Monthly Archives: March 2017

03.31.17
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Clint Watts Sums Up What Trump’s Collusion With Russia Really Means

 

molotov-ribbentrop_pact

Pictured: Me engaging in Godwin’s Law times, like, a million.

 

One of the most irritating parts about living in this madhouse political time is that the very worst people are suddenly influential. I literally couldn’t believe that, as of late, we were having a Sebastian Gorka moment, with his “ideas” being discussed on serious television programs, not to mention that he had actual influence in the White House. If you paid attention at all to CT, he was always this fringe idiot who was inexplicably taken seriously by a few people, but thankfully very few. He was more a persistent irritant. That he suddenly was everywhere was as boggled and distorted as the fact that some reality show idiot was being saluted by Marines.

But, on the other hand, people who you respect, who should have always been listened to more than bigoted fascists like Gorka, suddenly have their own moments, to help us explain how the reality TV dummy is President. For the last few months, that’s been Clint Watts. His testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday clarified what we should be talking about when looking for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian provocateurs.

Clint’s appeared on this blog a handful of times (which I’m sure is a thrill), first about foreign fighters, and then more Trump-y stuff, and over at the old joint we had a neat little roundelay about drones. So when the Senate called for his expertise, I knew we were in for something good. What I didn’t expect was him to draw the parallels between Trump and Russia so clearly.

“I think this answer is very simple and is what no one is really saying in this room. The reason active measures have worked in this US election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents.”

That’s the money quote right there. What we see, clearly, is that there doesn’t even need to be active collusion to say that the Trump campaign worked with the Russians in order to influence the elections. They purposely amplified Russian propaganda, giving it even greater attention, which, as he pointed out, is the whole goddamn point of propaganda.

And, furthermore, he was saying that because the Russians wanted to demonstrate that they could influence the election, because you don’t want to be subtle in doing so, the Trump amplification was, in addition to helping his horrorshow campaign, aiding and abetting Russia’s position as a power capable of doing such things.

And that’s part of Russian’s entire 21st-century purpose. They are a weakened superpower practicing asymmetrical warfare in the zone of influence. They want to intimidate and bully their Eurasian neighbors, as they jostle with China and form tenuous, loose-handshake alliances with Turkey, and Iran (and to an extent India) for continental dominance. They are playing the Eurasian game on multiple overlapping fronts, and being able to show their power is more important to them than using it, given their diminished resources.

And Trump, through his vanity and lack of self control, helped them do so.

I don’t know if any of this is actually actionable. The way I drew it here, I don’t think it is impeachable, though maybe there is an obscure law about helping Russia become more powerful.

But this is also just the beginning. That Michael Flynn is asking for immunity is…odd, since no one has accused him of any crimes (sure, the Logan Act, but I haven’t heard anyone seriously say he might be prosecuted for that). He’s either acting under a superabundance of caution or knows he’s got some problems coming his way. Either way, as soon as the investigation moved away from Nunes’s doltish coverups to an actual Senate hearing, dude got spooked. He knows it is serious now.

And that’s the point. It clearly goes much further. That literally everyone in the administration is compromised, in some form or the other, by Russia, and that they are being the opposite of forthcoming is too much smoke. As Charlie Pierce said, to assume that it stops with mere amplification is “to believe to the point of fanaticism the power of coincidence.”

If you live long enough, you see Donald Trump become President. But maybe if you live just a bit longer, you’ll see him become a disgraced ex-President.

03.30.17
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El Salvador Believes Water is Worth More Than Gold

 

Image result for gold miner

Different people might have different ideas about this picture

 

I was just reading this book that came out last year, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, which isn’t so much a telling of the US from the native point of view, but rather looking at US history as essentially being about Indian removal. There’s a passage where the author, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, talks about the gold rush, and the enormous depredations inflicted on the indigenous people in the European-American rush for gold. Some of the worst slaughters of the Indian Wars were to remove natives from their land, so that the Americans could get gold. (Remember, Custer was in the Black Hills to drive out the Sioux so newfound gold fields would be safe for Americans.)

In talking about the actions of the gold bugs, who brought torture and rape and disease and death to the natives, and who fought and killed each other over it, she mentions, almost as an aside, that for the natives, “gold was irrelevant.” Which is wild when you think about it: it had always been there, but was just sort of an interesting rock, until some other people came for whom it had imaginary value, and then it suddenly became death.

