My Trump Dream
I don't know if other people remember their dreams; I often do, and no doubt psychologists would have a field day trying to interpret them.The context of the dream is that there was bad weather, traffic hopelessly snarled, and I was trying to get my friend a medical chopper (his pregnant wife was experiencing contractions). So I go out of my place, and sure enough there's a chopper outside. But it's not the medical chopper, but a Presidential one--that is waiting for me. With the President in it. I see Trump holding in his hand a page of something I've published in US News. (Now already you can tell this is not real, because US News went to digital editions only years back, and to the best of my knowledge and/or consent, nothing I've written besides my academic work has ever been published or republished in print. My late maternal grandfather had subscribed to US News, and I later subscribed until it converted to digital. I suppose my grandfather would have been impressed if I had published there.)
So Trump is there to talk to me. (For the record, I've never been in contact with Trump in my life.) It seems that he is there to personally recruit me to his staff. I point out that I've written scores of blog posts and tweets critical of him and his economic policies. He knows and doesn't really seem bothered by it; if anything, he seems to admire the fact that I'm a straight shooter, not a yes man. He wants to hire me; I explain I've already got a job, but he's undeterred. And so I find myself flying to the White House, without a packed suitcase.
I was to be a Presidential adviser, technically a decision analyst coordinator, whatever that means. (I have quite the imagination.) The mainstream media discovers my libertarian blog and tweets and goes batshit crazy, but Trump doesn't care.
The dream ended at that point. I'm sure there are a number of readers disappointed: that's all there is to the story? For me, it's noteworthy because it showed a depth of character we didn't see during the campaign and his administration to date.
When It Hits Close To Home
I really don't discuss politics that often with family members and relatives. They know I have a political blog. I do know my middle brother's two kids are "progressive". (My brother used to be a pro-life Democrat like me in our salad days; I don't think he has my views, although he suggests that he's leaned right, enough to the point of having voted for Bush. His wife is conservative, one of those "I won't brake for Hillary" types. Every once in a while, he'll link me to a Gray Lady piece, and I start to wonder because there aren't a lot of conservatives who cite the NYT.) Now as for his kids, they were very much into the performance arts, for at least their initial college careers, and there is almost no chance of meeting a right-center professor in the arts. My politics were pretty public when I started the blog in the summer of 2008. My (older) niece cc'ed me on some anti-McCain rant she wrote to my mother (an obsolete email address at that). The topic dealt with McCain's favorable position on stem cell research; that was especially odd because it was part of the Dem party playbook during at least 2004 and 2008 campaigns. It probably wasn't the smartest thing for her to have done, because I have no problem returning a serve twice as hard. My sister-in-law wasn't happy with my pushback against her babies, and my nephew also got cc'ed by my niece during the exchange, and at the end my nephew made it clear that he and his sister were going to vote for Obama, and there's nothing I could do about it. (Well, they lived in KS, which Obama had no chance of winning anyway.) My nephew has since come out as gay and classifies himself as an 'activist', although the pair has basically not discussed politics with me since. [Well, the nephew never addressed his lifestyle with me; I inferred it from some family pictures where he and his partner were prominently featured, and my brother confirmed it.]So those were 2 of 21, and the rest of them never discuss politics with me. A couple of nephews via my youngest brother admit to having read some of my posts and usually say something like they agree with (unspecified) parts of them. (I suspect they are more "socially liberal" but fiscally conservative.) Another nephew went off on Trump during the election cycle, although I didn't really see anything pro-Dem in his posts. That changed a few months back when he attacked certain proposed Medicaid reforms, basically implying that medical care would be rationed among the needy. This was basically a Dem talking point, but most GOP proposals were simply talking about slowing the rate of increase in mandatory spending and most of that pain would be toward the end of a 10-year period.
Medicaid is one of those topics that may touch relatives and you may not even realize it. I think at least 2 of my nieces were on Medicaid during at least one pregnancy (and at least one niece held a college degree, in elementary education).
Now I had had a minor kerfuffle with the latter niece who had posted a piece of teacher union propaganda pointing out that teachers work longer than, say, 9 AM - 3 PM, unpaid time in preps, grading, etc. I pointed out that most of us have done the same (I was once a professor; even if I was lecturing say 12 hours in the classroom, my work weeks usually started at 70 hours a week. I had research and service work, I held generous office hours, I often had computer assignments to support, I was doing lecture preps, looking at textbooks for the next semester, etc.; in the IT profession, I never got overtime either; I've had to work nights, holidays, and weekends without comp time; in many cases, I was a road warrior. In one project in Oakland, I got to fly home once every 2 weeks; I would catch a late Friday flight, get into Chicago at 2 AM, and I would have a 3 PM flight out the next day. I never really griped about any of this; I knew that it came with the job. I almost never discussed or griped about any of this with my folks or family (only to the extent of planning holiday visits). I accept jobs with reasonable compensation; I don't go around playing 'poor, poor pitiful me'. So I asked my niece why she published that; I knew that teachers spent extra hours even when I was back in high school. She defensively said that she didn't think other people knew about this. Another relative from her dad's side of the family said something to the effect it's not what you do from 9-5 that gets you promoted, but what you do outside those hours. My niece's feelings got hurt because she took the criticism personally..
My teacher niece has had a difficult time in her professional career (also saddled with some college loans); she was laid off during the Great Recession in her home mid-western state from her public sector job. She eventually moved to the San Antonio area (close to my family members) and took an hourly-paid teaching job at a private school. Her youngest sister, a junior high math teacher, had gotten a public sector teaching job at a neighboring mid-western state, and my older niece eventually got a job offer from the same school district and I think spent 2 or 3 years there. For reasons I don't know, both sisters moved back to their home state last year. The older niece did not have a public sector job offer and over the past year has worked at a private school.
I realize that's a lot of background to get to the point. She had joyously recently announced on Facebook that she had finally landed a long-sought public sector position. (Further salient fact: she has a young son; her husband is employed in an hourly-paid position, but they barely make ends meet.) She ended up having to turn down the job; it turned out that the job would only pay $100 more a month, but child care and health insurance costs would leave the family budget in an even worse position (there were also some scheduling issues for events related to her proposed position as a music teacher). I think she gets free or discounted child care with her current private employer. But she made it clear that she couldn't make the numbers work. It's sad to see that younger teachers get much lower salaries in the public sector.
I'm not sure if this is a case where she has been on Medicaid and found that losing benefits by accepting higher-paying work leaves her worse off, a variation of the infamous welfare cliff. But we as a nation need to address this government welfare trap which makes it all but impossible to escape because the drop-off of government benefits offsets improving their circumstances in the private sector.
