Thanks. Nixon was a loathsome individual, but not a sociopath like Trump. When Nixon died, and they laid him out ion a bier near his home in California, my brother and I agreed that if we could have, we would have stood in the line of mourners, with a mallet and a stake.
Jon, actually, Trump is a psychopath, not a sociopath. Sociopaths have a conscience. Psychopaths lack empathy and remorse. They can cause death(s) and destruction and not care.
Eileen, at one time Trump was most likely a sociopath; however, the presidency itself has turned him into what appears to be a psychopath. Endorsing likeminded psychopaths in his cabinet to do his dirty work for him essentially proves the point. Messing with the environmental controls in this nation my well be a bridge too far for even him. However, at the same time, I'm not holding my breath that he may toy with, to the nation's detriment, on the environmental issues for this nation.
Eileen, good distinction! Trump likes to see the chaos and know that he has caused it, like January 6th, but he would not throw a punch unless without another way out. He does not want to be at risk, but wants to get others to do his dirty work, like many of the MAFIA dons he chooses to emulate. Nixon wouldn't have gotten involved directly either, but would certainly have sacrificed anyone who got in his way. Oh wait, he did sacrifice the guys who helped in the cover-up who got prison while he didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Trump does that even without thinking about it. Trump likes a regular peck on the butt from those he acknowledges and when they don't make it obvious enough, he will punish them. He wants to punish the whole country for trying to stand against him. If his cronies, the other toddler-adults don't make him king, he will be just soooo mad! I'm for making him mad!
Jon, I think you were both right and there is little distinction between the two. Sociopaths and psychopaths both exhibit antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and lack empathy, but they have different characteristics:
Sociopaths
Tend to be more impulsive and emotionally erratic. They may have difficulty controlling their emotions and may react violently when confronted with consequences. They may also have a weak ability to feel empathy and remorse.
Psychopaths
Tend to be more calculating and charming, and may be able to mask their true intentions. They may experience very little emotion and may have difficulty identifying emotional distress in others. They may also be able to follow social conventions when it suits their needs.
Other differences include:
Genetic, biological, and psychological bases: Psychopathy is thought to have genetic, biological, and psychological bases.
Social environment: Sociopathy's antisocial behaviors are thought to be the product of someone's social environment.
Self-control: Psychopaths may have more self-control than sociopaths.
Anxiety: Psychopaths may have low levels of anxiety.
Reactivity: Psychopaths may have low reactivity, meaning they don't react much to stress or punishment.
Hannah, you are so right but alas, American memories are short and rarely close to accurate. We should not forget that his Vice President Agnew was taking bribes in cash right in the White House and Nixon went right along with the Watergate cover-up, thinking he and they all could get away with it, except, maybe those careless break-in artists.
Rex-While I agree that Richard Nixon made significant progress on environmental issues, I disagree that he was a ‘decent’ human being. His political machinations alone put him in a similar category to Trump.
I don't think Nixon is nearly as bad as Trump. He did care for his family members, whereas I don't think Trump gives a damn about anyone except himself. Nixon cared about his wife enough to tell her, as he went off to fight in WWII, that if he were to be killed, she should marry again. Part of Nixon's problem was that he had lost two of four brothers during childhood, and part of it was nothing he could do would get him praise from his father.
Nixon cared about dogs that became part of his family. Trump doesn't care for family members, and he has never had a dog.
Your statements are justifications for limited acts which do not reflect the damage he did to our country and this country's relationships with other foreign countries. Nixon is NOT a good person because he is better than the psychopath. That is situational ethics and is not valid.
I think it's useful for people to know from whence his shortcomings arose. But he certainly did some truly rotten things, like interfering with efforts on either Johnson's or Humphrey's part (or may be both) to end the Vietnam war towards the end of the 1968 election season--which he did in order to prevent Humphrey from winning that election--thereby prolonging the Vietnam War, and the deaths of many tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese. Your points are valid.
Nixon opened the door to communist China. No other political person could do that and survive, That was a very big thing. I care less about character than about performance. At least Nixon had items in both columns. DJT has only one column, it is labeled ME!
The biggest lesson, I hope, from the Trump 2.0 administration, will be that he can't do nearly as much damage to the country as he confidently proclaimed he would.
He might fancy himself a king, but he's not. Not even a king-elect.
Frankly, I think corporate media HAS been scared into obeying in advance. THAT, in itself is tragic.
When WE the PEOPLE do what we can, as much as we can, as often as we can, those individual acts of resistance WILL accumulate. Do not do as Bezos has done, or Zuckerberg, or ABC News.
You all make excellent points about Nixon and Trump. Thank you. And yes-we RESIST! No watching inauguration, and slowing economy on the 21st of January by spending nothing.
I’m just wondering, Jen, how many folks will be paid to be there as well as bussed in from far afield (some of that would be normal, I think). Would be good to know the inside scoop on those preparations. I can look, afterwards, at the pics of the crowd size. It’s going to be a loooonnnggg 4 years.
And there lies the isssue ~ Trump will not be running the country, the top 1% will. So, who do you complain to when eggs are $8.00 a dozen? Amazon? Elon? RFK? DOGE? There will be no centralized government to protect the 99%. Trump will be off on the golf course relishing on the fact he escaped justice again.
DJT has said, "Drill, Drill, Drill, Frack, Frack, Frack'... Fracking fractures the Bedrock, and the Water that is injected into the Well, becomes Poisonous... When Oil is found, the Yield is usually Short-Lived... The Bedrock becomes unstable... Oklahoma now has thousands of Micro-Quakes... Poisoning the Water was illegal until Dick Cheney got involved... Didn't DJT say to the Oil Companies that if they sent $1,000,000,000 to his Campaign that DJT would give then Carte Blanche?... Do You Think That DJT Cares About Our Future?
A small grassroots group of us - Catskill Citizens for Clean Energy - fought and fought fracking in upstate New York - with some success. It scares me that it will be encouraged under Trump.
Could we please "discover" oil, and then drill and frack on Mar-a-Lago land first? The water they use for fracking is waste water, full of chemical poisons, which they inject into the earth.
This destroys the land and water. Big Oil has huge reserves stored up of oil and gas they hold onto to keep the prices high. This has got to stop.
I am happy to discover a person whose standards for decency are even stricter than mine. In my judgement, anyone who voted for Trump is even worse, as a human being, than Nixon.
Neither conclusion, I think, will suffice to deal with his character, owing to its complexity. I wonder if any of his biographers have gotten to the bottom of it. He was indeed a very complicated man. Bright. Thoughtful though not necessarily in good ways. Outstanding student ....from Whittier College. Unexceptional Navy career in WWII. Liked dogs . And seemed always on the defensive no more so than when he reached the White House. Perhaps a good exemplar of what Hofstader called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". or more accurately, the real McCoy.
...And then there is this. He was from a "Society of Friends" family. And this: he first gained notoriety as a Joe McCarthy follower by using his position to amplify Whitaker Chamber's accusations of espionage leveled at Alger Hiss.
Has anyone here ever read "Witness". ? A curious book. Written after the fact by Chambers to cement his account of Hiss's duplicity by recounting the story of "the Pumpkin Papers" ,- microfilms supposedly left for him by Hiss in a pumpkin in a field in Delaware that Chambers led FBI agents to. And to cash in on it. As did Nixon in a different way.
Solid gold for an up and coming politician. But where did the typewriter go ? And get this: all three were Quakers. Per force we must conclude that there was at least one backstabber among them, this Quaker menage a trois, and more likely, two.
....But exceptionally hard to judge. So let us not conflate civic virtue with personal morality. Nixon was his own worst enemy. .And whatever he did achieve he did at his own expense. .
In addition to opening up China, Nixon appointed Nancy Hanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and she increased its funding from $8 million to over $99 million during her 8-year tenure. It should surprise no one if during the next four years, the NEA holds bake sales to stay open.
A McCarthyeseque red baiter, and yet I saw fragments of decency that Trump and Tailgunner Joe seemed to totally lack. No exoneration for that, but see Nixon as a more complicated figure.
Very complicated -- all the way back to wearing a football jersey on his Wnittier CA High football Team No discipline back then & "Tricky" never mastered mature planning,
It was also Nixon and his FDA, HHS, and Sec of Ag, 😧 fearing inflation of the 70’s and the social upheaval of the 60’s took the steps to make food as cheap as possible. “ we will just add sugar to everything”, giving us dual epidemics of childhood obesity and diabetes. These are decisions about staying in power, not keeping the people healthy and quality of life. And it’s still a policy today. Leadership and policy decisions have consequences for millions and lasts for generations. Nixon was a net negative with few positives.
I have yet to detect a shred of decency. Trump is the poster boy for malignant sociopathy, Weird how many link him with Jesus, but then there has always been a "dark side" to religion. Nixon was a red-baiting dirty trickster, but from what I could tell, environmentally responsible. Like Trump, Reagan tried to sabotage environmental protection.
Trump is both a malignant narcissist and sociopath. I foresee trouble ahead with Muskrat, who is also a malignant narcissist and sociopath. Trump will lose his current BFF if he thinks Muskrat is stepping in the attention Trump believes he is due.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Nixon decent at his core. But he was pragmatic and seemed to be a patriot insofar as he wanted the best for the country.
Maybe. At least he did many good things and hus environment policies and initiatives saved countless lives in this country. As for the next occupant of the White House.....don't get me started....
Rex, I don’t know - on second thought - I do know that it is a bit unfair and not correct to say that any and every one who voted for trump is not a decent human being…a lot may just be misguided; and yes - ignorant of certain things like, how to make well thought out decisions (i.e., the basis for well thought out decisions are to make them based on facts, truths, not lies, false or misleading statements, misinformation, disinformation and conspiracies, etc.) and have an idea and/or some or do have a good deal of knowledge as to how to test the validity of their (and our) decisions. We have to try to minimize or ignore our prejudices, our preconceptions, hates and biases and try to make well balanced choices, decisions and judgments. [Somewhat easy to say - not necessarily easy to do!]. Remember, the reason FOXNews, OAN, and similar stations and news outlets and sources exist is to present an opposing view(s), viewpoints, perspectives and opinions…what many of them refer to as “alternative facts”!?!?!
TV has turned politics into a "reality show", more about titillation than societal outcomes. If a modern Lincoln and Douglas had a debate broadcast on TV, how many would watch it? To me, modern TV debates look more like game shows.
Cults nuts are attracted to carnival barkers selling bull Schitt. They can’t smell when they are wading up to their necks in it. The rest of us are reeling. Chump is Lady McBeth, out, out, damn spot. He knows that he is tainted and is trying to clean the spots so they won’t be remembered. Rupert has done one hell of a job but the picture in the attic is dark indeed. And it will emerge..,
Yours is a charitable view, Jim Riley, and good for you for holding it. I cannot agree because I think a vote for Trump was an unforgivable crime against humanity and that the white voters at least, who comprised the vast majority of Trump voters, were motivated to do so almost entirely by the Republican promise to do everything they can to preserve systemic white advantages in legal, political, and social opportunities. The obscenely wealthy have different motivations and are even worse, in a sense, but greed is not a primary factor in for 99% of white Trump voters.
Well, no--there was no decency at Nixon's core. Most actions of his that were for the public good were from public and political pressure. In and of himself his instincts were underhanded and illegal. He actually was a foul-mouthed CROOK.
I think it's wrong to denigrate Americans who voted for Trump. They are mostly decent people who were brought up in Republican/conservative surroundings of family and friends. They were betrayed by the criminals who hijacked the Republican party. They just don't know it yet. Thomas Hobbes wrote "H**l is the truth learned to late."
Rex, I am not sure at all about Nexon being a "decent human being at his core" or anywhere else. He was racist (the Southern Strategy and the Drug war, both intended to keep Black Americans down as far as he and his friends could push them), a warmonger who expanded the War in Vietnam instead of working to end it as he promised voters, and not especially supportive of any non-white groups. His assistance to Joe McCarthy was notable and he didn't seem to mind when innocent people were blacklisted because of his and McCarthy's efforts. He undermined the Vietnam peace talks which people didn't know about until long after his death, but President Johnson who knew about it thought it would look really bad for our country if he let the word out. I think those things ere his core. He did a couple of decent things like EPA and Title IX, but more due to extreme pressure when a river caught fire and cancer in toxic places was being reported at frightening levels. Trump is worse in so many ways, primarily due to his ignorance and unwillingness to learn anything positive, but they both share a core believe that they are supreme and should be permitted to do and say whatever they wish with impunity. Pardoning Nixon was a huge mistake and has made me see only that, when I hear President Ford's name.
I think one distinction is that Nixon did employ decent, capable people to advise him and make some of his accomplishments possible, and worked with a largely bipartisan Congress. And looking back, his Supreme Court was positively progressive compared with the one we have now.
Judging from the Trump 2.0 proposed lineup, that ain't gonna happen this time.
(From the 1st administration in "Donald's Vanity Tantrums" And that was a training period)
Beam Me Up, Scotty: Scott Pruitt's "New Agency for Holistic Standards Through Unobstructed Pollution" (formerly the Environmental Protection Agency)
If anyone gets into trouble in the Trump administration, just wait a few days until someone else gets into more trouble! A new disaster always comes waltzing in to take center stage and nudge out the current intolerable mess. Trump hops from one fiasco to another so the firing of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will not be a matter of concern for long.
Syrian bombing missions take the limelight off excessive personal spending habits of EPA director Scott Pruitt.
The Trump EPA has painfully become a dysfunctional shell of what it was. Science and research have been sidelined and global warming is called a figment of wild imagination. The already minuscule budget has been slashed by 30 percent, making enforcement actions impossible. Superfund enforcement (requiring polluters to clean up their toxic spills) has been reduced to the current interest rate.
The new EPA lost 700 employees. The House Appropriations Committee approved $31 million for Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to buy out contracts of existing staff. Now the polluters are running the show. A mining operation in Alaska's Bristol Bay goes forward after being blocked. One oil leak could destroy the largest sockeye salmon resources in the world. No more banning toxic pesticides, or more requirements for companies to disclose hazardous chemical inventories.
Welcome the return of smog, bigger and more profitable Trump Smog – coal ash, mining waste, benzene and mercury pollution. Get your oxygen tank and face masks out. Invest in air purifiers and carbon filters.
It’s profit at any cost. Fossil fuel is Trump’s renewable energy. Dirty energy industry lobbyists and CEOs are the new guards at the American power and utility gates.
"He's a fantastic person. I just left coal and energy country. They love Pruitt. They feel very strongly about Pruitt, and they love Pruitt,” Trump gloats.
Normally, this kind of accolade is a prelude to being fired. But normalcy doesn't thrive in this Trumpian era. Scott Pruitt resigned for using government funds on himself and his wife.
May God bless his little-soundproof-Chick-Fil-A-wifey-used-Trump-Hotel-mattress-cheap-rent-condo heart.
Bill, I have a good friend who worked in the EPA for many years prior to Trump's 2016 administration and she eventually quit simple because she was not allowed to do her job. Many other talented staff were stymied and discouraged and eventually as they were able to find other employment packed up and left.
I am not looking forward to "round 2" in disrespecting the health of the nation's citizens, the degradation of the environment, and the poisoning of American wildlife in the next four years. Of course there will be consequences but they will be disproportionately felt by poor and middle class families.
The most disturbing consequence however will be the failure to address climate change and as the oil industry powers up to drill baby drill the unrelenting heating will continue to burn baby burn. But we will see crop failures which will drive up the cost of food and as ecosystems fail and sea levels rise the economy will take a nose dive as displaced people struggle to find housing and ports that use to function fail.
We are that close to the tipping point that if progress on reducing emissions stalls we could very well find the efforts we are capable of will not arrest the warming trend. We don't have to imagine how this plays out. Just recall recent history in the middle east.
So, whether or not Nixon was as bad as Trump or not is a mote question. We are already in the middle of the 6th great extinction event and we may be unwittingly cutting the limb on which we're sitting as a species. There are ways to resist the likely policies of the coming Trump administration but they will require citizen focus and group actions like strikes and protests and boycotts to convince corporations that we the people will not go quietly to the dismal consequences they refuse in their greed to acknowledge.
Can we just say straight out that Trump and his minions absolutely do not care if we live or die. We are nothing but commodities to be plundered in their eyes.
Jane, as long as they can make money from your essentials needs they’ll let you be a consumer. But you are correct, they don’t care about consumers Jane & Larry. Any consumer will do. It’s OK if they can disinform you, knowingly sell you dangerous or unhealthy products or degrade the environment in producing their products. Buyer beware!
Just one comment on one point: the oil industry is already at "drill baby drill" levels. They don't want to produce more supply than there is demand because that will cause prices and thus profits to drop. The problem will be the reduced care which some contractors will take to avoid environmental damage will conducting surveying for oil, producing it, and delivering it to customers. Biden's administration never really restricted drilling and production because it couldn't because most of this activity occurs on private land. This will continue regardless of which administration is voted in.
Je, no argument there. We’re struggling with getting down to a one vehicle family and still can’t afford an EV(electric vehicle). They aren’t going to stop while the demand for gasoline is still high. My 2005 Prius gets good mileage but it still requires gas. I will get to a gas free transportation mode one way or another and soon.
Thank you Bill Katz - your investigative research provides transparency that all us HCR should send letters to our state & federal government. Can anyone here point us the way we can broadcast this…SINCE WE CANNOT COUNT ON OUR PRESS MEDIA TO DO TO THE INVESTIGATION OF HARMFUL ACTORS. #resist
Trump doesn't give a damn about anyone except for Trump. Nixon actually cared about his family, and had a few genuine friends. Which is not to say that he didn't have a lot of faults.
Trump never has given a damn about anyone or anything except himself and his bank account. I see comments on other sites from people who are convinced Trump will make things better. Fat chance, and I predict the first group of voters Trump will screw will be farmers, who will have no one to harvest their crops, and they won’t be able to sell their crops overseas because of tariffs.
It'll be interesting to see what DOGE does with the huge federal subsidies to the corn, soybean, and oil industries as they look across the government for wasteful spending. My bet?: nothing to Chuck Grassley's sacred farm subsidies. Nothing to Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott's sacred oil depletion allowances.
Yeah, Michael, even that bald eagle, the symbol of the United States, didn’t like him either! That vid of them is the perfect metaphor….the bird pecking at TFFFG indicating displeasure. We need a few more folks in the Republican Party with the smarts & daring of that bird!!!
That is exactly what concerns me, and many of us who would never vote for Trump and who know exactly what he is will be harmed along with Trump’s most fervent supporters. People will wind up broke, dead, or both.
Right on, Christopher. Hard to believe, but it tis true that compared to the Seditionist Sociopath and all of his soulless minions---starting with his VP in the pocket of Bond villain Peter Thiel---Richard Milhouse Nixon was the reincarnation of Thomas Paine.
That's bit too far for me. Nixon was an extremely complex man. At least he respected the Office of the Presidency enough to resign. Trump has zero respect for the Office -- or anything else.
And I am convinced he seriously has no intention of ever leaving office. Trump wants to emulate Putin and stay in office, and I seriously believe he will try to abuse his office and jail anyone he thinks is a political enemy.
I fear you are correct on both counts. My fear is that his mental instability will be used by others, e.g., Musk, Thiel, et alia, to seize control of the government.
Not so sure that Nixon “respected” the presidency. The GOP had not yet degraded into the depths of its current foul MAGA indecency, and its leaders would not tolerate criminal behavior by Nixon. He was forced to resign. The formerly somewhat moral GOP would not tolerate Trump’s personal or policy misbehaviors. The current GQP is so morally bankrupt that they will cheer on any level of horrible destruction, so long as it advances their crude culture war.
He respected it enough to not try a coup like someone we know. He respected it enough to accept the judgement of the Republicans who told him he would be impeached if he didn't resign.
Well....I am writing what you know already, what we all know but some dare not to say - Trump is a madman; he has been mad for years, and many people in important positions have sworn loyalty to a madman. And every year will be more dangerous. I think we have seen the birth of dark times. For Trump - l'etat c'est moi!
No nostalgia for Nixon or Ford, but I share the sentiment Ford expressed that “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.” I could add safety from violence and safe shelter.
Yeah, Nixon, like all the previous president going back to the 19th century, knew where his political bread was buttered. He was more active than most of his predecessors when it came to signing into law policies that improved the life of "We The People". Check this out: https://www.nixonfoundation.org/richard-nixons-top-domestic-and-foreign-policy-achievements/ Back then, I was overjoyed when he (and Agnew) had to leave office in disgrace but it took me a long while to understand how pervasive progressive policies were for politicians both Dems and repugs. Progressivism got you elected...until Reagan. Reagan's administration was more corrupt than Nixon's and he got away with all of it, became a frickin hero to the right and got this whole shitaree we are living through now. Of course, Reagan was an empty suit but in the eight years in office, his administration managed to turn this country on its head. Nixon engenders nostalgia for progressivism and for justice.
It is strange to think of Nixon in this light but his religion carried a sense of stewardship…a Quaker. And while we still face a horror of unbridled/unregulated (like the militia) capitalism, we have also benefited from a wide variety of health and safety laws, and that version of conservatism, in our caring for our environment (think being able to breath in cities). The clean water act was powerful, yet not enough! And then the supremes, scientists all, decided that laws and regulators weren’t the answer; ignorant judges were. If they had a ready-hired ‘science’ court of judges that were experts, maybe that would work. But when one of their own decided that wetlands only existed where you could ‘see’ the flow, throwing hydrology out the window, he put the ‘I’m with stupid’ stamp on all his decisions! The injustices reigned…again. Corporate peoplehood, money is speech, many serious mistakes, yet like resting on the shoulders of Roe v Wade, Congress refuses to react! We need clear laws! We need clear actions! If you don’t do the jobs send them home.
I’m not uneducated. I have a BA in PoliSci and a JD law degree from the University of Miami. I practiced law for almost 18 years and was a judge for almost 16 years before I retired in 2022. But I was not a student of history otherwise. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the historical perspective you bring to every topic. As I said, I’m not uneducated, but I sure am stupid about so much. Thank you for the lessons, dear Professor.
Heather Cox Richardson (born October 8, 1962) is an American historian. She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. Richardson focuses on the health of American democracy. The newsletter accrued over one million subscribers, making her, as of December 2020, the most successful individual author of a paid publication on Substack.
Richardson attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. She received her BA, MA, and PhD from Harvard University,
In 2023, Richardson published her seventh book, entitled Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America that she characterized as having grown from writings she began in 2019 and subsequent interactions with her readers.
In 2021, Richardson was on the Forbes 50 over 50 list and received the Frances Perkins Center Intelligence and Courage Award.
In 2022, she was recognized as one of the Women of the Year for 2022 by USA Today.
In 2023, The Guardian described her as the single most-important progressive pundit since Edward P. Morgan from the 1960s.
In 2024, the Authors Guild Foundation awarded her The Baldacci Award for Literary Activism for 2024.
In November 2024, Richardson was awarded the Kidger Award by the New England History Teachers Association at the NCSS Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Richardson has interviewed President Biden twice.
I appreciate Dr. Richardson’s lessons, as I am a history reader myself. I especially like how she connects events in our past to the present. Reading history is what makes me especially apprehensive about our present.
