“Today, the U.S. has had the highest economic growth among the world’s leading economies since the pandemic. We’ve added over 13 million jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has added in a four-year term. And folks, that’s no accident.
“That’s Bidenomics in action,” Biden said in a 37-minute speech in the Old Post Office’s lobby.
[...]
Originally intended as a criticism of the president’s economic plan, the term “Bidenomics” originated with the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. And while Biden made it clear on Wednesday that he didn’t come up with the moniker, he did everything he could to turn it into a positive, including standing amid blue banners touting “Bidenomics” and what he considers its pillars.
“I think it’s a plan that I’ll — I’m happy to call it ‘Bidenomics,’” Biden said to applause. “And guess what? Bidenomics is working.”
John Cassidy of The New Yorker defends the Biden economy.
But setting aside the politics of all this, which isn’t easy, Biden has a stronger economic argument to make than many people realize. In headline terms, his case can be summed up in three words: jobs, investment, and fairness. At a broad level, the Administration’s policies have helped the U.S economy rebound from the covid-19-induced slump more strongly than many economists expected, while, simultaneously, starting to tackle some deep challenges that had long been neglected. By the nature of things, it’s too early to say whether these efforts to shift the economy’s historical trajectory will succeed, but some of the early signs are encouraging.
The jobs record is central. When Biden took office, in January, 2021, the pandemic recovery was well under way: a hundred and forty-three million Americans were working, and the unemployment rate was 6.3 per cent. Last month, 156.1 million Americans were employed, and the jobless rate was just 3.7 per cent. Precisely how much of the job growth we’ve seen during the past two and a half years can be attributed to the $1.9 trillion stimulus that the Biden Administration signed in the March, 2021, American Rescue Plan can be debated, but the legislation undoubtedly played a significant role in supporting demand and hiring.[...]
In the Build Back Better economic plan that Biden laid out during his 2020 Presidential campaign, he promised to boost investment in American manufacturing and bring back jobs that had been offshored. After entering the White House, he didn’t get his entire economic agenda through Congress. But, taken together, the new spending, tax credits, and investment subsidies that were contained in the infrastructure bill, the chips Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act amount to an ambitious new industrial policy, which aspires to strengthen American high-tech manufacturing, make the green-energy transition a reality, and create well-paying jobs. Earlier this year, I argued that Biden’s industrial initiative would ultimately be seen as his most significant policy contribution.
Charles Blow of The New York Times says that Republican voter suppression and “anti-woke” policies are increasingly being recognized as unconstitutional.
The same party that argues for parental rights when haranguing and harassing educators about what is being taught and read in the classroom couldn’t care less about the parental rights of those trying to provide the best care for their children or who want their children to have an awareness and understanding of the broad spectrum of humanity and its expressions of love.
The Republican politicians pushing these un-American laws aren’t constitutional absolutists; they’re constitutional opportunists.
The same is true when it comes to elections, where the Republican strategy has become clear: Rather than change their party to appeal more broadly to the electorate, many Republican politicians are whittling away at the electorate and our election architecture, trying to remove or hamstring those aspects of the process that could lead to them losing.
They want to change the very meaning of democracy, shrinking to a government chosen by the chosen, a more originalist version of our system in which only certain people participate.
Steven Monacelli of the Texas Observer reports about data showing that the number of hate crimes in Texas reached an all-time high in 2022.
Newly released data collected from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) show that hate crimes in Texas increased by 6.4 percent from 2021 to 2022, marking the sixth year in a row the state has seen an increase in hate crimes—and setting a new record. The data show that Texas reached a new peak of at least 549 documented hate crimes across the state, with over 56 percent of hate crimes in 2022 targeting LGTBQ+ and Black people.
[...]
According to Texas DPS data, the majority of documented hate crimes are clustered in the top five most populous counties, which accounted for 54 percent of all hate crimes in 2022. The top 10 counties, home to 66 percent of Texans, accounted for 63 percent of hate crimes that same year. When normalized for population size, smaller counties tend to have much higher rates of hate crime incidents. The top 10 most-populous counties were split in terms of their change in the number of hate crimes year-over-year, with some seeing an increase and others seeing a decrease from 2021 to 2022.
[...]
