Editorial: Skunk Punks G7 Allies

Donald Trump played the role of the skunk at the Group of 7 garden party in Quebec June 8-9, as he showed up late, berated the six other national leaders for retaliating against his tariffs on steel and aluminum, and left early, refusing to sign off on the customary communique papering over their differences.

Trump had grumbled about having to go to the G7 meeting at all, and he raised a stink before he made it to the summit, with Twitter attacks on Canada’s trade policies and suggesting that Russia be invited to rejoin the alliance of economic powers, after it was expelled following the 2014 forcible annexation of Crimea.

Once at the summit, Trump engaged in what a French official described to Reuters as a “rant” full of “recriminations” against US trading partners, followed by his public denial of any contention with leaders at the summit, as he said their relationship was a “10.” a

The next morning, Trump showed up conspicuously late to a breakfast meeting on women’s empowerment, missing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s opening statement and creating a distraction with his entry while Isabelle Hudson, Canada’s ambassador to France and co-chair of the gender equality council, was speaking.

Trump left before the ending of the summit, to travel to Singapore, where he was to meet his new best friend, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The remaining six national leaders discussed climate change and environmental crises and reaffirmed their commitment to implement the Parish Agreement on climate change, from which Trump is withdrawing the US. Trump representatives offered a paragraph promoting cleaner fossil fuels.

On Air Force One, Trump heard that Prime Minister Trudeau had spoken at a press conference about retaliatory measures that Canada would take in response to Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. “Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable but we also will not be pushed around,” Trudeau told reporters.

Angry Trump said he ordered his representatives to back out of the joint communique that attempted to minimize the trade dispute, leaving the leaders of Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Japan to agree on the need for “free, fair, and mutually beneficial trade” and the importance of fighting protectionism.

Trump tweeted: “PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, ‘US Tariffs were kind of insulting’ and he ‘will not be pushed around.’ Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!”

Trump added he might escalate the trade war by putting tariffs on imported cars and car parts, which would devastate the Canadian auto industry, which is highly integrated with the US.

Trump told reporters it would be “very easy” to make the case for tariffs on auto imports, using the rationale that they threaten national security. “It’s economic. It’s the balance sheet. To have a great military, you need a great balance sheet,” he said.

Trump also repeated his desire to have a “sunset clause” in an updated NAFTA deal, requiring it to be renegotiated every five years, which Trudeau has rejected.

The United Steelworkers union has supported the tariffs on steel and aluminum, but expressed disappointment that the Trump Administration applied the tariffs to Canadian mills, based on supposed national security concerns, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

“The decision not to exempt Canada ignores the fact that Canada’s steel and aluminum exports to the United States are fairly traded and that Canada has shown its willingness to strengthen its laws as well as its cooperation with the United States to fight unfair trade,” USW stated May 31.

Early results showed the tariffs were having the intended impact, USW said, as thousands of jobs were created or saved as trading partners finally began to take action against the root of all the problems: China. Mills in Europe and Japan are more closely matched with US producers.

The same goes for proposed tariffs on auto parts. United Auto Workers President Dennis Wilson welcomed the Trump administration’s investigation of the impact of imported cars on national security. “The United States became a dumping ground for a lot of countries at a very low cost,” he said May 24.

But the trade group that represents General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ interests in Washington is dubious that the probe will give Trump cover to implement tariffs or limit imports.

“We are confident that vehicle imports do not pose a national security risk to the US,” the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said, according to Bloomberg News. In addition to the Big Three US brands, the Alliance also includes BMW, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz USA, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo, all of which build vehicles in the US.

US goods and services trade with Canada totaled $673.9 billion in 2017, with a net trade surplus of $8.4 billion for the US, according to the Office of US Trade Representative. However, Canada had a $17.5 billion surplus in goods in 2017 while the US had a $25.9 billion surplus in services.

US goods and services trade with China totaled $648.5 billion in 2016 and the US goods trade deficit with China was $347 billion. That is the gap the Trump Administration needs to address.

