Friday, March 30, 2018

Weaving Truth into Fiction - Wayne King’s Novel “Sacred Trust” Reveals Long-Held NH Senate Secret

In a move likely to raise the hairs on the back of your neck former State Senator Wayne D. King has used the vehicle of his new novel “Sacred Trust” to unveil a long-held secret involving a group of State Senators, arrested while driving North in the Southbound lane of Interstate 93 after a long night of drinking at the famed Highway Hotel in Concord.

“Most of the people in the story are no longer living, after all it did happen in the early 1980s,” said King when asked about this recently at a book signing. “The story was recounted to me by a Senate colleague who was a part of the whole fiasco so I’m confident that it actually happened, though there’s no way to know just how much he embellished the tale.”

In “Sacred Trust” King, who was the 1994 Democratic Gubernatorial nominee, weaves a story with a familiar ring . . . the clash of ordinary people who transform into extraordinary heroes while confronting money and power in an epic battle to protect the land they love.

“Sacred Trust” is the tale of a rollicking campaign of civil disobedience against a private powerline, pitting nine unlikely environmental patriots from across the political spectrum calling themselves “The Trust”, against the “Granite Skyway” transmission line and its powerful, well-connected consortium of investors.
Longview Flowers 

With an obvious deep fondness for both the people and the land, King weaves a fast-paced tale filled with both real and fictional stories from the political world and life in the Granite State. In a rich tableau that includes sometimes hilarious and sometimes hair-raising stories including that of the “wrong way Senators”; Doctors sneaking a pregnant Llama into a hospital surgical ward for ACL surgery; A bear and a boy eating from the same blueberry patch atop Mount Cardigan as his father, the Ranger, watches helplessly from the firetower, and much more, King stitches together six decades of stories from New Hampshire life and politics.

Woven into the story are two simultaneous threads, in addition to the story line, adding substance to the pure joy of the story:

Essays written by fictional icons who, in the style of the Federalist Papers, defend the actions of “The Trust” and make the intellectual case against the Powerline, covering everything from protest and civil disobedience in a post 9-11 world to the path forward to a carbon free energy future; and a feature series written by a business journalist named Kitchen who documents New Hampshire’s key role in the birth of the renewable energy revolution and the choices faced by the nation, and the world, in light of the challenges posed by a changing climate.

The story of the “wrong way Senators”, now that it is revealed, is one that will surely live on in the lore of the Senate. Just how it was the story never became a matter of public record is recounted in chilling detail in the pages of King’s book.

King is currently working on an interactive text iBook that examines the key issues explored in “Sacred Trust”. The iBook will be free, The author hopes that teachers and professors will find that reading the book will be both a pleasant experience and grist for debate and discussion among students.


“Sacred Trust” Paperback:
354 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN-10: 1981490302
http://bit.ly/STPaper
Price: $14.95*

Sacred Trust Kindle eBook
http://bit.ly/STrust
Price: $2.99*

thesacredtrust.blogspot.com/

* Special discounts are available to schools, libraries, and nonprofits. Please contact 603-515-6001

Call the above number to schedule a reading and signing

Monday, March 19, 2018

Finding the Center - Reversing the Hollowing of the Political Center in America

Back in the 80s when he coined his famous phrase, it was fine for Jim Hightower to declare that there “Ain’t nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos” when it was a satirical jab at moderate politicians in the midst of robust debate across the political spectrum, but the hollowing of the political center in America now threatens to collapse the system on itself like a political black hole.

Of course it is true that the margins define where the middle lies and for at least the last two decades there has been a gradual movement of the political center to the right. This is not, in and of itself, unusual. Shifting fortunes of political parties have a long tradition on the American political landscape, often - but not always - for good reason. The problem was that the Republican party was not satisfied with simply gaining ground. Instead they smelled an advantage and decided that moving the goalpost itself was to be their end game. They began first by violating two of the most sacred norms of American politics during the last one hundred years.

