Empire in Decline

This isn’t what I set out to write. It isn’t what I originally wrote.

But - the world as we know it has just changed a great deal, and I feel a duty to write about that. 

This election is about anger. The anger is real. I believe it is misplaced, but that really doesn’t matter now. The angry people have spoken, and the rest of the nation and the rest of the world will be living with the consequences for a long time to come.

Some social media snapshots from friends around the world:

From the UK: “World leaders are in shock. Apparently, Marine LePen is the only politician outside the US who has congratulated Trump, which is unprecedented.”

From Australia: “Come on, it's pretty funny that the USA has elected a clown, an actual one with makeup and wig, to govern. If you don't laugh you will go mad.”

From the UK: “Welcome to the Brexit Club, America.”

From Panama: “On several levels, it's the end of an era for the USA. Geopolitics and economics are generally forces for continuity, but in case you haven't noticed, the United States is not the power it was. Other countries' leaders and people who shift money to and fro around the world surely notice.”

From Australia:

“So it's looking like Donald Trump will be the president of the USA. What does that say about a political system that endorses a candidate like this lunatic? It is ok to be a bully? It's perfectly fine to be a misogynist? To be racist? To be a billionaire and not pay any tax? It's no problem at all to be a liar? It's ok to deceive people with conspiracy theories and manipulate opinions with empty statements that cannot be substantiated? To my American friends who I know did not vote for Trump. I'm so very sorry.”

Sorry, world. The US has just officially become a rogue nation.

The recriminations have begun. The Clinton supporters are blaming the third party voters. The third party voters are (in some cases) blaming the DNC for misreading the political climate. The Democratic Party has moved so far to the right since 2000, that they’re no longer the friend of the working stiff, in a year when it was terribly important to be that friend.

Republicans are not friends of the working class, either – they just have better PR. People with stagnant incomes hear “tax cuts” and they think that will mean more money for them. They do not understand that those cuts will be for the wealthy. People heard Trump talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country. That was a cruel message to people who badly need good paying jobs. Manufacturing is never coming back. Trump’s own products are manufactured overseas. We’re a nation and a world on the verge of big economic changes, and we’ve chosen an ill-informed carnival barker to lead us into the future.

As a nation, we’ve never gotten past racism. We tried a few times, but it’s not over. As a nation, we have never confronted our misogyny. We just elected a guy who has said awful things about women, and admitted to assaulting them. A man who says we need to build a wall to keep out Mexicans. He mocked a reporter with disabilities. He was cheered on by angry people who applauded him for “telling it like it is.”

That’s what we do here. When the economy is lousy for us, when we are fearful for our future, we blame THOSE PEOPLE. Whoever they are. The politics of hate, anger, and fear have won the day. What do we tell our girl children about what just happened here?

The media deserves a great deal of blame for this – but not the kind that we began to see at the end of Trump’s campaign. Men showing up at Trump events with t-shirts suggesting that lynching reporters was a good idea isn’t funny. Somewhere along the way the second amendment has become the only one that matters to a large segment of the population.

Nowhere is that truer than NH, where the politics of guns and pledges have won the day. NH has just chosen another Sununu to govern our state. Jumping on the Trump train worked for him. We can now look forward to 2 years of businessman Chris Sununu telling us why it’s a mistake to invest in our own state. He’ll be aided and abetted by the great visionaries of our legislature, whose idea of the future is firmly planted in 1952. 

Guns aren’t going to fix our roads and bridges – and neither is our new state government. Instead, the demonizing of the poor is likely to be ramped up, along with MOAR GUNZ, less access to health care, business tax cuts, MOAR GUNZ, right to work, eliminating bodily autonomy for women, and plenty of other stupid that has yet to reveal itself.

As I write this, the US Senate race between Kelly Ayotte and Maggie Hassan is still undecided. Congresswoman Ann Kuster kept her seat, despite a last minute surge of support for challenger Jim Lawrence. Carol Shea-Porter was reelected in the first district, despite the best efforts of the independent candidate. He might have swayed the election to Guinta, had it not been for the rats. That was just a bridge too far (and too bizarre) for many people. New Hampshire did manage to fend off some of the damage that was done in the rest of the country.

There are some bright spots in the darkness. In Las Cruces, NM, a young woman I met at a conference in 2012 was just elected to her state legislature. Angelica Rubio describes her campaign as being “built on a foundation of community and inclusion, speaking to values that unite us all.”

We need more of this.

Published as an op-ed in the November 11 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Same Old Song and Dance

Last week in Los Angeles, a 100-year old water pipe broke, and spilled more than 20 million gallons of water. That’s a day’s worth of water for about 100,000 people. According to a story at Grist.org, due to our aging water infrastructure, ancient pipes leak 7 billion gallons of treated drinking water every day. Most of our water infrastructure was put into place during the early part of the 20^th century. It’s now languishing in disrepair because we have other national and state spending priorities. We aren’t willing to invest in our country, because it would mean spending less on offense, and it would mean creating jobs, and that can’t happen while the Black Guy is in the White House. All that dripping water is something to chew on as we await the coming water wars.

