Author: Bruce VanWyngarden

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Ring of Truth

Harriet Tubman (Photo: Horatio Seymour Squyer | National Portrait Gallery | Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

“Revised National Parks Web Page Describes Harriet Tubman as Human Trafficker.”

That was the headline of an email I got a few days ago. I opened it immediately, thinking surely it was a joke. And I was right. The email was from The Onion, a satirical publication that’s been around since 1988 and that is somehow still alive and kicking and sending out funny material in 2025.

You have to admire their spunk. Satire can’t be easy these days. Just last month, for example, in a story about the hundreds of changes and cuts the Trump administration had made to federal government websites, the Washington Post reported that the National Park Service had revised a web page about the Underground Railroad to remove a quote and image of Harriet Tubman, and to remove the word “slavery” from the opening paragraph.

See, it’s just one small step from satire to reality. Or vice versa. And it’s often hard to tell the difference. Here’s another example: “RFK Jr. Says He Swam with Grandkids in a Creek Known for Raw Sewage.” Oh, those crazy kids at The Onion, I tell ya. Oh wait, that’s a real headline from MSNBC.com. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, actually did swim in sewage-infested Rock Creek in Washington, D.C., with his grandkids last week. No word on whether they also spotted a dead bear cub.

Here’s another tough one: “Trump Announces SEAL Team Six Kills U.S. Protester in Daring Overnight Raid.” Not quite true. At least, not yet. He is, however, having people abducted off the street and shipping them to prison without arresting them or giving them legal due process, which is horrifying enough.

How about this headline? “Trump Renames Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America.” Yes, of course, it’s real, but by any rational measure that should have been an Onion headline, don’t you think? Since it was already taken, The Onion came up with “Trump Renames Eric ‘Eric of America.’” See, satire is hard. 

“Immigrants Criticize Swimsuit Competition Portion of U.S. Citizenship Test.” Okay, yes, that’s The Onion. But just barely. The reality is almost as bizarre. It was announced last week that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, headed by cosplaying Border Barbie, Kristi Noem, is reportedly considering a reality TV show in which immigrants would compete in American-themed challenges for a chance to win U.S. citizenship. 

The show, pitched by Rob Worsoff, the producer behind Duck Dynasty, would be called The American, and would feature immigrants competing in challenges such as gold mining, balancing on logs, and assembling cars, to win a fast track to citizenship and potentially be sworn in as citizens on the steps of the Capitol. No, it’s really not from The Onion. I swear. You can google it.

So, how about this one? Real or fake? “Trump Orders Government to Stop Enforcing Rules He Doesn’t Like.” Sorry, that’s a real headline from the Washington Post. From the story: “Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt work related to anti-discrimination laws.” The story adds that at the Environmental Protection Agency, “Trump has ordered officials to scale back enforcement of rules intended to curb air and water pollution from power plants, oil refineries, hazardous waste sites, and other industrial facilities.” Argh.

So, here’s an easy one … I think: “Sean Combs Asks for Quick Trial So He Can Get to Part Where Trump Pardons Him.” A quote from Diddy: “With all due respect, your honor, can we skip some of the preamble and jump to when Trump gets all these sex trafficking and racketeering charges thrown out?” Yeah, it’s satire, unlike Trump’s pardon of 1,500 people convicted of various charges in the January 6th insurrection, but does anyone doubt Trump would actually pardon Combs? I don’t.

Okay, I’ll stop now, but here’s one last headline that has the bitter ring of truth to it. “Pope Leo XIV: ‘There Couldn’t Be a Better Time to Get the Fuck Out of America Forever.’” Real or fake? Hard to tell, and it hurts to laugh. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Driving While Brown

(Photo: Photo: Fibobjects | Dreamstime.com)

In Nashville last week, Tennessee State Highway Patrol troopers conducted around 500 traffic stops in a sweep coordinated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in order to find undocumented immigrants. The troopers made 12 arrests and detained more than 100 people for “reasons related to immigration.”

How do you conduct 500 traffic stops designed to detain undocumented immigrants? One can only assume the troopers looked for brown people and pulled them over. That’s 500 contrived stops conducted via racial profiling. The operation was performed under the auspices of a law Governor Bill Lee proudly signed during a recent special legislative session.

