Author: Tom Sullivan

We want the world and we want it now!
by Tom Sullivan

The 1960s are back. Campaign for America’s Future’s Bill Scher looks at the no-win scenario Bernie Sanders faces, not just from Black Lives Matter activists, but from the whole progressive spectrum:

In effect, Bernie isn’t running for President of the United States of America. He’s running to be President of Progressive America. And when you are running to be an ideological standard-bearer, your ideological fellow travellers all demand you adhere to their own standard. That involves not just checking every box on the liberal to-do list, but giving maximum rhetorical emphasis to everyone’s top priority. Which is impossible. It’s a game that can’t be won.

Sanders has already proposed immigration reform more liberal than the 2013 bipartisan Senate bill in a speech to the National Council of La Raza and incorporated a searing critique of entrenched racism into his regular stump. His reward was a public scolding by Seattle activists who prevented him from speaking at a Social Security rally, one of whom demanded the crowd “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his actions.”

Perhaps what they (and other activists) really want to hold Sanders accountable for is whatever hope and change Obama
failed to deliver. This time, no prisoners.

Black Live Matter demonstrators interrupted a Jeb Bush town hall event in Nevada yesterday. So perhaps Sanders won’t feel so singled out. (I know, BLM is not about Bernie.)

Sanders adviser Lawrence Lessig does not believe Sanders is giving campaign finance reform high enough billing:

“Citizen equality can’t just be one issue on a list. It has to be the first issue — the one change that makes all other changes believable,” Lessig wrote in the memo, obtained by POLITICO. “For the first time in forever, the Wall Street Journal reports this issue is at the top of voters’ mind. You need to be the leader who makes it top of your platform as well.”

So Harvard professor Lessig, if you haven’t heard, is looking at running for president himself, just so he can pass a package of election reforms and then resign. Because Lessig’s “set of quibbles” with Sanders makes Bernie not liberal enough.

Some environmental activists probably worry Sanders is not putting climate change, their foremost issue, front and center. Sanders must feel like Peanuts‘ Linus: There’s no heavier burden than a great potential!

Scher continues at Politico:

Sanders defenders are apoplectic that the ultimate progressive is getting kicked in the teeth by fellow progressives. “Don’t Piss On Your Best Friend” upbraided Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan. But the critics don’t see Sanders’ as their best friend, because his strategic approach doesn’t line up with theirs.

Sanders is forced to grapple with the various strands of the progressive movement in ways he hadn’t before because he decided to enter the presidential arena. A senator can pick and choose his issues more easily than a presidential candidate. While a traditional candidate succeeds by knowing when to cater to a party’s political base and when to keep it at arm’s length, a movement candidate doesn’t have that luxury. All that complicates the progressive objective of influencing the party Establishment.

But with the “wave of deadly encounters” between unarmed black people and police, patience is running thin.

Van Jones writes, today’s activists will no longer wait for “trickle down justice.”

This may not be their Summer of Love, but you can hear the echoes.

Where have you gone, Jim Morrison?

Has his time come?
by Tom Sullivan

“The soulless pursuit of profit has vulgarized American society,” writes Charlie Pierce. Looking at Donald the Vulgar, Pierce sees a man whose time has come:

… He has looked at the American political landscape as it has evolved since 1980 and decided that it has become just the kind of place where Donald Trump could get himself elected. Unfortunately, he was correct in that assessment. He was a vulgarian in an unusually vulgarian time and he is now a vulgarian in an age in which vulgarianism has become so normalized that we hardly notice its most deleterious consequences any more, or we call them “freedom,” which is the most vulgar thing I can think of.

Yet even as Trump pursued profit, Bernie Sanders toiled through those same years at the sort of unglamourous civil rights and social justice efforts that never pay well. As Republican candidates make vulgar obeisance before the likes of the Koch Brothers or, as Pierce dubs him, “international vice lord, Sheldon Adelson,” Bernie Sanders’ growing popularity may signify rejection of the vulgarian model.

Has his time come:

A stunning new poll has Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) beating presumptive Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

Sanders has eclipsed Clinton by a 44 to 37 percent margin, according to a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll that was first reported by the Boston newspaper Tuesday evening.

The Guardian has background:

This marks the first time Sanders has taken a lead in any poll. By contrast, in a poll conducted by Franklin Pierce University eight years ago, in September 2007, Clinton led Barack Obama by 36% to 18%.

While the poll may be an outlier, the very fact that Sanders, an unkempt septuagenarian socialist, is leading Clinton in any poll raises eyebrows. This marks the first time that Sanders has registered a lead over Clinton in any state or national poll. In past polls in New Hampshire, Clinton had maintained a narrow but comfortable lead in that state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Among the eyebrows being raised may be bushy, septuagenarian ones.

Not so Smart Objects
by Tom Sullivan

One morning in Glacier National Park years ago, I walked through a campground past a teepee. In the next campsite you could see through the picture window of his RV a guy reading the paper and drinking coffee as the news played on TV. People who can’t enjoy nature without their experience being mediated by an internal combustion engine always puzzled me. Getting out into the woods for them means ATVs or dirt bikes. Going for a swim means personal watercraft. Quiet simplicity seems foreign.

Then again, tech junkies shouldn’t talk, constantly checking our phones and computers. Connectivity, baby.

How much tech is too much? How much anything is too much? It is almost un-American to ask.

Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, wonders if Smart Objects, the Internet of Things, is a dumb idea. A hacked car (or cars) or airliner, for example, would be a safety nightmare:

The Internet of Things is also a privacy nightmare. Databases that already have too much information about us will now be bursting with data on the places we’ve driven, the food we’ve purchased and more. Last week, at Def Con, the annual information security conference, researchers set up an Internet of Things village to show how they could hack everyday objects like baby monitors, thermostats and security cameras.

Connecting everyday objects introduces new risks if done at mass scale. Take that smart refrigerator. If a single fridge malfunctions, it’s a hassle. However, if the fridge’s computer is connected to its motor, a software bug or hack could “brick” millions of them all at once — turning them into plastic pantries with heavy doors.

Wired magazine is all about Smart Objects and biometrics:

FOR ALL THE talk of smart objects, most of the stuff in our homes is remarkably dumb. Objects just sit there, inanimate and indifferent to the person using them. But just wait. According to Alex Rothera and James Krahe, it’s only a matter of time before even the dumbest of objects are embedded with a magical sense of interactivity. Eventually, the designers say, our stuff will be able to react to us based on data transmitted right through our bodies.

That will be magical. And if it sounds like something right out of Disney, you win a stuffed mouse. Wired asks, “Have you ever wished that your T-shirts could tell you the optimal water temperature for removing that pesky mustard stain?” Actually, no. No, I haven’t.

But the Internet Protocol for Smart Object (IPSO) Alliance has. ISPO just announced semi-finalists in its third annual IPSO CHALLENGE. Congratulations to the ten semi-finalists. With the Smart Toilet of the future, for example, no more tedious choosing Number One or Number Two buttons when flushing. Your Smart Toilet, the Department of Sanitation, the entire Internet will know just what you have done.

It is all beginning to sound too close for comfort to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and Sirius Cybernetics machines with Genuine People Personalities (“GPP”). The Vulcan Science Academy describes where this is headed:

Marvin, the paranoid android, by far the most beloved character in the guide is a super intelligent robot with ‘Real People Personalities.’ This means Marvin thinks and feels everything that a human would, and he is utterly depressed by it. As computers get more and more advanced and artificial intelligence lies just beyond the horizon, this may be a serious problem soon facing humanity. Marvin has the mind of a human but the insight and intelligence of a super-being, and it is clear that his feeble human traits cannot handle such immensity. Computers are sure to one day gain this type of personality, will we soon have a crisis of ethics on our hands as these poor souls fight with their own consciousness? Or will we once again be ignorant of the suffering due to preconceived ideas and debate as to whether the computers really feel it?