And that’s just the first-level horror. The miners choked the streams with silt, and of course, runoff from mining pollutes water supplies all around, leeching into aquifers, into the bodies of fish and anything that eats fish, and throughout whatever path the dirty water flows. That’s one of the lingering effects of mining, and it is why the US has been trying to regulate the industry as part of the Clean Water Act. That’s going away with the Trump administration, but there are some places which show us it is possible.

In this case, El Salvador.

SAN SALVADOR — Lawmakers in El Salvador voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to prohibit all mining for gold and other metals, making the country the first in the world to impose a nationwide ban on metal mining, environmental activists said.

Declaring that El Salvador’s fragile environment could not sustain metal mining operations, legislators across the political spectrum approved the ban, which had broad support, particularly from the influential Roman Catholic Church.

Supporters said the law was needed to protect the country’s dwindling supply of clean water.

“Today in El Salvador, water won out over gold,” Johnny Wright Sol, a legislator from the center-right Arena party, wrote on Twitter.

Now look: I’m not going to sit here and, you know, romanticize life in El Salvador. In some respects, it seems like a crummy place to live. But that’s sort of the point. Gold is really valuable, and I’m sure it could be used, but El Salvador is looking at long-term (and short-term) consequences of putting profit over elemental needs. It seems like the smart thing to do, and the obvious thing to do, which is why it is all the more bewildering that the dominant political party in the United States doesn’t seem to think so.

It’s essentially a continuation of the consistent project, which has been a 500-yr struggle to turn the indigenous land into capital.  It’s a past and present we can’t reckon with, and increasingly, it makes the future a more shaky proposition.

03.29.17
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On Brexit Day, an Elegiac Read on England

 

Image of Sutton Hoo by Marc Atkins, via LRB

Sutton Hoo © Marc Atkins/marcatkins.com

Sutton Hoo © Marc Atkins/marcatkins.com

 

Today (or, I guess, yesterday), as Theresa May officially initiated Brexit, throwing the European project into disarray, and continuing the long and nightmarish trend of advanced countries saying “LEAVE” to the modern world that got Donald Trump elected, I read a beautiful little piece in the London Review of Books about the burial ground of a 6th-century Anglican king. This article, by Rod Mengham, was written with Brexit in mind without mentioning it, by showing the whole sweep of English history, whether it was insular or expansive. It’s a beautiful little drizzle of a read, in which you get the scope of time and our current politics.

But it’s worth remembering that the version of English spoken by Rædwald also evolved into Swedish, not to mention Danish, Norwegian, German and Dutch. There is a case for saying that Sutton Hoo does not mark the beginnings of Englishness, but its end: no money, no Christianity, no island mentality. Whoever was buried in Mound 1 did not die in the ship, but he did live in one, conceptually – his people were joined by the sea, not bounded by it.

It’s also worth reading for the comment section, which discusses if Rædwald could count as UKIP.

 

 

03.29.17
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Pakistan and Climate Change: Presented Without Comment

 

Image result for pakistan flood 2016

Pakistan takes steps to politicize tragedy

 

Sigh...

The Pakistan senate’s approval of the Climate Change Act on March 17 was warmly welcomed by many as a step in the right direction for a country that is battling the growing threat of climate-related disasters.

The bill, authored by senator Zahid Hamid who heads the climate change ministry, was passed to ensure the country meets its obligations under international conventions relating to climate change and address its effects. Though ranked 153rd in terms of greenhouse gas emitting countries, Hamid told the senate it was the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change. The bill had already been approved by the National Assembly.

With this new law, Pakistan has joined the ranks of a handful of countries that have passed legislation to specifically tackle the impact of climate change, said Michal Nachmany who has been leading a global review of climate legislation at the Grantham Institute. As of 2017 there were over 400 laws relevant to climate change and energy, according to the institute’s review of 99 countries. However, there are just a few countries like Finland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Kenya, Australia, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, Micronesia and the Philippines that have passed climate change acts.

OK, just one comment: Pakistan officially believes in science more than the Republican Party.

03.29.17
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Climate Change Madness: The Real World vs. Trump

deepimpact_tsunami

Pictured: Success!

