Tag Archives: Trump

Ending CrazyTown

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has been on a snark roll ever since Donald Trump became President. To say that Milbank isn’t a fan of our “dear leader” would be a pretty massive understatement; a recent headline offers evidence: “This is what happens when a ‘stable genius” leads a stupid country.”

The first couple of paragraphs are illustrative of his thesis: “dear leader” thinks he knows better than the people who actually know–or accomplish–something. (Or really, anything.)

President Trump is surrounded by fools.

There’s that fool William H. McRaven, Special Operations commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the other fools in the U.S. military, who should have brought down bin Laden “a lot sooner,” because “everybody in Pakistan” — all 208 million of them — knew the terrorist leader was living in “a nice mansion.” Trump alone “predicted Osama bin Laden” in 2000 when “nobody really knew who he was.”(Were they waiting for Trump to give them bin Laden’s Zip code plus four?)

There are the fools in the CIA, who have concluded based on so-called evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered last month’s killing of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. But Trump alone understands that we’ll never know the truth, because the crown prince denied involvement “maybe five different times.”

Milbank follows up his introduction with a lengthy list of Trump’s proclamations of his own genius–he knows better than the generals, better than the scientists, better than the people who named their town Paradise. He complains that he is surrounded by fools who don’t know as much as he–the “stable genius”– knows.

And this is the problem with being surrounded by fools: Though Trump gives his presidency an “A-plus,” most Americans — about 60 percent — do not appreciate his brilliance.

He deserves better — and he should demand it. He should walk away, withdraw his excellence, maybe get a place in Pleasure — and leave us to suffer our own foolish “scientists” and “experts” and “facts.” That would really show us.

The only problem is, that would leave us with Pastor Pence…..

Eugene Robinson–another Washington Post stalwart–took a somewhat less sarcastic approach, but arrived at pretty much the same destination: Trump’s days are–or at least should be– numbered, and it’s time for the rats to leave the sinking ship.

Like a television show that has jumped the shark, President Trump’s frantic act grows more desperate and pathetic by the day.

Asked by Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” to grade his presidency, Trump absurdly replied: “Look, I hate to do it, but I will do it, I would give myself an A-plus. Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?”

Much closer to the mark is the assessment by Republican lawyer and operative George Conway, the husband of one of Trump’s closest White House aides, counselor Kellyanne Conway: “The administration is like a s—show in a dumpster fire.”

And it is all getting worse. The cravenness, incompetence, corruption, dysfunction, insanity — all of it.

Robinson noted that the midterm’s blue wave was a report card from the American public–and the voters flunked Trump. He also pointed out that those votes delivered an ominous message for Republicans “inclined to sign up for another season of Trump’s fading reality show.” The man who fancies himself a winner is not only a loser, he is very likely to take the cult that is the remaining GOP down with him.

Come January, a Democratic House will begin performing the oversight duties that Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) neglected. Does anyone believe that proper scrutiny of, say, the Trump family’s international business dealings is likely to improve the president’s political standing? I don’t.

In the Churchillian sense, the midterm election was the “end of the beginning.” My understanding is that rats tend to leave a sinking ship.

The remaining questions about this administration all fall into the “how will it all end?” category.

When will Muller deliver his report, and what will that report contain? How will a cornered, reality-denying, mentally-ill President react as the inevitable reality closes in? How will the MAGA-hat “true believers” behave when their emperor is shown to have no clothes?

When will the rest of the rats join those who have already left?

Comments

Saving Net Neutrality?

In the days and weeks following the midterm elections, the news has gotten steadily better. Undecided House races have been called for the Democrats; statehouses across the country have turned blue; and according to a couple of tweets from Nate Silver, the Democrats got as many votes in the midterms as Trump got in the Presidential election.

According to Silver, that’s unprecedented.

The news may also be good for Net Neutrality. According to the Brookings Institution, a combination of the Democrats’ win and a Supreme Court decision may restore non-discrimination rules to the Internet.

On November 5, the Supreme Court declined to review the decision of the D.C. Circuit Court that twice upheld the 2015 Open Internet Rule. The industry groups that had long opposed non-discriminatory access to broadband networks had previously stopped such regulation at the D.C. Circuit. When they attempted the same thing with regard to the 2015 decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a three-judge panel ruled the FCC’s favor. The industry then appealed the panel’s decision to the entire D.C. Circuit and lost again. The industry then appealed that loss to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court voted 4-3 (with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh abstaining) to deny a writ of certiorari for the appeal. As a result, the lower court’s decision upholding the 2015 Open Internet Rule stands.

