Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the rapid return to the status quo in both parties after the midterm elections, including the rapid discarding of promises made to voters on both sides. Those massive middle-class tax cuts promised by the President before the year end? Gone. The promise of a new Democratic party infused with young members and new leadership? Gone. What remains is the establishment which has succeeded again in replicating itself. It does not matter if you are Republican or Democrat. We have become a nation of chumps.
Here is the column: Continue reading “Chump Nation: The Establishment Quickly Returns To The Status Quo After The Election”
President Donald Trump 
I have been a critic of the alarming criminalizing of speech in Great Britain through hate speech laws. Such laws create an insatiable appetite for greater and greater speech regulation and create a sense of empowerment among citizens to silence those with whom they disagree. The most recent statistics from the Metropolitan Police for 2015 and 2016 seem to confirm those concerns. The over 2,500 alleged “hate incidents” in just that one jurisdiction show a vast array of everyday gripes being reported as hate crimes from a dog pooping near a house of a disputed tennis match. Hate speech arrests have according to one account risen by 900 percent and now involve thousands of such cases each year. 
We 
There is a growing concern about University’s treating students like emotional wrecks triggered by any routine terms or opposing views. Leed’s Trinity journalism department however has reached a new level of manic mollycoddling with 
Nathan Sharp, 28, gives family business a bad name. The son of the owner of Superior Crane Corp., a construction equipment company in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Sharp is accusing of “humping” employees and regularly exposing himself, including laying his genitals on the shoulders of employees. When an employee objected, Sharp allegedly responded “Don’t you know who the [expletive] I am? I’ll just go talk to my dad.” I expect that conversation has now occurred because Sharp is now a criminal defendant in a case of fourth-degree assault. 
While President Donald Trump has expressed reluctance to confront Saudi Arabia on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and noted that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman assured him that he was not involved, the CIA has now 
There is an interesting case heading to Ottawa before the Supreme Court of Canada. Bela Kosoian was arrested for failing to hold onto to an escalator handrail at a subway station in Montreal. The officer maintained that sign encouraging the practice was a binding law and issued a citation after she declined to hold on to the handrail. In the earlier Court of Appeal decision, Justice Julie Dutil concluded that, even though the officer was mistaken on the law, he still had grounds to arrest her after she dismissed his instructions and failed to give her name. 
In a truly astounding misstep, the United States Attorney’s Office in Eastern Virginia filed a document that referenced an indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The filng in 
Broward County continues to struggle with the most basic demands of being a functioning democratic system. In fairness to Florida, all but a couple counties showed that they are prepared for democracy. However, Broward (which has been accused of mismanagement for years) fulfilled the worst expectations by filing its recount results two minutes late. It might have been two days for all that it matters. That is the problem with legal deadlines. There are generally no mulligans. Broward released an announcement that none of its recount would count. Despite the defense of Brenda Snipes by Democratic leaders like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the latest failure of her office removes any question about the level of mismanagement of the county (as well as those responsible for Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties). Snipes recently boasted that she never missed deadlines. To miss a deadline by minutes just shows a complete lack of supervisory competence.