Hullabaloo

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

 
Yes, the media is why Trump is close

by digby

They refuse to admit it and probably never will. But it will be a miracle if Clinton manages to pull this off.

Here are the hard facts:

My analysis of media coverage in the four weeks surrounding both parties’ national conventions found that her use of a private email server while secretary of State and other alleged scandal references accounted for 11% of Clinton’s news coverage in the top five television networks and six major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Excluding neutral reports, 91% of the email-related news reports were negative in tone. Then, there were the references to her character and personal life, which accounted for 4% of the coverage; that was 92% negative.

While Trump declared open warfare on the mainstream media — and of late they have cautiously responded in kind — it has been Clinton who has suffered substantially more negative news coverage throughout nearly the whole campaign.

Few presidential candidates have been more fully prepared to assume the duties of the presidency than is Clinton. Yet, her many accomplishments as first lady, U.S. senator, and secretary of State barely surfaced in the news coverage of her candidacy at any point in the campaign. She may as well as have spent those years baking cookies.

How about her foreign, defense, social or economic policies? Don’t bother looking. Not a single one of Clinton’s policy proposals accounted for even 1% of her convention-period coverage; collectively, her policy stands accounted for a mere 4% of it. But she might be thankful for that: News reports about her stances were 71% negative to 29% positive in tone. Trump was quoted more often about her policies than she was. Trump’s claim that Clinton “created ISIS,” for example, got more news attention than her announcement of how she would handle Islamic State.

I also looked at the year before the 2016 primaries began, and even then Clinton had a 2-to-1 ratio of bad press to good press. There was only one month in the whole of 2015 where the tone of her coverage on balance was not in the red — and even then it barely touched positive territory.

During the primaries, her coverage was again in negative territory and again less positive than Trump’s. After the conventions got underway and Trump got embroiled in a testy exchange with the parents of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier, the tone of his coverage nosedived and her coverage looked rosy by comparison. But even then it was not glowing. Her convention-period news coverage was 56% negative to 44% positive.

Clinton’s emails and the accompanying narrative — “she can’t be trusted” — have been a defining feature of coverage from the campaign’s start. Only occasionally have reporters taken the narrative a step further. How important, exactly, are her emails in the larger context of presidential fitness? And just how large a transgression are they?

Judging from their stories, journalists rate the emails as being a highly important and very serious issue. They cover it heavily and with damning tone. When 90% or more of the coverage of a subject is negative, the verdict is in. Even good news gets turned to her disadvantage. For example, when the FBI announced that her emails did not violate the law, the Los Angeles Times ran a story focused on Trump’s response, quoting him as saying, “This is one of the most crooked politicians in history…. We have a rigged system, folks.”

In today’s hypercompetitive media environment, journalists find it difficult to resist controversies. Political scientist W. Lance Bennett explored this phenomenon around Trump’s 2011 allegation that President Obama was not a native-born American. Trump’s “birther” statements were seized upon by cable outlets and stayed in the headlines and on newscasts for days. Veteran CNN correspondent Candy Crowley even interviewed Trump, who was then not a political figure at all. She justified it by saying on air: “There comes a point where you can’t ignore something, not because it’s entertaining .... The question was, ‘Is he driving the conversation?’ And he was.” In truth, the news media were driving the conversation, as they have with Clinton’s emails.

Decades ago, the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press concluded that reporters routinely fail to provide a “comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in the context that gives them some meaning.” Whatever else might be concluded about the coverage of Clinton’s emails, context has been largely missing. Some stories spelled out how the merging of private and official emails by government officials was common practice. There were also some, though fewer, that tried to assess the harm, if any, that resulted from her use of a private server. As for Clinton’s policy proposals and presidential qualifications, they’ve been completely lost in the glare of damaging headlines and sound bites.

Thomas E. Patterson is a professor at Harvard and the author of “Informing the News.”

By the way, they're still doing it. If we end up with President Trump, which is certainly possible, you'll know who to thank.The only upside is that they won't be immune from Emperor Trump's authoritarian crack-down. He isn't a big fan of press freedom. On the other hand, if history holds they'll be good boys and girls and serve him well so it probably won't be a problem.

.
digby 9/21/2016 01:30:00 PM

 
A chip off the old block

by digby

I wrote about Trump Jr for Salon this morning:

In the beginning of the 2016 campaign the only one of Donald Trump's five children with a high public profile was his daughter Ivanka who has her own celebrity brand just like her father's. The two older sons were unknown to the general public but they made quite a good first impression when the whole family appeared on a CNN family special. They are all so attractive and glamorous that many people came to believe they were Donald Trump's best feature. Indeed, it was said that the fact he'd raised such an admirable family spoke so well of him that it smoothed some of  the rough edges of his own personality. Unfortunately, as people have gotten to know them better, they've revealed themselves to be as rough edged as dear old Dad, particularly his namesake, Donald Jr.

For most of the primaries Trump proudly evoke his two older sons when he talked about the 2nd amendment, touting their NRA membership and love of guns.  It was a little bit shocking to see the ghastly pictures of their African big game kills including a horrific shot of Trump Jr holding a severed elephant tail, but they seemed to otherwise be pretty ordinary hard-working businessmen devoted to their family. For the most part they kept a low profile, serving as the usual family props in a political campaign.

When Donald Jr spoke to a white supremacist radio host in March it set off a few alarm bells simply because his father's extreme immigration policies had been so ecstatically received by white nationalist groups. But most chalked it up to inexperience and let it go. Surely Junior wasn't as crudely racist as the old man who was reported to keep a book of Hitler speeches next to the bed. But just a few days later he retweeted a racist science fiction writer named Theodore Beale who goes by the handle of "Vox Day" claiming that a famous picture of a Trump supporter giving a Nazi salute was actually a follower of Bernie Sanders. The apple didn't fall far from the tree after all.

At the GOP convention in July, all four of the grown kids gave heartfelt speeches about their Dad, even as they made clear through their childhood anecdotes that the only time they ever spent with him was at the office and it seemed that Junior in particular had taken a more active role and was seen in a more serious light. people were talking about him as a moderating voice in the campaign.

Right after the convention, however, he let out a deafening dogwhistle that left no doubt as to his personal affiliation with the far right. He went to the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia Mississippi, best remembered as the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. But it has special political significance as the site of Ronald Reagan's famous "states' rights" speech in 1980 where he signaled  his sympathy for white supremacy by delivering it at the scene of that horrendous racist crime. (The man who coined the term "welfare queen" was always a champion dogwhistler.) Trump Jr went there to represent and represent he did. When asked what he thought about the confederate flag he said, “I believe in tradition. I don’t see a lot of the nonsense that’s been created about that.”

Since then it's been revealed that he follows a number of white nationalists on twitter and he's retweeted several including a psychologist who believes Jews manipulate society.  And in the last couple of weeks Junior has let his alt-right freak flag fly.  First he got excited about Hillary Clinton's "deplorable" comment and proudly retweeted a picture with the title "The Deplorables"  that had been making the rounds featuring Trump, Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Eric Trump and Donald Jr along with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, right wing hit man Roger Stone, alt-right leader Milo Yianopolis  and white supremacist symbol Pepe the Frog.  There's no indication that any of them had a problem with that but a lot of other people found it to be revealing, to say the least.

