#^d 2019-07-28 #^h Weekend Roundup
Lots of links below -- probably more than usual, although as always I feel like I'm leaving a lot of stuff untouched. Some topics I only decided late in the game to break out (Boris Johnson under Mackey, impeachment under Reich, Iran under Simon/Stevenson) could have picked up more links had I acted earlier and more consciously. I meant to write more on Mueller under Alksne when I first found the piece, but by the time I got to it I had scattered Mueller links all over the page.
Some scattered links this week:
Cynthia Alksne: No knight on a white horse: "House Democrats have spent the last two years waiting for someone else to solve the Trump conundrum."
Josh Barro: The T-Mobile/Sprint merger remedy makes no sense.
David Barsamian: Noam Chomsky: Life expectancy in the US is declining for a reason.
Zack Beauchamp:
5 losers and 0 winners from Robert Mueller's testimony to the House of Representatives: "Yes, it really was that bad." The list of losers: Robert Mueller, the House of Representatives, impeachment, President Trump, the Mueller report.
Russell Berman: Robert Mueller kept his promise:
Democrats can't say Robert Mueller didn't warn them.
For months, the former special counsel told them in every way he could -- in private negotiations, in his sole public statement on his investigation, through letters from the Justice Department -- that he did not want to testify before Congress, and that if he did, his appearance would be a dud.
Today, Mueller fully delivered on that promise.
Alexia Fernández Campbell: Puerto Ricans pushed out a sitting governor for the first time in history: "The massive protests worked." Related: Zeeshan Aleem: Puerto Rico's week of massive protests, explained.
Leticia Casado/Ernesto Londono: Under Brazil's far right leader, Amazon protections slashed and forests fall. Also: Alexander Zaitchik: Rainforest on fire: "On the front lines of Bolsonaro's war on the Amazon, Brazil's forest communities fight against climate catastrophe." For a comment, see David Wallace-Wells: Could one man single-handedly ruin the planet?
John Cassidy:
Jonathan Chait:
Why Trump spent his summer vacation sending racist tweets: "His entire adult life is devoted to associating nonwhites with crime, filth, and disorder.":
It does not occur to Trump that the patriotic requirements of his office require representing the whole of it. It is not merely that Trump is unfit for his job. He refuses, almost literally. to be president of the United States.
Trump tries to think up crime by Obama, comes up with 'wrote book'.
Zak Cheney-Rice:
Profiling doesn't bother conservatives unless it targets white people. Well, you are what you are, and it isn't hard to imagine how an offense (like profiling) might affect people like yourself. Harder to see how it affects people unlike yourself. And conservatives, almost by definition, are people who believe it's ok to treat other people poorly, especially people unlike themselves. Note quote from Trump: "You know, in Israel, they profile. They've done an unbelievable job -- as good as you can do."
The death penalty is already a farce. William Barr's plan might make it torturous. Related: Winnie Wong: The Trump Administration's death penalty cult.
Gareth Cook: The economist who would fix the American dream: "No one has done more to dispel the myth of social mobility than Raj Chetty. But he has a plan to make equality of opportunity a reality."
Adam Federman: How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic. Related: William deBuys: The 'drill, baby, drill' crowd wants access to this arctic reserve.
Crystal Marie Fleming: The composure and civility of "the Squad" against Trump's attacks.
Kathy Gilsinan: Dan Coats spoke truth to Trump. Now he's out. Oh? Now? Gilsinan also wrote Don't expect Mark Esper to contain Trump (you know, the new Secretary of Defense), and The impossible job of speaking truth to Trump. Coats' replacement is John Ratcliffe, a Texas Congressman in the press last week for his attacks on Robert Mueller.
James Gleick: Moon fever: On the Apollo 11 moon landing, 50 years ago.
Danny Goldberg: Goodbye to free-thought icon and merry prankster Paul Krassner.
Tara Golshan:
The House just passed a budget deal, taking a key step toward averting a massive fiscal crisis.
Joe Biden has questions about Medicare-for-all. We answered them.
The surprising thing about older voters: they're moving more to the left.
Study: the US could have averted about 15,600 deaths if every state expanded Medicaid.
David A Graham:
Ali Harb: How Iranian MEK went from US terror list to halls of Congress.
William D Hartung: Trump's Saudi arms vetoes, deconstructed.
Nathan Heller: Was the automotive era a terrible mistake?
