Saturday, October 12, 2024

It's the lies, stupid

For my title, I'm borrowing a phrase from when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." That's because the Trump/Vance campaign is pretty much entirely based on lies. That hit home to me when CNN's Daniel Dale recently pointed out that Trump told at least 40 lies during two speeches this week. That is in line with how Dale categorized Trump's performance during his debate with Harris.

No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency. A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true, and this wasn’t like little exaggeration, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality.

The most common lies told by Trump/Vance have to do with immigration. But they also tell blatant lies about the economy, tariffs, FEMA, crime, abortion, and schools. Those were all documented recently by David Corn, who makes an important point when he writes that Trump is running a disinformation campaign (emphasis mine).

Trump’s dishonesty goes further than the usual campaign lying. He concocts and promotes utterly false narratives to shape voters’ perceptions of fundamental realities. His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties...

Trump is not merely heading a campaign fueled by the routine lies of politics. He is endeavoring to use these and other lies to create an alternative reality for millions so they will vote on the basis of a false understanding of the world.

This is why it is so difficult (and perhaps pointless) to have conversations with MAGA people. It's not as if you can simply debunk a lie. It is that they are actually living in an alternate reality created by lies.

So what happens when Trump or Vance are confronted with the fact that they're lying? Trump just brushes it off as "fake news." But Vance has taken a different approach. For example, during the VP debate, Walz asked Vance a basic question: "Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?" Here's how the senator from Ohio responded:

Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?...

Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020. We've talked about it. I'm happy to talk about it further. But you guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there's no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship.

You can read a good fact check about what Walz said here. And Kamala Harris has never suggested that we should use the power of the government to silence people from speaking their minds.  

But it's important to note how Vance responded when challenged by Walz about the Big Lie. He pivoted to censorship. He did the same thing when challenged by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. 

What Vance is telling us is that he and Trump will lie in order to create an alternate reality. When challenged, he'll cry "censorship."  That's rich coming from the guy who wants the government to "seize the institutions of the left" and implement "a de-woke-ification program.” So no, Vance has zero respect for democracy or the First Amendment. He simply wants to lie with abandon. 

So what happens when politicians create an alternative reality based on lies. Here's what Peter Pomerantsev wrote back in 2014 in a piece titled "Russia and the Menace of Unreality: How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare" (emphasis mine)

The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action... insisting on the lie, the Kremlin intimidates others by showing that it is in control of defining ‘reality.’ This is why it’s so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible.

 A place where nothing is true and anything is possible is ripe for totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt warned.

What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed...If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

 That is why Trump/Vance pose the biggest threat to democracy that we've seen in generations.

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Sunday, September 15, 2024

The story Vance doesn't want you to hear about towns like Springfield, Ohio

During an interview on CNN Sunday morning, J.D. Vance basically admitted that he created the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. 

The rationale he gives for spreading those lies is that he wanted the media to focus on what is going on in Springfield. What he doesn't want you to know is that several reporters have covered the story of towns like Springfield for over a decade. It's just that they have been doing so honestly - without the lies he's been ginning up. 

For example, back in 2011, A.G. Sulzberger wrote about what was happening in western Kansas. 

For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus — of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

James Fallows visited the same area in 2016. 

Every single person we’ve met here — Anglo and Latino, African and Burmese and other, old and young, native-born and immigrant, male and female, well-educated and barely literate, working three jobs and retired and still in school—of all these people, we’ve asked the same questions. Namely: how has Kansas handled this shift in demography? And how does it sound, in this politically and culturally conservative part of the country, to hear the national discussion about “building a wall,” about making America “a real country again,” of the presumptive Republican nominee saying even today that Americans are “angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, nobody even knows who they are.”

And every single person we have spoken with — Anglo and Latino and other, old and young, native-born and immigrant, and so on down the list — every one of them has said: We need each other! There is work in this community that we all need to do. We can choose to embrace the world, or we can fade and die. And we choose to embrace it. (The unemployment rate in this area, by the way, is under 3 percent, and every business we’ve talked with has “help wanted” notices out.)

