Editorial: Lying Don Gets Buggy

So Donald Trump’s annual performance review with Russian President Vladimir Putin, closing out his Chaos Tour of Europe, didn’t go as planned. Things appeared to go OK during their two-hour closed-door meeting in Helsinki. The two autocrats emerged smiling for a press conference in which Trump refused to condemn the Kremlin for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, as determined by US intelligence agencies. Instead, he said,“I think the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. I think we’re all to blame.”

Trump repeated a phrase he often uses — that there has been no collusion — and he said accusations of collusion continue to hurt relations between the two countries. Putin, who admitted that he wanted Trump to win the election, gave him a soccer ball from the 2018 World Cup finals, which Russia hosted.

The following day, after Trump returned to the White House, controversy mounted over his assertion that he believed Putin’s word over the findings of the US intelligence community. Trump tried to walk back his remarks, in part, by claiming that “other people” could have also meddled in the 2016 presidential election. Trump also claimed he had simply misspoken by one word during his press conference in Finland. The president explained that he had intended to say he did not see any reason why it “wouldn’t” be Russia.

“I thought that I made myself very clear, but having just reviewed the transcript, I realized that there is a need for some clarification,” Trump said. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t, or why it wouldn’t be Russia.’”

Trump also asserted on July 17 that he had “full faith” in US intelligence agencies and also supported their conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

Two days later, Putin apparently put Trump on probation and gave him 90 days to restore his pro-Russia attitude, as the White House announced the Russian tyrant was invited to visit the D.C. branch in the fall, possibly to clarify some of the secret agreements they reached in Helsinki, as some of Trump’s Cabinet members had no idea what was up and Trump wasn’t telling.

[After this was written, the White House backtracked and pushed the potential second meeting until next year, possibly at the urging of Republican congressional leaders who weren't looking forward to the visuals of Putin visiting Washington and advertising Russian ties with the Grand Oligarch Party shortly before the mid-term elections. However, Putin on July 27 said he has invited Trump to visit Moscow.]

Trump might get back in Putin’s good graces, but this is no time to despair about the prospects of restoring democracy in America. It should be enough to note that Trump is an habitual liar, as the Washington Post has recorded more than 3,300 false or misleading claims since Trump took office in January 2017, including 74 in one speech at July 5 campaign rally in Montana, which must be a record. Voters can direct a change of course back towards truth and democracy in the mid-term election coming up in November. Since it is clear Republicans won’t check Trump’s excesses it will be up to Americans to put Democrats back in control of Congress.

Keep hope alive in the face of Trump devotees who boast that he will win re-election. As of July 22, the Lying Don had an average of 43.8% approval vs. 52.7% disapproval, among 10 public opinion surveys monitored by Pollster.com. A 43.8% approval rate is not a strong base upon which to mount a re-election campaign. An Ipsos/Reuters poll of 2,357 registered voters on July 13-17 showed 85% of Republican approve of the president, while 86% of registered Democrats disapprove of the president, so the election likely will be decided by independent voters, who disapprove of the president by a more than a two-to-one margin — 63% to 27%. The only way Trump can win re-election is if Republicans prevent many of the 52.7% who oppose Trump from voting. And that is their plan, since it worked in 2016 with suspicious victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The more immediate challenge is the mid-term election on Nov. 6, in which control of Congress will be at stake. The Ipsos/Reuters poll showed 44% would vote Democratic while 35% would vote Republican, while 5% would vote for another candidate.

The most important chamber to target is the Senate, where Democrats need a net gain of two seats to regain the majority. Trump won’t be able to offer much help for Republicans, as his popularity has fallen across the board. When he took office in January 2017, Trump had a net positive rating in 38 states, but that was down to 23 states July 11, according to the Morning Consult’s daily tracking poll.

Democrats have a good chance to pick up open seats from Republicans in Arizona and Tennessee, and Republican Sen. Dean Heller looks vulnerable in Nevada. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also faces a well-funded challenger in US Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, but Democrats’ biggest problem is that only nine Republican seats are up for election this year, while 26 Democratic seats are up for grabs.

Republicans see the most vulnerable Democrats as Bill Nelson in Florida, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McKaskill in Missouri, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia — all states Trump carried. Republilcans will have plenty of campaign funds to take on those and other Democrats, from the billionaires who got the bulk of $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Don’t bet on the elections to set up impeachment. It’s hard to tell what Robert Mueller will produce, of course, but it would need to be grim indeed to put the fear of voters in Republicans who, until now, have acted as Trump apologists and enablers.

Realistically, a Democratic House next year could start hearings, and vote out a bill of impeachment with a simple majority vote, but it takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove the president from office. Even if Democrats won four of the nine Senate seats up for grabs in November, that would give them a 53-47 majority — enough to run the chamber, but where would Democrats gain 14 Republican votes to remove the president? And failing to remove the impeached president would result in Lying Don and his cult proclaiming that he had been acquitted of the “witch hunt.”

