responsible for the muddled message on cyber security. So we are leaderless on perhaps the most pressing national security challenge facing the country.

Whether it’s insidious promotion of our divisions, or incipient inattention to our basic security, the President is a human Jenga toppler. When we’re laying awake in the dark, without air conditioning, wondering how long the latest blackout will last, and trying not to panic about growing disorder, it will be small comfort knowing exactly who to blame. Unsustainable. BC

One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to figure a 47-page indictment means business. And when most of those pages detail infractions down to the penny… that’s trouble. Whether Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA) is keeping it real and wondering if Italy and fine dining was worth the trouble, or shrugging his shoulders like the reinventor-of-scandal-in-Chief he idolizes and asking what’s the biggie, he better start dancing fast because this case looks tight as a snare drum.

Republican taste for hypocrisy is so well established it should be a permanent plank in the Party’s bylaws. Whether it’s wrinkled scolds  with a sudden taste for 22 year olds, shrill homophobes with  boyfriends in the shadows, or “drain the swamp” posers like Hunter Jr. using campaign funds like a home equity line, the GOP has long been much heavier on talk than walk when it comes to honesty and governance.

It really doesn’t get much swampier than the Duncan Hunter Jr. profile. Groomed to take over his father’s Congressional seat, Hunter Jr. came into office at age 32 in 2008. Early on his wife was paid as a campaign staff member, $117,000 between 2010-17’. Hunter corruption was a full family affair. He had barely been sworn in following re-election when campaign coffers began paying for concert tickets, sports bar tabs, beach trips and even dental bills. Eventually lavish trips to Italy and Hawaii were earmarked “official” business supporters should feel fortunate to underwrite. What a hands on Representative we have!

Apparently, Hunter Jr’s. campaign treasurer was sufficiently alarmed by the spending to voice serious concerns to the Congressman, who poo pooed “repeated inquiries” as “silly” and a sign of disloyalty by “trying to create a paper trail on me.” Gee, that sure sounds familiar. Of course Hunter was first in line on Capital Hill to embrace the Trump candidacy,  the same day as Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), recently charged with insider trading…great minds bilk alike!

Fact is there is more than enough evidence of GOP disdain for all things ethical and on the level when it comes to its membership, that simply questioning their political spines in supporting Trump outrages doesn’t cut it. Rather, a more accurate view may be a Trump Presidency seen from the beginning as open season for graft, a welcome surprise from the expected Clinton era, which promised far  more robust scrutiny.

Instead of asking why the GOP has “tolerated” Trump, perhaps we need to work under the premise they count on him and his cesspool to abet their anything goes shenanigans. Trump “deep state” tropes need not be applicable only to his wretchedness; instead it’s a new set of chapters in the GOP handbook, an emerging tutorial for maintaining viability when caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

Doubtless Hunter Jr. will lean heavily on a political victimization narrative as his career implodes. Perhaps his alamo will be begging the guy he called “the greatest President of my generation” for a pardon. Why not? As for those of us not immersed in slime, it may be a good idea to start considering  the worst of the Grand Old Party to be the main, and stop expecting more from a criminal enterprise.

How should this play in November? Maybe every GOP candidate needs to be reminded daily of their crooked pedigree, and forced to publicly own or renounce it. Let there be no room for dithering. If they embrace their Party, trounce them at the polls. If they exhibit some integrity, well, that’s exactly what will save their Party… everyone’s the better for it. Either way we have only ourselves to blame for the cost of allowing squatters from a den of thieves free rides this fall. BC

On a hot July day in 1984, on the 5th Street beach in Ocean City, MD, I had a big problem. The spring before, pre-occupied with graduating from college, I neglected to stay in touch with my local connections and failed to secure housing or touch base with my employer of the previous four summers. The housing issue was taken care of when a close buddy, living year-round in OC with his girlfriend, saw financial gain in offering me a bedroom in their downtown flat. The job question was tougher. Changes had come to English’s Chicken House in my absence, new management was not inclined to bring back college slackers like me, favoring hard working Eastern Shore locals; who could blame them?

Out self-medicating my unemployment blues one night, an amigo recommended I go down to the inlet in the morning and try out for the Beach Patrol. I laughed at the suggestion. Surfers like me viewed OCBP as the enemy, fascists dictating where we could and couldn’t enjoy Mother Ocean. Besides, the red suits they wore came dangerously close to “root suit” status, anathema to all that was beach cool. Yet and still, I needed a job… bad.