A couple of days later Trump Jr stepped in it again, saying the media would be "warming up the gas chamber" for Republicans if they lied and cheated the way Hillary Clinton does. He claimed he was talking about capital punishment but his association with virulent anti-Semites makes that claim ring a little bit hollow.

And then there was the Skittles incident. Donald Jr tweeted out a deeply offensive image of a bowl of skittles with the words "If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you three would kill you would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem." It's a terrible metaphor, wrong in every way and Donald Jr took some heat for it. But it's yet another window into his association with alt-right white nationalism. That bad metaphor has been around in various forms for a long time. In this country it was usually a bowl of M&Ms representing black people. The people who traffic in this garbage fairly recently changed it to Skittles because that was the candy Trayvon Martin had bought on the night he was murdered by vigilante George Zimmerman. Yes, it's that sick.

Junior didn't just see that disgusting dehumanizing tweet and send it off without thinking. He knew exactly what he was sending out there because he'd said the same thing in an interview the week before to Pittsburgh Tribune reporters and editors:

"If we had a bowl of Skittles on this table, and three of the 1,000 in there were poisonous, would you take from the bowl? You wouldn't until you could figure out which ones were bad."

You hear pundits and commentators saying that Donald Trump is sui generis and his phenomenon won't be recreated. They're probably right. But perhaps they are not aware that his son also has political ambitions and he is simply a younger, better looking version of his father with much more hair. If alt-right white nationalism is going to be an ongoing feature of American political life, they have their leader. He is one of them.



digby 9/21/2016 12:00:00 PM

 
There is Only One Candidate Part Three 

by tristero

Go out and pick up a hard copy of the NY Times.  The online edition is different, you need the full effect of actual hard print here. I'll wait.

Got it? Great! Now look on the front page. There's a headline with the word "Trump" in it above the fold. Now, go through section A (the main news section of the paper). The word "Trump" is on a smaller headline in the news summary on page 2.

Keep going. Page 10, "Obama" gets a headline. Page 16, again there's a "Trump" in the headline.

Page 18, again, two headlines above the fold with the word"Trump."

Page 25, an above the fold headline with the word "Trump."

Now, the editorial pages.

"Trump" is in the headline of the lead editorial on page 26. "Donald Trump" is in the headline of Tom Friedman's editorial on page 27. Both above the fold, by the way. And that's the front section of the paper of record.

Not a single headline mention of any rival candidate.

This regularly goes on day after day after day everywhere, in every media outlet in this country. All Trump, all the trumping time. There is no one else running for president.*

Whoops! Wait-a-minute, wait-a-minute... Flip back. On the op-ed page (nearly missed it!) there's an editorial entitled "My Plan For Helping America's Poor" with a byline by - wow, I can't believe it, they're letting her publish something?- Hillary Clinton!!! Let's look!!!!

Oh, dear... Oh, no. Oh.

It's unreadable, completely unreadable. Clinton takes 7 long and statistic-bloated paragraphs to tell us that (who knew?) she thinks it's bad that some American children are growing up in poverty.

And then her plan! A... a what? A 10-20-30 plan? What the hell is that? And who is Jim Clyburn? Is he running for president, too? Clinton finally gets her name (albeit in tiny type) mentioned above the fold and this is what we get, the best cure for insomnia ever, guaranteed?

We are doomed.

------

*Because who, including Times readers, has time to read more than one or two articles beyond the headlines, except for politics junkies?
tristero 9/21/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
Repeat, repeat and repeat and it's all people hear

by digby

The Fix:

Email, email, email. Plus other words associated with Clinton's use of a private email server during her time at the State Department: FBI, interview and release (referring to the release of the FBI's interview with Clinton. Then, more generically, lie and scandal -- words tied to nothing in particular.

There are probably a few things at play here. The first is that Clinton's campaign schedule was fairly light after the conventions, focused on fundraising for the final push. That contributed to most of the news being generated about and not by the campaign, meaning that updates on the never-ending email saga may actually have been all people heard.

Second, we've seen much more negative reactions about Clinton fairly consistently in similar polling. Because Republicans often use similar words to describe her -- liar, dishonest, etc. -- those words can quickly rise to the surface in surveys like this.

Third, there aren't really many points of focus that Clinton's critics seize upon. The email server, certainly, and her relationship with the Clinton Foundation, which makes a few appearances. But generally, Clinton isn't prone to the sorts of wild shifts in media attention that Trump laments and enjoys at varying moments.

Oh my God. She's been turned into a lying criminal because there are so few things to criticize her about that the media had no choice but to report the few things the Republicans were saying on a loop.

Here's what people heard about Trump:

Each week, something new. Sometimes it's bad -- family and Muslim after the Democratic convention as he battled the Khans -- and often it's positive. His trip to Mexico and discussion of immigration made a splash, as did his suggestion that President Obama founded the Islamic State, a comment that came the same week as his comments about Hillary Clinton and "Second Amendment people." (The word bear in the most recent week also presumably deals with the right to bear arms, and Trump's latest comments about Clinton in that regard.)

What people hear about Trump is all over the place, with his various controversial comments quickly rising and falling. Underneath, fairly positive themes: speech and president.

You'll notice that the media has nothing to do with any of this. So that's good.

.
digby 9/21/2016 09:00:00 AM

 

Who will reform U.S. policing?

by Tom Sullivan

Responding to the video of police in Tulsa shooting and killing unarmed, black motorist, Terrence Crutcher, a former reporter I know wrote yesterday on Facebook:

I will never, ever forget the words of an African-American man I was interviewing a few months ago as he talked about being stopped for a traffic infraction with his wife in the car.

The officer approached the car he said, and he could see in his mirror that he had unlatched his holster and had his hand on his gun. My subject knew this probably was just procedure, but it affected him -- terrified him.

He started weeping. "Please don't kill me, sir, please don't kill me," he repeated, sobbing uncontrollably. I knew then and I still say he was not over-reacting. He had every right to be terrified, and this is why I thank Colin Kaepernick for his courage.

That was yesterday morning. Last night, another fatal police shooting of a black man. This one in Charlotte:

The shooting took place Tuesday afternoon after officers arrived at an apartment complex in the city of Charlotte at about 4 p.m., searching for a suspect who had an outstanding warrant, a police statement said.

Police said the man fatally shot, identified as Keith Lamont Scott, was not the suspect officers were searching for, but had exited from a vehicle with a firearm and the officers believed he posed an imminent deadly threat.

Scott's family quickly challenged the police account of the fatal shooting, saying he was not armed and that he was holding a book and waiting for his son to be dropped off from school, WSOC-TV reports.

Police say the man was armed and they recovered a weapon at the scene. CMPD is still on scene investigating @wsoctv

— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) September 20, 2016

Clashes between protesters and police followed. Protesters shut down a highway. Police in riot gear used tear gas. Police and protesters were injured, etc., etc.