The new law creates a Centralized Immigration Enforcement division (“CIE,” get it? It’s like ICE, only different) at the state level, to be led by a Chief Immigration Enforcement Officer (CIEO) appointed by the governor. The CIEO (who should be named Old McDonald) will coordinate directly with the Trump Administration on federal immigration policies.

The law also establishes a new driver’s license that distinguishes U.S. citizens from legal permanent residents; makes it a felony for local officials to adopt sanctuary city policies; encourages local governments to participate in enforcing federal immigration policies; and establishes penalties for local officials who do not comply with enforcement mandates.

The ICE and THP operation caused considerable anxiety in Nashville, and residents raised questions about whether local officials knew about it in advance. The short answer is “no.”

“I want to be clear. We did not request this approach to safety. We do not support it,” said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “It’s important for us to get this right and it’s very frustrating to see a failure in the process.” O’Connell then issued an executive order aimed at tracking and reporting any future interactions with federal immigration authorities.

If they’ve not done so already, it would be a good idea for Memphis’ elected officials to get ahead of this kind of operation before it happens here. And it will happen here. Republicans have control of the legislative trifecta in Tennessee and they love nothing better than sticking it to the two blue voting areas in the state.

It’s been nearly a month now since the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia — who was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison with no due process — to the United States. If he is ever returned, he would presumably be given a chance to argue his case in court. But the administration has thus far managed to just ignore the Supreme Court, a clear violation of the Constitution.

Here’s the thing: We tend to focus on the individual cases that make the news, like Garcia’s and that of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national who was seized on the street by ICE agents in March and sent to a detention facility (read, prison) in Louisiana. She was released from custody last week, upon the order of a federal judge, but the horrifying fact remains that she was abducted on a street in Boston and spent six weeks in prison with no due process for the “crime” of writing an editorial the Trump administration didn’t like.

But what about the “more than 100 people” who were detained in Nashville? Who are they? Where are they? Who’s going to track their cases? And what about the thousands more who are being picked up and held in for-profit detention centers around the country? What about those who fall through the cracks, like the two-year-old girl born in the U.S. and detained in foster care here after her mother and father were deported?

There is no way the media can keep up with everyone who’s being picked up or report on what happens to them. And that’s part of the administration’s plan: overwhelm the system with mass detentions. It’s why Trump aide Stephen Miller is now calling for the suspension of Habeas Corpus, which constitutionally shields people from unlawful imprisonment and ensures them a day in court.

Joint operations like the one in Nashville are happening all over the country now, and Memphis is unlikely to be left out. What are we going to do when it happens to the people who work and live in our city, our friends and neighbors? Who will tell their stories? 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Swifty

Bruce and Jerry (Photo: Courtesy Bruce VanWyngarden)

Jerry Swift passed on from this life about a year ago. His wife, Leasa, wanted to keep the news low-key at the time and so I didn’t write about it, but I think now a remembrance is in order. He was a hell of a guy and he deserves his flowers. 

The first thing I’ll say about Jerry is that if he hadn’t taken a job selling ads for the Memphis Flyer in its early days you wouldn’t be reading this. This was some 35 years ago, four years before my own stint at the Flyer began, but I heard lots of Jerry tales — some from those who were working at the paper when publisher Ken Neill founded it, and many more from Jerry himself. He had a million stories and loved to tell them.

Jerry was a singer in a band in his teens and early 20s, but he made his bones in Memphis in the music-club business, most notably by opening the Ritz Theatre on Madison Avenue in 1976. Billy Joel was the club-opening act and there were lines around the block. Jerry managed to bring performers such as Meat Loaf, Joan Armatrading, Al Jarreau, Tom Waits, Roy Buchanan, and others to Memphis to play a 350-seat venue. He had a good eye (and ear) for up-and-coming talent and had a knack for striking a deal.

Jerry knew everybody in the local music business and brought those connections with him to the Flyer. Soon most of the city’s venues were advertising in the upstart little weekly. He even got the no-nonsense Beale Street club owners to start buying ads, a major coup. Jerry also talked the local topless joints into the paper, and they mostly ran full-page ads. Cash only. The bills smelled of sweat and perfume.  

