BSW, AfD, Kellogg, Appeasement, and NATO

November, 2024

Berlin — What is the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht) and why is it important?  It is a splinter but growing group on the German left that could be a major force in the upcoming German elections.  The U.S. Senate should be asking questions about it as the Senate begins confirmation hearings on American foreign policy nominations.  

Despite the blessing given to it by influential German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, BSW is a dangerous advocate of appeasing Russia.  Along with the far-right AfD (Alternativ für Deutschand) party, it could turn German public opinion against supporting Ukraine in Ukraine's war of survival against Russia.  

Additionally ominous is the selection in the U.S. of General Keith Kellogg as envoy to Ukraine and Russia, to try to end the war.  His approach would appease Russia by giving it land in Ukraine's east and keep Ukraine out of NATO.  German acquiescence to the Kellogg plan would seal Ukraine's fate and embolden Russia to invade other countries.  

The war needs to end on terms other than inviting a proof of Halford John Mackinder's heartland geopolitical theory, that whoever controls Russia and eastern Europe controls the world island, and whoever controls the world island controls the world.  Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory of sea power suggests a more acceptable way to end the war, to make Ukraine's suffering and sacrifice less in vain.  If in a peace settlement Russia acquires hegemony over certain lands in the Donbas, Ukraine should be rewarded with the strategic Crimean port of Sevastopol for its remarkable naval successes in the Black Sea.  As to NATO, Ukraine's control of Sevastopol would be guaranteed by NATO members bordering the Black Sea, which would be backed up as necessary by other NATO members, whose interests include freedom of those seas.  

To bring Russia to the peace table, sea power projected to defend Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimean territories would be better leverage than Kellogg's dubious plan to threaten long range attacks into sovereign Russia, an escalation of the war.  

BSW should signal opposition to the Kellogg plan immediately, and announce a search for alternatives that do not appease Russia, which already has its eyes on restoring the Soviet empire, including Moldova, Rumania, Slovakia, Poland, and the Baltic states  The matter should be a top Senate concern in confirmation hearings for Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.   

 

 

Defending the Constitution While Helping Student Loan Borrowers

November, 2024

Washington — Yet another court has struck a blow on behalf of student loan borrower victims of shoddy loan servicing.  In the case Jeffrey Good v. MOHELA (2024), the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that MOHELA did not have sovereign immunity under the Constitution's Eleventh Amendment and would have to comply with the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. 

I was doubly pleased that in so doing, the court cited Oberg v. PHEAA et al. (2015) seventeen times as precedent.  It is a testament to the great work of my attorneys Bert Rein, Michael Sturm, Christopher Mills, Stephen Obermeier, and others.  

The Tenth Circuit ruling came the same month as previously sealed documents in Oberg v. Nelnet et al. (2024) were unsealed per a decision of the U.S. Fourth Circuit that the public had a right to see them under the Constitution's First Amendment.  Much credit goes to attorney Nandan Joshi at Public Citizen, who argued the case on behalf of New York based filmmaker Michael Camoin.  Although the case is listed under my name, I had nothing to do with the effort and never met counsel Joshi until this past week, when I congratulated him both on this victory and on the MOHELA case, which he also argued. 

When I filed complaints against several student loan lenders under the False Claims Act in 2007, drafting them together with counsel Jason Zuckerman, I never realized that our case would lead to two significant constitutional law developments.  In fact, I thought we might face insurmountable obstacles within weeks.  But despite a few setbacks here and there along the way, the case is still thriving after almost two decades. 

A past outcome in the case could even be the basis for a third successful shot at yet another constitutional issue: my First Amendment rights to make charitable contributions without having to assess the hypothetical uses of the funds that might adversely affect certain undefined interests.  How would a donor know those interests, or know how the charity might use the funds?  It is a suppression of free speech to put such conditions on donors.  I'd rather not be back in court over the matter, as my interests are hardly adverse to what I might guess are other parties' interests — relatively good servicing should be acknowledged and all servicing improved — but the constitutional issue is out there, so the case may be back in court once again.  

May Good v. MOHELA lead to better student loan servicing, and may the Constitution continue to be defended.  

