I don’t want to say this. I shouldn’t have to say this. But because it keeps coming up, I’m going to say it: The Green New Deal does not mention cows. That’s amazing, I know, considering how ‘cows’ seem to come up every time a pundit brings up the plan. And not just from the right. I spent the afternoon in an argument that included the phrase “implied bovine methane.” Which I consider to be a genuine cow product of another sort.
Here is everything the Green New Deal has to say about agriculture. It’s the seventh of the resolution’s thirteen deals, found under “G” if you’re following along in the actual text.
Working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including— by supporting family farming; by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.
That’s it. It doesn’t threaten a single one of the 1.5 billion cows now living on this planet. Not unless “working cooperatively” means that ranchers are going to say “sure, shoot them.”
I’m told there was a FAQ written at one point that mentioned cows. And to that I say … I didn’t read the FAQ. I didn’t read the FAQ because the entire Green New Deal is only 14 pages long and not difficult to read—unlike the Manafort sentencing documents that are 870 pages long and kicking my butt after hours of reading. Also, everything I’ve heard about the FAQ indicates it was idiotic, contained a number of misstatements about what was in the actual resolution, and was withdrawn almost immediately. So I can only assume that people still arguing based on what was in the FAQ, are more interesting in arguing than anything else.
Maybe, in a process that worked with farmers and ranchers to improve our agriculture system, there would be fewer cows. Maybe not. Maybe there would be an end to feedlots and animals stuffed full of grains they don’t like washed down with buckets of antibiotics. That seems like a good idea. And maybe not. But whatever the answer is, what it’s not is in the Green New Deal. Because the Green New Deal on agriculture, as on nearly every other point, is little more than a mom and apple pie agreement on “hey, let’s do nice things” so we can all nod, and at least agree on the goals we are working toward before some other piece of legislation has to lay out the details.
Also, it’s possible that the hysteria over a plan that’s about as straightforward and non-threatening as possible is driving me to hysteria. And can I just point out that beef cattle only live a couple of years, so we don’t need cow hit squads? We are cow hit squads.
And …. Say, how about we go read some pundits?
Election 2020
Jonathan Chait thinks the stories are wrong about Sanders’ support.
New York Magazine
The Sanders campaign has circulated a strategy memo proclaiming their candidate would compete with Trump not only in Michigan and Ohio but even in states like West Virginia, Kansas, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Montana. Sanders “is popular with traditional, working-class, industrial workers in those places,” asserts his adviser, Jeff Weaver. “Bernie Sanders,” raves Bhaskar Sunkara, “is the only one capable of reaching millions of working Americans with the message that politics can indeed improve their lives.”
Their evidence is the persistent support Sanders amassed during his struggle against Clinton. But there is something eerily familiar about the pattern of Sanders’s support in 2016. Nate Silver, diving into the numbers, finds that about a quarter of Sanders voters were what he calls “Never Hillary” voters. They leaned conservative, and many of them voted for Donald Trump in the general election.
This seems like a good time to interrupt this program and say: Hey, remember back in December when I asked for a bunch of new pundits and you guys had several suggestions? I really appreciated those suggestions. I don’t know about you, but I’ve enjoyed the APR about 100 percent more over the last couple of months because I’ve had a much greater variety of voices, many of them pundits with whom I was not familiar in the past. Since we started with the new slate, I’ve pretty much tried to hit them all each week, so long as they 1) have a new column, 2) aren’t talking about some policy or event that’s strictly local, 3) aren’t indulging themselves in some kind of ‘when I was a kid, by cracky’ nostalgia. Which means I’ve put them in even when I’ve found their comments seriously uninformed—as I did Chait’s comments on the Green New Deal—or as in this week, when I feel I may have to duck a slice of pie. Okay, back to the show.
How big a factor was the Never Hillary vote for Sanders? Pretty big. They made the difference in eight of the states he won, finds Silver. Without that protest vote, the entire narrative of Sanders as the rising voice of the party’s authentic base would never have taken hold. And that basic misreading of the data created the foundation for a flourishing socialist dream that the American white working class is poised to turn against neoliberalism if only presented with a pure and sharp enough critique.
