Recession, repression & regression: the likely results if Trump-GOP legislative program becomes law

By Marc Jampole

Recession. Repression. Regression.

It seems fitting that 3R’s characterize the Trump-GOP legislative program since it was the lack of 3R’s—an old-fashioned, old-timey way to say education—that catapulted Trump to the White House, as uneducated white voters, and many educated ones, too, were so blinded by fear of “the other” that they believed Trump’s lies.

What we see in Trump’s legislative ideas is a wish list from the extreme right that will please very wealthy people and eventually disappoint everyone else accept those that think the function of government is to suppress minorities. If fully implemented, Trump’s legislative program will lead to a worldwide recession or depression, repression of civil rights and a regression backwards in time that erases the economic and social progress we have made over the past eight years.

Let’s take the proposals Trump and the GOP have put on the table topic by topic.

Taxes

Trump and the GOP may engineer the largest tax break for the wealthy in American history, including the Reagan and Bush II cuts. If Trump gets his way, the tax cuts will skew in favor of those whose wealth is tied up in land, but those who own financial assets will also make out like bandits. Large multinational companies storing billions of dollars in profit abroad will be able to repatriate their earnings at a bargain-basement rate of 10%.

Lower taxes on the wealthy and less revenue for the federal government to dispense will eventually lead to a deep recession, as it did under Bush II.  Rich folk will invest their wealth in financial and collectible bubbles, as they always do. No new jobs will be created, because it is not money that is holding back big companies from investing in growth today, but the lack of market growth potential. That lack of a market derives because the middle class and poor have less money than they used to, partially because the government, starved of resources, does not funnel as much money to these groups—AKA the 99%--as they could if taxes were higher. Lower taxes on the wealthy means less money for education, infrastructure maintenance, food stamps, mass transit. Lower taxes on the wealthy also means more money to feed financial bubbles. We’ve seen this before, not just in the United States but throughout history. The asset bubble bursts and it always turns out badly for the economy.

Infrastructure Investment

Trump is living in a free-market dream world if he thinks that his infrastructure financing plan will work. He wants to provide tax incentives to the private sector, which will then rebuild our highways and bridges and expand our mass transit systems. How will the private sector make money on roads and trolley lines? Only by jacking up prices, ignoring the public benefit of building certain roads and routes because they’re unprofitable and hammering down employee wages. The private sector always goes after the money, which may result in rebuilding municipal water systems only in wealthy communities. We’ve tried private sector solutions to prisons and the military and failed miserably. Advanced studies show that when you take into account the wealth and disabilities of the student base, private schools underperform public schools in educating children.  There are just certain basic societal needs that government must finance, address and manage, and infrastructure is first among them.

Immigration

Trump is still talking about funding a wall between the United States and Mexico and he still thinks Mexico will “reimburse” us for its construction. While he intends to have the private sector pay for roads, bridges, mass transit, waterways and sewers, he wants Congress to pass a law that has our taxes laying out the money for this unneeded monstrosity, this money pit that will provide no benefit save a temporary spike in construction jobs. I said “laying out money,” but only a died-in-wool, brainwashed Trumpsterite could believe that Mexico will pay even one penny for Trump’s folly. The rest of his immigration program presents new harsh penalties for breaking existing immigration laws, but nothing else.

Healthcare

If not stopped by healthcare industry lobbyists, Trump and the GOP could plunge the U.S. healthcare system into chaos, especially if they rescind Obamacare before replacing it. Getting rid of Obamacare will not only take away the health insurance of 20 million people, it will precipitously end three policies that helped everyone: 1) The removal of the cap on lifetime coverage; 2) the rule that someone cannot be denied insurance for a pre-existing condition; 3) allowing children to remain on their parent’s health insurance policy until age 26. Now if Congress should pass a law that keeps these important benefits but doesn’t mandate the kind of universal coverage that Obamacare does, health insurers will be forced to jack up rates.

As with everything else, Trump and the GOP favor what they call “market-based” and private solutions to address America’s healthcare needs. They think that making it easier for health insurers to cross state lines (they already do so, but with unique corporate entities in each state responding to the local regulations in each state) and letting people create tax-free Health Savings Accounts will bring down the cost of healthcare. It won’t happen, but it will shift the burden of paying for health insurance from the government and businesses to individuals. Another proposal, to let states manage Medicaid funds, will enable those in right-wing states to reallocate dollars from helping the poor to other uses.

Obamacare isn’t perfect, but building on it makes a lot more sense than ripping it up in favor of “market” solutions shown not to work. I’m guessing that once the healthcare lobby gets through beating up Congress that whatever they call healthcare reform will end up keeping just about all of Obamacare.  

Defense

Trump wants to end the sequestration of funds that has automatically cut federal government spending every year since 2013 for the military only and begin expanding military investment. He doesn’t really have a plan for what he will do with the extra money, but we do know that the Pentagon wants to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and continue development of robot weapons that would make seek-and-kill decisions. Narcissists like Trump always like shiny new toys. Congressional Republicans are still following the Reagan playbook, which consists of cutting taxes primarily on the wealthy while increasing defense spending to starve the social services part of the government and at the same time create enormous deficits which, when interest rates are high, translate into safe bond investments for the wealthy.  I will give Trump the benefit of the doubt and say that I am unsure whether he will ever want to use American military might, but there is no doubt that he joins fellow Republicans in wanting to build it up and never pay for it.

Safety and Security

This part is where the scary repression comes in. Trump has proposed a number of laws that he says will address “surging crime, drugs and violence.” Of course, crime is not surging, nor is violence, except in households that own firearms. But much of Trump’s demagoguery revolves around the notion that we are unsafe. Here is an area in which Trump could take ownership of Obama-era statistics and declare victory, but I believe that Congressional Republicans relish the opportunity to grab more civil rights, to create more selling opportunities for gun manufacturers by underwriting greater weaponization of local police and to encourage harsh police-state tactics in minority areas. The racist undertones of the Trump campaign, his own history of racism and the desire for Republicans to disenfranchise the African-American community may lead to a generation of federal Jim Crow laws that also affect Latinos and Muslims, all in the guise of protecting us from a non-existent crime wave.

The Trump legislative plan marks the apotheosis of the Reagan political strategy: Play on the racism, nativism and religiosity of working and middle class whites to make them believe that their best interests lie with the wealthy, pretend that the social service network being shredded only serves minorities, while pretending that tax cuts help everyone and not just those at the top. 

The good, done, bad & ugly: much of Trump’s 100 day plan will hurt America economically & in other ways

By Marc Jampole

Donald Trump has released an ambitious if highly general plan for the first one hundred days of his administration. He calls it a contract, and like virtually all contracts, its literary value is nonexistent. As a document for change, it should frighten everyone, those who didn’t vote for him and those who did.

The document consists of two parts, things he thinks can do as the executive and things he will ask Congress to do. This article looks at what he intends to do as head of a vast regulation-creating bureaucracy. In a different article, we’ll consider his program for Congress.

The executive’s part of Trump’s “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again” consists of four types of actions: 1) A few good ideas; 2) Things we already do and have done for a while; 3) General actions that are inherently bad because they deny his Administration the flexibility to address each problem in the best way possible; 4) Specific actions that will harm us economically or in other ways.

The good, the done, the bad and the ugly. Let’s look at these categories:

The Good

Trump wants to impose a five-year ban on White House officials becoming lobbyists after government service and a lifetime ban on lobbying on behalf of foreign governments; note he doesn’t include foreign corporations. He also wants to impose a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for any American election. He will propose a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress. All these moves will help reduce the influence of corporate and wealthy interests on our federal government, although none would help as much as appointing a Supreme Court justice who would vote to overturn the Citizens United decision.

He also proposes allocating funds to fix our water and environmental infrastructure, although he proposes to fund it by cancelling financial obligations to United Nation climate change programs, which makes no sense for two reasons: 1) the UN programs are also important to address the climate change he claims is not occurring; and 2) the money we spend on these programs represent a small drop in a very large bucket as far as what we have to expend to fix our city’s aging sewer systems, secure our coastal regions and improve our ability to withstand future extreme weather events.

The Done

During the election, Trump made a number of false accusations regarding the way the federal government handles basic functions, such as searching for undocumented immigrants who are criminals and administering trade deals and regulations. He thus now has to make a big show of doing things the right way. His ego demands it. I’m sure that after a few months he’ll release statistics that show Obama era improvements, take credit for them and declare victory. Here are the actions he proposes that we are already doing quite well. In all these areas, we are already doing everything we can to the extent that the law allows. For Trump to attempt more, he would have to break the law and he would likely end up impeded by lawsuits and constraining orders:

·         Identifying foreign trade abuses that unfairly impact American workers and use every means possible under current law to end any abuses uncovered.

·         Launch a program to identify and remove all criminal undocumented immigrants.

·         Suspend immigration from regions in which safe vetting of refugees cannot safely occur.

·         Implement “extreme vetting,” something we already do.

·         Cancel every unconstitutional action, memorandum and order issued by Obama: if any unconstitutional actions existed, the courts would have already canceled them!

The other thing Trump will do that has been done already is name a Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin Scalia. If his appointment enables a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, I wonder how the nine percent of white women who believe in a woman’s right to an abortion but who nevertheless voted for Trump will feel—they turned the election.

The Bad

Trump insists he will implement a number of very rigid actions that apply across the board to all Administrative branches. These actions represent management strategies that are known to fail because they are too inclusive and deny organizations the flexibility they need to address specific problems. Here are the bad management techniques Trump wishes to implement:

·         Freeze all federal hiring not related to the military or public health and safety to reduce the federal workforce through attrition.

·         Require that for every new government regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.

For Trump seriously to implement these two misguided principles he would have to cut into necessary and expected government services or to gut further the oversight that the government exercises over state governments and industries. Federal government employment is at a low point right now when we take a look at the post-World War II era. May agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency are already seriously understaffed.

The Ugly

Most of the specific actions Trump wants to take will inflict short- and/or long-term pain on the economy and American workers.

The most damage derives by his actions related to energy policy. Trump says he is going to lift Obama roadblocks to oil and gas development projects like the Keystone Pipeline and lift restrictions on the domestic production of shale, oil, natural gas and coal. By focusing on increasing domestic fossil energy supplies he makes a fateful decision: to develop fossil fuels instead of alternative energy and energy conservation. Let’s forget the deleterious impact on the environment that this decision will have and focus on the economic impact. There is currently a surplus of fossils fuel that has driven prices down significantly, in part as corporations and governments react to the global warming that Trump still denies. Figuring in inflation, American gas pump prices are the lowest in years. At this point, all the fossil fuel transmitted along the proposed Keystone pipeline will end up being sold to China, which will enrich the Canadian producers, but not Americans. If we want to sell more fossil fuels abroad, we will face some pretty stiff competition from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Russia.

By contrast, when it comes to competition in the emerging alternative fuels industry, only China can rival U.S. technical prowess. Pushing alternative fuels should be a major plank in any job-creation program of the early 21st century. Unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that anything that lowers the price of oil and natural gas hurts the alternative fuel industry, which is one of our major growth industries today and well into the future.

Three actions Trump promises in the area of trade could be disastrous. He wants to renegotiate the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and label China a currency manipulator. Whether you think NAFTA was a good or bad idea in 1992, let’s take a look at it today, when it supplies millions of jobs to American workers. Renegotiation in and of itself could be a good thing, especially if it leads to higher wages for workers in all three countries. But I have a feeling that Trump really wants to end NAFTA, which will put a lot of Americans out of work. Walking away from TPP would drive our trading partners to make a deal with China that doesn’t include us. Instead we should renegotiate TPP to make sure that the countries party to it comply with wage, environmental and our product and workplace safety regulations and to make sure it does not give corporations the right to sue governments.  

Labeling China a currency manipulator will get us off on the wrong foot with a country that could be a friend or a foe. Strange that Trump is making rapprochements to Russia while poking a stick into China’s eye. When we take a look at the two countries, the size of their armies, their intentions beyond their own borders, the business opportunities represented by their respective domestic markets, and the way their interests coincide or clash with ours, selecting Russia over China makes no sense at all. Unless, of course, those close to the Russian government have invested a lot into your companies.

The final specific action Trump will take chills free speech, hurts the economy and wreaks havoc on anyone who depends on city services like mass transit to survive. It is also likely illegal and will embroil the Trump Administration in a large number of lawsuits it is likely to lose: Trump says he is going to cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities, which are municipalities that adopt policies not to prosecute people solely for being undocumented. Imagine the economic chaos Trump will create by withdrawing all federal funding from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle, Oakland, San Jose, Baltimore, the Portland on both coasts and other major cities that have taken seriously the concept of local control that Trump touts for education, wage rates and women’s health issues.

I suspect that if Trump really implements this hodgepodge of ideas—a few good but most not only bad but based on economic and governmental naivety—it will be enough to sink the U.S. economy with no help from Congressional Republicans. 

Will all the King’s horses & men help yet another president conduct illegal activities?

By Marc Jampole

Donald Trump by himself can’t get anything done. Like any president, he needs an army of managers, economists, engineers, attorneys, spokespersons and other professional foot soldiers to head and staff departments and agencies to get the actual work done and documented.

We already know that when it comes to getting his way, Donald Trump is amoral, unethical and in many cases unconcerned with the legality of his actions, as long as he doesn’t get exposed. What will happen when the new president asks one or more of his many supernumeraries to engage in illegal or dangerous activities? To create an enemies list? To spy on those who his thin-skin thinks has insulted him? To use the Internal Revenue Service and other branches of government to punish his enemies or reward his friends? To put pressure on someone suing him? To transfer U.S. assets to a Russian bank? To do something specifically for one of his many business ventures?

Let’s journey back to the early 1970s to learn what will happen when a professional in government is asked to do something illegal. Watergate, like the Iran-Contra scandal, the justification for the second war in Iraq and the creation of the torture gulag, required dozens of people to discuss and engage in illegal activities. But I want to focus on one incident, the Saturday Night Massacre.

Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor had decided to subpoena Nixon to get the tapes he had made of all Oval Office conversations. Those tapes would show that President Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in, other dirty tricks and the cover-up of said activities. Nixon naturally balked at handing over the incriminating material. On Saturday, October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire Cox. Richardson, as rib-rocked and loyal a Republican as one could find, refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, another dyed-in-the-wool, lifelong Republican, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than do it.

But there is always some careerist, some amoral technician, willing to do the dirty work of a powerful person. In the case of Watergate it was Robert Bork, the Solicitor General, who fired Archibald Cox.

The story has a relatively happy ending. A judge declared the firing illegal. Nixon had to resign. And Bork was rejected when Ronald Regan nominated him to the Supreme Court. The country got a modicum of election finance reform…at least until the Citizens United decision.

The broader point is that there is always someone willing to break the law for our leader. Always an Oliver North willing to buy and sell arms illegally and give the proceeds to an army that Congress had explicitly put off limits. Always a John Yoo to come up with complicated legal-sounding mumbo-jumbo to justify illegal torturing of other human beings. And what’s most scary, is that there are always honorable men like General Colin Powell or Vice President Hubert Humphrey who will place a single indelible stain on their reputation to follow the commander’s orders and treat what he knows are unsubstantiated or already disproven rumors as the truth. 

In 1927, the French thinker Julien Bendel wrote in The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (in French, La Trahison des Clercs) that the intellectuals—the high level knowledge workers like attorneys, engineers, economists, writers—betrayed the ethics and principles of their professions to support the self-serving ideas and proposals of governments, politicians and the wealthy that they knew were wrong or unprovable. He wrote specifically about the many European intellectuals who became apologists for crass nationalism, warmongering and racism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Be they historians, political scientists, economists, philosophers or theologians, they betrayed the very foundational principles of their disciplines with false arguments justifying racism or a particular war. The intellectual who sells out is a standard character in 20th and 21st century world fiction, be it the fascistic Willy Stark’s press secretary Jack Burden in All the King’s Men or the Jewish physicist Victor Strum in Life and Fate. In real life, we have Edward Teller, Kellyanne Conway and George Will.

Benda never got into why intellectuals betrayed themselves (and society), but today, we do it for money.

That’s why I fear for this country over the next few years. I fear that a lot of talented educated people will participate in a campaign to reign in our free press, harass the political opposition and further suppress the vote. I fear that when President Trump orders the military to drop a bomb—conventional or nuclear—because of a momentary whim he will find a general willing to implement the order. One whose family probably has access to a well-stocked bomb shelter.

But it’s only four years.

I expect Trump to be a one-term president. His past is just too littered with illegal or unethical actions for him not to do something so obnoxious or illegal that Congress is forced to impeach him. Or, the GOP may impeach and convict him quickly, to gain their revenge and install one of their own, Mike Pence, in the White House.  I reckon that the likelihood of Trump dying in office, or being assassinated, is very high. I do not believe the American government participated in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but I would wonder about the U.S. military’s involvement if Trump should take a bullet.

Even if Trump survives impeachment and assassination, he will rightfully be blamed for the world-wide depression that implementing ever one of his or the Republican platform’s half-baked economic ideas would cause. Unless Mike Pence is president because of Trump’s passing, the Republicans will likely have most of the country angry at them for one of any number of betrayals by 2020. African-Americans, Hispanics, the LGBTQ community and left-leaning Democrats and independents will likely have a good chance of turning the tide and beat back the politics of selfishness and racist nativism among whites that catapulted Trump to the presidency.

Shame on my fellow white people, but blame the news media that created Trump and distorted Hillary

Shame on us, white people.

We just rejected the most presidential, qualified candidate in history to vote for a mentally ill buffoon who spews hate speech and has no impulse control.

We voted against someone who has studied every issue and developed a reasoned approach to each so we could vote for someone who has displayed total ignorance and confusion on the basics of what constitutes abortion, foreign trade, contemporary business practices, military strategy and tactics and a wide range of other important matters.  

Surveys say Americans want to protect and strengthen Social Security, yet white people voted for the candidate whose platform wants to gut this successful program. Surveys say we believe in a woman’s right to have an abortion, yet whites voted for someone who says he wants to restrict those rights. Surveys say we are wary of Russian motives, yet we voted for a Putin apologist.  Surveys show that a whopping 64% of all Americans worry about the effects of climate change, yet we whites voted for someone who denies that climate change is occurring.

In the 2016 election, whites have done what they—what we--have been doing since the election of Ronald Reagan—we voted against our own interests.

                                                       

Why?

Because the majority of whites are racists? Because they secretly don’t think women capable of leading? Because we secretly want an autocrat, no matter how erratic?

I am ashamed of the color of my skin this morning, but I don’t place the primary blame on whites. I blame the mass media for manipulating the fears and prejudices of whites and putting profits above ethics.

It was the mass media that decided that a clownish failed real estate developer would play the role of a titan of business on TV. When Trump started doing “The Apprentice,” his real estate empire was in shambles. He was involved in thousands of lawsuits. The New York real estate industry considered him a buffoon. He had mismanaged his family’s fortunes so much that the Trumps were worth much less than if he had invested in mutual funds that track the S&P 500.  But the media bought into Trump’s narcissistic self-delusions of business genius and by doing so validated them to the world. Most importantly, the media created the “celebrity culture” that glorifies selfish consumption and reduces all issues to personal opinions, not the analysis of reality and facts.

The news media also bought into and publicized the inaccurate image of Hillary Clinton that Republicans assiduously created. It took years of bullshit investigations and false rumors, years of characterizing her speeches as unexciting and her program as uninspiring, never with any examples, since the examples would all prove the opposite. The news media followed the GOP playbook. It also applied a double standard that blamed Hillary for mistakes her peers also made and set a higher standard for evaluating her words and actions.

Once Trump announced his run, it was the mass media who took him seriously, giving his campaign far more coverage than what they gave to other Republicans and the Democratic candidates.  His insults and lies dominated the news pages.

Finally, until very late in the campaign, the news media refused to call Trump on his obvious lies.  Illegal immigration from Mexico has been negative for several years now, meaning more undocumented migrants are crossing back into Mexico than are sneaking into the United States. Crime is down. Police deaths are down. Acts of terrorism are way down. African-Americans do not for the most part live in warzones. There is no such thing as an abortion in the eighth month. Putin did invade the Ukraine. The list of Trump’s big and little lies go on and on and on and on. But until Trump made the outrageous claim that Hillary Clinton started the “birther” rumors and he ended them, the mainstream media reported what he said, but never told us it was a pack of lies. I understand that NBC producers were sitting on tapes which proved Trump assaulted women and showed him using the “n” word, but they released them.

One of the network executives said during the primary campaign that Trump might not be good for the country, but he was good for ratings, and therefore made the networks a ton of money.

No consolation, but that worm is going to turn very quickly. Economists and pundits are already talking and writing about a Trump recession. By itself, any one of several Trump proposals will throw the country and the world in to a deep economic crisis. Rounding up and kicking out 11 million people will do it.  Taking health insurance away from 20 million people—the net effect of rescinding Obamacare—will do it. Entering into a trade war with China or Europe will do it. Lowering taxes on the wealthy will do it. Building a wall on our southern border for hundreds of billions of dollars will do it. Withdrawing from trade agreements will do it.

In other words, it’s likely that the media moguls who put profits first will see their investment portfolios take a big hit and then take years, if not decades to recover. The media itself will find itself under much greater scrutiny during the administration of an autocrat, if Trump makes good on his revenge threats and his threat to pass libel laws that infringe on press freedom. 

So the news media will suffer for their sins. Poetic justice, except the rest of us will also suffer.

And maybe we deserve to suffer, at least white people. Although I blame the news media for manipulating us, upholding the wrong values and turning its back on the truth, we swallowed the nonsense. We swallowed it because it confirmed the deep-seated racism, sexism and jingoism that it appears most white still have.  Because of voter suppression laws passed by Republican legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and other swing states, there were not enough African-American and Hispanic voters to compensate for the failings of the white voter.

I would like personally to apologize to the African-American and Hispanic communities, who saw through the garbage and voted for Hillary. I would like to apologize to millennials, who will have to live a long time in the dystopic world Trump and the GOP want to create. It would be grandiose to apologize on behalf of all white people, so I do so for myself and my family.

This morning, I am as ashamed of my color and my nationality as I could ever be.

Russia & the FBI: strange bedfellows in dirty election tricks

In the last week we’ve learned that a faction of the FBI wants to elect Trump… 

That, before deciding to announce he was looking into more emails that may not have anything to do with Hillary Clinton, the Director of the FBI quashed an announcement that Russia may have deep ties to the Trump campaign… 

That a Fox News anchor admitted to lying when he said an indictment of Hillary Clinton was imminent… 

That the National Enquirer bought a story of a Playboy model who had an affair with Donald Trump while he was married to Melania and then refused to publish it… 

That the mainstream news media has completely ignored a rape charge against Donald Trump, the impending trial against Trump University and the whopper Trump told about Clinton’s immigration plans… 

That an Ohio judge has ordered the Republican Party and the Trump campaign to cease and desist their voter suppression activities… 

For the most part, the mainstream news media ignores the mounting negative news about Donald Trump in favor of features that downplay the enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton or explore the reasons that certain groups like the Donald. 

And the polls are tightening, the result of what is no doubt the independent nefarious efforts of the FBI, the Russian government, the Republican Party and the mainstream news media. 

We know what each of them wants: 

A faction of the FBI, apparently including the Director, are “evil clown Republicans” (the equivalent of “yellow dog Democrats,” you know, will vote for any Republican, even an evil clown!) and seem more beholden to party than country. Perhaps the FBI is making a play to become the special security agency for a Trump Administration, seeing that virtually every former leader of the other agencies and departments of security plus every living ex-president is supporting Hillary. I’m not the first to smell the evil stench of J. Edgar Hoover. 

