December 24, 2021
Dear Interested Readers,
Warning: The first section of this letter is at times sarcastic. Its content ranges from overt hostility to whimsical fantasy that attempts to answer the question, “What’s the problem with Joe Manchin?” It fails in that effort. There is a huge problem with him. I just don’t understand him or his problem, and I reject his pleadings that what he is doing is in the overall best interest of the country. In the second section, I try to recover just a little bit of the holiday joy that old Joe disrupted last Sunday with his appearance on Fox News.
All I Want For Christmas…
My earliest memories of Christmas were possibly from December 1947. I was two and a half years old, and my family surprised my grandparents in North Carolina with a Christmas visit. That may not sound too dramatic, but we had driven all the way from Oklahoma in our 1938 Plymouth at a time when there were no Interstate highways. What I remember is that my father drove around to the back of my grandparent’s home when we arrived after dark and had me go alone to knock on the back door while my parents waited in the car with my baby brother. When my grandmother came to see who was knocking I yelled, “Surprise!” I don’t know if my grandmother was expecting us, but I do remember the excitement of that wonderful moment.
Another early Christmas memory was singing “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth!” The song was written in 1944, but it was not released until 1948. It was probably Christmas of 1950 or 1951 before I could sing the song with the proper authenticity. Another big favorite, “I Saw Moma Kissing Santa Claus” arrived in 1952 just about the same time a second-grade playground bully forced me to deal with the metaphysical challenges presented by Santa Claus. Being no fool, I did not reveal my forced enlightenment to my parents for several more years.
This holiday season, I keep humming the tune of “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” but the words going through my head are “All I Want For Christmas Is The Build Back Better Bill.” I was stunned last Sunday to hear that Senator Joe Manchin was “The Grinch That Stole Christmas” and a better future for about ten million children who will fall back into poverty when the child tax benefit expires this month. That is not the whole story. Poverty is not a bright line like the “blue line” in hockey. Sixty million children and their families have had the quality of their lives enhanced by this benefit. Thanks to Joe Manchin they will not have the benefit in 2022 that they had over the last six months of 2021.
I hope that Senator Manchin finds a lump of coal in his stocking on Christmas morning. Well, that’s not nice, but I do know that Joe likes coal. The good senator has big investments in coal, and has made it very clear that he does not think now is the time to move away from coal as an energy source even though the climate is headed toward a slow rolling boil. I guess in the end, Joe will win in multiple ways because as the seas rise there will be plenty of new places he can go on his yacht. Click here to see his yacht and hear Joe lean over the stern to respond to protesters in kayaks who vehemently disagree with his thinking. They are asking him why he doesn’t favor expanding Medicare benefits and expanding benefits for the poor. Joe tried hard to have it both ways, but in the end, it looks like he settled on what’s best for him. Now Joe wants you to know that he is a good guy. He is trying to show how not passing Build Back Better is really better for the poor folks in West Virginia where a large majority of voters from both parties and independents favor the legislation even though for reasons only God or a psychologist could understand they voted for Trump by a huge majority in the last two elections. Joe’s constituency is about as White as my neighborhood in New Hampshire. In the 2020 census, Vermont led the country in whiteness with Maine, West Virginia, and New Hampshire right behind. I point this out to say that Joe’s objections to the Biden’s Build Back Better dreams are not racial.
- Vermont 95.6%
- Maine 95.4%
- West Virginia 94.4%
- New Hampshire 93.7%
My guess is that Joe may have a class bias. Whether he favors the rich over the poor or not, his political position is really a problem for the White majority of West Virginia which is one of our poorest states. West Virginia clocks in at number forty-seven in income. The roughly 1.8 million West Virginians have an average income of $26,354. They do better in education where they are number 45. West Virginians must be delighted that they can look down on Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, Alaska, and New Mexico in education. Before Joe said no to the whole bill, Joe wanted to hack out most of the healthcare benefits from the Build Back Better Bill. I wonder if he knows that his state also ranks 47th in healthcare. If you’re going to be sick, it’s better to be in West Virginia than in Oklahoma, Arkansas, or Mississippi. As you might imagine the overall economy in West Virginia isn’t much better. Again, they rank in the high forties, but they do beat out Mississippi and Alaska. Finally, if you add up all the categories and look at what the best state is overall, West Virginian comes in, you guessed it, at number 47. Joe must be very happy that he doesn’t represent New Mexico, Mississippi, or Louisiana.
