unraveling

New Year's Eve

What we like in the desert is that even a hint of beauty can find its way to us.

29.Dec.2017

Loser, liar, grifter, baby-tyrant

Was Michael Schmidt's interview as bizarrely rambling as the edited version reads? It wouldn't surprise anyone. Tweet-oh jumps to the Alabama senatorial election, says "I wasn't for [Moore]. I was for Strange" and the NYT provides the link to Trump's Revisionist History of His Role in Alabama Race, which is the "truncated and misleading account" he's giving. As misleading as "I signed more bills than any other president" when he's dead last of the most recent ten administrations? (Fact check: suprisingly, it was mostly true at day 100, but Trump has now sunk to last place.)

Joy Reid's twitter thread responding to the interview is well worth a read.

Now that I’ve read the entire transcript of @nytmike’s Trump interview, a few observations:
1. Trump speaks a lot like a child does. Lots of focus on who likes him, who loves him, who is his friend... his biographers all emphasize his deep desire to be loved & it comes through.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) December 29, 2017

Trump says "no collusion" 16 times in the piece; and "collusion" in some other way 7 more times. Reprising his "No puppet. You're the puppet" greatest hit, he said "I actually think it’s turning to the Democrats because there was collusion on behalf of the Democrats. There was collusion with the Russians and the Democrats. A lot of collusion." And even more incredibly that "virtually every Democrat has said there is no collusion."

There are literally no Democrats who believe that. None. But he repeats that over and over in the interview.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) December 29, 2017

It would be nothing but entertainment if this were a reality TV show, the way The Donald seems to think it is, rather than the political reality in our country right now. Nothing quite so casually chilling as this statement in the interview:

TRUMP: What I’ve done is, I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.

By comparison, this, retweeted by Preet Bharara ( "This is true. I was there"):

The first time President Obama met with his US Attorneys, he told us, “I appointed you but you don’t serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence & integrity.” None of us ever forgot that.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) December 29, 2017

Speaking of records, the Wall Street Journal reports that our dotard's White House had a record number of first-year staff departures. More than one-third of the staff have been fired or quit, twice the coups to count of the next-highest in the last 4 decades, Ronald Reagan's 17%. Probably not good news: Trump without "establishment guardrails" could be more truly unhinged.

The safest and cheapest way out of the swamp we're now mired in might be to look the other way while Trump goes golfing and shakes down the unscrupulous sycophants for hotel fare. Amply illegal, but not nearly as dangerous as ratcheting up the pissing match with Kim Jong-un, or kicking off WWIII in Iran.

Ezra Klein's take on Vox is that the interview starts with "a string of falsehoods that make it difficult to tell whether the leader of the free world is lying or delusional."

"It almost goes without saying that literally zero congressional Democrats have said that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Zero."

And later, expressing admiration for how Attorney General Eric Holder "protected" President Obama, Trump evinces his "great respect" for what Holder supposedly did. Klein:

"Trump’s premise in this section appears to be that President Obama engaged in a wide array of criminal, undemocratic, and negligent behaviors but his attorney general protected him from justice. And Trump’s conclusion is that Obama’s attorney general did his job well. To Trump, the attorney general doesn’t serve the country, or the Constitution, but the president."

And the Dunning-Kruger effect, defining the dynamic parameters for those of us doomed to orbit the black hole of Trump's ignorance:

"He is not just notably uninformed but also notably difficult to inform — his attention span is thin, he hears what he wants to hear, he wanders off topic, he has trouble following complex arguments. Trump has trouble following his briefings or even correctly repeating what he has heard."

Update: One more take, on our bigger problem, from Charles Pierce. Portrait of a Man in Cognitive Decline.

Boxing Day

How we fixed corruption

At the subtitle destination chapter of Zephyr Teachout's excellent (and alarming) book that foreshadowed the 2016 election, published before the nut had sprouted, in September, 2014: Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United.

It was some work to get to it; her list of "cases cited" runs 4 pages, never mind the 40 pages of notes, and a second generation law professor's bent for careful construction of her argument. She shows that our nation's founders made it clear that they thought corruption was an important concern for the new republic, even though (or especially because) it was hard to pin down and define exactly. The details about the various states' attempts to legislate boundaries, and the shifting of those boundaries over time lay the groundwork for the punchline, in chapter 13, "Citizens United."

Even without the long preamble, the facts of the case that foreshadowed the finale seem shocking enough to me: in U.S. v. Sun-Diamond Growers of California, mock-originalist Antonin Scalia provided the opinion of the court, that having looked under the microscope at the bark of this one tree, he could find no evidence whatsoever that forests exist. Gratuities cannot be a problem if there is no particular consequential act we can identify that resulted from their influence. Sun-Diamond gave then-Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy almost $6,000 in illegal gratuities (in 1993; worth more than $10,000 in today's dollars): some very nice tickets to the 1993 US Open Tennis Tournament, luggage, many hundreds of dollars in meals, a framed print and a crystal bowl. But that's ok! Never mind!

Reading the statute as to prohibit the possibility of corrupt influence without requiring something in particular that the influenced official did? That "would produce peculiar results, criminalizing, e.g., token gifts to the President based on his official position and not linked to any identifiable act-such as the replica jerseys given by championship sports teams each year during ceremonial White House visits."

Not that we were talking about replica jerseys, or that any championship sports teams want to go to the White House any more. 4 figure tix to the US Open and a similar spend for a set of luggage; how peculiar is Toni's pettifogging? But by 1999, the decision was not much disputed; the Court's affirmation overturning the judgment against Sun-Diamond was unanimous. And so... it is now

"nearly impossible to prove a violation of the gratutities statue for any gift given before an official action. Sun Diamond effectively turned the bright-line gratuities statue into a more demanding bribery statute. ... Sun Diamond revealed just how far the Court had come from the framing era, where gracious presents were understood as swords of power. The gifts clause of the Constitution was never discussed. ...

"If you read the case as political theory, instead of statutory interpretation, the Court suggests that using money to influence power through gifts is both inevitable and not troubling."

Scalia and the Court finished the job 11 years later, with Citizens United.

"During the initial oral argument of the case in 2008, Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Roberts asked questions that implied something far more expansive, and declaratory, than statutory interpretation. They wanted to hear arguments about whether the law banning corporate election spending could be justified at all."

Their ruling "redefined the rules governing political life in the United States."

"As a matter of federal constitutional law, corruption now means only 'quid pro quo corruption.' And quid pro quo corruption exists only when there are 'direct examples of votes being exchanged for ... expenditures.' Corruption does not include undue influence and cannot flow from donors trying to influence policy through campaign contributions, unless these donors are utterly crass. 'Ingratiation and access' are not corruption. Corruption does not include 'the corrosive and distorting affects of immense aggregations of wealth... Kennedy held that as a matter of law—regardless of the facts that are presented—'independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'"

We just don't see it anymore! Funny (not ha ha) how this inventive theory of jurisprudence does not seem to have driven evil from our political system. Au contraire.

But in spite of what seem rather bleak circumstances just now, Paul Krugman declares himself hopeful, because an "energized resistance" might still arrest our slide. There will be a great deal to resist.

"[T]he Republican Party—including so-called moderates—turns out, if anything, to be even worse than one might have expected. At this point it’s evidently composed entirely of cynical apparatchiks, willing to sell out every principle—and every shred of their own dignity—as long as their donors get big tax cuts."

Conservative media have "given up even the pretense of doing real reporting, and become blatant organs of ruling-party propaganda." And the best that might come out of Robert Mueller's investigation may be symbolic: "as long as Republicans control Congress, constitutional checks and balances are effectively a dead letter."

"Even if voters rise up effectively against the awful people currently in power, we’ll be a long way from restoring basic American values. Our democracy needs two decent parties, and at this point the GOP seems to be irretrievably corrupt."

Christmas Eve

We consecrate this world with our attention,
our intention to make more of it, and of ourselves.

To build up; to bind together;
to lift each other with love and compassion.

