Journalists I Like

Here is a list of journalists on the left that I like and respect. They represent a fairly large swath on the leftist continuum. All have a definite point of view but they all write from the coolness of reason and on the basis of fact rather than fear, anger, or misrepresentation. And some of them are downright eloquent.

(In no particular order):

• Sarah Leonard
• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Matt Taibbi
• Jelani Cobb
• Chris Hayes
• Ezra Klein
• Bhaskar Sunkara
• Kevin Drum

Foxconn Quickie

One other point about the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin, sort of following up on my last post. Foxconn is one of the largest--and most ruthless--companies in the world. When they negotiate with a Howdy Doody like Scott Walker, there's no doubt in my mind who got the better end of that deal.

Wisconsin's (Un) Ayn-Randism

As one who was born and raised in Wisconsin, and who hasn't lived there in many years, I have watched the deterioration of the state by Scott Walker and the Tea Party/Koch Bros legislature. The right-wing narrative is of the angry liberal. But as for me, it is not anger but sadness. Economically, Walker has--quite successfully I'm afraid--turned the state from a progressive beacon toward the direction of a poor southern state. Politically, he has turned the state from the textbook example of clean, honest, and open government to one of corruption for which we used to ridicule New Jersey (my apologies to New Jersey). It leaves me sad and dismayed rather than angry.

I suppose this is really unrelated to the purpose of this post--which is the proposed FoxConn deal--but only serves as a preamble.

The Wisconsin/FoxConn deal is a great illustration of the disconnect between what so-called small-government right-wing capitalists say they believe, and what they actually practice. On the one hand, they say that government can do nothing worthwhile (and they mean nothing). And on the other hand--as in the FoxConn corporate socialism example--they say that capitalism won't work without the most severe government intervention in the "free market". So much for Ayn Rand.

The Whiner in Chief

The Whinefest of President Trump and is supporters has become an epic comedy. There is a Republican in the White House; both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans; the Supreme Court is controlled by fringy right-wing Republican appointees; half the criticism of Trump comes from Republican politicians and media outlets (even Fox News can't help it sometimes); shoot, even Robert Mueller is a Republican. The Democrats have virtually no power in government. And yet, Trump and his core supporters whine that his entire agenda is being thwarted by these powerless Democrats. Very funny.

White Resentment of the Elites

A lot has been written over the last several months about the so-called white resentment of the so-called working-class whites. But let's not overlook the white resentment among right-wing elites. It may be more dangerous.

I put Antonin Scalia on this list. As a layman reading excerpts from his opinions over the years, I think that resentment oozed out at times. And Chief Justice Roberts also belongs on the list. His career kinda sorta is based on white resentment. He became a rising star at just the time when the Right was looking for legal "scholars" who could put a respectable legal veneer on the notion that racial discrimination was a problem fully solved, and that (largely nonexistent) "reverse discrimination" had become the real problem.

The result was the gutting of the Voting Rights Act as well as the Courts' approval of voter suppression laws. These things weren't done by the KKK or the Nazis. It was done by these guy and others like them. Don't ever forget that.

Quote of the Day

From Naomi Klein's excellent essay (as usual) in The Nation:

But in so many ways, Trump is not a rupture at all, but rather the culmination—the logical end point—of a great many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time. That greed is good. That the market rules. That money is what matters in life. That white men are better than the rest. That the natural world is there for us to pillage. That the vulnerable deserve their fate, and the 1 percent deserve their golden towers. That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protecting. That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after our own. That there is no alternative to any of this.

Random Thoughts

• Fox News is not allowed on our house so I admit that I may be out of touch with what's happening in that alternate universe.  But all of a sudden I started seeing the term "Snowflake" appearing in my Facebook feed from some conservative friends (yes I have a few).  Well, I eventually was able to read between the lines and discern the definition.  Snowflake: the opposite of Fascist.
• I don't know what on earth conservatives would do without the Hollywood/entertainment industry to serve as its last resort deflection tool.  "Hey, Trump and the Repubs just doomed our planet!".  "But yeah, what about that Kathy Griffin.  Isn't she horrible?"  No matter what the topic, all they have to do is blame it all on Hollywood. Sheesh.
• Paul Ryan tweeted this recently: "BREAKING NEWS → Next week, the House will vote to dismantle #DoddFrank. The era of taxpayer bailouts and #TooBigToFail is over."  Now read this and tell me how much better things will be if only we can get rid of Donald Trump.  Be careful what you wish for: things could get worse.

Four Months of Trump

Well, we've lived through four months of the Trump presidency.  The crazy thing is that there really haven't been many surprises, except perhaps that his (imagined) populism turned out to be a total scam job.  That has been surprising to some but not so much to me.  Donald Trump is first and foremost from and of the 1%, so for me it would have been more surprising if he had turned out to really mean it.

