Getting Acquainted with Your New Minority Status

The white, christian majority in this country, being the long-time majority, doesn't have the experience to handle minority status graciously. I, on the other hand, grew up in a family that was proud of its recent immigrant history, in an area that had seen waves of immigration. So I have great appreciation for the ethnic mixer in this country. But I don't have a clue what it feels like to be in the majority.

Maybe I can help the white majority make a graceful transition into minority status. First some reassurance about being a minority:

• You don't automatically lose your culture when you become a minority. You just share it with fewer people, but it's still very vibrant. You can see this is true if you visit any cultural fair near you. You'll get to see and sample the ethnic food, the favorite music, maybe even see the fancy dress, but most of all the pride in a unique cultural identity. 
• Being a minority is not being embattled. You don't have to fight to survive when you become a minority, or there would be fewer minorities and whites wouldn't be facing this question. The days of genocide in the US are over, so you won't be targeted for death or beatings.
• You don't have to worry about your culture, your lives, your limbs, so what's left? You may worry about losing your white, christian advantages, which weren't fair anyway, so they don't count. The only thing left to worry about is your comfort in a not-so-white world. That's actually good news. It's easy to survive a little loss of comfort.

So if the biggest problem you'll encounter is being uncomfortable, let me help you some more with my guide to how to be a well-behaved demographic minority:

• Being a minority, you aren't part of a group that owns everything or nearly everything. If you are used to thinking "this is mine" as in "my park," "my street," "my school," "my highway," or "my country," stop. It isn't just yours, not like your house where everything is yours to play with or break. 
• You are now clearly sharing with lots of people. It's like being a guest in a big table that includes a lot of new people, and you all have to act respectful to each other and get along. So if you've been a brat about being white and the top of the heap, you're not on top anymore. No one is. You're all at the same table, so be nice with those knives and forks.
• Realize that most places are neutral territory, hopefully by mutual agreement. You are sharing all these public spaces, so share nicely. Don't insult other people, don't expect them to be just like you, and take turns. One weekend the Puerto Rican Cultural Society uses the park, the next weekend is the Columbus Festival. You can visit each other's festival or not. It's a choice, not a requirement. You don't have to like it, but don't try to stop it.
• Some places aren't neutral territory. Instead they are your home-base. In your church or your house, what you do (or what they do) is nobody else's business as long as nobody gets hurt.
• Most of all, don't try to adjust the demographics. Don't pass white-only emigration laws or massacre people. Don't try to tip the demographics by having lots more children. A baby race is the demographic equivalent of an arms race. Believe me, that approach hasn't done good anywhere. Look at Israel as an example.

Please follow my advice and take my word--it is entirely possible to be a happy, healthy minority in this country. It's part of what makes America great.

EXTRAS. Being a minority: 

"Sometimes it can be alienating, at work, at school, at social events when you are the only minority there... It's always something that's on your mind... Mostly it's like being anyone else though."

"... it is like a sentence because we are stamped with the word "minority" as though we aren't apart of the "acceptable" population."

"I have faced hatred, and insults based upon religion."

 Fears:

"This is why it is more important than ever for whites to recognize this and make a conscious effort to preserve and protect our race, culture, and heritage before it is eventually gone."

"...close the border already!! we need a passport to leave our house!!"

"You have this perception out there that whites are no longer in control or the majority."

"Will they suffer a similar fate to that of the whites in South Africa?"

On the Republican Menu: Just the leftovers

The low caliber of the Republican candidates is proving itself again. Today, I watched a compilation of clips from a Rick Perry speech last Friday where he seemed drunk.  Bachmann, Newt, Santorum ... nobody wants these egomaniacs with no realistic sense of themselves to be president. It would be too dangerous.

This should be a great year to run for president as a Republican. Then why is the field so bad? Because of the Tea Party. Romney is the only major candidate not pandering to them. I suspect that other potential candidates couldn't stomach the political atmosphere. They weren't prepared to spew hate the way the Tea Party demands, and they didn't want to be the Tea Party's target either.

Does the Tea Party run the Republicans now, or is it just the only part with a voice that still works? I think it's time for Republicans to push back. Some sane Republican should talk some sense--talk respectfully about Obama's successes and failures, talk about how to compromise on deficit reduction and tax reform. Instead of having 8 flavors of Not-Romney, we should have at least 4 flavors of Not-Tea-Party. That would be a Republican race that I and most of the country would cheer on. As it is, we're laughing, or just shaking our heads. 

P.S. I know these ideas aren't news. However, today it's all I can think about, so I'm exorcising it onto my blog. That's part of what my blog is for.

Extras: Flashback 2008, no more hacks, this devastating bit from Jon Stewart that I've cited elsewhere in the blog and is completely relevant here too.

The Usurpers

The cry "We're going to take back our country" is one I heard frequently from tea partiers. The sense is that some (usually specified) elected officials are illegitimate usurpers of that office. The implied meaning in  'take back the country' is usually electoral, but violence, or a second amendment solution, lurks in the background

The idea that elected officials are not illegitimate holders of their elected office can come from concerns about the fairness of the election or about the officials themselves. It's often mixed up in the believers' heads. Obama was elected by fraud, he's also not a natural-born American, and no one with his political philosophy should ever be elected.

Graphic:xark.typepad.com

So Obama is treated like a usurper. But Clinton was also treated like a usurper, and there's no doubt that he was a natural-born American. I think the concerns about fraud and Obama's citizenship are just smokescreens for the real reason people don't want him as president--that they don't want someone with his politics in the White House. Therefore, any Democratic president is going to get this treatment--the constant complaints, the attacks on his legitimacy, the insults like "traitor," and the calls to impeach.

Clinton got it too, and it was surprising in its virulence at the time. Hillary called it a "vast rightwing conspiracy," but it actually became normal operating procedure for Clinton's GOP opponents, and the machinery hasn't ever stopped. Now Obama is the target, along with his senior staff, particularly Eric Holder for some reason.

Bear in mind that here can easily be an unending series of complaints about any official since none of us is perfect or all-powerful or able to accomplish everything within our purview. I think the Obama administration has been relatively clean, which is why Operation Fast and Furious is still such an item of anger. It's the biggest club with which to beat the Obama administration, and it isn't that big (in my subjective opinion), especially since it began under President Bush in 2006.

I wonder about this sense that any Democratic president is a usurper. It can feel that the president doesn't have much support if you live in a deep-red state or receive your political information in a partisan echo chamber. Many people, on the right, left, and middle, thin that they are actually in the majority if only:

• The media wasn't so biased.
• The media would get the truth out there.
• Voting fraud was eliminated.
• Stupid voters weren't allowed to vote.
• Freeloaders weren't allowed to vote.
• Immigration laws were enforced.

The belief that your ideas are superior and would win a electorate majority if only [something] is common enough. I just don't know why it persists in the face of election results. Why is there the sense that you are part of the "silent majority" (Nixon) or the real Americans (Palin), and those others are not?

The echo chamber of media and the politics of the people around you with can certainly reinforce that idea, and Fox News and other right-wing outlets do plenty of conscious reinforcement. But I think there's more. There's a kind of resentment at work. It's resentment of elites, particularly in non-conservative media and in academia, who have used their power to stifle. Many people feel stifled, belittled, and embattled. It's no wonder they want to take their country back. That's how anyone feels when they're shouted down, or just perceive that kind of treatment. So they turn their resentment on these elites and their allies, the Democrats.

I don't have a quick solution to this. But I want to remind people that civil discourse and true listening are lacking, and we see the outcome of this situation and probably thousands of others.

  Not a bull's eye for the topic, but a great graphic for 

"take our country back" from rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/tag/paul-street/

Extras:
Type "most Americans want" into Google to see what phrases come up in auto-complete.

Short: Miles apart on regulation

"The reductions of toxic pollution required by the pending “Mercury and Air Toxics” standard would save as many as 17,000 lives every year by 2015 and prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms." -National Resources Defense Council

"If enacted, the regulations would lead to nationwide employment losses totaling 1.44 million job-years by 2020 and increase Americans’ average electricity bills by 11.5 percent. In some parts of the United States, rates would climb by almost 24 percent." - A coal-power industrial group

One article talks only about the health benefits of a set of regulations. One article talks only about the economic drawbacks. Where can we go for a balanced discussion? None of the top 20 Google suggestions help.

Funny deja vu moment courtesy of Rick Perry

I was addicted to Intrade 3 years ago--tracking Obama's strength all the way to his victory on Election Day. Then I stopped being such a political junkie, started watching Lost, or something. But today, I remembered it in a flash of inspiration. Let me set the scene.

I'm reading of the latest blunder from Rick Perry. He's trying to restore his support, so he talks about how much he loves guns and hunting. This is the train of my thought:

1. Of course Perry loves guns.
2. He probably loves hunting up at N*****head camp.
3. He's not too smart getting people thinking about that again.
4. I better check Intrade and see how Romney is doing.

Romney is doing great--his stock is up above $6 a share. Check it out and see where the other candidates are.

Herman Cain improvises

Maybe this isn't fair. Candidates often haven't worked out their policy positions before they run for office. On the other hand, Cain was mostly retired, was doing political commentary, and then decided to run for president, only the highest office in the entire country. So, yes, it is fair to expect him to have his plan worked out a little better than it appeared this week.

Monday - He says there will be tax relief for poorer workers living or working in "empowerment zones."