One candidate for president strikes a pose: get tough. Another has a plan, as Bill Scher explained at Campaign for America's Future:

Yet we cannot easily compare the policy visions of the two major party candidates. One reason is that the phrase “flip-flop” doesn’t begin to describe Republican candidate Trump’s willingness to reverse himself when convenient, contradict himself within minutes and serve up word salad to avoid taking clear stances.

Another reason is that only one candidate is bothering to offer a comprehensive set of policy proposals.

As the Associated Press reported, “Trump’s campaign has posted just seven policy proposals on his website, totaling just over 9,000 words. There are 38 on [Democratic candidate Hillary] Clinton’s “issues” page, ranging from efforts to cure Alzheimer’s disease to Wall Street and criminal justice reform, and her campaign boasts that it has now released 65 policy fact sheets, totaling 112,735 words.”

The policy fight is a mismatch. You can’t beat something with nothing. And on many fronts, Trump is literally offering nothing.

Here's what something looks like:

Effective policing and constitutional policing go hand in hand. We can—and must—do both by:

• Bringing law enforcement and communities together to develop national guidelines on the use of force by police officers, making it clear when deadly force is warranted and when it isn’t and emphasizing proven methods for de-escalating situations.
• Acknowledging that implicit bias still exists across society—even in the best police departments—and tackle it together. Hillary will commit $1 billion in her first budget to find and fund the best training programs, support new research, and make this a national policing priority.
• Making new investments to support state-of-the-art law enforcement training programs at every level on issues like use of force, de-escalation, community policing and problem solving, alternatives to incarceration, crisis intervention, and officer safety and wellness.
• Supporting legislation to end racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials.
• Strengthening the U.S. Department of Justice’s pattern or practice unit—the unit that monitors civil rights violations—by increasing the department’s resources, working to secure subpoena power, and improving data collection for pattern or practice investigations.
• Doubling funding for the U.S. Department of Justice “Collaborative Reform” program. Across the country, there are police departments deploying creative and effective strategies that we can learn from and build on. Hillary will provide assistance and training to agencies that apply these best practices
• Providing federal matching funds to make body cameras available to every police department in America.
• Promoting oversight and accountability in use of controlled equipment, including by limiting the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement from the federal government, eliminating the one-year use requirement, and requiring transparency from agencies that purchase equipment using federal funds.
• Collecting and reporting national data to inform policing strategies and provide greater transparency and accountability when it comes to crime, officer-involved shootings, and deaths in custody.

Channel 9 is continuously updating this story and has LIVE updates from reporters on #Daybreak: https://t.co/eKVghitUKf #WakeUpWith9 pic.twitter.com/vncG9HaVs3

— WSOCTV (@wsoctv) September 21, 2016

Or we could just "get tough"and see how that works out.

Undercover Blue 9/21/2016 06:00:00 AM

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

 
Donald Trump average schlub

by digby

He tries to pretend that he is prescient about the rise of terrorism and the war in Iraq. He claims he was the only one who saw bin Laden as a threat when he wrote his book in 2000 and needless to say he wasn't. The bombings of he kobar towers and the attack on USS Cole had happened already. Anyone who's read the 9/11 report knows this. Even I did --- when the WTC was attacked the first thing I said was, "I'll bet it's bin Laden." I'm sure millions of other Americans did too since we read newspapers.

He also has said he was against the war in Iraq which he wasn't. Some of us were. Millions in fact, all over the world and we marched and protested and made a lot of noise. Trump went on Howard Stern and said he guessed it was good idea and told CNBC that he thought it would be good for the markets. His thinking about the war was like a majority of Americans'

Trump insists that he opposed the war from the outset, but the only available evidence is that he backed it. This point has been made any number of times before, but it's important to point out that it makes sense. A lot of Americans backed the war at the outset and slowly grew skeptical of the effort — precisely the path that Trump seems to have taken. 

Using data from Washington Post-ABC News polling in 2003 and 2004, we charted polling on the subject as the war unfolded and overlapped it with The Washington Post's timeline of what Trump said about his support and when.

He was just another American who believed his president and then got mad when his president didn't bring home a pony.  He's nothing special.


.
digby 9/20/2016 05:00:00 PM

 
If you have the biggest pole you need the biggest flag

by digby

A small flag on a 70 ft pole

A big flag on a 70 ft pole

You have probably heard by now about Trump being fined for flying an insanely huge American flag and using other people's money to do it. Colbert did a wholesgment on it.

Your next president ladies and gentlemen:

What, exactly, does the American flag represent?Stephen Colbert asked him just that when news of Trump’s refusal to pay the fee started making the news. And despite his claims of being a staunch believer in the flag and everything it stands for, it turns out that Donald Trump doesn’t actually have any idea what it is he’s screaming about, telling Colbert point blank, “I don’t know what the 13 stripes represent.”

Schmaahtasawhip.

.
digby 9/20/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
Oh look, more Trump scams

by digby

This one may be a legal scam but so what?

Donald Trump has created an uproar by being the first presidential candidate since Richard Nixon to refuse to release his tax returns. He claims, implausibly, that he can’t do so because he is under an IRS audit. Many speculate that there’s a different reason—Romney has even blasted him, saying his returns would show a “bombshell of unusual size.”

One thing is certain. If Trump’s full tax returns are ever released, the country would get an up-close look at how Trump’s empire sits upon a real-estate tax racket, composed of a princely pile of tax breaks, loopholes, and deferrals that make wealthy real-estate developers even wealthier by eliminating most of their taxes. For Trump, it’s a point of pride: “I fight like hell to pay as little as possible,” he said in August 2015.

Apparently these real estate developers rarely pay any taxes which may be why he doesn't want to release them. But who knows what's in those things? His finances are so tangled and byzantine that it could be anything.

.
digby 9/20/2016 02:00:00 PM

 
QOTD: that nice Republican fellow with the glasses

by digby

I'm talking about Hugh Hewitt, of course, who is now an unreconstructed Trump supporter and yet is still treated as if he's some sort of sane moderate Republican. Here he is on MSNBC this morning talking about the bombshell Trump Foundation story that shows he spent a quarter of a million dollars of the charity's money for his own personal legal expenses:

There might be someone out there on the margin who moves now on a foundation story. If so there are just as many who will move because of Gilbert Chagoury and the Clinton Foundation and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Foreign Agents Registration act. I'm not sure the Clintons want to be stressing foundation stories. 

This is yet another case of the Trump people turning the story back on Clinton so that whenever he takes a hit, she gets hit too. And the media has well prepared the ground for this by pounding on emails, foundation and Benghazi until people just assume there must be something nefarious and criminal even though there isn't. ("Lock her up!!!")

If you haven't heart about the Chagoury story, if you google you will find page after page of febrile wingnuttery before you get to one where you find out that he is a foundation donor who asked to be put in touch with someone in the State department and they didn't do it. The press has been eagerly publishing whatever juicy "smell test" tid-bits Judicial Watch spoon feeds them and this is one of the stories that's "out there."  It's nonsense.

Trump, on the other hand is being shown to have literally used his charity to pay off politicians (there's a signed check with his name on it) and pay for his personal legal fees with the money from people who thought they were donating to charitable causes. That's on top of his buying pictures of himself and accepting awards for his "philanthropy" when he hasn't spent a penny of his own money for almost a decade.