Long story short I became an OCBP and actually didn’t mind it so much. My first year I was stationed uptown, where an occasional pull broke the day’s monotony, and checking out an endless parade of bikinis didn’t necessarily suck. Since I had graduated from school, I had nowhere to be in the fall and was able to enjoy gorgeous autumn days of empty beaches, able to sneak surf sessions at my barren post. I actually guarded the final early October day of that season, fully expecting it to be a last hurrah.

Well, life can be funny. After fruitless job searches, including a heartbreaking near miss for a Capital Hill position I thought was in the bag, I decided grad school was the call, and while awaiting acceptance I ended up out in Brekenridge CO for the winter of 84’. By the time April rolled around, snow storms had become very old. GW accepted me, so all seemed in order for one last summer in OC. My buddy said my room was ready, Captain Craig himself, impressed by my longetivity the previous season, personally invited me back to the BP.

Arriving to pick up my gear and crew assignment, which I assumed would be where I was the previous summer, Captain Craig patted me on the back and exclaimed he had done me a big favor, instead of having to ride my bike uptown every morning, I would be at 5th street, right up the road from my place. This was a disaster! Downtown was hell, everybody knew it. Only fanatics or unfortunate newbies got posted there. Instead of bikinis, there were jeans with wallets on chains. Steady and predictable sets of waves were replaced by nasty rips and north currents, punctuated by menacing rock jetties. Downtown you earned every dime of the $423 biweekly take home!

Fifth street did indeed turn out to be a far harder day’s work. Instead of an occasional pull, rough days had you in the water constantly. Strong north currents would have clueless swimmers heading toward the jetty as soon as their feet left the bottom. I sprained my ankle playing basketball, which created constant discomfort. But to my eyes the worst part of the downtown posting was the “beer checks”… having to jog about ordering beachgoers to get rid of their beers. I hated nothing worse, and essentially refused to do it, which may have gotten around the grapevine as my beach seemed to have more drinkers than most. At least that’s what Captain Schoepf, Craig’s right hand with a strong bent toward law and order, was yelling at me that July afternoon from his Jeep at the bottom of my stand!

“Carey,” he roared in his best Marine, “your beach is a disgrace; it looks like some kind of rock concert!” I told him my first priority was the water, which he didn’t buy. “Look back there at the boardwalk,” he barked. “They’re having a party on your beach, God dammit! Get the hell down from there and go tell them to get rid of the beer!!” Turning to see who he was referring to I noticed roughly fifteen members of a motorcycle gang, surely an inspiration for Sons of Anarchy. All had open cans of Budweiser which they made zero effort to conceal. “Get your ass over there son, this isn’t a damn keg party. We’ll watch your stand. Get going…now!”

Walking dejectedly toward the group, the leader looked to be out of Hollywood casting. Tatted and ripped, he was who you cross the street quickly to avoid. Big, mean and slamming brews; diplomacy was on my mind. He seemed amused as I approached; I hoped he would at least hear me out before he started pounding. “Sir,” I stammered, “see that old guy over at the stand?” He nodded his head. “He ordered me over to tell you all to get rid of the beer. Personally, I’d rather have my molars pulled than tell you what to do. But I’d consider it a great favor if, just until he is out of sight, you put the beer away. How about finishing what you have and waiting until he’s gone. I’d sure appreciate it.”

After what seemed like a very long time, Mr. Hell’s Angel smiled and said no problem. I thanked him profusely. Jogging back to my stand I peeked back and saw the whole group heading south on the boardwalk. “There, was that so hard,” an unimpressed Schoepf asked as he put his vehicle into gear. “Control your beach, Carey!”

So what is the point of this missive, other than to partially explain why I look ten years older than I am? Just this: guarding 5th Street was a real responsibility. To me, beer checks were nothing but needless distractions that took my eyes off the water, endangering swimmers, who were clueless to the trouble they could find when the rips were active. Moreover, playing cop wasn’t anything I wanted to do, having a cold one on the beach may have been illegal but… it was the frickin beach!

But here’s the real point… there were more than a hundred guards on the OCBP, and for every one with my view on the subject, there was at least another who loved beer checks, who got off on exerting authority. This was a fact, as confrontations between zealous guards and the drinking public played out all too often, sometimes violently.

