Paul Krugman at The New York Times calls Donald Trump an "ignorant blowhard" and simultaneously cuts through one hunk of Republican bullshit in Monday's column—Trump Is Right on Economics:
So Jeb Bush is finally going after Donald Trump. Over the past couple of weeks the man who was supposed to be the front-runner has made a series of attacks on the man who is. Strange to say, however, Mr. Bush hasn’t focused on what’s truly vicious and absurd — viciously absurd? — about Mr. Trump’s platform, his implicit racism and his insistence that he would somehow round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and remove them from our soil.
Instead, Mr. Bush has chosen to attack Mr. Trump as a false conservative, a proposition that is supposedly demonstrated by his deviations from current Republican economic orthodoxy: his willingness to raise taxes on the rich, his positive words about universal health care. And that tells you a lot about the dire state of the G.O.P. For the issues the Bush campaign is using to attack its unexpected nemesis are precisely the issues on which Mr. Trump happens to be right, and the Republican establishment has been proved utterly wrong. [...]
I’m not saying that everything is great in the U.S. economy, because it isn’t. There’s good reason to believe that we’re still a substantial distance from full employment, and while the number of jobs has grown a lot, wages haven’t. But the economy has nonetheless done far better than should have been possible if conservative orthodoxy had any truth to it. And now Mr. Trump is being accused of heresy for not accepting that failed orthodoxy?
More pundit excerpts can be found below the orange tangle.
E. J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—The right question to ask about government:
Many conservatives and most libertarians argue that every new law or regulation means that government is adding to the sum total of oppression and reducing the freedom of individuals.
This way of looking at things greatly simplifies the political debate. Domestic issues are boiled down to the question of whether someone is “pro-government” or “anti-government.”
Alas for the over-simplifiers, it’s an approach that misreads the nature of the choices that regulators, politicians and citizens regularly face. It ignores that the market system itself could not exist without the rules that government establishes, beginning with statutes protecting private property and also the various measures against the use of force and fraud in business and individual transactions.
Matt Taibbi at
Rolling Stone writes—
The Republicans Are Now Officially the Party of White Paranoia:
The Republicans already lost virtually the entire black vote (scoring just 4 percent and 6 percent of black voters the last two elections). Now, by pushing toward the nomination a candidate whose brilliant plan to "make America great again" is to build a giant wall to keep out Mexican rapists, they're headed the same route with Hispanics. That's a steep fall for a party that won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote as recently as 2004.
Trump's supporters are people who are tired of being told they have to be part of some kind of coalition in order to have a political voice. They particularly hate being lectured about alienating minorities, especially by members of their own party.
Just a few weeks ago, for instance, establishment GOP spokesghoul George Will spent a whole column haranguing readers about how Trump was ruining his party's chances for victory. He noted that Mitt Romney might have won in 2012 if he'd pulled even slightly more than 27 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Trevor Timm at
The Guardian writes—
Victory against secret fake cell phone towers shows privacy isn't dead:
Don’t look now, but digital privacy rights are making a major comeback in the United States. Thursday saw the latest in a series of recent victories for those who are against secret and unconstitutional surveillance.
After years of dogged investigations by journalists and relentless pressure by lawyers and advocates, the Justice Department abruptly changed its policy around stingray mass surveillance devices – roving, fake cell phone towers that the FBI and other government agencies use to force all the phones in their vicinity to connect to and feed your personal data. Finally, federal law enforcement will be required to get a judge-signed warrant before using the tool. They’ll have have to delete the data of innocent people immediately, and clearly explain to judges what they’re doing. [...]
While it’s a significant step up for the Fourth Amendment rights of all Americans, there are still some huge holes: state and local governments don’t have to abide by the rules. It’s also just a policy – not the law, so there’s nothing preventing the Justice Department from changing it again. And there’s a good argument it’s illegal to use them at all, since they can find people inside private homes without getting a warrant for each house they search. But given that up until recently, the FBI wouldn’t even publicly acknowledge stingrays existed – let alone require a warrant – this is a huge win.
David Moberg at
In These Times writes—
With Dem. Defections, Billionaire IL Gov. Bruce Rauner Wins Key Vote Against Unionized State Workers:
Illinois state public employee unions suffered a serious strategic loss in their battle with anti-union Republican Governor Bruce Rauner Wednesday. The state House of Representatives narrowly failed to overturn Rauner’s veto of a bill that would have provided arbitration as an alternative to a strike or lockout if contract negotiations reach a stalemate.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 had promoted legislation that would have offered the alternative of arbitration in contract negotiations if bargaining reached an impasse and prohibited strikes and lockouts over the next four years in response to Rauner’s overt anti-union strategy. Rauner campaigned as an admirer of neighboring Gov. Scott Walker, who decimated public employee union power in Wisconsin in 2011. “I may have to take a strike and shut down the government a few weeks to redo everybody’s contract,” Rauner has stated.
Stacia L. Brown at
The New Republic explains—
How Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby Became My Hero:
In May, Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby burst onto the national scene when she held a televised press conference to announce her team's decision about whether or not to indict the six officers involved in the arrest and eventual death of Freddie Gray. She’d only been in office for five months; this was the first time many viewers—including myself—had heard her speak. I sat at home in Baltimore, transfixed. Her head tilted, her voice purposeful and deliberate, Mosby directly addressed city residents and protestors, the youngest among them in particular. “To the youth of this city: I will seek justice on your behalf,” she promised. “This is a moment, this is your moment. [...] You’re at the forefront of this cause. And as young people, our time is now.”
It was a moment that earned her a reprimand during yesterday’s first hearing in the case. "Is it the prosecutor’s job to calm the city or to prosecute cases?" Judge Barry Williams asked rhetorically, before denying the defense’s motion to recuse Mosby from prosecuting the trial.
But back in May, as she listed the charges her office intended to pursue—all of which will proceed, with each officer tried separately—I knew my city had found a new and formidable champion.
Ali Gharib at
The Nation writes—
The Iran Deal Survives Congress—for Now. Obama wins the first round with AIPAC. Here’s what's coming next:
But opponents of the deal already have plans B, C, and D. Reports began floating around on Wednesday of efforts in Congress to pass a bill in tandem with the doomed-to-fail resolution of disapproval that would put onerous requirements on Obama’s implementation of the deal, and throw in a few poison pills for good measure.
In addition, hawks in state legislatures and among Republicans on Capitol Hill itself are pressing to de facto reimpose full sanctions on Iran, through the so-called “non-nuclear” sanctions—those targeted at human-rights violations and terrorism—that the Obama administration had said from the get-go it would not lift as part of the accord. The fight to keep the historic nuke deal alive, in other words, is just getting started.
So far, though, the agreement itself and Obama’s apparent ability to block a resolution of disapproval in Congress constitutes a major defeat for the pro-Israel flagship, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The debate has in many ways been clarifying. Opponents of the deal like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New Jersey’s Bob Menendez—the only Democratic senators to announce their opposition to the deal—are in an isolated position.
They are siding with Republicans and the right-leaning center of gravity in the pro-Israel world at a time when Democrats, at the grassroots and, for one of the first times, at an elite level, are becoming more and more critical of Israel (or at least more willing to oppose Israel’s goals). Liberals, in other words, are falling onto the liberal side of the budding Democratic civil war over Israel politics—that is, the anti-war side. As if to reinforce this, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who will give a speech next week opposing the deal at—where else?—the inveterate hawk house of the American Enterprise Institute, told Fox News that America should trust his judgement because he “was right about Iraq.” This is the company Schumer and Menendez are keeping.
Shaila Dewan at
The New York Times writes—
The Collateral Victims of Criminal Justice:
Since the financial crisis, complaints that corporate wrongdoers suffer light penalties have become routine. One reason is the Department of Justice’s longstanding policy that prosecutors must consider the “collateral consequences” that pursuing a corporation might have on innocent employees, shareholders, pensioners and even the financial system at large.
Amid public outrage, Congress has hauled in prosecutors to ask precisely how often collateral consequences have led them to give the banks a pass. Last spring, when four of the country’s biggest banks pleaded guilty to felonies, raising the issue again, I had a different question. As a reporter covering the criminal justice system’s impact on both the accused and their families, I wondered why we don’t give more consideration to collateral consequences when prosecuting individuals.
Without a doubt, war and the military-industrial-congressional complex that makes it possible is a target that should be on or near the top of every progressive/liberal/leftist activist's list of priorities. But is it really
the issue, the italics signifying its being the sole issue, where activist energy should be directed? In a time of the growing ferocity of climate change?
Chris Hedges at
TruthOut writes—
The Real Enemy Is Within:
If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is the issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential election campaign to Bernie Sanders, who refuses to confront the war industry or the crimes of empire, including U.S. support for the slow genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There will be no genuine democratic, social, economic or political reform until we destroy our permanent war machine.
Militarists and war profiteers are our greatest enemy. They use fear, bolstered by racism, as a tool in their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent and ultimately extinguish democracy. To produce weapons and finance military expansion, they ruin the domestic economy by diverting resources, scientific and technical expertise and a disproportionate share of government funds. They use the military to carry out futile, decades-long wars to enrich corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. War is a business. And when the generals retire, guess where they go to work? Profits swell. War never stops. Whole sections of the earth live in terror. And our nation is disemboweled and left to live under what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” Libertarians seem to get this. It is time the left woke up. [...]
Military expenditures bleed the federal budget—officially—of $598.49 billion a year, or 53.71 percent of all spending. This does not, however, include veterans’ benefits at $65.32 billion a year or hidden costs in other budgets that see the military and the war profiteers take as much as $1.6 trillion a year out of the pockets of taxpayers.
Michael Eisenscher, co-founder of U.S. Labor Against the War, writes at
Foreign Policy in Focus—
Why All Working People Should Support the Iran Deal—We’ll never rebuild this country if we keep wasting money on war:
For most of its first 50 years of existence, the country’s largest labor federation—the AFL-CIO—never once challenged the deployment of U.S. troops into foreign conflicts. But it turns out that workers have as much of a stake in those decisions as anyone.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together are projected to cost American taxpayers anywhere from $4 trillion to $6 trillion. And now the war on the Islamic State—a direct continuation of the last war in Iraq—has already racked up over $5.8 billion in costs, according to the National Priorities Project. And the tab’s running up at a rate of over $600,000 per hour.
That’s money that isn’t available to put unemployed people back to work, fix our nation’s failing infrastructure, provide high quality public education, create a universal Medicare-for-all health care system, build affordable housing, or help transition to a sustainable, de-militarized alternative economy, among many other major social needs identified by the labor movement.
War, in other words, is bad for working people.