Richard Wolfe at The Guardian writes—Gordon Sondland was a perfect fall guy, until he decided to tell the truth:
In every good disaster movie, we get to meet the easily dispensable character: someone who mixes just enough stupidity with just enough mediocrity to be cannon fodder for the impending calamity.
In the epic shipwreck of Donald Trump’s impeachment, that man is Gordon Sondland.
Sondland first entered this feature-length catastrophe as an ironic counterpoint to the doomed buffoon who has alternately dismayed and disgusted us for the last three years.
To Trump himself, Sondland was once a Never Trumper who first globbed on to the low-energy Jeb before shifting his undying loyalty to little Marco. When neither of those Republican gods were able to confer any honor upon his wealthy shoulders, Sondland did what any principled conservative would do: he wrote a $1m check to Trump and asked for an ambassadorship.
To the rest of the world, the entirely expendable Sondland bears an uncanny resemblance to Trump himself. What kind of genius thinks you can lie to an impeachment inquiry by denying the whole quid pro quo deal with Ukraine? Who could ignore the risk that so many witnesses would spill their guts about your central role in the stitch-up of an American ally in desperate need of national security assistance?
Farhad Manjoo at The New York Times writes—Instead of a Generational Culture War, Let’s Fight the Rich:
At the risk of sounding like a patronizing Old, I’ll concede that “ok boomer” means well, and I don’t begrudge teenagers their anger. They are certainly right that over several generations and across political ideologies, the holders of political and economic power in America totally screwed things up for the future. Boomer leaders (and their forebears) underinvested in long-term infrastructure and safety nets and economic and environmental rules. They overindulged in wars and tax cuts and systemic deregulation. They long overlooked racial and gender bias, sexual harassment and just about every other form of systemic discrimination. They brought the country and the world to the sorry place we’re in now.
Yet it’s a mistake to blame all boomers for the sins of the most powerful among them. As a taunt, “ok boomer” overlooks the vast differences within the postwar generation — there are rich boomers and poor boomers, far-left boomers and far-right ones, boomers who are fighting for right and those who are hopelessly stuck in yesteryear. “ok boomer” also lets other generations off the hook, neglecting the facts that millennials keep gaining greater economic and political power and that some of them are starting to act and sound like archetypal boomers. [...]
Instead of canceling an entire generation, why not set your sights on a smaller, more specific group, one that bears more direct complicity in America’s widening dystopia?
Not to go full Chapo Trap House on you, but yes, I’m talking about the wealthy. Instead of “ok boomer,” how about “ok billionaire”?
On a personal note, for the past three decades, I’ve been pushing—preaching, according to a good friend—to anyone in any state who would listen to me promoting what’s described in the final sentence of the first and third paragraphs of Tram Nguyen’s Democrats Could Learn a Lot From What Happened In Virginia, appearing in The New York Times:
On Tuesday night, Virginia Democrats won their most consequential election in decades. After obtaining a majority in both chambers of the General Assembly, Democrats now have a governing trifecta for the first time since 1993. This is no accident. It comes in the midst of a generational political shift that was put in motion years ago. Virginia’s Democrats got where they are today as a result of year-round community organizing and voter engagement. [...]
For decades, Democrats allowed the prize of an Electoral College victory to blind them to electoral opportunities elsewhere, staving off funding and failing to provide meaningful support for candidates, campaigns and local parties in places they had written off as unwinnable. The national Democratic Party spent millions in Virginia this year, but the state wasn’t always such a priority. From its position in the South to its prominent role in America’s legacy of oppression, Virginia was long considered reliably conservative — unbreakable. As recently as six years ago, Republicans controlled the office of the governor and the General Assembly.
Local organizations like mine understood the political potential of Virginia when we got started 12 years ago. We are winning because we recognize the power of an electorate that includes and reflects the diversity of our state. We don’t talk to voters only when campaign season rolls around.
Joan Walsh at The Nation writes—Democrats flipped both chambers of the state legislature thanks to years of hard work, diverse and inspiring candidates—and district maps that didn’t discriminate against black voters:
Winning 15 House of Delegates seats in 2017 changed everything for Virginia Democrats, and the people they represent: They finally expanded Medicaid (to 320,000 people and counting) and hiked education funding, even while Republicans held a narrow majority. Now, flipping five more seats to take the General Assembly while also winning control of the state Senate, they’re poised to enact an inspiring roster of progressive priorities: expanding voting rights, passing the Equal Rights Amendment, enacting commonsense gun laws and drawing the state’s legislative boundaries—fairly—after the 2020 Census. With a Democratic governor—the flawed moderate Ralph Northam, grateful to progressives and voters of color for letting him survive his blackface scandal—not quite anything is possible. But almost.