Donald Trump has never performed an honest day’s work for compensation; but had he ever sat on a stand for the OCBP, there is little doubt he would have been an avid beer checker, as would most any of his wretched core. ICE is an organization comprised entirely of beer checkers, some more enthusiastic than others. Trump feted them at the White House yesterday, declaring them heroes and, as is his hideous nature, extracting them from the population they are presumably part of while labeling most everyone else the enemy.

Trump bellows constantly that ICE and its participation in whitening America is a winning cause for November. Perhaps the President should be indulged on this issue. Come November, why not simply ask yourself who the beer checkers are on the ballot and whether they deserve a vote. I’m ok with that choice. At the very least it will define who we are… or what we have become. BC

Emerging victorious from WWII one word was on the tongue of America’s political and business leaders…Markets! The blood and nerves of American boys had created a tabula rasa, ready to be chisled for the trouble. The world was our oyster and we were ready to shuck. After a decade of hard times and a conflict we didn’t start but sure finished, America was not inclined to have a cocktail and butter a roll; we wanted the buffet. The Marshall Plan was the door charge of our all-you-can-eat, and man did the Greatest Generation get its money’s worth. Twenty years of global preeminence. A feast of emerging markets, all in need of goods seamlessly evolved from wartime production facilities, pristine and undamaged by foreign armaments. A generation of victors enjoying the spoils their selflessness earned them – producing, transporting, marketing and servicing goods purchased for asking price.

And just when their children, having been reared with a mother at home and everything Madison Avenue decided they required, were ready to gorge at the same trough… things started to go bad. Why? How did Don Draper become Lee Iococca? How did Jeb Smith become Richard Gephardt? And most importantly, how did we allow it all to happen in real time while lifting nary a collective finger to right the ship?

When this chapter of American history is written, regardless its outcome, nobody will be able to say it snuck up on us. For fifty years we watched the world become what the plans we laid out for it envisioned. Technological and economic development, from the beginning seen as absolute goods, saviors for the Old World and uncivilized alike, the twin engines for all of global aspiration, advanced faster than our ability to even understand their impact, let alone manage it.

Technological and economic development…fueling each other’s spread, like parallel rivers moving toward a junction, relentless and inevitable. Leading to a place nobody could say, the journey consuming all attention. A tsunami of change, creating new status quos whose only common characteristic would be none’s ability to last. Ways of life, far and wide, created by the same forces that would eventually uproot the foundations they laid. Like a sand castle painstakingly built on a summer afternoon, only to be the victim of a new tide’s arrival. Did it really have to be that way? Were we necessarily holding on to the tiger’s tale for dear life? Or did conscious decisions at critical forks in the road turn heaven to hell, prosperity to decline?

Centuries ago a prescient Rousseau was explicit that “our ills are our own making.” He advised “adhering to the simple, uniform and solitary way of living prescribed to us by nature.” Of course nobody listened and here we are, on the precipice of authoritarian disfunction, brought to us by the victims of progress. The back of the line, late to the buffet, offered limp broccoli and dried pot roast, oven roasted potatoes chafed at the edges. The dregs, who the GOP decided to use for its ends, only to be beaten up by cynical bigots, steeped on Limbaugh and Levin, collecting disability at 40. A bloc of voters with little patience for the truth.

Michael Moore, in the trailer of his latest documentary of Trump’s rise, calls him a “human Molotov cocktail” thrown by those who have had their lives bulldozed by the vagaries of the global interdependence our leaders knew from the start Breton Woods would lead to. We created a dynamic world economy based on trade patterns beholden to technological and economic progress. Initial success was assured, and future prosperity required only adjusting to the events we were presumably ahead of.

Steel workers’ sons would be trained to lead the world in robotics as our comparative advantage in steel production was gradually ceded to Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) in Asia, like South Korea or Singapore. The children of southern textile workers would benefit from the sweat of their parents and, aided by owners of aging clothing plants, reinvesting in the community to, say, produce advanced electronics instead of shoes, while Malaysia became the maker of attire imported and priced to move for US consumers. And all the while the US export locomotive would continue to roll. New generations, new opportunities. College wouldn’t be an end all; workers could be trained to adjust. That was the theory anyway.

However, like so many other avenues we crossed along the way, our political and business sheperds took the shortcut, and lied away the consequences. Turns out buying off Congressman and Senators was easier and, at least in the short term cheaper. Rather than adjusting, with all of the time and capital – good faith – simply erect the myth of unfair foreign trade and our god given right to keep industries we originally planned to outgrow. Keep making textiles into the 80s by negotiating “multi-fiber agreements” with countries despite their clear comparative advantage. Whine that other countries are dumping steel because they can bring it to market cheaper by paying non-union labor less. Convince workers who need little convincing that their job at the plant should always be there, even though trending economic forces portend just the opposite.

