World, Show Trump (and the Kids) the Money!

 

Trump towers, Trump golf courses, trump steaks would be valueless if separated from DJT.  He, his gaudy bragadoccio are the brand,are the value.  And now as he has said "the brand is hot".  The Trump presidency goes beyond conflict of interest.  It is monetizing the presidency. - gwc

World, Show Trump (and the Kids) the Money!

by Josh Marshall

The point is that there's no way to sell this operation to Larry Stein and have these gaudy monstrosities become Stein Towers. The value disappears or almost entirely disappears once the name goes. The value of this business is inextricably tied to Trump's (or his immediate family members) owning them and using his name. As we speak he's doing precisely the same thing, just with the value of the Trump name turbocharged with the new "President of the United States" brand which generations of Americans have been building up for almost a quarter of a millennium.

Fei Chang Dao: Court Upholds Jail Time for Statements Critical of the Dead Heroes of Wolf Tooth Mountain

Fei Chang Dao: Court Upholds Jail Time for Statements Critical of the Dead Heroes of Wolf Tooth Mountain

As previously noted on this blog, on October 19, 2016, China's Supreme People's Court published a piece on its website entitled "People's Courts Come to the Defense of the 'Five Heroes of Wolf Tooth Mountain' and Other Model Cases Involving the Right of Human Dignity of Heroic Figures" (人民法院依法保护“狼牙山五壮士”等英雄人物人格权益典型案例). That article explained why People’s Courts in Beijing had been correct in holding Hong Zhenkuai liable for defaming two dead soldiers. The defamation took place in two articles written by Hong and published in 2013 on the Caijing website and in the Yanhuang Chunqiu magazine. For more on this, see Supreme People's Court Website Explains Why Courts Found Author Guilty of Defaming Dead Heroes.

The People Chose Hillary Clinton. Now We Need To Stop Donald Trump From Trashing Our Democracy. - The Daily Beast

The People Chose Hillary Clinton. Now We Need To Stop Donald Trump From Trashing Our Democracy. - The Daily Beast
by Michael Tomasky

As Yale scholar Akhil Reed Amar wrote before the election in Time, the Electoral College was a compromise over slavery. In a system of direct election, votes in the North would vastly outnumber votes in the South, because the North had more propertied white males and the South had more slaves, who of course couldn’t vote. But the Electoral College in effect gave slaves three-fifths of a vote. Consequently, writes Amar, Pennsylvania had 10 percent more white males right after 1800 but 20 percent fewer Electoral College votes. As David Frum tweeted the other day, “‘The people’ wanted Hillary. The compromises of 1787 got us Trump.” The thread tying 1787 and Trump together? Four letters, starts with “r,” rhymes with disgrace.

A Reflexive Liar in Command: Guidelines for the Media - The Atlantic

A Reflexive Liar in Command: Guidelines for the Media - The Atlantic
by James Fallows
***Being back in China in the U.S.-election aftermath naturally leads to thoughts about how societies function when there is no agreed-on version of “reality,” public knowledge, or news.

We take for granted that this was a challenge for Soviet citizens back in the Cold War days, when they relied on samizdat for non-government-authorized reports and criticisms. Obviously it’s a big issue for China’s public now. But its most consequential effects could be those the United States is undergoing, which have led to the elevation of the least prepared, most temperamentally unfit, least public-spirited person ever to assume the powers of the U.S. presidency.

The United States is seeing both a chronic and an acute new version of this public-information problem. The chronic version, recognized but nowhere close to being solved, is the rise of separate fact-universes into which different segments of society silo themselves—occurring at the same time as the “normal” news media are struggling against economic and other pressures.

The acute version is the emergence as president-elect of a man whose nature as a liar is outside what our institutions are designed to deal with. Donald Trump either cannot tell the difference between truth and lies, or he knows the difference but does not care. Tiniest example: On a single day during the campaign, Trump claimed that the National Football League had sent him a letter complaining that the presidential-debate schedule conflicted with NFL games (which the NFL immediately denied), and then he said the Koch brothers had begged him to accept their donations (which they also flat-out denied).

