Author: MKCPC

The Delray Democrat*
October 2019

Trump’s Threat of Civil War May Be a
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
June Neal

We thought Trump couldn’t sink lower. But the impending testimony of a whistleblower and an impeachment inquiry have summoned even a blacker nature: threatening both the execution of the whistleblower and a civil war, should Trump be removed from office.
Most people dismiss his threats as bombast. We should not be so casual.
We believe that the foundations of this democracy were concretized enough to withstand assaults from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were forged on the fiery crucible of a monarchy by men and women who would cede their freedom no more. They provided a brilliant construct of checks and balances to prevent any usurpation of their supremacy.
Yet, on January 20, 2017, Trump waged a coup in the White House, not by toppling a sitting president, but by his promiscuous abuse of his office. His singular success to date is encouraging expressions of division, bigotry, xenophobia and racism. An “us against them” groupthink, used so effectively by all modern dictators.
A president with a lifetime of flagrantly illegal and immoral behavior, and an imperial sense of self, took command. A president whose checklist of dictatorial governance aligns perfectly with that of other world dictators. Sow distrust of the media. Use nepotism to blur the lines of authority between government officials and family members. Continue to profit from the family businesses while in office.
Replace key administrators with temps (lieutenants) to by-pass congressional confirmation and to control their offices. Abuse the power of Executive Orders. Surround himself with similarly corrupt people like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. Manipulate classified information. Demand hyperbolic public expressions of fealty by subordinates. Hide conversations with other world leaders. Emasculate our military and national security professionals by standing against them in support of another dictator, Putin.
Checks and balances? Only if you play by the rules. Congress cannot function properly when all Trump’s fiats are stamped “Executive Order,” when he orders people to ignore its subpoenas, when he arbitrarily re-arranges the national budget to benefit his pet projects.
The common denominator among all modern dictators is that they create division; “they” are an impediment to restoring “our” national pride and prosperity. “Make America Great Again” implies America has been in decline and is now promised both ascendance and superiority. Charlottesville was only one omen.
Trump threatens civil war. We’d best be vigilant.

Also In This Issue
Commander-in-Cheat . . . Page 2
“Why Is Everybody Picking on Me?” . . . Page 2
Repeal the Second Amendment . . . page 3
Every Quid Has Its Quo . . . Page 4
An Elephant in Donkey Attire . . . Page 5
DCDB September Meeting Notes ...Page 6
Looking Down the Barrel . . . Page 7
This Just In (from the November 1866 Issue of
The Atlantic) . . . Page 7

Upcoming Meetings
October 10: Fred Guttenberg on Gun Safety and the 2020 Election
November 14: Amendment 4 Update

How Can We Afford It!?**
Michael K. Cantwell

“How Can We Afford It” is the constant, sickening drumbeat whenever Democrats pursue a progressive agenda designed to benefit most Americans. We’re hearing it again now, as Democrats release ambitious proposals to address both climate change and the shame that we are the only industrialized nation in which people die unnecessarily and prematurely because they cannot afford health insurance.
Depending upon their party, the same pundits who said Trump could never be elected are now either wringing their hands or salivating, confident that Democrats will turn victory into defeat in 2020 by pursuing a progressive agenda. “How Can We Afford to Do It?” these “Very Serious People” breathlessly and self-importantly warn.
Of course, they’re asking the wrong question. They should be asking “How Can We Afford Not to Do It?” Then the question answers itself.
It’s the question Democrats asked as they passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, saving the country from a Great Depression II. It’s the question they asked as they passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, saving tens of thousands of Americans from untimely, preventable deaths. And in earlier generations, it’s the question LBJ asked before spearheading the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the question that FDR asked before spearheading the passage of Social Security and Unemployment Insurance.
Ironically, no one asks “How Can We Afford It” when Republicans pass deficit-busting tax cuts designed to benefit plutocrats and multinational corporations. And no one asked it before George W. Bush launched a $3-trillion war against a country that had not attacked us and posed no threat to us.
According to Ron Susskind’s book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Dick Cheney sought to justify the Iraq invasion by arguing that “if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction . . . the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.”
Today, by contrast, not 1% but roughly 97% of scientists believe that climate change is real, is caused by human activity, and represents an existential threat. Under the “Ninety-Seven Percent” doctrine, we must act as if climate change is a certainty.
And if you have to ask how we can afford to do whatever it takes to prevent a future in which the planet becomes uninhabitable for most species and a hellish environment for those that survive, you’re just asking the wrong question.

*“Democrat: 1. An advocate of democracy. 2. a person who believes in the political or social equality of all people.”
** Originally published October 1, 2019, Palm Beach Post, p. A11.

