#^d 2019-05-26 #^h Weekend Roundup
Here in Wichita it's rained every day for a week with more coming tonight, tomorrow, the day after. We're up to 11.96 inches this month (2nd wettest May ever; annual average is 34 inches). Many rivers in southeastern Kansas have flooded -- my recent trip to Oklahoma was detoured when the Kansas State Turnpike went under water. Wichita used to flood regularly, and my home would surely be under water but for "the big ditch" -- a flood control project built in 1950-59. (See Beccy Tanner: 'Big Ditch Mitch' saved Wichita many times; also, David Guilliams: The Big Ditch: The Wichita-Valley Center Flood Control Project [PDF].) I've been reading up on this, not least because I haven't seen the rivers this high since 1966, when the Ditch spared Wichita (barely) an epochal flood that wiped out the Arkansas River dam in Lamar, CO, and flooded every other town on the river's path into Oklahoma and Arkansas. Reading Guilliams' history reminds me that we had politicians in the 1940s who were as short-sighted as the ones we have today, but I'll always be thankful they got outvoted. That Ditch was the best investment Wichita ever made. Without it I wouldn't be able to get around to this week's other stories.
Some scattered links this week:
Nancy Altman: Donald Trump's sneak attack on social security.
Phyllis Bennis: Foreign aid that costs an arm and a leg -- literally: "The US-funded Israeli military is shooting so many unarmed Palestinians that the UN is warning of an amputation crisis in Gaza."
Alexia Fernández Campbell: How Trump's new immigration plan could hurt the economy.
John Cassidy:
Jonathan Chait:
Dave DeCamp:
US Army unpleasantly surprised after asking veterans about impact of serving. E.g.:
Michael J Neel replied, "26 brothers dead. Only 8 in theater. Psyche ward myself after 3 attempts. Everything we accomplished in Mosul was wasted. Every life we gave was spat on. That's how serving impacted me." Veteran Drew Turner said, "Let's see. Lost the functional use of a hand, developed a rare movement disorder and cancer both likely from burn pit exposure, enjoy sleeping 3 to 4 hours most nights due to nightmares and during the day random anxiety attacks all due to PTSD, 7 herniated discs, arthritis . . ."
Former Army Chaplain Bill Cork replied, "Given me memories of twelve soldiers who chose suicide, three killed in preventable rollovers, another dozen sexually assaulted, and lots of people and families broken by immoral acts in a war that won't end."
Gaby Del Valle: The Harriet Tubman $20 bill was supposed to be unveiled in 2020. Now it might be delayed by almost a decade.
Tom Engelhardt: Russia's election meddling is despicable, but don't forget our own.
Dexter Filkins: John Bolton on the Warpath: One of America's more gullible war reporters, which lets him take Bolton more seriously than I would, offering a useful, respectful profile which nonetheless makes him even more disgusting than you imagined. Of particular interest are the details of how Bolton has made millions of dollars recently trying to stir up multiple wars.
Lisa Friedman: EPA plans to get thousands of pollution deaths off the books by changing its math.
David Frum: Trump's cover-up accelerates: "President Trump can only escalate. He cannot help it."
Tara Golshan:
What Rep. Justin Amash's call for Trump's impeachment showed about the Republican Party. Related: Elaina Plott: How Trump broke the Freedom Caucus.
Congress's high-stakes budget fight to avert an economic crisis, explained: about budget caps and the debt limit, again.
Ryan Goodman: Trump's position on the Mueller Report is legally ridiculous -- and dangerous.
David A Graham:
A single scandal sums up all of Trump's failures: "The president has been intervening in the process of producing a border wall, on behalf of a favored firm."
Trump's impeachment finger trap: "With each stonewall and demand that Democrats drop investigations, the president is making it more likely that Congress will feel compelled to act."
Maggie Haberman/Annie Karni: A would-be Trump aide's demands: a jet on call, a future cabinet post and more: Give him lots of perks and Kris Kobach would be willing to serve Trump as "immigration czar" (for a while).
Umair Irfan: One of the largest environmental protests ever is underway. It's led by children. Most famously, Greta Thunberg, but she's not alone. I've seen sub-teens on Jimmy Kimmel explain the science better than most Democratic politicians, let alone Republicans (who don't try to explain anything). In an effort to reassert his relevance, Bill McKibben responded: It's not entirely up to the school students to save the world.
Kalpana Jain: Indian PM Narendra Modi and his party just swept India's elections. Some more pieces on India's election:
Quinta Jurecic: Impeachment is a refusal to accept the unacceptable.
Ed Kilgore:
Does Trump want to be impeached? That very thought has occurred to me. Bill Clinton actually got a bump in the polls out of being impeached. I don't recall anything similar with John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, or Richard Nixon, which is the company Trump will be joining. He may even think that in the Us-vs-Them world he imagines himself thriving in, that not getting impeached could be taken as not trying hard enough. Equally important, in taunting the Democratic House leadership, he may hope to show them up as weak and ineffective to their voter base. He's been campaigning hard since inauguration day. It seems to be the only thing he really cares about, so why not bet the farm? Maybe he even thinks there's a further endgame after the election. After all, I've also been wondering whether Erdogan wanted the failed coup that allowed him to purge his enemies in the military and the courts and consolidate his grip on power. It would be harder to pull that off in the US, but Trump's already broken numerous so-called "norms" as he's mocked and degraded our past notions of democracy.
Trump continues drive to protect religious-based discrimination.
Jen Kirby:
Trump is sending 1,500 troops to the Middle East as the standoff with Iran continues.
Breit has finally brought down Theresa May. Well, not so fast: she will step aside as Conservative Party leader on June 7, but will stay as prime minister "until her successor is selected . . . without the need for a general election."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange indicted on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. Related: Masha Gessen: Charging Julian Assange under the Espionage Act is an attack on the first amendment; also Fred Kaplan: The charges against Julian Assange are appalling (even if you despise him); also this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial: Amend the Espionage Act: Public interest defenses must be allowed.
Eric Kleefeld: Lindsey Graham proposes invading Venezuela to oust Maduro. He's citing Reagan's 1983 invasion of Grenada as a precedent, now (as then) citing Cuban influence as a cassus belli. On the other hand, whereas Grenada "had a population of less than 100,000 . . . Venezuela, on the other hand, has a population of a little over 28 million people, is lager than Texas, and has roughly 160,000 troops in its military." Graham also wants to send more troops to the Middle East, where he's up in arms against Iran. Warmongers like Graham and Bolton readily group Iran and Venezuela without ever mentioning the one thing they obviously have in common: before US sanctions crippled them, both were major oil exporters. The effect of taking their oil off the world market is to push prices (and oil company profits) up, or at least to keep those profits from falling as global demand shifts to renewables.
Paul Krugman:
After Draghi (wonkish): On the economic situation in the Eurozone since 2008, or more positively since Mario Draghi became president of the European Central Bank.
Claire Lampen: Trump v Pelosi: anatomy of a feud.
Jill Lepore: Confessions of a presidential candidate: "How the political memoir evolved."
Eric Levitz: Moderate Democrats' delusions of 'prudence' will kill us all. This is in response to an op-ed by "moderate Democrat" Greg Weiner: It's not always the end of the world ("political prudence isn't in vogue, but it should be"). I can see both sides of this debate, but that's mostly because both are illuminated by the raging wildfires deliberately set by the Republican far-right. Right now, I think the balance of evidence favors Levitz, on two counts: the sheer amount of destruction caused by Republicans in power, and the lack of positive results from recent efforts by prudent Democrats (e.g., Obama).
Dylan Matthews: The Fed's bad predictions are hurting us.
Ella Nilsen:
Democrats in Congress are getting things done. Trump and Republicans are just ignoring them.
Trump wants everyone to know he is extremely calm and Pelosi is the "crazy" one: "Trump called himself a 'very stable genius,' after Pelosi suggested his family or staff should have an 'intervention'."
Anna North:
Missouri governor signs 8-week abortion ban: "The law, which is likely to be challenged in court, contains no exceptions for rape or incest."
Alabama's abortion ban is being challenged in court by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.
Robert O'Harrow Jr/Shawn Boburg: A conservative activist's behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts: "Leonard Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from mostly undisclosed donors in recent years to promote conservative judges and causes."
Nicole Perlroth/Scott Shane: In Baltimore and beyond, a stolen NSA tool wreaks havoc. With David E Sanger, the authors also reported: How Chinese spies got the NSA's hacking tools, and used them for attacks; also: Security breach and spilled secrets have shaken the NSA to its core: gives them more credit for conscience than they deserve. America's cyberwarriors aren't the first to fail to appreciate what happens when other "warriors" learn to do what they do.
Katha Pollitt: How the right to legal abortion changed the arc of all women's lives.
John Quiggin: Australia isn't doing its part for the global climate. Sooner or later we'll have to pay our share. Last week's elections kicked this can further down the road. Quiggin has a new book out, Economics in Two Lessons, explaining where markets work, and where they don't.
Robert Reich: Trump's wrecking ball assaults American government. Luckily, it is strongly built. I think a big part of Reagan's popularity came from the fact that he couldn't do much short-term damage, even though that was plainly the intent of his program. Democrats controlled Congress most of the time, and liberals dominated the courts. Reagan indulged many people's prejudices, saying things that flattered his base and riled them up against supposed enemies, yet the real consequences of his presidency -- the destruction of the labor movement, the major shift toward ever-greater inequality, undermining civil rights while ramping up mass incarceration, the embrace of militarism and the withdrawal from international cooperation, the end of equal time and the takeover of politics by big money -- only gradually became evident (not that they explicit about their goals, but because most people didn't take the threat seriously). Of course, it became harder to overlook the cumulative effect of Reagan and later waves of conservative activism under the Bushes and Trump. Reich is probably right that the US political system still moderates the extremism of Republican presidents -- although it's been much more effective at neutering reformist impulses by Democrats -- yet clearly we are losing ground.
Brian Resnick: Trump's hasty plan to get Americans back on the moon by 2020, explained. Worth noting that there is more at stake than just Trumpian ego. See Rivka Galchen: The race to develop the moon.
Aaron Rupar:
Trump's interest in pardoning troops accused of war crimes, explained: "The military doesn't want these pardons. But Fox News does." Of course, the number of US troops who have been prosecuted for war crimes is a sad little joke, but the military brass still defends what they did because they need to maintain at least some discipline within the ranks. For more on this, see Ed Kilgore: Military brass warn Trump against Memorial Day pardons for war criminals.
Attorney General William Barr dining at the Trump hotel is a bad look: "Barr was photographed at the Trump International on a night when it hosted a pro-Trump Super PAC."
Trump's bizarre Rose Garden news conference on impeachment, explained.
Michael S Schmidt/Julian E Barnes: Trump's targeting of intelligence agencies gains a harder edge. Trump directed Attorney General William Barr to investigate anyone who thought that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia in 2016, starting with the FBI and potentially going deeper into the CIA and the broader "intelligence community," and he's given Barr authority to declassify any secret documents he finds along the way (see: Trump gives Barr power to declassify US secrets in review of Russia probe). This extraordinary politicization of the Justice Department is obviously disturbing, but thus far most of the pushback has come from the intelligence agencies, who prefer to operate in secret, with little or no oversight -- e.g., Chuck Ross: Ex-CIA officials fume about declassification order, ignoring previous leaks of secret sources and methods. Also see: Natasha Bertrand: Trump puts DOJ on crash course with intelligence agencies.
Dylan Scott: Congress wants to stop surprise medical bills. But they have one big problem left to solve.
Mark Joseph Stern: The Trump administration releases its plan to let health care providers refuse to treat transgender people: This is getting real petty. Nor is this all. See: Camille Baker: The Trump administration wants to make it harder for transgender people to access homeless shelters.
Matt Taibbi:
Avenatti, Wohl and the Krassensteins prove political media is a huckster's paradise.
We've hit a new low in campaign hit pieces: "Recent efforts to sandbag Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are crude repeats of behaviors that helped elect Trump in 2016." Takes particular exception to a piece titled "Tulsi Gabbard is the top candidate of traitors."
Alex Ward:
The US may use a loophole to sell billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Pentagon's plan to send up to 10,000 troops to the Middle East is about Iran.
"American Taliban" John Walker Lindh's controversial release from prison, explained. I recall thinking that his original 20-year sentence was a gross miscarriage of justice, enabled by a whipped-up war hysteria, which evidently hasn't gone away -- just calcified into prejudice. But my view was based more on what I know about the US than the virtually nothing I know about Lindh. For more on him, see: Graeme Wood: I wrote to John Walker Lindh. He wrote back.
Democrats are accusing Trump officials of inflating the Iran threat.
Robin Wright: Does trump have an off-ramp on Iran? i doubt he even wants one, nor is he likely to show any interest on wright's history lesson. it looks to me like the conflict with iran is nothing more than a favor to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE -- all of which know how to push his buttons and stroke him with gifts. Moreover, he is incapable of seeing potential downsides, or even risk. Challenging him, or calling his bluff, would be unthinkable. He might even say suicidal.
Matthew Yglesias:
The controversy over WeWork's $47 billion valuation and impending IPO, explained.
Holding Trump accountable is a pocketbook issue: After reviewing Trump's own history of cheating his contractors, note this:
Trump, as president, is acting in line with his own predilection for alleged corporate criminals.
- While Obama's Environmental Protection Agency sought a $4.8 million fine from Syngenta Seeds for poisoning workers with pesticides, Trump's EPA settled for $150,000.
- Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined a man $1 for allegedly swindling veterans out of their pensions -- also extracting from him a promise not to do it again.
- In February 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled with three major banks that had engaged in illegal market manipulation -- charging them a financial penalty but requiring no admission of wrongdoing and waiving "bad actor" penalties that would have impaired their ability to do business in the future.
The specific dynamics of each agency and each industry are, of course, unique.
But the basic pattern is the same -- under lax enforcement, crime basically pays. You might not get caught, and even if you do get caught, the monetary penalties will not create a meaningful deterrent to future misconduct. . . . The overall problem, in other words, is much larger in scope than Trump. But Trump is part of the problem. Not only is he emblematic, as a business leader, of the cost of inadequate enforcement, but he's also someone who clearly favors inadequate enforcement as a matter of principle and appoints regulators who make the problem worse.
Yglesias also has a piece called Daenerys was right: King's Landing had to burn, which goes to great lengths to try to rationalize the indiscriminate fire-bombing of the capitol of Westeros. I understand the impulse to try to take a contrary view, especially counter to those who casually impose their contemporary political prejudices on such a fantasy landscape, but Yglesias overlooks some pretty obvious clues (like the Daenerys speech to her troops where she vows to conquer/liberate all of Westeros and Essos -- a speech that the actress claims she studied Hitler for, but which sounded more to me like Napoleon), as well as a couple of much more fundamental problems. What always turned me off in Game of Thrones was its unquestioned bedrock belief in hereditary aristocracy, and its correlative commitment to war. Without having read the books, I gather that Martin is completely opposed to both, but rather than constructing cardboard characters for us to root for (in the vain hope that good will ultimately triumph over evil), he exposes the foundations by showing how every character is corrupted and disgraced by inequality and violence. That Yglesias winds up rooting for a strong and fearsome ruler shows how much he's willing to compromise.
Gary Younge: Shocked by the rise of the right? Then you weren't paying attention. Young blames "endemic racism and unfairness" -- I take the latter to mean inequality and the business practices that increase it.
Li Zhou:
One House Republican is holding up $19 billion in disaster aid funding.
The Senate finally approved a disaster aid package with $1.4 billion for Puerto Rico: "Trump has been a big reason for the delay in disaster relief . . . The fallout of this delay is staggering.".
Poll: Most Americans disapprove of the Alabama abortion ban.