Every day belongs to Heisenberg — full of potential for good or ill — but some days are particularly potent with the promise of change.
At this moment, the Grand Jury associated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has returned an indictment. A sealed indictment. We don’t know whose name is printed on the inside of that envelope. We don’t know what charges it might feature. We don’t know why the special counsel chose to start the laying of charges at this point. We don’t know whether this is the first of many, the tip of an iceberg, or simply the sum of action to be taken.
What we don’t know is legion. What we do know might not fit on the head of a pen … but it would come close.
Still, we’re hopeful. Hopeful enough that we’re all, for the moment, children on the brink of birthday—holding our breath at the possibility of some fantastic prize, and gritting our teeth against the likelihood of a box of socks. After all, while we haven’t been quite to this place before, it’s somewhat familiar terrain. And the last time we were told to expect such a present, the rather excellent looking package turned out to contain nothing but a broken Scooter.
Whatever is in the envelope, several sources are indicating it will be torn open on Monday morning. So … at least we don’t have long to wait. Maybe this will be a complete Fitzle. Or, if we’re really lucky, we’ll discover that this is just the first day of Muenukkah—where even if the gift of the day seems a disappointment, there are many days still to come.
And, packing away the metaphor, if we’re less than lucky we’ll find that it doesn’t matter what’s in the envelope; that even if the answer is Donald Trump, in his office, with a direct call to Putin, nothing will come of it. Because while Republican actions this week certainly suggest that they’re worried about the possibility of Robert Mueller leveling serious charges, they also demonstrate that the Republicans are perfectly prepared to ignore those charges and substitute their own.
Just this week, announcements were made that the committees investigating the Trump–Russia connection in the House and the Senate expect to wind down those investigation, even though they admit they’ve failed to interview many witnesses, or follow up on many leads. At the same time, Congress announced that they were beginning an “investigation” into a transaction that’s eight years in the past, even though they have full knowledge that what they’re beginning isn’t a search for the truth, it’s a show trial.
This is a week that’s seen the Republican Party solidify it’s transition to cult of personality, where the one voice raised in protest was met with thundering silence. There’s every possibility that, no matter how many names the special counsel produces or how dire the charges, Republicans will simply ignore the stream of envelopes and jail whomever they please, for whatever reasons they declare.
If that seems an awful lump of coal in the stocking for all those waiting this morning, just remember: Trump digs that stuff.
Okay, let’s go read some pundits.
A tip of the hat to good doctor Greg Dworkin, who in spite of his own heavy rotation of morning gigs, found time to fill in for me last Sunday while I was helping to move my mom out of the old homestead. Much appreciated, Greg.
Leonard Pitts on male “allies” in the outing of powerful men who’ve abused women.
Clearly, we are having ourselves a moment here.
It reflects not a sudden increase in sexual harassment but rather, a sudden increase in the courage of women to defy their own hurt, confusion, and humiliation so as to put names and faces to acts of thuggery, piggery, and dominance. And their moment of bravery necessitates a moment of soul searching, even from — especially from — men who like to think of themselves as decent and good. In that spirit, I need to share a story.
Pitts’ story is not about how he committed abuse himself, but how he attached such little value to stories of abuse that he forgot about one serial abuser, even though he’d written about it in his own column.
That lapse embarrassed me then. It embarrasses me now.
Because it is, I think, emblematic of the way too many men regard the sexual harassment of women. Even when we think we take it seriously, we don’t take it seriously. The Los Angeles Times reports that rumors of Toback’s predations went back to the ’80s. Weinstein’s pervy-ness was supposedly an open secret. O’Reilly’s alleged behavior likewise was well known.
Why, then, did the men around them not speak out? Stand up? Decline to work with them? It seems that even when we fancy ourselves women’s allies, we too often fail to impose any sanction — even the sanction of our disapproval, even the sanction of memory — on the predators among us. They pay no price.
On the contrary, one guy bragged of being a sexual predator last year, and he was elected president.
As usual, Pitts’ essay is worth reading in full.
The Miami Herald would like to remind you about Las Vegas.
In the aftermath of the deadliest U.S. mass shooting in modern history, the National Rifle Association signaled it was open to restrictions on the kind of devices the Las Vegas gunman attached to legal semiautomatic weapons to create the rapid fire that killed 58 people.
Could it be, finally, that the group was willing to accept some minimum protections against gun violence? Alas, no.
The NRA comments were nothing more than a gambit and, sad to say, it looks as if Congress is once again falling into line.
Is it too soon to talk about gun violence? Oh, wait, apparently it’s too late. Well, we can always be yelled at about respect for the families of the dead after the next mass shooting. Though, of course, it takes quite a massive shooting these days to even make the news.
Once the horror of those killed and wounded in Las Vegas receded slightly from the headlines, however, the NRA announced its opposition to legislation that would ban the production and sale of bump stocks.
Of course it did. Because the NRA doesn’t want to admit that any hardware designed to make killing easier contributes to killing. No matter how cynical you are about these people or the way Congress bows to them, you’re not cynical enough.
Lucía Martínez Valdivia and a very interesting plea about the limits of protest on campus.
At Reed College in Oregon, where I work, a group of students began protesting the required first-year humanities course a year ago. Three times a week, students sat in the lecture space holding signs — many too obscene to be printed here — condemning the course and its faculty as white supremacists, as anti-black, as not open to dialogue and criticism, on the grounds that we continue to teach, among many other things, Aristotle and Plato.
In the interest of supporting dissent and the free exchange of ideas, the faculty and administration allowed this. Those who felt able to do so lectured surrounded by those signs for the better part of a year. I lectured, but dealt with physical anxiety — lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite, inability to focus — in the weeks leading up to my lecture. Instead of walking around or standing at the lectern, as I typically do, I sat as I tried to teach students how to read the poetry of Sappho. Inadvertently, I spoke more quietly, more timidly.
When does an act of protest become an act of silencing? Who really has the power in a classroom, the professor standing at the lectern, or the dozens of students facing them? When do tactics of protest, themselves turn into actions of intimidation? Even if you, like me, have been away from college so long that actions on campus seem both remote and washed with a nice coat of rosy nostalgia, read this. Because this isn’t a simple problem, there are no clear lines in this argument, and even those far from the campus need to be part of this conversation.
Understanding this argument requires an ability to detect and follow nuance, but nuance has largely been dismissed from the debates about speech raging on college campuses. Absolutist postures and the binary reign supreme. You are pro- or anti-, radical or fascist, angel or demon. Even small differences of opinion are seized on and characterized as moral and intellectual failures, unacceptable thought crimes that cancel out anything else you might say.
This is an uneasy read and a challenging issue. Which is why you should go tackle it right now. Consider it an assignment.
The New York Times on Weinstein moment.
Has America at last reached a turning point on sexual harassment? Watching the events of the past three weeks, one can hope. ...
This reckoning is all to the good, even if it is far too late. It feels as though a real and lasting transformation may be afoot — until you remember that this isn’t the first time women have sounded the alarm.
Remember Anita Hill, who told a firing line of skeptical senators the story of constant harassment by her boss, Clarence Thomas, more than 25 years ago. The lawmakers, every one of them male, seemed less concerned with the alleged misconduct of a Supreme Court nominee than that a woman would drag such a tawdry subject into the halls of Congress. While Ms. Hill’s brave testimony prompted a sharp rise in sexual-harassment claims, she was vilified in public; nearly twice as many Americans said at the time that they believed now-Justice Thomas’s account of what happened over hers.
There is no NRA trying to make reports of sexual harassment as invisible as incidents of mass shootings. Because there doesn’t have to be. When Donald Trump is in the White House and Clarence Thomas is still sitting silently in the Supreme Court, it’s clear that the mechanisms that repress women and dismiss the importance of sexual assault are still well intact.
Gail Collins on another education issue that’s a bit easier to define.
Perhaps you’re wondering how Betsy DeVos is doing.
Or maybe not, unless you’re planning to go to a Halloween party dressed as the secretary of education.
DeVos is the superrich Republican donor who once led a crusade to reform troubled Michigan public schools by turning them into truly terrible private ones. Now she’s in the Trump cabinet, and she seems to be dedicating a lot of her time to, um, lowering higher education.
Betsy DeVos joins EPA administrator Scott Pruitt as the greatest exemplars of Trump’s bizzaro culture. There is no good policy she isn’t ready to destroy, no bad idea she’s not anxious to promote. But in particular, DeVos seems to have determined that Trump University is the model for all higher learning.
“When no one was watching she hired a lot of people that come from the for-profit colleges,” complained Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who feels the additions are far more interested in protecting their old associates than in overseeing them. Murray is the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, otherwise known as HELP. These days it’s hard to tell whether that’s a promise of assistance or a cry of distress.
Definitely the latter. Unfortunately, the odds are very low that Betsy’s name will be found in Mueller’s envelope. But we can dream.
Nicholas Kristof and the other end of Trump’s most terrible twosome.
The pesticide, which belongs to a class of chemicals developed as a nerve gas made by Nazi Germany, is now found in food, air and drinking water. Human and animal studies show that it damages the brain and reduces I.Q.s while causing tremors among children. It has also been linked to lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease in adults. …
The Environmental Protection Agency actually banned Dow’s Nerve Gas Pesticide for most indoor residential use 17 years ago — so it’s no longer found in the Raid you spray at cockroaches (it’s very effective, which is why it’s so widely used; then again, don’t suggest this to Dow, but sarin nerve gas might be even more effective!). The E.P.A. was preparing to ban it for agricultural and outdoor use this spring, but then the Trump administration rejected the ban.
Scott Pruitt made this decision after meeting with the leadership of Dow, overruling the EPA’s own science team in the process.
Remember the brain-damaging lead that was ignored in drinking water in Flint, Mich.? What’s happening under the Trump administration is a nationwide echo of what was permitted in Flint: Officials are turning a blind eye to the spread of a number of toxic substances, including those linked to cancer and brain damage.
But Obama would hate this, right? Okay then, carry on.
Michelle Goldberg comes to praise Jeff Flake against those who want to bury him.
It’s certainly true that Flake has voted with Trump to advance right-wing policies, most of which I find morally repulsive. But Flake is extremely conservative — as of 2016, the American Conservative Union gave him a 93 percent lifetime rating, a score comparable to that of Jeff Sessions. The senator believed in the policies he was voting for; from his point of view, there was no valor in opposing them. All the same, he’s now arguing that telling the truth about Trump is more important than enacting his most cherished political priorities. In doing so, he’s sacrificed a career he’s spent a lifetime building. He’s given more than most to the fight against Trump and Trumpism.
I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the policies that Jeff Flake endorses are law, and the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend … but the threat represented by Trump is great enough that my tent on this issue will expand to take in most anyone.
To recognize the role of Flake’s conservative principles in fueling his dissent is not to absolve the conservative movement for Trump. For decades, Republicans have stoked the culture war to win the support of people hurt by their economic policies. Under the guise of pushing back against left-wing bias, the right has systematically tried to discredit all objective sources of information, ushering in a berserk reactionary postmodernism in which truth loses its meaning. And though the Republican Party’s racial appeals used to be more coded, it’s been capitalizing on white resentment for a long time.
Which may be the biggest reason that Flake’s speech was forgotten almost before the last syllable left his lips — when you’ve spent a lifetime digging a big hole labeled “fake news,” it’s un-surprisingly easy to fall into it.
Dana Milbank shares his blindness over #MeToo.
I was amazed by the #MeToo outpouring by women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted. So many women I know have been victims, and yet, I marveled, I had spent my career in charmed workplaces where such things didn’t happen.
But this week I learned that, earlier in my career, I worked in a place that was the very definition of a hostile work environment — a place that is now one of the most visible examples of the Harvey Weinstein fallout. Worse, one of my dearest friends was a victim — indeed, the one who first went public.
I wish I could say I was merely ignorant, but I worked for thirty years in a company where there were clear areas closed off to both women and African Americans. I allowed myself to be comforted by the idea that the department where I worked was both diverse and female-run, while ignoring the fact that this was because it was the place the company used to make a token adjustment to its overall horrible hiring numbers.
David Leonhardt and a tax plan that goes beyond helping the 1 percent.
House Republicans approved a budget plan yesterday that’s the first step toward passing a big tax cut. More than half of the tax cut’s benefits would flow to the top 1 percent of earners — those earning at least $733,000 a year. On average, each of those households would receive an infusion of $130,000 each year.
In related news, two Democratic senators have introduced a bill that would cut the child poverty rate almost in half, by increasing the child tax credit. The total cost of their bill happens to be similar to the cost of the tax cut flowing only to the top 1 percent — both are in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year. If anything, the anti-poverty plan would probably cost less.
Unfortunately, Leonhardt has to ask this question.
Which do you think sounds like a more urgent national priority: cutting this country’s depressingly-high child poverty rate or sending $130,000 a year to every household in the top 1 percent?
And the fact that it does have to be asked, pretty much tells you how things are going to end — at least so long as the people getting the big bonus checks can convince people not getting those checks that somehow giving the nation’s money to the people who already have money is the right direction.
The New York Times on that mystery power deal in Puerto Rico.
… restoring electrical power to the island’s 3.4 million American citizens — remains a frustrating and mysterious process, with 75 percent of the island still without electricity. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s vow to have 95 percent restoration by mid-December was quickly dismissed as unrealistic by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is working to rebuild the island’s flattened power grid.
Confidence has not been helped by the news that a two-person, two-year-old Montana electrical company with limited experience was able to land a $300 million contract for a part of the task that is far larger than any project the company has ever done. The contract is stirring suspicions of inside favoritism, prompting the financial oversight board that manages Puerto Rican affairs to consider appointment of a special monitor over the island’s power authority.
Considering what’s happened, the idea of having someone look over PREPA’s shoulder doesn’t seem a bad idea.
The power authority, which is facing deep financial problems of its own, says Whitefish won by claiming experience in working in difficult mountainous terrain and also by not asking for money up front, as another company did. But an overriding question is why the power authority did not use the industry’s “mutual aid” agreements to rush in thousands of emergency workers from other utilities, as Texas and Florida did after recent hurricanes. Industry groups say they offered to go but never heard from the island power authority.
That mutual aid agreement brought 30,000 utility workers from outside Florida into the state after Hurricane Irma, restoring power for most of the state within days.