 

 

Worthless Ideological Positioning

November, 2024

Washington — Ich bin Politikwissenshaftler.  For decades, I've been following political theory: right, left, progressive, conservative, socialist, libertarian, authoritarian, and everything in between.  I've also been following voting behavior studies for decades, and participated in more than my share of campaigns.  

Conclusion:  although pundits, reporters, and consultants are preoccupied with ideologies, the great majority of voters are not, and if not oblivious to political theory, many are so confused by it that they often vote contrary to what they think is their placement on an ideological spectrum.  

The problem here is not so much with the voters, but with the rickety frameworks of the ideologies themselves, which can collapse in a heap when confronted by realities facing voters.  If a voter is concerned, for example, about the very real problem of too much of the federal budget going to interest on the debt, that could appear anywhere on the ideological spectrum.  Is it a transfer of wealth to the lender class, and thus a concern of the left, or a plea for a balanced budget, often a talking point of the right? 

So when political consultants and the pundit class advise "move left" or "move right" to win elections, what does that mean?  It means they make money off their superficial erudition, but not much else. 

What does this portend if Democrats want to compete for votes in rural America, which they desperately need to win elections up and down the ticket?  It means they should ask rural voters what problems they want candidates to address, and act accordingly, ideological perceptions be damned. 

Voters in rural areas suffer disproportionately from lack of good medical care and alarming numbers of deaths of despair.  A solution?  Rejuvenating the Cooperative Extension Service to use its agent system to provide nutrition help and disease prevention would likely be a much-welcomed Democratic initiative, if only it were offered.  

Why hasn't it been?  It does not fit neatly into ideological fairy-castles.  Only the voters care.

The Democratic Party is doing much soul-searching after this month's election losses.  May it find its soul in solutions to real problems, not in worthless exercises in ideological positioning.  

"Analysis" in the NYT

November, 2024

Washington —  The following analysis of why Kamala Harris lost battleground states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin appeared today in the New York Times.  Typical of such second-guessing, it fails to attribute the losses to the obvious:  Democrats' over-reliance of turning out votes in urban Democratic strongholds rather than competing for votes in non-metro areas.  See previous blog "A Call to Revamp the Democratic Party."

A better analysis would be to explore why Democrats don't have the acumen or fortitude to compete in culturally rural areas where cutting their losses would result in overall election victories.  You won't find it here, which should give us all pause:  

Swamped in the Battlegrounds

In Pennsylvania, the biggest electoral prize on the battleground map, Mr. Trump’s victory received an outsize boost from an unlikely place — the five counties with the highest percentage of registered Democrats: Allegheny, Delaware, Lackawanna, Montgomery and Philadelphia.

Ms. Harris won these counties, but not by the margins needed to overcome Republican-heavy areas of the state. Total turnout was down from 2020 in all five Democratic strongholds, which could partly explain how Ms. Harris received 78,000 fewer votes than Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump added 24,000 votes to his total in these same counties.

This gap left Ms. Harris with little chance of winning Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump’s victory margin in the state, as of Sunday, was about 145,000 votes.

In Wisconsin, the voter participation rate overall was among the highest of any state. But voters in Democratic-heavy counties simply could not keep pace with gains from their Republican counterparts.

Why could Democrats not "keep pace"?  They did not have a rural strategy to give them a chance. 

A Call to Revamp the Democratic Party

November, 2024

Washington — The first caller I talked to on November 6th, the morning after the election, asked an unexpected question:  "Do you feel vindicated now?"  

No, I replied, my feelings were simply deep apprehension about the future.  The caller persisted:  Democrats obviously lost because they performed so badly in rural areas, as I had been predicting and warning about for several years.  I was among the few who predicted Hillary Clinton would lose in 2016 because of Democrats' neglect of rural America, and I felt largely the same about Kamala Harris's campaign, although she made a few commendable attempts to make inroads.   

It's not that Democrats don't potentially have policies and messages that would resonate in non-metro areas that are dominated by the culturally rural.  But how often do we see Democrats going purposefully into these areas to seek out voters' concerns, with empathy and answers for rural America's very real woes?  The Democratic National Committee would be aghast at such a strategy.  Instead, it pushes axe-grinding identity politics, a sure and proven loser.  

