It has often seemed to me that we could lower our workload if we only kept track of Donald Trump’s instances of telling the truth instead of pedaling ourselves out of breath trying to keep up with his daily roster of lies. Today, the squatter in the White House said one true thing during the official announcement of the re-election campaign he’s been running since he filed the paperwork for 2020 with the Federal Election Commission the same day he took the oath of office on January 20, 2017. Today he truthfully told an audience in Orlando, Florida, "Nobody has done what we have done in two-and-a-half years."
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Jessicah Pierre at OtherWords writes—Celebrating Juneteenth with Bold New Ideas. Closing our racial wealth divide requires bold thinking, but so did ending slavery.
...more than 150 years after slavery, black wealth still lags centuries behind white wealth. A report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that it would take 228 years for black families to amass the amount of wealth white families already own today.
In fact, the racial wealth divide is greater today than it was decades ago, and still widening. That divide won’t close without bold, structural reform to match the structural injustices that created it — from slavery itself to Jim Crow, red lining, and mass incarceration.
A more recent IPS report offered a number of promising solutions to close this gap. Some ideas include….
1. Baby Bonds: Baby bonds are federally managed accounts that could be set up at birth for all kids and grow over time. When a child reaches adulthood, they could use these federally seeded funds for education, to buy a house, or start a business. 2. Guaranteed Employment and a Living Wage [...] 3. Affordable Housing [...] 4. Medicare for All [...] 5. Postal Banking [...] 6. Higher Taxes on the Ultra-Wealthy [...] 7. Fixing the Tax Code; 8. Reparations: A bill called HR 40, championed currently by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18), would create a commission to study the issue of reparations and grapple with what they could really look like. 9. Better Data Collection [...] 10. A Racial Wealth Audit.
Andy Greenberg at Wired writes—How Not to Prevent a Cyberwar with Russia:
IN THE SHORT span of years in which the threat of cyberwar has loomed, no one has quite figured out how to prevent one. As state-sponsored hackers find new ways to inflict disruption and paralysis on one another, that arms race has proven far easier to accelerate than to slow down. But security wonks tend to agree, at least, that there's one way not to prevent a cyberwar: launching a preemptive or disproportionate cyberattack on an opponent's civilian infrastructure. As the Trump administration increasingly beats its cyberwar drum, some former national security officials and analysts warn that even threatening that sort of attack could do far more to escalate a coming cyberwar than to deter it.
Over the past weekend, The New York Times reported that US Cyber Command has penetrated more deeply than ever before into Russian electric utilities, planting malware potentially capable of disrupting the grid, perhaps as a retaliatory measure meant to deter further cyberattacks by the country's hackers. [...]
But former White House cybersecurity officials caution against that cyberwar hawkishness. "The idea that we can use cyber offense capabilities to impose sabotage-like effects, and to do so in increasingly large scale and costly ways until they get it through their head that they can’t win, I don’t think that's going to work," says Tom Bossert, who served as White House homeland security advisor and the president's most senior cybersecurity-focused official until April of last year. "I want to make sure we don’t end up in an escalatory cyber exchange where we lose more than they do."
David Ignatius at The Washington Post writes—Trump has a credibility problem with Iran. Shanahan’s departure makes it worse:
President Trump has a credibility problem at a time when his confrontation with Iran is moving toward a dangerous test.
“There is no capital in the bank” in terms of trust with major European and Asian allies, said one former senior defense official. “We’ve managed to isolate ourselves, rather than Iran. This is a strategy-free zone.”
Adding to the sense of vertigo surrounding U.S. defense policy was the withdrawal Tuesday of Patrick Shanahan as Trump’s selection for defense secretary. [...]
Shanahan’s departure will increase uncertainty at the Pentagon at a moment of significant potential military risk. Allied jitters are likely to expand, too, with Monday’s announcement that the United States is sending 1,000 additional troops to the Persian Gulf.
Michael H. Fuchs, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs at The Guardian writes—The Trump administration's dangerous fever dream about Iran:
The Trump administration is caught in a fever dream about Iran, and the fever is becoming dangerous.
In the wake of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman – which the US blames on Iran, though questions remain about the attack – the discourse on Iran being pushed by the administration and others is reaching fever pitch. Senator Tom Cotton has called for a “retaliatory military strike”. The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens says the US should threaten to sink Iran’s navy.
