Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Al_U_Card]

An interesting and salient POV

 

"Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society. "

An excerpt from the speech that JFK had planned on giving at the Trademart in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.

[johnu]

There are also children of US citizens and military personnel who are born abroad (with a few exceptions).

 

Of course, some members of the military are not US citizens. Some would say they are more patriotic than "fake bone spurs" Dennison.

[Winstonm]

Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism. While the data show a decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups, violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency — and has surged since President Trump took office.

 

IMO, what prompts this is what psychologists term "projection" as personal difficulties rise in lockstep with wealth inequity - it is difficult if not impossible to blame your own ideology and worldview for these problems so blame is placed elsewhere, on invisible forces (deep state) and "others" (refugees, immigrants). When that emotion is compounded by the group security of a political rally where everyone is chanting hateful, racists slogans, it is easy to understand certain phenomena.

 

The biggest challenge faced is to get someone to sit and discuss this long enough to understand it. Explanations aren't slogan-sized.

[Winstonm]

Here's a shock, Dennison and the entire GOP caught in a supply-side lie (again): Yahoo

 

Business

GM Just Laid Off 15,000 Workers Less Than One Year After Trump Promised Tax Cuts Would Save US Jobs

 

Less than one year after historic tax cuts, aimed toward corporations and made with promises from the White House of jobs security for Americans across the country, General Motors announced on Monday that it would be laying off 14,700 of its workers in the United States.

 

According to a tweet from the Washington Post, the motor company is set to fire 15 percent of its salaried workers, as well as end production at five plants in the U.S. and in Canada.

[barmar]

Here's a shock, Dennison and the entire GOP caught in a supply-side lie (again): Yahoo

Did GM at least give those workers a bonus last year, using the windfall from the tax cut?

 

I don't know, but I do know that they continued their aggressive program of stock buybacks. So this is trickling down to the shareholders, and you know how much they need it. Yachts don't captain themselves.

[ldrews]

Did GM at least give those workers a bonus last year, using the windfall from the tax cut?

 

I don't know, but I do know that they continued their aggressive program of stock buybacks. So this is trickling down to the shareholders, and you know how much they need it. Yachts don't captain themselves.

 

I wonder if 401ks and pension funds, probably the major shareholders in GM, can captain yachts?

[ggwhiz]

Ali Velshi, who grew up in Toronto pointed out that closing the plant in Oshawa, while it will hurt it may not be fatal as it has become more or less a bedroom community for Toronto with a lot of other potential action going on.

 

Not the case in Ohio where if people have to move to where the jobs are and own a house they will take another bath trying to sell it. Not to mention the damage to any local small businesses. Trump is a slow motion disaster for HIS BASE.

[Winstonm]

Ali Velshi, who grew up in Toronto pointed out that closing the plant in Oshawa, while it will hurt it may not be fatal as it has become more or less a bedroom community for Toronto with a lot of other potential action going on.

 

Not the case in Ohio where if people have to move to where the jobs are and own a house they will take another bath trying to sell it. Not to mention the damage to any local small businesses. Trump is a slow motion disaster for HIS BASE.

 

That base is shrinking. Latest polls show 38% approval with 60% disapproval. How 2% can still be undecided is the only mystery to me.

 

And after the disaster of the midterms there is evidence that the GOP is starting to turn away, as well, as a few Republican senators are not buying the Dennison-Saudi love affair as valid.

[johnu]

That base is shrinking. Latest polls show 38% approval with 60% disapproval. How 2% can still be undecided is the only mystery to me.

 

And after the disaster of the midterms there is evidence that the GOP is starting to turn away, as well, as a few Republican senators are not buying the Dennison-Saudi love affair as valid.

 

Republican approval numbers for Dennison was 86% (and has been actually increasing since mid 2017). If anything, the base is even more vested in Dennison than before he was elected. On the other hand, approval among independents is 34% where it's been for most of Dennison's term. You can't win elections if the independents don't swing your way.

 

Presidential Approval Ratings

 

Other Republican politicians in any kind of swing district or state will start distancing themselves from their own records, and Dennison's, before the 2020 general election.

[Winstonm]

Republican approval numbers for Dennison was 86% (and has been actually increasing since mid 2017). If anything, the base is even more vested in Dennison than before he was elected. On the other hand, approval among independents is 34% where it's been for most of Dennison's term. You can't win elections if the independents don't swing your way.

