The Idiots of Democracy

By Brian T. Lynch, MSW

So much of what we call Western Civilization had its origin in Ancient Greece. On a recent trip to Athens, my wife and I stood on the steps leading up to the great temple at the Acropolis. It was on these very steps that democracy was first practiced in the ancient world.

 When important decisions of governance had to be made, all the men of the city (sorry ladies) were summoned. They came and stood on these steps where they freely and openly debated all sides of the issues before them. They then called for a vote, and by a show of hands decided the issues in question. It was for all of them a liberating and empowering experience unlike anything citizens ever experienced before.

But even so, there were always some men who choose not to participate, men who stayed away. The Greeks had a word for such men. In English the word they called them means “individual” but not in a positive sense. It was more in the sense of a person who holds themself apart from others, who doesn’t pull their weight or work for the welfare of the community in which they live.

The Greek word for this was “IDEOS” from which we get the word idiot. 

That’s right, people who didn’t vote or participate in democracy were called idiots back then, and they are still idiots today.

NJ's 7th District Democratic Congressional Candidate

by Brian T Lynch, MSW

What follows is a summary to inform anyone interested as to the policy positions of the Democratic candidate for Congress from New Jersey's 7th Congressional District. Tom Malinowski may soon be replacing Republican Leonard Lance.

Tom Malinowski (D) NJ 7th Congressional District Candidate Positions Summary*

HEALTHCARE

 - Will defend the ACA, fix its flaws and evolve towards universal coverage.

 - Supports taxpayer-funded cost-sharing subsidies to share the burden of low wage earners

 - Supports access to contraceptive coverage

 - Supports elimination of pre-existing condition clauses

 - Advocates for a Medicare buy-in (purchase) plan

 - Will allow Medicare to be able to negotiate lower drug prices

 - Will allow state attorneys general to sue generic drug makers for excessively high prices

 - Supports laws to prevent pharmaceutical companies from blocking generic alternatives

 - Will increase funding and support for HIH research grants

 - Will allow stem-cell research

WAGE EARNERS

 - Supports an equal pay for equal work law to benefit women

 - Supports guaranteed paid family leave for new parents

 - Wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour

 - Opposes right to work laws and other attacks on collective bargaining

 - Opposes unsafe worker misclassification and other wage theft schemes

 - Will protect the prevailing wages of workers

ENVIRONMENT

 - Believes climate change is a threat and will support the Paris Climate Change Agreement

 - Opposes fossil fuel industry subsidies

 - Supports sensible safeguards against climate change

 - Opposes the PennEast and Pilgrim pipelines

 - Opposes offshore drilling

 - Supports and will defend the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

TAX REFORM

 - Will work to repeal and replace the GOP tax law with a fiscally responsible tax reform.

 - Supports middle-class tax deductions such as State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions

 - Wants to close corporate and special interest tax loopholes

 - Wants to bring foreign tax shelter money back onshore where it can be fairly taxed

IMMIGRATION

 - Supports bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform

 - Will funding better border security Encourage legal immigration

 - Encourages legal immigration

 - Will advocate for a tough but fair process to bring immigrants out from the shadows

 - Will strengthen employment verification

 - Supports DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program

 - Would end the practice of family separation by ICE

 - Opposes the Muslim travel ban

 - Supports granting additional protections to domestic and migrant farm workers

NATIONAL SECURITY

 - Will support the US State Department and frontline diplomats

 - Supports foreign trade policies that are fair to American workers and businesses

 - Opposes foreign trade wars

 - Will keep our NATO commitments

 - Will maintain sanctions on Russia while it continues aggression towards Ukraine

 - Supports Israel

 - Will support putting pressure on Iran to stop missile and nuclear weapons development

 - Will urge deterrence, sanctions and diplomacy to achieve the denuclearization of N. Korea

 - Is for greater Congressional oversight of military overseas operations

 - Will defend global human rights and fight international corruption

FIREARMS CONTROL

 - Supports renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (AWB)