However, if Democrats regain control of the Senate, they can stop the approval of partisan Republican judges to federal courts, particularly on appeals courts, and they could reject other bad appointees. It would be sweet to see the Democrats impose the “McConnell rule” on Trump’s right-wing judicial nominees — which is why the Republicans will try to confirm as many judges as possible before the end of the year.

As Mueller closes in on Trump and his family, Lying Don likely will get more desperate. In the past week he finally took flak from Republicans and even from Fox News over his disastrous performance in Helsinki and his flip-flop the next day. So Trump tried to change the subject on July 22 with an all-caps message on Twitter, addressed to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, warning that Iran would face “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED” if Rouhani continued to threaten the United States.

Trump’s unhinged message was apparently in response to a speech by Rouhani, who warned the US that any conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars.”

Rouhani, who has long been considered a more pragmatic leader who was seen as tolerable to moderates, had earlier threatened the possible disruption of regional oil shipments if its own exports were blocked by US sanctions.

Of course, Trump has been spoiling for a fight with Iran, unilaterally withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in May, and announcing that the US would re-impose sanctions on Iran, in violation of the UN-sponsored deal. US trade partners in Europe will have to decide whether to abide with their deal with Iran or submit to Trump’s demands that they also violate the deal.

If “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” as Samuel Johnson said, Trump will become the Scoundrel in Chief in pursuit of “better ratings.” Don’t let him fool you, America. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2018

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Selections from the August 15, 2018 issue

COVER/Vijay Prashad
Trump will send oil and gas prices soaring even higher

EDITORIAL
Lying Don gets buggy

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

DON ROLLINS
Business as usual between Pentagon and big sport. 

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
What is wrong with that man?

DISPATCHES
Consercative Dems seek to move agenda right;
Trump White House considers stripping security clearances of Trump critics. Just one problem;
What if Trump threatened a war and nobody cared?
Fossil fuel lobbyist spend $2B to kill US climate action;
From Supreme Court to ballot, Trump Obamacare sabotage is toxic;
Trump solidifies base, but GOP sheds indy support;
Va. GOP candidate laughed at for claiming Trump is 'standing up' to Russia;
Coal miners contract black lung disease at record rate;
FBI's top cybersecurity officials are jumping ship;
Trump fumes over North Korea failing to honor handshake;
Native Ameican pipeline protesters enter plea ageements to avoid long prison terms ...

ART CULLEN
Climate change is real

JILL RICHARDSON
Soon you can’t use food stamps at farmers markets — but that’s not half of it

JOHN YOUNG
So much like Watergate, and so much worse

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Give people money

JOSH HOXIE
Our missing $10 trillion

JOHN L. MICEK
Congress too weak to stop trade war

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Beat bad grammar at the ballot box

SAM PIZZIGATI
A sweet new century for America’s most privileged

BOB LORD
How to level the playing field for workers, even with unions hurting

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Dribbling out profits: Of catsup and eye drops

SAM URETSKY
Has it happened here? Can we stop it from happening again? 

BOB BURNETT
Remind me, what do liberals believe?

WAYNE O’LEARY
The not-so-grand old party

JOHN BUELL
Who are the real extremists?

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Kavanaugh is a political, partisan jurist

SATIRE/Barry Friedman
From the archives: This week mit Marte Bruger

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Borderline foolishness

ROB PATTERSON
Facebook is so 2016

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Dystopian racial apocalypse tomorrow: May the purge be with you

SETH SANDRONSKY
Treating immigrants like people

New York Times news staff makes up false narrative that there are extreme differences between left & mainstream Democrats, but never tell us what those differences are

By Marc Jampole

An unstated but obvious unofficial policy of the New York Times is to undercut the Democratic Party in news stories, even as it pretends to support virtually all of the positions that Democrats hold in its editorials.

 

The game this year consists of using the heavily-charged word “socialist” as much as possible to describe the more left-leaning Democrats while playing up a supposed generational divide between more progressive millennials and their centrist-leaning elders. As we will see, it’s a completely false narrative meant to suppress the Democratic vote and drive independents to hold their nose and vote for Trump’s-boot-licking Republicans. (Begging the question: Is that “boot” or “bootie” to which servile GOP candidates have placed their puckered lips.)

 

This Sunday’s Times followed this false narrative to a tee. Both the front page lead story and the lead story of the national news page focused exclusively on the divide between mainstream Democrats and the charismatic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives who have won primaries. Both articles stress that Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and others call themselves democratic socialists; sometimes the articles sometimes drop the “democratic.”

 

The problem is the Times never defines what a democratic socialist is and what democratic socialism stands for.

 

“Socialism,” of course has long been a dirty word in the United States invoking totalitarianism and complete social control to the right-wing and to the many centrists brainwashed by decades of fear of the Soviet Union’s corrupt and autocratic version of socialism. Right-wingers have long labeled such government programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps as “socialist” in hopes of convincing the public that because socialism was bad, so were these programs. They’ve labelled regulatory efforts as socialist. Their arguments would fail miserably unless the public accepted the premise that socialism was evil. 

Which of course, it’s not. Historically, socialism referred to the government collectively owning and administering the means of production and distribution of goods. But in the real world, there’s a vast continuum of government intervention and control.  Europe provides a number of models of democratic socialism: governments addressing social challenges such as health care, retirement and education; unions having a greater say in the management of companies or in the development of national industrial policy; greater regulation of businesses to protect the environment or consumers or set standards of employment and wages. The European democracies, Japan, Canada, and—let’s face it—even the United States all have mixed economies that graft various socialist solutions onto private enterprise and the free market.

 

By not getting into any of what constitutes democratic socialism, the Times let’s stand the decades of fear-mongering rightwing demonization of the word “socialism.”   

 

Moreover, the Times attempts to exaggerate the differences between more centrist and more leftist Democrats by never talking about what those differences are. The headline of one of the articles says “Democrats Are Bracing for a Progressive Storm Brewing Far to the Left.” The articles quote a number of Democrats suggesting that extreme differences exist between mainstream Democrats and the candidates subscribing to “hard-left ideology.”

 

Yet in the two articles, which stretch across more than two pages of text and photographs, only three times does the Times mention what position any Democrat has on any issue. A phrase of text and a photo caption point out that Ben Jealous, running for governor in Maryland, is in favor of single payer health care. The other reference is this weird sentence referring to voters in Republican districts: “Across most of the approximately 60 Republican-held districts that Democrats are contesting, primary voters have chosen candidates who seem to embody change — many of them women and minorities — but who have not necessarily endorsed positions like single-payer health care and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.” The only way to understand that sentence in the context of the article is to assume that single-payer and a desire to dismantle ICE are extremist positions with which mainstream Dems disagree.

 

The Times never mentions what the differences between the “far left” and the rest of the party are, never does an issue-by-issue comparison. And there’s a good reason for it. There are few real differences, and those that exist are quibbles, at best.  While I’m quite confident that large numbers of Democrats do not want to see ICE abolished, virtually all want to see it reformed. Surveys suggest that most Dems like the single-payer concept when presented to them as “Medicare for all.”

 

Now let’s look at the large number of issues that the Times doesn’t mention. Surveys tell us that that virtually all Democrats:

·         Want to raise the minimum wage. The quibble in the past election cycle was that Bernie wanted to raise it to $15 right away, whereas Hillary wanted to do so over a period of time.

·         Want more government support of public education, especially higher education.

·         Think the tax package passed late last year was a giveaway to the rich and want to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

·         Want to give the Dreamers a path to citizenship and help refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

·         Are against the dismantling of regulations that protect the environment and consumers.

·         Support a woman’s right to an abortion and fear that Roe v. Wade may be overturned.

·         Support the Mueller investigation and want to prosecute any American who collaborated with the Russians to fix the election in favor of any candidate.

 

Most of all, virtually every Democrat wants to rein in Donald Trump by electing a Congress that is not afraid to overrule his actions with legislation and make certain that his appointees are competent and not irrational ideologues or thieving cronies.

 

As we have seen, all Democrats pretty much share the same basic views, especially when contrasted with the Trumpublicans. The only way to conceal this underlying unity, however, is not to mention or talk about issues, something that the Times news staff has proven itself quite capable of doing.

In-country with Trump supporters: As long as there are tax cuts and a conservative Supreme Court, they’re happy

By Marc Jampole

I took a brief trip to Pittsburgh this week during the two-day outburst of treasonous remarks by Donald Trump, who first said he believed Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence services, then tried to weasel out of it by focusing on one word of one sentence of a long diatribe, but still managed to get in a dig undermining the intelligence agencies yet again.

Being in Pittsburgh meant I spent some time with two old friends who are Trump supporters. Although both are long-time Republicans, neither is a virulent racist and both are old-fashioned cold warriors, so their support of Trump in light of his denial of Russian tampering in the 2016 elections and the likelihood his campaign colluded with the Russians is both frightening and illuminating.

One of my friends is a high-level professional service vendor in his late 50s whose expertise mostly helps nonprofit organizations. He lives in a distant white suburb and is extremely Christian, building virtually all of his non-work life around his church. My guess is his family’s net worth is about like mine—upper middle class. The other friend is in his late 70s, retired from working for the government in a position in which he primarily interacted with poor people. For decades has also pursued a career in the arts that has made him prominent local presence. He lives in a diverse city neighborhood and has libertarian views on social matters, although he is definitely against a woman’s absolute right to get an abortion. He barely scrapes by on his pension and savings.

There are many things that should have offended these guys about Trump from the first. His all-too-frequent rude comments and multiple marriages and affairs should have disgusted my Christian friend. As a small business entrepreneur, he should have seen through Trump’s bluster and realized the Donald is a bad businessperson except in the narrow specialty of mass-appeal branding. He should have also resented the thousands of lawsuits filed against Trump for breaking contracts with small contractors and suppliers. The racism and treatment of women should have turned off my friend who lives in the city, who has a number of African-American acquaintances and is what I call a “true ladies’ man,” meaning he always has a lady friend because he respects women and treats them as equal, at least in public.

Both of these guys have a hard time accepting reality when it contradicts their beliefs, but in profoundly different ways. The fervent Christian is used to dealing with facts and reality and is ready to accept science, but when the facts undermine his basic beliefs, the scales seem to fall from his eyes for literally a nanosecond before forming again as he retreats into an almost catatonic state in which he keeps repeating a core doctrine. Several times over the years I have tried to convince him that lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations does not create jobs or grow the economy. I have carefully explained that the government spends all its money, whereas rich folk and business put their extra cash from a tax break into assets that form bubbles, like real estate and secondary stock market. He admitted that he—like me—has put the proceeds from our recent tax break into the secondary stock market, meaning it doesn’t go to any company and creates no new jobs. He had this moment of realization that I was right and then his eyes glazed over and he said in an affectless, hypnotized drone, “Tax cuts are good. We should cut taxes more.” Another time, he and a group of other conservatives who all owned companies that serve nonprofit organizations were complaining that their business was down. I patiently explained that a large number of their clients depend on government contracts and cuts by federal and state governments were choking these organizations. I proposed that we raise taxes to what they once had been so the state had more money to fund these organizations, all of which deliver vital services. Again, I could see the look of epiphany in their eyes—the beam that says, Eureka, “Yes, he’s right!” Then almost in unison, as if members of a cult, they said, “Can’t raise taxes. Must lower taxes more.” My friend’s faith in the false Reaganist creed of cutting taxes is as strong as his faith in the truth of every word in the Bible.

My other friend argues from a cynicism born of no faith in anything. He explicitly states that he prefers to believe a single anecdote that supports his argument than reams of facts and studies that prove that what he thinks is wrong. Now in Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman uses extensive research to show that many if not most people are exactly the same, putting more credence in anecdotes than facts. But hardly anyone admits it as brazenly as my friend, who reasons that all research is suspect because it always reflects the biases of the people or organizations paying for it. He lives in a post-Karl Rove world in which reality is a construct of those strong enough to force their version on everyone else. It was Rove who said, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” My friend’s argues that if all research is inherently corrupt, he might as well believe the stuff that supports his side. It’s the scholarly equivalent of fake news. All news is fake and all pursuits of knowledge are fake. If it sounds like Machiavellian rhetoric, that’s because it is. His true belief may rely on faith, but he maintains it through a cynical and amoral disregard of truth. In this, he resembles Trump.

When I asked them why they continue to support Trump, I get the same answer: Trump has done more good than bad. They mention they like the tax breaks, the Supreme Court justices and placing the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. They also point out that they don’t like the tariffs. No mention of the treatment of immigrants or the massive rollback of regulations that protect the environment and consumers. In a real way, my friends reflect the attitude of Republican leadership, which forgives anything Trump does or says, as long as they get their tax breaks, relief from government regulation and a conservative Supreme Court. If Trump delivers those things, they’ll overlook all of the man’s failings. And that includes treason.

Editorial: Negotiating with Tariffists

Donald Trump has been throwing his weight around on global trade matters with little apparent long-term planning. He threatened tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Then, when America’s trade partners retaliated with tariffs on American products, he upped the ante. When he proposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports, Beijing retaliated with tariffs on an equal value of US goods, including beef, pork, soybeans, cars and computer chips. So Trump has threatened to escalate the battle with tariffs on more than $200 billion worth of goods from China.

Trump got a lot of mileage in his 2016 campaign with his co-opting of the populist belief that “free trade” deals have contributed to the misery and inequality afflicting working-class communities in America. That may have made the difference in his razor-thin victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

But when, as president, he started the saber rattling, Trump showed little sense of the trouble he was unleashing. “Trade wars are good and easy to win,” he tweeted in March. He had imposed tariffs on solar panels, newsprint and washing machines before he started the war on foreign steel and aluminum. But after he announced tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union on “national security” grounds, EU officials announced they would apply tariffs on a series of American goods, including Harley-Davidson motorcycles. When Harley-Davidson announced it would move some production overseas to avoid the tariffs, which would increase the cost of motorcycles by an average of $2,200, Trump urged the company to “be patient.”

Trump, a practiced grifter, advises American businesses and farmers to “be patient” in the same way itinerant driveway pavers collect a down payment, and advise the homeowner to “be patient” when they promise to be back in a week or so to do the work.

Tariffs on Mexico, Canada and the European Union are questionable, as they are traditional allies and do not engage in the sort of predatory trade practices China uses. Trump could use some allies in his attempt to rein in China, but the alienation of US trading partners comes at a time when Trump suggests he is also considering reducing the US commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Mexican and Canadian tariffs also could wreak havoc on economies that are closely integrated with neighboring US states after 24 years under NAFTA. Goods and services trade with Canada totaled $673.9 billion in 2017, with a net trade surplus of $8.4 billion for the US, owing to its $25.9 billion surplus in services, according to the Office of US Trade Representative.

According to the Department of Commerce, US exports to Canada supported 1.6 million jobs in 2015 (the latest data available). The tariffs are supposed to protect 140,000 US steelworker jobs.

Goods and services trade with Mexico totaled $616.6 billion in 2017. Exports were $276.2 billion; imports were $340.3 billion with a US deficit of $64.1 billion in 2017. However, the US had a services trade surplus of $7.8 billion, and trade with Mexico supported 1.2 million US jobs in 2015.

