Month: June 2016

We’re not worthy

by digby

by digby

Here’s the totally not-racist Senator Jeff Sessions explaining that Brexit is all about fighting the financial elites. He doesn’t even mention race or immigration but then he doesn’t have to does he? He’s a walking dogwhistle.

But keep in mind a couple of things. Margaret Thatcher was all for the EU. Just saying.

And Sessions voted against every single policy that would have helped actual working people during the Great Recession and pushed for austerity measures that would have made even David Cameron cringe. He wants to repeal every bit of the safety net and doesn’t believe there should even be a minimum wage.

He doesn’t like trade deals but that’s only because he’s what’s known as a business nationalist:

According to progressive scholar Mark Rupert, the right wing antiglobalist worldview (the worldview of business nationalists) “envisions a world in which Americans are uniquely privileged, inheritors of a divinely inspired socio–political order which must at all costs be defended against external intrusions and internal subversion.”  Rupert argues that this reactionary analysis seeks to challenge corporate power without comprehending the nature of “capital concentration and the transnational socialization of production.” The reactionary analysis absent this understanding breeds alienation and intensifies “scapegoating and hostility toward those seen as outside of, different or dissenting from its vision of national identity.” 

As alienation builds, more overtly fascistic forces will attempt to pull some of these angry people into an ideological framework that further justifies demonization of the chosen “Other.”

Business nationalism carries with it its right-wing baggage. Pat Buchanan’s rhetoric is an example of this baggage. His racist, antisemitic and xenophobic inclinations reflect business nationalism’s right-wing national chauvinism. 

At the core of right wing populism is the “producerist narrative” where the main scapegoats are people of color, especially Blacks. This narrative diverts attention from the White supremacist subtext. It uses coded language to mobilize resentment against people of color through attacks on issues immediately relevant to them, such as welfare, immigration, tax, or education policies. Women, gay men and lesbians, abortion providers, youth, students, and environmentalists are also frequently scapegoated in this manner.

Yeah, I think you can see why Session and Trump are  two peas in a pod.

Anyway, here’s Sessions, giving cover to the bigots with a sophisticated nationalist populist argument that elides all the underlying motivations:

The British people, our special friends and allies, deserve our full support following their sovereign and considered decision to leave the European Union. 

The people spoke from their hearts and with conviction. They considered deep and critical issues never discussed by the international elites. Their strong vote arose not out of fear and pique but out of love for country and pride of place. Their experience with a distant government in Brussels was given a long and fair chance to succeed. In the end, however, they concluded that the costs outweighed the benefits. Often, Britain makes changes that precede U. S. action. The Thatcher movement preceded the Reagan revolution. Both were victories for the people over outdated and corrupt forces. Both were achieved against powerful and determined establishment forces. Both resulted in historic and positive periods in their nation’s history. 

Now it’s our time. The period of the nation state has not ended. No far off global government or union can command the loyalty of a people like their own country. Vague unions have no ability to call on the people to sacrifice for the common good. They seem incapable of making decisions and when they do, they have difficulty executing the decision. 

Far better to celebrate the wonder and proven worth of good nation states and to work hard to use that foundation to build harmonious political and trading relations among the nations. This is the best basis for peace and prosperity. 

In negotiations and relationships, national leaders should first ensure they have protected the safety and legitimate interests of their own people. This principle has been eroded and Brexit is a warning for America. Our British friends have sent the message loud and clear. 

The interests of powerful international corporations, media, special interests, and leftist international forces are not coterminous with those of our people. This we must understand. The ultimate interest that our government is legally and morally bound to serve is that of our people. 

Just as in the U.K., our November presidential election presents a stark contrast. The establishment forces, the global powers, are promoting their values and their interests. They want to erode borders, rapidly open America’s markets to foreign produced goods, while having little interest in advancing America’s ability to sell abroad. These forces have zero interest in better job opportunities and higher wages for our citizens. 

