Not only is Massachusetts falling behind Denver, but the so called “innovation hub” is part of a bilateral trend where China is expanding its technology, innovation, and consumer culture at America’s expense.
Part of this is due to transit. In the last 14 years China has built 30 new subway systems across its growing cities and now has a billion dollar ridership. It’s investing almost three times what the US is in public education and city to city rail based infrastructure. It’s adapting its cities for bicycles and it’s government is investing in R&D. There is now an exodus of American educated Chinese workers back to the mainland where they can now make more money and work on more innovative products. Income inequality is decreasing and is something the government is taking drastic steps to stop.
China still suffers from the rot of legacy state owned corporations, a corrupt legal system, a corrupt military, and is still a large carbon emitter. On top of that, it’s a one party dictatorship where all dissent is crushed. It’s engaging in human rights abuses among its Muslim population.
That said, we should want our democracy to be as innovative if we want it to survive the coming Chinese century.
It appears to me that we’re well along a trajectory where we can accurately say that America suffers from the rot of corporate-owned government, a corrupt legal system, a corrupt military, and is still a large carbon emitter. On top of that, it’s a one party dictatorship where all dissent is crushed. It’s engaging in human rights abuses among its minority and immigrant populations.
I get it, but I’ll pushback.
Would Xi be impeached by his legislature? Are there checks and balances in China? Is Xi up for re-election? Is the military crushing protestors and firing on them? Are Muslim citizens being rounded up into concentration camps and re-educated?
I get your point, but this is still America. We should not let Trump let us lose our sights in that or lead to false equivalencies with China.
Agreed. There is a lot to do in the United States for us to live out our promises to ourselves and fellow citizens, but it’s a far cry from one of the largest projects of minority suppression in world history. My living room and the Qing dynasty both have walls, but one is far greater than the other.
I agree that we’re not there yet, and I’m certainly not claiming an equivalence between the US and China. I’m talking about the direction, not the location.
I invite each of us to ask ourselves to compare America of 2020 with America of 2015, and ask what America will look like in 2025 if we continue the current path at the current pace.
Regarding the specific points, of course Xi is not being impeached by his legislature. On the other hand, is there any evidence at all that this impeachment will mean anything? Let’s continue …
– Is Xi up for re-election? It remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will relinquish power if he loses the 2020 election. Mr. Trump and GOP has already cancelled GOP primaries rather than face a competitor.
– Is the military crushing protesters and firing on them? Not yet. Are Chinese authorities ripping babies from the arms of their mothers and caging them for weeks or months? American authorities most certainly ARE rounding up immigrants and locking them in “detention centers”. I’m not sure how much qualitative difference there is between the US ICE and Chinese military.
If America was up in arms about the abuses of the Trump administration, then I would more enthusiastically embrace your point. I think that America in 2020 has much more in common with Germany of about 1935 than we wish to admit.
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We had a civil war the last time an election result was not honored, so the incentives are in place even for him and the cuckolds in the GOP . The much bigger threat is that Russia, or other foreign allies of Trump, has access to paperless voting machines and can rig the results in his favor. I think that’s far more likely and deeply disturbing.
As to your second point, the sad fact is those children are not citizens and they did break the laws of this country. I am not saying that to justify the policies at all, I strongly believe with all my heart that both the laws and the policies need to change. Yet if we are discussing questions about the rule of law, what the Chinese government is doing to its own citizens is far more egregious from an international law and human rights standpoint, even if I fully agree what we are doing is barbaric and downright unAmerican.
I will only add my wife worked as a translator for a summer internship at the immigration detention center in Chicago in the summer of 2010 during the Obama deportations and saw how limited even a liberal judge could be in applying compassion to cases when the law really limits her options. The judge would openly apologize to the young men, none of whom had a constitutional right to counsel, that her hands were tied. This was under a progressive president and a much more progressive DOJ and DOJ.