US goods and services trade with the EU totaled nearly $1.1 trillion in 2016, making it the largest trading partner with the US, and a net trade deficit for the US of $92 billion, or less than 1%.

The US had a $147 billion deficit on goods trade with the EU out of a total of $686 billion in 2016. But the US had a $55 billion surplus in services with the EU out of a total of $407 billion, and US exports to the EU supported 2.6 million US jobs in 2015.

The largest trade deficit is with China, which did $648.5 billion in trade with the US, and recorded a $385 billion goods and services surplus in 2016. US exports to China supported 911,000 jobs in 2015, with 601,000 supported by goods exports and 309,000 supported by services exports.

Now that Trump has targeted a wide range of Chinese products, the conflict is likely to cause collateral damage among American companies that rely on those products in the global supply chains. The White House also is placing restrictions on investment and on visas for Chinese nationals as leverage to force Beijing to make changes, including opening its markets to American companies and ending its practice of requiring firms operating in China to hand over valuable technology.

The New York Times reported July 5 that companies like Husco International, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer of parts for companies like Ford, General Motors, Caterpillar and John Deere, now face a 25% increase on a variety of parts imported from China. Austin Ramirez, Husco International’s chief executive, said that increase would immediately put him and other American manufacturers at a disadvantage to competitors abroad.

“The people it helps most of all are my competitors in Germany and Japan, who also have large parts of their supply chain in Asia but don’t have these tariffs,” he said.

Farmers also have been hit by Chinese retaliatory tariffs on pork and soybeans — a serious blow, as China has been a market for mor than half of American soybean exports, and fears of the tariffs have pushed down the price of soybeans by roughly 15% in recent months, wiping out potential profits for that crop. American farmers also risk losing key markets in the long term, as farmers in Brazil are boosting soybean production to scoop up the Chinese market.

Progressive Democrats should support the need to renegotiate NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and other trade deals to preserve the authority of governments to regulate business and industry and abolish investor-state dispute settlement panels that can overrule national courts. Progressives should promote a trade policy that protects labor and environmental standards.

But remember that Trump has no principles guiding his trade or immigration campaigns. As a developer, he used undocumented Polish workers in 1980 to demolish a department store to make way for Trump Tower; then he forced them to go to court to get paid. Trump's resort, Mar-a-Lago, in June asked the Department of Labor for 61 H2-B visas for foreign servers and cooks. He used cheap Chinese steel and aluminum in Trump hotels in Las Vegas and Chicago and he has used Chinese factories to make his merchandise. His campaign gets flags from a Chinese factory whose owner said he has already started to make flags for Trump’s 2020 campaign. And White House adviser Ivanka Trump’s foreign-made products on her fashion line won’t be touched by tariffs.

And on May 13, two days after state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China offered to lend $500 million to Indonesian developers to finance a Trump-branded resort in Indonesia, Trump pledged to help ZTE, a Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer with ties to the Chinese government, recover from a $1.19 billion fine and a ban on dealing with US companies, after ZTE sold technology products in North Korea and Iran, in violation of sanctions, then lied about it to US officials. US intelligence officials also warned of security risks in allowing ZTE phones to be used by government employees. But Trump tweeted: “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

When asked about the business deal in Indonesia, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah referred questions to the Trump Organization, saying, “You’re asking about a private organization’s dealings.”

So don’t count on Tariffist Trump to do the right thing. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2018

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Copyright © 2018 The Progressive PopulistPO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the August 1, 2018 issue

COVER/Kent Paterson
López Obrador’s victory in Mexico raises hopes in Latin America

EDITORIAL
Negotiating with tarrifists

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Young democratic socialists bringing the heat

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Yes, the planet is at risk

DISPATCHES
Trump freezes Obamacare payments, further undermining affordable care;
Louisiana Medicaid expansion may have saved thousands of lives;
Brett Kavanaugh picked to kill the ‘administrative state’;
Trump administration comes out against breastfeeding;
Pruitt’s successor at EPA may be more dangerous;
Heat waves could rise another 12°F;
Surely Trump will strip citizenship carefully;
Rural groups urge Congess invest in rural business ...

ART CULLEN
Dems must address rural voters

JILL RICHARDSON
Knowing when to turn off the news

JOHN YOUNG
Inside the GOP rationalization chamber

RICHARD ESKOW
How to cover a revolution

MARK ANDERSON
Homeowner seeks court action against fraudulent foreclosures

BOB BURNETT
Telling the truth about immigration

JIM VAN DER POL
There’s more to immigration than people piling up at the border

WENONAH HAUTER
What fossil fuels and factory farms have in common

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Barreling toward dystopia

SAM URETSKY
What they think they know makes Trump supporters dangerous

SETH SANDRONSKY  
Labor rules expand skimpy ‘association health plans’

WAYNE O’LEARY
The wages of Trump

JOHN BUELL
Paramilitary politics and the world’s children

N. GUNASEKARAN
Asia’s environment becoming ‘full-blown crisis’

CLAUDIA ZEQUEIRA
What zero tolerance means for refugee families

ROB PATTERSON
Interest in Hitler heats up

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Gut check

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
When 1 million Americans voted socialist