In their groundbreaking book “How Democracies Die” authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt deconstruct the modern day process by which Democracies descend into totalitarianism; not by military takeover, violence or assassination but rather by the election of politicians who allow or collude to create a gradual erosion of what they call the “soft guardrails of democracy”  These are the institutional norms that reflect our shared American Voice . . . the spirit of our system and the laws that govern us. Levitsky and Ziblatt label these norms “Mutual Toleration” and “Institutional Forbearance”. Mutual Toleration is the norm, or belief, that our political adversaries are NOT our enemies, that they love their country just as deeply and, while they may see the world differently, we accept their legitimacy and their right to govern if they prevail within a fair and democratic process. Institutional Forbearance, its twin norm in a successful and strong democracy, is the political restraint to live within both the letter and the spirit of the law and to avoid overreaching that strains the bonds of our common beliefs.

A strong and successful democracy has a broad range of voices that make their case strongly and loudly, even joyously, but respects the people and their right to decide within the marketplace of ideas, who will represent them.  Just as important those in power, exercise restraint and do not abuse the system to seek unfair advantage, through processes that are technically legal but outside of the spirit of the law. When the governing party uses tactics like partisan gerrymandering that gives them an excessive advantage; voter suppression in the guise of “election reform” that makes it harder for certain groups of Americans to vote; or hold up the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice as the Republican Senate and leader Mitch McConnell did with Judge Merrick Garland. These things begin to create an atmosphere of hostility that can spiral out of control; An environment where not only is one party violating the spirit of the law but the opposition party is tempted to abandon these norms themselves. The result, if the opposition succumbs to this inclination, is extreme polarization.

Over the last twenty years both the Republican Party and the Democrats have abandoned these norms. Republicans struck first in 1994 when they abandoned all pretense of mutual respect and used the language of hate to drive their “Contract with America”. Democrats struck back during the tenure of Barack Obama with the albeit less extreme use of Presidential Executive Orders. The result has been polarization unlike anything that any of us have seen in our lifetimes.  This polarization has been exacerbated by the balkanization of the media landscape with the rapid growth of conservative talk radio and Fox TV and a similar, though again not as dramatic, shift among some of the other media, like MSNBC, on the other side.

The polarization of the parties and the balkanization of the media has spread like a contagion through the country taking advantage of the growing desperation of a large number of Americans, many of them white working class, who see their real income shrinking.

Ironically, immigrants and people of color, who have and continue to unjustly bear the blame, were experiencing the same thing. The major difference being that they were already marginalized within the economy. For hard working white folks, this was something new and alarming.

This is where Levitsky and Ziblatt missed the most important reason for the perilous divisions in our country right now. The alarming and growing wealth inequality gap in our country. Wages and net worth of the bottom 90% of Americans have been stagnant since 1973. That’s right, 44 years of effectively losing ground. Today the richest 1% of Americans controls more of the wealth in America than they have in 50 years. 40% of the wealth of the country is in the hands of just 1% of our population. 76 percent of wealth is vested in the top 10% of Americans.

If middle class wages and those of the precariat* had been rising during that time, even just keeping pace with the cost of living, then politicians would not have been able to stoke resentment of immigrants and people of color because, after all, they were just chasing the American dream like everyone else, right?  But as the wealth gap has grown so too has the fear and resentment of the “other” and with Republicans ignoring them in favor of the wealthy and Democrats playing identity politics to try and stay even, working class Americans of all colors have paid the price.  

Seeds of hatred and division that fall on fallow ground whither and die, but sow those seeds on fertile ground and they take root and grow. Over the past twenty years or more the ground has grown more and more fertile. As income disparity has grown more and more of our fellow Americans have found themselves having to work harder and longer just to stay afloat, many are finding it impossible. Technology, has hit them like an Abrams Tank. If the shell of shrinking wages doesn’t find its mark, the twin treads of job obsolescence and artificial intelligence surely will. Exacerbating this is the decline of American social capital, disconnecting us from community and from one another, particularly limiting our exposure to people who are different from us for any reason. This is a phenomenon described as “Bowling Alone” by social theorist Robert Putnam.

In fairness to the authors quoted so extensively above, perhaps they chose to ignore the role of wealth inequality in creating the crisis we face because the roots of this problem go so deep and are so seemingly intractable that they wanted to focus on the things we could do more immediately to stem the bleeding in our Republic. I understand this but I also believe that it is the deepest taproot of this tree and if the tree of Liberty and prosperity is to flourish again in America, we will have to confront it - and soon. Not in another twenty years when it may be too late.  

Nevertheless, since I will be addressing this issue much more in future columns, I will stand down from my soapbox and try to address some shorter term solutions to the challenge of halting the “Hollowing of the American Middle” and restoring the center again.

The deep polarization within our political system has spawned at least one other notable phenomenon worth mentioning. Not content to have gained serious ground by ignoring ``critical norms that have guided us for more than 100 years the Republicans did something that all those sinking into the sands of tyranny do, they turned on those in their own ranks whose loyalty was questionable. They turned on their own centrists - those “disloyal” Congressmen and Senators who had the unmitigated gall to believe that members of the other party were not monsters but the loyal opposition - sweeping most of them from office through the noun they have verbified as “primarying”. There is nothing wrong with having a broad range of thinkers in the political process, in fact it is healthy, but like two shores divided by a great river flowing into the future there must be a bridge that joins the two sides. This has been the most important role of centrists in politics. They have been the bridge that sees good ideas where ever they come from, working to bring the two sides together for the good of all.

If we do not restore the center in American politics we will surely witness what may be the unraveling of the American Republic, caught up in an endless cycle, lurching from left to right until one party or the other decides to put country ahead of political gain or we self destruct.

So what, then, do we do? (while we are working on that thorny income gap problem!)  

First, we sing out in the American Voice. Each of us must hold those running for any office accountable. We must ask tough questions, and we must expect that they will have answers to how we might heal our country again. The specific answers are less important than the clear indication that each has given serious thought to the matter.   

if the elections this fall are in fact the blow out for Democrats that is being forecast, the Democrats need to understand that this will not be a mandate for them. It will be because the “Coalition of the Decent” - as described by Republican operative Steve Schmidt - has risen up to wrest the country from the clutches of despotism. The Democrat’s challenge, as painful as it may be, will be to show the country what it looks like when adults are running the government . . . to model mutual tolerance and exercise forbearance. As Nelson Mandela put it “to surprise our adversaries”.  If they can do this, despite the challenges, they will capture enough of that coalition to be successful in the future.

As sympathetic as I am to those who say that Democrats should fight like Republicans, that will only make the problem worse and probably assure that the pendulum will swing back in next election . . . and you know what that means.

In the longer term, we will have to take other steps to restore the center. Here are some of the things I would suggest:

End Partisan Gerrymandering:
Since the day when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry’s last name was annexed to the “salamander” descriptor given to one of the districts redrawn to benefit his political party back in 1812, It has been a common practice for political parties who find themselves in power during the term following a census to redraw the election map in their favor. Where Gerrymandering that disadvantages racial groups has been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, “Partisan Gerrymandering” has - until recently - been accepted as a part of the spoils of political victory. This has now come under fire for good reasons. Throughout the country a fairly dramatic disconnect has developed between the political choices of voters and the outcome of elections. Partixan Gerrymandering, it is said, has created a situation where voters do not choose their representatives in elections but rather Representatives choose their voters when district lines are drawn.
The case of Wisconsin, now before the US Supreme Court, is particularly telling. In 2012 Democrats racked up 174,000 more votes for the state legislature - called “The Assembly” - than Republicans. Yet Republicans ended up with 61% of the seats in the Assembly . . . with only 49% of the votes, Democrats with 51% of the votes won less than 40% of the seats in the Assembly. Both parties should be incensed by this because the current system is just as likely to provide Democrats with the opportunity to stack the deck as Republicans and they are, sadly, just as willing to take advantage.

