MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Mar 26
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How a First Putin-Trump Summit Might Go

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As the character of our next POTUS—Donald Trump—blooms right before our very eyes, it occurs to me it is not too soon to start imagining how future events might play out. Take that first Trump summit with Russia President Vladimir Putin. A lot is going to be riding on that one.

Trump-Putin copy

Trump and Putin had admired each other from afar but, now that the unthinkable has happened and the American people have lost their heads and gone and elected Trump as “leader of the free world,” they find themselves uneasy rivals on the world stage.

Putin has ridden bareback, his and the horse’s; he’s famous for his judo moves and has wrestled bears, among many manly exploits. Trump plays golf and, as he has assured us, whatever the size of his hands, it does not mean what Little Marco jerkily insinuated: “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”

But, in this first summit, Trump and Putin began squabbling immediately. The first issue was where to meet. As most countries of the Western world declined to host Trump, they settled on the out of the way Yesanguan Township in Badong County in China.

“Yeah, China,” Trump says. “China is a big country. Anybody can tell you, I only go to the biggest countries. No shrimpy countries for me.”

“I hate China,” Vlad says, “but, because you are hated all over the world and you’re too chicken to meet in Russia, we have to come to this hellhole.”

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Mar 22
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An Unbeatable Ticket

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Microsoft Word - Trump-Kelly.docI should have known it was always going end like this: A Donald Trump/Megyn Kelly 2016 GOP ticket for president. Trump takes a backseat to no one. Not even to that evil political mastermind Frank Underwood.

I know now why he can’t seem to let go of Megyn Kelly. Why he always brings her up when it seems the media was about to let go of their tiffs in favor any of Trump’s latest outrage.

This was all because he’s been planning to make Ms. Kelly his 2016 running mate all along. In one fell swoop, he checkmates Hillary Rodham Clinton, takes care of the women’s vote and literally torpedoes the political narrative about him being a chauvinist pig with an unbeatable ticket.

Gone forever is talk of GOP leaders and party establishment ambushing Trump at the Cleveland convention in favor of a non-existent option. And this has the virtue of also  saving them from a third-party run by Trump. Party leaders will worship Trump because he has solved all of their problems with that bold move. He not only increases their majorities in the House and Senate, we get new Trump-like governors and state legislatures across the nation.

You’re probably saying how very “House of Cards” of me.  This ticket beats even the Underwoods!
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Mar 22
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Our Present and Future Demagogues

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12642640_1094525283973858_4096573307952498857_nWe must also, as a society, fix the underlying economic and social conditions that make Trump-like supporters in the first place and then vote the way they do.

Donald Trump is only the latest demagogic figure to come along and exploit much of the ignorance and insecurities that some of these people feel in their lives. The Republican Party is currently organized around exploiting the fears of poor people who are not of color.

What is U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan who, despite his more dignified pose, has espoused many of the same policies and bigotry that Trump and Cruz have been trafficking in? The danger is to think of this demographic as just ignorant. We cannot just mock them. They have real and legitimate fears that we need to understand, respect and help find solutions for. Our future will depend on how well we do that.

Mar 18
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The Center Cannot Hold

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Prediction: Republicans are not going to crack up at their convention in Cleveland.

There’s enough time between now and the July 18–21, 2016 Republican National Convention for party leaders to realize that Donald Trump is their dream candidate.

The DonaldThe singular achievement of the Trump campaign is that he distilled decades of Republican agitprop–White Supremacy–into a potent brew that their usual audience, working class whites, cannot get enough of. What Trump has dispensed with–and this is brilliant–is the usual feints and pretenses that this is not about White Supremacy. If America gave the world anything, it is by codifying White Supremacy so that every white person knows that, if nothing else, they have at least that.

What the past several decades have wrought in America is to move us ever so slowly toward the idea of a society where the color of a person’s skin may not be the sole currency that determines whether a life of abject poverty awaits them.

