Monday, July 29, 2019

Fulfilling the Dream

What I represent is an America that still allows people to fulfill that American dream. ... What I wanted people to know about my election is that this dream isn't closed off.

- Ilhan Omar

This week's featured posts are "A New ICE Policy Endangers Everybody" and "Reset: Investigations Post Mueller".

This week everybody was talking about Bob Mueller

Most of my reaction to Mueller's testimony on Wednesday is in the featured post.


Mueller's warning about Russian interference in our elections -- that it's real and they're still doing it -- made no impression on Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. "Moscow Mitch", who killed two election-security bills that had passed the House: One would give states extra money to beef up the security of their election systems and insist on paper ballots (which can be recounted if something goes wrong with the voting machines); and the other would require candidates to notify the FBI if they are offered help by a foreign country.

Republicans are trying to portray these as partisan proposals, because they got almost no Republican votes in the House. But there's nothing partisan about the content of the bills, unless Republicans believe they can't win fair elections. For the same reason, McConnell killed H. R. 1, which would ban gerrymandering, eliminate anonymous political ads, and make many other admirable changes in our elections.

and "expedited removal"

This is the subject of "A New ICE Policy Endangers Everybody".

and this week's outburst of racism

Last week the Squad, this week Elijah Cummings and Baltimore. Maybe Trump's purpose is to cut off discussion of Bob Mueller, but if this is just his 2020 strategy -- to turn the racism up to 11 -- I think he's starting too early. This is going to get really old by the time we vote.

Most of the time, the media treats Trump's constant attacks on communities of color as bad in some abstract moral sense. But occasionally someone takes it personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYANRUos8Hg&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2tzV9CwQxjL-39NRahN2cuX2XLktdV3IajOCEy3owtIDqjIhOukvWQFGw

Victor Blackwell's response demonstrates why it's important for the media to include a wide range of voices. White commentators from professional-class suburbs can tut-tut as much as they like about insults like this, but their words don't have the power of someone who feels the sting personally.

Blackwell makes a point that you should note, even if you don't feel like watching the full 2:42: Infested is a dehumanizing term that Trump reserves for communities of color. Whenever Trump refers to a place as being "infested" with something (drugs, rats, crime, etc.), invariably that place has a non-white majority. West Virginia might be poor, and it might be ground-zero of the opioid problem, but Trump would never call it "drug-infested", because white people live there.


Seth Mandel makes a similar point about Trump's clash with ex-Republican Rep. Justin Amash.

See Trump didn’t go after Amash’s district in their dustup, which is like 80% white. That’s a bit of a tell.

This tweet also raises the notion that it's weird for a President to "go after" any part of America. I'm sure there are meth-head-infested hell-holes in rural Alabama, but Obama never demonized them, or argued that their representatives shouldn't criticize him until they fixed their districts.


A number of white Baltimorians also responded to Trump's attack on their city. Director John Waters pointed to the cowardice of insulting people via Twitter. "Come on over to that neighborhood and see if you have the nerve to say it in person!” (That's humorous, because Trump is a Twitter warrior. Can you imagine him having the courage to insult Colin Kaepernick or LeBron James face-to-face?)

And David Simon, creator of HBO's Baltimore-centered "The Wire", called Trump "a simplistic, racist moron".


There's an argument about how to respond to Trump's appeals to racism.

Tim Wise describes what he learned from David Duke's campaigns for governor and senator in Louisiana.

if a racist’s political opponent avoids the subject of race and tries instead to appeal to voters with proposals on health coverage and tax reform, that normalizes the racist, whether it’s Duke, Trump or someone else, by treating them like any other candidate, and treating the election at hand as if it’s merely a debate between two legitimate, contrasting public policy visions.

To win an election where the issue of race is front-and-center, anti-racists must make it clear to voters that when they cast their ballots, they are making a moral choice about the kind of people they want to be and the kind of nation in which they want to live.

But Frank Bruni disagrees:

We used all those words in 2016 — racist, demagogue, fascist — and he won. Voters saw indelible examples of this same behavior, and he won. The [North Carolina] rally wasn’t a new Trump, just a bloated one. And the coming election isn’t a referendum on his character, which voters have or haven’t made their peace with. Pointing at him and shouting the direst words from the darkest thesaurus will do limited if any good.

Stop talking so much about the America that he’s destroying and save that oxygen for the America that Democrats want to create.

I wonder if the answer isn't to borrow an idea from the Serbian resistance to Milosevic: very simple slogans that became nationwide graffiti, like "It's time" and "He's finished". Maybe the right anti-Trump message doesn't have to detail anything about his racism, sexism, bullying, trolling, authoritarianism, or general boorishness. Just: "Enough!". Everyone who sees it can decide for themselves what they've had enough of. Feel free to steal my version or make a better one of your own.

