This Week in America

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 35)

Far too much media coverage of politics focuses on the horserace angle--who's ahead, who's behind, who's up or down. It relies on false equivalency: if Politician A says X, then the reporter goes to Politician B, who's sure to say Y. That's lazy journalism, and it doesn't actually inform the public about which position (if any) is actually true, or adheres to the facts as we know them. At TWiA, our mission is to discuss politics through the prism of policy--to look, in other words, at the real-world implications of the things that politicians say and do, to make connections others might miss, and to explain it all in language a lay person can understand. Also to offer suggestions of how you can help somebody in need, to report on what's awesome, and to keep tabs on bears. If you like TWiA, share or repost or tell a friend, and be sure to leave comments, even if they're arguments. Especially if they're arguments.

 

This Week in the Post-presidency

Last week, after TWiA's early deadline, we saw a remarkable press conference. Former president Jimmy Carter gathered reporters together to describe his cancer, its treatment, and his outlook. He gave a brief, very technical statement, then took questions. At 90, his mind remains sharp and agile, and we don't remember ever seeing anything quite like this event.

At the Washington Spectator, author Rick Perlstein also watched it. He's been working on a book about Ronald Reagan, so thinking about and studying Carter, because the two were so interlinked. He observes that Carter's two sides--he was both an engineer and a Baptist missionary--were on display that day. And he reminds us that in many ways (Carter put solar panels on the White House roof and warned us that we'd better cut our dependence on fossil fuels) Carter was ahead of his time. The specific example he uses is Carter's efforts to protect and expand voting rights--efforts blocked by conservatives, as they remain today.

It's a short piece, and well worth a read. Carter was a much better president than many people give him credit for, and quite possibly the best former president the nation has ever known.

This Week on Wall Street

The stock market has been in turmoil this week, with some big drops that cause some people concern and others outright panic, followed by some big gains. (Market tip--don't sell into a correction. It only makes the correction worse, and you're selling at too low a price. Hang onto your shares, and if you're not crazy about them after the market is on the way up again, then you can sell. When prices are low, it's time to buy. Here's all the financial advice you'll ever need, on one index card.)

Naturally, according to Republican politicians and presidential candidates, it's all President Obama's fault.

Interestingly, during the Obama administration, the market has soared to new heights. Not once during those highs did we hear of any Republican politicians crediting President Obama. But when it takes a tumble, well, that's Obama's fault.

Donald Trump says it's Obama's fault because "our leaders don't have a clue," and Obama has let China "set the agenda." If nothing else, Trump is supposed to understand the world of finance, but apparently he doesn't. Our slump was largely in response to a much bigger drop in China's stock market, amid speculation that China has been misrepresenting its own economic growth for ages. China has also devalued its currency in the past couple of weeks.

What the current situation shows us is that the US economy is much stronger and more stable than China's. Currency devaluation and stock market losses (which we knew were coming), Mr. Trump, do not point to a government that has outmaneuvered ours in any way--they point to an economy in trouble. We have to remember not to panic, that corrections are a necessary evil in our markets, and that while we import a lot of goods from China, we don't export nearly as much to them, so their economic woes shouldn't be disastrous for us (although some sectors, like aircraft, could be seriously hurt).

Scott Walker and Trump want the president to call off an upcoming state visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Which would make sense if, during a time of crisis and uncertainty, not talking to important partners in the world community was a good idea. It isn't.

And Chris Christie says it's because we've been borrowing too much from China, and now the payment's coming due. That's nonsensical, and not supported by the facts.

Obviously, these presidential candidates need to say something. Just as obviously, they don't have anything to say that both 1) makes sense and 2) furthers their political ambitions. So they just spout uninformed craziness, which is likely to make matters worse by scaring anyone foolish enough to believe them.

Side Note: It's important to remember that while the stock market has ties to the real economy, it isn't the real economy. Yes, a downswing can damage your 401(K), but history has shown that it'll recover. Most of the people taking big hits this week are people with lots of money in stocks, and their damages won't affect us one way or another.

Below the fold: Hubris, hypocrisy, bears, and more.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 34)

Last week we had a very long post. This week's is considerably shorter, in part because travel will take us out of operation Thursday and Friday.

This Week on the Border

Donald Trump made his first big stir in this year's primary season by making up his own set of facts about undocumented immigrants. The fact that he was wrong didn't seem to bother his supporters, who appear to value the anger in his tone more than they do honesty.