By any measure, this is wrong and it would be if the parties were reversed.  If you believe in the principle of one person one vote, this system defies that principle and effectively creates a rigged election. If the Supreme Court finds for the Plaintiffs in the case it could have dramatic effects on the electoral landscape but the last time that the Supreme Court considered this matter, in 2003, they punted. We should not wait for the Supreme Court. Efforts already undertaken by states like California and Arizona, arguably the most liberal and conservative states in the Union, have demonstrated that independent and balanced commissions can dramatically reduce the level of partisanship in their elected bodies. In addition to these commissions, several other innovative methodologies have been developed both here and in other nations that can and should be considered.  

Moving to Ranked Vote Balloting:
How often have you cast a vote when you felt that, aside from your choice of candidate, there were others who would do a perfectly respectable job? Ranked Voting, sometimes also referred to as Instant Runoff Voting, is a system of voting where the ballot allows the voter to rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote then second and third choices are considered, using a system for allocating those votes until one candidate or another achieves a majority. There are also systems employed in other countries that are specifically created to address both the voting and the Gerrymandering problems together.

With Ranked Voting candidates can no longer count only on their “base” for an election victory - often at substantially less than a majority - but instead must be concerned about those voters who might see them as a second choice. Forcing them to be more specific about their positions on issues and tamping down the inclination to use negative campaigning as a political tactic.  

The Ranked Vote system of balloting gives the voter the opportunity to not only vote for the candidate of their choosing but also to cast an additional vote for one or more of their choices in their order of preference. Both voters and candidates in places where Ranked Voting is being employed say that it give moderates, and even Independents, a fair shot at the nomination or the seat and it reduces negative campaigning, with candidates concerned that negative attacks on their opponents will affect their weighted total of votes.

An unintended but consequential result of such a system would also be that it will make meddling in our elections much more difficult for the Russians or any other nation intent on doing harm to the American Republic, even that 400 pound fat guy sitting on his bed.
Chapel on a Road to the Sun Monochrome Poster

Money in Politics:

The deleterious effect of the “Citizens United” decision by the Supreme Court has been well documented. While I don’t foresee a change of heart among the members of the court at any time soon, we should continue to push for reforms that limit the effects of big money on the outcomes of political races. The suggestions above will have a significant effect in this area but money in politics is an insidious force, akin to rainwater on a leaky roof. If one avenue to enter the house is repaired the water will seek out other paths.

After thoughts:

Finally, though I might lose you on one or both of these, we might also consider a few other things. Encouraging the Senate - by whatever means - to bring back the old style filibuster instead of the nonsense that now passes for a filibuster. If all those Senators with their failing prostates had to actually stand up and debate for hours on end to hold up a bill I’ll wager we’d have very few filibusters.

A serious and substantive discussion about lowering the voting age to 16 instead of 18 is also in order. Ten other countries now permit it.  In Scotland the Parliament passed the franchise to vote for 16 and 17 year-olds unanimously after successfully testing the premise during their referendum on independence.

In the last few months our kids have taught us a lot about what it means to be a good citizen. Maybe it’s time to say that if they can teach us to be good citizens, they can vote as well. We allow 16 year olds to get married - they should be able to vote. They can’t do any worse than we have, and I suspect they would do a whole lot better. . . and by the way, any party that thinks they could count on their votes is in for a rude awakening - these kids are not going to be partisan. They scoff at the notion that any political party has a monopoly on good ideas or moral authority. If they get the franchise, you best sharpen your rhetorical skills.

You may have noticed that I have not once in this column mentioned Donald Trump. I have said it before. . . Donald Trump is not the cause of the crisis in our Republic, he is a symptom. As Pogo said in the now oft-cited quote from Walt Kelly’s famous comic strip, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

*Working class and poor - advancing quickly into the middle class

About Wayne D. King: Wayne King is an author, artist, activist and recovering politician. He was a three term State Senator,  who Chaired the Senate Economic Development Committee and the NH Senate Economic Summit. In 1994 King was the Democratic nominee for Governor and most recently the CEO of MOP Environmental Solutions Inc., a public company in the environmental cleanup space.  His art is exhibited nationally in galleries and he has published three books of his images. His most recent novel "Sacred Trust" a vicarious, high voltage adventure to stop a private powerline has been published on Amazon.com as an ebook (http://bit.ly/STrust ) or in paper at http://bit.ly/STPaper . He lives in Rumney at the base of Rattlesnake Ridge. His website is: http://bit.ly/WayneDKing



