This Week in America

This Week in America (General Election, Week 9; @realDonaldTrump is a Loser, Bigly. #Sad!)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word. 

Follow us on Twitter: @ThisWeekAmerica

 

This Week in Debates

The first presidential debate was held on Monday night, and it was--in the term Donald Trump likes to use to describe the American military, the American economy, the lives of black Americans, and many other things that aren't as bad as he paints them--a disaster for Trump. His bar was set lower than that of any candidate in televised presidential debate history, and he still tripped over it.

Since he is constitutionally incapable of admitting error or failure, he immediately took to blaming a "defective mic," which might have had a nugget of truth to it. But for the 80 million-plus watching on TV or online, the mic picked up every interruption, sputter, grunt, sniffle, and incoherent word-mess Trump uttered; it was "defective" only if it was meant to translate Trump-speak into something approaching intelligent, comprehensible English sentences.

Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the by now completely self-discredited former Mayor of New York City, blamed Trump's performance on the moderator, NBC's Lester Holt (who, despite Trump's claims otherwise, is a registered Republican). "If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact checker,” Giuliani said.

The only occasions on which we recall Holt acting as a fact-checker were when he pointed out that Trump had told Howard Stern in 2002 that he supported the war in Iraq (albeit not enthusiastically), and that NYC's stop-and-frisk policy had been ruled unconstitutional. On both occasions, he was correct, and Trump was wrong. But Giuliani may have been trying to create an opening for Trump to skip the two remaining debates--an option that probably looks pretty good in the wake of his first performance.

In the debate's aftermath, except for the invented "defective mic," Trump refused to admit defeat, saying, "I thought it was a very fair debate. The polls are all saying we won."

No real polls are saying he won. In the four scientific polls conducted post-debate, Clinton was the clear winner.

Holt, who before the debates said he didn't believe his job was to be a fact-checker, did a pretty fair job. It would have been easy for a moderator to be a major presence in the debate--enforcing the 2-minute rules, pressing for candidates not to interrupt each other, fact-checking, etc.--but Holt figured it was better to let the candidates fend for themselves. At the time, it seemed like he had left the stage altogether, and we felt he could have done a better job of enforcing time limits, but overall, letting the candidates have at it probably better serves the public interest.

We won't relitigate the entire debate. Articles and fact-checks are easy to find (and the full transcript is here). The real point is that we were able to see, for the first time on the same stage, speaking directly to each other, the only two people who can become the next president of the United States. The race is closer than it should be--worryingly so. And it was clear that one of the people on stage has the intelligence, composure, judgment, and ability to do the job, and the other simply doesn't.

The truth about Hillary Clinton is that she's not a great politician, but she is a good public servant. She's not comfortable on the campaign trail, having to sell herself, to let people see the parts of herself they want to see. But when she's in a job, she earns bipartisan praise. She's prepared. She's smart. She's tough. She's steadfast. She's a hard worker. She can reach across the aisle and find common ground with political foes.

There's no evidence that Trump shares any of those traits. The debate showed the differences well. Maybe there will be two more, and maybe a different Trump will show up to those, but the Trump we saw this week is the real one--impatient, ill-informed, dishonest, insulting, and utterly unfit to serve. She was solid, prepared, intelligent, and in command. He was in way over his head.

The morning after, the Washington Post's editorial board wrote: "Monday night's debate told the story of this year’s presidential race. The Republican primary process failed, producing a nominee who cynically or ignorantly sells a warped view of reality, disqualifying himself with practically every overheated sentence. The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated a flawed but knowledgeable, confident and even-tempered politician."

The choice is clear. Now it's up to the voters to ensure that Trump--and Trumpism--are stopped cold, and never return.

Side Note: After the debate, Brit Hume of Fox "News" said on the air that Clinton was "not necessarily attractive." Because that's what matters in a girl president, apparently. Good to know, Brit.

Below the fold: endorsements, rackets, economics, lies, museums, and more. Also, bears.

This Week in America (General Election Week 8, How the @NRA and @RealDonaldTrump Encourage Gun Violence)

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. 

Follow us on Twitter: @ThisWeekAmerica 

 

This Week in Gun Safety

On Friday night, after TWiA's deadline, Republican presidential candidate said this about Hillary Clinton: "She goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Right? Right? I think they should disarm immediately. What do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away. She doesn't want guns. ... Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay? It would be very dangerous."

For a change, Trump said something that's true--it would be very dangerous. Of course, the reason it would be dangerous is that Trump keeps suggesting, in ways subtle and not-so-subtle, that Clinton should be killed. Some of his supporters have been very up-front about this, saying she should go before a firing squad or hanged for treason. Trump isn't quite so direct, but he comes close. Dana Milbank at the Washington Post lines up some examples here.

That's abhorrent behavior for any human being, much less a presidential candidate. That any ethical Republicans continue to support him is awful. That some of his supporters would probably be willing to make his dream of a murdered Clinton reality is far more so.