So when it came time to start putting out "position papers" (really, so lacking in specificity they might be called "position sketches" instead), his first one was about immigration. Once again, it's largely fact-free, and contains little insight on how he would actually achieve his stated objectives, or what the true costs would be.

Naturally, it's been received with enthusiasm by conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, although not by people who really understand the issue.

First, he wants to deport all the undocumented workers. If there are children who are birthright citizens but their parents are undocumented, he wants to "keep the families together" by deporting the American citizens along with their parents.

He fails to seriously address the costs involved. Not only would it cost billions of dollars to identify and locate all the people who are here without papers--people who, in the most part, are already living in the shadows--but doing so would devastate the economy. He claims those people are costing us "hundreds of billions" of dollars in health care and education," which is nonsense. They do, however, pay sales taxes and income taxes and they pay into Social Security, even though they'll never get tax refunds or collect on that Social Security as long as they're undocumented. And as much as Trump might not want to admit it, they help keep the cost of food down, and, yes, help make it so we can afford to stay in hotels, including his. Deporting 11 million or so people is not desirable or feasible, so right off the bat, Trump's position paper veers into dangerous fiction.

He also wants to build a border wall, an idea that would have wide-ranging consequences if it could even be done. And he wants Mexico to pay for it, which he says he'll do by "impounding all remittances from illegal wages."

There are a few problems with that idea. First, hasn't he just deported all the people earning illegal wages? Second, how will he know what remittances are from illegal wages? Is he going to open every letter going to Mexico to see if there's a check in it? Study every bank transfer to determine the source of the funds? It's another grandiose but impossible idea.

And ultimately, it wouldn't help solve the real problem. Immigration is at its lowest point in decades, with just as many people going back to Mexico as sneaking in over the border. Part of the reason for that is our recession, which made jobs harder to get for everyone. But part of it is that Mexico's economy has been improving and diversifying. The three legs on which that economy stood for a long time were oil, drugs, and remittances.

We've been producing more of our own oil lately--more than ever in US history. That doesn't mean Mexico can't find other markets for its oil, but it means their closest rich neighbor isn't buying. We've tried to close the drug pipeline, but that never seems to work, because there's always a ready market for drugs here. But shutting down the remittance part of their economy would do it great damage. And we know that a bad economy in Mexico increases immigration into the US--the opposite of what Trump wants.

Finally, the Southern border is not the place where most undocumented immigrants enter the US. Most of them came here on visas, which they overstayed. They were students, they were workers, and they just didn't go back when those papers expired. They're not all from Mexico, either, but from all over the world. Building a border wall is not only a dumb idea, but paying for it with an impossible method that would, if it could be done, increase illegal immigration is even dumber. And it wouldn't address the real issues.

Finally, Trump--like Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, and Scott Walker--wants to end birthright citizenship.  That would require a constitutional amendment (or for the Supreme Court to overturn more than a century of precedent), not just a bill from Congress or a presidential proclamation. And the "problem" it addresses is largely a myth--there just aren't a lot of "anchor babies" around. Why not? Let's let a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association explain:

"Trump claims that birthright citizenship must end because it’s the 'biggest magnet for illegal immigration' — it attracts illegal immigrants using their 'anchor babies' to reap the benefits of U.S. citizenship. In fact, being the undocumented parent of a U.S. citizen bestows no legal right to even be in the country, let alone to a green card or citizenship—just ask the thousands of undocumented parents deported and barred from the U.S. each day by the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires that to sponsor an undocumented parent for a green card a child must first reach the age of 21. But at that point—more than two decades after arrival—an undocumented parent who entered illegally is not eligible to apply for a green card in the U.S. The parent must leave and apply abroad. And once the parent departs the U.S., another part of the law bans his or her return for 10 years."

Those anchor babies and their aging parents must be incredibly patient.

Immigration is, on the whole, good for the country and good for our economy. It would be better if we had comprehensive immigration reform, so we could know who's in our country, but although the Senate passed a reasonable bill (which some of its most important supporters have since turned their backs on), the Republican-led House wouldn't even take it up. We won't have real reform until we have a Democratic majority in Congress big enough to block the certain filibuster that would come up.

One thing's for sure, though--the more aspects of Trump's plan the Republican party embraces, the more certain Democrats are to hold the White House for years to come.