It’s how you disillusion large swaths of America; how you turn them into victims of broken promises, and render them useless but for their vote. A permanent grievance class bent on blaming everyone else but themselves for failed lives and dreamless futures. A big lie that never had to be, but seems inevitable in retrospect.

Trump’s election is the calamity we saw coming from a mile away, shocking as it seemed. He is the result of an entire class of radicalized malcontents, unconcerned with blowing up what they are certain betrayed them. He reflects a group fully ready to stumble into repression’s abyss because freedom never did them any favors. They are right as rain the system failed them; what got old a long time ago are their claims they never knew what hit them and couldn’t do anything about it. Now they stand for nothing and refuse to tolerate any alternative. BC

When I was a 9 or 10 year old boy, nobody meant more to me than my father. He was my hero, larger than life. A stoic protector of our family, who disappeared toward the el tracks most every morning headed into the big wonderous city to provide. He was a noted lawyer and a litigator. It remains one of the great memories of my life being taken by my mother to an ornate courtroom in Chicago to watch my father in action; not a kid in this world felt luckier!

My dad’s father, Grandpop Bud, was just as proud of him as I was, and when he came to visit us one summer, he showed me yearbooks from the Catholic high school my dad attended back in the Boston area. The annuals were from his sophomore, junior and senior years, and fully documented his rise to stardom in both football and basketball. By the time he was a senior in 1950, he was the captain and star of the basketball team, averaging almost 20 points per game. The yearbooks became prized possessions, fully solidifying my father as one of the world’s great men. Often back then I would beg my dad to tell me stories of his glory days; he would always demure.

Of course my father turned out to be human, and as I grew older and more aware, and he buckled a bit under the stress of life and the consequences of a Mad Men taste for a Dry Manhatten, my idol worship was usurped some by resentment and a nagging feeling that a teenager was not yet able to articulate.

Years later, well after he gave up drinking and sort of admitted his problem with a cocktail, I would come to understand my dad had some demons. What they were I had no idea, but something gnawed at him, and he was not the sharing type when it came to such things.

My dad died in 2003 of lung cancer, again every bit the titan I had adored in my youth. One day, more than a decade later, just after my mom passed suddenly and shockingly, I was in their house alone going through old memorabilia… and there were the yearbooks! I hadn’t seen them in more than 40 plus years, but I remembered every page. The memory of my dad flooded through me as I turned the pages, seeing pictures of him as a youth, shooting his jumper, and hanging with his buddies, engaging in all manner of scholastic activities, often in the company of priests. But now he seemed to have a more melancholy look than I remembered as a boy, more dutiful, almost sad. And suddenly it hit me! Boston, priests…my dad! The high school he attended was a bunch of boys in the care of Catholic priests in the heart of the Boston area!

I googled “list of Boston-area pedophile priests” and turned the page to the faculty section. My heart raced; I hoped nothing came up, but was certain it would… and there they were. The list of all Boston-area cases had been released years before. Under section E, which had a long title basically underscoring the accused were all “deceased”, but “credible” accusations had been made, were two members of the faculty of my father’s high school. Both had been there throughout my dad’s matriculation and were prominent in pictures in the annuals. One was the faculty sponsor of the French Club; he actually chaperoned its members on annual trips to Paris! Thankfully, my father never had any interest in French. Looking at the database, their work histories fit the pattern of most of the accused listed, frequent reassignments, never staying at a post more than several years, and sporadic leave of absences. Looking at the French Club pictures from the various years of the yearbook, I wondered if other future children of those boys had done the same math as I.

This week’s report from Pennsylvania is yet another chapter in the ugliest religious scandal in American history. Pittsburgh joins Boston, Chicago, New Mexico… really anywhere enough good Catholics entrusted their most cherished possessions to predators interested only in grooming and destroying. Case after case of, not only one monster acting as the devil himself, but groups! And all the while a beauracracy intent on, at best mitigating the damage, at worst conspiring to abet it.

Honestly, I have no idea whether my dad was part of the carnage. But I do know he was in the care of Jesuit Priests from grades 1-12 in Newton Massachusetts. With all that has come to light, those seem like frightful odds.

A non-negotiable requirement for living under my father’s roof was attending Sunday mass. And no offertory basket ever left empty when passed by my dad. Yet and still, my brothers and I went to public schools; the parochial option was never seriously mentioned. In addition, the subject of sex was more than uncomfortable, it simply was avoided… perhaps like a bad memory. Who knows?

What I am certain about is my decision to leave Catholicism more than two decades ago. It’s hard to understand how so many still embrace an institution awash in betrayal at every level. This week’s report reminds us, not only how pervasive the evil has been, but how wholly inadequate the leadership’s reaction to it continues to be. That a nation of sons and daughters have to wonder whether their parents went to their graves as victims of unspeakable crimes clarifies an enterprise undeserving of the slightest benefit of the doubt. Our fathers deserved better. BC

If anyone wants to find something good in the latest data showing 83% of Republicans approve of the way Donald Trump is handling race relations, I’m all ears. Either the POTUS is as misunderstood as his lackeys continually vomit to questions, after the knee jerk “whatabout Obama,” or more than 8 in 10 Republicans are bigots. I suppose we’ll all have to make our own decision on that one, but it’s hard to argue that the divisions in our country are not profound and deepening.

Some wonderful African-American teenage girls visited the Jersey shore the other day. For most it was their first trip to the ocean and they were naturally very excited. Hours later, a video shows what can only be described as surreal and vile. At Jenkinson Aquarium they went to a gift shop and met one of the 83%, who turned a dream into a nightmare, literally refusing to allow them to stay in the shop because they were black. To watch the video is to see something one couldn’t imagine just two years ago, and unmistakably tied to the national disgrace tallied in early November of 2016. This wasn’t Mississippi or Alabama, it was New Jersey.

At Trump rallies the resentment is, of course, palpable; and if you somehow can’t feel it, just wait for Trump to get started and he’ll throw it right in your face. On the President’s twitter feed, his dog whistles are getting less ambiguous. “Low intelligence” is specifically for Maxine Waters, LeBron James and Don Lemmon. Meanwhile, the venom sprayed at the “spoiled millionaires” uppity enough to silently take a knee during the national anthem leaves nothing to the imagination. It’s Trump’s GOP now and it is a white party, at its very best unempathetic to any gripes Black America may have, at worst unapologetically racist.

Like German Nazis in the early 30s, unable yet to fully impose their murderous will, this regime is all about distraction. Attack established norms across the entire landscape of American life and we won’t be able to keep up. One day it’s reckless tariffs, the next outrageous behavior in Brussels. Oh look, Betsy DeVos is gutting protections for disabled students, and, oh my god, did you see what Trump tweeted about Mueller today?! It is a relentless assault, forcing us to triage the damage, and prioritize where our attention should be focused. Multiple battles on many fronts.

Five or six years from now, should we lose the war, Omarosa will simply disappear, the story ignored within the Fox-Sinclair dominated news cycle. For now she’s getting her 15 minutes, but competing with a cacophony of other Trump noise.

So where does this Administration and the Party it now seems to fully control’s attitudes about race rank for our focus? One can rightly point to today’s GOP as a Party in its death throes, flailing against a flood of demographics. It will not survive as a viable political force unless it either adapts and moderates…or adopts extreme measures to reverse current trends. So the question becomes which avenue do they appear willing to take? That answer seems clear. And since the Party currently sits atop virtually our entire government apparatus, the machinery is in place. Anybody doubting how that power can be employed need only google “family separation.”

Just how grim are the numbers on race? Anyone want to bet on the proposition as to what the polling breakdown would be for, say, white cops asked if they approve how Trump is handling race relations? ICE officers? Intent and capability… that’s kind of the whole ball game. If the national legislative and executive branches are willing to provide approval to measures those with guns and authority will enthusiastically enforce at the state and local levels, where does that leave us? There are jail cells available to be filled, the absurd Trump meeting in Georgia last week on prison reform notwithstanding.

Our country has endured cataclysm before. The Civil War, Vietnam and Civil Rights, Watergate, 9/11, all provided critical challenges to our citizenry, whose response shaped whether we would survive with our freedoms in tact. The underlying assumption has always been without such liberties the whole deal ain’t worth squat. Moreover, as we’ve progressed as a going democratic concern, the pool of those fully entitled to such freedoms has expanded to…everybody! Trumpism challenges both propositions, one at a time. Bigoted GOP fools believe, just as their Johnny Reb and Jim Crow predecessors, that freedom for some and not others, or separate but equal justice, is good enough to secure the liberty required for them and theirs to prosper. That is a lie only the ignorant would buy into. Four out of five in the GOP apparently haven’t received that memo. That’s a battle worth fighting right now! BC

The soaring number of children with developmental disabilities over the last three decades has alarmed and baffled researchers. Theories abound, from vaccine side effects, which Big Pharma has spared little expense trying to discredit, to looking at genetic patterns and sequencing that might provide clues to vulnerability. Of course, common sense dictates environmental factors be examined, surely pollutants are a natural suspect proven over the years to cause all manner of other maladies; why wouldn’t government watchdogs air on the side of caution and limit the exposure of unborns to such toxins? Why indeed!

