This Week

I get an incomplete

Mar 13, 2021

“I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane." -Bob Dylan, Maggie’s Farm

As David Brooks writes in today’s New York Times, “This has been one of the most quietly consequential weeks in recent American politics.” Brooks’ piece delves into the impact of the landmark American Recovery Plan, President Biden’s program dealing with both the healthcare and economic issues caused by the pandemic. As the President pointed out in his Thursday prime time speech, vaccine production and distribution are exceeding the Administration’s original projections.

There were other issues of note this week: The tsunami of proposed voter-suppression legislation in Republican-controlled states; on Wednesday, House Democrats used their majority to pass HR1 (“For the People”), sweeping legislation to expand voting rights and reform campaign finance and redistricting. The question remains of whether or not Senate Democrats will eliminate the filibuster to pass the bill into law. On the international front, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is pushing a diplomatic effort to end the US military presence in Afghanistan by working with the United Nations and adversaries Russia, China, and Iran, as well as Pakistan, setting the stage for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Of course, there is always news about the former President to distract us from more consequential events. This week’s stories included his continuing spat with various Republican committees over who gets control of GOP fundraising. There is also the matter of the criminal investigations by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis, into his past business dealings and, in the Georgia case, interference in the 2020 election.

All this and more in the news this week and I did not produce a complete piece. I have been researching several different topics but none evolved to the point I could produce a complete essay. Here are some ideas to think about that I will be presenting in the future:

An Open Letter to Senate Democrats- Is there a substantive case for eliminating the filibuster? If so, will the Democrats be able to pull it off? Will they allow Senators Sinema and Manchin to break their hair-thin majority? And shouldn’t we discuss the illusion of bipartisan legislating?

Colonizing America- There is a structural disparity in our government that manifests itself in the composition of the Senate and the Electoral College. This disparity gives the states with smaller populations more power than larger states. Statistic: The 48 Democrats and 2 Independents in the Senate, who are the “majority” because Vice-President Harris is the tie-breaker, represent 41 million more people than the 50 Republicans in the minority. This divide, sometimes described colloquially as the difference between the coastal states and the “fly-over country” in the middle, is reflected in more than political representation. The states with larger populations have much larger economies than the smaller states. Urban centers and their surrounding suburbs generally have more diverse populations, resulting in more cultural interactions. Dispersing people away from the areas of population concentration to smaller cities scattered across the nation might change this. Modern technology allows for the divergence of economic activity. Heterogeneous populations living in close proximity might open the way for less political divisiveness.

The “P’s” in Politics- Persuasion, Pandering, Personality- lots of facets of politics are described with words that begin with “p”. I am specifically looking into the Republican Party’s total abandonment of Persuasion and its reversion to Preventing some people from voting.

The Return of the Deficit Hawks- This is Part II of the dive I took back in January into the issue of the government’s deficit spending. I want to discuss the nature of money, the role of the Federal Reserve, and why a government with a sovereign currency can run a deficit. Think of it as an economic layman presenting thoughts on macro-economics.

The purpose of this newsletter is to present my thoughts and opinions in order to provoke discussion. I would like to get more reaction but, even in the absence of comments, I will continue to express my thoughts. After all, as Dylan says, I have a head full of them.

PS: Are there topics you would like to discuss? I would be pleased to accept your essay for publication on this site. See below. And, if you wish, please click the subscribe button so you can donate $5.00 a month to this project.

1hundredsixty8

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?