The FCC’s 2015 Open Internet decision declared broadband providers to be Telecommunications Services subject to the common carrier requirements of Title II of the Communications Act. Just like the telegraph and telephone companies that preceded them, internet service providers could not discriminate among those using the network. They could not, for instance, break the internet into fast lanes and slow lanes depending on how much a content provider such as Netflix paid them.

It will not surprise you to learn that in 2017, Trump’s FCC repealed the Open Internet Rule, and ruled that the agency had only minimal authority over internet networks. Under Trump’s FCC chief, former Verizon honcho Ajit Pai, the Commission announced it would exercise no oversight over internet access.

As former FCC chair Tom Wheeler explains, not only did the agency created by Congress to oversee the nation’s networks walk away from that responsibility, it joined the plaintiffs in asking the Supreme Court to overrule the D.C. Circuit’s 2015 decision.

The High Court declined to do so.

Add to that encouraging development the fact that Democrats will control the House of Representatives.

House Democratic leaders from presumptive Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA,) to the new Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee Frank Pallone (D-NJ), to the new Chairman of the Telecommunications Subcommittee Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all been vocal supporters of strong net neutrality rules.

Reps. Pallone and Doyle will be able to conduct oversight hearings into the activities of  Trump’s FCC, and on the effect of eliminating the Open Internet Rule.

Since meaningful new legislation is highly unlikely, given the GOP Senate and Trump’s threatened veto, the Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn the Open Internet Rule means non-discrimination might survive anyway.

I say “might” because the D.C. Circuit will hear arguments in February in the lawsuit challenging the FCC’s elimination of the Open Internet Rule.  If the Circuit Court rules against the FCC,  the 2015 Open Internet Rule is reinstated—and the Supreme Court has declined to consider the matter, at least for now.

In their zeal to gut oversight of their activities, the internet networks and their Trump FCC allies may have shot themselves in the foot. There is a strong case that the Trump FCC acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it repealed the 2015 Open Internet Rule and walked away from any responsibility over the most important network of the 21st century. If the D.C. Circuit makes such a finding, net neutrality would once again be the law of the land. Although the Trump FCC would probably spitefully ignore its enforcement and even force adoption of a new rule to free the broadband companies, that action would simply bolster the Democrats in the House.

Research suggests that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor retention of Net Neutrality.

I favor neutering Ajit Pai.

Comments

Identity Partisanship

A recent Vox “explainer” by Ezra Klein rebuts some post-2016-election punditry–while confirming emerging political science research on partisan identity.

Klein’s article began with an important point that is often overlooked: the term “identity politics” is too often used to diminish the importance or legitimacy of political demands made by historically marginalized groups. It is a handy way to dismiss demands by African-American voters for action on police brutality, for example.

Corporate CEOs asking for tax cuts or suburban voters demanding action on health care costs, well, that’s just normal politics.

This narrowed definition obscures the true might of identity politics. Virtually all politics is identity politics, and the most powerful political identities are the biggest political identities — Democrat and Republican, which are increasingly merging with our racial, geographic, religious, and cultural groups to create what the political scientist Lilliana Mason calls “mega-identities.”

These mega-identities influence the way we interact with reality. Who we are influences not just our policy preferences, but what we believe is true. The column quotes from a recent, important book titled “Identity Crisis.”

