VOTE TO PRESERVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Many voters are uninformed about the history and meaning of the political system that is fundamental to our constitutional republic and now under attack— “liberal democracy”. Our form of government confers rights on the individual, is egalitarian and universal. This commentary will attempt to demystify liberal democracy by comparing it to other democratic alternatives.

American liberal democracy is defined as a representative republic in which the power of government is limited. Constitutionally established norms and democratic institutions are followed to protect the rights of individuals. American liberal democracy is committed to the rule of law and places limitations on the power of elected officials by maintaining a separation of powers. The United Kingdom, Canada and Germany are also liberal democracies.

By contrast, a “direct democracy”, like ancient Greece or local government in Switzerland is a form of government in which the laws and policies are made directly by voting citizens rather than by their elected representatives. Direct democracy might work in a small community but is impractical in a large country.  

The third democratic model, gaining acceptance around the world, is an “illiberal democracy”. This prototype is a representative democracy with few limits on the power of elected leaders. In modern illiberal democracies like Hungary and Egypt “Presidents for life”, control most institutions including elections, the press, and the courts. MAGA Republican leaders are attempting to replicate aspects of the illiberal model in America.

Since our nation’s founding, members of all political parties have generally agreed that liberal democracy is the basis of our constitutional republic. While there have always been political debate about ideas, policies and procedures there has also been a consensus on the importance of our constitution and democratic institutions. It is critical for voters to understand that, regardless of their different positions on policy, they have consistently sang from the same sheet of music when it comes to preserving our form of government.

In my study of liberal democracy, I have come to appreciate the writings of the journalist Adam Gopnik. Mr. Gopnik provides a stirring defense of our democracy’s traditions and relevance. He is fair in his analysis and often very funny. His best seller, A Thousand Small Sanities, and his reviews of the recent plethora of books on liberal democracy in the New Yorker magazine provided background for this commentary.

One of the most relevant of Gopnik’s points is explaining the difference between winning and losing a national election when both political parties are following that “same sheet of music”, and when one party seeks to tear up this long established plan in order to follow illiberal rules.

The differing political positions between former presidential candidates Carter and Reagan, Clinton and Dole, Obama and Romney were monumental, but they all believed in liberal democracy. The losing political party was disappointed but always came back to fight another day.  Our republic remained strong and open to competing views.

In 2024, for the second time in our history, liberal democracy is under direct attack. Gopnik tells us, “We may be months away from the greatest crisis the liberal state has known since the Civil War.”  Gopnik has followed the MAGA movement and seen evidence that “patriotism is being replaced with nationalism, pluralism with tribalism, impersonal justice by the tyrannical whim of an autocrat who thinks only to punish his enemies and reward his hitmen.”

How is liberal democracy unique from other philosophical and religious ideas that have captured the attention of humankind? Gopnik explains, “You can’t really be a Marxist without believing that a revolution against the existing capitalist order would be a good thing. You can’t really be a Christian without believing that a dissident rabbi was crucified and later rose from the dead.”

Liberal democracy on the other is not about uniformity of belief. It is the framework for the operation of a democratic government. Within liberal democracy, political leaders with opposing views are free to stake out their positions to gain additional support.

The political scientists, Acemoglu and Robinson have pointed out in their landmark work, The Narrow Corridor that a liberal democracy has a set of rules and institutions designed to keep a democratic nation within a narrow corridor.  Within this corridor, the government and the people are in constant conflict to maintain a free and fair nation. There are no absolute political, social, or religious principles that control liberal democracy. The only requirement is that there must be a democratic mechanism to permit the constant adjustment of policy as opinions shift over time.

Gopnik believes that to understand liberal democracy one needs to ignore the set dogma of political philosophers and consider real events. He suggests we study the history of the Obama administration on health care. Following extended debate among competing interests and all of the conflict, and criticism, America now has a patchwork, compromise solution for a just health-care system.

As this example shows, under democratic liberalism, “there are no ideal stories about the unimpeded pursuit of freedom and fairness, only compromised stories of adjustments and amendments.”

In this election, no other issue is as paramount as preserving American liberal democracy. After this goal is accomplished, there will be amble opportunities for disagreement and compromise on what the future should look like.  Most important, all of our citizens will continue to sing from the same songbook that has always guided our nation.