 

Presidential Approval Ratings

 

Other Republican politicians in any kind of swing district or state will start distancing themselves from their own records, and Dennison's, before the 2020 general election.

 

Percentages don't tell the whole story, though. From Brooking Institute:

 

As the following graph of Gallup polls indicates, both political parties find themselves less popular now than they did in 2004 with a substantial rise in those who identify as independents. For the Democrats, party identification peaked in Obama’s first term and then dropped in his second term. For Republicans, party identification took a sharp drop at the end of George W. Bush’s second term and never really recovered. The trend seems to have taken another drop after Trump’s election.

 

Dennison retains a high approval rate among those who still admit to being Republican, but that doesn't mean his support isn't shrinking. Nixon had similar numbers (36% approval) as late as August of 1973, and his disapproval number did not rise to match Dennison's 60% until October 1973. He resigned August 9, 1974. We have hope. B-)

Source: https://historyinpieces.com/research/nixon-approval-ratings

[johnu]

Doctors Say Using Tear Gas On Migrant Children Can Have Severe, Long-Lasting Effects

 

Dennison denied that tear gas was used on the children, despite photographs and videos that show it was.

 

Well, Dennison's denial is certainly undeniable proof for Fox Propaganda and Republicans. Forget the pictures and videos. Just remember, this is the president who had the largest inaugural crowd in the history of the world.

[Winstonm]

The Daily Beast:

 

Donald Trump, a princeling who was raised in luxury, never held accountable for any of his countless personal and business betrayals and failures, and who literally lived in a golden tower for most of his life, is not good with stress. His rage-tweeting shows us that he knows he can’t juggle all the crises steaming toward him, that he knows his astounding power to distort reality for his followers won’t shield him from the political, legal, and personal perils closing in on him.

 

Playtime is over, and Donald doesn't like it.

 

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

[jjbrr]

Cindy Hyde-Smith (R: 2018 – ):

 

• “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row."
  

 

Her predecessor, Thad Cochran (R: 1978 – 2018):

 

• One of 20 Senators who did not co-sponsor the Senate’s 2005 resolution that apologized to the victims and survivors of lynching for the chamber’s failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation.
  

 

His predecessor, James Eastland (D: 1941, 1943 – 1978):

 

• When questioned by President Lyndon Johnson on the kidnapping and murder of 3 Civil Rights activists: "Well, I don’t know…. I don’t believe there’s three missing…. I believe it’s a publicity stunt…. Who is it that harmed them? There’s no white organizations in that area of Mississippi. Who could possibly harm them?"
  

 

In between Eastland's terms, Wall Doxey, (1941-1943):

 

• Voted against a 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill when he was in the House of Representatives.
  

 

 

Eastland's predecessor, Pat Harrison (D: 1919 – 1941):

 

• Denounced the 1938 Anti-Lynching Bill for its “great inroads upon the police powers and sovereign rights of a State” and its “rape of the Constitution.”
  

 

His predecessor, James Vardaman (D: 1913 – 1919):

 

• “If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”
  

[Winstonm]

Cindy Hyde-Smith (R: 2018 – ):

 

• “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row."
  

 

Her predecessor, Thad Cochran (R: 1978 – 2018):

 

• One of 20 Senators who did not co-sponsor the Senate’s 2005 resolution that apologized to the victims and survivors of lynching for the chamber’s failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation.
  

 

His predecessor, James Eastland (D: 1941, 1943 – 1978):

 

• When questioned by President Lyndon Johnson on the kidnapping and murder of 3 Civil Rights activists: "Well, I don’t know…. I don’t believe there’s three missing…. I believe it’s a publicity stunt…. Who is it that harmed them? There’s no white organizations in that area of Mississippi. Who could possibly harm them?"
  

 

In between Eastland's terms, Wall Doxey, (1941-1943):

 

• Voted against a 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill when he was in the House of Representatives.
  

 

 

Eastland's predecessor, Pat Harrison (D: 1919 – 1941):

 

• Denounced the 1938 Anti-Lynching Bill for its “great inroads upon the police powers and sovereign rights of a State” and its “rape of the Constitution.”
  

 

His predecessor, James Vardaman (D: 1913 – 1919):

 

• “If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”
  

 

There is a reason the movie was titled "Mississippi Burning".

