The rich get richer.

Democratic candidates are raising the issue of income distribution. The richest are getting even richer. The rest are gettting left behind.

Wealth is going to capital, not humans doing the work.

All of the Democratic candidates for Congress in Oregon's bright-red 2nd District advocate for greater fairness in government. Two of them put income distribution and fair wages at the top of their lists.

Chris Beck, a former three-term state legislator who worked for former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D), and President Barack Obama, begins his website with these words:

It's no secret that we live in an era dominated by an extraordinary wealth gap separating a small group of American family dynasties and corporations from those of us who make up 99% of the U.S. population. It's the root cause of so many issues that plague our society. . . .

Rebecca Mueller, a Medford pediatrician, begins by saying her campaign is focusing on the issues of health care and fair wages. 

The income and wealth gap is a top one for Democrats. Something is wrong with the way our economy is working. People who own investment assets are doing very well. People who are living off earned income are not.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes about the problem repeatedly in his Substack newsletter:

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made the argument with uncommon eloquence in a campaign speech in August, 2011:

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

When Obama echoed the comment, Republicans mocked him and had a full day of speeches at the Republican National Convention on the theme of "Yes, you did build it," all by yourself.

My cohort of Baby Boomers grew up in a special moment: postwar America. The ethos of the time was recognition of shared effort and shared sacrifice. Pitching in and doing one's part wasn't being a sucker; it was doing the right thing. 

Movies of the postwar era describe it. The narrative takes a turn in the movie The Best Years of Our Lives, when a banker appeals to a loan board ,saying that a veteran without financial collateral had something better, proven character. We saw an actor with missing arms. That is sacrifice. The Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed characters in It's a Wonderful Life tried to compensate for being unable to serve in the military with service to their community. 

The movies seem sappy and sentimental now because the zeitgeist has changed from "commonwealth" to zero-sum, dog-eat-dog competition, and me-first. Trump exemplifies and amplifies our era.

The strongest argument for a rebalance of national incomes, is that it is fair: Everyone contributes in one way or another. Perhaps as a solder, as a neighbor, as a fellow-citizen, as part of the workforce,  as a consumer, or as a person whose work product was swept up for free and became part of the data that informs artificial intelligence. Andrew Yang, briefly a candidate for president in 2020, made that argument in proposing a universal basic income. He said that every American, without compensation, provided the data and network-effect that makes our technology companies trillion-dollar enterprises. Citizens should be compensated for that, with the income spread equally and circulated. It would replace poverty programs.

That would be the carrot. 

There is a stick, too. Left-wing, redistributionist revolutions happen when societies hit a breaking point, when wealth is concentrated among too few oligarchs, aristocrats, and cronies. Desperate people take action if they feel they haven't got a shot at the life they want. Before Alexander Hamilton helped create a new country, he participated in a revolution.

I am not throwin' away my shot
I am not throwin' away my shot
I'm just like my country
I'm young, scrappy and hungry
And I'm not throwin' away my shot

The 2nd District's incumbent U.S. Representative, Republican Cliff Bentz, voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill." It perpetuated tax cuts for billionaires. About 70 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they support higher taxes on billionaires, and about 85 percent of Americans tell pollsters they have contempt for Congress. Possibly no Democrat can win in this district, but this is an opportunity. Frustrated voters may not feel that postwar common interest with fellow citizens, but this you're-on-your-own sentiment feeds an opposite emotion, resentment within the polity. 

Trump exploits that, pointing to immigrants and the poor, and calls them leeches. Democrats can return the favor by pointing to the crony capitalism of exploitive billionaires. The billionaires are flagrant about it their new wealth and influence. The huge judgment against Facebook shows that juries are ready to punish them. Democrats can use a proven slogan: Drain the swamp.

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This isn't a holy war.

The U.S. war with Iran has strong defenders. 

They say we need to destroy Iran because they are Muslim and trying to conquer the world for Allah. The war is self-defense for Jews and Christians.

