Elections and widespread voter suppression disenfranchise voters throughout the United States. In this most recent presidential election we have seen almost every trick used to make voting difficult or impossible. But there are many paths to disenfranchisement. Who we see on the ballot, who we see on the debate stage, and how we select the winners all determine whether we get the politicians we need.

The hegemony of the so-called Two Party System isn’t doing democracy any favors. Like the convention of having 9 Supreme Court justices, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires a two-party system. The reality is that we have dozens of political parties. Yet this magic number is taken by many as an article of political faith.

This year more than a dozen presidential candidates qualified to appear on state ballots, but you wouldn’t know it since only two parties were invited to appear at debates hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Despite its government-y name, the CPD is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose board members are a Who’s Who of establishment politics. It was founded by the then-chair of the Democratic Party, Paul Kirk, Jr., and by his Republican equivalent, Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr. Since 1996 CPD’s sponsors have included Anheuser-Busch, Dun & Bradstreet, Philip Morris, Sara Lee, Sprint, AT&T, Ford Motor Company, Hallmark, IBM, J.P. Morgan, U.S. Airways, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and — well, you get the idea.

The entire election process — including the voting procedure itself — is designed to disadvantage third parties. The American preoccupation with “viability” always trumps presenting new ideas to voters. When, as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein did in 2016, a third party candidate does overcome all odds and manages to get on the ballot, s/he is usually vilified, as Stein was, for stealing votes from “viable” candidates who are only viable thanks to free coverage from media giants and non-profits like CPD. Stein was arrested when she tried to “crash” CPB’s 2016 debates.

I recently viewed a 2016 video of Stein being interviewed by “Headliner” anchor Mehdi Hasan. When asked what she could uniquely offer voters, she pointed to: student debt relief; an emergency jobs program based on a green energy economy; and and end to police violence. While today’s Democrats are still struggling to address police violence, income inequality, and climate change, Stein nailed it four years ago.

Fast forward to 2020. It wasn’t just Bernie Sanders and the Squad who brought progressive platform planks to voters. Planks from Stein’s platform were eventually embraced by at least several Democrats in the 2020 election cycle.

I was one of those who voted “Green” in 2016. Admittedly, my vote was lost in a sea of Massachusetts votes for Hillary Clinton. But I felt it was important to support a fundamentally decent candidate with a more humane and rational platform than Democrats were offering. And — no — my vote didn’t bring Donald Trump to power any more than Russian troll farms or Jim Comey did. Democrats anointed the wrong candidate, and she lost because not enough people wanted her.

Which brings me to Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). RCV is used in a number of American cities, Maine, Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Ireland, and elsewhere. It gives voters more than one choice on a ballot, so that if their first candidate is not viable — in the real sense of the word — then their 2nd, 3rd, or 10th choice will at least influence the final vote. Ranked Choice Voting also avoids costly runoff elections by calculating instant runoffs.

On November 3rd Massachusetts voters will have a chance to choose Ranked Choice Voting by checking “Yes” on Question #2. The 10-way Democratic primary in the 4th Congressional District offered a perfect example of why RCV is needed. As a Boston.com article pointed out, “winning without the support of the vast majority of voters has become a feature of most recent open House primaries. In 2018, Rep. Lori Trahan won her 3rd District primary with less than 22 percent of the vote. In 2013, Rep. Katherine Clark won with less than 32 percent. In 1998, former Rep. Mike Capuano clinched the nomination with 23 percent.”

And we call this democracy?

Had Ranked Choice voting been available in 2016, I imagine that Green voters like myself would have held our noses and chosen Hillary Clinton as our second pick. But that wasn’t even an option.

So if Massachusetts voters, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, still end up rejecting Ranked Choice Voting in the face of increasing problems with conventional voting, then I will be quick to offer this piece of advice: Shut up about third parties spoiling “your” wins. You had your chance and you blew it.

Vote Yes on Question #2.

If he manages to be elected, Joe Biden must add at least two Supreme Court justices. I would welcome his choice of Barack Obama for one new seat and Merritt Garland for the other.

Adding justices is what should happen if Republicans jam through the appointment of an “originalist” judge who is also a member of a cult featuring handmaids.

Of course, not everybody thinks expanding the Supreme Courts is a great idea. Some Democrats — including Biden himself — fear the sky would fall if such an audacious thing were done.

But given that the Republicans have been packing lower courts for years, maybe we need to trade in “Hope and Change” for some “Audacity and Change.” The threat of so-called “court packing” would send a chilling message to Republicans pondering Trump’s eclipse — do it and see what happens.

But forget about Barrett’s cult for a moment. Shouldn’t we restore some religious balance to the highest court in the land? 63% of Supreme Court Justices are already Catholic in a country where only 23% identify as such. If Barrett is confirmed that number would hit 75%. Many American Catholics don’t even share the views of their more conservative co-religionists on the Court. And more Americans than ever check off “none” in the religious box.

Expanding the Court is hardly a new idea. Donald Trump’s next favorite president (after himself, of course) is Andrew Jackson, who added two justices to the Court in 1836.

There is also nothing sacred about nine justices or lifetime presidential appointments. The way justices are appointed in other Western nations puts our process to shame.

The Supreme Court of Canada is appointed by the Governor in Council and consists of nine justices. The number started out as six, was bumped up to seven, and ultimately nine. On the surface theirs looks like ours, but Canada’s Supreme Court Act requires that three judges come from Ontario, three from Quebec, two from the Western provinces or Northern Canada and one from the Atlantic provinces. And Judges must also retire before their 75th birthdays.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has twelve justices and they must have already served on the bench for 15 years, or 2 on a “federal” bench. The UK convenes a selection commission chosen from judiciaries in Britain, Scotland, Northern Island and Wales, and it strives for balance. After selection, a justice is formally appointed by the Queen. Even with 12 justices that number can still be increased. Justices must retire at 70 or 75, depending on when they joined the bench.

The German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, or BVerfG), has sixteen justices divided a couple of ways into two senates and three chambers. Judges are elected by both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, each of which selects eight justices. A Justice must have previously held a position on the bench and be at least 40 years of age. Justices serve for 12 years or until the age of 68, whichever comes first.

The French Court of Cassation is the highest appeal court in France and has an elaborate system of chambers and sitting and administrative judges, but 15 justices head up the court. These 15 judges serve a 9 year term and 3 each are appointed by the President of the Republic, the Senate and the National Assembly presidents. To become a judge, a lawyer must be admitted to the Supreme Court Bar after passing an exam from the National School of the Magistracy. Typically, candidates are already judges in lower courts.

Our Supreme Court selection process is a mess. Not only is it highly politicized, but it lacks regional and demographic representation, professionalism, and justices typically serve well past normal professional expiration dates. More importantly, our selection process is simply undemocratic.

We need a serious re-think of the selection process, as well as term limits for the Supreme Court. And there are plenty of places to look for better ideas, starting with some of our closer allies.

But in the interim, let’s expand the Supreme Court.

Legislators are elected to help people. Some think their responsibility stops with constituents; others have a broader sense of responsibility to the earth, humanity, and global concerns. This is who I want representing me.

When it comes to immigration in this state, I want legislators to take action against the Trump administration’s enlistment of local police in increasingly brazen and cruel roundups of desperate and paperless refugees. But the majority of Bristol County legislators are profound disappointments. Most coast to re-election without challengers. Instead of democracy we have political machinery and patronage in Bristol County. And with a few exceptions, we get hacks instead of leaders as a result.

Hall of Fame

I am grateful to the following state representatives and senators for stepping up to support the Safe Communities Act. It takes guts and principle and that broader sense of responsiibility to help suffering human beings, whether they can vote for you or not.

• Rep. Antonio F. D. Cabral, 13th Bristol (H.3573)
• Rep. James K. Hawkins, 2nd Bristol (H.3573)
• Sen. Paul R. Feeney, Bristol and Norfolk (S.1401 is the Senate version)
• Sen. Rebecca L. Rausch, Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex (S.1401)

Wall of Shame

The Republicans on the list below all belong on the Wall of Shame. Their party has become a rotting husk and a personality cult whose immigration policy is literally written by white supremacists. No surprise that Massachusetts Republicans march in lockstep with White House immigration advisor Stephen Miller, who proposed deporting Central American DACA recipients in railroad boxcars.

But the Democrats on this list? To be charitable, if they don’t share the xenophobia of their Republican friends, then their only excuse is that they are cowardly machine politicians afraid of angering rightwing police unions and some of their more racist constituents. Everyone on the list below will protest that they’re not racists or xenophobes — and a few can even point to programs they’ve funded which help disadvantaged communities.

But when it’s time to show their mettle, they are invariably too timid to help refugees whose lives have been upended by war, climate change, political instability, or hunger. Their love of humanity is conditional and narrow, reserved only for campaign contributors and potential voters. For refugees they look away, and for that — Democrat or Republican — they ought to be deeply ashamed.

• Rep. Jay Barrows
• Rep. Carole Fiola
• Rep. Patricia Haddad
• Rep. Christopher Hendricks
• Rep. Steven Howitt
• Rep. Christopher Markey
• Rep. Shaunna O’Connell
• Rep. Norman Orrall
• Rep. Elizabeth Poirier
• Rep. Paul Schmid
• Rep. Alan Silvia
• Rep. William Straus
• Senator Michael Brady
• Senator Mark Montigny
• Senator Marc Pacheco
• Senator Michael Rodrigues
• Senator Walter Timilty

In 2016 a small percentage of Bernie Sanders’ supporters refused to support the Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton. I agreed with Bernie that Clinton’s “damn server” was not her main problem, nor were her tangled connections to oligarchs and war criminals through the Clinton Foundation, the $2 billion family business, my main objection to Clinton.

No, I was one of those people disgusted at the blood Clinton had on her hands from her stint crafting malign foreign policy and advocating regime change in the Middle East as Secretary of State. I voted Green and don’t regret my protest vote for a second, although some of my friends still believe it was people like me who tipped the scales in Trump’s favor.

They forget, of course, that for every one of us who voted Green — “robbing” Clinton of “her” vote — there were more than three people who voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, thus robbing Donald Trump of three times our votes. In the grand scheme of things, the Libertarian vote hurt Republicans much more than the Green vote hurt Democrats.

In contrast to 1992, when Ross Perot received almost 19% of the vote, in 2016 third parties received a combined total of only 4.4% of the popular vote. Neither Jill Stein nor Gary Johnson received even a fraction of a single Electoral College vote — the only thing that really counts in a presidential election. The tiniest of fractions were, however, allocated to Colin Powell, John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Faith Spotted Eagle. Despite winning the popular vote 48.18% to 46.09%, Democrats were defeated — not by the Greens but by a combination of the Electoral College, voter apathy, and Clinton’s own failure to campaign in key states.

So here we are four years later. Sanders, who once again ran on a progressive platform and lost to Centrist Democratic machinery, finds himself once again being a good soldier, supporting another Centrist. Once again some of his disgruntled supporters are being accused of acting irresponsibly by not playing the Two Party game with sufficient enthusiasm. And once again old accusations against Sanders supporters have re-surfaced.

It’s not clear how many Working Families Party, Our Revolution, or Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members will vote for Joe Biden — in a time of pandemic and incipient fascism it’s going to be a lot more than you think — but the fact progressives are not eager to endorse Biden has some people in a tizzy.

