Watch out, Medford: Curt Ankerberg is back

          "Dumbass slovenly pig."

Photo of my copy of the Mail Tribune

      "You folks are fucking sick in the mind. You too, Peter! You're a sick motherfucker."

     "First of all, I did not have a mental incapacity."

     "idiot reporter at KOBI5 . . . . news article was nothing but a hit piece. KOBI5 is run by yellow journalists."

     "Now sit down and shut-up, and let some competent adults like me run the show for a change."

     "[My opponent] is a lying piece of crap."

     

Sample of Comments by Curt Ankerberg

  

He earned a nickname: Mr. "Anger-Berger."  

This time he is running for Medford School Board. 

He could win election. Voters will have heard of him, but forget just exactly why his name is familiar. 

So let this blog be a reminder. He is the one to avoid.

Curt Ankerberg has the notoriety one gets from being repeatedly on the ballot. He keeps running for local office and losing. His behavior has been so angry, vulgar, and weird that he  makes front page news. Stories about him go viral on social media. "Wow! Look at what Ankerberg did this time!"

Ankerberg writes angry, vulgar, vicious comments on social media. He had serious problems with the CPA Board which he now blames on his being sick and blind for a four year period. He blames IRS retaliation for his failed audits, and the discipline they meted out.

He denounces as corrupt nearly everyone: Republicans, Democrats, the local newspaper, businesses, the Chamber of Commerce. Republicans, he says, are corrupt crony capitalists. Democrats, he says, are commies. He names names.

He gained a reputation as a caller on the Bill Meyer talk radio program, and he signs his name to some of the comments he posts here on this blog and on Facebook. They aren't useful, because they are so relentlessly hostile. Everyone is corrupt or stupid but him, and he is brilliant.

Voters who rely primarily on the Voters Pamphlet will see an incomplete picture of Ankerberg. Ankerberg is profoundly angry and weird, but he is not stupid, and he can present himself with moments of apparent sound judgement and rationality, a citizen with legitimate concerns.

That is the person one sees in the Voters Pamphlet. The person behind that facade would be a deeply disruptive presence on the School Board, just as he would have been on the other offices he has sought. So far, voters have known to avoid him, but social media has made him more famous and School Board elections are typically low-turnout and voters rely on that Voters Pamphlet. 

Voters have two alternatives to Ankerberg. One of them is the incumbent, Lilia Caballero. She is the Cultural Outreach Coordinator for the City of Medford's police department. There--and on the School Board--she plays the important role of providing two-way communication to the Latino community. 

She is well respected. She knows how to get along with others. 

Caballero is not as well known as Ankerberg. She is quietly doing her job. But voters would be best served by concentrating their votes on her as the electable alternative to Ankerberg.

How Trump Wins Big: Two Bad Trends for Democrats.

If Trump wins in 2020, Democrats will spend years fighting over the reasons why.

If it's a big win, there will be two big reasons.

"Socialism. Socialism."

Lots of little things can contribute to a Trump victory.  People can point to the fact that the Democratic candidate--whoever it is--will have been given a label that stuck--Socialist, Man-Hater, Pocahontas, Little Butt Boy, Sleepy-Creepy, Skateboard Boy, Ms. San Francisco. Maybe one demographic group or another will be unhappy that their group didn't get the nomination. Or maybe someone should have spent less time in one state and more in another. 

Maybe it is Trump flinging the "Socialism" charge: Click   Maybe it is how disgusting and flawed Democrats are, in the minds of Trump supporters: Click   Little things.

Trump might win big.  That would happen because big forces are at work.

Immigration. 

This blog got e-mails and comments about people living in poor countries. They are a reminder that the immigration issue remains in place. 

A friend in Mazatlan, Mexico wrote: 

     "Here in Mazatlan we have good workers say they are willing to walk to the USA. We tell them the dangers--the Sonora desert, etc. They still go. They can find jobs and work in the US, make more money than they can here, and send it back to family in Mexico.

     It isn't political corruption here that bothers them. They expect that. They want the US because they just want to work. There is not way to measure unemployment or inflation here, but when gasoline costs $4/gallon and cost for a bus ride one way is 75 cents--while the daily wage is under $7/day, people need to escape."