Each day calls to us, angel choirs are singing, Hark!
There are glad tidings of great joy!
A Savior is born within the manger of our hearts.
O come let us adore.

The message of Jesus and the Jedi:
We’re not going to win by fighting what we hate,
but by saving what we love.

23.Dec.2017

On legislative malpractice

You would think a big tax cut would just sell itself, but for some reason the GOP seems to have bricked this thing so badly, they need a promotional tour. With salesmen such as Idaho's Rep. Labrador on the job, you can see why. He tweeted out a link to his Labrador Letter dated Dec. 22 with this teaser:

"This week's tax reform bill will have a big impact on everyday Americans. The average family working paycheck to paycheck will see their taxes go down by an average of 60%. The Democrats, however, keep telling lies about the bill."

After a 5-item bullet list of highlights, including the canard of "doubling the standard deduction" without mentioning the elimination of personal exemptions that will leave families of 3 or more worse off, there's the punchline he put in the tweet. Not sure who he might mean by "average family that is working paycheck to paycheck," but having followed the horse trading in the tax bill fairly closely, I'm certain there is NO group that's going to see that big a reduction. Even the biggest winners—corporations, going from a 35% to 21% nominal rate—are "only" getting a 40% rate reduction.

The TPC's report is way easier to follow than the bloody tax bill, which would require you to look up all the Code sections that are being changed, insert the changes, and so on. (That's why none of the legislators read it. It's hard. There was no time.)

This is only 8 pages, and has a nice color bar chart and six tables. The bar chart shows percent change in after-tax income by the lower 4 quintiles, and 5 tranches of the top quintile (where the most excitement is), and "all." The reductions are biggest in 2018, and the lowest four quintiles all show less than 2% average change.)

Table 1 shows the distribution of the federal tax changes for 2018, by quintile. But the text accompanying the table is simpler:

"Taxpayers in the bottom quintile (those with income less than $25,000) would see an average tax cut of $60, or 0.4 percent of after-tax income."

Sixty dollars. Not sixty percent. It's like the Congressman says in his newsletter: "It is malpractice to lie and misinform the public."

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as far as lying; he probably just didn't bother to read the TPC report for understanding, and clumsily cherry-picked a nice number from the top of the chart. Still, malpractice.

This is the guy who thinks he should be Idaho's next Governor, the executive in charge of an $8 billion budget? I don't think so.

Update:
Just noticed his "Labrador Letter" on his website has the title "Myths and Facts About the Historic Tax Bill." Indeed.

The 4th national climate assessment

Story is, the superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park was called to the foggy bottom woodshed to get dressed down by Ryan Zinke, which, I have to think is a major brag point for a super, at least while you don't get fired. It seems SecInt deemed more than a dozen scenic tweets mentioning the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists and stuff were above a Parks employee's pay grade. Maybe.

The Hill's report cites at least 4 unnamed sources for what they describe, while the named spokesperson for Zinke "denied the meeting."

“You have been given really bad information,” [Heather Swift] said, declining to elaborate or to make Zinke available for an interview.

That's a... thing. It would have been easy enough to deny what was said to have been said in the meeting, but to deny the meeting entirely? Given the Secretary flying his personal flag while on site, and given the head of the national park's movements were not deliberately stealthy, it's just more reason to wonder what the hell Zinke's problem is.

But any publicity for one of the more important issues of the day is good publicity, let's say. Gives us all reason to be reminded that a team of more than 50 authors, 9 editors, and a production team of almost two dozen just released "an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States."

This is the first of two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, and you can obtain the whole thing from the web, in bite-sized pieces, or in its entirety as a 477 page PDF. If that's more than you were looking for, the Executive Summary is a comprehensive overview, 23 pages in the PDF. (Maybe the Executive Summary needs an Executive Summary, especially if the Secretary hopes to bring our current Executive to a working understanding of what's inside? Pages 10-11 have the "highlights.") Start with the statement that the last 115 years (1901–2016) is the warmest in the history of modern civilization.

"This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence."

If you're betting, page 13 of the PDF has a figure showing definitions for their statements of confidence levels and likelihood. "Extremely likely" means 95-100%.

The magnitude of additional change, and its consequences will depend on what we do next. Do you want your additional sea level rise in inches, or feet? Your extreme storms, heatwaves, forest fires, chronic drought, etc. in medium, large, or super-sized?

Perhaps you've heard (or imagined) that yeah, but natural stuff like the sun and volcanoes are a bigger deal than human-caused change, right? No. See chapter 3 and figure 2.

22.Dec.2017

Winter news

In the snippety bursts that Twitter delivers. Ezra Klein: "The GOP's repeal efforts failed for the same reason Obamacare enrollment beat expectations despite Trump's best efforts at sabotage. People want health insurance."

@CNN: Some students who were defrauded by their colleges will no longer be granted full debt relief." (Joy Reid notes that Betsy DeVos will personally pocket more than $2 million from the tax cut while denying this relief. In America, Trump U.) CNN Money has the full story.

Scott Pruitt's Christmas dreams are coming true, as the s deconstruction of the administrative state proceeds apace. EPA employees are leaving in droves. More than 700 in less than a year, more than 200 of them scientists. (The office of the administrator is the only unit that saw more hires than departures this year: 53 left, 73 were hired.) Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and now head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his spare time, proposed a 31% cut of the EPA budget. “You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” he said, wittily.

"The [EPA] Office of Research and Development — which has three national laboratories and four national centers with expertise on science and technology issues — lost 69 people, while hiring three. At the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, responsible for regulating toxic chemicals and pesticides, 54 people left and seven were hired. And in the office that ensures safe drinking water, one person was hired, while 26 departed."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page staff isn't as big as the EPA's, but five staffers (more than 15% of the total) busting out seems almost a drove. It seems they couldn't handle the truth preferred by the Murdoch media empire, and managed by Paul Gigot. In that alternate universe, Mr. T. is figured to be "far less vulgar" than Bill Clinton, so go figure. Vulgarity is in the eye of the beholder. (Speaking of vulgarity: if you're lucky enough to get the Mdna Skin ad with that jump to NY Magazine, tell me if that isn't the perfect product for our Zeitgeist, from the banner tease, to the sidebar reveal.)

There was a celebratory press conference this morning, I hear, on the eve of the eve of the eve of a Merry Christmas to all. Speaking of which, Parker Molloy highlights a lovely new "America First" ad rolling on the other State News Media channel with a little girl thanking the President for letting us say "Merry Christmas" again. Chris Hayes has the backstory: "This girl had been in prison for the last three years, after being prosecuted by the Obama administration for saying Merry Christmas at age 4."

And then...
and then, the Dalai Lama stopped by to say this, and I just took a deep breath and relaxed a tiny bit.

Within each of us exists the potential to contribute positively to society. Although one individual among so many on this planet may seem too insignificant, it is our personal efforts that will determine the direction our society is heading.

— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) December 22, 2017

Update: Amy Sullivan had a nice piece in last Sunday's NY Times, on America's new religion: Fox Evangelicalism. The new strain of nationalistic, race-baiting, fear-mongering gift-shopping and gun-toting.

Solstice

Health insurance, not so much

The Republican Party is not about health insurance. While making their tax cut dreams come true, and continuing to not pass an actual budget for the fiscal year that started October 1, they've also not been looking after the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Their inaction has states around the country running out of funding, with 2 million children at risk of losing health insurance coverage next month. CHIP covers 9 million children and pregnant women nationwide, in households that are just above Medicaid eligibilty. It has enjoyed bipartisan support for its 20 year existence, until now, thanks to that tax cut bill being The Most Important Thing In The World Before Christmas. The deadline for action to prevent dire consequences is this Friday.

Still, the slow-playing of CHIP's funding (let's be optimistic and hope they're not genuinely trying to kill the program) is a minor thing compared to the long-term project to undo the Affordable Care Act. After more than half a decade of impotent symbolic acts, and then this year's legislative debacle that could not come up with anything like "replace" (or even "half-assed patch"), the Cut, Cut, Cut bill included a significant act of ACA sabotage.