Edward Hellmore: 'Unprecedented': more than 100 Arctic wildfires burn in worst ever season: "Huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska are producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space."
Umair Irfan: 108 degrees in Paris: Europe is shattering heat records this week.
Sarah Jones: An other person has died after rationing insulin. Jones had previously warned (Jan. 31, 2019): Rising insulin costs are a life-or-death political crisis. I've been rather taken aback by these stories. My first wife had diabetes. I never remembered any particular problem with insulin expense, but she died over 30 years ago, so I've been out of touch. Best explanation I've found for recent insulin pricing is here: 8 reasons why insulin is so outrageously expensive. The big one here is patents, which is the public's way of saying: rape me, pillage, take it all. There's no good reason why governments should create or even allow patents. Take them away, and the problems with biologics and biosimilars will become purely technical -- real, but much more manageable. And if private industry cannot find the motivation to bring the price of insulin back to a reasonable level, governments could finance non-profit manufacturers aiming at the lowest possible cost. Moreover, the cost savings go way beyond direct costs. Failure to properly regulate blood sugar levels leads to all kinds of further expense -- my wife being an especially dramatic example of what all can go horribly wrong.
Ben Judah: The millennial left is tired of waiting: "Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, is working to build a generational movement."
Ed Kilgore:
Is 'doing the right thing' worth increasing the risk of a second Trump term? More rationalization against trying to impeach Trump.
Trump's hate offensive could turn off white working-class women.
Catherine Kim: The Trump administration is bringing back federal executions.
Natalie Kitroeff/David Gelles/Jack Nicas: The root of Boeing's 737 Max crisis: A regulator relaxes its oversight.
Ezra Klein:
The case for a universal basic income, open borders, and a 15-hour workweek: Interview with Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists.
How "Medicare Extra" gets to universal coverage without single-payer: Didn't make much sense of this in a quick read. I'm skeptical that you can actually achieve universal coverage while requiring so much paperwork, and using a means-tested sliding scale that guarantees pinch points. Or I suppose you could pitch this as system that defaults to single-payer but allows people to opt out to select inferior private insurance -- with the added costs of public subsidies to the private insurance companies (if not direct, then at least by allowing them to piggyback on universal negotiated pricing). But then you have to ask yourself: why go through this charade of pretending that private for-profit insurance companies can compete meaningfully against a non-profit single-payer service.
Lucas Koerner/Ricardo Vaz: Western media losing enthusiasm for failing coup in Venezuela.
Paul Krugman: Trump's secret foreign aid program: "He's giving away billions to overseas investors."
Amanda Cohen Leiter: Justice John Paul Stevens and the slow evolution of the law.
Christopher Leonard: How an oil theft investigation laid the groundwork for the Koch playbook: "In the late 1980s, Charles Koch faced a federa probe, rallied all of his resources to fight it off and came away with lessons that would guide the Kochs for decades." Leonard has a book coming out Aug. 13: Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.
Daniel Lippman: 'It's a disaster over there': Commerce reaches new heights of dysfunction: "Under Secretary Wilbur Ross, the department is chaotic and adrift." Related: Matt Stieb: Wilbur Ross is falling asleep in Commerce Department meetings.
Martin Longman:
Robert Mackey: Donald Trump praises Boris Johnson, who once called him "unfit to hold the office of President of the United States". Also on Johnson:
The Guardian: The next prime minister will be Boris Johnson. What now? Our panel responds.
TJ Coles: The tragic inevitability of Boris Johnson PM.
John Feffer: Boris Johnson and the new battle of Britain.
Chase Madar: Ilhan Omar's anti-semitism is becoming a load-bearing myth for American politics.
Madeline Marshall: How Trump took over America's courts.
Jonathan Martin/Maggie Haberman: Trump relies on populist language, but he mostly sides with corporate interests: Trenchant reporting from the New York Times.
Jane Mayer: The case of Al Franken.
Alec MacGillis: Jared Kushner's other real estate empire in Baltimore. Related: Beatrice Dupuy: Jared Kushner's family company faces more than 170 Baltimore violations.
George Monbiot: From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise -- backed by billionaire oligarchs.
Anna North: Al Franken needs to stop comparing his resignation to death.
Ilhan Omar: It is not enough to condemn Trump's racism.
Andrew Prokop:
Robert Reich: The real reason we need to impeach Trump immediately: Actually, he offers close to a dozen, but they're just examples of a more fundamental contempt Trump holds for law and order:
Every child in America is supposed to learn about the Constitution's basic principles of separation of powers, and checks and balances.