John Flenniken of Portland wrote this about rural Mexico:

     "My son Greg and I traveled to a remote mountain village in Mexico. Greg had participated in a cultural exchange. His host family were successful coffee growers and considered wealthy in their village. Then came NAFTA. The price for a kilogram of raw coffee beans fell from 5 pesos to 50 centavos. The family was no longer able to hire people in the village to work their corps. The beans were left to rot. The family lost their land. 

     The effect on the village was for the younger, mostly male, members of the village to leave for the US to find work at much higher wages and send the money home. These young men were willing to work for below-minimum wages in hopes of sending a monthly amount in US dollars equal to, in some cases, an annual wage picking coffee beans and tending local farms. This added to, and incentivized, the youth of Mexico to look to the US as a land of economic opportunity. NAFTA’s effect had been to destroy their local opportunity and disrupted their village. As a postscript: the young fathers coming to the US eventually had enough money to pay, by any means, to bring their family to city or town where the father found worked."

Get here legally, then stay

Thad Guyer, in Vietnam, had the same message: 

     "I live in Vietnam. Rich and poor people have one goal in common-- get to the USA. Half of illegal immigrants are visa overstays, i.e. tourists, students and tech professionals who are "haves" not "have nots". They have one common goal-- stay in the USA. Why wouldn't middle and upper income people and poor people want to come to the cultural MTV and Disneyland of the world? PEW says 65 million want to come here asap. Illegal immigration to the USA is a cross-class free-for-all.

     So illegal immigration is the defining issue in every presidential race. Trump will bury Democrats again in 2020 with that issue."

Bottom line: The images voters see will be people clamoring to come to America, and immigrants at that point of entry are easily portrayed as masses of poor, dependent people--public charges, and maybe some are criminals. They will see that Trump is attempting to stop it--brutally--but that Democrats appear confused and helpless because they are more sympathetic to the immigrants than to the people already here. It is a version of NIMBY, the desire to protect what you have and stop newcomers and change.  

Voters showed that they want something done.

The economy, stupid.

Unemployment trend continues down under Trump

Obama's efforts, teaming the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, saved the banking system and therefore the economy from depression--but at the cost of rescuing un-sympathetic people: the bankers who caused the mess. The economy recovered, Trump called the result "carnage" and Obama failed to contradict that narrative. Two months after the inauguration Trump said the economy was great, the best ever, and that he was responsible.  Again, Democrats didn't protest.

Net result: Trump gets credit for the recovery.  Trend number two is that the recovery has not faltered. It nearly did. Last summer and fall, as the Fed moved interest rates back up toward a sustainable equilibrium, the economy sputtered. Trump protested. The Fed blinked, and backed off raising rates.

The economy is now much less likely to fall into recession in 2020. Trump will have a strong economy and he will take full credit for it. Democrats will say that "Trump cannot do the job" but in fact, if unemployment is about 4% and we are not in recession, then consumer confidence will be good or very good and this is a giant headwind for Democrats.

Trump has the foundation of a landslide.

Democrats can console themselves thinking that Trump is on the ropes, about to be exposed as a self interested, corrupt, con man, on the edge of impeachment. 

It is true--but irrelevant. People know this. It isn't what is important to them.

Trump will project an entirely different image to a great many voters: he is a cruel maybe corrupt bully on immigration doing a dirty job that needs to be done, while presiding over a strong economy. Trump's image isn't pretty, and voters will tell pollsters they don't approve of the guy.

But they will still vote for him: the dirty guy doing the job he was elected to do.

Immigration: America's unclean hands

Trump: “Why are we having all these people from shit-hole countries come here?”

Trump image: Caravans. 

Good question.

The debate in the US over immigration policy focuses on its effect on us. We act as if the story starts at the southern border.  

It doesn't.

This blog received an interesting exchange between technology investor and philanthropist John Coster and attorney Thad Guyer. Guyer wrote that illegal immigration persisted unfixed because it actually served the interests of the two sides--Republicans and Democrats--who had the power to fix it.  

Thad Guyer wrote that it is all about money and power. Twelve million illegal immigrants translate into fifteen extra congressional seats for likely Democratic voters, spread out within immigrant-receiving states. Meanwhile, Republican business interests have a cheap labor source holding down wages.  

Win-win.

He concludes: 

     "Because Democrats are rewarded by illegal immigration with quantifiable direct political power, and the GOP is rewarded with cheap underground labor (and the resulting indirect political power), there is no genuine resolve in Congress to pursue mythical "immigration reform". Except for the unpleasant humanitarian toll that periodically flares up on the border, illegal immigration is only about politics and money. It's going to stay that way."

Democratic image: Kids in cages

Guyer's view is cynical, but one does not go far wrong attributing cynical motives to political actors in matters that fester unresolved.

My own addition to Guyer's observation is that the unsolved problem serves the messaging interests of Trump, giving him a winning issue for solidifying his political base. Caravan! Fox News Alert! White girl raped and killed by Mexican drug dealer! It fits a narrative of erosion of status and security of native born people by outsiders. 

Meanwhile, Democrats think they have a successful counter argument: Racist Trump. Charlotesville! Family separation! Worthless wall boondoggle! Rainbow tapestry.

Again, win-win.

So the issue remains frozen, at least until the election, and then another form of freeze: legislative gridlock.

John Coster moved the focus from the border to the set of American policies that involve the places in the world that create the "problem" immigration, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.  

Every wonder why those countries are "shit-holes"?

John Coster

Coster wrote:

"The forces that drive refugee immigration are still not addressed. In my experience, most people who live in poor but peaceful countries actually prefer to stay there unless forced by war, famine or real threats to their lives. In most traditional societies family and community are more valued than material prosperity. This is just my observation from living among them.

Since the Marshall Plan, the US has used foreign aid to keep unstable places stable because it serves our interests. Here’s a good article to describe it:  Click: Council on Foreign Relations, backgrounder   ["National security concerns have continued to drive U.S. assistance policy, aiming to provide stability in conflicted regions, bolster allies, promote democracy, or contribute to counterterrorism and law enforcement efforts abroad."]   

Here’s an interesting anecdote that may illustrate the complex interrelationship between our economy, security and immigration. I was involved in rural development in El Salvador after the end of the 10-year civil war. The wealth of the country was concentrated in a 14-family oligarchy. Most of the country was made up of poor subsistence farmers on rented land. My group purchased land and extended a loan to a group of farmers who could repay based on their crop yields. They were now proud land-owners who through hard work and skill, grow and sell their corn, rice, beans and other cash crops. Except none of them could compete with the low market price of imported grains from the US that came in the form of US aid, that was actually paid to US farmers. 

I saw this in Niger, West Africa too. Over time, their ability to sustain themselves diminishes and they become perpetually dependent on the US. And there are no margins. When the smallest shift starts to destabilize an area, power gets concentrated in gangs or despotic leadership and the general population becomes the victim. They endure until they can’t and then they flee or die. 

US Africa Command

Now I’m not saying that USAID and our policies are the culprit. But it is a substantial lever. So when an administration wants to simply cut foreign aid to ‘shit-hole’ nations, we have some culpability in creating the current situation."

Coster went on to note that political trouble grows out of economic and social dislocations, things that are observable. 

"Shit-hole countries" don't just spring up randomly. They are created. 

"You start to see patterns. Ten years ago I worked with a start-up out of Portland that was funded by Inq-Q-Tel [https://www.iqt.org/] an arm of the CIA. Their software married geo-spatial data with demographics, weather, crops, religious movements, etc. Using advanced AI [Artificial Intelligence] provided intelligence data on potential areas of unrest and threats to the US."

The United States is going through an uncomfortable re-assessment of its place in the world. 

We are not the all-powerful sole remaining superpower, and we learned that in the modern era of asymmetric warfare of terror attacks, cyber warfare, and nuclear proliferation that the United States is, once again, merely one of many. A million dollar missile can destroy a five billion dollar aircraft carrier, and a twenty year old at a keyboard in Kiev can create an urban riot in Newark. In the economic sphere, China, not the US, is the growing economic center of gravity. We try not to think about the fact that drugs are grown elsewhere because they are consumed here, so we blame the grower and shipper. 

