Donald Trump likes to talk about how he "inherited a mess": here's one measure of that, a chart of private-sector payroll employment over Obama's eight years:
Note first that the guy who really did inherit a mess was Obama, following eight years of Republican misrule under GW Bush. Also, that by ignoring cuts to public sector employment due to austerity measures mostly (but not exclusively) pushed by Republicans, this overstates the overall jobs gains a bit. Still, Trump's going to be hard-pressed to sustain Obama's rate, given hat he's working with the same "wrecking crew" that sunk Bush. Of course, you may not know all this, because Obama spent very little time bitching about the hole Republicans dug for him: he felt it important to recovery to project confidence, so he consistently understated the recession early on. In doing so, he did himself (and the country) a disservice, as he undercut the political case for more emphatic reforms.
Dean Baker reviews the latest jobs figures: Prime-Age Employment Rate Hits New High for Recovery in February. On the other hand, no false modesty from Trump: Trump keeps claiming he's created US jobs since Election Day. As the title continues: "Not so." Also: Spicer: Trump Says Formerly 'Phony' Jobs Numbers Are Now 'Very Real' For more, see Matthew Yglesias: Sean Spicer's appalling answer about economic data shows how far we've lowered the bar for Trump. Spicer's quip: "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now."
Some scattered links this week in the Trumpiverse:
Zoë Carpenter/George Zornick: Everything Trump Did in His 7th Week That Really Matters: Sub-heads:
I've featured these pieces every week since inauguration, but frankly the "federal rule" broken in the last point is a really stupid one, on the order of misusing a comma in a press release. As the rest of this post shows, there was much more amiss in the Trump world this week -- the purge of federal prosecutors, for instance, which shows the extent to which partisan politics has taken over law enforcement in the minds of Republican strategists.
More fallout on the Paul Ryan's health care hack (graphic right from
Talking Points
Memo):
Zoë Carpenter: The GOP's Health-Care Plan Could Strip Addiction and Mental-Health Coverage From 1.3 Million: Part of the Republican effort to roll back Medicaid expansion.
Esme Cribb: Trump Admin Keeps Up Attacks on CBO Before It Scores ACA Repeal Bill
Jesse Drucker: Wealthy Would Get Billions in Tax Cuts Under Obamacare Repeal Plan
Jessica Glenza: Trump supporters in the heartland fear being left behind by GOP health plan
Ezra Klein: Is the Republican health plan designed to fail? This piece has gotten a lot of attention for Klein's fawning portrait of Paul Ryan:
Paul Ryan isn't an amateur. He is, arguably, the most skilled policy entrepreneur of his generation. He is known for winning support from political actors and policy validators who normally reject his brand of conservatism. The backing he's built for past proposals comes from painstaking work talking to allies, working on plans with them, preparing them for what he'll release, hearing out their concerns, constructing processes where they feel heard, and so on. He's good at this kind of thing.
The implication is that since he didn't do all that this time he must not be serious about it. Paul Krugman has a response:
But has Ryan ever put together major legislation with any real chance of passage? Yes, he made a name for himself with big budget proposals that received adoring press coverage. But these were never remotely operational -- they were filled not just with magic asterisks -- tax loophole closing to be determined later, cost savings to be achieved via means to be determined later -- but with elements, like converting Medicare into a voucher system, that would have drawn immense flack if they got anywhere close to actually happening.
In other words, he has never offered real plans for overhauling social insurance, just things that sound like plans but are basically just advertisements for some imaginary plan that might eventually be produced. Actually pulling together a coalition to get stuff done? Has he ever managed that?
What I'd say is that Ryan is not, in fact, a policy entrepreneur. He's just a self-promoter, someone who has successfully sold a credulous media on a character he plays: Paul Ryan, Serious, Honest Conservative Policy Wonk. This is really his first test at real policymaking, which is a very different process. There's nothing strange about his inability to pull off the real thing, as opposed to the act. . . .
In other words, maybe this looks like amateur hour because it is. Ryan isn't a skilled politician inexplicably losing his touch, he's a con artist who started to believe his own con; Republicans didn't hammer out a workable plan because there is no such plan, and anyway they have no idea what that would involve.
Or to put it another way, this could just be more malevolence tempered by incompetence.
Matthew Yglesias: The Republican health plan is a huge betrayal of Trump's campaign promises: As if anything Trump's done as president isn't.
Julia Belluz: Scott Gottlieb, Trump's FDA pick, explained: "Trump wants to deregulate the Food and Drug Administration. He chose the right guy for the job."
Anna Lenzer: Trump's Panama Problem And the Panama story didn't even make Matthew Rosza's This week in Donald Trump's conflicts of interest, the juiciest of which was "Trump opened a hotel in the capital of Azerbaijan with 'The Corleones of the Caspian' as his partners." Also this quote from Eric Trump: "The stars have all aligned. I think our brand is the hottest it has ever been."