Honestly, I think Chait is wrong on about half his points this week. I’m just not saying which half.
Paul Krugman likes Warren’s plan for national day care.
New York Times
For millions of Americans with children, life is a constant, desperate balancing act. They must work during the day, either because they’re single parents or because decades of wage stagnation mean that both parents must take jobs to make ends meet. Yet quality child care is unavailable or unaffordable.
And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Other wealthy countries either have national child care systems or subsidize care to put it in everyone’s reach. It doesn’t even cost all that much. While other advanced countries spend, on average, about three times as much as we do helping families — so much for our vaunted “family values” — it’s still a relatively small part of their budgets. In particular, taking care of children is much cheaper than providing health care and retirement income to seniors, which even America does.
I’m sure somewhere there’s a statistician standing by to explain how many billions, or trillions, it would cost to give American kids good, affordable day care. I’m sure right wing pundits already have that number ready to repeat, and inflate. And I’m sure it’s not a fraction of the benefits that would be gained.
Over the past 20 years, women’s prime-age employment in the U.S. has lagged ever further behind the rest of the advanced world — at this point we’re well below even Japan. And lack of child care is probably one main reason.
So child care really should be an important part of the progressive agenda. Hillary Clinton had a serious plan back in 2016, but the news media was too busy obsessing over emails to pay attention. And if you ask me, Elizabeth Warren’s new proposal isn’t getting as much attention as it should.
Oh, the news media has barely begun to obsess for the 2020 cycle. I can tell you with certainty that I saw more reports on Amy Klobuchar’s choice of salad-eating utensils than I did on Warren’s child care plan. Because that’s the kind of very serious nation we are.
Nancy LeTourneau looks at the statistics say at the moment about how 2020 could look.
Washington Monthly
Presidential approval numbers are often used to predict re-election chances. According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump stands at 42.6 percent, which is better than it was during the government shutdown, but still doesn’t bode well for him.
That polling question is usually tracked at the national level, which gives us an overall picture of the president’s performance, but isn’t that helpful when it comes to how it will play out in the electoral college. That is why Gallup’s recent release of Trump’s job approval rating by states is worth taking a look at.
The president’s job approval rating is 50 percent or above in 17 states, which would account for a combined total of only 102 electoral votes. I thought it would be interesting to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’d win in states where his job approval was higher than 45 percent. Here’s what the electoral map would look like under those circumstances.
There are really only two problems with this story. First, it’s highly map-based, so I’d encourage you to go over and check it out. Second, everyone knows the best place for this sort of analysis is Daily Kos Elections.
Michael Tomasky has something to say about Bernie, but he’s not saying it here this week because Daily Beast put his column behind a paywall. Sorry, folks.
Anne Applebaum on the death of political parties abroad, and what it means at home.
Washington Post
Both the Labour leadership and its grass-roots activists are now dominated by a Marxist far left that is vitriolic, secretive about its plans and prone to conspiracy theories, including anti-Semitic ones. One of the ex-Labour MPs has described the party as “sickeningly institutionally racist.” The once-pragmatic Tory party has meanwhile lost its old ideological compass and is in thrall to a far-right minority and a leader whose main interest is not the good of the country but the unity of the party. As one of the now ex-Tories put it, “The right-wing, hard-line, anti-[European Union] squad are now running the Conservative Party.” As if to reaffirm those claims, partisans from both political extremes launched a tidal wave of vile insults and hateful attacks at all the new members of the Independent Group within minutes of their announced resignations.
But the transformation of both parties is not just about brutal language. Like their U.S. equivalents, the British parties were once broad movements with links to real institutions that mattered to people, institutions such as trade unions and church groups that offered not just political participation but also an identity. As the power of those real institutions faded — as identity became a thing people increasingly found online — the mainstream parties became hollow vehicles for politicians to gain power. In an information landscape increasingly governed by algorithms that favor anger and extremism, it was a short step from there to their capture by angry, extremist minorities.