The most visceral way in which this manifested itself was in the heretofore unthinkable election in 2008 of an African American man as president. Trying to cope, Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich and a cabal of other Republican leaders gathered in Washington on inauguration night in 2009 to plot ways to thwart the new president. Their preferred tactic has been to pretend Barack Obama is not actually president. When Mitch McConnell said he wants the American people to elect a new POTUS so that that (white) person could pick Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the SCOTUS it’s because, for people of his ilk (Republicans), the elections of 2008 and 2012 simply did not happen. Now, we’ll have a proper election in which a white person will be elected and that person can then choose an associate justice of the SCOTUS.

He should have consulted Trump before this gambit. Trump would not be turning himself inside out pretending he did not want the black guy picking his SCOTUS justice. With refreshing candor right out of the gate (“Mexicans are criminals and rapists”), Trump is embarking on making America great again by identifying all those people within and without who are standing in the way of America’s greatness.

And his audience has been responding with the mouth-foaming ardor you would expect from such potent message.

Trump, by running the kind of campaign he’s running, has done America a favor. We can now proudly wear our racism on our sleeves. No longer will meetings like McConnell’s have to be held behind closed doors. Those who don’t like it can take a fist to the face. Cops will be let loose again on troublemakers, including those very working class whites, if they should step out of line.

I can already glimpse the greatness of America again.

Mar 27
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End of an Era, Indeed!

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The New York Times published the note below at the end of a strange story about the reburial of Richard III. I revered to Times journalists as a young journalist. Unlike many in my generation who came into journalism because of Woodward and Bernstein, Harrison Salisbury was my initial inspiration. Then, John F. Burns became a hero because, like Salisbury, he would go anywhere, cover any story. He seemed to always get to the scene way before any journalist of his day and cover the story longer and better than anyone. The Times says Burns is retiring and becoming a freelancer. He was the finest one. The attached story is a classic.

“With this article, John F. Burns concludes a distinguished career spanning 40 years with The New York Times, 39 of them with the international desk. Beginning with South Africa in 1976, Mr. Burns reported from 10 foreign bureaus and was chief of the Baghdad bureau during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Along the way, he wrote more than 3,300 articles and collected two Pulitzer Prizes for International Reporting, one in Afghanistan and the other in Bosnia. His portrait of a cellist playing on Sarajevo’s main pedestrian concourse while artillery shells exploded nearby is considered a classic of modern journalism. He will continue to contribute to the international and sports desks, among others.”

 

Jan 29
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President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address-January 28, 2014

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The 2014 State of the Union Address (Enhanced Version)
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans:

Today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it, and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest level in more than three decades.

An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup, and did her part to add to the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.

An autoworker fine-tuned some of the best, most fuel-efficient cars in the world, and did his part to help America wean itself off foreign oil.

A farmer prepared for the spring after the strongest five-year stretch of farm exports in our history. A rural doctor gave a young child the first prescription to treat asthma that his mother could afford. A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone-tired but dreaming big dreams for his son. And in tight-knit communities across America, fathers and mothers will tuck in their kids, put an arm around their spouse, remember fallen comrades, and give thanks for being home from a war that, after twelve long years, is finally coming to an end.

Tonight, this chamber speaks with one voice to the people we represent: it is you, our citizens, who make the state of our union strong.

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Jul 23
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A Plug for Unions

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The New York Times published a story yesterday about a study (done at Harvard and elsewhere involving income data from millions of people) that found In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters. If you’re born in the bottom 20 percent in New York City, for instance, you’ll wind up on average around the 40th percentile. People in places like Chicago, Atlanta and Charlotte are not so lucky. Brian Lehrer of WNYC invited listeners today to phone in to tell their upward mobility stories. He asked his listeners to tell him what personal factors and what outside factors made their rise in socio-economic class possible. If you grew up poor but made it to the middle class, how did you do it?

AUDIO:

Callers cited the usual—family, education, mass transit, (public) housing, “hard work”—in their rise to the middle class. Dorothy, 94, from Croton-on-Hudson, was the last caller:

Dorothy:     I was going to mention something that nobody has talked about and that is the role
that unions played in raising people from poverty to less poverty. That’s what
happened with my father. He came to this country . . . he and my mother both were
immigrants. I’m a first generation American. My father was lucky to get a job in a
factory . . . in a mill . . . a shop, I should say.