Side Note 1: Gov. Walker hasn't released his immigration plan yet, but he says it's a "lot like Trump's." That's not a good recommendation.

Side Note 2: Ben Carson, in Arizona this week, suggested using drone strikes to control the border region.

Ben Carson's bus, heading back from the border (photo by TWiA)

More below the fold, including political correctness, topics to be avoided, women who are tougher than you, and, of course, bears.

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 33)

This is a (very) long one, so we'll skip the intro. We did try something new this time--highlighting in gray some of the more important sentences or phrases, so if you don't have time to read everything, read the parts around those. And of course, click through as many links as you can.

 

This Week in Debates

We mentioned last week that we weren't going to try to cover Thursday night's debates in that edition, because we would want more time to digest them. Having had more time, we've also seen that everybody who writes about politics anywhere, ever, has already commented on it, and we don't have much to say that hasn't been said, so--believe it or not--this is the short version. (There's a debate transcript here.) Jeb Bush denied having called Donald Trump an asshole, while Donald Trump stood next to him proving that he actually was. The Fox "News" moderators did an admirable job reining in some of the crazy, though with those 10 men on stage (and the seven more candidates, including one of the two women in the 2016 primaries--for both parties--in the kiddie table debate) a certain amount of crazy seeped through, anyway.

The Weekly Sift points out what a careful job Fox did of trying to restore some dignity--and some electability--to the Republican Party. The three moderators asked what seemed to be some tough questions, but any time an issue was potentially controversial, they asked the candidate with the most moderate record on that issue to justify that record. For instance, Ohio governor John Kasich was asked to justify expanding Medicaid in his state, but the governors who have refused to do so weren't asked why they chose to prevent their state's working poor from having decent healthcare.

The hardest questions went to Donald Trump, because everybody in the Republican Party except Trump himself wants to distance him from the party, so his particularly repulsive brand of campaigning won't spill over onto the rest of them. The very first question--asking for a show of hands of anyone who would not promise to support the party's eventual nominee, and not run as a third-party candidate--was designed to isolate Trump . Everybody knew what his answer would be, and he did not disappoint. Megyn Kelly followed up with a couple of hard questions about his very public misogyny and "when he actually became a Republican." His answer to that seemed to imply that the terrible record of George W. Bush's last months in office had something to do with it, which makes no sense except that Trump rarely makes sense.

In the interests of fairness and science, we watched both debates (and although we were largely alone for the first one, for the second we were joined by about 24 million other people, making it the most-watched cable news program in the history of cable news. As everyone else has already concluded, Carly Fiorina walked away with the kiddie table debate--although given the competition, that wasn't too hard. She came across as sensible and intelligent, if a little dishonest in some of her attacks. Now she has to somehow deal with the fact that the only record she has to run on is her business record, for which she's often included in lists of the worst CEOs in American history.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "She was CEO of Hewlett-Packard from mid-1999 to early 2005, a period in which the company’s stock sank 49% to 60% (depending on how you count), making it one of the worst-performing high-tech firms. … She cut HP’s payroll by 10,000 employees in 2000 while surrounding her glamorous self with clouds of image and strategy consultants. She marketed overpriced knockoffs of other companies’ consumer technologies and then, disastrously, doubled down on the PC business by acquiring Compaq in 2002, when the right move would have been to exit that low-margin business altogether. The Compaq takeover led to a bruising battle with the HP board, which she utterly mismanaged, leading to her bitter ouster in 2005."

James Hohman of the WaPo adds, "None of the above is news for Californians. [I worked for the San Jose Mercury News in 2006 when it came out that investigators working for HP had illicitly obtained reporter phone records to crack down on leaks.]"

In an era when the electorate seems more focused than ever on inequality and populist rage bubbles just beneath the surface, this kind of thing seems like it won't play well. Nor will, to many, the fact that this week she landed squarely on the side of the anti-vaxxers.

As well as Fox staged the big debate, though, they did a disservice to the candidates in the kiddie table debate. While the men were consistently referred to by their titles, Ms. Fiorina was repeatedly called "Carly." A wide shot of the stage clearly showed that Lindsey Graham was standing on a raised platform so that he wouldn't look tiny compared to the others (which could explain why he looked and sounded like a robot--if he paid attention to what he was saying, he might have fallen off). And the decision to let only family and friends watch the debate might not have been so bad if it hadn't taken place in the same enormous stadium where the main event was held, and if Fox hadn't continually showed all the empty seats. Audience reaction is an important part of debates, and there was virtually none during the first debate.