The accolades and awards continue to grow as well. There are a few others that you haven't mentioned that I am aware of.
If you search deep enough you can see what her former students thought of her as a Professor at U Mass - Amherst, MIT and BC. One student wrote that she responds to email in a few minutes and that she always makes time for her students.
I am delighted that we have access to her brilliance at connecting the past to the present. I live amongst many Trumpsters. Heather, and a few others, keep my moral compass focused with facts and knowledge.
Thank you. It’s the first account of Professor Richardson’s background that i’be seen. Good to know that even with a business school, Harvard can still educate. My wonderful professor of medieval Romance used to brag that he graduated from Harvard “while it was still a university—the year before the business school existed.”
I have a relative who graduated from Harvard. He is a nice person who helps people through his chosen profession. The members of my family who graduated from ivy league schools are all good people who excel in their professions.
It is regrettable that the bad apples get all the attention.
You Bob and a whole bunch of us very well educated, numerous graduate degree holders from all walks of life are HCR's humble students. My late grandma would have asked me build a shrine for HCR. Yes, our thanks to this amazing professor.
Bob Orlando, that’s how bad’SS Dr Heather Cox Richardson’s ripples of real stories skip across a lake of historical ‘connect-the-dots’. #jointheconversation
It has already been done. Please see Oliver Willis for his extreme details on everything the Biden Administration has done.
It is relevant to note that Letters from an American read like they would if Dr. Richardson were traveling through an America and posting letters back to, say, France on what it is like here.
And that is some of the reason the folks voted for Trump. They didn't know better. They didn't educate themselves. Now is the time. Tell others. It's too late for this go around, but we have a job to do in the next two years.
Bob, I too am grateful for HCR’s history lessons that are so much more detailed and nuanced than what I absorbed in public schools. I am reminded of two songs Pete Seeger performed in reading the post and your comment. HCR’s post Sailin up, Sailin down: https://youtu.be/da8kcFEaoAI. Your post What did you learn in school today: https://youtu.be/VucczIg98Gw
Bob, I view this page as an opportunity to audit a grad level history/politics class. The comment section is where we go out for coffee after class and discuss the lecture.
I too feel about the same way. My field is technology even though I'm a graduate of international politics and languages. Yet the depth and influence of each day of our history has been too transparent for me. NOW I see her insights as part of what we're needing to DO EACH DAY. We must act to preserve our democracy. So many lives depend on it.
Thank you sir. Ignorance has the pejorative sound of "stupid", which it is not. It simply means not knowing, unaware. Millions of stupid Americans have foisted this Pandemic POTUS off on us, and the rest of the world's populations. They did so primarily because IT is entertaining to them. That defines stupid. Far, far beyond simple ignorance.
A lot of educated folks in many professions don't realize that history matters...and they never received an appropriate education. Thanks for your reflections.
As a former (now retired) employee of said agency, I am sad and angry to see all the work we did and what we managed to achieve now standing in peril. I have been concerned for the lives and livelihoods of my former colleagues who still remain on the job ever since Trump appointed that yokel Scott Pruitt, who made his reputation taking legal action against EPA when he was the Attorney General of Oklahoma.
Now, on the cusp of a second Trump administration with apparently unfettered powers and another coterie of idiots to do his bidding, the only advice I have for them is to cherish the reprieve you got under the Biden administration, and retire as soon as you possibly can.
How true, Robert Phillips. So much good work, so carefully accumulated over so much time, and further nurtured under President Biden, who left no stone unturned. I could scream and stamp. I could weep. "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."
I recall from religious classes that the sins of the father are visited on his children for 10 generations, while the good deeds of the father are visited on his children for 30 generations. I don't remember which book it was, but it was the old testament and I remember reading the text and hearing the lesson.
The lesson is that while Trump and pro-prifit-at-all-cost Republicans can undo a lot of social, economic, and scientific progress, but they won't be able to undo it all, and when the nation starts moving forward again, it eill be from a point more progressive than when Nixon left office. You know, "5 steps forward but 3 steps back" leaves us 2 steps ahead. We just have to persevere and support those of us who fight the back-sliding.
Agreed - and thank you for the insight, and your work at trying to keep us all safe (as well as the work by your colleagues). I speak for many - you are appreciated 💙.
Thank you. Some people, including those among the communities EPA serve, complain about the bureaucracy, and at times nobody complained louder or more often than those of us working in the trenches. At the best of times, laws and regulations can be confusing and implementing them can be frustrating. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, we managed to get the work done we were mandated to do in the way it was meant to be done.
What scares me most now is Trump wanting to do away with career federal workers and replace them with "loyalists." That is insanity. Appointed positions come and go (and I personally think there are far too many of them), but it may come as a surprise to some it is those career workers who keep the day to day business of the government going from administration to administration, not the political appointees. If you think government is chaotic now, and it sometimes is, imagine what it would be like if a new executive branch had to be created every four or eight years.
Robert, as a now retired public servant for 40+ years, I found Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk (2018) to peel back the lid on what many consider the “deep state” (not!) only to find dedicated workers keeping the ship of state afloat and on course. Its focus was to outline the transition between the Obama-to-Trump administrations, but the impact is really so much broader than that. I’ve posted my recommendation of his work (not just this book) here several times…but bears repeating. 👍👍 Check it out if you’ve not read it already.
The real Deep State and Swamp that Trump always yammers on about are actually Trump’s desires to use the Federal government and its institutions to benefit himself personally.
Robert, while "laws and regulations can be confusing,” especially those regarding the environment and the planet on which we live, consider just how unimaginably complex our earth has become as it has evolved with us on it and just how easily we disrupt that fine ecological balance by all our human activities, especially our activities driven by profit motives! Perhaps our complex planet needs, even DESERVES complex and confusing regulations to protect it!
My father, a 1951 graduate of University of Michigan's "sanitary engineering" masters degree program, was hired by Dow Chemical to deal with their toxic wastes. Growing up, our Sunday afternoon drives included visits to his latest treatment pond or taller chimney. In 1983, Tom Brokaw announced on NBC News that my dad had met with the EPA's assistant director, Rita Lavelle, eleven times for lunch. By then my dad was the chief lobbyist for the Chemical Manufacturing Association, working with Anne Gorsuch's EPA staff. So, clearly, our government was in bed with industry to foul up efforts to set up Superfund. In actuality, chemical companies like Dow, which had been paying more to re-use wastes in its production whenever possiblle and treating the waste when it couldn't, needed a public agency to step in and order those clean up efforts for ALL chemical manufacturing contamination sites (level the playing field ) and a fair way to finance it. In his career, my dad was always between a rock and a hard place. But he prevented a "Love Canal" and a ""Bophal." And he thought little Neil Gorsuch was such a nice boy. Dad wrote a book he called, "Too Soon Green" but it has not been published. A Dow attorney said, "That book will NEVER be published," which of course, means it needs to be. About 5 years ago someone suggested we contact that well connected environmentalist, Robert F Kennedy, for help. One look at his Facebook page and I knew he was no help.
Robert, I understand your sadness and anger. My Dad was a career meteorologist with the Weather Bureau and later NOAA. He would be aghast at what is on the horizon for them as well. I'm retired county law enforcement. I got to experience during the middle of my career awful leadership from 1996 to 2006 or thereabouts. It did not destroy my agency, but there were times when it looked like it would.
My father, a 1951 graduate of University of Michigan's "sanitary engineering" masters degree program, was hired by Dow Chemical to deal with their toxic wastes. Growing up, our Sunday afternoon drives included visits to his latest treatment pond or taller chimney. In 1983, Tom Brokaw announced on NBC News that my dad had met with the EPA's assistant director, Rita Lavelle, eleven times for lunch. By then my dad was the chief lobbyist for the Chemical Manufacturing Association, working with Anne Gorsuch's EPA staff. So, clearly, our government was in bed with industry to foul up efforts to set up Superfund. In actuality, chemical companies like Dow, which had been paying more to re-use wastes in its production whenever possiblle and treating the waste when it couldn't, needed a public agency to step in and order those clean up efforts for ALL chemical manufacturing contamination sites (level the playing field ) and a fair way to finance it. In his career, my dad was always between a rock and a hard place. But he prevented a "Love Canal" and a ""Bophal." And he thought little Neil Gorsuch was such a nice boy. Dad wrote a book he called, "Too Soon Green" but it has not been published. A Dow attorney said, "That book will NEVER be published," which of course, means it needs to be. About 5 years ago someone suggested we contact that well connected environmentalist, Robert F Kennedy, for help. One look at his Facebook page and I knew he was no help.
Yes, me too. But this is what a 20-point majority of white voters asked for with their votes. Decent people are deeply sad, but nobody should be shocked.
Oh, Tom, what a hat-embroidery opportunity….make it red-ish, you know, not quite, but that folks might be inclined to look….and see Make America Gag Again!!! Love it!🧢
Actually, in the sixties Tom Lehrer became virtually banned on radio stations in the US because of his song "The Vatican Rag", which was hilarious. Still is.
YAND enlighten the electorate to return Protection to All of Our Environment.
Our CHILDREN will be paying for Our Inability to Educate (Enlighten?) our neighbor voters to the IGNORANCE of OLD WHITE MEN turning their abstemiousness with our Environmental Protection Agency and hundreds of other gov’t agencies into nonviable protectors of the general population.
SOME billionaires trust funds for their children will still be around after their brilliant dads have left our great natural resources depleted and/or grotesquely deformed and useless for their offspring.
It is curious that Trump's appointees nearly all are qualified by how vociferously they have railed against one or another agency on FOX. That's it. Actual pertinent education or experience are not on the measuring scale. And I am personally deeply offended by the nominees whose personal offenses against women would in normal times automatically keep them from high government office. It's like Trump is normalizing his own egregious behaviors by surrounding himself with fellow misogynists. Are Susie Wiles and Melania and Ivanka powerless or blind?
Given that Trump has offered to sell what I see as regulatory waivers for anyone who “Invests” $1B I expect this will get worse. As always, thanks for bringing up another historical tie to a current issue.
“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”
By which Trump means "Any person or company giving ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE to me." You laugh, but in arguing before the Roberts Court, Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow*asserted that POTUS in his person IS the Executive Branch and anything which might distract him - such as a subpoena for financial records - is a threat to national security. https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/trump-v-vance-oral-argument/545585
It is part of the specious and outside the constitution 'unitary executive' notion promoted by the Federalist and Heritage societies - on which the Roberts Court based its specious and outside the constitution immunity decision.
*Jay Sekulow, is being floated by Trump for the Supreme Court.
And all you folks who refused to vote for Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris ...
"L'État, c'est moi ("I am the state", lit. "the state, it is me") is an apocryphal saying attributed to Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre. It was allegedly said on 13 April 1655 before the Parlement of Paris.[1] It is supposed to recall the primacy of the royal authority in a context of defiance with the Parliament, which contests royal edicts taken in lit de justice on 20 March 1655.[2] The phrase symbolizes absolute monarchy and absolutism."
"In American law, the unitary executive theory is a Constitutional law theory according to which the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. It is "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House".
And the unitary executive theory is bogus and allows the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation (both of whom will wreck the nation) to ignore the Founders’ express statement that even the President is subject to the law. It seems their so-called originalism forgets this. They are creating a system where the President is protected by the law, but not bound by it.
As an environmental attorney, my heart aches just thinking about what is to come. I only hope it does not take decades to recover from the damage we can foresee given the new Administration’s promises and cabinet picks. Sigh . . . . .
I think the threat of what the new administration will do to the natural world worries me more than the bureaucratic and legal antics in DC the next four years. We are still replacing lead pipes in Greensboro and delaying a landfill clean up under a playground in a less wealthy part of town for a few more years while the city drags its feet on affordable housing.Maddening!