Trump has called the Clinton Foundation a slush fund but the books are completely open to the public, have been reviewed by accountants and there is no evidence of that at all. The Trump Foundation actually is a slush fund to pay for pay-offs and Trump's personal business related expenses.

#Bothsidesdoit

.




digby 9/20/2016 12:00:00 PM

 
Blast from the past

by digby

Sam Bee found this fascinating Nixon townhall from 1968:



Weird how "politically correct" they sound by Trump standards. And Rick Perlstein commented in email, "amazing that this was the gold standard (well, silver standard: Wallace took the gold) for political demagoguery back then. It's high wonkery by today's standards!"

.
digby 9/20/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
Will anyone care when Trump runs his business out of the White House?

by digby

I wrote about it again for Salon. I just can't understand why nobody seems to see this as totally disqualifying but it doesn't seem to be getting much traction in the media:


Somebody finally noticed that Donald Trump is planning to keep his far-flung private business in the family while he’s president — an arrangement that goes far beyond an “appearance of impropriety” to an outright conflict of interest that could create serious problems for American national security. Over the weekend, a group of former government officials of both parties released an open letter urging Trump to disclose information about his overseas business dealings. Considering that this man is refusing to even disclose his tax returns, this seems like a long shot. But it’s important that the issue remains live because it could not be more important.

The signers of the letter represent all quarters of the national security and foreign policy establishment, from Michael Morell, former acting CIA director under Barack Obama, to Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security under George W. Bush. They were responding to last week’sNewsweek investigation by Kurt Eichenwald into the Trump Organization’s foreign ties. (I wrote about the article here.) The letter states:

Donald Trump still has not revealed to the American public his international business relationships, even as it becomes increasingly clear that his overseas ties could well constitute significant conflicts of interest when it comes to charting U.S. foreign policy. This is unprecedented for a candidate for the nation’s highest office. As such, we are calling on Mr. Trump to disclose, in full, the nature of his business relationships overseas — to include specifically who his business partners are and what and where are his foreign investments.

They demand that he divest himself of all overseas business interests if he should win the presidency.

So far, Trump has simply said that he plans to “follow all the laws” and turn his multimillion-dollar private business over to his children to run. When questioned, he has not seemed to understand why anyone would question the propriety of such an arrangement, even as he has excoriated Hillary Clinton for her ties to the family’s global charity which has not personally profited her in any way. (The difference between thetransparency of the Clinton Foundation and Trump’s privately held business could not be more stark.) Trump seems to believe it’s adequate to assure the public that he simply won’t care about the business while he’s president.

Oddly, Jason Miller of the Trump campaign responded to the letter with a sideswipe against one of the signers, Wendy Sherman, an experienced diplomat and negotiator, for her role in the Iran deal:

If Wendy Sherman is the definition of who is considered a reliable government official, this letter and its signatories lose all credibility. Sherman was appointed to the State Department by Hillary Clinton during her disastrous tenure and was the lead negotiator in opening up Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — for business, ultimately funding terrorist activities and exporting violence around the world. Based on her complete failure in representing American foreign policy and deep ties to Secretary Clinton, this letter epitomizes the rigged system in Washington that has continued to fail Americans over and over again.

The letter was signed by Republicans who have worked as high-level members of the intelligence establishment as well. Perhaps they’re not expected to believe the Trump campaign was calling them unreliable government officials.

Frankly, the signers of that letter are missing the point. It’s true that we do not know the extent of Trump’s holdings. He has released nothing more than a list of 500 affiliated entities in his Federal Elections Commission report, which was the only information Eichenwald had to go on when he launched his investigation. He followed the trail of several of those entities to such far-flung places as South Korea, India, Turkey, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Azerbaijan, and detailed a byzantine network of business and government alliances. Eichenwald says there are also “deep connections in China, Brazil, Bulgaria, Argentina, Canada, France, Germany and other countries.”

The problem is that this is simply not fixable. Here’s how Eichenwald describes the nature of Trump’s business, which deals with foreign financiers, developers, government officials, tax havens and shady oligarchs:

The GOP nominee is essentially a licensor who leverages his celebrity into streams of cash from partners from all over the world. The business model for Trump’s company started to change around 2007, after he became the star of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” which boosted his national and international fame. Rather than constructing Trump’s own hotels, office towers and other buildings, much of his business involved striking deals with overseas developers who pay his company for the right to slap his name on their buildings. (The last building constructed by Trump with his name on it is the Trump-SoHo hotel and condominium project, completed in 2007.)

The foreign business, you see, is the Trump name. He cannot “divest.” It’s not something you can sell. And no one could buy it. You likewise cannot put it in a blind trust — it’s his name on buildings and developments all over the world. He cannot literally wear blinders as president of the United States. Even if he were to tell his kids to find another line of work and simply walk away from the Trump Organization, shutting the doors and leaving it all behind, there are hundreds of deals already in place and contractual ramifications years into the future, all of which would present crippling conflicts of interest for President Trump. Trump’s business interests would have had to be unwound years ago for him to be able to function properly as president. It’s literally impossible to do it now.

In case you were wondering, Trump has no legal obligation to do anything. Presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest statutes. It was decided that it would be too complicated to write such a law for an office with such expansive powers. Instead we have depended upon norms that govern the behavior of our leaders, ensuring they are seen as acting solely on behalf of the people while they hold the office. Donald Trump has exploded every norm in politics so far. If he wins this election, there’s every likelihood that he’ll simply tell everyone that he’s not making any important decisions for the Trump Organization, and that will be that. We will have a real-life oligarch in the White House, who will likely leave a whole lot richer then when he came in, while the people will be a whole lot poorer. That’s been his business model from the beginning.


.
digby 9/20/2016 09:00:00 AM

 

Keeping it (un)real

by Tom Sullivan

This presidential campaign makes it hard to tell what's real anymore.

Just last night, Seth Meyers lampooned Donald Trump and Chris Christie over Trump's Friday faux press conference/hotel infomercial that supposedly put an end to birtherism. Christie tried to rewrite history by claimed Trump had dropped the matter in 2011. So Meyers played clips of Trump questioning whether Barack Obama's birth certificate is real from 2011 through 2015. Meyers quipped, “And by the way, I’m not sure the guy who holds fake press conferences, has a fake university, a fake foundation, fake hair, and a fake tan should be the one in charge of deciding what’s real.”

What's real about Hillary Clinton and what's not has been an issue for her campaign. Struggling to connect with voters under 35, she is running on the most progressive platform in her party's history, one heavily influenced by Bernie Sanders' ideas. But millennials were not exactly gushing at a speech she gave Monday at Temple University:

Clinton’s speech came as some polling has found that young people opposed to Trump have gravitated towards the two main third party candidates -- the Green Party's Jill Stein and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate -- rather than to the Democratic nominee. Clinton also lagged with young voters in her primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). On Monday, Clinton acknowledged the struggles she’s faced with millennials.

“Even if you are totally opposed to Donald Trump, you may still have some questions about me -- I get that and I want to do my best to answer those questions,” Clinton said.

But post-convention, Jim Newell writes at Slate, her focus has been "moderate, suburban Republican-leaners." So Clinton tried to address some of their concerns in an op-ed yesterday at Mic:

First, everyone who wants to go to college should be able to without drowning in debt. That's why I worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders to design a plan that will let everyone attend college debt-free. If you already have loans, we'll let you refinance them, defer them to start a business or forgive them if you spend 10 years in public service. You can even see how much you and your family could save under our plan by looking at the "college calculator" on our website. And we'll make sure a four-year degree isn't the only path to a good-paying job by supporting apprenticeships and other high-quality training programs.

Second, everyone should be able to get a job that pays the bills and can support a family. And not only that, you should be able to do work you love and find meaningful. So we'll create more good-paying jobs, raise the minimum wage and guarantee equal pay. This will help a lot of Americans, especially young people struggling to find footing in a difficult economy.

Third, no new parent should have to face the impossible choice between caring for a child or family member and losing a paycheck or even a job. It's outrageous that in 2016, the United States is the only developed country in the world without paid family leave of any kind. So we'll make high-quality child care and preschool available to every family in every community. I've spent my career fighting to make a difference for children and families, and I can't wait to do even more as president.

Of course, to do any of these things, we can't have secret unaccountable money poisoning our politics. So I'll appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Citizens United and even propose a constitutional amendment to do the same. And by doing that, we'll make sure that no special interests can get in the way of protecting and expanding civil rights, LGBT rights and all human rights.

Many of you have shared with me that it feels like you're out there on your own — like no one has your back. It shouldn't be that way. If I'm fortunate enough to be elected, you will always have a champion in the White House. But I can't do it on my own. I need you to work with me, keep fighting for what you believe, hold me accountable. I can't promise we'll win every fight on our first try. But I can promise you this: I'll never stop fighting for you.

The policy-speak demonstrates what Clinton said of herself at Temple, “I will never be the showman my opponent is, and you know what? That's okay with me.” And it should be okay with voters. We're hiring a president, not searching for soulmate on Match dot com.

Newell writes at Slate:

But running through this targeted demographic’s laundry list isn’t enough. It doesn’t get to the core of the problem, which is: character, and Clinton as the embodiment of a political insider. It’s on this fundamental question of trustworthiness where Clinton faces the steepest climb among young voters. Both she and her team were wise enough to understand that in crafting the speech.

A Quinnipiac national poll released last week asked likely voters if they believed Clinton was honest or not. Overall, 32 percent said she was, compared to 65 percent who said she was not. That ugly picture was bad across all age groups, but worst among young voters: Only 21 percent of 18-to-34–year-olds said she was honest, compared to 77 percent who did not. By contrast, 27 percent of those 18 to 34 said Donald Trump was honest. (Which is not to say they all view this as an asset in him.) Another question asked whether Clinton “bases her policies on a set of core values” or “does whatever is politically convenient.” Thirty-nine percent of likely voters overall said “based on core values,” but only 25 percent of 18-to-34–year-olds did. Clinton’s poll numbers suggest she’s outperforming her character numbers among these demographics—i.e., she’s still earning the votes of many young people who believe she’s wholly dishonest. But she needs to repair this image if she’s going to get much further, and there are only 50 days left to do so.

That's going to be tough, especially for a generation born into a world of right-wing talk radio, Faux News, faux scandals, and relentless anti-Clinton propaganda. Much of what people know of Hillary Clinton falls into the "everyone knows" category. Everyone knows she's a serial liar, corrupt, and untrustworthy. But how does everyone know what they think they know? Is what they know true, or do they simply feel like it's true? Because that's truthiness, the term Stephen Colbert invented to poke fun at people who think with their guts instead of with their heads. (I'm trying to remember a time the "neoliberal warmonger" threatened to take the country to war over someone flipping off our sailors.)

After being steeped in twenty-five years of anti-Clinton propaganda myself, I don't claim any kind on immunity. I don't even believe what I think I know about her. But I'm damned sure the people who who worked oh-so hard at stuffing my head with propaganda didn't have her best interests in mind, or mine. So I focus Clinton's long list of accomplishments and policy proposals. They are not feelings. They are on the record. What's Hillary Clinton really like? People who actually know her speak glowingly. Me? I don't know for sure. But I know what her opponents are like. Their deeds on the record too.

Meyers' bit from last night is here:




Undercover Blue 9/20/2016 06:00:00 AM

Monday, September 19, 2016

 
Nervousness in Trumpland over foundation issues

by digby

This one does seem to get under his skin:

Those in Donald Trump’s orbit appear to be nervous about the swirling scandal around the Trump Foundation—and they should be: The stakes are incredibly high.

The allegations of a quid pro quo between Trump and Florida Attorney General, improper use of the charity for personal benefit, and employment of the charity for political purposes have serious penalties beyond mere campaign optics—the possible consequences range from hefty fines to jail time.

The last seven days has been all bad news on the Trump Foundation front: House Democrats have publicly sought a Justice Department investigation into the charity, while left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleged that Trump appeared to have bribed Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi by giving her a $25,000 contribution so that she would not join a lawsuit against Trump University.

And a New York Times investigation this past week showed that Trump had personally signed the check that constituted the illegal campaign contribution from his charity to Bondi.

Add this to a dose of personal animosity: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told CNN this week that “we have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.” The Trump camp already despises Schneiderman due to his legal crusade on the controversial Trump University business.

“This reaches above a distraction for them due to the legal implications of it and long litigation possibility,” a former senior aide to Trump said. “Look, Donald signed those checks… he’s on there. He’s liable.”

In the interest of fairness and balance I have to point out that Hillary Clinton's emails showed that people who donated to her family charity would call up and try to get meetings or favors and they wouldn't get them. Just so you know. If you 'd like the details there are approximately 8,532 articles about that and every anchor and pundit have talked about the "gross" nature of the appearance of the possibility of impropriety that never happened when she was Secretary of State years ago.

Donald Trump wasn't a professional politician when he bribed state AGs not to pursue his fraudulent business practices so we need to cut him a little slack. He can't be held to the same standard.

But anyway, do click over and read the whole thing. It's quite interesting. One might even think it's something the voters should take into account.

.
digby 9/19/2016 05:30:00 PM

 
In addition to torture, no medical care or food for terrorist suspects

by digby

These comments are not surprising, He says he loves waterboarding. Seriously he loves it. And he wants to use it as a punishment as well as an interrogation tactic:

“Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works. And if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us”.

He would also be torturing and killing this terror suspect's family right now:

DICKERSON: Let me ask you about your position on torture. When you and I talked last week, you said that General Hayden was wrong when he said that military wouldn't follow you on the question of water-boarding and on the killing of terrorists' families.

In the debate, you said, "If I say do it, they are going to do it." You were talking about the military. Then, on Friday, you said, "I will not order our military to violate -- to violate those laws."

So, what changed?

TRUMP: Well, you never asked me violating laws, in all fairness. You weren't talking about violating laws.

