This morning the trial of Derek Chauvin begins in downtown Minneapolis.

Just now, 5 a.m. CDT, March 29, 2021, I browsed my photo files for the first and last pictures I took during the past 10 months which related to the killing of George Floyd at 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis, MN, May 25, 2020.  Here they are:

Monument to Minnesota Workers at Minnesota State Capitol Grounds May 26, 2020

Black Lives Matter flag atop the administrative office of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church 2730 E 31st St. Minneapolis Mn Mar 21, 2021

George Floyd died on Memorial Day, May 25th, 2020, in front of Cup Foods, at 38th and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis MN.

The morning I took the first photo above, May 26, 2020, I decided to drive over to 38th and Chicago to see the scene, where George Floyd had died.  I recall getting within a half block of Chicago on 38th.  I didn’t stop, get out of the car, or attempt to walk to the corner.  An orderly crowd had gathered, and a man was speaking.  Enroute to the site, I’d passed by the site of the Third Precinct – at the time, I didn’t know there was a police station there – and I remember seeing a young man with a protest sign walking down the street towards it.  The scene had not yet turned to the chaos that came later.

Fast forward.

Yesterday, we drove over to the site of the former Gandhi Mahal restaurant at 27th and E Lake Street and the surrounding area which was devastated in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.

Today, the neighborhood is showing very visible signs of deep renewal.  There is a long ways to go, but a casual visitor with no knowledge of the events of the week of May 25, 2020, would be forgiven if they didn’t notice much, though there remain a couple of buildings, badly damaged last year, for whom some unknown decisions remain to be made.

Let’s work towards a better world in the infinite ways available to each one of us.

In peace.

Third Precinct, March 27, 2021

Carver Park Trail May 29, 2020

9:30 p.m. March 29: I didn’t watch much of this first day today, and probably won’t watch much later either.

The actors are all wired in – jury et al are likely nearby in other rooms, social distancing as required.  But this is probably a trial being watched nationwide particularly by those whose trade is the Law.  This is an important case.

The beauty, and the frustration, of the American criminal justice system is that it is an adversary process where, in the ideal, the playing field for accuser and accused is essentially equal.  The accuser needs to prove his or her case; the accused does not have to prove his or her innocence.  This is sometimes a difficult concept to understand in our polarized society, where it is possible to live within an echo chamber where the only case is the one in which your personal position prevails, and the others position is at best minimized.

The practitioners know the rules and the process.  And in the end a jury of citizens will rule on guilt or innocence.  It is not a perfect system, but it beats the alternative.

Letter to the editor, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 30, 2021

I’m watching very little of the actual testimony, on purpose.  Of course, the analyses is typically “coulda, woulda, shoulda” – what they must do…which is of course from the point of view of the commentator.  In the end, the jury decides.

POSTNOTE MARCH 31: Just Above Sunset, “Choosing the Reckoning”

Postnote April 2, 2021:  Yesterday was drug day at the trial.  More to be said, later.

Postnote April 3, 2021: an excellent commentary from Charles Pierce of Esquire, passed along by Joyce.  Top headline in this mornings Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Totally Unnecessary”

Postnote April 7, 2021: The trial proceeds.  I watch off and on, but mostly rely on summaries.  Today, expert witnesses for the Prosecution.

The day the trial goes to the Jury for decision, I’ll give personal predictions.  I am waiting to see when or if either side will address one particular aspect of this case which was highly publicized within the first month after George Floyd was killed.  That’s all I’ll say.

Yesterday I spent about an hour with a man I’d never met, and in the course of conversation he raised the ‘racism’ issue.  He’s white probably in 50s from a rural environment in a neighboring state who at one point lived in the general neighborhood of 38th and Chicago.  I thought we had a very good conversation.  He had his own feelings and impressions.  There was no argument.  He trusted me to say what he felt.  I’ll leave it at that.