 

 

BABY BOOMERS BECAME YUPPIES

 Social media is full of baby boomer nostalgia. Many of us born between 1946 and 1964 enjoy trading stories of our youth. We fondly recall how we spent our time without modern conveniences. We love to post blurry photographs of our school days and of businesses that no longer exist. As young boys, we split our time between Little League baseball, Boy Scouts with the obligatory two weeks at Scout summer camp, and the neighborhood hangouts. In high school, we all found summer jobs.

Baby boomers like to remind today’s young people how quickly we left our childhood behind and became independent. Immediately following high school, some of us would go to Vietnam to fight in a devastating war, and others would stay home and protest the same conflict. While our paths took us in opposite directions, no one wanted to remain at home and live in their parents’ basement. With the acceptance of hitchhiking, inexpensive travel options, and the Peace Corps, we spread out across the country and the globe.

This month marks the 55th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival. Because the “three days of peace and music” occurred in 1969, the summer between my high school graduation and entering college, I attended. It was a pivotal event in my life. Open nudity, political act

It has always been interesting to me how little we baby boomers seem to reminisce about our late 20s and 30s. After all, during these years, we were coming into our own. Many of us were graduating from professional schools, starting families, and getting ready to make an impact. However, something happened in those years that was more cringeworthy than praiseworthy-too many boomers became yuppies.

Newsweek magazine named 1984 “the Year of the Yuppie.” The name was adopted to identify “young urban professionals” living in or near larger cities, an actual population of less than 2 million people. However, in 1982, a columnist in the Chicago Tribune coined the phrase, and like the present term, “Swifties,” the concept captured the imagination of the country

I have tried to repress these yuppie years from my memory but alas, a new book has compelled me to acknowledge this period of my life. Tom McGrath, former editor of Philadelphia magazine, has written the definitive yuppie history, “Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation.”

What did it mean to become a Yuppie? An excellent example involves the early life of social activist and antiwar radical Jerry Rubin. Rubin’s favorite slogan was “Never trust anyone over 30.” In 1967, Rubin along with his fellow activist, Abbie Hoffman, pulled a prank at the New York Stock Exchange. They threw $1 bills over the railing onto the trading floor and watched the traders greedily fall over each other to retrieve them.

In the 1980s, however, Rubin went back to Wall Street, this time as a securities analyst. He was an early investor in Apple Computer and became a multimillionaire. Rubin wrote an op-ed for The New York Times explaining, “While politics and rebellion distinguished the 60s, money and financial interest will capture the passion of the 80s.”

Rubin’s prediction was correct. Many activists who spent their youth fighting for change took the same path. Yuppies by the thousands discarded their social values and then threw the working class and the middle class under the bus. McGrath believes that the Yuppie phenomenon radically altered American life between 1980 and 1990. On the positive side, Yuppies brought decaying cities that were losing population in the 1970s back to life. On the negative side, McGrath traces the rise of an elite, well-educated fa

The transformation from idealists in the 1960s and 70s to careerists in the 1980s was remarkable. Unfortunately, career success led to overindulgent materialism. Moreover, McGrath found that many of the tribal political divisions of 2024 can be traced back to this period. A self-satisfied Yuppie elite who did not care if the Rust Belt lost its factories, later became both wealthy Republicans and Democrats. The resentful working class became Trump supporters.

As a young adult, I was a yuppie. In the 1980s, downtown Pittsburgh was where I worked and played. Law school, marriage to a fellow lawyer, a home and a child removed all traces of social activism from my life. My world revolved around long workweeks, private schools, fitness centers, golf, networking, junk bonds, and expensive restaurants. President Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of the welfare state did not concern me.

Years later, as a recovering lawyer, Barack Obama reignited my values and concern for others. If not for McGrath’s excellent study of the yuppie period, the 1980s would have remained a distant memory.

McGrath points out that the stock market crash in October 1987 marked the beginning of the end for yuppies. He writes, “The country was ready to slow down again, to get back to normal.”

The 1980s Donald Trump and his book, “The Art of the Deal” were symbolic of everything yuppies represented. Trump did not get the memo to change. Ironically, his continued projection of self-serving yuppie greed has attracted the disgruntled white middle-class.

Gary Stout is a Washington attorney

WHEN BABY BOOMERS BECAME YUPPIES

 THE FALLACY OF “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”

If Donald Trump and the radicalized Republican Party have a policy doctrine for the American people, it is simply to “Make America Great Again.” Peaking behind the curtain, this means a return to a mythological past when Christianity, local charities, white superiority, rural communities, and economic hierarchies controlled the strings of our democracy.

