Lincoln utilized infographics during the Civil War, but today's GOP denies climate change realities facing US

D: Man! But what diverse realties are shaping our lives on Main Street that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine address in their book Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future?

M: Dude! In order to understand the diverse realities that are shaping our lives on Main Street as outlined by Clinton and Kaine, we must first read President Abraham Lincoln’s address to the United States Congress on December 3, 1861. It can be found in the online archives of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s The American Presidency Project under the collection heading Messages and Papers of the Presidents.  

D: Man! December 3, 1861 is a far way off from the present day realities facing all of US!

M: Dude! But President Lincoln addresses the same issues being faced by Americans then as in today. In fact, we still are dealing with the same currency levels of then today. Technically, big business and special interests have strangled the international economy by way of diminishing competition and creating a privileged class of a few hundred people and their descendants that we’re still dealing in the multimillions and billions and a trillion is still a big deal for government and business to get to in terms of gross domestic product and assets.

D: Man! Really? What currency denomination should we be dealing with right now if the privileged class of a few hundred people and their descendants did not have a stranglehold on the economy via diminishing competition in business and diminishing investments by government because of special interests representing big businesses?

M: Dude! We should be in the quadrillions and the quintillions, at least. Listen to what President Lincoln reported to Congress on December 3, 1861 regarding the States that were seceding from the United States of America during the Civil War,

One of the unavoidable consequences of the present insurrection is the entire suppression in many places of all the ordinary means of administering civil justice by the officers and in the forms of existing law. This is the case, in whole or in part, in all the insurgent States; and as our armies advance upon and take possession of parts of those States the practical evil becomes more apparent. There are no courts nor officers to whom the citizens of the other States may apply for the enforcement of their lawful claims against the citizens of the insurgent States, and there is a vast amount of debt constituting such claims. Some have estimated it as high as $200,000,000, due in large part from insurgents in open rebellion to loyal citizens who are even now making great sacrifices in the discharge of their patriotic duty to support the Government.

D: Man! So within the States that seceded or were thinking about seceding, the insurgents left the federal government with the responsibility of paying their debts? But the people who remained with the federal government headed by President Lincoln were relieved of the debts left by their insurgent neighbors?

M: Dude! Yes! Whether the federal government was to take on the debts left behind by the insurgents was a matter Lincoln deferred to Congress. But we’ve got a similar crisis playing out before our very eyes right now in 2016! Likewise, today we’ve got a situation where the federal government bailed out the financial sector after the 2008 crash, but the very same big business allies are wanting to return to the ways of the past and speculate, or downright rob, US of our own hard-earned assets like our retirement funds and mortgages. American voters need to come to the understanding that this election is a choice between their own best interests being brought forth by Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, or the best interests of the financial sector and its big business allies being set into play by the greedy and selfish and asinine Donald Trump.

D: Man! Have you read the Smithsonian Magazine article about how President Lincoln used early infographics to assist him in strategizing and winning the Civil War? It’s in the July/August 2016 issue, authored by a Clive Thompson, and reads as such,

When Southern states began to secede in 1860 and 1861, Union forces invaded Virginia to try to beat back the secessionists. But where should they concentrate their forces? In the midst of the fighting in June 1861, the federal government’s Coast Survey department produced a fascinating map of Virginia that suggested a strategy. Using data from the latest census, the map showed the concentration of slaves in each county of Virginia: The darker the county, the higher the percentage of the population enslaved.

One trend immediately jumped out: eastern Virginia was the hotspot of slavery. The western region was comparatively slave-free. This suggested that the west would care less about fighting to preserve slavery; indeed, it might even switch sides and join the Unionists. The map was a deeply political data visualization, points out Susan Schulten, a historian at the University of Denver and author of Mapping the Nation. It was trying to show that only a relative minority of Virginians supported—and benefited from—slavery. It suggested military strategy, too: Try to pit the west against the east.

“It was a breakthrough map,” Schulten notes. “It was an attempt to influence how the government saw the nation, and how the military understood it. It drove Lincoln’s attention to where slavery was weakest.”