[Winstonm]

In case no one knows, Paul Manafort has been acting as a mole inside the Mueller investigation and passing information to Trump and his lawyers. This becomes critical:

 

From the Washington Post:

 

 

The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline

 

 

By Harry Litman November 28 at 4:04 PM

Harry Litman teaches constitutional law at the University of California at San Diego. He has served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and deputy assistant attorney general.

 

Following the implosion of Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III , a lawyer for President Trump casually announced that Manafort’s lawyers had been briefing Trump’s lawyers about his sessions with the Mueller team all along.

 

This revelation, far from routine, in fact is jaw-dropping — and it has significant legal and political implications.

 

First, and least, it represents another breach of the demolished cooperation agreement that Manafort entered into to avoid the expense and near-certain conviction in a second trial.

 

Some defense attorneys have asserted that it is common for cooperating witnesses to share information with other suspects (as we know the president is here) or putative defendants. Not so. Once a witness enters into a cooperation agreement with the government — which he does for the very valuable consideration of a potential reduction in sentence — he has agreed contractually to a full, no-holds-barred provision of information. The government in turn will frame questions and possibly share evidence with the witness, all of which reveal the government’s thinking. The universal understanding is that the witness will not run back and reveal the government’s case to potential suspects.

 

 

A witness is normally free to talk to defense attorneys if he chooses. A cooperator is not (and that holds whether it is expressly spelled out in the agreement).

 

The spectacular rise and fall of Paul Manafort

Before he joined the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort made a name for himself in the D.C. lobbying world, but his past caught up with him. (Dalton Bennett , Jon Gerberg, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)

 

Second, whatever Team Trump may assert, the conversations between some combination of Manafort, Trump and the lawyers for both of them were not privileged, and Mueller is entitled to know their contents.

 

Defendants are entitled to enter into privileged conversations with their own lawyers, and the government cannot force the attorney to reveal them. This is entirely proper and part of the constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel. A corollary to this principle permits co-defendants and potential defendants to share certain information — essentially the same information that would be shielded by the attorney-client privilege for either of them — on the grounds that they have a “common interest.” This interest is generally set out in a joint defense agreement, or JDA, which confirms the umbrella of covered discussions.

 

 

Crucially, however, the JDA can operate only among parties who , in fact, have a common interest. A defendant cannot simply pick and choose people he wants to talk to and thereafter claim that a conversation is privileged. And when Manafort entered into the cooperation agreement with the government, he ceased to have a common interest with other defendants, including the president, as a matter of law. As former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg put it, having signed with the Yankees, he couldn’t give scouting reports to the Red Sox.

 

Thus, Mueller is fully entitled to subpoena Manafort counsel Kevin Downing and whichever Trump counsel spoke with him (one trusts it wasn’t Emmet Flood, who is too savvy for such shenanigans) and force them to reveal every word of the discussions.

 

But that’s where political considerations possibly intercede. It is possible that Trump’s counselors bank on Mueller staying his hand to avoid loud (if bogus) cries of foul play from Trump apologists, renewed rants from Trump about a witch hunt and even, possibly, a refusal from acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker to permit the subpoenas to go forward.

 

 

Finally, the open pipeline between cooperator Manafort and suspect Trump may have been not only extraordinary but also criminal. On Manafort and Downing’s end, there is a circumstantial case for obstruction of justice. What purpose other than an attempt to “influence, obstruct, or impede” the investigation of the president can be discerned from Manafort’s service as a double agent? And on the Trump side, the communications emit a strong scent of illegal witness tampering (and possibly obstruction as well).

 

Proving those charges would require a fight. The lawyers would be expected to assert privilege, and cries of overreach would sound from the White House and pro-Trump journalists. Whitaker could impede or countermand the effort.

 

But it’s critical to understand the stakes of the battle. Even more than the president’s potential criminal liability, there is a set of burning questions about exactly what happened in 2016, the extent to which Russian efforts to influence the presidential election found purchase in the United States, and what part was played by high-level Trump campaign officials or the president himself. It is intolerable to consider that the truth of these consequential matters would be smothered and kept from the American people indefinitely. But that’s exactly what the president’s overall strategy aims to do, and with the support, at least tacitly, of a complicit still-Republican-majority — for now — Congress. Is there no one in the GOP with the guts to stand up to the president and the resolve to see that the truth will out?

[Winstonm]

TICK-TOCK

[y66]

From Why Historians Worry More About Trump Than Economists Do by Tyler Cowen at Bloomberg:

 

The dangers of the current political moment in the West — with its polarization, harsh rhetoric and growing hostility toward cosmopolitanism — are evident to historians and economists alike. But which group sees the situation as more grave? I suspect it is historians, and it is worth considering why.

