Dana Blankenhorn

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March for Democracy

There is a way to make what I wrote about yesterday real.

March for it.

The King family got us rolling with this. Yesterday’s March for Voting Rights needs to grow in intensity, from now through the November election, everywhere across the country. In blue states, purple states, in the very reddest states.

Marching on behalf of causes is a common political tactic. Its results are proven over time. The problem is that it’s often done haphazardly. It’s not done consistently, strategically, with a definite aim in mind.

This year, democracy is the aim. Marching is how you make it a cause and, ultimately, the wedge issue that destroys the fascist right. (If at this point you want to pretend the fascist streak in today’s Republican Party is just cosplaying, or politics as usual, here’s your hood.)

Securing Democracy

“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

 – Martin Luther King Jr.

This King Day, I’m angrier at Democrats than at Republicans. Millions share my frustration.

The Democratic Party made a mistake in 2021. They assumed democracy could be secured by elites. That’s not the case. It’s the people who secure democracy. No one else can do it for us. By pretending otherwise, Democrats from Joe Biden down did us all a tremendous disservice.

King Day 2021 was a celebration. It was assumed then that Democrats controlled the Congress and the White House. It was assumed that whatever Republicans tried, Democrats could checkmate it. It was assumed then that democracy had won.

Wild America Stores

There is no difference between the wild environment and the built environment.

Cities and suburbs are as much a part of the ecosystem as any national park or wetland.

In the last few years my Atlanta backyard, a few hundred feet from a MARTA rail station, has been visited by deer, rabbits, and while turkey vultures, as well as a host of predatory and preying birds and other animals.

If you want to know where the environmental war is being fought, it’s around your house. Millions of people are fighting it. They’re putting up bird feeders, planting trees, running beehives, and letting their plants grow wild.

They’re doing it without retail support. That needs to change.

You will find seed and wild animal chows in hardware stores, pet shops, and even some specialty bird stores. What I’ve yet to see is anyone offering a full set of products and services targeting homeowners who want to create a more natural ecosystem where they live.

There are products for such a store, from feeders to water gardens, from birdbaths to salt licks. Such a store could also sell services. It could send out people to inspect yards and certify habitats. It could provide environmental education and learning products to young people.

Until now, environmentalism has mainly been pursued through non-profit channels, and politics. This is one reason why the environment is losing. The market’s will is all on the other side.

Drop me a line and let’s launch this puppy.

The Limits of Rage

American history is littered with periods of intense rage.

But they fade.

I lived through one myself, the anti-war movement of the 1960s. (I was a kid, but I was there.) Anger peaked after Nixon’s election in 1968, but it faded. He didn’t need to cheat to win in 1972.

The same happened with the rage of the 1930s, when democracy seemed about to crumble under the twin tides of communism and fascism. It happened in the 1890s with the populist movement.

Rage is a drug. You need bigger and bigger doses to stay high. That’s why Trumpian Republicans keep raising the ante, keep growing more outrageous. Democrats are socialists. No, they’re anti-American. No, they’re Communists! We should put them in jail. No, we should kill them, kill them all!

For both the infected and the infecting, it’s exhausting. In the end, it’s self-defeating.

When Inflation Strikes

People are always fighting the last war. This is never truer than when talking about inflation.

Prices are rising. Oil producers are making a killing. Employees have their bosses over a barrel. There are supply chain disruptions.

There are also idiots responding that “inflation is theft” and demanding that the dollar be protected. This response made sense in 1979. Oil and other resources were the primary sources of wealth, and the only way to slow their takeover was to raise interest rates and cut the money supply.

This makes no sense today.

That’s because technology is much more effective than manufacturing was in fighting inflation. Just to give one example. Upstart uses artificial intelligence to decide whether someone should get a loan. Instead of just using credit scores, they use 1,000 variables that let banks more than double their lending without increasing their credit risk. The software does a better job than a loan officer. Why have loan officers?

Carter University

Southern governors have a simple strategy for creating jobs.

They buy them.

The move by Rivian to locate its second car plant in Georgia is just the latest example. Governor Brian Kemp paid out a (so far) untold number of billions to get 1,700 manufacturing jobs. It’s like a deal former Governor Sonny Perdue signed 15 years ago to bring Korea’s Kia to West Point. 

The idea has a history. It’s just what southern states did 100 years ago with textile mills. Offer “incentives” and cheap labor so manufacturers score a quick profit. Then hide when they find a better deal somewhere else and leave. There are two such mills within 5 miles of my office.

There’s a better way to economic growth, which is to build it.

For what Perdue and Kemp paid to get a few thousand blue collar jobs, Democrat Stacey Abrams could create a revolution in southern Georgia. Just announce that you’ll turn Georgia Southwestern College into a research institution, like Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and the University of Georgia.