In the main debate, the consensus seems to be that Kasich and Marco Rubio came off well. Kasich scored because he was seemingly able to get away with some sane statements that ran against party orthodoxy, as in his answer about expanding Medicaid and the obvious revelation that he would still love his daughters if they turned out to be lesbians. (Lest anyone think he's a closet moderate, over the weekend he came out in favor of climate change denial.) Rubio delivered his usual rhetoric, but without stumbling or reaching off-screen for a water bottle. He looked and sounded confident, even when he was wrong. By contrast, establishment favorites Bush and Scott Walker gave reasonably solid answers, but projected no warmth or charisma and seemed to fade into the background. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee competed to see who could snarl and snap most like a junkyard dog, without a clear winner. Rand Paul, seemingly aware that he wouldn't get much air time, argued with Trump and Christie. Ben Carson appeared nervous, even timid, as well as woefully ignorant.

There were plenty of untruths to go around (not even counting Trump, whose only true sentence of the night might have been "What I say is what I say.") Carson's was perhaps the most egregious, because he wants to be commander in chief but clearly has no understanding of military capabilities and limitations. He repeated the line thoroughly debunked in 2012 that "Our navy is at its smallest size since 1917." Not only is that factually untrue--we have more ships now than we did then--but a single modern carrier group could destroy 1917's entire navy in an afternoon.

Bush tossed out a couple of lines he's been using on the trail, both of which are nonsense. He said that ISIS exists because President Obama withdrew our troops from Iraq--failing to mention that ISIS grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't exist until his brother started a war that created a power vacuum, and that ISIS existed (though not at its present strength, obviously) before Obama took office. Or that Obama was simply adhering to the Status of Forces Agreement that George W. negotiated with Iraq before leaving office.

He also continues to claim that in Florida, he "created" 1.3 million jobs. The truth is that a huge real estate bubble created a lot of jobs. Just as he was leaving office, that bubble started to deflate, and then the Bush recession came along and popped it entirely, destroying 900,000 of those jobs. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says, "So Jeb! is basically promising that as president, he can generate Florida-style bubbles, which bring disaster when they burst, to the rest of America!"

Christie said twice that he was appointed US Attorney on September 10, 2001. Sounds good, and buttresses his self-declared persona as a terrorist fighter. Except he was actually nominated on December 7, 2002, confirmed later that month, and took office in January 2003.

There were plenty more; here are some fact checkers: Washington Post, PBS, New York Times.

The debates were almost more notable for what wasn't discussed. Climate change and energy policy never came up, beyond a mention of the Keystone XL pipeline. The minimum wage, race, and criminal justice reform were glossed over. Income inequality was only briefly mentioned, and then Kasich said the way to deal with it is to grow the economy. Well, yes, except he's missing a key point--income inequality inhibits growth. You deal with the inequality first, then grow the economy from the middle out.

And foreign policy* was only lightly touched on. Everybody seems to oppose the Iran deal**; nobody offered a serious alternative. A couple of candidates don't think President Obama is doing enough to fight terrorism because he doesn't say the precise words "radical Islamic terrorism." They might reconsider Teddy Roosevelt's maxim--the words don't matter so much as the judicious application of the big stick, and Obama is the best terrorist fighter ever.

* Part of the problem with Republican perceptions of foreign policy is that they believe in the legend of the Iraq surge. Here's why that's a mistake.

**One of the most prominent groups working against the deal, United Against Nuclear Iran, has just made ex-senator and constant PITA Joe Lieberman its chairman. The group has been around for a long time, but its previous chairman had to go because he supported the Iran deal. Most people who really understand the issue do support it. If Lieberman and his allies are successful, United Against Nuclear Iran will actually help to create a nuclear Iran.

* * *

Trump's supporters seem to be willing to stick with him no matter what he says. He can lie with every breath, but as long as he does it in his typical blustery fashion they call him a truth-teller. He's either profoundly ignorant, profoundly dishonest, or both. Anyone outside the bubble can see that he makes stuff up and convinces himself that it's true, or he doesn't care that it's not true. Either way, it's disturbing that so many people are taking in by the circus act.

Trump said during the debate that the biggest problem the country faces is political correctness. Anyone who actually believes that (and we doubt that Trump does) is a fool. And as Catherine Rampell writes in the Washington Post, the right has its own standards of political correctness. Asking a presidential candidate to not refer to women as "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" is not a violation of his First Amendment rights, but asking the government to ban certain books is.