 - Prohibits domestic firearms manufacturers from producing military-style assault rifles

 - Limits ammunition magazines to ten rounds

 - Would raise the minimum gun purchase age from 18 to 21 years old

 - Opposes the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act

 - Supports a court petition law to remove guns from people at risk to themselves or others

 - Supports legislation to prohibit ownership of armor-piercing ammunition

 - Support restrictions to the acquisition, sale, or transfer of body armor

 - Support repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment which restricts law enforcement gun tracing

 - Support universal background checks in all circumstances

CORRUPTION

 - Has pledged to not take campaign contributions from corporate PACs.

 - Supports a Constitution Amendment to overturn the SCOTUS Citizens United decision.

 - Supports an Honest Ads Act to keep a public registry of political ads and their funders

 - Supports codifying ethics rules to prevent conflicts of interest and lobbyist abuses

DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

 - Will fight to protect democratic institutions that keep us free and hold leaders accountable

 - Supports the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI

 - Will encourage law enforcement to pay close attention to all extremist groups, including     white supremacists

 - Opposes voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering

 - Will work to secure our voting process from electronic tampering and foreign influence schemes

__________________________________________

* This summary was compiled by me, Brian T. Lynch, from Tom Malinowski’s position statements as posted on the Malinowski for Congress Web page. I am not affiliated with his campaign. You can read his full position statements at this link:  https://malinowskifornj.com/issues-all/

This Lays Behind Our Economic Boom and Political Bust

By Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Last year the wealthiest nation in the history of the world generated $8.7 trillion in new wealth, more than the next 10 countries combined. That works out to over $65,000 per household. How much of that worker generated new wealth did you receive in your pay raise last year? If your family income was $60,000 last year, and if you were rewarded with just 5% of the new wealth that you helped create, plus a cost of living adjustment to keep up with inflation, your family income today should be over $63,500? Is that true for most of you? Probably not, because that second bar graph on right suggests personal household income is not growing much.

Some people looking at this will say: 

“Yea, rich people will get richer, but low unemployment and new manufacturing jobs will add a lot of wealth where there was none before. Right"?

That hasn't been the case overall for the past 40 years. The great wealth creation last year isn't a one-off event. It happens nearly every year. And every year since the mid-1970s workers do not receive any (or very little) share in the rising hourly GDP (New Wealth).

Prior to 1974, we all receive productivity raises nearly every year on top of any cost of living adjustments (a COLA, as it was called). Since then we stopped receiving productivity raises and lost public sector health coverage, pension plans, and other benefits. We have received cost of living raises since then, but productivity raises have been minimal. Therefore, while our wages keep up with inflation, they aren't keeping up with new personal wealth. Put another way, our collective wages are a smaller and smaller percentage of our National GDP.

If wages continued keeping up with hourly GDP since 1974, the median household income today (fam of 4) would be over $115,000/year instead of nearly half that. The national GDP is nearly three times greater today than it was in 1974, yet inflation-adjusted have barely risen. These are uncontested facts. Chronic wage suppression (and I do believe this is deliberate) accounts for most of our economic ills today.

Imagine how much easier it would be to raise money for our schools and local services if everyone in town had twice the income they make now. How much money would we save on government aid to the working poor (daycare, housing, medical care, etc.) if everyone had twice the income and didn’t need financial subsidies? Imagine how the economy would be buzzing if everyone had lots more discretionary income to buy things, thus boosting the demand for production. The only downside is that the wealth of the richest 1% wouldn't be growing quite as fast. The decline of the middle-class, the lack of good paying jobs, the increase in public assistance, the rise in taxes and decline of other government services are all symptoms of income inequality. The cycle of wealth accumulation followed by catastrophic wars and social collapse is a very old story with a many-centuries-old history.

Are you still with me, because this next part is important.

There has not been a big partisan difference on the issues of a fair distribution of wages or wealth. Both political parties remained silent on the subject for decades, until the 2014 election. Both parties talked about job growth, but not wage growth. Both talked about growing the economy but not about our shrinking pensions and benefits packages and stagnant wages. They talked about bolstering the middle-class but didn't mention our growing poverty class for almost three decades.