Talking with Kim is Better than Tweeting

We hope the vague agreement between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore survives the flight back home, though we suspect that, in the North Korean dictator, Trump may have met his match in the grifting game. Other US presidents have tried to sound out North Korea leaders on the possibility of reducing tensions along the 38th Parallel, which separates North and South Korea. Trump critics objected to his giving Kim the legitimacy of a summit meeting, but 65 years after an armistice replaced the shooting with a standoff at the Demilitarized Zone, North Korea remains technically at war with South Korea and the US, and we think respectful talk between Trump and Kim is better than exchanges of insulting tweets.

Trump was unprepared to negotiate the details of a peace treaty or “denuclearization” with Kim, but if he gets peace talks going, with the support of South Korea President Moon Jae-In, who has led the peace efforts, we can mark it as a good thing.

North Korea’s longtime allies, Russia and China, probably would welcome an end to North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric, even if Kim is unwilling to give up his nuclear weapons — particularly after John Bolton, said in March, after he became Trump’s national security adviser, that the administration should insist on a “Libyan Solution” for North Korea — requiring Kim to give up his nuclear weapons before any agreements could be reached. Bolton referred to George W. Bush’s demand that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi give up his nuclear program in 2003 in exchange for security guarantees from the US. Of course, Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 with British, French and US military assistance. Saddam Hussein met a similar fate in Iraq in 2003 after giving up his nuclear ambitions, and Trump has shown he doesn’t respect the agreement made by his predecessor, Barack Obama, to limit Iran’s nuclear program. Kim won’t be giving up his nukes anytime soon in exchange for the assurances of Trump — a notorious liar and reneger. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2018

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Selections from the July 1-15, 2018 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther
Time for the midnight ride

EDITORIAL
Skunk punks G7 allies; Talking with Kim better than tweeting

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
The road to hopelessness

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Greitens’ big guns misfire

DISPATCHES
Medicare, Social Security stressed but expendable;
Pelosi’s PAYGO pledge frustrates progressive goals;
Trump tops 3,251 lies in 500 days;
Mulvaney fires advisory board whose members criticized him;
Is Obamacare here to stay?
Supreme Court clears way for diseinfranchisement of voters;
US dairy trade policy is simple: basically no imports at all;
Feinstein bill would prohibit family separations at border;
Net neutrality is officially dead ...

ART CULLEN
Our dirty secret

JILL RICHARDSON
‘Pro-family’ homophobia rips families apart

JOHN YOUNG
Serious case of parasitism in executive branch

PETER CERTO
Never mind the wall — they’re building warehouses

BOB BURNETT
All the president’s men: Mike Pompeo

GENE NICHOL
RFK fifty years on

SALLY HERRIN
‘Red pill’: Lessons for the left

JASON SIBERT
A nation’s word should mean something

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky 
A fraught century

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Harley-Davidson is moving jobs offshore despite tax cut and subsidies

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas 
Work makes you insured

SAM URETSKY
Time for labor to fight back

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Time to think big

WAYNE O’LEARY
New wind sweeps Mexico

JOHN BUELL
War as our way of life?

KENT PATERSON 
Migrants in US struggle to participate in 2018 Mexican elections

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Nolo Contendere

ROB PATTERSON
How about those Beatles

ED RAMPELL
Rigging Rigoletto’s fate: Send in the clowns

Atlantic runs ridiculous article that proposes to replace NY subways with driverless hoverboards rented at market price from private companies

By Marc Jampole

Atlantic’s editors must have all taken stupid pills on the same day or forgot that editors are also supposed to check the math. Or maybe they thought it was a science fiction fairy tale when they agreed to run “The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair” by software expert Peter Weyner?

Weyner proposes to replace the New York subway system with underground paved roads on which a variety of private fleets of driverless vehicles would transport New Yorkers directly to their destinations, all guided by one central scheduling system. Prices would vary depending on the time of day and type of vehicle employed, as Weyner imagines a market for both basic transportation and luxury cars outfitted with a desk and chair. He believes it will be cheaper to convert the subway system and buy fleets of driverless vehicles than the $19 billion that Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) chief Andy Byford says it will take the fix the subways. Weyner, whose expertise in the matter seems to be that he has self-published a few books about driverless cars, prophesizes that it will take less energy to run the tens of thousands driverless vehicles than it does to run the current fleet of subways.