Number One Deal Artist couldn't keep himself—he never can—from blurting out the deceit simmering inside him. (He thinks that's something to brag about, too. And his duped base celebrate their being duped, as if they were the ones looting the Treasury.)

“We didn’t want to bring it up,” he said. “I told people specifically, ‘Be quiet with the fake-news media because I don’t want them talking too much about it.’ Because I didn’t know how people would...”

Dana Milbank's headline says "he may wish he hadn’t," but I doubt "full ownership" will mean anything more for the issue than it has for the Trump family's tawdry real estate. They only thing they've ever owned is a skimmer's share of the revenue; they rent responsibility on a short-term lease, while there's something in it for them. Everyone else is stuck holding the bag, and the stink.

A massive gift of hypocrisy and venality

to the donor class, jingling Merry Christmas! all over the place. Thomas Edsall: You Cannot Be Too Cynical About the Republican Tax Bill.

It's not exactly a news flash, but no, Virginia, this is not a tax break for the middle class. There will be a little splashover to the plebes, but the main event is "a $1.4 trillion package of benefits for key donors and lobbyists, the richest members of Congress, President Trump, his family and other families like his." Duh.

Is it the BIGGEST, as Mr. Bigly is so fatuously bragging it up? Nope. Might be 2nd, or 4th, but not #1. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, enacted in 2013 was somewhere between 50% larger and twice as big. Under the tyrant Obama, who knew?

This was surely the FASTEST and LEAST WELL-CONSIDERED. Every well-connected lobbyist's wish list was wrapped up with a bow and stuffed into Santa's sack in a screaming hurry.

Thirty-one years coming and all of seven weeks in gestation, with no substantive hearings, no actual analysis published by the Treasury Department, and so much last-minute horse-trading (and parliamentarian vetoing), that none of the half of Congress that voted "aye" could have possibly understood what they just approved in its entirety. Never mind even just "read the bill."

But you could read it if you wanted. It's officially known as H.R.1 - An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018. Good luck. You can also read the final pre-passage Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for it to see the direct estimate of the increase in the deficit is $1.455 trillion. Its "major legislation" status requires that "the cost estimate, to the extent practicable, include the budgetary impact of the bill’s macroeconomic effects," but shucks, "it is not practicable to provide an estimate of the budgetary impact of the bill’s macroeconomic effects at this time."

Feel free to imagine that it will pay for itself in sugarplums and clean coal in your stockings, the way Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell did.

This "tax reform" includes a kick in the teeth to the Affordable Care Act (Collins' collapse), opening up drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (Murkowski mayhem), and whoops, a Corker Kickback tax bonanza for real estate developers, how did that happen? (But having $20 per month from your employer to cover the expense of bicycle commuting be deductible? OMG THAT IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR.)

It did not, of course, "simplify" anything having to do with the Tax Code, or filing your taxes. There are new rules to learn, and new loopholes to discover and abuse. (Unless of course you wrote them for your own benefit.)

Two days before Congress gave final approval, a group of 13 tax law experts released the most incisive critique of the tax bill to date, a 30-page document called “The Games They Will Play: An Update on the Conference Committee Tax Bill.”

The primary authors of the report — Ari Glogower, David Kamin, Rebecca Kysar, and Darien Shanske — describe the legislation as “a substantial blow to the basic integrity of the income tax” that will “advantage the well-advised in ways that are both deliberate and inadvertent.”

Preferences to some, with "no discernible policy rationale"; advantages to corporations over individuals, and thus the incentive for individuals to corporatize themselves; incentives for passive income over earned income; for tax evasion, using rate differentials and "ill-considered transitions"; incentives to shift assets, and jobs abroad; using the chained CPI to build in negative impact on lower and middle-income families for the future (and a backdoor to reducing Social Security and Medicare payments).

Without. A. Single. Hearing.

Remember all that outrage (and the campaign promise) about the "carried interest provision"? Whoops, didn't get around to fixing that. And so much more.

"After looking at the legislation in its entirety — its substance and the procedures used to get there — it is difficult to conclude that the motivations of its sponsors are either benevolent or somehow in the best interests of the country. More likely it is hypocrisy and venality mixed up into one awful bill."

20.Dec.2017

Quid pro quo

Momentarily lost in the absurd comment flow underneath John Harwood's tweety observation that the Dow was up more (+29%) after 11 months of Obama's first term and this go of Trump's (+24%). One fellow was really dogged about how "context matters," and Harwood's tweet was "misleading" because the former was right after "the economy had cratered" and the latter "after a full recovery."

It's so weird to consider that Obama's 8 years in office, culminating in a booming economy and this something like "a full recovery" (in the throes of a post-labor transformation) were painted as the darkest pits of desperation last year, and now this... is somehow all of the new guy's doing? Reality is malleable.

My friend A.K. chuckled about being old to remember that whenever Democrats ran a businessman or woman, Republicans were quick to say they lacked government experience. Now, having no experience is somehow a virtue. Touting Trump's business experience is slightly insane, but with the tax cut robbery about to happen, it does feel like the country might be about to go the way of one of Tweetoh's businesses. We've got $1.5 trillion to burn at the moment, but when this moment of euphoria fizzles (inevitably sooner than "the Dow" thinks it will), there will be hell to pay.

With VICTORY AT HAND, our Prevaricator-in-chief does what he always does, and kept help but show his hand.

Yeah, we kept the deliberate sabotage of the Affordable Care Act and health insurance for 13-some million Americans REAL QUIET so nobody would light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.

We're going to see "leadership" like the world has never seen before. Believe me. Presidential approval polling gets the picture. Can't wait for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to point out that Trump is definitely in the "top 10." We already had Sean Hannity's staff report that Hillary Clinton's poll numbers reached record lows. (One wag wondered: Do you think she'll be impeached?) Whaaat?

David Frum pointed out that's still 21 points ahead of the Republicans in Congress. And funny thing is, if "down to 36%" is correct, she's been brought down to the level of the guy who fewer people voted for to be president. Quinnipiac shows Trump steady in the 57% disapprove / 37% approve region, and going nowhere. In the cloud for "first word that comes to mind," "idiot," "liar" and "incompetent" are running head of "leader" and "strong."

Speaking of unbelievable leadership, Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan insists that his economic approach of massive tax cuts will be more successful than the one that happened during the "slowest recovery since World War II"

Quick question: What economic approach led to the massive meltdown that made that recovery necessary?

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 19, 2017

And what inaction, obstruction, and deliberate sabotage from Congress helped make the recovery from the Great Recession slower than it might have been? #Rhetorical

Finally,

The typical American household, two parents, two kids, 7 limited liability partnerships, a dozen individual real state LLC’s, several investment vehicles throwing off streams of passive income, will be doing quite well!

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 19, 2017

17.Dec.17

Pig in a poke

The epic tax reform for the next generation is coming to fruition, the long-anticipated first (and only?) "piece of major legislation" that the current administration and its Republican-controlled Congress can call its very own.

After the late afternoon Friday roll-out of the conference committee bill, news organizations were scrambling to make sense of the thing, which is more than we can say for the sausage chefs.

When gosh, it turned out that Bob Corker got to "yes" about the same The IBT turned up a juicy provision that wasn't in either the House's or Senate's bills came to light, but that stands to be good for Bob Corker's business (as well as the president's, and his daughter's family's), Corker went from DUNNO to YES!

In his defense, Corker said he did not know about the provision being added to the final bill, and he also declared he has not even read the tax bill he announced he is voting for.

Reading is overrated anyway.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas dismissed the kerfuffle on ABC, saying “Picking out one piece in a thousand-page bill and saying, 'well, this is going to benefit somebody' — I just think that takes the whole bill out of context.”

George Stephanopoulos pressed the question, noting that “this provision wasn't included in either the House or the Senate bill and apparently was added at the last minute. Why was that done? Why was it necessary to include that provision?”

Cornyn responded: “Well, we were working very hard. It was a very intense process. As I said, the Democrats refused to participate. And what we've tried to do is cobble together the votes we needed to get this bill passed.”