Republican legislators (not most rank and file members) have been far more pro-corporate in pursuing the interests of the wealthy elite over time. Republican party elites also shamelessly pandered to value voters and the far-right fringe to win elections but never delivered on their promises. Main Street Republicans were used and abuse to the elite of their party could pursue the corporate donor interests.

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Party leadership (not every legislator) also pandered to big corporations, to the rich and to their more liberal base while being complicit in their silence on income inequality and many other matters important to their voters. No one in government was addressing the shrinking middle-class or their shrinking wages relative to the size of the ever-growing US economy. No one was listening to any of us!

Hence, we had a political revolt in both parties during the 2014 elections. Rank and file members of both parties weren’t listening to each other either as powerful special interest, foreign and domestic, made sure we didn’t get together to compare notes. Donald Trump rose up among conservatives to shake things up in the GOP. Bernie Sanders rose up among liberals to shake up the Democratic establishment.

So here we are today, like opposing armies glaring at each other across the battlefield in a war we never wanted. Both sides have been ignored by our leaders. Both sides have been told the other side is the cause of our decline. Both sides have been given false reasons for our growing dissatisfaction. And yet the real reasons for this sluggish Main Street economy, which is slowly squeezing us into poverty, are reasons that we all share in common. 

It is the failure of our politics to address the unfair distribution of wages and wealth. It is hundreds of policies that favor the profitability of big businesses over the best interests of our people. It is the corruption of special interests representing the ultra-wealthy and buying elections. We would all do far better if we could just lower our guard, put our less consequential differences aside for now and join in common cause to take charge of our economic well-being.

Social Progress and the Democratic Party

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

When I take the long view of this country's domestic history, and especially when I view it through the lens of that great historian, Howard Zinn, I feel a debt of gratitude towards the past leaders of the Democratic Party who championed the progress we have made towards building a better society for all.

But then I think about what Democrats have so far failed obtain in recent times. A list that includes: 

• Meaningful minimum wages 
• Paid maternity leave (only one of three countries on earth without it) 
• Paid family leave 
• Affordable daycare 
• Reasonable gun control 
• Reductions in our outrageously bloated military spending 
• Abolishment of the death penalty (Only one of a handful of countries with it) 
• Universal healthcare 
• Free or low-cost college tuition 
• A humane prison system 
• Racial equality
• Adequate and competent counsel for anyone accused of a crime 
• Pay equity for women 
• A plan to mitigate the release of greenhouse gasses 
• A fair tax system that doesn't favor the wealthy and reduces wealth inequality 
• Labor laws that give workers real power on corporate boards (as is true and very beneficial in Europe) 
• An honest, fair and accessible voting system 
• Enforcement of meaningful regulations on polluters, wall street traders and big corporations, and much more. 

This is a very long list that has been ignored for too long. I know we can't count on any current members of the Republican Party to champion these priorities, but we ought to be able to count on Democrats to take up these very reasonable measures.

So I do thank the Democrats for all of the great advances they have ushered into our lives. I vote for them consistently. I believe the Republican Party has been kidnapped by men addicted to power, but still I keep waiting for leaders in the Democratic Party to show up on all of these popular, progressive issues.

Do We Have a Built-in Moral Compass?

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

A "moral compass" is an interesting concept. If it exists at all in humans, it would have to be a durable and immutable guide even when it is ignored or deeply suppressed. Otherwise, it wouldn't be compass-like but simply a pattern of learned associations. Patterns of thought and behavior can be reshaped or unlearned, but human morality seems to have persistent cross-cultural and timeless qualities. This is consistent with the idea of people having a moral compass.

In many ways, a moral compass seems to describe our genetic disposition for social fairness, traits which we share with other primates .. ours being genetically the most advanced. And if this compass does have a genetic basis, then it follows that the underlying traits may be stronger in some people and weaker or absent in others.