I have been to West Virginia, and I agreed with John Denver when he sang:
Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin’ like a breeze…
There is a lot of natural beauty to see in West Virginia if you look past the poverty and the rape of the mountain tops that frequently blight otherwise gorgeous scenery. In West Virginia, you are never far from a Dollar General store. If you did not click on the link, you should know that if you see a Dollar General you are probably in an impoverished neighborhood. Why would Joe want to do anything that might give the people in his home state some hope that life could be better?
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, and New York Times op-ed columnist, expressed his opinion about Manchin this way:
I’ll leave the savvy political analysis to others. I don’t know why Senator Joe Manchin apparently decided to go back on an explicit promise he made to President Biden. Naïvely, I thought that even in this era of norm-breaking, honoring a deal you’ve just made would be one of the last norms to go, since a reputation for keeping your word once given is useful even to highly cynical politicians. I also don’t know what, if anything, can be saved from the Build Back Better framework.
What I do know is that there will be huge human and, yes, economic costs if Biden’s moderate but crucial spending plans fall by the wayside.
Failure to enact a decent social agenda would condemn millions of American children to poor health and low earnings in adulthood — because that’s what growing up in poverty does. It would condemn millions more to inadequate medical care and financial ruin if they got ill, because that’s what happens when people lack adequate health insurance. It would condemn hundreds of thousands, maybe more, to unnecessary illness and premature death from air pollution, even aside from the intensified risk of climate catastrophe.
I’m not speculating here. There’s overwhelming evidence that children in low-income families who receive financial aid are significantly healthier and more productive than those who didn’t once they become adults. Uninsured Americans often lack access to needed medical care and face unaffordable bills. And studies show that policies to mitigate climate change will also yield major health benefits from cleaner air over the next decade.
In summary, the facts suggest that Senator Joe is just wrong on the child tax credit, parental leave, healthcare, and the environment. His position has made it likely that more children will live in poverty and function at a level far below their potential when they become adults. Maybe he would like to see every state operate on a par with West Virginia. Manchin could do more than any of us to curb the increasing weather disasters. With his vote, he could contribute to an American resurgence. There is no doubt that there are uncertainties ahead whether Build Back Better is passed or not. What Senator Joe from the State of Coal has actually done is to reduce the uncertainty in our future in favor of a continuing decline for the country and increasing misery for millions who deserve just a little bit of help as they struggle against generations of poverty and inequality.
On Wednesday I was surprised to find an excellent editorial in the Boston Globe about Manchin.
The writers state that much of their data was taken from reports published in the Washington Post. (This link is to an excellent opinion piece by Greg Sargent about Manchin’s possible motivations that was published this week in the Post. There is a treasure trove of Post articles about how wrong-headed Manchin is. I am not sure which article is the one the Globe is referencing. They did not provide a link.) Below are some of the points the Globe editors made as they reviewed the fuzzy thinking that the good senator has presented to justify the damage he is doing to the future of the country. If you support Joe’s explanations you have got to believe that he is a hero and that the legislative process is working really well. I think his explanations and concerns are easily refuted and have been rejected by scores of economists. It is not a stretch to say that currently, he is the embodiment of a real problem for those of us who are concerned about the future of our country.
- Manchin’s opposition to the bill is based on the size and scale of its climate measures and his disapproval of extending paid leave and the expanded monthly child tax credit of up to $300 per child, which expired this month.
- Manchin reportedly also privately raised concerns with his colleagues that a provision of the bill giving four weeks of paid family and medical leave to all US workers would be abused by some to go on deer hunting trips. Manchin also reportedly worried that the expanded child tax credit was being used by parents to buy drugs.