Morning, January 6, 2021

One commenter to this blog made that case, quoting the founder of the Iranian regime:

“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
― Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The commenter said that a statement like that justifies treating Iran as a life-or-death threat: 

These are the words of a jihadist Islamic death cult that thinks it will ultimately triumph because it loves death more than we love life. An ideology like that in possession of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, capable of carrying them is an unacceptable threat to the entire world.

There are good reasons for Iranians to be profoundly angry with the USA. Claiming a religious purpose is standard operating procedure. More plausible to me is lingering anger for the coup we arranged in 1953. We made an enemy. We removed a government that intended to use Iranian oil resources for the benefit of the Iranian people. We installed instead a government of our choice that offered their oil to the West on the cheap.

How seriously should Westerners take the Ayatollah's language? Isn't he justifying holy war? Surely that is reason to fear and hate them.

Maybe not. I dismiss that kind of talk, just as I would hope Muslims dismiss it when coming from the West. There is no difficulty finding Jews and Christians with words of murderous intent.

The words aren't by a former political leader. These are a command from God Himself in a sacred text that Americans hold when taking the oath of office. Deuteronomy 20 reads:

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

Pretty rough stuff. A Muslim might read this and believe genocide is central to Judeo-Christian belief. 

A person who discounts scripture as out of date might look at this month's statements by the U.S. secretary of defense at a prayer service at the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth weaved in and out of scripture references as he prayed:

Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.

I consider language like this in a public building to be unconstitutional and blasphemous. I wish Christians would condemn linking U.S. warmaking and Christ, but I have not seen much of it from American Jews and Christians. The Pope condemned it from Rome, saying that "God cannot be enlisted in darkness."

Americans should not over-react to language coming out of Iran that calls for "Death to America." Nor should we treat seriously as holy war Hegseth's prayer. It is political claptrap.

The war won't end when the "evil perish" and Iranian "teeth are broken," nor will it end when Iran imposes Sharia Law on Americans. It will end with a negotiated peace in which Iran's interest in believing its boundaries and sovereignty are protected. It will end when the Trump succeeds in giving Bibi Netanyahu whatever foreign policy victory he needs to keep Israel's justice system from putting him in prison, in which case in gratitude to the U.S. he will praise Trump effusively for his "heroic actions." Hail Trump!

The seeds to end of the war are planted. Iran showed they have a weapon that survives a first strike. They can put bombs on oil infrastructure and close the Strait of Hormuz, throwing regional and Western rivals into an economic chaos. It is a security backstop they possess as a future threat and warning against American and regional rivals. It is a threat they can keep in the background, but not use, rather like our nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't need a nuclear weapon. They have mines, drones, and bombs that can reach vulnerable targets. Israel has nuclear weapons that can hit Tehran. It is the stability of the modern world: mutually assured destruction.

Citizens should pay attention to what each side needs for peace, not the holy war comments of an Ayatollah or secretary of defense. The war will end when Netanyahu and Trump can bask in glory over something. 

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Easy Sunday: A feel-good Saturday protest.

"Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovy"
        Paul Simon, "59th Street Bridge Song," 1966

It was a lovely spring day. People made signs and stood on the sidewalk. We mingled and smiled and encouraged one another. It had a party atmosphere, a mix of Halloween and a high school sock-hop, people having fun.

I overthink things. Later, in the quiet after the event, I got nagging worries. Who was there? Or, more important, who wasn't there?

Young people.

The attendees skewed old, toward boomers. There was a mix, with the occasional young family, but I saw very few teens, college students or even people in their 30s and 40s and (young to me) 50s. 

That's a worry. Is it possible that people who have come of age in the Trump era see today's politics as so hopeless and disgusting and crass and corrupt that nothing does any good, and they should just ignore the whole thing and get back to their jobs or their phone screens? 

I took photos mostly of signs, but also captured who held them.

 

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Goal: "Telling Democrats what they need to do to win elections."

We hear it all the time: 

Insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different result.

 A news and opinion organization with a Substack audience just shut down. The Liberal Patriot described a direction for Democratic policies, ones that would let them win elections again. How? By advocating policies that a vast majority of Americans agreed with. 

