The Wolf Hall Commentary

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The BBC's show Wolf Hall (WH) chronicles the turbulent times of Henry VIII's rule and his relationship with his consiglieri, Thomas Cromwell. It's a more detailed look at the history than, A Man For All Seasons (AMFAS), which covers the same historical period, focusing on Thomas More, not Cromwell. AMFAS is a movie, WH is a two-season multi-episode drama that more time for a more detailed history.

AMFAS presents Thomas More across as a beacon of moral probity, refusing to compromise his religious principles about divorce when Henry VIII wants to divorce a wife who has not produced a son. Henry executes More when this uncompromising attitude threatens Henry's authority.

Wolf Hall, on the other hand, discloses that More's morality was much more ambiguous. For example, he  tortured at least one of Henry's opponents. For Cromwell, carrying out Henry's wishes is full of compromises and calculations, just as More's was, even though More drew the line at endorsing Henry's divorce, while Cromwell enabled it.

One historical side note: I've read that before antibiotics and modern medicine, childbirth was fraught with peril for women. So marriages in that dark time lasted, on average, six years. Meanwhile, in modern, healthier times, marriage lasts, on average, six years. The difference: The women get to live!

The political problem of how far to go into the territory of immorality, how to administer a state, is something we struggle with even today. Comments condemning Senators and Congresspeople for compromise are endemic in political discussions. 

But what is representative government if not a negotiation that, of necessity, must include compromise? Was Thomas More a prig, worthy of scorn, or was he an upright man, clear about his moral compass? Intolerance of ambiguity and compromise might produce a more moral state, or it might produce the rigid torture of Vlad the Impaler's terrified population.

Should we compromise, or hold out for moral consistency? The current setup systemically requires the former, if any public policy is to occur at all.

Update: A related story about how pursuing perfect justice degrades the pursuer.

Monopoly's predecessor: The Landlord's Game

Invented by a woman (Elizabeth Magie), it promotes Henry George's economics of taxing land, first and foremost. There are two sets of rules: Monopoly, in which one player bankrupts everyone else, and Prosperity, which everyone wins. You can still get the Prosperity rules online.

 
 

You can see more here. Excerpt:

"There are few cases of creative and intellectual theft more egregious than the origins of the billion-dollar grossing Monopoly. The short version: a brilliant woman economist invented an anti-capitalist board game that was stolen by a lying, opportunistic man and repackaged as capitalist family fun.

"In early 1933, Richard Brace Darrow went to a dinner party where he was taught a new game. He had such a good time, and waxed so enthusiastic, his hosts typed up the game’s rules and sent Darrow a copy. Then Darrow proceeded to draw his own version, on a circular piece of oilcloth. (The version he’d played at the dinner party had also been homemade — mass-produced board games were not yet an ordinary commodity.)

"Darrow was a heater salesman who’d lost his job and times were lean. He decided to take his prototype and pitch the game to Parker Brothers. The rules were exactly the same as those his friends had shared, down to the misspelling of Marven Gardens as Marvin Gardens. Parker Brothers didn’t bite right away, but then they did, and Darrow became a millionaire."

How Tesla Will Die

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

Pulled from a Nextdoor post:

The Nextdoor editors deleted a recent post asking how Elon managed to be the richest man in the US. I understand their reluctance to permit political debates where all we see is how disrespectful each side can be of the other. I've tried to remain polite. In fact, I have no disrespect for voters who support Musk. Given the D's malfeasance, their protest is perfectly understandable. We'll see if that bit of politeness convinces them to leave this post up. If not, I'll post it to the Fair Oaks group that permits political comment. 

 

Unfortunately, the "who's the richest" game has a flexible scoring method (the stock market) so Elon may not be as rich has we think. He's certainly willing to take risks the US car makers weren't willing to take (see Matt Stoller's explanation...really worth a look) 

 

Meanwhile, Musk's risky position is truly precarious. Musk is in a world of hurt if his gambles don't pay off.

 

 

Today's Bee Letter: Are Democrats failing to address homelessness?

"Two career Democrats prove why they're terrible leaders for Sacramento" p. b10 3/31/25

Your editorial about Supervisors Serna and Kennedy criticizing Supervisor Rodriguez' comments concerning the county's homelessness strategy is a perfect example of that (Democrat) Boss Tweed's saying: "I don't care who people vote for as long as I can pick the candidates."

Both parties are willing to come up with millions, indeed billions, for a sports arena, or an expanded jail, but nobody's willing to propose rent control--and the majority of homeless people are victims of rents rising faster than incomes. A local version of Section 8 rental subsidies is also off the table. The important issue here isn't how Kennedy and Serna "mansplained" to Rodriguz. It's the money, and neither "side" in this debate brings that up.

When Will the Democrats Learn?