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Another mass shooting yesterday, this time at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. If even these sorts of fun civic events aren't safe any more, it says something terrible about our country.


The next round of Democratic presidential debates are tomorrow and Wednesday on CNN. Again, there are 10 candidates each night. The first night is headlined by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on stage the second night.

The first night, I'll be watching what Warren and Sanders do. On the one hand, they agree on a lot, so they could support each other's points. On the other hand, there's probably only room for one of them to make a serious run, so they could try to knock each other out.

On the second night, Joe Biden is the interesting one. The first debate showed that he can't just coast; he has to put forward ideas and jostle with the other candidates. How does he plan to do that?


Friday, the Commerce Department released its GDP estimates for the second quarter. GDP growth was down to 2.1%, and the growth rate for 2018 as a whole was revised down from 3% to 2.5%. This is far from terrible, but it means that the economy is doing roughly the same under Trump as it did under Obama.

Unemployment rates are lower now because it's later in the economic cycle; the economy has had more time to create jobs since the Great Recession. If you look at the graph of the unemployment rate since the recession, you can't pick out any difference between Trump and Obama.

Matt Yglesias elaborates:

Growth under Trump has continued, but there’s no discernible Trump acceleration. What’s more, the data indicates that the growth we have been enjoying has come largely from traditional fiscal stimulus — under Trump, Republicans have stopped caring about budget deficits and spending has gone up while taxes have gone down — rather than from any supply-side magic or boost in investment.

In other words: The Trump tax cut may have stimulated the economy by raising the deficit, but the other stuff it was supposed to accomplish still hasn't happened. (Business investment, for example, was actually down in the second quarter.) Exports, meanwhile, are a drag on the economy, as Trump's trade war takes its toll.

Again, this isn't awful performance any more than Obama's was. It just points out that we're getting nothing in exchange for having Trump as president. Nothing in exchange for what we're giving up in terms of democracy, the environment, race relations, and our national dignity.


The Supreme Court has stayed the injunction of a lower court, and will allow Trump to expropriate $2.5 billion from the Defense budget to start building his wall. This is not a final ruling on the merits of the case, which is proceeding along with other cases.


The Boeing 737 Max is what happens when manufacturers are allowed to perform their own safety assessments.

Boeing needed the approval process on the Max to go swiftly. Months behind its rival Airbus, the company was racing to finish the plane, a more fuel-efficient version of its best-selling 737.

The regulator’s hands-off approach was pivotal. At crucial moments in the Max’s development, the agency operated in the background, mainly monitoring Boeing’s progress and checking paperwork. The nation’s largest aerospace manufacturer, Boeing was treated as a client, with F.A.A. officials making decisions based on the company’s deadlines and budget.

The two crashes that caused the planes to be grounded were caused by a software system [MCAS] that the FAA never examined closely. When MCAS was changed late in the process, making it activate more frequently and make bigger adjustments,

the company never submitted an updated safety assessment of those changes to the agency. ... Under the impression the system was insignificant, officials didn’t require Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS. When the company asked to remove mention of MCAS from the pilot’s manual, the agency agreed.

A common libertarian argument says that a corporation's reputation for safety is so valuable in the market that government oversight isn't necessary. If that principle held anywhere, it would hold in a corporation like Boeing. But the argument assumes that the full import of decisions comes into play at all times. In actual corporations, though, individual decision-makers often are under pressure to cut corners and hope.


One thing Trump ran on in 2016 was that he would protect and even revive America's coal industry. ("They want to be miners, but their jobs have been taken away and we're going to bring them back, folks.") Obama, he claimed, had been fighting a "war on coal", regulating the industry out of business. Trump would put a stop to that war.

Well, the Trump administration has definitely rolled back regulations, valuing the dirtiest form of fossil fuel above the environment, and especially above combating climate change. But it turns out that over-regulation wasn't really the problem: Coal companies are continuing to go bankrupt, with six bankruptcies since October.

Adam Ozimek explains how Trump-think works in these situations:

West Virginia coal miners, big news: we’re cracking down on immigrants. No longer will you live under the crushing burden of the 1.6% of your population that is foreign born.


The NYT wonders why Rep. Seth Moulton keeps running for president despite polling at asterisk levels. Those of us who live in his district wonder the same thing.


It was 109 degrees in Paris on Thursday, but I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. Just keep on doing whatever you've been doing.

Last month, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said Europe’s five hottest summers since 1500 had all occurred in the 21st century – in 2002, 2003, 2010, 2016 and 2018.

Monthly records were now falling five times as often as they would in a stable climate, the institute said, adding that this was “a consequence of global warming caused by the increasing greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas”.


The Washington Post let a former student editor at Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University describe the oppressive atmosphere he had to live under.


A video of Rep. Ilhan Omar that has been edited to make her sound anti-white went viral inside the conservative bubble. It was shared by Senator Marco Rubio, who apparently doesn't feel any obligation to verify the stuff he tweets. Here's the original 10-minute Omar interview, which includes the quote at the top of the page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UmmvROd4J8

In case you're wondering what was left out in the edited version, it's the hypothetical nature of her comment that police should be profiling and monitoring white men. They edited out the "if fear was the driving force behind policies to keep Americans safe". She wasn't trying to threaten white men (as the edited version implies); her point was that policies like Trump's Muslim ban have more to do with bigotry than with fear of terrorism. And this much is true: More terrorist attacks in the US are carried out by white supremacists than by jihadists.

and let's close with somebody else's problem

Now that Boris Johnson is giving Trump competition in the wild-haired loose cannon division of the head-of-state Olympics, and the possibility of a no-deal Brexit looms, this Tracey Uhlman piece advertising "Paddy Passports" -- EU-member Irish passports for British folk who still want to travel in Europe -- is relevant again.

Monday, July 1, 2019

Abandonment of Duty

This Court’s one-person, one-vote cases recognize that each person is entitled to an equal say in the election of representatives. It hardly follows from that principle that a person is entitled to have his political party achieve representation commensurate to its share of statewide support. Vote dilution in the one-person, one-vote cases refers to the idea that each vote must carry equal weight. That requirement does not extend to political parties; it does not mean that each party must be influential in proportion to the number of its supporters.

- Chief Justice John Roberts

Of all times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one. The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.

-- Justice Elena Kagan

This week's featured posts are "What I Learned from the Debates" and "Chief Justice Roberts OKs Minority Rule".

The Weekly Sift's Facebook page just reached 1,000 likes. If you haven't liked it yet, think about it.

This week everybody was talking about the Supreme Court

The term ended this week, and as usual the Court saved the toughest cases for the end. I've already discussed the gerrymandering case in one of the featured posts. But there was also the census case. Here, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the four liberal judges to slap back the administration's effort to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census.

Whatever Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross might say, the purpose of a citizenship question has been obvious from the beginning: Intimidate non-citizens out of responding to the census, so that areas with lots of non-citizens will be undercounted. That will mean their states get fewer representatives in Congress and fewer electoral votes. In general, this will raise the (already substantial) structural advantage of rural whites, who tend to vote Republican.

Unfortunately, the fact that Ross and Trump are trying to undermine democracy is not a winning legal argument, because the law setting up the census is written so broadly that they could say openly "We're trying to undermine democracy" and that would be fine.

What Ross did wrong, though, was to construct a fake reason for the citizenship question and stand by it in court. In general, this is not all that different from what the administration did in the Muslim ban case: Give a bogus explanation and count on the Court to defer to the judgment of the Executive Branch. The problem is, this explanation was so bogus that Chief Justice Roberts was embarrassed to rubber-stamp it. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Stern summarize:

If there could be a one-sentence summary of his majority opinion in the term’s census case—in which the chief joined the court’s liberals to refuse to allow Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census—it would be this: “Go ahead and lie to me, but at least do it with gravitas.” Ross and his crew of Keystone Cops had attempted to add the citizenship question that would depress Hispanic response rates and boost white voting power in future redistricting, using pretextual reasons about which the secretary lied But his goals did not offend John Roberts’ politics; that much is clear from his opinion, which accepts the premise that Ross has the right to do what he did so long as he gives a better reason next time. They offended his sense of dignity and politesse with their sloppiness. Lie better next time. That’s the real holding of this case, and it tells you what you need to know about the chief.

One striking thing is that the four conservative justices all dissented from this opinion. As long as the Trump administration goes through the proper motions, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh really don't care whether what they're being told is true or even credible.

We'll get a good chance to see those four blow with the partisan winds if and when any of the House Democrats' subpoena cases reaches them. There, the Court really has no business delving into Congress' reasons for wanting to see what it wants to see. But I'm sure they'll find a way to forego deference to an equal branch of government when that branch is controlled by Democrats.

and the human rights atrocities on our border

The mistreatment of refugees on our southern border continued to get attention this week. The photo of a father and daughter drowned in the Rio Grande was hard to ignore and hard to explain away.

Congress managed to respond, passing a bill to fund the agencies dealing with the immigrants just before leaving for the Fourth of July recess. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill which progressives in the House didn't like, because it included more money for enforcement as well as humanitarian aid. But House Democrats couldn't stay together and ended up adopting the Senate bill.

The detention facility at Homestead had the misfortune to be close to the Democratic debates, making it an obvious camp to criticize. For its part, the private for-profit company running the camp put out a defensive press release. Among the "fictions" the company disputes is that "Homestead is a 'prison-like' facility." That's setting the bar high.

One of my favorite quotes is from Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Same thing here: Even among the people who have sympathy for the migrants showing up from Central America, too few are asking what went wrong to make them refugees in the first place.

Let me recommend an article from 2016, before this became a Trump-centered issue: "How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today's migration". Some people ask why this is our problem to deal with. Well, there are reasons. In general, the US has favored the Honduran military over more democratic institutions, and has pushed free-market ideas that have served Honduras' poor badly. Now, they have little power, little money, and no place to go but here.


The Onion published "Tips for Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons", including

  • Consider that we all have different perspectives stemming from things like age, ethnicity, or level of racism.
  • Make sure any protests are peaceful, silent, and completely out of sight of anyone who could actually affect government policy.
  • Avoid painting with a broad brush. Not everyone in favor of zero-tolerance immigration wants to see children in cages—it’s more likely that they just don’t care.

Meanwhile, conservatives exercised their own sense of humor. Kids in cages are so funny!

and the Democratic debates

The other featured post covers them.

and the G-20 meetings in Osaka

Trump spent most of his time chumming with the other members of the Autocrats Club: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and Mohammed bin Salman, with a side trip to see Kim Jong Un.

Trump warned Putin not to interfere in his re-election, and they both laughed. They also yucked about fake news and getting rid of journalists, which Putin has often done by killing them.


The meeting with Xi restarted the trade talks that fell apart in May.

Mr. Trump promised to hold off on his threat to slap new 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports, and he agreed to lift some restrictions on Huawei, the Chinese technology giant at the center of a dispute between the nations. In exchange, he said, China agreed to buy a “tremendous amount” of American food and agricultural products. “We will give them a list of things we want them to buy,” he said.

We'll see if that amounts to anything or not. The Huawei issue is very disturbing, because the Chinese tech giant either is or isn't a national security threat. If it isn't, then imposing the restrictions in the first place was using national security a pretext to get trade concessions. If it is, then relaxing the restrictions to get trade talks restarted makes no sense. Either way, I am left with the impression that Trump just doesn't take security seriously.

Early indications are that the stock market will have a big rally today because of optimism about US/China trade. I'm not qualified to give investment advice, but that doesn't always stop me: If there's some stock you've been thinking about selling, this might be a good moment.


Trump and Kim met in the DMZ between the two Koreas on Sunday. Photos were taken, but it's not clear that anything was accomplished. It's not clear that any of the three Trump/Kim meetings have accomplished anything.


Ivanka's presence as a diplomat was its own side issue. My favorite Facebook comment: "Apparently Trump thought it was Bring Your Daughter to the G-20 Day."

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Dirty tricks have started. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Ari Alexander's questioning of Kamala Harris' race.

“Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves,” Mr. Alexander wrote during the second night of the Democratic debates. “She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

Mr. Trump shared the message, asking his more than three million followers, “Is this true? Wow.”

I'm sure this is a tactic you'll see whenever a Democrat starts to break out of the pack: imply that there is something suspicious or inauthentic about her or him. The insinuation against Harris resembles the baseless claim (pushed by Trump personally) that Barack Obama wasn't really an American.

Kamala Harris with her great-grandmother.

The facts: Harris' father came from Jamaica and her mother from India. She grew up in Oakland, where I'm sure that whatever asterisk Alexander or Trump Jr. want to put on her blackness made no difference whatsoever. When Harris said "As the only black person on this stage ..." she spoke the literal truth. (Cory Booker had debated the previous night.)

To their credit, Harris' rival Democrats closed ranks around her. Cory Booker (who perhaps could benefit if his blackness were considered more authentic than Harris'), was having none of it.

. doesn’t have shit to prove.

And Amy Klobuchar tweeted:

These troll-fueled racist attacks on Senator are unacceptable. We are better than this (Russia is not) and stand united against this type of vile behavior.

Trump Jr. has deleted the tweet and his spokesman claims his intent was "misconstrued". If you've ever been targeted with some kind of smear -- whether based on your race, sex, class, appearance or some other possible sensitivity -- you have undoubtedly run into this tactic before. "Oh, I didn't mean that." The onus is always on you to see the attacker's pure intentions, never on him to see the obvious implications of his words and actions. But let's be blunt: If Trump Jr. really didn't know how his tweet would be construed, then he's a moron.


The current dirty trick on Joe Biden is to imply that he has some mysterious health problem. This is similar to what Trump's people did to Hillary Clinton. Nothing is too low for them.

and let's close with something you probably didn't know

TV Guide claims there's been a TV show set in every state. Sure, we all knew about Northern Exposure in Alaska and Hawaii Five-O, but what's the most popular TV show set in Nebraska?