Not Enough: "During this time of confusing rhetoric and uncertainty"

Today at Rep. Mimi Walters' office.

Tuesday afternoon, Rebel Girl was late getting to the Irvine office of Congressional Representative Mimi Walters who represents CA 45th so by the time she arrived, all the other protesters were gone.

Still, she was shown the door (locked) by a solicitous security guard who greeted her at the elevator and said, “Right this way” as if she had been expected. There were he said, over 200 people there earlier. She explained she had been teaching until 5:00 and that a student needed to talk to her after, as if he was asking for an excuse. “Where do you teach?” he asked. She told him and he shared that he takes classes at Golden West. They both agreed about the general fabulousness of the community college education and continued down the hall.

The office door was watched over by an utterly bored Irvine police officer, his badge hanging by a lanyard from around his neck, his head bowed toward the glowing screen of his smart phone. He had obviously judged her as peaceful as the ones who came before (Rebel Girl had asked if all had gone peacefully and been reassured it had) and just kept stroking his phone screen.

Rebel felt a little foolish. Without the others, what was she supposed to do? Her audience, it seemed, was the smiling security guard and the cop. So she told them about her student, the one who kept her late, after class to talk. The student had apologized for her work. The class activities had shown her, she said, that she wasn’t where she needed to be in her essay. Rebel Girl had reassured her that was fine, that that was what the activities were supposed to help her with. She had found it hard to concentrate, the student said, since the president announced his executive order. It affected her family, she told Rebel Girl, because of who they were. Her father was supposed to go on a business trip but he cancelled it, afraid he wouldn’t be allowed back in the U.S. They were now separated from their family overseas. The worse thing was, the student said, was that she felt that the U.S. government thought of her as a lesser person, and that now others had permission to look at her that way too. And they had. She could feel it. She had spent her childhood under a dictatorship and it had never felt as bad as this she concluded. Her eyes were wet, shining.

Rebel Girl said the things you say. She offered sympathy, moral support, free legal counsel and told her, yes, she was on her way to a protest about that very issue but Rebel Girl had the feeling that none of it was enough. How could it be? 

The security guard nodded. The cop said nothing. Rebel Girl thanked them for their service, snapped a photo and left.

By the time Rebel Girl got home, it was dark and this message waited for her in her email:

Jan. 31, 2017 – Our Commitment to All, Following Executive Order Affecting Seven Countries

Yesterday, California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Oakley issued this statement regarding President Trump’s executive order:

Over the weekend the Trump administration issued an executive order that restricts the ability of students, faculty and staff from certain countries from being able to enter the United States. The action caused great concern at colleges and universities across the nation. We also witnessed growing protests and confusion over the implementation of the executive order. As the California Community Colleges Board of Governors clearly stated, we support the ability of all students attending our colleges to attend without fear or intimidation.

During this time of confusing rhetoric and uncertainty, South Orange County Community College District, Saddleback College, and Irvine Valley College wish to reaffirm our values of inclusiveness and diversity. Our primary job is to educate all students who stand to benefit from higher education. We continually strive to create a welcoming environment where all people can learn and grow.

We are here to help all students. If you know of a student who may need confidential assistance, please contact our College Vice Presidents of Student Services: Dr. Juan Avalos, Saddleback College, at (949) 582-4566, javalos@saddleback.edu; or Dr. Linda Fontanilla, Irvine Valley College, at (949) 451-5624, lfontanilla@ivc.edu or visit the campus student services offices.

Dr. Debra L. Fitzsimons, Interim Chancellor
Dr. Tod A. Burnett, President, Saddleback College
Dr. Glenn R. Roquemore, President, Irvine Valley College
C.M. Brahmbhatt, Interim Vice Chancellor, Business Services
Dr. David Bugay, Vice Chancellor, Human Resources
Dr. Robert Bramucci, Vice Chancellor, Technology & Learning Services

 This is not enough either. How could it be?