Are there, however, plausible answers for rural America's failing health care systems, inadequate infrastructures, loss of family farms to corporate monopolies, market and supply-chain failures, top-soil loss, poor nutrition, youth out-migration, and disproportionate deaths of despair?  Yes, there are answers! Many of these issues are addressed in Congress's periodic Farm Bill, which is up for reauthorization this very year.  But when was the last time you heard Democrats making it a priority, let alone even mentioning it as a strategy to win rural votes?*  

Instead, too many Democrats view rural denizens —especially those of the working class — as cardboard cutouts, clinging to their guns and religion, to the exclusion of seeing their actual problems and their humanity.  To these Democrats, it has never occurred to them that guns and religion are symbols of rural resistance to their dehumanization, and that the most destructive aspects of these symbols would lose their power were Democrats to address rural issues with real solutions.  

I don't care about vindication, but please add my voice to the many who are calling for a complete revamping of the Democratic Party, to address the number one cause (by far) of its election defeats: a failure to compete effectively in rural America.  No, Democrats are not necessarily going to win in non-metro areas with a sensible rural strategy, but cutting the current huge losses is the obvious answer to winning more elections overall.   

   

________________________

*Also, when was the last time you heard Democrats rightfully point our that many of rural America's problems were created by Republican policies under Nixon (get-big-or-get-out), Reagan (huge numbers of farm bankruptcies), and Trump (market-killing tariffs)?  And when was the last time you heard Democrats say that an aggressive rural strategy is particularly important because it is linked to overcoming the party's electoral college disadvantage?  Ever?  

 

Climate Urgency

November, 2024

Lincoln — On the eve of our national elections, one issue outweighs all others. Margaret Renkl describes it well in her guest essay today in the New York Times.  Her analysis is nothing short of alarming.  

Despite the urgency needed to deal with the climate crisis, our nation's efforts are lagging badly, as described in two other reports, excerpted here below, describing the lack of progress in administering the climate provisions of both the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act:

President Joe Biden approved the largest-ever investment to protect the nation against hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and other disasters being intensified by climate change.

Nearly three years later, the majority of that $33.6 billion remains unspent, POLITICO found in an analysis of federal data — a lag that imperils Biden’s hopes of building the nation’s resilience to the maladies of a warming world.

The money, provided by the president’s bipartisan 2021 infrastructure law, is meant for projects to harden the electrical grid, prevent wildfires, flood-proof communities and stabilize dwindling water supplies, among other efforts. The needs for this kind of spending are likely to be bottomless given the galloping pace of climate change, as seen by the devastation that Hurricanes Helene and Milton inflicted in just the past month.

But the progress of launching this work has been slow: Through the end of September, 80 federal programs that received $24.4 billion of the climate resilience money had awarded just $10.3 billion of it, according to POLITICO’s review of spending data provided by agencies.  

Tens of Billions Yet to be Awarded

From the Inflation Reduction Act, $61 billion in climate funding has been awarded for more than 6,100 projects (excluding loans, direct government spending, and tax credits) through September 5, 2024. We estimate that the IRA has just over $33 billion (or 35 percent) in remaining funding.... 

With our property in Nebraska, we have been trying our best as private individuals to participate in these efforts, with the expert assistance and cooperation of the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District.  See photo below.  We estimate that the carbon sequestration from this 71 acre conservation easement amounts to at least 100 metric tons of CO2e annually.  Unfortunately, this seems to be a rare project.  We are trying to encourage others, including state and local governments eligible to be partners with these funds, to do more carbon sequestration through conservation.  

Election 2024 Choices

October, 2024

Lincoln —  Back in 2020, my preferred presidential candidates were Steve Bullock, Jay Inslee, Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, and Mitch Landrieu, more or less in that order.  All were relatively young, with much practical political experience and a minimum of ideological baggage.  

So now comes the opportunity in 2024 to pick one of them, Kamala Harris.  She, with Tim Walz, who also fits that profile (and has rural Nebraska roots), make a good ticket.

My thoughts on the other choice, the Trump and Vance ticket, are well expressed by Sam Meade Cordes, formerly an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska.   He asks, "Where is the rural America that raised me?"  It is a profoundly disturbing question.  I ask it as well:  

https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-where-is-the-rural-america-that-raised-me/2024/10/09/

There's a lot of work to be done whatever the outcome and I welcome the opportunity to pitch in on a wide variety of problems, foreign and domestic.  Now more than ever.     