Jim, this is my worry too. I note that your city is doing what many do, ignoring the needs of its most vulnerable citizens. The planet is at a tipping point, but fools, all of whom are susceptible to the hazards of climate change and pollution, voted for death star for all the wrong reasons. None of these things will make any difference at all in the long run and probably in the short run as well.
Representative House Rep of Tennessee has submitted a proposed "Joint Resolution" to amend the U.S. Constitution to elect thePresident of the United Staes by popular vote.
One person one unsuppressed, not restrained not smothered nor restrained Vote.
That would be a huge step forward. But we might still have the Russians trying to undermine our elections, or Elon trying to buy them. Still, eliminating the electoral college would be a huge step forward.
Jim, I disagree and maybe that is reassuring? 'Legal antics can destroy our democracy and then its 'game over' for all issues. I've been involved in the 'environmentalist' wars, litigation. It moves glacially in either direction and takes years implement anything, good or bad. E.g. Keystone Pipeline. Obama paused it, Trump approved, Biden removed approval. Litigation additionally started/stopped it in all administrations. NET, nothing has happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
If you care about the environment, donate to Earth Justice, "because earth needs a good lawyer". 620 pending cases. https://earthjustice.org/
Also more locally your state Sierra Club pursues litigation.
The convicted criminal and his fellow criminal-intending billionaires will undo all earlier R's did.
Trouble is, Dems let them in, as Dems could not, cannot message. Or, can message only purity.
I’ve returned to the three collections of poems by “Homegrown Democrat” Garrison Keillor: “Good Poems,” “Good Poems for Hard Times,” and “Good Poems, American Places” – by the many Americans he showcased for years on National Public Radio’s “The Writer’s Almanac.”
Garrison Keillor’s public life ended Nov. 29, 2017, when Minnesota Public Radio fired him for improperly touching the back of a young women, a staffer.
This came a day after he, also long-time host of NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” had published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post defending fellow Minnesotan Al Franken. The latter resigned from the U.S. Senate a week later, after fellow Dems reviled his having tastelessly posed with a sleeping woman on an airplane.
The poems in Garrison Keillor’s three volumes celebrate varieties of Americans abroad the land. I don’t know further details in his firing. I do know that Al Franken asked the best questions of Donald Trump’s first appointment to the Supreme Court.
I also know that Garrison Keillor’s wide variety of American poets shows more being in touch with the American experience than have all Dems in Washington put together.
Why are there no comments yet?? I guess I need to be in Romania to be the first to comment 🤷♀️ All I know is that Heather rocks, and all of you knowledgeable posters rock!! I feel like I've been earning a history degree over the past 4 years. Thank you!!!
Yes, I realize that. I was just surprised because there are usually hundreds of comments by the time I see it. It was intended to be funny since I truly am in Romania today, instead of the normal MN or CA!
The EPA doesn’t only safeguard drinking water; it’s also safeguarding the public from dangerous chemicals used or produced in chemical plants. Chemical plants have to do Process Hazard Analyses to identify and correct possible leaks/explosions of hazardous chemicals every 5 years or when some equipment or unit(s) are added. It’s a safeguard against bad actors further contaminating our neighborhoods and waterways.
Thank you Dr. Richardson, Isn't it odd, that standing next to trumpscum, Nixon and Ford can be viewed as people caring decent Presidents. America has really hit the slime at the bottom of the barrel this time with trumpscum and his more evil twin vanceslime. "President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”
It's a real shame that the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Gerald Ford has fallen so low as to have thoroughly rotten to the core trump and vance.
I’ve posted this before… I’m desperately afraid Trump will undo all the environmental friendly accomplishments Biden has established and it will undermine our progress as a nation and millions will suffer bc of it.
A most excellent epistle from our New Acadian tonight.
The environmental issues facing our Country and indeed the World, and the incoming Trump Administration's reckless and irresponsible take thereon do not get nearly enough ink and airtime as they should. To put it perhaps too simply but bluntly, our collective concern for our Democracy is of course valid, but we have to be alive and well to have a Democracy, and we cannot be alive and well if we fail to address the ongoing devastation to our collective global environment caused by global warming caused by excessive carbon based pollution.
Of all the horrendous decisions promulgated by the current Supreme Court, the worst since Roger Taney declared Dred Scott to be property, the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision ranks as high on the shameful scale as it does low on the scale of public discussion. The crusade for a return to enforced ignorance that we saw so vividly during the dark days of Trump I with the scurrilous attacks on Dr. Fauci and the overall public health community, raised its ugly head in this decision with respect to environmental protection, when it eviscerated the long standing precedent of the Chevron doctrine, mandating that courts must defer to the reasonable interpretation of the EPA's expert decision making when faced with ambiguous regulatory paths.
We forget, at our peril, the fact that the Constitution's preamble mandated six bases for that document's existence, and one of them was to "promote the general Welfare". That basis was followed by the one to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". We cannot bask in the blessings of Liberty for ourselves, much less our posterity, if we have not continued to promote the general welfare sufficiently. To do so, it would seem that safe and universally accessible drinking water would be an easily agreeable precept. Presidents Nixon and Ford, neither of whom were ever accused of being "woke" or controlled by the "deep State", understood this fully. The Mango Mussolini and his vulgar minions do not.
The reason we need oversight and regulations and laws is because we can’t trust that all will do the right thing. Those types of people will now be running the new administration. We must continue our protests and activism.
The EPA regulates chemicals hazardous to human health. The monetary and human costs saved in cancer treatment alone makes the EPA a frugal and decent investment. The same could be said for everything from the American Endowment for the Arts to SNAP.
For a modest investment in a theater or music company, the US government helps local businesses around that venue - cafes, restaurants, hotels, shops - to flourish. The money made back for cities, states, and the government is remarkable. Sometimes - I think of Ashland, Oregon, for example - a whole community grows and thrives around it, becoming an invaluable resource.
The same is true when it comes to feeding kids. Years ago I heard a lecture by a Harvard pediatrician; she spoke of the expense this country incurs when it fails to properly fund food assistance to needy families, most of which are young and have children. Imagine, she said, how you feel around 11:00 am when your blood sugar drops, and you get hungry for lunch. Now imagine that for a full day for a child with a developing brain and body whose family cannot afford food. She continued to note the serious developmental impacts of improper care, even for a brief time, for children, and the damage that is permanent: lifelong health issues, poor education and employment prospects, behavioral and mental health issues that result not in a productive adult, but homelessness, prison, and addiction. In other words, they become a societal expense rather than contributors. A small investment in nutritional subsidies to their families can help prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars of state expenditure per individual down the road.
Those who pose as fiscal conservatives and advocate cutting such programs are in fact, in the end, creating a much greater economic and human cost for their community. And while private charities do their part, their contribution is close to negligible when compared to that of state programs.
The same could be said for investment in education, in scientific research, in supporting NOAA which helps predict and lessen, e.g., storm damage and its costs by early warning systems. To cut these programs and suggest to do what this administration is doing is just incompetent spend thrift and deliberate performative cruelty.
Thank you, Professor, for reminding us of how hard the Biden/Harris administration was working for ALL of us. There is no telling of the horrors our country will experience under this incoming administration.
Kimberly, this is a repeat of what I posted up/down thread, but never know who might not see the post, so am linking it again: SubStack What Did Biden Do Today
It a strange time that I have a nostalgia for Richard Nixon. That’s how bad our current situation is. Thanks Heather.
Nixon had plenty of faults but at core was a decent human being. Trump isn’t, and neither is anyone who voted for Trump.
My dad worked for him. He was not a decent human. He was a crook and employed thugs to do his dirty work. Not just Watergate.
Thanks. Nixon was a loathsome individual, but not a sociopath like Trump. When Nixon died, and they laid him out ion a bier near his home in California, my brother and I agreed that if we could have, we would have stood in the line of mourners, with a mallet and a stake.
Jon, actually, Trump is a psychopath, not a sociopath. Sociopaths have a conscience. Psychopaths lack empathy and remorse. They can cause death(s) and destruction and not care.
Eileen, at one time Trump was most likely a sociopath; however, the presidency itself has turned him into what appears to be a psychopath. Endorsing likeminded psychopaths in his cabinet to do his dirty work for him essentially proves the point. Messing with the environmental controls in this nation my well be a bridge too far for even him. However, at the same time, I'm not holding my breath that he may toy with, to the nation's detriment, on the environmental issues for this nation.
Eileen, good distinction! Trump likes to see the chaos and know that he has caused it, like January 6th, but he would not throw a punch unless without another way out. He does not want to be at risk, but wants to get others to do his dirty work, like many of the MAFIA dons he chooses to emulate. Nixon wouldn't have gotten involved directly either, but would certainly have sacrificed anyone who got in his way. Oh wait, he did sacrifice the guys who helped in the cover-up who got prison while he didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Trump does that even without thinking about it. Trump likes a regular peck on the butt from those he acknowledges and when they don't make it obvious enough, he will punish them. He wants to punish the whole country for trying to stand against him. If his cronies, the other toddler-adults don't make him king, he will be just soooo mad! I'm for making him mad!
Thanks for the correction!
Jon, I think you were both right and there is little distinction between the two. Sociopaths and psychopaths both exhibit antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and lack empathy, but they have different characteristics:
Sociopaths
Tend to be more impulsive and emotionally erratic. They may have difficulty controlling their emotions and may react violently when confronted with consequences. They may also have a weak ability to feel empathy and remorse.
Psychopaths
Tend to be more calculating and charming, and may be able to mask their true intentions. They may experience very little emotion and may have difficulty identifying emotional distress in others. They may also be able to follow social conventions when it suits their needs.
Other differences include:
Genetic, biological, and psychological bases: Psychopathy is thought to have genetic, biological, and psychological bases.
Social environment: Sociopathy's antisocial behaviors are thought to be the product of someone's social environment.
Self-control: Psychopaths may have more self-control than sociopaths.
Anxiety: Psychopaths may have low levels of anxiety.
Reactivity: Psychopaths may have low reactivity, meaning they don't react much to stress or punishment.
Actually, it is part of a psychopath’s pathology that they destroy everything around them. Check out Dr. Bandy Lee.
Thanks
Hannah, you are so right but alas, American memories are short and rarely close to accurate. We should not forget that his Vice President Agnew was taking bribes in cash right in the White House and Nixon went right along with the Watergate cover-up, thinking he and they all could get away with it, except, maybe those careless break-in artists.
Rex-While I agree that Richard Nixon made significant progress on environmental issues, I disagree that he was a ‘decent’ human being. His political machinations alone put him in a similar category to Trump.
I don't think Nixon is nearly as bad as Trump. He did care for his family members, whereas I don't think Trump gives a damn about anyone except himself. Nixon cared about his wife enough to tell her, as he went off to fight in WWII, that if he were to be killed, she should marry again. Part of Nixon's problem was that he had lost two of four brothers during childhood, and part of it was nothing he could do would get him praise from his father.
Nixon cared about dogs that became part of his family. Trump doesn't care for family members, and he has never had a dog.
The only dog "K9, as they call them" ever photographed with Trump, went and sat down beside Pence, occasionally licking his hand.
That’s perfect. They’re so intuitive!
Dogs coevolved with us for thousands of years. It's not surprising they understand us so well!
“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”
Mark Twain.
Your statements are justifications for limited acts which do not reflect the damage he did to our country and this country's relationships with other foreign countries. Nixon is NOT a good person because he is better than the psychopath. That is situational ethics and is not valid.
I think it's useful for people to know from whence his shortcomings arose. But he certainly did some truly rotten things, like interfering with efforts on either Johnson's or Humphrey's part (or may be both) to end the Vietnam war towards the end of the 1968 election season--which he did in order to prevent Humphrey from winning that election--thereby prolonging the Vietnam War, and the deaths of many tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese. Your points are valid.