Working very hard. Democrats! Cobble, cobble, cobble.

Yes, that explains everything. We're in a screaming hurry, no time to do it well, must get it done by Christmas. Or Else. What?

Yesterday, the NYT reported on who it figured the winners and losers would be, and here's a surprise: commercial real estate businesses would get so much winning.

Big Corporations will benefit bigly, of course. They and the donors behind them are the Republicans #1 concern, obviously. A giant whack in the domestic tax rate, while profits earned abroad will no longer be subject to US tax. Can't beat that.

If they want to bring their $trillions parked offshore home, they can do it at a reduced rate (15.5% for cash, half that for illiquid assets). But they don't have to, it sounds like? Which means, why would they?

What we won't be having: three, or five brackets. Our returns on a postcard. Reined-in deficit spending. Or really, all that much of a tax cut.

But it'll be something!

Not dead yet

Trodding that path of customer service open to only those who buy their pixels by the barrel, Rachel Abrams, Google Thinks I'm Dead. After a weeklong effort and that nice piece for the NYT Business Day, she managed to get her picture removed from Google's Knowledge Graph panel (we learned it's called) for the other Rachel Abrams, who died 4½ years ago.

Oh, sorry, I forgot: #SpoilerAlert

16.Dec.2017

Media affairs problem? We can help!

Definers Corp., a Virginia-based public relations firm, gets a no-bid contract to... do the EPA's "press clips," yeah, that's it. Just a coincidence it's run by some RNC hacks specializing in "opposition research," and interested in a little free-lance "antiresistance" work.

The resistance is on the inside, Scott Pruitt figures, and Definers' VP Allan Blutstein has submitted at least 40 Freedom of Information Act requests to the EPA since inauguration day.

“I wondered if they were emailing critical things about the agency on government time and how frequently they were corresponding about this,” he said. “And did they do anything that would be useful for Republicans.”

The FOIA provided Blutstein with an earful, starting with Michael Cox's retirement notice after 25 years working for the EPA.

"...I, and many staff, firmly believe the policies this Administration is advancing are contrary to what the majority of the American people, who pay our salaries, want EPA to accomplish, which are to ensure the air their children breath is safe; the land they live, play, and hunt on to be free of toxic chemicals; and the water they drink, the lakes they swim in, and the rivers they fish in to be clean.

"I assume you are aware of the current low morale of EPA career staff. I have worked under six Administrations with political appointees leading EPA from both parties. This is the first time I remember staff openly dismissing and mocking the environmental policies of an Administration and by extension you, the individual selected to implement the policies. The message we are hearing is that this Administration is working to dismantle EPA and its staff as quickly as possible. I have highlighted several areas below which are emblematic of why morale at EPA is the lowest since I started in 1987."

Starting with denial of climate science, on down to demonizing the agency and demonstrating a lack of understanding what the EPA actually does.

Anything else to talk about in government affairs? How about a list of banned words at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention? Maybe if we just stop talking about science it will go away. Or let's say the "C.D.C. bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes," that'll be nice.

Not so much a "ban," on words and phrases, but recommendations, "to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans."

Responsive government

After our last winter's epic snow and ice, there was a sizeable chunk of our street that was sinking down. After getting in the habit of steering around it to avoid the whoop-de-do, it occurred to me to submit a note to the Ada County Highway District that's responsible for our local roads. I sent them another note about something else, and they'd responded quickly to that, but quiet on the growing swale.

Not too many days later, I noticed there was pink paint on the road outlining the problem. Whoa, they had responded to my message. And followed up with an email response to me, soon after:

"The section of asphalt is indeed settling in three spots approximately a 20x30 area that will need to be dug out and repaved. With the freezing temperatures the hot mix plants are closed and will most likely stay closed till this spring. What we can do in the meantime is have line located marked out and place a temporary patch with some cold mix to get through till spring when temperatures are better for paving."

This morning, it's covered up with the first in-town snowfall of the season, very cheery with sunshine for the first time in more than a week, a bit of weather dispelling the inversion we've been brooding under. I snapped a photo yesterday afternoon before the snow:

With the "seal" in our chipseal pretty much an old joke, it could still get interesting this winter, but almost certainly not as as interesting as last winter was.

15.Dec.2017

Mr. Tracker's wild ride

Whatever else he is or isn't, this Rex Tillerson guy is a piece of work. After becoming an Eagle Scout and getting an engineering degree, he rose to the top of ExxonMobil, then took a screwball turn into politics. As "Wayne Tracker," he was already skilled in subterfuge? All that business with Russia made it seem like a good fit?

His run at Secretary of State seems to be mostly about those tried-and-true management chestnuts of reducing expenses and head count, and convincing stockholders that it's all for the best.

His powers of discernment hit an all-time high when he (reportedly) said the president was a "moron," but then he ran short of the strength of conviction to admit that yes he did. He just was not going to lend creedence to such petty stuff.

In October, Tillerson was hinting that diplomacy with North Korea would be a good thing, rather than say, going straight to the nuclear pissing contest. His boss tweeted that his underling was "wasting his time." (But hey, what else did he have to do?)

Then rumors he was about to get laid off himself, and their denial.

This week he seemed ready to do something quite Secretary-of-State-like, actual diplomacy in regard to North Korea. If Dennis Rodman can do it, why not an oil tycoon with a Texas drawl?

“Let’s just meet and let’s — we can talk about the weather if you want,” he said on Tuesday. “We can talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table, if that’s what you’re excited about. But can we at least sit down and see each other face to face?”

Fabulous stuff.

Then yesterday, The Hill gave space to the White House official serving in the Condition of Anonymity department to "sharply rebuke" the guy 4th in line to replace Donald Trump. (Can you believe it?)

“I think our allies know at this point he’s not really speaking for the administration,” the official is said to have said.

Hmm?

Fast-forward one more day to another Tillerson U-turn. “A sustained cessation of North Korea’s threatening behavior must occur before talks can begin,” Mr. Tillerson said at a United Nations Security Council meeting.

We're not going to talk about the weather, except maybe the forecast that we're going to rain hellfire on the Korean peninsula if you loonie toons don't stop firing missiles into the Sea of Japan and demonstrating that Washington D.C. is now in range.

We're on pins and needles for the final episodes of this first season.

Poisoning the well

“I think the public trust in this whole thing is gone,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Wednesday, expressing the president's fondest wish in the House Judiciary Committee this week. We even had the magic metaphor that's supposed to throw the public off the trail, put right on the record.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, the acting head of the Justice Department for this affair (since the Attorney General is tainted with a very bad memory, and unfortunate appearances, and has had to recuse himself) was asked, is this a witch hunt?

“The special counsel’s investigation is not a witch hunt,” Rosenstein told the hearing.

There's a lot Rosenstein will not talk about, but the members of the House Judiciary Committee were free to prance and posture for each other and campaign donors.

“Investigations must not be tainted by individuals imposing their own political prejudices,” said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), who chairs the committee. True dat! “We are now beginning to better understand the magnitude of this insider bias on Mr. Mueller’s team.”

What magntitude is that? Text messages between a couple FBI agents referencing candidate Trump as an “idiot” and “This man can not be president.” Hell, that looks like RNC email. What did they think, and when did they text it? March 2016.

Strzok wrote: “Omg he's an idiot."
"He's awful," Page replied.
“America will get what the voting public deserves,” Strzok said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Page replied.

...The pair apparently were exchanging texts during a Republican presidential debate in March 2016. "Also did you hear [Trump] make a comment about the size of his d--- earlier? This man can not be president," Page wrote.

February, 2016, Trump offered his opinion about Lindsay Graham: "one of the dumbest human beings I have ever seen." That was just before Graham came back to "joke" that the GOP had gone "batshit crazy" and in regard to the eventual nominee: “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.”

Now we all know... more.

Idaho's own Rep. Raúl Labrador sneered out his portion of innuendo, after declaring that "I shudder at some of the questions from the other side."