It has been known for years that the European Union has often served as a barrier to its members taking action that would serve their own interests. Perhaps nothing proves this more definitively than the current migrant crisis, where the EU has clearly been part of the problem, not the solution. 

And, consider the promotion of radical trade policies that erode the power of the people to control their lives. Millions upon millions of dollars from around the globe are being spent to get America to agree to the massive, twelve-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. While sold as a trade deal, in reality, the TPP is a Trojan Horse for yet another sovereignty-eroding global pact. If implemented, it would create a new governing body that would exercise power and make decisions that the United States Congress would be effectively powerless to block. Like the EU, each nation gets one vote. Brunei and Vietnam get one vote as does the President of the United States. 

We must remember that the European Union began as a seemingly benign economic agreement, and we must not forget, that as Secretary of State, with negotiating responsibility for the TPP, Hillary Clinton promoted it and called it the ‘gold standard’ for a trade deal. That should give us all pause. This sovereignty eroding trade deal is in perfect accord with her globalist agenda. 

Too many politicians and pundits here in America have been woefully oblivious to, or in some cases complicit in, what is going on around us. The failed European Union experiment, and Great Britain’s rejection of it, must serve as a wake-up call for all of us in America. 

I applaud yesterday’s strong and patriotic action taken by America’s special friend, retaking its independence. I know that moving forward the deep and historic ties between Great Britain and America will grow ever stronger. I believe the American people too will choose independence this November.

Worth every penny

by digby

CNN is reportedly paying this guy half a million dollars:

Did you sign a nondisclosure agreement when you worked for the Trump campaign?” Here’s how he responded:

When I came on board the Trump campaign, like everybody else, I said what I would do is keep confidential information confidential. And I signed a document to that degree, and I don’t plan on ever breaking that. My confidentiality agreement is such where information that I would be privy to and private conversations that take place between family members that are not meant for the public audience are going to be held in the closest and strictest of confidence with me.

Fine, but the real issue isn’t whether Lewandowski will spill secrets. No one would expect him to do that. The issue is whether he’ll be able to provide authentic analysis, criticizing his former boss as he sees fit, or whether he’ll be required to put a positive spin on everything Trump says and does, as if he were still on the payroll.

Burnett read a portion of a nondisclosure agreement: “During the term of your service and at all times thereafter, you hereby promise and agree not to demean or disparage publicly the company, Mr. Trump, any Trump company, any family member, or any family member company.”

“Did you sign something like that, that said no disparaging?” she asked.

Lewandowski didn’t provide a yes-or-no answer:

Let me tell you who I am. And then for those who don’t know me, I’m a guy who calls balls and strikes. I’m going to tell it like it is because that’s how I’ve had my entire career, and most of the time it has been at my own detriment. People who know me know I’m a very straightforward person. I’ll tell you exactly like it is, whether you like it or not. And maybe that’s the reason I don’t have some of the jobs I should have had or been given some of those opportunities because I’m a straightforward person.

That’s not going to change. No matter what I’ve done or what I’ve said, if something is wrong, I’m going to tell people it’s wrong. If something is right, I’m going to tell people it’s right. So there is nothing that’s going to stop me from telling the truth, in my opinion, regardless of what that is.

Watch the whole thing to see what he thinks is the truth:

Yeah, he’s going to add a lot of value to the coverage. But you could probably get just as much for much less money by putting a pile of rocks on a chair.

Disrupting the disruptors
by Tom Sullivan

A long piece at Washington Monthly is worth your attention. Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman examine ten ideas for giving power back to the people of this country and for creating an economy that serves us. A lot of us are pretty damned tired of the arrangement where we serve the economy.