Once we’ve given them Genuine People Personalities, will we be morally obligated to expand Medicare Part D to cover digital antidepressants for our toasters?

A single phrase characterizes the need product engineers feel to pack as much into an electronic product as technically feasible: “feature rich.” It is not enough to have a watch provide accurate time when it can do so much more. Yes, I can have a coffee maker that is also a timer, an alarm clock, satellite radio, and that starts and warms up my car on cold mornings. But all I really wanted was a cup of coffee.

The thin Blue Monday
by Tom Sullivan

It’s like a riff on a bad joke. How many cops does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the cop has to want to change.

A year after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, not a lot has changed. Subsequent events have made relations between police and communities worse. In Baltimore, Freddie Gray’s death is still raw. Interim police chief, Kevin Davis, acknowledges there is some introspection happening. Half of white Americans, Gallup reports, are dissatisfied with how police treat blacks (down from the high 60s two years ago). Davis says:

“We have a profession with authority that no other profession has,” Mr. Davis told the AP last month. “We can take a person’s freedom away and … a human life if justification exists to do so. Where we are in this moment in time is, we have to engage in a great deal of self-examination, and look at how we can do things better.”

But the basic dynamic hasn’t changed:

Adding to the tension: The country is still entrenched in a post-9/11 national security environment that saw a widespread militarization of local police, and where soldier traditions and paramilitary tactics seeped deeper into policing culture, according to “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” by libertarian author Radley Balko.

That trend has hardened an already significant “us versus them” approach by many especially urban police departments, where some parts of town feel, at least to cops, like war zones. As part of that defensiveness, police academies focus first and foremost on the gun. US police cadets spend an average of 58 hours at the gun range and eight yours learning how to de-escalate tense situations.

Cops are taught to fear citizens; citizens fear the cops in a self-reinforcing cycle. Slate takes a ride through Baltimore with ex-cop Michael Wood Jr., a critic of police culture. “I never feared the streets,” says Wood, “But I constantly feared other officers.” (Video at the link.)

The ones who cross the line are the ones who are afraid, Wood explains. Giving them a badge and a gun doesn’t necessarily change that. Plus, fear is a legal standard. “If I am afraid that you can take my life, then I’m allowed to take yours, legally.” Living with fear day to day has a way of turning into a persistent, low-level, unhelpful anger.

A detective slapping a completely innocent female in the face for bumping into him, coming out of a corner chicken store.— Michael A. Wood Jr. (@MichaelAWoodJr) June 24, 2015

Worth a watch if you’re already having a Blue Monday.

No, it’s not a metaphor. Really.
by Tom Sullivan

Comedy writer and playwright David Castro shared some impressions of Thursday’s Republican presidential debate:

Some final thoughts on the 10 Guys at Open Mic Nite at the Chuckle Hut in Cleveland:
1. How did Ben Carson operate as a neurosurgeon when he can barely open his eyes?
2. I want to see Trump and Rand Paul in a wind tunnel.
3. Jeb Bush isn’t even the kind of guy his brother would want to have a beer with.
4. Marco Rubio says he knows what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck. What else does he know?
5. Mike Huckabee said the Supreme Court isn’t the Supreme Being. Is this that Cthulu I’ve heard so much about?
6. Chris Christie is clearly running to be the head of the Five Families.
7. Mike Huckabee believes in DNA so his finally accepting the heliocentric view of our solar system is not out of the question.
8. This Kasich guy – he arm-wrestled Carly Fiorina and won the right to be here, right?
9. Ted Cruz – look up the etymology of decimated. You were decimated tonight.
10. Scott Walker looks like the church group youth leader that parents know not to leave their kids with.

“Man’s Dominion,” David’s show about a 1916 lynching in Erwin, Tennessee drew great reviews at the Hollywood and Toronto Fringe Festivals. The good people of Erwin once lynched a circus elephant. No, really.

“Man’s Dominion” is at the Chicago Fringe Festival – Sept 3 – 13, 2015.