My heart is with that judge in Newton, and perhaps 100 years from now we’ll look at her as a civil disobedient trailblazer. I look at her now as fundamentally undermining the rule of law, during a time when it’s under unprecedented attack. It’s the laws that need to change. Luckily in America, they still can.
@ We had a civil war the last time an election result was not honored:
I join other commentators in observing that civil war appears to be one of the explicit goals of Mr. Putin’s years-long plan to disrupt America.
We know that Russia compromised the NRA at least as long ago as 2015, and used it to funnel enormous amounts of illegal Russian cash to elected officials of both parties — but especially to GOP officials. The explicit purpose of that effort was to ship enormous volumes of military-grade assault weapons into right-wing groups across America.
The strategy is transparent. Create as much chaos as possible. Do everything possible to polarize the US electorate while simultaneously publicizing the illegitimacy of the government and the election.
If the GOP wins the 2020 election with Russian intervention, the Democrats will challenge the legitimacy of the result. If the GOP loses the 2020 election despite Russian intervention, the right wing will initiate armed civil war.
Each and every day that this impeachment circus continues makes the corruption and criminality of the GOP conspiracy more evident. It also makes the corruption and criminality of the defenders of Mr. Trump and the GOP more difficult to ignore. In the past five days, we see compelling evidence from Mr. Parnas — supported by documentation, electronic data, and independent sources — that the criminal conspiracy includes Mr. Barr, Mr. Perry, Mr. Pompeo, and Mr. Pence. The GOP continues to turn handsprings to sweep all that under the rug.
I’m sorry to be so pessimistic, but I do not yet see any grounds for optimism.
@ Human rights abuses:
The New York Times published a relevant piece today documenting the horrific events inside Mississippi state prisons.
Whatever advantage America had over China in human rights abuses is eroding each and every day.
@ those children are not citizens:
I’m just not going to even go there. I invite you to walk back the entire meme. The immigration status of a 3-month old baby is absolutely irrelevant to how that baby is treated in any nation that pretends to have even a tiny bit of morality in its culture, society, and laws.
I feel compelled to observe that you are making King Herod’s argument.
Please have the decency not to cherry pick my quotes to make it seem I am endorsing policies I deeply oppose.
I agree with you 100%. As I clearly stated in my caveat, I am not endorsing the morality of the actions of my government. In the words of Dr. King, one of the biggest purveyors of violence in the world today is my own government. I completely agree with that. Detentions and family separations are an appalling black mark on the moral fabric of America. My students are directly at risk from these new restrictions, and I have been trained on how to respond to protocols and questions without putting them in legal jeopardy. From our actions abroad or at home, America continues to fall woefully short of our professed values.
The comparison you were making was with a repressive and communist dictatorship, not with a morally righteous America that never existed. I simply refuse to concede that Trump will be allowed to make this country a dictatorship and I will fight like mad to stop him. The Chinese people do not have the luxury we have of openly debating issues on the internet, their citizens do not enjoy the same protections of the law, and while America treats its non citizens and citizens of color unfairly, it is nowhere near the oppression that Chinese citizens feel, particularly non-Han or religious minorities.
I think Trump is so dangerous because his moral calculus is no different than that of a dictator, and while the partisanship of them Senate may prevent the rule of law from prevailing over the president, hopefully the voters can put in a check that their Senators failed to do. It’s up to us to make that happen. And it means all hands on deck even if our preferred primary candidates fail.
@I simply refuse to concede that Trump will be allowed to make this country a dictatorship:
I agree with your sentiments, of course. My optimism that we will stop Mr. Trump is not equal to yours.
I think we’re already well on the way towards making this country a dictatorship, and I don’t see a mechanism to slow or stop our progress down this road. I hope I’m wrong.
Nobody refused to leave office when Lincoln was elected, but rather certain states decided this country was not for them anymore. Even those states did not try to prevent the inauguration of Lincoln. I really think the conspiracy theories about Trump losing an election would stop. I’ve always felt it much more likely he hightail it out of town like John Adams did rather than hang around for his successor’s inaugural. GOP primaries are only being cancelled in states where parties run them, and not entirely unprecedented since some were cancelled in 1984 as well. As for Xi, I don’t think anyone is expecting PRC to have a legitimately contested election.