Simple: yes. Easy: no. 

Key Democratic policy groups have a religious-like faith that they are on the "right side of history" and that it is virtuous to ignore electoral signals sent by voters. 

The Liberal Patriot ceased publication with this:

This is The Liberal Patriot’s final post. We tried our best to make a non-profit media model work with entirely free analysis and commentary published throughout our existence. But it turns out upsetting the partisan applecart on multiple issues is not a particularly good fundraising or business model.

I share the policy direction and goal of The Liberal Patriot writers. A friend and reader, Herb Rothschild, suggested a description of this blog to use in a banner ad: "Telling Democrats what they need to do to win elections." That is what The Liberal Patriot people did. Unlike them, I am not going away. I do this for free and have no expenses and no expectations. People who solicit large contributions -- the people who win statewide and congressional offices in Oregon -- sometimes tell me they read me. Maybe they do.

The Liberal Patriot shared four policy directions where Democrats needed to change course. I agree with these and have mentioned them repeatedly in my posts:

--  The cultural problem. The archetypal Democrat now has the instincts and values of an educated, prosperous, urban, non-religious office-worker in a college town. Their sensibilities, language, values, and political instincts are off-putting to working Americans. Democrats have drifted too far to the left on cultural issues. The problem shows up in the loss of votes of people whose interests on health care, taxes, education, and public benefits that Democrats support -- they should vote for Democrats! -- but they vote Republican anyway. 

--  The trans issue. Democrats try to minimize the issue as a Republican talking point, and it is -- for a reason. It resonates with voters and probably swung the election to Trump. The issue exemplified Democrats demanding belief in an idea that seems utterly false to most Americans, that biological sex isn't real. Most people feel gendered as part of their lived experience. Trans athletes competing as women offend a moral instinct of fair play. Trans women in bathrooms feels like an invasion into a vulnerable space. Democrats ignore those feelings at their political peril. 

--  The immigration problem. Democrats encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and an asylum claim that effectively legalized illegal immigration. It made a mockery of controlled legal immigration. Democrats cannot stop with complaints about brutal ICE enforcement. They need to acknowledge that as a rich country we will draw immigrants, and if there is to be a limit on immigration then some "good" law-abiding people must be denied entry and deported if they are already here. Otherwise it is a free-for-all, and potential migrants will see that and come at rates that stress communities. There is a reason Democrats lost to Trump in border towns. Democrats must get the courage to say "No." 

--  Economics and climate.  Democratic messaging on climate emphasizes the sensibility of the already-comfortable people who can afford to hear messages of conservation and restraint. Poor and working people want policies of can-do abundance. Regulations, environmental lawsuits, and pipeline and drilling bans all send a message that Democrats are withholding prosperity to protect the wealthy.  Zero-emission and carbon goals are unrealistic in their timing and burdensome to working people. Technological advances in wind, solar, nuclear energy may allow Democrats to move toward climate goals in a some-of-everything policy, but Democrats need to get real on the pace of abandoning fossil fuel.

This all makes sense to me. It reflects the interests and values of people whose votes Democrats seek. Can a Democratic candidate for Congress or the White House say things like this and win nomination in a competitive primary? 

Possibly, but the indications are not good. We see the problem when Democrats including Gavin Newsom and Seth Moulton explore a presidential bid and say something heterodox. Liberal progressive enforcers jump on them and call them dangerous heretics and sellouts.

Policy leadership in the Democratic Party comes from officeholders and thought leaders who represent bright blue urban coastal polities. They set the tone for engaged Democrats who show up at candidate events and vote in the Democratic primary. The result is a party that can never win the U.S. Senate and can only win the White House when a Republican incumbent president totally runs the country into a ditch. That is not a description of a party with a durable majority. It is a description of a party that elects Donald Trump.

Democrats need to get real.

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Replace Cliff Bentz? Possible if the time is right

Too Trump-y and out of touch with his District, but re-elected anyway.

Oregon Second District U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz

Most voters say they hate the polarization.