Nothing in this sounds good, but I’ve found Applebaum consistently thoughtful enough in the past that it warrants consideration. What are parties, when they’re no longer moored to institutions? Is a platform enough?
State Stuff
Laurie Roberts is talking about local issues — but they are, unfortunately, not unique.
Arizona Republican
This week at state Capitol, our leaders …
… Passed a bill through committee aimed at better regulating charter schools – one written largely by the charter school industry. The bill makes modest changes but does nothing to prevent insider deals that have allowed charter school owners to divert unlimited amounts of tax money away from students and into their own stock portfolios.
... Killed a bill that would have allowed voters to eliminate legislators’ immunity from arrest during the legislative session. The proposal – popular with 99 percent of Arizona voters and apparently none of the people we elect to represent us – quietly died as the deadline to hear bills in the committee of origin passed. House Speaker Rusty Bowers never even assigned the bill to a committee.
That second one is really intriguing. Arizona legislators have genuine, no-kidding, immunity from arrest while the legislature is in session? This is better assurance than Donald Trump, who only has a few piddling Justice Department guidelines between him and an orange jumpsuit. How long before these guys declare the Arizona legislative session to be 366 days long?
Art Cullen is talking about stuff in Iowa, but it’s also way too familiar to anyone, anywhere.
Storm Lake News
Just last week the Iowa Fiscal Partnership reported the state wrote $41.8 million in checks for research tax credits to huge companies that paid no taxes. It’s perfectly legal, all written in to our economic development incentive laws long ago to convince companies to undertake activities they would undertake anyhow. It was suggested for change in 2010. It is not a Republican or Democrat thing. It is a corporate welfare thing that transcends party.
The credits go out year after year without legislative approval, unlike the deliberations over school appropriations. The program is on auto-pilot.
Through various programs we fund old-line things like fertilizer plants, pork processors and even computer warehouses. We fund tractors and airplane radio components. Sometimes, the companies we subsidize just pick up and leave Iowa after we have been writing them checks.
It’s called buying jobs. It started during the Farm Crisis when any job was a good job. Over time, we have come to recognize that the fertilizer plant will be there so long as corn needs nitrogen, and that pork plant will be there so long is the corn is. They don’t need any help from us.
But the schools do. That $40 million could have allowed schools a 3% increase next year.
I’ve surely mentioned that my father was the city administrator of a small town in Kentucky for 40 years. And in that 40 years, the one thing he never did. Never. Never, ever. Was offer anyone a tax incentive to “bring jobs to town.” That’s because he did the math. if there was ever a tax incentive deal that actually worked out to the benefit of the community, one that didn’t stick everyone else with higher costs to cover a freeloading corporation that put additional strain on everything from sewers to streets without paying their share … he never saw it. He had this funny idea that if you kept things in good repair, kept the school system functioning well, and reserved the handouts for people who needed them rather than corporations who didn’t, people would want to be there and things would work out. They worked out.
Celebrities and sexual assault
Renée Graham is ready to move past R. Kelley.
Boston Globe
Nearly a decade after Jackson’s death, those allegations are again news. On March 3 and 4, HBO will air “Leaving Neverland,” a four-hour documentary featuring two men who say that, as children, they were first befriended, then sexually abused by Jackson. In the film’s trailer, one of the accusers says Jackson told him, “If they ever found out what we were doing, [you] and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives.” Later he adds, “I want to be able to speak the truth as loud as I had to speak the lie for so long.”
Jackson, who was acquitted in 2005 on all charges related to another child molestation accusation, always maintained his innocence. After “Leaving Neverland” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this year, Jackson’s estate excoriated the accusers. In a statement, his family said, “The facts don’t lie, people do. Michael Jackson was and always will be 100% innocent of these false allegations.” Now, Jackson’s estate is suing HBO for $100 million.
Honestly, I don’t know enough here to have an opinion. It seems like I should, as often as “jokes” about Jackson’s actions have been in the media over the years. But at this point, I’m not sure I can separate the real man from the tabloid rumors.