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Too big to fail to catch the irony

The Trump Administration is never afraid to hurt children in its never-ending quest to create markets for its cronies

By Marc Jampole

There always have been a limited number of ways for companies to sell more goods or services. The most obvious are to develop new products or to sell in new territories or to new markets, the latter being the point of global trade. Just as significant is to the creation of new needs for an existing product or service—new reasons to buy the same product from the company or industry, as when a pharmaceutical company finds a new use for an existing prescription drug. Sometimes, the economy or society itself creates the new need. A few old examples should suffice: In the 19th century, once states required many professionals to pass rigorous examinations that tested knowledge of standardized but highly specialized information, there was a new need to educate lawyers, physicians and other professionals which led to the rapid expansion of universities. During the same century, the consolidation of regional companies into national corporations created a new need for advertising. The rise of the fast food industry in the 20th expanded the market for throwaway plates, bowls and utensils enormously.  

Most lobbying of legislatures and the administrative offices of the executive branch of state and federal governments is intended to make sure government either helps to create a new market or doesn’t do anything to shrink an existing market. An example of the former is to enter into an agreement with foreign countries that lowers tariffs on the products a company sells. An example of the later is to ban the use of a certain material, say lead in paint or gasoline. These governmental decisions result in companies and industries gaining or losing business. Almost since the founding of the United States, companies, especially larger ones, have made sure that elected officials understand that.

Unfortunately, all too often, our elected officials listen and respond with laws, regulations and policies that reward a few, typically contributors, at the expense of the many. 

And all too often in the Trump Administration, the actions that create a new market for their cronies and contributors involve directly hurting children.  We can see this most obviously in the recent policy to break up families that are seeking refugee status in the United States from countries south of the border, sending parents to one center and children to another. It is now well-documented that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has depended heavily on private organizations to process, house and feed the tens of thousands of refugee men, women and children nabbed at border crossings. Estimates of how much it costs to house each child range from $600-$900 a day, most of which goes into the hands of private companies that have courted Trump and Pence for years. Considering the accommodations, the profit margins must be phenomenal.

This week’s brouhaha over the United Nation’s World Health Assembly statement on breastfeeding is a virtual repeat of the decision to imprison everyone who tries to enter the country and take their children from them. Trump attempted to bully the UN and the rest of the world to help companies selling infant formula. But that policy hurts children. Virtually every expert agrees that breastfeeding an infant produces healthier and smarter babies who have fewer health problems later on and tend to live longer. But of course every baby who is breastfed is one less family buying infant formula, which, while a good substitute when breast-feeding is impossible or harmful to the mother, should for most mothers be a distant second choice to breastfeeding. We may not see the horrible photos of traumatized children and parents, but policies and advertising that steer mothers away from breastfeeding are nonetheless harmful to large numbers of children.

When the UN wanted to issue a strong statement recommending that mothers breastfeed, Trump officials went bat-shit crazy, pushing their weight around and threatening trade sanctions and withdrawal of military aid if any nation dare support a resolution at the United Nations. America officials wanted to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding.”  The administration’s threats made Ecuador back down from introducing the resolution.

To quote the New York Times, “Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.” The reason the administration didn’t like full-hearted support for breast feeding was obvious to everyone from the beginning. The Trump Administration wanted to avoid narrowing the market opportunities for Abbot, Nestles and other makers of infant formula.

Unlike the fiasco at the border, the latest attempt to ignore science and put the interests of business first even though it directly hurts thousands of children, has a somewhat happy ending. One nation proved fearless enough to agree to introduce the resolution in its strongest version. For some reason, this nation didn’t fear retaliation from Trump. For some reason, Trump feared pissing off this nation and refused to threaten it in any way.

That country was Russia.

Yes, Russia became the hero of the moment, defending both science and the right of families all over the world to get accurate information and the best nutrition for their children.

Meanwhile, America continues to lose the respect of the rest of the world.

Especially appalling—and depressing—is that direct harm to children is the end result of so many efforts by the Trump Administration to create business opportunities for its cronies. Trump doesn’t seem to care if he creates a generation of PTSD sufferers by ripping children from their families. He doesn’t seem to care if millions of babies around the world could get inferior nutrition, which will shorten their lives. Trump and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos don’t care that all the studies show that well-funded public schools produce better educated students than do private schools or charter schools. In all three cases, the Trump Administration believes the best interests of industry far outweigh the health or educational needs of children.

We celebrated the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, but we live every day by a Constitution that the Supreme Court says favors property over people

By Marc Jampole

Whether grilling hamburgers, attending a parade, watching fireworks, playing softball or zoning out to the Dirty Hairy binge-a-thon on Sundance TV, our celebration of July 4th commemorated an obsolete document.

All the fuss about Independence Day celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, easily recognized by its key passage, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The idea that animates the Declaration of Independence is equality of rights and opportunity for all men (which at the time meant white males but has since been expanded to include people of color and women). This ideal, however, was superseded by the Constitution, which as interpreted by the Supreme Court almost from its first case onward, holds as government’s primary function the protection of private property. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” is how the Constitution begins. Sounds like a contract between large corporations, which, as it turns out it was, and is.

I have been reminded of the predominance of property over people in U.S. law reading We the Corporations: How American Corporations Won Their Civil Rights, Adam Winkler’s breezy history of Supreme Court decisions that have gradually recognized and expanded the rights of corporations. As Winkler notes, one strand of legal thinking shared by many of the rich white merchants and slave owners who wrote the Constitutions “understood the Constitution largely in terms of protecting private property and private economic relations from majority rule.” This theory predominates the thinking of the Reagan Era right wing. It is a guiding principle of the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Mercatus Center and other 21st century right-wing propaganda mills. It animates the political contributions of the Koch brothers. (see Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains.)

One ramification of the industrial and financial revolutions after the Civil War was that vast amounts of property (wealth) were transferred from the hands of individuals to corporate control. Even though individuals controlled corporations and other individuals owned them, a corporation was something different from the sum of those individuals. In essence, a corporation comprises its tangible and intangible assets and its debts (which are negative forms of property) and thus is nothing more or less than a piece of property, no less than land, furniture, equipment or the right to use an image.

Early on, the managers and owners of corporations wanted to assert corporate rights, while governments and reformers wanted to restrict them. It was up to the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and decide what rights corporations—compositions of property and property rights—had. According to Winkler, the “corporate rights” movement developed alongside the Civil Rights movement, and was more successful earlier on.

From the turn of the 20th century to just before World War II in what is known as the “Lochner Era,” named after a 1905 case, the Supreme Court distinguished between property rights and liberty rights. The court gave property rights to corporations, but not liberty rights, such as the right to free speech. In fact, it was in this era that the first laws were passed limiting the ability of corporations to give money to support candidates. But the Court in the Lochner Era also invalidated state and federal legislation that constrained corporations, such as minimum wage laws, federal child labor laws, and regulations of the banking, insurance and transportation industries.

After World War II, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren focused much more on protecting the rights of individuals, but to the degree that these included property rights, Court decisions also helped corporations.

Since Nixon replaced four Supreme Court justices with pro-business conservatives in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Court has gradually recognized that corporations—again, collections of property owned collectively by individuals—have liberty rights, too, in decisions such as First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, in which the Court ruled that corporations had a First Amendment right to speak and spend freely on ballot referenda. The coup-de-grace for corporate liberty rights was, of course, Citizens United, which has enabled corporations to give unlimited amounts of “dark money” to support candidates.

By giving corporations that same rights as individuals, the Supreme Court has enthroned property as more important than “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It has also created a number of asymmetries which give large corporations overwhelming advantages over smaller businesses and individuals. While corporations can’t cast votes, they have greater influence over elections than individuals because they have more money to spend. Once de facto limits are removed from campaign contributions, as Citizens United did, those with more money have more votes. Likewise in employment: the corporate entity has the power not to hire someone who doesn’t accept an arbitration agreement.

Most Americans like to think that the great arc of history—and in particular American history—bends towards freedom and justice for all, as Martin Luther King once said. The freeing of the slaves, the gaining of the right to vote, minimum wage, child labor and overtime laws, the end of legal segregation, gay marriage—these are all milestones in the American pursuit of liberty and equal opportunity. But Winkler’s conclusion in We the Corporations is that over the course of time, corporations have won more constitutional rights than have individuals. And every win for corporations is a win for property over people. Remember, we live by the Constitution, not the Declaration. Our right to pursue happiness—enshrined by the Declaration of Independence—exists, but it’s not as strong or as meaningful as the rights of a corporation to pursue profit for the rich folk who own it.

Despite the many recent setbacks & the fear that Roe V. Wade could be overturned, progressives have some cause for optimism

By Marc Jampole

Just about everyone with whom I’ve spoken these past few days is stunned and depressed because of the accelerating accumulation of Trump Administration actions that are against the best interests of most Americans, morally offensive, signs of a growing autocratic state or some combination of the three.

At the risk of driving half my readership to drink, dope or anti-depressants, let me review the terrible stuff to happen just this week:

• We began to recognize the full extent of the incompetence and cruelty with which the administration is prosecuting its zero tolerance policy against refugee families.
• The Supreme Court issued several horrible 5-4 decisions, including Janus v. AFSCME, which could gut public sector unions, and Trump v. Hawaii, which upheld the right of Donald Trump to impose a travel band even if his public comments demonstrate the ban is meant to discriminate against one religious group.
• Trump announced a July summit with Vladimir Putin, where he is sure to give away whatever of the store is left after his capitulations to North Korea.
• The trade war with allies intensified and we began to see analyses that show that the net effect of Trump’s tariffs even before the imminent trade war will be to create a few jobs in shrinking industries like steel manufacturing while destroying jobs in growth industries such as renewable resources.
• Another mass murder—this one of journalists—with no federal gun control law anywhere close to being passed.
• The kicker of course was the announcement that Anthony Kennedy was retiring from the Supreme Court allowing Trump to replace a right-wing, pro-business ideologue who was okay with gay marriage and abortion with a right-wing, pro-business ideologue who is against gay marriage and abortion. Most liberals expect and fear that Roe V. Wadewill soon be overturned and from 18-26 states will ban abortion outright.

Every week it seems we get hit by more and more of these abominations. No wonder most of us on the left are feeling a little punch-drunk right now, as if we can’t take any more of these constant hits to our body politic. Over the past two weeks I have heard more pessimistic sentiments from liberal acquaintances than over the previous two years. Friends and acquaintances are now sure that Trump will avoid impeachment and win again in 2020, with the help of voter suppression and Donald’s best bud in Moscow. Others rightfully despair that we will likely get the most politically activist right-wing Supreme Court in American history. Others seem to be suffering contact post-traumatic stress disease (PTSD), as they see the bleak images of children crying in cages and learn more about the biggest federal government botch job since the Bush II’s Iraq and Katrina debacles. We feel powerless to help ease the pain of these children, and we know the horrible truth that the psychological part of it will persist for decades after the proximate cause is removed. I can still conjure the images and emotions of several childhood traumas I suffered, but even worse are my imagined sufferings that my son never went through, but could have. I know I’m among tens of millions of parents who have transferred empathy for their own children to the innocent children Trump’s ICE took away from their parents. It’s a miserable feeling of helplessness.

(Aside: A lack of competence seems to characterize all ideological regimes, in the United States as elsewhere. Just think of the similarities between the Trump regime and the Soviet Union under the communists.  People get positions because of their ideological purity or emotional proximity to the great leader, not competence. Competent people who disagree with the party line lose their jobs. Decisions are made based on the a priori beliefs of the great leader or the ruling elite, even if those decisions ignore scientific evidence or empirical experience. The results are half-baked policies which are then implemented incompetently.)

The current emotional depression (as opposed to the economic one likely to come in a few years) deepens into despair for those who consider that the rationale for most of the policies that Trump has implemented are pure lies: Environmental protections do not hurt the economy or diminish jobs. We do not have a problem with too many immigrants, and in fact could use some more to fill the many open positions our economy now has. Immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans and increase the jobs and income of non-immigrants. Our allies were not taking advantage of us in treaties. Iran was not ignoring the terms of the nuclear agreement. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations does not lead to greater investment in new jobs. Socialized healthcare keeps populations healthier and costs less per person. Then there are the filthy lies, like the one that an overwhelming majority of government aid recipient are minorities or that minorities receive preferential treatment by schools, employees and government. Not one part of the Trumpite program starts with a factual basis.

Like patients of talk therapy, let’s pick at the open wound and dig deeper into the dismal morass of the current political situation by remembering that Trump is not a solitary figure who upset everyone’s apple cart, but only the extreme version of Reagan Republicanism. Other than tariffs, consider how similar Trump’s actions have been in office to what the rest of the field save Kasich was advocating. Just about all Republicans since Reagan have retreated to a large degree from the fact-based universe when it did not jibe with the ideology they wanted to impose on reality. Just about all have been more interested in power than fairness in government. All have supported privatization of basic services as a way to reward their contributors and business allies. All have worked almost exclusively for the interests of the wealthy and extremely wealthy, while stringing along the religious right by supporting anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ positions. All have worked to restrict voting rights. Just about all have played the race card with frequency, usually in a subtle code language.

If the Republican Party has seemed quick to embrace Trump despite his ignorance, autocratic predilections, uncivility and overt racism and sexism, it is merely because it has been moving in those directions since Reagan fanaticized about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and Americans workers vampirized of every incentive to work by cheap, free healthcare. What that means is that Republicans are happy to see us slip into fascism, as long as a white majority elects the autocrats running and ruining the country for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy.

A pretty grim situation, and yet I have hope.

My hope comes from the fact that even with restrictive voting laws, if all the constituencies of the Democratic Party come out to vote, the Democrats can still control the House and Senate and win the Electoral College. It will take a massive effort to register voters and then get them out to the polls, but it can be done.

My hope comes from knowing that groups that tend to vote Democratic are growing—college educated white women, millennials, minorities, whereas groups that have now tend to vote Republican are shrinking—whites without education, evangelicals.

I’m hopeful because millennials and minorities are pushing the Democrats left, so that when they do take power again, the Dems will more likely be emboldened to make real change—Medicare for all, a trillion-dollar infrastructure program, steep tax increases on the wealthy, legislating all the environmental regulations the Trump administration has been rolling back, responding to all the crap that’s going to come out of the Roberts’ Court with overriding legislation.

We are in the final stages of a coup d’état by a theocratic autocracy, but all is not lost, as long as we have the right to vote. But for once, we have to exercise it and do so with some common sense. Whoever the candidate for whatever the office, we have to vote for the Democrat, and not the independent, the “good Republican,” the Green Party candidate or none of the above. At the same time, we have to vote and support the most left-leaning candidate in every Democratic primary.

So in the gloom of the summer of our discontent, fellow lefties, let’s dream of November and think not just about voting but helping others to register and get to the polls.