But these days, every child and every adult in America is learning from Donald Trump that these principles are bunk.
More impeachment talk:
Shaun King: Racism is an impeachable offense.
Charles P Pierce: Impeachment is not an exercise in futility; also: This is an impeach by any other name.
David Roberts: Ohio just passed the worst energy bill of the 21st century: "A corrupt bailout for dinosaur power plants that screws renewable energy in the process." Also: Ryan Grim/Akela Lacy: Ohio Republicans balked at a nuclear bailout, so the industry elected new Republicans -- and walked away with $1.1 billion.
Jacob Rosenberg: "Love it or leave it" has a racist history. A lot of America's language does. I've always heard "love it or leave it" as "be complacent, or get banished," because you're not entitled to your own opinions, or in any way to criticize your government, and if you dissent, you're not entitled to keep living your life where you grew up. Racism is one of many things that we weren't allowed to question (and the "back to Africa" movement was largely a concession to this dictate), but there are a great many more things that triggered this demand -- in my time, most memorably, America's imperialist war against Vietnam.
Aaron Rupar:
David E Sanger/Catie Edmondson: Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states, report finds: I don't doubt Russian machinations, nor excuse them with the fact that the US routinely and methodically attempts to interfere and influence elections in Russia and damn near everywhere else. But one should bear in mind that Republicans are much more active underminers of democracy. And that the common interest that Russia and Republicans share is their dedication to oligarchy.
Kori Schake: The bill for America First is coming due: "Two of America's closest treaty allies have announced military efforts explicitly designed to exclude the US." As Trump's foreign policy becomes more arbitrary and erratic, it's inevitable that other countries will go their own way -- in this case, UK and Australia, reverting to their basest imperialist roots. Not a good sign, although anything that reduces the American bootprint on the world's neck can't be all bad. Schake directs a UK security think tank, IISS, and her recent pieces offer various hints at how Trump's vacuous foreign policy is perturbing America's former clients. For example, see: A Middle East peace plan built in un-American principles, and Worse than Obama's red-line moment: taunting Trump for not bombing Iran ("Trump has now shown himself just as willing as President Obama to make empty threats that damage American credibility").
Eric B Schnurer: Facebook doesn't just need to be broken up. It needs to be broken into. "To create real competition, let other social networks operate on the architecture Mark Zuckerberg built." I haven't digested this yet, but my general response to proposals to attack web service monopolies is to provide public funding to stand up open source alternatives. This subject is worth a much deeper discussion.
Adam Serwer:
The press has adopted Trump's reality-show standards: "The reaction to the special counsel's testimony shows how deeply the president has conditioned the media to treat political events like reality television."
What Americans do now will define us forever: "If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere.".
Trump tells America what kind of nationalist he is: "In a series of tweets attacking four Democratic congresswomen, the president reiterated his belief that only white people can truly be American."
Trump lied to the Supreme court, and four justices don't care.
Steven Simon/Jonathan Stevenson: Iran: The case against war. More recent pieces on Iran:
Patrick Cockburn: Brexit, Britain and the permanent crisis in the Gulf.
Juan Cole: How Bolton tricked clueless UK Conservatives into confrontation with Tehran.
Jason Ditz: US poised to send 500 troops to Saudi Arabia amid Iran tensions.
Fred Kaplan: Sleepwalking into war with Iran.
Tony Karon: Iran is gambling that Trump is afraid of war.
Danny Sjursen: Could Donald Trump end the Afghan War?
Maggie Stevens/Derek Willis: How conservative operatives steered millions in PAC donations to themselves.
Emily Stewart: Elizabeth Warren sees "serious warning signs" of an economic crash. Warren's piece: The coming economic crash and how to stop it. Another important Warren piece: End Wall Street's stranglehold on our economy. Yves Smith writes about this latter piece: Elizabeth Warren seeks to cut private equity down to size.
Matt Taibbi:
The Iowa circus: "Clown Car II: The Democrats. God help us." He wrote a great campaign book once, but it wasn't his 2016 effort (Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus -- it was his 2004-based Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches From the Dumb Season). But clearly he's just running on auto-pilot now, not even considering whether to revamp his circus metaphors -- it's like he's forgotten that there's a distinction between a sequel and a parody.
Siva Vaidhyanathan:
Why conservatives allege big tech is muzzling them.