It was a wild and woolly time, and without the advertising dollars that Jerry brought in, it’s unlikely the Flyer would have survived. He gave the paper street cred. And, as he told it, he never sold an ad. “I just tell them what we offer and how much it costs,” he’d say. “If they want to buy an ad, they’ll let me know.” Cool. Whatever his approach was, it worked. Jerry could talk to anyone, and did. And nobody intimidated him, not even his boss.

He loved to tell the story about how an angry Ken Neill was pounding his fist on the table in an ad sales meeting when his metal watchband exploded and flew off in several pieces around the room. There was an awkward silence before Jerry started laughing so hard that the whole room soon joined in. “That was the last time Ken pounded on the table,” Jerry recalled. 

He was a big man, full of gusto and full of ideas. One of those ideas, which he latched onto with a vengeance in the mid-1990s, was that we should start playing golf — “we” being Recording Academy director Jon Hornyak, Flyer photographer Larry Kuzniewski, and me. Jerry was a hard man to resist, so we bought clubs at local thrift stores and met one Sunday morning at Overton Park to embark on a new adventure.

It wasn’t pretty at first, but we got better after a few Sundays. I remember well the first time we all four hit our drives over the dreaded “ditch” on number 7. Usually, at least one of us bounced a pellet into the lovely concrete confines of Lick Creek. It was a funny, joyful, high-fiving moment that has stayed with me through the years. 

That same foursome stayed together for the next 25 years, playing what Jerry dubbed the “Grudge Match,” which pitted Larry and me against Jerry and Jon. We played courses all over the area before finally settling on a weekly game at Galloway after the course was renovated. Jerry and Leasa bought a house nearby, and when Jerry retired, he played there several days a week, until he injured his back in a fall that put him in the hospital and ended his golf career. 

As they will with all of us, the years finally caught up with Jerry last May at the age of 76, a number he would have been proud to have on his scorecard. He is sorely missed. And you wouldn’t be reading these words without him.

Categories
At Large Opinion

A Toenail Is Better

Photo: Spiroview Inc. | Dreamstime.com

“‘Stink for a dime’ is an idiom that means to be extremely bad, unpleasant, or worthless. It’s often used to describe something that is so poor in quality or value that it’s not even worth the low cost of a dime.”

Who among us has not fallen back on that popular saying, “stink for a dime”? It comes in handy now and then, right? What? You’ve never heard anyone say that? Well … okay, you got me. No one ever says that. My friend and former Flyer colleague Chris Davis made it up, along with several other original “idioms,” including “A toenail is better,” “Too foggy to fart,” and “All nines and 14s.” 

Davis decided to challenge Google’s AI capabilities by typing random phrases in the search bar and asking what they meant. Like an unprepared seventh-grader called out in class by his teacher, Google’s AI just started, well, making up total crap. 

Take AI’s response to another of Davis’ invented idioms — “All nines and 14s” — which according to Google’s AI, is “a common expression used to describe a situation where all the digits or a percentage are either 9 or 14. It’s most commonly used in the context of high availability and reliability.” What? A toenail is better!

Imagine relying on this resource to do research or to write a term paper. Unfortunately, it’s being done all the time. Recently, I had a conversation with an Ole Miss professor who told me it’s an endemic practice among students, most of whom soon find out that their professors are easily able to catch them at it. There’s too much “AI slop.”

What’s AI slop? Funny you should ask. I typed that phrase into Google’s search bar and got this: “AI slop is essentially mass-produced, low-quality content that floods online spaces like social media, blogs, and search results. It often lacks substance, is generic or repetitive, and may not be harmful but is of little value. In essence, ‘AI slop’ highlights the potential downsides of relying on AI for content creation, particularly when speed and quantity are prioritized over quality and purpose.” In other words, it’s too foggy to fart.

Even so, it’s projected that $644 billion will be spent globally in 2025 to further develop artificial intelligence technologies. Companies such Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Google, and xAI are in a frantic race to build and expand AI data centers and infrastructure. Here in Memphis, Elon Musk’s Colossus AI development is using unpermitted gas turbines with little to no pushback from local authorities. And it’s not just in Memphis. Similar construction projects from other AI developers are stressing water resources and power grids all around the planet.

So what is the ultimate prize in this expensive and environmentally destructive contest? Why are companies spending such enormous amounts of money on AI development? AI systems are designed to analyze data, identify patterns, and automate processes, the aim being to create intelligence that can adapt and learn from its environment, much like humans. But where’s the profit going to come from? None of these companies are developing AI for altruistic reasons.

As AI currently exists, it can automate certain tasks and processes and automate customer service (whether the latter is “progress” is debatable), manage inventory, and even drive vehicles. Google says AI has also been useful in the fields of medicine, engineering, and materials science. But costs still far outweigh profits for AI developers.

Some analysts say the big payoff could potentially come from AGI (artificial general intelligence), a still-hypothetical evolution of AI that would have human-level cognitive abilities, allowing it to solve problems in a wide range of domains without specific training and adapt to new situations and contexts — presumably without making up crap, which is what happens now when AI encounters a problem for which it hasn’t been “trained.”

Musk calls his xAI chatbot “Grok,” a term coined by Robert Heinlein in his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. It’s from a mythical Martian language and means to “empathize or communicate sympathetically.” Which is ironic, since Musk recently said that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” while likening Social Security to a “Ponzi scheme.” That’s also a term some critics have used to describe the burgeoning investments in AI. If you ask me, it all sounds like it might stink for a dime. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Turdus Migratorius

Photo: Petar Kremenarov | Dreamstime.com

I’m sitting on the deck, sipping a fresh-brewed cup of early coffee. It’s Easter, and the air is clear and bright and alive, offering the promise of another glorious Memphis spring day. The earth has resurrected itself and donned its finest vestments: Azaleas, dogwoods, irises, shamrocks, lantana — all manner of flowers large and small are in full bloom, turning the city, and my own backyard, into a celebration of color.

There is a mixed chorus of birdsong coming from the trees above. I listen for awhile and recognize the chirpy stylings of our resident Carolina wrens, cardinals, and mockingbirds, but there’s one persistent call I should know and can’t place. After a check of my Merlin Bird ID app, the mystery is soon revealed. It’s the cheery morning song of a — wait for it — Turdus migratorius, probably the commonest bird of all in these parts, better known as the American robin. Merlin says it’s a “fairly large songbird with round body parts. … Gray above, with warm orange underparts.”

Turdus migratorius? Round body parts? Warm orange underparts? C’mon. How can it be that even Latin bird names are conspiring to divert my brain on this lovely morning and send my thoughts to the unlovely news all too easily located elsewhere on my phone? 

There’s no escaping it. Every day brings a new horror as President Turdus deconstructs our government and tightens his control over We the People. He’s intentionally crippling the pillars of our republic, cutting funding for Social Security, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the IRS, the Department of Energy, our national parks, NPR, Voice of America, the NOAA, the FDIC, Veterans Affairs, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just last week, he tossed FEMA onto the bonfire of his vanities. Federal disaster relief is now going to be defunded. Cool. 

And it’s not just the government. Trump’s putting the squeeze on law firms, universities, the media, nonprofits, students, and immigrants of every color except white, should they dare to stand up to the mighty American Robbin’. And it gets worse.

As I write this, the president has ignored at least one Supreme Court ruling for more than a week, with more SCOTUS cases to come. A genuine constitutional crisis is brewing, one which stems from the fact that the chief executive of the United States has literally seized power from the other two branches of government before our very eyes — in less than 100 days.

To control the judiciary, Trump began by ignoring the long-standing tradition of appointing an independent attorney general in favor of his pal Pam Bondi, the same woman who engineered a sweetheart “home confinement” deal for known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein when she was Florida’s attorney general. She’s also the woman who declined to prosecute Trump for his Trump University scam after receiving a $25,000 campaign donation from Trump’s “foundation.”

Toss in six conservative Supreme Court justices, three of whom were appointed by Trump, and the odds of the Justice Department stopping Orange Underparts are slim. Plus, they have no enforcement powers except for the U.S. Marshals, which are controlled by Bondi.

And when it comes to the GOP-controlled Congress, it appears Trump has only to breathe the threat of primarying a Republican politician with Elon Musk’s billions and they line up like good little soldiers and head over to Fox News to spew the latest White House drivel.

And lest we forget, there are the incredibly foolish and soon-to-be-costly tariffs and the impetuous destruction of relationships with long-standing allies. Worst of all is the realization that we live in a time in the United States of America where masked, non-uniformed agents are literally abducting people — throwing them into vehicles, taking them from their families and friends, and sending them to prisons here and abroad. No attorneys, no judges, no juries, no court appearances, no sentences. Welcome to the new USA.