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Today at UCI: IVC alum takes leadership role

UC Irvine student Zeina Mousa [IVC alum] speaks through a megaphone during an on-campus protest Monday against President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration restrictions. Kevin Chang | Daily Pilot

from the LA Times:

UCI demonstrators protest Trump's orders on immigration

excerpt:

When members of the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine saw protesters descending on international airports in cities such as Los Angeles and New York over the weekend, they began to organize their own rally to show solidarity with demonstrations nationwide against President Trump's executive order to temporarily bar citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States....

UCI Chancellor Howard Gilman released a statement Saturday saying: "UCI has 154 students and scholars from these countries. ... I want to express my deep concern for our students, scholars and others who will be personally affected by this order. I agree with the statement today by the Association of American Universities that the order 'is already causing damage and should end as quickly as possible.'"

Zeina Mousa and friends, proud graduates of IVC. 2015

Now is the time to stand with them with our bodies and voices.

Has anyone heard a peep from our administration at the college or district level?

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Oh, the Places You Won't Go: Our Students and Trump's Ban

The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Trump’s Travel Ban Leaves Students Stranded — and Colleges Scrambling to Help
excerpt:

Stay calm, you’re safe here. That’s the message American colleges have been trying to send to international students in the wake of an executive order, signed Friday night by President Trump, that imposes a travel ban on visitors — including students and other people with valid visas — from seven largely Muslim countries.

Administrators at colleges across the country spent the weekend trying to reassure students from the affected nations— Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — that they can continue their studies uninterrupted. In the meantime, officials advised students not to travel abroad during the 90-day ban.

But the soothing words belie deeper concerns. Since the presidential election, educators had been bracing for a "Trump effect" on international students. In a survey of prospective foreign students released last spring, when few gave the Republican businessman strong odds of winning the presidency, 60 percent said they would be less likely to study in the United States under a President Trump.

Los Angeles Times: 
UC urges students, faculty covered by Trump travel restrictions to stay in U.S. for now

excerpt:

The University of California on Saturday advised university community members covered by President Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries to stay in this country for now.

“We continue to analyze the executive order and its impact on our students, faculty, scholars, employees and other community members,” the UC said in a message to faculty, staff and students. “At this time, we recommend that UC community members from these seven countries who hold a visa to enter the United States or who are lawful permanent residents do not travel outside of the United States.”

In a statement released Saturday, UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman expressed “deep concern for our students, scholars and others who will be personally affected by this order. I am also concerned about the order’s impact on the ability of universities to pursue our mission.”

ABC News: 

Some Colleges Warning Foreign Students on Travel After Trump's Immigration Order

excerpt:

Some colleges are advising foreign students and scholars who might be affected by President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration to defer travel outside of the U.S. at least until there is more clarity on how the order may affect them.

Princeton University, Stanford University's center for international students and the Rochester Institute of Technology have each issued advice against immediate travel out of the country by members of their college communities.

the past, the present

A ship full of refugees fleeing the Nazis once begged the U.S. for entry. They were turned back. (Washington Post)

     Nine hundred thirty-seven.
     That was the number of passengers aboard the SS St. Louis, a German ocean liner that set off from Hamburg on May 13, 1939. Almost all of those sailing were Jewish people, desperate to escape the Third Reich. The destination was Havana, more than two weeks away by ship.
. . .
     “Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge,” the Holocaust museum noted. “Roosevelt never responded.”
     A State Department telegram stated, simply, that passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”
     Finally, the St. Louis returned to Europe. After more than a month at sea, the passengers disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium, where they were divided between four countries that had agreed to take them: Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
     By the end of the Holocaust, 254 of them would be dead....

• John McCain says President Trump's travel ban will "give ISIS some more propaganda" (CBS News)
• Republican Senators Growing Restive Over Refugee Policy (NYT)

"It’s working out very nicely."

Wallace: Bannon's remarks "offensive"

Latest 'Hate Map' shows 30 groups in Southern California (OC Reg, Jan 29);
check out Irvine/Newport Beach

How will Trump's refugee and seven-country Muslim ban affect our students?

