(Greg Dworkin, inventor of the APR series, is on vacation.)
Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post writes—Sean Spicer is free!
The enchantment is finally broken. Sean Spicer has been set free.
For just over 180 days, he toiled under the watchful eye of the ogre, performing acts that made his whole soul shrink in revulsion. From the first day, when he had to come out and bear false witness to the numbers present for the inauguration, to the very last, when you could still hear his voice echoing dimly from far off camera, insisting that the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act was an excellent idea, he was forced to spew one horrifying imbecility after another. Even his suits shrank in revulsion.
But he could not help it. They had his whole family in an hourglass, and whenever President Trump shook it, horrible things would happen. All his brothers had been transformed into swans.
And so his punishment was to go to the lectern each morning. The curse held him. He had to stand there and say nothing (in as many words as possible). He had to stand there pronouncing hateful phrases about how the House’s American Health Care Act was superior to its predecessor since it required fewer pages, and saying it was necessary to vet a five year-old because Who Knew Who Might Radicalize these refugee babies, and admitting that, after all, Even Hitler never used gas on his own people. [...]
He did not bring this suffering on himself. How could he have? Who would do such a thing? It is far more likely that it was an enchantment, and therefore we should pity him.
At The Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes—Sean Spicer is the latest Trump casualty. He won’t be the last:
In business, Trump tended to destroy those around him, walking away from failure relatively unscathed while others — lenders, partners, vendors — paid the cost. Something similar is happening to those around Trump now, but this isn’t a casino — it’s our country.
Nobody has been more slavishly loyal to Trump than Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of his earliest supporters in the Senate; now Trump is publicly savaging him. Trump is likewise disparaging Rod J. Rosenstein, the man he appointed to be the No. 2 at the Justice Department, as well as the special counsel that Rosenstein appointed. Trump has publicly contradicted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson twice (on Qatar and Russia sanctions) and has denied Tillerson even the dignity of staffing his own agency. Trump accepted Chris Christie’s over-the-top support during the campaign, then cast him aside.
He demands loyalty but offers little. Bodies, meritorious and otherwise, pile up: James B. Comey, Preet Bharara, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Carter Page, Mike Dubke, Monica Crowley, Mark Corallo, Marc Kasowitz and, now, Spicer. [...]
Scaramucci won’t succeed any more than Spicer. The problem is more than personnel — it’s the principal.
At The Nation, Dave Zirin writes—The decision to parole O.J. Simpson will rankle some, but it was correct and just:
As Jeffrey Toobin, CNN legal analyst and author of The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which formed the basis of the FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson, said:
“I continue to believe that the Nevada case is bogus, and it’s the perfect irony of the Simpson case that he was acquitted of the crime that he was guilty of and he was convicted of a crime he’s innocent of…. I really think his 33-year sentence was absurdly long. It was entirely payback for the murder he was acquitted of. It’s not the way the legal system is supposed to work.”
Toobin, to put it mildly, is no fan of Simpson. He is also right that this is not the way the system is supposed to work, and it’s maddening to consider the idea that a Nevada judge would be rendering a prison judgment as “payback” for a California civil judgment. Even if you care nothing about O.J. Simpson or want him to rot behind bars until his dying day, this, from a civil-liberties perspective, is an abomination. In addition, a retired corrections official at Lovelock Prison, where he has been incarcerated, was quoted in USA Today calling O.J. Simpson’s prison term “a cruise ship with barbed wire” and claiming that “there’s plenty for him to do at that prison and he’s always happy.’’
This is a garbage statement. But it speaks to why we need to be vigilant in our criticisms of the nation’s sprawling prison system, especially in a Trump era, where Jeff Sessions—if he is still attorney general by the time this publishes—aims to revive and nationalize every discredited tough-on-crime, war-on-drugs, private prison, New Jim Crow provision from the past 40 years. The O.J. Simpson drama has been many things to many people, but its longest lasting—and furthest reaching—effect has been the valorization of our system of highly racialized mass incarceration. When the US justice system is allowed to demonize, it’s not only demons who are caught in its web.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times writes—What Did Trump and Putin Tell Each Other?
According to The Associated Press, Mr. Trump ignored the warnings of aides like his national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, that Mr. Putin cannot be trusted and that bilateral meetings should be avoided. It may be that Mr. Trump simply acted on impulse.
The stories about what was discussed keep changing. Mr. Spicer told reporters the dinner discussion involved “pleasantries and small talk.” Mr. Trump told The Times the two men discussed “Russian adoptions,” a reference to Mr. Putin’s 2012 decision to suspend American adoptions of Russian orphans. Mr. Putin took that step in response to American sanctions; did the idea of lifting sanctions come up, too? There is even a question about how many times the two leaders met. On Friday, Mr. Lavrov told NBC News, “They might have met even much more than just three times.”
If one were confident that Mr. Trump, like most presidents, possessed a basic knowledge of world events and an ethical compass, his meetings with Mr. Putin would not necessarily cause alarm. Mr. Trump, however, is no ordinary president.
At The Guardian, Thomas Frank writes—The media's war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?
The news media’s alarms about Trump have been shrieking at high C for more than a year. It was in January of 2016 that the Huffington Post began appending a denunciation of Trump as a “serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully” to every single story about the man. It was last August that the New York Times published an essay approving of the profession’s collective understanding of Trump as a political mutation – an unacceptable deviation from the two-party norm – that journalists must cleanse from the political mainstream.
It hasn’t worked. They correct and denounce; they cluck and deride and Trump seems to bask in it. He reflects this incredible outpouring of disapprobation right back at the press itself. The old “liberal bias” critique, a minor deity in the pantheon of Republican paranoia since the days of Trump’s hero Richard Nixon, has been elevated to first place. Trump and company now use it to explain everything. And the news media’s reputation sinks lower and lower as they advance into their golden age.
What explains this dazzling disconnect? Yes, Trump is unpopular these days, but not nearly as unpopular as he deserves to be (among other amazing things, he is now reported to be more popular than Hillary Clinton). How can our opinion-leaders believe something so unanimously, so emphatically, and yet have so little success persuading their erstwhile opinion-followers to get in line?
One part of the explanation is the structural situation of the news media. As newspapers die off, their place in the American consciousness is taken by social networks of both the formal and informal variety. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, these days we read only that which confirms our biases. Once upon a time, perhaps, the Washington Post could single-handedly bring down a president, but those days have passed.
Graça Machel at The Guardian writes—The global rise of nationalism is a threat to Nelson Mandela’s achievements:
This week has been particularly emotional for me. The world marked the birthday of my late husband Nelson Mandela. Everything he stood for still endures and the need to continue working towards protecting freedoms around the world is as important today as it ever has been. [...]
Today, we see nationalist and populist political forces securing their highest levels of support for decades, including in the established democracies of Europe and North America. Authoritarian leaders in every part of the world show increasing confidence in their ability to erode human rights, shrink civic space and in the worst cases, imprison and massacre their own citizens without fear of reprisal. Around the globe, people are increasingly less convinced that protecting freedoms should be prioritised over promises of strong government and security. There is a very real threat that human rights are being overturned, as those who supposedly speak for the people see them as an impediment to the majority will.
Frankly put, the threat to democratic freedoms needs to be challenged, loud and clear. Without freedom, there will be no lasting peace or security, no justice, no prosperity, or pursuit of happiness. This can only be done through a concerted effort between governments, the media, civil society and communities in demanding bipartisan politics based on truth and tolerance. The public discourse and practice need to change so that human rights are not seen as obstacles to the way we live our lives, but rather recognised as strengthening the fabric of society. Human rights place critical obligations on our leaders to properly protect us from harm. Human rights make our democracy stronger. [...]
At the Los Angeles Times, Douglas Rushkoff writes—Silicon Valley's push for universal basic income is — surprise! — totally self-serving:
Just a year ago, proposing a concept like universal basic income could practically get me laughed off the stage at a tech industry conference. The idea that everyone should be guaranteed a minimum subsidy from the government seemed to go against every fundamental tenet of creative destruction: Don’t reward the obsolete! Force people to evolve! If workers lose their jobs to automation, retrain them for new ones!
From the perspective of Silicon Valley’s executives, only a hippie or communist would suggest that people be given a livable wage simply for being alive. [...]
While it’s gratifying to hear a multi-billionaire like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg echo the words in my books as he calls on Harvard’s graduating class to explore UBI strategies, in light of the rest of Facebook’s priorities and behavior, his request comes off as utterly clueless, and more than a little late. Much like his vow to donate 99% of his shares to charity, Zuckerberg’s interest in UBI seems less the result of a comprehensive economic vision than a guilt-inspired effort to compensate for the social impact of his business. (If you have to donate 99% of your winnings, perhaps you took too much to begin with?)
I’d have an easier time accepting Zuckerberg’s proposal at face value if his company weren’t trying so hard to avoid paying taxes on its massive profits. Where is UBI supposed to come from, after all, if not the profits that Silicon Valley companies have made by cutting out human labor in the first place?
Jack Heyman at the San Francisco Chronicle writes—Dockworkers squeezed by automation, abandoned by politicians:
The ink wasn’t even dry on the West Coast longshore contract when the head of the employers’ group, the Pacific Maritime Association, proposed to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union a three-year extension, making it an eight-year contract. While the number of registered longshore jobs, 14,000, is the about same as in 1952, the volume of cargo passing through the 29 ports has increased 14 times to a record-breaking 350 million revenue tons a year
Under the current contract, employers have eliminated hundreds of longshore jobs through automation on marine terminals such as the fully automated Long Beach Container Terminal and the semi-automated TraPac freight-forwarding facility in the Port of Los Angeles.
“By the end of an extended contract in 2022, several thousand longshore jobs will be eliminated on an annual basis due to automation,” warned Ed Ferris, president of ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco. With driverless trucks and crane operators in control towers running three cranes simultaneously, the chance of serious and deadly accidents are enormous.
Now maritime employers are pulling out all stops to push through this job-killing contract extension, using both Democratic and Republican politicians, high-powered PR firms and even some union officials.
At Common Dreams, Jake Johnson writes—Worker Wages Flat, But Since 1978 CEO Pay Has Soared by 'Outrageous' 937%:
Wages for most American workers have remained basically stagnant for decades, but a new report published on Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the CEOs of America’s largest firms have seen their pay soar at a consistent and “outrageous” clip.
Between 1978 and 2016, CEO pay rose by 937 percent, EPI’s Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder found. By contrast, the typical worker saw “painfully slow” compensation growth—11.2 percent over the same period.
Mishel and Schieder also note that CEOs of “America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6 million in compensation, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker.” [...]
EPI’s report is just the latest on an ever-expanding list of analyses documenting America’s staggering income inequality, which is the worst in the industrialized world. In March, the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman labeled the U.S. inequality crisis—the massive gap between the wealthiest and everyone else—”a tale of two countries.”
Ellie Phipps Price at The New York Times writes—They’ll Shoot Horses, Won’t They?
Should the federal government encourage the slaughter of a living symbol of the American West?
While blunt, this question is unfortunately not hyperbole when it comes to America’s wild horses. This week the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment that would eliminate longstanding restrictions on killing wild horses and burros.
And it could get worse: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is also pushing to end the ban on selling these animals for slaughter for food in Mexico and Canada; at the same time, Mr. Zinke wants to cut funding for fertility control — the only scientifically recommended, humane tool available to manage wild horse herds.
Lawmakers in Congress must decide: Are they — and more important, their constituents — comfortable with the killing of animals that for nearly 50 years have been under congressional protection?