Back in Memphis, Turdus migratorius is still singing sweetly above me as I scroll my phone and see that on the Fox News app, the top story on this beautiful Easter Sunday is: “Trump shreds Biden, ‘Radical Left Lunatics’ in Easter message.” Just as Jesus would have done, no doubt. Lord, help us. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

When It Rains

Just some wacky weather, nothing more. (Photo: Bethany Butler Myers)

Perhaps the nadir of last week for me came Saturday morning, as I was standing in a sudden downpour with my two leashed dogs, imploring them to, well, pee.

“C’mon, Olive! Pee and you get a treat! C’mon, girls, pee! Don’t you want a treat?” 

Their ears always perk when they hear the sacred T-word, but they never seem to make the connection as to how relieving themselves might make the magic happen, and so on we trudged along the flooded Midtown sidewalks until at last the deeds were done and we could return home to shake ourselves dry.

Seriously, can we all agree that last week was insane? Twelve inches of rain in four days? They called it a “generational event.” Maybe, but does anybody remember the great flood of 2011? Seems less than a generation ago.

My rain-crazed friends and I spent the afternoon sending each other flood videos gleaned from social media or local TV websites. Overton Park is under water! Union Avenue is closed! Poplar is shut down! Stay away from East Parkway! Giant tree fell on Cooper! There’s a guy kayaking by Ecco!

There were several images of sad people standing beside their cars in waist-deep water, victims of the kind of foolish optimism that leads someone into thinking their Corolla is a Humvee. We got 5.5 inches in a single day, a record for April. 

By Sunday, we were down to an occasional drizzle, but there’s more moisture to come, folks. That giant anaconda of a storm squatted over the center of the country for several days, and all of that water is headed our way, spilling down the countless rivers, streams, creeks, and ditches that feed into the Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, and Missouri rivers, and ultimately, the Mississippi. A rise of two feet a day on the lower Mississippi (that’s us), is considered a big deal. The river rose 5.6 feet(!) at Memphis on Monday and is predicted to rise more than 20 feet before it crests at 37 feet on April 14th — three feet above flood stage. The 2011 flood crested at 48 feet, but still, the redesigned Tom Lee Park may be tested. 

But all of this wacky weather was really just background noise as the country was being “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far” and cruelly denied a “turn to prosper.” Or at least that’s what was happening in the spacious cranium of Donald Trump, as he proclaimed last Wednesday “Liberation Day” and imposed tariffs on, well, every country in the world except Russia. He was like Oprah Winfrey on a bender: “You get a tariff, and you get a tariff, and you get a tariff! And everyone gets a global market collapse.” Good times!

Noted leftist hippie rag, The Economist, described the proceedings thusly: “It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century — and committed the most profound, harmful, and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”

Out of curiosity, I went around my house checking manufacturing labels. Here’s a partial list of things I own that were made in another country: toaster oven, blender, coffee maker, knife sharpener, microwave, vacuum cleaner, nine lamps, two televisions, stereo and turntable, hair dryer, washer and dryer. If I’d gone out to the garage, I could have kept going, starting with my Subaru and working through all my tools and battery-powered lawn care devices. I do own two American guitars and a Kershaw pocket knife. 

All that stuff is soon going to cost, at minimum, 20 percent more, thanks to Tariff-Boy’s McKinley wet dream. Hope you like the idea of $1,500 iPhones. Not to mention, everyone’s 401(k) is in the toilet and the IRS’ and Social Security’s computer programs are being rewritten by Elon Musk’s unrestrained junior code-hackers. What, me worry?

There was at least some good news. Trump sent out this announcement on Saturday: “The President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” Priorities! I bet you can’t guess who won. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Sea Change

Photo © Lawrence Wee | Dreamstime.com

A pelican glides by just offshore, there, out where the blue dolphins dance, emerging and disappearing into the sea. The kite hangs overhead, side-slipping in the ocean breeze, tethered to your umbrella pole by a gracile thread. You push your new sunglasses up on your nose and soak in the sun, the blue sky, the bleached sand; you hear the surf mumbling, “Stay.”