Maybe most important, on Tuesday night Virginia became the first Southern state to entirely flip back to Democratic control in the post–civil rights movement era. As victorious Virginia Beach house challenger Nancy Guy said campaigning in late October: “Virginia has the chance to lead the nation again. We can join the 21st Century from the 19th.” On Tuesday night, it did.
The big win was made possible by a local and national web of women-powered resistance activism and a phenomenally diverse and mostly progressive roster of Democratic candidates. But as we observe the civil rights victory the Virginia statehouse flip represents, let’s remember that Democrats were buoyed by a court-ordered redrawn map of legislative districts that finally, in the words of National Democratic Redistricting Committee chair (and former attorney general) Eric Holder, “was not drawn to dilute the voting power of African Americans.” In other words, a fair election.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Stop Blaming Black Homophobia for Buttigieg’s Problems! Let’s put an end to this racist trope:
The latest round of blaming black homophobia for Buttigieg’s lackluster black support came last month when McClatchy obtained the report from a focus group the Buttigieg campaign had conducted with black voters.
According to McClatchy, the report found that “being gay was a barrier for these voters, particularly for the men who seemed deeply uncomfortable even discussing it. … [T]heir preference is for his sexuality to not be front and center.”
First thing to note here is the size of the group: only 24 people.
The second thing is that focus groups aren’t scientific surveys. As Liza Featherstone, author of “Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation,” has put it, “Focus groups are not a scientific and quantitative method of gathering knowledge.”
But none of that mattered. This fed a narrative that liberals — including some older black politicians and pundits — have nursed. A raft of articles was published. Social media posts started to fly.
Former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean at The Guardian writes—By shirking its responsibility to filter out lies, Facebook is a threat to civic society:
Propaganda is often employed by those unable to maintain control without resorting to falsehoods and the demonization of their opponents. Certainly Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and various recent rightwing populist movements across the world have relied, at least in part, on alarming and false characterizations of “The Other” to gain the emotional allegiance of voters.
Again and again, the far right has proven itself ready and able to disrupt democracy with weaponized misinformation and hate speech. Those who believe in democracy have seen our devotion to free speech turned against us.
Now Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in refusing to ban false political advertising from his platform, is in effect defending the far right’s approach. Zuckerberg has appealed to the principle of free speech; he says he does not believe a platform should regulate political content.
That argument isn’t very persuasive. Facebook is a private platform, not subject to first amendment protections. Every media platform – whether a TV station, newspaper or giant tech company, has a reasonable moral obligation to try to mitigate lies and propaganda.
George Zimmer at The Guardian writes—America needs to seriously tax the rich – I should know, I'm one of them: As a member of the Patriotic Millionaires organization I’ve seen how our system perpetuates gross inequality but now I’m a proud ‘traitor to our class’:
If Donald Trump really wants to make America great again, he’d do what our country did when it was at the height of its economic stability and equality: increase the top income tax rate to 90%.
Instead, what we have now is a tax system put into place for present-day robber barons – one that enables the interests of a small number of powerful industries to dominate national policy, for the benefit of only themselves and to the detriment of working people.
Under the current revenue system, companies such as Facebook and Exxon pay a lower rate on their 20 billionth dollar of profit (21%) than the top rate that dental assistants, sales workers, mechanics, telephone operators, painters and postal clerks pay on their average annual wage of $39,400 (22%).
Thanks to Trump and his 2017 tax bill, income inequality has now reached its highest level since the US Census Bureau first began to tabulate it 50 years ago.
Natasha Stoynoff at The Washington Post writes—Women were the first Trump whistleblowers:
Three years ago, before it heard from diplomats, ambassadors and lieutenant colonels — the country heard from a yoga teacher, an actress, a restaurant owner, a makeup artist — and me.
When it comes to Donald Trump, we were the first whistleblowers.
On the eve of the 2016 election, I was among more than a dozen women who came forward about being forcibly grabbed, groped and kissed by Trump. We wanted to warn the country it was in danger of voting for a serial predator.
Trump, of course, called us liars. He attacked our looks. At one pumped-up rally, he said of me: “Look at her. Look at her words. Tell me what you think. I don’t think so!”
We got hate mail, death threats.
And what did he get? The keys to the office once held by Washington, Lincoln and the Roosevelts.
Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—Are Bill Taylor’s notebooks Trump’s Nixon tapes?
President Richard Nixon was undone by his secret White House tapes. Could President Trump be unraveled by Bill Taylor’s notebooks? [...]
As the deposition transcript reveals, Taylor’s notes show that White House officials knew well in advance of the president’s now-infamous call with Ukraine’s president that their actions could be problematic. Taylor recounted how Sondland, before a June call with the Ukrainian president, got the State Department not to allow stenographers on the call, as was typical. “In response to his request, they said, ‘we won’t monitor and . . . we certainly won’t transcribe because we’re going to sign off.’ ”
You won’t hear anybody say, “read the transcript!” for that one.
Alex Shepard at The New Republic writes—How Booing Trump Corrects Media Bias:
The boos that rained down at the World Series and at UFC 244 are palpable proof of reality, which is that Trump is the most despised president in recent memory.
The polling has shown this consistently, but only in the abstract. Trump’s counter-narrative—the packed arenas—are used to show that the pollsters and pundits are wrong about him. But the last week has eviscerated the myth of Trump’s popularity. News outlets and their viewers have been forced to acknowledge that Trump’s opponents are as real as his supporters—that they are, in fact, more numerous.
That is why the president and his adult children were so insistent that he wasn’t actually being booed at Madison Square Garden. They have improbably held on to the idea that Donald Trump is a secretly popular president and have hoodwinked the media into endlessly covering his rallies and his supporters. This week, at long last, we saw the way that Trump is greeted when he leaves the bubble that he, with the help of the media, has built around himself.
Greg Palast at TruthDig writes—End PG&E’s Reign of Error With a Hostile Takeover:
Power companies have two jobs: Keep the lights on and don’t kill your customers. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. of Northern California flunks on both counts.
So how can California put an end to PG&E’s reign of error?
The answer: Make this so-called “public utility” into a true public system—a customer-owned power cooperative, a plan proposed by the city of San Jose. Currently, the only things “public” about PG&E are the bills the public pays and the charred homes and bodies this bankrupt beast leaves behind.
But how can the public take ownership without busting government coffers?
The way Gordon Gekko did it in “Wall Street”: through a hostile takeover bid for PG&E’s stock—now bouncing on the floor at about $4 per share.
It’s been done before, in New York
Tim Higginbotham at Jacobin writes—Elizabeth Warren Is Jeopardizing Our Fight for Medicare for All:
The question of how to pay for Medicare for All has always irked single-payer advocates, mostly because we’ve always known that paying for it is easy — the United States is the wealthiest country on earth, and we’re spending far more now than we would be under Medicare for All. The real obstacle is not the cost, as those immersed in the fight for single-payer understand well, but the battle we’ll need to wage against insurance companies, drug companies, and the political establishment in order to take public control over what’s rightfully ours.
Check the news, however, and you’d think the only reason we haven’t yet won Medicare for All is that nobody has figured out how to finance it. Media outlets frequently repeat political attacks on Medicare for All’s costs while ignoring all firm evidence about its benefits and inevitable savings. The question has gotten far more play in presidential debates than any concern about the insane profits of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, or the political establishment’s effort to bait-and-switch on the promise of universal health care by rallying around watered-down alternatives.
The narrative is completely wrong. Detailed economic studies have demonstrated a variety of options to fund the program through stable, progressive taxes while saving the vast majority of people money by eliminating all premiums and out-of-pocket spending. The media has happily amplified lies and bogus talking points about affordability and taxes to create a problem that quite simply isn’t there.
Yeganeh Torbati at ProPublica writes—How Mike Pence’s Office Meddled in Foreign Aid to Reroute Money to Favored Christian Groups:
Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups. [...]
The email underscored what had become a stark reality under the Trump White House. Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake.
Five months before Ferguson sent the email, his former boss had been ousted following a mandate from Pence’s chief of staff. Pence had grown displeased with USAID’s work in Iraq after Christian groups were turned down for aid.
ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid. Most people spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Democrats Can Win in Both the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt:
The good news about Tuesday’s election was welcome relief from all of the hand-wringing we saw from Democrats about the latest NYT/Siena poll that showed Trump competitive in several battleground states—particularly against Elizabeth Warren.
While Nate Cohn suggests that a poll this early has historically been predictive of general election results, I suspect that this race won’t follow historical precedents. For example, while it is not likely, it is possible that Trump won’t be the incumbent president a year from now. Take a look at what Robert Costa reported Tuesday night.
There is also one variable in the upcoming election that could break from historical precedents.