When broken out by bias type, there is not a consistent trend regarding year-over-year changes in hate crimes. The overall increase seen in the state is driven by a handful of groups: anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Asian, anti-Other Religion, anti-Other Race, and anti-Jewish. Meanwhile, anti-white and anti-Latino hate crimes have slightly decreased, while anti-Black hate crimes have remained flat. Hate crimes against other groups have increased and decreased variably. Minority groups faced significantly higher rates of hate crimes per capita.
Elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales writes for Roll Call that that the number of white evangelical Christians in the national electorate is being exaggerated.
Do evangelicals make up that large share of the electorate compared to Black, Hispanic and union voters? The short answer is: no.
White born-again or evangelical Christians made up 24 percent of the electorate in the 2022 elections, according to the media consortium exit poll conducted for CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Black (11 percent) and Latino (11 percent) voters and those from a union household (18 percent) combined to comprise 40 percent of the vote.
A second exit poll, conducted for Fox News, The Associated Press, and The Wall Street Journal broke out voters who were union members (11 percent) and voters who had a union member in their household (6 percent), but the end result was the same.
White evangelicals made up 20 percent of the electorate in 2022, according to the second exit poll, while Black (11 percent), Hispanic (10 percent) and union members (11 percent) combined for 32 percent of the electorate. Adding in voters in a union household, that coalition ticketed up 38 percent — nearly double the white evangelical vote.
Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review points out that the media environment in Russia is more complex than some would have you believe.
For starters, while Putin has indeed tried to suck the air out of Russia’s domestic media, there have long been gaps in the seal. Online readers can use VPNs and other tools to access restricted independent media. As the war in Ukraine has dragged disastrously on, a new cadre of pro-war bloggers have periodically challenged Putin from the right, for not being hardline enough. Mikhail Zygar, the former editor in chief of the independent Russian channel TV Rain, told The New Yorker’s David Remnick over the weekend that these bloggers are now more important than propagandists on state TV. “They pose themselves as representatives of some ‘true Russia,’” Zygar said. “They are careful, but they do not denounce Prigozhin.” And repression does not always equal control. Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Anne Applebaum argued that by distorting the domestic information space, Putin has, above all, encouraged widespread popular apathy—which has discouraged opposition to his rule, but also meant that, as Wagner forces marched on Moscow, Russians en route didn’t rise up to stop them.
Internationally, not everyone has always bought the media caricature of Putin as a strategic genius. (A remark that I once heard on a panel discussion about the Trump-Russia scandal, to the effect of the power dynamics in the Kremlin being far more farcical than one might intuitively think, has long stuck with me, though apparently not so much that I can remember who said it.) Putin’s prosecution of his war in Ukraine already punctured this image; if nothing else, the mutiny might finally deflate it and conjure a different media archetype in its stead: one of a paper tiger whose foes just grew real teeth. The truth, of course, will be messier than this image, too.
Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times say that intelligence sources indicate that at least one general in the Russian Armed Forces may have assisted Prigozhin in last weekend’s coup attempt.
The officials said they are trying to learn if Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the former top Russian commander in Ukraine, helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions last weekend, which posed the most dramatic threat to President Vladimir V. Putin in his 23 years in power.
General Surovikin is a respected military leader who helped shore up defenses across the battle lines after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, analysts say. He was replaced as the top commander in January but retained influence in running war operations and remains popular among the troops.
American officials also said there are signs that other Russian generals may also have supported Mr. Prigozhin’s attempt to change the leadership of the Defense Ministry by force. Current and former U.S. officials said Mr. Prigozhin would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.
If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of the infighting that has characterized Russia’s military leadership since the start of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine and could signal a wider fracture between supporters of Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin’s two senior military advisers: Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of general staff.
The New York Times’ Pentagon correspondent, Helene Cooper, also appeared on “Deadline White House” with Nicole Wallace Tuesday.
Ali Velshi also weighed in.
Russian General Sergei Surovikin has been arrested, The Moscow Times' Russian service reported Wednesday, citing two sources close to the Defense Ministry who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Defense Ministry has yet to comment on the alleged arrest of Surovikin, who has not been seen in public since Saturday, when Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion against Russia's military leadership.
"The situation with him was not 'OK.' For the authorities. I can't say anything more," one of the sources said.
According to the second source, the arrest was carried out "in the context of Prigozhin."
"Apparently, he [Surovikin] chose Prigozhin's side during the uprising, and they've gotten him by the balls," the source said.
