Month: May 2016

Strange attractors
by Tom Sullivan

Visual representation of a strange attractor
by Nicolas Desprez via Wikimedia Commons.

Dissatisfaction runs deep. This season, large blocks of American voters across the political spectrum are backing anti-establishment candidates. Yet the public does not seem to agree on a coherent set of fixes. Dissatisfaction is like a vague pain that comes and goes and moves around.

Perhaps the closest thing to a strange attractor around which left and right opinions cluster is the undue influence of money in our politics. Donald Trump claims he is so wealthy no one can buy him. Bernie Sanders has turned $27, his stated average campaign contribution, into a stadium-sized brag. But in his new book, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, Richard Hasen argues that the view that big money is buying elections and bribing politicians is too narrow an understanding of how money influences our politics and policy. I have not read Hasen’s book, but an excerpt at Bill Moyer’s blog provides a sense of where Hasen’s argument will go:

It is hard for reformers to avoid the corruption talk. To begin with, “corruption” resonates with the general public — a poll commissioned by Represent.Us saw support jump from 60 to 72 percent of Americans when a campaign finance reform bill is packaged as an anticorruption measure. Using the term broadly, corruption can mean anything deviating from some perfect state of nature.

Of course, corruption shorthand has escalated in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the word paints with too broad a brush:

The new Citizens United era is not full of corrupt politicians taking bribes or of elections going to the highest bidder. To claim it is so puts the public’s spotlight in the wrong place, looking for elected officials to use large amounts of money for private gain. The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes. Without any politician taking a single bribe, wealth has an increasingly disproportionate influence on our politics. While we can call that a problem of “corruption,” this pushes the limits of the words too far (certainly far beyond what the Supreme Court is going to entertain as corruption) and obscures the fundamental unfairness of a political system moving toward plutocracy. The political power of the wealthy is especially troubling in our current period of rising economic inequality, when those with great economic clout can use their increased political power to protect their economic position.

Widespread use of “corrupt” and “rigged” to describe our current state even by progressive icons such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren seems to be having the unintended consequence of promoting a sense that affecting change through political means is pointless, if not hopeless. Let’s just say my experience is that limited efforts of short duration are not likely to produce durable reforms. I attended the funeral of a friend last week, a former Freedom Rider with a history that went back to who SNCC, who never lost hope and never stopped fighting. Perhaps he was naive. And perhaps not.

And he loves him a good taco bowl too

by digby

This is the speech Donald Trump prepared for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. It is not a joke. He really did this.

“It’s so great to be with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. We’re gonna do a lot of things if I get elected president. We’re gonna bring back jobs and that you understand. The world is taking our jobs and we’ve gotta stop it.

“We’re gonna take care of minority unemployment. It’s a huge problem, it’s really unfair to minorities, and we’re going to solve that problem and it’s going to be solved once and for all. We’re going to create good schools, and I mean, in some cases, hopefully, great schools. And really save communities because our communities in many cases are not safe, which is really unfair to Hispanics, and frankly, everybody else.

“We’re gonna do massive tax cuts, especially for the middle class, and people that are poor are going to pay nothing. They’re struggling, it’s tough, and under my plan which is filed under DonaldJTrump.com you’re going to see it’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’re going to get it, you’re going to go out, we’re going to bring back jobs. You’re going to start paying taxes after you’re making a lot of money and hopefully that’s going to be soon.

“We’re going to make great, great trade deals. So important. The world is laughing at us right now. We’re losing our jobs, we’re losing so much, whether it’s China or whether it’s Japan or whether it’s so many other countries. Our trade deals are horrendous and that’s where we’re losing our jobs.

That’s going to end.

“We’re going to stop drugs from pouring into our country. We’re going to strengthen our borders. People are going to come into our country but they’re going to come in through a process. They’ll come in legally but we’re going to stop the drugs and we are going to curb our debt. Our debt is a disaster, we owe right now $19 trillion, it’s gotta stop. By the way, the $19 trillion is going up to $21 trillion very, very soon. So we have to curb our debt and we will do that.