The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Colleges Scramble After Trump’s Executive Order Bans Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries

excerpt:

The main message was one many institutions had been spreading well before Friday: Students and scholars, if you might be affected by such an executive order, don’t leave the country...

...An official with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities told The New York Times that the association knew of an undergraduate student in Iran who had been stopped from boarding a flight to the United States. It is estimated that more than 15,000 international students could be affected by the ban, roughly 12,000 from Iran alone....

...Chapman University on Friday sent an email to the campus urging people outside the United States who might be affected by the order to return “as soon as possible.” (According to the Times, people seeking to enter the United States on Friday night were already being stopped at airports, including refugees who were in the air when the order was signed.)

***
A copy of the email sent out by Chapman University to its community:  Note the use of the phrase "could become indefinite."

This article from Pro Publica offers more insight:
Trump Executive Order Could Block 500,000 Legal U.S. Residents From Returning to America From Trips

excerpt: 

The order bans the “entry” of foreigners from those countries and specifically exempts from the ban those who hold certain diplomatic visas.

Not included in the exemption, however, are those who hold long-term temporary visas — such as students or employees — who have the right to live in the United States for years at a time, as well as to travel abroad and back as they please....

...Citizens of Iran and Iraq far outnumber those from the other five countries among green card and visa holders. In the past 10 years, Iranian and Iraqi citizens have received over 250,000 green cards.

Iran also has the 11th most students in the U.S. among foreign nations, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, which tracks the demographics of international students.

“We are inundated with calls and questions of how this is going to affect people,” said Jamal Abdi, policy director for the National Iranian American Council, an organization that advocates for better relations between Iranian and American people.

*
s

I won't keep quiet

Gutting the EPA

Kellyanne Conway offers "alternative facts" while refusing to answer questions

See Trump's press weasel's faltering attempt to spank the media

See also Kellyanne is the soulless Machiavellian despot America deserves

Rainy Rally at UCI on Inauguration Day

Demonstrators walk under umbrellas in a downpour as they protest newly elected
President Donald Trump at UC Irvine on Friday. Photo by Don Leach. 

Friday's noontime rally on Inauguration Day gets some ink in the LA Times. One of the students interviewed is Jordan Hoiberg of Irvine Valley College and Rebel Girl knows that Red Emma is in one of the photos somewhere. He came home soaked.

UCI marchers protest as Trump begins his presidency

excerpt:

A few hours after Donald Trump was sworn in Friday as the nation’s 45th president, a line of more than 100 UC Irvine faculty members and students took to the campus in pouring rain to demonstrate their opposition to his policies on immigration and other issues and urge other opponents to keep organizing during Trump’s presidency.

Some shouted “Education, not deportation” and held signs reading “Black lives matter” and “Immigrants welcome.”

“We need to show that Trump’s policy on mass deportation [of undocumented immigrants] is not acceptable to our communities,” said Jordan Hoiberg, 22, an Irvine Valley College student who marched at the front of the line.

To read the rest and see more photos, click here.

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IVC on the march

Here's the IVC contingent, along with 750 thousand other people in Los Angeles.

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Trump's press weasel's faltering attempt to spank the media; meanwhile, millions of women protest the Trumpster

With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift (NYT)

     President Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd....

In challenge to Trump, women protesters swarm streets across U.S.: Women descend on D.C. to protest Trump (Reuters)

     Women took to the streets in unexpectedly large numbers in major U.S. cities on Saturday in mass protests against U.S. President Donald Trump, in an early indication of the strong opposition the newly inaugurated Republican may face in office.
     Hundreds of thousands of women - many wearing pink knit hats to evoke comments by Trump that triggered outrage among many - filled long stretches of downtown Washington around the White House and National Mall. Hundreds of thousands more women thronged New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston to rebuke Trump on his first full day in office....

Women protesting Trump in London today

Estimated 1 million-plus join anti-Trump marches worldwide (Chicago News)

     In a global exclamation of defiance and solidarity, more than 1 million people rallied at women’s marches in the nation’s capital and cities around the world Saturday to send President Donald Trump an emphatic message on his first full day in office that they won’t let his agenda go unchallenged....

Flashback Friday or When the IVC Prez Told Employees NOT to Watch the Inaugural

No such message went out this week.

Wonder why?

Check out Thursday January 15, 2009 for a little history lesson:

Get Your Ball Gown On

This late arrival in the virtual mailbox today came from the college president. In case you didn't read it, we post it below in its entirety with all its capitalization intact.

SUBJECT LINE: PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION

Colleagues,

There have been a few requests to open the PAC for the purposes of airing the Presidential Inauguration. There is no doubt that this Inauguration is historic and expected to draw broad National attention and interest. However, establishing a formal college wide program for this purpose is not possible from a number of vantage points. The most important point is that Tuesday will continue to be a day where students are in most need of our services. I have consulted with the Executive Administrative Team, the Deans and the Academic Senate President regarding this matter. The consensus is to not host a college wide Inauguration viewing. We can do the following:

We have been told that “College Network” will be airing the Inauguration on the cafeteria televisions.

We will attempt to bring up a CNN web feed on the two flat screens in the SSC lobby.

Student clubs are encouraged to host Inauguration events.

Administrators and Classified Staff wishing to view portions of the Inauguration Program will be able to do so only at the discretion of your supervisor and when zero impact on college business is verified.

Very Respectfully,
Glenn R. Roquemore, Ph.D.
President
Irvine Valley College

Ahem.

Not surprising but still. Rebel Girl recalls all those other events of a civic nature that we and our students (and, she believes, staff and administrators) were encouraged to attend--to commemorate say, Veteran's Day or September 11th. These events are held in public areas of the college during class time. Very often faculty dismiss or cut short classes in order to participate and are greeted with smiles. Please join the IVC community, the flyers often say. Join us.

Rebel Girl remembers a sunny day when we were all told to stay home. On Wednesday April 27, 1994, the entire college district shut down for an Official Day of Mourning honoring a great American, newly dead and to be buried on that day. Surely you remember. We were the only college district in the country to close (it took a vote from the board of trustees) and deny students our services on that day. Who were we honoring?

Richard M. Nixon.

Over a year later, on October 3, 1995, Rebel Girl noticed two big televisons pushed out in front of the Student Center. What's up, she wondered. Some students and staff gathered around the sets. As as she got closer, she saw what was up. It was the O.J. Simpson trial, televised live. The jury was about to deliver their verdict. It was something Rebel Girl didn't want to see, no matter what happened. There was something creepy about the whole scene.

She never could figure whose idea it was to put the big TVs out there. What they were hoping for. Why they thought that that verdict in that trial was so important for the students to view. She wonders what those same people might say when, 14 years later, someone requests to recognize the inaugural of the nation's first African-American president in a manner that suggests President Obama is just as important as a disgraced dead president or a disgraced celebrity athelete.

Shame.

Don't even get her started on how the college simply doesn't really "do" King day either. She'll talk your ear off and then you'll only have one ear.


Anyway, Rebel Girl plans to wear her version of an inaugural ball gown on Tuesday. Come find her, wherever she is and we'll party down. She's never needed anyone's permission to celebrate. She suggests you don't either.

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OCC Prof: No regrets

Orange Coast College students, including those in the Feminist Club, rally in support of instructor Olga Perez Stable Cox during a campus rally in Costa Mesa last month. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

from the Register:

OCC professor: No regrets calling Trump's election 'an act of terrorism'

excerpt:

A community college teacher who attracted national attention for describing the election of Donald Trump as “an act of terrorism” said her comments were meant to comfort her students, not ignite political controversy.

Olga Perez Stable Cox defended her statements – secretly videotaped by a student in clips that went viral online and made national news last month.

“I didn’t say anything wrong or do anything wrong. I didn’t say anything that thousands of Americans weren’t feeling or saying,” Cox, 66, said in a recent interview at her home. “I don’t regret it.”

To those who demand the Orange Coast College instructor apologize for making statements such as “We have been assaulted,” Cox said no apology would be forthcoming. She also denied telling students to stand up if they voted for Trump.

Instead, Cox repeatedly labeled the secret filming, and what has happened since the video clips ricocheted across television screens and online forums, as an attack on her.

Harvard, Too? Obama’s Final Push to Catch Predatory Colleges Is Revealing (NYT)

     For the past eight years, the Obama administration has waged a battle against predatory for-profit colleges. On Monday, the Department of Education released a final salvo — a list of hundreds of college programs that load students with more debt than they can afford to repay.
     The failing-program list included ITT Tech, which filed for bankruptcy under federal pressure late last year, as well as industry leaders like Kaplan University and the University of Phoenix. And there — among a host of local graphic design, fashion, cosmetology and barber schools — is Harvard University.
. . .
     Republican members of Congress and people working with the incoming Trump administration have called for rolling back the for-profit college regulations. Harvard’s inclusion suggests it might make sense to expand the rules to include nonprofit programs with similar problems….

Burning off "impurities of foreignness" (OR: with Trump, some other curious figures come to mind, Part I)

The anti-intellectual, anti-elitist Henry Ford
"History is bunk," he said

     Henry Ford is, of course, extremely famous. He didn’t invent the automobile; Karl Benz did that. He famously adopted assembly line methods in the manufacture of automobiles, but, again, he wasn’t quite the first.
     Still, he changed the world and has a genuine claim to greatness.
     How so?
     In Ford’s day as in our own, the obvious road to profit was the manufacture and sale of expensive cars. But, as journalist Richard Snow explains,

     …Ford believed exactly the opposite. Make the car cheaper; you’ll do better selling lots of low-priced cars to farmers and shopclerks than you will a few costly ones to millionaires. The way to achieve this, he told one of the backers of his new company, “is to make one automobile like another automobile … just as one pin is like another pin when it comes from a pin factory, or one match like another match when it comes from a match factory.”
     Ford got the car he’d been reaching for with the Model T. It was ugly, cantankerous, simple enough for any farmhand to understand and fix, and indomitable. Almost every American could afford to buy one, and millions did. By 1919 Ford was selling half the cars built in America.

Facts are bunk

     He did this by lowering the price instead of raising it in the face of steady demand. (In its last year the car cost just $295 new.) But more important, he was able to make his automobiles in their multitude—one a minute, finally—by developing moving assembly lines to bring the job to the worker, rather than having the worker move around the factory. At Ford, workers stood still, each performing one small motion—tightening three screws, twisting on a hubcap—as the developing car rolled past. This was the first true mass-production line, and when Ford doubled his workers’ wages to the then-unheard-of sum of $5 a day, so that the same people who built the cars could buy them, the destination of those moving lines became clear: mass consumption; the middle class; the modern age.

     OK. Therein lies Ford’s claim to being a great American, more or less. The rest of the story, however, isn’t so great: anti-Semitism, a near-ruinous refusal to move beyond the Model T, hounding his son, Edsel, to his early grave, vicious anti-union tactics, contempt for intellectuals, etc.
     No doubt about it: there’s a vast dark side to Our Ford.

Ford had his Model T; Trump has his Wall and his Self

     One of the curiouser inky blotches of this dark side concerns Ford’s stunning act, in 1914, of doubling workers’ salaries from $2.34 to $5 dollars a day. He did that because he had a terrible employee turnover problem (200%!)—and he had that problem because working conditions in his factories were terrible. As auto journalist Michael Ballaban explains,

     In …[1913], the Ford Motor Company somehow managed to hire more than 52,000 people, despite having less than 15,000 on payroll at any one time. Factory work was boring, monotonous, dangerous, and it didn’t pay well at all.
     This was no seasonal turnover. The company was in a constant state of mass exodus.

—And so Ford more than doubled workers’ pay, a truly stunning move.
     Voila!

BUT WAIT A MINUTE:

     So, Ford made it possible for his own workers to afford a new Ford. But, as Ballaban explains, “that didn’t mean they were allowed to buy one.”