I could do it, you think, shifting in your canvas chair. “I could get a job renting beach umbrellas or maybe working on a fishing boat. In the evenings, I’ll sip margaritas and finish the novel.”

Your young daughter hands you a sand dollar from a plastic bucket filled with saltwater currency. “Let’s go cash this in,” you say. “We’ll buy this place.

The cast is perfect, a dry fly circling at the deep end of an eddy. There is a flash of silver and a tug that feels like you’ve hooked the river and it wants off. The trout streaks into the current, jumps once, twice, takes line, gives it back a reel-turn at a time. You stand in the riffle, gravel crunching, sliding under your feet. “This is a good one,” you think. Minutes later you net the fat rainbow, admire it for a few seconds, and release it back into the pool.

“I wonder what a piece of land on this stream would cost,” you wonder. “I could live here, deep in these dark woods, enjoying a life of fishing, solitude, and contemplation — become a wise old man.”

You’re sitting on the pool steps, waist-deep in cool water, deep in the steamy jungles of Quintana Roo, south of Cancun. The house is modern, open, with glass walls overlooking the pool on one side and the twisted green jungle on the other. Every morning, a troop of monkeys swings by, screeching through the trees as you sit outside with your coffee, marveling at the strangeness of it all.

“I’ve decided this must be a drug lord’s house,” your wife says from her chaise lounge, not opening her eyes. “Who else would build a place like this in the middle of nowhere?”

“They didn’t mention that in the rental brochure,” you say, “but whoever owns this house certainly knows how to get away from it all.”

Two grackles land near the diving board and begin dipping their heads in the water and shivering it off. They chortle and chatter like an old couple in the park. You slip neck-deep into the pool and they fly away, complaining at the intrusion. 

“Hey, I’m thinking maybe we should look into property in this area.”

“Sure,” she says.

Two-hour layover in the Atlanta airport. You’re sitting in a bar that has a stupid name, talking to a man in gray — gray suit, socks, tie. He’s on his way to St. Louis, a software rep for a company you’ve heard of. You both watch as five men walk into the place — scruffy hair, tattoos, colorful funky clothes — obviously a band. You overhear them talking about going to the Bahamas to record. 

“Nice work if you can get it,” says the gray man.

“I used to be in a band myself,” you say.

“Really?” says Mr. Gray. “Me, too!”

You sigh and take another pull on your beer.

How many times have you been tempted to start over, to ditch your life, your career, and make a big change? If you’re like me, those moments occurred, but were seldom followed up on, unless you count moving to a new city to take a job, which last happened to me in 1993.

Change is difficult, even when the goal is worthy and attainable. It’s much more difficult when it’s not worthy and it’s forced upon you, and when you’re not sure how to fight against it. That’s where we all are now, in the midst of an attempt to change how our country will be governed, to overturn our core human values. Democracy itself seems tethered by a gracile thread. I take solace in knowing we’re all in this together, and that that’s the only way we’ll get out of it. I don’t know how it ends. I do think that we’re well past the “have a margarita and watch the dolphins” stage. Courage, my friends. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Huddled Masses

Photo: Dhvstockphoto | Dreamstime.com

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These are the final lines of Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus.” They are inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. How quaint those words seem now that it’s apparent that those leading this country no longer want anything to do with the poor or homeless or those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There’s no lamp and no golden door, unless it’s the ones controlled by the for-profit ICE detention centers run by CoreCivic, GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and Management & Training Corporation.

That there are big profits being made from immigrant deportation is a feature, not a bug. In 2023, during Joe Biden’s presidency, 90 percent of the 30,000 people then held in ICE detention were housed in private facilities contracted by the agency. In 2022, Biden pledged there would be “no private prisons” used for detention, but he never delivered on that promise, and the number of immigrants in ICE detention centers has almost doubled since then.

Biden did at least keep detained immigrants in the U.S. until their cases could be handled in court. Donald Trump ramped it up to the next level last week by flying 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador without giving them judicial due process. Trump justified the illegal move by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which enables the government to rapidly deport people from countries at war with the United States. Last time I checked, we weren’t at war with Venezuela. 