And he used deleted expletives. His secretary's loyalty never wavered. She lied for him.
I hate him for that most of all, the Vietnam Memorial should say that.
And no self respecting dog would have Trump.
No self respecting person should have voted for him.
Nixon opened the door to communist China. No other political person could do that and survive, That was a very big thing. I care less about character than about performance. At least Nixon had items in both columns. DJT has only one column, it is labeled ME!
When Nixon screwed LBJ on a peace deal for Viet Nam, he wallowed in blood and loved it
So many of us suffer trauma, leaving scars for others to deal with. Some pass their damage on in ways that affect millions
Wisdom
The ultimate evil, to me
Even Hitler loved dogs. Unfortunately, loving dogs is not a guarantee of being a good person. Not even close.
J, what to say about trump? This guy doesn't even likes dogs or cats or anything...other than money
Not it's not.
Trump makes Nixon look like a Boy Scout! At least Tricky Dick did some good, Trump is poised to destroy all of it.
The biggest lesson, I hope, from the Trump 2.0 administration, will be that he can't do nearly as much damage to the country as he confidently proclaimed he would.
He might fancy himself a king, but he's not. Not even a king-elect.
Frankly, I think corporate media HAS been scared into obeying in advance. THAT, in itself is tragic.
When WE the PEOPLE do what we can, as much as we can, as often as we can, those individual acts of resistance WILL accumulate. Do not do as Bezos has done, or Zuckerberg, or ABC News.
#Resist
You all make excellent points about Nixon and Trump. Thank you. And yes-we RESIST! No watching inauguration, and slowing economy on the 21st of January by spending nothing.
I’m just wondering, Jen, how many folks will be paid to be there as well as bussed in from far afield (some of that would be normal, I think). Would be good to know the inside scoop on those preparations. I can look, afterwards, at the pics of the crowd size. It’s going to be a loooonnnggg 4 years.
I am going into full media black out on January 20th. I could not bear to watch that.
If everyone boycotted Amazon and Tesla just for 1 day, that would send a very loud message.
And there lies the isssue ~ Trump will not be running the country, the top 1% will. So, who do you complain to when eggs are $8.00 a dozen? Amazon? Elon? RFK? DOGE? There will be no centralized government to protect the 99%. Trump will be off on the golf course relishing on the fact he escaped justice again.
Trump is accountable for inflation, stock market and unemployment rate. The three key watch instruments.
! ! !
Billionaires worry more about losing money than losing their souls.
DJT has said, "Drill, Drill, Drill, Frack, Frack, Frack'... Fracking fractures the Bedrock, and the Water that is injected into the Well, becomes Poisonous... When Oil is found, the Yield is usually Short-Lived... The Bedrock becomes unstable... Oklahoma now has thousands of Micro-Quakes... Poisoning the Water was illegal until Dick Cheney got involved... Didn't DJT say to the Oil Companies that if they sent $1,000,000,000 to his Campaign that DJT would give then Carte Blanche?... Do You Think That DJT Cares About Our Future?
A small grassroots group of us - Catskill Citizens for Clean Energy - fought and fought fracking in upstate New York - with some success. It scares me that it will be encouraged under Trump.
Fracking will probably be back on the agenda if a Republican replaces the unpopular Kathy Hochul as New York's governor, too. 😞
Could we please "discover" oil, and then drill and frack on Mar-a-Lago land first? The water they use for fracking is waste water, full of chemical poisons, which they inject into the earth.
This destroys the land and water. Big Oil has huge reserves stored up of oil and gas they hold onto to keep the prices high. This has got to stop.
🤬
Vile but not that vile; though vile enough that there would have been enough Republican votes to convict him had he not resigned.
There is no similar category to Trump. He stands alone in history for depravity.
I am happy to discover a person whose standards for decency are even stricter than mine. In my judgement, anyone who voted for Trump is even worse, as a human being, than Nixon.
Neither conclusion, I think, will suffice to deal with his character, owing to its complexity. I wonder if any of his biographers have gotten to the bottom of it. He was indeed a very complicated man. Bright. Thoughtful though not necessarily in good ways. Outstanding student ....from Whittier College. Unexceptional Navy career in WWII. Liked dogs . And seemed always on the defensive no more so than when he reached the White House. Perhaps a good exemplar of what Hofstader called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". or more accurately, the real McCoy.
...And then there is this. He was from a "Society of Friends" family. And this: he first gained notoriety as a Joe McCarthy follower by using his position to amplify Whitaker Chamber's accusations of espionage leveled at Alger Hiss.
Has anyone here ever read "Witness". ? A curious book. Written after the fact by Chambers to cement his account of Hiss's duplicity by recounting the story of "the Pumpkin Papers" ,- microfilms supposedly left for him by Hiss in a pumpkin in a field in Delaware that Chambers led FBI agents to. And to cash in on it. As did Nixon in a different way.
Solid gold for an up and coming politician. But where did the typewriter go ? And get this: all three were Quakers. Per force we must conclude that there was at least one backstabber among them, this Quaker menage a trois, and more likely, two.
....But exceptionally hard to judge. So let us not conflate civic virtue with personal morality. Nixon was his own worst enemy. .And whatever he did achieve he did at his own expense. .
You've just told me a couple of things I didn't know. Arthur Miller knew them. There's a line from "The Crucible": "What, are we Quakers here?"
https://www.arts.gov › about › what-is-the-nea › nancy-hanks-1969-77.
In addition to opening up China, Nixon appointed Nancy Hanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and she increased its funding from $8 million to over $99 million during her 8-year tenure. It should surprise no one if during the next four years, the NEA holds bake sales to stay open.
exactly - taking shared costs and turning it to your costs.
Nixon most certainly was not a decent human being at his core. He engaged in decades of deception, fraud and was a pathological liar!
Nixon's sins circa 1948 go back to his first Congressional election & his "dirty tricks" against the actress, Helen Douglas,
A McCarthyeseque red baiter, and yet I saw fragments of decency that Trump and Tailgunner Joe seemed to totally lack. No exoneration for that, but see Nixon as a more complicated figure.
Very complicated -- all the way back to wearing a football jersey on his Wnittier CA High football Team No discipline back then & "Tricky" never mastered mature planning,
It was also Nixon and his FDA, HHS, and Sec of Ag, 😧 fearing inflation of the 70’s and the social upheaval of the 60’s took the steps to make food as cheap as possible. “ we will just add sugar to everything”, giving us dual epidemics of childhood obesity and diabetes. These are decisions about staying in power, not keeping the people healthy and quality of life. And it’s still a policy today. Leadership and policy decisions have consequences for millions and lasts for generations. Nixon was a net negative with few positives.
Sabrina,your comment sounds like familiar 🤔
I have yet to detect a shred of decency. Trump is the poster boy for malignant sociopathy, Weird how many link him with Jesus, but then there has always been a "dark side" to religion. Nixon was a red-baiting dirty trickster, but from what I could tell, environmentally responsible. Like Trump, Reagan tried to sabotage environmental protection.
Trump is both a malignant narcissist and sociopath. I foresee trouble ahead with Muskrat, who is also a malignant narcissist and sociopath. Trump will lose his current BFF if he thinks Muskrat is stepping in the attention Trump believes he is due.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call Nixon decent at his core. But he was pragmatic and seemed to be a patriot insofar as he wanted the best for the country.
Maybe. At least he did many good things and hus environment policies and initiatives saved countless lives in this country. As for the next occupant of the White House.....don't get me started....
I agree that Nixon was good on the environment, which I view as an expression of his pragmatism.
Rex, I don’t know - on second thought - I do know that it is a bit unfair and not correct to say that any and every one who voted for trump is not a decent human being…a lot may just be misguided; and yes - ignorant of certain things like, how to make well thought out decisions (i.e., the basis for well thought out decisions are to make them based on facts, truths, not lies, false or misleading statements, misinformation, disinformation and conspiracies, etc.) and have an idea and/or some or do have a good deal of knowledge as to how to test the validity of their (and our) decisions. We have to try to minimize or ignore our prejudices, our preconceptions, hates and biases and try to make well balanced choices, decisions and judgments. [Somewhat easy to say - not necessarily easy to do!]. Remember, the reason FOXNews, OAN, and similar stations and news outlets and sources exist is to present an opposing view(s), viewpoints, perspectives and opinions…what many of them refer to as “alternative facts”!?!?!
TV has turned politics into a "reality show", more about titillation than societal outcomes. If a modern Lincoln and Douglas had a debate broadcast on TV, how many would watch it? To me, modern TV debates look more like game shows.
They are unfunny jokes
Cults nuts are attracted to carnival barkers selling bull Schitt. They can’t smell when they are wading up to their necks in it. The rest of us are reeling. Chump is Lady McBeth, out, out, damn spot. He knows that he is tainted and is trying to clean the spots so they won’t be remembered. Rupert has done one hell of a job but the picture in the attic is dark indeed. And it will emerge..,
Many? I thought Mrs Conway made so many people laugh at that, that nobody else would use it except in mockery.
Yours is a charitable view, Jim Riley, and good for you for holding it. I cannot agree because I think a vote for Trump was an unforgivable crime against humanity and that the white voters at least, who comprised the vast majority of Trump voters, were motivated to do so almost entirely by the Republican promise to do everything they can to preserve systemic white advantages in legal, political, and social opportunities. The obscenely wealthy have different motivations and are even worse, in a sense, but greed is not a primary factor in for 99% of white Trump voters.
I'd like to disagree politely. He was a bigot and an antisemite.
Well, no--there was no decency at Nixon's core. Most actions of his that were for the public good were from public and political pressure. In and of himself his instincts were underhanded and illegal. He actually was a foul-mouthed CROOK.
I think it's wrong to denigrate Americans who voted for Trump. They are mostly decent people who were brought up in Republican/conservative surroundings of family and friends. They were betrayed by the criminals who hijacked the Republican party. They just don't know it yet. Thomas Hobbes wrote "H**l is the truth learned to late."
Rex, I am not sure at all about Nexon being a "decent human being at his core" or anywhere else. He was racist (the Southern Strategy and the Drug war, both intended to keep Black Americans down as far as he and his friends could push them), a warmonger who expanded the War in Vietnam instead of working to end it as he promised voters, and not especially supportive of any non-white groups. His assistance to Joe McCarthy was notable and he didn't seem to mind when innocent people were blacklisted because of his and McCarthy's efforts. He undermined the Vietnam peace talks which people didn't know about until long after his death, but President Johnson who knew about it thought it would look really bad for our country if he let the word out. I think those things ere his core. He did a couple of decent things like EPA and Title IX, but more due to extreme pressure when a river caught fire and cancer in toxic places was being reported at frightening levels. Trump is worse in so many ways, primarily due to his ignorance and unwillingness to learn anything positive, but they both share a core believe that they are supreme and should be permitted to do and say whatever they wish with impunity. Pardoning Nixon was a huge mistake and has made me see only that, when I hear President Ford's name.
I think one distinction is that Nixon did employ decent, capable people to advise him and make some of his accomplishments possible, and worked with a largely bipartisan Congress. And looking back, his Supreme Court was positively progressive compared with the one we have now.
Judging from the Trump 2.0 proposed lineup, that ain't gonna happen this time.
You lost the election. Grow a pair an accept it.
Even better you are aren't better than the people who voted for Trump.
America is sick of leftist virtue signaling.
You lost because America got tired on Democratic policies and elites giving the middle class the middle finger.
(From the 1st administration in "Donald's Vanity Tantrums" And that was a training period)
Beam Me Up, Scotty: Scott Pruitt's "New Agency for Holistic Standards Through Unobstructed Pollution" (formerly the Environmental Protection Agency)
If anyone gets into trouble in the Trump administration, just wait a few days until someone else gets into more trouble! A new disaster always comes waltzing in to take center stage and nudge out the current intolerable mess. Trump hops from one fiasco to another so the firing of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will not be a matter of concern for long.
Syrian bombing missions take the limelight off excessive personal spending habits of EPA director Scott Pruitt.
The Trump EPA has painfully become a dysfunctional shell of what it was. Science and research have been sidelined and global warming is called a figment of wild imagination. The already minuscule budget has been slashed by 30 percent, making enforcement actions impossible. Superfund enforcement (requiring polluters to clean up their toxic spills) has been reduced to the current interest rate.
The new EPA lost 700 employees. The House Appropriations Committee approved $31 million for Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) to buy out contracts of existing staff. Now the polluters are running the show. A mining operation in Alaska's Bristol Bay goes forward after being blocked. One oil leak could destroy the largest sockeye salmon resources in the world. No more banning toxic pesticides, or more requirements for companies to disclose hazardous chemical inventories.
Welcome the return of smog, bigger and more profitable Trump Smog – coal ash, mining waste, benzene and mercury pollution. Get your oxygen tank and face masks out. Invest in air purifiers and carbon filters.
It’s profit at any cost. Fossil fuel is Trump’s renewable energy. Dirty energy industry lobbyists and CEOs are the new guards at the American power and utility gates.
"He's a fantastic person. I just left coal and energy country. They love Pruitt. They feel very strongly about Pruitt, and they love Pruitt,” Trump gloats.
Normally, this kind of accolade is a prelude to being fired. But normalcy doesn't thrive in this Trumpian era. Scott Pruitt resigned for using government funds on himself and his wife.
May God bless his little-soundproof-Chick-Fil-A-wifey-used-Trump-Hotel-mattress-cheap-rent-condo heart.
Bill, I have a good friend who worked in the EPA for many years prior to Trump's 2016 administration and she eventually quit simple because she was not allowed to do her job. Many other talented staff were stymied and discouraged and eventually as they were able to find other employment packed up and left.
I am not looking forward to "round 2" in disrespecting the health of the nation's citizens, the degradation of the environment, and the poisoning of American wildlife in the next four years. Of course there will be consequences but they will be disproportionately felt by poor and middle class families.
The most disturbing consequence however will be the failure to address climate change and as the oil industry powers up to drill baby drill the unrelenting heating will continue to burn baby burn. But we will see crop failures which will drive up the cost of food and as ecosystems fail and sea levels rise the economy will take a nose dive as displaced people struggle to find housing and ports that use to function fail.
We are that close to the tipping point that if progress on reducing emissions stalls we could very well find the efforts we are capable of will not arrest the warming trend. We don't have to imagine how this plays out. Just recall recent history in the middle east.
So, whether or not Nixon was as bad as Trump or not is a mote question. We are already in the middle of the 6th great extinction event and we may be unwittingly cutting the limb on which we're sitting as a species. There are ways to resist the likely policies of the coming Trump administration but they will require citizen focus and group actions like strikes and protests and boycotts to convince corporations that we the people will not go quietly to the dismal consequences they refuse in their greed to acknowledge.
With the next 4 years coming into focus I see great health problems. We are as a civilization coming to a close.
Can you elaborate a little on that, Chris? I’m interested.
Can we just say straight out that Trump and his minions absolutely do not care if we live or die. We are nothing but commodities to be plundered in their eyes.
Jane, as long as they can make money from your essentials needs they’ll let you be a consumer. But you are correct, they don’t care about consumers Jane & Larry. Any consumer will do. It’s OK if they can disinform you, knowingly sell you dangerous or unhealthy products or degrade the environment in producing their products. Buyer beware!
Just one comment on one point: the oil industry is already at "drill baby drill" levels. They don't want to produce more supply than there is demand because that will cause prices and thus profits to drop. The problem will be the reduced care which some contractors will take to avoid environmental damage will conducting surveying for oil, producing it, and delivering it to customers. Biden's administration never really restricted drilling and production because it couldn't because most of this activity occurs on private land. This will continue regardless of which administration is voted in.
Je, no argument there. We’re struggling with getting down to a one vehicle family and still can’t afford an EV(electric vehicle). They aren’t going to stop while the demand for gasoline is still high. My 2005 Prius gets good mileage but it still requires gas. I will get to a gas free transportation mode one way or another and soon.
Tell that to the media as well
Katrina, please feel free to copy whatever you want from this discussion and share it with whatever media outlets you want.
Thank you Bill Katz - your investigative research provides transparency that all us HCR should send letters to our state & federal government. Can anyone here point us the way we can broadcast this…SINCE WE CANNOT COUNT ON OUR PRESS MEDIA TO DO TO THE INVESTIGATION OF HARMFUL ACTORS. #resist
This is one reason I support ProPublica. They are doing the investigative work that the MSM ignores.
Check out indivisible.org. There will probably be a local chapter near you.
I did. 👍
Right around when GW Bush launched his war of choice against Iraq, I saw a telling bumper sticker that said I NEVER THOUGHT I’D MISS NIXON.
Trump doesn't give a damn about anyone except for Trump. Nixon actually cared about his family, and had a few genuine friends. Which is not to say that he didn't have a lot of faults.
Trump never has given a damn about anyone or anything except himself and his bank account. I see comments on other sites from people who are convinced Trump will make things better. Fat chance, and I predict the first group of voters Trump will screw will be farmers, who will have no one to harvest their crops, and they won’t be able to sell their crops overseas because of tariffs.
And in MT , the Megas voted out the Senator who is a farmer
It'll be interesting to see what DOGE does with the huge federal subsidies to the corn, soybean, and oil industries as they look across the government for wasteful spending. My bet?: nothing to Chuck Grassley's sacred farm subsidies. Nothing to Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott's sacred oil depletion allowances.
Strange indeed. At least Nixon had a dog. I don't think any dog would even tolerate Trump.
Yeah, Michael, even that bald eagle, the symbol of the United States, didn’t like him either! That vid of them is the perfect metaphor….the bird pecking at TFFFG indicating displeasure. We need a few more folks in the Republican Party with the smarts & daring of that bird!!!
A great peck, er, peek at the real Trump.
🤣
Unfortunately, we will have to experience rock bottom before anybody wakes up....
That is exactly what concerns me, and many of us who would never vote for Trump and who know exactly what he is will be harmed along with Trump’s most fervent supporters. People will wind up broke, dead, or both.
Yeah, Kathy, we are all in this ship together…if it goes down, so do we all.
Which is why we must stay at general quarters from the gun deck to the galley all.
Exactly what I was hoping would happen to him. Actually having him locked up in prison would have sufficed….
Right on, Christopher. Hard to believe, but it tis true that compared to the Seditionist Sociopath and all of his soulless minions---starting with his VP in the pocket of Bond villain Peter Thiel---Richard Milhouse Nixon was the reincarnation of Thomas Paine.
That's bit too far for me. Nixon was an extremely complex man. At least he respected the Office of the Presidency enough to resign. Trump has zero respect for the Office -- or anything else.
And I am convinced he seriously has no intention of ever leaving office. Trump wants to emulate Putin and stay in office, and I seriously believe he will try to abuse his office and jail anyone he thinks is a political enemy.
I fear you are correct on both counts. My fear is that his mental instability will be used by others, e.g., Musk, Thiel, et alia, to seize control of the government.
And at least dogs liked Nixon. I am convinced that no one actually likes Trump. Fear certainly; affection, dubious.
No one adored Nixon. Way too many Americans adore Trump.
Not so sure that Nixon “respected” the presidency. The GOP had not yet degraded into the depths of its current foul MAGA indecency, and its leaders would not tolerate criminal behavior by Nixon. He was forced to resign. The formerly somewhat moral GOP would not tolerate Trump’s personal or policy misbehaviors. The current GQP is so morally bankrupt that they will cheer on any level of horrible destruction, so long as it advances their crude culture war.
He respected it enough to not try a coup like someone we know. He respected it enough to accept the judgement of the Republicans who told him he would be impeached if he didn't resign.
Back when republicans seemed almost sane.
my thoughts exactly
Well....I am writing what you know already, what we all know but some dare not to say - Trump is a madman; he has been mad for years, and many people in important positions have sworn loyalty to a madman. And every year will be more dangerous. I think we have seen the birth of dark times. For Trump - l'etat c'est moi!
No nostalgia for Nixon or Ford, but I share the sentiment Ford expressed that “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.” I could add safety from violence and safe shelter.
At least Nixon was good enough to go at the urging of many Republicans and did not return to politics.
#PublicHealthHaiku
Odd to be nostalgic /
But EPA was benefit /
Nixon's only "plus".
Ain’t it the truth!!
Yeah, Nixon, like all the previous president going back to the 19th century, knew where his political bread was buttered. He was more active than most of his predecessors when it came to signing into law policies that improved the life of "We The People". Check this out: https://www.nixonfoundation.org/richard-nixons-top-domestic-and-foreign-policy-achievements/ Back then, I was overjoyed when he (and Agnew) had to leave office in disgrace but it took me a long while to understand how pervasive progressive policies were for politicians both Dems and repugs. Progressivism got you elected...until Reagan. Reagan's administration was more corrupt than Nixon's and he got away with all of it, became a frickin hero to the right and got this whole shitaree we are living through now. Of course, Reagan was an empty suit but in the eight years in office, his administration managed to turn this country on its head. Nixon engenders nostalgia for progressivism and for justice.
It is strange to think of Nixon in this light but his religion carried a sense of stewardship…a Quaker. And while we still face a horror of unbridled/unregulated (like the militia) capitalism, we have also benefited from a wide variety of health and safety laws, and that version of conservatism, in our caring for our environment (think being able to breath in cities). The clean water act was powerful, yet not enough! And then the supremes, scientists all, decided that laws and regulators weren’t the answer; ignorant judges were. If they had a ready-hired ‘science’ court of judges that were experts, maybe that would work. But when one of their own decided that wetlands only existed where you could ‘see’ the flow, throwing hydrology out the window, he put the ‘I’m with stupid’ stamp on all his decisions! The injustices reigned…again. Corporate peoplehood, money is speech, many serious mistakes, yet like resting on the shoulders of Roe v Wade, Congress refuses to react! We need clear laws! We need clear actions! If you don’t do the jobs send them home.
I’m not uneducated. I have a BA in PoliSci and a JD law degree from the University of Miami. I practiced law for almost 18 years and was a judge for almost 16 years before I retired in 2022. But I was not a student of history otherwise. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the historical perspective you bring to every topic. As I said, I’m not uneducated, but I sure am stupid about so much. Thank you for the lessons, dear Professor.
Dr. Richardson's resume is massive.
Heather Cox Richardson (born October 8, 1962) is an American historian. She is a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Richardson has authored seven books on history and politics. In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history. Richardson focuses on the health of American democracy. The newsletter accrued over one million subscribers, making her, as of December 2020, the most successful individual author of a paid publication on Substack.
Richardson attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. She received her BA, MA, and PhD from Harvard University,
In 2023, Richardson published her seventh book, entitled Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America that she characterized as having grown from writings she began in 2019 and subsequent interactions with her readers.
In 2021, Richardson was on the Forbes 50 over 50 list and received the Frances Perkins Center Intelligence and Courage Award.
In 2022, she was recognized as one of the Women of the Year for 2022 by USA Today.
In 2023, The Guardian described her as the single most-important progressive pundit since Edward P. Morgan from the 1960s.
In 2024, the Authors Guild Foundation awarded her The Baldacci Award for Literary Activism for 2024.