Trump's latest call for assassination is disguised as a shot at her support for gun safety laws. Others have made similar points in the past, as has Trump. No matter who says it, it's ridiculously stupid. Clinton is in favor of expanded background checks. She has never said she wants to get rid of all guns; she thinks we should know that people who buy guns have been checked out to make sure they're not criminals, terrorists, or domestic abusers. She has never said that regular, law-abiding people shouldn't be able to legally buy guns if they feel they need them to protect themselves and their families. Here are her gun violence proposals.

The Secret Service agents protecting Clinton have undergone extensive background checks and intensive training. If Trump wants to make that the point of comparison, then he should argue that people who want to own guns should undergo similar background checks and take the same training. But to compare armed Secret Service agents to someone who's just had a restraining order imposed by an ex and wants a handgun to threaten her with is absurd and the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Intellectual honesty and simple human decency are too much to ask of Donald Trump, we've learned. We'd like to think that the Republican Party establishment still values those things, but sadly, we know that it doesn't. Over the weekend, the party's chair warned that people like Jeb Bush and John Kasich might not be allowed to run as Republicans in future races--or that at least, the party will "penalize" them in some way--if they don't express their support for the party's nominee*.

Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin writes that "The GOP died this weekend." Her conclusion: "Priebus inadvertently suggested the right approach — although he got the solution backwards. Anyone who refused to embrace Trump, who stood up to his lies, who refused to put party ahead of country should be at the vanguard of the future center-right party. That may include people with exceptionally different ideological views (e.g., former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz [Tex.]). But it will not include apologists or enablers of Trump. The #NeverTrump vanguard will be responsible for creating a home for those who can no longer carry the banner of a Republican Party that repudiated its ideological origins as the Party of Lincoln."

Other political candidates through the ages have called for violence against their opponents. Sometimes they get it. The Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan calls it what it is--fascism--in the Washington Post:

In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.

A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to be brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.

What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will likely comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

Trump may or may not be literally calling for the assassination of Hillary Clinton. If he's not, he should say so, explicitly. He should, for the first time, apologize for sending such a vile message in the first place. Since he refuses personal responsibility for any error, he could couch it in his usual fashion, by saying something like, "I'm sorry that any of my supporters might have taken my words as a call for violence against Secretary Clinton, and of course, I never meant them that way."

If he doesn't, he's responsible for anything that happens.

 

*One prominent Republican appears to have caved to Priebus's pressure. On Friday, Ted Cruz--who earlier called Trump "A pathological liar," "utterly amoral," "a serial philanderer," "a sniveling coward," and "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country has ever seen"--endorsed Trump. Trump also attacked Cruz's wife, and suggested that his father was complicit in the assassination of JFK. So much for any supposed principles.

 ***

The results of a massive new study by Harvard and Northeastern universities--the "most authoritative since 1994"--describes an America living in fear. The Trace reports:

Even though homicides and other forms of violent crime have dramatically decreased, a rise in the number of high-profile rampage shootings has heightened perceptions of danger, and helped fuel the handgun-buying boom. At the same time, the gun lobby has aggressively campaigned to lift restrictions against carrying firearms in public and stoked fears of government gun seizures. The firearms industry and retailers have also amped up their marketing of handguns for self-defense purposes.

“When I look at our survey, what I see is a population that is living in fear,” says Deb Azrael, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the lead authors of the study. “They are buying handguns to protect themselves against bad guys, they store their guns ready-to-use because of bad guys, and they believe that their guns make them safer.”

They're wrong. Also from The Trace:

Studies have found that people who live in homes with handguns are twice as likely to take their life compared to those who live in homes with other types of firearms, such as shotguns and rifles. (Seniors are the population at the highest risk of using a handgun in a fatal suicide attempt.)

Domestic violence victims are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser has access to a gun, research shows.

The Harvard/Northeastern survey shows a slight increase in the number of gun-owning women — a group that now makes up 12 percent of all gun owners. But while nearly 70 percent of women cited self protection as one of the primary motivations for owning a gun, past studies show that a gun in the home is statistically more likely to be used to harm a woman than to help one.

“Our survey suggests that many more people believe guns in their home make them safer, when in fact, epidemiological research suggests precisely the opposite,” Azrael says.

One consequence of more small and portable guns, taken to more public places, is an increased threat of theft. The new survey estimates that hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen in the U.S. each year. Many flood the illegal market.

In other words, we're living in a country with lower rates of violent crime than ever, and therefore, less reason to live in fear. But enough people have bought into irrational fears that we're awash in guns. The easy availability of guns makes mass shootings more common and more deadly, which stokes fear, which precipitates more gun ownership. That also increases the effectiveness of suicide attempts and makes it more likely that domestic disputes will end in gunfire and death.

When we talk about pro-gun death organizations like the NRA, this is what we mean--they're deliberately fomenting fear among Americans, because it serves their financial interests and boosts the profit of the arms and ammunition manufacturers that provide most of their funding. Americans are killing themselves and each other and making their homes and communities less safe--despite the fact that violent crime isn't much of a genuine threat--in order to put more dollars into the pockets of a few executives at gun companies and gun advocacy groups. It might sound harsh to call the NRA pro-gun death, but it's literal truth. They profit from Americans shooting themselves and each other, so they encourage it.

