Kate Aronoff at In These Times writes—Donald Trump’s Economic Plan Is a Giveaway to The Super Rich:
For a man who appears so bent on breaking with tradition, Donald Trump spewed a lot of it Monday. Following in the footsteps of Republican presidential hopefuls past, Trump delivered an address outlining his “America First” economic plan to the Detroit Economic Club.
Though characteristically light on details, what Trump did say—apart from his protectionist stance on trade—fell squarely in line with the free market dogma that has taken center stage in the GOP from Ronald Reagan through both Bush administrations and the Tea Party that followed them.
“He’s basically adopted the straight Republican platform,” says Dean Baker, an economist and co-director of the progressive Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Trump emphasized that his campaign will, “offer a new future, not the same old failed policies of the past.” Yet the proposals he rattled off have been at the top of conservatives’ agenda for years and in some cases decades: Repealing the so-called death tax (estate tax) for people with more than $5.45 million to pass on, slashing taxes for the wealthy and rolling back regulations.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times takes note of Hillary Clinton’s economic ideas in his Wisdom, Courage and the Economy:
It’s very much a center-left vision: incremental but fairly large increases in high-income tax rates, further tightening of financial regulation, further strengthening of the social safety net.
It’s also a vision notable for its lack of outlandish assumptions. Unlike just about everyone on the Republican side, she isn’t justifying her proposals with claims that they would cause a radical quickening of the U.S. economy. As the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center put it, she’s “a politician who would pay for what she promises.”
So here’s my question: Is the modesty of the Clinton economic agenda too much of a good thing? Should accelerating U.S. economic growth be a bigger priority?f
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What our Olympians can teach us about politics:
The 2016 campaign is one of the least uplifting examples of politics in our lifetimes. I place most of the blame for this on Donald Trump, although examples of campaigns that were universally regarded as uplifting are rare. Trump’s rise itself reflects a deep cynicism about politics that we have allowed to fester. He praises himself for not being a “politician,” even though that is exactly what he is. In his manipulation of resentments and his indifference to truth, he represents the worst traits we associate with the breed.
But Trump is, finally, a symptom of our impatience with and disrespect for the messy but essential work that politicians do — and the fact that we are badly out of practice when it comes to reconciling (as opposed to sharpening) our differences.
I truly hope that our great Olympians consider joining the political fray down the road. But in the short run, we citizens and our leaders need to work as hard at the skills of self-rule as they do at their strokes, kicks, floor routines and overall fitness. We admire them for respecting the integrity of what they do. We need the same attitude toward politics.
Fred Hiatt at The Washington Post writes—The final insult: Donald Trump is a bore:
If he doesn’t ultimately win the election and shred our Constitution, the most annoying thing about Donald Trump may end up being this: He forced us to devote so much of our lives to a man who is, fundamentally, a bore.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m as addicted to coverage of his train-wreck, oh-no-he-didn’t campaign as everyone else. Even if we wanted to avert our eyes, as citizens we would have a duty not to, to learn as much about the man and his potential presidency as we can. As Trump pinballed last week from “rigged election” to “Second Amendment people” to “founder of ISIS,” I crashed from one bumper to the next along with the rest of America.
But one reason this feels like such an imposition is that Trump is, in the end, so uninteresting.
Katha Pollitt at The Nation writes—Don’t Bother Reporting Sexual Harassment Unless You’ve Got 10 Other Women Saying the Same Thing:
Ladies, if you’re ever the victim of sexual harassment or rape, try to make sure you have plenty of company. It’s not so hard to dismiss the claims of one woman—we all know the country is full of scheming females who will say anything to get attention, money, or revenge. This is true whether the woman is a hotel housekeeper, a university administrator like Andrea Constand—the first of Bill Cosby’s victims to go public—or a famous TV personality, like former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson. When the news broke in mid-July that Carlson was suing her ex-boss, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment, her former colleagues didn’t exactly rally around her cause. Greta Van Susteren told People that the charges didn’t have “a ring of truth”—after all, Van Susteren said, Ailes had never harassed her, and she’d been alone with him many times. Maybe Carlson was angry that her show hadn’t been renewed. It was only when other women came forward with similar accounts—25 in all, including the network’s biggest star, Megyn Kelly—that public sentiment shifted in favor of Carlson. Something that could be dismissed out of hand when one woman spoke up—Roger Ailes, that perfect gentleman? Nonsense!—became something that people had suspected all along. [...]