This commentary will size up this idolized past-America with the Republican view of our future. I will compare the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page manifesto, Project 2025, with Republican policy positions from the “good-old days.” Trump’s recent attempt to distance himself from Project 2025 is disingenuous. Its authors include his former cabinet secretaries, top White House officials, and senior aides.

Going back ninety years to the Republican Party platform of 1932 provides an interesting comparison. The party was pushing for the reelection of Herbert Hoover “after three years of economic depression of unparalleled extent and severity.” The platform called for “Unemployment and Relief” to be “a state and local responsibility.” It commended the charitable work of “citizen’s organizations across the country” as the solution for starving Americans.

In this fondly remembered idyllic period of our history, Republicans labeled any attempts to improve economic or social equality as outright communism.  In 1932, Republicans considered federal programs like unemployment insurance and social security as the death knell of our democracy. Thankfully, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated both in 1935.

In the middle of the worst recession in history, the 1932 Republican Platform called for “drastic reduction of public expenditure and resistance to every appropriation not demonstrably necessary to the performance of government, national or local.” Concerning the world financial system, the platform “upheld the gold standard.”

On foreign policy, “The party will continue to maintain its attitude of protecting our national interests…without alliances or foreign partnerships.” On immigration, “the restriction of immigration is a Republican policy.” On infrastructure, “the states will continue building roads.”

These policy prescriptions from the past were destined to “make America fail.”  It is interesting that while the 1932 Republican Party was aligned with southern segregationists, many extremes of MAGA were nowhere to be found. The platform contained no hint of supporting an authoritarian executive, increasing executive power, or Christian nationalism.

Following Roosevelt’s election, Democrats initiated a bold new agenda for the modern era—to truly make America great. Roosevelt would end the depression by adopting a comprehensive federal economic safety net for citizens in need. He would end American isolationism, win WWII, and prepare the nation to assume a major role in international foreign policy. He would reform our banking system and make it the model for world finance. He would permit immigration so that our economy could grow. Democrats controlled the White House for the next twenty years, and our nation became the envy of the world.

Now, segue to the sweeping radical plan for Trump’s second term, as outlined by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. According to the news and opinion website Vox Media, Heritage’s main goal is to push the federal government further to the right. It would replace thousands of long-serving bipartisan civil servants with Trump ideologues and hardliners.

Vox Media concludes, “There is every reason to believe a second-term President Trump will go full steam ahead with centralizing executive authority in a way that could enable major abuses of power.”

So, how will a Trump election victory and Project 2025 make America great again?  In many respects, Project 2025 is a return to the provincial Republican policies of 1932, when economically challenged Americans were expected to fend for themselves or rely on local charity.

Project 2025 would raise the retirement age for Social Security. It calls for  individuals with few investment skills to manage their own Social Security accounts. Proposals would strip 688,000 people of their SNAP (food stamp) benefits. The plan would end the Head Start program for disadvantaged children. The Affordable Care Act would be eliminated and Medicaid benefits cut.

Project 2025 seeks to abolish overtime pay laws, outlaw public sector unions, eliminate health and safety protections, terminate the federal minimum wage, make it harder for people out of work to receive unemployment, and wants to abolish the Department of Education, which supports public education. Trump’s “greater America” would rip large holes in the fabric of our nation’s economic safety net and regulatory protections.

In a return to 1932, Project 2025 calls for an American foreign policy that leans hard into Trump’s isolationist instincts. If Trump wins, Ukraine and South Korea are rightfully worried about reduced support. Mexico fears the deportation of millions. NATO is preparing to go it alone against Russia. The Project calls for the nation to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In addition, in a return to 1932, Project 2025 would abolish the Federal Reserve, and let the executive branch control fiscal policy, bringing partisan politics into the financial markets. The ghost of Herbert Hoover is at work supporting Trump’s plan for a 10% across the board tariff on imported goods.  Economists believe such a tariff will rapidly accelerate inflation and cost the average family $1,500 a year.

Each voter must weigh the state of our nation under a Democrat administration, against Trump’s plan as set out in Project 2025. In 2024, we are admired by the world for our economic success and leadership. Conversely, Trump’s MAGA vision is a very dark and dangerous place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  ELECTED REPUBLICANS HAVE MADE THE CASE FOR HOME RULE

In proposing a home rule form of government for Washington County, I know that I will be accused of kicking a dead horse. After all, in November of 2021, Washington County voters soundly defeated a referendum to appoint a Government Study Commission to consider home rule.