Commander-in-Cheat
Robert Resnick

President Trump has often touted his administration for “rebuilding our military” but that is yet another lie to the American people and all the military families he has let down. Although it is accurate that Congress has increased the military budget in recent years, that was on a bipartisan basis. The Obama administration had not sought cuts to military spending, but rather it was the Congressionally mandated sequestration, brought on by the GOP Tea Party extremists, that forced the budget cuts and harmed military readiness. As a military senior leader in those days I can attest to the inability to conduct proper training, obtain much needed resources, as well as dealing with other consequences of significant budget uncertainty. Thank you, Republicans…
Although Congress has increased military spending, Trump and his corrupt administration have directed much of the money to expensive contracts to defense contractors who just happened to be Trump supporters. He can make all the phony claims he wants, but the money was not going to support the needs of military personnel or their training. In fact, Trump cancelled essential military exercises such as in South Korea. He literally stole money from service members and their families to pay for his bogus border wall, construction of which has not even begun as he approaches three years in office. Trump and Defense Secretary Esper abruptly and callously cancelled critical military construction projects that had been planned for ten years. They even raided their retirement fund and stole that, too!
Trump is the worst Commander-in-Chief in history, at least modern history. He routinely abuses the military with phony missions along the border that served only to disrupt holidays and reset periods between lengthy deployments. The money people believe is going to support the military is actually being spent in the private sector on incredibly expensive weapons systems, many of which the Pentagon neither wants nor needs. He has proven he cannot be trusted with our national security, supporting our adversaries over our own interests. When Trump talks about his support for the military, it is unfortunately just another Trump con game.

It goes without saying that Donald Trump’s tweets about coups and lowlifes and traitors and foreign conspiracies are just crazy talk. They are projections around which Sigmund Freud could have based a series of conferences and brazen lies beyond even the imagination of George Orwell.
But a broken clock is right twice daily, and Trump is not completely wrong to whine about being “persecuted” for what other presidents got away with. Just not the presidents he’s talking about.
Consider Ronald Reagan, who sold arms to the Iranians and used the proceeds to fund the Contras, in brazen defiance of U.S. law. Or closer to the present, the lies of the Bush administration used to launch a war against a country that had neither attacked us nor posed a threat, a war that cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, not to mention (and of course it is rarely mentioned) the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Both Reagan and Bush should have been impeached, and both of them – along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – belonged in the dock at The Hague.
Trump’s mistake, of course, is the fact that he is an absolutely repellent creature, a man who debases everything he touches and makes civilized people recoil in disgust. Neither Reagan nor Bush put children in cages or talked about locking up their political rivals or trying them for treason or shooting immigrants in the legs.
Ronald Reagan was a genial snake-oil salesman, and George W. Bush was more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore, at least according to the corporate media.
But the fact that these criminals did not get what they deserved should not deter us from pressing to see Mr. Trump frog-marched out of the Oval Office.

“Why Is Everybody Always Picking on Me?”
Michael K. Cantwell

Repeal the Second Amendment
David Kulick
June Sandra Neal

Most countries have kids (and adults) playing violent video games, and all countries have people with mental health issues. All countries have people who are depressed and people who are angry. In spite of these issues, the only direct correlation between countries and gun deaths is the number of guns in the country. The more guns in a country, the more people die by guns.
Given these facts, the logical means of reducing the gun death rate is by reducing the number of guns. The US is a bit handicapped in this obvious solution by the Second Amendment. If we had a Supreme Court that could read, they would understand that the Second Amendment is all about militias.
The right wing likes to talk about the original intent of the founders, and the Second Amendment was written at a time of battles against the Native Americans as well as slave revolts. The founders also forbid the establishment of a standing army, so the job fell to militias. That was the purpose of the Second Amendment. If we really want to go by original intent, the right to bear arms at that time was referring to muskets, not AK47s or even a handgun.
The right wing talks of guns as a check on the government, but the founders never intended personal firearms for use against the government. Armed rebellion against the government is known as treason.
Mass murder gets the headlines, but two thirds of all gun deaths are suicides. 95% of non-gun suicide attempts fail but not surprisingly, 85% of gun suicides are successful. Also not surprisingly, the US gun suicide rate is ten times that of other high income countries.
Most suicide attempts are a cry for help from someone who is often momentarily depressed, and making it so easy to succeed is unfortunate.
Since the Supreme Court can’t read, perhaps the beginning of a solution is to repeal the Second Amendment. This isn’t unprecedented; we made a mistake with the Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition) and repealed it with the Twenty-First. In fact, it was the Second Amendment that made possible the overwhelming violence that marked much of the Prohibition era. Perhaps the movie industry would have been set back a little if they had to shoot knife fights in the streets instead of gun battles, but we could have paid that price.
Repealing the Second Amendment wouldn’t mean that the government instantly comes to confiscate your guns since repeal alone wouldn’t outlaw guns. Repealing would make it easier to restrict gun ownership and usage, and new laws that make sense would be easier to implement. It is time to consider repeal.