Perhaps most worrisome, American voters are discovering that others--state actors and non state actors--can do to us what Americans have felt free to do to others for a century: meddle in their elections and choose their leaders and create division and misery.

Another uncomfortable thought: maybe we are not the clear-cut good guys of the world. Maybe people are escaping to the US from misery we had a hand in creating. Dealing with that reality is too big a problem for our political system to confront. After all, we cannot even deal with the problem late in the cycle, when it shows up at our borders.

But Trump's complaint was in fact a question Americans can ask themselves: why are we having so many people from shit-hole countries coming here?

A Good Enemy

       "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewell in its head."

                            William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Trump trash talk. "I am young." 

Joe Biden caught a good break. Trump talked trash.

Pete Buttigieg caught a break, too.  Franklin Graham condemns him.

Being criticized is good, and often it is very, very good. It seems un-intuitive. People running for office often miss this point. After all, they submit their names for public spirited reasons and instead of getting thanks and praise, they get criticized. 

The instinct is to shrink back, wondering what they did wrong. The candidate must have done something wrong. That instinct persists to candidates at the highest levels in politics, thinking that criticism must be justified, that being "above criticism" is good, and that criticism always hurts.

Wrong.

Nobody--no voter, not TV viewer--remembers for a second a politician saying something unobjectionable, some anodyne thing everyone agrees with, like, "I will work hard, listen to the voters, and do the right thing because as Jefferson said. . . . "

Yeah, yeah, whatever. This is just time wasting boilerplate. We know who someone is by what they are not, and what they truly believe by what they lose votes over by being something else instead.

Young man

Biden got called "Sleepy Joe" by Trump, and Trump set himself up in contrast to Biden as the younger, more studly guy.  "I'm a young, vibrant guy," Trump said. 

     "I just feel like a young man. I'm so young I can't believe it. I look at Joe. I don't know about him. I would never say anyone else is too old. I know they all are making me look very young both in terms of age and in terms of energy."

This helps Biden. 

The attack validates Biden's implied assertion that of all the twenty candidates, Biden is the head-to-head guy who is the general election candidate. Moreover, Trump immediately moved the frame to sexual virility and assertion youth. Trump said "vibrant," lightly disguised code for virile. 

Trump is trash talking and metaphorically grabbing his crotch. 

He is associating alpha male dominance with youthful sex drive--and he still has it, he brags. Trump is at his most pathetic and mockable when he attempts to be Mr. Young Stud.

Graham: Buttigieg is sinning

The trash talk makes Biden look credible and reasonable in comparison--a good matchup frame for Biden. The serious older guy versus the fat old bragger in denial. We know the cliche: the old guy talking about how "vibrant" he is. 

He buys a red Corvette convertible. Sad.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg gets criticized by Franklin Graham.  Lucky, lucky Mayor Pete. 

Franklin Graham said homosexuality was a sin, defined forever by God as "something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized."

Buttigieg is the most conventional of foils, a happily married man, a town mayor, a person who projects that he would be a good, considerate neighbor, calm, safe, friendly, and reasonable guy. 

Mr. Rogers. Andy of Mayberry. George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life.

It gives Buttigieg an opportunity to communicate sincerity rather than pugnaciousness, and steadfast self-possession rather than apology. "Your quarrel, sir, is with my Maker" Buttigieg said to Mike Pence. 

Buttigieg presents more as an earnest example of a Christian than he does as a spokesman for gayness. He switches the frame to the nature of Christianity.  Buttigieg presents as the real Crhistian, comfortable with his faith, with no need to fight over it. That contrasts well with Graham, the old school finger-pointer.

Buttigieg reflects the next generation of Christians. Buttigieg was never going to get the votes of old Republican Christian homophobes. This way he gets the attention of people who don't think Graham speaks for them.

Buttigieg, in New Hampshire

Buttigieg emerges not as a champion of some kind of aggressive homosexual agenda, that dangerous boogy-man threat posited by the religious right. Instead, Buttigieg presents as a married man who wants to stay home, keep his lawn mowed, attend church, love his neighbor.

Both Biden and Buttigieg get respect for having an enemy. 