The Editorial Board of The New York Times says the federal government should Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin:
Supporters of a saner marijuana policy scored a small victory this week when the Obama administration said it would authorize more institutions to grow marijuana for medical research. But the government passed up an opportunity to make a more significant change.
The Drug Enforcement Administration on Thursday turned down two petitions—one from the governors of Rhode Island and Washington and the other from a resident of New Mexico—requesting that marijuana be removed from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act. Drugs on that list, which include heroin and LSD, are deemed to have no medical use; possession is illegal under federal law, and researchers have to jump through many hoops to obtain permission to study them and obtain samples to study. Having marijuana on that list is deeply misguided since many scientists and President Obama have said that it is no more dangerous than alcohol.
Jorge Villarreal at Inequality.org writes—Tackling Climate Change Equitably:
This year’s Democratic platform has the fingerprints of progressive movements all over it. A $15 minimum wage, a pathway to cannabis legalization, improvements to Social Security, police accountability, and financial reforms — including a tax on speculation — all make an appearance.
The platform also highlights the critical link between climate and the economy. In particular, it argues that “carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities.”
That’s a complicated way of saying that the cost of the harm done to people and the planet should be calculated into the price of energy generated by burning coal, oil, and gas. If these costs were factored into the price consumers pay at the pump or in their utility bills, it could make dirty energy expensive enough to change both consumer and industry behavior. And that, in turn, would make renewable energy much more cost-competitive. [...]
But a clean energy economy catalyzed by a carbon tax is only a progressive victory if it’s also a just economy. That means the policies to fight climate change also have to help end inequality. Why? Because the two are inextricably linked.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Is a Democratic Majority in the House Possible?
Personally, I’m a bit skeptical. With 435 seats up for grabs and polling that is either suspect or non-existent, these folks are relying on Clinton’s lead in Congressional districts. That might or might not be predictive.
What I can rely on is what I’m seeing on the ground in my own state. Minnesota is typically described as a “blue state” because we have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1960 – with one exception in 1972. Right now 3 of the 8 Congressional districts are represented by Republicans. One of those is the seat formerly held by Michele Bachmann – which indicates it’s reliably red. But the other 2 are pretty good examples of how Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s embrace of extremism could very likely flip them this fall.
Anne Kim recently wrote about the race in the 3rd Congressional district between incumbent Republican Eric Paulson and state Senator Terri Bonoff.
One Democratic strategist says the fissures within the Republican Party have created new opportunities for Democrats who can appeal to suburban “economic moderates.”…
Frank Smith at The Progressive writes—Why Trump’s Second Amendment Comments are More Dangerous than You Think:
It makes sense to worry that Donald Trump’s most recent comments about the Second Amendment could encourage an assassination attempt against Hillary Clinton. But as a long-time follower of the gun rights movement, I think Trump’s words mean something else. His controversial statement in a speech that “Second Amendment people” could stop Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal judges and cracking down on gun rights fits in with a familiar NRA message to members—that gun owners should prepare for an armed insurrection against the state. Trump is stoking the coals of an extremist movement that in the long-run may prove even more dangerous than any aspiring assassin inspired by Trump. [...]
While Trump and his supporters like to claim he is upholding the Constitution, his latest comments are an escalation of his ongoing attack against the credibility of our constitutional democratic process. Since he started losing ground in the polls, Trump began claiming without evidence that “the system” and the elections are rigged. Now he seems to be suggesting that some kind of collective act of resistance may be necessary to stop an overreaching government should Clinton win the November election.
This is a message that resonates with the hardline base of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association, which last month had a representative speak from the stage of a Republican National Convention for the first time.
David Atkins at The Washington Monthly writes—As Trump’s Chances Dwindle, In Come the Conservative Fantasy Peddlers:
One of the curious hallmarks of modern conservative culture is the stubborn adherence to ideology and “known truths” even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. A half century ago the stereotype was that liberals were the starry-eyed purveyors of untested ideologies and assertions about the essential goodness of human nature, even as conservatives played the role of sober grandfathers who tempered liberal passions with doses of reality. This was never really the case even back then, but it was much closer to the truth than it is now.