Having “a Republican argument”
by Tom Sullivan

It could be weeks before U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder rules on whether North Carolina’s House Bill 589 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit alleging that the law discriminated against racial minorities, the elderly and young people. In addition to requiring photo IDs for voting, H.B. 589 eliminated same-day voter registration, out-of-precinct provisional voting, preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and reduced early voting from 17 to 10 days. (In advance of the trial, state legislators loosened the ID requirements.)

At Plum Line, Greg Sargent spoke with Chris Brook, one of the ACLU attorneys on the case, about “the mother of all voter suppression bills”:

PLUM LINE: What is the case against the North Carolina law?

BROOK: It makes it more difficult for all North Carolinians to vote, but in particular for racial minorities in our state. Beyond that, the legislature knew full well, when they passed this raft of voting restrictions, that it would make it more difficult for African Americans to vote. Yet they plowed forward despite that fact. We’re challenging these measures pursuant to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

PLUM LINE: The judge in this case is trying to determine whether the impact of the law is discriminatory or merely inconveniencing. It seems like proving discrimination is a high bar.

BROOK: There’s grounds for optimism, because over the course of the trial, we were able to put on a strong case featuring dozens of North Carolinians who were disenfranchised in 2014. These restrictions are not mere inconveniences. They resulted in many North Carolinians not being able to vote.

More than 1,000 North Carolinians cast out-of-precinct provisional ballots in 2014 that previously would have been counted and were not counted. Approximately 11,000 North Carolinians registered to vote during the same-day registration window in 2014. They were not able to participate. This is something that has kept North Carolinians from voting.

In a narrow ruling this week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found Texas’ SB 14 voter ID requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in that it “produces a discriminatory result that is actionable because [it] . . . interact[s] with social and historical conditions in Texas to cause an inequality in the electoral opportunities enjoyed by African-Americans and Hispanic voters.” North Carolina’s H.B. 589 court could face a similar ruling.

The Fifth Circuit did not affirm that the law was passed with discriminatory purpose or that it constitutes a poll tax. Discriminatory purpose is tougher to prove, even if it’s obvious.

Election Law Blog’s Rick Hasen:

Particularly interesting in this analysis is the question whether Texas’s explanations for why it needed its law (antifraud, voter confidence) were tenuous. The trial court found that they were because the evidence did not support the need for voter id for either of these purposes, and this factor worked in favor of finding of a Section 2 violation.

In upholding the Section 2 claim, the court observed:

While increasing voter turnout and safeguarding voter confidence are legitimate state interests, see Crawford v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 191 (2008), the district court found that “the stated policies behind SB 14 are only tenuously related to its provisions,” Veasey, 71 F. Supp. 3d at 698. While in-person voting fraud is rare and mail-in fraud is comparatively much more common, SB 14’s voter ID restrictions would only combat the former. Id. at 639–41, 653.

[…]

The district court also found “no credible evidence” to support assertions that voter turnout was low due to a lack of confidence in elections, that SB 14 would increase public confidence in elections, or that increased confidence would boost voter turnout. Id. at 655. Two State Senators and the Director of the Elections Division at the Texas Secretary of State’s office all were unaware of anyone abstaining from voting out of concern for voter fraud, and the Director testified that implementing the provisional ballot process might undermine voter confidence. Id. The district court also credited testimony that SB 14 would decrease voter turnout. Id. at 655–56. According to a well established formula employed by political scientists to assess individuals’ likelihood of voting in an election, increasing the cost of voting decreases voter turnout—particularly among low-income individuals, as they are most cost sensitive. Id. at 656. Further, the district court dismissed the argument that increased turnout during the 2008 presidential election was demonstrative of increased voter confidence in two states that had recently passed voter ID laws. Id. at 655. Instead, it found that the increased turnout, nationwide, was due to President Obama’s candidacy. Id. Finally, the court also found that public opinion polls—which found high levels of support for photo ID requirements—were not demonstrative that SB 14 itself would promote voter confidence. Id. at 656. The district court discounted the polls because they did not evaluate whether voters supported SB 14 when weighed against its attendant effect on minority voters. Id.

The same “confidence” assertion the district court in Texas rejected is one prime rationale behind most of these laws nationwide, as well as in North Carolina. In July closing arguments in North Carolina, the Winston-Salem Journal reported:

Schroeder asked Farr [one of the state’s attorneys] what the justification was in making the election law changes. State Republican legislators said publicly they wanted to restore public confidence in the election system and stamp out potential voter fraud.

There is no evidence of widespread in-person voter fraud in North Carolina or nationally. An expert for the plaintiffs testified that North Carolina had only two verified cases of voter fraud out of 35 million votes cast in primary and presidential elections between 2000 and 2014.

My wife calls this having “a Republican argument.” That is to say, a disingenuous one. It’s where your opponent abandons rules of evidence and logic and instead argues by assertion or by exaggerated fear of what “might be” happening undetected.

It is to argue, for example, that eliminating public assistance to the rich through tax cuts, credits, and direct incentives (that fund their fifth home, new yacht, or airplane upgrade) will kill their incentive to work hard and “create jobs.” But public assistance to the poor — you know, for food — eliminates their incentive to work.

It is to argue after every mass shooting that we need no new gun laws criminals will simply ignore; we just need to enforce laws already on the books. Except when it comes to voting restrictions, we need new laws on top of those they complain the state is already not enforcing.

It is people arguing that we need to restore public confidence in the election system after they’ve spent decades trying to undermine it to build public support for restoring Jim Crow.

Next up: competency tests.

Trump on America: We suck
by Tom Sullivan

There will be hundreds of commentaries written today about last night’s Republican debates. The most interesting exchange last night, however, was over Donald Trump’s campaign donations:

BAIER: You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies, you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.

TRUMP: You better believe it… I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

BAIER: So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.

Let’s hope the Supreme Court was watching.

When Trump “tells it like it is,” his supporters cheer. But they are too busy pumping their fists to notice that while Trump is blunt enough to call out the broken system, he is not principled enough to eschew taking advantage of it. Somehow his lack of principle in enriching himself from the system’s brokenness makes him the perfect guy to fix it. Go figure.

Ezra Klein calls Trump a honey badger. “He just doesn’t fucking care.” Klein writes:

You cannot embarrass Donald Trump. You cannot back him down with questions that make other candidates buckle. And the crowd loves him for it. They love him because he does not back down. The fact that Trump doesn’t back down is the core of Trump-ism. It is the answer to how he will negotiate with the Democrats, with China, with Mexico. He will get what he wants because he doesn’t back down.

Strength. Stubbornness. Savvy. Aggressiveness. Those are what eager Trump followers — and many other Americans — want in their alpha dogs. Not real character or principles. Just the appearance of having them. Plus a large dash of xenophobia. Others dither. Trump delivers.

A priest I know says Americans think one ought to have faith. Not in anything in particular, just faith. That’s Trump’s secret. His unshakeable faith is in himself.

So he gets away with saying things that would have lesser dogs crucified by conservative media:

This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.

Trump more or less tells supporters,”We suck.” They cheer.

The new American exceptionalism: We suck and everyone is better than us #GOPDebate— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 7, 2015

Who Wants To Be A President?
by Tom Sullivan

Hiroshima at 70, the Voting Rights Act at 50, Jon Stewart, tonight’s Republican debate, the Texas voter ID ruling. It’s a bit much to take in before work. But I’m going to go with what E.J. Dionne calls Bernie Sanders’ “authentic authenticity” and what that, plus Donald Trump lapping the Republican presidential field in the polls, says about the mood of the country.

Dionne explains that Bernie Sanders “taps into a deep frustration with inequality and the power of big money in politics while also reflecting the public’s interest in bold proposals to correct both.” But at the New Yorker, James Surowiecki observes that fully one third of Republicans with no college education support the candidacy of Donald Trump. They support the billionaire, according to pollster Stanley Greenberg, because of their deep sense that the system is corrupt and that Trump can’t be bought.

Why then would they not demand Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, both of whom have established bona fides in that area? Besides political tribalism, perhaps it’s the money, and because Trump is the perfect game-show candidate. Because as jaded as they may be, voters still haven’t let go of the American dream. Plus, decades of quiz shows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) and reality TV have programmed them to think they’re just one right answer or good idea away from being Donald Trump, the showman. Surowiecki writes:

Trump is hardly the first Western plutocrat to venture into politics. Think of William Randolph Hearst or, more recently, Silvio Berlusconi. But both Hearst and Berlusconi benefitted from controlling media empires. Trump has earned publicity all on his own, by playing the role of that quintessential American figure the huckster. As others have observed, the businessman he most resembles is P. T. Barnum, whose success rested on what he called “humbug,” defined as “putting on glittering appearances . . . by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear.” Barnum’s key insight into how to arrest public attention was that, to some degree, Americans enjoy brazen exaggeration. No American businessman since Barnum has been a better master of humbug than Trump has.

There’s one born every minute, and Trump has suckered his share of drought-stricken dirt farmers into thinking he’s an economic rainmaker. But there’s a difference, explains Dionne:

As for alienation from the system, Trump and Sanders do speak to a disaffection that currently roils most of the world’s democracies. But their way of doing it is so radically different — Sanders resolutely programmatic, Trump all about feelings, affect and showmanship — that they cannot easily be subsumed as part of the same phenomenon. Sanders’s candidacy will leave behind policy markers and arguments about the future. Trump’s legacy will be almost entirely about himself, which is probably fine with him.

True. But whether Sanders’ candidacy, if unsuccessful, has any policy legacy on the left remains to be seen.

Finally, I’ll welcome back Charlie Pierce from his vacation. Pierce looks at the Jade Helm 15 nonsense and the arrest of three North Carolina men for preparing to meet the Kenyan usurper’s martial law with improvised explosives. It is symptomatic of some Americans’ darker response to disaffection:

For all the talk about how Donald Trump has tapped into some general dissatisfaction with government and some ill-defined populist moment, the energy behind his campaign comes mainly from these sad and angry places, deep in the tangled underbrush of fear, hate, and profitable ignorance, where it’s all funny until somebody builds a bomb.

But tonight, at least, it’s Bread and Circuses in Cleveland.

The courage of our exceptionalism
by Tom Sullivan

In the home of William Blackstone, they are at least investigating whether the Iraq war was illegal. Just very, very slowly:

An impatient David Cameron will demand that Sir John Chilcot name the date by which his report into the British invasion of Iraq will be ready for publication.

The prime minister is expected to tell Chilcot he wants to see the report as soon as possible. “Right now I want a timetable,” he told journalists.

Its release is not expected before September, and could be delayed until the middle of next year. Chilcot has been at this for some time and has spent £10.3m:

Chilcot has so far declined to give a timetable for the publication of the findings of the Iraq war inquiry, which opened in 2009 and concluded in 2011. He previously told Cameron and separately the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Sir Crispin Blunt, that he was still waiting for witnesses to respond to planned criticisms in the report. He is also examining fresh evidence.

Much of the Chilcot report is expected to examine communications between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush:

In January Chilcot announced that 29 of Blair’s notes to Bush had been cleared for publication, as well as extracts of 130 records of conversations between the two leaders and records from up to 200 cabinet-level discussions. Chilcot also plans to release documents that reveal which ministers and officials were excluded from discussions on military action.

That snip above is from late April. British families are still waiting to know why their loved ones were maimed or killed.

Jeremy Corbyn, current frontrunner for Labour leader in next month’s elections, is still waiting:

He said: “The Chilcot report is going to come out sometime. I hope it comes out soon. I think there are some decisions Tony Blair has got to confess or tell us what actually happened. What happened in Crawford, Texas, in 2002 in his private meetings with George [W] Bush. Why has the Chilcot report still not come out because – apparently there is still debate about the release of information on one side or the other of the Atlantic. At that point Tony Blair and the others that have made the decisions are then going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”

Corbyn is leading the polls as union supporters hope a Corbyn win can loosen “the grip of the Blairites” and neoliberals on the party. Corbyn is raising hackles in his own party by suggesting former Labour PM Tony Blair might eventually stand trail for war crimes.