Biden stands unapologetic against Trump; Buttigieg stands unapologetic against Christian bigotry. Not everyone will agree with Biden and Buttigieg, which is why their position has credibility. They won't win all the votes, the ones they deserve.

Democrats aren't sure who they like, but they know who they don't like.

Orderly immigration, or Trump. Choose one.

     "If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do."

                       David Frum, Senior editor at the Atlantic and MSNBC contributor

Click for tour of Ellis Island

A tide has turned. It is a new era.

The era of global thinking and the free movement of goods and services and people reached its apogee and is reversing. 

Humans are tribal, and their politics are expressing this reality.

There is something happening world wide, and the US is part of it. Brexit was the unmistakable signal, a heads up for the later Trump victory. 

British voters shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union, in the face of economic disruption, at a price of re-opening a border wound with Ireland, and against the warning of nearly all British expert authority.  Why? Because membership in the European Union meant uncontrolled immigration, which in Britain meant most visibly from Poland--white Christian Poles.  Immigration felt out of control.

The smart people in America saw this and dismissed it. A mistake. It couldn't be serious and it couldn't happen here in the US.  Then it did.

The phenomenon is not just in Britain. Far right nationalist parties are gaining power in the liberal democracies of Europe: La Pen in France, Salvini in Italy, the Freedom Party in Hungary. 

Riot police protected school buses.

Israel just voted a new Basic Law clarifying that it is not a multinational democracy: Israel is for Jews. China is openly and proudly intimidating its Muslim Uighur minority. 

I witnessed tribalism in the US most personally in Boston in the 1970s, where the prosperous settled into enclaves of money--nice neighborhoods--and the less prosperous settled into enclaves of ethnicity. There were Irish neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, Black neighborhoods. The clustering was so dramatic that the courts had to mandate busing children from one neighborhood to others to integrate the schools.  People panicked. The battle cry was "neighborhood schools."

World wide, we are seeing voters express their concern about the current levels of immigration and global economic union. Too much, too fast. No limits. So we are seeing backlash and a reversal of the policies of globalism.

The USA has a problem and a solution. It is the melting pot. It works, but not quickly.

In the mid 19th Century the Irish were considered "foreign" and unwanted, but then, after a generation or two, they became Americans--on the "inside" of America, not the outside. In the early 20th Century they were sufficiently American--"white"--that they opposed immigration from southern Europe--Greeks and Italians. Those southern Europeans--and Jews--were the scary outsiders then. But after a generation or two, those foreigners became Americanized, and the notion of "American" came to include them. 

Pizza isn't foreign anymore. It got melted into the pot.

Immigration is at same percentage as 1900-1930

We are at a period of heightened immigration numbers, with most coming from Latin America and Asia. This makes some people uneasy--as has always been the case in America. (Meanwhile, darker skinned Muslims are moving from south to north into Europe, causing the worry there.) 

Will those darker skinned foreigners add to America or destroy it by changing it?  

History gives us an answer: In the long run, the melting pot will work in America, because our democracy still works and those immigrants and their children will have voting power and equal rights and will be Americans. The culture will evolve to Americanize and include them. "Chinese food," and "Thai food" didn't destroy American taste in food. It added to it. 

There is a risk for Democrats: Over-learning opposition to group identity. Joe Biden's opening video reflects a potential conflation within Democratic messaging: that group identity among whites equals racism. Sometimes it does, but not always. I know from experience and observation: first and second generation Greeks like Greek food and music and speak Greek among themselves. It isn't prejudice. It is culture. Their grandchildren speak no Greek, but eat baklava. They are Americans.

There needs to be some middle ground where Democrats recognize that the melting pot works--and should be allowed to work--but that social change is slow, and it is inevitable that humans want to protect the familiar in their culture and they have pride in it. 

The political solution is available for Democrats: allow immigration, even lots of immigration, but make clear there are rules to it, and limits attached to it, and be visible in enforcing those rules. Assure the nervous that this is an area where Democrats recognize that immigration creates some problems, but they are on top of this. 

There is an idea floating around within Democratic constituencies that pride in ones culture is unacknowledged "racism," and that it needs to be called out. There two problems with that. One is that liking ones familiar culture and not wanting it disrespected is universal.  

