Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning Southpaw column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles writes Southpaw for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.
Green shoots
Spring. A season of hope -- a word which does not roll easily off the lib tongue after getting broadsided continually in the Trump years; watching helplessly as our once-inviolate systems of ethics and justice have been made a mockery of. But, believe it or not, there are incontrovertibly good signs out there as we enter the final stretch toward the November general election.
• Right off the bat: Joe's State of the Union address. Talk about knocking it out of the park. Apparently Americans feel the same way. In the weeks immediately following the speech, eight national polls including ones conducted by Florida Atlantic University, Ipsos/Reuters, Emerson College, TIPP, and the Kaiser Family Foundation now put Joe in the lead. Righties were so surprised and flummoxed by his feisty, high-energy performance all they could do was stammer words like "angry" and "screaming" and "yelling." Gee, if only they could figure out a way to cut some slack for an angry old white guy hollering at a crowd for an hour-and-a-half.
• A recent article in the far right Washington Examiner notes "a shrinking battleground map is bad news for Trump and Republicans" with fewer in-play states for Republicans and more for Dems. Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg agrees, telling the New York Times, "Democrats keep overperforming in elections. Republicans keep underperforming and struggling." Rosenberg cites blue successes in the Iowa caucuses earlier this year: "Despite Trump’s strong victory, turnout there was abysmal. They had 186,000 people vote in 2016. Only 110,000 people voted this time." In those elections Trump only got 7 percent of all registered Republicans. "It’s a terrible number," Rosenberg continued. "When we actually go vote, we just keep winning, and they keep losing. And so I go into 2024 feeling really good about where we are."
• Something seems to be changing vis-à-vis personal accountability, and it's for the better. With the landmark convictions of Jennifer and James Crumbley -- the parents of yet another child who committed a murderous high school rampage -- and the near-universal approval of those verdicts, America is signaling a willingness to once again hold parents responsible for the misdeeds of their children. What a concept. Set aside the second amendment frame for a moment and include actions taken by voters across the country in last month's mid-terms to take back control of their own cities and states, and it has to make you hope that perhaps normal is within sight again after all.
• As noted here, the environment is having some sunny days with renewable energy projects springing up all across the country. Add on top of that a recent award of $1 million to US climate scientist Michael Mann against the libertarian think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute and writer Rand Simberg who published a blogpost making outrageous comparisons between Mann’s work and Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced football coach who was convicted of sexually assaulting numerous children. “I hope this verdict sends a message that falsely attacking climate scientists is not protected speech,” Mann said.
• Joe's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion to the IRS to catch tax cheats. We're not talking about the little guy or gal who salts away a few bucks on the side, the way the right wing corporate shills want to frighten us into believing. USA Today notes, "The IRS is stepping up its campaign against wealthy tax cheats, dispatching letters this week in more than 125,000 cases involving high-income taxpayers who failed to file returns since 2017." Did you catch that? These people didn't even FILE. For SIX YEARS. The IRS has stated that audit rates will not increase for taxpayers earning less than $400,000 a year.
"It’s ridiculous that thousands of wealthy people don’t even bother to file a tax return," said David Kass, executive director of the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness. "This IRS enforcement makes the point that the rich can’t play by their own set of rules."
The IRS says these cases total over $100 billion. All they have to do is GO GET THE MONEY -- money for government services these people are happy to take advantage of but somehow believe they are above having to pay for. Hmm, let's do the math... $80 billion out, $100 billion IN -- and that's just to start. Sounds to me like government doing its job for people again, not the wealthy.
• And let's not forget to give a YUGE shout-out to the Alabama Supreme Court who adjudicated the quiet part out loud by outlawing IVF (in vitro fertilization). I mean, there's tipping your hand and there's throwing all your cards on the table and jumping up and down and pointing at them. And IVF is only the beginning. We now know for 100% definite certain what will happen if Americans are ever dumb enough to cede full control of their government to the extremists. Come this fall, there are going to be a lot of justly angry women (and men!) standing in lines at the polls, no matter how long red states make them.
So cheer up. Feel good. All day. Then forget everything I just said and get all nervous and angsty again. We're going to need every single vote we can get come November!