Soon after, the U.S. Coast Survey produced yet another map charting slave density, except this one covered all the Southern states. President Lincoln was fascinated by this map, consulting it so frequently during the Civil War that it showed “the marks of much service,” as an official portraitist, Francis Bicknell Carpenter, later recalled. One day, Carpenter had borrowed the map to examine it, when Lincoln came into the room.

“You have appropriated my map, have you?” said Lincoln. “I have been looking all around for it.” The president put on his spectacles, “and sitting down upon a trunk began to pore over it very earnestly,” as Carpenter later wrote. Lincoln pointed to the position where Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry division of the Army was now fighting Confederate troops. “It is just as I thought it was,” he said. “He is close upon ___County, where slaves are thickest. Now we ought to get a ‘heap’ of them, when he returns.” Much as with the Virginia map, Lincoln used the map to understand the country in a new way—to see where Southerners would be most, and least, eager to fight the North.

M: Dude! Republican Party donors deny climate change despite the sciences and mathematics proving otherwise and physical human tragedies unfolding across the United States and World map due to unmitigated preventative measures being overlooked at the local and state level for far too long. But, fortunately, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are astute like Lincoln and unafraid to face these monster storms and epic destructive forces across the nation and globe once and for all humanity.

D: Man! Fortunately, all the Representatives inside the House of Representatives are up for reelection. That means we the people can change the course of history by replacing the Republican Party membership that constitutes the Majority in the House of Representatives with Democratic Party pragmatists who are willing to face these monstrosities and destructive forces full speed ahead. The solutions are there, but American Voters must register to vote and then cast their ballots for Clinton and Kaine and the Democratic Party on Election Day Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

Seismic Paradigm Shift

M: Dude! A profound departure from an established way of thinking. In this case, Hillary Clinton is bridging the gap between the left and the right, conservative and liberal, and progressive and moderate, in order to allow for a new world order in human political theory that embraces the whole of humanity, not just the privileged few at the top of societies. And the concept that the privileged need to comprehend that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine get, is that embracing diversity is the only course with an optimal outlook in the long run.

D: Man! We are a nation of diversity but is there another example in human history of what Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are trying to accomplish by thoroughly informing US of our rights and place in humanity?

M: Dude! Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton is to political history what Hans Kung proved to be to Christian theology. Like Kung’s six developmental phases of Christianity, which move from the apocalyptic to the pedagogic to the medieval to the protestant to the enlightenment to the ecumenical, Hillary Clinton is moving American political history towards an ecumenical outlook for the new millennium, by cutting off the fractious factions of the neoconservatives and the neoliberals and bringing American voters to the realization that it is time to return to the place where sovereignty lies in the hands of the people on Main Street, not the privileged few on Wall Street.

D: Man! What exactly is the ecumenical?

M: Dude! The universals, as outlined in the United States Constitution for example, that unite US as a nation in the world. But Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine have very specific plans to getting US on Main Street to hold the financial sector on Wall Street accountable and responsible. The first step they lay out in their incredible masterwork is to get the financial sector to reflect the diverse realities that are shaping our lives on Main Street.

D: Man! How so?

M: Dude! On page 59 of Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future, Clinton and Kaine clearly explain how Wall Street is prepping itself for another round of reckless risk-taking behavior with our money, if we decide to not vote in this critical election cycle. According to Clinton and Kaine,

The 2008 financial crisis saw reckless behavior on Wall Street send our economy into a tailspin. Nearly 5 million Americans lost their homes. Nearly 9 million lost their jobs. Some $18 trillion in household wealth was wiped out.

It took hard work, but we got our economy growing again. And we put tough new rules on the books, including the Dodd-Frank Act, to protect consumers and curb recklessness and risk-taking on Wall Street. Those rules are working — which is a good thing.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. There are Republicans in Congress who are determined to go back to the bad old days where Wall Street could crash the economy, walk away without a scratch, and stick taxpayers with the bill for cleaning up the mess they caused. Republican members of Congress have tried to attach damaging deregulatory amendments to must-pass spending bills, and have called for rolling back commonsense efforts to prevent conflicts of interest by financial managers responsible for middle-class Americans’ retirement savings. They have tried to hamstring the government’s authority to regulate some of our riskiest financial institutions, and are committed to defunding and defanging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency dedicates solely to protecting Americans from unfair and deceptive financial practices.