(c) by Mark Dempsey

"Nobody has been corrected; no one has forgotten anything, nor learned anything." - The Chevalier de Panat (often attributed to Talleyrand, about the aristocrats' response to the French revolution).

That quote sprang to mind after reading a resignation account from Ruth Marcus, a former Washington Post employee. She quit after the owner, Jeff Bezos, instructed the paper's editorial staff to promote "free markets and personal liberty," and to not endorse a candidate in the Harris v. Trump election of 2024. 

Ms. Marcus condemns Bezos, and the Post retiring presidential endorsements, but says nothing about how the Democrats deserved to lose. To this writer, that same inability to acknowledge failure in anyone but one's opponents continues to be the Democratic party's response to Trump.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing Trump. It's obvious that he's the "wrecking ball president," thrown, like a hand grenade into Washington's political and public policy system. He's chaotic, and incompetent. He's made America not "Great," but a laughingstock. Here's an apt description that came out after his first presidential victory. It still applies:

“Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge.....Workers now sense that economic justice — a condition in which labor and capital recognize and value each other — is permanently out of reach; the class war is over and it was an absolute rout: insatiable parasites control everything now, and even drain us gratuitously, as if exacting reparations for the money and effort they spent taming us. The economy itself, and the institutions protecting it, must be attacked, and actually crippled, to get the attention of the smug patricians in charge. Two decades of appealing to justice, proportion, and common decency have yielded nothing." - Thomas Greene (Noteworthy):

The question we're still waiting for "Team Blue" to answer is "What was so bad it needed to be destroyed by a wrecking ball?" 

So...to Trump's supporters, he was a protest against a system rigged to produce more than eight million foreclosures thanks to subprime mortgages and the beggar-on-every-corner economy we currently enjoy.  The Obama presidency, for all its "hope and change" proved to be more Caspar Milquetoast than FDR. 

Thanks to predecessors of both parties, Obama inherited the worst bank crises in US history. The subprime/derivates meltdown, now called the "Global Financial Crisis" (GFC) was literally seventy times larger than the previous biggest-ever financial and political problem, the Savings & Loans (S&Ls) scandal. 

But when it came to the S&Ls--which Reagan's initial strategy of deregulation worsened--regulators responded. They filed more than thirty thousand referrals for criminal prosecution and the Attorney General prosecuted more than twelve hundred cases with a ninety percent conviction rate. They got big fish, too--Mike Milken and Charles Keating among them.

Fast forward to the 70-times-larger GFC. How many referrals for criminal prosecution from the Obama regulators? Zero. Attorney General Eric Holder prosecuted about a dozen cases, all small fish. 

The template for how they treated the really big (seventy times bigger) criminals was how they treated Angelo Mozilo, whose frauds crashed Countrywide Mortgage as he made nearly a half-billion dollars in the process. The Justice Dept. fined Mozilo dimes on the dollar of his loot, without even requesting a confession of guilt--which makes the civil cases harder to prosecute. Mozilo, with his fellow criminals, got our central bank ("The Fed") to extend $16-$29 trillion in credit to the financial sector, at least according to its own congressionally-mandated audit. For only $9 trillion the Fed could have paid off all the mortgages in the country, but saving the banks was perhaps more important.

So...the Democrats were complicit in one of the largest thefts in human history. The indignation about how manufacturing has been shipped overseas, and how criminals got a "get out of jail free" card from the Obama administration inspired voters to vote for the wrecking ball. And until the Democrats have their come-to-Jesus moment, and repent their cowardly behavior, they'll continue to inspire more wrecking. 

There's a Russian sentiment the US has yet to learn: "Nothing's so bad it can't get worse." We'll see something like that in action in the years to come. And if the "smug patricians" continue to insist on the victor's spoils in the class war underway, the underclass will continue to elect wrecking balls until all of us--the guilty and the innocent--are swept away in the undertow of history.

Today's Bee Letter: Josh Hoover, Mr. "Behind the Scenes"

The Bee publishes an editorial praising Josh Hoover's "behind the scenes" effective legislating. Meanwhile, couragescore.org rates him an "F" for his consistent vote against issues favoring labor and the environment. Hoover was staff for (now) congressman Kevin Kiley, a former assemblyman who endorsed Donald Trump and whose agenda consists largely of complaining about Gavin Newsom. Surely your editorial page can do better than that.

‘We Know How to Solve the Mental Health Crisis. Will We Actually Do It?’

From the Davis Vanguard

Advocates Say We Must Invest in Housing, Peer Support, and Community-Based Care—Not Coercion

In the wake of high-profile tragedies involving individuals with mental health challenges, politicians and media outlets often return to a familiar refrain: lock more people up. But mental health advocates are calling that approach dangerous, ineffective, and deeply unjust.

“People living with mental health challenges are 11 times more likely to be the victims of crime and violence than to commit an act of violence,” said Simon McCormack, NYCLU senior writer and host of the organization’s Rights This Way podcast. “Yet every time a tragic incident occurs, the response is to call for more involuntary commitment and more criminalization.”

In the podcast episode titled “We Know How to Solve the Mental Health Crisis. Will We Actually Do It?”, McCormack spoke with Harvey Rosenthal, CEO of the Alliance for Rights and Recovery, and Beth Haroules, senior staff attorney at the NYCLU. Together, they dismantled the myths surrounding mental illness, crime, and public safety—and laid out a transformative vision for what true care could look like.

Rosenthal’s career in mental health advocacy began with a deeply personal experience. “I was a patient in a mental hospital on Long Island in 1969,” he recalled. “If I had stayed longer, they were going to give me shock therapy. I was lucky to get out.”

That harrowing experience lit a fire in him. “Eventually, I went to work in a state hospital in Albany,” Rosenthal said. “I wanted to help people not go through what I did—to reclaim hope, to find recovery, to have a say in their care.”

That commitment evolved into decades of advocacy, rooted in a movement that prioritizes human rights, choice, and self-determination. “I was once told, ‘Don’t use the word recovery—it’ll give people false hope,’” Rosenthal said. “That tells you everything about the old system.”

Haroules described New York’s current mental health system as fundamentally broken—and failing the very people it claims to help.

“We don’t have culturally competent services. We don’t have services based in the community. And we don’t have housing,” she said. “We treat people in crisis by briefly medicating them in ERs, then dumping them back on the street without follow-up, navigators, or support.”

Instead of addressing this system failure, Haroules said politicians default to the same solution: criminalization.

“Our elected officials fail us,” she said. “They fall back on this one trick in their playbook: lock people up, take them out of public view, and call it a solution. And the media stops covering it. But for the person who needed care? Their suffering continues.”

The discussion also tackled Kendra’s Law, a New York statute that allows for involuntary outpatient commitment (IOC) for people with serious mental illness. While the law is framed as a safety measure, both Rosenthal and Haroules view it as coercive and often racially biased.

“Four out of five Kendra’s Law orders in New York City are imposed on people of color,” Rosenthal noted. “It’s rooted in fear and stigma, not real support.”

He emphasized that when people are offered services voluntarily—especially peer-led services—they overwhelmingly accept them. “We created the INSET model, where peers engage people instead of forcing care,” Rosenthal said. “In our Westchester County pilot, we engaged 83% of people who otherwise met all the criteria for forced treatment.”

Rather than expanding coercion, he and Haroules argue that the state should scale up these voluntary, peer-led alternatives.

Another major reform on the table is Daniel’s Law, named after Daniel Prude, who was killed by police during a mental health crisis in Rochester. The law would replace police with peer and health care responders in mental health emergencies.

“The police are trained for command and control. Their job is not empathy. It’s not de-escalation,” said Haroules. “Daniel’s Law says we need a health-based response—peers, social workers, and medical staff who can actually help someone in crisis.”

The proposal, now gaining traction in both houses of the New York legislature, would create local response councils and state-level oversight to ensure communities build crisis teams that reflect their specific needs.

Over and over, Rosenthal and Haroules returned to a core truth: we know what works.

“We know how to help people live real lives,” said Rosenthal. “It starts with housing first. It continues with peer bridgers who support people as they transition out of hospitals. It includes clubhouses—community centers where people build relationships and routines without being pathologized.”

The evidence backs it up. A Housing First model aimed at people with complex needs showed a 93% housing retention rate—even among people considered “noncompliant.” Peer Bridger programs have slashed hospital readmissions and saved Medicaid funds.

“But instead of scaling what works,” Rosenthal said, “we invest in policing, hospitals, and jails.”

One critical weak point is discharge planning. Haroules pointed out that people are often released from psychiatric facilities without any plan—no housing, no follow-up, no care coordination.

“Discharge planning is supposed to be mandated under the law,” she said. “But it’s often ignored. And then we blame the person for returning in crisis.”

She and Rosenthal are pushing for reforms that would require critical incident reviews after each hospitalization or tragedy—reviews that identify what failed and how the system can be improved.

The danger is growing, especially with the return of Trump-era rhetoric. In 2024, the then-former president proposed rounding up unhoused people and confining them in federally run tent cities—language eerily reminiscent of internment camps.

“This is eugenics thinking,” Haroules warned. “It’s about disappearing people who are inconvenient. It’s about criminalizing poverty and illness.”

Rosenthal agreed. “We’re heading into very dark days if we don’t act now,” he said. “We need to hold the line—not just to protect rights, but to save lives.”

The solutions are not a mystery. They are humane, community-based, and already being implemented in small pockets across New York. What’s missing, Rosenthal and Haroules argue, is the political will.

“We don’t need more coercion,” Haroules said. “We need services that work. We need to meet people where they are—with care, not force.”