  • During Barack Obama’s presidency, polling showed Republicans making more than $100,000 a year were more dissatisfied with the state of the economy than Democrats making less than $20,000 a year. Economic anxiety was “in large part a partisan phenomenon.”
  • It was also a racial phenomenon. Prior to Obama, measures of racial resentment didn’t predict views on the economy. After Obama, they did. It’s worth stating that clearly: The more racially resentful you were, the worse you thought the economy was doing, even controlling for your party, circumstance, and so on. This flipped as soon as Donald Trump was elected: The more racial resentful you were, the more economically optimistic you became.
  • Among Republican primary voters, Trump did not do better with Republicans who worried that “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does” or that the system “unfairly favors powerful interests.” Nor did he routinely lead the field among Republicans who felt betrayed by their party. There’s little evidence, in other words, that Trump voters were registering outrage with the political system as a whole.
  • Trump destroyed the rest of the Republican field among primary voters who were angry about immigration. He did 40 points better among Republican voters with the most negative views of immigration than among those with the most positive views. Trump’s success, in other words, was that he ran an issue-based candidacy on an issue where he was closer to the Republican base than the other candidates were.
  • The same was true with attitudes toward Muslims: “Trump performed significantly better with Republican voters who rated Muslims relatively unfavorably in 2011 than he did with Republican voters who rated Muslims relatively favorably.” By contrast, views of Muslims did not affect support for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
  •  And so it went for race too. Republican voters who attributed racial inequality to a lack of effort among African Americans rather than past and present discrimination were 50 points likelier to support Trump. Similarly, Republicans who told pollsters they felt coldly toward African Americans in 2011 were 20 points likelier to support Trump than Republicans who said they felt warmly toward African Americans.

There was much more along the same lines. It adds to the steady accumulation of evidence that has emerged in the wake of the 2016 election, that Obama’s Presidency moved less-educated, more racially-resentful Americans to the GOP, and widened the attitudinal and cultural gap between the parties.

In Pew Research Center surveys from 2007, whites were just as likely to call themselves Democrats as Republicans (roughly 44%-44%). But whites quickly fled the Democratic Party during Obama’s presidency. By 2010, whites were 12 points more likely to be Republicans than Democrats (51%-39%). By 2016, that gap had widened to 15 points (54%-39%).

This, um, white flight was concentrated at the bottom of the education ladder. “Whites who did not attend college were evenly split between the two parties in Pew surveys conducted from 1992 to 2008,” write the authors. “But by 2015, white voters who had a high school degree or less were 24 percentage points more Republican than Democratic.”

The conclusions of the study were unambiguous, and debunked both the theory that economic anxiety drove Trump’s voters, and the theory that a weak economic recovery catalyzed the racial resentment that drove Trump’s voters.

The correct synthesis is the reverse: Racial resentment driven by Obama’s presidency catalyzed economic anxiety among Trump’s voters.

As other studies have documented, racial resentment has been stoked–“activated”– by growing White Christian realization that America’s demographics are changing. As Klein says,

 Politics is increasingly revolving around fights that activate the Democratic-diverse America identity and the Republican-white America identity.

We shouldn’t expect Trump to be the terminal point of this kind of political appeal, which means we need books like Identity Crisis that help us understand it.

Comments

When You Hire A Goof-Off

There are lots of metrics for determining whether a worker is performing adequately. HR experts all over the country can share them. If you have ever been responsible for managing personnel (I have–it was the very least favorite part of my job), you know how frustrating it can be when an employee is goofing off, failing to meet timelines or generally just not doing the job.

Voters “hired” Donald Trump to fill the position of Chief Executive. Forget the corruption, the ignorance and the evident mental illness–what would a basic job evaluation by a dispassionate, politically-neutral observer look like? A few “data points” are instructive.

CNBC looked at a very basic element of the job: assembling a team of middle-and-upper managers.

On his 500th day in office, President Donald Trump tweeted a list of accomplishments that he said “many believe” is longer than any other president.

One list that remains longer than most of his recent predecessors is the number of White House positions that remain unfilled.

After more than 16 months in office, the Trump administration has yet to fill hundreds of key jobs that require Senate confirmation. The delays are longer than for any of the last six administrations.

The most worrisome of those empty positions are at the United States State Department. More than 40 top jobs remain vacant, and dozens of ambassadors who’d been appointed by Obama and fired by Trump on Inauguration Day have yet to be replaced. Given the precipitous drop in the regard in which other countries hold the United States, and the international issues we face, it would be helpful to have people working on such matters.

Meanwhile, the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Interior,  the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Postal Service and the CIA still have no Inspectors General. Given the almost-daily revelations of  corruption in the Trump Administration, I tend to think this lack of oversight is intentional.

Then there’s this recent report from Raw Story:

An investigation by Politico has found that President Donald Trump’s “executive time” — which is used by the White House as a euphemism for the time he spends watching cable news — absolutely dwarfs the time allotted to doing official work.