Setting up his line with an easy couple of softballs, Labrador got up on his prime dudgeon:

"I believe that no one in the United States has done more to undermine the belief in the United States democratic process than the Democrats, and the press in some cases, when they continue to report on false allegation after allegation after allegation. In fact what you see from the Democrats is that they move from one allegation, that allegation is proven to be false and they move to the next one and they move to the next one and they move to the next one because they're unhappy with the result of the election. Can you tell me why the Independent Counsel was actually appointed?"

Of course he can. It's on the record, as Labrador knows, we know, and Deputy AG Rosenstein was happy to paraphrase for him. Labrador recites the charge to the I.C., gratuitously, from the record, and it's e.x.a.c.t.l.y what Robert Mueller has been carrying out. Labrador expansively declares that the charge to the Independent Counsel is "overly broad." But no one asked him. Labrador then fails to correctly count the coups to date. Rosenstein helps him out:

"Four individuals charged, two pleaded guilty, and two will stand trial."

And "the charging documents speak for themselves."

Can Rosentstein tell us whether there was collusion between the DOJ and Fusion GPS to use a Democratic-funded document for political and legal purposes? What he might have said, but did not, is: "That's a clown question, bro."

Instead, he pointed out that "collusion" wasn't referenced in the charge to the I.C. "Coordination" was. Labrador tries the same question with the correct term. Rosenstein's not going to answer the clown question.

Aha! "So there could be potentially be an investigation" about this crazy thing I'm bringing up that I know you won't respond to specifically! Labrador went on:

“We need to find out who started this investigation, we need to find out what the purpose was,” he said. “If you have an individual who actually had a desire to have an outcome in a political race, and they decided to use the Department of Justice to investigate their political opponents, I think that is one of the worst crimes that has occurred in the history of the United States when it comes to politics, do you agree with that?” he asked Rosenstein.

Rosenstein responded, “If that were what happened, congressman, it would certainly be of grave concern.”

“Well I hope that you are truly investigating this,” Labrador said, “and that we get to the bottom of this.”

13.Dec.2017

And the horse he rode in on

But I kid; I've got nothing against that unfortunate horse not-judge Roy Moore used for his special election day photo-op. Roy had the jacket and the hat (a-woo, a-woo, is that your hat?) but he looked like a fish out of water bouncing on the back and yanking at the bit. Sort of like Donald Trump riding the US of A these days; the horse has the worst of it, by far, but neither end of the combination is attractive.

It turned out, surprise, surprise(, SERPRIZE) that the twice-booted codger with the taste for young girls and Christian-branded marketing, the wife who nosiree is not anti-semitic at all, and the spokesman who brought us the awkwardest stretch of silence in cable news history yesterday, were just ever-so-slightly, by the write-in votes and the folks who just stayed home, just a little Too Much.

Just a little.

It also turned out that the horse—Sassy, don't you know—was lighting up Twitter yesterday, making the most of her 15 minutes.

I AM OVERJOYED TO BE SO SUDDENLY IRRELEVANT

— Roy Moore's Horse (@RoyMooresHorse) December 13, 2017

Speaking of horse's asses, there are more than a few fingers pointing at the not-so-stylish Steve Bannon this morning. Newsweek: Republicans think Steve Bannon is a huge loser. Chicago Tribune: Steve Bannon gets a pro-abortion Democrat elected in Alabama. And Rep. Peter King (R-NY):

"He looks like some disheveled drunk who wandered on to the political stage. He does not represent anything that I stand for," King said on CNN. "And he sort of parades himself out there with his weird alt-right views that he has and to me it's demeaning the whole governmental, political process."

The Independent: Republicans turn on Steve Bannon after Roy Moore loses Alabama election. As illustrated by the inimitable Wall Street Journal editorial board announcing that Steve Bannon is for losers.

After backing his second loser in the same Alabama election, the president was of course blaming everyone other than hisself.

We firstly sprayed Luther the Strange Orc with endurscent (& numbers went up bigly precious)! We dids this since we saids Roymer cant wins whole elections! We was RIGHT! But didnt Luthers lost precious? SHUTUP! Roymer worksed hard but ticks was slimed against him! Yes thats it!

— Gollum J. Trump (@realGollumTrump) December 13, 2017

But did we supports Strange Luther? Can’t find our support tweetses ANYWHERES! Did we deletes them precious? https://t.co/9FNT3X0XeT

— Gollum J. Trump (@realGollumTrump) December 13, 2017

It's down below the scroll before you get to the editor at large of The American Interest telling us Why the Doug Jones Victory Is Overblown, throwing cold water on the prating pundits.

"The GOP is like a dying star that begins by growing hotter, not colder, as it shrinks. ...

"[T]he GOP’s awkward alliance between populists and plutocrats, the former supplying the votes, the latter getting the legislation, can’t long endure in its present form."

Amen to that, even if this is what passes for "success" and the Democrats are "spoiled" by it. Leave it to Conservative HQ to go deeper into the spoilage, editor George Rasley keening about the establishment "Uniparty" defeating Roy Moore and the Trump Agenda in this one fell swoop. Adorned with an "I Voted Judge Roy Moore" yard sign (how many lies can you find in this graphic?), the inevitable "our friend" source, "reporting for Breitbart," no less, "three secretive Washington, D.C. consulting firms founded by former Obama campaign staffers," two turtle doves and what was that in the pear tree?

"In a pattern that was established back in the early days of the Tea Party rebellion, Moore was stripped of any establishment Republican support, even before the scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges of sexual misconduct were raised against him."

Don't think "unsubstantiated" means quite what you seem to think it means, but OK. Also, the "Far-Left Democrat Doug Jones" trope just makes you look dumb as toast. We're still talking about Alabama, you know. And the comparison of Roy Moore's defeat to that of Goldwater in 1964 and Reagan in 1976, all I can say is oh my. Oooooh myyyyyy.

12.Dec.2017

Crazy coming home to roost?

After three full doses of Clement Leroy "Butch" Otter in the big chair, Idaho has an open race for Governor, and no shortage of interested parties. Republicans have a big leg up, thanks to knee-jerk voters who have a hard time seeing past the (R) behind someone's name. But in the primary, that's not enough to help you decide!

We've got our long-time Lieutenant Governor, Brad Little, ready for a promotion. We've got Boise physician, developer, and political newbie Tommy Ahlquist making waves. We've got four-term Congressman Raúl Labrador thinking he should be the boss of Idaho. And we've even got two Democrats running, A.J. Balukoff for his second try, and Paulette Jordan for her first, after being elected to two terms in the Idaho House.

Rep. Labrador has been a TEA Party darling in Congress, full-on anti-Obama, anti-government in general, and pro-pretty much nothing. As a former immigration lawyer, he was positioned to lead the way to immigration reform when that was being seriously discussed, but could not figure out how to play well with others. Other than that, he'd make the news as a talking head now and then.

Phoning it in to the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho annual conference last week, Labrador boldly went where no sensible man had gone before, declaring that Idaho's government "needs to be slashed." No lily-livered chipping around the edges for Mr. Labrador. He thinks a full QUARTER of the state's budget could be hacked away and we'd be better for it.

$900 million a year.

This is a special kind of stupid. It comes from enjoying political status without responsibility. As one of 435 members in the House, Labrador was pretty much free to run a permanent campaign and find TV time, while others did the actual work of keeping the federal government operating, such as it is.

You don't need to take my word for this. Take it from a genuine Idaho conservative with experience in business and (20 years in) the state legislature, Max Black, providing an Idaho Politics Weekly guest opinion on Conservative Budgeting 101, back in October.

"Folks tend to feel that government is wasteful, inefficient and generally irresponsible in using their taxpayer dollars. And some think anyone with a lick of business sense [or less - Ed.] could quickly and easily clean up the mess and save a lot of money.

"There are plenty of examples out there to support the first point – just look at the fiscal fiascos in Illinois. And the way the federal government spends our money is irresponsible. But, as a small businessman and experienced legislator, let me assure you that claims like that about Idaho’s government are only spoken by those who lack experience and the understanding about Idaho’s fiscally conservative leadership."

Black takes a look at the consequences of slashing just $100 million from the state budget "without due deliberation." Labrador's breezy proposal is to multiply that by NINE. Because... he's a big thinker. Black's conclusion:

"The bottom line: Anyone calling for quick and dramatic cuts to Idaho’s state budget – whether for political advantage or because they don’t understand how things work – is not ready to govern."

11.Dec.2017

This just in

Hey, the Department of the Treasury turned in its homework on the new tax bill, only a week or two late! They got it done in one page! They came up with exactly the same answer as the Joint Committee on Taxation, what do you know. Their 10-year score is "approximately -$1.5 trillion on a current law basis and approximately -$1 trillion on a current policy basis."

Minus one trillion dollars.

Except they dialed up the estimate of GDP growth that will trickle down from the tax cutting to balance the books, as long as there's "a combination of regulatory reform, infrastructure development, and welfare reform as proposed in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget" kicker. +0.7% GDP, + $1.8 trillion in tax revenue and PRESTO! Everybody's a winner!

H/t to Axios for their quick take of the DoT's quick take.

Net neuterality

Correspondence from Idaho's junior Senator always emphasizes how much he "really appreciates" hearing from me, closing with this stumbling bit of comma-spliced dangled before the Very Truly Yours:

"Again, I really value your effort to get in touch with me to share your thoughts, as many Idahoans do."

Before that, the boilerplate response (responding to precisely none of the specific points in my Dec. 1 message) notes the "significant consequences" of the policy decision that the FCC "has moved forward on." He's telling me it's a done deal, or just more sloppy grammar?

On the subject of the FCC's pending diddle with Net Neutrality, Risch notes the "significant consequences," and this:

"It is necessary Congress consider Internet and telecommunication reforms based on 21st century information and technology. It will take a collaborative effort of public policymakers, consumers and providers regarding this specific Internet and telecommunication issue to build workable solutions. It is always important to note, solutions imposed by political means, can potentially have unwanted and unforeseen consequences. I have joined with several of my Senate colleagues in sending a letter to the FCC asking them to reassess and review all processes regarding net neutrality and Title II public utility rule."

Yes, we need 21st century information and technology. Collaboration. (How are consumers supposed to "collaborate," exactly?) And political hackery such as the FCC is about to enact can have unwanted consequences, some of which are quite forseeable.

And he and some colleagues sent a letter! I sent another message, asking him if I could see it (after searching his website, and the news for some hint of the thing, and finding nothing).

His next copy of the same boilerplate should arrive in time for Christmas, after the FCC does its thing this week.

For his part, Idaho's other senator, Mike Crapo, responded more quickly (last Monday), to say he "share[d my] support for fair access to the Internet," by contradicting every point I made.

"Going forward, I will maintain my support for efforts that promote accessibility, competition, and innovation in the telecommunications industry,"

he assured me, by which he means YAY FOR NO REGULATION, which will magically do all that promotion. We can rest assured that ISPs will be required "to be transparent with their offerings to allow consumers to purchase the plan that is best for them."

Isn't it funny how "them" could refer to ISPs in that sentence?

10.Dec.2017

Dissolution

Last week's op-ed from Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein: How the Republicans Broke Congress:

"In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation: to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security."

It's a short update to the book they published in 2006, The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track.

"What is astounding, and still largely unappreciated, is the unexpected and rapid nature of the decline in American national politics, and how one-sided its cause. If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system. ...

"First, beginning in the 1990s, the Republicans strategically demonized Congress and government more broadly and flouted the norms of lawmaking, fueling a significant decline of trust in government that began well before the financial collapse in 2008, though it has sped up since.

That would be Newt Gingrich's legacy.

"Second (during Obama's administration), we saw a deliberate Republican strategy to oppose all of his initiatives and frame his attempts to compromise as weak or inauthentic. The Senate under the majority leader Mitch McConnell weaponized the filibuster to obstruct legislation, block judges and upend the policy process. ..."

"Third, we have seen the impact of significant changes in the news media, which had a far greater importance on the right than on the left. ..."

To what end? The acceleration of this process of ideological and moral dissolution.

"The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it."

Not enough room to include the "how to get it back on track" part of the story in the opinion section. Guess we'll have to look at that old book.

9.Dec.2017

Asymmetrical warfare

Paul Krugman: "[T]he Republican Party has become an extremist institution with little respect for traditional norms of any kind." Can I get a little fact-checking with that?

In between the cat videos, family photos, click-bait and political organizing, Facebook is apparently working on doing some reality assessment, and in order to appear fair and balanced, is there some, uh, right wing opinion mill that could be included? The Weekly Standard, maybe.

It sounds like the arbiter of reality you hadn't heard of before today, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, had to come up with some affirmative action to help the Standard qualify, "based on when The Weekly Standard started publishing distinct fact checks, which was more than three months ago."

Three months is quite the storied history. As compared to, say, having Mark Hemingway long pointing out (with a link to his 2011 opinion, citing his own personal incredulity), that PolitiFact is "objectively biased."

"Surveys done by the University of Minnesota and George Mason University have shown that the supposedly impartial 'fact checking' news organization rates Republican claims as false three times as often as Democratic claims and twice as much, respectively."

Digging up the 2013 press release for the GMU Center for Media and Public Affairs "study," sure enough, that's what they found. They didn't take the trouble to determine the veracity of what was being assessed, however. Dr. Krugman:

"Notice the implicit assumption here – namely, that impartial fact-checking would find an equal number of false claims from each party. But what if – bear with me a minute – Republicans actually make more false claims than Democrats?"

If they were, perhaps, "deeply committed to the proposition that tax cuts pay for themselves," for example. Cooking up a $1.5 trillion tax cut bonanza and justifying with sincere self-congratulation that it "will produce growth not seen in generations, giving Americans access to higher wages, greater job opportunities and a more vibrant economy, all of which will result in greater dynamic revenue generation to reduce the deficit and improve our nation’s fiscal standing."

Underneath a spinning counter of the U.S. National Debt, no less.

Poynter's latest Week in Fact-Checking drops this bombshell: "There's fake news (and fact-checking) on both sides of the aisle." In its headline, anyway, over a fast-paced mash-up of links pointing every which-way, including to their own "statement" about giving the Weekly Standard its imprimatur, image-captured in a tweet, what the hell?

Is there a "both sides of the aisle" assessment in the 3 dozen disparate links? I'm not seeing it. But let's give Poynter's IFCN and their rambling blog/ger a gentleman's C for effort, maybe.

It would be really useful if a credible Institute would make an objective measurement of the frequency of false claims, applied with the mid-century engineering innovation of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to give emphasis to false claims with the most risk of damage.

They might start with a background read-through of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Disinformation Playbook, describing "how business interests deceive, misinform, and buy influence at the expense of public health and safety," followed by a review of ExxonMobil's funding for climate science denial, in the storied tradition of corporate profit-making in disregard for public welfare.

“Doubt is our product,” a tobacco executive famously said, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

After millions are killed, and decades of court battles, perhaps both Republicans and Democrats will agree on the facts, and coerce the merchants of death to spell it out for everyone to see:

Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans. EVERY DAY.

Secondhand smoke kills over 38,000 Americans each year.

More people die every year from smoking than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined.

Smoking is highly addictive. When you smoke, the nicotine in cigarettes changes your brain; that's why quitting is so hard. Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction.

With those basic facts established, we can go back and look at the tobacco industry's political contributions over the last three decades and see if perhaps there might be a political slant in the millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Not that millions of dollars in campaign contributions might cause you to shade the truth a little.

Update: In rounding up the usual suspect sources for this blog post, I came across an item in Dawn, a news outlet in Pakistan, last May. I remember adding that to my blogroll news section back in the day when sources around the world coming available on the World Wide Web seemed rather magical. It seems they're reliving the history we've been through with the tobacco industry: ‘Most politicians support tobacco industry’

8.Dec.2017

Good news / bad news

Global regulators agree on rules to prevent financial crises, that's good! "Just as the United States under President [redacted] begins relaxing constraints on risky behavior by banks," not so good.