The second is that this is a democracy. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." A majority of Americans will accept controlled immigration--do in fact accept controlled immigration. But they won't tolerate being called deplorable or racist, and they won't accept uncontrolled immigration, which they interpret as a foreign invasion. If they perceive invasion they will exercise their democratic power, as they are doing all over the world, and vote for people who will protect them.

The Democrat who can beat Trump will be the one who says he or she will control immigration, sensibly but firmly.  Otherwise Democrats will lose another election to Trump.







[Note: I am pro-immigrant. I think we need more immigrants in America. It is powerful medicine for America, but needs to be handled as such.]

Joe Biden's Identity

     "We can't forget what happened in Charlottesville. We have to remember who we are. This is America."

                                    Joe Biden, campaign announcement video, today.

Joe Biden began his campaign with a video that looked back at Charlottesville, Trump, and white identity politics. Trump was on the wrong side, Biden said, the side of hate. 

Biden takes the other side. America is an idea, an idea of equal opportunity, equal rights, and equal justice.

Click: 3 1/2 minutes

The video includes scenes of New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the landing at Normandy, and Martin Luther King. Old stuff. Sentimental stuff.

There was mostly the look and sound of Joe Biden himself, looking serious, quoting Jefferson, voicing American ideals in the high language of political speech. He was presidential in the old style. 

Dignified. 

"It's time for respected leadership on the world stage—and dignified leadership at home," reads caption for his video.

Joe Biden is leading with identity.

Biden enters the Democratic primary with what is presumed to be the multiple handicaps of being an old white man, the triple whammy of the being the wrong person at the wrong time.  

Only a quarter of the Democratic electorate are white men. Sixty percent of Democratic voters are women, forty percent of Democrats are black, Latino, or Asian. Source: Gallup 

Social media chatter among activists on the left contain moans over all the media hype and attention paid to new entrants that include Beto, Bernie, Buttigieg, Swalwell, Moulton, Inslee, Delaney, Ryan, and now Biden. White guys.

White men had their turn. White men have their party: Republican. 

The word "intersectionality" is batted around within leftish social media. The idea is that there are multiple layers of prejudice, and it is understood best by someone who experiences its economic and social consequences personally. Theoretically, Stacy Abrams or Kamala Harris should represent the party.

So Biden is trying to define identity as an idea, not a demographic. Biden says he represents the American idea and Trump represents its contradiction. Biden versus Trump: American versus Nazi-apologist.

Biden's primary election positioning is to run a general election frame. It isn't Biden vs Harris or Booker or Castro or Buttigieg or others who represent the multiple intersections of oppression. If Biden focuses on Trump, then Biden vs. Trump is the frame, so Democrats who trash Biden as too old or moderate or white or un-woke empower Trump. Is that really what Democrats want? Of course not.

There are problems with this for Biden. By facing the identity issue head on he assures that identity is a relevant issue.

Trump and his campaign calculate that every minute that Democrats talk about identity means they dig themselves deeper into a political hole. This is still a white majority country. White voters hear candidates on the left talk about intersectionality, of black reparations, of Title IX, of ballots in multiple languages, of respect for Muslims, of bathrooms for transgenders, of welcoming new immigrants. Identity-consciousness has backlash, and a majority of whites tell pollsters they feel dissed and taken advantage of, that the country is changing too fast, that they are being displaced. Trump appeals to that feeling. 

From Biden video. 

Trump likes that frame: white against non-white. 

Biden can say it is American vs. Nazi, but white voters see whiteness associated with Nazi and many consider it an unfair smear, another example of being dissed, being associated with Nazis. Whites are white, but that doesn't make them Nazis, but here Biden is, making the association. They don't want to have to feel ashamed of the way they were born, white and American.

With Democrats talking about identity, Trump's strategists will do their best to keep Trump on message, the its-the-economy-stupid message: economic growth, the unemployment rate, the good stock market, the Fed under control, his fights with China and Mexico to protect American jobs, jobs, jobs.

Let Biden make speeches and videos about Jefferson and dignity and race. Trump will talk in simple language about paychecks for the forgotten American.