Sunday, September 23, 2018

Weekend Roundup

Got a late start this week, figuring I'd just go through the motions, but got overwhelmed, as usual.

Was reminded on twitter that Liz Fink died three years ago. Also pointed to this video biography. I couldn't tell whether the dog snoring sounds were in the video, given that the same dog was camped out under my desk (not the poodle pictured in the video, the legendary Sheldon).

Some scattered links this week:

  • Matthew Yglesias: Kavanaugh and Trump are part of a larger crisis of elite accountability in America: Two pretty good quotes here. The first gives you most of the background you need to judge Kavanaugh:

    An honest look at his career shows that it's extraordinarily undistinguished.

    Born into a privileged family that was well-connected in Republican Party politics, Kavanaugh coasted from Georgetown Prep, where he was apparently a hard partier, into Yale, where he joined the notoriously hard-partying secret society Truth & Courage, and then on to Yale Law School.

    Soon after graduating, he got a gig working for independent counsel Ken Starr -- a plum position for a Republican lawyer on the make because the Starr inquiry was supposed to take down the Clinton administration. Instead, it ended up an ignominious, embarrassing failure, generating an impeachment process that was so spectacularly misguided and unpopular that Democrats pulled off the nearly impossible feat of gaining seats during a midterm election when they controlled the White House.

    Kavanaugh clerked for Alex Kozinski, an appeals court judge who was well known to the lay public for his witty opinions and well known to the legal community as a sexual harasser. When the sexual harassment became a matter of public embarrassment in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Kavanaugh professed to have simply not noticed anything amiss -- including somehow not remembering Kozinski's dirty jokes email distribution list.

    Despite this inattention to detail, Kavanaugh ended up in the George W. Bush White House, playing a critical behind-the-scenes role as staff secretary to an administration that suffered the worst terrorist attack in American history, let the perpetrator get away, invaded Iraq to halt the country's nonexistent nuclear weapons program, and destroyed the global economy.

    Kavanaugh then landed a seat on the DC Circuit Court, though to do so, he had to offer testimony that we now know to have been misleading regarding his role in both William Pryor's nomination for a different federal judgeship and the handling of some emails stolen from Democratic Party committee staff. On the DC Circuit, he issued some normal GOP party-line rulings befitting his career as a Republican Party foot soldier.

    Now he may end up as a Supreme Court justice despite never in his life having been involved in anything that was actually successful. He has never meaningfully taken responsibility for the substantive failures of the Starr inquiry or the Bush White House, where his tenure as a senior staffer coincided with both Hurricane Katrina and failed Social Security privatization plan as well as the email shenanigans he misled Congress about, or for his personal failure as a bystander to Kozinski's abuses.

    He's been a man on the make ever since his teen years, and has consistently acted with the breezy confidence of privilege.

    The second quote wraps Trump up neatly. Every now and then you need to be reminded that however much you loathe Trump personally, his actual track record is even more nefarious than you recall:

    The most striking thing about Trump's record, in my view, is how frequently he has been caught doing illegal things only to get away without paying much of a price. His career is a story of a crime here, a civil settlement there, but never a criminal trial or anything that would deprive him of his business empire or social clout.

    Back in 1990, he needed an illegal loan from his father to keep his casinos afloat. So he asked for an illegal loan from his father, received an illegal loan from his father, and was caught by the New Jersey gaming authorities receiving said illegal loan from his father. But nothing really happened to him as a result. He paid a $65,000 fine and moved on.

    This happened to Trump again and again before he began his political career. From his empty-box tax scam to money laundering at his casinos to racial discrimination in his apartments to Federal Trade Commission violations for his stock purchases to Securities and Exchange Commission violations for his financial reporting, Trump has spent his entire career breaking various laws, getting caught, and then essentially plowing ahead unharmed.

    When he was caught engaging in illegal racial discrimination to please a mob boss, he paid a fine. There was no sense that this was a repeated pattern of violating racial discrimination law, and certainly no desire to take a closer look at his various personal and professional connections to the Mafia.

    If Trump had been a carjacker or a heroin dealer, this rap sheet would have had him labeled a career criminal and treated quite harshly by the legal system. But operating under the rules of rich-guy impunity, Trump remained a member of New York high society in good standing -- hosting a television show, having Bill and Hillary Clinton attend his third wedding as guests, etc. -- before finally leaning into his lifelong dalliances with racial demagoguery to become president.

    Over the course of that campaign, he wasn't only credibly accused of several instances of sexual assault -- he was caught on tape confessing -- but he won the election anyway, and Congress has shown no interest in looking into the matter.

    Other Yglesias pieces:

    More Kavanaugh links:

  • Michelle Alexander: We Are Not the Resistance: New NY Times opinion columnist, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), the book that brought its subject into mainstream political discourse. Here she bravely tries to turn the table, arguing "Donald Trump is the one who is pushing back against the new nation that's struggling to be born."

    Resistance is a reactive state of mind. While it can be necessary for survival and to prevent catastrophic harm, it can also tempt us to set our sights too low and to restrict our field of vision to the next election cycle, leading us to forget our ultimate purpose and place in history.

    The disorienting nature of Trump's presidency has already managed to obscure what should be an obvious fact: Viewed from the broad sweep of history, Donald Trump is the resistance. We are not.

    Those of us who are committed to the radical evolution of American democracy are not merely resisting an unwanted reality. To the contrary, the struggle for human freedom and dignity extends back centuries and is likely to continue for generations to come. . . .

    Donald Trump's election represents a surge of resistance to this rapidly swelling river, an effort to build not just a wall but a dam. A new nation is struggling to be born, a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith, egalitarian democracy in which every life and every voice truly matters.

  • Daniel Bessner: What Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Think About the South China Sea? Sub hed is more to the point: "the rising left needs more foreign policy. Here's how it can start." Basic point:

    Left-wing politics is, at its heart, about giving power to ordinary people. Foreign policy, especially recently, has been about the opposite. Since the 1940s, unelected officials ensconced in bodies like the National Security Council have been the primary makers of foreign policy. This trend has worsened since the Sept. 11 attacks, as Congress has relinquished its oversight role and granted officials in the executive branch and the military carte blanche. Foreign policy elites have been anything but wise and have promoted several of the worst foreign policy blunders in American history, including the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

    The left should aim to bring democracy into foreign policy. This means taking some of the power away from the executive and, especially, White House institutions like the National Security Council and returning it to the hands of Congress. In particular, socialist politicians should push to reassert Congress's long-abdicated role in declaring war, encourage more active oversight of the military and create bodies that make national security information available to the public so that Americans know exactly what their country is doing abroad.

    Bessner goes on to outline four areas: Accountability, Anti-militarism, Threat deflation, and Internationalism. That's a good start, an outline for a book which I'd like to see but could probably write myself. One thing that isn't developed enough is why this matters. US foreign policy has always been dominated by business interests -- the Barbars Wars, the War of 1812, and the "Open Door" skirmishes in East Asia were all about supporting US traders, the Mexican and Spanish Wars were more nakedly imperialist; even after WWII, CIA coups in Guatemala and Iran had clear corporate sponsors. Such ventures had little domestic effect -- a few special interests benefited, but unless they escalated into world wars few ordinary Americans were affected. That changed after WWII, when the anti-communist effort was broadly directed against labor movements, and wound up undermining worker representation here, concentrating corporate power and dragging domestic politics to the right, subverting democracy and increasing inequality. Finance and trade policies were even more obviously captured by corporate interests. Corporations went global, exporting capital to more lucrative markets abroad. US trade deficits were tolerated because the profits could be returned to the investment banks and hedge funds that dominated the elite 1%. Meanwhile, nearly constant war coarsened and brutalized American society, making us meaner and more contemptuous, both of other and of ourselves. Harry Truman started the Cold War and wound up destroying our own middle class. GW Bush started the Global War on Terror, and all we have to show for it is Donald Trump -- a seething bundle of contradictions, blindly lashing out at the foreign policy he inherited and totally in thrall to it. So sure, the Rising Left needs a new foreign policy, and not just because the world should be treated better but because we should treat ourselves better too.

  • Sean Illing: Americans have a longstanding love of magical thinking: One more in a long series of superficial interviews with authors of recent books. This one is with Kurt Andersen, whose Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire intrigued me as possibly insightful in the Trump era -- still, when I thumbed through the book, it struck me as possibly just glib and superficial, or maybe just too obvious. It's long been clear to me that in 1980 America voted for a deranged fantasy (Reagan) over sober reality (Carter), and since then it's been impossible to turn back -- not least because the Clinton-Obama Democrats have chosen to fight conservative myths with neoliberal ones. Andersen quote:

    I've been familiar with Trump for a long time, and I was one of the first people to write about him back in the '80s. I started paying attention to him before a lot of other people did. There's nothing there. He's a showman, a performance artist. But he's a hustler like P.T. Barnum.

    As I was writing this book in 2014 and 2015, I saw that Trump was running for president and I realized, about halfway through the book, that I had to reckon with this stupid -- but deadly serious -- candidacy.

    Watching it was strange, though. I was finishing the book and getting to the part about modern politics, and here's Trump about to win the nomination. It was as though I had summoned some golem into existence by writing this history, of which he, as you say, is the apotheosis.

  • Umair Irfan: Ryan Zinke to the oil and gas industry: "Our government should work for you": And Zinke's department, to say the least, already does.

    Irfan has also been following Hurricane Florence. See: Hurricane Florence's "1,000-year" rainfall, explained; and Hog manure is spilling out of lagoons because of Hurricane Florence's floods. Coal ash is another concern: Steven Murfson/Brady Dennis/Darryl Fears: More headaches as Florence's waters overtake toxic pits and hog lagoons; and, following up, Dam breach sends toxic coal ash flowing into a major North Carolina river; also: Kelsey Piper: How 3.4 million chickens drowned in Hurricane Florence.

  • Naomi Klein: There's Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico's Disaster. In many ways you can say the same thing about North Carolina's disaster, although Puerto Rico had to face a much more powerful storm with a lot less government aid.

  • German Lopez: There have been 263 days in 2018 -- and 262 mass shootings in America.

  • Dana Milbank: America's Jews are watching Israel in horror. Not a columnist I regularly read, least of all on Israel, but take this as a signpost that in Israel "the rise of ultranationalism tied to religious extremism, the upsurge in settler violence, the overriding of Supreme Court rulings upholding democracy and human rights, a crackdown on dissent, harassment of critics and nonprofits, confiscation of Arab villages and alliances with regimes -- in Poland, Hungary and the Philippines -- that foment anti-Semitism" is beginning to worry some previously staunch supporters.

    A poll for the American Jewish Committee in June found that while 77 percent of Israeli Jews approve of Trump's handling of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, only 34 percent of American Jews approve. Although Trump is popular in Israel, only 26 percent of American Jews approve of him. Most Jews feel less secure in the United States than they did a year ago. (No wonder, given the sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents and high-level winks at anti-Semitism, from Charlottesville to Eric Trump's recent claim that Trump critics are trying to "make three extra shekels.") The AJC poll was done a month before Israel passed a law to give Jews more rights than other citizens, betraying the country's 70-year democratic tradition.

    On the other hand:

    Netanyahu is betting Israel's future on people such as Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, featured at the ceremony for Trump's opening of the Jerusalem embassy. Hagee once said "Hitler was a hunter" sent by God to drive Jews to Israel. Pro-Israel apocalypse-minded Christians see Israel as a precursor to the second coming, when Jews must convert or go to hell.

    On the other hand, for the one Jewish-American who counts the most (to Trump, anyway): Jeremy W Peters: Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump's Washington.

  • Trita Parsi: The Ahvaz terror attack in Iran may drag the US into a larger war: On the same day that Trump Lawyer Giuliani Says Iran's Government Will Be Overthrown, gunmen attacked a parade in Ahvaz (southwestern Iran, a corner with a large Arabic population), killing 29. Iran's Rouhani blames US-backed Gulf states for military parade attack, specifically Saudi Arabia and the UAE -- the prime movers of the US-backed intervention in Yemen. This follows the September 7 fire-bombing of the Iranian consulate in Basra, Iraq, which in turn follows months of bellicose talk directed by the Trump administration (e.g., Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Giuliani) at Iran, following constant lobbying by Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel to get the US to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement.

  • Dick Polman: Donald Trump Might Be the 'Client From Hell': That's almost a commonplace by now, this article repeating all of the usual charges except the one that Trump doesn't pay his bills. Early on I doubted the investigation would ever get anywhere near Trump, but Sessions had to recuse himself after getting caught in a lie about not meeting any Russians, then Trump tried to intercede for Flynn and wound up throwing himself into the fray by firing Comey. Even so, Trump could have sat tight and let a few of his underlings get sacrificed. However, it's never just been a legal issue for Trump. It's also a political one, and he seems to intuitively grasp that he can spin the investigation as a "witch hunt" and rally his base with that. To some extent he's succeeded doing just that, and in so doing he's galvanized his base against an ever-expanding array of scandals. But his base, even having captured nearly all of the Republican Party faithful, is still a minority position. And to pretty much everyone else, he's managed to look guilty as hell. By looking and acting guilty, he's inviting further investigation. A lawyer who's any good would worry about the legal exposure, and keep it as far as possible away from the spotlight. On the other hand, Trump's main lawyer right now is Rudy Giuliani, a flack who like Trump is primarily interested in political gain.

  • Andrew Prokop: The Times's big new Rod Rosenstein story has major implications for Mueller's probe: Seems overblown as a story. Even if it's true, which I wouldn't bet on, it's a big jump from wondering whether the president is competent to using his office to unfairly plot against Trump. On the other hand, the firing of Andrew McCabe shows that there are powerful people in the Trump administration who are willing to use innuendo and gossip to punish DOJ employees they consider hostile to Trump.

  • Alex Ward: Trump's China strategy is the most radical in decades -- and it's failing. Also related: Dean Baker: Trump's Tariffs on Chinese Imports Are Actually a Tax on the US Middle Class. I think both of these pieces are overstated, but more important miss the main point. China has an industrial policy, while the US doesn't (well, except for arms and, barely, agribusiness). To boost exports, you need two things: supply, and an open market. The Chinese government works both sides of that equation, as indeed does the government of nation with a successful export-led growth program. So when China gains access to a market, China has made sure that it has companies producing products for that market. US trade treaties try to open markets for American exporters, but they do little to develop suppliers -- they expect capitalism to magically fill the supply gap, which could happens but most often won't. Nor is the problem there simply that the US doesn't have an industrial policy to make sure we're building products we can successfully export. It's also that US corporations are free to invest their capital elsewhere -- basically wherever they expect the highest return. And there is no real pressure on them to reinvest their profits in American workers -- either from the government or labor unions. So, Trump is right when he complains that China has been ripping us off for many years. However, he doesn't have the right tools for turning this around, and with his carte blanche for corporate power he refuses to even consider doing what needs to be done. But that doesn't mean that someone who cared about American workers couldn't do much better.

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