“Populism With a Brain” draws on the tradition that arose in response to the First Gilded Age. The principles that drove policy then — and have been sorely eroded since the 1970s — might be re-applied to the Second Gilded Age today:

These first Populists drew upon a political philosophy with roots back to the American Revolution. Part of this tradition is familiar—a belief that government must be run by the people. Populists called for direct election of senators and led the push for referendums and initiatives to bypass corrupt legislatures. But another part is largely forgotten—that the people are sovereign over the economy and have a responsibility to structure markets to promote the common good.

This was the “democratic republicanism” of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It holds that, just like political power, economic power must be distributed as widely as possible. Thus, the Populists focused much of their energy on combating efforts to monopolize commerce and natural resources, especially land. They also closely studied how to govern large corporations, and strongly supported unionization of workers and farmers to counter the power of concentrated capital.

Eroding the power of concentrated capital has been central to Bernie Sanders’ campaign. The reach of the financial sector and its power to remake government into one of, by, and for the corporations has been evident since the 2008 financial meltdown, yet too little has been done to bring it too heel. Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s crusade to forestall further corporate wilding has been little more than a speed bump from Wall Street’s perspective. What Populists sought was to prevent the concentration of that power by disallowing monopolistic concentrations of power in the first place.

In particular, the turn away from this Populist tradition and towards a preference for efficiency, they suggest, has led us to yet another Gilded Age in which people are no longer viewed as citizens, but as consumers:

In this tradition, breaking up monopoly has little to do with promoting efficiency or better deals for consumers, and everything to do with protecting political equality, self-government, and democratic institutions. As Brandeis explained, “The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted . . . not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.” The way to “save the people from autocracy,” he said, is precisely by building “friction” into the system.

Over the following decades, these principles guided how Americans distributed economic power and protected industrial liberty. Despite wave after wave of technological change, concentration declined in almost every realm of the economy.

But in the 1970s, a small group of intellectuals—some, like Alfred Kahn, with roots in mainstream liberalism; and others, like Robert Bork, with roots in conservative Chicago school economics—systematically targeted the achievements of the Populist tradition. While anti-monopoly laws remained on the books, they were reinterpreted in ways that defeated their historical purpose. No longer would the aim be to promote economic and political liberty. Instead, according to guidelines enacted in 1982 by Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, big corporations would be allowed to get bigger so long as they did not immediately hike prices to the “consumer.”

In retrospect, the evidence is close to irrefutable that adoption of this philosophy of “efficiency” unleashed a process of concentration that over the last generation has remade almost the entire U.S. economy, and is now disrupting our democracy.

No kidding. Read Lynn’s and Longman’s article for the skeleton of an agenda for defanging the fat cats. If it doesn’t get discussed, it won’t have a prayer.

by digby

In 2014, a pair of mated Bald Eagles chose the most idyllic of nest sites within the United States’ National Capital (Washington, DC), nestled high in a Tulip Poplar tree amongst the Azalea Collection at the U.S. National Arboretum, which is operated by the United States Department of Agriculture. This is the first Bald Eagle pair to nest in this location since 1947. 

The two Eagles have been iconically named ‘Mr. President’ and ‘The First Lady.’ Join us in viewing the most patriotic nest cam in the United States, 24 hours a day.
‘The First Lady’ laid her first egg of 2016 on February 10th, and laid her second egg on February 14th early in the morning. ‘Freedom’ (DC2) hatched at 8:27 a.m. March 18, 2016 Eastern Daylight Time. ‘Liberty’ (DC3) followed two days later, hatching March 20 at about 3:00 a.m. EDT.

H/t to  @robertgoldman7


The human version:

“You’ve probably never seen anything like this before. Six members of the vertical dance troupe BANDALOOP descended the façade of the new 100 Northern Ave. building commemorating its grand opening at Boston’s Seaport District. The performers are held securely by special rigging allowing them to mesmerize audiences with dynamic physicality and intricate choreography. You’ll want to turn on the sound for this one.” 

On June 9, 2016 BANDALOOP commemorated The Fallon Company’s grand opening of 100 Northern Avenue, a 17-story commercial tower and the fifth building to be completed at Fan Pier on Boston’s waterfront, during a private celebration. 

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and The Fallon Company President and CEO Joseph F. Fallon will officiated the building’s opening just prior to BANDALOOP’s performance.
Originally shared to WBZ-TV/CBS Boston’s Facebook page, this piece surpassed 2 million views in less than five days.

H/t to @Chicago_Todd 

“A one-world gummint mini-me”

by digby

And now a word from an international expert to the British people:

Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation’s self-determination and sovereignty… the EU being a One World Government mini-me…America can learn an encouraging lesson from this. It is time to dissolve political bands that connect us to agendas not in our best interest. May UN shackles be next on the chopping block.”

That would be the person the oldest candidate to ever run for president thought was qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

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The Democrats’ big Florida mistake

by digby

a baby gator is much cuter than Patrick Murphy

I wrote about Patrick Murphy for Salon this morning:

The American people really don’t like congress right now. It’s popularity is only slightly above the popularity of compost as a dessert topping. But in reality, what they really seem to hate about congress is the party they don’t belong to. According to the most recent Pew Poll, polarization is at an all-time high with members of both parties pretty much loathing each other. There are plenty of theories about what’s driving this, which we won’t get into here. (My personal belief is that the Republicans went completely nuts, which is born out by data and not just by my own partisan biases.) But one thing each side can agree upon is that their opponents are simply insufferable:

“Partisan Bad Blood Highest In Decades” – @nprpolitics on our new survey https://t.co/evCY9CxUlf pic.twitter.com/GoSGP4oEjV

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) June 22, 2016

If the last seven years are any example, it’s not going to be easy for either party to govern effectively in this climate without a majority in both houses of congress. The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics Crystal Ball forecast by analyst Larry Sabato shows that the Democrats are very highly favored to win the presidency with nearly 350 electoral votes and in ordinary times that might also usher in a congressional majority. Unfortunately, the Republicans managed to gerrymander the House so thoroughly that it will take an epic landslide for Democrats to win it back. It’s not impossible — the Trump factor may be instrumental in turning it over. But it’s a heavy lift.

The Senate, on the other hand, has long been considered doable and while that doesn’t solve the problem of that Blue Eyed devil Paul Ryan and his Tea Partying wrecking crew, it does mean something when it comes to things like Supreme Court judges and Executive Branch appointments. (And if the worst were to happen and, God forbid, Trump were to win the presidency, having the Senate majority could be the difference between simple dysfunction and total chaos.) It is a very important goal and one for which the Democrats have been preparing for some time.

There are a number of seats where Republican incumbents are vulnerable and a few open seats that could turn over to a Democrat. One of the most promising was Marco Rubio’s in Florida which he pretended to vacate when he decided to run for president. He waiting until the last minute but finally jumped back into the race earlier this week. Apparently, he figured he still had plenty of time to make his fortune and he is clearly eyeing another run at the presidency.

His strategy seems to be to run against both Clinton and Trump which is an odd choice since that’s what he did during the primaries and it didn’t work out too well for him. The polling isn’t showing much enthusiasm among Floridians for more Marco in the Senate. Perhaps they weren’t impressed by his constant demeaning of the job, saying it wasn’t even worth showing up for — which he rarely did. But he’s a familiar face now so perhaps he’ll just win by default.

The perils of the protest vote

by digby

Why didn’t anyone tell us?

Following Britain’s 52% to 48% decision to leave the European Union on Thursday (June 23), BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire convened a group of voters in Manchester who cast ballots for a Brexit.

One of them, a man named Adam, is harboring some rather immediate regrets.

“I’m a bit shocked to be honest,” he said. “I’m shocked that we actually have voted to leave, I didn’t think that was going to happen.”

Adam told Derbyshire that he didn’t think his vote would ultimately matter. “I thought we were just going to remain,” he explained, “and the David Cameron resignation has blown me away to be honest.”

When Derbyshire asked him if the results had him concerned for the country’s future, he replied, “I think the period of uncertainty that we’re going to have for the next couple of months, that’s just been magnified now. So yeah, quite worried.”

Adam is not alone, apparently. Google is reporting a sharp uptick in searches relating to not just the implications of Britain leaving the EU, but the basic functions of the body all together:

“What is the EU?” is the second top UK question on the EU since the #EURefResults were officially announced pic.twitter.com/1q4VAX3qcm

— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016

With presumptive major-party nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the United States faces a similarly stark choice as EU referendum voters. Indeed, the parallels between the Leave campaign and Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement are clear—both are built on a bedrock of white, working-class angst; anti-immigrant paranoia, economic protectionism, and queasy ultranationalism.

Clinton is leading Trump in polls nationwide. She has built a coalition of key demographics—women, ethnic minorities, and the college-educated—that make up a pretty strong firewall against a Trump victory. But then again, it appears many Britons couldn’t conceive of a Brexit in the same way many Americans can’t conceive of a Trump presidency. Yet here we are, a day after the referendum, with Britain on its way out of the EU and David Cameron on his way out of office.

Political analysts say turnout for the Remain campaign was lower than expected. This, in combination with the notion that perhaps large numbers of Leave voters did not cast their ballots seriously has precipitated the current situation. And a parallel recipe has the potential to bring about a Trump victory in November.

There is no doubt that the austerity regime under Cameron made people sour and bitter and you can’t blame them. It’s also true that many British people just don’t like immigrants. (And yes,terrorism plays a part in that as well.) Europe does not have the same history with immigration as the US and we also escaped the level of super harsh austerity that was inflicted on much of Europe, yet we’re having a xenophobic backlash too.

The reasons for this are complicated. But no matter what is making people so anxious, blaming immigrants and people of color for that anxiety is just wrong. It’s wrong on the merits — they didn’t cause the problem. And it is wrong on a moral basis. It’s not something that people of integrity should excuse simply because big structural issues that are driving all this instability around the world are making people unhappy.

There is a danger that people will not take the threat of Donald Trump seriously enough to stop him. There is a large contingent of Americans who are signed on to his toxic program because they really like it. And there are others who either aren’t taking him seriously or who are myopically obsessed with internecine battles that can be dealt with after Trump is defeated. That’s a bad strategy.

As you can see from the word coming out of Britain today, a whole lot of people didn’t understand the ramifications of their vote, assumed that it couldn’t come to this so they didn’t bother to vote, or used voting as an emotional expression of their personal discontent. None of those things are a good idea in times like these. Actually, they’re never a good idea, but in times like these the consequences could be grave.The last time we had a big protest vote in the US, we got Junior Bush and Cheney gang.

I don’t know if Brexit will have any long term serious effect on the world economy. This is beyond my ken. Hopefully, economic elites will learn (again) that it’s playing with fire to force austerity on hard working people as a sort of moral lesson in fiscal responsibility. They rarely learn what you want them to from that.

But it is also clear that this vote was a public endorsement of disgusting xenophobia and racism. It shouldn’t be hard to condemn that:

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Uhm, Trump spoke today surrounded by swastikas

by digby

You cannot make this stuff up:

CHRIS CUOMO (HOST): Break into Donald Trump’s statement right now which is not something we often do but it’s very remarkable at this point because of what he hasn’t mentioned yet. Donald Trump has been up at the podium for about five minutes, has not mentioned Brexit, is only talking about his golf course and his other business ventures and how it came to be. Let’s discuss why he would make this choice and what the implications are.

TRUMP: Blah, blah, blah, my golf course is fabulous, blah, blah, I’m fabulous, it’s beautiful, it’s grand it’s great, blah, blah, blah…

JOHN AVALON: This is insane. The presumptive Republican nominee has the world watching on a historic day and he is doing a five minute advertorial for his golf course in great detail, talking about the beauty of the suites, how great the pars are on certain holes, not talking about Brexit. This is a summation in some ways of his campaign. He is in the right place at the right time for his message, and he blows it because at the end of the day, it’s all about him. He seems to be trying to profit off a presidential run and not taking it seriously. This is trump steaks all over again after winning the primaries. It’s completely insane.

ALISYN CAMEROTA (HOST): David, is that how you see it?

DAVID GREGORY: I think John understates the importance of adding suites to the lighthouse. But I totally — I mean, look, we spent all this time analyzing the potential significance of the parallels with his own campaign. We spent all of this time highlighting parallels of the campaign and way out ahead of where Donald Trump’s campaign is. I’m shocked that, even given his statements, that he didn’t come out and immediately seize on the importance of this. Maybe he wanted to inject a note of caution by not getting involved. But no, this just seems like political malpractice. I’m as bemused as everyone else looking at this thinking how strange this is.

And then there was this:

Trump gave most of his press conference in Scotland surrounded by these Nazi golf balls pic.twitter.com/UsUoVK3nkW

— Naomi O’Leary ⚡️ (@NaomiOhReally) June 24, 2016

I don’t know what to say …

On behalf of all America, I apologize.

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The Gun Business Is Making A Killing by Making it Personal
by Spocko

We know the stages of how the media cover mass shootings. One stage we are hitting now is “the business of guns.” Where reporters duly note how much the gun stock prices rise after shootings. They talk to industry analysts, talk about projected earnings as if they were selling abstract widgets.

Yesterday the New York Times did a piece about how the gun industry is growing via assault rifles and handguns.

Today I listened to Evan Osnos who wrote the piece Making,a Killing, The business and politics of selling guns. by Evan Osnos for the New Yorker.  Osnos was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Fresh Air interview with Osnos.
I really encourage people to listen to the entire interview or read the story. Osnos talks about a number of things that I have been writing about and that I’ve heard about from listening to Cliff Schecter and my friends at various non-profits who are working on this issue.

What I and others have noted is how the gun industry grows. Osnos talks about the conceal carry “lifestyle” and how it uses fear to constantly sell guns as the answer. They tell men and women,

“The world is dangerous, look at this mass shooting! You must protect your family! What kind of man would you be if you were powerless to protect them! Now watch and read these carefully chosen examples that prove you are doing the right thing.”

What the interview also shows is that any talk about smart guns that might stop toddlers from blowing their brains out will be stopped. It might get in the way of selling more guns.

He gives the example of when Smith & Wesson tried to do something in this area they were punished financially. Their stock price dropped by 95 %. But that really wasn’t good enough. The CEO also got death threats.

A gun maker CEO who tried to make things safer, is punished in one of the only ways that really counts in the US, falling stock prices. They gave him death threats instead of a golden parachute.

This is what people who would like less gun violence in America are up against. This is an industry that would rather block actions that would save the lives of thousand of kids every single year than risk slowing market growth.

What I take away from the Osnos piece and the many, “business of guns” stories  is the industries’ focus on making money at any cost is becoming a weakness Especially when someone like Donald Trump takes them at their word.
The last half of the interview covers that.

If the gun industry sells more guns after every tragic shooting is there a time when they don’t make money? What can activists do that gets in the way of their revenue stream? And if they do, how will the industry react?

Sam Seder pointed out the other day that the market caps on the gun companies are small. Maybe Bloomberg could buy one?
But also, who else makes money by supporting the gun industry? Who loses money?

If you can’t cost the gun industry money, can you cost the buyers money?

There are ways, but as I found out when I started the process of defunding Right Wing radio that when you get in the way of a revenue stream people get pissed off. They may talk about how important their rights are, but it’s not about the industries’ great desire to help men defend their families or defend our freedoms, it’s about making a buck.