I would say this. Look, we have an enemy in the Middle East that is chopping off heads and drowning people in massive steel cages, OK? We have an enemy that doesn't play by the laws. You could say laws, and they're laughing. They're laughing at us right now.

I would like to strengthen the laws so that we can better compete.

He wants to compete on the basis of brutality. Seriously.That's what he says.

I would like to have the law expanded. I would like to make...

DICKERSON: How?

TRUMP: Well, I would like -- I happen to think that when you're fighting an enemy that chops off heads, I happen to think that we should use something that is stronger than we have right now. Right now, basically water-boarding is essentially not allowed, as I understand it.

DICKERSON: And you would like it to be, if you could expand it.

TRUMP: I would certainly like it to be, at a minimum, at a minimum, to allow that.

DICKERSON: Why do you think we don't have those -- why do you think we don't have water-boarding allowed?

TRUMP: Because we're a weak -- I think we have become very weak and ineffective. I think that's why we're not beating ISIS. It's that mentality.

DICKERSON: But you think people got rid of the law to be weak?

TRUMP: No, I think that we are weak. I think we're weak. We cannot beat ISIS. We should beat ISIS very quickly. General Patton would have had ISIS down in about three days. General Douglas MacArthur -- we are playing by a different set of rules. We are -- let me just put it differently. When the ISIS people chop off the heads, and then they go back to their homes and they talk, and they hear we're talking about water-boarding like it's the worst thing in the world, and they just drowned a hundred people and chopped off 50 heads, they must think we are a little bit on the weak side.

DICKERSON: The reason that the water-boarding was -- a number of reasons, but one of them was because worry was that if America does that, then our soldiers, American hostages will be treated even worse. That's the argument. What do you think of that argument?

TRUMP: They're doing that anyway. They're killing our soldiers when they capture them. I mean, they're doing that anyway.

Now, if that were the case, in other words, we won't do it and you don't do it. But we're not playing by those rules. They're not -- why, somebody tell ISIS, look, we're going to treat your guys well, would you please do us a favor and treat our guys well? They don't do that.

We're not playing by -- we are playing by rules, but they have no rules. It's very hard to win when that's the case.

DICKERSON: Isn't that separates us from the savages, rules?

TRUMP: No, I don't think so. We have to beat the savages.

DICKERSON: And therefore throw all rules out?

TRUMP: We have beat the savages.

DICKERSON: By being savages?

TRUMP: No. We -- well, look, you have to play the game the way they're playing the game.

You're not going to win if we are soft, and they are -- they have no rules. Now, I want to stay within the laws. I want to do all of that. But I think we have to increase the laws, because the laws are not working, obviously. All you have to do is take a look what is going on. And they're getting worse. They're chopping, chopping, chopping, and we're worried about water-boarding.

He's a sadistic monster. (But you knew that) It doesn't appear that a majority of Americans want that. But the way it's going he could win anyway.

.


.
digby 9/19/2016 03:30:00 PM

 
A whole lot of cray-cray

by digby

From one of Trump's biggest supporters:




Trump peddles his stuff all the time. Remember when he told Californians there isn't a drought?

“It’s not the drought. They have plenty of water. No, they shove it out to sea. Now, why? Because they’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

“If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive.”

According to Rick Perlstein, he got that from Alex Jones as well as a whole bunch of other stuff. And as you can see, he's unhinged.






digby 9/19/2016 02:00:00 PM

 
Half the guns in the country are owned by a small subset of gun nuts

by digby

This investigative piece in today's Guardian is a must read for anyone who is concerned about the proliferation of guns in our society.It's a very interesting breakdown of who owns guns, what they're used for and why certain people buy them.

Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every American adult, according to the most definitive portrait of US gun ownership in two decades. But the new survey estimates that 130m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super-owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each. 

The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace, estimates that America’s gun stock has increased by 70m guns since 1994. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who own guns decreased slightly from 25% to 22%. 

The new survey, conducted in 2015 by public health researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities, also found that the proportion of female gun owners is increasing as fewer men own guns. These women were more likely to own a gun for self-defense than men, and more likely to own a handgun only. 

Women’s focus on self-defense is part of a broader trend. Even as the US has grown dramatically safer and gun violence rates have plummeted, handguns have become a greater proportion of the country’s civilian gun stock, suggesting that self-defense is an increasingly important factor in gun ownership. 

“The desire to own a gun for protection – there’s a disconnect between that and the decreasing rates of lethal violence in this country. It isn’t a response to actuarial reality,” said Matthew Miller, a Northeastern University and Harvard School of Public Health professor and one of the authors of the study. 

The data suggests that American gun ownership is driven by an “increasing fearfulness”, said Dr Deborah Azrael, a Harvard School of Public Health firearms researcher and the lead author of the study.

And politicians are helping drive the fear:



This psycho is featured in the video:

As is this psycho:



There's a whole lot of gun culture that is also alt-right, including Trump's own family.

Update: Now go read this also in the Washington Post: Donald Trump’s law-and-order approach won’t make us safer.

Neither will gun proliferation, which he proposes along with his "let the police crack some heads" approach to law enforcement. He's prescribing an authoritarian government working with a private vigilante force. We've seen that before. It didn't work out well.

.
digby 9/19/2016 12:00:00 PM

 
Steady leadership in a time of crisis

by digby

Your next president:

“Our local police, they know a lot of who these people are. They are afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of profiling, they don’t want to be accused of all sorts of things,” Trump said on Fox & Friends.

Trump then pointed to Israel’s practice of predictive profiling as an example, saying the country has done “an unbelievable job.”

“Do we have a choice? Look what’s going on,” Trump said. “Do we really have a choice? We’re trying to be so politically correct in our country and this is only going to get worse.”
[...]
Trump added on Friday that he believes more terror attacks will happen in the US.

“I think this is something that will maybe get — will happen perhaps more and more all over the country,” Trump said. “Because we’ve been weak. Our country has been weak.”

Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC just told me that this week-end's terrorist attack favors Trump. According to her, after San Bernardino he got a tough on terrorism persona that benefits from these attacks. This is something I did not know. I guess that explains why he's pretty much saying "bring it on."

He does seem a little confused about the role of law enforcement though. He loves them but thinks they are so cowardly and selfish that even if they know terrorists are planning an attack they won't do anything about it because someone will say something about them. So people are injured and die.

Within 9 mins, he went from praising law enforcement to saying they failed pic.twitter.com/FtqhnY38Xp

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 19, 2016

.
That could very well be your next president America.

.
digby 9/19/2016 10:30:00 AM

 
If Trump takes a hit he makes sure they hit Clinton too

by digby

I wrote about the Sunday Morning horror show yesterday for Salon today:

Last Friday Donald Trump gathered the press at his glitzy new hotel for a press conference, had a famous birther introduce him and then proceeded to ramble for 25 minutes before saying that Barack Obama was born in America, that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement and he ended it. Then he refused to take questions, restrained the pool producer from accompanying him on what he apparently planned as a free promotional tour for cable TV of his new business.

Pundits and reporters alike were shocked that Trump would suggest that he "ended" the controversy, presumably when he demanded the birth certificate and President Obama finally acquiesced just to shut him up. They pointed out that he flogged the controversy for years afterward and were appalled that he would think he could get away with pretending otherwise considering the public record.