Point-Source Emissions Threaten to Undo Climate Action Plans

October, 2024

Lincoln — The City of Lincoln has launched a second round of homeowner incentives to replace fossil-fueled furnaces and air conditioners with electric heat pumps.  Low and moderate income families can receive up to $3000 for the conversion, on top of Lincoln Electric System and federal tax credit incentives. The "initiative is an important part of the city’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050," according to the Lincoln JournalStar. 

This is a good program.  Each household that converts reduces carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions by 1-2 metric tons annually.  Last year's pilot program reduced emissions by 250 tons of CO2e.

Another good local government effort is the acquisition and restoration of grasslands and wetlands at 27th and Arbor Road.  Each acre protected or restored can reduce 3-7 metric tons of CO2e emissions annually.  If 155 acres is protected at 7 tons per acre (both generous estimates) the annual reduction would reach 1000 tons.  

Both the heat pump conversions and protection of natural resource buffers are part of the Lincoln-Lancaster Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2021. 

But context is needed.  These and other worthy efforts will likely not be enough to meet Lincoln's goals for CO2e reductions.  Not when point-source emissions overwhelm them.

Smithfield Packaged Meats Corp. in west Lincoln was given a local government permit this year for 38,554 annual metric tons of CO2e.  In 2022, soybean processor Archer Daniels Midland in northeast Lincoln reported CO2e emissions of 158,580 metric tons.  Just to offset the coal-fired (now gas-fired) ADM plant's CO2e output would require the equivalent of converting nearly 80,000 Lincoln households to heat pumps, or at least 35 square miles of additional carbon-sequestration on woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands.  Doing the math is depressing.   

Theoretically, local governments can, by law, require stricter controls on point-source CO2e emissions than are required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency or by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy.  A cursory review, however, suggests such measures are not under consideration.  Point-source emissions are not given attention in the local Climate Action Plan.  One reason may be that a 2019 local ordinance ceded the authority to the state.  

The state's Priority Climate Action Plan steers away from point-source emission controls in favor of distributing federal grants to voluntary projects in the agriculture production sector.  Announcing a $307 million federal grant this year, the governor said it would be used to "turbocharge the state ag industry." 

Looking at some of the state's largest CO2e emitters, one is located next door in Gage County.  Koch Fertilizer Beatrice LLC emitted 631,946 metric tons of CO2e in 2022.  That year, ADM's ethanol plant in Columbus emitted 1,163,383 metric tons.  

ADM has facilities throughout the midwest, some of which are in the company's plan to reduce CO2e emissions.  The Lincoln soybean oilseed plant is among the last to phase out coal as a part of this plan.  This presents an opportunity to look at how ADM's choices on reducing emissions are related to the regulatory environment in different states and localities, including those with stricter point-source controls.  ADM makes large political contributions to affect those environments, in Nebraska and elsewhere.  The same can be said for the Koch businesses.  Hypotheses are waiting to be tested.  

In the meantime, be prepared for less than good news in reaching our goals unless more can be done to address point-source emissions.  Per capita CO2e emissions in Nebraska already rank sixth highest in the nation. And don't be surprised as more frequent and more devastating storms strike in unexpected places, including our own state, city, and county.         

  

 

Missouri Does Not Have Standing to Oppose Student Debt Relief

October, 2024

Washington — Student loan debt relief for good cause has once again been stymied by dubious court injunctions.  The latest injunction raises eyebrows not only because it is the result of judge-shopping, but because the plaintiff, the State of Missouri, does not have the standing it claims to oppose the relief.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) found, controversially, that Missouri's relationship to the loan servicer MOHELA was sufficient to give Missouri standing to oppose the first Biden debt relief proposal, that rationale does not attach to the much different debt relief effort now being promulgated by the Department of Education.  For example, most of those now eligible for the relief are linked more closely to loan servicers' errors and consumer protection failures, and the legal basis for the relief is grounded in the Secretary of Education's longstanding powers and obligations under the Higher Education Act, not on the previous HEROES Act justification disallowed in Biden v. Nebraska. 

The appropriate test for Missouri's standing in the current, much different case is whether Missouri is injured or if it actually benefits from the relief borrowers would be given.  That is not going to be a close call, as the supposed injury to Missouri even in Biden was conjured out of nothing.  And, clearly, the servicer MOHELA is not an arm of the State of Missouri, although both Missouri and MOHELA still make futile arguments in that direction.