This, of course, is not surprising to anyone who has watched the Iran debate in Washington. It’s divorced from reality.
Everyone knows that Iran’s government is dangerous. It represses the Iranian people. It sponsors terrorism across the Middle East. The question is not whether Iran is bad – the question is what the best strategy is to deal with the threats. [...]
To develop an effective strategy, America needs to put itself in Iran’s shoes. After the US invaded two of Iran’s neighbors – Afghanistan and Iraq – tensions got even worse with Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon and deadly fights between Iranians and American soldiers in Iraq. America believes Iran’s aggression has intensified while Iran believes America is surrounding Iran.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield at Yes! magazine writes—On Reparations, the Question Isn’t If, but When and How: “”
This year we observe the 400th anniversary of the first captive Africans brought to what is now the United States of America, and this month we observe Juneteenth, the celebration of freedom for all U.S. enslaved Black people.
But we will also observe another monumental moment in U.S. history.
On June 19, Juneteenth, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will hold a slavery reparations hearing. It is the first of its kind in decades. And the first time ever the issue has garnered as much attention and support, including a declaration from the United Nations. The purpose of the hearing is “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.”
While the topic of reparations has made its way to the forefront of mainstream discourse, this hearing is the result of centuries of work. The push for reparations did not just come into being with current presidential candidates purporting their support of some kind of reparations. It didn’t just come about as a reaction to the divisive leadership of Donald Trump. And it didn’t come into being, as some have reported, with the excellent reporting of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 piece in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations.”
In the late 1800s to early 1900s, a formerly enslaved Black woman named Callie House, who was head of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, led a movement to secure reparations for formerly enslaved U.S. Blacks—specifically pensions to older freed men and women who’d worked without pay—to no avail.
House was jailed for her efforts.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Reparations: Reasonable and Right. It is America’s responsibility to undo the trauma it has inflicted upon black people for hundreds of years:
For a vast majority of black people’s time in this country, they have been suffering under an oppression operating on all levels of government — local, state and federal.
It is absolutely a good idea for America to think about how to make that right, to think about how to repair the damage it did, to think about how to do what is morally just.
And the idea that too much time has passed makes a mockery of morality. You can’t use having not done something at a better time as an argument that a later time can never be the right time.
Furthermore, this is not about individual guilt or shame but rather about collective responsibility and redemption. America needs to set its soul right.
The paying of reparations isn’t at all an outlandish idea. To the contrary, it’s an exceedingly reasonable proposition. Most of all, it’s right.
Michelle Chen at In These Times writes—“Hardhats vs. Hippies”: How the Media Misrepresents the Debate Over the Green New Deal:
A recent Politico article about the Green New Deal resolution put forward in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) features many grumblings from blue-collar union members about the potential economic disruption and the loss of jobs—even though the resolution calls for union rights and a federal jobs guarantee for workers. [...]
The Politico article follows a number of reports of labor groups chafing at the sweeping goals of the federal Green New Deal resolution, as well as the "Green New Deal Los Angeles," lamenting the lack of detail about how fossil-fuel dependent industries and workers will be affected. The friction over the resolution does speak to an understandable wariness of the plan’s soaring ambitions. The expansive targets, along with a lack of concrete plans on how to achieve its benchmarks, have stirred fears of unrealistic expectations, and workers have reasonable concerns about whether promises of green jobs will really materialize. With so much at stake, organized labor has a reasonable interest in safeguarding members from potential economic turbulence.
But contrary to Politico's depiction, skeptics hardly amount to massive working-class opposition to the Green New Deal. The media coverage centers on labor’s fear that workers won’t be provided a fair share of the deal’s achievements. The same question of social equity can be applied to any number of progressive policy proposals that the 2020 presidential candidates have touted, such as Medicare for All or a federal jobs guarantee.
More importantly, though building-trades workers may fit Trump’s image of working-class America, they are not representative of labor or the working class as a whole when it comes to green issues. The future of labor will be helmed by service workers, women, immigrants and people of color. Accordingly, the Green New Deal or other strong climate change policies have won endorsements from SEIU, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and National Nurses United, along with various locals like New York State Nurses Association and American Federation of Teachers - Oregon. A survey released by Data for Progress this month found that “union membership is one of the factors most highly correlated with support for Green New Deal policies as well as the Green New Deal framework as a whole.”
Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer writes—4 years since Trump came down that escalator and the cycle of empty outrage has become unbearable:
It was the most consequential ride in American history since Paul Revere, and as I write this it happened exactly four years ago — June 16, 2015. But doesn’t it feel like it was 14 years ago, or maybe 40, when Donald Trump stepped onto that escalator at Trump Tower, his glam wife Melania a few steps ahead of him like an extra from a Robert Palmer video, as the pirated version of Neil Young’s “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World" blasted from the speakers?
There was definitely big-time symbolism — but like everything else in America these days ... whose symbolism? To Trump and the cult he was initiating at 11:05 a.m. that day, a leader was finally descending from the (faux) billionaire heavens to lead his people to the promised land. To me — and I sense that I’m not alone in this — it felt that escalator was just the first stage of an endless descent downward, Dante’s Inferno as drawn by M.C. Escher. Just when you thought you’d reached the basement, you turn a corner and there’s another down escalator. To infinity, and beyond.
Gail Collins at The New York Times writes—Trump’s Running Again. Still. Somebody seems to miss HIllary Clinton:
Hell of a busy time for concerned citizens. Donald Trump just kicked off his re-election campaign, leaving his supporters cheering while less enthusiastic citizens kept yelling “That’s just not true!” at the television. [...]
He’s in desperate need of new material. Trump spent a good part of his big kickoff rally attacking Hillary Clinton (“33,000 emails deleted! Think of it!”). His speech was pretty much the same one he’s been making to his fans for the last four years.
The only fresh information Trump brought to the party was an announcement that he’s retiring his Make America Great Again slogan, since, of course, that has been accomplished. The successor will presumably be Keep America Great. Try to imagine all those KAG hats floating around. It suggests either a drunkenly misspelled beer bash or a hitherto unknown arm of the Russian secret police.
Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—By Replacing Obama’s Clean Energy Rules, Trump Threatens Us All:
Why would anyone want to do this?
The Trump administration on Wednesday replaced former President Barack Obama’s effort to reduce planet-warming pollution from coal plants with a new rule that would allow plants to stay open longer and slow progress on cutting carbon emissions.
Even the name the Trump administration has given this travesty is an effort to troll its political opponents.
“The Affordable Clean Energy rule gives states the regulatory certainty they need to continue to reduce emissions and provide affordable energy to all Americans,” Andrew Wheeler, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said Wednesday as he introduced the new measure.
Get it? The Democrats called it the “Affordable” Care Act, so they call this the “Affordable” Clean Energy rule. It should be called the Climate Change Denial rule. It’s not even really a rule.
While it instructs states to reduce emissions, the new measure sets no targets. Instead, it gives states broad latitude to decide how much carbon reduction they consider reasonable and suggests ways to improve efficiency at individual power plants.
It’s just stupid and immoral.
In a podcast, India Rakusen at The Guardian talks with activist and author Bill McKibben about What oil companies knew: the great climate cover-up.
Charles Dunst at The New Republic writes—No, the Buttigiegs Are Not Straight. Mayor Pete and his husband's assimilation into the American mainstream is not some kind of queer failure:
The seriousness of Pete Buttigieg’s pursuit of the Democratic nomination for president is, in no uncertain terms, a stunning reflection of progress. It is remarkable that a gay man—one who lived through a time when his choice of sexual partner, his desire to marry, and his interest in adopting children were all contrary to the law—is a legitimate contender in the race to be commander-in-chief. Given that his success surprised me, an early-twenties gay millennial, I can only imagine the glee being felt by the queer Americans who lived through decades of discrimination far harsher that its contemporary analog.
Buttigieg’s candidacy, beyond warming the hearts of this older generation, serves also to embolden their younger counterparts. Research by Jeremiah Garretson, professor of political science at California State University, East Bay, has shown that as exposure to queer people increases, so does the probability of supporting job protections for them. Garretson’s observations could apply to Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten, whose smiling faces appear regularly in mainstream media, sometimes even together to proudly offer a once-illicit kiss. The couple’s regular appearances on these platforms, including their recent TIME magazine cover, can serve to tangibly improve the lives of queer Americans.
And yet, Greta LaFleur, a Yale professor of American Studies who also directs the university’s graduate program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, recently penned a Los Angeles Review of Books essay titled “Heterosexuality Without Women” deriding the couple. Citing their traditional appearance, LaFleur accused the mayor and his husband of leveraging heterosexuality in an effort to offer the American public “the promise that our first gay first family might actually be a straight one.” Amid unnecessary jabs—including an allegation of “sartorial doppel-banging” (sleeping with your own doppelgänger)—she essentially argues that the couple is too mainstream to truly be queer. Instead, they are tangentially heterosexual. Her article, which won support from other academics and writers, demonstrates how intersectional thinkers, amidst their well-intentioned efforts to raise up the voices of marginalized queer people, often needlessly sideline and diminish the queerness of their privileged counterparts.
Chris Brooks at The Nation writes—Why the UAW Lost Another Election in Tennessee. Officials offered a soft-serve variation of a union instead of the real thing:
Volkswagen workers somberly shuffled through the turnstiles and into the front entrance of the 1,400-acre factory here on Monday morning, having just endured a scorched-earth union election which the United Automobile Workers (UAW) narrowly lost, 776 to 833. [...]
Intensive anti-union campaigns involving employers, politicians, and corporate front groups is the new status quo in the South. Sadly, the UAW has consistently failed to build strong, high-participation campaigns capable of withstanding and even pushing back against these attacks through militant action. The UAW’s approach has left workers woefully ill-prepared to deal with a company assisted by powerful state politicians and dark-money groups.
While there is a lot of blame to go around, not all of it is being directed at the company and its union-busting proxies—or the union. Some is aimed at the UAW’s German allies. “Germany waited until the last fucking minute to help,” said one enraged union activist, who asked to remain anonymous.
For years, the UAW has unsuccessfully tried to leverage the power of European unions and German laws mandating labor-management partnership. Elizabeth Warren has recently proposed an “Accountable Capitalism Act,” explicitly based on Germany’s model of social partnership, mandating that workers elect a minimum of 40 percent of their employer’s board of directors.
Warren’s heart is in the right place, but the UAW’s experience with Volkswagen suggests the policy may be misguided.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Democratic moderates are owning their mistakes:
Former senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) argued that Democrats need to pay far more attention to rural America if they ever want to take back the Senate. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) urged his party to be more open to people of faith. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) spoke for new members of Congress from swing districts in insisting that “the loudest voices” are not representative of voters “working two or three jobs.”
And New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) had this advice: “Don’t keep reacting to [President] Trump. Show there are things we can run on and win on.”
Thus went the counsel of the Democratic pragmatists of Third Way, a leading middle-of-the-road think tank, at a meeting here this week that was, in part, a running critique of the baleful influence of Twitter on the political debate. Jim Kessler and Lanae Erickson, senior officials of the group, devoted separate presentations to showing that Democratic voters who use Twitter regularly are much more left-wing than the party’s primary electorate as a whole. Democrats, in Third Way’s view, could tweet themselves into oblivion.
Jon Cowan, the group’s president, brought the point home by warning that outside “cobalt blue districts and states, we can’t afford a strategy aimed mainly at the furthest-left Democrats. . . . The danger is that we pursue an approach that runs up the score in blue places but falls short everywhere else.”
The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times laments—California’s wildfire commission delivers its reform plan, only to be promptly ignored:
The five members of the Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery were given no small task: Dive into the highly wonky issues of electric utilities, finance and insurance to come up with a fair and workable plan to spread the cost of future wildfires caused by power lines. And do it without letting power companies off the hook or dumping the entire burden onto ratepayers. And do it in less than six months. With no pay.
To their credit, the commissioners — all respected experts in their various fields — did just that. They spent months traveling across the state to take testimony from the people who lost homes and loved ones in wildfires, as well as from fire experts, utility managers, consumer advocates, lawyers and anyone else with an opinion. They released their report on May 29 calling for a series of urgent and interconnected reforms: doing away with the so-called strict liability standard for utilities, establishing a wildfire victims fund to help people rebuild quickly, and implementing policy changes to stabilize the homeowners insurance market.
And how was their report received? Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders, to their discredit, announced on the very same day that one of the cornerstones of the recommendations — removing the strict liability standard for utilities and replacing it with a fault-based system — was just not going to happen. At least not this year. Thanks anyhow!