There were some who also challenged his charges that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement in 2008. But then this happened:

former McClatchy DC bureau chief @jimasher tweeting that Sid Blumenthal pushed birther lie to him in 2008. Asking for comment

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 16, 2016

Shortly people on social media were reminded that a low level staffer in Iowa had forwarded a birther email, was fired for it and the Clinton campaign apologized. And Clinton's 2008 pollster, Mark Penn, wrote a memo which said in effect that Obama's exotic childhood could "hold him back." But it also said that they could never go negative on such a thing and they did not. Clinton confidante did send emails with negative clippings and articles about Obama back in 2008 but denies spreading the birther lie.  Nobody has ever reported it before and  journalists such as James Fallows from the Atlantic and were privy to Blumenthal's emails do not remember ever seeing anything about the racist birther smear and are extremely skeptical that it happened. Moreover, the birther controversy has been amply documented going back to this piece by Chris Hayes in The Nation in 2007 and it was not in any way advanced by the Clinton campaign.

But the damage was done. By the time the Sunday shows rolled around, it was clear that while Trump may not have gotten away with claiming that he didn't push the birther smear relentlessly, he had managed to "raise questions" about Clinton being the one who started it all.

Kellyanne Conway gave a bravura performance on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, constantly bringing back the charge that Clinton had started it. Here's Chuck Todd's reaction on Meet the Press:

So I guess what I'm curious about, though, is who cares about the Clinton incident? Donald Trump, for five years, perpetuated this. This has been, arguably, part of his political identity for the last five years. So what difference does it make whether Clinton does it? Why do two wrongs make a right in this case? 

He pressed her hard on Trump's pushing what she continued to call Clinton's smear after 2008. He continued to accept her premise.

John Dickerson of Face the Nation was not quite as easy on Conway's repeated accusations that Clinton had started it but when Reince Preibus let fly with this after Dickerson suggested that Clinton had nothing to do with it, it all went downhill fast:

PRIEBUS: And people get convicted every single day with circumstantial evidence that is enough to tip the scale.And by the preponderance of the evidence before us, Hillary Clinton or her campaign were definitely involved in this issue. So, we can’t keep saying it’s not true. That’s ridiculous.

DICKERSON: But...

PRIEBUS: I know you didn’t, but there’s enough media people out there claiming that that’s not true, as if it’s some fiction. It’s not fiction. It’s the truth.

DICKERSON: Sure. But when you think about -- it may be contributory, but Donald Trump spent the bulk of his time...

PRIEBUS: But he’s not denying it.

DICKERSON: No, I understand that. But I guess my point is this.

PRIEBUS: But she is denying it, and that’s ridiculous.

DICKERSON: My point -- well, her former campaign manager said...

PRIEBUS: All right, so everyone around her is involved, but not her, so, therefore, she’s innocent.

DICKERSON: Well, everyone around her is a little more than the evidence would support.

PRIEBUS: Her campaign deputy manager was apologizing on CNN three days ago for it.

DICKERSON: But she said she fired the one person who brought it up immediately. There’s a difference between firing one person immediately and then...

PRIEBUS: What about Sid Blumenthal? Was he involved or not?

DICKERSON: Well, let’s assume that he was.

PRIEBUS: OK.

DICKERSON: So, you have a person spreading rumors. And then you have someone making a five-year crusade, holding press conferences and spending money. Here’s my question to you, which is not to figure out the details anymore, but to ask you this question...

Priebus even managed to make it sound like she had committed a crime.  Something along this line happened on every show. Yes, Trump got knocked for his birther madness. The press pushed his surrogates quite hard. Jake Tapper even managed to put Chris Christie on the defensive on State of the Union. But one Trump supporters after the other aggressively repeated the lie that Clinton was responsible for the smear.And the hosts were ineffective at best in denying it.

Back at the beginning of June as the primaries were finally closing out and the news began to shift it's focus to Trump vs Clinton I wrote  piece for Salon in which I warned that  the press was distorting the coverage for the sake of "balance" which was given the headline: Normalizing Trump, demonizing Hillary: The media’s shameful strategy for the 2016 election. The press is only helping Donald Trump by creating a false equivalency between the billionaire and Hillary.

That dynamic has resulted in a funhouse mirror of an election in which Hillary Clinton is now seen as less honest than Donald Trump. According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, only 43% of all voters believe Hillary Clinton is honest enough to be president while 50% think that of Donald Trump. 54% believe Trump has been transparent while 37% believe that about Clinton. Considering the mountain of lies that Trump has told during this campaign and his refusal to release his tax returns, Trump Foundation accounting or how he plans to deal with his labyrinthine international business dealings once he wins the white house those are shocking numbers.

But really,why wouldn't people believe that? Even when Trump's lie is so blatant that it's laughable, as it is with his birther excuses, with the help of the press, Trump and his minions managed to smear Clinton as the originator of the smear. That is a neat trick. One thing Trump's learned is that the press will always seek to balance their coverage so if he takes a hit he makes sure that Clinton takes one too. And they are happy to help him.

Update: I hadn't seen this before, but it's a further explanation of the Clinton camp's reaction to that Iowa volunteer passing on a birther email back in 2007. 

This is what people are saying the Clinton campaign former campaign manager Patti Solis-Doyle "admitted" on CNN without any pushback from Tapper. 

.
.
digby 9/19/2016 09:00:00 AM

 
When we transform the economy to deal with climate change, what should we transform it to

by Gaius Publius


I want to put two ideas into your head and ask you to hold them there for a while. Later I'm going to write a deeper piece on this subject. But for now, just notice these two ideas and how they're linked. They form an either-or, a one-or-the-other way to respond to climate change, assuming we do.

Sometimes you can't have everything. Sometimes you have to choose. (Source; click to enlarge)

After all, perhaps we will respond effectively to climate change, and that response may be in time to lessen the disaster. It could happen that people wake up — or more likely, that some catastrophic event grips the nation hard enough — so that changing the present course becomes actually possible, even widely perceived as necessary.

Consider this: It's certainly true that most voters — not just Democrats, but even and especially Republicans — are full-time worshipers at the Church of Daddy Do Something when a real crisis hits. "Daddy" in this case is the government, and it better act ... and now ... if my house is likely to burn, my property is likely to flood, my child is likely to die of some disease or in the next attack. If that realization does hit before it's really too late — the realization that "we're in deep trouble and 'daddy' better do something" — there's great reason for optimism.

And it's not like we're not sitting on a powder keg of potential disasters. For example, imagine a Haiyan-size hurricane sweeping across Florida — no lives are lost, but all property values brought instantly to zero — followed by a summer of torrential torrential rains throughout the East, South and Midwest, causing thousands of dollars of damage and bankrupting insurance companies throughout the country. What do you think the national response would be? I think the nation, with one voice (minus most of the unaffected rich) might easily say, "OK, time to really do something. This time we mean it."

If we decide to do something, what should it be?