There are now more guns in America than there are cars (though half of civilian-owned guns are concentrated in 3% of households). The rates of death from guns and cars are pretty similar, but the difference is that cars provide mobility, transportation, hauling capacity--in other words, they're meant to do other things, and automobile deaths are a tragic consequence of their being misused (often, though not always, with substance abuse being another part of the problem). Guns, on the other hand, are made to kill. Their other uses--target shooting and, umm...well, target shooting) are secondary to that, and are actually part of the process of learning to kill more effectively. But there is no practical use for a gun other than to kill someone or something.

Trump lies about Hillary Clinton's proposed gun laws--he continually claims she wants to repeal the Second Amendment, a policy she does not advocate--because he wants the votes of the fearful. Many of those people fear the government (or more accurately, their nightmarish imaginings of what government is), and they believe that only owning guns will keep them safe from government tyranny.

By stoking the impression that Clinton is a gun-grabbing tyrant-in-waiting, Trump increases the odds that one of those misguided Americans will actually turn his gun on her--removing the threat before it can fully manifest. His status as the Republican Party's standard-bearer legitimizes his claims, in many eyes.

Donald Trump and the NRA and its ilk are pro-gun death, and there's no getting around that fact. Gun deaths and the fear of gun deaths go hand-in-hand. Not many Americans profit from that, and we should call out those who do.

More below the fold, including terror, voting, charity, Canada (?), and of course, bears.

This Week in America (General Election, Week 7; Yep, @realDonald Trump is Still a Liar)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word. 

Follow us on Twitter: @ThisWeekAmerica

 

This Week in BS

On Friday morning, shortly before our deadline, Donald Trump finally admitted that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

And he prefaced his remarks with a bald-faced lie, one that US News and World Report calls "bullshit."

They're right. Trump said, "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it."

That last part would only be true if it was, in fact, finished. But because he once again pushed the lie that Clinton and/or her campaign started it (discussed here last week), that'll be part of every story going forward. He couldn't just come out and say "I was wrong," or more accurately, "I spread the lie because I'm a racist." He was the chief birther, doing more than anyone else to spread the vile tale. He's fond of right-wing conspiracy theories, and he repeats them with no interest whatsoever in their veracity.

We hope his supporters accept the first part of the story--that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii. But we wish, probably in vain, that they'd recognize that their hero is once again feeding them a line of BS when he repeats the second part.

This Week in Clinton

Hillary Clinton was the topic of considerable discussion this week, for reasons within her control and otherwise.

First it was her "basket of deplorables" statement. For context, here's the whole thing. It's considerably more nuanced than the part that's been focused on:

I know there are only 60 days left to make our case -- and don't get complacent, don't see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he's done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket–and I know this because I see friends from all over America here–I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas–as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

So there it is. She's not calling all Americans "deplorable," or even half of them. She came out later and said she shouldn't have generalized the "half" part. But the real question here is, is she right?

Certainly the candidate himself is deplorable. Racist, sexist, dishonest, seemingly without a conscience, insulting to anyone he considers unattractive, handicapped, "stupid" (a particularly ironic complaint, coming from him), or a "loser." Is it unlikely, then, that a large number of his supporters share those views?

Luckily, we have polling. Ta-Nehisi Coates runs some of it down at The Atlantic: "We know, for instance, some nearly 60 percent of Trump’s supporters hold “unfavorable views” of Islam, and 76 percent support a ban on Muslims entering the United States. We know that some 40 percent of Trump’s supporters believe blacks are more violent, more criminal, lazier, and ruder than whites. Two-thirds of Trump’s supporters believe the first black president in this country’s history is not American. These claim are not ancillary to Donald Trump’s candidacy, they are a driving force behind it."

At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent has a couple of pieces covering similar ground. Large numbers of Americans see Trump's campaign as appealing to racial and religious bigotry. As Coates observes, those things are not incidental to his campaign, they're the fuel behind it. His policy ideas, such as they are, change with the direction of the wind. His personal qualities--profound ignorance, extreme braggadocio, contempt for everyone who doesn't meet his special standards--are hardly attractive. His business history is checkered at best, with bankruptcies, hundreds of lawsuits, and a pattern of cheating suppliers and customers alike, isn't fertile ground for political success. His most racist ideas--the wall, the Muslim ban, the idea that all American blacks live in a hellhole and can't escape it without him reaching out a very small hand to lift them up--are the ones that have drawn a certain segment of the populace to his side. If that's not deplorable, then the word has no meaning.

In a separate but related piece, Coates examines how Breitbart.com became the online home of white nationalism and the alt-right. That history is inextricable from the Trump campaign, because Breitbart.com has become the biggest online cheering section for Trump (with rumors of payments from Trump to ensure favorable coverage), and its head, Stephen Bannon, has become the Trump campaign CEO. Breitbart staffers like Milo Yiannopolous have become figureheads for the racist right. Deplorable is a kind word for those people.

The question under debate seems not to be whether large numbers of Trump supporters are deplorable, but how many. Those who don't consider themselves deplorable don't have to be offended--she didn't name names, after all, and they can always point to the next guy. Those who wonder if she's talking about them might need to look deep into themselves. Do they support Trump because he wants to put white people back on top, because he gives them permission to look down upon people of other races and religions? Do they believe that putting a wall on the southwestern border will solve their economic woes? If so, maybe she is talking about them, and maybe some self-awareness will help them rid themselves of harmful beliefs and allow them to embrace the diversity of humankind.

There's another way to view the "basket of deplorables" comment, and that's to say that Clinton underestimated the number by about half. Consider this: it should be no secret to anyone, even the most diehard Trump supporters, that their candidate is the single most dishonest major-party presidential candidate of modern times, if not of the entire history of the country. His lies are so frequent they make the campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush look forthright by comparison. It's also no secret that their candidate engages in bigoted, hateful, and divisive speech, or that he encourages violence by his supporters. And it's no secret that he's blissfully ignorant of the details of policy, that the things he describes as problems usually aren't, and that his "solutions" to those "problems" are completely divorced from reality. When focus groups are shown his inane statements, they often respond with "That's just Trump being Trump," and applaud his lack of "political correctness," when that would be more accurately described as his lack of correctness, period.

So every American who plans to vote for Trump is willing to put into the White House a would-be authoritarian who denigrates vast swaths of the American public, who knows nothing about the issues he'd face as president, who has no interest in speaking the truth, who admires strongmen and dictators and has expressed a desire to rule our country the way they rule theirs. They know what Trump is. They don't necessarily share his views on Muslims, or women, or Mexicans, or blacks. But they'll vote for him anyway.

If that isn't deplorable, what is?

Side Note: Here's a more nuanced and sympathetic view of Trump supporters. They're people who feel disconnected from the course of the nation, sidelined by forces beyond their control or understanding, and lectured at instead of spoken to by coastal elites. Seen in that light, they're less deplorable--but still, if they believe Trump cares about them or plans to do anything to help them, gullible. And that doesn't begin to address the genuinely deplorable ones who hate people of other cultures, religions, or orientation simply because of those facts.

 ***

The other topic under discussion this week was Clinton's health (and that of her opponent, who has released even less medical information than she has--and has also, of course, released less financial information and less policy information). In 2008, republican candidate John McCain released 1200 pages of medical records. President Obama released detailed medical records before the election, and has continued to do so throughout his presidency. Until this week Clinton, by contrast, had released a two-page letter from her doctor, and Trump had released a four-paragraph letter dashed off by a gastroenterologist as a limo idled outside, waiting for it.

Part of the issue is Clinton's penchant for secrecy, which we discussed last week. For 30 years, anything she has divulged has become fodder for press investigations and conspiracy theories, which could make anyone a little gun-shy. And part of it is that in this election, we have two private citizens running against each other. That's very rare--usually at least one of the major-party candidates is an office-holder, and often both are. In this case, it's been several years since Clinton held public office, and Trump never has. Private citizens have a greater expectation of privacy than office-holders do, and both of these candidates take their privacy very seriously. That desire for privacy is at odds with what we expect from presidential candidates, though, so there's a natural tension between their desires and ours.

Last Friday morning, after having issues with a persistent cough that she was attributing to allergies, Clinton saw her doctor, who determined that Clinton had pneumonia. The doctor recommended that she refrain from campaigning for a few days, but Clinton was adamant that with just 60 days left until election day, she couldn't take time off. She went to a fund-raiser on Friday night (at which, possibly under the influence of antibiotics and the general fogginess that comes with illness, Clinton made her "basket of deplorables" comment), gave a speech on Saturday, and attended the 9/11 Memorial service on Sunday. That was where it finally hit her hard, and she had to leave early, stumbling as she tried to get into a limo.

Later, the campaign acknowledged that it should have been more forthcoming with the news of Clinton's condition, rather than trying to keep it quiet. Again, Clinton's natural reticence made that difficult, as did her intention to "power through" rather than letting it sideline her. She also has a longstanding aversion to drinking water, and as a result has become dehydrated several times, which may have contributed to the pneumonia (and now that it's out there, expect to see Rudy Giuliani on TV suggesting that she has rabies). W.C. Fields, notably, shared that aversion, saying, "Do you know what fish do in water?"

Still later in the week, Clinton's campaign released a letter from her doctor, describing her "mild" pneumonia and her treatment, as well as summarizing her mental and physical health and ensuring that she's fit to serve. After an appearance on a TV show with noted quack Dr. Oz, the Trump campaign released another single-page letter from his goofy gastroenterologist, which at least contained a few more details than his previous letter. So much for detailed medical records.

 ***

Republicans in Congress held another politically motivated, pretend "investigation" of the Clinton email "scandal" this week. In response, Newsweek reminded the nation what a real email scandal looks like:

Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”

Some of those emails could have shed light on what should have been far more serious scandals: the White House's role in outing Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative working on WMD issues, as payback for her husband reporting honestly on the results of an investigation the WH had asked him to undertake; and the firing of nine US Attorneys for what appeared to be political reasons.

More below the fold, including blood, scares, good news, and bears!

 

This Week in America (General Election, Week 6, Trump and Putin, Sittin' in a Tree...)

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 False Equivalency

At the Washington Post, Paul Waldman asks the age-old question: WTF? Or, as the headline phrased it:

"Trump's history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?

Either way you put it, the point is the same. The press has been going after Hillary Clinton nonstop, launching extensive investigations that turn up no actual crimes or ethical lapses, but reporting breathlessly all the same. Meanwhile, although they touch on Donald Trump's genuine scandals, they never seem to go after those with the same enthusiasm. Waldman offers a partial list of Trump issues that could use more attention.

The false equivalency problem was made more acute by a televised forum this week, the "Commander-in-Chief Forum," in which both candidates were interviewed separately, but back to back, by Today Show host Matt Lauer. Lauer's performance as moderator was roundly criticized, and justifiably so. As a tweet from Obama administration alumnus Bill Burton put it, "Lauer opens to Clinton: 'Why are you so horrible?' Lauer opens to Trump: 'Talk about why you're awesome.'"

It went downhill from there. Lauer pressed Clinton again and again on her emails, hardly leaving her any time for any actual, substantive questions about national security and veterans' issues, which were supposed to be the event topics. After having wasted so much time covering familiar ground, he interrupted her multiple times, to remind her that time was short. American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Orenstein tweeted, "It is amazing. Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump. Tough to be a woman running for President."

When Trump finally came on, he claimed to have opposed the Iraq War from the start. Everyone in the world should know this is a lie; Matt Lauer certainly should have, since a) he's a journalist, or a "journalist," and b) Clinton had just mentioned Trump's oft-repeated lie in her segment, minutes earlier. Not only that, but Trump introduced the topic by reminding Lauer of Clinton's comment, saying, "I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that." Even if that was the first time Lauer had ever heard about it (hint: it wasn't), he should have challenged Trump's statement. The WaPo's fact checkers have covered this many times, and put together a timeline, complete with video, showing Trump's, let's say, evolution on the Iraq War. Lauer had to know it was coming; it's one of Trump's most fundamental lies.

At the New Yorker, Jonathan Chait wrote: "I had not taken seriously the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidency until I saw Matt Lauer host an hour-long interview with the two major-party candidates. Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking. The shock, for me, was the realization that most Americans inhabit a very different news environment than professional journalists. I not only consume a lot of news, since it’s my job, I also tend to focus on elite print-news sources. Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them from Lauer matches the reality of the polls, which is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed."

If you can stomach it, the full transcript is here. Look for the part where Trump claims that Vladimir Putin is a better chief executive than Barack Obama, and try to imagine the response on the right had Obama said that about George W. Bush in 2008. And watch for the spot where Trump declares that rape is the inevitable result of having men and women together in the same organization. And of course there's the time Trump revealed details of his classified intelligence briefing--details that are lies, but still. Intelligence officials have called it the first time in anyone's memory that a candidate has tried to politicize the intelligence briefing that all major party presidential candidates get.

From the New York Times, here's a veteran's discussion of things Trump doesn't understand about the military.

 

It's worth taking another look at reporter Jonathan Allen's list of "The media's 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary," which explain why coverage of her is different than of any other public figure.

1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets

2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.

3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.

4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family.

5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.

The piece is worth a read for the many examples Allen offers. Hillary-haters probably won't read it, but they should, because they might see a different--and more accurate--picture of her there than they usually do.

Side Note 1: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo disagrees about Lauer's performance. Not that he was in love with it, but he thinks that Lauer's softball approach to Trump was largely a matter of spooling out just enough rope for Trump to hang himself. An NBC poll afterward declared Trump the winner, so it's hard to argue that Trump hurt himself too badly. Watch the video or read the transcript for yourself--YMMV.

Side Note 2: There's been some back-and-forth between Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell about his advice to her re: using a non-State Department email system. Now the email that Powell wrote to her--2 days after she was sworn in as Secretary of State--has surfaced, and in it he explains the lengths to which he went to use his own personal devices. Next time someone tells you that Clinton is the first Secretary of State to use non-State Department hardware, you can tell them that Powell did it, and told her how to do the same.

Side Note 3: If you still think Hillary's emails are a "scandal," you should read this.

This Week in Russia

Donald Trump occasionally claims to have met Vladimir Putin, and also occasionally admits that they've never met. During this campaign, he's hugged Putin so tightly that one suspects that if they ever did meet, Trump would embrace him in a bear hug. That might make Putin uncomfortable--but probably not as uncomfortable as he looks in this image from the G-20 summit. Here, Putin looks downright terrified. And so very small.