“I just want to thank everybody, we’re going to be working very hard. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m going to win and we’re going to take care of everybody. Our country is going to be unified for the first time in a long time. And again, I just want to thank the, the whole group, and all of the committees that asked me to do this.

“National. Hispanic. Christian. Three. Great. Words. We’re going to take care of you, we’re going to work with you, you’re going to be very happy, you’re going to like President Trump.”

You’re all going to happy little peasant, just let President Trump “take care” of everything and don’t you worry your pretty little heads about the details.

It’s just shocking. And yet, there it is.

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The twitter pol

by digby

I know I have at least a few readers who don’t follow twitter. I don’t blame them, it’s often a time suck at best and a sewer at worst. But it is Donald Trump’s favorite way of communicating other than calling up Fox and Friends in his jammies every morning so I thought I’d just grab a handful of his tweets from the last few days:

This man is the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, folks. He has the mind of a 12 year old.  And that’s being unfair to many 12 year olds.

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Trump and Willie Horton

by digby

To anyone out there who thinks that Donald Trump is anything but unreconstructed, racist, law and order authoritarian, think again:

Donald J. Trump accused Hillary Clinton on Friday of wanting to let violent criminals out of prison and “disarm” law-abiding citizens in unsafe neighborhoods, and warned that women, in particular, would be at greater risk if she were elected president.

Accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association at its annual convention here, Mr. Trump — who has not always been the staunchest opponent of stricter gun controls — said the November election would be a referendum on the Second Amendment. He claimed, hyperbolically, that Mrs. Clinton, his likely Democratic opponent, “wants to take away your guns.”

“Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment candidate ever to run for office,” he said.

Mrs. Clinton has called for tightened restrictions on guns, but not for abolishing the right to own them.

Mr. Trump, whose record of sexist remarks, among other things, has left him at a potentially crippling disadvantage among female voters, polls show, appealed directly to women in his speech, imbuing his defense of gun rights with an undercurrent of fear.

“In trying to overturn the Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton is telling everyone — and every woman living in a dangerous community — that she doesn’t have the right to defend herself,” Mr. Trump said. “So you have a woman living in a community, a rough community, a bad community — sorry, you can’t defend yourself.”

If Mr. Trump’s comments seemed reminiscent of an era when crime rates were far higher — the Willie Horton ads attacking Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, in the 1988 presidential race came to mind — they also appeared somewhat at odds with the broad bipartisan consensus on the need to reduce incarceration rates and prison populations: Mr. Trump sought to frighten voters about the idea of criminals being released from prison.

He said Mrs. Clinton’s agenda was “to release the violent criminals from jail,” freeing them to roam the streets and put “innocent Americans at risk.”

He even tried out a new epithet for Mrs. Clinton: “heartless Hillary.”

He’s basically saying to women that Clinton wants to let black men tout of prison so they can rape white women. Recall that Trump’s campaign guru Paul Manafort was working with Lee Atwater when Atwater said “by the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”

This is just more evidence that Trump and his campaign advisers are 70s and 80s throwbacks who want to “Make America White Again.”

Then there’s this beaut:

Calling Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, “heartless hypocrites,” he dared them to “let their bodyguards immediately disarm,” an apparent reference to their Secret Service protection.

“Let’s see how good they do,” Mr. Trump said. “Let’s see how they feel walking around without their guns and their bodyguards. In the meantime, nobody else can have the guns, right?”

Trump doesn’t allow guns at this rallies.

The NRA didn’t allow guns in the hall where Trump was speaking.

Update: And then there’s this. It looks like we’re going to party like it’s 1988.

A lesson in bad ratfu**ing

by digby

Your must read of the day comes from Jane Mayer at the New Yorker. It’s about a voice mail message from someone named “Victor Kesh” left at one of George Soros’s foundations. They were supposedly calling to offer some money to help in their cause but forgot to hang up the phone:

She heard a click, a pause, and then a second male voice. The person who had introduced himself as Kesh said, “Don’t say anything . . . before I hang up the phone.”

“That piqued my interest,” Geraghty recalls. Other aspects of the message puzzled her: “Who says they’re with a foundation without saying which one? He sounded scattered. And usually people call to get funding, not to offer it.” Victor Kesh, she suspected, was “someone passing as someone else.”

She continued to listen, and the man’s voice suddenly took on a more commanding tone. The caller had failed to hang up, and Kesh, unaware that he was still being recorded, seemed to be conducting a meeting about how to perpetrate an elaborate sting on Soros. “What needs to happen,” he said, is for “someone other than me to make a hundred phone calls like that”—to Soros, to his employees, and to the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberal political donors that Soros helped to found, which is expected to play a large role in financing this year’s campaigns. Kesh described sending into the Soros offices an “undercover” agent who could “talk the talk” with Open Society executives. Kesh’s goal wasn’t fully spelled out on the recording, but the gist was that an operative posing as a potential donor could penetrate Soros’s operation and make secret videos that exposed embarrassing activities. Soros, he assured the others, has “thousands of organizations” on the left in league with him. Kesh said that the name of his project was Discover the Networks.

The money that would be offered, Kesh said, couldn’t come from “offshore British Virgin Island companies,” because “Soros’s people don’t want to take money from a group like that.” He claimed that “Bill Clinton would” take suspect cash, “and Hillary Clinton would, and Chelsea would.”

One member of the team suggested to Kesh that he knew someone who could infiltrate the Soros network: an English orthopedic surgeon with “a real heavy British accent,” who was in the U.S. and was “more than happy to do anything he can do for us.” The surgeon was sophisticated about technology and would not “have any problem with the cameras.” The team member said, “He’s a very talented guy, so, I mean, he’ll be able to pull it off.” As Kesh mapped out the covert attack, however, he had no idea that the only person he was stinging was himself.

The accidental recording reached farcical proportions when Kesh announced that he was opening Geraghty’s LinkedIn page on his computer. He planned to check her résumé and leverage the information to penetrate the Soros “octopus.” Kesh said, “She’s probably going to call me back, and if she doesn’t I can create other points of entry.” Suddenly, Kesh realized that by opening Geraghty’s LinkedIn page he had accidentally revealed his own LinkedIn identity to her. (LinkedIn can let users see who has looked at their pages.) “Whoa!” an accomplice warned. “Log out!” The men anxiously reassured one another that no one checks their LinkedIn account anyway. “It was a little chilling to hear this group of men talking about me as a ‘point of entry,’ ” Geraghty says. “But—not to sound ageist—it was clear that these people were not used to the technology.”

Geraghty forwarded the voice-mail recording to Chris Stone, the president of the Open Society Foundations. “The Watergate burglars look good compared to these guys,” Stone told me last month. “These guys can’t even figure out how to use an Internet browser, let alone conduct an undercover operation. You read the transcript and you can’t help but laugh.” He went on, “But the issues here aren’t funny. There’s some kind of dirty-tricks operation in play against us.”

In the Westchester County suburb of Mamaroneck, a street-level office has reflective glass doors and windows that make it impossible to see inside. This is the headquarters of James O’Keefe III—the conservative activist who placed the phony phone call pretending to be Victor Kesh. As he showed me around, in late April, O’Keefe, who is thirty-one, told me that he is not a dirty trickster but an investigative journalist and a leading practitioner of modern political warfare. “We’ve got this guerrilla army, and it’s coming to fruition soon,” he said. “This is our base of operations.” Waving his hand around seven thousand square feet of empty office space, he said, “This is our norad. It’s our field operation.”

The story gets even better.

The scary thing is that this moron is being funded in the millions and the story makes clear that he’s not the only one employed to do this work. She brings up David Brock’s operation on behalf of Democrats as well, but it’s clear that he’s operating within a completely different ethical framework. They are not in the same business.

This is going to be so, so ugly.

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Today’s Trump fact-check

by digby

Trump says it isn’t true that his tax plan would benefit the top 1%, specifically people like him the top .001%. A Clinton surrogate said it would. This is the fact-check:

Standing in the lobby of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan in September 2015, Trump rolled out his tax reform plan — which some analysts immediately saw as a boon for the wealthy.

He proposed significant cuts across the board, PolitiFact National found, but the wealthiest would get the most in tax cuts. For the highest income earners, the top income tax rate would drop from 39.6 percent to 25 percent.

When we asked about Shilling’s claim, Clinton’s Wisconsin campaign cited an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of two Washington, D.C. think tanks: the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

The analysis found that on average, under Trump’s plan, households at all income levels would receive tax cuts — but the highest-income households would receive the largest cuts, both in dollars and as a percentage of income.

More specific to Shilling’s claim:

The highest-income 0.1 percent of taxpayers — those who had an income of over $3.7 million in 2015 — would get an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million in 2017.

That same group would receive 18 percent of the tax reduction, while the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would receive 16.4 percent of the reduction.

At our request, the liberal Citizens for Tax Justice also did calculations, which came out nearly the same: The top 0.1 percent would get 17 percent of Trump’s proposed tax cuts and the bottom 60 percent would get 13 percent of the cuts.

To some extent, this isn’t a surprise, in that the wealthiest pay the lion’s share of income taxes. In a June 2015 report, the Tax Policy Center said the top 0.1 percent pay 21.1 percent of all individual income taxes and the bottom 60 percent pays 1.5 percent.

Alan Cole, an economist with the Tax Foundation, also ran the numbers and told us Shilling’s claim is accurate. But Cole noted that under Trump’s plan:

— People in the 40th to 60th percentiles have about 99 percent of their income tax liability removed.

— People in the 0 to 40th percentiles who paid positive income taxes have about 100 percent of their income tax liability removed.

“So the reason Trump’s plan doesn’t cut middle-class income taxes by more than that is, well, you can’t cut middle-class income taxes by more than that,” Cole said.

So, the figures back Shilling.

The thing is, shortly before she made her claim, Trump’s tax proposal was changing. Sort of. Maybe. Or was it?

Trump’s equivocation

In the three days prior, Trump said he might raise, not lower, taxes on the wealthy. Then he indicated the wealthy would get tax cuts, but the cuts might be less than what is in his plan. And then Politico reported that Trump’s campaign had enlisted conservative economists to revise his plan, and that they were advising a top tax rate of 28 percent — higher than the 25 percent in Trump’s proposal.

All of which has caused some confusion as to what Trump would do with taxes.

Nevertheless, by the time Shilling made her statement, Trump had not changed his tax proposal, which remained on his campaign website.

(Indeed, for what it’s worth, the day after Shilling’s claim, a Trump spokeswoman told the New York Times: “There are no changes being made to the plan.”)

Our rating

Shilling said that under Trump’s tax plan, “the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers — people earning multiple millions of dollars a year, on average — would get more tax relief than the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers combined.”

A report from a respected nonpartisan research group calculates that the 0.1 percent — those making more than $3.7 million per year — would receive 18 percent of the tax cuts under Trump’s proposal. The bottom 60 percent of taxpayers, meanwhile, would enjoy only 16.4 percent of the cuts. Another tax group found similar figures.

Trump has indicated he might make alter his tax proposal, but he hadn’t as of when Shilling made her statement — so we rate the statement True.

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Nothing to sea here again
by Tom Sullivan

Chinese Shenyang J-11B. U.S. Navy photo from a 2014 intercept.

Returning to the South China Sea again this morning as world powers play chicken. Reuters from Thursday:

Beijing demanded an end to U.S. surveillance near China on Thursday after two of its fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.

The incident, likely to increase tension in and around the contested waterway, took place in international airspace on Tuesday as the plane carried out “a routine U.S. patrol,” a Pentagon statement said.

A U.S. Defense official said two Chinese J-11 fighter jets flew within 50 feet (15 meters) of the U.S. EP-3 aircraft. The official said the incident took place east of Hainan island.

“Initial reports characterized the incident as unsafe,” the Pentagon statement said.

As we have already noted here, here, and here, Chinese island-building in the South China Sea is an effort to exert greater control over both resources and a key shipping lane for $5 trillion in trade. As I wrote a year ago, it is the sort of thing that in the 20th century sometimes led to unpleasantness.

Expected in weeks is an international arbitration court ruling in a case brought against China by the Philippines over maritime disputes in the contested waterway. The New York Times Editorial Board expressed its concern this morning:

Many experts expect the court to rule against China. The right response would be for China to accept the court’s decision and work with the Philippines and other neighboring countries that have interests in the region — Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan — on a mutually acceptable resolution to their rival claims. But whether it will respond that way remains to be seen. So far, Beijing has refused to acknowledge the court’s jurisdiction, even though it ratified the treaty under which the case was brought — the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, guaranteeing unimpeded passage on the high seas for trade, fishing and oil exploration.

China’s most aggressive and outrageous tactic has been to use tons of dirt and gravel and rocks to transform small reefs and rocks into artificial islands with airstrips and other military structures, including runways capable of handling military aircraft. According to the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military, over the last two years China added more than 3,200 acres of land to the seven outposts in the Spratly Islands, while other countries that occupy disputed rocks and reefs in the archipelago added about 50 acres. China’s neighbors fear that Beijing intends to use these outposts to interfere with navigation and their rights to fish and drill for oil and gas.

No worries. The Donald will get in their faces and deal with it. He wrote the book on deals.

Friday night soother: baby otter time

by digby

When a baby otter was separated from his family — nicknamed the Marina 9 by Singapore’s devoted otter-watching community — one man found himself literally jumping into action to save the young otter’s life. 

Earlier this month, Toby, a 6-week-old pup, was spotted drowning after he slipped into a canal during high tide. The cub struggled to stay afloat, OtterWatch wrote on Facebook. That was when Patrick Ng, a retiree, dove in to scoop Toby out of the rushing waters.

Ng then left him alone in a safer location with the belief that Toby’s family would eventually come pick him up — but they never did.

When the otter watchers realized Toby was still on his own later that day, they called in the Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) to rescue the wayward otter pup … again.

In WRS’ care, Toby was bottle-fed and given an overall checkup to make sure he was in good condition, according to the Straits Times.

At first, the otter pup was kept in a carrier — but when Toby didn’t leave the carrier or cry, he was taken out of the carrier and left alone on the sand. It was only then that Toby began to cry loudly.

“The rescue and reintroduction of Toby has demonstrated an unprecedented collaboration and ‘make-it-happen’ spirit between members of the public and across multiple agencies,” Jeffery Teo, a member of OtterWatch, told the Straits Times. 

“Everyone puts in their best, not for pride nor glory. We just want to bring Toby home. This is humanity at its best form.”

Mr Integrity

by digby

Remember this?

The White House has been occupied by giants. But from time to time it is sought by the small-minded – divisive figures propelled by anger, and appealing to the worst instincts in the human condition.

In times of trouble, there are two types of leaders: repairers of the breach and sowers of discord.

The sower of discord foments agitation, thrives on division, scapegoats certain elements of society, and offers empty platitudes and promises. He is without substance when one scratches below the surface.

He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.

Let no one be mistaken – Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded…

Donald Trump the reality television star is a great generator of ratings. But Donald Trump the candidate is a sower of division, wrongly demonizing Mexican-Americans for political sport.

It is wrong to paint with a broad brush Hispanic men and women in this country who have fought and died for freedom from the Alamo to Afghanistan. He scapegoats Hispanics to appeal to our worst instincts, when we need a president who appeals to our best.

This is not new in America.

In the 1840’s the “Know Nothings” emerged as a political movement, scapegoating Irish and German immigrants for the problems of the nation.

They were obsessively anti-Catholic, so much so that when the Pope sent marble for the building of the Washington Monument, they smashed it to pieces and helped delay its construction for 35 years.

These people built nothing, created nothing. They existed to cast blame and tear down certain institutions. To give outlet to anger.

Donald Trump is the modern-day incarnation of the know-nothing movement.

He espouses nativism, not conservatism. He is negative when conservatism is inherently optimistic.

He would divide us along bloodlines, when conservatives believe our policies will work for people of all backgrounds.

He has piqued the interest of some Republican voters who have legitimate concerns about a porous border and broken immigration system. But instead of offering those voters leadership or solutions, he has offered fear and soundbites. This cannot stand.

Conservatism doesn’t foment agitation through identity politics. That’s what Democrats do. But as a supporter of socialized medicine, the stimulus package and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump is quite suited to follow the Democrats’ example.

I, for one, will not be silent when a candidate for the high office of president runs under the Republican banner by targeting millions of Hispanics, and our veterans, with mean-spirited vitriol.

I will not go quiet when this cancer on conservatism threatens to metastasize into a movement of mean-spirited politics that will send the Republican Party to the same place it sent the Whig Party in 1854: the graveyard.

As a veteran, I took offense to his attack on Senator McCain, and I found lacking his defense that he spent a lot of money on veterans’ parades.

Donald Trump was born into privilege. He received deferments to avoid service in Vietnam. He breathes the free air thousands of heroes died protecting. And he couldn’t have endured for five minutes what John McCain endured for five and a half years.

Think what you want about Senator McCain’s politics, but let no one question his service to our country.

Here was a man offered the chance to go home. He refused, knowing it could cost him his life. There was no way he would leave before any man captured before him. This is the embodiment of duty, honor, country. Mr. Trump does not know the meaning of those words.

But most telling to me is not Mr. Trump’s bombast, his refusal to show any remorse for his comments about Senator McCain, but his admission that there is not a single time in his life that he sought the forgiveness of God.

A man too arrogant, too self-absorbed, to seek God’s forgiveness is precisely the type of leader John Adams prayed would never occupy the White House.

Adams, Lincoln, FDR – they all went before God on bended knee. They all held this office of great power with humility.

When a candidate under the Republican banner would abandon the tradition of magnanimous leadership of the presidency, when he would seek to demonize millions of citizens, when he would stoop to attack POWs for being captured, I can only ask as Senator Welch did of Senator McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

My fellow Republicans, beware of false prophets. Do not let itching ears be tickled by messengers who appeal to anger, division and resentment.

Resentment is the poison we swallow that we hope harms another. My fellow Republicans, don’t take the poison…

We need a president who rises above personal grievances, petty differences, raw partisan politics. Who puts the nation first, who inspires Americans to believe again and produce again and dream again.

We must move past the empty calories of Trumpism, and return to conservatism.

That’s part of Rick Perry’s stirring denunciation of Donald Trump’s carnival campaign during the primary. He’s not known to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but someone wrote him a good speech there and it was important.

Guess what?

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Donald Trump “a cancer on conservatism,” said Friday he would be willing to serve as the presumptive Republican nominee’s vice president. 

Perry said he will do whatever he can to help Trump — including joining him on the Republican ticket in November.

“I suspect I’m going to be helping him in a myriad ways — but if it’s the vice presidency, if a cabinet position is where he needs somebody with my experience then I’m not going to go back to Texas and say, ‘Aw shucks sir, I’m gonna go fishing.’ I’m gonna go serve my country,” Perry told CNN backstage at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting.

Perry told Republican donors Wednesday on a conference call hosted by Great America PAC, a pro-Trump group, that he would help Trump any way he could “within reason” and appeared to make his case for the vice presidency — pointing to his foreign policy and government experience just as he talked up those same qualities as those Trump should look for in selecting a running mate.
Asked Friday whether the vice presidency was “within reason,” Perry was blunt: “Of course it is,” he said.

It’s funny how so many macho dudes are now servile Trump sycophants.

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