- Manchin is also wrong in dismissing the size and scope of climate measures in the bill as seeking to do too much, too fast. As climate policy experts have noted, these measures — designed to provide long-term incentives to energy developers, auto manufacturers, and others to invest in cleaner power sources — cannot simply be scaled back without it having a major impact on their effectiveness.
I am no fool. Just as there are a few people who experience life-threatening side effects from a “wonder drug” that benefits the overwhelming majority of people with some problem like COVID, in any large public spending bill there will be a few people who abuse the intent. But can you imagine the father of a child in poverty living in one of our large urban ghettos going hunting? Perhaps that is what might be expected in West Virginia, but can you justify denying the benefit to a child in East LA because some father in rural West Virginia might go deer hunting? Even that West Virginia father may be motivated by the desire to put some protein on the table for his family. There has been enough experience with the child tax credit to provide certainty that very little is spent by drug-addicted parents on their habit. Most families use the new money to pay rent, improve their diet, pay for daycare so that they can work, or perhaps pay some of their oppressive student debt that is a constant handicap to their ability to construct a balanced family budget. The Globe had its own take on the absurdity of Manchin’s flimsy analysis:
Let’s start by disabusing that last assertion, which harkens back to the derogatory “welfare queen’’ myth peddled by Ronald Reagan and others in the 1980s, when entitlement programs were a political football.
The truth is that the expanded child tax credit, first implemented in July as part of the emergency pandemic stimulus bill, reduced childhood poverty by 40 percent, according to a Columbia University study. Extending the benefit could help keep millions of children out of poverty permanently, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities…In a recent survey by family advocacy nonprofit ParentsTogether Action, half of the parents and caregivers polled said the loss of the expanded child benefit would make it harder for them to meet their families’ most basic needs: food, housing, and child care. In fact, 15 percent of respondents said the loss would require them to cut back on their work hours because child care alone would become prohibitively expensive.
Manchin’s loyalty to coal represents a problem to many coal miners who know that like it or not there is little future in coal, and that time is “a wasting.” Even the coal miner’s union is in favor of the government support in the Build Back Better Bill that would help them transition to the jobs of the future.
While Manchin’s support for — and from — the coal industry has always been a major basis of his opposition to climate measures, this week the United Mine Workers of America urged him to reverse course and support Build Back Better.
“The bill includes language that will provide tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to build facilities in the coalfields that would employ thousands of coal miners who have lost their jobs,’’ said the union’s president, Cecil E. Roberts, in a statement after Manchin rejected BBB. “We support that and are ready to help supply those plants with a trained, professional workforce. But now the potential for those jobs is significantly threatened.’’
I liked the way the Globe’s editors finished their piece. They offered the hope that Manchin might still be engaged in a process that could salvage some of the intended benefits of Build Back Better. They write:
Even a seasoned lawmaker can make mistakes. If Manchin honestly believed the bill would harm the economy, the facts prove his theory wrong. That means there is nothing stopping him from changing his mind, or at the very least returning to the negotiating table in the new year ready to work in earnest with the White House to get the bill across the finish line.
One can only hope. Before I read the Globe editorial or even Paul Krugman’s op-ed, I was working on my own idea about how a positive resolution might occur. Since it is the holiday season, It’s a Wonderful Life and Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol are back again. For the last 75 years every Christmas season, we have been hearing how Jimmy Stewart’s depressed “do-gooder” character, George Baily, found his way with the help of a guardian angel in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In Dicken’s masterpiece which has been a part of our holidays since 1843, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dicken’s loathsome businessman who loved money more than people, also benefited by visitation from otherworldly spirits. In both cases, it took visitation by a ghost or an angel before each character could put their own behavior and attitudes into proper perspective. I can imagine the ghost of Ronald Reagan playing a character like the ghost of Joseph Marley, Scrooge’s business partner who visits him encumbered by chains. Marley so regrets the mistakes he made in his life that he wants to save Scrooge from the same fate. With great sincerity, Marley’s ghost, in concert with the spirits of “Christmas Past,” “Christmas Present,” and “Christmas Yet To Come” succeeds in changing Scrooge’s perspective. Together they show what he has already lost, the harm that he causes in the world, and the plight of poor children that he has ignored. They warn him that he has little time to change his ways before he faces eternity. He gets the message. He wakes up on Christmas as a transformed soul. Is it possible that such a transformation could occur for a man who wants to wake up to find a world on Christmas morning where his investments in coal are still returning a handsome profit?
