Reforms go beyond the police station

This  post was published in the Wilson Times June 12, 2020.

            If you haven’t been moved by the protests and demonstrations that have swept American and foreign cities the past couple of weeks, you’re not paying attention. The earnest outrage over senseless deaths of African-Americans by police is understandable and righteous.

            The vandalism and looting that accompanied some peaceful protests were disgusting and disgraceful. Reports indicate that anarchists and criminals stole the spotlight from peaceful protests and proceeded to pilfer and destroy whatever they wanted. Shop owners, black and white, barely holding on during the pandemic, found windows smashed, inventory stolen and other damage. These criminals should be prosecuted. The peaceful protesters should be heard. Their message is honorable and justifiable.

            Last week, I called for a review of police training and tactics. That should be obvious. Police in body armor wielding armored vehicles, shields, explosives and chemical weapons make them more military combatants than protectors of the people. The Obama administration has provided a 40-page guide to reforming policing, but, as with all things from Obama, the Trump administration has exiled the needed reforms and turned to more weaponry, more violence, more force, more fatalities. Reform can be done, improving criminal justice and reducing police violence while keeping Americans safer in their own homes and communities. Increased violence and force is not the answer. Making police “helpers,” with better training and screening, instead of herders is the answer.

            Some are calling for defunding or dismantling police departments. That is not the answer, especially for minority communities with high crime rates. The militarization of police, developed in the Nixon “Law and Order” era, however, should be ended. Lethal tactics intended for foreign enemies should not be used against our own citizens.

            Criminal justice reform should accompany police reforms. As William J.  Stuntz showed in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” few criminal charges go before a jury as prosecutors force defendants to wait in jail until they accept a plea bargain, which avoids a trial and closes the case in the state’s favor.

            The rest of us also need reform. White Americans’ fear of black dominance has justified slavery, lynching, segregated schools and other atrocities. Some have advocated reparations for slavery and its aftermath. As New York Times columnist David Brooks has written, determination of who is eligible for reparations (documenting slave ancestors, adjusting for non-African ancestors, etc.) would be a nightmare. It would be better, he says, to help fund institutions that can bring prosperity to black families and black neighborhoods. Brooks acknowledges that this was tried before with Community Action Agencies under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society with poor results, but it can be done successfully, he says.

           

            Substandard housing could best be addressed by following the formula of Habitat for Humanity, which focuses on home ownership at discount prices. New owners make payments to Habitat and must live in their homes for 10 or more years. The owner may sell the home before paying off a zero-interest first mortgage, but a second mortgage comes due if the owner tries to “flip” the home for a quick profit. Federal housing projects that push the poor into rentals do little for the poor. Home ownership creates wealth, in which African-Americans sadly lag.

            Discounted home ownership could compensate for generations of red-lining, loan rejections, and other unfair treatment while building up minority communities.  Incentives could be added to promote desegregation of neighborhoods.

            In this pivotal moment, America should be bold enough to address police violence and the inequality of opportunity for minorities, an inequality that harms both minorities and white Americans.

Don't want to Bragg, but ...

The latest battleground in the effort to obliterate all reminders of slavery and slave owners apparently will be the names of U.S. Army bases, many of which are named after Confederate generals.

That is a distinction at which I have often marveled. Why name Army bases after people who fought against the U.S. Army? The answer apparently is that when new Army bases were established in the 20th century, Confederate heroes were still popular among local officials in the South, and the Army gave local officials naming rights for the new bases that engulfed millions of acres of land.

One Army base's name has a bit of irony. Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., is named after Braxton Bragg, who is widely regarded as probably the worst general in the Confederacy. He might be one of the worst generals in history! Activists who want to purge Bragg's name from the huge Army base might want to think twice. Yes, Bragg was loyal to the Confederacy, and he was a slave owner (as nearly all wealthy individuals in the Old South were), but his bumbling and ignorance of strategy and tactics probably shortened the Civil War by several months and saved many thousands of lives, North and South. His incompetence was especially noted at Chattanooga and Franklin, Tennessee.

If Southern defenders of the Confederacy took a moment to learn more about Bragg, they might be less interested in defending the Bragg name. Yankees wanting to erase Confederate names from American soil might want to reconsider and make Bragg an honorary Union general. After all, he probably did far more from the Union cause that he did for the Confederate cause.

'I can't breathe' is being felt nationwide

This post was published in the Wilson Times June 5, 2020.

“I can’t breathe …” America has heard these words before. These words came as the desperate plea of black men in police custody. We heard it in New York City in 2014 as Eric Garner slowly suffocated in the arms of a police officer. We heard it again from George Floyd of Minneapolis May 25 as a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, cutting off his air. Other African-Americans who posed no threat to police or the public have been shot dead by police officers.

The words of Garner and Floyd can apply in a larger sense to this nation, which has been denying that it has a problem with overly aggressive and needlessly punishing law enforcement. Protesters in cities throughout America and the world have proclaimed that they are on the side of African-American men who are routinely mistreated in the name of achieving “law and order.”

America’s cities have been inflamed before, particularly in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., but underlying problems persist.

The mostly peaceful recent protests have, in many cities, devolved into vandalism as stores and government buildings have been set ablaze by demonstrators who came prepared for violent combat. Private and public property was destroyed. Windows were shattered — even in Wilson — and stores were ransacked by organized or opportunistic looters.

To repair the nation, we must change the way law enforcement officers are trained. Excessive force should never be necessary. Garner was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes on the street. Floyd may have been accused of possessing a counterfeit $20 bill. These men were not dangerous criminals, not a threat to society. Use of deadly force over an inconsequential offense cannot be justified.

These deaths are part of a pattern of racially tinged law enforcement going back, some say, to the era of slavery. Let’s get chokeholds and knees on windpipes out of police departments’ playbooks. Let’s restore black America’s trust in law enforcement.

And let’s take racial prejudice out of the economy. Some have relied upon the argument that people are poor because of bad decisions they made, and it is true that bad decisions can ruin a person’s opportunities for a better life, but that’s not the whole story. As writer Ta Nehisi Coates has documented, zoning laws, substandard education, federal banking rules, access to agricultural grants and other obscure limitations have kept African-Americans out of the larger economy.

America must begin a process of eliminating all these barriers so that equal opportunity really is fair. Federal grants could help poor people buy or repair homes or start a business, giving them a solid foundation.

We should also recognize that protests against injustice are being used by people with nefarious intentions. Rumors abound as to whether far-right or far-left extremists are igniting the fires that are burning down our cities. Let it be clear that anarchists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists are among us and are an imminent danger to America’s principles. A right to assemble and petition government is guaranteed in the Constitution. There is no right to riot, burn and destroy. Law enforcement should use every legal method, from facial recognition software to monitoring cell phones, to identify and indict those who steal legitimate protests to create chaos and destruction.

America needs a reassessment, an honest examination of how we got to this point. That reassessment can’t take place under a president who urges police to be more violent and abusive and touts military involvement. If we fail to change, the next “I can’t breathe” might summarize the entire nation’s suffering.

Pandemic demands unity, not intimidation

This post was published in the Wilson Times May 22, 2020

WHAT is the matter with us?

We, meaning everyone in this country, indeed, everyone on the entire planet, is in the midst of a global pandemic. To stop the deadly pandemic, we’ve been told, will require a concerted effort by everyone. We’re all in this together.

You’d be hard-pressed to believe that if you’ve read recent news about public reaction to the relatively modest efforts to slow the spread of the disease and, ultimately, eliminate it as a public health danger. We are asked to remain at home as much as possible, to keep apart from other people when we do go out, to wear face masks that will protect the wearer and others from contracting the virus.

But instead of unity and mutual concern, we’re getting threats, intimidation and threatened or actual violence against people observing pandemic restrictions or asking others to do the same. Consider these recent examples:

° Public health rules and restrictions have led to demonstrations against the laws and rules that apply to everyone in the effort to stop the spread of the virus. But in many places, protesters emphatically carried assault rifles and wore tactical gear to these protests, including some protests in Raleigh, where state law prohibits display of firearms at demonstrations.

° Protesters against public health laws in Michigan flaunted military-style rifles as they tried to force their way into the state capitol’s legislative chamber.

° When an employee at an Oklahoma City McDonald’s told a visitor that the dining area was closed (in accordance with public health restrictions) and only takeout service was available, the visitor initially left but then returned with a pistol and shot and injured three teenage employees.

° A security guard at a Flint, Mich., Family Dollar store was less fortunate. He was fatally shot by a customer he had asked to wear a face mask, in accordance with store policy.

° When a park ranger in Austin, Texas, told a group of visitors that they needed to keep a six-foot distance to prevent spreading the corona virus, one of the men in the group shoved the ranger into the lake.

° Two weeks after the armed intimidation in the Michigan capitol, demonstrators carried a doll dangling from a hangman’s noose. Some protesters suggested Gov. Gretchen Whitmire should be hanged. One demonstrator chanted, “Hang Fauci; Hang Gates; Open all the states.” (The latter invective apparently referred to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who had been falsely accused of deliberately spreading the virus.)

Throughout these atrocities, law enforcement has been mostly absent. Raleigh police, for example, chose not to enforce state law against carrying firearms to a protest or counter-protest.

In Michigan, protesters tried to intimidate news reporters who came to cover the event. Chants of “Fake News is Not Essential” were shouted. One reporter was closely followed by a protester, who ignored requests to keep a safe distance, saying to the reporter, “No, I’m fine, I’ve got hydroxychloroquine,” the malaria drug President Trump had touted as a cure to COVID-19.

It has been reported that some right-wing extremists see not wearing masks as a sign of courage or contempt, regardless of their choice’s impact on the health of others.

What is the matter with us?

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Some things money can't buy in pandemic

This post was published in the Wilson Times May 15, 2020

Congress has appropriated more than $2 trillion to compensate for the loss of jobs and income caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The spending is unprecedented, greater even than the recovery spending after mortgage markets collapsed in the 2008-09 Great Recession.

Among those receiving funds from Congress’ pandemic spending are laid-off workers, businesses unable to pay workers, individual taxpayers (at the rate of $1,200 each or $2,400 per couple) and big corporations, which lobbied Congress and the Trump administration to let them in on the largesse, too. Even state governments, usually tight-fisted and operating under a balanced budget mandate, have opened their coffers to provide funding to people and businesses insufficiently helped by federal money.

Now, nearly four months after the COVID-19 virus became a household phrase and shoppers panicked and cleaned shelves of toilet paper and other essential items, elected officials are wondering whether this unprecedented spending will be enough to compensate all (or nearly all) Americans for what they lost because of a virus neither they nor their government agencies could predict or subdue.

There are other losses besides the monetary ones. People are dying because of this pandemic. Earlier this week, deaths from COVID-19 topped 80,000 in the United States. No one thinks the virus will stop there.

Each death is a tragedy. Each needless death resulting from poor healthcare, lack of insurance, uncaring others who ignored precautions such as washing hands, cleaning counters, social distancing and wearing face masks, or stay-at-home orders is doubly tragic. Nothing can bring back those who were lost in the pandemic, and that leaves a vacuum felt for years by friends and relatives.

 

Pandemic rules make each death more tragic. Funerals are either limited or forbidden. No one can get a proper sendoff, a comforting farewell, a shared mourning because of limits on crowd sizes.

High school and college seniors are being denied the usual capstone of their studies, a graduation ceremony. Although high school and college leaders have provided recognitions of their graduating class, a neighborhood parade or a sign in the front yard just isn’t the same as that walk across the stage. Some college athletes are missing their last chance at stardom.

Even more disappointed are engaged couples who have planned a wedding months in advance, put down payments on reception catering and venues, plus honeymoon trips. Restrictions on crowds and uncertainties about travel will force them to postpone their ceremony and honeymoon.

Similarly, families who planned vacation trips a year in advance (not an unusual practice) have had to cancel their long-awaited travel, hope for refunds and deal with it if refunds are declined. For many, a 2020 trip was to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a bucket list item. It may be possible to shift some trips to a year later, but for some people, this year’s vacation loss is permanent. Several years ago, a friend with a debilitating and ultimately fatal disease scheduled a series of trips to check off his bucket list of places he had always wanted to see. In 2020, such once-in-a-lifetime trips won’t be possible.

For some people of a certain age, a dream trip canceled this year might be a last chance. A year from now, they might not have the mobility, strength or stamina for such a trip.

We all know that there are some things money can’t buy. There are some things for which no government stimulus can compensate: a life ended too soon, a life-mark ceremony postponed, a long-nurtured dream denied, a life-changing opportunity canceled. Stimulus money can’t make up for the disappointments, the postponements, the tragedies this pandemic has wrought.

Pandemic makes April cruel again

This post was published in the Wilson Times May 8, 2020.

Fourteen years ago, I wrote a column for The Wilson Daily Times titled “Don’t Call April Cruel.” I chided T.S. Eliot for calling April “The Cruelest Month” in his most famous poem, “The Waste Land.”

A few days before the column was published on April 8, 2006, my wife and I had sat on the deck in the back of our house and took in the beauty of spring in eastern North Carolina. Dogwoods, forsythia, azaleas and daffodils were all blooming within our sight lines. Looking at the freshly mowed green grass accented with budding flowers, I wondered how Eliot could call a month so lovely “cruel.”

Eliot accused April of “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Bright flowers never last. They wilt and die. All beauty is ephemeral, here today, gone tomorrow. But I just couldn’t agree with Eliot that April is cruel.

Now, 14 Aprils and at least one April tornado later, I’m beginning to see the cruelty of April in a way that the poet never did. April of 2020 has been cruel in hundreds of thousands of ways. A pandemic, sparked by an odd virus has killed about a quarter million people worldwide. North Carolina, still sparkling with April blooms, has recorded more than 400 deaths from the disease.

As of earlier this week, 69,000 Americans have died from the Corona Virus. That is more than all of the Americans killed in the Vietnam War. COVID-19 deaths are especially cruel; family members cannot visit a loved one on his/her deathbed. Traditional funerals are forbidden because they attract more than 10 people, creating a crowd that can spread the virus.

“Normal” life has come to a close. Efforts to contain the rapidly spreading virus have escalated from “social distancing” and frequent hand washing to closed schools, mandatory closing of restaurants, bars and other “non-essential” businesses. People you know are wearing facemasks to prevent spreading the invisible virus. Millions are out of work because their businesses closed or laid them off. Thirty million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits.

This April has brought out the best and the worst in us. Millions of healthcare workers are risking their own lives to treat and comfort sick patients. People are looking out for their neighbors. Families, unable to visit loved ones’ homes, are adopting video technology to create “virtual visits” with parents, children, grandchildren and others.

And the worst: Our divided politics have been ripped further asunder. Family celebrations (weddings, funerals, birthdays and anniversaries) have had to be canceled or postponed. Business owners eager to reopen their shops have chosen profits over their neighbors’ and employees’ right to live. Some “liberate” protesters carried assault weapons into the Michigan State Capitol, apparently to intimidate the state workers and elected officials there. Loud insults and implied threats have added to the cruelty of this pandemic

Perhaps cruelest of all is this: We don’t know this virus’ life cycle. Can it be stopped by the measures already undertaken? Will a relaxing of these measures invite a second wave of COVID-19 later this year? Will the insidious virus become a seasonal threat, leaving us to fight the virus month after month, year after year? Will our lives, our schedules, our workplaces, our businesses, our nonprofits, our churches, our schools, our arts and culture change drastically and permanently because of a virus that is only visible through electron microscopes?

Instead of worrying about the cruelty of April, we could have 12 cruel months every year.

That stimulus money will have to be repaid

This post was published in the Wilson Times May 1, 2020.

If you’re pleased with your pandemic stimulus check, just wait until the payments come due. As someone who paid federal taxes last year, you qualified for a $1,200 stimulus check; you don’t even have to sign away all your privacy rights. If you gave up your bank account number, you get a direct deposit into your account instead of a paper check with Donald J. Trump’s name on it.

Do a little math, though. If everyone is getting $1,200 ($2,400 for two-earner households), how much money does that total, and where is it coming from? The stimulus checks sent to individual taxpayers were part of a $3 trillion bill that included payments to small businesses, supplemental unemployment payments, cash for state and local governments and hospitals. The individual checks were estimated at about $209 billion.

This generosity comes on the heels of the 2017 tax cuts, which added more than $1 trillion to the budget deficit, even as the economy was bursting at the seams and little of the tax cuts went to people who would spend it on basics.

If these numbers sound familiar, you may recall an earlier stimulus package in 2008-09, which involved payments and tax changes boosted by the Bush and Obama administrations. In addition to one-time payments of up to $1,200 for couples, plus $300 per child, this stimulus included a pause in payroll taxes (that support Social Security and Medicare with 6% of wages). The Bush administration spent $120 billion to prop up the economy.

The money must have helped, although surveys showed a lot of recipients saved their stimulus money instead of spending it as intended. Even so, the economy had been zooming for a decade until the Corona Virus pandemic caused an economic collapse.

Because this year’s stimulus package was financed with borrowed money, this fiscal year’s federal budget deficit is expected to be $3.7 trillion. That’s 3,700,000,000,000 dollars. It’s more money than you can imagine. As Everett Dirksen famously said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

The government’s stimulus package in the 2008-09 Great Recession and the current economic reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic were needed to prevent a total collapse of the global economy. But neither Congress nor the White House sought to offset the stimulus with tax increases or spending cuts. Annual deficits have increased the national debt and debt-to-income ratio to near-suicidal levels.

The relief package for America’s worst depression, in the 1930s, included government jobs to put people (mostly men) back to work in an economy that had no job openings. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built or improved roads, national parks and buildings, including the Wilson County Public Library, a WPA project. In 1936, the federal deficit was $4 billion. In that case, the federal stimulus created an asset — government buildings, roads and parks — that added to the government’s worth.

We’ll never go back to the pre-New Deal federal budgeting, but the deficits we’ve run up every year since 2000 will have to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. The federal debt at the end of World War II was $259 billion. It has not fallen below $300 billion since 1962. This year, it is expected to top $24 trillion — more than the total value of the nation’s output (GDP).

Enjoy your stimulus check, or give it away to charities in need. But you might want to have a talk with your grandchildren. They (and their grandchildren) will have to pay for the nation’s stimulated economy.