Weyner’s exposition has a sieve-like number of logical holes in it. First off, he never demonstrates why a $19 billion price tag means that, of necessity, we should replace the railed mass transit concept. It’s called a “pons asinorum” in Latin, or “bridge of asses”: A being true does not lead to B being true, and wouldn’t even if both were true, which in this case, they are not.

The article’s basic premise connects two ideas—privatization and replacement of trains by driverless vehicles for individual users—that don’t have to exist together. We could privatize subways or we could have the government finance, build and run the system Weyner proposes. Of course, Weyner believes that privatization will lead to a greater choice of vehicles, amenities and other features without explaining how that could be a benefit to those wanting to get to the office or the jazz club on time and cheaply. Weyner undercuts his own argument without even knowing it when he notes that the subway lines were originally privately run. Yes, they were. But he does not complete his history: Private ownership of subways didn’t work out too well, so within a few decades government took over with a pledge to provide inexpensive and reliable public transportation to 1.75 billion rides a year.

Weyner’s math never really adds up. At best, he does hasty analysis that does not take every factor into consideration; at worst, he’s purposely trying to do some math magic tricks, similar to politicians who propose that lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations leads to greater job creation.

Let’s start with basic size, which in the case of vehicles matters a lot. The average 10-car subway train holds 1,832 people according to the manufacturer, but Weyner says 2,000 and I saw someone estimate it at 2,200. At rush hour, trains typically hold 103% of capacity, or 1887 if we use the manufacturer’s recommendation. At 1,832 per train at peak capacity, that’s 2.41 square feet per person; at 2,000, it’s 2.21 square feet. The current generation of Segways, the hoverboard I checked, measures from 5.41 square feet to 9.16 square feet, or from 2.25 to 3.8 times larger than the footprint of a subway rider. Thus, excluding the room that will have to exist between each vehicle as it rolls along the underground road, it will take from 2.25 to 3.8 times the total length of driverless vehicles to replace your average subway train at rush hour.

But wait. It’s going to be much more additional space than that. Remember that rich folk will be able to get customized luxury cars. And what about people traveling in groups, those carrying a lot of packages, or people with disabilities? Those traveling with strollers, bicycles or dogs in containers? Those who need to eat while they ride? Some people absolutely have to sit down for health reasons. A lot of the vehicles will end up being bigger than the current 5.41-9.16 square feet of a hoverboard. The bigger the vehicle, the more space needed between vehicles. That’s simple physics. Certainly the space between vehicles will be much more than the inches that separate New Yorkers on rush hour trains. Even with the efficiency of driverless vehicles under a central scheduling authority using sophisticated software, it’s hard to see how individual vehicles will be able to move the New York rush hour crowds as efficiently as an upgraded subway system with new switching systems could do.

That’s where peak pricing comes in, Weyner says. Peak pricing will influence people to select alternative times of day to travel. Let’s forget the obvious logical flaw—that a public authority can also do peak pricing for rail transit. Lots of people do not have flexible hours, and many (if not most) New York employers already stagger start and end times to accommodate the New York rush hour craziness their employees go through. The least flexible in travel times will virtually always be those who earn the least, so moving to any kind of peak pricing for mass transit will inevitably have a disparately negative impact on the poor, and thus go against the basic mission of the subway system for more than a century.

Weyner’s numbers for energy savings are just plain sloppy. He estimates that running the hoverboards will take only 20% of the electrical energy that running the subways does, but conveniently forgets to mention that he’s comparing apples to a basket of mixed fruit. He only estimates the electrical costs for running the hoverboards, whereas the MTA annual use of 1.8 billion kilowatt hours includes the electricity to power the lighting along the tracks, in the stations and outside entrances, the signal system, the toll booths and the elevators; FYI, Weyner’s plan calls for adding more lights to the roadways. Weyner also conveniently forgets to calculate how much electricity the non-hoverboard vehicles will use. Missing, too is an estimate of the total number of vehicles included in his estimate for energy use.

Let’s not forget that after a $19 billion investment, there will be fewer delays and breakdowns, meaning the subway system will use less electrical power.