Chlorpyrifos was introduced by Dow Chemical in 1965. Designed to kill insects in rural, business and residential settings, Dow aggressively promoted its distribution. Oranges, apples and bananas, among other cash crops, were held out as benefitting from regularly scheduled applications of the pesticide. More than 100 countries were targeted by Dow and became reliable chlorpyrifos consumers.

But like many Dow breakthroughs of the 50s and 60s, what made the product effective also rendered it dangerous to humans. Deemed a level II toxin by the World Health Organization, the pesticide was tied to chronic wheezing, immune issues and lung cancer in adults. However, children, specifically unborn children, were shown to be particularly vulnerable to the product’s nasty side effects.

In utero exposure is the most difficult scenario to research and draw conclusions about when looking for links to developmental problems. What pregnant women ate and where they may have been exposed is hard to catalog and investigate. But chlorpyrifos was prolific enough to emerge early on as a prime suspect. Residential use of the product was prohibited in 2001; by the time the Obama EPA moved to ban chlorpyrifos completely, many felt it was long overdue. Indeed, a study released in 2012 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) concluded that even limited exposure to the pesticide could impact pre-natal brain development, while higher levels produced “abnormal areas of enlargement and indentation across the surface of the brain.”

Scott Pruitt came into his duties as Trump’s EPA Administrator with an ambitious agenda. Nowhere was he more activist than rolling back regulations deemed to have removed once profitable products from the marketplace. Anywhere the science was debatable – read corporate lobbyist claims – Pruitt wasn’t just going to offer a benefit of the doubt, he was going to employ the full weight of his office. The regulatory history of chlorpyrifos fit that paradigm to a tee.

On March 29 of last year, Pruitt issued the following statement in heralding his decision to lift the Obama ban on chlorpyrifos:

“We need to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment. By reversing the previous Administration’s steps to ban one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, we are returning to using sound science in decision-making – rather than predetermined results.”

The statement aped the climate change talktrack, essentially accusing the research community, dedicated to getting to the bottom of a horrific epidemic of children suffering life-ruining maladies from the minute they emerge in the delivery room, of bad faith conclusions meant to addle respectable commerce.

Of course, the spectrum of developmental deficits is non-partisan, with no regard for political affiliation. Yet and still, that hasn’t stopped Trump and his Fox/AM creators, as they do with every other issue, from declaring us against them when it comes to regulation of poisons. Worrying about the unborn as anything other than the political football of pro-life righteousness is a liberal deficiency. Compelling evidence linking a toxin of the same family developed by Nazi weapon makers to pre-natal and infant injuries can be breezily condemned because, after all, “the left” are hypocrites, who support killing babies through abortion. Ah, the circular insanity of nihilism.

Scott Pruitt has been run out of DC on a rail, the result, not of overt subservience to corporate money which the chlorpyrifos action fully exemplified, but a long list of other outrageously corrupt personal perks he felt entitled to enjoy. Better yet, his decision to lift the ban on Chlorpyrifos sales met with similar ignominy the other day. In a split decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled there was no justification for Pruitt’s policy “in the face of scientific evidence that it’s residue on food causes nuerodevelopmental damage to children.” The EPA has 60 days to ban all sale of chlorpyrifos.

While this story seems to end on the hopeful note that enough institutional decency exists to check at least the most extreme assaults by Trumpism on hard won regulatory gains directed at protecting our children, don’t get the champagne out just yet. Pruitt’s successor, Andrew Wheeler may not be the unhinged show horse few missed when sent packing back to Oklahoma, but he has spent his career feeding at the same trough. And while, the court’s ruling was forceful, Wheeler’s spokesman merely acknowledged the agency was “reviewing the decision.” Stay tuned.

In this Administration nobody ever says never when it comes to senselessly attacking what its wretched core has been taught to disdain… even as their children suffer the same fate as the ones they couldn’t care less about. BC