On the one hand:

The year 2016 made history, with a record global temperature, exceptionally low sea ice, and unabated sea level rise and ocean heat, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Extreme weather and climate conditions have continued into 2017.

On the other:

After weeks of rumors and delays, President Trump signed an executive order on climate policies Tuesday at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency—an agency the Trump administration tried to hit with a $247 million cut for the current fiscal year, according to Politico, and is seeking a 31 percent budget cut for next year. The order includes a number of actions to undo Obama-era decisions addressing the greenhouse gas emissions that have already warmed the world’s climate about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s.

Remember, to these malicious turnips, who are essentially saying that the US is pulling out of the Paris Agreement, success can be measured by dooming the entire species.

You know who doesn’t dig this? Exxon. 

Oil giant Exxon Mobil is urging Donald Trump to keep the United States signed up to the Paris Agreement on climate change. In a letter to the President’s special assistant for international energy and the environment, a senior Exxon official described the historic international deal as an “effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change”.

Exxon!

But you know who has a completely coherent and not at all illiterate and incomprehensible message of reassurance? The man with the nukes himself, Dancin’ Rick Perry!

As part of the announcement, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said, “America’s leadership, the president’s leadership, on how we achieve energy independence while improving our environment in this country and abroad is determined more by the actions that this president is taking than at any time.”

It’s too bad there won’t be any history classes in the Aftertime, because they’d have a field day with this.

03.29.17
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Yemen, Mosul, and a Strategy of Civilizational War

WASHINGTON — The senior United States commander in Iraq said on Tuesday that an American airstrike most likely led to the collapse of a building in Mosul that killed scores of civilians this month…

“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,” said General Townsend, who commands the American-led task force that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But he asserted that “the munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building.”

On the one hand, the tragedy of Mosul was “one of those things” that happen in a war, and clearly not intentional, and obviously pales in comparison to the flagrant bloodlust of ISIS. It doesn’t pale to the hundreds killed, of course, and that’s exactly the other hand. It’s hard to say if this one specific incident was an outcome of the Trump administration loosening the rules on engagement, giving fewer restrictions about civilian casualties, or if it could have happened regardless, but we need to be prepared for more of these stories.

Because, while letting on-the-ground commanders have more freedom, and more coordination with local officers fighting ISIS, is theoretically a sound strategy in a vacuum (and there have been reports that Iraqi commanders are happy), we aren’t in a vacuum. We’re in the Trump administration, which has been openly hostile to the Muslim world. Mass civilian casualties won’t be seen as an outcome of war. They won’t be seen as terrible accidents by genuinely committed and largely decent military people who want to destroy ISIS and liberate the people of Iraq and Syria from medieval teenage monsters. It will be seen as an outcome of Trumpism.

And the problem might be that this is exactly what Trump and his people want.

Steve Bannon might be a slight outlier when it comes to dreaming of religious holy wars, but he isn’t that far off. For years, the GOP has been saying that the fight against ISIS is a war of civilizations, and of civilization, and that it is essentially an existential struggle in which the US might be destroyed. This is wrapped up, and exacerbated by, general hostility to Muslims. It also “confirms” and strengthens that hostility.

Part of that is the rhetorical tomb Republicans walled themselves in. Because Obama (correctly) didn’t consider ISIS more than just a very dangerous terrorist group, they had to imagine them as Nazi hordes landing on Floridian shores. And because Obama actually did act aggressively to fight ISIS, they had to ramp up the rhetoric to pretend that MORE had to be done, because Obama, of course, was a wimp and really probably wanted ISIS to win. Senator ISIS, he surely thought, had a great ring to it. So they’ve convinced themselves for years that a massive blitz was needed.

It goes deeper than that. It’s partly because the GOP is, by and large, a bunch of non-military types who pump themselves up with reflected glory, and that means elevating every threat to an existential level. But it is also because the GOP is, by and large, made up of religious bigots and hysterics who despise Islam and want the US to fight a Christianized battle against it. They’ll say against terrorism, but the two have a 1:1 conflation in the GOP mind.

So that’s where the new rules come in. It’s a way to push that battle forward, and that sounds good to Donald Trump, who 1) is a bigot; 2) thinks he’s tough, and 3) is too lazy to come up with a plan other than “kill”. So again, his personal pathologies perfectly line up with mainstream Republican goals, “mainstream” here meaning “lunatic”.

We see this in Yemen, probably more than in Iraq and Syria, largely because Yemen is off the map, for the most part, and seen as an ideological playground and a place in which one can experiment. It’s where the Special Forces-Drone strategy was tested by Obama, and it’s where Trump will test his “anything goes”s strategy.

The administration is expanding its role in Yemen, as the Soufan Group reports. It wants to expand help to the Saudi-led war against the Houthis, the large majority of which is a war crime. It is doing this because it believes that the Sauds are our friends, and that they can help broker Jared Kushner’s regional peace deal. They are doing this because they believe that the Houthis are essentially Iran, and that this is a war against Iran. They don’t believe Yemen actually exists, save as a battleground for their experiments.

But mostly, they are doing this because they can. They want this war, which is why they are expanding Yemen’s “area of active hostilities“.  This is a war of civilizations, against the Muslim tide. That they are doing this in conjunction with shutting down our borders from refugees, and specifically targeting Muslims, is not a coincidence. It’s a plan. Or, if this is a mistake, and they actually think that they are doing something positive for world peace, as opposed to Western domination, then they are doing an excellent incidental job of persuading people otherwise.

Yemen is facing a terrible, devastating famine, which will further destabilize the region. Can you imagine the Trump administration, which is gutting foreign aid, even pretending to care? The war in Yemen is not inherently regional; it’s a local battle steeped in Yemeni history and geography, and can only be resolved by taking that into account. Can you imagine Bannon or Trump or Kushner knowing any of that history, or even pretending to take it into account? Of course not.

And none of that is chance. They might be all bluster, but this isn’t a blunder. It’s a global tragedy, but it is intentional. They want a civilizational battle, and that’s essentially in lockstep with the majority of the Republican Party. The moral outrage of their actions is terrible enough. But knowing that any fleeting victory is ledgered against an ever-expanding and irresolvable conflict makes what happened in November a world-historic disaster.

03.27.17
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Monday Quick Hits: Robots, Water, and Keystone

 

robot-1

“So I says to Mabel, I says…”

 

Did everyone have a good weekend? I had a great weekend. Lots of family, and lots of toast to Trump’s and Ryan’s failure to devastate the lives of millions of people. But this victory is, I think, just a pause. The battle will be to pressure Republicans, who seem to be a bit nervous about ruining the lives of their constituents, to make positive changes to the ACA, rather than repeal it.

Admittedly, they’re in a bind. The Times reported some anecdotes about people in GOP districts shocked that their reps would even think about such a thing, and might not vote Republican again. But then, there are also lots of GOP voters who, having been told that Obamacare was basically the forward thrust of creeping Bolshevism, are mad that it wasn’t repealed. So they are caught in a dilemma, namely: how do we do the things we’ve been saying we were going to do now that people have learned exactly what it is?

So now the question for Democrats is: how much should they work with Republicans? They are, thankfully, not eager to make some kind of “grand bargain” in order to help out the Republicans. The goal should be to fix Obamacare, working where you can to lower costs and make sure that insurance companies stay in. The talk of the “death spiral”, always exaggerated, is made possible by the threat of repeal. With that out of the way, for now at least, it could be possible to woo nervous Republicans to fix the bill at the margins, essentially working around Paul Ryan. That’s why the continued pressure from the outside is the only way to heighten their fear, and maybe force their hand to do the right and sensible thing and fix Obamacare.

Or, you could be like the President, who seems eager to watch the whole thing spiral out of control.

The “do not worry” is an especially nice touch.  He’s got a plan!

-Re/Code had a little story today about how PwC estimates, offhand, that the US could lose 40% of its jobs over the next 15 years thanks to automation. While there would of course be jobs created by automation (engineer, repair, etc) most of these will be high-skill jobs for people with advanced education. This is more than an unemployment trend; even if PwC’s numbers aren’t strictly accurate, this is economic devastation. This is something that can fundamentally alter society.

Massive unemployment of that sort needs to be ameliorated with something like a Universal Basic Income, or, failing that, an effort to create new work around infrastructure, tourism, or more. But there needs to be a collective effort grouped around the ideas that 1) the common good actually exists; and 2) that self-government is a good thing.