On a personal level, President Trump is pretty awful. It's possible that the fifty-year-old Donald Trump was more personable and capable of speaking in complete sentences (albeit still a jerk).  But the seventy-year-old Trump is is a thin-skinned and weak-kneed whiner, and obviously in possession of some sort of personality disorder.  The surprising thing to me is how many people still mistake bluster for strength, whether it's from Dick Cheney, John Bolton, or Donald Trump.

But, having said that, it is a mistake for progressives to dwell so much on the personal side of all this.  The problem we face--in terms of policy and politics--is a Republican problem (coupled with a tendency of too many Democrats to tack to the neo-liberal center and right).  If President Trump was removed from office tomorrow, the policy fights we face would be the same, possible worse.  A President Pence, working with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would be more dangerous than what we have now.  The Republican Party agenda's on immigration, health care, income distribution, labor, race, war and peace, education, and..the list is endless...would be the same no matter which of the scary list of Republicans were president. Maybe worse.  Actually, replacing Trump with Pence would be a gift to conservatives, one we shouldn't give them.

Instead, we should make the Republicans live with Trump, leveraging his unpopularity in order oppose everything.  Focus on the policy and the agenda, not on the man so much.  Slow down the agenda wherever possible and work for 2018 with a 50-state strategy.

A Few Things That Popped into My Mind Today

• I don't want to hear about the US having the highest (marginal) corporate tax rate compared to Europe unless we also talk about those countries having universal health care and a far superior safety net. I'm ready....
• I have been reading The Nation for about 50 years I think.  During the eight years of the Obama administration, I would say that they were probably about 50/50 in terms of their articles being supportive or critical of President Obama and his policies. What strikes me--admittedly anecdotally--about Trump supporters is that there seems to be nothing he can do that will draw even a hint of criticism from those supporters.
• I was finally able to finish Matt Taibbi's The Divide.  It was very hard to get through, making me extremely sad for my country and angry at the unpunished criminal behavior of America's entire financial services industry.
• I love curling!
• I grew up in Wisconsin during the Lombardi years and was a crazy Packer fan like everyone else.  Today I am amazed at how uninterested I am in football.
• I am also amazed at how so many people are able to translate Trump's thin-skinned whining into strength.

Headline of the Day

Headline from this article on Vox.com:

"If you're a millionaire, the AHCA gives you $50K. If you're poor, it costs you $1,420."

A Brief Encyclopedia for the Right

Offering a quick reference encyclopedia of, by, and about the Political and Religious Right.  The first several entries, in random order:

• Irrelevance:  Dinesh D'Souza
• Pharisee:  Matt Walsh (see also Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, et al)
• Overrated:  Paul Ryan
• Con Man: Paul Ryan
• Holy Trinity: (a) for Christians: Father, Son, Holy Spirit (b) for the Religious Right: Second Amendment, American Exceptionalism, Supply-Side Economics
• Affordable Care Act: Slavery
• Slaves: Immigrants
• Hoax:  Science
• Science:  Creationism
• Death Panel: The 2017 version of the House of Representatives
• Air Quotes:  Apparently, something that should be put around almost everything Donald Trump says.

Goobledygook

On Twitter today, Ezra Klein (whom I follow) tweeted this article from Vox.com.  It is rather lengthy, and I guess its purpose is to say that leftist politics are worthless for the defeat of Trumpism. The problem is, after slogging through the article, I am not left with any indication as to what exactly is worth doing. Perhaps it's because there are too many passages like this one:

"This isn’t to say that there aren’t drawbacks to European welfare states. There’s real evidence that excessive regulation can stymie innovation and make it harder to start new firms, and that some welfare state labor protections (like the notorious French laws limiting corporations’ ability to fire employees) can make doing business maddeningly difficult."

This is the kind of meaningless blah-blah you expect to hear on CNBC's Squawk Box. Let's see..."real evidence"?..."excessive regulation"?..."innovation"?( ah, yes, one can always pull out the "stymie innovation" card to justify almost any point)..."maddeningly difficult"?  There is so much meaningless fluff packed onto this one paragraph that it's hard to take the whole thing seriously.

If the purpose of this piece is to convince progressives that political success is only to be achieved through more tacking to the right (i.e., the political equivalent of "we had to burn the village to save it"), then the author is wasting my time. I will trust The Nation, Jacobin, and other outlets to discuss strategies that are actually worth pursuing.

Ain't Freedom Great?