Colors of a Pike NH Home

Friday, March 9, 2018

The Hidden Time Bomb within the Good Employment News


If you ever needed proof of the disconnect between Wall Street and average folks it is the response of the Markets to the unemployment numbers from last month. Not only were markets excited with the growth in the number of people employed but they were especially excited at the lack of wage growth. Their argument was that it means that inflation is not heating up; but lets call it what it is, a continuation of nearly 50 years of stagnant wages for middle class and working class families.

Indeed, the unemployment news today is very good for the economy. Whether you wish to credit President Obama or President Trump is your call; economists make pretty good arguments both ways. Within these numbers, however, there is the long-term crisis of income inequality that represents the single greatest to the American Republic, there is also a ticking time bomb that threatens to lock it in . . . Non-compete clauses for hourly workers.

What? You say. If you have ever heard discussions about non-compete clauses in the past it was in conjunction with the employment of management level employees and people who are engaged in work that involves closely held intellectual property and trade secrets.

The fact is that since 2014 non-compete clauses for lower wage employees has been growing dramatically. It is now estimated that 25% of low wage workers are being required to sign non-compete clauses.

In year’s past there have been spurts in wage growth associated with a strong economy because employers had to raise wages in order to keep their workforce. Now they are requiring new hires to sign non-compete clauses instead.

Are you managing the line at a Pizza Hut and the local Papa John’s is offering to double your pay if you’ll come on board with them? Great news for you. Great news for your family too. Here’s your chance to take another step up the ladder of the American Dream. Hold on there! If you signed a non-compete agreement with your employee when you were hired - or after that - chances are that you are stuck. Worse still, you’ve got no leverage with your current boss because when you ask him or her for a raise - especially if you mention the offer from Papa John’s. He’ll just remind you that your non-compete clause means you can’t take that job. If you think you can take the job and accept the legal consequences, keep in mind that you may end up spending all or more of your increased wages on lawyers to defend you from your former boss.

Asking low wage workers to sign non-compete clauses is a blatant use of a legal contract clause intended to protect intellectual property to suppress wages for working class and middle income workers. If this practice grows we will have effectively locked in shrinking wage growth, especially for the poor and working class - the precariat - and made more desperate the hopes of overcoming the growing inequality of income in America.

To those who think this is not a threat to both the Republic and the economy I say, where will your consumers come from if this continues?

Alton Washday Revisited


About Wayne D. King: Wayne King is an author, artist, activist and recovering politician. He was a three term State Senator, who Chaired the Senate Economic Development Committee and the NH Senate Economic Summit. In 1994 King was the Democratic nominee for Governor and most recently the CEO of MOP Environmental Solutions Inc., a public company in the environmental cleanup space. His art is exhibited nationally in galleries and he has published three books of his images. His most recent novel "Sacred Trust" a vicarious, high voltage adventure to stop a private powerline has been published on Amazon.com as an ebook (http://bit.ly/STrust ) or in paper at http://bit.ly/STPaper . He lives in Rumney at the base of Rattlesnake Ridge. His website is: http://bit.ly/WayneDKing

3/9/2018

Sunday, March 4, 2018

A National American Social Dividend and a New American Paradigm

As the oldest, most successful republican system of government there is much about the American political, social and cultural systems in which we can take considerable pride. For more than 200 years, with relatively few exceptions - some notable whoppers among them - our system of governance and the people who have been elected, appointed and hired to represent us have served us well.