Dave Price wrote about Marshalltown, Iowa in 2016.

As many smaller Iowa towns are shrinking, Marshalltown is experiencing the opposite: The population has increased over the past 15 years, and it’s almost entirely due to an influx of immigrants. The number of non-Hispanic people in town has actually declined slightly since 2000, while Hispanics have more than doubled their share of the population in that time. They now make up more than a quarter of the city’s 28,000 residents.
Art Cullen, of Iowa’s Storm Lake Times, wrote about the shrinking population of small Iowa towns in 2019 and came to this conclusion.
[R]ural communities can be rejuvenated by immigration to replace those youth who don’t see their future in a food processing plant or dairy barn. First, a recognition of the crucial role immigrants play in low-margin industries like agriculture and food processing would be helpful. Second, a system that recognizes reality is overdue. The problem in Sac County is not too many Mexicans, but too few people in general, no matter their skin color.

Michelle Norris wrote about Hazelton, Pennsylvania in 2018.

Hazleton was another former coal mining town slipping into decline until a wave of Latinos arrived. It would not be an overstatement to say a tidal wave. In 2000 Hazleton’s 23,399 residents were 95 percent non-Hispanic white and less than 5 percent Latino. By 2016 Latinos became the majority, composing 52 percent of the population, while the white share plunged to 44 percent... 
Hazleton’s population is younger, the hospital is no longer in bankruptcy, and major employers such as Amazon, Cargill, and American Eagle Outfitters have opened distribution centers and plants offering jobs that helped attract the massive Latino migration.
 In 2019, Thomas Friedman visited Wilmar, Minnesota.
“We had 1,200 to 1,600 Somalis when I started as mayor in 2014 and now we have 3,500 to 3,800,” said [Mayor Marv] Calvin. “We also have 800 Karen people from Burma.” Add to that over 4,000 Latinos and you have a town of 21,000 that had been virtually all white and Christian its entire existence become nearly half new immigrants in the blink of two decades...

America is actually a checkerboard of towns and cities — some rising from the bottom up and others collapsing from the top down, ravaged by opioids, high unemployment among less-educated white males and a soaring suicide rate. I’ve been trying to understand why some communities rise and others fall — and so many of the answers can be found in Willmar.

The answers to three questions in particular make all the difference: 1) Is your town hungry for workers to fill open jobs? 2) Can your town embrace the new immigrants ready to do those jobs, immigrants who may come not just from Latin America, but also from nonwhite and non-Christian nations of Africa or Asia? And 3) Does your town have a critical mass of “leaders without authority”?

Almost all of these accounts describe the challenges these communities faced in light of the demographic changes they were experiencing. But what is true in every single case is that, prior to the influx of immigrants, these towns were dying. Now, if they can rise above the racism, they have a chance to flourish. 

That is the story David DeWitt tells about Springfield, Ohio.

The Times details how, after decades of shrinking and uncertainty, Springfield was able to attract new manufacturing and business with a strategic plan, and by 2020 had drawn in food-service firms, logistics companies, and a microchip maker, among others...

So what, in fact, do we have going on here?

We have a large population increase over a short period of time; we have a language barrier that can cause various strains; we have housing, schooling, and health services that need adequate resources to deal with a massive and rapid adjustment.

We also have an eager, dutiful, law-abiding, and peaceful workforce helping revitalize a city and helping local businesses thrive; we have a city’s population swelling instead of declining; we have an influx of new taxpayers and consumers filling blue-collar jobs, paying property taxes, shopping at local stores, and contributing to their community.

Are there struggles? Absolutely.

Is it chaos and terror? Absolutely not.

Let's first of all note that what is happening in all of these small towns started long before the Biden/Harris administration. There is a long history to these dynamics that Trump/Vance want to ignore. That's because they are more interested in fanning the flames of racism and inciting terror in towns like Springfield than they are in finding solutions to help them flourish. 