[Sen. Ted] Cruz knows that conservatives need Facebook and Google and that they benefit greatly from the algorithmic amplification that occurs in both systems. Trump's 2020 campaign manager is Brad Parscale, who ran digital operations for the president's successful 2016 campaign. Parscale declared that his mastery of Facebook for advertising, amplifying pro-Trump videos and memes, and fundraising won the 2016 election.
Scholarship supports this conclusion. As the sociologist Jen Schradie demonstrates in great detail in her new book, The Revolution That Wasn't: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives, Facebook and Google work better for top-down, well-funded, disciplined, directed movements. Those adjectives tend to describe conservative groups more than liberal or leftist groups in the United States. In our current media ecosystem, right-wing sources of news and propaganda spread much further and faster than liberal or neutral sources do, according to a rigorous quantitative study of communication-network patterns by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Internet platforms are demonstrably not silencing conservative ideas. If anything, the opposite is true.
Billion-dollar fines can't stop Google and Facebook. That's peanuts for them.
Anya van Wagtendonk:
Trump launches another racist attack on a lawmaker of color: Elijah Cummings, and his "rodent infested mess" of a district.
A controversial deal between US and Guatemala could reshape the asylum process.
In a victory for Trump, the Supreme Court frees up $2.5 billion for the border wall.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The transpartisan revolt against America's endless wars.
Alex Ward:
Trump says Daniel Coats, director of national intelligence, to step down.
Navy SEAL platoon sent home from Iraq over rape allegation and drinking while deployed: "SEAL scandals are piling up."
Senate confirms Army Gen. Mark Milley as new Joint Chiefs chair.
Mueller explained why he didn't push to interview Trump: "Trump would've fought a subpoena, and that would've taken too long.".
Trump says he could wipe Afghanistan off face of the earth in 10 days: "Trump said he doesn't want millions to die, but mused about wiping out Afghanistan, a country we are supposedly trying to help."
Iran says it arrested 17 people spying for the CIA. The US says it's fake news.
Peter Wehner: George Will changes his mind -- but stays true to his convictions: Proving his convictions were always the problem with him. While it's tempting to admire people who are so consistently dedicated to wrong principles that they occasionally stand up against more opportunistic evils, they're ultimately not that useful, and never reliable. This turns into a puff-piece interview, not unlike Wehner's previous David Brooks's journey toward faith. Wehner's own mission is to rescue evangelical Christianity ffrom the shame of association with Donald Trump. That's a decent and noble endeavor, but misses the problem in favor of a bogus solution.
Kelly Weill: MAGA bomber's lawyers blame Trump, Sean Hannity for his radicalization. Related, from Oct. 27, 2018: Rick Wilson: Of course Donald Trump inspired Cesar Sayoc's alleged terrorism.
Philip Weiss: Ilhan Omar's case for foreign influence is more convincing than Mueller's.
Matthew Yglesias:
New GDP data confirms Trump's tax cuts aren't working. Seems to me they're doing exactly what they were intended to: help the rich get even richer, and weaken the government by piling up debt, which they can later use as a cudgel against spending by a future Democratic government. Sure, tax cut propagandists trotted out a few macroeconomic rationalizations, but they were such obvious horseshit at the time that their thorough debunking here offers no surprise and scant comfort. Or, as Eric Levitz reviews the same issue: The Trump tax cuts worked (as a scam):
In the Trump era, Republicans have become masters of rationalizing the indefensible. But even they couldn't defend running up the deficit (and clamping down social spending) to boost corporate profits at a time when such profits were already high. Thus, they insisted that the president's tax cuts would neither increase the deficit nor benefit the wealthy much at all. . . .
There was little empirical evidence to support this argument when Republicans were making it two years ago. There is even less today. In May, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found no sign that the Trump tax cuts made any discernible contribution to growth, wages, or business investment. Corporations did not plow their windfalls into exceptionally productive and innovative ventures. Instead, they mostly threw their handouts onto the giant pile of cash they were already sitting on, and/or returned it to their (predominantly rich) shareholders. . . .
If you take Republicans at their word -- and assume that they earnestly believed they could massively increase business investment by slashing corporate rates -- then the Trump tax cuts have been a miserable failure.
If, however, you assume that the party's goal was always to prioritize the bottomless avarice of its megadonors over the pressing needs of the American people -- without paying a huge political price -- then the president's signature legislation has worked like a charm.
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, not the unpopular ones.
Mueller's testimony matters even if he doesn't say anything new.