That quote was pulled from Eric Lipton/Susanne Craig: With Trump in White House, His Golf Properties Prosper.Les Leopold: 6 reasons why Trump is too weak to save American jobs: All six boil down to the fact that Trump, as a lifelong businessman, inevitably winds up siding with investors in their pursuit of profits over concerns for jobs and livelihoods. The "six reasons" are simply examples of that, and are far from exhaustive.
Dahlia Lithwick: Is Trump's Second Immigration Ban Unconstitutional? Yes, among other things at least as troubling.
Bill Moyers/Henry A Giroux: Our President Is Up to No Good: Actually, two pieces. Giroux's is especially stirring (at least, reading it right after writing the piece on the Olathe shootings below):
Trump's ascendancy has made visible a plague of deep-seated civic illiteracy, a corrupt political system and a contempt for reason that has been decades in the making. It also points to the withering of civic attachments, the decline of public life and the use of violence and fear to shock and numb everyday people. Galvanizing his base of true-believers in post-election rallies, the country witnesses how politics is transformed into a spectacle of fear, divisions and disinformation. Under President Trump, the scourge of mid-20th century authoritarianism has returned, not only in the menacing plague of populist rallies, fear-mongering, hate and humiliation, but also in an emboldened culture of war, militarization and violence that looms over society like a rising storm.
Matthew Nussbaum/Josh Dawsey: Trump's in the White House bubble, and he loves it: "He's a creature of habit . . . and it works for him."
Janet Reitman: Betsy DeVos' Holy War: Some things you may not know:
Betsy DeVos' father, Edgar Prince, made his fortune manufacturing auto parts (including perhaps his greatest innovation, the lighted sun visor), and was one of the single largest donors to the Christian right. "No one in the United States gave more money to James Dobson's Focus on the Family, its Michigan Family Forum affiliate or its Washington, D.C., arm, the Family Research Council, than the late Edgar Prince," notes Russ Bellant, a Michigan author who has written extensively about the religious right. After Prince died in 1995, Betsy's mother, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, continued funding religious-right causes, as has Betsy's brother, Erik Prince, founder of the military contractor Blackwater. Among the causes the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation has supported is the Foundation for Traditional Values, which produced multi-media seminars and presentations on "America's Judeo-Christian heritage," including the "biblical roots" of government and our education system.
And some stuff you probably did:
Neither Betsy DeVos, who is 59, nor any of her children have ever attended a public school; her Cabinet post also marks her first full-time job in the education system. Even before her nomination, she was a controversial figure in education circles, a leading advocate of "school choice" through student vouchers, which give parents public dollars to send their children to private and parochial schools.
There is also a quote from Trump calling school choice the "civil rights issue of our time." Admittedly, not a fellow well known for his devotion to civil rights.
Harry Siegel: Trump to US Attorney Preet Bahrara: You're Fired: This followed a political purge as Trump and Sessions "ordered 46 United States attorneys to resign immediately." When Bahrara didn't, he was fired. Also see: US Attorney in NY Fired by DOJ After Trump Previously Promised He'd Stay On; also Cleve R Wootson Jr/Amy B Wang: Preet Bharara said he wanted to be a US attorney 'forever.' Well, he was just fired. One unfortunate thing here is that focus on Bharara, whose record on prosecuting Wall Street was checkered at best, has distracted from the bigger story, which is the extent Trump and Sessions have decided to use federal prosecutors for their own political agenda. [PS: Belatedly found one piece that picks up this thread: Elizabeth Warren says Trump pushed out prosecutors to install 'cronies'.]
Mark Joseph Stern: Donald Trump and the Chamber of Secrets: "The president's solicitor general nominee Noel Francisco thinks executive privilege should shield pretty much everything."
Cary Wedler: US Drone Strikes Have Gone Up 432% Since Trump Took Office: On a per/day basis, compared to Obama's much longer term.
Also a few links less directly tied to Trump, though sometimes still to America's bout of political insanity:
Bernard Avishai: It's Not Too Early for the Next Democratic Ticket: Dude, it's way too fucking early. In fact, the subject should be zipped until way after the 2018 elections, and I wish we could put it off until well into 2020: partly because it'll do nothing but distract the press from the real issues, but mostly because the next candidate should represent the party, not usurp the party to stroke her or his ego (which is what being the designated leader would do).
Dean Baker: Drugs Are Cheap: Why Do We Let Governments Make Them Expensive? It's worth remembering that private health insurance was quick to add pharmaceutical coverage to their plans because drug therapies were often cheaper than medical interventions. Medicare was slow to follow suit, and by the time they did drugs weren't so cheap any more. The price rise was partly the effect of more money being available through insurance, and partly the increasing callousness of the profit motive, but to cash in the key has been government-granted patent monopolies, which give companies the right to push patients (and insurers) to their limits -- a "right" they've lately been exploiting so universally it's become a major driver of health care cost. There is an easy fix to this, and a little public investment would more than make up for any reductions companies might make to r&d.