Most people would hesitate before telling easily disprovable lies like these, much as shoplifters would hesitate if the store owner is looking at them. Most people are fazed if caught in an outright lie. 
But in these cases and others Trump never blinked.***

Socialism for white people – Political Orphans

Middle class and working class people (to use inadequate prevailing terms), especially if they're white see their government benefits as no burden.  My home mortgage interest deduction is not a cost - just a break from supporting "them"; same for my untaxed health insurance ).   Those are just earned benefits - not like those Section 8 and food stamp payments to the lazy, etc. Chris Ladd, a conservative refugee from the GOP views it in highly racialized terms - which I think are mostly right since the `middle class' is mostly white and we are now suffering from a white voters uprising.  - gwc
Socialism for white people – Political Orphans
by Chris Ladd
*** When it seems like people are voting against their interests, you have probably failed to understand their interests. We cannot begin to understand this election until we understand the power and reach of socialism for white people.

Like most of my neighbors I have a good job in the private sector. Ask my neighbors about the cost of the welfare programs they enjoy and you will be greeted by baffled stares. All that we have is “earned” and we have no use for government support. Nevertheless, taxpayers fund our retirement saving, health insurance, primary, secondary, and advanced education, daycare, commuter costs, and even our mortgages at a staggering public cost. Socialism for white people is all-enveloping, benevolent, invisible, and entirely reserved for the “deserving.”

My family’s health insurance costs about $20k a year, of which we pay only $4k. The rest is subsidized by taxpayers. You read that right. Like virtually everyone else on my block who isn’t old enough for Medicare or employed by the government, my family is covered by private health insurance subsidized by taxpayers at a stupendous public cost. Well over 90% of White households earning over the white median income (about $75k) almost universally carried health insurance even before the Affordable Care Act. White socialism is nice.

Companies can deduct 100% of the cost of their employees’ health insurance. That results in roughly a $500bn annual transfer of funds from the state and federal treasuries to insurers to provide coverage for the Americans least in need of assistance. America pays about as much to subsidize my private healthcare as we spend annually on Medicaid. This is one of the defining features of white socialism, the most generous benefits go to those who are best suited to provide for themselves. Those benefits are not limited to health care.

When I buy a house for my family, or a vacation home, the interest I pay on the mortgage is deductible up to a million dollars of debt. That costs the treasury about $75bn a year, about what we spend to fund the food stamp program. My retirement savings are also tax deductible, diverting another $75bn from government revenues. Other tax preferences carve out special treatment for child care expenses, college savings, commuter costs (your suburban tax credit), local taxes, and other exemptions.

By funding government programs with tax credits rather than spending, we create an enormous social safety net that grows ever more generous as household incomes rise. It is important to note though that you need not be wealthy to participate. All you need to gain access to socialism for white people is a good corporate or government job. That fact helps explain how this welfare system took shape sixty years ago, why it was originally (and still overwhelmingly) white, and why Trump voters backed their candidate instead of Bernie Sanders. Blue collar voters are not interested in democratic socialism. They want to restore their access to a more generous and dignified program of white socialism.

In the years after World War II, the western democracies that had not already done so adopted universal social safety net programs. These included health care, retirement and other benefits. President Truman introduced his plan for universal health coverage in 1945. It would have worked much like Social Security, imposing a tax to fund a universal insurance pool. His plan went nowhere.***

Conway Continues Public Attack On Mitt Romney (VIDEO)

Conway Continues Public Attack On Mitt Romney (VIDEO)
by Caitlin McNeal
Subjugation's Latin root  is "under the yoke".  The Roman army made the officers of defeated armies crawl under the yokes of oxen to make clear that they were completely defeated: just beasts of burden now.
What Kellyanne Conway fails to understand is that Trump here has a chance to subjugate his predecessor - the "choke artist" Mitt Romney.  In this case the ritual is the oath of submission Romney must take in order to be the United States Secretary of State - a job he surely craves. It is not ideology but the need to subjugate that drives Trump.  Coway, speaking out of turn, endangers her own position.  That is what Conway, et al. fail to grasp.  - GWC

El Yuma: Trump v. Obama v. Trudeau

El Yuma: Trump v. Obama v. Trudeau
by Ted Henken (Professor at Baruch College/CUNY)
Trump v. Obama v. Trudeau: Three very different statements on Fidel Castro's passing 