It is an election year, and around New Hampshire, politicians are gearing up for the primary on September 9. The signs are coming out, and so are the usual talking points. “Cut spending!” “No New Taxes!” That’s been the GOP mantra since I moved to NH thirty years ago. It’s been successful because it is easily absorbed and repeated by low information/low intellect voters. As a plan for running a state, it has not been successful – any more than it would be a successful business plan. A business that doesn’t invest in itself will eventually go under. We’re seeing what becomes of a state that doesn’t invest in itself – all the states around us are bouncing back from the meltdown of the economy in 2008. Our neighbor states invested in education and infrastructure. They began planning for the future. NH remains obstinately stuck in the past. 

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, over half of NH’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition. NH reports the need to invest $847 million in drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. We need to invest $1.2 billion in wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years. We all know that there are hundreds of red listed bridges that need fixing, and that our state park system has unmet needs of about $100 million because we don’t fund the park system properly.

With all of that in mind, I looked at the websites of our top gubernatorial candidates. Andrew Hemingway wants to offer tax cut incentives to bring new businesses here. He wants to create a business friendly atmosphere, which in Hemingway speak means “a regulatory and tax structure that is inviting to small and large businesses.” Nowhere in the “Solutions First” section of his website is infrastructure even mentioned. We’ve heard all of this before.

Walter Havenstein, the Maryland resident who wants to be our governor, has a snappy graphic and a 3-part plan on his website. It seems that our problem is business taxes and high electric costs. Havenstein blames the high electric costs on REGGI. Perhaps it is unfair to expect a recent emigre to be familiar with what the Seabrook nuclear plant did to our energy costs, and how PSNH has managed itself over the years. He also adds the usual mantra of no income/no sales tax. No unions. Passing right to work will send a strong message to the whole country that we are open for business! We need qualified employees! The university system better shape up! We need to eliminate regulations and fees! And so on.

This is all in his plan for The Economic Transformation of NH.  If it sounds curiously familiar, it’s because it’s the same plan we’ve heard from every GOP candidate for the last 30 years. The word infrastructure is never mentioned in Havenstein’s 3 point plan. He does, however, pat himself on the back for his career at BAE Systems, a company that relies entirely on government contracts. Walt may be a stranger to NH, but he’s no stranger to feeding from the public trough.

Havenstein and Hemingway have both taken the Americans for Prosperity pledge. The Koch funded AFP is desperate to ensure that NH residents don’t have health insurance or roads and bridges. The more pledges a candidate signs, the less creativity or actual thought is required of them.

Governor Hassan acknowledges the need for modern, safe, transportation infrastructure on her campaign website, and touts her accomplishments in investing in business-backed plans for investing in road and bridge projects. She’s the only candidate who uses the word infrastructure on her campaign website.

None of the candidates mentioned telecommunications infrastructure at all. The idea that we can somehow continue to struggle to move into the 21^st century without dramatically improved telecommunications infrastructure is befuddling.

A great deal of high volume whining goes on about the transportation fund. Many people seem to think that somewhere in the highway budget is buried treasure that’s just waiting to be properly spent. The Bartlett Center for Kochenomics insists that it’s the carve outs from the highway fund that are the problem. It is true that money from the highway fund goes to the Dept. of Safety, and sometimes to other departments. The trickle downers are aghast upon their fainting couches at the very thought! What they don’t ever acknowledge is this: If NH doesn’t raise enough revenue to run the state properly, then departments will continue to rob Peter to pay Paul. That’s how the NH budget has worked for as long as we can all remember.

Infrastructure investment isn’t a sexy subject. It does not inflame the passions of voters. Addressing NH’s infrastructure needs won’t be cheap. The longer we put it off, the more costly it becomes, and we’ve been putting it off for decades, because NO TAXES/CUT SPENDING. Guns get people wound up. Infrastructure bores people. Roads, bridges, and drinking water are all essential to our state’s economic future, and all we’re getting from our candidates are the same old non-solutions from the last 3 decades. Its no wonder the future looks bleak – we can’t seem to find candidates who have any interest in it.

© 2014 sbruce

Published in the August 8 edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper. 

Bqhatewvr

Scott Brown - the former US Senator from Massachusetts who moved to NH half an hour ago is the gift that keeps on giving. Steve Peoples via the AP:

Outside after a breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs, Brown acknowledged the challenge.

"Do I have the best credentials? Probably not. 'Cause, you know, whatever. But I have long and strong ties to this state," he told The Associated Press. "People know." Brown spent the first year and a half of his life living in New Hampshire before his family moved to Massachusetts.

Bqhatewvr, indeed Scottachusetts. 

But wait, there's more!

Brown told Pratt that "carpetbagger is a derogatory term" in New Hampshire given that roughly 60 percent of its people were born elsewhere, including the current and former Democratic governors. Gov. Maggie Hassan moved to the state in 1989. Shaheen, who was born in Missouri, has lived in New Hampshire for more than 40 years.

"Sen. Shaheen is not from here, but apparently it's a problem with me?" Brown asked during a brief interview outside the diner.