@ Nobody refused to leave office when Lincoln was elected:
No administration has EVER strutted utter contempt for Congress like this administration. No administration has ever flatly refused to turn over ANY documents and issued blanket orders blocking ANY participant, past and present, from responding to lawful and valid congressional subpoenas.
@I really think the conspiracy theories about Trump losing an election would stop.:
I would really like to you acknowledge the breadth and depth of the conspiracy that is already a matter of public record. Refusing to accept the election results is a baby-step after what is already in the public record.
I offer these specific aspects of the conspiracy:
– Dmitri Firtash, already under indictment and facing extradition on US racketeering and bribery charges, has been providing millions of dollars to Lev Parnas, Igor Frumin, and Rudy Giuliani including a one million dollar wire transfer last fall AFTER Mr. Parnas was arrested and jailed — a payment Mr. Parnas neglected to mention to authorities at the time. Mr. Firtash also has deep ties to Paul Manafort, convicted and imprisoned for various illegal activities. Mr. Manafort was Mr. Trump’s campaign chair.
– Lev Parnas, intimate associate of Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump, is already under indictment and accused of, among other things, funneling illegal campaign contributions to Pete Sessions, former GOP Representative of Texas.
– The House Intelligence committee last week published a large body of evidence, including documents, emails, texts, videos, and images, showing that Mr. Parnas has knowledge of on-going participation in the Ukraine scandal by William Barr, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Rick Perry, and even Devin Nunes. This actual criminal conspiracy includes the Vice President and many current cabinet members as well as the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee.
– The DoJ stonewalled all attempts to stop the illegal Ukraine conspiracy. It then stonewalled all attempts to reveal it to Congress afterwards.
– The Department of State similarly stonewalled all attempts to stop or slow the illegal Ukraine operation. Mr. Pompeo refused to even investigate credible threats against the US ambassador to Ukraine. Even this week, he refused to address these threats.
– Among other things, documents published this week by the House Intelligence Committee show that ranking member Devin Nunes was actually PARTICIPATING in the attempt to pressure Ukraine to manufacture “evidence” against Mr. Biden as recently as this fall — AFTER the hearings were already under way! There is so far no evidence that anybody is doing anything about this clear and probably criminal conflict of interest.
We already see the Senate Majority Leader not just announcing but proudly trumpeting that he is NOT an impartial juror and that he will ensure that Mr. Trump is not removed from office. He has announced that he is working “hand and glove” with the Donald Trump defense team to ensure that Mr. Trump is not removed. Lindsay Graham is similarly trumpeting his support for Mr. Trump.
This conspiracy is already well-documented and well-established. The Congress has so far shown no ability whatsoever to restrain the conspiracy or to even enforce its own subpoeanas.
Your desire for the threat this criminal conspiracy constitutes towards the 2020 elections is as unrealistic as it is naive and charming.
This conspiracy is an existential threat to American democracy. We need to ACT like it.
We obviously have some bad actors, but I actually interpret a lot of what you say as evidence we still have a solid system. For example, when you point out that certain people are under indictment you seem to also imply the system is broken, whereas I see indictments for wrongdoing as precisely the evidence that the system still works rather than devolving into anarchy. I can virtually guarantee Trump will not overstay his welcome in the WH.
If Trump remains President it will be because he has an electoral college majority because the Democrats didn’t #do their job. I have high hopes this time will be different. We seem a lot more fires up than his supporters.
@If Trump remains President…:
Or because voting systems are rigged. Or because millions of Democratic voters and votes are suppressed nationwide.
Or because the Democrats win an electoral college majority and the GOP refuses to accept the outcome. We already saw that in 2000, when the GOP arranged for the Florida results to be changed.