Friday - He announces the 9-0-9 plan for workers at or below the poverty line, meaning that they don't pay the payroll tax. Change of plans, I guess. The benefits for business of empowerment zones, well that's still being worked on.  (By the way, this website hasn't caught up yet either.)

Here's what I think: Herman Cain latched onto someone's economic plan. It sounded good in the echo chamber, but not so good out in the real world that contains 1) poor workers 2) noisy liberals in the media that will point out the plan's effect on poor workers.

So Cain conferred with his economic adviser, trying to alter the plan for the real world after the tour bus is on the road. Between Monday and Friday somebody pointed out that poor workers may live somewhere outside of an "empowerment zone." Cain, as a former poor child, should have known this already. Actually, everyone in this country should know this.

Soon we'll hear about problems with the 9-0-9 plan. I've got two already:

1. How does the government know you're under the poverty line unless you file a tax return? 
2. If you're under the poverty line, you don't have any incentive to get slightly over the poverty line unless the income tax is phased in. So there be 9-1-9 plan, then 9-3-9 plan, etc?

Maybe this commentator is right--Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Is Disintegrating In Front of Our Eyes.

Herman with his favorite focus group

Romney's economic plan - FAIL

It's time for me to accept that Romney may well be Republican nominee, despite the appearance that half the Repub base can't stand him. Since I live in Massachusetts, I've experienced Romney as a governor but I can barely remember it. That indicates that he wasn't a great governor or an awful one. That's the sum of my firsthand experience. For any other questions, I have to research just like anyone else. This comment from an Atlantic blog seconded my impression of him and prompted my flurry of Romney research:

"He's seeped himself in the republican orthodoxy with a wink wink and nod and a smile at the camera.  I think he can largely free himself from that come the general election." --Atlantic post

My impression of Romney as a campaigner: polished delivery, strong on the details, personable, moderate. I don't remember many policy proposals, but the entire field has been rather lean on policy (except 9-9-9), so that's par for the course. I had to look at the goods, so I skimmed Romney's 87-page economic plan.

The good news is that the plan is not a typical Republican conservative supply-side fairy tale. Of course there's Obama-bashing on every other page, but there's some promising stuff too. What I liked:

• Lower tax rate on cap gains, dividends, interest, but importantly, only for tax payers under $200,000.
• Cut corporate rate to 25% and end rules that discourage repatriation of overseas profits.
• An explicit shout-out to Simpson-Bowles' recommendations on tax reform - broader tax base, simpler, fewer deductions.
• A cap on regulation that measures compliance costs, and doesn't allow an overall rise in compliance costs.
• A bit of respect for Dodd-Frank disguised as criticism.
• Cut, cap, and balance but at 20% of GDP, not the 18% level that most conservatives quote.

What I didn't like:

• Eliminate estate tax (but this is such a Republican plank, I'm not too surprised).
• Mention of the illusory tax compliance cost of $400 billion a year. I don't believe we spend 2.7% of our GDP in tax compliance. Where the spending is concentrated, in complex business arrangements,  will likely remain.
• A poke in the eye at the auto industry over the bail-out--UAW made out, but investors (carefully not called creditors) got screwed. I predict he'll change his tune on this one in the general campaign.
• Only small fixes to Social Security.
• A shout-out to Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare, but with unspecified differences. This void shows how dangerous a definite policy commitment would be. I doubt that Romney will choose the deeply unpopular voucher approach.
• Turn Medicaid into a block grant. (I'm on the fence as to whether this will be beneficial or not.)
• Support for a balanced budget amendment that is more a strait-jacket than a workable plan.
• Tough talk about sanctioning China for currency manipulation.

Gaping holes in the plan:

• No plan for the uninsured or for lowering health care costs.
• No specific areas of spending cuts, but a reduction of the federal workforce by attrition.
• No proposed federal budget with numbers.

So, my overall impression is that the plan isn't extreme considering it came from a Republican: no major tax cuts, a reasonable goal on regulation. But it fails in two essential ways:

• It isn't a plan unless it contains actual numbers.
• It isn't honest about what will be painful. 

This plan is meant to get Romney elected, and only then will we find out if he'll grapple with tough issues. I'm sure no one is surprised that Romney is playing it safe.

 ...but don't expect a straight answer.

Should I review Michele Bachmann's plan now? ... No, I'll stick to real candidates.

Update 12/13/11. Romney announced his plans for Medicare reform, and they look a lot like Ryan's plan to voucherize the program.The big advantage of vouchers is that the federal government can decide how much to spend year-to-year. A big disadvantage is that it puts cost-containment onto insurance companies. To be fair, cost-containment is the boogey man in all Medicare plans. ...Oh, it's not a voucher, it's premium support. Don't ask me to explain the non-existent difference between the two.


Wall Street Journal review of Romney's plan