In the summer of 2021, Democrat Commissioner Larry Maggi and Republican Diana Irey Vaughan, encouraged by a group of concerned citizens, voted to support the referendum. Sadly, Republican Commissioner Nick Sherman and the local Republican Party fought vigorously to defeat the proposal to elect citizens who would study methods to reform Washington’s government. Ironically, after seven months of county leadership under the new Republican regime headed by Sherman, the case for revisiting the formation of a Government Study Commission has never been stronger.

My commentary will begin with a discussion of the advantages of home rule followed by background on Pennsylvania counties where voters have chosen to adopt this versatile form of government. Next, I will make the case that Washington County, more than ever, needs a commission of citizens to recommend home rule reforms.

Without home rule, local leaders cannot address continued unconscionable behavior by Republican elected officials in the Controller and Prothonotary offices. Moreover, continued lack of transparency by the two Republican commissioners demonstrates the need for intergovernmental checks and balances, achievable only through home rule.

Advantages of Home Rule. According to information published by the Pennsylvania Governor’s Center for Local Government Services, counties where the voters appointed a commission to study improvements and then voted to adopt home rule have greater control over deciding their form of government. These counties manage an expanded number of governmental decisions that arise in daily life. Authority for most regulatory matters is transferred from state laws to each county’s home rule charter. Home rule is essentially a customized county constitution.  Decision-making is based on community needs rather than the “one-size-fits-all” state code cobbled together decades ago.

Under the revised 1968 Pennsylvania constitution, “A municipality which has a home rule charter may exercise any power or perform any function not denied by this Constitution, by its home rule charter or by the General Assembly.” By contrast, Washington County is constrained by state mandated municipal codes.

The traditional objection to home rule is that it can be used to raise taxes. In Pennsylvania, home rule counties have all made the conversion to reform their governments and taxes have not increased.

Where Adopting Home Rule has worked. Seven Pennsylvania counties are now home rule jurisdictions: Allegheny, Delaware, Erie, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, and Northampton. Philadelphia, as Pennsylvania's only first-class jurisdiction, has always operated under special state legislation. The home rule jurisdictions of Allegheny and Erie are unique, with their larger populations and urban areas. The other home rule jurisdictions are suburban, medium-sized counties, all growing in population, similar to Washington County. Like Washington, the political trend in these counties has been from solidly Democratic registration to more Republican over the past decade.

Each of the home rule counties have adopted a distinctive governmental system after careful citizen deliberation and voter approval. In Northampton, the voters elect a county executive, nine-member county council (five at large, four by district), controller, and district attorney. All other managerial positions including sheriff, coroner, and court row offices are nominated by the executive and approved by county council.

In Delaware, a five-member council, all elected at large to four-year terms at two-year intervals, make major county decisions.  The council appoints an executive director to act as the day-to-day administrator over certain designated county departments. The district attorney, sheriff, controller, and register of wills are the only other elected officials under Delaware’s home rule.

In Luzerne, there is an eleven-member at large council staggered over two year intervals with a three term limit. Council appoints a county manager to oversee operational issues, including all judicial row-office services, sheriff, and coroner. The only other elected officials are district attorney and controller.

The Lehigh County government has an elected county executive, district attorney, clerk of judicial records responsible for all court row offices, sheriff, controller, and coroner. Nine “commissioners” serve on a council with five elected by district and four at large.

Why Washington County Needs Home Rule. In addition to the obvious advantages, there are specific reasons why a home rule referendum is needed now. First, the elected prothonotary, controller, and two years ago, elected clerk of courts have abused their positions by being arrested (controller, clerk of courts) or by filing expensive frivolous lawsuits (prothonotary). Home rule permits a county executive to propose professional, non-partisan individuals for these positions, approved by a transparent county council. Appointed managers can be disciplined or fired for inadequate or bad behavior.

Second, the three-commissioner system has broken down in Washington County. The majority Republicans are making high-level hiring decisions without conferring with the minority commissioner and without transparent vetting of candidates. Moreover, other closed-door politically motivated decisions are being made without the broad input and veto power that a home rule county council would provide.

Third, the Washington County Republican Party has consistently called for “strong county reforms” and “term limits”. The only way to achieve these goals is to convene a citizens’ study commission who can recommend a home rule charter.

It is now up to concerned Republicans to call for a referendum that can recommend improvements to county government.