Monday, February 26, 2018

It's Going to Get Worse

Trump habitually repeats theories he sees in conservative media. Donald Trump had a firmer grip on reality as a younger man who primarily followed the mainstream news, before the invention of Fox News. His descent into paranoia is linked with his growing absorption into the right-wing media echo chamber. Trump has not infected conservatism. Conservatism has infected Trump.
This is not an abstract question or a debater’s point. The insistence by conservative dissidents on treating Trump as an alien disease upon their movement prevents them from diagnosing, and therefore treating, the source of the infection. To restore the Republican Party to health, defined as being committed to some baseline relationship with reality and a commitment to democratic governing norms, requires freeing it from conservatism’s grip. It requires a break from decades of American right-wing tradition. And if that sounds like a deeper schism than anti-Trump conservatives are willing to contemplate at the moment, they need to come to grips with the reality that before their party gets better, it is going to get much worse.
-Jonathan Chait

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Got It

The answer to gun violence is more guns? Got it. Now pardon me while I follow the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole. Like him I don't want to be late. Things get curiouser and curiouser.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

The Only Solution

The only solution is November if it is an honest election.  Democrats outnumber Republicans.  We have to show up next November.

Ridiculous

Arming teachers is ridiculous.  Trump is ridiculous.  Despite the mass shooting in Florida, Trump and his cult following will never change.  We live in ridiculous times that I would never dreamed of.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

True Populism

Photo
A mural by Seymour Fogel created through the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency.CreditCorbis, via Getty Images 
President Trump’s tough talk on trade and the tariffs he recently imposed on imported washing machines and solar panels, as well as the ones he threatened on foreign steel and aluminum, would seem straight out of the populist playbook. But in terms of targeting the real grievances of his popular base, they largely miss the mark.
The early history of American populism, culminating in the New Deal, suggests a more productive and less damaging kind of populism. When populism succeeds, it does so not by cosmetic gimmicks but by going after the roots of economic injustice directly.
At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, the 36-year-old former Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan delivered what became one of the most famous lines of American political oratory: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Bryan’s immediate target was the gold standard, an emblem of the globalization of his day, which he blamed for the economic difficulties of what he called the “toiling masses.” Bryan ran for president that year as the joint candidate of the Democratic Party and of the People’s Party, also known as the Populist Party.
The populists of the late 19th century had many grievances, but the flames of their discontent were fanned by opposition to economic globalization. Under the gold standard, markets for money, goods, capital and labor had become intertwined among nations as never before. As John Maynard Keynes would later rue, a well-to-do inhabitant in a major capital city like London “could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth.”
Global competition also drove American agricultural prices down. And the rules of the gold standard enforced tight money and credit conditions — what we would today call austerity policies. The consequent economic distress among farmers in the South and the West fueled the populist movement. The populists viewed the railroads as well as the financial and commercial interests of the Northeast, the defenders of the gold standard, as their main opponents. Throwing off the shackles of the gold standard and reclaiming national monetary sovereignty became their rallying cry.
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Populism in the 21st century is as much a reaction to globalization as its late-19th-century version. While the backlash in the United States and Europe differs in specific details, the broad outlines are similar. Large segments of the workers in these advanced economies — older, less-skilled manufacturing employees and the communities they live in — have seen their earnings decline or stagnate and their relative social status take a big hit. These groups see governments as increasingly in the pocket of financial and business elites, the big winners of globalization. The discontent in turn fuels populist leaders who promise to wrest control from faceless global market forces and re-empower the nation-state.
The populist backlash unleashed by advanced stages of economic globalization should not have been a surprise, least of all to economists. The warning signs are right there in the basic economic theory we teach in the classroom. Yes, globalization expands economic opportunities: There are gains from trade. But globalization also entails stark distributional consequences, with some groups almost always left worse off. Factory closings, job displacement and offshoring are the flip side of the gains from trade.
What is more, these redistributive effects loom larger relative to the overall economic gains as globalization advances and trade agreements begin to aim at less consequential barriers. In other words, in its late stages, globalization looks less and less as if it is expanding the overall economic pie and more and more as though it is simply taking money from some groups and giving it to others.
In principle, an active government can take the edge off the resentment produced by redistribution. In Western Europe, an extensive welfare state has historically provided the safety nets that in turn enabled levels of economic openness that are much higher than in the United States. But often the response of the government has been to plead incapacity in the face of inexorable global economic realities: “We cannot tax the winners — the wealthy investors, financiers and skilled professionals — because they are footloose and they would move to other countries.” This reinforces populists’ yearning to reassert national economic control.
William Jennings Bryan ultimately failed in his quest for the presidency, and the People’s Party imploded because of regional and ideological divisions. But many of the Populists’ economic ideas, such as the progressive income tax, regulations on big business and much greater government control of the economy, were absorbed by the progressive movement and became part of the political mainstream.
It wasn’t until 1933 that the Populists’ main plank, the end of the gold standard, was adopted. By then the United States was mired in the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt had decided the economy needed the monetary boost that adherence to the gold standard precluded. Internationalists complained that Roosevelt acted unilaterally, but he had little patience with orthodox economic ideas or shackles — foreign or domestic — on his conduct of economic policy. At home, he had to fight conservative courts to put his New Deal reforms in place.
By his day’s standards, and perhaps also today’s, Roosevelt was an economic populist. But the New Deal reinvigorated the market economy and saved capitalism from itself. It may also have saved democracy, as it helped staved off the dangerous demagogues and chauvinist ideologues, of which there were plenty (such as Father Coughlin and Huey Long).
The lesson of history is not only that globalization and the populist backlash are tightly linked. It is also that the bad kind of populism spawned by globalization may require a good kind of populism to fend it off.
President Trump and his European counterparts have capitalized on the economic difficulties of the middle and lower-middle classes by wrapping them in narratives that exploit prevailing ethno-nationalist prejudices. In the United States, they attribute declining wages and job prospects to Mexican immigrants, Chinese exporters and the federal government’s preoccupation with minority groups at the expense of the white middle class. In Europe, they lay the blame for the erosion of the welfare state and public services on competition from immigrants and refugees. But none of this really helps the middle and lower-middle classes. Worse, the illiberal politics of the strategy undermines democracy.
If our economic rules empower corporations and financial interests excessively, then the correct response is to rewrite those rules — at home as well as abroad. If trade agreements serve mainly to reshuffle income to capital and corporations, the answer is to rebalance them to make them friendlier to labor and society at large. If governments feel themselves powerless to institute the tax policies and regulations needed to address the dislocations caused by economic and technological shocks, the solution is not just to seek more national autonomy but also to deploy it toward such reforms.
A populism of this kind can seem like a frontal attack on the economic sacred cows of the day — just as earlier waves of American populism were. But it is an honest populism that stands a chance of achieving its stated objectives, without harming fundamental democratic norms of tolerance and equal citizenship.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Flash!

FLASH: Someone has researched the Warren Commission Report on President Kennedy's assassination and discovered that it clears Trump on any collusion with Russia. Good to know.

Who Thinks

Who still thinks Russia didn't meddle in the election? Probably the same people who are attacking the brave young people who are speaking out in South Florida. Probably the same people who are trying to distract from Trump's collusion. Probably the same people who excuse Trump's every action.

Monday, February 19, 2018

No Collusion? Nyet.


Ad will collapse in seconds…

Trump’s Claim Mueller Found ‘NO COLLUSION’ Is Literal Nonsense

By 
Donald Trump: We’re all good, let’s pack it up and go home. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
One of President Trump’s favorite methods to defend his innocence in the Russia investigation is to claim that any piece of evidence that does not explicitly assert his guilt is in fact evidence of his innocence. Trump has been applying this method to the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian election interference. The report steered clear of the unanswerable question of whether Russian intervention moved enough votes to hand Trump the electoral college, because neither intelligence analysts nor anybody can measure just how many votes were changed by developments on the campaign. Trump has repeatedly lied that the report made a positive case that Russian interference made no difference. It is exactly like saying Trump was cleared by the Warren Commission because the Warren Commission report makes no conclusion about Trump and Russia.
Trump repeats this method for the indictments handed down today by Robert Mueller. The charges are focused on an aspect of Mueller’s investigation that is — at least at the moment, and perhaps permanently — peripheral to Trump. Mueller is charging Russians who engaged in social-media activism to help elect Trump. That is not the only thing Russia did to help Trump. (It also stole Democratic emails.) Nor is this the only source of potentially illegal connections between Russia and Trump. In other words, this particular indictment probably has nothing to do with collusion. As Chris Strohm reports, Mueller is continuing his probe and he and his prosecutors “have not concluded their investigation into whether President Donald Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election.”
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Trump’s defense is simply to pretend it is an investigation of his campaign and he’s somehow been cleared:
Literally nothing like this is found in the indictment. It does not say there’s no collusion. It simply addresses an aspect of Russian activity that may not have entailed collusion. And if you expected the president to make an argument more sophisticated than this extremely simplistic and obviously false denial, which treats an indictment of something other than collusion as proof there is no collusion, then you probably haven’t been paying attention.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

How to Reduce Mass Shooting Deaths? Experts Rank Gun Laws

NY Times
October 5, 2017
Whenever a mass shooting shocks America, people ask if tighter gun-control measures could have prevented the slaughter.
Gun violence researchers say that no law can eliminate the risk of mass shootings, which are unpredictable and represent a small minority of gun homicides over all. But there are a handful of policies that could reduce the likelihood of such events, or reduce the number of people killed when such shootings do occur. And several of them have strong public support.
These are findings from surveys we conducted a year ago about the recurring problem of gun violence in the United States. We asked dozens of researchers in criminology, law and public health to assess a range of policies often proposed to prevent gun deaths. We also conducted a national poll to measure public support for the same set of measures.
The policies in the upper right corner of our matrix are those that were deemed effective and popular. The most effective one, according to our experts, would be restricting gun sales to anyone found guilty of a violent crime. Under federal law, such limitations apply to those convicted of felonies or domestic violence crimes. That idea has not been debated much among federal policy makers.
Expanding background checks for gun purchasers to a wider range of gun sales was also judged effective and popular. It is an idea that was considered by Congress in 2013, but failed to win enough votes to become law. Some popular measures, like strengthening sentences for illegal gun possession, were deemed less effective. And some measures that experts thought could reduce deaths, such as banning all semiautomatic weapons, were less popular, though a majority of people in our survey still approved.
In general, the public was more accepting of measures limiting the types of people who could obtain weapons than of restrictions on the types of guns and accessories available on the market.
The attack at a Las Vegas concert on Sunday was unusual even among mass shootings. Stephen Paddock, the shooter, appeared to have used modified semiautomatic weapons that fired at the rapid pace of a machine gun. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has proposed legislation that would prohibit so-called bump stocks, the devices found on several of his guns. At least some Republicans in Congress have expressed openness to the idea.
We did not ask specifically about “bump stocks,” but we did ask about a broader set of gun modification restrictions that were part of a 1990s law known as the assault weapons ban, and about outlawing large-capacity ammunition magazines that enable rapid fire. Our experts thought both ideas could reduce the death toll from mass shootings, but they were not among the most popular ideas with the public.
Select Measures That May Help Prevent Mass Shootings
MeasureEffective
(1-10)
Public
Support
Miss.
(Less Strict)
Nev.Calif.
(More Strict)
Assault weapons ban6.867%
Bar sales to all violent criminals6.885%
Semiautomatic gun ban6.862%
High-capacity magazine ban6.862%
Universal checks for gun buyers6.689%*
Universal checks for ammo buyers6.573%*
Bar sales to people deemed dangerous by mental health provider6.388%
Bar sales to convicted stalkers6.085%
Require gun licenses5.879%
Ammo purchase limit5.664%
Centralized record of gun sales5.082%
Report lost or stolen guns4.888%
3-day waiting period4.778%
Gun purchase limit4.768%
Workplace weapons ban4.459%
School weapons ban4.366%
Guns that microstamp bullets4.168%*
Require gun safes4.175%
Require safety training4.081%
Fingerprint gun owners4.074%
NOTE: Starred measures have been passed by legislature or ballot initiative but have not yet been fully enacted.
SOURCE: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
When we developed our list of measures, we focused on policies that were not part of federal law. And we gathered ideas from advocates on the left and the right – some part of the mainstream political conversation, and some extremely unlikely to be considered.
No state has adopted more than a handful of the ideas our experts deemed to be effective, but some states have adopted more of our experts’ preferred measures than others. Nevada has adopted relatively few. In the accompanying table, we compared Nevada with California, which has been particularly aggressive about passing gun-control measures, and Mississippi, which is among the most permissive in its approach to firearms. The table omits policies that could be instituted only by the federal government.

What Has Nevada Done?


100% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT
Universal checks for gun buyers
EXPERTS SAY NOT EFFECTIVE
School weapons ban
EXPERTS SAY EFFECTIVE
0% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
In 2016, Nevadans narrowly approved a ballot measure that called for instituting a universal background check for all gun purchases. Currently, people who buy guns from a federally licensed dealer must undergo a background check, but not those who buy guns from individuals, including at gun shows or through internet classified sites.
The ballot initiative has not yet been enacted. The governor and attorney general, who oppose the policy, have said it is unenforceable because the F.B.I. has not agreed to conduct the checks for the states, as specified in the measure. Advocates have protested, and are preparing to bring a lawsuit this month if no further action is taken.

How We Made Our Matrix

To build a list of possible policies, we consulted the academic literature on laws from American states and foreign countries and spoke with advocates for gun rights and gun control. Both surveys were conducted in June 2016.
For our measure of popularity, Morning Consult conducted an internet survey of 1,975 voters, who were asked whether they approved of the possible laws.
For our effectiveness survey, we asked experts in gun policy to evaluate each idea on a scale of 1 to 10, according to how effective they thought it would be in reducing fatalities. We asked the experts to ignore considerations of political or legal feasibility.
Our expert panel consisted of 32 current or retired academics in criminology, public health and law, who have published extensively in peer-reviewed academic journals on gun policy. We know our sample is small and may not include every expert that readers would like consulted. But we feel it represents a useful, if imperfect, measure of what people steeped in the research think might save lives.
The panel of academics included: Cathy Barber, Magdalena Cerdá, Jay Corzine, John Donohue, Laura Dugan, Liza H. Gold, David Hemenway, David Kennedy, Louis Klarevas, Gary Kleck, David Kopel, Tomislav Kovandzic, Adam Lankford, John Lott, Jonathan Metzl, Matthew Miller, Carlisle E. Moody, Andrew Papachristos, Charles Ransford, Peter Reuter, Mark Rosenberg, Robert J. Sampson, Michael Siegel, Gary Slutkin, Robert Spitzer, Stephen P. Teret, George E. Tita, Eugene Volokh, Daniel Webster, April Zeoli and others.
To see our full, original findings, including our experts’ assessment of which measures would do the most to reduce overall gun homicide deaths, read our article from January.
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