Imagine Senator Manchin being led by some spirit to visit a single mother with three children who are hungry and facing eviction. I can imagine Manchin being taken to a clinic at one of our DSH Hospitals and observing a dedicated social worker who is trying to help an elderly woman find a way to get the medicines she needs and still have enough leftover from her meager social security check and SNAP benefits to pay her rent which is still a stretch for her even though she lives in subsidized housing. Even Ronald Reagan’s ghost might be able to demonstrate how wrong he was for having blown up one case to imply that the country was rife with “welfare queens.” He might say that he regretted that his slick political trick worked to the detriment of the large majority of children, single mothers, and the elderly in poverty for whom every day is a challenge. Perhaps Reagan’s ghost could sit with Joe on the deck of his yacht and while sharing some libations confess that it was Hubert Humphrey who had it right when he said:
\
“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Perhaps Reagan’s ghost might also confess to Joe that from his perspective in the afterlife he regretted his undermining of the trust in the government’s ability to improve the lives of the poor or address chronic problems when he said:
Joe needs to know that someday, no matter how much money he makes from coal, things will change and he is at risk of being seen as yet another fuzzy thinking, greedy politician who failed to make a positive difference. I can’t imagine anyone in fifty years having warm feelings about how Joe prevented government money from being used to improve the environment, or nixed programs to assist children and the elderly by his absurd suggestion that money meant to improve poverty would be used on a large scale to finance deer hunting trips or provide money to deadbeat drug users to buy their drugs. He is more likely to be remembered by the fact that he used his leverage in a misguided way to deny millions of children and other disadvantaged people the help they needed while simultaneously blocking efforts to improve the environment and reestablish America as a beacon of hope for the world. He seems to want to be a one-man tornado leaving a broad path of destruction when it comes to the programs that could benefit those who struggle to improve their social determinants of health.
I’ve got all of my teeth now (Actually, I am waiting for one implant which is coming soon.) So, “all I want for Christmas” is for Joe Manchin to see the light while there is still time to achieve some of the benefits we need from the Build Back Better Bill. By just saying “Yes” he could improve the lives of millions and help lay the cornerstone of a more equitable America as all of us work together to use the Build Back Better Bill to gain a better future with less poverty, less global warming, and less threat to our health.
Good Wishes From My Home To Yours
It is the holiday season, and I am determined not to let Joe Manchin lick all of the red off my candy cane. I hope that your gatherings will be exercises in both joy and prudence. I am becoming very attached to my KN95 mask as Omicorn spreads across the country. On Tuesday morning my wife and I did home COVID tests before flying to California on a 6:05 AM flight on Wednesday out of Manchester where icy rain was spoiling the beauty of what could have been an excellent “White Christmas.”
According to my weather app, New London got mostly snow on Wednesday so I hope that now there is more snow than when I took the picture in today’s header. As much as I look forward to California where they expect to get much-needed rain for the eight days we will be there, I really love a White Christmas that can live up to Irving Berlin’s song. Ironically, Berlin was in California or Arizona when he put the dream of a White Christmas into words and notes.
2021 left a lot to be desired, but we survived and have another chance coming up to work together in 2022 for peace, joy, and goodwill for all that includes a curbing of global warming, improvements in poverty and equity, and a victory over COVID. I hope old Senator Joe M will join President Joe B to lead us to a better place. Miracles can happen.
I wish you and your family and friends Happy Holidays and great success in 2022.
Be well,
Gene
