Mark Levison, The Levison Group
I am a rebel, an anti-establishment guy, schooled in the hard lessons of a government gone wrong in the 60s that resulted in the deaths of lots of young men from my generation. I am a non-conformist; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It is therefore, with considerable regret that I find myself oddly favoring the status quo as America is increasingly getting Uber-Trumped.
Uber, Lyft, et al., represent the new age way of acquiring a ride through an app. These companies threaten the livelihood of traditional taxi drivers. Well, this is America, isn’t it? Long live competition, and the way forward is seldom steeped in looking back. Uber is the epitome of Libertine philosophy. It insists on no government background checks, no fingerprinting and for goodness sake’s, certainly no drug tests. Traditionally, local, state and federal governments licensing and overseeing public carriers, like taxi cabs, require these things as a part of their charge to protect the public.
Uber’s drug testing policy is no testing at all; it’s customer feedback. If a customer reports that a driver was under the influence of a drug that offended the customer, the driver gets suspended and investigated. I’m not sure what kind of investigation is conducted, but I know it won’t be done by the government. The bigger concern is the drugged up driver doesn’t get reported because the passenger is dead. America is not ready to surrender the drug testing of our school bus drivers or airplane pilots to passenger ratings, but some Americans think consumer reporting is good enough for our new age taxi drivers.
Apparently a large number of Uber customers are Millennials and city dwellers. This demographic normally has a liberal Democrat bent. Yet, the Uber business model-part-time “non-employees”-results in employment without benefits. That doesn’t sound like a phenomenon a bunch of young Democrats would support, but I guess they do. In some quarters this new age economic model causes concern about deterioration of the lower and middle classes. If there’s too much loss of income in these groups, where does the money come from to fuel consumer purchases and drive the economy?
Uber claims its driver background checks are better than the government checks, but it is getting a lot of bad press regarding rapists and other undesirable “non-employees.” For me, I don’t have a horse in the race, and more than anything, I want to be known as a modern guy. Still, the lawyer in me wonders who is going to keep paying our bills if there is continued deterioration in the lower and middle classes. I suppose we can always work for the Donald Trumps of the world — which leads me to Donald Trump. He’s surprising just about everybody.
Despite being on the campaign stump for more than a month, his predicted deterioration has failed to materialize. I was sure that with all of his campaign stops, somewhere along the line, a gust of wind would catch his hair and expose him for what he is — nothing more than a comb-over artist. Not so. No matter how badly the media portrays his gaffes, his poll numbers, like his former Neilsen ratings, are steady or climbing. Before the first Republican debate he referred to his opponents as “contestants.” Most recently contestant Trump told the American people that he gets his briefing on military issues through the media — specifically cable talk shows. Call me crazy, but that sounds like a dumb thing to say. Still, it didn’t harm him. I guess that’s where a lot of the voters get their opinions, so maybe that makes sense to them.
What is clear is that the entrepreneur and TV personality has harnessed the anger of a large section of America against politicians and the media. Interestingly, this candidate’s (who is trying to out right the right wing of the Republican party) biggest fight so far has been with Fox News. That is puzzling in and of itself. The centerpiece of the Fox dust-up was his confrontation with Megyn Kelly and Trump’s past comments about women. Well heck, if everything politicians said, or did, in the past was counted against them, we wouldn’t have anybody to pick from. Actually, it’s Trump’s current comments that make me scratch my head. His first line of defense is that if he calls a woman a pig, because she’s a pig, truth, like in defamation actions, is an absolute defense. His next line of defense is the fact he “cherishes women” and “takes care of them.”
Truth is a defense I have often used, so I’m with him there. Cherishing women is a time honored characteristic of American presidents. In addition to his wife, Thomas Jefferson apparently cherished slave Sally Hemings, and we’ve recently learned that even dull Warren G. Harding had a mistress. Of course, there is always John Kennedy. It’s the part about “taking care of them” that’s got me confounded. I am plainly out of touch, because I thought that phrase would cause steam to shoot out of proud female ears. Well, maybe what he means is the government hasn’t taken very good care of women, because given the deficit, it hasn’t taken very good care of any of us, and he has a plan to do better. Although generally short on detailed plans, a criticism which can be leveled at other candidates, he has now gone out on a limb with specifics on his deportation policy.
As a pragmatist (I think I’m a pragmatist, just like everybody thinks they are pragmatists), I don’t know how you round up 11 million illegal immigrants (or 34 million as Trump has suggested at times) and ship them home. That reminds me of the old movies of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables fanning out across the country on the running boards of their big old cars to surprise and capture the undesirables. But, how do you catch 11-34 million immigrants? If you do, how much does it cost to capture and transport them south, and who does the work that at least some portion of them were doing? And one more thing: how long will it take us to build Trump’s version of “The Great Wall?” It reportedly took China eleven hundred years and 500,000 people to build their wall. If we dump those 30 million illegals into Nogales or Tijuana before the wall is done, won’t they just come scurrying back? Or maybe we can pay them to build the wall and just make sure they are on the other side when they lay the last brick. And then, of course, as a lawyer, the thought of repealing the 14th Amendment causes a little concern. I guess as in the legal disputes I document in settlement agreements, the devil is in the detail. The worst part of all of this is Mr. Trump and Mr. Uber have got me wondering if our existing government and its laws are not preferable to “the new way of thinking.” As a 60s rebel, that thought is horrifying.
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Under Analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Mark Levison is a member of the law firm of Lashly & Baer. Contact Under Analysis by e-mail at comments@levisongroup.com.
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