Anyone who watched the crafting of the latest tax "reform" in Congress can appreciate that "years of grindingly detailed work" by the "Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision" from 26 countries are not the new, new thing. Still, it does say in the story that the U.S. agreed to the rules. Which is not the same as incorporating them into U.S. law. Last month's story reported:

"The [U.S. banking] regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees the nation’s biggest banks, has made it easier for Wall Street to offer high-interest, payday-style loans. It has softened a policy for punishing banks suspected of discriminatory lending. And it has clashed with another federal regulator that pushed to give consumers greater power to sue financial institutions."

And this is convenient:

"The shift, detailed in government memos and interviews with current and former regulators, is unfolding without congressional action or a rule-making process. It is happening instead through directives issued at the stroke of a pen by the agency’s interim leader, Keith A. Noreika, who — like the nominee to fill the post going forward — has deep connections to the industry."

We are draining some swamp now, eh.

7.Dec.2017

In other collapse of civilization news

News from upper right Idaho, the Kootenai County commissioners have stood up against one world government, and just said no to the next edition of the International Building Code for new residential and commercial construction, because, FREEDOM.

At least outside incorporated city limits, denizens of KootCo will be free to "voluntarily" comply, or not. “Let people make their own decisions,” said commission Marc Eberlein. What could possibly go wrong? Building codes are just a “protection racket for special interest groups.”

The arguments for unfettered construction include (not making this up) that someone else in Idaho can do it, so why not us? and "having the government involved in building your home does not automatically mean peace of mind." Which ok, was someone in an online comment talking about some houses in the Boise foothills on unstable ground. Since building codes did not save them, why should we have building codes?

It doesn't have to make sense. That applies in spades to what one Russell Mclain added at the top of the comments. (For what it's worth, I think he's arguing in favor of building codes.) Sic:

"Well this is what they missed the permit does two things it insures that a builder gets payed a judge will see to that and it's a tattle tail to the tax man so in this agenda twenty one based idea existing home owners and city dwellers will pay the loin share of property taxes but the none permitted will still demand eqail services that they don't pay fore some time I just wonder about people"

Don't you just.

Back to our roots

Tuesday was World Soil Day, who knew? You would have known if you'd heard Monday's episode of 1A, The Ground Beneath Our Feet. I'd heard a snippet, and looked it up on the web to hear the rest.

If you haven't heard of "mycorrhizal fungi," you could find out what's up with that. If you have heard of them, of course you're interested, and already know that your life depends on them. It was my second college roommate, come from a southern Idaho farming family who introduced me, now more than 40 years ago, before I took that Soils class at the University of Idaho.

Here's something I didn't know, from Phil Nauta: Endomycorrhizal fungi (a.k.a. arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi or am fungi) are happy to get together with more than 9 out of 10 plant species, while ectomycorrhizal fungi get together with fewer than 1 in 20 plant species, mainly conifers and oaks. I was under the impression that mycorrhizal associations were mostly specific, rather than mostly promiscuous. Another 1 in 20 species are nonmycorrhizal, including the wonderfully polymorphic Brassica olearacea and genera in the Heath family (blueberries, rhododendron, etc.).

The part that caught my ear is 30+ minutes into the 47, when they talk with Jimmy Emmons, a "regenerative farmer" in Oklahoma. He's on land his grandfather homesteaded in 1926, talking about the results from going to no-till, cover crops, and integrating livestock in his operation:

"...to see your soil start to darkening again, the biology coming alive, earthworms—we used to never find them in our soil, now every shovelful, we get six, eight, ten, twelve earthworms... it's a very exciting time for us."

5.Dec.2017

STOP THIEF!

The big environmental news this week is the president making his way west of the Mississippi to write off the Antiquities Act protection Obama gave to (85% of) Bears Ears and (half of) the Grand Staircase-Escalante, in favor of oil and gas extraction, uranium mining, logging, what-not.

In a caricature of populism (to say nothing of conservativism), yesterday's speech celebrated the transfer of "control" away from "a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington," and to whom, he did not identify. ("Your citizens," he said, waving his tiny hands in Utah's Capitol.)

“Together,” he continued, “we will usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth.” For a small handful of resource extraction interests that would be advanced over Americans as a whole, the owners of this federal public land.

Our current president could not possibly recognize the true wonder and wealth of Utah's canyonlands, because he could not possibly be bothered to go beyond Salt Lake City and get some red dirt on one of his steamed suits.

The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Grand Canyon Trust, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the Western Watersheds Project, Wildearth Guardians, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity have joined together to file the first lawsuit in response, led by EarthJustice, providing counsel for eight of the ten plaintiffs.

"In derogation of the Antiquities Act’s text and protective purpose, President Trump has flouted 111 years of conservation history," the plaintiffs write. President Clinton's 1996 protection of 1.7 million acres was counter to "a range of activities—most notably a large coal mine that would have brought industrial-scale development, including roads, heavy equipment, structures, waste pits, degradation of natural springs, and noise to the Kaiparowits Plateau.

"After the Monument’s designation, the Department of the Interior negotiated the repurchase of the coal leases, the mine proposal was abandoned, and the area, with its world-class paleontological resources has been protected ever since. Areas of the Monument with coal deposits have yielded astonishing new dinosaur fossils found nowhere else in the world. ...

The 1906 Antiquities Act "authorizes Presidents to create national monuments; it does not authorize Presidents to abolish them either in whole or in part, as President Trump’s action attempts to do."

It's time for our most generous donation to EarthJustice for their important work on our behalf.

In his opinion published last Friday, Bruce Babbitt, former Governor of Arizona, and Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, quotes Theodore Roosevelt, after his 1903 visit to the Grand Canyon:

“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it; not a bit. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”

4.Dec.2017

New math tax bill

The $1.5 trillion tax cut is likely to increase the national debt by two-thirds of the total over the next decade, a nice, round one trillion dollars. This from the party that has practically trademarked railing against deficit spending, go figure. In addition to attempts change the rules, roll out the long-discredited "supply side" justification, and hammer through "tax reform" in head-spinning, record time, without hearings, time for comment, or even time for most of the people voting on the mess to even read it, this: "hours before they were set to vote on the largest tax cut Congress has considered in years, Senate Republicans opened an assault on that scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and its analysis."

Senate Republicans questioned the timing of the analysis’ release on Thursday, and a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee released a statement saying the findings are “curious and deserve further scrutiny.”

Yes, how utterly "curious" that the JCT would release findings about the bill in process (and in steady revision), just before a vote on it.

Heard on the radio this morning someone mentioning "conservative estimates" that imagined the supply side boost would be twice what the JCT came up with, so make the budget busting only half a trillion dollars.

Conservative, you say? Conservative?!

But even that bullshit estimate from conservative stink tanks is not faith enough for the faithful (or gas for the gaslighters):

In the final hours before and after the bill passed, party leaders insisted that the tax plan would produce enough economic growth to pay for themselves with additional tax revenue from growing businesses and higher-paid workers. “I’m totally confident this is a revenue-neutral bill,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, told reporters early Saturday morning after the vote. “Actually a revenue producer.”

Update: Paul Waldman collects two telltale quotes from the GOP that speak volumes. First, Sen. Chuck Grassley, of Iowa:

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Or whether it's rent, car insurance, repairs, child care, doctor bills. All those silly indulgences of the poor. Second, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, on why it's time to tear up the New Deal:

“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger, and expect the federal government to do everything.”

If he has any memory of those humble roots he trotted out the other day, they seem to have vanished in the heat of the passage.

Lessons learned (for the rest of us)

Rocky Barker styled his latest Letters from the West post as a letter addressed to the president, on the eve of his coming to Utah to throw down the gauntlet against the Antiquities Act.

The letter's named recipient won't have read past the first 140 chars, nor do I imagine Stuart Leavenworth's arresting image, so perfectly expressing the Zeitgeist will make an impression.

It's expected that the Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Hopi—at least—will fill suit, so we'll see whether the president can do away with the Antiquities Act on a whim.