     The $5 a day rate wasn’t just free money that every worker got. Instead, you had to work at the company for at least six months, and you also had to buy in to a new set of rules. The extra pay came at a price.
     As Richard Snow writes …, a few basic stipulations were laid from day one:

To qualify for his doubled salary, the worker had to be thrifty and continent. He had to keep his home neat and his children healthy, and, if he were below the age of twenty-two, to be married.

     That was just the start. Henry Ford wanted his workers to be model Americans, and to ensure that, he created a division within the Ford Motor Company to keep everyone in line. It was known as the Ford Sociological Department….

Henry and his obsession: the Model T

     What started out as a team of 50 “Investigators” eventually morphed into a team of 200 people who probed every aspect of their employees lives. And I mean every aspect.

Ford security beating UAW women

     Investigators would show up unannounced at your home, just to make sure it was being kept clean. They’d ask questions that were less appropriate of a car company, than they were for the modern-day CIA. They’d query you about your spending habits, your alcohol consumption, even your marital relationships. They’d ask what you were buying, and they’d check on your children to make sure they were in school.
     Women weren’t eligible, unless they were single and had to support children. Men weren’t eligible unless the only work their wives did was in the home.
     They were Henry Ford’s personal morality enforcers, making sure that everyone who took one of his paychecks lived up to his standards. Those standards included patriotism and assimilation, especially when it came to language. This wasn’t just a wanton disregard for other cultures (though that wasn’t not a part of it), but rather a safety issue. In a time of massive amounts of immigration from Europe, all Ford workers had to speak English. On the factory floor, a simple miscommunication could get someone killed.
     The Ford English School was rigorous, but it produced results. In fact, it was so thorough that a diploma from it could be counted towards a requirement for citizenship. But, like with most things associated with the Sociological Department, it had a darker side. Specifically, involving the graduation ceremony, as the Henry Ford Museum relates (bolding mine):

The culmination of the Ford English School program was the graduation ceremony where students were transformed into Americans. During the ceremony speakers gave rousing patriotic speeches and factory bands played marches and patriotic songs. The highlight of the event would be the transformation of immigrants into Americans. Students dressed in costumes reminiscent of their native homes stepped into a massive stage-prop cauldron that had a banner across the front identifying it as the AMERICAN MELTING POT. Seconds later, after a quick change out of sight of the audience, students emerged wearing “American” suits and hats, waving American flags, having undergone a spiritual smelting process where the impurities of foreignness were burnt off as slag to be tossed away leaving a new 100% American. [See below]

Golly.

Ford's "melting pot" at his English School

SEE ALSO

• When Henry Ford's Benevolent Secret Police Ruled His Workers (Jalopnik, March 23, 2014)
• The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Henry Ford (Daily Beast, May 14, 2013)
• American Experience: Henry Ford
• I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford (by Richard Snow)
• The Story of Henry Ford's $5 a Day Wages: It's Not What You Think (Forbes, March 4, 2012)
• How the Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground (Smithsonian Magazine, April 30, 2013)

Slag (aka "impurities of foreignness")

P.S.:

I just came upon this article:

Donald Trump Is...; 13 historians scour the past for Trumpian precedents. (Politico Magazine, August 29, 2015)

Excerpt:

...David Greenberg, associate professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University