I want to be clear about my posture in all this — I hope that each of you is correct. I hope that Donald Trump and his administration is removed from power, and I hope they go quietly.
I do not share your optimism that this will happen.
The people under indictment are thugs with ties to organized crime who have no political protection at all.
The people who SHOULD be under indictment are the high-ranking officials who these thugs are emissaries to.
When clear and compelling evidence that a sitting US ambassador was physically threatened, under illegal surveillance, and otherwise harassed by government agents is ignored by the sitting Secretary of State, then the system is broken.
When an entire administration can simply ignore congressional subpoenas across the board and NO action is taken AT ALL, the system is broken.
When the participants in this criminal conspiracy face indictment, prosecution, and incarceration if found guilty then I’ll take that as evidence that the system is working.
It hasn’t happened yet and I don’t expect it ever will.
You understand this takes time, right? We learned about surveilling the ambassador last week. Surely you don’t think somebody would already be in jail over that, for example. Also, regarding no action to enforce subpoenas what do you think the second impeachment article is for? They could have gone 20 rounds trying to enforce them or just say fine, that’s another impeachment article, have it your way. I for one think they made the right choice.
@what do you think the second impeachment article is for?:
That’s my point. It will take the GOP Senate about 15 minutes to vote against each article, perhaps after a perfunctory display of “listening” to witnesses.
A hostile power has taken over our government, and our constitutional provisions have NO ability to change that.
Our system is broken.
But not irreparably. There is nothing wrong with our system that staffing it with the right people can’t fix. I know the Senate won’t remove, but this is a political process and elections have consequences. Therefore in 2020 flipping the Senate is at least as important as the WH.
We’ve also hijacked the thread. I just noticed this was supposed to be about beating China on transit and education and we got sidetracked.
We have very different definitions of “broken”. In my view, a democracy must survive being staffed with the wrong people. It seems to me that you’re assuming away the problem we’re talking about.
I suggest that a marriage where one spouse lies and cheats on the other is broken. You’re saying “well, so long as the spouse tells the truth and stays faithful, the marriage isn’t broken”.
I agree with you, and in my view that perspective misses the point.
I’ll concede the system is not working as intended or advertised, but I’m not as paranoid as you seem to be that we’re all doomed. To continue the marriage analogy we’re the couple that will make it work and stay together despite infidelity.
@ We’re the couple that will make it work…:
Saying “[we will make it work] despite infidelity” assumes that the spouse agrees that lies and infidelity are outside the boundaries of the marraige and agrees to at least attempt to change his or her behavior.
The metaphorical spouse we’re talking about instead says “I’ll have sex with whomever I please whenever I please and I’ll tell you whatever I choose whether or not it’s true.”
Attempts to preserve the metaphorical marriage we’re talking about are both futile and self-destructive. There must be limits and ground rules that all participants embrace in ANY functioning relationship and political system .
Today’s GOP rejects those limits and ground rules. Our political system has no mechanism for addressing that rejection. I don’t know whether or not we are “doomed”. I do know that we MUST admit and ACT on the flagrant, intentional, and destructive behavior of virtually the entire GOP. The consequences of not doing so are tantamount to the end of representative democracy as we’ve lived it for for 250 years.
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don’t want to” the famous Richard Branson quote that is lost on the majority of business owners and the political leaders that are their lap dogs.
As it relates to transit, well, mass transit is for the masses….hoi polloi…and so far only a handful of Democrats are willing to go to bat for them. As I have noted earlier, if the obligation to get to work on time was not the sole responsibility of the working class, if delays caused by poor roads and faulty public transit were seen as not their fault and therefor, “billable time” paid by business owners, we’d have world class transit in Massachusetts.
Sure, education is key, but this responsibility ought to also rest on the shoulders of business owners and not be the public schools as simply “manufacturers” of a working force to be exploited.
In addition to public funding of education, we could create financial incentives for employers to invest in their own internal trade schools and apprenticeship programs.