#^d 2020-01-26 #^h Weekend Roundup
Not much on the impeachment trial below. I remember watching Senate hearings on Watergate, but haven't followed anything in Congress that closely since -- even the Iraq War votes (note plural), or a series of Supreme Court votes (starting with Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas) even though they were much more consequential. The Democrats would like to see this impeachment as a grave, solemn affair, but it doesn't differ from the Clinton impeachment enough to sway me. Of course, if given the chance, I'd vote to convict -- fact of the matter is I would have voted to convict Clinton as well -- but the 2020 election remains the prize, and this is just a distraction. If Republicans decide to throw Trump under the bus, they'd still have the colorless, soulless Mike Pence in the White House, still have their Senate majority, and still have all those judges they've confirmed during the last three years. On the other hand, the 2020 elections offer the hope of starting to reverse the tragic effects of electing those Republicans in recent years. I know I've eschewed reporting on horserace political stories, but I'd much rather be reading Bernie Sanders surges into lead in new CNN poll and Polls show Bernie Sanders surging at just the right time and Getting Bernie over the top than anything on the impeachment trial travesty or how sad our wretched democracy has become.
Some scattered links this week:
Tim Alberta: How the gun show became the Trump show.
Kate Aronoff: Why climate-conscious plutocrats still like Trump: "Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week say they're worried about global warming. But they're also looking out for their business models." By the way, Trump was in Davos last week, trying to look busy during his trial, sending soundbites back home while contributing nothing there (e.g., see Trump roars, and Davos shrugs.)
Zach Beauchamp: Bernie Sanders's Joe Rogan experience: "Joe Rogan's controversial endorsement of Bernie Sanders, explained." I can't say as I knew the first thing about Rogan before reading this. I add that nothing here makes me want to listen to Rogan's podcasts. On the other hand, any "leftists" who see this endorsement as rason to attack Bernie have a death wish, such that you have to wonder whether left politics has any practical meaning for them.
Julia Belluz: A SARS-like virus is spreading quickly. Here's what you need to know. Related links:
Sasha Abramsky: The United States is more vulnerable than ever to deadly diseases: "In a bout of bipartisan neglect, Washington has cut billions from our public-health infrastructure over the past decade."
Eric Levitz: The coronavirus should be a wake-up call for Congress.
Ben Burgis: The many bad arguments against Medicare for All.
Peter Cary: How Republicans made millions on the tax cuts they pushed through Congress: "The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a case study of how lawmakers make themselves richer with the bills they pass."
Casey Cep: The long war against slavery: A review of Vincent Brown's book, Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, which starts with a slave revolt in Jamaica and situates it in the context of the broader debate over slavery.
Jonathan Chait:
Clio Chang: The only thing stopping us from taxing the rich is political will: Interview with Gabriel Zucman, "the rock star behind the wealth tax," co-author with Emmanuel Saez of The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay (a book I read and recommend). Of course, one should add that political will in the US is not equally (or even randomly) distributed, but is skewed heavily toward the rich. It's also technically more difficult to assess a wealth tax than a progressive income tax that would impact the rich and raise comparable revenues. The estate tax is an exception here, in that the government could simply confiscate whatever property is covered, liquidate the assets, and pay off the untaxed share (if there still is one) to the heirs in cash (possibly an annuity).
Jelani Cobb: Trump, impeachment, and the short-term thinking of the GOP.
Coral Davenport: Trump removes pollution controls on streams and wetlands.
Jackson Diehl: Trump's hallmark foreign policy failure? 'Maximum pressure.'
Larry Elliott: Soros gives $1bn to fund universities 'and stop the drift towards authoritarianism': That's the thing about the left-right split among billionaires. Not only are the right-wing types more numerous, they put their money fairly narrowly into securing even more political power. Soros does spend money on politicians, but he spends a lot more on projects that are meant to do direct good, rather than trying to redirect the corruption of the political class to more noble ends.
Lee Fang: Interim Bolivian government taps the same lobby firm hired to sell the coup in Honduras. Big surprise: the firm is based in Washington, DC.
Liza Featherstone: Adam Schiff is a dangerous warmonger: A track record which makes his promotion of weapons for Ukraine all the more disturbing.
Thomas Geoghegan: Educated fools: Why Democratic leaders still misunderstand the politics of social class.