     Among the chief reasons for Donald Trump’s popularity is the image he has fashioned as a blunt-talking businessman. Hailing from outside the world of politics, he presents himself as willing to speak the unpleasant truths that politicians cannot, and he promises to bring to the White House a businessman’s no-nonsense pragmatism.
     This fantasy of a brusque businessman riding to rescue our corrupt Washington politics is not new at all. To pick but one notorious example, in the 1910s and 1920s, the role was played by Henry Ford—a pioneering businessman, but a nutcase when it came to politics. In 1918, Ford waged a losing bid for the Senate, and throughout the next decade he flirted with the White House. (The quietly canny Calvin Coolidge shrewdly eased him out of the 1924 race.) Many Americans looked to Ford as a fount of old-fashioned common sense, but his off-the-cuff expressions of contempt and anti-intellectualism—“History is bunk” was his most famous aphorism—also revealed an ugly side. His foolhardiness was exposed when he sued the Chicago Tribune in 1919 for calling him ignorant, and the paper’s lawyers quizzed Ford on basic facts of American history, which he couldn’t answer. The Revolution, he said, occurred in 1812; Benedict Arnold was “a writer, I think.” Yet legions of Americans continued to root for him, some of them celebrating his defiant contempt for education. Eventually Ford would permanently tarnish his reputation when his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, began promulgating rank anti-Semitism, publishing, for example, the slanderous forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as an anti-Semitic series called The International Jew. Next to that raw sewage, Trump’s noxious comments about Mexicans and women look downright civil.
     In more recent times, numerous other moguls have toyed with the presidency using the argument that Washington needs the blunt pragmatism that only a man from the world of business can provide: Lee Iacocca, Ross Perot, Herman Cain. (In late 2011, lest we forget, Cain was leading the GOP field, polling between 25 and 30 percent.) All of them were ultimately rejected, in part because they lacked an important skill that politics requires: the ability to be politic.

Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, co-editor of the website Dissent and author, most recently, of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation

     As every intelligent historian knows, history doesn’t repeat itself, not even in rhyme (as Mark Twain once claimed). But one cannot have a discussion without using similes and metaphors, and Donald Trump does remind me of a figure from the American past who nobody, to my knowledge, has mentioned during this campaign: Henry Ford.
     Ford, like Trump, was a fabulously wealthy and famous businessman with a penchant for making controversial political statements that kept him in the news. As a pacifist, during World War I, he declared, “To my mind, the word ‘murderer’ should be embroidered in red letters across the breast of every soldier.” Then, in the early 1920s, his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, published vicious anti-Semitic documents, which the industrialist vigorously defended.
     Ford, like Trump, also moved back and forth between the major parties. In 1918, he was the Democratic candidate for a Senate seat in Michigan and probably would have won if he had bothered to spend any money or campaign for himself. In 1924, despite or perhaps because of his notoriety, many Republicans wanted to draft him for president; a magazine poll in 1923 had him leading all other potential candidates.
     In the end, however, Ford decided not to run. He was as arrogant as Trump but lacked his political ambition. Yet, the media never tired of him. One critic in the 1920s wrote that modern Americans were eager for “new sensations” that a “tame president” could not fulfill. “If you were a motion-picture producer,” he wrote, “bent on furnishing a glimpse into the future … wouldn’t you choose Henry Ford as your hero?”

[Other categories in the article:

[George Wallace; William Randolph Hearst; Ross Perot; Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party; Something out of a Mark Twain novel; There’s never been a Trump in American politics; Wendell Wilkie, Teddy Roosevelt, Arthur Godfrey and Lonesome Rhodes; Pat Paulsen and Ronald Reagan; Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman; Sui generis, with a touch of Silvio Berlusconi; An unprecedented product of the times]

Ethics Schmethics! (& damage-control)

The Republican Ethics Vote: What Happened? (NYT)

     House Republicans voted in a private meeting on Monday to strip the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics.
     But by Tuesday, facing a firestorm of criticism from both side of the aisle and President-Elect Donald J. Trump, they moved to reverse that plan....

See also

Split Views On Enforcing OC Political Ethics
(Voice of OC, Aug 5, 2014)

     A long running argument between unofficial campaign finance watchdog Shirley Grindle and Orange County supervisors over how to enforce ethics in local politics has erupted again, with Grindle urging voters in November to reject the supervisors’ plan for the state to take on the responsibility.
. . .
     For years, Grindle has tried to convince supervisors the county needs an independent ethics commission to review complaints about wrongdoing, ranging from campaign finance law violations to abuse of power within the sprawling county bureaucracy.
     Although Grindle isn’t alone – three separate grand juries in recent years have recommended an ethics commission -- she’s been consistently rebuffed by supervisors, who dismiss the idea as costly and potentially compromised by political biases….

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