Baker also wrote a major piece on the track record of his fellow economists: The Wrongest Profession.
Thomas Frank: The Revolution Will Not Be Curated: There must be a better word for what he's getting at, but the people he's talking about are those who sort and select things (originally art) to be presented to larger groups of people (originally exhibitions). To call these people filters suggests they're more passive than they in fact are. Another word that comes to mind is experts, but that suggests they know more than most seem to, and that they work by some relatively objective criteria which we should respect -- in fact, many people who call themselves experts are distinguished mostly by their partisan support for special interests. Obviously, much can go wrong with all this curating, but it's impossible to be broadly informed without tapping into intermediaries who pay much more attention to specialists. Virtually all of the links in this post came to my attention through curators I've found worthwhile, and if you're reading this you're doing the same. Indeed, that makes me a curator, as I suppose I am in other domains, such as recorded jazz. Still not sure what Frank's title means, unless it's that in order to break out of today's debilitating conventional wisdom you have to be aware of how all this curating limits your options, and seek out info beyond the commonplace. But as a practical matter, that just means that you need to find better curators (and, I would add, hold them to account).
Henry Grabar: Corporate Incentives Cost US $45 Billion in 2015, Don't Really Work: Photo features Boeing, who recently extorted $8.7 billion from Washington state for not (for now) moving jobs elsewhere.
Aamna Mohdin: The Dutch far right's election donors are almost exclusively American: So rich Americans are trying to buy another election, something they have a lot of practice doing at home, and as a little reporting would easily reveal, abroad. For more on right-wing Dutch candidate Geert Wilders: Michael Birnbaum: The peroxide-blonde crusader who could soon top Dutch elections. Especially interesting is Wilders' experience of working on an Israeli kibbutz ("a trip he described as transformative in shaping his pro-Israel, anti-Muslim views"). Another American publicly supporting Wilders is Rep. Steve King (R-IA): Iowa congressman lauds far-right Dutch politician, warning over 'demographics'. Curious how chummy the International Fraternal Order of Fascists is at the moment, because one lesson history teaches us is that nationalists ultimately find themselves at war with one another, or falling obediently into the orbit of stronger nationalists (as Quisling, Petain, and others prostrated their nations to Hitler's Germany). Do the Dutch really want to elect Wilders (or the French Le Pen) to be even more under Trump's (or Putin's) thumb? [PS: Also on Wilders' funding: Max Blumenthal: The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate.]
Rich Montgomery/Andian Cummings: Arcs of two lives intersect in tragedy at Austins bar in Olathe: Profiles of the Trump-inspired shooter (Adam W. Purinton: "51, had long since seen his career as an air traffic controller come to an end, gaining a reputation as an unhappy drinker as he drifted from one low-level job to another") and victim (Srinivas Kuchibbotla, 32, an engineer who had immigrated from Hyderabad, India; he "had the American dream in his grasp: great job, happy marriage, new house and plans for children"). Of course, Trump's spokespeople were quick to disavow the shooting, but aside from its ending (which they'd prefer to leave ambiguous) the whole Trump campaign was based on exploiting the frustrations of folks like Purinton and rallying their furor against people like Kuchibbotla. And it certainly is the case that American businesses prefer hiring brilliant and optimistic foreign-born professionals to trying to train undereducated and aging malcontents like Purinton. We live in a society where even such paltry welfare efforts as we make are more meant to belittle beneficiaries than to build them up, so it's easy to see how Trump's supporters can think the system favors immigrants over natives. And Democrats, having taken every side of the issue (including for the Clintons a leading roll in "ending welfare as we know it"), have had no coherent message, allowing Trump to exploit this simmering wrath -- and to stir it up, as we see here.
Vijay Prashad: The Rehabilitation of George W. Bush, War Criminal
Danielle Ryan: WikiLeaks CIA dump makes the Russian hacking story even murkier -- if that's possible: I haven't followed the latest WikiLeaks dump of confidential CIA documents enough to form an opinion on whether it's a good or bad or mixed thing, and frankly don't much care. Clearly, we already knew that the CIA was out of control, which we should have expected simply due to the cloak of secrecy under which it works. Still, this article makes some interesting points:
The Vault 7 leaks are not exactly a smoking gun for those who maintain Russia's innocence where the DNC hacks and leaks are concerned -- but they're not insignificant either. If anything, the new leaks should make people think a little harder before putting their complete trust in the CIA's public conclusions about the acts (or alleged acts) of enemy states. . . .
The fact that the CIA -- an organization of professionals trained in the most sophisticated methods of deception -- is front and center promoting the idea that Assange is a Russian agent, should be enough for anyone to take that idea with a pinch of salt.