Virginia Heffernan looks at the incredible scope of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
Los Angeles Times
Over the last two decades, nearly 100 women told authorities all about sexual crimes allegedly committed by the hedge-funder Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was a friend of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and many other men in high places. …
Twelve years ago, despite masses of corroborating evidence and the statements of the Jane Does, federal prosecutors under then-Miami U.S. Atty. Alexander Acosta — now President Trump’s Labor secretary — handed Epstein a sickly-sweet sweetheart deal.
The multimillionaire pleaded guilty to two negligible charges of soliciting prostitution in state court and paid restitution to dozens of his victims. In exchange, according to the plea agreement, he and “any potential co-conspirators” received immunity from potential federal charges that could have have carried a life sentence. And instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein served his grueling 13-month sentence in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail, with work release privileges of up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Fortunately, that’s not the end of this terrible story.
But that was then.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled in a civil lawsuit that Acosta (reminder: Trump’s Labor secretary) broke a victims’ rights law in concealing the particulars of Epstein’s deal from the girls who gave evidence. The judge gave prosecutors 15 days to come up with a settlement; it’s possible that Epstein’s plea deal could be overturned entirely.
Hate Crimes
Joan Walsh on the damage being done by the handling of Jussie Smollet’s story.
The Nation
I’m sad about the mess Empire star Jussie Smollett has allegedly caused, and the pain he must have felt to cause this mess. I’m sadder still that the charge that he faked an attack by racist, homophobic Donald Trump supporters in MAGA hats is now the leading story on the front of white-supremacist violence, while we have two genuine examples of white-supremacist menace sludging up our legal system—and they are getting far less coverage.
Of course, Trump took advantage of the Smollett story to tweet: “@JussieSmollett – what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA.” But as TV viewers watched Smollett be shamed live, in real time, in a Chicago courtroom Thursday afternoon, the more important stories about actual violent white racism were elsewhere.
Note that Trump’s actions are … Trump. Of course he’s going to do that. But the relative amount of media coverage — the fact that CNN pulled away from every other story to breathlessly follow every moment of the story on Smollett, then returned just long enough so a room full of people could tsk tsk over the story some more — that’s completely voluntary.
Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, 49, was arrested nominally on drug and gun charges last Friday, but behind the broad outlines of his threatened violence was a plan to target known Trump enemies, liberals whom the White House bully has railed against in speeches and on social media, from Democratic Congressmembers like Representatives Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Richard Blumenthal (he called him “Sen blumen jew”), to journalists like CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, and “leftists in general.” Weirdly, Hasson’s arrest wasn’t broadcast by the Trump Justice Department; can you imagine the administration busting a violent, well-armed would-be Muslim terrorist and not blowing its own horn to the media?
That the Justice Department would make an arrest like this and not trumpet it to the press is a mark of how twisted things have become.
Henry Olson also has a look at how “populist” anti-immigrant parties are still on the rise.
Washington Post.
But honestly, it’s such a catalog of depressing racism and hate that I’m not going to reproduce it, just point out that it’s there.
Freedom of the Press
Will Bunch on Clarence Thomas and Donald Trump vs the press.
Philadelphia Inquirer
In 1960, as King — the well-known leader of the Rosa Parks-sparked Montgomery bus boycott — was looking to expand his movement against Southern segregation, officials in Alabama charged the young minister with perjury. A group calling itself the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South placed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling attention to the case and seeking to raise money for King’s defense. It was headlined “Heed Their Rising Voices.”
Alabama’s white, pro-segregation leaders had other ideas. Having vowed “massive resistance” to racial integration, top officials — beginning with Montgomery’s public safety commissioner L.B. Sullivan, later joined by Alabama’s governor — sued the New York Times as well as prominent black ministers for libel over the allegations in the ad. Bringing their cases in state court before all-white juries who’d been whipped into a frenzy against “outside agitators” by their political leaders, Sullivan eventually won a $500,000 judgment — a sum that would have been highly damaging to the Times in those days.