The article never considers maintenance costs for concrete roads versus rails or the lifespan of hoverboards versus railcars, but he does make a big show of trying to prove it will take much less than $19 billion to convert to his vision. But when it comes to estimating how much it would cost to clean up the subways, pull up the tracks and pave them, add lights, install the appropriate software systems and buy the vehicles, Weyner is pulling numbers out of the air, with no basis. Again, he estimates the costs of hoverboards, but not of the hundreds if not thousands of bigger vehicles that will be needed for those with disabilities, groups, people with packages, those who need to sit and luxury travelers. He never tells us how he derived the figure of $8 million a mile to clean up and he never places a number on the additional lighting that will be required. His budget lacks so many crucial items that it’s essentially worthless in making a comparison to the cost of fixing what ails the subway system.

The paragraph on the great new money-making opportunity that an underground road with driverless vehicles will create makes me wonder if Weyner has ever ridden a New York subway. He sees untapped wealth in placing advertising billboards along these underground roads. He never answers the question why companies are going to want to pay more for ads along the underground roadways than they now pay for ads in the subway cars; nor does he estimate how much more ad space will be available on these underground billboards than already exists inside current subway cars. The only way not to chide him for these omissions is to assume he has never seen subway car advertising, which means he has never ridden in the New York subway.

Another sign that Weyner has never actually ridden the subway extensively is that he never addresses what to do with the 40% of the subway system which is at ground level, or more frequently, dozens of feet above the ground. Does he propose to enclose the elevated lines or place safety rails on their sides, and how much is that going to cost? I can tell you one thing: it will take a ton more money to dig new tunnels to replace the els than it will to complete the MTA’s $19 billion laundry list of current needs.

Subway systems in general are a product of 19th century thinking, just as Weyner accuses them of being. But big deal! That does not mean subways are obsolete, as Weyner declares at the beginning of the article. The idea that dedicated mass transit systems are the ideal way to transport large numbers of people in urban areas is a lot younger than the idea that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us, or that wheels encounters less friction than blocks in moving a weight over a surface. There are lots of old ideas and technologies that are still valid, many of which have undergone improvement over time; stereo amplifiers than play MP3s, electric screwdrivers, refrigerators that make ice, cars with electronic systems and batteries, and computers that take photos and make phone calls that you can carry with you in your pocket all immediately come to mind. Nothing in this mess of an article should convince us to abandon subways or the $19 billion improvement plan the MTA has developed.

And therein lies the real harm of this article and the real disservice that Weyner and Atlantic have done to New York and the entire country. Right-wingers everywhere will wave the article in the air and declare piously that it’s a waste of money for the state or the federal government to help fund the MTA’s ambitious but necessary improvements. And that has the potential to devastate the New York economy, and therefore the national economy, which is intimately tied to the economic well-being of its largest city. With all due respect to Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco-San Jose, Houston and Atlanta, New York has been the heartbeat of American commerce and finance for almost 200 years now. The New York subway system—like the tunnels taking rail traffic from New Jersey to Manhattan and like the Washington subway system and like our system of roads and bridges and sewer systems everywhere—are living on borrowed time. We have spent the past 30 years cutting infrastructure spending to line the pockets of the wealthy through deep and steady tax cuts. It’s time to invest in our country’s public infrastructure again, not spin pie-in-the-sky free market science fiction fantasies.

Why does Trump keeping acting against U.S. interests in foreign policy? Stupidity? Narcissism? Or maybe it’s money from Russia & elsewhere

By Marc Jampole

Let’s take a bird’s eye view at the foreign policy accomplishments of Donald Trump in the past 500+ days:

Trump has insulted our allies and made nice with long-time adversaries, showing a decided preference for autocrats such as the Philippine’s Duarte and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un over democratically elected leaders, especially those who happen to be women.

He has walked away from multilateral agreements that were working such as the Paris Accord and the Iran Nuclear agreement. He has also threatened to blow up other trade agreements and kept the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has given the Chinese an opening to dominate Pacific trade.

Trumpty-Dumpty has inflicted trade tariffs on our allies, who have always played by the international rules of treaties, while helping out a Chinese company ZTE, which was found to have broken trade sanctions multiple times.

He pissed off most of the world by making an unnecessary and totally symbolic move of the U.S. embassy in Israel and he took sides in a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that we had no business poking our noses into.

Trump has weakened the U.S. foreign policy capability by shrinking the State Department, forcing out career diplomats and not filling open positions. Meanwhile, with the help of Congressional Republicans, he has increased the military budget and approved further development of robot weapons that operate without human intervention and the next generation of nuclear weapons. He has also jacked up American use of military power in a number of global hotspots. The net effect of these policies is to tell the world that America is turning its back on the idea of multilateral diplomacy in favor of pushing its military might around.

Even the one move that might work out in favor of the United States could end up backfiring, an instance of losing by winning. That’s the Korean peninsula. While the world would be safer from nuclear attack if the North Koreans dismantled their nuclear capability, de-escalation of tensions between the two Koreas would curtail the need for so many U.S. troops and weaponry in South Korea, military assets which are directed at China and Russia as much as at North Korea. A peace treaty could also enable China to build a pipeline through North Korea to provide South Korea with natural gas, something that will help both China and Russia. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to broker a peace and thereby denuclearize the Korean position. I’m merely pointing out that to truly contribute to world peace, the United States must in a sense “thread the needle,” i.e., construct a nuanced deal that seems beyond the capabilities of the broad-brushed, bad-with-details Trump to engineer. The result then could be a lopsided deal that while stabilizing the Korean peninsula also destabilizes representational democracy throughout the globe.

Many of Trump’s foreign policy moves, such as the help to ZTE and the bullying of Qatar have seemed to be connected to his private business matters. The move against Qatar followed Qatar denying the Trump organization some loans, whereas the help for ZTE came after the Chinese delivered a massive loan to a Trump partner. If it’s true that the Trump Administration has made deals with countries based on how well those countries treat Trump’s business interests, it will be unconstitutional (the “emoluments clause”), unethical and unheard of. Throughout American history, politicians such as Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Averill Harriman, John Foster Dulles, George W. H. Bush and others have conducted foreign policy to help American businesses, but it’s never been their own business!

Of course, virtually all of the foreign policy actions Trump has taken have help Russia in one way or another, providing at least circumstantial evidence that Trump is the “Siberian candidate,” bought and paid for long before the 2016 elections.

What kind of person sells out his or her own country for money? Some would say a self-centered narcissist. Or perhaps a ruthless power seeker, much like David, son of Jesse of Bethlehem, who used the troops of his country’s enemy to take control. Or perhaps like several British communist spies, Trump thinks his country is unjust or wrong, and has thrown in with a country pursuing a superior way of life. Based on the body of evidence made in his public statements, for Trump a superior way of life would be an ethnically cleansed white country whose autocratic government tries to control the mores and beliefs of its citizens. It doesn’t, however, matter much why Trump would have sold his soul to Putin. It still makes him the same thing: a traitor.

We should also consider the possibility that there is a basic miswiring in Trump’s brain, something that compels him almost always to make the wrong decision. I once tried to teach someone chess who, when presented with overwhelming evidence that one move was strong and another weak, would repeat with a great deal of cognizance the facts and then always make the wrong move. Always. You could see this disconnect in the person’s approach to math, too, so it was a basic miswiring in the brain, a kind of defect that made this person make the wrong choice. Perhaps Trump has a similar disability. That he also tends to take the side against evidence in immigration, environmental, healthcare and gun control issues provides additional support to the idea that his brain doesn’t work quite right, as does his past failure in every business except branding and entertainment.

Of course, Trump’s problem could be in his head, not mental, but emotional. In his extreme narcissism, perhaps Trump believes that the power of his will can overcome the reality of facts. As the superior man, he can bend the actions not just of other humans, but of nature itself. He wouldn’t be the first to mistake Schopenhauer’s “will to power” for an advantage the superior man has over others. Hitler and his crew beat Trump to the punch in trying to will the world into their own base and debased image. In saying that he dominated the most recent G-7 summit, in not seeing that he embarrassed himself and the United States, we see signs of the narcissism that makes some people believe they can shape, change or twist reality to their own liking.

So yes, it’s quite possible that the Trump foreign policy derives from a small brain malfunction, his emotional illness or even just his unfortunate but almost laughable combination of ignorance and low intellectual abilities.

But I’ll bet on the money. He has sold out his country for a bag of gold coins, like Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot.