Month: October 2017

We’ve been waiting for that first big crisis and here it is

by digby

Matt Yglesias has written a good overview of what we now know about Trump in a crisis. It’s not good:

For the first nine months of his administration, observers have had occasion to wonder — and wonder, and wonder, and wonder — how exactly Donald Trump would manage to handle a real crisis imposed by external events rather than his own impulsiveness. The answer is now apparent in the blackened streets of San Juan and the villages of interior Puerto Rico that more than a week after Hurricane Maria struck remain without access to food or clean water.

To an extent, the United States of America held up surprisingly well from Inauguration Day until September 20th or so. The ongoing degradation of American civic institutions, at a minimum, did not have an immediate negative impact on the typical person’s life.

But the world is beginning to draw a straight line from the devastation in Puerto Rico straight to the White House. Trump’s instinct so far is to turn the island’s devastation into another front in culture war politics, a strategy that could help his own political career survive.

The rest of us will just have to pray for good luck.

The president watches too much TV

Hurricanes Harvey and Irene were massive cable television events that dominated coverage on all the networks. MSNBC went so all-in on storm news that they sent Chris Hayes out in a windbreaker to stand around in the wind in Naples, Florida.

But as Dhrumil Mehta has shown at 538, Maria was relatively invisible on cable.

“People on TV news shows spoke significantly fewer sentences about Hurricane Maria than about Hurricanes Harvey and Irma,” he writes, and “the spike in conversation about Puerto Rico right as the hurricane hit was also much smaller than the spike in mentions of Texas and Florida.”

Cable producers surely had their reasons for this. But something anyone in the media could tell you is that cable producers’ news judgment is not an infallible guide to the substantive importance of various stories. In particular, a broad range of issues — potentially including natural disasters in outlying US territories — have an asymmetrical quality to them, where if handled appropriately most people won’t care that much, but if botched it eventually becomes a big deal.

This is why traditionally presidents have relied upon staff and the massive information gathering capabilities of the American government for information rather than letting television set the agenda. Trump has a different philosophy, however, and spent the post-storm Saturday glued to his television and letting the hosts of “Fox & Friends” drag him into an ill-advised Twitter spat with NFL stars.

Because Trump wasn’t paying attention, the situation evolved into a catastrophe. And because the situation evolved into a catastrophe, it eventually ended up on television.

The Washington Post reports that by Monday, Trump “was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV.”

Trump can’t un-ring the bell of a slow response

Now that Trump’s inadequate response to Maria’s devastation has become a big issue, the Trump administration is full of excuses for why their response was so inadequate:

Trump emphasized in public remarks on Friday that Puerto Rico is “an island surrounded by water” which makes relief difficult.

An anonymous administration officials told the Washington Post that “the Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

He goes on to discuss the fact that yes, it was a big hurricane but also that Trump is president of the United States and it’s a big job.

This is also true:

Trump turns everything into a culture war

The substantive problem that Trump — and America — is now facing is that you can’t go back in time and do the preparatory work that should have been done. You can’t pre-position satellite phones, schedule timely visits from top administration officials, or quickly dispatch ships and helicopters once you’re starting with an eight-day lag. The best you can do is admit you were too slow and throw everything you’ve got at it.

But admitting wrongdoing isn’t part of Trump’s playbook.

Defensiveness and counterpunching is.

Many people will see more than a hint of racism here in the implication that Puerto Ricans are too lazy to help themselves.

And the specter of Trump once again being called a racist by liberals will once again help rally to his side the large segment of the white population which believes that anti-white discrimination is a big problem in the United States. Trump, meanwhile, portrays criticism of him, personally, as criticism of heroic soldiers and first responders.

Trump doesn’t know much about governing. But he is very good at channeling every discussion into the same handful of culture war tropes. Shifting the discussion in this direction rather than adopting a tone of humility will, of course, only make substantive recovery more difficult by polarizing the topic in congress and among the public.

Aaaaand:

There are no “adults in the room”

Actually they’re there. They are just terrified and impotent. And it’s because this is Trump:

Playing the percentages again
by Tom Sullivan

Houston remains flooded following Hurricane Harvey, Aug. 31, 2017. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Larry E. Reid Jr.

“Houston is the state’s beating heart,” writes Christopher Hooks in the Texas Observer. It is the fourth largest city in the United States, and the largest in Texas, at roughly 2.3 million. Unlike hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, Houston is not struggling. It is the state’s economic powerhouse.

Yet, the sitting president’s underwhelming response to the disaster in Puerto Rico must look familiar to Houston’s Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner. Despite having Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and top Patrick allies such as Senator Paul Bettencourt living in the flooded Houston area, Turner has seen the same lack of urgency on hurricane recovery efforts from lawmakers in Austin.

Turner faces overseeing months or years of cleanup. Neighborhood streets are lined with sodden, rotting furniture, and ruined appliances. The situation is made worse by cleanup contractors leaving for better rates in Florida for Hurricane Irma cleanup.

Nearly a month after Harvey struck Houston, Houston’s police chief called on the state legislature to support its largest city:

“Nobody’s going to come and rebuild the city of Houston for free. Unless someone has a magic pill that we can just give somebody and say, ‘You will build this for free, you will fix it for free,’ it’s got to be paid,” Chief Art Acevedo said Saturday. “Maybe in the long term they can look at either the property tax or a one-cent sales tax for three years. For me, the Legislature – we shouldn’t put it all on poor Sylvester Turner. The Legislature needs to step up.”

But helping cities aids people who tend to vote Democrat. It does not matter that Republicans have firm control of state government. Pockets of resistance must be subdued. Hurricane Harvey laid Houston lower than any preemption legislation cooked up in Austin by Abbott. Now Houston is struggling. What’s the rush?

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Turner had asked that the state (fittingly) tap its over $10 billion Rainy Day Fund to aid Houston’s recovery. On Monday, Turner told the Texas Tribune that lack of immediate state funding might force him to push for a property tax increase to bring in an additional $50 million to pay for immediate cleanup efforts. Houston’s recovery will ultimately take billions in federal dollars.

Hooks writes in the Texas Observer:

When Turner’s hand was forced and the tax bump was proposed, state officials had two options: Reassure Houstonians about the forthcoming availability of state money, or let Turner, the Democratic mayor of a city Republicans are increasingly struggling to contest, twist in the wind.

You know which one they chose.

Bettencourt announced he opposes provisions allowing cities to raise taxes more easily after disasters as well as using state money for Houston’s recovery. Houston should be “using the funds that are already there to avoid a tax increase.” Abbott told reporters, Turner “has all the money that he needs.” He wouldn’t touch the Rainy Day Fund until the 2018 session.

Hooks continues:

Bettencourt and Abbott are doing what state lawmakers frequently do now — putting political pressure on local governments to draw attention away from what the state is doing and gather ammo for future internecine battles in Austin. (All last session, Bettencourt was at war with local officials over property tax policy.) The difference now is that he’s doing it right after Texas’ largest city had its legs shot out from under it, at a time when you might hope Houston-area lawmakers would not only refrain from taking potshots at Turner, but find ways to affirmatively help him. But, hey, it’s just business as usual: Everything good in Texas is to the credit of the brave boys and girls of the Lege, and everything bad is the fault of county commissioners courts, city councils and school boards.

Aren’t the different layers of government supposed to work together? In Texas, they generally do not. I’ve talked to many local officials, including Republicans in deep-red counties, who can’t for the life of them get a call returned from their GOP state representative or senator. Even big-city mayors sometimes get the stiff arm, and lawmakers seem to take pleasure in nullifying or canceling popular city ordinances, sometimes because of lobby money but sometimes, it seems, simply out of spite.

But by Friday afternoon, with the news dominated by images of devastation in Puerto Rico and a press conference in which San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz angrily condemned the paucity and tardiness of federal help, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appeared at Houston City Hall with a $50 million check for Sylvester Turner.

Hooks concludes:

… we have a state government that sees its largest generators of economic activity — the six metropolitan areas in which more than half of the state lives — as some kind of threat, either because of their values or the demographic and political threat they represent to the Republican Party. You might hope Harvey would temper that, but don’t hold your breath.

It is why Houston’s story and Puerto Rico’s are not unique. It is why Republicans balked at providing disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey, a blue state (with a Republican governor, even). And why Houston and Puerto Rico, economic clout or no, are low priorities. It is why the sitting president’s cronies are actively undermining Obamacare: engineering its collapse so they can blame it on Democrats. It is why, as Chris Hayes observed, Republicans “use policy as a mechanism by which to reduce the political power of people” who oppose them. The delay in aid to Houston might hurt some Republican voters, sure, but as with photo ID laws, Republican leaders are playing percentages, sacrificing thousands of supporters, potentially, as acceptable casualties. They are less concerned where more Democrats will be harmed in the end, and the party’s longer-term prospects with them.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies

 

This has been keeping me up for several nights. How could I, a self-proclaimed musicologist, have been hitherto completely and blissfully unaware of the Egyptian-Italian “international superstar” Dalida, who sold a record-breaking 170 million records during her lifetime? Her 30-year career began in 1956…my birth year. So apparently, her music was part of the soundtrack of my life (although…you wouldn’t know it to ask me). In my own (weak) defense, I have heard of Zamfir (master of the pan flute!), and I’m aware of international superstar Nana Mouskouri, but Dalida? A complete flyover for me.

Unfortunately, after watching Dalida, Lisa Azuelo’s slickly produced yet superficial 124-minute biopic, I still don’t know that much about her, except that her personal life was a tragedian’s dream. While she did have natural talent, statuesque beauty, and massive success going for her, an inordinate number of men in her life committed suicide…as did she (it’s probably not the best “date movie” if you or your date lean toward melancholia).

In fact, the film kicks off with Dalida’s first suicide attempt in 1967 (talk about foreshadowing) and then proceeds from there with flashbacks and flash-forwards. We do see Dalida (born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti) as a young girl in Cairo, getting taunted and bullied by her fellow students at Catholic school; they call her “ugly” and “four-eyes”…but there is no elaboration offered as to whether this sowed the seeds of her lifelong self-esteem issues (manifesting in adult life as we see her struggle with bulimia).

Of course, our ugly duckling does turn into a swan; after winning the Miss Egypt pageant, Dalida (Sveva Alviti) relocates to Paris in the early 1950s to pursue a show biz career. While she aspires to act, her singing talent and charismatic stage presence gains her entre into the music business. She meets Radio Europe 1 producer (and future hubby) Lucien Morisse (Jean-Paul Rouve), who helps guide her into international superstardom.

After a promising start, the film falls into a predictable pattern: Dalida starts a passionate new relationship. Her lover kills himself (either while the relationship is still in progress, or a delayed reaction sometime after it fizzes). She sings a really sad song. She meets someone else. Her new lover kills himself. She sings an ever sadder song. She meets another guy. Her latest lover kills himself. She sings a song so sad…I want to kill myself.

If that was her life story, that was her life story; I understand that, and it’s very sad. But there is little else in the film that gives us a sense of who she really was. On the plus side, Dalida’s original recordings provide the soundtrack (revealing a unique juxtaposition of melancholia and pop sensibility that recalls Scott Walker). The film sports earnest performances, catchy tunes, and it has a good beat; but as a biopic…you can’t dance to it. 

If you were a free-thinking musician, artist, writer, poet, filmmaker, scientist, or scholar living in or around Germany circa 1933-1945, there was a shared occupational hazard: fleeing the Nazis. Whether you were Albert Einstein or the von Trapp family, there was just something about the Third Reich that made you feel, oh, I don’t know…unwelcome?

The crushing of free thought and creative expression under fascism’s thumb has provided dramatic fodder for a number of WW2 films; some fictional (e.g. Cabaret, Mephisto, and The Last Metro), and others that are based on true stories (The Sound of Music and Julia).

The latest film to mix biopic with WW2 intrigue is Etienne Comar’s Django, which dramatizes guitarist-composer-European jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt’s escape attempt to Switzerland while living in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943. While his talent and reputation kept him relatively “safe”, Reinhardt had a couple strikes against him. He was a free-spirited musician, and he was Sinti (the Nazis were less than kind to the Gypsies).

As the film opens Django (portrayed with verisimilitude by Reda Kateb) is in the midst of one of his legendary Paris engagements with the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Django has a patron in jazz-loving Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Koehn, aka “Doktor Jazz” (Jan Henrik Stahlberg). While on the one hand Django is well aware of the atrocities being committed against Gypsies, he is somehow able to appease the occupying Germans enough to keep his immediate family fed and out of danger while still actively engaging in his favorite extracurricular activities of drinking, gambling, and womanizing.

However, he has a sobering moment when Dr. Jazz informs him that he has arranged a tour for Django and his group, with an itinerary that includes dates in Germany. While things are still relatively loose in Paris, the closer you get to the fatherland, the more stringent the “rules”. Django is outwardly amused but obviously concerned about his possible future when he is presented with a rider for the tour that includes directives like:

“As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones (so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation […]

…so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs).”

Oy. Tough room.

So it is not surprising that when Django sees an opportunity at one of the road gigs for his family (who have accompanied him on the tour) and himself to make a break for the Swiss border in the dark of night, they go for it, providing some suspense and intrigue in the third act. Possible spoiler here, but quite curiously, there seems to be a bit of disparity between how the filmmakers portray the outcome of this escapade with the actual historical accounts (and that’s all I am prepared to say about that at this juncture…ahem).

The recreation of Reinhardt’s music (by The Rosenberg Trio) is beautifully done; if Kateb isn’t actually playing, I have to say he’s doing a wholly convincing job of miming the right notes (although “hands only” cutaways for the more intricate soloing passages suggests supplementation from a ringer). A nitpick or two aside, Comar has fashioned an absorbing (although far from complete) portrait of a fascinating musical talent whose work and innovation is ripe for rediscovery and appreciation by a new generation of fans.

[“Dalida” and “Django” are both playing at SIFF’s “French Cinema Now” festival, running through October 5th in Seattle. For tickets and further information, click here].

Previous posts with related themes:
Bill Frisell: A Portrait
Born to Be Blue
Low Down
The Girls in the Band
The Savoy King
A Jazz Day Mixtape

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–Dennis Hartley