If America really had the courage of its exceptionalism, we might already have dealt with Bush, Cheney, et. al., whose actions with Blair, Corbyn says, “are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and refugees all over the region.”

But as with the Chilkot report, don’t hold your breath. Here at home we still refuse to hold Wall Street magnates criminally accountable for the global fraud behind the 2008 financial meltdown that had banks wielding phony paperwork throwing families into the streets. We are still arguing whether to release 28 pages (unredacted, please) of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, we’re still failing to comes to grips with structural racism while trying to bring back Jim Crow. And 239 years after declaring we would no longer bow and scrape to British royalty, American voters are fawning like peasants over their uber-rich betters from Jamie Dimon to Donald Trump, while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Dick Cheney keynotes Republican party events in Florida.

Which way to the revolt?
by Tom Sullivan

Robert Reich sees Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ rising popularity as evidence of a growing revolt against America’s ruling class. Go figure. When venture capitalist Tom Perkins last year compared Occupiers and progressives to Kristallnacht, then held up his watch on TV and bragged, “I could buy a 6-pack of Rolexes for this,” he was less than six degrees of Marie Antoinette. And just as clueless.

Reich writes:

We’ve witnessed self-dealing on a monumental scale – starting with the junk-bond takeovers of the 1980s, followed by the Savings and Loan crisis, the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom), and culminating in the near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 and the taxpayer-financed bailout.

Along the way, millions of Americans lost their jobs their savings, and their homes.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to big money in politics wider than ever. Taxes have been cut on top incomes, tax loopholes widened, government debt has grown, public services have been cut. And not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail.

Reich continues:

In 1964, Americans agreed by 64% to 29% that government was run for the benefit of all the people. By 2012, the response had reversed, with voters saying by 79% to 19% that government was “run by a few big interests looking after themselves.”

The left wants to rebuild the system while the angry right (exemplified by the T-party) wants to burn it down, Reich writes. As American families saw their net worth plummet and lost jobs and homes in the Great Recession, the ruling class Hoovered up more of America’s wealth, even as it bitched about bonuses and taxes, and as hedge fund managers rallied to defend the carried interest loophole. Lynn Parramore explains that one at Naked Capitalism:

The carried interest loophole, as economist Dean Baker put it, is likely the worst of all the “sneaky and squirrelly ways that the rich use to escape their tax liability.” It goes down like this: Hedge fund managers brazenly claim they deserve to pay a special low tax rate on the money they earn overseeing the funds they manage because, um, it’s not guaranteed. So they pay 20 percent instead of the 39.6 percent they would pay if the money were taxed as ordinary income. They get very rich from this windfall, just ask Mitt Romney. But you know what? Lots of workers have no guarantee about the money they’ll earn, from people selling cars to the guy who just served you a burger. Do they get a special tax rate? No, they don’t. They pay full freight. In fact, almost nobody’s income is guaranteed. You could get a pay cut tomorrow. Or a pink slip. Do you still pay regular income tax? Yep, you do.

This unfair tax break basically allows hedge fund managers to screw their fellow Americans out of money that could do things the illustrious patrons of the Robin Hood Foundation claim are so dear to their hearts, like building schools and feeding the poor. According to a Congressional Research Service cited in the Hedge Clippers report, closing the carried interest loophole would generate $17 billion a year. How many hungry children in New York City could that feed? All of them.

In exposing the Robin Hood Foundation’s brand of billionaire philanthropy, the Hedge Clippers report shows that “for every dollar the Robin Hood Foundation hedge fund managers studied give to the organization’s antipoverty efforts, they soak up $44 from the public in the form of tax avoidance and anti-tax advocacy. The authors of the report believe that to be a conservative estimate,” writes Parramore.

That’s pretty revolting right there. And now, cake?