Russia would rather have the vain and unstable Donald Trump as president of the nation serving as the largest impediment to Russian global aspirations.  

The establishment wing of the Republican Party really doesn’t care what happens to the country, as long as taxes are cut even further on the incomes of the ultra-wealthy. They’re quite happy to continue bedding with racists and those who would deny women control over their own bodies if it means they can keep taking more and more of the country’s wealth. 

As to the mainstream news media—I think their ultra-wealthy owners and operators realize that Trump is dangerously delusional, but fear Democratic control of both houses, which would bring the higher taxes on the wealthy that they would hate so much. They are therefore trying to thread the needle—say enough of the truth about Trump to keep him from winning, but falsely malign Clinton enough to keep her from achieving the landslide that will give Democrats control of the Senate and House. 

You can see the mass media trying to get cute in the way they have adjusted their campaigns according to the changing spread in the polls. When Clinton had a healthy lead after the convention the mainstream media created false equivalencies, did not report Trump’s many lies, underplayed Trump scandals and gave Trump spokespersons free reign. When the race got close, they started calling the Trumpites on their lies and exaggerations, were more complimentary of Hillary Clinton and focused on Trump’s sexual assaults.  After the debates in which Clinton trounced Trump and widened her lead to a landslide, the mainstream news media once again started giving favorable coverage to Trumpty-Dumpty and paying too much attention to yet the latest iteration in the longest running non-scandal in history, Hillary’s emails.  

We know what the FBI and Russia want. We know what Republicans want. And we know what the news media wants. 

The question is, what do the American people want?

A seasoned competent leader with the most progressive agenda in American history or a mentally unbalanced, racist sexual assaulter with no real knowledge of the issue whose program will bankrupt the country, send the global economy into a depression and gut the middle class?

 

 

 

Major TV advertiser appeals to alt-right by cleaning up Pepe the Frog + Comey apologists make no sense

By Marc Jampole

It’s bad enough that Stephen Bannon, a major figure of the racist, Nazi-loving alt-right is directing the campaign of a major political candidate. Now it appears that one of the largest advertisers on TV is working a sanitized version of a symbol of the alt-right into a much-repeated commercial. The ugliest part is…it’s Volkswagen, a German company that should be more sensitive to the nuances of racial coding and cultural symbols.

The alt-right, as most readers will already know, is a loose collection of fringe organizations, angry individuals, chatrooms and websites advocating white supremacy, white nationalism, Islamophobia, anti-feminism, homophobia, antisemitism, white male superiority and nativism. The alt-right tends to be very anti-government and pro-guns.

One unofficial symbol of the alt-right is a cartoon character named Pepe the Frog, an anthropomorphized amphibian. Originally a black-and-white line drawing, Pepe quickly transformed to deep green with brown lips. He is often depicted as a frog’s head on a human body, but often he has a frog body.

A quick perusal of the Internet will reveal Pepe’s image in a large number of frightening contexts, including:

• With the legend “You will always be a n****r”
• Pepe dressed as a Nazi SS officer saying “Feels good.”
• Pepe in a KKK white hood and robe
• Pepe with a Hitler stubby moustache saying, “Kill Jews man”
• A collage photo of Pepe with Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, long-time racist provocateur Roger Stone and Trump’s sons.
• Pepe covered in Nazi insignia with the number 14 over his left eyelid and 88 over his right eyelid; to alt-righters 14 is a numeric shorthand for “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and 88 means “Heil Hitler.”
• Pepe wearing a Trump button and making fun of a Mexican family on the other side of a metal fence.

These and many other posters incorporating Pepe explain why the Anti-Defamation League has designated Pepe as a symbol of hate. Pepe’s creator has also vehemently condemned the racist and nativist uses to which the icon has been put.

But Volkswagen evidently didn’t get the memo, or is quietly trying to appeal to alt-righters.

The narrative of the TV ad for the 2017 Volkswagen Golf Alltrack, a four-wheel station wagon, plays out wordlessly, first to ambient sound and then to Eddie Rabbit’s “Driving My Life Away”: A millennial male with the requisite very short beard is gazing at a frog in a terrarium in his work cube. His boss knocks on the glass wall of the cube and gives him a “get that frog out of here” gesture. In the next shot, our hero is driving his Golf Alltrack out of a parking structure and into the street, onto the highway and into a woodsy road to a pond in the middle of a forest. We see the frog in a pond looking tearfully at the car. The final shots are of the guy driving the VW with the frog on the dash looking as happy as a clam, or perhaps a pollywog.  “Oooh, I’m drivin’ my life a way, looking for a better….” Fadeout.

The frog looks completely like a frog in form, but it has the emotional life and expressiveness of a human, just like Pepe. He is attracted to doing something that makes young men feel good, just like Pepe (although in the case of Pepe, some of those things are socially unacceptable outside a small circle of white male supremacists). The frog hangs out with young white men, just like Pepe does. He has the same evocative eyes as Pepe does.

Don’t you think it’s a little more than coincidental that Volkswagen comes out with a commercial targeted at rural-loving (and therefore probably white) young men using an anthropomorphized frog who interacts with humans round the same time that an anthropomorphized frog who interacts with humans becomes a symbol of a political movement filled with rural-loving young white men? There were certainly a number of other terrarium animals with which the commercial’s cool dude could have bonded over the same love of driving a VW: newt, turtle, snake or a gerbil. It could have been a bird, which would have underscored the motif of speed and freedom.

But Volkswagen selected a frog that will remind some of Pepe. Especially those who know and love Pepe because he’s the same kind of, n-hating, immigrant bashing good-old boy that they are.

Marketing departments do a tremendous amount of work analyzing key branding elements, such as color, spokesperson and certainly an animal that’s going to act human. I’m sure focus groups with their target market loved the frog. I’m equally sure that someone did a thorough Internet search. When I searched for “frog” in Google, Pepe did not come up in the first five pages of results, but when I searched for “frog symbol,” Pepe as an alt-right icon comes up on the first page. Moreover, it is incredulous to think that of all the dozens of people to work on the ad—marketing managers, product managers, writers, directors, market researchers, advertising placement specialists, et. al.—none had read any of the hundreds of stories in the news media about Pepe the alt-right Frog, especially when it became an issue in the Trump campaign. 

We might be able to give Volkswagen the benefit of the doubt and say its staff didn’t do their homework, but that doesn’t explain why it didn’t pull the ad as soon as the mainstream media began covering Pepe.

I’m fairly certain that Volkswagen goes out of its way not to appeal to Nazi-lovers in its home market. Why would do so in the United States? Answer is…money.

Changing the topic to the election campaign that I promised myself I would not cover again until November 9…

Those who sympathize with FBI Director Comey after he sent his weaseled letter about potentially finding more Hillary emails assert that the life-long Republican Comey would have risked being accused of a cover-up if he waited until after the election and something important turned out to be on the Weiner computer.

What these Comey supporters are really saying is that the Director was right to put his own job above the fairness of the political process. Comey must have known the mainstream and right-wing news media would pick up this large, juicy shank of veal like a pack of dogs that haven’t seen a bone in months. The only conclusion if you follow the line of the apologists is that he preferred to definitely affect the election as opposed to being accused of possible doing it after the fact.

Consider, too, the low likelihood that any of these emails will make a difference in the original conclusion: all information suggests that they’re probably duplicates of what we have already seen. Based on this low likelihood of relevancy, all Comey had to do was write a CYA memo to Attorney General Loretta Lynch saying he agreed with her recommendation to follow standard operating procedure and wait until the  emails had been examined to make an announcement.

My conclusion: Comey is either a senseless puppet of the Republicans or an active participant in the second attempt to use dirty tricks to sway this election (the first being by the Russian government).

If Trump should win, it would mean that every Republican president since Reagan except for Bush I would have been elected because of dirty tricks: Nixon, by making a deal with South Vietnam to block peace negotiations; Reagan with his deal to have Iran not send home the hostages before the elections; Bush II’s brother’s nefarious voter suppression and miscounting in Florida that won the 2000 election. And now this incredibly well-timed but probably baseless smear of Hillary by the Republican Director of the FBI. 

Editorial: The Campaign Goes On

The good news is, after the third and final debate, Hillary Clinton has staked out a substantial lead over Donald Trump in polls, both nationwide and in key states, in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign.

The challenge remains for Democrats to get people to actually turn out, preferably in early voting that makes it relatively easy in many states to cast a ballot in the weeks before the election, at times and locations that are convenient for working people. Surveys don’t elect presidents — voters do — and a 6- to 8-point lead at Pollster.com won’t mean squat on the evening of Nov. 8 if Democrats and progressive independents stay home or decide to cast their vote for Green Jill Stein, figuring Hillary’s election is in the bag.

After they vote for Clinton, progressives need to go down the ballot and vote for Democrats for the House and Senate, as well as in state legislatures, where Republicans gained control in 2010 midterms and have been punishing working people ever since.

After the historic level of obstruction of President Obama by the Republican majority in Congress, a Democratic majority is needed in both chambers to work with the new president. That is particularly important in the Senate, which has refused for seven months to move on Obama’s choice of Merrick Garland, a moderate judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, to replace the late right winger Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Republican refusal to consider Obama’s nomination has left the high court split 4-4 on many controversial issues since Scalia’s death in February. And the obstruction is not limited to the Supreme Court: as of Oct. 24, there were 99 vacancies on federal courts and 59 nominees waiting, apparently in vain, for Senate action. At least 36 of those vacancies are considered “judicial emergencies,” but the Republican leadership, which has allowed confirmation of only 11 nominees this year, is in no mood to hand any more lifetime appointments to Obama, hoping against hope that Trump, the Caligula of Mar-a-Lago, will get the chance to refill the courts with right wingers.

After the election, Clinton must deal with the populist issues raised by Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and Trump in the general election. Matthew Rozsa of Salon.com noted that when Trump narrowed the margin between himself and Clinton between mid-August and mid-September, he did it by focusing on populist reform issues, such as trade policy — a subject that unites Americans across partisan and ideological lines, largely because it has massively contributed to economic inequality and job loss. Clinton is a battlefield convert on the issue, declaring her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership when challenged by Sanders after she supported the trade deal while she was secretary of state.

Of course, Trump also is a recent convert on fair trade, as he has outsourced manufacturing of his apparel lines to Mexico, China and other foreign factories that feature lower wages. He also opted for cheaper Chinese steel and aluminum in building projects, including the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. When Clinton noted at the last debate that he chose Chinese steelworkers over American steelworkers, Trump said Clinton shared the blame for letting him get away with it. “Make it impossible for me to do that,” he replied.

With WikiLeaks releasing portions of a 2013 speech to a Brazilian bank in which Clinton declared, “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” Clinton will face pressure to make sure that future trade deals don’t leave American workers on the sidelines.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren also laid down her marker Oct. 14 when she called for President Obama to replace Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White. Among other things, Warren cited the failure of White, a former federal prosecutor who also represented financial institutions as an attorney before she joined the SEC, to draw up a rule compelling public companies to disclose political spending. Obama is not expected to replace White, whose term on the commission expires in 2019, but the next president can name a new chair and Warren’s demand sends a signal to Hillary Clinton that she should appoint a more aggressive leader for the agency that regulates Wall Street.

Warren has been actively campaigning for Clinton, who has promised an aggressive antitrust agenda that she said would “take on abuses of market power” and protect the interests of consumers and workers.

Clinton promised to appoint strong leadership at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission who would “robustly enforce enforce antitrust laws,” drawing a contrast with the more permissive approach that has reigned since the Reagan administration.

She promised to take steps so that laws are “aggressively” enforced to ensure that mergers and acquisitions don’t overly concentrate market power in a few hands. She also promised to order agencies to use existing authority to curb the overuse of harmful forced arbitration clauses. She also said the Securities and Exchange Commission should pursue the rulemaking authorized under the Dodd-Frank bank reforms to ensure that investors have appropriate legal recourse if they are wronged.

The proposed merger of AT&T with Time Warner, which would make AT&T the nation’s largest entertainment company, could be the first test of her mettle on antitrust enforcement. Consumer advocates have warned that AT&T could raise fees on competitors who want to access Time Warner’s content, such as CNN and HBO, or make it difficult for them to get it, thus driving consumers to its own offerings.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said there were “a number of questions and concerns” about the proposed merger and that “certainly [Clinton] thinks regulators should scrutinize it closely.”

Trump said he would block the AT&T-Time Warner merger “because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” But, like so many of his populist talking points, it’s hard to put any trust in him. He also said he is going to cut “70 to 80 percent” of federal regulations if he wins the White House.

Trump made his anti-regulatory vow while speaking at a farmers’ roundtable in Boynton Beach, Fla. He did not explain how his administration would determine which rules to axe. “We want clean air, we want clean water,” Trump said. But the regulatory oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency was simply too much to bear, he said. The federal agency that enforces clean air and water laws has been a “total disaster,” and regulations on the whole “have been a total catastrophe,” he said.

Sanders, who has supported Clinton since he conceded the Democratic presidential nomination in July, told the Washington Post he plans to push liberal legislation with like-minded senators with or without Clinton’s support if she is elected — and to aggressively oppose appointments that do not pass muster with the party’s left wing.

Sanders said he and other senators have started plotting legislation that would achieve many of the proposals that fueled his insurgent run for president, including a $15 federal minimum wage, tuition-free public colleges, an end to “mass incarceration” and aggressive steps to fight climate change.

The senators, Sanders said, also plan to push for the breakup of “too big to fail” banks and to pressure Clinton to appoint liberals to key Cabinet positions, including treasury secretary. Sanders said he would not stay silent if Clinton nominated the “same old, same old Wall Street guys” to regulatory positions that are important in enacting and overseeing the financial policies he supports. “I will be vigorously in opposition, and I will make that very clear,” Sanders said.

Progressive populists should be ready to get back to work after the election to push Clinton and members of Congress to stop the TPP and pursue the progressive initiatives in the Democratic platform. Citizenship is a full-time job. Keep after your elected officials. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2016

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Selections from the November 15, 2016 issue

COVER/Amanda Marcotte
Seven races that could flip the Senate

EDITORIAL
The campaign goes on

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

STEPHEN A. HOPKINS
Who really is the crook?

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Presidential race is just the top of the card

DISPATCHES
Latino voters may lift Clinton, Dems in border states;
Clinton, Obama focus on electing Dems to Congress;
Early voting in N.C. is down after polling place reductions;
In N.C., Burr stands with Trump, Dem challenger sprints ahead;
Just 10 mega-donors provide one-fifth of super PAC funds;
Ryan warns if GOP loses Senate, Sanders wins ...
Sanders: If my campaign emails leaked, there'd be mean things about Hillary, too;
Opioid use down in states that allow marijuana;
Media pushed Russia, ISIS, taxes; downplayed climate, poverty, campaign finance;
At least Trump may end Paul Ryan's career ...

ERIC BLUMBERG
The (psycho) path to the White House

DON ROLLINS
Virginia’s home health aides are pretty much invisible

JOHN L. MICEK
Trump’s put his banana republicanism on display to the world

RICHARD ESKOW
Her first 100 days

WENDELL POTTER
Why health insurance industry consolidation is bad for your health

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas 
The art of the scam: Wellness programs

SAM URETSKY
Sometimes the system comes in handy

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet 
The real first freedoms

WAYNE O’LEARY
The economic consequences of immigration

JOHN BUELL
Financing our extinction

MARK ANDERSON
Many prefer that US continue to police the world

BOB BURNETT
The election’s tipping point

JOHN YOUNG
Enough about the beast

ROB PATTERSON
‘Criminal Minds’ keeps growing

SETH SANDRONSKY
New York ruling grants jobless payments to Uber drivers

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
America, the violent

ROSIE SORENSON
This way madness comes

POET/Michael Silverstein 
A passionate Congressman to his constituents

and more ...

GOP give voters who want to break DC deadlock one choice only: Vote straight line Democratic

By Marc Jampole

Official Republican policy over the past eight years has been to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama, and it looks as if the GOP is prepared to follow the same strategy in a Hillary Clinton administration.

The examples of the Obama delegitimacy campaign are many: The dozens of attempts to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the Trump-led campaign to suggest Obama was not born in the United States; the outrageous letter GOP senators sent directly to Iranian leaders; the arrangement of a speech by a foreign head of government without White House participation; the historic refusal even to consider the President’s Supreme Court nominee; and the shutting down of the government in 2013, which cost the United States about $24 billion.

We can see the development of the same obstreperous approach even before all votes are cast: Let’s start with the crazy Trump assertion that the Clinton campaign is somehow colluding with the news media and state election officials (who nationwide are overwhelmingly Republican) to rig the election. To be sure, Trump’s major reasons for making this absurd claim are to justify his loss to his large but extremely fragile ego, to continue his code-word campaign against minorities, and to distract the media and public from the Republican’s long-term campaign to suppress the votes of minorities and the young. But one ramification of his mendacious screeds about election rigging is to delegitimize the election, and by implication, Hillary’s presidency. Recent stories in the news media suggest that many are falling for Trump’s accusations.

But Trump is not alone in planting seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of a Hillary presidency. More than 50 House Republicans have urged the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Clinton Foundation donors had unusual access to Hillary Clinton while she served as Secretary of State. GOP Congressperson Jason Chavetz, who recently became the poster boy for flip-flopping because of his off-again, on-again support of Trumpty-Dumpty, promises an investigation of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State lasting two years if he maintains his position as chair of the House Oversight Committee. Tom Filton, current president of the ultra-right Judicial Watch, has coined the expression “preemptive impeachment” to describe his plans for a Republican Congress.

It’s not just a GOP-dominated House of Representatives that will try to delegitimize Hillary’s presidency. GOP Senators Ted Cruz, John McCain and Pat Toomey have all explicitly promised to block any and all Supreme Court nominations that Hillary might make. With three justices over the age of 75, we could be down to five Supreme Court if the Republicans make good on this threat.

To whom will pledging to obstruct the operation of government for another four years appeal? Those who think banning all abortions is the most important issue. Ultra-rich folk who are so selfish that they want to minimize their taxes, even if it means destroying public education and letting our roads and bridges continue to crumble. Large industrial concerns that will suffer if we get serious about fighting global warming and don’t care that the pursuit of clean energy and environmentally friendly business practices will give the economy a large boost. Then there are the racists and those who in their hearts think that women are inferior. Sounds like a rather large basket of deplorables to me.

But they do not represent a majority of Americans, and they don’t even represent all of the Republican Party. A majority of Americans understand that man-made global warming (I hate the euphemistic “climate change”) is happening. Most want to raise the minimum wage, make college more affordable and invest more in our decaying infrastructure. Most Americans, especially among the young, believe in an open, pluralistic society.

Perhaps most significantly, most Americans are tired of Washington’s gridlock and the endless political sniping that has dominated 16 or the last 24 years of American government, that is, the years when Democrats held the White House. Because of news media conflation, many Americans have faulted both sides of the aisle for this ugly political bickering, but the unfolding of the 2016 election cycle has made it obvious that in fact, the Republicans and the Republicans alone are responsible for gridlock by their failure to accept the results of elections.

There is only one way to give Hillary Clinton a chance to fulfill the vision for which an unprecedented landside of Americans will likely vote on November 8. The American people must also give Democrats a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. With a majority of both houses, Hillary can get a lot accomplished from the most progressive platform in American history by a major party. She can make college affordable, raise the minimum wage, invest in infrastructure, alternative fuels and public education and even raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Without a majority on both houses, her presidency will face the constant stonewalling of Republicans and her administration is forced will be forced to wallow in investigation after investigation.

That’s why in this election, everyone who wants to end governmental gridlock—Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians and Greens—must vote a straight-line Democratic ticket, at least for national and state-wide offices. Only racists, the ultra-wealthy and anti-woman extremists have anything to gain from a divided government. Moreover, a historic defeat may enable sensible, unhypocritical Republicans who believe in abiding by election results, such as Jeff Flake, Evan McMillan, John Kasich and Meg Whitman, to take control of the Republican Party.

First order of business for President Clinton: Shoot down automated weapons & nuclear weapons modernization

By Marc Jampole

One of the first decisions Hillary Clinton will face as president is whether to continue funding development of automated weapons, which are weapons that think on their own, selecting targets and firing their payload without the intervention of humans once they have programmed the mission into the weapon. Kind of like the Terminator of movie fame, although defense officials go out of their way to explicitly deny that analogy.  

These weapons are as horrifying in their own right as germ, chemical and nuclear weapons, and more prone to misuse or unintentional use. We can anticipate that decision-making weapons will be as susceptible to bugs, hacking and programming errors as other sophisticated systems based on computer technologies, such as bank databases, credit card companies, government servers, clouds and the Internet. A robot could turn on us, kill the wrong target or mindlessly start slaughtering innocents.

There is also the moral issue of agency. The very thing that makes automated weapons so attractive—we can send them into battle instead of live soldiers—also underlies the essential immorality of using robots to kill other humans. It’s so easy to kill an animated figure on a screen in a video game. And then another, and then another, each of them so realistic in their detail that they could almost be human. Pretty soon you’ve knocked off hundreds of imaginary people. Not so easy, though, for most of us to pull a trigger, knowing that a bullet will rip through heart of someone standing ten feet away and end their existence. Perhaps we instinctively empathize with the victim and fear for our own lives. Or maybe most of us kill with difficulty because the taboo against killing is so strongly instilled in us, that moral sense that taking the life of another human being is wrong, sinful?

The problem with all advanced military technologies is that they turn war into a video game, and by doing so distance the possessors of the technology from their adversaries. Whether the attack is by conventional bomber, missile, drone or the decision-making robot weapons now under development, the technology turns the enemy into video images. Remote warfare dehumanizes the enemy and makes it easier to kill lots of them without giving it a thought. The bombardier doesn’t see the victims below, or if he can, they look like specks. The operator of the drone is even farther away from his intended victims. The operator of robots even more so.

Once we have robot weapons that are allowed to think and act independently, the next logical step will be to provide them with nuclear capabilities. I can only imagine the horrors that we will be able to inflict on others combining these two apocalyptic weapons, but I’m guessing that a future civilization from another planet will label the development of automated weapons with nuclear capabilities as the beginning of Earth’s final extinction event.

Moral and safety considerations aside, there is also the issue of cost. Lots of pundits like to deny it, but one of the primary reasons the United States economy thrived during the 1990s was the peace dividend we received at the end of the cold war. Just like the money that the Obama Administration proposes to spend modernizing our nuclear weapons, the funds to develop automated weapons could better be used to fund public education, mass transit, alternative fuel, medical research and other pressing needs.

As soon as one proposes not developing a new weapon or military technology, apologists for the military-industrial complex (a Republican president’s phraseology) always invoke the fear that other countries will develop it first, and automated weapons are no exception. The argument that we have to do it before others is fallacious because there is another way: to negotiate a treaty banning all development of these monstrous weapons of mass destruction. The central factor in what I believe will be an easy international agreement to reach is the asymmetry in resources that favors the United States. Only China could keep up with us in spending if we decided to make a major “moonshot” push to develop Terminator-like weaponry. But China faces tremendous environmental and developmental problems. The Chinese also seem usually to prefer to compete economically and culturally, and would likely welcome a treaty banning automated weapons.

In the course of a little over one hundred years, humans have developed four apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction: germ warfare, chemical warfare, nuclear warfare and now automated weapons. Thankfully, we have had the will to outlaw two of these terrible scourges. Let’s hope that Hillary makes it three out of four by vetoing the further development of robotized weapons, and then starts working on ending nuclear weapons.

Of course, I’m assuming Hillary wins. When it comes to weapons of mass destruction, any other outcome to the 2016 election would be a deadly disaster.

Unlike everyone at the Al Smith dinner, CNN doesn’t know difference between roast humor and inept insults

By Marc Jampole

It’s interesting how the various news media approach the task of holding up Donald Trump as if he were a boxer who the other fighter has to keep standing for two more rounds to complete the fix.

Setting a low bar for Trump, quoting Trump in stories on news developments without mentioning Hillary’s view, creating a double standard for Hillary, blaming her for mistakes also committed by her peers, ignoring the harmless contents of her emails, covering his rallies but not hers, not calling him on obvious lies—these are some of the many ways the mainstream news media has subtly helped the Republican candidate since the race began. One of the most frequently utilized techniques has been conflation, which in the 2016 presidential election consists of equating a minor fault of Hillary’s to a massive history of bad behavior by Trumpty-Dumpty.

CNN provided a seminal example of conflation in its coverage of the annual Al Smith Dinner, which supports charitable work by the New York Catholic Diocese and is typically attended by all the New York City movers and shakers. It’s a tradition to invite both presidential candidates to the dinner to give funny speeches that mildly roast themselves and their opponent.

This year, Donald Trump spoke first and he was heavily booed throughout the speech, and for good reason. After starting with a few excellent zingers, his remarks quickly devolved into insults, lies and accusations, none of which approached wit, satire or any other kind of humor.  His one success at self-deprecation really was a joke about his wife. Another time, his joke was to compare himself to Christ. You could see the uncomfortably ashen faces of the people sitting near the podium, aghast at Trump’s ugly transgressions against a convivial tradition.

By contrast, the audience loved what Hillary had to say. As everyone who watched on TV saw, she peppered her remarks with a number of self-deprecating jokes. She seemed to enjoy making fun of herself, the image the public has of her and even the false image of her created by lies that Republicans have spread about her for years. When she turned to Trump, her cracks were the essence of roast humor—always funny, and always hitting their mark, jokes that cut deep in the truth they revealed, but that always stayed on the side of humor. She delivered them with a good-natured warmth that made me think that she took time out from debate preparation to study the master of the roast, Dean Martin.

The audience loved it, applauding frequently. Some of the applause was at the humor, but sometimes it was because they agreed with the truth behind the humor. Her best moment was when she talked about the debates. “Sharing a stage with Donald Trump is like, well, nothing really comes to mind. Donald wanted me drug tested before last night's debate. I am so flattered that Donald thought I used some sort of performance enhancer. Now, actually, I did. It's called preparation.” After hearty laughter from the audience, Clinton did what every great comedian does: go for a topper. She said, “And looking back, I've had to listen to Donald for three full debates, and he says I don't have any stamina!” The audience roared.

How surprised was I then to wake up to CNN equating the performances at the dinner by the two candidates. “They struggled to disguise the anger, bitterness and sheer open dislike that has pulsed through their recriminatory White House race, perhaps not surprisingly since he has threatened to throw her in jail and she says he's a threat to the republic.”  CNN hits the daily double with this sentence, two conflations in one: 1) The conflation of Clinton’s good-natured ribbing which the audience ate up like grandma’s cannoli with Trump’s boorish ill-humor that the audience widely booed. 2) The conflation of Trump’s false and unsubstantiated accusations against a woman who has withstood decades of investigations with Hillary’s legitimate concern about Trump’s refusal to say he’ll agree to the election results, a concern also voiced by virtually the entire mainstream news media and many if not most Republicans. The CNN coverage ignores the applause and minimizes the humor that distinguished Hillary’s appropriate remarks with Trump’s transgressions.

I understand the craven Jimmy Fallon sucking up to a former star of the network that writes his paychecks, but what does CNN have to gain by its inaccurate portrayal of what happened? What does it gain from ignoring what was obvious to all? That we cannot compare Donald Trump’s boorishness in any way with anyone else who has run for president, at least since World War I. My guess is that CNN’s editorial board is still hell bent in denying Hillary the landslide that will produce Democratic majorities in the Senate, and maybe even the House.

Most of the other mainstream media outlets, like NBC, the New York Times and National Public Radio focused their coverage much more on the boos given to Trump’s mean-spirited remarks than on the applause and laughs Hillary got. In this regard, their approach resembled how they portrayed the debates and the commander-in-chief forum. In all instances, they focused on Trump’s bad performance, mentioning that he fell for many traps Hillary set for him, but often forget to note that Hillary was superb in her own right.

Hillary and Trumpty-Dumpty have now gone mano a mano five times, and all five times Hillary has defeated her adversary with ease, all after defeating the far more competent and visionary Bernie Sanders. If it weren’t Hillary Clinton, if she weren’t a woman, if the mainstream news media didn’t list Republican, maybe they would realize that we are seeing the political equivalent of the 1998 Yankees or American Pharoah’s run to horse racing’s Triple Crown.

3rd debate score: cool Clinton wins, Wallace wins, Trump stumbles, sniffs & commits sedition

By Marc Jampole

Newscasters and commentators who analyze the candidates’ performance and the public’s reaction immediately after presidential debates typically endeavor to express a unique point of view that gives a special insight to what just occurred. Each pundit wants to shine with something different or surprising to build her-his recognition and brand.

Not after the third debate, though.

For the first five minutes, flipping between the various news programs, one topic and one topic alone under discussion: Donald Trump’s explicit refusal to recognize the results of the election in advance. Never before in the history of the United States has a major party candidate been unwilling to endorse the voting and Electoral College totals. It shocked many. Some Republican analysts said it disqualified him from consideration as our next president. Everyone understood that Trump was undermining a basic principle of American democracy, a two century compact between the people and government: the peaceful transfer of power from one regime to the next. Technically, Trump was probably committing sedition, which Merriam-Webster’s defines as “conduct consisting of speaking, writing, or acting against an established government or seeking to overthrow it by unlawful means; resistance to lawful authority; conduct tending to treason but without an overt act.”

Wallace gave Trump a chance to change his mind, but the Donald dug in, eschewing reality in favor of his fantasy world in which the only way he ever loses is when he is cheated.

Speaking of Wallace, he did a fine job, certainly the best of any moderator this election cycle. He kept the candidates to the issues and kept them talking on point. He made sure both sides got their say and kept order between the two candidates. Although he said he would not fact check, he did correct Trump a time or two. He kept the audience under control. The only disruption I heard was a loud rumble of laughter and sniggers when Trumpty-Dumpty said “Nobody has more respect for women than me.”

After the debate, Trump surrogates tried to compare what Trumpty-Dumpty said to Al Gore not conceding until a month after the 2000 election. To their credit, every reporter and pundit understood that refusing to agree to the results because the election could be rigged weeks before the voting is far different from Gore waiting until the results in Florida had been confirmed, or in the case of the 2000 election, mandated by the Supreme Court. Once the Supreme Court ruled, Gore wasted no time in endorsing the election returns, even though it meant he lost despite a significant edge in the popular voting. And Gore never said the election was rigged or threatened not to abide by the vote in the Electoral College.

By the time Trump made his seditious statement not once but twice, he had already lost the debate on merit. As in the first two debates, he interrupted, he fidgeted with his mic, he tried to shout Hillary down and he lost control and got angry. The longer the debate went, the more incoherent his remarks became and the louder his constant sniffing became.  He resorted to insults, the worst of which was when he muttered, “Such a nasty woman.”

And Trump lied and lied and lied. He lied about the impact of illegal immigration. He lied about the relative strength of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal. He lied about what occurs in late-term abortion. He lied about the situation in Syria. He lied about the State Department losing $6 billion. He made unfounded accusations against his opponent. The fact-checkers found many of his statements false, while confirming that Hillary has been the most truthful candidate of this election cycle.

When the history of the 2016 election is written, I’m fairly certain historians will focus on the Trump phenomenon, his insults of other candidates, his dust-up with a Gold Star family, his infamous tape in which he admits to sexually assaulting women and his refusal to pledge to honor election results. Many will forget how masterful Hillary has been in these debates. Hillary showed why she has never lost a presidential debate in her life—tied a time or two, but never lost.  Unlike the rambling Trumpty-Dumpty, Hillary spoke with extreme efficiency and precision. Her typical answer consisted of several parts: her stand, the facts to back the stand, why her opponent’s stand was inferior and a dig at Trump. Her formula: present the facts presidentially, then bait your opponent.  Trump didn’t always take the bait, but even when he didn’t, you could see him fuming and fidgeting. Clinton, by contrast, laughed off Trump’s insults and accusations. She kept her poise while successfully goading her opponent to lose his. She also had her share of clever moments, my favorite of which was when she contrasted what she was doing in each of the past four decades to what Trump was doing; e.g., in the ‘70s she worked on behalf of poor children, while Trump was being sued for discrimination in rental practices.

But most of all, Hillary was cool and Americans like their presidents cool.

By cool, I mean her demeanor and temperament, not her sense of style or her social position in high school (which is what Maureen Dowd would mean). Americans tend to select as president the candidate who seems most comfortable with her-his body and in her-his surroundings. They like the candidate who stays in control, as long as that control comes easily and is not the product of a visible internal struggle. They like smiles over frowns, friendly over angry. Cool over hot.

Eisenhower was cooler than Stevenson in temperament and demeanor. Kennedy was cooler than Nixon. Reagan was cooler than Carter. Bush I was cooler than Dukakis, but no one was ever as cool as Bill Clinton. Certainly not Bob Dole. Bush II was cooler than both Gore and Kerry. Obama was cooler than McCain and Romney.

And the calm and studied Hillary is a lot cooler than the strident and fumbling Donald Trump. 

Editorial: Light the GOP Fuse

Donald Trump must have had mixed emotions when the news media stopped talking about the nearly billion-dollar loss he claimed on his income taxes in 1995, which allowed him to avoid paying taxes for the next 18 years but also undermined his claims that he is a master businessman.

During the first debate, on Sept. 26, Hillary Clinton managed to goad Trump into admitting that he paid little or no federal taxes. He replied that not paying taxes “makes me smart,” a statement that alienated some middle-class voters who pay their taxes and resent the “takers” who get government benefits but don’t pay taxes. The Washington Post reported Sept. 27 on a focus group of undecided voters in North Carolina with the headline, “When Trump said that not paying taxes ‘makes me smart,’ undecided voters in N.C. gasped.”

Then some unknown person with a return address of Trump Tower, New York City, mailed the New York Times three pages of Trump’s state tax returns for 1995, which showed the $916 million loss, which the Times reported Oct. 1, “certainly could have eliminated any federal income taxes Mr. Trump otherwise would have owed on the $50,000 to $100,000 he was paid for each episode of The Apprentice, or the roughly $45 million he was paid between 1995 and 2009 when he was chairman or chief executive of the publicly traded company he created to assume ownership of his troubled Atlantic City casinos. Ordinary investors in the new company, meanwhile, saw the value of their shares plunge to 17 cents from $35.50, while scores of contractors went unpaid for work on Mr. Trump’s casinos and casino bondholders received pennies on the dollar.”

In another article, Steve Eder and Alicia Parlapiano reported in the Times Oct. 6 on their analysis of roughly 60 businesses started or promoted by Trump in the past decade. Few went off without a hitch. “One-third of them either never got off the ground or soon petered out. Another third delivered a measure of what was promised — buildings were built, courses taught, a product introduced — but they also encountered substantial problems, like lawsuits, government investigations, partnership woes or market downturns.

“The remaining third, while sometimes encountering strife, generally met expectations — notably the television show The Apprentice and the purchases of numerous golf courses, including properties near Philadelphia and in the Hudson Valley.”

Trump surrogate Rudolph Giuliani compared Trump to Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs, saying that, like them, “He had some failures and then he built an empire.” He asked: “Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her emails?”

Heather Digby Parton replied, “The idea that a man whose business has gone bankrupt four times, who has stiffed thousands of small business owners, who has been sued all over the country for fraud, who used his charity as a slush fund and who now has been revealed to have reported to the government that he lost more than $915 million — in a year in which the stock market gained 37%! — is an economic genius could only be true in Bizarro World.”

A new firestorm overtook the dissection of Trump’s truncated tax return on Oct. 8 when the Washington Post reported the video of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women and grabbing them by, among other things, their genitalia, and getting away with it. Because, you know, he’s a star.

Trump dismissed his lewd comments as “locker room talk.” He denied that he had physically assaulted anyone. He counterattacked with claims that former President Bill Clinton had done worse in assaulting women while Hillary Clinton also “viciously” attacked the women who claimed they had been abused by her husband.

Trump invited four women to the debate at Washington University in St. Louis on Oct. 9, but PolitiFact noted that only three of them — Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones — actually accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. The fourth woman, Kathy Shelton, was a victim in a rape case. Hillary Clinton defended Shelton’s attacker in 1975 while working at a legal aid clinic. Trump accused Clinton of laughing at Shelton on two separate occasions.

PolitiFact concluded that Bill Clinton has been accused of sexual assault and having affairs. “The record shows Hillary Clinton played a role in defending her husband, and that the Clintons’ first presidential campaign deployed tough tactics to defend against stories of consensual sex.

“But in the cases of alleged abuse by Broaddrick, Willey and Jones, Hillary Clinton was largely silent. The words she allegedly had with Broaddrick are subject to interpretation. Approving the release of Willey’s letters does qualify as an attack, but using a person’s words against them is a fairly tame tactic. And Clinton did not attack Jones directly.

“Overall, we rate [Trump’s] claim Mostly False.”

As for the claim that Clinton laughed at a sexual assault victim on two separate occasions and got her attacker off, PolitiFact noted that Clinton, then 27, was representing an indigent defendant and the prosecutor had little evidence connecting the defendant to the crime, so she plea-bargained the case to unlawful fondling of a minor. The defendant was sentenced to one year in prison and four years’ probation.

PolitiFact concluded, “Trump is referring to an audio tape in which she does respond with amusement at her recollections of the oddities of the case, which involve the prosecution and the judge.

“At no point does she laugh at the victim.

“We rate his claim False.”

Taryn Hillin noted at Fusion.net that, according to legal documents, Trump has been accused of raping a 13-year-old child, raping his ex-wife Ivana, and attempting to rape a former business associate. Trump has vehemently denied all of these accusations — and Hillin noted anyone can file a civil complaint in court, and a complaint is by no means proof of allegations. That being said, the accusations are chilling, and if old accusations against Bill Clinton are fair game, sexual assault accusations against Trump — who actually is running for president — are even more important for the press to explore.

As we went to press, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, taken after the video was disclosed but before the debate, showed Mrs. Clinton jumping to an 11-point lead over Trump among likely voters on a ballot including third-party candidates, up from 6 points in September.

The Journal noted the weekend survey found Clinton’s advantage among women increased to 21 points, from 12 points in the September Journal/NBC Survey. Trump retained a small, single-point advantage among men.

That had Republicans worrying that a Clinton victory could become a blowout, which might not only allow Democrats to gain the four seats they need to regain control of the Senate, but might create a wave that could wipe out the 30-seat Republican majority in the House.

This could ruin House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, regulatory agencies and many other progressive initiatives through the budget reconciliation process. This radical parliamentary ruse depends on Republicans holding onto the House and Senate and gaining the White House, but Republicans still might try to force a regressive budget through the Oval Office if they keep their congressional majorities intact.

On either the business side or the sexual side, it looks like many people have had a bad experience with the blowhard real estate mogul. Now a lot of Republican officials are regretting their embrace of the Caligula of Mar-a-Lago, but they fear the backlash from his millions of supporters if they try to cut him loose, raising the prospect of a civil war among the GOP.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer party. Vote for Hillary Clinton — or Green Jill Stein, if you must. But vote Democratic for the House and Senate. No good will come from another Republican Congress, but the blame-throwing could be entertaining if they get wiped out. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2016

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