Most voters say they want to elect moderates. But they don't.

They nominate an extremist from their favored party.

Georgetown University political scientist Michael Bailey described it this way:

Polarization is more likely when control of the legislature is closely contested and the policy impact of a single legislator is modest because party nominators know that the district median will prefer electing an extremist from a favored party than a moderate from a disfavored party. 

For example, a moderately conservative district median voter will prefer the policy outcomes under Republican control, even if their individual legislator is very conservative, over the policy outcomes under Democratic control, with a moderate Democrat representing their district.

Oregon Second District U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is a good example of what Professor Bailey described. He is far more conservative and Trump-compliant than the median voter in the district, but he has been re-elected anyway. Democratic candidates see the disconnect with the median voter and it gives them hope. After all, Bentz lets Trump impose district-damaging tariffs that hurt Oregon's grain and wine industries. He voted to make health insurance unaffordable under the ACA exchanges, a program in widespread use in this district. He tolerates Trump's brutal ICE policing, which damages the district's farmers. He consents to Trump trying to stop Oregon's popular vote-by-mail system. Bentz is a classic yes-man enabler of Trump. Bentz is far more Trump-devoted than the median district voter. 

The Democratic opportunity is a mirage most years. A majority of the voters in the district are Republican and, as Bailey wrote, Republicans would rather have a too-conservative, too-Trump-y Republican than a Democrat.

Each Democratic candidate hoping to replace Bentz asserts moderation, reasonableness, and fit with the district. Each will listen. Each is in touch. Each is the median voter.

-- Patty Snow introduces herself by saying she is from the small, rural Idaho town of Burley, and was brought up by "generational Republicans who taught me the importance of fiscal responsibility." 

--  Rebecca Mueller's presentation at the event at my house last weekend began by describing her reasonable sensitivity to divergent points of view.  

--  Chris Beck headlines "Coming of age east of the Cascades" and his family's deep roots in the district. 

--  Dawn Rasmussen headlines "People first, politics last," and down-to-earth leadership that listens to the district. 

--  Mary Doyle headlines "Leadership that listens" saying she is "grounded, accessable, and accountable."  

--  Peter Quince's opening page has four words, "Because your voice matters."

They all listen, listen, listen.

My own sense is that the path to electing a Democrat does not come from a Democrat's assurances of moderation, even if that is absolutely true and even if the candidate is closer to the median voter than is Bentz. Republicans vote for Republicans.  A very electable, credible candidate, Joe Yetter, a retired military physician, proved that by losing with the usual 60-40 margin.

A different approach might be to attempt to exploit the crack within the GOP, which has a regular wing and a MAGA wing. The MAGA wing is 100 percent Trump-y. They believe Trump, whatever he says. They love his lies and his grift. They are in the cult. But there is another group of Republicans who are more or less disgusted with Trump, but tolerate him because he is their team captain. They think he has done some things right, e.g., reduced illegal immigration, got Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence, and reversed the excessive "woke" symbolism of the left including pronoun announcements, use of "Latinx," identity-based hiring quotas, and trans inclusion in women's spaces. They like all that but they don't like Trump. They see the lies, grift, crassness, and unapologetic cronyism. 

By this fall's election, events might well have spun further out of control based on some combination of war in Iran, gasoline prices, stagflation, unemployment, troop deaths, trade chaos, and a bad stock market.  Stuff happens, and Trump is accident-prone. 

1968

2008

At times of great distress for Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Carter in 1980, Reagan in 1982, and Bush in 2008, voters wanted to cast a "NO" vote on the president. Perhaps 2026 will offer a similar opportunity.

Bentz's current political strength is his fawning obedience to Trump. That protects his right flank. That would also be his weakness if the moment is right, and bad moments happen every decade. Trump is Bentz's life preserver until he is Bentz's anchor. 

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Mexico, part two: expansion controersy

In the 19th Century the U.S. seized land: It was our manifest destiny.

For a century the U.S. was content with our national borders.

President Trump is not content.

Trump is a builder and he sold Americans on the idea of national greatness. America is great and more is greater. All four presidents on Mt. Rushmore enlarged our national borders, two by war, two by acquisition. 

After World War II, the Roosevelt postwar plan was for strong countries to use their power to enforce rules of non-aggression. That era is over. Trump sees opportunities for acquisition: the oil of Iran and Venezuela; the strategic position of Greenland; Canada's oil, timber, minerals, and giant space on a map; Ukraine's rare earth; Gaza for resorts; and Cuba for something, maybe its good weather, Trump said. 

Jack Mullen joins yesterday's guest post author Erich Almasy in refreshing our memories about how the U.S. expanded it territory.Jack and I thinned and picked pears in local orchards in the late 1960s, and we both worked in the office of U.S. Rep. Jim Weaver in the 1970s. He studied history at the University of Oregon.

My experience is that schools in Oregon in the postwar 1950s and 1960s skipped quickly over the Mexican War. Our teachers, veterans of WWII, had fought a war against an expansionist aggressor nation.

Jack Mullen and his wife Jennifer Angelo

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

The 1861-65 American Civil War overshadows the Mexico American War (1846-48) in the mind of most Americans. The Mexican War was the Wicked War, Ulysses S. Grant said. It brought a full-blown national campaign debate over an incursion into a foreign country in the 1844 Presidential race between James K. Polk and Henry Clay.

 

Stephen F. Austin brought three hundred slave-owning families into the Mexican area of what is now Texas. Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829. Texan Americans formed a provisional government and raised an army to rebel against Mexico: the Texas Rebellion of 1835-36. The 1836 battle of San Jacinto resulted in Texas becoming an independent nation, the Lone Star Republic, a polity that permitted slavery. Eight years later, Texas became the focal point of the 1844 Presidential Election between the Democrat, James K. Polk, and the Whig, Henry Clay.

Polk’s campaign focused largely on the annexation of Texas into the Union. Texas would tip the U.S. Senate balance in favor of slave states. Polk campaigned on a vision of an American empire that extended to the Pacific, a potential bonanza for slave territory expansion. Henry Clay campaigned on economic development and opposition to the Texas annexation. Clay’s main support came from northern states.

Polk won a close election. Before Polk took his seat in the White House, out-going President John Tyler, with congressional consent, annexed Texas into the Union. The senatorial balance problem was solved by cleaving off the northern part of Massachusetts and making it the state of Maine. Seven months later, a boundary dispute over which country could claim land between Nueces and Rio Grand River, led to war between the U.S. and Mexico.

A young Abe Lincoln accompanied his wife to Lexington, Kentucky, her hometown, in 1847, where he attended a Henry Clay rally. Clay’s fiery speech opposing the war stirred Lincoln to the point that he kept a copy of Clay’s speech in his pocket. Lincoln brought his anti-war feelings to the halls of Congress in his one term in Washington.

American anti-war movements at the time involved strange bedfellows. John C. Calhoun, the racist senator from South Carolina, opposed Polk’s war for fear that non-White and Catholics would be become part of the country. Northern opponents of slavery opposed the war because it expanded slavery. Northern thought-leaders, including Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglas, considered it unconstitutional, an expansion of executive power, and an unjust land grab. Protestant churches, including Quakers and Congregationalists, argued the war violated Christian principles.

Newspaper accounts described disturbing actions by volunteer brigades of American soldiers involving rape of Mexican women.

President Polk pursued the war that was our "manifest destiny," in the 1946 words of newspaper editor John O'Sullivan, fulfilling its God-given mission to control all of North America. The war’s end came once American troops under General Winfield Scott occupied Mexico City. That began the dispute over how much of Mexico's territory was enough. More territory meant more war. General Scott and special envoy Nicholas Trist were chose not to try to claim all of Mexico.Trist negotiated what would become the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty, in which 55 percent of Mexican territory was given to the United States for $15 million. It secured peace, but the settlement infuriated President Polk when he learned that the Mexican territories of Sonora and Baja California were not included in the settlement. Polk called for Trist’s return to the Capitol. Trist refused. Polk fired him and refused to pay Trist's salary. Polk hated the treaty, but realizing the increasing unpopularity of the war with Mexico, he reluctantly accepted the treaty.

America expanded to the Pacific under Polk, but did not expand to the Guatemala border or include Baja California and Sonora.

As protesters march in Saturday's No Kings event, and as sentiment against bombing and troop deployments in Iran continue, opponents of the Iran War can take heart in the notion that anti-war and anti-expansionist movements do influence U.S. decision makers. News accounts of disturbing actions -- My Lai in Vietnam, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or a bomb destroying a school in Iran -- affect the public mood. Americans are notoriously sensitive to war casualties. At some point peace is a better option than war.

Under President Grant,Trist got vindication for drawing the boundaries where he did. Grant restored his back pay with interest and he was given a postmastership job.



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Oil for the taking.

Maybe human history boils down to something pretty simple: 

Humans are a selfish territorial species that goes to war with others of their species to control valuable resources.

We may remember our high school history on the fights that shaped the U.S. and Western Hemisphere. The Spanish search for gold and silver. The British and French fight for beaver pelts. Everyone's fight to control New Orleans and passage on the Mississippi. 

And for the last 150 years, the fight for access to oil at a favorable price. That fight forced the hand of Japan, which led to their attack on Pearl Harbor. That fight was what made Stalingrad so important to the Germans and Soviets in World War II. I have written this week about our struggle to get Iran's oil. We got a recent lesson on Venezuelan oil -- ours now. We may get a lesson soon on how stopping Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba will allow the U.S. to "take," as President Trump puts it, Cuba.

Less known is our history with Mexican oil. College classmate and Mexican expat Erich Almasy reminds us. Will we go to war with Mexico again? I suspect not. Trump doesn't want Mexico, which is filled with the wrong sort of people, i.e., Mexicans, not as long as we can get what we really want and need, which is its oil, reliably and a price we like.

Erich Almasy and his wife Cynthia Blanton

Guest Post by Erich Almasy 

Today, the price of gasoline in México went up 15 centavos or about six American cents. This may not sound like a lot, but it is the first time in over two years that the price has changed. The Mexican government prefers to keep prices steady, absorbing higher oil prices and profiting when the world price falls. The present doubling of the international oil price apparently left them no choice. At just over 24 pesos per liter, we currently pay the equivalent of US$5.16 per gallon. While México has many “international” brands of gasoline (BP, Shell, Mobil, and Total), the government sets the wholesale price because the national oil company, Pemex, owns all six of the country’s refineries.

Early Mexican Indigenous peoples used tar that seeped from the ground to seal their canoes. Mexican oil has been a part of its political positioning since the first wells were drilled in 1869 by American wildcatters. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, Americans dominated exploration and production, with more than 400 companies holding oil rights. The Californian Edward Doheny and the Texan William F. Buckley, Sr., brought modern technology and production methods to México, along with their skill in subverting the political system to their benefit; first under President Porfirio Díaz and then under the military dictator Victoriano Huerta. During World War I, México tripled its oil exports to the United States, reaching 100 million barrels in 1920; 73 percent of production was from American interests and 21 percent by British ones. Foreigners were taking the vast majority of profits, and despite oil taxes that accounted for 20 percent of México’s GDP, an anti-American government led by President Álvaro Obregón passed legislation declaring that all subsoil resources belonged to the Mexican people.

More oil was discovered during the 1930s, eventually leading to the expropriation of lands in 1938 under President Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio. American oil interests had shifted their attention to developing the Venezuelan oil industry, and Mexican oil wells and working conditions had deteriorated. In retaliation, the foreign oil companies boycotted México, denying it the critical chemicals needed to refine. The American government ceased buying over US$30 million of silver annually from México, raised tariffs on Mexican oil, and threatened to seize Mexican oilfields in 1939. That’s when, in a masterstroke, Cárdenas offered to sell Mexican oil to Germany, which had just begun World War II. Faced with a possible Axis ally on its southern border, the United States permitted the expropriation to continue, more interested in a strategic alliance than a disgruntled neighbor. México declared war on Japan and Germany in 1942, and eventually, US$29 million was paid in compensation for the expropriation. Last week, on March 18, the anniversary of the expropriation was quietly celebrated at the Capitol in México City. It remains a key date in México’s sense of itself.