Each generation in that time has played its part in questioning, evaluating and putting to the test the institutions that we have created, allowing our government and our culture to continue to evolve. Sometimes that evolution came by renewing our allegiance to those institutions and sometimes by changing or even abolishing them. Sometimes the evolution of institutions has been gradual and sometimes by upheaval.
When the Republic was first established, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were essential to its adoption as the nation exercised its right to create changes to the structure and form of government right from the start. Insisting that the ten proposed amendments were essential to define the limits of power vested in the Federal Government and the essential rights of the individual and the states.
Likewise, over time, other amendments would codify the changes brought on by campaigns for change driven by the people and moving the country toward that “more perfect union”. In 1865, following the greatest single test of the young nation, and the loss of more than half a million American lives, the thirteenth Amendment ended America’s greatest shame, slavery. In 1869 it became illegal for a man to be discriminated against in voting based on race, though women, to our everlasting regret, would remain completely disenfranchised for almost a half century more and most of those covered by the fourteenth amendment would also not fully realize their franchise until even more time had passed. In 1912 Senators, who had been selected by state legislatures for the first 125 years of the United States system, were selected by direct election of the people for the first time and six years later women finally obtained the right to vote after a long and hard fought campaign for suffrage.
Like the then-emerging understanding of natural law, propounded by Charles Darwin, so too did it seem that the process of evolving toward a more perfect union was one in which competing forces served to dictate the speed of that evolution, driven by a complex algorithm of activism, courage, perseverance and patience.

It also seemed, until fairly recently, that with our system of governance, so dexterously woven by the founders, they foresaw within its structures and institutions that there would be a natural obsolescence, the result of the nexus of time, human endeavor and achievement pushing forward the evolution of society.

Each of these major political changes as well as those wrought by social and economic forces including two Industrial Revolutions, the Labor Union Movement, The Progressive Era, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, merged with the political changes to create ongoing movements and moments defining continuously reinvented versions of the American Paradigm.

But in the last two generations something has happened to this natural progression . . . something has changed.

If you are a Millenial or from Generation X you may not have noticed. That’s because the changes seem less dramatic when viewed in the scope of 20 years than over more than half a century.

Each generation of Americans have faced this to some extent but the leap from horses and buggies in the late 1800s to fast cars and SUVs in the late 1900s is not nearly as mind-blowing as the changes that have taken place since the turn of this millenium.
Today the world is shifting beneath our feet. Change is not only the rule, it is both friend and foe. To make matters worse, it is often difficult to distinguish between when it is friend and when it is foe.
As important as the rapidly accelerating pace of technological change is to understanding where we are and where we are headed, what is even more important is to acknowledge that there has been a dramatic decoupling of the responsiveness to change between those driven by the human spirit, innovation and entrepreneurial initiative and our increasingly moribund and tribalized national politics that threaten to infect our state, local and community politics.

Even those of us who are Boomers have accommodated ourselves to the rapid pace of social change, as difficult as that may seem from time to time. Every day we hear new stories of entrepreneurs who have created remarkable new products that solve real problems. The pace of these victories of the human spirit and the entrepreneurial ethos continues to accelerate; but the ability of government to respond seems inversely proportional to its size and level. The further government is removed from the people the less dynamic it seems to be in its capability to respond to change and the more partisan it has become.
Until recently our political institutions have seemed to be up to the task of evolving with the culture and the economy. No more. In fact, they have been out of sync for some time now, the lag, it turns out, was in our understanding of this.


The Collapse of Middle Class and Precariat Income and Wages
Believe it or not, 1973 was the last year that wages for the Middle Class and the Precariat rose in response to increasing productivity. Since that time wages for both have stagnated while the real income of the top 1% has risen dramatically.

This growing income gap is the greatest threat to our democracy and our most important challenge as a Republic. Furthermore it is a virtual iceberg of sadness, rage and division within our society. Where most of the danger lies beneath the surface of the water. One need only observe that the margin of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 elections can be found in the number of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 - desperately seeking hope - and then having found that still no one seemed to be listening - they voted to burn the system down by switching to Donald Trump.