Our conversation, and surrounding and allied observations cause me to re-recommend a Racism series I was involved in at the beginning of the pandemic In February, 2020.  The six part in-person series had to be cancelled after session three, and the remaining classes were presented virtually.  They remain accessible on-line here scroll down to Featured Resources, “Becoming Human”.  This series is available at no-cost with a code available at the site.  The series is all by white professors at the University of St. Thomas, so it has a white “spin”, which is intentional.  It gives a great deal of food for thought.

Postnote April 10, 2021:  I continue to keep tabs on the trial.  This morning I gave an opportunity to others on my list to give pre-Jury feedback.  Any of these comments will be included here.  Personally, this week we watched the three-part Ken Burns series “Hemingway”.  I didn’t follow Hemingway’s personal life, which ended by suicide when I was in college – he died at 61.  Ironically, the series paralleled the phase of the trial that dealt with things like addiction and drugs and George Floyd, which will likely be used as mitigating factors in defense of Derek Chauvin’s action.  Addiction was more than a bit player in Hemingway’s life as well, and a major player in his life story, but somehow there is a difference in how it is portrayed in the differing worlds of Floyd and Hemingway….

from David: I think like any concerned person, I’m fearful for the verdict the jury will render. Despite the excellent case the attorneys from Keith Ellison’s office have presented, there are still two major roadblocks to conviction (1) 1989 Graham vs. O’Connor SCOTUS ruling (How the Supreme Court Gave Cops a License to Kill), and (2) qualified immunity.

from Bill: Hi Dick!  I wrote this last week on my FB [Facebook] page: As many have said “George Floyd is not on trial, Derek Chauvin is!”  Floyd may have been under ill effects of narcotic drugs at the time.  The police exasperated his condition and caused his death no matter what.  If Floyd was dying due to his own actions, he should have received proper medical attention in any case at the time it was required and not 4 minutes after he was already dead.

from Christina and Lillian: Lillian and I have been zooming in to prayer healingourcity.org at 8am every morning since the beginning of the trial.  It is a virtual tent with 1/2 hour of African American lead prayer for healing.  Starts with 10 min of input- reflection followed by 9 min and 29 seconds of silent prayer then music.  We have both found it healing and inspiring.  There are usually over 200 people on from all over.  When Krista Tippet gave the presentation I think there were over 350 people on.

from Larry:  Personally, the docs testifying for the prosecution this week sealed it. No call for the knee-happy cop to do what he did.

POSTNOTE April 15, 2021:  We returned last night after a four day trip to rural Minnesota, taking home our 94 year old friend  who’d been visiting family in Minneapolis.  It was the first trip out of town since Covid-19 pandemic.  Indeed, the last trip was to visit the same person in the same town in January, 2020.  Time flies.

Of course, most everyone is wired similarly these days – the same news we see here, they see there, and I followed the trial as I had done here – intermittently and casually: live courtroom, but no newspaper or internet.

When we left for home, the Defense was presenting its witnesses.  Today or tomorrow it may complete its case, then the process begins to the Jury phase, where a panel of citizens renders the final verdict.

This will be the final postnote until the verdict is announced.

Of course, in the time of our trip, another tragedy intervened, the Daunte Wright killing at a traffic stop in suburban Brooklyn Center, 10 miles or so from the Derek Chauvin trial.  Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune banner headline “Manslaughter charge” with a mugshot photo of the 26-year policewoman Kimberley A. Potter.

You know as much as I do.

In peace.

POSTNOTE April 19, 2021:  It’s 4:20 pm. CDT.  The day has been spent with closing arguments.  I have only listened to small parts of this.  The arguments are to the Jury who will make the decision.  I remember a friend first telling me the elements of a good talk.  “Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then tell them what you said.”  It is good advice for all of us.  The Citizen Jury will judge.  It is imperfect but better than the alternative of someone arbitrarily deciding one’s fate.

My thoughts this day turn to a past case I’m well aware of, from 10 years ago. It was a family matter, in a very real sense.  An infant in the care of a baby sitter – my grandniece – died of what was alleged to be ‘shaken baby’.  The state prosecuted the babysitter.  There was a long, tense, Jury Trial, and in the end, the babysitter was acquitted.  One family won, the other lost.  Everybody lost.