Today, México is the eleventh-largest oil producer in the world and the fourth-largest in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States, Canada, and Brazil). Current volume is about 1.7 million barrels per day, down by over 50 percent over the past 20 years. Proven oil reserves of over 6 billion barrels should imply a healthy industry, but most of them are offshore, requiring more expensive drilling technology. Even as production declined, oil taxes remained at over 20 percent of total government revenues. The presidency of Pemex has, to some extent, become a symbol of Mexican corruption. Since 2000, five major bribery, embezzlement, and money laundering scandals have plagued the company and its leaders. The funneling of Pemex operating funds to political parties became so widespread that the company came to be known as Hucha, or “piggy bank.”

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Real life on the campaign trail: An event de-brief

Congressional candidate Rebecca Mueller did fine at the event on Saturday.

She did it her way.

I have done about a hundred campaign events at our house over the past 30 years, so I have points of comparison. She accomplished the most important thing in a campaign, which is to give voters an honest look at who she is.

She is appealing. She is nuanced and moderate. She doesn't want to be a "regular," hyper-partisan politician.

About 40 people attended, a good turnout for a new candidate meet-and-greet. I set up chairs to hold it indoors, in the room behind her, where it would have been crowded, but -- incredibly for an event on March 21 -- the day turned bright and warm. I moved the event to the patio around the still-winterized pool, where most of the audience chose to sit in the shade. She stepped off the elevation of the doorstep and its bright light, where politicians normally stand to speak, and into shade at the level of the audience. I realize I am overthinking this, but I consider this a tell, and an honest one. She was talking with us, not to us.

She began by telling the audience with a smile that she was going to ignore my campaign advice, and she did. My advice was to give audiences about three or four very clear "mentally sticky" themes. These would be ones that attendees could later repeat to a spouse or friend: "Mueller wants to _____." Candidates are tempted to say mealy-mouthed platitudes no one remembers. I advised her to organize a speech saying that the Republican incumbent, Cliff Bentz, is part of the GOP congressional enablers of Donald Trump, who consent to whatever Trump demands. I suggested she list those areas where Bentz fails us: He hurts Medicaid users, hurts us with tariffs, hurts us by deporting the people who do the agricultural work of the district, and hurts us by going to war with Iran. Then say what you would do instead. Be short and punchy, with clear declarative sentences.

Mueller did something else. For over 15 minutes she drew from her 15 years as a physician to describe the nuances of pregnancy, miscarriage, stillborns, and the sometimes-heartbreaking choices and situations families experience. She then said that the abortion issue, like many others, requires political leaders who understand problems from many sides. She said this introduction gives us an understanding of her approach to politics.

She did it her way. My concern, sitting in the audience, was that she was proving to the audience that she was a good physician, a good and fair-minded person, but not a good politician able to articulate a political agenda. We have a runaway president and a comatose Congress, and voters are looking for a candidate who will give a firm NO to the current spiral. But I try to have some humility. Maybe Rebecca Mueller is exactly what voters want. 

Over the course of the hour that she spoke and answered questions, the audience saw that she is a political moderate with nuanced ideas. Her speech was congruent with statements on her website. Her website condemns "false dichotomies" and "hyperpolarization." There was a single moment that got spontaneous applause from the audience: "I'm against this war with Iran." I consider that another tell; voters want clarity and certitude from politicians. 

As in any event like this, after the candidate finishes someone does "the ask," the appeal for campaign donations. Ashland's mayor, Tonya Graham, did that. Graham is a high-status endorser and a good catch for Mueller. Graham's persuasive polish was a contrast to Mueller. Mueller is a candidate with high potential, but she is new and under development.