* * *

In Scott Walker, we would have a president who takes his marching orders directly from the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (which, incidentally, should not have tax-free status), as he's done throughout his entire political career.

Below the fold: Economics, Voting, Guns, Flags, The Bubble, Bears, and much more!

This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 32; Who Gets to Vote Edition)

 

This Week in Voting

Fifty years ago, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. It was necessary primarily because Southern racists had successfully prevented minorities from registering and voting for decades, leading to gross under-representation in the halls of government at every level. The VRA finally eliminated poll taxes, "literacy tests," and other tactics used to dissuade minority voters. Because certain states had been most responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement, those states were required, under the VRA's Section 5, to seek preclearance from the Department of Justice before making changes to their voting laws. For most of the last 50 years, the VRA has been relatively uncontroversial; hard-right conservatives didn't like it because they felt it infringed on the right of any state to be as blatantly racist as it wanted, but in 2006 it was reauthorized with a unanimous vote in the Senate and only 33 House members voting against it.

Then, in 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative allies found their chance to shoot it down. They vacated Section 5, giving the previously offending states the leeway to restrict voting rights in any number of ways. States with Republican governors and legislatures followed suit (some had already begun the effort, since they didn't need to ask permission to discriminate), even if they hadn't been preclearance states under the old VRA. Minority voting found itself under attack in ways that it hadn't been since the Jim Crow era.

The majority opinion in that case threw the issue back to Congress. There could be a way, Roberts wrote, for Congress to restore Section 5 such that it didn't violate his interpretation of the Constitution. But the Republican-held House won't even consider doing so. And that's how, 50 years later, the far right gets away with systematically disenfranchising minority voters, elderly voters, and young voters--all of whom might conceivably lean Democratic. In the name of preventing imaginary voter fraud, these measures are actually preventing voting.

Jim Rutenberg has written a fascinating and important piece for the New York Times Magazine, describing the VRA's necessity, its history, and the awful course of its dismantling. It's long, but worth every minute you put into it. The right to vote is the cornerstone of a representative democracy, and there's a faction out there working hard to undermine it.

What effect will that undermining have? Analysis by William Frey for Brookings is mixed (emphasis ours):

"Yet, restrictive voting provisions such as stringent Voter ID laws and limits to early voting and voting hours in heavily minority communities will not adversely impact voting in the way the provisions’ authors intend. As I state in my book, '... over the long haul, the effects of such attempts to suppress voters will pale in comparison to the larger demographic sweep of diversity that will shape the nation’s civic decision-making.'"

"Simply put, the sheer force of our diverse demographic change (racial minorities account for 95 percent of our growth), will render such measures meaningless. However, in the near term—meaning the next couple presidential election cycles—voting restrictions that disproportionately impact minorities could be costly just as they are beginning to find their voice in the political arena."

We think the point of these efforts is the near term. The Republican platform is just not very popular with the American electorate. Change happens, and conservative attempts to freeze or roll back the clock are ultimately doomed to failure. In lieu of changing their message, they're trying to re-sculpt the electorate to suit their needs. It's a deeply cynical and dangerous game. As Frey writes, in the long run it's pointless; demography is what it is, and they can't disenfranchise everybody. At some point, they'll either have to retool their own thinking and come up with policies that address the needs of all Americans, or get out of the way and let some other political party take their place as the opposition. But in the short run, they can do a lot of damage to the country and the very concept of American democracy.

President Lyndon Johnson Signing the Voting Rights Act

Side Note 1: Oregon Governor Kate Brown just signed a law making voter registration automatic in that state. When a resident obtains or renews a driver's license or state ID, that person is registered to vote unless he or she specifically opts out. As Brown said, "...we have the tools to make voter registration more cost-effective, more secure and more convenient for Oregonians. Why wouldn’t we?”

Would that every elected official in the country felt that way. In Oregon, not a single Republican in either chamber of the legislature voted in favor of the bill, which really says all that needs to be said about today's Republicans.
(Thanks to TWiA special ballot box correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)

Side Note 2: On August 6, President Obama published an essay about the VRA, and about the need to keep fighting so that every eligible American can vote. He also declared September 22 National Voter Registration Day.

Below the fold: August heat, 2016, debates, guns, and bears. Keep reading!