The Delray Democrat is the official publication of the Democratic Club of Delray Beach.
The views and opinions expressed in the articles herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Democratic Club of Delray Beach or the Democratic Party. The copyrights in the articles are owned by the respective authors but the articles may be copied and redistributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
Editorial Board: Michael K. Cantwell (Editor), Sandra Elaissen, Sylvia Gruber, David Kulick, June Neal, and Rob Resnick.
Address for submissions and letters: editor@thedelraydemocrat.com; letters@thedelraydemocrat.com or by snail mail to The Delray Democrat, 15127 Jog Road, Suite 101, Delray Beach, FL -1251.

Trump’s Threat of Civil War Continued from page 1

Every Quid Has Its Quo
(with apologies to the Muse of Poetry)
Sylvia Gruber

Said our Prez to the Prez of Ukraine
“Hey Bro, do I need to explain?
We would both like to see, aid to Kiev from D.C.
I'd be happy to help, perhaps you can aid me.
I need 'stuff' on that uppity Biden
Which I'm sure there is dirt he's been hidin
My friends, Rudy and Will, are awaiting your call
Get on board, hitch a ride, do not tarry or stall
We could harmonize well, you and I, and you know it.
We could whistle and sing, just be sure you don't blow it.”

How Can We Afford It!? Continued from page #

An Elephant in Donkey Attire
Bob Averack

Ron DeSantis is paying his tributes to the Mobster in Chief, the man who will soon be facing the rightful scarring of impeachment. This is part of DeSantis’s indentured servitude for the support he received during his equally questionable election as Florida’s Governor in 2018. Paying his debts include both raising money for Trump’s TV blitz of deceit as well as carrying out the rigging of Florida’s election apparatus in preparation for the 2020 Presidential election. And at the core of this is the disenfranchisement of voters, particularly those from communities of color.
And this is inextricably “Linked” to the office of the PBC Supervisor of Elections, which was hijacked by DeSantis following his election. He replaced the duly-elected Supervisor, Susan Bucher, with a Palm Beach socialite and lifelong Republican. Following this coup, DeSantis’s devotee made a cameo appearance as a re-registered NPA (publicly citing disinterest in running for the position in 2020) before making an 11th hour decision to re-affiliate with our party (but only after a FL Supreme Court decision that changed the SOE to a partisan election).
Now, why would this be the case, unless this person was going to run for SOE in 2020? And why would she then introduce a new SOE website (pbcelections.org) that looks more like a personal branding page than a government services page? Go visit the site and take note of the very GOP-looking and self-promoting motif - can you say dog whistle? Also, take note of the obfuscating lack of party identification on the 2020 Candidates page (even though the races are partisan and will go through the primary process). It’s a very skillful setup for a future “change of heart”.
But we who have persevered and toiled for our party over decades know the difference between a true Democrat and an elephant in donkey attire. Therefore, let it be known that, in the words of Pete Townsend, “We won’t get fooled again”.
N.B. This article expresses the opinion of the author and should not be construed as an official position of the Democratic Club of Delray Beach or the Palm Beach County Democratic Party.

Democratic Club of Delray Beach
September Meeting Notes

The September meeting of the Democratic Club of Delray Beach featured a discussion of “The Haitian-American Experience.” Even though it coincided with the third Democratic debate, it drew a decent-sized and (as always) lively crowd.
Our principal speaker was Dr. Marc Lafalaise, president of the United Haitian American Club. Dr. Lafalaise kept us riveted with an entertaining and insightful account of his transformation from a young immigrant to a successful psychologist and political activist. Settling in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as a teenager, he watched his hardworking mother, who never went past the eighth grade, drag herself from meeting to meeting in the evening.
When he asked her why, she explained, “In this country, if you don’t get involved you’re not going to get anywhere.” True then, even truer today, and especially – and painfully – true of all immigrants . . . and yet another example of how immigration has built this nation. Dr. Lafalaise took his mother’s advice, becoming a school psychologist, and followed in her footsteps, becoming an activist.
He spoke of Haitians’ view of America as a promised land, coupled with their nostalgia for the mother country, their ties to African culture, and their commitment to hard work.
His most important message, however, and one that was echoed by every speaker who followed him, is that if Democrats want Haitians to turn out in 2020, we need to “come to them.” We need to produce for them. We need to do more than simply show up every two or four years and ask for their vote. Well, there was no one in attendance who didn’t already get it, but saying that we get it is one thing, showing that we get it is quite another.
Dr. Lafalaisse was followed by Philippe Augustin, an accountant and activist who emigrated first to Montréal and then Boston, where he worked for Gov. Michael Dukakis. He told us that he was one of the earliest to volunteer for Barack Obama, so early that he said people thought he was crazy, but he knew what he wanted.
Mr. Augustin told us that many Haitians stayed home in 2016, and he offered advice on how Democrats can motivate them in 2020 by emphasizing issues such as healthcare and immigration and also, once again, by going to their communities.
Mack Bernard, Mayor of Palm Beach County, followed up on this theme, contrasting the “rhythm” he found during the Obama campaign with the dead space in 2016. In 2016, he said “If you drove through the Northwest and Southwest neighborhoods, and you see no signs, well, you got no rhythm.” He stressed the urgency of getting the people excited to go out and vote. “You can have the best policies, but if you don’t have that rhythm where you have these college educated kids excited to go out to vote, they’re just not going to vote, period. We’ve got to be on the radio, at churches. It’s not just the issues, get the rhythm, the people excited.”
Finally, local activist Barbara Bernadin followed up from the audience with a heartfelt and impassioned demand that Democrats must stand behind the community if we expect the community to stand behind us.
I think it’s fair to say “we get it.” But we must remember that saying “we get it” just isn’t the same as showing “we get it.”