Kim Ghattas: The Muslim world's question: 'What happened to us?' In an excerpt from his book, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, the author points to three pivotal events from 1979: the Iranian Revolution, the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (which the US, allying with Islamist-ruled Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, countered by bankrolling jihad). I'd add the 1979 oil shock, which resulted in Carter declaring the Persian Gulf a vital interest to the United States, the US-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which split Egypt away from its previous interest in Arab unity, and Israel's initial invasion into Lebanon's civil war (which Carter was able to cancel at the time, but Israel repeated in 1982). Two points stand out here: from 1979 on the US took a much more direct, much more aggressive role in the Middle East; but in many ways the US let their "allies" direct operations at a detailed level, especially those based on politicizing religion, and that eventually resulted in those "allies" directing US policy for their own regional purposes, with little or no regard for broader American interests. So while it's true that much of the Muslim world is saying "what happened to us?" many in America are left wondering the very same thing.
Amy Goodman: Law professor: Trump could also have been impeached for war crimes, assassinations and corruption: Title reflects interview with Marjorie Cohn. Such an indictment would be more interesting and more damning than the one that Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler chose to prosecute.
David A Graham: Here's what Trump has been up to while Americans have been distracted by impeachment. E.g.:
The administration has announced a series of major steps just in the past few days, since senators were sworn in for the impeachment trial on January 16.
On January 17, the Agriculture Department announced that it would roll back nutritional standards for school lunches that were championed by former first lady Michelle Obama. (In what the government insisted was a coincidence, January 17 is her birthday.) . . .
Yesterday, while hobnobbing with the world's wealthiest elites at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Trump told CNBC that he would consider cutting entitlements in a second term. . . .
He also said he'd expand his controversial travel ban to Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania, with different restrictions on people from different countries. . . .
Meanwhile, the administration also disclosed plans to make it harder for pregnant women to get visas to travel to the United States, a move intended to prevent women from giving birth stateside and thus earning American citizenship for their children. The phenomenon of "anchor babies" or "birth tourism" has been, like Michelle Obama's lunch rules, a conservative obsession for years, though it's unclear how many people actually come to the U.S. to give birth. . . .
Today is still young, but already the administration is set to announce a drastic reinterpretation of the Clean Water Act that will exempt a large number of waterways from protection and allow more pollution.
All of this is only a few days' worth of changes. Impeachment has dominated political news for nearly four months now, and the administration has made plenty of other under-the-radar moves -- cuts to food stamps, rollbacks to LBGTQ protections, and diverting Pentagon funds to pay for border-wall construction among them.
Greg Grandin: Slavery, and American racism, were born in genocide. A little history refresher, published for MLK Day.
Jacob Heilbrunn: The Neocons strike back: "How a discredited foreign policy ideology continues to wreak havoc in Washington and around the world."
Nathan Heller: Is venture capital worth the risk? "The industry shaped the past decade. It could destroy the next."
Sean Illing: Is Trumpism a cult? Interview with Steven Hassan, author of a new book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. Hassan's gained his "expertise" on cults by joining and eventually leaving the "Moonies." That doesn't strike me as very relevant, nor do I find it easy to credit Trump with the mental skills to be manipulative. On the other hand, there clearly are lots of people who want to think of him as the voice of God, and he's not one to dispel that sort of delusion. Maybe that dynamic will harden into a cult eventually, and as it does some of his followers will rebel, as Hassan eventually did. But I can't see any reason for the rest of us to read their inevitable books.
Sarah Jones: Steve King is building a dank fascist meme stash.
Joshua Keating: Forever wars don't end. They just go corporate.
Ed Kilgore:
Partisan polarization reaching record levels. That's because partisan differences actually mean something these days. But note also that it's the Republicans who are driving the polarization: Trump and his Congressional leadership have deliberately decided not to offer Democrats any concessions to broaden their appeal.
Could Bloomberg's billions boost the odds of a contested convention?
Maya King: Bloomberg's massive ad campaign hikes TV prices for other candidates.
Ezra Klein: Why Democrats still have to appeal to the center, but Republicans don't: The most convincing reason I see here is that most Democrats still depend on centrist corporate media giants to stay "reality-based," where the right has Fox, convincing the Republican base that there is no reality, just their political fears and biases.
Steve Krakauer: Trump's wedding to Melania was 15 years ago. It explains so much about our cultural moment.
Anita Kumar: How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency: "critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses."