The deportees are now subject to a “justice system” that relies mostly on the whims of banana republic authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the world’s “coolest dictator.” El Salvador (read Bukele) received $6 million from the U.S. for taking the Venezuelans off our hands. It’s blood money. The prisoners had no opportunity to prove their innocence or challenge their sentences — because they haven’t been sentenced, just imprisoned for however long Bukele decides to keep them. It’s a business deal disguised as justice.

The administration claimed that the men were members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, but no proof was offered in a court of law. Some of these men presumably were gang leaders with criminal records; others may have been low-level members; others, we are now discovering, may not have had any association with the gang or any criminal record at all. They all got the same punishment.

It’s utterly inhumane and flies in the face of any American legal processes. At the very least, the men could have been deported to their country of origin. Using a Salvadoran prison as an American Gulag is a new low, even for Trump. 

And all of this was carried out against the specific orders of federal Judge James Boasberg. It’s perhaps instructive to learn that when Bukele was told about the administration’s lawyers ignoring the judge’s order, he posted, “Oopsie, too late” on X. It was promptly reposted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President-Select Elon Musk because … well, of course they did.

That exchange makes it increasingly clear that the last line of defense against Trump’s march to authoritarianism will be the judiciary. And the final bulwark of the judiciary is the Supreme Court, which has six right-leaning Republican appointees among its nine members. Trump has already hand-picked a subservient attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead the Justice Department. If Trump just starts ignoring judicial orders from lower courts, as he has begun to do, will the GOP-linked members of SCOTUS stand up for the rule of law — or cede our democracy to the oligarchs who have taken over their party and our country? Their track record isn’t great.

And even if they do stand up to Trump, what happens if the president just ignores the Supreme Court? Who’s going to stop him? According to the Constitution, the only means available for judges to enforce their court orders are fines and/or arrests carried out by U.S. marshals. So, who controls U.S. federal marshals? Attorney General Pam Bondi. Oopsie. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

March Madness

It’s all madness. (Photo: Evgeniya Leonova | Dreamstime.com)

Every year I play in an online pool to predict the outcome of the NCAA basketball tournament, aka March Madness. It’s made up of longtime friends who are scattered all over the country and who communicate for the most part via social media. It’s become a rite of spring for a lot of us, with good-natured smack talk being the main attraction. 

We use a CBS Sports platform, and for some of us the hardest part is remembering our password every 12 months. Well, that and trying to guess who’s going to take that pivotal first-round game between, say, Siena and Northeast Idaho. And for me, there’s also the dilemma of predicting how far the Memphis Tigers will go — a delicate balancing act that pits my hometown rooting interest against years of painful experience. A Penny (Hardaway) for my thoughts. 

The tournament is a particularly timely distraction this year. That’s because the daily news is just delivering one plop-load of angst after another. I went online Sunday morning and read the following headlines: “Arlington Cemetery Website Scrubs Links About Black and Female Veterans”; “Trump’s FCC Chief Orders Investigation into NPR and PBS Sponsorships”; “Trump Signs Order to Gut Staff at Voice of America and Other U.S.-funded Media Organizations”; “Trump’s NIH Cuts Threaten Scientific and Medical Research at U.S. Universities.”

So yeah, just let me ponder that crucial West Bracket matchup between Maryland and Grand Canyon for a while. Maryland’s pretty good, but Grand Canyon is deep, heh, and it’s tough to beat a national park. Or it used to be until they got defunded. Sorry, I’m just trying not to go crazy thinking about the frightening idiocracy that’s now dismantling our government piece by piece. 

This administration’s credo appears to be “Knowledge Is the Enemy of the People.” Or maybe it’s “They Can’t Handle the Truth.” In many areas of the world, Voice of America is the only news that isn’t controlled by autocratic governments. NPR and PBS news services have long been considered the gold standard for fact-based, in-depth reporting. The U.S. government shouldn’t be in the business of suppressing its own media. The First Amendment still means something. Or at least, it did until a month ago, when this administration decided that it would begin hand-selecting the reporters allowed in the press pool to ask questions of the president. 

If knowledge is power, then power is being taken away from us at an alarming pace. And, let’s be blunt, we’re all being put in danger by the reductions in funding and personnel at agencies that provide air traffic control, weather prognostication and warnings, and medical and scientific research. Not to mention the emotional stress being imposed on millions of Americans who depend on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and their 401(k) funds. 