American Prospect editor Harold Meyerson, for example, accuses DSA of “moronic rectitude” for withholding their endorsement of Biden. One hopes that Meyerson knows the difference between a grudging vote cast in the privacy of the voting booth and a full-throated public endorsement. Of course, it might also help if Biden reached out to the Democratic Left with progressive policy changes to earn that endorsement — at a time in our history when progressive policies are needed more than ever. And by now Biden should have chosen an African-American woman running mate. His dithering — and the ongoing market testing of various white female Centrists — say a lot about Biden, the DNC, and the power of Democratic Party’s PACs and big donors.

So I’m going to vote for the guy who’s not a fascist. I will probably even donate money to his campaign. But there are a couple of things about voting that bear repeating.

First, voters don’t owe anyone their votes. Those who don’t vote are a majority in many American elections. Voting statistics reveal the low opinion the electorate has of both parties, their hollow promises and their bullshit platforms. Though most of you will disagree with the following statement, it is true enough for those who hold it — the differences between the two mainstream parties are simply not significant enough to get most people off their couches on Election Day. Want more voters? Offer something worth voting for.

Second, voters don’t owe you their votes. A vote means what a voter wants it to mean. You may regard my vote as an obligation to get with your program and ensure that your candidate wins an election, but that’s not why I show up at the polls. Elections are not horse races. If they were there would occasionally be a pay-out. Elections are just as much referenda on ideas and principles as they are the ritual selection of interchangeable elected representatives.

Phrases like “electability” and “viability” are not Good Housekeeping seals of approval. They are mainly indictments of the hollowness of American politics. It’s not my fault that many of you vote for people you don’t even like that much — candidates who do test polling instead of actually believing in something and committing to fixing the root causes of the nation’s most serious problems. And since when do mainstream Democrats, who just concluded a vicious liberal red-baiting campaign against Sanders, believe in Marxist-Leninist Party Discipline? My vote is my own, not the Democratic Party’s.

By now we all know that elections have consequences, but so do campaigns and candidate choices. Give voters a good and decent candidate with good and decent policies and they’ll vote for her. Offer them the lesser of two evils, and an electorate conditioned to always snap to attention and choose American greatness will choose the greater evil every time.

Biden’s going to be an extremely long-shot this November. Don’t blame his loss on progressives.

A New York Times editorial by Tom Friedman making the rounds offers specific recommendations for a Biden cabinet. Friedman’s terrible picks deserve both scrutiny and comment.

For starters, the “Team of Rivals” approach is even more ill-conceived today than it was in 2016. And backing up for a second, what’s the rush to anoint Joe Biden before he survives the Coronavirus, the last Democratic primary, and a convention? Joe Biden is not Juan Guaidó: he can’t simply proclaim himself president (or nominee) before an election says he is. Premature anointment is a 2016 mistake Democrats seem determined to repeat in 2020. This is a party that never learns.

Instead of a “Team of Rivals” that magically makes Republicans sing Kumbaya along with Democrats, what we really need is an experienced Democratic cabinet that reflects America’s neighborhoods and not America’s boardrooms. We need a kick-ass team of Democrats who believe in science and education and health and economic and racial justice — including Democrats usually relegated to the sidelines while people like Friedman’s choices run America into the ground as ineptly as their Republican golfing buddies.

The Democratic Party is being held together with duct tape and spearmint gum. If Democrats need anything, it is to give power to people already inside the tent, especially progressives and African Americans — rather than handing Republicans, Think Tank ideologues, CEO’s, and Friedman’s Davos crowd any more power than they already have.

Where Friedman casts a few crumbs to progressives and African Americans, they are cynical and ill-fitting posts akin to ambassadorships. With Friedman’s picks, Corporate America can rest assured that Neoliberalism and reckless foreign policy will continue — and his choice of so many American oligarchs all but guarantees it.

Worse, Friedman’s cabinet assignments are an extension of the Centrist Democrat election “strategy” of sidelining progressives and minorities in favor of America’s imagined “heartland” and “center.” The enthusiasm with which Friedman’s half-baked notions have gathered appreciative sighs is discouraging. It confirms my belief that Democrats are a party of small ideas and wishful thinking.

Who on Friedman’s List will finally deal with reparations, student debt, or the formation of a single-payer National Health Care System? Who on his list is prepared to implement economic, criminal, policing, and racial justice reforms? Remember: this will be a Biden monster cobbled together from human parts harvested from the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Basically, the best Friedman has come up with is an offer to share Democratic power with Republicans immediately after being won — that is, if a lackluster candidate and an uninspiring cabinet can even inspire voters to choose a Democratic slate.

Below are my comments on Friedman’s specific choices. Among them are too many Centrists and Republicans, a frightening number of oligarchs, numerous Think Tank and Davos buddies, and a racial and socioeconomic mix that looks little like the real America.

Post Person Notes Vice President Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala or Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island This is a giant “F*** You” to African Americans. And from which section of his colon did Friedman pull Gina Raimondo? Treasury Secretary Mike Bloomberg Another member of the Ruling Class? Health and Human Services Secretary Bill Gates Another member of the Ruling Class? Secretary of Oversight for the trillions of dollars in emergency Coronavirus spending Elizabeth Warren Instead of letting Warren create a single-payer national healthcare system Attorney General Merrick Garland Why not Kamala Harris and save Garland for SCOTUS (again)? Homeland Security Secretary Andrew Cuomo Another Giulani in the making; he is not acceptable to progressives Secretary of State Mitt Romney A White Republican, and not even one most White Republicans like Defense Secretary Michèle Flournoy A Clinton neoconservative, just what we don’t need Labor Secretary Ro Khanna An attempt to buy off a progressive critic of reckless “Defense” spending Secretary of National Infrastructure Rebuild (Friedman’s new cabinet post) Walmart C.E.O. Doug McMillon Another member of the Ruling Class? Commerce Secretary Former American Express C.E.O. Ken Chenault Another member of the Ruling Class? O.M.B. Director Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio Why is Friedman afraid to let a Democrat run the OMB? Education Secretary Laurene Powell Jobs Friedman has been hob-nobbing at Davos too long with celebrities like Steve Jobs’ widow U.N. ambassador Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Why not put AOC in charge of the Green New Deal? Maybe because Centrists don’t believe in it. HUD secretary Ford Foundation chief Darren Walker Walker is Friedman’s only African-American pick but is not exactly in touch with its problems Interior Secretary Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico Friedman treats this like an inherited position: Grisham’s father, Manuel Lujan, was Bush’s Interior Secretary Energy Secretary Andy Karsner (a green Republican who led renewable energy for George W. Bush) Another from the Davos crowd, and affiliated with Laurene Jobs. But why not an author or cosponsor of the Green New Deal? E.P.A. administrator Al Gore Gore made some nice movies back in the day, but my choice would be Jay Inslee

I watched part of the Biden-Bernie debate list night. Whatever anyone thinks about Democratic Centrists or Democratic Socialists, it’s clear that either of these two would take on a global pandemic with smarter people and more compassion and honesty than the present inhabitant of the White House. And while one might be tempted to think that Trump’s failed response to the pandemic might lead his supporters to doubt him even a little, one would be wrong. Read this and this and this and weep for a nation of so many willful idiots.

I have to admit: I couldn’t watch the whole Bernie-Biden debate. It was disappointing that even a crisis of this magnitude couldn’t move Biden to acknowledge that a national healthcare system covering everyone could have been more than handy this week, and that (going forward) it would be the best long-term response to another pandemic. Instead, Biden seemed comfortable with the idea of sitting in the Situation Room managing a one-time crisis. Of course, after that we’d still have a patchwork healthcare “system” that excludes 80 million people — and be waiting for the next national health emergency.

The 63% of all Americans who would be wiped out financially by a $500 emergency are the same ones likely to lose the little they own during this pandemic because their services providing rides, eldercare, serving tables, or running corner stores and restaurants won’t be needed for several months. I didn’t hear any satisfactory explanations last night of how Capitalism and The Market were going to handle the massive financial damage to these vulnerable people.

Our nation of 330 million people has 400 million guns and 924,000 hospital beds and we may soon find ourselves in the same situation as Italy, which announced yesterday that people over 80 might be denied treatment because there are simply not enough ventilators and hospital beds. As schools close due to the virus, we are forced to acknowledge how much we depend on them to provide a safe place and food for millions of children. And until last week I thought Andrew Yang’s universal basic income was a gimmick. I was wrong: COVID-19 is the best argument seen yet for providing financial stability to families — now that we’re way past hypotheticals.

Progressives keep saying government has a role to play in providing a safety net for real people — not just defense contractors, the oil industry and big agriculture. But most Democrats still think the market economy can handle everything. I wonder if the Coronavirus has made anyone rethink this assumption, even a little. No, dear friends, this week has been a wake-up call. We’ve been patching the cracked walls of the house for far too long. Even though the floor has buckled and we can hear the beams snapping while even bigger cracks appear with greater frequency, the only solution we ever come up with is to buy more Spackle.

Why the hell don’t we just fix the foundation?

As the March 3rd Democratic primary approaches, I have been arguing with just about all of my centrist Democrat friends. It was interesting to come across an essay about the centrist-progressive dispute by Jim Hightower, who may be best known (at least in Texas) as the agriculture commissioner whom Rick Perry unseated. For progressives Hightower is probably best known for the many causes and candidates the sprightly 77 year-old has worked for, including Bernie Sanders.

In an essay entitled “The Irony of the centrist-progresssive Debate” Hightower argues that centrists “tinkering around the edges” aren’t going to fix America’s problems, and those who fear to make real change won’t appeal to voters in numbers sufficient to vote Trump out of office. Moreover, Hightower writes, polls show that voters want substantial and progressive change, not centrist diddling.

So — forget moral arguments for a moment and focus on tactics — you can’t replace a solid, political platform with a vague appeal to throw some bum out of office. Voters are not going to vote the bum out if Democrats propose the same cold, cautious, poll-tested and spreadsheet-engineered technocratic B.S. they always come up with. Instead, Democrats ought to be appealing to people’s hearts — you know, like the Republicans do. More importantly, I completely agree with Hightower’s South Texas dictum — grandes males, grandes remedios. Big problems, big solutions. And we have some incredibly big problems.

But — aside from nostalgia for a democracy centrists themselves had a hand in vandalizing when they voted for the Patriot Act, FISA courts, ICE, 287g, border walls of their own, the war on drugs, the war on crime, wars, wars, and more wars — centrist Democrats don’t really have a problem with the nation’s staggering economic, military, foreign policy, environmental, and race problems. If they did, we’d be seeing them proposing ambitious platforms like progressives. But for centrists a little tinkering suffices and no big solutions are necessary.

The centrist argument seems to boil down to this — that America isn’t ready for a progressive agenda and that Democrats can win only by being slightly less depraved than Trump. Specifically, that Democrats must align their own platform with Republican values. And more specifically, that Democrats have to embrace white Republican values. Flag-waving, red-baiting progressives, going soft on abortion, avoiding national conversations on reparations and criminal justice reform, and showing they can pray as fervently as Evangelicals is now their ticket to centrist Democratic victory.

This is not only distasteful but a fool’s errand because common sense dictates that nobody is going to rush out to buy a case of Pepsi when they already have a pallet of Coke in the garage. If you want flag-waving, god-fearing patriots, NATO, corporation-friendly trade agreements, a belligerent foreign policy, regime change, wars of choice, saber rattling with China and Iran, a new Cold War, coddling Israel, and the defense of private insurers and bailouts for Wall Street, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the centrist Democratic playbook.

Republicans do it so much better.

What America is desperately looking for are real solutions, and Democrats had better offer them now — or lose the next presidential election.