 

To be sure, some of the disgruntlement of historians stems from their political orientation. Historians are relatively left-wing, so it is no surprise that they are hostile to an “alt-right” shift in the political discourse. During the 2016 campaign, the group Historians Against Trump received widespread publicity.

 

More fundamentally, however, historians stress the importance of contingency, that things really could have gone another way. The decisions of a solitary assassin or the outcome of a single battle can shift the course of history. Particular leadership decisions might have avoided or limited World War I. Or what if the Germans had not, in 1917, put Lenin on a train back into Russia? The Bolshevik Revolution might have been avoided and probably the entire course of history would have been different. A shrewder President Paul von Hindenburg might have prevented the rise of Adolf Hitler.

 

If you think about these questions enough, you can end up very nervous indeed. Historians have seen too many modest mistakes spiral out of control and turn into disasters.

 

Economists, in contrast, work more with general models than with concrete historical situations, and those models emphasize underlying structural forces. Economies have fairly set populations, birth rates, natural resources, capital stocks, savings rates, trading partners, and so on. So to an economist, the final outcomes are closer to necessary than contingent.

 

Economists also study “catch-up growth,” which holds that systems tend to be self-repairing. So if some resources are destroyed, GDP will fall but the system will produce new replacement resources more rapidly, just as a lobster might regrow a lopped-off arm. Catch-up growth tends to make economists less nervous about natural disasters or wartime losses, although of course we think it is better to avoid the resource destruction in the first place. Many of Japan’s major cities were bombed to oblivion in World War II, but in time they regained their former prominence.

 

Some economic models do emphasize contingency — for instance, how a small force could induce an economy to make a major shift from one equilibrium to another. To give an example, some amount of defense contracting in Silicon Valley later caused the area to blossom into a major technology center. But perhaps the same could have happened in some other regions of the U.S. And these economic models remain the exception rather than the rule, often criticized for the fact that, under some circumstances, they can predict almost anything.

 

Paul Krugman is the economist who has mounted probably the most consistent and virulent attack on President Donald Trump’s administration, even going so far as to suggest that it might destroy U.S. democracy. But Krugman is an avid reader of history, and he took his early inspiration from history and also science fiction, in particular Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, a tale of long-scale world history and the degree of its contingency. The notion that “history matters” also is an underlying theme of Krugman’s contributions to economic theory.

 

A more typical economist’s view is that Trump is promoting some bad policies with respect to trade and immigration and fiscal policy, but that most essential features of America are likely to persist. And when it comes to politics, economists of the “public choice” variety tend to see outcomes as controlled by a fairly tight structure of voter preferences and interest groups, variables which a president can change only at the margin and with great effort.

 

So which perspective is correct — the historian’s or the economist’s? It is hard to counter the historian’s contention that contingent events can shift the course of a nation or the world. That said, the underlying fundamentals seem to have greater predictive power. The U.S. economy seems fairly robust, the investigation into Russian interference in the election is proceeding, and the courts have repeatedly stood up to Trump. The system seems to be holding up.

 

I’m not going to deny that the world is sustaining damage from some recent electoral results, including Brexit. But as an economist, I’m still going to say that progress mostly remains on track.

 

Nonetheless, I find it striking that the number of people studying history in American colleges is plummeting, even more than in the other humanities and indeed all of the other measured fields of study (the fastest-growing major: exercise studies). Perhaps in a time of Instagram and Snapchat, history doesn’t have the allure it once did.

 

One can be a loyal economist and still find this concerning. In the language of my chosen profession, there is a need for a marginal increase of interest in historical reasoning.

[Chas_P]

TICK-TOCK

Alan Dershowitz

 

[johnu]

Russian official questions 'true reason' Dennison canceled meeting with Putin

 

Das Vedanya. A nice helping of Kompromat for Putin's puppet.

[Winstonm]

There’s little dispute that Rosa Maria Ortega did in fact break the law. Ortega came to the United States from Mexico as a baby and was living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident. Although it’s against the law for non-citizens to vote in Texas, Ortega registered to vote in 2002 as a Republican and then cast ballots multiple times over more than a decade.

 

Huffington Post has found those millions of illegal voters. :lol:

[Winstonm]

Alan Dershowitz

 

Prior to Manafort’s decision to “flip” and cooperate with Mueller, he entered into a joint defense agreement with Trump, which is a common tool used by subjects of federal criminal investigations to ensure that their attorneys can exchange information while maintaining attorney-client privilege.