Democratic Club of Delray Beach Officers and Directors
Michael Cantwell, President; Mary Fader, First Vice-President; Robert Averack, Second Vice-President; David Kulick, Treasurer; Sandra Elaissen-Cantwell, Secretary; Robert Resnick, Recording Secretary; John Ramos, Parlimentarian
Directors: Nancy Chanin, June Neal, Patricia O’Hearne, Schuman Padovany, Cheryl Perry, and Kate Woodward

Looking Down the Barrel – the Peril of Gun Safety Compromise
Robert Resnick

Our country has been long overdue in passing essential gun safety legislation. Columbine was an early warning that was ignored. After the atrocity of Sandy Hook it seemed we would surely address rising gun violence. Yet Congress continued to do nothing, intimidated by the NRA. And if we thought the Parkland murders would be the final straw, we were again wrong, notwithstanding the heroism and activism of the Parkland students,
Instead, there has been an increase in mass shootings across the country in schools, places of worship, stores, movies, concerts, and other facets of everyday life. Hundreds of innocent people have been senselessly and mercilessly slaughtered. While there appears to be a mental health issue (normal people don’t commit mass murder, right?), writing off these massacres on that basis simply defies logic and necessity. Improved background checks may have hindered access to these weapons in some cases, but not in all. More importantly, in almost every case, the assailant used a military assault style weapon with high capacity magazines.
The NRA and Republicans face polls showing an all-time high approval for gun safety legislation. Most Americans, including NRA members, support improving the background check system. That appears to be a limited area of safe space for the President and Congressional Republicans to support legislation with minimal risk to their electoral base. Trump and Republican leaders might be poised to agree to such an effort. This is not nearly enough and anyone who cares to stop the scourge of gun violence across the country should not support this excuse for a response. Most Americans, including Republican voters, also support a ban on military assault weapons and high capacity magazines. These measures must be included with improved background checks in any gun safety legislation or the legislation should fail.
Passing legislation that only addresses background checks will not solve the gun violence crisis. However, it would allow the President and Congressional Republicans to claim they took action. Such minimal progress is hardly heroic, even if in defiance of the NRA. More importantly, it fails to address the more significant aspect of the crisis. Any viable, impactful solution must include a ban on military assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and such a ban is favored by a majority of Americans.
As a veteran, I can safely attest to the fact there is no legitimate need to possess these weapons aside from war. Banning them will have the greatest impact in reducing mass shootings and the resultant carnage . Democrats, along with Republicans who support gun safety, need to stand fast and reject the easy way out and demand a real solution. Keep fighting to ban military assault weapons – nothing less will work. Our lives, our children’s lives, depend on it.

This Just In (from the November 1866 Issue of The Atlantic)
Michael K. Cantwell
In the first issue of the revised Delray Democrat, I compared Trump to some of his predecessors as follows:
Next to Donald Trump, George W. Bush appears thoughtful and compassionate, Ronald Reagan appears coherent and focused, and Richard Nixon appears honest and forgiving.”
I forgot about Andrew Johnson, who gives Trump a run for his money. Here he is characterized by Edwin Percy Whipple in the November 1866 issue of The Atlantic:
Never before did the first office in the gift of the people appear so poor an object of human ambition as when Andrew Johnson made it an eminence on which to exhibit inability to behave and incapacity to reason. His low cunning conspired with his devouring egoism to make him throw off all the restraints of official decorum . . .

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