That question was resolved earlier this year by the federal district court of Eastern Virginia in Pellegrino v. Equifax (2024):  MOHELA is not an arm of the State of Missouri.  If Missouri insists that it is, to have standing, then Missouri should pay borrower relief for MOHELA malfeasance.  Missouri cannot have it both ways.  

Judge-shopping is bad enough.  Giving plaintiffs standing when they have none is worse.  Many learned legal commentators, representing a broad ideological spectrum, have already doubted that Missouri had standing in Biden v. Nebraska.  That was a contrivance to carve out the narrowest of paths for the Supreme Court to make pronouncements on its "major questions" doctrine.  But this new attempt at debt relief is hardly a major question, if properly scored, as it deals primarily with fulfilling the promises the federal government made to borrowers over decades in its student loan programs.  Granted, it is hard to find a plaintiff who will be harmed by the government finally fulfilling its own obligations, but Missouri is certainly not it. 

  

American Voices Abroad: Get out the Vote

September, 2024

Berlin — Our friend and chair of Berlin-based American Voices Abroad, Ann Wertheimer, gave an inspiring speech recently in Hamburg.  Here is part of it. 

Defending Democracy rally, Hamburg, September 22, 2024

My name is Ann Wertheimer. I was born in New Jersey and lived there until I moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a public school teacher. I have been living in Berlin since 1971 where I taught English at the Freie Universität.

I am the chair of American Voices Abroad Berlin—or AVA, for short. AVA is a politically progressive group independent of all political parties both in the United States and in Germany. We offer a community for engaged U.S. citizens and provide a forum for a wide spectrum of views. We began in 2003 as Americans in Berlin Against the Iraq War. After a while, we began to focus on other issues and then changed our name.

And, by the way, we are not only citizens of the United States; we are also members of the community where we live. We seek to engage all members of this community in dialogue on issues of mutual concern.

Und übrigens sind wir nicht nur Bürger der Vereinigten Staaten, sondern auch ein Teil der Gemeinschaft in der wir leben. Wir wollen alle in dieser Gemeinschaft in einen Dialog über Fragen von gemeinsamem Interesse einbinden.

Joining American Voices Abroad is a way of engaging in American civic life even from here.

Democracy, we think, is something you do. You do it as an individual and you do it as part of a community.

Doing democracy starts with voting. Free and fair elections are the basis of democracy. Voting is how you do democracy as an individual, but significantly as one individual among many. Voting is a political act that we carry out with all of our fellow citizens.

A strong democracy needs high voter participation, but the United States State Department estimates that, of the over 80,000 U.S. citizens of voting age living in Germany, less than 10% voted in the 2022 general election—even though registering and voting from here is fairly simple. (If you haven’t yet registered, go to votefromabroad.org and do it.)

So why do so many overseas Americans not vote, not even in an election as crucial as this one? Do they not know that they can? Do they not know how? Or is it cynicism? Or resignation? Or fear of being tracked by the government? Does low voter turnout possibly reflect a lack of civic engagement among Americans abroad, a lack of community? In our efforts to participate in the life of our country of residence, in Germany, have we forgotten the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? Are we perhaps confused about what it means to act as individuals and, at the same time, to be part of the body politic?

With all good will, people may say, “My conscience just won’t let me vote for this or that person because I disagree with her so strongly on … name your issue.” So they sit out the election with a sense of political righteousness. In the end, the candidate who wins the election is often much further from the non-voter’s ideals than the candidate who offended their conscience.

Democracy may be exhausting, messy, confusing, and fragile, but it is truly our best hope. And we might take heart from legal scholar Jedediah Purdy, who writes: “Although no formula can make a polity democratic, there is one that goes a long way toward doing so: the principle that everybody votes.” (from Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening — and Our Best Hope) ...

In the up-coming election, what’s at stake has never been more clear. It is the understanding that our government must work for all of us, that we are equal under the law, and that the rule of law, rather than the whims of one person or small group, must prevail....

We have learned that when wannabe dictators tell us what they intend to do, we should believe them. Wenn Möchtegern-Diktatoren uns sagen, was sie tun wollen, sollten wir ihnen glauben.

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