It’s important to understand that all of these decisions are being made by executive orders that are mostly being carried out by an unsupervised, unrestrained, and unelected creep with billions of dollars in conflicts of interest between his own businesses and federal subsidies. It’s unconstitutional, and none of it is being opposed by Congress, which is constitutionally designated to restrain the excesses of the executive branch.

It goes without saying that the Republicans in Washington are all in the tank for Trump, but the fact that the Democrats are so numbingly compliant is really troubling. They appear to be as vested in accommodating this autocratic insanity as the Vichy French collaborators were in World War II. It makes you wonder just how much kompromat Putin has. Is everyone in Washington compromised except Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Liz Cheney? Where is the damn anger?

I’m no James Carville, but I play one in this column and I have a message for the Democratic Party: Get your shit together. My suggestion would be to set up a daily evening press conference in which a rotating cast of the party’s stalwarts (not Schumer, Jeffries, or Pelosi) addresses the news of the day, takes on the latest lunacy enacted by the White House, explains the real-life consequences of it for everyday Americans, and yes, expresses the outrage that millions of us are feeling right now. It’s time for the opposing party to get in the game — and take some shots. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Social Insecurity

Photo: Pojoslaw | Dreamstime.com

On the fourth Wednesday of each month, a four-figure amount from the U.S. government gets deposited into my bank account. I wouldn’t want to try to subsist solely on my Social Security check, but it’s an invaluable source of income for me in my semi-retirement, and it’s a fund I’ve contributed to since I was in high school, working as a pharmacy stock boy. 

President-Select Elon Musk said on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and spouted several statistics that were quickly debunked. “We’ll make mistakes,” Musk said, when asked about it. That didn’t stop President Trump from repeating Musk’s statistical lies in his address to Congress last week. Trump added that Social Security suffered from “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud.”

Let’s look at their claims: A Ponzi scheme is a system in which the con artist tricks a lot of people into investing in a scam. If investors want to withdraw their money, the scammer pays back the early investors with money he’s gotten from more recent investors.

In a broad sense, that is the case with Social Security; the people paying into it now are covering the checks of those who are retired or disabled. If, as is happening now, the birth-rate goes down and people are living longer, there can be a funding problem. But, as many economists have pointed out, the solution is simple: Americans contribute to Social Security up to an annual income of $176,000. Raising the top salary level for paying into Social Security to $200,000 would fix the issue for years to come. Another Social Security Administration (SSA) analysis says that an “increase in the combined payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 14.4 percent” would make the program sustainable for the next 75 years. That’s not a Ponzi scheme or a crisis. It’s an amendable budget line-item that Congress could address tomorrow.

Regarding Trump’s statements about incompetence and fraud? As hard as it is to believe, he’s lying. Trump told Congress and the American public that 16 million people over the age of 100 received Social Security payments, including 130,000 supposedly over 160 years old. As several media outlets reported after Musk first made these allegations, the SSA’s beneficiaries chart shows that just 89,106 people over age 99 are receiving retirement funds. That number (which includes my own dear mother) is a long way from 16 million. As for fraud, the SSA inspector general reported in 2024 that .84 percent of benefits paid between 2015 and 2022 were improper.

So why are the two most powerful men in the country spewing disinformation about the SSA? Simple. They are attempting to soften up the public for cuts in services. DOGE, Musk’s stealthy pseudo-government agency, is cutting 7,000 SSA workers for starters, and the number of regional SSA offices has been trimmed from 10 to four. Will that mean those of us who receive SS checks should worry? I’m going to go with “yes.”

Here’s what former SSA chief Michael O’Malley told CNN: “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. … I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”

This is speculation, of course, and O’Malley is a Democrat, but here’s what Leland Dudek, the man Trump appointed to head SSA, said in a recent meeting, according to The Washington Post: “DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA. I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions.” Reassuring, eh? 

Here’s the bottom line on all this: The “DOGE people” have access to the personal and financial information of every American citizen — living or dead — who has paid into Social Security. What they will do with that private intel is anybody’s guess because they sure aren’t going to tell us. I do know this much: If DOGE screws up with the SSA as badly as they’ve screwed up with some of the other government agencies they’ve defenestrated, our social security benefits could very well be interrupted. If that happens, it will be torch-and-pitchfork time among the citizenry. And it won’t be pretty.