Hillel the Elder famously wrote in the Pirkei Avot: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Desperate Americans have been asking the first of Hillel’s questions — “who will be for me” — and have yet to receive an honest reply from either party. In 2016 Republicans lied to voters, and continue to do so. As 2020 unfolds, Democrats — rejecting “identity politics” and unlikely to make desperately needed structural changes in a broken America — appear to be ignoring Hillel’s last two questions.

If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Great questions.

The people of Dartmouth have an important decision to make: approve a Prop 2 1/2 override to pay for increases in teachers’ pay — or continue short-changing teachers, especially those earning the least.

Dartmouth teachers are still working without contract while escalating healthcare costs are actually reducing their take-home pay. The town’s contract with the Dartmouth Education Association does not include steps or cost-of-living increases. And some of Dartmouth’s most economically vulnerable workers are teachers’ aides who not only have to worry about declining earnings — they’re already making sub-poverty wages.

According to the now-expired agreement between the school district and the Dartmouth Educators Association (DEA), a first-time aide without a bachelor’s degree earns $16,614 a year and the position pays a maximum of $24,206 for a six year aide with a bachelor’s degree. These salaries represent gross wages of between $9.89 and $14.30. The Massachusetts minimum wage is $12 an hour. The lowest-paid teachers’ aide — typically a woman — makes $16,614 a year in pre-tax earnings, and her estimated take home pay is $14,259.

To put this economic and gender wage inequality in perspective, a typically male county correctional officer with only a high-school degree earns between $56-$60,000 a year. And there is currently a bill in the legislature to give Massachusetts correctional officers (the fourth best paid in the country) a $100 million raise.

Even with the town picking up 52% of the cost of her HMO Network Blue family plan, our first-year teachers’ aide pays $6,407.73 a year for the mandatory town health insurance and she cannot choose a different provider. After paying almost one-half of her sub minimum-wage salary for healthcare, she ends up making only $7,851 a year. That’s $4.67 an hour.

According to Dartmouth Educators Association President Renee Vieira, healthcare costs rose in 2018 by 8.3% and again by 4.3% in 2019. Vieira says that the 52% contribution the school district pays is low compared to other communities.

One option for the union is to demand a higher town contribution for healthcare. Raising the town contribution from 52% to 60% would put another $1,068 in every teacher’s hands. With this adjustment, instead of living on just $7,851 a year, our first-time teachers’ aide would then be bringing home just $8,919 a year — for a family.

Addressing healthcare alone won’t help a teacher’s aide. What she really needs is better base pay. Dartmouth residents, then, are going to have to decide whether they want to save a few bucks or make their teachers work for declining — and in some cases — poverty wages. This is not only an economic but a moral choice.

Absent national healthcare, which would help town government and small business immeasurably, it’s clear to me that Dartmouth needs to approve a tax override and sign an agreement with teachers providing cost of living increases and more affordable healthcare. Especially if it hopes to retain quality educators.

Both the town and the union must also do something specifically to improve the situation for aides who skate on the edge of poverty helping children in our schools.

Republicans are incredibly on-message at all times, while it’s difficult to determine what the Democratic Party stands for. An example close to home is Margaret Monsell’s piece in Commonwealth which shows Massachusetts Dems led by House Speaker Bob DeLeo being more interested in safeguarding incumbent seats than with the professed values of the Democratic Party.

One may be inclined to ascribe the superiority of Republican messaging to that party’s penchant for authoritarianism and undemocratic dirty tricks — and you will get no argument from me. But Republicans actually believe in something — no matter that much of it is cruel and immoral — and they never miss an opportunity to hammer away at their message.

In contrast, the Democratic Party discounts progressives and minorities — and instead focuses on races in which they support Frankencandidates precisely calibrated to specific congressional districts.

Despite professed values, in the presidential race this polling-based approach has led to candidates of color like Kamala Harris dropping out and to the short-changing of candidates like Cory Booker — the “other” Rhodes Scholar mayor (but the one with six years in the Senate).

Quentin James of the CollectivePAC, a black political action committee, called out liberal Democrats in 2016 for the “other” type of white supremacy: “I am talking about, […] ‘a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.'”

James may have predicted the 2020 presidential race in 2016.

But also in Democratic congressional races the strategy of discounting values and real constituents led to the DCCC backing Jeff Van Drew — the most conservative New Jersey white male Democrat with his 100% rating from the NRA — over Tanzie Youngblood, a progressive black woman with a #MeToo message.

And if the name “Van Drew” sounds familiar, it’s because this DCCC-financed virtual Republican just made it official and defected to the Republican Party, announcing he’s voting against impeachment.

Democrats need to start showing they believe in something besides polling, and they have to run with a consistent message and consistent values — regardless of the district and regardless of the futility of a particular race.

This is a tune that’s topped the Republican Hit Parade for years.

Maybe Democrats should hum a few bars themselves.

ABC News and Univision hosted the Democratic debate at Texas Southern University in Houston on September 12th. Those putting questions to the candidates were ABC News anchor George Stephanopolous, World New Tonight anchor David Muir, Univision’s anchor Jorge Ramos, and news correspondent Linsey Davis, who asked the toughest and brightest questions.

The ten candidates chosen by the DNC were: poll leaders Bernie Sanders; Joe Biden; and Elizabeth Warren, all of whom are 70 and older and white; Amy Klobuchar; Kamala Harris; Cory Booker; and Beto O’Rourke, ranging in age from 47 to 59; then Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, and Pete Buttigieg, all of whom are 45 or younger.

A friend thought Castro’s going after Biden for “forgetting” what he had just said about his healthcare plan was a cheap shot — and I agreed. But it was a self-inflicted wound since Biden was caught either denying the truth or really had forgotten his own health plan’s buy-in requirements. They say that lying only makes it worse — and they’re right. Biden also proved himself incapable of apologizing for past mistakes.

Following the debate, the talking heads scored candidates as if it had been a boxing match: how many punches landed, how many punches suffered. The talking heads said that Castro had disqualified himself. Maybe, but the low punch he landed on Biden had been effective — and instructive. Voters now know that Biden can’t keep his composure debating the Liar-in-Chief.

Linsey Davis asked hard questions of Kamala Harris, and I’m not sure Harris stood up to the scrutiny of her own criminal justice record. Like Biden, she seemed incapable of apologizing for past mistakes. Buttigieg is eloquent but inexperienced. Much of the time he sounded like he was delivering an award-winning high schooler speech to the VFW. Bernie had lost his voice and never managed to explain his views to voters as well as Warren, and Booker neither gained nor lost traction but, for me, was unmemorable. Andrew Yang has always been the candidate to save Capitalism from the income inequality it produces — by giving people some crumbs to live on. That’s his whole shtick.

Beto O’Rourke is an earnest, decent guy with a mix of great and not-so-great positions. But his position on guns is what all Democrats should aim for — hell, yeah, we’re coming for your AR-15s. The talking heads said his quip was a gift to Republicans. Democrats practically wet themselves in shock. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who sponsored an assault weapon ban himself, took pains to say that O’Rourke’s comment “doesn’t help.” Pete Buttigieg, who knows the damage the weapons can do, agreed that O’Rourke’s remark was just too much truth for voters to handle. Apparently, for mainstream Democrats, an assault weapon ban doesn’t really mean owners have to part with their weapons of war.

Finally, there was Amy Klobuchar, with her polite Midwestern version of “screw it, here’s what I think,” talking about legislation that could be voted upon today. While Klobuchar is a Centrist and hardly a visionary or a reformer, I can well imagine her at Donald Trump’s empty Oval Office desk, plugging away in an earnest bipartisan fashion at issues and political realities the country faces. If Democrats really need a Centrist to win, perhaps this is one that the progressive wing of the party may learn to grudgingly respect.

Last night’s installment of the July Democratic debates was a mess. With Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren standing at center stage, CNN’s questions seemed designed to invite attacks from the Center and the Right. A common theme was that the Democratic Progressives are far too radical for America and that “reasonable” and “pragmatic” people from the Heartland are America’s only hope. Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, Hickenlooper, Ryan, and Bullock had thus been chosen for this media-staged matchup. To their credit, Warren and Sanders defended their positions admirably. Particularly on Medicare for All.

Early in the debate, CNN host Jake Tapper asked Bernie Sanders to respond to a talking point by fellow candidate John Delaney: “You support Medicare for All, which would eventually take private health insurance away from more than 150 million Americans in exchange for government-sponsored health care for everyone. Congressman Delaney just referred to it as bad policy, and previously he’s called the idea political suicide that will just get President Trump reelected. What do you say to Congressman Delaney?”

Delaney, an informed viewer would know, is a healthcare executive (and three-term Maryland Congressman) who made $230 million by first providing home health care services by using underpaid workers, and then founded a health care investment corporation to take a cut of your medical premiums. While in Congress, Delaney served on the Financial Services Committee. His top campaign donors were J.P. Morgan Chase, Alliance Partners, Capital One Financial, and several other insurance and investment companies. Delaney is the human personification of everything that is wrong with American healthcare — and, to some extent, the Democratic Party.

Objecting to the framing of the question, Bernie Sanders replied, “Jake, your question is a Republican talking point. And, by the way, the healthcare industry will be advertising tonight, on this program…” — before being cut off by Tapper.

And Sanders was exactly right. During the ad break, CNN broadcast a commercial for Otezla, which “partially clears skin at the cost of nausea, diarrhea and depression at a listed prices of $3,400 for a 30-day supply.”

The American Prospect‘s David Dayen wrote that, besides hearing from the pharmaceutical industry, debate viewers also heard from “the anti-single payer group Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), funded by hospitals and drug companies, and an Alzheimer’s disease patient advocacy group that takes major funding from drug companies.”

“The unfiltered 90 seconds of three of these commercials in succession comprised more screen time than anything in the debate about money in politics,” Dayen wrote. “The country cannot afford to have CNN creating the proscenium through which America gets informed.”

Unfortunately, half the Democrats on stage sounded exactly like Republicans when it comes to health care. Delaney, Ryan, Bullock, Hickenlooper, and to some extent also Klobuchar all said that Americans would fight tooth and nail to preserve their healthcare plans. All gravely warned that any talk of removing the private option would frighten voters into the hands of Republicans.

Certainly no one should ever underestimate the credulity of the American public, but it would help if the issue were not being improperly framed by corporate media like CNN (and its advertisers) and by Big Pharma’s and Big Healthcare’s friends in both parties.

“Don’t take my healthcare away!” is absolutely the wrong demand, and an abuse of the English language.

Like organized crime, insurance companies don’t provide healthcare. They take a cut of your payment to your doctor. These companies are in it for the money. For journalists and presidential candidates to associate “healthcare” with the insurance industry is professional and linguistic malfeasance. And little more than corporate propaganda.

These are companies that require customers to spend hours and hours trying to adjust rejected or screwed-up claims. Do consumers really want to preserve relationships with these companies? Maybe it’s just me, but the best relationship with the insurance companies would be none at all.

I’ve seen it myself in Germany and Canada. I simply pay my premiums (through taxes or other deductions) and I don’t get nickeled and dimed on copays, approved pharmaceuticals, or have to worry about scheduling treatment because I haven’t yet hit some arbitrary annual dollar amount. I simply go to the doctor or the hospital and everything’s been paid for. Without the possibility that some unusual condition or treatment will bankrupt me. That’s my definition of healthcare. And if I were a small businessman in America, I wouldn’t need to spend half my time negotiating deals with insurance companies.