So the question is, what is that something? Which is where the two thoughts I mentioned above come in. Obviously we get off of carbon as fast as we can, which completely transforms the economy. But it's not obvious what we should transform the economy to. Right now the economy is built around rapid economic growth — meaning, rapid growth of profits for the very very wealthy. Do we want to simply power the current wealth-enabling economy with renewable energy sources and call it done?

Would powering the current wealth-enabling economy even be effective in mitigating climate change? (The argument below says no.)

Or do we want to transform our broader economy at the same time to something more ... sustainable? Constant growth may well be ineffective in stopping climate change, and it's frankly unsustainable on its own. The "build more stuff, then throw it away" world has its own a natural end as well; we're getting pretty close to it; and the end if that world is no prettier than the end of the climate chaos world.

Put more simply, why would be want to avoid the climate collapse, just to collapse a few years later anyway on the rock of unsustainable economic growth for the very very few?

I'm not asking you to agree with this just yet. Simply hold these thoughts in mind as alternatives, and read the following, by Elliot Sperber writing in Counterpunch. The piece is framed as a response to Bill McKibben's (appropriate) call for a WWII-style "war on climate change." The following paragraphs illustrate the kind of choices I'm trying to put before you now.

Again, the question is, if we're going to have to transform the economy, what do we transform it to? If we're going to embark on a WWII-style restructuring of the economy, including some rationing during the transition, everything new is possible, including each of the choices I'm presenting.

Benefits of a sustainability economy, even to the climate

In the section below, Sperber starts with meat production (my emphasis):

Perhaps most relevant to the issue of climate change and rationing, commodities such as nylon, oil, and meat were rationed during World War II. And since by some measures meat production is responsible for even more greenhouse gas than fossil fuels, rationing (or, better yet, banning the commercial production of meat altogether) would reduce greenhouse gases far more rapidly than McKibben’s building plan. Beyond the ethical imperative to not torture animals, curtailing meat production would not only eliminate the production of greenhouse gases; it would allow the rain forests and other ecosystems destroyed in the creation of pasture and feed for livestock to regenerate, simultaneously halting CO2 and methane proliferation and absorbing it. And it’s a hardly incidental benefit that the tons of water used to raise and process meat could be used to ameliorate climate change-exacerbated drought the world over.

That's a pretty decent list of benefits, simply on the climate front, not to mention alleviating health issues caused by mass consumption of highly processed, hormone-injected, expensive-to-produce animal protein — your next McDonald's burger, for example.

On the effectiveness of a climate solution in stopping those storms that come "one in 500 years," which have been happening with great frequency in the U.S. lately, Sperber writes:

​Furthermore, though it’s less well-known than either CO2 or the notoriously potent greenhouse gas methane, water vapor is also a tremendously important greenhouse gas, one with a powerful feedback loop that amplifies global warming. That is, as the climate heats up and ice melts, and soil dries out, and water evaporates (spreading deserts and extending droughts), more and more vapor enters the atmosphere, heating the planet further still – melting more ice, producing more vapor, ad infinitum. The one trillion tons of ice that disappeared from the Greenland ice sheet between 2011 and 2014, for example, didn’t simply vanish; they transmogrified into hundreds of trillions of gallons of liquid water and water vapor that, by further heating the planet, has added to the power – as well as to the mass – of hurricanes, typhoons, storms, floods, and other extreme weather events. And this is only accelerating. But while this vapor heats the planet and, when concentrated, creates catastrophic floods, this vapor can also be absorbed by, and stored in, marine and terrestrial plants.

If a change in meat production and consumption increases the likelihood of a real climate solution, do we need to hold onto our current McDonald's lifestyle?

Which takes us to land use and transportation:

In addition to the fact that plants convert CO2 into oxygen, because plants absorb and store water, conserving and restoring plant life is arguably just as crucial as building excessive energy capacity. And because forests and other ecosystems regenerate independently, when they’re simply left alone, this requires far less work than building all those solar panels and wind turbines (in factories that, by the way, would likely result in clearing land of a considerable deal of plant coverage). Restoring ecosystems and conserving vegetation doesn’t need to be limited to non-urban areas, though. In addition to decontaminating them (when necessary) and leaving forests alone to regenerate, plants just as easily flourish in cities. Beyond building ‘green roofs’ and street level gardens (akin to the World War II-era “victory gardens” that supplied 40% of people’s vegetables, as McKibben reminds us), much of the space devoted to cars (streets, freeways, gas stations, parking lots, etc.) could be dedicated to the growth of trees and vegetation. By absorbing both CO2 and water vapor, trees and urban gardens, not to mention spontaneously growing plants, would cool cities, improve air quality, and make cities more livable, all while mitigating global warming and providing food. Because they require space that could be used to grow plants, a serious commitment to mitigating climate change should also ration, or ban altogether, the toxic private car – at least from urban areas. If during World War II the use of public transportation increased by close to 90%, as McKibben notes, there’s no reason why this can’t be replicated today, improving the wellbeing of the climate, as well as that of human and non-human animals.

In general, this leads to the question of  "industrial mobilization" versus "demobilization" and the recovery of diminishing and collapsing ecosystems, like world fisheries:

Rather than the “industrial mobilization” McKibben advocates, then, in many respects demobilization could be at least as effective at mitigating climate change, and could be implemented far more rapidly. When methane-producing, ecosystem-killing dams are dismantled, for instance, entire ecosystems can quickly and spontaneously recover. And, as it’s part of World War II history, McKibben may appreciate the fact that, in the decades leading up to the war commercial fishing in the North Sea led to the virtual extinction of fish. But, because of a commercial fishing moratorium (imposed by the threat of German submarines, and other martial maritime dangers), by the end of the war the ecosystem had regenerated itself. Following this precedent, moratoria should be imposed immediately on the commercial fishing industries presently devastating the oceans (wiping out entire species of coral, fish, and mammals, not to mention gigatons of carbon-storing, oxygen-producing phytoplankton).

Of course, rationing and imposing moratoria on ecocidal practices such as commercial fishing, logging, and the production of toxic materials, such as plastics, would slow economic production substantially; but if our priority is effectively mitigating climate change’s harms, as opposed to making money, slowing economic production is crucial. Moreover, rather than exacerbating existing poverty, the phasing out of ecocidal industries, such as the fast food industry, could lead to the elimination of poverty; we simply need to produce necessities, such as food, housing, healthcare, and transportation, for their own sake, rather than in exchange for money. Among other benefits, this would eliminate the conflicts of interest that result in such absurdities as food producers refusing to grow, and willfully destroying, tremendous amounts of food each year in order to keep up prices, and market forces driving vulnerable populations from necessary housing in order to develop luxury housing for people who already have more than enough."

To repeat: If our first priority is effectively mitigating the harm done by climate change, instead of protecting the "right" of the wealthy to make money, slowing economic production is crucial.

Just give it some thought

I'm not asking you to make that choice yet. Just to be aware of it and give it some thought of your own. I'll have more on this in a bit.

Economic growth (a world awash in profit) versus sustainable living (a world without the super-rich, but one we can share and maintain) — if we're lucky, we may get to finally decide between them.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP
 


.
Gaius Publius 9/19/2016 07:30:00 AM