In November 2024, Richardson was awarded the Kidger Award by the New England History Teachers Association at the NCSS Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Richardson has interviewed President Biden twice.
I appreciate Dr. Richardson’s lessons, as I am a history reader myself. I especially like how she connects events in our past to the present. Reading history is what makes me especially apprehensive about our present.
The accolades and awards continue to grow as well. There are a few others that you haven't mentioned that I am aware of.
If you search deep enough you can see what her former students thought of her as a Professor at U Mass - Amherst, MIT and BC. One student wrote that she responds to email in a few minutes and that she always makes time for her students.
Not surprising. Do you watch her podcasts?
I haven't watched them. I listened to her book on tape and read a couple of others, but I haven't watched the podcast.
She is a frequent guest on panels and discussions.
Thanx for this!!!! What a resume!!!
Democracy Awakening is a most worthwhile read
Thank you for the useful information 🙏
And, re-read and annotated in pencil.
I am delighted that we have access to her brilliance at connecting the past to the present. I live amongst many Trumpsters. Heather, and a few others, keep my moral compass focused with facts and knowledge.
I'm a total fanboy!
Thank you. It’s the first account of Professor Richardson’s background that i’be seen. Good to know that even with a business school, Harvard can still educate. My wonderful professor of medieval Romance used to brag that he graduated from Harvard “while it was still a university—the year before the business school existed.”
I have a relative who graduated from Harvard. He is a nice person who helps people through his chosen profession. The members of my family who graduated from ivy league schools are all good people who excel in their professions.
It is regrettable that the bad apples get all the attention.
You Bob and a whole bunch of us very well educated, numerous graduate degree holders from all walks of life are HCR's humble students. My late grandma would have asked me build a shrine for HCR. Yes, our thanks to this amazing professor.
Bob Orlando, that’s how bad’SS Dr Heather Cox Richardson’s ripples of real stories skip across a lake of historical ‘connect-the-dots’. #jointheconversation
But she could reach millions more by summarizing some of the info into short details we could post. For example. Top ten accomplishments of Biden.
Sandra, I follow George Cummings’ SubStack What Did Biden Do Today—he really does a dive into all the stuff that never seems to make to the MSM. I appreciate his efforts! https://whatdidbidendotoday.substack.com/p/what-did-joe-biden-do-today-342?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=954002&post_id=153183703&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=6wq7j&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It has already been done. Please see Oliver Willis for his extreme details on everything the Biden Administration has done.
It is relevant to note that Letters from an American read like they would if Dr. Richardson were traveling through an America and posting letters back to, say, France on what it is like here.
You can also repost her work.
And that is some of the reason the folks voted for Trump. They didn't know better. They didn't educate themselves. Now is the time. Tell others. It's too late for this go around, but we have a job to do in the next two years.
Bob, I too am grateful for HCR’s history lessons that are so much more detailed and nuanced than what I absorbed in public schools. I am reminded of two songs Pete Seeger performed in reading the post and your comment. HCR’s post Sailin up, Sailin down: https://youtu.be/da8kcFEaoAI. Your post What did you learn in school today: https://youtu.be/VucczIg98Gw
Bob, I view this page as an opportunity to audit a grad level history/politics class. The comment section is where we go out for coffee after class and discuss the lecture.
Nicely put Alley. And the comments section is also where I have made some good friends.
Same here!
I too feel about the same way. My field is technology even though I'm a graduate of international politics and languages. Yet the depth and influence of each day of our history has been too transparent for me. NOW I see her insights as part of what we're needing to DO EACH DAY. We must act to preserve our democracy. So many lives depend on it.
Thank you sir. Ignorance has the pejorative sound of "stupid", which it is not. It simply means not knowing, unaware. Millions of stupid Americans have foisted this Pandemic POTUS off on us, and the rest of the world's populations. They did so primarily because IT is entertaining to them. That defines stupid. Far, far beyond simple ignorance.
A lot of educated folks in many professions don't realize that history matters...and they never received an appropriate education. Thanks for your reflections.
I hate to think what this new administration will do to the EPA and the quality of our drinking water.
As a former (now retired) employee of said agency, I am sad and angry to see all the work we did and what we managed to achieve now standing in peril. I have been concerned for the lives and livelihoods of my former colleagues who still remain on the job ever since Trump appointed that yokel Scott Pruitt, who made his reputation taking legal action against EPA when he was the Attorney General of Oklahoma.
Now, on the cusp of a second Trump administration with apparently unfettered powers and another coterie of idiots to do his bidding, the only advice I have for them is to cherish the reprieve you got under the Biden administration, and retire as soon as you possibly can.
How true, Robert Phillips. So much good work, so carefully accumulated over so much time, and further nurtured under President Biden, who left no stone unturned. I could scream and stamp. I could weep. "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."
I recall from religious classes that the sins of the father are visited on his children for 10 generations, while the good deeds of the father are visited on his children for 30 generations. I don't remember which book it was, but it was the old testament and I remember reading the text and hearing the lesson.
The lesson is that while Trump and pro-prifit-at-all-cost Republicans can undo a lot of social, economic, and scientific progress, but they won't be able to undo it all, and when the nation starts moving forward again, it eill be from a point more progressive than when Nixon left office. You know, "5 steps forward but 3 steps back" leaves us 2 steps ahead. We just have to persevere and support those of us who fight the back-sliding.
Great quote by Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I had to look that one up.
“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."
Well....nothing good is going to be interred with trump's bones.
Gloomy agreement.
Agreed - and thank you for the insight, and your work at trying to keep us all safe (as well as the work by your colleagues). I speak for many - you are appreciated 💙.
Thank you. Some people, including those among the communities EPA serve, complain about the bureaucracy, and at times nobody complained louder or more often than those of us working in the trenches. At the best of times, laws and regulations can be confusing and implementing them can be frustrating. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, we managed to get the work done we were mandated to do in the way it was meant to be done.
What scares me most now is Trump wanting to do away with career federal workers and replace them with "loyalists." That is insanity. Appointed positions come and go (and I personally think there are far too many of them), but it may come as a surprise to some it is those career workers who keep the day to day business of the government going from administration to administration, not the political appointees. If you think government is chaotic now, and it sometimes is, imagine what it would be like if a new executive branch had to be created every four or eight years.
Robert, as a now retired public servant for 40+ years, I found Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk (2018) to peel back the lid on what many consider the “deep state” (not!) only to find dedicated workers keeping the ship of state afloat and on course. Its focus was to outline the transition between the Obama-to-Trump administrations, but the impact is really so much broader than that. I’ve posted my recommendation of his work (not just this book) here several times…but bears repeating. 👍👍 Check it out if you’ve not read it already.
The real Deep State and Swamp that Trump always yammers on about are actually Trump’s desires to use the Federal government and its institutions to benefit himself personally.
Yeah, his “swamp” (an ecosystem) is more aptly called a “sewer” (toxic waste) & he pulls his minions from the depths of the slime.
Thanks for the recommendation, Barbara. I shall seek out a copy.
Robert, while "laws and regulations can be confusing,” especially those regarding the environment and the planet on which we live, consider just how unimaginably complex our earth has become as it has evolved with us on it and just how easily we disrupt that fine ecological balance by all our human activities, especially our activities driven by profit motives! Perhaps our complex planet needs, even DESERVES complex and confusing regulations to protect it!
My father, a 1951 graduate of University of Michigan's "sanitary engineering" masters degree program, was hired by Dow Chemical to deal with their toxic wastes. Growing up, our Sunday afternoon drives included visits to his latest treatment pond or taller chimney. In 1983, Tom Brokaw announced on NBC News that my dad had met with the EPA's assistant director, Rita Lavelle, eleven times for lunch. By then my dad was the chief lobbyist for the Chemical Manufacturing Association, working with Anne Gorsuch's EPA staff. So, clearly, our government was in bed with industry to foul up efforts to set up Superfund. In actuality, chemical companies like Dow, which had been paying more to re-use wastes in its production whenever possiblle and treating the waste when it couldn't, needed a public agency to step in and order those clean up efforts for ALL chemical manufacturing contamination sites (level the playing field ) and a fair way to finance it. In his career, my dad was always between a rock and a hard place. But he prevented a "Love Canal" and a ""Bophal." And he thought little Neil Gorsuch was such a nice boy. Dad wrote a book he called, "Too Soon Green" but it has not been published. A Dow attorney said, "That book will NEVER be published," which of course, means it needs to be. About 5 years ago someone suggested we contact that well connected environmentalist, Robert F Kennedy, for help. One look at his Facebook page and I knew he was no help.
Robert, I understand your sadness and anger. My Dad was a career meteorologist with the Weather Bureau and later NOAA. He would be aghast at what is on the horizon for them as well. I'm retired county law enforcement. I got to experience during the middle of my career awful leadership from 1996 to 2006 or thereabouts. It did not destroy my agency, but there were times when it looked like it would.
My dad would be aghast as well:
My father, a 1951 graduate of University of Michigan's "sanitary engineering" masters degree program, was hired by Dow Chemical to deal with their toxic wastes. Growing up, our Sunday afternoon drives included visits to his latest treatment pond or taller chimney. In 1983, Tom Brokaw announced on NBC News that my dad had met with the EPA's assistant director, Rita Lavelle, eleven times for lunch. By then my dad was the chief lobbyist for the Chemical Manufacturing Association, working with Anne Gorsuch's EPA staff. So, clearly, our government was in bed with industry to foul up efforts to set up Superfund. In actuality, chemical companies like Dow, which had been paying more to re-use wastes in its production whenever possiblle and treating the waste when it couldn't, needed a public agency to step in and order those clean up efforts for ALL chemical manufacturing contamination sites (level the playing field ) and a fair way to finance it. In his career, my dad was always between a rock and a hard place. But he prevented a "Love Canal" and a ""Bophal." And he thought little Neil Gorsuch was such a nice boy. Dad wrote a book he called, "Too Soon Green" but it has not been published. A Dow attorney said, "That book will NEVER be published," which of course, means it needs to be. About 5 years ago someone suggested we contact that well connected environmentalist, Robert F Kennedy, for help. One look at his Facebook page and I knew he was no help.
Awesome story.
Yes, me too. But this is what a 20-point majority of white voters asked for with their votes. Decent people are deeply sad, but nobody should be shocked.
I've not seen this statustic..could you share a cite? Might be needed later!
Tom Lehrer
Pollution, 1960
https://youtu.be/nz_-KNNl-no?si=JuCPTxYJ4EfYonZa
Make America Gag Again
The brilliant Tom Lehrer. That reminds me, what's happened to Randy Rainbow?
Where have all the rainbows gone ... gone to Instagram every one.
When will they ever learn?
Anne-Louise, he is uploading a new video TODAY!! (December 16): got the news from my FB feed, where I follow him religiously.
Here's the URL for the new drop on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmrNhbn8KI8
Excellent news!
He's still around, thank goodness.
https://www.randyrainbow.com/tour
No doubt he will have more than enough fodder for new songs in the coming administration…as will the late night comedian truth tellers.
Randy Rainbow is hilarious and brilliant.
Oh, Tom, what a hat-embroidery opportunity….make it red-ish, you know, not quite, but that folks might be inclined to look….and see Make America Gag Again!!! Love it!🧢
HaHaHa - thanks 🙏🏻 Lin• 🙏🏻 for sharing that political humor (as a song about pollution)
This was filmed in Oslo, Norway 1966 or -67
Actually, in the sixties Tom Lehrer became virtually banned on radio stations in the US because of his song "The Vatican Rag", which was hilarious. Still is.
PBS runs a Tom Lehrer special: https://www.pbs.org/show/tom-lehrer-live-copenhagen-1967/ that is as relevant today as it was then...
Me as well.
May God protect us all in the coming FOUR YEARS.