Brian:         Where did he come from?
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Apr 26
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The 2013 State of the Union Address

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February 13, 2013 | 1:01:01 | Public Domain

Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address

U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C.

9:15 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens:

Fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress.” (Applause.) “It is my task,” he said, “to report the State of the Union — to improve it is the task of us all.”

Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home. (Applause.) After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in five years, and less foreign oil than we have in 20. (Applause.) Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before. (Applause.)

So, together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we can say with renewed confidence that the State of our Union is stronger. (Applause.)

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Mar 07
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Sanders’ October 2010 Filibuster Against Corporate Greed

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhOAzqfMoms[/youtube]So many people are talking about Rand Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan’s CIA nomination in the U.S. Senate that I thought I would remind people of Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders made a much loved speech on the senate floor that was turned into a book.

It was in Oct. 2010 and the U.S. Senate was considering a budget deal that President Obama made with Republican that was heavily weighted to what Republicans wanted. Sanders spoke for eight hours, stalling adoption of the agreement.

Here is his speech–which is available on C-Span and at other sites, including the Congressional Record–in its entirety:

The Speech*

THE ECONOMY — (Senate – December 10, 2010)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my friend from Virginia for doing what is very important. I think the essence of what he is saying is that today there are millions of Federal employees, people in the Armed Forces, who are doing the very best they can. In many instances, they are doing a great job to protect our country, to keep it safe. And very often, to be honest with you, these folks get dumped on. So it is important that people such as Senator Warner come here and point out individuals who are doing a great job, people of whom we are very proud. So I thank Senator Warner for that.
Mr. President, as I think everyone knows, President Obama and the Republican leadership have reached an agreement on a very significant tax bill. In my view, the agreement they reached is a bad deal for the American people. I think we can do better.
I am here today to take a strong stand against this bill, and I intend to tell my colleagues and the Nation exactly why I am in opposition to this bill. You can call what I am doing today whatever you want. You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long speech. I am not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle; I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have to do a lot better than this agreement provides.
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Mar 06
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Pieces of Me

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This site is, of course, the archive of mostly my newspaper journalism. I have written other places, too.

I don’t know if it is wanderlust, nostalgia, whatever, I found myself looking around the web for some of my past writings and came across these pieces scattered around the Internet. Some of these pieces, I posted individually at the time I wrote them but I was not consistent in doing that.

Without comment, here are some of the discoveries:

From the American Civil Liberties Union’s BLOG OF RIGHTS:

http://www.aclu.org/blog/author/michael-o-allen

The Natural Resources Defense Council publishes ONEARTH magazine:

http://www.onearth.org/author/michael-o-allen

And, at the Overseas Press Club of America, where I covered news events and wrote blog posts for OPC’s website (www.opcofamerica.org/), I found these blog posts: https://www.opcofamerica.org/search/node/michael%20o.%20allen

Jan 21
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Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama–January 21, 2013

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Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama–January 21, 2013

11:55 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice,
members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. (Applause.) The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

And for more than two hundred years, we have.

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Sep 06
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Mitt and the Bain Capital Chronicles

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In an all too familiar tale, during its heydays, when Mitt Romney and his posse rode into town on behalf of Bain Capital, someone’s dream was going to get crushed, usually a lot of someones. Hopes and aspirations are swiftly snuffed out.

“I don’t think Mitt Romney is a bad man. I don’t fault him for the fact that some companies win and some companies lose. That’s a fact of life,” Randy Johnson, laid off by Mitt in 1994, said at the 2012 Democratic National Convention last night. “What I fault him for is making money without a moral compass.”

David Foster, a steelworker, describes the pattern. Mitt’s Bain bought the company he worked for, loaded it with debt, forcing it into bankruptcy, then fired hundreds of workers. Mitt and his Bain cohorts made out like, well, bandits.
Cindy Hewitt talked about Romney walking away with $249 million after shutting down the plant where she worked.

After workers are laid off, a few are rehired at much lower pay, without benefits or pensions. Then plants are eventually shuttered.

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