This could explain a lot. For example, at the extremes, folks born with a heightened sense of morality (a very strong moral compass) may experience even petty social slights as highly offensive. In others, this heightened sensitivity might cause them to overestimate the offensiveness of their behaviors toward others resulting in excessive guilt.

People with weak or a highly suppressed moral compass wouldn't experience guilt the same way we do. For most of us, guilt is a strong self-correcting feature that influences our social behavior. Guilt is uncomfortable. It motivates us to either change behavior patterns or to avoid that which causes us guilt.

At the other extreme, if a moral compass is a durable human feature, then even people who learn how to ignore their compass must also suppress the guilt associated with it. This should create behavioral tells that can distinguish people who ignore their compass from people born with a weak moral compass. The rare person who is born without a moral compass has no capacity for guilt. These are true and dangerous sociopaths for whom moral actions are merely calculations coupled with mimicked social behaviors.

If a moral compass has a genetic basis, it's unlikely to have a single gene origin. It isn't an object or a particular brain center, but a conceptual construct to describe an emotional experience created by a network of genes and neural connections. It is an experience that produces a sense of appropriate and inappropriate social behavior.  

The idea that any human behavior could be traced to genetics (or what we might call instincts in other animals) isn't an entirely new idea as these things go, but recent research in this area strongly supports such connections. And it makes sense. If you ever observed a baby cry when another baby takes a toy from them you can see that crying behavior isn't learned. It's natural. It is instinctual. The actual hurt that causes those tears is a violation of social justice. Injustice creates emotional consequences which, on the victim's side, is painful and potentially harmful to their well being. 

So do we have a moral compass? Whether attributed to the indwelling of God or an acquired character trait through moral training, the idea that we have a moral compass has had a long and persistent history. And now science seems to be weighing in on the subject to affirm, in a qualified sense, that perhaps it has a genetic basis as well.

WAR! The Indictment of 12 Russian Solders is a window on the War Against America.

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Have you read the Indictment of 12 Russian Officers who attacked our Election yet?:

https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

Read just a small portion of the indictment. The term "Conspirators" is shorthand for named Russian military soldiers.

a. On or about April 12, 2016, the Conspirators used the stolen credentials of a DCCC Employee (“DCCC Employee 1”) to access the DCCC network. DCCC Employee 1 had received a spearphishing email from the Conspirators on or about April 6, 2016, and entered her password after clicking on the link.  

b. Between in or around April 2016 and June 2016, the Conspirators installed multiple versions of their X-Agent malware on at least ten DCCC computers, which allowed them to monitor individual employees’ computer activity, steal passwords, and maintain access to the DCCC network. 

c. X-Agent malware implanted on the DCCC network transmitted information from the victims’ computers to a GRU-leased server located in Arizona. TheConspirators referred to this server as their “AMS” panel. KOZACHEK, MALYSHEV, and their co-conspirators logged into the AMS panel to useX-Agent’s keylog and screenshot functions in the course of monitoring and surveilling activity on the DCCC computers. The keylog function allowed theConspirators to capture keystrokes entered by DCCC employees. The screenshot function allowed the Conspirators to take pictures of the DCCC employees’ computer screens. 

d. For example, on or about April 14, 2016, the Conspirators repeatedly activatedX-Agent’s keylog and screenshot functions to surveil DCCC Employee 1’s computer activity over the course of eight hours. During that time, the Conspirators captured DCCC Employee 1’s communications with co-workers and the passwords she entered while working on fundraising and voter outreach projects. Similarly, on or about April 22, 2016, the Conspirators activated X-Agent’s keylog and screenshot functions to capture the discussions of another DCCC Employee(“DCCC Employee 2”) about the DCCC’s finances, as well as her individual banking information and other personal topics.

We are presently under attack in a war designed to break the political bond that unite us as a nation. Russian interference in the 2016 election is just one skirmish in this broader war against our Republic. And Russia is just one element of the forces that are pushing the West towards a fascist style tyranny.