Today, it is Republicans whose assertions about the nature of world consistently meet with rejection by reality. Supply-side economics is a proven failure. Climate change is real. Abstinence education doesn’t work. Giving money to the underprivileged doesn’t make them lazy, but rather strengthens the entire community. Tax cuts don’t spur growth, especially when given to the wealthy. Letting gay people get married doesn’t bring down God’s wrath on the nation. Wall Street doesn’t function well when it’s allowed to regulate itself. Letting the private insurance market dictate healthcare costs leads to worse outcomes. And so on.
Faced with these dilemmas, conservatives choose not to adjust to reality, but rather to ever more loudly assert the rightness of their ideological position. Liberals, on the other hand, have largely been chastened by the historical failures in implementation of state Marxism to apply a “use what works” mantra in picking whatever methods can be scientifically proven to lead to fairer outcomes.
Eva Wiseman at The Guardian writes—Goodbye to sex: a short and heartfelt eulogy:
Born in 1963, died 2016 – alas poor Sex. We knew you well. Well, not WELL. We knew you. Slightly. That was a good summer.
But it was with great regret and some tears that last week we learned of your death. All of us will remember where we were when we heard, of course – we were not having you. We were sitting on sofas, TV on, loungewear on, jointly scrolling through our phones for more updates on what the millennials are thinking, eating Doritos.
There was a time when we all thought you were eternal, that pursuit of you was vital to our humanity – “wars and lechery”, morning, night, how foolish we were. Of course a day would come when somebody would invent something better, like a game where you had to throw pretend balls at invisible monsters. You gave off such heat – of course a day would come when you burned out.
But why? Why have young people stopped having you? Why have they stopped building their lives around you, the peg their tents were tied to, the mistakes they yearned to make? Why have you died just when, some would argue, we needed you most?
Juan Cole at Informed Content writes—No, Obama did not found ISIL, Mr. Trump: That was the GOP:
Trump in his daily free association exercise accused President Obama of creating Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) in Iraq by withdrawing troops from that country in 2011. It is an accusation he has in past made against Sec. Clinton, but now he is shifting blame to Obama.
Obama did not withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 all on his own. The timetable for withdrawal was set by the Bush administration. [...]
In 2011 when the civil war broke out in Syria, the elements of the ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ that had evolved out of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia went to fight in Syria. Obama had nothing to do with that development.
There had been no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush invaded. Operatives flocked there to fight the US troops, and gathered under the rubric first of al-Tawhid of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But al-Zarqawi initially had bad relations with Usama Bin Laden. In order to fight the US presence, he made up and joined al-Qaeda and formed al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. After he was killed by the US in 2006, the new, Iraqi leadership declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq and deepened their al-Qaeda affiliation.
So, the Republican, George W. Bush created Daesh/ISIL.
Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine writes—Rupert Murdoch Promotes Roger Ailes Loyalists to Run Fox News
Roger Ailes may be out of Fox News, but he continues to cast a long shadow over the network. Today, 21st Century Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch promoted three Ailes loyalists to serve as the new leadership team atop the network. Murdoch, who will remain as executive chairman of Fox News, divided Ailes’s job into two positions with titles of co-president. Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy will run the business side of the news network, while programming chief Bill Shine will oversee content and talent.
Abernethy worked with Ailes at CNBC in the mid-1990s and joined Fox News in 1996 as CFO. In 2005, after Ailes helped sideline Lachlan Murdoch, then News Corp’s COO and heir apparent, by going around him and directly to Rupert on management, Abernethy took over Lachlan’s portfolio of broadcast stations. He’s known to be intensely loyal to Ailes.
Shine’s promotion is perhaps the most surprising given that he’s been the subject of intense media scrutiny since Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against Ailes on July 6. His elevation seems to signal that Rupert Murdoch, contrary to some speculation, intends to maintain Ailes’s brand of programming. As I’ve reported previously, Shine enthusiastically promoted Ailes’s right-wing agenda (he was formerly Sean Hannity’s producer) and assisted in Ailes’s PR campaigns (it was Shine whom Ailes assigned to rally Fox hosts to tweet negative comments about me while I researched my Ailes biography).