This collapse and the growing disparity of income in America represents a grave and existential danger to our Republic. The stability of a democracy is built on the strength of its middle class and the belief that even those in the Precariat can aspire to moving up . . . the belief that if you work hard and play by the rules that every American has the opportunity to succeed. When people begin to lose faith in this the Republic is in peril.

Equally as important, though rarely observed, this disparity represents a nearly complete denial of what has contributed to an American economy that is second to no other in humanity’s history. The Gross Domestic Product of our nation is a complex synthesis of recent success and hard won achievement built over more than 500 years of history.

Try telling the families of the Creek, the Cherokee, the Chocktaw, the Chickasaw and other nations who unwillingly participated in the death march now known as the “Trail of Tears” that some of the wealth of this great nation, reflected in its GDP today, did not come from the theft of their lands and wealth or that of any of the other 558 other tribes within the United States that have managed to survive the informal genocide of disease and the more formal one of the eradication campaigns that followed them.

Try telling the descendants of African American slaves who, for more than 200 years, padded the numbers of the national GDP with free labor that their toil and pain played no role in the equation.

Try telling the women of this nation, who even today earn less than 80 cents on a dollar compared with men in the American economy, that their labor is not of equal value and worthy of recognition in the equation.

Try telling the descendants of every immigrant group that came to this nation seeking opportunity and endured the slings and arrows of xenophobia and prejudice while providing low wage labor to generations of American Oligarchs; or the families of Japanese Americans held in prisoner camps during World War II and stripped of their wealth that their sacrifices in the national interest don’t matter.

I could go on but my point is not to dredge up the mistakes of the past but rather to recognize that - as a nation built by immigrants on lands stolen from indigenous people, we are all aggrieved, we are all due reparations. We are mutually responsible for our successes and failures and mutually entitled to a National American Social Dividend paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of every American who labored, and fought for the American Dream over the past 500 years - even before the dream was fully formed.

Mutually Entitled is the key phrase here. This National American Social Dividend is the birthright of everyone from the richest oligarch to the poorest American cobbling together four minimum wage part-time jobs to keep his or her head above water. Recognizing this will be critical to solving the problems associated with it lest it simply become one more flashpoint in the ongoing culture wars and tribalism that pits one American against another.

Back in the early 1970s when wages had not decoupled from productivity and the share of the wealth the bottom 99% of wage earners was still growing it seemed that we might see ‘the invisible hand of the market’ adjust accordingly to correct for the problem of income disparity, but time has a nasty way of revealing to us the truths behind our sacred cows.

In the last decade, time has, like a capital black hole, collapsed on itself in a landslide of cascading realities that have shaken our confidence in the American system to the core.
American productivity has never been better, yet productivity has produced a rush to the bottom in marginal costs of products, great it you are a consumer - but fewer and fewer of us find ourselves able to afford the luxury of being consumers these days.

American productivity is rarely today referred to in the quaint old fashioned parlance as “worker productivity” because fewer and fewer workers actually lay hands on the products. Astounding gains in artificial intelligence will only serve to make this problem worse and this train has left the station, there is no turning back.

Depending upon what futurist or prognosticator you are listening to between 40% and 60% of existing jobs will be performed autonomously within a decade, requiring few if any human hands earning wages. Even some of the newest jobs created within the “Gig Economy” like Uber Driver will vanish while the driver’s seat is barely warm. Within ten years almost all jobs related to transporting passengers and freight will likely be driverless as will many others that require only rote learning. Even a significant number of jobs that we would not imagine capable of being performed by anything other than a human will vanish without a trace.
There is no consensus about whether this dramatic job loss will be accompanied by equally dramatic growth of new jobs. Historically the case can be made that such revolutions in employment generate more jobs, not fewer. However, it’s worth asking ourselves if there are any trends that run contrary to this optimists outlook.

According to Mark Blyth, Professor of Political Economy at the Watson Center for International Studies at Brown University, 94% of jobs created since 2008 have been agency contract, part time jobs - most without benefits. If this trend continues, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, the majority of Americans will no longer be working a single job but multiple jobs, again with few, if any, employer provided benefits.