After his pro-Putin appearance in the Commander-in-Chief forum on Wednesday, Trump went on Russian state-owned propaganda TV network Russia Today (RT) America to complain more about the United States and rave about the Russians. After public outcry, his campaign claimed he didn't realize the interview would be broadcast on RT. That would be easier to believe if one of his chief foreign policy advisors, retired general Michael Flynn, weren't such a big supporter of Putin and RT (and, of course, if Trump could ever be believed). Here's Flynn sitting next to good ol' Vlad at RT's 10th-anniversary dinner. Note also Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein at the table.

(Photo by Michael Klimentyev/Sputnik via AP)

This Week in War

One of the takeaways from the forum this week was just how little Donald Trump knows about the military, or his own plans, or anything else, really. Philip Bump has much more. Warning: it's scary.

***

Before the forum, Trump announced his plan to "rebuild" the US military. He wants 540,000 active duty soldiers, 36 battalions of Marines, a 350-ship Navy and he wants the Air Force to have 1,200 fighter jets. We guess he'll have a yard sale to unload 500 fighter jets, because as Lara Seligman of Aviation Week points out, the AF currently has 1,700 of them.

On MSNBC's Hardball the next day, Rudy Giuliani accidentally called Trump "Ronald Reagan," while also repeating the always nonsensical claim that the US Navy is at World War I strength. Giuliani should know that a single current carrier group could reduce the entire WWI Navy to scrap metal in about twenty minutes, and making that claim makes him sound like a fool. He is probably referring to the number of ships the Navy has now vs. then, which is closer to factually correct but still foolish, because number of ships is a ridiculous measure.

Speaking of sounding like a fool, in the same interview he declared numerous times, very forcefully, that Hillary Clinton's campaign was the original source of the Obama birther conspiracy. It wasn't. Some of her supporters made that claim, but holding a campaign responsible for things its supporters say is dangerous. (Giuliani, a surrogate for Trump, might then have to answer for folks who claim that America is a "white" country and all non-whites should go back where they came from. Which raises the issue that the ancestors of all human beings came to America from elsewhere, so why shouldn't we all have to leave? And where would we go?) Hardball host Chris Matthews fact-checked him on the spot, and Giuliani insisted, "I'm not wrong. I'm right about that."

He is wrong. Transcript and video are here.

Side Note: Trump's racist supporters would embarrass any other presidential candidate, but Trump speaks their language. This piece in the WaPo discusses the roots of "politically acceptable" racism, which came to the fore with libertarians like Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard, founder of the Cato Institute. The libertarian movement led directly to the alt-right we're hearing so much about these days.

 ***

Libertarian candidate was on MSNBC's Morning Joe this week, and it didn't go well. Talking Points Memo has the details:

“What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?" Mike Barnicle asked Gary Johnson on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“About?” Johnson asked.

“Aleppo,” Barnicle repeated, referring to Syria’s second-largest city, which has been hit in recent weeks by a series of devastating chemical gas attacks and targeted bombing strikes on its few remaining medical facilities.

“And what is Aleppo?” Johnson asked sunnily, to the astonishment of the “Morning Joe” hosts.

“You’re kidding,” Barnicle said.

“No,” Johnson replied.

“Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis,” Barnicle said.

“Okay got it, got it,” Johnson said. “Well with regard to Syria I do think that it’s a mess. I think the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that to an end.”

Later, Johnson explained his problem by saying "Well, I have to get smarter and that’s just part of the process."

Actually, Gov. Johnson, getting smarter on issues of great international significance is a process that should take place before you run for president, not with two months left in race. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be ready for prime time before prime time starts. That just makes you look like...well, like Donald Trump. We can only imagine the look of horror on the face of Johnson's running mate, former Gov. William Weld, who has foreign policy experience, knows what Aleppo is, and probably has solid ideas on what to do there. Johnson later said he does know what Aleppo is, but misunderstood the question, thinking he was being asked about some acronym. That's possible, but it's still a poor excuse.

We here at TWiA World Headquarters don't know what to do about Aleppo, which we think is President Obama's greatest foreign policy failure--but which we also think is a nearly impossible situation. But we know what it is. So should Gary Johnson.

This Week in Hannity's Brain

Yes, it's an icky place to venture into, so we'll just share this verbatim from the Washington Post:

"You can’t make this up: In 2010, [Fox "News" personality Sean] Hannity said Assange was 'waging … war against the U.S.' by publishing leaked documents and attacked President Obama for not arresting him. Now that Assange is going after Clinton, Hannity praises him for doing 'a lot of good.' (Never mind that the U.S. intelligence community believes the pilfered documents he’s posting most likely came from the Russians as part of an effort to meddle in our elections.) Hannity then applauded Assange some more and ended last night’s interview by saying, 'I do hope you get free one day.' (Keep in mind that this guy is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid being extradited/prosecuted for alleged sex crimes…)"

Assange is not our idea of any kind of hero, and the fact that he's trying to get Donald Trump elected president just shows how much he hates America.

This Week in Banks

Still wondering about the usefulness of the Elizabeth Warren-championed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Check out what Wells Fargo Bank employees have been up to--creating 1.5 million fake bank accounts and applying for 565,000 credit cards, passing along the costs for all this phony activity to the bank's customers. They said the bank pressured them to sell, sell, sell, and the only way they could think of to meet sales goals was to create bogus accounts and rip off the people who put their faith in one of America's biggest banks. Enter the CFPB, and now Wells Fargo is paying record fines.

This Week in Offensive

Sunday is the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This mattress store decided to use the occasion to launch a truly offensive promotion, and then to publicize it with a TV commercial. One can only hope whoever came up with this idea is now unemployed.

This Week in Arizona

BuzzFeed News suggests that America's Most Corrupt Sheriff^TM is vulnerable in this year's election, in part thanks to his legal troubles, his history of blatant racism, and his ties to Trump. Here's hoping.

This Week in Bears

Pandas aren't really bears, and China isn't really America. But there are pandas in America, and people often call them panda bears, so when the news is this good, we'll take it.

"The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which monitors threatened species on its 'Red List,' announced Sunday that giant pandas were being shifted from the endangered category to being listed as vulnerable."

The first place we ever saw pandas was at the National Zoo, so here's a shot of the zoo's current generation:

Karen Bleier / AFP / Getty Images

 Also, Upworthy shares "11 panda facts that are really just an excuse to look at some pandas." You know you want to.

(Thanks to TWiA special ursine correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)

 

This Week in America (General Election, Week 5; Governments Should Spend More)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word. 

Follow us on Twitter: @ThisWeekAmerica

 

This Week in Spending

It's an article of faith on the right that--as a direct mail piece for a congressional candidate that arrived at TWiA World Headquarters this week said (no doubt echoing the hundreds of similar pieces already recycled)--"Government at all levels spends too much." It's so simple.

It's also dangerously wrong.

The reasons for this unshakeable belief among conservatives are circular. They want to cut taxes--they all want to cut taxes; even if taxes were already cut last last month, last week, and yesterday, they'd still want to cut taxes tomorrow. Of course, cutting taxes invariably benefits those who need the tax cuts least--the already rich--at the expense of those who need government spending the most--everybody else.

Also, they simply don't like government. They want government to fail, to be as ineffective as they say it is, in order to justify their desire to let the rich keep ever more of their money. If government doesn't work, their prophecy is fulfilled. Government is useless, so don't let the government have "our" money.

But how does government work, really? In large part, by spending money. A functional government hires enough people to get the job done, whether the job is building or repairing roads, teaching kids in public schools, staffing libraries, preserving wilderness in national parks, or fighting wars abroad. It's not just people--those people need the right raw materials, the proper tools, which also cost money. Some of them, like the soldiers who fight our wars, also need housing and meals, and government pays other people to provide those physical objects (housing) and services (meals, prepared with the raw or semi-raw materials of purchased food).

Point that out to the tax-cutters, and they'll argue that those things can still be funded after taxes have been slashed, if only government could reduce waste. It's true that there is a certain amount of waste in government spending (as in all other spending--how much of any family's grocery bill goes into the trash or disposal on any given day or week?). Every waste-fighter can find a headline egregious example of over-spending. The fact is, though, that government procurement personnel do a good job, for the most part, of soliciting competing bids and selecting the most cost-effective vendor that can actually get the job done. When bids aren't strictly decided on a cost/capability basis, there are sound reasons for the variance--trying to increase contracts for small businesses owned by disadvantaged minorities, or veterans, or some other group that needs a hand up the ladder of success.

Where the don't spend forces truly part ways with reality is in the results they predict. Cutting taxes does not grow economies. Spending does. Even--especially--government spending, because by pooling our money, governments can spend in larger quantities, and can target that spending to do the most good.

Here's an example of what myopic views on government spending can get you (from fivethirtyeight.com):

The 7-year-old economic recovery has not been kind to the American public education system. In May 2008, as the Great Recession was just beginning, U.S. school departments employed 8.4 million teachers and other workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This past May, they employed just 8.2 million — despite public-school enrollments that the Department of Education estimated have risen by more than 1 million students during the same period. Student-teacher ratios are as high as they’ve been since the late 1990s, though they’re still well below their levels of the 1980s and most of the 1990s.

The staff cuts reflect a broader pullback in education funding in recent years. Public schools actually came through the recession relatively well, as stimulus money from the federal government helped offset cuts at the state and local levels. But federal dollars dried up before states were able to pick up the slack. In 2014, the latest year for which full data is available, state public-education funding was 6.6 percent lower than in 2008. (Local funding, which accounts for about 45 percent of school budgets, was down about 1 percent over the same span.) Federal spending rose, but not enough to overcome the state cuts: Per-student spending fell 2.4 percent after adjusting for inflation. (All spending figures in this story have been adjusted for inflation.)

More spending, of course, doesn’t necessarily translate into better education, and budget watchdogs have long called on states to rein in spending on administrative salaries, building construction and other non-instructional items. But classrooms haven’t been spared; instructional spending has been cut at roughly the same rate as overall budgets.