One prominent Republican--now a member of President Trump's Cabinet--said that the Affordable Care Act was the worst thing since slavery.  (If this is the case then I wonder why it wasn't repealed outright on January 21st ?!?)

From what I can tell, the replacement plan of the Repubs has done away with this slavery in a way that is entirely worthy of the GOP scam artists.  You don't like the enslavement of your ACA subsidy?  Well, good news!  Now you can try to buy health insurance with a tax credit that is entirely inadequate.  And some of you will be given the ultimate freedom, since you probably won't be able to afford health insurance at all and you will be totally free of that enslavement.

All this so they can give a tax cut to the rich, who need it so badly.  Ain't freedom a wonderful thing?  Thank you, Paul Ryan.  You make Ayn Rand so proud.

2009 and 2017

Kevin Drum had a pretty good blog post on Mother Jones yesterday. He compared the press headlines and stories in 2009 versus 2017. In 2009, on the federal level, Obama had won a very decisive victory and Congress was controlled by the Democrats. The narrative then--even in The New York Times--was that Obama was not reaching out to the Repubs enough (even though he was, but that's another story), and that this was some sort of failure. In 2017, by contrast, the narrative is a lot different. There is no expectation that the Repubs should "reach out".  In fact, it seems to be presented as a sign of strength that they are not.

If you have followed the press the last few years, this is not surprising, since it was pretty consistently presented--again, also in The New York Times--that this failure to compromise was the fault of the Democrats, and specifically Preident Obama. And this was true whether the Dems or the Repubs controlled Congress.

It's not worth whining about but I think it's pretty interesting. (Kevin Drum has his own idea on why this is so.)

Quote for Today

Some people are able to say things in just the right way.  I guess that's why we call them great writers.  Here is Philip Roth from the January 30 New Yorker:

“I was born in 1933,” he continued, “the year that F.D.R. was inaugurated. He was President until I was twelve years old. I’ve been a Roosevelt Democrat ever since. I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Right on!

Popularity

Although there has been a recent reversal in some of the polls of President Trump's job approval polling (i.e., moving more negative), some people are puzzled that his approval rating has not been worse.

Well, I have lived most of my adult life with a good portion (maybe a majority) of the American people being wrong, so it doesn't really surprise me.

• The Vietnam War was very popular--until it wasn't.
• Bush II's Iraq War was popular--until it wasn't.
• Martin Luther King Jr. was very unpopular--until he was (well, at least a little more).
• Rights for homosexuals were very unpopular--until they became at least less so.

Okay okay, so this is way oversimplified.  But at the same time, all you can do is keep fighting and organizing and protesting and telling the truth.  It can't hurt.

Religious Liberty?

I fully understand that the latest leak of the draft Executive Order allowing Christians to break the law could just be a ruse to divert our attention from some other disaster that the Trump administration is contemplating (one a day it seems), but I want to talk about it anyway.

Although I am neither a trained historian nor trained theologian, I am a Christian and I am pretty comfortable with the following assertions:

The Religious Right is pretty adamant that some threat to Christianity is coming from the secular world. It bears reminding that "religious liberty" is not a biblical concept. There is nothing in the Bible that claims a right to religious liberty. In fact, for almost all of the 2000+ years of the existence of Christianity, the Church has been utterly opposed to the concept. We didn't have heretics burned at the stake and witch trials because the Church (in all its various formulations) was a champion of religious liberty. The Puritans didn't believe in freedom of religion except for the right to create a community that they could govern with their own version of Sharia Law.

On the contrary, religious liberty did not come about until countries were governed by secular principles. To the extent the we have religious liberty in America, it is because it is granted by a secular government and society. The places with the least religious freedom are those that are the least secular.

So don't ever be taken in by the whining of the Religious Right. They just want a license to disobey any law they choose--by the way, this is also very unbiblical--under the smokescreen of incorrect biblical teachings and a false notion of what religious liberty means. And they want to blame the secular society which is responsible for granting that right in the first place.

American Institutions Won't Save Us

I agree with Paul Krugman that American institutions will not save us from Trump. But here is an even more forceful article demonstrating that they never have. One excerpt:

This is a country that managed to enslave — to torture and drive unto death, both physical and social — millions of black men, women, and their children, for over two centuries, and then to reenslave them by another name for another century, not by shredding the Constitution but by writing and interpreting and executing the Constitution. This is a country that managed to mow down trade unionists and dissenters, to arrest and throw them into jail, to destroy vibrant social movements, to engineer a near-complete rout of American social democracy after World War II, to build and fill concentration camps, to pass legislation during the Cold War authorizing internment camps: all without a strongman; indeed, often with the collusion of some of the most esteemed voices of liberty in the country.

This is a country that in the last half-century has managed to undo some of the precious achievements of liberal civilization — the ban and revulsion against torture, the prohibition on preventive war, the right to organize, the skepticism of the imperial executive — through lawyers, genteel men of the Senate with their august traditions and practices, and the Supreme Court.

It's worth a read.

Trump Week #2 Addendum

Also, I am going to stop listening to strategic advice from the centrists and Third Way types (not that I did much anyway). They are big contributors to the mess we find ourselves in. Instead, I will be heeding politicians like Sanders, Merkley, Ellison, and Warren. And publications on the left like Jacobin, The Nation, and Dissent. And groups like Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays, etc. We need to organize and resist.

Trump Week #2

• I think those that know me will attest that I am not prone to melodrama. (In fact I have been accused of being too much the opposite.)  But I will say this anyway:  The day that President Trump issued his anti-Muslim EO might be the day that the United States ceased to be a great nation.
• Interesting quote from a  NY Times article, quoting a German equity fund manager:

"China does not have free elections. China jails labor organizers, while lavishing credit on state-owned enterprises. All of this makes Mr. Xi an ironic choice as an icon for free trade. Yet Mr. Xi’s speech was so successful that it won the embrace of business people and world leaders alike.

At a lunch in Davos two days after Mr. Xi’s address, a Berlin-based private equity fund manager, André Loesekrug-Pietri, stood in a dining room full of more than 100 people and predicted the dawning of a new era.

“We heard a Chinese president becoming the leader of the free world,” he said."

• The Dems should obstruct and resist the Gorsuch nomination with everything they have. Screw the filibuster.  Keep the seat vacant for as long as possible. The 4-4 split is to our advantage.
• The Trump administration has already shown an extraordinary talent for making bad decisions and then executing them poorly (e.g., the anti-Muslim EO).  Yeah, kind of like GW Bush's Iraq War, isn't it?  And it looks like it might be the way a lot of things are going to unfold in the coming months.

Week One with Trump

• Give Trump a chance?  Of course I am.  So far not so good.
• The Religious Right's Brigade of Hate continues to grow.  Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Franklin Graham.  This week I add Matt Walsh.  It's important to keep in mind that the Religious Right (note that I eschew the term Christian Right) has little to do with Christianity. It is Big Business. Some people have gotten very rich in that industry, which is why they are so comfortable with Trump.
• Post-Women's-March Reactions: I didn't participate in the march but my daughter and granddaughter were in the Chicago march. From what I've seen on Facebook among my Trump-supporting friends, their objections seem to be that (1) a few of the million or more signs were offensive and (2) there was some litter left behind. Nice try.
• Oh...and some of the signs contained the word "pussy".  Well, if you are offended by a sign which is simply quoting the leader of the free world, then maybe the problem isn't with the sign.
• One final review.  When Barack Obama took office, the Dow Industrials were at about 8,000. When he left, it was approaching 20,000.
• Another review: the number of abortions pretty much increased every year of Reagan's presidency (~1.3 million per year according to CDC). From 2009 to 2013 they steadily decreased from 789,000 to 664,000.

First Post of Randomness in 2017

• Barack Obama is the best president of my lifetime. (There presidents in my lifetime haven't been greatest, so maybe the bar is low.)  I wish he had been even better in many ways, but in terms of policy, the way he conducted himself, and what he was able to accomplish with the worst Congress of my lifetime, the contest isn't really that close.
• If you're on Facebook or Twitter or other social media, a good rule of thumb is to ignore any meme that comes from a source that has the word "Patriot" in its name.  It is probably worthless and a lie. Don't waste your time.
• How many Goldman Sachs people is Trump going to appoint?  So glad he is thinking about the little guy like he promised. 
• Unlike some of my progressive comrades, I don't have any illusions that Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election fair and square.  One bone of contention I have, however, is with this whole concocted notion that the media was in Clinton's pocket.  Unlike (I assume) most of my conservative non-comrades, I actually read The New York Times every day, and I can attest without reservation that their coverage of Hillary was relentlessly negative.

Reading List for 2016

Okay, for whatever reason I always feel compelled to post a list of the books I've read the previous year. Here's my list for 2016:

Frank Herbert, Dune

Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name

Sarah Hall, Daughters of the North (originally published as The Carhullan Army)

Mary Gaitskill, Veronica

Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master’s Son

Paul Harding, Tinkers (second reading)

Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Jay Atkinson, Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes

Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn

Nell Zink, The Wallcreeper

Doris Lessing, A Ripple from the Storm

Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You

Ron Rash, The Cove

Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter

Doris Lessing, Landlocked (second reading)

Roxane Gay, An Untamed State

Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City

William Lychack, The Architect of Flowers

I am glad that I read every single one of them!