 

A common provision of those agreements, whether they’re written or not, is that if one defendant subsequently agrees to cooperate with the government, he is required to notify everyone else who is part of the agreement. Once someone flips, as Manafort did, his interests are adverse to those of everyone else under investigation because the prosecutors will require him to cooperate against everyone else. For that reason, communications between Manafort and other subjects of Mueller’s investigation aren’t privileged.

[Winstonm]

Finally, a definitive answer from Daily Kos:

 

We began by selecting a set of search topics that we believed might be especially common among men concerned about living up to the ideals of manhood: “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.”

 

We found that support for Trump in the 2016 election was higher in areas that had more searches for topics such as “erectile dysfunction.”

 

And I thought they were all just a bunch of dicks. Turns out I left off the critical adjective. :P

[y66]

From Paul Ryan is leaving Congress in the most fitting way possible. He’s doing what he does best: saying stuff about policy that’s not true by Matt Yglesias at Vox:

 

Paul Ryan is heading out of Congress the way he served: with a blizzard of false statements about substantive matters of public policy.

 

That started with Thursday’s bizarre exit interview with the Washington Post’s Paul Kane, in which Ryan claimed to regret congressional inaction on debt and immigration when he was, in fact, personally responsible for congressional inaction on debt and immigration.

 

Now comes a tweet in which he offers the view that the policy vision that made him famous — the Roadmap for America’s Future — has been enacted into law under the Trump administration.

 

Paul Ryan ✔ @SpeakerRyan When I was chair of @HouseBudgetGOP, we began to change the debate with the Roadmap for America’s Future. Now, all these years later, those early ideas of tax reform have become law and hundreds of millions of Americans are better for it. 11:38 AM - Nov 30, 2018

One can see why Ryan would like to believe that this is true.

 

The Roadmap was, after all, the intellectual project of his lifetime. And in its pursuit, Ryan did a lot of things (like risking America’s role in the international financial system, harming the economy with ill-timed austerity budgets, and threatening the basic fabric of the American constitutional order by relentlessly covering for Trump) that earned him a lot of criticism. And in the end, basically none of what Ryan advocated for has come to pass.

A con-man to the end.

[y66]

From There’s something very weird going on with this House election in North Carolina by Dylan Scott at Vox:

 

North Carolina election officials have declined to certify the winner of the state’s Ninth Congressional District election, after allegations were made suggesting absentee ballots may have been tampered with.

 

Elections officials and Democrats have been careful not to allege any specific wrongdoing so far. But the allegations suggest some kind of scheme, undertaken by people supporting the GOP campaign, to influence the results of an election ultimately decided by less than 1,000 votes.

 

According to the votes as currently counted, Republican Mark Harris beat Democrat Dan McCready by a little more than 900 votes to become the next Congress member from the Ninth. But earlier this week, the state board of elections unanimously agreed it would not certify the election results, making vague references to “unfortunate activities” that raised doubts about their veracity.

 

Some specific irregularities were later revealed in sworn affidavits sent by Democratic attorneys to the state board. Multiple voters described an unidentified woman coming to voters’ houses and taking their absentee ballots. Some ballots were uncompleted; the woman promised to finish filling them out. In other affidavits, voters alleged that a local political operative was working for the Harris campaign on absentee ballots and that he would be paid a bonus if Harris beat McCready.

 

Furthermore, political scientists in the state have noted that the Ninth District had an unusually high number of mail-in absentee ballots requested but then not returned to be counted. Almost one in four of those requested absentee ballots were not returned in the Ninth, substantially higher in than any other North Carolina congressional district.

 

“Currently, there is a serious question as to whether ‘irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness,’” John Wallace, an attorney working for the state Democratic Party, said in a letter sent this week to the board of elections.

 

The elections board voted on Friday to hold a hearing on the evidence of voter tampering before December 21. Under North Carolina law, the evidence could eventually allow the board to call a new election, no matter the number of ballots in question, state experts say. The midterms might not be over just yet.

[Winstonm]

From Yes magazine concerning deeply red Oklahoma's shift toward Democrats.

 

Trump voters cite racial resentments, not economic loss, as what drives them.

 

The Republican party has serious problems going forward as their base of older white evangelicals dies out piecemeal while new voters overwhelmingly chose the Democratic party.