The 2016 election tampering was a battle to help mostly Republicans get elected to public office, not just Donald Trump. The Russian's were peddling stolen documents to many Congressional candidates around the country. At least one accepted that offer.

Why Republicans? Perhaps because that is where Russian first go a toe hold in American Politics. I don't know. I do know they don't care about Republican values or American conservative values. They only care about how they can use our political passions to drive a wedge between us so we fight amongst ourselves and become ungovernable.

It's working. The Russians, and other unnamed actors in this global movement, are winning battles all over the world.

If I sound like a kook, you need to stop right here and go back to the link above. Read the full indictment.

Then think about what it means when a division of full-time Russian military men spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, sowing disinformation on American internet sites, stealing sensitive political documents then circulating them after weaponizing them for maximum impact in our political system, literally turning them into political bombshells. Think about Russian solders taking on American personas while recruiting followers and supporters duped by their lies and exaggerations.

This is a war. Russia isn't the only enemy, but the level of activity demonstrated in the Mueller indictment is a window on the activity levels among those conducting this war on our perceptions and emotions. If we are ever going to defend ourselves we have to first recognize that this is a war and our animus towards our fellow countrymen is evidence of the wounds our enemies have inflicted upon us.

Please, read the full indictment and then let us recommit ourselves to joining together despite our differences, despite our carefully implanted suspicions, to confront our real global enemies.

What Shakespeare Might Say About Impeaching Donald Trump

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW





(With apologies to William Shakespeare)

To impeach, or not to impeach:  That is the question.

Whether 'tis better to suffer the slings and arrows of the outrageous Trump,
Or now to drown him in his sea of troubles, and by calling the question, end him.
Impeach: convict: No more.

And by convicting say we ended Russiagate, restored the public trust, 

Upheld the constitution, purified our politics, and moved his sycophants off stage.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Impeach, Convict. Convict: perchance acquit!

Ay, there's the rub: For in that long and bitter process of impeachment, 

What evils may befall us while we are shuffling off his White House coil, 

Must give us pause: To deepen those divisions now dividing us the more, 

While his minions undo all diplomacy and civility, tilting our enemies towards war, 

Incaging babies shorn from their mothers' arms, 

Stoking flames of wild trade wars against allies, 

Battering the pillars of our cherished institutions, 
Poisoning the highest courts in our land, 
Dissolving the rule of law and leaving us bereft of truth itself.

Whilst now our wav'ring allies stare aghast at his rapturous rapprochement
Toward the sly thief of Moscow, who abrogates their democracies and our own.
Heeding not Trump's unmastered tweets of preposterous denial,
Righteous Nations no longer take lead or counsel from the birthplace of liberty,
Whose statue blushes in New York harbor.
All the while hidden commerce of corruption rages on, expanding the swamp, 

Palms outward to every tyrant and stateless oligarch 

In exchange for dark entanglements that enrich a few at the cost of many.
To Impeach: To act quickly and strike the sword from his command, 

Before war or atomic doom encircles us all! 

For who can bear the whips and scorns of Trump's insolence in office,
His oppressive executive orders to undo righteous advances by his predecessors.
His fetid self-promotion, and disregard for all emollient constraints.

But alas, the dread of something after his quietus doth follow:  A congress of cowards! 

Men who neither see, nor hear nor care in their actions to spare us.  

A second in Pence who will not quell the contumely of the berserkers at the gates,  

The emboldened militia, so quick to arms,  aim at the heart of our founders, 

Insurgents all, born from a country of souls and minds captured in this war of deception.

Yet is all of this not so already? This is the urgency of now!

So fly to the battered ramparts of the House where truth yet abides, 
Where the Articles must be cast, 

Where Mueller's champions in silence yet bear the fardels of knowledge unheaded.

Dwell not, dear queen, in rumination lest this yoke makes cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
With this regard, their currents turn awry 

And lose the name of action. 
Arise now as one, ye House of the People, or all hope is lost!