This isn’t something private markets can fix alone; indeed, it is the private market that will be at fault. There needs to be collective action to help the less educated and more vulnerable people in the new economy–the same ones who have been hurt for decades by market forces. That many of these are your stereotypical Trump voters (though they will be joined by millions of white collar types as well) represents an opportunity to convince them that the government is not the enemy, and that, in fact, this kind of intervention is the heart of the American experiment.

Of course, we’re debating whether or not it is ok if people just, you know, die because they don’t have employer-based insurance, so consensus on this seems a long way off.

-But we do have an answer on Keystone! That answer, of course, is “yes”. Trump signed off on Keystone on Friday, saying in a signing ceremony that:

It’s a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North American and energy independence.  This announcement is part of a new era of American energy policy that will lower costs for American families — and very significantly — reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create thousands of jobs right here in America.

It’s important to note, in the interest of being strictly accurate, that none of this is true. And it is just weird to talk about reducing “our dependence on foreign oil” right before you introduce the President of TransCanada, above and beyond the fact that this isn’t how the oil markets work. The sludge pumped over the largest underground aquifer isn’t going to be shuttled to your car. It goes into the global markets. I honestly don’t know if Trump understands this. I also wonder how he would reconcile the “lower costs” with the fact that, while Keystone was blocked, gas prices plummeted.

It is also good to note that this isn’t a done deal. As the TransCanada President reminded the United States President, they face resistance and lawsuits in Nebraska, where people don’t want a Canadian pipeline bringing dangerous material across their lands and into their water. That led to this exchange.

Trump: So we put a lot of people to work, a lot of great workers to work, and they did appreciate it.  And they appreciated it, Russ, very much at the polls, as you probably noticed.  And so we’re very happy about it.

So the bottom line — Keystone finished.  They’re going to start construction when?

MR. GIRLING:  Well, we’ve got some work to do in Nebraska to get our permits there —

THE PRESIDENT:  Nebraska.

MR. GIRLING:  — so we’re looking forward to working through that local —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll call Nebraska.  (Laughter.)  You know why?  Nebraska has a great governor.  They have a great governor.

MR. GIRLING:  We’ve been working there for some time, and I do believe that we’ll get through that process.  But obviously have to engage with local landowners, communities.  So we’ll be reaching out to those over the coming months to get the other necessary permits that we need, and then we’d look forward to start construction.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  I’m sure Nebraska will be good.  Peter is a fantastic governor who’s done a great job, and I’ll call him today.

Remember that the head of an oil company is talking about working with local communities and landowners, and the President of the US is saying he’ll call the governor to get it done. That’s a true populist man of the people right there.

03.24.17
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Trump Healthcare Ultimatum Is Equal Parts Stupid and Cruel; or: The Quintessence of Trumpism

 

Donald Trump sits in a truck, pretends to be big man.

Tough guy.

I’ve never read The Art of the Deal. With all due respect to his ghostwriter on the project, who turned out to be a real standup dude, there are maybe five books in the entire universe I’d enjoy reading less. The self-aggrandizing money-worship of an overfed huckster in celebration of our gaudiest decade? The vast majority of cereal boxes have more insight on the human condition, and probably more wit.

That said, from having had to pay attention to this man for decades, I know a little about how he operates, and it is from false machismo, the not-tough toughguyness of rich men in suits with lawyers. His main plank is to be willing to walk away, so that the other guy, nervous about sunk cost, gives away the store.

The other plank is that the deal is the thing, no matter how terrible it turns out to be, so long as there is short term gain. Both of these are on display with what the President is offering the Republican Party right now.

WASHINGTON — President Trump issued an ultimatum on Thursday to recalcitrant Republicans to fall in line behind a broad health insurance overhaul or see their opportunity to repeal the Affordable Care Act vanish, demanding a Friday vote on a bill that appeared to lack a majority to pass.

A couple of things. First of all, that shouldn’t, strictly, be true. There is nothing that says “one and done” with health care. It might make it more difficult to pass later on, but in theory, they could try to come up with a better bill. But this is Trump’s dumbbell toughshow on full display. You pass this bill, or else, hoping that will clarify their minds. It shows that he has no idea how government works, and thinks his shtick can pass for actual knowledge or skill (to be fair, it has his entire life, which says a lot about our culture).