This Is Not the Natural State of Things

Not your ordinary journalist, Josh Marshall - founder and editor of Talking Points Memo - is a prolific writer and thinker of broad scope.  This piece which he just republished captures the dangers of the current moment.  It may not last only a moment, but be the beginning of a period of profound discord. - gwc
This Is Not the Natural State of Things//Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall  first published July 14, 2016

***I believe generally in what Democrats believe in rather than what Republicans believe in. It informs almost everything I've written in almost twenty years as a professional writer about American politics. But both have been able to govern the country within a broad consensus of what we consider acceptable behavior. Trump represents something quite different. The kind of menace he represents is amplified by the rise of complacent instability and reckless behavior we see today in Europe, in the conflagration in the Middle East and the still distant but rising specter of great power confrontation on the borders of Russia and in East Asia. The belief that we can roll the dice with no consequences, that we can provoke and act out with no consequences is a dangerous illusion. We are indulging that illusion along with many other peoples across the globe. But there are consequences. They can come upon us suddenly, like a mugger in the dark and then multiply and spin out of control.

The Guardian view on Fidel Castro: man of history | Editorial | World news | The Guardian

The Guardian view on Fidel Castro: man of history | Editorial | World news | The Guardian
Recovering the figure of Fidel Castro from the legacy of the failures of communism, his own chequered reputation, the hours-long flights of rhetorical bombast and hipster beard is no easy task. One should situate him in the political and intellectual setting of 20th-century Latin American anti-colonialism rather than seeing him through the eyes of the 21st century. Castro’s passing sees the departure of one of the giants of the cold war era and a revolutionary guerilla leader. He must be judged by the conditions that made him possible, but not indulged by them. He emerged victorious in a battle against a brutal and corrupt US-friendly regime at a time when democracy had yet to reach most of the Caribbean or indeed what we now know of as the developing world. Although his brother Raul assumed presidential powers in 2006 before getting the official title in 2008, modern-day Cuba was built by Fidel Castro. The early years saw him embrace faraway Soviet Union and reject the United States next door, expropriating American assets in the name of his revolution. Castro’s alliance with Moscow brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. Yet he survived – and thrived on – the brinkmanship, even if the world very nearly did not.

The slow-motion decline: Resisting the gradual erosion of democratic institutions under President Trump - Salon.com

The slow-motion decline: Resisting the gradual erosion of democratic institutions under President Trump - Salon.com
by Simon Maloy

***The bulk of Donald Trump’s political life prior to capturing the presidency was devoted to undermining the established institutions of democracy: from the campaign to destroy Barack Obama’s legitimacy as president to his unrelenting hostility towards the press to his pernicious insistences that the election was being “rigged” against him. Now he will have all the levers of the presidency available to him to continue this crusade to erode public confidence in the very political and social institutions that are supposed to keep him in check.

VIDEOIT'S EXPERIENCE VS. LOYALTY WITH TRUMP'S STATE PICK

There have been numerous entreaties from politicians of both parties to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and afford him a chance to govern responsibly. But there is nothing in his background to indicate that he is interested or capable of behaving as a responsible chief executive. And nothing he’s done as president-elect should reassure anyone that he’s planning to change.

Trump is sitting on an unprecedentedly massive conflict of interest in the form of a sprawling business empire from which he has so far refused to disassociate himself. The Trump transition team’s work to set up the incoming administration has already been compromised by Trump’s business interests. The advisers and lieutenants Trump is appointing to positions of authority have two common traits: They are loyalists, and they enable Trump’s worst instincts. His chief strategist is a champion of white nationalism, and his potential Homeland Security secretary has plans to reinstitute a registry of Muslim immigrants. Trump’s national security adviser considers the Islamic faith — all of it, not just the radicalized fringes — to be illegitimate and akin to a “cancer.” Even the supposedly “mainstream” staffers Trump has appointed, like chief of staff-designate Reince Priebus, are giving a soft embraceto this extremism.***

Fidel Castro: Memories of a Lost Time //John Judis //Talking Points Memo

Fidel Castro: Memories of a Lost Time //Talking Points Memo
by John Judis
Fidel Castro: Memories of a Lost Time //Talking Points Memo

by John Judis

I am not going to try to assess Fidel Castro’s historical significance. I’ll leave that to people who know the history of Latin America better than I do. But I want to make one historical and a personal comment.
The New York Times subheads its decent story about Castro, “The Man Who Brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere.” That’s entirely untrue. Well before Castro and Che Guevara stepped on the world stage, the U.S. was involved in overthrowing governments in Latin America on the grounds that they were too close to “communism.”

In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup in Guatemala to overthrow its democratically elected social democratic government, whose labor reforms had run afoul of the United Front Co. In its place, the US installed a military dictatorship. Castro was the first Latin America leader to defy the dominance of American corporations in the region and to get away with it. That’s a big reason why he remains a hero in Latin America to people who have and had no love for Soviet communism nor supported the kind of dictatorship that Castro erected in Cuba.

The Cuban revolution was also hugely important to the development of a new left in the United States. It was the first crack in the façade that liberal Cold Warriors had erected to justify American intervention abroad in place in places like Guatemala and Iran and contributed to the early skepticism that many of us had about American intervention in Vietnam. In my own case, I’d trace my first inkling that something was wrong with US foreign policy to an article in the very early ‘60s that the New Republic (well before the Marty Peretz era) published about the Cuban revolution.

Castro was also the reason for my first big fight with my father over politics. He and my mother were visiting me in Berkeley in late 1964, I think, and my girlfriend and I had a photo of Castro, looking somewhat like Jesus, on the wall of our apartment. My father saw it and ripped it down. We didn’t talk for a year after that. He was sort of a Richard J. Daley Democrat, but I had never seen him agitated about politics before. I recall that just to say what a very big deal Fidel Castro was to people like me in the early 1960s.

Balkinization: The Uncomfortable View from 1824

In 1824 Andrew Jackson won a 41% plurality of votes but not a majority of the electoral college (sound familiar?)  The election was thrown into the House of Representatives as the Constitution provides.  John Quincy Adams became President.  Accusing the "establishment" of corruption Jacksonian Democrats surged in 1826.  In 1828 he won 56%.  If there were a similar Electoral College vote now the debacle would haunt us.  - GWC
Balkinization: The Uncomfortable View from 1824
by Mark Graber (U of Maryland Law School)

The lesson 1824 should teach 2016 is that the approximately 47% of voters who cast ballots for Donald Trump on election day is the most fundamental crisis of our time rather the accidental outcome that a person grossly unfit for the presidency was elected this time. A nation in which 47% of the voters are willing to vote for a person patently unqualified to be president of the United States (or Treasurer of the Linden Community Civil Association for that matter) is a nation in deep constitutional trouble regardless of whether by accidents of timing and weather that candidate wins or loses. And, under the rules, the candidate won. Claims that Clinton “really” won the election because she won the majority of the popular vote are the political equivalent of northern claims before the Civil War that Southerners only gained control of the national government because their representation in Congress and the Electoral College was augmented by the three-fifths clause. True, but beside the point.

David Runciman · Is this how democracy ends?: A Failed State? · LRB 1 December 2016

David Runciman · Is this how democracy ends?: A Failed State? · LRB 1 December 2016
(David Runciman teaches at Cambridge, UK)
*** It is sometimes said that Trump appeals to his supporters because he represents the authoritarian father figure who they want to shield them from all the bad people out there making their lives hell. That can’t be right: Trump is a child, the most childish politician I have encountered in my lifetime. The parent in this relationship is the American state itself, which allows the voters to throw a tantrum and join forces with the worst behaved kid in the class, safe in the knowledge that the grown-ups will always be there to pick up the pieces.

This is where the real risks lie. It is not possible to keep behaving like this without damaging the basic machinery of democratic government. It takes an extraordinarily fine-tuned political intelligence to target popular anger at the parts of the state that need reform while leaving intact the parts that make that reform possible. Trump – and indeed Brexit – are not that. They are the bluntest of instruments, indiscriminately shaking the foundations with nothing to offer by way of support. Under these conditions, the likeliest response is for the grown-ups in the room to hunker down, waiting for the storm to pass. While they do, politics atrophies and necessary change is put off by the overriding imperative of avoiding systemic collapse. The understandable desire to keep the tanks off the streets and the cashpoints open gets in the way of tackling the long-term threats we face. Fake disruption followed by institutional paralysis, and all the while the real dangers continue to mount. Ultimately, that is how democracy ends.