YAND enlighten the electorate to return Protection to All of Our Environment.
Our CHILDREN will be paying for Our Inability to Educate (Enlighten?) our neighbor voters to the IGNORANCE of OLD WHITE MEN turning their abstemiousness with our Environmental Protection Agency and hundreds of other gov’t agencies into nonviable protectors of the general population.
SOME billionaires trust funds for their children will still be around after their brilliant dads have left our great natural resources depleted and/or grotesquely deformed and useless for their offspring.
WHO WILL BENEFIT !?
Eh? Mr President?
It is curious that Trump's appointees nearly all are qualified by how vociferously they have railed against one or another agency on FOX. That's it. Actual pertinent education or experience are not on the measuring scale. And I am personally deeply offended by the nominees whose personal offenses against women would in normal times automatically keep them from high government office. It's like Trump is normalizing his own egregious behaviors by surrounding himself with fellow misogynists. Are Susie Wiles and Melania and Ivanka powerless or blind?
Heck, Rowshan, the quality of our LIVES! I fear it will be quite a ride & we need to be ready to apply the brakes and resist & persist!!!
Given that Trump has offered to sell what I see as regulatory waivers for anyone who “Invests” $1B I expect this will get worse. As always, thanks for bringing up another historical tie to a current issue.
“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”
By which Trump means "Any person or company giving ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE to me." You laugh, but in arguing before the Roberts Court, Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow*asserted that POTUS in his person IS the Executive Branch and anything which might distract him - such as a subpoena for financial records - is a threat to national security. https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/trump-v-vance-oral-argument/545585
It is part of the specious and outside the constitution 'unitary executive' notion promoted by the Federalist and Heritage societies - on which the Roberts Court based its specious and outside the constitution immunity decision.
*Jay Sekulow, is being floated by Trump for the Supreme Court.
And all you folks who refused to vote for Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris ...
"L'État, c'est moi ("I am the state", lit. "the state, it is me") is an apocryphal saying attributed to Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre. It was allegedly said on 13 April 1655 before the Parlement of Paris.[1] It is supposed to recall the primacy of the royal authority in a context of defiance with the Parliament, which contests royal edicts taken in lit de justice on 20 March 1655.[2] The phrase symbolizes absolute monarchy and absolutism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi
"In American law, the unitary executive theory is a Constitutional law theory according to which the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. It is "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
And the unitary executive theory is bogus and allows the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation (both of whom will wreck the nation) to ignore the Founders’ express statement that even the President is subject to the law. It seems their so-called originalism forgets this. They are creating a system where the President is protected by the law, but not bound by it.
Well said, with receipts.
Trump’s expensive legal team, like Jay Sekulow, is who we need to watch daily.
Thanks Lin•
Thank you, lin•
As an environmental attorney, my heart aches just thinking about what is to come. I only hope it does not take decades to recover from the damage we can foresee given the new Administration’s promises and cabinet picks. Sigh . . . . .
Thank you for having the hope that we can recover—that we can limit the damage adequately to recover.
I think the threat of what the new administration will do to the natural world worries me more than the bureaucratic and legal antics in DC the next four years. We are still replacing lead pipes in Greensboro and delaying a landfill clean up under a playground in a less wealthy part of town for a few more years while the city drags its feet on affordable housing.Maddening!
Jim, this is my worry too. I note that your city is doing what many do, ignoring the needs of its most vulnerable citizens. The planet is at a tipping point, but fools, all of whom are susceptible to the hazards of climate change and pollution, voted for death star for all the wrong reasons. None of these things will make any difference at all in the long run and probably in the short run as well.
I worry most about our Democracy. Loss of that could prevent us from fixing the environment.
Representative House Rep of Tennessee has submitted a proposed "Joint Resolution" to amend the U.S. Constitution to elect thePresident of the United Staes by popular vote.
One person one unsuppressed, not restrained not smothered nor restrained Vote.
That would be a huge step forward. But we might still have the Russians trying to undermine our elections, or Elon trying to buy them. Still, eliminating the electoral college would be a huge step forward.
Jim, I disagree and maybe that is reassuring? 'Legal antics can destroy our democracy and then its 'game over' for all issues. I've been involved in the 'environmentalist' wars, litigation. It moves glacially in either direction and takes years implement anything, good or bad. E.g. Keystone Pipeline. Obama paused it, Trump approved, Biden removed approval. Litigation additionally started/stopped it in all administrations. NET, nothing has happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
If you care about the environment, donate to Earth Justice, "because earth needs a good lawyer". 620 pending cases. https://earthjustice.org/
Also more locally your state Sierra Club pursues litigation.
👍 Thanks 100Panthers…Environment Note
#environmental#support
Earth Justice “because earth needs a good lawyer". 620 pending cases.
https://earth justice.org/
✅
#environmental#support
More locally your state Sierra Club pursues litigation.
✅
Thanks, 100 Panthers. I will sign up.
The convicted criminal and his fellow criminal-intending billionaires will undo all earlier R's did.
Trouble is, Dems let them in, as Dems could not, cannot message. Or, can message only purity.
I’ve returned to the three collections of poems by “Homegrown Democrat” Garrison Keillor: “Good Poems,” “Good Poems for Hard Times,” and “Good Poems, American Places” – by the many Americans he showcased for years on National Public Radio’s “The Writer’s Almanac.”
Garrison Keillor’s public life ended Nov. 29, 2017, when Minnesota Public Radio fired him for improperly touching the back of a young women, a staffer.
This came a day after he, also long-time host of NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” had published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post defending fellow Minnesotan Al Franken. The latter resigned from the U.S. Senate a week later, after fellow Dems reviled his having tastelessly posed with a sleeping woman on an airplane.
The poems in Garrison Keillor’s three volumes celebrate varieties of Americans abroad the land. I don’t know further details in his firing. I do know that Al Franken asked the best questions of Donald Trump’s first appointment to the Supreme Court.
I also know that Garrison Keillor’s wide variety of American poets shows more being in touch with the American experience than have all Dems in Washington put together.
Still pissed about all this
Why are there no comments yet?? I guess I need to be in Romania to be the first to comment 🤷♀️ All I know is that Heather rocks, and all of you knowledgeable posters rock!! I feel like I've been earning a history degree over the past 4 years. Thank you!!!
She just
Posted this.
Yes, I realize that. I was just surprised because there are usually hundreds of comments by the time I see it. It was intended to be funny since I truly am in Romania today, instead of the normal MN or CA!
Enjoy your visit.
The EPA doesn’t only safeguard drinking water; it’s also safeguarding the public from dangerous chemicals used or produced in chemical plants. Chemical plants have to do Process Hazard Analyses to identify and correct possible leaks/explosions of hazardous chemicals every 5 years or when some equipment or unit(s) are added. It’s a safeguard against bad actors further contaminating our neighborhoods and waterways.
Thank you Dr. Richardson, Isn't it odd, that standing next to trumpscum, Nixon and Ford can be viewed as people caring decent Presidents. America has really hit the slime at the bottom of the barrel this time with trumpscum and his more evil twin vanceslime. "President Ford added simply: “Nothing is more essential to the life of every single American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.”
It's a real shame that the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Gerald Ford has fallen so low as to have thoroughly rotten to the core trump and vance.
I tried to post on your substack, but the posts were rejected twice. I will try again tomorrow. I agree with your opinion of the GOP.
Fay rants very well. A favorite of mine!
Well, this comment came through, Gloria!
I’ve posted this before… I’m desperately afraid Trump will undo all the environmental friendly accomplishments Biden has established and it will undermine our progress as a nation and millions will suffer bc of it.
A most excellent epistle from our New Acadian tonight.
The environmental issues facing our Country and indeed the World, and the incoming Trump Administration's reckless and irresponsible take thereon do not get nearly enough ink and airtime as they should. To put it perhaps too simply but bluntly, our collective concern for our Democracy is of course valid, but we have to be alive and well to have a Democracy, and we cannot be alive and well if we fail to address the ongoing devastation to our collective global environment caused by global warming caused by excessive carbon based pollution.
Of all the horrendous decisions promulgated by the current Supreme Court, the worst since Roger Taney declared Dred Scott to be property, the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision ranks as high on the shameful scale as it does low on the scale of public discussion. The crusade for a return to enforced ignorance that we saw so vividly during the dark days of Trump I with the scurrilous attacks on Dr. Fauci and the overall public health community, raised its ugly head in this decision with respect to environmental protection, when it eviscerated the long standing precedent of the Chevron doctrine, mandating that courts must defer to the reasonable interpretation of the EPA's expert decision making when faced with ambiguous regulatory paths.
We forget, at our peril, the fact that the Constitution's preamble mandated six bases for that document's existence, and one of them was to "promote the general Welfare". That basis was followed by the one to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". We cannot bask in the blessings of Liberty for ourselves, much less our posterity, if we have not continued to promote the general welfare sufficiently. To do so, it would seem that safe and universally accessible drinking water would be an easily agreeable precept. Presidents Nixon and Ford, neither of whom were ever accused of being "woke" or controlled by the "deep State", understood this fully. The Mango Mussolini and his vulgar minions do not.
🎯👍
Well said!
The reason we need oversight and regulations and laws is because we can’t trust that all will do the right thing. Those types of people will now be running the new administration. We must continue our protests and activism.
The EPA will be history under the creeps heading into government.
Government cuts, paradoxically, cost money.
The EPA regulates chemicals hazardous to human health. The monetary and human costs saved in cancer treatment alone makes the EPA a frugal and decent investment. The same could be said for everything from the American Endowment for the Arts to SNAP.
For a modest investment in a theater or music company, the US government helps local businesses around that venue - cafes, restaurants, hotels, shops - to flourish. The money made back for cities, states, and the government is remarkable. Sometimes - I think of Ashland, Oregon, for example - a whole community grows and thrives around it, becoming an invaluable resource.
The same is true when it comes to feeding kids. Years ago I heard a lecture by a Harvard pediatrician; she spoke of the expense this country incurs when it fails to properly fund food assistance to needy families, most of which are young and have children. Imagine, she said, how you feel around 11:00 am when your blood sugar drops, and you get hungry for lunch. Now imagine that for a full day for a child with a developing brain and body whose family cannot afford food. She continued to note the serious developmental impacts of improper care, even for a brief time, for children, and the damage that is permanent: lifelong health issues, poor education and employment prospects, behavioral and mental health issues that result not in a productive adult, but homelessness, prison, and addiction. In other words, they become a societal expense rather than contributors. A small investment in nutritional subsidies to their families can help prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars of state expenditure per individual down the road.
Those who pose as fiscal conservatives and advocate cutting such programs are in fact, in the end, creating a much greater economic and human cost for their community. And while private charities do their part, their contribution is close to negligible when compared to that of state programs.
The same could be said for investment in education, in scientific research, in supporting NOAA which helps predict and lessen, e.g., storm damage and its costs by early warning systems. To cut these programs and suggest to do what this administration is doing is just incompetent spend thrift and deliberate performative cruelty.
As long as we continue with the current medical extortion system, arguments for sickness prevention will not be supported by the kleptocrats.
Reminiscent of the oil filter, TV commercials of 1970s: “Pay me now, or pay me later“!
And that late 1600’s truism “penny wise and pound foolish” is still relevant.
Thank you, Professor, for reminding us of how hard the Biden/Harris administration was working for ALL of us. There is no telling of the horrors our country will experience under this incoming administration.
Kimberly, this is a repeat of what I posted up/down thread, but never know who might not see the post, so am linking it again: SubStack What Did Biden Do Today
https://whatdidbidendotoday.substack.com/p/what-did-joe-biden-do-today-342?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=954002&post_id=153183703&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=6wq7j&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email Covers a lot of stuff that does not make it to most public forums (MSM).