And it might work! The Republicans might be terrified of this failure, and hope that they can make a widely despised piece of legislation come to life, or at least have the Senate somehow fix it. So this might come to pass (Politico still says too close to call), and if it does, might ghostwalk through the Senate, though there are a lot of institutional and electoral obstacles to doing so.

But let’s look at what we have. In the last few days, Trump and Ryan have given away the store to the far, far, far right members of the House Freedom Caucus, making their already unfathomably cruel and reckless bill even worse. It’ll cost more, and insure fewer people. The latest horror was stripping away the 10 essentials that health care should cover, on the extremely Republican idea that if you aren’t going to get pregnant, your money shouldn’t cover other people’s pregnancies.

(It could be pointed out that that’s how all insurance works, but at least they are ideologically consistent: no help for anyone, and pull the ladder up after you.)

So, basically, because Trump only wants to make deals, and has his whole phony image based on being great at negotiating and closing, is going to make life worse for nearly everyone, including the people who voted for him, so that he can get this quick little victory and show off how good he is at twisting arms. It’s stupid and cruel, which is really the essence of the man.

Please don’t take this as any sympathy for Paul Ryan or the Republicans. This is their fault, and not just because they acquiesced to Trump. They’ve spent seven years salivating over the idea of kicking people off insurance rolls, gutting Medicare, block-granting Medicaid, and most of all, shoveling money upward. They couldn’t wait! They rushed this through to maximize pain, and were suddenly stunned when it turned out that people didn’t equate dying in poverty with freedom.

So maybe this is their last shot. Maybe they recognize that the whole edifice of Republican governance is crumbling. It’s crumbling because of Trump, of course, his Russian connections, his inability to do anything that isn’t directly tied to his ego, and the fact that the sleaze with which he’s lived his life is an inescapable part of his administration.

But it is also crumbling because a party who thinks that self-government is Communism and that there is no such thing as the common good can’t govern when their plans are brought to light. For eight years, the cruelest and most Randian elements of the right wing had been percolating, able to tear at Obama, but still hidden by his shadow. Their guttersniping worked while they weren’t in charge, but now that their plans have seen the light of day, much of the country is reacting in horror. They can’t govern because they don’t believe in it, and that comes from their one core belief: you’re on your own, sucker.

So yes, they want to push through this bill while they still can. It’s cruel and insane, and it comes from their ideology, and it comes from the man who thinks that any deal is good so long as he isn’t holding the bag. It’s Trumpism, which is really just a flamboyant way of saying it’s the modern GOP.

03.23.17
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Overtime Regulations and Health Care: GOP Demonstrates the Measure of Human Existence

 

Image result for industrial revolution workers conditions

Pictured: GOP Nostalgia

 

In the daily brief of the New York Times, there’s a link-filled sentence that gives away the entire universe.

Party leaders worked into the night on Wednesday to secure the support of rank-and-file members, who our writer says face a dilemma: Vote for a bill that could harm their constituents, or undermine President Trump’s agenda.

While admitting that the Morning Brief writer may have put their thumb on the scale a little bit, it’s also impossible to deny that this is their real choice: go against Trump and mainstream GOP wishes, or hurt their constituents by throwing them into poverty and turmoil in order to pass a massive tax cut. That is to say, more bluntly: President Trump’s agenda will hurt their constituents (and, of course, his constituents, but the entire career of Donald Trump has been to leave other people holding the bag, so who is really surprised?).

And, meanwhile, while the Gorsuch hearings and Comey testimony have understandably taken up much of the oxygen, the hearing for new Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has been kicking off. Elizabeth Warren, as is her habit, got things off by saying the exact right thing.

“I’ll be honest, I’m glad it’s not his first choice, Andrew Puzder, who is sitting here today. That said, the test for secretary of Labor is not, ‘Are you better than Andrew Puzder?’ The test is, ‘Will you stand up for American workers?’ ” she added.

The thing is, that’s not really what the GOP believes should be the role of labor secretary, since they don’t at all respect labor, except as a way to garner votes. They truly believe that unions should be destroyed (something Judge Gorsuch seems to agree with), and while Donald Trump makes protectionist noise, it is clear he is against minimum wages and encourages states to compete with each other in a race to the bottom. While that might, in a way, be pro-make-stuff-in-America, it is very far from being pro-worker.

Indeed, the driving philosophy is that workers exist to make money for the bosses. That’s always been the main philosophy behind capitalism, and it has only been tempered by the progressive movement (which inarguably saved capitalism from itself). We saw this again when Barack Obama moved to change overtime rules, saying that people who make a certain percentage above the poverty line should be compensated for working overtime.

Think about that. The rule is literally saying that you should be paid for the hours you work. For years, businesses, especially low-wage ones that hire younger people, minorities, and other vulnerable populations, have skirted overtime rules by “promoting” low-wage workers to “management” positions, which are often exempt from overtime. Because, you know, if you have this high-paying responsibility, you should be willing to work the extra hours.

Of course, the management positions didn’t come with any actual extra money. They only came with the overtime exemption. That’s because, as per current guidelines, the overtime rules only protect workers making less than $23,660 per year. Think about that. If you make $24,000 a year, and I’m guessing most of my readers make considerably more, you are considered too well off to make money for working overtime.

The Obama update moved that to a far more reasonable $47,476, and that set of screams from the right, that they are killing small businesses, overregulating, sticking the bearish claw of big government into the sweet honeycombs of mom and pop businesses like Arby’s, etc. Because, as always, the priority for the right is to maximize profit by grinding down workers. By converting them into capital while paying the absolute least and investing the bare minimum into the community.

Anyway, Acosta, to his credit, seemed to realize that pegging the overtime rules to 2004 standards was absurd, and sugessted that it could be raised along with inflation, which would put it around $33,000. That’s better, but still seems pretty low. But still, even that modest hedge is greatly qualified by his appeal to a worker-hating down-the-line Republican.

In addition to the overtime increase, unions scored major victories when the Obama administration issued one rule limiting workplace exposure to silica, a cancer-causing substance, and a second rule requiring investment advisers to act in the best interests of their clients.

The Labor nominee indicated he would follow Trump’s direction on the three rules, which means the agency could go through the rulemaking process again to repeal them.

Which means: none of these are going to go through. The Trump administration, fulfilling Heritage Foundation fantasies, has been working hand-in-glove with Congress to destroy worker safety regulations on federal and state levels. What makes you think they are going to protect overtime rules?

The fiduciary rule, where investment advisors have to work in the best interests of their clients, and not themselves, is another obvious tell. (Imagine if, say, medicine had the same lack of standards. “It’s his right to just practice an appendectomy if he wants!”) Profit for the very few isn’t the main goal: it’s the only belief.

I’m going to finish this with another little story I think is telling, which I came across doing research for another article for my day job.

Tim Cook, was asked at the annual shareholder meeting by the NCPPR, the conservative finance group, to disclose the costs of Apple’s energy sustainability programs, and make a commitment to doing only those things that were profitable.

Mr. Cook replied –with an uncharacteristic display of emotion–that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”

Now, obviously, I’m not praising Apple in an article talking about worker rights and such. But think of the mentality of the NCPPR: they literally are offended by the idea that a company could do anything that wouldn’t immediately increase “shareholder profit”, which includes such squish nonsense as protecting the environment.

The whole goal, the whole mentality, is that of a shareholder/boss dominion. Workers, and indeed the entire earth, is means toward profit. They are mere tools. That’s all they are, and that’s all they ever should be. That’s why I think the health care plan still has a chance at passing. If they can make it cruel enough, and it looks like they’re trying to do so, they can get the Freedom Caucus, for whom other people’s life and liberty are the cheap prices to be paid for the pursuit of profit.

 

03.21.17
by

Trump’s Great Lakes Policies Are Terrible For His Rust Belt Voters

Republic Steel - Now known as Riverbend (BEFORE)

The people who this hurts aren’t latte-sipping coastal elites

There’s been no doubt that all of Donald Trump’s plans (at least the ones that aren’t designed to hurt Muslims and Mexicans) stick it especially hard to his voting base. Gutting the ACA will throw millions more into uncertainty and poverty. He’s destroying programs that reduce misery in Appalachia (while obviously not doing anything to “restore coal”, because that’s impossible).  He’s gutting Meals on Wheels, which I don’t remember being the province of smug liberals.

He’s doing this because he’s a Republican, of course, and a tremendous liar, both of which facts eluded (and in a way were hidden from) the people that voted for him. But regardless.

One area where this is especially true is in the Great Lakes, home of the Rust Belt, and the symbolic heart of Trump’s victory. On the surface, it is easy to see why. For decades, after the labor/environmental split, which was more a product of a few mistakes and deliberate divide-and-conquer strategies of management rather than an inevitable corporate outcome, “green” policies have been perceived as harmful, and even antithetical, to the white working class.

It’s a buncha eggheads at the EPA and college professors and long-hairs who are stopping us from working, with their regulations. The culture wars mixed with the regulatory battles (and are really part of the same phenomenon), to the point where anything that smacked of environmentalism was seen as un-American. That’s why Trump (like every other Republican) gets applause when he talks about destroying the EPA: he’s attacking BIG GOVERNMENT and he’s ANNOYING LIBERALS.

But the funny thing is that people who are opposed to all this green stuff in the main tend to like it when it is by their homes. That’s why Trump’s Great Lakes policies, in which he is going to gut the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, have proven to be so controversial.

The GLRI is a $3 billion dollar fund started in 2010 by the noted hater of the working man, Barack Obama, to improve water quality, clean up and manage pollution, fight invasive species, and promote responsible waterfront development in the Great Lakes, especially the heavily industrialized areas.

These are Rust Belt areas in which the land was poisoned and the water destroyed. These are areas like Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Detroit, and others. But they aren’t just big blue cities: they are the innumerable small towns that have their own shuttered factories whose legacies are pollution and waste. And, even in those “blue” cities, there are the fabled white working class, whose lives are destroyed, are whose lakes are algal disasters.

The GLRI has been working not just to undo that legacy, but to bring the lakefronts back to life. One of the most remarkable things about Chicago is that, as ruthlessly and dirtily capitalistic as this city was, we never built to the lake, keeping it public and beautiful. As such, the waterfront is the heart of the city, and helps bring in millions of tourists.

Other cities can get in on that. The GLRI has not just been great for the Lakes environmentally, but it has had the effect of letting cities use their waterfronts for recreation, commercial fishing, and gatherings. Look at this image from the Niagara River (which is part of the Great Lakes system).

Outer Harbor

Photo from NPR

I mean, yeah, you can see the rot around it. But that’s the same area from the top  picture! Now it’s an area where people hang out and can have jobs. It’s a tax base. It’s a place where life can be better.

For another great example of this, look at Erie, PA. It’s a town that was dying (and in parts, still is). But the GLRI helped clean the waterfront, bringing it back to life, a process Ohio had started but couldn’t afford on its own. Now there are big hotels, and a happening downtown with good restaurants and bars and stores. That’s economic progress. That’s turnaround.

And now that’s going to be thrown away. How nuts is this? It’s so nuts that even Scott Pruitt promised to keep funding the GLRI. Trump’s budget, the dream of Republicans, is so cruel and insane that even people who truly hate environmentalism are being wrong-footed by it. It’s pure nightmarish ideology.

What’s interesting (and predictable in a cheering, if also cynical way), is that Great Lakes Republican are angry. Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Rob Portman and others, who always talk about federal waste, think the GLRI should stay. (And remember, Scott Walker is generally fine selling off most of his state to the highest bidder.) And they’re right!

What we see here, of course, is that wasteful overreach is only wasteful overreach when it doesn’t impact you. These GOP governors and Senators know that they need the Lakes, both for drinking water and for their state’s economies. They’d be fine cutting the EPA budget for other areas. But not for the Lakes.

This, finally, is the ultimate in GOP cynicism, and I think paves a way forward for liberal environmentalism to reconnect with labor. After all, the Trump budget was made from his priorities and from those of Washington think tanks who have been wanting to destroy the EPA for decades. They’ve managed to make that seem like a good thing for the working class, but now that they have total power, the truth is known.

They think the working class should live with dead rivers and unusable lakes. They think the ground should be ruined and salted with chemicals. They think that the government has no need to help make up for the wastes of industrialization, in which the white working class gave their lives, only to be left with poverty and poison. Someone else made money off of it. Now you have to live there.

Remember, the people making these decisions don’t live in Detroit. They don’t live in Erie. They sure as shit don’t live in Buffalo. They’re rich people in think tanks who think that the poor and economically anxious should stay that way, and if cancer is the price, well, it’s your choice if you can’t afford health care. Trump, and the people making his budget, aren’t just cruel. They’re snobs.