Same Sex Unions and the Catholic Church: How Law and Doctrine Evolve - ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Same Sex Unions and the Catholic Church: How Law and Doctrine Evolve - ReligiousLeftLaw.com
by Professor Charles Reid (University of St. Thomas Law School)

Reid's article on same-sex unions and the Catholic Church is downloadable for free here. This is the abstract:

This Article makes the case for reforming the Catholic Church’s law and teaching on the topic of same-sex unions. It is divided into two large parts. Part I surveys the present state of the Church’s rules governing same-sex relations. It is further subdivided into three subsections: the first examining the formation and reinforcement of the anti-sodomy norm in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the second reviewing the jurisprudence of the Roman Rota (one of the Vatican’s two supreme appellate tribunals) on homosexuality; the third glancing briefly at more affirming recent statements of Pope Francis and leading Cardinals and bishops. The second part then states the case for reform. It begins by recapitulating the natural-law case against same-sex unions, especially as articulated by Pope John Paul II; it then focuses on personalist philosophy to build a case grounded in human dignity and human rights; it looks to see how arguments grounded on dignity, respect, and human rights were used in legislative and constitutional reform in the United States and in three Catholic countries; and it returns again to natural law. Building on the premise that natural law requires an understanding of nature, the Article reviews the state of the science on same-sex attraction. It closes with a reflection on the many ways the Church has dynamically reinterpreted its normative structure and proposes that reform of the law on same-sex unions would be in keeping with other large historical shifts in the Church’s law and doctrine.

Hillary Clinton and the Populist Revolt - The New Yorker

This is a long read.  The opening doesn't tell you much - except that he will treat everyone with respect...except for Donald Trump.
He recognizes that Trumpism is a rebellion against Republican establishment conservatism and liberal  Democrats.  There's a lot of recognition the "strangers in their own land" laments of Trump voters.  And recognition that the Democratic Party has lost its (white) working class base.  [Why is another question: to me it is the cybernetic revolution and the marginalization of trade unions, envy, and racism.]

I can't, not at this hour at least, capture his argument except to say read it.  It's behind a paywall, I think.  But the long essay is in the October 3 issue of the New Yorker.  And keep an eye out for his name: George Packer.
Hillary Clinton and the Populist Revolt - The New Yorker
by George Packer  October 24, 2016

***I sat down across from [Hillary Clinton]. With only a few weeks left until the election, I wanted to ask her about the voters she’s had the most trouble winning. Why were so many downwardly mobile white Americans supporting Donald Trump?

“It’s ‘Pox on both your houses,’ ” Clinton said. “It was certainly a rejection of every other Republican running. So pick the guy who’s the outsider, pick the guy who’s giving you an explanation—in my view, a trumped-up one, not convincing—but, nevertheless, people are hungry for that.” Voters needed a narrative for their lives, she said, including someone to blame for what had gone wrong. “Donald Trump came up with a fairly simple, easily understood, and to some extent satisfying story. And I think we Democrats have not provided as clear a message about how we see the economy as we need to.” She continued, “We need to get back to claiming the economic mantle—that we are the ones who create the jobs, who provide the support that is needed to get more fairness into the economy.”

Clinton has given a lot of thought to economic policy. She wants to use tax incentives and other enticements to nudge corporations into focussing less on share price and more on “long-term investments,” in research, equipment, and workers. She said, “We have come to heavily favor the financial markets over the otherwise productive markets,” including manufacturing, “which have been pushed to a narrower place within the over-all economy while an enormous amount of intelligence, effort, and dollars went into spinning transactions.” As she plunged into the details, her eyes widened, her color rose, and her finger occasionally gave the table a thump for emphasis. “I want to really marry the public and the private sector,” she said. Her ideas are progressive but incrementalist: raise the federal minimum wage to twelve dollars an hour, but not fifteen; support free trade, as long as workers’ rights are protected and corporations aren’t allowed to evade regulations.

The thumps got harder when Clinton turned to the Democratic Party. In her acceptance speech at the Philadelphia Convention, she said, “Americans are willing to work—and work hard. But right now an awful lot of people feel there is less and less respect for the work they do. And less respect for them, period. Democrats, we are the party of working people, but we haven’t done a good enough job showing we get what you’re going through.” One didn’t often hear that thought from Democratic politicians, and I asked Clinton what she had meant by it.

Don't Forget It Happened - Russian interference in our election

Don't Forget It Happened
by Josh Marshall

This news should not surprise you if you've been reading TPM over the last year. It's something I've discussed a number of times in different contexts. But we're now getting the first comprehensive studies showing that Russian propaganda campaigns played a major role in spawning and in other cases simply spreading "fake news" stories aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton and aiding Donald Trump.

This Washington Post piece does a nice job in explaining some of the patterns which have emerged.

And So it Begins: Normalizing the Election

The  principal blame for our current moment of jeopardy is not with Hillary Clinton, or the DNC.  Nor is it with the lying, racist bullying of Donald Trump.  This is a democracy with unprecedented ways to gather information.  Let's look at the voters.  As media critic Neal Gabler observes:

"[Trump voters] were not all reprehensible, any more than Clinton voters were all godly. Many of Trump’s folks just wanted to blow up the system, and then see what happens. But, yes, most of them were voting for racial and religious hegemony too. Let’s not pretend otherwise."

And So it Begins: Normalizing the Election
by Neal Gabler

It didn’t take a clairvoyant to predict that President-elect Donald Trump would be almost instantly normalized by the press since he had already been normalized by them when he was a candidate. After a “60 Minutes” interview, Lesley Stahl declared him “more subdued and serious.” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported approvingly upon the transition as if proposed White House counselor Steve Bannon and proposed attorney general Jeff Sessions, two men with racism in their pasts, were ordinary appointments. Mitchell’s colleague at NBC, Chuck Todd, chastised Senator Harry Reid, after his eloquent and impassioned attack on Trump, for being “too harsh.” And so the media fell into line. To which we can only invoke John Oliver’s emphatic post-election pronouncement: “THIS IS NOT NORMAL.”
Under normal circumstances a candidate who incited his supporters to attack the press might raise First Amendment issues. But these are not normal circumstances…

That, however, is only one of the media’s derelictions. Far more serious is their normalization not of Trump but of his voters. The former is typical cowardice under threat of reactionary populism. The latter is an endorsement of reactionary populism that may have far-reaching consequences for whether the country can ever be reunited after having been torn asunder.
******
Under normal circumstances a candidate who incited his supporters to attack the press might raise First Amendment issues. But these are not normal circumstances, so Trump can target the press with impunity. Their only recourse is to make peace, which is what they seemed to be doing when they met with Trump this weekend, and peace means less rigorous coverage. The meeting, according to accounts, didn’t go well, but it didn’t have to. Trump bullied the press, and they stewed. We all know how this turns out. No matter how much the media may protest and show false bravado, he will thrash them into submission. Always remember: the news media are in the eyeball business, not the information business. And Trump gets eyeballs.
*****


What Taibbi and others discovered is that the east coast and west coast media elites should have known what was brewing. They should have known about the festering resentments. They were so cocksure of themselves that they wound up missing the big story.

All too true. But in saying that, the media also let the Trump supporters off the hook. It wasn’t their fault that they bought Trump’s vicious bigotry. It was Clinton’s fault and the Democrats’ fault and the Republicans’ fault and the media’s fault and everybody else’s fault. Give the American people a break. That, in a nutshell, is the new conventional wisdom.

You hear that wisdom everywhere now. I revere Jon Stewart, but in his brief post-election reaction to Charlie Rose on CBS Morning News, he said two things that I think are demonstrably wrong. First: “I don’t believe we are fundamentally a different country today than we were two weeks ago or than we were a month ago,” and he cited anti-Semitic remarks by Nixon and LBJ to make the point that anti-Semitism was alive and well in the White House long before Trump. But the point – the fundamental difference – is that Nixon and LBJ made those remarks closeted in the White House. They didn’t make them publicly to rouse the latent hatred in their fellow Americans. Trump has. Second: “There is now this idea that anyone who voted for him [Trump] has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric.” And he went on to say how he “loved” some Trump supporters he knew, who weren’t really racists. They were just angry about their rising insurance premiums.