Those nationwide totals obscure significant differences at the state level. According to an analysis earlier this year by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 15 states cut per-student spending by more than 10 percent from 2008 to 2014, while a dozen states meaningfully increased funding.¹ At the extremes: North Dakota, where an oil boom allowed the state nearly to double per-student spending, and Arizona, where the housing bust forced the state to slash spending by nearly a quarter. Not all the states making big cuts were necessarily forced to do so: The biggest cuts tended to come in the states that already spent the least on public education.

Public schools are one of the greatest economic drivers in American history. An educated populace has enabled America to lead the world in innovation and invention. The majority of the world's most successful companies are American ones. America has one of the most productive labor forces in the world. Immigrants want to come here because they still see us as a land of opportunity, where people can start businesses, hire good workers, and succeed.

But note the decisions some states have made about public education. Arizona was hit hard by the housing bust, but at the same time, Arizona--TWiA's home state--decided the recession was a good time to cut taxes on the rich. The New York Times has more:

But in states with the biggest school-budget cuts, much of the pain is self-inflicted, because they have cut income taxes in recent years, creating budget shortfalls that make it impossible to adequately finance their schools. Kansas is the most notorious for such counterproductive tax cuts; other offenders include Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Oklahoma, in particular, is vying with its neighbor Kansas for the title of most fiscally reckless. Repeated cuts to Oklahoma’s income tax have resulted in deep and chronic budget shortfalls, and yet the top tax rate went down again in January, from 5.25 percent to 5 percent. The lost revenue has been offset in part by a reduction in the amount of assistance the poorest Oklahomans can derive from the state’s earned-income tax credit.

In contrast, California voters in 2012 approved increases in sales taxes and income taxes on wealthy residents. Earmarked for education, the new revenue was enough to restore much of the state’s school budget, which had been cut deeply in the face of the recession. At the same time, reforms to the state’s school-spending formula have directed more money to low-income schools. Minnesota raised income taxes on wealthy residents in 2013 and is using some of the revenue to bring full-day kindergarten to all school districts and help more low-income families afford preschool.

The contrasts are stark. States that spent money had better educational outcomes than states that cut taxes and starved their schools. Housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area have risen so astronomically that many firms are moving out of there and into the Phoenix area--where they know they can find an educated workforce, and where rents are lower. But what happens in ten years, if Arizona's schools continue to suffer compared to schools in other states? If the best teachers either quit the profession or move to where salaries are higher and they don't have to spend half the school year begging parents for tissues, pencils, and disinfectant wipes?

The NYT puts it succinctly: "Investment in education is crucial to improving long-term productivity; conversely, failure to invest in education portends the decline of living standards over time."

Across the globe, countries are still trying to recover from 2008's recession. Ones where governments spent more have recovered better and come out stronger. At a meeting of central bankers from around the world last week, the message was clear:

"Christopher A. Sims, a Nobel laureate in economic science, told the annual conference that increased government spending was required to lift the world’s major economies from stagnation. The pursuit of innovations in monetary policy, he said, is diverting needed attention from the inaction of fiscal policy makers."

The central bankers in many places have been trying to manage the recoveries themselves, with little or no help from legislatures that hold the purse strings. But there's only so much they can do.

"Developed nations have leaned heavily on their central banks since the 2008 financial crisis. The United States, Europe and Japan have all relied on low interest rates to encourage increased spending by businesses and consumers even as government spending has remained relatively austere. Mr. Sims is among a growing number of experts who warn that this experiment has reached its limits."

Conservative debt- and deficit-hawks worry about the long-term impact of debt (at least, when Democrats are in charge--when debt is created by cutting taxes for the rich, it seems not to be a problem). But that's the wrong way to look at it.

But Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, argued in a recent paper written with Louise Sheiner, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that the sensible solution is to spend money now and deal with the debt later.

“A rush to reduce budget deficits after 2010 was the biggest error in this downturn,” Mr. Elmendorf, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, said in a May presentation on the nation’s economic woes.

Government spending has to be a key tool in the toolbox, especially--but not exclusively--during and after recessions. More government spending would have ended the recession sooner. We've added jobs every month for a record-breaking streak, but spending power and salaries have remained depressed for far too many Americans. When vast numbers of people are out of work, companies don't have to pay much--nobody wants to jump ship because there are a hundred other people at the door looking for work. As the economy gets closer to "full employment," paychecks get larger because companies want to retain employees. A growing economy will put more money into your pockets faster than a tax cut will. More jobs and higher wages means more individual spending, which means more jobs created. It means tax coffers fill up, so schools and librarians and park workers and DMV workers and mail carriers and cops and firefighters and soldiers can be paid, improving quality of life for all.

Any candidate who says "Government at all levels spends too much" either doesn't know any better, or does know better and doesn't care. Either way, that candidate should be kept far from public office. It's hard for candidates these days to say "I'm going to raise your taxes a little," or even "I'm going to raise taxes on the rich." But those are the people who actually understand how economies function. They're the ones who know how to avoid a recession or keep it short and shallow.

It's not really complicated--it's just a matter of not pretending we don't know how economics works. We do. Conservative politicians are programmed to tell you otherwise, though, and until they learn to get it right, they should be kept out of office.

Much more below the fold, including guns, weiners, and bears. Keep reading!