“Healthcare” is provided by healthcare experts. Doctors, nurses, midwives, physician assistants. “Healthcare” has nothing to do with the corporate parasites who currently profit off human frailty and mortality. If there is a healthcare relationship I want to preserve, it is with my doctor, not an insurance company.

While Sanders was plainly frustrated with Democratic friends of Big Pharma and Big Finance — who refused to allow that a national healthcare plan is most certainly possible because every other Western nation in the world has already done it — Elizabeth Warren did a better job of explaining what the stakes are. Like Sanders, Warren was cut off by CNN while trying to recount the tragic story of Ady Barkan, who has ALS, and whose illness is bankrupting his family despite premium private medical insurance. Still, Warren made her point.

“We are not about trying to take away healthcare from anyone. That’s what the Republicans are trying to do,” said Warren, a co-sponsor of Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. “And we should stop using Republican talking points in order to talk with each other about how to best provide that healthcare.”

A year ago, on June 30, 2018, I attended a Families Belong Together rally in New Bedford, one of hundreds of similar events taking place nationwide. Between 400-500 people attended, overflowing into the balcony at the Bethel AME Church on County Street, to hear New Bedford’s expressions of solidarity and concern for families separated at the border.

Despite his actual history of voting for anti-immigrant legislation, one or more of the organizers invited U.S. Congressman Bill Keating to speak at the event. Keating shed his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and gave an energetic speech — all clenched fists and faux outrage at the Trump administration’s caging of six year-olds.

The only problem with this performance was not the dramatic oratory; it was the rank hypocrisy. Keating has voted repeatedly for GOP anti-immigrant bills. H.R.3009 punished Sanctuary Cities. H.R.4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, restricted absorption of Syrian refugees. H.R.3004, “Kate’s Law,” took a hard line against desperate people who re-enter the United States. And Keating’s “On the Issues” statement on immigration reads like it was written by Tom Hodgson:

“Bill Keating opposes amnesty. As a District Attorney, Bill Keating enforces our laws and believes that everyone must obey them. His office has prosecuted thousands of criminal cases that resulted in defendants being detained for immigration and deportation action. Bill believes that we must secure our borders, and wants to punish and stop corporations that hire workers here illegally. Bill does not support giving people who are here illegally access to state and federal benefits.”

On July 12th Keating was at it again. At a New Bedford rally called Lights for Liberty, some of the same organizers had again invited the Congressman, and there he was — delivering the same shtick in precisely the same way. This time he huffed and puffed at the concentration camps the Trump administration is running on the southern border.

But Keating himself just voted to expand them. The Washington Post reported “House passes $4.6 billion border bill as leaders cave to moderate Democrats and GOP.” Ninety-five Democrats opposed the legislation, which placed no constraints on how Trump could use the funding. House leader Nancy Pelosi even abandoned language to earmark funds specifically for humanitarian aid. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the capitulation: “Well, too bad. This is our job. Cancel vacation, fly the Senate in. Pass a clean humanitarian bill and stop trying to squeeze crises for more pain.”

These appearances remind us how easily machine Democrats and their friends can so easily exploit and co-opt humanitarian issues they repeatedly refuse to fix. And Keating reminds me how little will change until these good buddies of the GOP are retired and replaced.

By coincidence, a day before Keating’s theatrical performance in New Bedford, Stephen Kinzer, a well-known historian of American Empire, wrote a blistering piece in the Globe excoriating the Congressman:

“My own representative, Bourne Democrat Bill Keating, takes campaign donations from arms makers and repays them by endorsing mind-boggling Pentagon budgets. He has cosponsored a bill promoting increased US arms sales to Ukraine, voted to allow the deployment of US troops to Libya without Congressional approval, and called President Trump’s 2017 missile attack on Syria ‘necessary and proportional‘. […] Most recently he was one of 129 Democrats who voted with Republicans to fund the network of immigration prisons along our southern border without any requirement that inmates be given water, soap, blankets, or toothbrushes.”

We clearly need a new Congressional Representative in the 9th District. And, as luck would have it, Kinzer even wrote the want ad:

“Urgently Needed: Dynamic activist from Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, the South Shore, New Bedford, or Fall River. Job entails a year of 16-hour days, knocking on doors, and organizing to defeat Representative Bill Keating in the Democratic primary in the fall of 2020. Benefits include the satisfaction of speaking every day about the need to defend human rights, build strong communities, combat climate change, and end foreign wars. No pay, but seat in Congress if campaign succeeds.”

NOTICE: The Democratic Party does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or any other status protected by law or regulation. All qualified applicants will be given equal opportunity and selection decisions are based on job-related factors only.

Just kidding. It will be an uphill battle all the way. But Massachusetts needs another Ayanna Pressley and one less Blue Dog.

Last week’s debates featured a pack of twenty Democratic candidates for president. All these men and women deeply care about the United States and all would be an improvement over the incumbent. I can say with relative certainty that I will be canvassing door-to-door for whichever of these people ends up the Democratic nominee in 2020.

The debates were chaotic, with contenders interrupting and constantly talking over each other. Nevertheless, it was a valuable opportunity to see wits and bits of policy on display. To my thinking, only Julian Castro, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren survived the first night’s debate. And of the second night’s participants, only Kamala Harris and Pete Buttegieg came out relatively unscathed.

Neither of the two leaders in the polls — Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders — seemed up to the job. Biden is a gift to Republican voters with more baggage than an airport, and he deserved the thrashing he got from Kamala Harris. Twice Biden, outmatched or unprepared, saved himself by stammering — “my time is up” — a phrase that, more than any other, defines his fitness for the job.

And it breaks my heart to say this, but Bernie is who he has always been, with a message that does not change with the wind or with polls. His policy prescriptions are wise and bold. But as the oldest presidential candidate ever, and without the ability to connect with an electorate that craves charisma over substance, Bernie is probably unelectable in 2020. Like Moses, Bernie has brought millions of progressives to Canaan, but he himself will never step foot in the Promised Land.

I am left with the mental image of Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg or Julian Castro running circles around Trump in a debate — that is, if voters in 2020 still care about ideas. I can also picture Kamala Harris cleaning off the ice pick she just shoved into Biden’s neck — the one she used on Barr — and plunging it into Trump. I’m not alone in believing that the defense of what’s left of our democracy may have to be accomplished with considerable ruthlessness.

Now is not the time to abandon principles. Democrats can’t give in to the delusion that so-called “never-Trump” Republicans or swing voters will be swayed by watered-down policies. If these voters are truly worried by Trump — as they should be — then they’re just going to have to suck it up and vote for the lesser evil. Universal health care won’t be as painful as concentration camps and whatever follows that. Eugene Robinson, in his July 1st column in the Washington Post, writes:

“Anyone who watched last week’s two-night candidates’ debate should be confident that the eventual Democratic nominee is virtually certain to support universal health care, comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, reasonable gun control, measures to address climate change and bold steps to address income inequality. No, this is not a Republican agenda. Outcasts from the GOP will have to decide whether to accept it, in the interest of ending our long national nightmare, or reject it and stick with a president who kowtows to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.”

This week a progressive Democratic Congressional delegation faced a snarling MAGA mob and aggressive Border Patrol agents in Texas when they went to visit a camp where there was no tap water and prisoners were being forced to drink out of toilets. In the midst of hostility that concerned even their security details, these mostly young progressive lawmakers stood up and denounced the abuses they had just seen.

Newly-elected Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who many Democrats initially believed was politically indistinguishable from the man she replaced, showed voters on Monday just what the difference was when she directly addressed the haters.

“I learned a long time ago that when change happens it’s either because people see the light or they feel the fire. We’re lifting up these stories in the hopes that you will see the light. And if you don’t, we will bring the fire.”

It’s going to take principle and courage and ruthlessness to win the next election. Everything depends on it.

Bring the fire.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, faced with a corrupt proto-fascist, and not sure what it really stood for, the Democratic Party ran on a simplistic, fearful platform — “anybody but Trump.” Few remember now what else Hillary Clinton campaigned on — much less actually believed in, because her views on everything from abortion, gay rights, criminal justice, immigration, and trade had all “evolved” and it was difficult to untangle Clinton the Candidate from Clinton the Goldman-Sachs speaker — or Clinton the peddler of influence from her $2 billion family foundation.

After her stunning loss the corporate media began pushing the message that Democrats had been too focused on “identity politics” — that concern for gays, women, minorities, and immigrants had robbed the party of its rightful win.

Then, as now, Republicans whined about identity politics (knowing full-well that white privilege itself is the most toxic example), called Democratic safety-net programs “socialist,” railed against “political correctness” and lied about the basic science behind human gestation and environmental warming. And Democrats took the bait, wishing they had appealed more to the mythological unicorn — the fabled white swing voter.

Now, as the 2020 presidential campaign begins, faced with the same corrupt, and now much more dangerous proto-fascist — and still unsure of what they really stand for — Democrats have again trotted out the same simplistic platform — “anybody but Trump.” And this time around, it looks like it will be up to a white candidate to appeal to the white swing voter.

At least fifteen of the twenty Democratic contenders will never survive the primaries. As of May 13th, the leaders were Biden (39.8%), Sanders (16.3%), Warren (8.3%), Harris (7.7%), and Buttigieg (6.8%). Not one candidate of color is running in double digits. Two Democratic candidates (Sanders and Warren) are progressives — idea people who want to fix a long list of economic, social, and criminal justice wrongs. They and Tulsi Gabbard are also the only candidates to question American militarism. But this year the Democratic Party is not interested in grand ideas — not even those diametrically opposed to the President’s. “Anyone but Trump” is their only idea. Sadly, Sanders and Warren’s campaigns are dead out of the gate.

Instead, the Democratic Party leadership sees Biden and Buttigieg as the best shot to appeal to White Middle America — by turning their backs on progressive agendas Sanders and Warren and some of the newly-elected House representatives have championed. In Las Vegas this week Pete Buttigieg dropped the hammer on identity politics. This was a tip of the hat to MAGA America and a slap in the face to minorities. Polls show that Buttigieg has the support of 18% of South Carolina’s voters and 8% of the state’s Democratic voters. But among African-Americans that percent is a well-deserved zero.

Among millennials and young black voters Biden is doing relatively well in the polls for the moment. Unless the septuagenarian suffers a health crisis, he looks to become the next Anointed One. But young people are unreliable voters. And so are dispirited and disrespected voters. As Charles M. Blow pointed out in the New York Times, “there is part of the Biden enthusiasm, and to a lesser extent the energy around candidates like Bernie Sanders, that focuses too heavily on the fickle white, working-class swing voters and is not enough focused on the party’s faithful.”

For Blow the Anointing of Joe Biden is an insult to loyal black voters. “Democrats want to hold constant their support from women and minorities even as they chase the votes of people hostile to the interests of women and minorities. What does it say that the Democrats lust after disaffection rather than rewarding devotion? Democrats tell their base that this must be done, that the prodigal [white] children must be brought home, as if that is their only path to victory. It is not. That is a lie. And, it’s a lazy lie.”

Not only is it a lazy lie, it’s a crazy one as well. White swing voters, who in 2008 and 2012 voted for Obama and Biden and then flipped to Trump in 2016, just aren’t going back anytime soon. Not only are these voters unicorns; the fervent hope that Democrats can win them back is a delusion.

The other path to power, as Blow hinted, is Steve Phillips’ New American Majority, an idea he developed in his book Brown in the New White. The idea is neither new nor very difficult math. If you add up white progressives and progressives of color you’ve got a numerical majority that can beat Republicans — not in 2040, when whites will be a numerical minority, but right now. The gotcha, says Phillips, is that the Democratic Party needs to start offering better reasons for registered African-Americans voters to show up at the polls — like representation, support, and money. Anointing Biden, then, is just a prescription for another electoral loss.

So for the moment it looks like it’s going to be Biden in 2020, and if it is — then Democrats are going to lose. 2020 could have been about ideas and programs to truly make this country a better place. Instead, it seems to be contracting into a referendum on replacing one set of hair work and dental veneers with another.

It’s debatable if county jails do much to turn peoples’ lives around. But they certainly excel as institutions of patronage. In communities where jobs are scarce, where else can a high school graduate with basic skills make $46K a year with benefits? The sheriff as patrón is in a position to hire a lot of employees and make a lot of friends. The Bristol County Sheriff, for example, is the top employer in New Bedford and the third largest employer in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

Consider the staffing in Massachusetts jails. The statewide staff-to-prisoner ratio in county jails is 1:73 and Bristol County’s ratio is slightly less than that. In personnel costs alone, it takes 6,629 employees at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars to lock away 11,480 prisoners in the state’s 14 county jails. Most of the incarcerated — the majority who are simply awaiting trial — would be better-served by drug rehabilitation and vocational programs, which jails don’t even pretend to offer. And society would be better-served by actually doing “corrections” rather than simply warehousing human beings.

But jails are not in the business of rehabilitation. They seem to function mainly as job and pension factories.

Padding the Payroll

In 2015 Public Consulting Group (PCG) visited six Massachusetts jails and found “wide variance in key costs metrics amongst sheriffs, even when comparing counties of similar sizes and prisoner counts.” The study, “Sheriffs’ Funding Formula,” was issued in 2016 and notes:

“A review of 2013-2016 inmate counts found a decline in inmate populations over the last three years. Despite a population decrease of just over 14% during that period, state funding for sheriffs has increased by nearly 10% over those same three fiscal years.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Jail staffing and construction is actually increasing — even though fewer people are being incarcerated. Yet at this moment there is at least one bill in the state Legislature trying to expand the Middlesex County jail. The bill’s sponsor prefers to call her jail expansion project a “justice complex.”

PCG’s study noted that the Massachusetts sheriffs’ officer-to-prisoner ratio (1:2.48) is higher than that in New York state (1:2.53), New Hampshire (1:3.02), New Jersey (1:3.75), or Pennsylvania (1:4.49). According to PCG, the problem is bloat among the higher ranks at county jails:

“In reviewing the ratio of staff to supervisors in each of the facilities, we found that many sheriffs have a higher number of high ranking supervisors. While our research did not identify a consistent recommendation for correctional facilities, studies in the public safety, probation, and corrections field typically recommend a “span of control” for supervisors of between 5-7 subordinates. While the sheriffs fall very close to this range for the ratio of Correctional Officers to Sergeants, the top end of the chain of command shows ratios as low as 1.58 (Lieutenants to Sergeants) and 1.87 (Captains to Lieutenants).”

But without make-work jobs for corrections supervisors, how else is a patrón supposed to help his friends?

The 2018 Bristol County Sheriff’s Department salary data from the Office of the Comptroller includes 739 records representing 675 individuals and 64 promotions in rank. In the entire sample there are 34 Deputy Sheriff records, 46 Lieutenants, 27 Sergeants, 316 full-time Corrections Officers, 90 part-time Corrections Officers, and a variety of other professional roles. 54 were full or part-time contractors, many with the position of “Deputy” or “Instructor.” The sheriff’s top employees walk off with $3.9 million a year — 10% of the entire payroll. And they’re smart enough to thank their benefactor. Many of these same names are found in Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) reports as contributors to the Hodgson campaign.

The damage that patronage does in a payroll-intensive system like a county jail cannot be over-estimated. According to Massachusetts Comptroller data, payroll, overtime, roll call, holiday, vacation, and sick-leave buy-back pay account for 86 percent of the operation of the Bristol County jail:

Patronage is a Massachusetts tradition

But patronage is a hallowed Massachusetts tradition. As Shira Schoenberg wrote in MassLive, the “Massachusetts governor for a time had an ‘Office of Patronage’ dedicated to helping people apply for state jobs.” The office existed at least until 2002. Boston Mayor Curley’s administration ran on patronage, More recently, Paul Celluci’s patronage appointee to MassPort, Virginia Buckingham, was forced to resign after 9/11 hijackers commandeered two planes from her airport.

In Bristol County, Massachusetts, accusations of political patronage have long dogged Sheriff Tom Hodgson. When Hodgson ran for Sheriff the first time in 1998 after an interim appointment by William Weld, the Standard-Times endorsed his opponent, Rep. Joseph McIntyre. McIntyre accused Hodgson of running a “patronage bazaar” in the sheriff’s office, and the newspaper’s endorsement slammed Hodgson for practices ranging from “hiring of publicity agents to his fattening of the payroll with patronage employees, who repay him with campaign contributions that he encourages.”

Both of Hodgson’s challengers in 2010, John Quinn and Alan Garcia, charged Hodgson with trading jobs and pensions for political support. During one campaign debate, Quinn said, “the Sheriff has spent millions of dollars on unnecessary legal fees to three lawyers who are his personal friends and political contributors. He has hired dozens of high paid administrators in unnecessary patronage jobs. These people will retire on a hidden budget that will cost our communities millions of dollars in unseen pension payments for decades to come.” When announcing his candidacy, Alan Garcia took a similar swipe at Hodgson: “We will be promoting people inside the prisons based on performance and merit, not political maneuvering or political patronage.”

In 2008 the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct forced Judge Michael Livingstone off the bench for ethics violations. Almost immediately, Tom Hodgson snapped up Livingstone to run his jail’s medical program. Why? It was a simple case of political back-scratching. According to the Standard Times:

“The politically connected Livingstone was previously the legal counsel to the New Bedford City Council and a city solicitor. Hodgson has acknowledged that former state Sen. William Q. “Biff” MacLean Jr., New Bedford City Councilor John T. Saunders and former mayor Judge John Markey approached him seeking a job for Livingstone.”

In 2011 Livingstone, who had stopped coming to work, resigned amid accusations that his job had been nothing more than a scheme permitting him to extend his state pension benefits. When asked about the scheme on October 6, 2011, Hodgson claimed to have “no idea.” Of course he didn’t. On that particular day the sheriff was more focused on slamming Gov. Deval Patrick’s immigration policies on Lou Dobbs’ FOX News show.

Several of Hodgson’s lawyers are donors. $1.3 million of state money went to donor lawyer and “Special Deputy” Bruce Assad, who is now “Special Sheriff” Bruce Assad. According to Comptroller records, Craig Assad is Hodgson’s Assistant Supervisor of Training, and Steven Assad is a corrections officer. Another million dollars in legal fees went to attorney Ronald Lowenstein, whose family’s contributions in 2004 violated state campaign finance laws. Lowenstein’s former partner, Robert Novack — also a donor — was made a $70K a year part-time employee, qualifying him for a state pension and health benefits, and he now serves as one of Hodgson’s lawyers.

In 2013 Boston Globe reporters Peter Schworm and Matt Carroll looked at patronage among county sheriffs and District Attorneys. Offender #2 was Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald: “Over the past five years, McDonald has raised about $123,000 in contributions from his 525 employees, almost $50,000 over the past two years alone. That two-year total ranked as the highest among the state’s sheriffs and district attorneys, a Globe survey of campaign records from 2008 through 2012 found.”

But Tom Hodgson followed on McDonald’s heels in total contributions, with Bristol and Plymouth County District Attorneys right at the top of the pack as well.

Patronage damages morale, inhibits whistleblowing, and creates dysfunction. With the highest prisoner suicide rate in the state, the second-highest recidivism rate, the highest rate of complaints of excessive force, and multiple wrongful death and human rights lawsuits, one could argue that the Bristol County jail is the very definition of dysfunction.

A special commission investigating corruption at the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in 2002 explains why:

“Further compounding the lack of leadership is patronage. Many of the staff at all levels owe their jobs to well-connected politicians. Because the Sheriff made promotions without clearly-defined criteria (or even an employee evaluation process), many staff members concluded that their own advancement depended on politics, rather than merit. In this environment, staff became cynical of policies introduced by top management without their input. Supervisors, a group of employees critical to the proper functioning of the facilities, abdicated their responsibilities and well-formulated policies were not uniformly or consistently implemented.”

In 2014, Republican candidate Jeff Perry lost his bid for the 10th Congressional District on the Cape. But patronage provided a soft landing. Perry was appointed “Special Sheriff,” a job that pays $100K a year, by political buddy, Barnstable Sheriff Jim Cummings — despite allegations Perry knew about improper strip searches of teenage girls when he was a Wareham police sergeant in the 90’s.

The Ware Inquiry

In 2010 the Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigated Rep. Tom “Tommy” Petrolati and Parole Commissioner John O’Brien. Petrolati apparently leaned on Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe to hire some of Petrolati’s friends and associates and, when Ashe balked, Petrolati retaliated. But the sheriff had his own turf to defend. In 2009 Ashe, known for his extravagant community clambakes and whose motto was “strength reinforced with decency; firmness dignified with fairness,” awarded his own brother a consulting contract, making him the highest paid public safety official in Massachusetts.

The Globe’s reporting eventually led to a Supreme Judicial Court inquiry headed up by Special Investigator Paul Ware. In 2010 the Ware Inquiry released its 337 page report, naming state Senators and Representatives, members of the Parole Commission, and county sheriffs’ employees who to this day offer patronage and violate campaign finance laws. When asked about the Parole Department, Governor Deval Patrick described it as an “unaccountable and to some extent rogue agency.” Many of the state’s law enforcement agencies have a culture of corruption, as Troopergate just demonstrated.

Page 197 of the Ware Inquiry identified Senator Mark Montigny as the top practitioner of patronage. Sal DeMasi, who went to jail for other types of corruption, appears third on Ware’s list. Montigny, in fact, accounted for 54 out of all 319 “sponsorships” investigated, one of which was a girlfriend poorly ranked by the hiring panel because of her lack of experience. Other than the girlfriend, Montigny’s friends had extraordinary success finding jobs. Page 38 of Ware’s report notes: “Of the 54 candidates sponsored by Senator Montigny, for example, at least 23, or 42.6%, were contributors to the Senator. Of the 23 contributors, 11 were successful in being hired or promoted within a year following the sponsorship (47.8%). By contrast, of the 31 non-contributors, only 1 (3%) was hired or promoted.”

In 2014 the Standard Times’ Jack Spillane asked, “… what are we to make of the fact federal prosecutors have painted a portrait of Montigny, now 21 years in office, as exactly like the man who is his unwanted political godfather?”

Spillane was referring to Montigny’s mentor, former state Senator William Q. “Biff” MacLean. The same MacLean who in 1993 pleaded guilty to conflict of interest violations involving state contracts, paid a half-million dollar fine and who ironically served a year of probation and was stripped of his pension. The same MacLean whose son Douglas was hired in 1999 by Bristol County District Attorney Paul Wash despite a history of heroin and cocaine abuse, and multiple criminal convictions. The same MacLean whose son again In 2004 — with help from Mark Montigny — was given a job in the probation system, which he lost five years later after being arrested for possession of crack cocaine.

The same “Biff” MacLean who leaned on Hodgson to hire disgraced judge Livingstone.

What can be done?

Tom Hodgson is one of the worst and doesn’t deserve a break. But neither do all the other state ethics violators out there. Hodgson’s corruption is part of a culture that spans political parties. His abuses persist because neither party has the political will to end patronage. Instead, each year criminal reforms include studies, oversight groups, and tweaks to Department of Corrections rules that shut out the public and make offending agencies accountable only to themselves.