We cannot afford to go backward. Making sure there is accountability on Wall Street is essential to building prosperity on every other street in America. That’s why we have the toughest, most comprehensive plan to make sure Wall Street banks work for Main Street businesses and families.

Our plan starts by pledging to veto any legislation that would weaken the protections enshrined in Dodd-Frank — and using the full force of that law to protect American consumers and businesses.

But we know the job of reforming our financial sector is not finished. We need to make sure no bank is too big to fail and no executive too powerful to jail. And we need tough, independent cops on the Wall Street beat to help get the job done.

That’s why we will:

1. Require firms that are too large and too risky to be managed effectively to reorganize, downsize, or break apart. The size and complexity of many financial institutions can create risks for our economy, both by making it more likely that firms will fail and increasing the severity of the economic damage failure would cause. That’s why we will pursue legislation that enhances regulators’ authority under Dodd-Frank to ensure that no financial institution is too large and too risky to manage. If firms can’t demonstrate that they can be managed effectively, regulators have the explicit statutory authority to require that they reorganize, downsize, or break apart.

2. Impose a “risk fee” on the largest financial institutions. To address the risk posed by size, leverage, and unstable short-term funding strategies, we will charge a graduated risk fee every year on banks with more than $50 billion in assets and other financial institutions that regulators believe merit strong oversight. As firms get bigger and riskier, the risk fee they face will grow in size, discouraging large financial institutions from relying on excessive leverage and the kinds of “hot” short-term money that were particularly damaging during the crisis.

3. Strengthen oversight of the “shadow banking” system to reduce risk. The so-called shadow banking sector – which includes certain activities of hedge funds, investment banks, and other non-bank financial companies – makes up more than a quarter of the global financial system and contributed significantly to the crash of 2008. We believe we need more transparency of this sector, a better understanding of the risks it poses, and stronger tools to tackle those risks. Specifically, we will increase leverage and liquidity requirements for broker-dealers, impose strict margin requirements on the kinds of short-term borrowing that also played a major role in spurring the financial crisis, enhance public disclosure and regulatory reporting requirements, and strengthen the authority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to address excessive risks.

4. Hold individuals, not just corporations, responsible when they break the law. In America, no executive is too big to jail. We will enforce laws against the criminals who break them, plain and simple. That includes holding corporate officers and supervisors accountable when they knew about misconduct by their subordinates and failed to prevent it or stop it. We will extend the statute of limitations for major financial fraud, prohibit individuals in financial services convicted of egregious crimes from future employment in the industry, and make sure major corporate fines also cut into the bonuses of culpable executives, supervisors, and employees.

5. Ensure that prosecutors and regulators have the tools and resources they need to hold both individuals and corporations accountable for financial wrongdoing. Right now, our efforts to investigate and prosecute financial crimes are under-resourced. We will increase funding for the DOJ, SEC, and CFTC so they have the resources and manpower they need to punish lawbreakers. And we will appoint tough, independent regulators and ensure the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are independently regulated. This is the only way we can ensure transparency and decrease conflicts of interest to make markets more stable and fair for everyone.

D: Man! What diverse realities are shaping our lives on Main Street? From what you’ve read thus far, Clinton and Kaine are exhaustively thorough and logical. However, why don’t the over 2,000 reviewers of this definitive guide to American government written by Clinton and Kaine, completely read the book before posting such scathing criticism of this game-changing masterpiece on Amazon’s website?

M: Dude! Why don’t the newscasters read the book before reporting to their desks? I just hope the next presidential and vice presidential debate moderators actually take the time to read Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s work of genius. Simon and Shuster needs to distribute this magnum opus to all public schools across the United States of America with counsel from Warren Buffett.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)