I doubt it. Unless you hold the terribly condescending view that Trump voters – “low-information” voters, as they were sneeringly called — had no idea what he actually said, they were not voting against insurance premiums or other economic difficulties. They were voting against a world, including one with rising insurance premiums, that they didn’t want, didn’t understand, and, above all, didn’t control. He is right in this: They were not all reprehensible, any more than Clinton voters were all godly. Many of Trump’s folks just wanted to blow up the system, and then see what happens. But, yes, most of them were voting for racial and religious hegemony too. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

KEEP READING

Trouble on the Exchanges — Does the United States Owe Billions to Health Insurers? — NEJM

The Affordable Care Act promised - for a three year period - that the federal government would compensate insurers who lost money on the exchanges.  But Congress refused to appropriate the money.  The government found a way to fill the gap by tax credits.  Republicans, seeking to kill the ACA, banned compensatory payments to insurers.  
That  (plus low enrollment by the young who were undeterred by the tax penalty) is why insurers have withdrawn from the exchanges.  Another case of Republican blaming Obama for a a failure that they engineered.- gwc
Trouble on the Exchanges — Does the United States Owe Billions to Health Insurers? — NEJM: Perspective from The New England Journal of Medicine

Not the Time for Reconciliation // Commonweal

Hillary Clinton plurality over Donald Trump-2,017,563 11/22/16
This year's white voting insurgency was surprising in its strength and vitriol.  80% of evangelicals.  60% of white Catholics.  They voted for Trump.  Why?  the picture above tells the story.  White people voted white - in unusually high numbers.  Why?  Economic anxiety, cultural disruption are the most common refrain.  But race is the driving force.  White people voting white regardless of their religious doctrines.  Even though they get abortions and use birth control at rates comparable to the rest of the population, anti-abortion absolutism relieves them of any obligation to admit to voting white.

We have a political system inherited from the days of slavery that favors rural voters.  And that generally means white voters.  Maine, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Delaware, Alaska, and Vermont have populations less than 1 million. Total 4,428,892.  total number of U.S. Senators: 18.  California population: 37,253,956.  Senators: 2

Not the Time for Reconciliation

First Confront the Danger of Trump

by Stephen J. Pope November 21, 2016 

Following the bitter presidential election, many Catholic pastors and religious writers are calling for reconciliation. I think this call is premature. Yes, we ought to love one another no matter what the circumstances. But willing the good to everyone does not mean we ought to contrive a cheap reconciliation that ignores the danger presented by Donald Trump [1] not only to our own society but also to the wider world. Christian reconciliation involves a renewal of broken relationships based upon shared acknowledgement of truth and mutual respect for the claims of justice. If we want peace, Pope Paul VI observed more succinctly, we must work for justice.

We must face the fact that if Catholics had refrained from voting for Trump, he would not be the president-elect today. Millions of Catholics helped to elect someone who has displayed contempt for much of what lies at the heart of Christian morality—compassion, forgiveness, humility, fidelity, and patience. His campaign proposals run directly contrary to core values affirmed by Catholic social teachings—solidarity, the preferential option for the poor, the common good, stewardship of the planet, and the intrinsic dignity of every person, regardless of race, religion, or gender. Most striking is his constant denigration of and contempt for society’s so-called “losers”—precisely those to whom Jesus paid the most attention.

The Church will have trouble acting as a source of reconciliation unless its members can engage in serious conversation about truth, justice, and the common good. Right now the laity is sharply divided. Catholics are 23 percent of the electorate, and 52 percent of Catholic voters cast their vote for Trump, whom many suspect is a racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic bully[2]. Sixty percent of white Catholics voted for him, as did 56 percent of Catholics who go to church regularly. Trump was supported not just by “low-information” Catholics, but also by “high-information” Catholics; by college-educated white male Catholics along with working-class Catholics. Latino Catholics were the one bright spot.

Many of Trump’s Catholic supporters presumably found his callousness and cruelty to be “personally distasteful,” but not objectionable enough to make them repudiate him. Yet if we vote for the candidate we have to take responsibility for supporting the whole package, not just the particular traits or policies we happen to like. Catholic social ethics recognizes the importance of jobs at a living wage, affordable health care, and national security, but insists that we ought not to seek these goods by unjust means or in any way by dehumanizing others. Christian identity makes more fundamental claims on us than does American identity. Many Catholics either don’t know about or don’t want to apply this principle to their electoral decision-making.