Eric Levitz:
Donald Trump is already trying to cut entitlements: "Forget Trump's vague public remarks. His White House has officially endorsed cuts to Social Security, and is trying to cut Medicaid by fiat."
The left-wing realignment of American politics has already begun.
Hillary Clinton won't commit to endorsing Sanders if he wins nomination. Related: Luke Savage: We regret to inform you that Hillary Clinton is at it again.
German Lopez: Marijuana legalization is about to have a huge year.
Ian Millhiser:
Ella Nilsen: Bernie Sanders's path to the 2020 Democratic nomination, explained.
Anna North:
"They are coming after me because I am fighting for you": Trump at March for Life. More importantly, he's fighting "against them." Who are "them"? Well, most Americans.
The right keeps attacking Greta Thunberg's identity, not her ideas: "Steve Mnuchin says she needs to go to college before she talks about climate change."
Andre Pagliarini: Brazilian conservatives really hate Glenn Greenwald. Other links on Brazil and/or Greenwald:
Isaac Chotiner: Glenn Greenwald on Brazil's charges against him.
Glenn Greenwald/Victor Pougy: Bolsonaro, under fire, dismisses his culture minister for giving a Nazi speech, but it is still representative of Brazil's governing ethos.
Matt Taibbi: Glenn Greenwald: 'Does the law in Brazil even matter anymore?'
Robert Wright: Glenn Greenwald has his reasons.
Cameron Peters: Why a question about Ukraine sent Mike Pompeo into a rage. Well, he does come off as a guy with a lot of pent-up rage. Related:
Kelsey Piper: Kansas's ag-gag law has been ruled unconstitutional: "The 1990 law banned documenting animal abuse on factory farms."
Andrew Prokop:
John Quiggin: Libertarians can't save the planet.
Adam K Raymond: All the problems with the New York Times's televised endorsement special. Not all of them, of course. But it starts with the softball candidate interviews, continues with the ignorance and carelessness of the "judges," and continues through the decision to present the sausage making as reality TV faux drama, to the surprisingly indecisive finale. By the way, the actual written endorsement, which at least doesn't bury the lede, is here: The Democrats' best choices for president: Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar?
Frank Rich: Trump's impeachment puts the Senate on trial.
Tony Romm: Facebook and Google spent nearly half a billion on lobbying over the past decade, new data shows.
David Roth: The windbag of war: "Trump's boasts and lies about the conflict with Iran perfectly encapsulate America's petty, TV-addled, and increasingly degenerate president."
The strangest and most enduring misapprehension about Donald Trump is that he has beliefs. He doesn't, or at least none beyond the lifelong conviction that Donald Trump really should be on television more often. Trump has his signature anxieties and appetites, numerous fears and a few oafish ambitions, and a wide spectrum of ancient and unexamined biases and bigotries, but he can claim nothing that rises anywhere near to being an actual belief. The attempt to retroactively graft something like a belief system onto the howling bottomless suckhole of Trump's idiocy and need, from both sides of the political spectrum, is a joke that stopped being funny long before Mark Levin sat in front of a fake fireplace on Fox News and did his grandiloquent best to describe the Trump Doctrine.
Aaron Rupar:
Trump's impeachment trial countermessaging has been tasteless and incorrect tweets.
Fox News devised a way to cover the impeachment trial without covering it at all.
Trump's Davos news conerence featured a pack of lies about the impeachment trial.
Trump's lawyers began the impeachment trial with a blizzard of lies. /p>
Greg Sargent: A big tell in Trump's own legal brief exposes McConnell's coverup.
Jonah Shepp: Brexit is finally happening, but the drama is far from over.
Henry Siegman: Is Apartheid the inevitable outcome of Zionism? I'm always uncomfortable with arguments about inevitability, but given that it's happened, it's hard to see how it could have turned out differently. There was a division within Zionism where Martin Buber, Joseph Magnes, and their circle tried to promote a less political, more cultural ideal, but they never mad much of a chance against David Ben-Gurion's socialist and his revisionist opponent-allies. Maybe earlier on the British could have imposed a power-sharing framework, but back then the British (as they were everywhere they set foot) were more concerned with exploiting race and religion to perpetuate their own rule.
Jamil Smith: Trump, guns, and white fragility: "What do the Senate impeachment trial and the Virginia gun rally have in common?"