The truth is that small town America needs immigrants. 

Now run and tell that.

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Thursday, August 22, 2024

Amanda Gorman: "the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together"

As I wrote previously, something in me literally "woke up" as I watched VP Harris and Gov. Walz begin their campaign. In thinking more about it, I realized that I had been experiencing a mild depression over the last few years. It's pretty clear that I'm not the only one. 

I think it all started when I watched the same country that elected Barack Obama chose Donald Trump as his successor. My optimism about my fellow Americans was shattered. But then, not only did we have to live through four years of division, hate, and chaos, we all had to navigate living through a pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the MeToo movement. The insurrection of January 6 was yet another blow. 

While Joe Biden did everything possible to deal with the physical and economic devastation we were experiencing, the MAGA crowd shouted so loud that we found ourselves chasing down every hateful lie they told. In other words, we found ourselves in the gutter with them on defense. 

Somehow Harris and Walz broke though all of that. Here's how Walz described it last night.

You know, you might not know it, but I haven't given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team. It's the fourth quarter. We're down a field goal. But we're on offense and we've got the ball. We're driving down the field. Our job for everyone watching, is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling. One inch at a time. One yard at a time.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure that last bit was a reference to Al Pacino's locker room speech in "On Any Sunday," which is definitely worth a listen. 

But as right wingers and the media keep droning on about the lack of specific policy proposals from Harris, it is important to keep in mind that what has been broken is not about the lack of a legislative agenda. Democrats have accomplished that in spades over the last four years while no one gave them credit. And Harris has a long history of putting forth excellent policies to address issues. As just one example, her anti-poverty proposal was rated the most effective in 2020.

What has been broken is our spirit. Harris, Walz, and many of the speakers at the Democratic Convention aren't just bringing back the joy. They're reminding us of who we are and what's important to us. 

One of the most powerful reminders last night came from Amanda Gorman. Take a listen:

The whole thing is AMAZING! But here are the lines that went straight to my heart:

Empathy emancipates, making us greater than hate or vanity. That is the American promise, powerful and pure.

Divided we cannot endure but united we can endeavor to humanize our democracy and endear democracy to humanity.

And make no mistake, cohering is the hardest task history ever wrote,

but tomorrow is not written by our odds of hardship, but by the audacity of our hope, by the vitality of our vote.

Only now, approaching this rare air are we aware that perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together.

Here's how Obama talked about it:

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where “we, the people” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do...
 
All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. Because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better.

Oprah hit on the same theme. 

Coach Walz's entire life has been a testament to that theme. 

We can (and will) have debates about policy differences and the threat Trump poses to our democracy. But before we get there, we needed a reminder of the bedrock of who we are. 

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Saturday, August 17, 2024

Harris: Competition is the life-blood of our economy

Does anyone else remember that time back in the mid-80s when Ben & Jerry's ice cream started an ad campaign titled "What's the doughboy afraid of?" Here's what happened:

By 1983, the little ice cream company from Vermont was distributing their frozen treats to grocery stores...the same stores that sold Häagen-Dazs.

Häagen-Dazs was owned by Pillsbury at the time, and their distributor had been given an ultimatum by Pillsbury: stop selling Ben & Jerry's or we'll stop selling all Pillsbury products through you.

Guess what the distributor did? Kept his biggest account and dropped Ben & Jerry's.

Much to Pillsbury's chagrin however, the innovative campaign from the small start-up worked. 

Prior to that, not many of us knew that Haagen-Dazs was owned by Pillsbury. But the fact is that 10 corporations own almost all of the world's food.

That's part of the reason why the FTC recently found that price-gouging became a post-pandemic problem (emphasis mine).
Notably, consumers are still facing the negative impact of the pandemic’s price hikes, as the Commission’s report finds that some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.

“As the pandemic illustrated, a major shock to the supply chain can have cascading effects on consumers, including the prices they pay for groceries,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s report examining U.S. grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.”

Apparently, the editors of the Washington Post missed that report. Their op-ed is titled "The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks." But the tag line says it all: "‘Price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?"

Rather than "gimmicks," Harris is proposing to take on those "dominant firms" who used the excuse of the pandemic to increase their profits. Here's how she explained it: 

It was especially powerful when, at the end, she said, "We will help the food industry become more competitive because I believe competition is the life-blood of our economy. More competition means lower prices for you and your families."

Contrary to those who claim that Harris is proposing socialism, the fact is that the life-blood of capitalism is competition. When dominant firms use their power to control markets, they stifle the ability of small businesses to compete. That might line the pockets of people like Jeff Bezos - the owner of both the Washington Post and Amazon - but it means higher prices for the rest of us.

VP Harris is serious about tackling that issue head-on. Obviously the "dominant firms" won't like it one little bit, as Bezos just demonstrated.

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Thursday, August 8, 2024

Drop the labels and embrace the joy

In case you're wondering how this Minnesota girl feels about the Harris/Walz ticket, here's something I tweeted a couple of days ago: 

The way Democrats rallied around Harris and are now positively joyous about adding Gov. Walz to the ticket is the best thing I've seen in politics since the 2008 election. 

But I want to take a moment to address the sourpusses among us who are joining with the opposition to suggest that Walz is a nod to progressives /radicals and risks alienating so-called "moderates." People who have said that include John Halpin, Ruy Teixeira, Jonathan Chait, and Nate Cohn.

Just to be clear, it's true that Walz and MN Democrats passed some of the most progressive policies in the country over the last couple of years. As the governor said at the time: "Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don't win elections to bank political capital. You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.” And they did, indeed, improve lives. How do Minnesotans feel about that?

More than 70% of Minnesota voters — including majorities across every ideological and demographic category — say they approve of the Legislature’s decision last year to provide free school meals to all students, regardless of income...

The KSTP survey also found wide margins of support for several other new policies passed last year, including legal marijuana (65%) and paid family leave funded by a new payroll tax (61%).

When it comes to the issues Harris and Walz are talking about on the campaign trail, here's what the majority of Americans think:

  1. 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases
  2. 87% say they support requiring criminal background checks for all gun buyers 
  3. 61% support banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons 
  4. 70% favor U.S. taking steps to address climate change 
  5. 65% oppose book banning in schools 
  6. 61% favor raising taxes for household incomes over $400,000
I'd suggest that there is a serious disconnect between those sourpusses and the majority of American voters, wouldn't you? The so-called "center" isn't where they think it is. Here's how David Rothkopf put it:

But there are some things WAY more important than the policy issues. Walz showed us how to get beyond the fear.

And, is I indicated up above, he and VP Harris have brought back things like joy and hope. That does more than make people like me feel better, as Anand Giridharadas pointed out. 

Please listen to the whole thing because it is the most profound bit of punditry I've heard in a long time. Here's how he ended:

Here's an older white man, a coach, a soldier who is very hard to dismiss as some kind of coastal elite who is telling older folks and white people you do not need to be afraid of the future. There is joy in the future. There's joy in having your boss be a Black woman. There is joy in what is coming. I think it's going to teach lots of people, in addition to whatever role he is going to play in this election and in the White House. He is going to teach lots of people through his role in the culture that they are going to be okay. That there is joy on the far side of realizing a multi-racial democracy in this country.

Overshadowing the policy issues is the racism/sexism/homophobia that is so often driven by fear. Who better to lead the way out from under that cloud than an older white man who is fearlessly joyful about the promise of America. 

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Monday, July 22, 2024

Vance's Dilemma

Yesterday's news rocked the political world as Biden pulled out of the 2024 presidential race and the Democratic Party immediately coalesced around VP Harris as the presumptive nominee. The angles on what this means for November are endless, but one take that I've found interesting was captured by Michael McFaul on Twitter. 

As you know, Trump said that the January 6th insurrectionists were justified in their chants of "hang Mike Pence." On the other end of the spectrum, Biden bowed out and passed the torch to his vice president. The contrast couldn't be more clear. 

But all of that reminds me that Trump's current running mate, J.D. Vance, is going to have to walk a very fine line. That's because, even before it became clear that the former president is suffering from dementia, he was clearly diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (among other things). 

Way back in 2016, Richard Greene wrote about what it means to deal with someone who has NPD (emphasis mine).

There are only two ways to deal with someone with NPD, and they are both dangerous. There is no healthy way of interacting with someone with this affliction. If you criticize them they will lash out at you and if they have a great deal of power, that can be consequential. If you compliment them it only acts to increase the delusional and grandiose reality the sufferer has created, causing him to be even more reliant on constant and endless compliments and unwavering support.

Vance has already shown that he's willing to bite the bullet and feed Trump's delusion with loyalty and praise. His dilemma is going to come from elsewhere. What Greene didn't mention is that people with NPD not only demand total loyalty (which Pence wasn't willing to give when it meant participation in a coup), they also need to demonstrate their dominance over everyone around them. 

J.D. Vance is a very smart guy with ambitions and his own ego to support. Folks are already claiming he's won the battle to be the next GOP leader. But Trump will turn on him in a hot minute if the VP candidate even comes close to out-shinning the guy at the top of the ticket. 

So Vance has to walk the fine line of bowing to Trump's dominance while not coming off as too weak and submissive to be the next MAGA leader. He'll get no sympathy from me for having to maneuver that minefield. It's what the entire GOP has brought on itself by turning a political party into a cult of personality.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024

"With fear for our democracy, I dissent."


My title is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor concluded her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court case granting presidents criminal immunity for "official acts." Here's the context:
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
You might not have seen this coming if you'd watched the confirmation hearings for the six justices who ruled in favor of presidential immunity. At least three of them made statements that no one - not even the president - is above the law.
Why the change all of the sudden? Josh Marshall nailed it. 

Because the GOP has been overtaken by a criminal, it is now time to give their leader immunity. 

I believe that Sotomayor's words in response will go down as one of the most consequential moments in our history as a country. But in her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took things a bit further and identified the root of the problem.
Ultimately, the majority’s model simply sets the criminal law to one side when it comes to crimes allegedly committed by the President. Before accountability can be sought or rendered, the Judiciary serves as a newfound special gatekeeper, charged not merely with interpreting the law but with policing whether it applies to the President at all...

In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction...The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious...because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.

In other words, the six extremists on the court gave themselves the power to decide when/if a president can be held accountable for criminal acts. Over time this isn't so much about making the president a king as it is about taking power away from the legislative and executive branches and giving it to the courts. It continues what the court ruled just three days prior.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo fully consolidates the Court’s dominance over federal agencies within the executive branch of government. It is a radical reordering of the US separation of powers, giving the one unelected branch of government all of its own power, plus much of the power that Congress has vested in the executive branch.

What we see unfolding is that the one unelected branch of government with lifetime appointments has decided that they have the power to overturn rulings by previous courts (Roe vs Wade), decide when a president can be held accountable, and discard expert analysis by federal employees - directing policy based on their own beliefs.

None of this is an accident. Two men in particular have been focused on elevating the power of the court over the other (more democratic) branches of government: Leonard Leo and Mitch McConnell. Recognizing that the GOP was moving into minority status when it comes to elections, they have been working on this for years. Their dream of neutering the legislative and executive branches of government to set up a country ruled by a majority of extremist judges is unfolding right before our eyes. Sotomayor issued the correct warning when she concluded her dissent by expressing fear for our democracy.

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It's the lies, stupid

For my title, I'm borrowing a phrase from when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." That's because the Tru...