Six candidates filed to be the Democratic nominee. None of them come as the marquee contender, someone already holding high office, celebrity name-recognition, or a fortune. Any of them could win. Bentz likely thinks this will be another 60-40 general election cakewalk in a bright red district. His political risk would come if he ever deviated in the slightest from the demands of President Trump. That is his potential vulnerability. Trump's positions, if well exposed by a Democratic challenger, are not well-suited to the 2nd District. A  Democrat with moderate policies on timber harvests and immigrant agricultural workers would better suit the district than does Bentz.

If Mueller wins the primary she will have time to sharpen her positions, get comfortable standing on a raised platform to talk to voters, raise serious money, tell her story, and give Bentz a scare and voters a choice.

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Bombs are the wrong tool

"If I had a hammer

I'd hammer in the morning. . .

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters

All over the land.

     Original song by Pete Seeger, 1949, with these revised lyrics by Peter, Paul, and Mary, 1962

The United States has a hammer. 

I was in junior high school when I sang along with Peter, Paul, and Mary in my parents' Chrysler Newport with its AM radio. I never thought about whether a hammer generated love. In adulthood I learned that we often have the wrong tool for the job at hand.

As a financial advisor I learned everyone has problems, even prosperous people. The frustration for prosperous old people is that their money, wonderful as it is, rarely fixes their most pressing problems: their own declining health and the mistakes their children and grandchildren make. 

This comes to mind because of our war with Iran. The U.S. faces a real problem, exacerbated by our ally Israel and the tribal and religious schisms of the Abrahamic religions. The U.S. has a legitimate wish, that the countries of the Middle East all get along with each other, with Israel, and with the West, and that Iran in particular not be a hostile power. Ideally, it would be a region of Switzerland-style countries. That is impossible, alas. The countries' national consciousnesses are centered around their own particular form of tribe and religion, and each is sure God is on their side. 

The U.S. is stuck in this insolvable mess because we and the world need the oil that comes out of the region; because the U.S. has political and emotional ties to Israel; and because the U.S. has a guilty history with Iran. Many Americans have forgotten that we organized a coup to overturn Iran's democratic government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed a pro-West dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in its place; Iranians have not forgotten. In 1979 they staged a revolution against that dictator, energized by revenge against the U.S. We are still dealing with the aftermath of this history.

President Trump has a tool: the U.S. military. The U.S. can destroy nearly anything we want anywhere in the world, a extraordinary tool. We have bombed military sites and oil facilities in Iran. Trump announced that he planned to destroy the civilian electric and water infrastructure of Iran, which might well result in millions of civilian deaths if water-borne diseases spread in the absence of clean water and sanitation. That action may be popular in Israel and among many in the U.S. After all, they are Muslim, believers in the wrong prophet, and they vow revenge against us. 

Bombing Iran is almost certainly the wrong tool to get what the U.S. wants: a friendly Iran, or failing that, a perpetually harmless Iran. Either would require an Iran with government legitimacy formed around something other than anger with the U.S. and Israel. Bombing Iran and eliminating its leaders, including ones with the potential of forming a government dedicated to anything but revenge, is the least likely way to get the Iran government we want. 

The potential new government dangled by the West is a return of the dictatorship we established in 1953, in the form of Pahlavi's son. How likely would it have been in the U.S., 50 years after our revolution, to welcome back a British monarch to replace James Madison? The answer, if we remember our own history, is that we went back to war against the British, the war of 1812. They burned down our White House, but they did not get regime change. 

Israel squandered much of the goodwill Americans felt toward it in the decades after WWII. Israel appears to be yet another intransigent belligerent in a region of tribal zealots, in an endless cycle of vengeance for past vengeance. Scorched-earth bombing may be in Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's political interest. I expect it is. Trump let the U.S. be the impetuous hammer for Israel's foreign policy. We confirm to Iran and the Muslim world that we are indeed the "Great Satan" being led by the "Little Satan." Our bombs won't hammer out love, peace, and justice. The war we are waging isn't a move toward reconciliation, or a lasting anything, except more war.

Good goal. Wrong tool. 

President Biden got played by Netanyahu. Trump is getting played even worse.

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