I am sure that there remains residual PTSD.  Some family members may, in fact read this post.

The circumstances in both cases – Floyd, and my relative – were much the same.  Someone died at the hands of someone else, and didn’t deserve to die.  The Defense side prevailed.  The Prosecution side was more than disappointed.

The funeral was in January, 2011, long before the trial.  It was a very large funeral.  There was much to remember.  What was most striking at this funeral was the attendance of a large number of police officers from varied constituencies.

The Dad of the infant was a colleague policeman.  The babysitter was a relative of his.

In the case before us, a decision will soon be made, and the decision will be argued.  All I can hope for is that enough people make a decision to learn from this terribly difficult experience.  We cannot bring back George Floyd; and there is no more punishment that can be meted out against Derek Chauvin, and perhaps his colleagues.  We all need to grow.

7:45 p.m. April 19, and early April 20, 2021 – How would I rule, if in the Jury?  I did not hear or experience most of the evidence and testimony.  I respect the process of Law, and the code which has evolved imperfectly over the centuries.

Were I in the Jury, the easy question for me would be about murder: Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd.  I would vote to convict, based on what I know.  Floyd’s death was a homicide, totally uncalled for.

Impacting my personal judgement is an earlier conviction of another Minneapolis policeman, Mohammed Noor, who killed a white woman in a late night incident in an alley in south Minneapolis in 2017.  I personally saw that incident as an accident in an extremely stressful situation for both the police and the victim.  Those of us who live here know the story.  In June, 2019, Noor was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison.

Beyond Floyd/Chauvin, the surrounding American society questions are far more complicated and compelling.  I haven’t and probably won’t see Chauvin as a reprehensible individual; and I’ve had some empathy with the other three cops on the scene: the two rookies and the other veteran are still largely a blank page for me.

The general environment at the time of the incident was pretty normal, it appears to me, and not hostile to the police, rather concern at what the bystanders were witnessing.  Floyd was killed on Memorial Day.  By no means was he the only American ‘high’ on something on May 25, or on any other day, for example.

In my memory, I think Chauvin and Floyd knew each other, possibly working  together, at least for the same employer, in some context, possibly bouncer/security at a club at some point.  I seem to recall that from a long newspaper article in the early weeks after his death last year.  There may have been some ‘bad blood’.  On the other hand, I don’t recall either prosecution nor defense making any issue of this, so my memory, or earlier reports might be faulty.

In my opinion, our system, writ large, all of us, is the culprit.

It is how we operate as a society, together.  It is who we elect, and for what reasons we elect them.  Whether we even bother to vote.  Who we blame.  What policies and laws our elected representatives enact and enforce, which police often are called upon to enforce, and which same police are as imperfect as the rest of us.  A downside of Democracy is that we are all responsible for the results.  In a sense we all killed George Floyd May 25, 2020.

I was impressed with the Judge, and the team for the prosecution and the defense.  Whatever the outcome, I think I’ll be able to stand in support of the rule of law, and to stand for compassion and even forgiveness.

I’ve said it before, often, and I will say it again.  The future is all of us, working together, one action at a time.  The verdict on George Floyd will begin our task, not end it.

6:45 a.m. April 22, 2021:  My last action yesterday afternoon was to send a 57 page booklet prepared for a meeting on May 1, 2018, to the Catholic bishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis Diocese, and six Parish priests I know.  The focus of the booklet was World Citizenship and The Forgiveness Project.  My hope is that each of them find one or two useful morsels within.  The booklet itself was generated out of the Declaration of Minneapolis and Hennepin County as a World Citizenship Community on May 1, 1968.  It was an immensely impressive event, participated in by political leaders of the Republicans and Democrats and all of the major civic organization leaders.  It had meaning.  It was symbolically killed in March, 2012, and I hope that it is, someday, resurrected.

The statement by Fr. Harry Bury at the April 19 blog particularly resonate with me.  We have too much of a tendency of lurching from side to side – winner over loser – a game that ultimately makes us all losers.

I have a lot of confidence that the overwhelming majority of the persons who won on Tuesday, April 20, really  all simply want justice and for everyone to, as Rodney King so famously said, “just get along”.

The extent of the punishment Derek Chauvin and his colleagues on May 25 receive is not yet known.  I am not in the camp of those who want him to get the maximum and worst punishment.  I think a reasonable middle ground will be found.

We can put the event of May 25, 2020, and succeeding days, behind us.  We do not, and will not, forget it.  Neither can we controlled by its negativity.  We need to find a solution.  I recommend visiting the Forgiveness Project website.  And pondering how we can truly move on.

Minnesota Declarations of World Citizenship 1965-71:  Minnesota Declarations002

Some on-line learning ideas, March 30 and April 7: Human Rights and World Health Day.

Citizens for Global Solutions – Minnesota, is sponsoring an online Human Rights Forum at 10-11 a.m. CDT Tuesday, March 30.  The complete announcement is here: HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM – announcement – March 30 2021 (click to enlarge).

This conversation will feature Female Voices on Justice and Hope.  The session is free and open to all interested.

This post is about voting rights: the frontal assault on these rights in many of the 50 states – a commonly used number is 250 proposals to amend rights to vote in assorted ways, by the Republican Party.  In the other corner is HR 1, a Congressional initiative by the Democrats to at minimum secure existing voting rights to all eligible, and hopefully an expansion of those rights under the U.S. Constitution.  The battle is visible; the outcome is uncertain.  Citizens will make the difference in this issue.  Some background, and a recommendation follow.

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Repression isn’t new in the U.S.

Friday night I was watching Chris Hayes on MSNBC, and saw this segment, which I found very interesting.  It is about Nathan Bedford Forrest.  I hope you can watch it,  here is the link, about 7 minutes.

If you can’t access the link, Forrest was the First Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and a bust of him has been in the Tennessee State Capitol since the 1930s.  A State Commission ruled that the bust needed to go, and some state legislators want to abolish the commission (which they created).  I suppose this goes along with the current ‘cancel culture’ narrative now in vogue.  Leading the charge to move the statue is a Memphis state legislator – a young African-American woman.

The piece caused me to think about an old book I found on the family farm in North Dakota after my Uncle died.  It’s title “The Clansman” intrigued me at the time.  It was by Thomas Dixon and it included photos of the then-upcoming racist film, “The Birth of a Nation” (1915).  So it must have been a reprint of the 1905 book.

I’ve read the book, actually had it restored and have written about it at this blog earlier in 2020.  What I said then, remains my opinion.  Here is the 2-page forward in the book: “To the Reader”: Clansman, Forward 1904.

This brings me to the word “offense”, which titles this piece.  My old unabridged comes in handy at times like this:

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It is clear, on many fronts, in many states, that there is an orchestrated attack which are attempting  to bring back the old, whatever that was.  January 6 was a primary example; hundreds of attempts to restrict access to voting in many states are others.  And on and on.  You can find in the definitions above descriptive words for all of these efforts.

The Republicans have gone on the offense to make voting more difficult for certain voters.

I happen to be on the other side in this current war; and it is my opinion that I am on by far the strongest side.  Evidence is strong, starting with 81,000,000 votes in November; and an approval rating for the now-gone past-president which never reached 50%, regardless of what was counted in the survey.  Further, the base of the angry army probably never exceeded one-fourth of the electorate.

Years ago, in 1974, I found myself in an organization which was under attack by a competing organization which was considerably smaller, but very aggressive.  We were considered vulnerable, and we felt vulnerable.  I can remember the day the tables turned, and it was based on a decision we made: we had been put on the defensive, and we decided to go on offense.  The election came and we prevailed with about 60% of the vote.  Apparently, we had made our case.

There are many ways to go on offense.  Take your pick.  And act.

Things are different now than they were in 1865 and the years that followed.  The KKK and others killed emancipation of black men.  Later came the monuments to the confederacy.  1915 was the year the film, Birth of a Nation was released (and the Clansman novel reprinted).  There was a new President, a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who was also a racist.  A World War was raging, and America was going to be pulled into it, which exacerbated tensions.  The U.S. essentially occupied Haiti from 1915-34...it’s treatment of Haiti essentially continuation of the slave tradition of France and the United States.

There were other things that happened then.  Women got the right to vote in 1920.

Fast forward, and finally civil and human rights began to have their day in our own country.  It was a difficult struggle.  As Martin Luther King declared shortly before he died: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Change takes effort.  It is not free.  The bitter past will not come back unless we allow its return.  And the avatars of permanent change will be young people, women, persons of color, all assisted by tens of millions of us who are suspect by virtue of our age, gender and skin color.

It will take work, but like the African-American woman legislator in Memphis yesterday, we can make change happen by shining a light on the injustice that still exists.

Be part of the change you wish to see.

Go on the offense.

POSTNOTE March 22: The bulk of this post was written before March 21.  Sunday evening, March 22, we watched the last of a six-part mini-series on Abraham Lincoln on CNN.  The last segment began with the assassination of President Lincoln, and the ensuing disintegration of family and dream of emancipation in the United States.  It was essentially along the lines of the earlier text above.  What would Lincoln have thought?  Would there have been different outcomes had he lived?

Personally, I think Martin Luther King got it right – “the arc of the moral universe”.  MLK was rooted in reality. He had a dream, but he knew it would not be easy, indeed it would be dangerous, and he paid with his life.

My Dad loved sayings.  One of them that comes to mind, that he administered on me more than once, is this: “Quitters never win; winners never quit.”  Vince Lombardi apparently coined the phrase.  Good enough for me.

POSTNOTE March 26: The following two items languished in the ‘draft’ file, but are too worthwhile to delete.  

“Lobbying”: Some days ago a friend who is active in Politics sent me this podcast, which I think is accessible by anyone.  I would recommend listening to the program, which is one hour.

My friend says this: “Steven Pearlstein Discusses the Left’s ‘Progressive Paradise’ and the Partisanship of Covid Relief. The similarities to our state legislature (MN) are remarkable. If you get a chance to listen, let me know what you think. And I wonder if you recognize the change that Pearlstein describes.”

Women’s Suffrage: March 8, was International Women’s Day.  Sunday, March 7, was the 56th anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery march for voting rights, described powerfully here by Heather Cox Richardson..

My friend, Jane Peck, posted a comment at my International Women’s Day post, as follows ” I’d like to invite everyone to watch the 25 minute video made of our show, “Votes for Women! Rally 1920“. It focuses on 5 Minnesota suffragists. We four actors had paid engagements to tour this show around MN this year, but Covid interfered.  I wrote and directed it through History Alive Lanesboro. You can find a link to watch it on our website https://historyalivelanesboro.org  . We’d really like to share it with you all!”  

Jane’s profession has been historical reenactment, especially dance, for many years.  As for many others in the performance business, Covid-19, has severely interfered with Jane’s work.  Do take the time to accept her gift.

Women finally got the right to vote in 1920, which today seems astonishing.  Slaves had been emancipated over 50 years earlier, and theoretically freed male slaves did have the franchise, though we know what happened during reconstruction and in the first half of the 20th century.

It is a statement of the obvious that women are every bit as diverse in opinions, etc., as are men.  All the rest is argument.  The group I am watching most closely are younger women of color who are making a big difference and taking a back seat to no one.  Life isn’t perfect – it will never be.  But I’m pretty certain we’ll not be making a trip back to 1860, or 1915, or pre-1950s.  Each era has brought change, sometimes small, sometimes large.  But there’s no going back, and I’m glad of that.

Usually in this little corner of the world called Thoughts Towards a Better World I have one or two opinions in progress.  As I write this is the 7th in the draft file.  It is that kind of week.

I title this one “Relationships”.

Top of the list is the U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment on Foreign Threats to the 2020 U.S. Federal Elections.  You can read it here.   Just Above Sunset summarizes its findings in last nights post, “From Russia With Love”.   These are not Twitter-length.  Take some time to at least scan through them.

Then there is the tragic murder spree in Georgia, which left 8 people, 6 who were Asian-American, and 7 women, dead.  And the resurgence of fear-mongering about foreigners coming across the border, especially from Mexico and Central America.  It is all about fear, period.

Personally, this week, I had a chance to take a mini-deep dive into the humanitarian crisis of the YAZIDI’s of Iraq.  Last week I watched on-line the film, “On Her Shoulders” about a young Yazidi woman, Nadia Murad, who has become the face of her beleaguered people, threatened with extinction by ISIS in northwest Iraq.

Nadia was a co-winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, and her website, Nadia’s Initiative, is here.  The film is available on Amazon Prime and is well worth your time.

Thursday night, 15 of us engaged in conversation with Abid Shamdeen, Yazidi, who is Executive Director of Nadia’s Initiative.   He, like Nadia, was very impressive, and informative.

One aspect of the story that most engaged me was the Yazidi religious philosophy, which seems well described in a Huffpost article seven years back.  At the time, the article estimated Yazidi’s to number about 600,000 (roughly the population of North Dakota).  Their natural area was in northwest Iraq, in the area of Mt. Sinjar.  They are neither Christian nor Muslim nor any other commonly known religion and this made them a target of ISIS.

Each of us who had the opportunity to see the film, and to meet Abid on-line would have our own individual impressions, and I hope some of the folks will share their impressions as comments here.

For me, I saw in Nadia a young woman thrust into a leadership role flowing out of violent and tragic circumstances.  History is full of unsung heroes like Nadia – people who didn’t intend to become noted; people who often perished in the process.  Her life script, as she articulated it herself, did not have her testifying at the United Nations, or receiving a Nobel Peace Prize.

Then there is the matter of being a refugee.  For the Yazidi’s, outside of their neighboring countries,  Germany was a major destination.   The Norwegian Refugee Council has a very interesting graphic about refugees, which you can access here.  Note how the U.S. compares.

There are many opportunities to learn from the above, and other current and past events.

We’re in all sorts of relationships, from personal, to community, to state, to nation, to the entire planet.  We’re in this world together.

COMMENTS: 

from Gail: Personally, I thought that “On Her Shoulders” was the most boring documentary I’ve ever seen – just Nadia speaking at various places, saying the same thing.  I hadn’t been aware of the plight of the Yazdis, so I appreciate the film for that; but it could have been so much more interesting and informative if it had provided a broader context.

Today Congress passed the stimulus bill today, probably with no Republican votes.  There will be talk about numbers too large for us to comprehend: $1.9 Trillion; national debt of $29 Trillion, on and on.

I keep thinking of perspective, on several grounds.  (There are numerous sources of data.  My choices, below, are not ‘cherry-picked’ by ideology.  I basically picked the first one I saw in internet search which seemed reasonably credible.)

Here’s the U.S. deficit data over the past few years.

Here’s the average American personal debt.

Then there’s the American wealth relative to the rest of the world: Wealth of UN Countries.  Note the column headings and look specifically at the United States data (which is from 2017).  We remain far and away the wealthiest country, but the inequity in wealth within our country has increased.

And that wealth in America is increasingly concentrated in the very richest Americans.

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I’d encourage you to look at the charts, and to give them context relating to yourself, and those around you who you know, family, friends, other.

Think outside the box – how does someone opposite of you in philosophy think, and why.  We are a dangerously divided country.  I’m not saying one side is right, the other wrong.  But there are polar opposite views.  Personally, I think today’s action in Congress was outstanding, and needed.

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Some thoughts:

Even with the pandemic, the U.S. is incredibly wealthy.  Among the United Nations countries – 193 of them – the U.S. has about 4% of the world population, and nearly one-fourth of the world’s wealth.

As to debt, that too is relative.  American personal debt is about 14 trillion dollars – home mortgage, credit card, etc., etc.  That is serious money, granted.  The national debt about double.  (See next paragraph).