Felicia Sonmez/Elise Viebeck: Schiff 'has not paid the price' for impeachment, Trump says in what appears to be a veiled threat.
Nik Steinberg: Even before Mike Pompeo's blowup, State Department insiders were feeling undermined. Well, Trump's political appointees have been undermining the professional civil service almost everywhere. Rex Tillerson started this in the State Department: while he was less ideological than Pompeo, he was remarkably careless, ignorant, and callous. Michael Lewis wrote about several cases of this in The Fifth Risk. I have mixed views on this happening in the State Dept., as what passed for professional there was a lifelong commitment to anti-communism and neoliberalism -- the view that the sole purpose of US foreign policy is to secure business opportunities for the globalized rich (especially those in oil, arms, and finance). I could see doing some housecleaning there.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: Martha Nussbaum thinks the so-called retreat of liberalism is an academic fad. Interview with the philosopher on her latest book, The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, starting with some dumb things that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) said.
Emily Stewart: Hillary Clinton jumps into the 2020 primary by blasting Bernie Sanders. Explaining her fact-challenged rant against Sanders, Clinton is quoted as saying, "I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!" Maybe if they revealed some conscious remorse for her shortcomings, but just to remind us that deep down she's just another conceited asshole? Not really.
Matt Stieb:
Bolton says Trump tied Ukraine aid to Biden investigation in book draft: One thing that wasn't clear before now was why Bolton, having refused to testify in the House, now wants to testify in the Senate. Evidently he now sees it as part of his book promo tour.
Ratings show Americans don't care about the impeachment trial enough to watch it.
Trump invites Israel, not Palestine, to discuss peace plan. This is Jared Kushner's "plan," which nobody likes -- even Israelis don't see the point, so it shouldn't be surprising that the first step is to get the US-Israeli side onto the same page. Then they (well, probably just Kushner) thinks they can ram a settlement they can call "peace" down everyone's throats. Not that there's any urgency here, but note the mug shots: one leader's impeached, the other's indicted. Both could use the distraction.
Craig Timberg/Isaac Stanley-Becker: Sanders supporters have weaponized Facebook to spread angry memes about his Democratic rivals. This is probably meant to throw shade on Bernie for unsportsmanlike conduct -- "No other Democrat's supporters are engaged in behavior on a similar scale, which is more characteristic of the online movement galvanized by Trump" -- although I have to wonder whether this isn't an essential part of the skill-set necessary to run against Trump and win. A while back, I was trying to figure out what Democrats could do with Bloomberg's billion. I think I'd spend most of it on ground game, and secondly on social media. (Bloomberg is putting most of it into vanity TV ads, as if he's campaigning in the 1970s.) Meanwhile, Trump is doubling down. See: John Harris: Trump's greatest ally in the coming election? Facebook.
Alex Ward:
Trump said no US troops were hurt in the Iran strike. The number is now up to 34. Yeah, but for once a Trump lie made it easier to step back from a death spiral of escalation. On the other hand, this does remind us that war gamesmanship is always fraught with danger, something that sane people should always work against.
Thousands in Iraq called for US troops to leave the country. But there's more to the story. The US has long survived in Iraq by pitting factions against one another, casting itself as protector of minorities, plus a lot of bribes, so Trump officials are skeptical of having to respect the will of the majority. But the struggle continues: Huge rally as Iraqis demand US troops pull out.
Libby Watson: The elite media's Amy Klobuchar blind spot: "That so many people in the pundit class promote a candidate credibly accused of being an abuse boss says a lot about their regard for ordinary people." That dredges up a story that made the rounds in the weeks after her announcement, but hasn't been heard from since.
Alissa Wilkinson: The Fight explores how the ACLU is navigating the Trump era through 4 key cases: "The documentary shows the hard, exhausting work of fighting for civil and human rights."
Gabriel Winant: No going back: The power and limits of the anti-monopolist tradition. Review of Matt Stoller's book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, roughly from the 1870s through the 1960s. With Reagan, anti-monopoly enforcement waned, while financiers went on a spree buying up, combining, and carving up businesses to reap more and more monopoly rents. Recently progressive Democrats have started to talk about monopoly (and monopsony) again, partly because anti-monopoly politics has always been rooted in a defense of markets against corrupting power. (E.g., see Thomas Philippon: The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets.)
Robert Wright: Tom Cotton, soldier in Bill Kristol's proxy war against evil.
Matthew Yglesias: