Dana Blankenhorn

Another View of the Carter Administration

It has been clear to me for years that the 2010s are, in many ways, a bizarre recapitulation of the 1970s.

I just didn’t know how much.

While the 1970s represented the rise of oil, the 2010s represent its twilight.

The 70s were marked by two key crises, in 1973 and 1979, during which supplies were cut and prices skyrocketed.

The 2010s have already seen one price collapse, in 2014. It is going to see another before the decade is out.

It is against this backdrop that I would like to revisit the administration of Jimmy Carter. This time, especially if you’re a liberal, try to imagine yourself in opposition.

This isn’t difficult for me, because I began the 1970s as a genuine conservative activist. My politics shifted left, slowly, during the decade, but I still voted for Gerald Ford in 1976, and still refused to support Carter in 1980. (Sorry, Jimmy.)

What conservatives saw during that decade was just what liberals see today, in reverse. In the 1970s conservatives saw a natural majority growing, with power tantalizingly out of reach. Democrats in 1977 held all branches of government, as Republicans do now, and were very optimistic about putting their program into motion.

Killing Trumpcare

If Trumpcare passes, and if it’s implemented, it will bankrupt the American health system.

I don’t know that its advocates care about this, but let’s go back to 2010 to learn why this is so.

The Affordable Care Act is a huge subsidy to the insurance industry. It takes high-cost risks – poor people, old people, veterans – out of the private insurance system, leaving companies like United Healthcare only with relatively young, working, healthy people, and their kids, insuring people with jobs and employers who can afford the premiums

Why (and How) Tech Must Fight Trump

Of all the forces unleashed by Trump the most dangerous to technology is nationalism.

Nationalism was crafted in the 18^th century, became useful in the 19^th century by providing scale to larger ethnic groups, then delivered all the horrors of the 20^th century through ethnic cleansing across Europe, Asia and Africa.

A key goal of Trump’s Goebbels, Steve Bannon (left), is to let this monster loose across the Western World again, revisiting the horrors of our grandparents on our grandchildren. Steve Bannon makes Dick Cheney look like Santa Claus. 

But Bannon is now running the Trump budget.

Why increase the military budget by 10%, when we can already beat any conceivable collection of enemies with ease, unless you intend to intimidate or invade? The Department of Defense is once again becoming the Department of Offense. This is what got us into Vietnam, Iran and Afghanistan.

Beating Trump

The liberal whinging over Donald Trump’s victory has been music to the ears of Trump’s supporters.

It is past time for this to stop. It’s over. The past is past. Capture the future.

How?

Instead of taking the racism, sexism, and misogyny coming from Trump supporters at face value, start by seeing much of it for what it is.

It’s a cry for help.

Software Arbitraging the World

Corporations have been arbitraging the world for a century, and not in a good way.

Manufacturing industries see labor as fungible. They see pollution or waste as a cost. They seek a legal environment that assures maximum profit and tax regimes which let them keep that profit.

American corporations have been playing this game ever since the first textile mill moved south, and then on to China, India and the Philippines. Every industry does it. There are both positive and negative side effects. Hundreds of millions of people in the developing world have been raised out of poverty in this century, but low-skill jobs in the developed world have disappeared.