Here are some other approaches we might try:

• Ban employee political contributions. Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis promised during his 2010 campaign to not accept campaign donations from employees. “The perception has been that this place was extremely political, and it seemed the morale of employees was low because of the perceived or real sense of politics being a part of the hiring process,” he said shortly after his campaign ended. Half the state’s sheriffs follow this example and do not accept contributions from their employees.

• Professionalize corrections staff. Sheriff Evangelidis raised the bar to require correctional officers to hold either an Associate Degree or have military service. This was a start, but insufficient. Corrections officers should all have completed coursework in psychology and the social sciences supervisors should have master’s degrees in these areas.

• Abolish make-work jobs. Remember Jeff Perry — the “Special Sheriff” hired by Barnstable County Sheriff Jim Cummings? This position had been vacant and was dusted-off just for him. Perry himself signalled that he would just be warming the seat until another political opportunity presented itself. Jails should not be a jobs program for politicians between gigs.

• Professionalize the hiring. Perry’s hiring — his department under a cloud of sexual abuse — would not have been possible if an independent civil service were responsible for hiring.

• Limit command structure. As the PCG study shows, left to their own devices sheriffs pad supervisory ranks. Supervisory jobs must be justified and reviewed by a public (non-DOC) oversight group and should never be directly filled by a sheriff.

• Pay for treatment not jails. Treatment for substance abuse and psychological problems — the majority of people in county jail — should be delivered in a clinical setting by healthcare and treatment professionals. We must not spend a penny more for jails. Spend it on treatment; otherwise, it’s wasted tax money.

• Abolish the position of sheriff. This is one way to deal with patronage havens. All county jails have been owned by the state since 2010. Bristol County has only an agricultural vocational high school and a county print shop. Place all jails under the Department of Corrections and have the state police handle process serving. Connecticut and Rhode Island do this already.

• Prosecute. Corruption breeds impunity. As chief law-enforcer, the Attorney General is in the unenviable position of having to defend sheriffs. But who defends citizens’ interests? Change laws or set up a new non-partisan prosecutorial agency to deal with state corruption.

• Vote wisely. Sheriffs are constrained by the Department of Corrections (DOC), the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS), and the Executive Office for Administration and Finance (EOAF). All are appointed by the [present] Republican governor. The current Democratic state auditor conducted only a cursory “performance” audit which only makes friendly recommendations to a sheriff, not holds him accountable. As Tom Hodgson repeatedly tells voters: if you don’t like him, vote him out.

Yesterday the Massachusetts House voted overwhelmingly against three House rules amendments which would have required legislators to actually read bills before voting on them, and which would have published roll call votes and testimony so the public knows how representatives vote. While it all sounded sensible and democratic, the votes were a bitter reminder of one lobbyist’s remark: “Don’t mistake what happens in [the Massachusetts State House] for democracy.”

The lobbyist quoted was Phil Sego, who penned a piece in Commonwealth Magazine last month deeply critical of a loyalty-based spoils system in Blue State Massachusetts that could just as easily be run by Mitch McConnell as Robert DeLeo. The amendment votes were strikes against transparency, to be sure, but they were mainly strikes against threats to Robert DeLeo’s grip on the House.

Another Commonwealth article that appeared on the 30th pointed out that Democrats with cherished committee assignments voted to keep things as-is, while freshman legislators were put in the awkward position of having to vote with Republicans for a change in The Way Things Work.

In addition to the transparency votes, the House voted 43-113 against a proposal to impose term limits on Speaker Robert Deleo.

Today Progressive Massachusetts (PM) published the results of the votes on three of the amendments:

1. 72 hours to read the final language of any bill the House is voting on;
2. 30 minutes for the House to read any amendment submitted on the floor to be voted on;
3. publication of hearing testimony and roll call votes

Check the votes below to see how your representative voted — and feel free to give him or her an earful:

https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator

Amendment #1 – 72 hours to read text of a new bill

Amendment #2 – 30 minutes to read floor amendments

Amendment #3 – publication of testimony and roll-calls

Massachusetts is not happy with incumbent State Auditor Suzanne Bump.

Three candidates are challenging her this year, and all for the same reason — Bump is just not doing her job. Even many Democrats would agree that the Auditor loves to scrutinize the state’s social service agencies but has done little to investigate corruption in the state police and at least one Massachusetts county jail.

At the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO), for example, illegal detentions and human rights abuses inside the facilities have been widely reported. The BCSO receives state and federal money for opioid treatment programs, yet inmates report little or no actual treatment — in fact having all medications, including blood pressure meds, HIV treatments, insulin, and methadone, withheld upon incarceration. Suzanne Bump was first informed of this last February but has not completed an audit of the BCSO.

The Bristol County Sheriff circumvents the State Judicial Court’s prohibition of daily inmate fees by forcing inmates to purchase goods at a canteen from which the BCSO collects a percentage. The Auditor did a cursory review of sheriff’s departments in 2010 when the state assumed responsibility for county jails, and it enumerated a number of discretionary funds the Bristol County Sheriff is permitted to manage apart from the state. But attempts to discover how these funds are actually managed, and for what purposes and to whom payments are made, have been stymied by the sheriff’s omissions and obfuscatory reporting.

In 2016 Suzanne Bump faulted the Massachusetts Sheriff’s Association for failure to deliver state-mandated reports to her, but these reports still have never been published. After the Auditor’s failure to look into Troopergate, it’s fair to say that Suzanne Bump has been far too deferential to law enforcement agencies.

In the Bristol County Sheriff’s office there have been persistent charges of: pension abuses related to cronyism; money laundering related to the federal “Codfather” case; profiteering related to the sheriff’s use of the canteen, phone and video visitation; and pocketing of food, healthcare and drug treatment funds. A lawsuit was recently filed against the sheriff for receiving millions in kickbacks from Securus, a phone vendor. But with an Auditor asleep on the job, there’s no accountability for the sheriff.

Of the approximately 1300 published audits done by the Auditor’s office since 2000, only 22 involve sheriff’s departments, and of these a third were “checkpoints” of the departments during transition to state control in 2010. Only 8 of 14 sheriff’s departments have ever been separately audited in the last 19 years.

• The Berkshire County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2011
• The Essex County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2010 2018
• The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2010
• The Hampden County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2010 2015 2016
• The Hampshire County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2010 2014 2018
• The Middlesex County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2011
• The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2005
• The Worcester County Sheriff’s Department was audited in 2005 2010 2012

The Bristol County Sheriff’s office just keeps racking up the questionable practices. Any one of them ought to be enough to trigger an investigation of what’s going on in Bristol County.

And it gets worse.

After filing a public information request, I learned that the Bristol County Sheriff has been using state funds for registration, accommodation, and travel to far-right political events that have nothing to do with his job of running a jail and ought to be billed to the sheriff’s political campaign. The documents I’ve seen are ripe with the stink of corruption. There is plenty of information in the collection to determine whether the sheriff has finally crossed the line from impropriety to lawbreaking. But so far — nothing from Suzanne Bump.

So it’s time for a change.

Bump’s challengers are: Libertarian Daniel Fishman, a software entrepreneur who ran twice for federal office and once for municipal election in the span of 10 months; Helen Brady, a Concord socialite who ran for state office in 2016 as a moderate Republican but who recently has begun a love affair with the Tea Party; and Green Party candidate Jed Stamas, a progressive public school teacher who actually seems to care how citizens are treated and is prepared to hold public officials accountable.

So I’m casting my vote for The Green Party guy, Jed Stamas. Brady has campaigned with Keiko Orrall, Bristol County’s version of Michelle Bachmann. And a corporate-friendly, regulation-averse Libertarian would never be my first choice for a watchdog. The Green Party’s Jed Stamas has promised to hold public officials accountable, regardless of party affiliation. And Stamas certainly can’t do any worse than the snoozing incumbent.

Vote for Jed Stamas for Massachusetts State Auditor on November 6th.

While it is generally frowned upon to speak ill of the dead, this rule of etiquette cannot be observed for someone who exerted as much power in Washington for over three decades as John McCain. As I.F. Stone once observed, “funerals are always occasions for pious lying, A deep vein of superstition and a sudden touch of kindness always leads people to give the departed credit for more virtues than he possessed.” Conversely, sentimentality at funerals sometimes reveals deeper truths about those expressing condolences.

When John McCain died last week, his Senate desk was draped in black crepe and it was announced that his body would lie in state in the Rotunda and be interred at Arlington Cemetery. Writers from both Right and Left seized upon McCain to idolize both the man he was and the man he was not, pointing at his work across the aisle, his self-deprecatory humor, and his status as an honest-to-god American hero. Even Democratic Socialist Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez was smitten by McCain’s “decency.” McCain was Audie Murphy, Jack Armstrong, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington all rolled into a single myth. And he got a lot of mileage from it over a long career.

There is no question the nation has been traumatized by Donald Trump. Some of the effusive praise of McCain seems at first glance to be nostalgia for the days when not all Republicans were white supremacists or proto-fascists. There are plenty of journalists who remember McCain as he was — warmonger, friend of the super-rich, the man who made the Tea Party “respectable” with his Vice Presidential pick — and not as some want him to be (see this and this and this and this and this and this for examples). But much of the praise we’re hearing reveals a bipartisan appetite for McCain’s militarism and love of American Exceptionalism. Numerous Democratic pundits removed their veils this week, revealing that McCain’s values were really their own.

In John McCain’s farewell statement, read by a former campaign manager, he wrote that Americans “never hide from history. We make history.” McCain was wrong. We may know our history but it is precisely the American penchant for hiding from history which allows us to repeat our mistakes over and over again. McCain certainly hadn’t forgotten the history of Viet Nam when he voted to invade Iraq. But he hid from it. Democrats know their history too, but hiding from it permits the strange posthumous embrace of a man who represented everything they claim to oppose.

The Far Right — that is, today’s Republican Party — has little to lose by valorizing McCain even if they did bash him for the occasional clash with Dear Leader Trump. But the effusive praise by Centrist Democrats (examples here and here and here and here) is egregious and focuses on McCain’s better personal qualities, and not on an honest reckoning with his — or their — politics.

When it comes to immigration, defense spending, and economic policy, Centrist Democrats aren’t really as distant or distinct from Republicans as they claim to be. Despite McCain’s swipe at Trump “hiding behind walls” in his farewell statement, in 2008 McCain went to Mexico to argue that America needed more border walls — a view both Clintons and Barak Obama shared. In 2013 McCain went to Syria to drum up support for American intervention and regime change, but it was the Obama administration which actually initiated the war. In 2018 the massive “John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act” was passed overwhelmingly by both Republicans and Democrats, stealing much from the poor and giving it instead to defense contractors.

Another recent preoccupation of Centrist Democrats has been the defense of the American security establishment. FBI head James Comey and CIA head John Brennan have become national heroes for many liberal Democrats. Conveniently forgetting history has led to liberals like Stephen Colbert forgetting James Comey’s spying on Black Lives Matter and American Muslims, or Bill Maher forgetting John Brennan’s long history of war crimes, including torture and rendition, dating back to the Bush administration (Obama kept Brennan on at the CIA). As an institution, Comey’s FBI has a long history of repression of Afro-Americans and Leftists.

Since Hillary Clinton’s accusations at the 2016 DNC Convention of political meddling by Vladimir Putin, there has been a Russian lurking under every bush. Suspicion, calls for additional sanctions, and even red-baiting have led to a new Cold War mentality, with some Democrats even demanding Internet censorship of news outlets not hard enough on Russia. NATO, a relic of the Cold War, now has more flag-waving Democratic boosters than ever.

If Russia is the foreign nation Centrist Democrats obsess over the most, Israel is the one they won’t even talk about. Since the 2016 election, Donald Trump has cozied up to the Israeli settler movement. The American ambassador to Israel is, in fact, a settler himself. The US has cut UN contributions for Palestinian refugees and given Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to annex East Jerusalem and roll out more settlements in the West Bank. Israeli snipers recently murdered dozens of “Land Day” protesters in Gaza, and there was scarcely a peep from Centrist Democrats. And when it comes to all-too real “foreign interference,” Israel’s domestic lobbying partners have successfully passed legislation in dozens of states making it illegal to criticize or boycott Israel. And all with Democratic Party help.

I.F. Stone was right about lies at funerals, but sentimentality sometimes reveals its own truths. No one for a second believes history can be conveniently forgotten, but we can and do hide from it — and who we really are. This week’s outpouring of love for America’s most recognizable nationalist and American Exceptionalist tells a disturbing truth about both our country and the Democratic Party.

If you hadn’t noticed it before, the 2016 presidential election only sharpened our awareness of America’s festering race problem. White liberals may be repulsed by Donald Trump’s Tweets and his unapologetic racism, but White Supremacy in America is not simply foul-mouthed malice. Once you realize that White Supremacy is mainly about creating a system of privilege for White people, it’s like noticing cars exactly like yours on the road — you start recognizing its insidious presence in almost every institution — the courts, schools, jobs, police, housing — and politics. And, like much in this country, the debate over the Democratic Party’s soul often overlooks the importance of African-Americans.

Congress is 90% White and 80% male. The Senate has only three African-American Senators — and only one is a woman. If the Senate looked like the rest of America, we’d have thirteen African-American Senators and seven of them would be women. But. because of demographics and the disproportionate Senate representation that states like Vermont and Wyoming receive, the Senate is one more structural element of White Supremacy. And in a nation with a median age of 37, Congress looks more like a retirement community than Main Street. The average age of the top three House Democrats is 76, and most are millionaires. The people who represent us are nothing like us — and I’m talking about Democrats.

Emily’s List is the second largest Democratic political action committee (PAC) after ActBlue. Its mission is simply to get pro-Choice Democratic women elected, and it’s been pretty successful at it. But when it comes to race, the Democratic Party isn’t ceding power to a younger, browner America. In addition, Democratic political action committees aren’t recognizing candidates of color as “viable” as readily as they do White contenders and they haven’t historically provided much funding. With both representation and funding of African-American candidates lacking by both centrist Democrats and progressives, political consultant and CollectivePAC founder Quentin James wasn’t sugarcoating it when he titled his Medium piece, “The Left Has A White Supremacy Problem, Too.”

Last year the Democratic Party sent its leadership to Berryville, Virginia to woo White voters with its “Better Deal” economic campaign. In a New York Times editorial Steve Phillips, founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White, warned of a midterm disaster for Democrats in 2018 if they insisted on repeating the mistakes of 2016, specifically “prioritizing the pursuit of wavering whites over investing in and inspiring African-American voters, who made up 24 percent of Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2012.” In Brown is the New White Phillips offers postmortems of the 2010 and 2014 midterms. And guess what? Democrats still haven’t learned their lesson — they’re still pursuing the White swing vote in 2018.

In its first iteration, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” candidate list — campaigns designed to take back the House — did not include a single Black candidate. Now, less than a hundred days before midterms, there may be a few more people of color on the roster, but the DCCC’s candidates are still overwhelmingly White and Centrist — technocrats and gatekeepers selected mainly for “viability.” Democrats aren’t listening to Phillips and they aren’t listening to Thomas Frank either. Frank’s book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People, takes Democrats to task for abandoning the working class and embracing a technocratic caste located somewhere between upper-middle and the ruling class. Call it what you want, but it’s not the party of the people.

As elections have unfolded this year, the special Senate race in Alabama (in which a Democrat narrowly beat an alleged pedophile) focused attention on Black women in the party. All of a sudden Black women were receiving thanks and praise, but not feeling enough love to propel them into positions of power. And political power is to politics what air is to breathing. Black women were sick and tired of being sick and tired of being asked to support White candidates without the favor being returned.

Michelle Laws, who challenged incumbent David Price in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional district, said it best during her campaign, “There are many black women around this country who are no longer willing to be the mules of the party, doing the hard work on the ground, and receiving very little in return in terms of support and endorsement of the party to serve in key leadership positions.” With the DCCC’s strategy of defending (White) incumbents, Laws received only 16% in the Democratic primary. Political consultant Jessica Byrd expressed her frustration with the dearth of Senate seats for Black women when she wrote — “how about you get out of my chair?'”

Candidates of color endorsed and financed by PACs like CollectivePAC, PowerPAC+, Color of Change PAC, and BlackPAC have made it possible for younger and browner candidates to throw their hats into political races. Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez in New York are both running campaigns with wide progressive support, which involve hundreds of operatives and canvassers — both adding to a pipeline of future candidates of color and energizing White progressives. And these are the sort of campaigns the Democratic Party should be fiercely supporting.

Steve Phillips’ New American Majority is neither a new idea nor complex math. His thesis is that if you add up white progressives and progressives of color you’ve got a numerical majority that can beat Conservatives — not in 2040, when Whites will be a numerical minority, but right now. Phillips grumbles that he’d rather Greens and Libertarians vote with their Democratic friends than split the vote, but he’d really prefer that the Democratic Party offer better reasons for registered African-Americans voters to show up at the polls — like representation, support, and money. But this requires real change, not rhetoric.

Uniting progressives of different colors will require the blindingly White Democratic Party establishment to loosen its death-grip on power, while candidates of color receive more support to fundraise, train political operatives, and run candidates who reflect who they are and the values they care about. It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party has done so little for national criminal justice reform, police accountability, or immigration. Our most serious problems — racism, xenophobia, income inequality, criminal (in)justice, police abuse, healthcare, education, housing, jobs, militarism, civil liberties, political representation — all have been the concerns of Black America since the very beginning. If African-American and Latinx politicians actually held proportionate political and economic power within the Democratic Party, we might actually see some change.

In July Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez went before both the NAACP Convention in San Antonio and Black voters in Atlanta to apologize for the party’s turning its back on African-Americans. At this late date there’s little hope of changing the party’s orientation to White swing voters. But if the direction is ever to be changed, it will come from the grassroots, not from the leadership.

Last month I had the opportunity to attend CollectivePAC’s Black Campaign School in Atlanta, Georgia. I met Quentin and Stephanie James, lead trainer Jessica Byrd, and numerous candidates (and sitting politicians) of color who shared their campaign experiences with a largely millennial audience of first-time candidates and volunteer staffers. I was not the only White person in attendance; several others were working on campaigns for African-American candidates, mainly in the South.

I came away believing more than ever that Steve Phillips is on to something. The rescue of the country depends on whatever political power the Democratic Party can still muster. But the Democratic Party has a vision problem, a values problem, and a representation problem. When it comes to social and political reforms, the overwhelmingly White Democratic Party leadership just doesn’t have enough skin in the game. Does Chuck Schumer have an incarcerated brother? Stacey Abrams does.

The best way forward, I firmly believe, is by working with, and following the lead, of those who truly, personally, know the value of fixing America.

Today Marion Davis of MIRA issued a press release announcing that the Democratic-majority legislature had abdicated moral leadership by stripping four immigrant protection provisions from the 2019 budget. It echoed U.S. Congressional Democrats doing much the same thing last January. Sacrificing immigrants for budgets is becoming a Democratic habit.

In MIRA’s press release, Eva A. Millona, executive director of the MIRA Coalition, was quoted:

“We are deeply disappointed. The Massachusetts Legislature had a prime opportunity to stand up for civil rights and human decency, and under political pressure from Governor Baker and conservative Democrats, it backed down. The safety and well-being of tens of thousands of immigrant families will suffer as a result.”

Democrats did this.

“It is particularly disturbing that the Legislature succumbed to fear-mongering about ‘sanctuary’ policies. Though nothing in the four provisions approved by the Senate actually met the definition of ‘sanctuary’ used by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, prominent House members embraced nativist propaganda misrepresenting those provisions, using the falsehoods as political cover for their inaction.”

Democrats did this.

“We find it shocking that, with this agreement, the Legislature has tacitly accepted the notion that police should be able to ask people who ‘look foreign’ to show their papers before they can report a crime, and that immigrants should be kept in the dark about their legal rights, so it’s easier to deport them. The Legislature couldn’t even agree that Massachusetts should never contribute to a Muslim registry. That is stunning and embarrassing.”

Democrats did this.

“Our country faces an existential crisis, and in the face of horrific abuses by the federal government, it is morally imperative for states to act to protect their most vulnerable residents. By failing to pass the Safe Communities Act, and now failing to pass even basic legal protections, the Legislature has abdicated its moral leadership, and failed a large share of its constituents.”

Instead, the Massachusetts House chose expediency and making a Republican governor happy.

Democrats had better fix this.

At the national level Democrats may be forgiven for doing little for DACA and TPS recipients or for immigration reform in general. But, in a majority Democratic state like Massachusetts, there is no excuse for the legislature dragging its heels on reasonable immigrant protections called for by the party’s own platform. House Speaker Robert DeLeo has repeatedly manipulated and maneuvered to shelve bills and limit votes on immigration, and now he’s trying to strip immigrant protection provisions from the FY2019 budget.

Of course we can’t blame it all on DeLeo — who now has exhausted every last cent of his political capital with progressives. House Democrats can’t — and shouldn’t — hide behind the Speaker forever. Ultimately they will be held to personal account. Too many members of the State House sound like Republicans in their willingness to “go along to get along” with cruel attacks on undocumented families. It’s simply hypocrisy for Massachusetts Democrats to chastise Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell for their lack of spine when they themselves are guilty of the same.

Last year I attended the Massachusetts Democratic convention in Worcester, at which a new party platform was drafted. Among the hollow declarations of resistance and highfalutin but ultimately meaningless verbiage added to the platform were planks calling for a living wage and sensible immigration polices.

It was left to groups like RaiseUp to fight to get living wages on the November ballot because Democrats themselves didn’t find it important enough. And even though the state party’s platform calls for immigrant protections, these proved to be hollow promises as well:

• “Becoming a sanctuary state, where all immigrants and refugees feel welcome and safe in all communities of the Commonwealth.”
• “Eliminating policies that make local and state officials responsible for the enforcement of national immigration laws.”

For many of us the MassDems platform has no value other than to document the hollowness of a party whose real-life politicians have no intention of standing by the party’s professed values.

Representatives, start acting like Democrats. Ultimately voters are going to look at your positions and voting record, not Speaker DeLeo’s. Do the right thing. Stand up for the principles we voted for last year. Stand up for some of the state’s most vulnerable people. Show some backbone. Defy the Speaker. Keep immigration protections in the budget.

Here in Massachusetts we have 38 days to register for the Massachusetts primaries, 58 days until we vote in them, 100 days to register for midterm elections, and 121 days until the fate of nation is sealed. But it’s been over a year and a half since the 2016 presidential election and we feel only the faintest of pulses from a Democratic Party led nationally by septuagenarians older on average than Brezhnev’s Politburo, with few new ideas and little backbone. This is a party desperately in need of major rehabilitation, not the slow-moving suicide in progress.

Despite a progressive insurgency, the DNC and DCCC still can’t bring themselves to give up the Big Money donors and slick top-down campaign machinery they’ve always counted on. Their direction hasn’t changed — today it’s even further to the right with campaigns featuring more veterans, more members of the security establishment, more prosecutors, and more tech wizards and hedge fund managers. Capitalism may not be working for most of the country, but it sure is for these Democrats. When Tammy Duckworth quipped that Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez represents only the Bronx, it spoke volumes about a party unwilling to confront the future, much less the present.

Our last president left the Democratic Party in virtual receivership, according to Donna Brazile. And the losing presidential candidate called in the DNC’s chits to literally turn it into her own presidential campaign. Today the very existence of the Poor People’s Campaign is a symptom of how badly Democrats have represented the working poor — or anyone a paycheck or two from sliding out of the middle class. Yet, while Democrats do little for the average American, Republicans are doing their worst.

In November we again have a choice between truly evil or lesser evil, oligarch or technocrat. We’ve been properly conditioned to always vote for the lesser evil. And the Democratic Party can always count on us. Liberals smugly argue that Conservatives vote against their own interests, but that’s not entirely true. In 2016 White America got exactly what it always wanted — Reconstruction 2.0. Whether trade, taxes, budget, infrastructure, medical care, or even their children’s lives or their own retirement, White America was willing to take any hit to unroll and unwind everything the Black Guy had tried to accomplish. Last year the Democratic Party leadership traveled down to Berryville, Virginia to specifically court the white middle class. We should all be watching midterm results in Berryville to see how this works out for them.

Liberals won’t admit that they also vote against their own interests by supporting massive military budgets, corporate bailouts, and helping dismantle the social safety net. And centrist Democrats apparently love trickle-down economics every bit as much as their kleptocratic Republican brethren. The “Better Deal” that Democrats announced in Berryville focuses on “pocketbook” issues and, just like Republicans, claims that what’s good for America’s corporations is also good for America’s workers. But progressives take issue with this neoliberal fable, increasingly questioning not only income inequality but the Capitalism behind it.

Each year, those of us who recall — that the Democratic Party was the party of the Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates in American history. carte blanche for the Patriot Act, Libya, Syria, Drone Tuesdays, and the biggest corporate bailout since the Great Depression — each year we remind centrist Democrats they’ve been hoodwinked. And each year they call us irresponsible dogmatists. But history and newspaper clippings don’t do them any favors.

Some things simply have to be abandoned and created anew. In software refactoring only gets you so far: sometimes you need a complete rewrite of the code. With a dumpy old house, add-ons and endless tinkering with electrical and structural problems often turn out to be more costly than bulldozing and rebuilding. Now, because of widespread dysfunction and corruption, many Democrats have begun to recognize that ICE must be abolished and rebuilt from the ground up. What they don’t see is that the same applies to their own party.

Hundreds of Democratic primary winners are waiting for November. Many are first-timers, younger and browner, offering the party new ideas, a different future, and inspiring forgotten constituencies and new voters. They include gubernatorial, congressional, senatorial, and state candidates. Many of them have very little national exposure.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps staging campaign rallies throughout the country. The other day he made a stop in Duluth, Minnesota — a state where he only narrowly lost in 2016, and a city where he received an old fashioned ass-whupping, where the StarTribune summarized Trump’s visit as a “potent mix of hubris, divisiveness and victimhood that has come to mark his rallies, energizing his supporters and appalling his opponents.” Trump had come to improve his odds in 2020 — and to troll Democrats.

Sometimes being appalled is enough to generate an idea. So here’s one that occurred to me:

From this second until November Democrats must dog Trump’s rallies. Every city he visits. Every cheeseburger stand. While Trump goes about selling his personal brand at the expense of his own party, Democrats should start selling the Democratic Party at rallies visually similar to Trump’s. A changing roster of Democratic primary winners would appear at rallies delivering a simple, consistent message to the American public — “America, you have a choice!” Or “This is the real face of America!”

To be sure, Democratic midterm winners represent different political views. The point of a campaign like this would be to slam Trump’s policies and to celebrate a party that actually cares about people. It could combine candidate appearances with voter registration, fundraising, and local interviews. It would be simple, celebratory, and unabashedly confrontational. A campaign like this could potentially bring progressive and centrist Democrats together without papering over our very real differences. And it would signal that the Democratic Party has finally gotten up off its behind to take their messsage directly to the people.

Midterm elections are in 128 days. Democrats can’t send their own autocrat on tour, but they sure could start reminding voters of the stark choices before us right now — and the diverse roster of Democratic candidates who stand ready to make all the difference in November.

Yesterday I attended a “Families Belong Together” rally in New Bedford, one of hundreds of similar events taking place nationwide. Between 400-500 people attended, overflowing into the balcony at the Bethel AME Chuch on County Street. It was good to see friends, neighbors, my sister-in-law, and to hear heartfelt expressions of concern for detained children and famillies. It was a tangible reminder that we — our undocumented friends included — are all members of a single community. It was also an affirmation of our responsibility for one another.

Over the years I’ve been to a number of events like this, often following something horrible — mass shootings, acts of hate, threats to civil liberties. Now it’s the Federal government caging children. Over the years I’ve noticed the same concerned citizens meeting as one, praying as one, the same clergy bowing their heads in unity, making the same reassurances, hearing the same exhortations from politicians and community leaders. There’s a “feel good” aspect to it all that disturbs me. Why aren’t people marching in the streets? Why aren’t there fewer bowed heads and more raised fists?

To be sure, the good friends of immigrants showed up and were counted. Community, union and faith leaders were in the pews. New Bedford House Representative Tony Cabral brought a daughter with every reason to be proud of her dad. New Bedford City Council member Dana Ribeiro spoke warmly to her city, and Brockton Council member Jean Bradley Derenoncourt delivered a moving appeal for America to keep faith with those who arrive here just looking to survive. The Coalition for Social Justice’s Maria Fortes pressed for House adoption of Senate Amendment #1147 — immigrant protections being now considered in conference by the House.

But the event did not reflect well on an overwhelmingly blue Massachusetts House that refused to vote on the Safe Communities Act and on Congressional Democrats who have done little for TPS and DACA recipients (both of whom were present yesterday). With the exception of Tony Cabral, not one other state representative bothered to show up at the New Bedford rally. And the lone U.S. Congressman who spoke should never have been invited.

Bill Keating (MA-09) gave an energetic shirtsleeve speech — all clenched fists and outrage at the Trump administration’s caging of six year-olds. The problem with Keating’s performance was not its dramatic fist-pumping; it was the hypocrisy. Keating has voted repeatedly for GOP anti-immigrant bills. H.R.3009 punished Sanctuary Cities. H.R.4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, restricted absorption of Syrian refugees. H.R.3004, “Kate’s Law,” took a hard line against desperate people who re-enter the United States. And Keating’s “On the Issues” statement on immigration reads like it was written by Jeff Sessions himself:

“Bill Keating opposes amnesty. As a District Attorney, Bill Keating enforces our laws and believes that everyone must obey them. His office has prosecuted thousands of criminal cases that resulted in defendants being detained for immigration and deportation action. Bill believes that we must secure our borders, and wants to punish and stop corporations that hire workers here illegally. Bill does not support giving people who are here illegally access to state and federal benefits.”

Toward the end of the rally a group of local children recited ‘families deserve to stay together” in multiple languages, sweetly honoring children now sitting in ICE and CPB cages. With the event ending, clergy lined up awkwardly, a long interfaith blessing was delivered, and attendees filed outside into the hot summer air.

Both Conservatives and Liberals are awash in nostalgia for days long gone. Trump Republicans long for the good old days when men were men and women and Blacks and Hispanics and gays and foreigners knew their place. Centrist Democrats dream of the glory days of Obama and Camelot. Or what might have been with Hillary.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is pouring money into entrepreneurs, ex-prosecutors, ex-security establishment, and ex-military for Congressional races that don’t challenge Democratic incumbents. Even in “safe” Congressional races, Democratic candidates still like to play up their national security bona fides, for example as Alexandra Chandler is doing in MA-03, or incumbent Bill Keating does at every opportunity in MA-09.

In a recent piece in Blue Mass Group, Chandler penned an essay that spelled out her vision for the proper use of American power. She didn’t challenge the misuse of that power, only that more of it should be in Congressional hands. Otherwise, Chandler argued for a return to a “rules-based international order,” return of a Cold War footing regarding Russia, strengthening of military and intelligence alliances, and defending spy agencies (even after learning of rogue torture, surveillance and rendition programs).

Like many Democrats, Chandler makes excuses for Israel’s murders of Gazan demonstrators while still managing to blame Hamas (“I am confident that given different orders and rules of engagement — for instance, not to use live ammunition and to use numerous specialized riot and border control tools at their disposal — they could have protected themselves, and the security of the Israeli-Gaza border, notwithstanding Hamas-directed provocateurs among the protestors.”) Chandler strongly touts her national security resume but has little to say about criminal justice or immigration reform. And not a shred of criticism of the super-predatory capitalism we experience in the 21st Century.

Chandler is the perfect example of Democratic nostalgia for the good old days when NATO and the G7, the IMF, the World Bank, and Western institutions and alliances could put the screws to Russia while still pursuing their own colonial interests. The good old days when America (together with allies who couldn’t say “no”) would throw around their weight with a higher class of people running the show. In this nostalgic Democratic daydream, as long as well-spoken men and women (not reincarnated P. T. Barnums like Trump) have the codes to nuclear footballs and are the ones spying on the citizenry for their own good, the world is in good hands. But Democrats forget that the Kennedys, Johnsons, Clintons, and Obamas were also frightening stewards of American military, surveillance, nuclear, and economic power.

Someone sent me a link to a piece from the Cato Institute perfectly titled “A World Imagined.” Libertarians are not clear-eyed critics of Capitalism but they do seem to have 20-20 vision when it comes to the defects of Neoliberalism. In this piece the author shows why we should not be so quick to embrace a lopsided world order long loved by Republicans and Democrats alike. The author argues convincingly that Trump’s polices and authoritarian inclinations are simple-minded exaggerations of the old realpolitik long practiced by Kissinger, Albright, Cheney, Bush, Kerry, Clinton, and their friends in the national security establishment. They embrace a world order based on American Exceptionalism, a world run by white men of privilege, with foreign and domestic policies ultimately resting on authoritarianism, austerity, and privilege. Trump’s only innovation is exulting in a widespread view that a master race deserves to run the world and make the country great again.

The other night I was watching “The Good Shepherd.” You might say it’s a movie about privileged white men keeping each other’s secrets — until they decide to betray one another. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale undergraduate inducted into the “Skull and Bones” society, who then becomes an OSS operative and later a CIA director. Wilson has a lot of blood on his hands — and not just for the Bay of Pigs but for sins much closer to home. Make some popcorn. The movie’s decent, if perhaps a bit too long.

At one point Wilson visits a mobster named Joseph Palmi (played by Joe Pesci), who controls criminal enterprises in Cuba. His character is based loosely on Sam Giancana and Santo Traficante, who Kennedy enlisted for the Bay of Pigs. Palmi agrees to help Wilson. At one point there is this exchange:

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Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something… we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland; the Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Carlson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

The movie, of course, is fiction. But the scene nevertheless holds a very real truth. We shouldn’t become too nostalgic for the Kennedy years or the post-war “rules-based international order” and its domestic reflection in a segregated nation. The America of 1961 and an administration some still wistfully call “Camelot” bore all too many similarities to Trump’s America of 2018.