What is never said is that debt is what fuels the American economy.  I’m no recommending that but I think that is true.  The rare individual who pays with cash is, in a sense, not a patriot. We’re accustomed to debt.  We depend on debt.  Think back to the first time you had a credit card.  It’s not ancient history.  What role does credit play in your life today.  Think back to the home(s) you lived in, or your grandparents, and compare them to the very large homes even first time homebuyers demand in these days.

One of the old sayings that comes to mind today is “nest egg” – the savings account.  If you’re fortunate, and most everyone who reads this is very fortunate, you have a rainy day fund of some size set aside.  Everybody has a different idea of what this should be.  I knew a person who literally had almost no furniture because she’d been advised that she needed $5 million to retire.  She was obsessed with saving for the future.  I’m being only a little dramatic here.  She had no perspective.

There are examples of course, on the other end of this.  People who will consider the stimulus as mad money.  Most of us are between the poles.

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Here are the main data points over the last 20 years as I see them.

1. Huge outlays to pay for war in the wake of 9-11-01.  We’re still engaged.
2. The near collapse of the American Economy in late 2008, in large part by careless fiscal management particularly in the arena of real estate.
3. The stimulus to restore the economy in 2009, which probably should have been greater.
4. The immense and ill-advised tax cuts in 2017, which aggravated conditions and were fuel for very large increases in the national debt in the previous four years.
5. The impact of Covid-19, now in its second year.

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Today is a single step.  As the President likes to say, “we are all in this together”.

POSTNOTE 1, March 11: Yesterday, each member of Congress had one minute to make a final argument about the bill described above.  There are 435 members of the House of Representatives.  That is over seven hours if anything went perfectly.  It is a huge opportunity for sound bites, that can be produced by anybody, for anyone, at great length, posted anywhere, said at any meeting….

I made my very imperfect attempt – how I saw it – above.

In the end, the real “legislators” are, really, every one of us, the vocal and the quiet, the beneficiaries.

A democracy is ‘we, the people’.  We truly elect our redemption or our doom in this temporal world.

Yesterday was extremely significant.  Just Above Sunset, overnight, goes into more detail, trying to condense those 435 comments (which also must include the 100 Senators on the other side of the Capitol.)

Just Above Sunset: “Doing some good”.

Today, March 12, is the one year anniversary of the Covid-19 Pandemic.  The date is as determined by the World Health Organization (WHO), and I yield to The WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for his remarks, which you can see/read here.  We are a part of, not apart from, the rest of the planet.  We survive by working together for solutions.

POSTNOTE 2, March 11: Already, the folks who voted unanimously against the package, are fashioning ways to take credit for it.  It was anticipated.

How much is “$1.9T”, as headlined, for some reason, in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.

It is a big number: 1,900,000,000,000 – 1,000 million.

There are, more or less, 330,000,000 Americans, men, women, children.

That is $5,756 per person, surely a large number.

But view it from your own vantage point of your own current debt, particularly if you have a mortgage or a car payment.

In fact, those whose hands wring when talking about this aid package secretly worship debt as a driver of wealth in our society.  It is a secret, untold.

Keep it in perspective, particularly looking at how the money will be used to help the economy recover.

POSTNOTE 3, March 12: It occurred to me that this American Rescue Plan was the second Covid-19 related initiative in Congress.  The first was what was called the CARES Act, passed unanimously by the Senate, and easily and bi-partisan by the House of Representatives in the spring of 2020.  The House vote was more ambiguous than the Senate.  There were only 6 “no” votes, 5 of them Republican in the House; on the other hand, there was a fairly large number of “no information” non-votes in the House of Representatives – it appears about 36 of these in the 435 member chamber, most of these Democrat.  More information on the House split vote is here.

In the American Rescue Plan, there were no Republican Yes votes.

Why the difference in the votes?  A good topic for discussion.

POSTNOTE 4, sent byJeff, March 13: Ron Insana at CNBC, here