Specifically, Politico reports that last Tuesday, “the president was slated for more than nine hours of ‘Executive Time,’ a euphemism for the unstructured time Trump spends tweeting, phoning friends and watching television.” The publication then notes that “official meetings, policy briefings and public appearances — traditionally the daily work of being president — consumed just over three hours of his day.”

Now, this bit of information should probably be considered good news rather than dereliction of duty; God knows how much more harm he’d do if he actually worked at it. That said, it’s one more indication–as if we needed further evidence–that Trump has no  interest in actually governing.

It’s hard to disagree with Michael Cohen, who produces a newsletter called Born in the USA, when he sums up what Trump’s real interests are.

“The thing that Trump seems to enjoy most about being president is going to campaign rallies and looking out into a sea of adoring white faces, who applaud him, laugh at his jokes, and feed his limitless need for validation and approval. So making these people happy is really about making Trump happy.”

Making Trump happy is the last thing I want to do.

Comments

Wise Words

Two different Facebook friends attended Donald Trump’s rally in Southport, Indiana, an Indianapolis bedroom community, in the week prior to the midterm election. Both were there simply to observe–one was with a group of protesters, but the other was on a sort of “reconnaissance mission.” Who, she wondered, were these Hoosiers who continued to support a man she considered morally repulsive?

Both of these observers were shaken by the experience. Trump’s “adoring crowds” evidently really do adore him. (Those “over the top” comparisons to Hitler may not be so over the top.) His crudeness and vulgarity, his contempt for expertise and elemental humanity, evidently validate them in some fashion that I can’t comprehend.

It may be because he gives them someone to blame for life’s disappointments and failures–someone black or brown or Jewish or Muslim.

We keep hearing that 90% of Republicans still strongly support Trump, and that’s terrifying. But what we don’t hear nearly as often is the corollary: that the number of people who continue to call themselves Republican has dramatically diminished. As the party has metamorphosed into a cult, a large number of good, sane Americans who were previously Republican  have run for the exits.

One of those was “Sully” Sullenberger–a lifelong Republican best known for safely landing a plane in an episode usually referred to as the “miracle on the Hudson.” Right before the election, he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, and it’s worth quoting.

He began by referencing that storied landing:

Nearly 10 years ago, I led 154 people to safety as the captain of US Airways Flight 1549, which suffered bird strikes, lost thrust in the engines and was forced to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. Some called it “the Miracle on the Hudson.” But it was not a miracle. It was, in microcosm, an example of what is needed in emergencies — including the current national crisis — and what is possible when we serve a cause greater than ourselves.

Sullenberger recounted the important contributions of passengers and airline personnel to the effort to avert disaster, and emphasized the importance of good  judgment, experience, skill — and combined efforts of people working together. He then made a crucial point.

To navigate complex challenges, all leaders must take responsibility and have a moral compass grounded in competence, integrity and concern for the greater good.

Concern for the greater good is a concept entirely foreign to Donald Trump (who, incidentally, displays neither competence nor integrity). Sullenberger didn’t identify Trump by name, but it was impossible not to know who he was talking about when he wrote the following:

In every situation, but especially challenging ones, a leader sets the tone and must create an environment in which all can do their best. You get what you project. Whether it is calm and confidence — or fear, anger and hatred — people will respond in kind. Courage can be contagious.

Today, tragically, too many people in power are projecting the worst. Many are cowardly, complicit enablers, acting against the interests of the United States, our allies and democracy; encouraging extremists at home and emboldening our adversaries abroad; and threatening the livability of our planet. Many do not respect the offices they hold; they lack — or disregard — a basic knowledge of history, science and leadership; and they act impulsively, worsening a toxic political environment.

As a result, we are in a struggle for who and what we are as a people. We have lost what in the military we call unit cohesion. The fabric of our nation is under attack, while shame — a timeless beacon of right and wrong — seems dead.

Toward the end of his essay, Sullenberger (unlike the people at Trump rallies or the spineless enablers in Congress) firmly elevates the national interest over partisan loyalties.

For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding our common values and not pandering to our basest impulses.

We sometimes forget that there are thousands of former Republicans who–like Sullenberger–chose to leave the GOP when it became the party of Trump and the unhappy White Nationalists who drink his Kool-Aid.

Comments