But even worse, the case had a chilling impact on coverage of the civil rights movement by the New York Times and other Northern newspapers right at a critical moment for King and other activists. They desperately needed publicity outside the South — to raise money, rally public support, and woo Northern members of Congress to their cause. But the legal proceedings, and fear of being served with court papers, kept the Times’ legendary reporter on the civil rights beat, Claude Sitton, out of Alabama for much of a two-year period.
This is the situation Clarence Thomas’ set out to restore in an amazing solo dissent this past week. Thomas’ arguments so astoundingly diverged from court thinking over the past two decades that it seriously has people wondering if he means to retire.
Trump
Charles Pierce thinks the day the Mueller investigation ends, something else should begin.
Esquire
It's time to push Congress. Hard. The moment Mueller drops his report, the congressional move to replace this bungler and grifter should begin in earnest and, if it doesn't, then we should howl loudly and constantly until it does. We are a free and self-governing people or we are not. The choice never has been starker than it is now. Next week is going to be an extended test of that proposition. Mueller may drop his report. Michael Cohen is going before Congress in public testimony. The entire administration*'s foul entrails will be draped on the trees lining the National Mall between the Capitol and the White House. We should walk slowly and look at every inch of them. If we're sickened by the stench, so much the better.
Can we just skip the next round of investigations and move straight on to the impeachment hearings? Let’s give it a shot. Pierce has some stories about other politicians who also make impeachment seem way too light a punishment. It’s worth visiting his piece to read them.
Max Boot on Republicans and the vote over the national non-emergency.
Washington Post
Republicans condemned President Barack Obama’s use of executive authority as, in the words of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.)‚ “an unprecedented executive power grab” and an “end-run around Congress” that would “undermine the Constitution and threaten our democracy.” They called him a “king,” “emperor” and “tyrant.” They were particularly exercised that Obama used executive authority on the issue of — oh, the irony — immigration. In 2014, Trump condemned Obama’s executive order to stop deportations of undocumented parents of children born in the United States as “a very, very dangerous thing that should be overwritten easily by the Supreme Court.”
Now Trump is traducing the Constitution in ways that Obama would never have dared. This is only the second time since the passage of the 1976 National Emergencies Act that a president has used his emergency powers to take military action — in this case to divert defense funds to build a border wall. The only previous time was after 9/11. And never before has a president employed emergency powers to fund a project that Congress refused to appropriate.
What’s amazing is how little discussion there is of Trump’s “emergency” at this point. Oh, yeah, he declared his ability to trample Congress, seize funds, and answer to know one you say? But how does he eat his salads?
Now Republicans have a chance to vote their consciences, if they have any left. The House will vote Tuesday on a resolution to repeal the state of emergency. The Senate will have its opportunity soon. This is the most important vote that Republicans will make in their lives. And there is every indication that almost all of them will make the wrong choice.
It’ll pass in the House. But not because of Republicans.
The Right to Disagree
Leonard Pitts on the 11-year-old arrested for insufficient patriotism.
Miami Herald
It happened earlier this month — the story came to widespread attention only last week — after the child, whose name has not been released, refused to join his class in expressing love of country. Which is to say, he defied a substitute teacher’s order to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge, he said, represents racism.
There followed a standoff with the sub who probably didn’t know and maybe didn’t care that the boy has been refusing to take the pledge all year. As reported by Bay News 9, a TV station in St. Petersburg, which obtained the teacher’s written statement, she asked why he didn’t go somewhere else to live if America is so bad.
Which is an extremely hurtful and stupid thing to say.
She said the boy responded, “They brought me here.”
Which is a very good answer.
The teacher said she told him, “Well, you can always go back, because I came here from Cuba and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore I would find another place to live.” Thereby equating her decision to flee a totalitarian regime with the kidnapping at gunpoint of this child’s ancestors.
Compounding her cluelessness, the woman called administrators, who called police. They claim the boy was arrested because he became disruptive, refused to follow instructions and resisted arrest without violence. Which feels like a lame excuse for an indefensible overreaction, especially given that school policy — and a little thing called the First Amendment — give him the right to opt out of the Pledge. Small wonder a prosecutor has declined to prosecute.