KEEP READING

How the Vote Broke, in Historical Perspective - The Atlantic

How the Vote Broke, in Historical Perspective - The Atlantic

***In California,[Clinton] will nearly double Trump's tally, and out-poll Obama (the 2008 and 2012 version) by about three percentage points. She will receive nine million plus votes in California. These are the votes pushing her national total two million and more votes past that of the President-elect.

She will not be inaugurated two months hence, not in virtue of a pitiful campaign. She wasn’t perfect, and sometimes not very good, but she received support from enough of the republic to win the office in any universe not governed by an 18th century compromise with the slave-owning aristocrats of the Carolinas and Virginia.

She has 2.5 million more votes than the person who will be inaugurated. That is not a close margin.

This is what a democratic crisis looks like.***

Michael Moore, Who Predicted Trump Win, Calls for Democratic Party Takeover | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Michael Moore, Who Predicted Trump Win, Calls for Democratic Party Takeover | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
November 10, 2016

1. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage, and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).

Let's try to get this all done by noon today.

Farewell, America - Neal Gabler -BillMoyers.com

Neal Gabler holds out little hope.   I don't disagree with those who report on why millions of Americans - especially white Americans,  especially white men - are frustrated by stagnation and other economic woes.  But nothing justifies the thousands in the Trump crowds who chanted "build the wall" and "lock her up", jeering at reporters, etc.  And of course the political system really is rigged - against the cities and populous states - against us!  As of today Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead is 1,750,000 and counting. -gwc

Farewell, America - BillMoyers.com
by Neal Gabler (2X winner of the LA Times book award, and the Time magazine non-fiction book of the year)

America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:

MORE ON MEDIA

The Media and the Earthquake

BY NEAL GABLER | NOVEMBER 8, 2016

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”

 
I hunt for that affirming flame.

 KEEP READING

Identity Politics and Its Defenders //David Leonhardt

As Hillary Clinton's plurality marched toward 2 million what to do?  The short answer is we're stuck because rural areas with thin population are strongly favored by the Constitution (which so many revere while I agree with William Lloyd Garrison that it is a pact with the devil).
Many - like Bernie Sanders- believe that he or a class warrior like elizabeth Warren would have won.  But to accept that you have to assume that economic inequality and insecurity drove white rural voters choices.  But Sanders renunciation of "the billionaire class" makes it hard to say he would have succeeded when the political majority voted for a vulgar `billionaire'.
I'm afraid that white nationalist identity is a much stronger force than calls for a higher minimum wage, to bring back the factories, etc.  - gwc
Identity Politics and Its Defenders //David Leonhardt

Mark Lilla’s much-discussed piece in yesterday’s Times tapped into a debate about “identity politics.” Lilla argued that Democrats had lost the election by focusing on ethnicity, gender and sexuality rather than “appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them.”

His view fits with the post-election conventional wisdom: that Democrats must do better appealing to the white working class to regain power. I largely agree, but I also think that Democrats need to be careful about alienating their current constituencies — particularly since many of those constituencies are growing.

****The core criticism was that Lilla was wrong to suggest the political left deserves blame for initiating the focus on racial (and other) groups. “The label of ‘identity politics’ is mostly ridiculous whenever used, because American politics historically was based on white male identity,” Vann R. Newkirk II of The Atlantic wrote on Twitter. “Trump’s entire candidacy & now presidency was based on one of the most effective campaigns of identity politics in history.”

Likewise, Ira Madison III, at MTV.com, wrote: “Trump is confirming racists and white nationalists for his cabinet, but it’s the liberals focusing on identity politics that are getting us into trouble?” You’ll find similar points in the comments section of Lilla’s article, including one from Sara, one of the first comments under “Readers’ Picks.”

All of these arguments make a vital historical point: This country’s deep racial problems stem from discrimination, not from oversensitivity about discrimination. And it would be a terrible mistake for anyone to shy away from criticizing Donald Trump’s alarming choices for attorney general and chief White House strategist.***