The stress that this has already exerted on the fabric of America can be seen in the growing partisan divisions of our politics, in the tribalism that pits one American against another even to the point of casting aside some of our most cherished beliefs including our pride in our own immigrant heritage and the role it has played in creating the most diverse and vibrant democracy on the planet.
All of those people who took such pride in the election of Barack Obama as President did not just abandon their core beliefs to choose Donald Trump. They came to believe that the light they saw at the end of the tunnel was - in fact - a train coming at them full speed. Fear has a powerful way of changing our perceptions.

Thomas Piketty said, in his landmark work “Capital”, “The natural course of capitalism is the concentration of wealth.” but there is a solution to this. A robust democracy that doesn’t accept it as a fait accompli. Assigning blame is counter productive. This is no-one’s fault, but it is everyone’s problem. Overcoming it will be the great challenge of our time. It will require us to reinvent many of the institutions that have defined us over the centuries. It will require us to find new ways to bridge the divides that threaten us. It will require Democrats to embrace smaller government and Republicans to accept economies of scale. It will require those who would prefer to punish the poor for being . . . well, poor . . . granting them more freedom and responsibility and require those inclined to act as nannies to enfranchise the poor with the freedom to fail. It will require that we do not downsize government or upsize government but rightsize government, vesting power where it is most effectively wielded.

It will require us to create a new American Paradigm including a means for accessing and employing a National American Social Dividend as a means for creating a pathway to national renewal.

About Wayne D. King: Wayne King is an author, artist, activist and recovering politician. He was a three term State Senator, who Chaired the Senate Economic Development Committee and the NH Senate Economic Summit. In 1994 King was the Democratic nominee for Governor and most recently the CEO of MOP Environmental Solutions Inc., a public company in the environmental cleanup space. His art is exhibited nationally in galleries and he has published three books of his images. His most recent novel "Sacred Trust" a vicarious, high voltage adventure to stop a private powerline has been published on Amazon.com as an ebook (http://bit.ly/STrust ) or in paper at http://bit.ly/STPaper . He lives in Rumney at the base of Rattlesnake Ridge. His website is: http://bit.ly/WayneDKing

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Income Inequality - America’s Greatest Single Challenge in the Age of Technology

Wayne D. King

I believe that income inequality is the greatest single threat to our nation. If we do not begin to talk seriously about how we address this - and not the simplistic pablum that both Republicans and Democrats have fed us for the last 50 years - then the Republic is in grave danger. We will pinball from one ideologue on the right to one on the left.

"The world is shifting beneath our feet. Consider this:

1. Since 1973 wages and income for the bottom 99% of Americans have been stagnant. That means that every year growth in the economy is transferred directly into the bank accounts of 1% of the population.

2. The marginal costs of products move ever lower in response to enhanced productivity but that productivity is purchased by an unstoppable wave of technology displacing workers.

3. 94% of the jobs added to our economy since 2008 have been agency conntract part time jobs most without benefits and within the next 20 years 40-60% of all jobs that exist today will be replaced by technology.

4. For the first time in 100 years average American lifespans have gone down over the past decade. Some of this can be attributed to the Opiate crisis but a large share is the due to the fact that even a health club membership is out of reach for many Americans and expensive prescriptions are out of the question to many.

I ask the same question that I asked in my column of January 1, 2018 ("A Steady Hand and an Open Heart" http://bit.ly/ASteadyHand) Who will buy the products when technology has replaced the human hands that once made them? To whom will those products be delivered when the trucks delivering them are driverless or they are flown through the air by drones? Where will we employ the taxi drivers, the line workers, the coal miners?"

Every American has contributed to the success of our economy for 500 years. We must find a way to share in those fruits in order to unleash a new entrepreneurial vision and spirit and to shrink the need for a safety net because more people are sharing in our economic success.


Next column: A National American Social Dividend and a New American Paradigm

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Time to put 16YO voting age on the table.

Time to put 16YO voting age on the table. Parkman kids have made it clear that our young people can participate responsibly and are as informed as any average voter. #Let16VOTE