Trumpapalooza

Now comes one of the president's personal lawyers (how many are there?) to say that he drafted one of the tweets in the weekend storm, the "sloppy" one about how "I" had to fire former General, National Security Advisor and now current convicted felon Michael Flynn "because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI."

"There was nothing to hide!"

Also, you are not a crook? Speaking of which, Billy Bush got some nice op-ed space in the NY Times yesterday to counter the president's gaslighting retraction of his so-called "locker room talk."

"Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.

"We now know better. ..."

Jay Rosen's tweet-take on the legal sword-swallowing act:

Even if we're in a credulous mood and grant that Dowd wrote it, Trump SAID it. If it's not Trump speaking we're in Edgar Bergen territory. https://t.co/eL1P0E4hbs

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 3, 2017

A helpful comment below that provided a Google images link "for the benefit of those [who] need to look up that reference."

Even though the Old Time Radio Show came and went before I was listening, I recognized the Old Time meme, oddly captured best by black-and-white still photos. (I see we could still listen to the older-than-me shows if we wanted, too.) Just for the record:

Update: @KenDilanianNBC explains the legal jeopardy Dowd is dodging for his boss:

"When I saw that tweet, I knew that President Trump or somebody in his camp was going to have to walk it back. Because on its face, it essentially admitted obstruction of justice..."

2.Dec.2017

Other worlds

Checking financial news for what was a pretty epic week, the Friday night wrap-up from Barrons.com (behind a paywall, of course) was "Washington Whipsaws the Market." The record high close on Thursday thanks to the "solid Thanksgiving shopping reports" and "progress on tax reform," then whoop, Michael Flynn's guilty cooperation,

causing the Dow to shed 400 points from peak to trough in a matter of minutes. The drop happened so quickly that some opined that humans couldn't have been responsible for the tumble. "No way real traders were moving that fast," says Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income securities at NatAlliance Securities. "Clearly, it was algorithms taking over."

But by the close on Friday, more optimistic humans had intervened, "ending the week, if not on a high note, then with a sigh of relief." The DJIA up 2.9% on the week, the S&P 500 up 1.5% and Nasdaq a modest party pooper ("rotation" between sectors, don't you know), off 0.6%. Up THREE PERCENT IN A WEEK and all we get is a "sigh of relief," really?

We're in an EIGHT YEAR bull market. "If you weren't watching closely Friday, you might not have even noticed that anything exciting was happening," Ben Levison opines in his wrap-up. We didn't "melt-up," so that's good. Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at OppenheimerFunds agrees. "We're in a good situation. We should fret less and enjoy it more."

Barrons also offered What Investors Can Expect From Tax Reform ("Feature" outside their paywall—and I see paywallnews.com has a copy), some hours before the Senate voted on their trillion dollar dog's breakfast slap-dash rotten sausage. It's all good, investors! Corporate tax rate bonanza. Domestic companies get a big boost, international companies will bring their money home and pay some taxes so they can pass it out to their shareholders, really? Both House and Senate bills offer a 14% repatriation tax rate, damn.

Most of that money, analysts say, will go to paying down debt and benefiting shareholders through additional stock buy-backs and increased dividends, rather than hiring new workers and expanding their business.

A number of executives have said as much in recent months, undercutting the notion advanced by GOP politicians, including President Donald Trump, that corporate tax break would bolster the job market and wages.

"An overwhelming majority of that overseas cash will be repatriated if tax reform is enacted," says Scott Kessler, director of equity research with CFRA, an independent research firm. "The cash has to be domestic if these companies want to do stock buybacks and dividend increases."

Another piece I fetched up, "The GOP tax plan will make filing taxes (only slightly) easier," was deleted by MarketWatch, past its sell-by date. (A lot has changed since Nov. 4! "Simplification" turned out to be not so simple.) But "Related News" headlines give a crazy quilt glimpse of the Zeitgeist:

• Middle East leaders paint 'dark picture' at Rome conference ("45 heads of state, ministers and business leaders" there for a 3-day conference; no one from the Trump administration. Jared's a little busy just now.)
• Supreme Court hearing could open the country to more sports betting
• Trump says no collusion between his campaign and Russia ("There was nothing to hide!" Cheat-oh tweeted, conviently enriching the textual record of his deceit. “No collusion, no collusion, there’s been absolutely no collusion, so we’re very happy,” he told reporters.)
• Police clear protesters as Germany's far-right AfD picks new leaders
• Shouting 'pay your taxes,' activists occupy Apple retail stores across France
• Tesla tussles with German regulators over electric-vehicle subsidy limits
• Uber managers resign amid data breach revelation, allegations of corporate spying

Anything else we should know about the TAX PLAN? @TitusNation notes there's

• An abortion law reclassifying life at conception.
• A clause to drill oil in Alaska’s arctic wildlife preserve.
• Pulled the mandate for the ACA—13 million lose insurance

Aaaaand, whether or not the president is sane is a legitimately open question.

"By the end of [Wednesday], Trump had been condemned by Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, to which he responded by going after a different Theresa May on Twitter, dragging an obscure woman who at the time had six followers into the limelight. In another tweet, he insinuated that the TV host Joe Scarborough killed an intern in 2001, when he was a congressman. This came after news reports informed us that Trump is still a birther and that he no longer admits that the voice on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape is his own. ...

"There is a debate over whether Trump is unaware of reality or merely indifferent to it. He might be delusional, or he might simply be asserting the power to blithely override truth, which is the ultimate privilege of a despot. But reports from the administration all suggest an increasingly unhinged and chaotic president. ...

"This should be seen as an emergency situation. But now that Republicans are about to get their tax cuts, they appear to have decided that it doesn’t matter whether the president is sane. ...

"The message here is clear: Republicans aren’t going to defy their mad king over anything as mushy and amorphous as democratic norms, rationality or national honor. Indeed, whether Trump is mentally ill or simply unbound, his provocations can serve a purpose for the Republican Party, numbing the country to a tide of less flamboyant outrages. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for example, appears to have flat-out lied when he said that his agency’s comprehensive analysis shows the Republican tax bill paying for itself through economic growth; according to the Times, no such analysis exists. This should be a scandal, but when an administration lies all the time, it makes a lie like this less shocking."

1.Dec.2017

On Net Neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission's express comment filing system invites "brief comments," which I see means "text with no formatting whatsoever." I guess I could've used the Standard Filing interface which invites files as PDF, text, ppt, pptx, docx, xlsx, doc, xls, rtf, ppt, pptx or dwg, max size 25 MB per submission, and at most 5 files to the customer.

But here's what I submitted in the "express" lane for docket No. 17-108, Restoring [sic] Internet Freedom Comments, two weeks ahead the Dec. 14. decision, before having mashed into a single paragraph (and with a bit of emphasis added):

The claim that users of various broadband Internet access service are provided “more than [a] pure transmission path” whenever they access the Internet is based on a conceptual error. Access service IS a transmission path.

There are many useful services at the END of the path. Internet service providers may offer the "capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications," but that does not alter the centrality of telecommunication itself, which is by its nature a utility.

More than half of Americans have only one option for a broadband internet provider. "Free market competition" depends on consumer choice. Where there is not sufficient choice, regulation is essential.

The principles of Net Neutrality--no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization--are essential.

Paragraph 29 of the FCC's fact sheet claims that "Internet service providers do not appear to offer “telecommunications,” i.e., “the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received,” to their users.

This would be shocking news to any such user. It would mean the "internet is down" and online discourse and commerce would be halted. It has nothing to do with the knowledge or ignorance of "the physical location of a server," any more than calling a person or business on a telephone relies on me knowing where that person or business' agent may be.

The economic threat to the engines of innovation that have been built on the open internet is not too much regulation squelching competition. It is that companies with monopoly power will use their control of infrastructure and access to it to stifle competition, and extract monopoly rents from consumers.

Promises from existing companies to act fairly do not provide a reason to eliminate regulation. For those who can and will honor such promises, that's great. For those who will not honor them, we need regulation to ensure fairness.

I urge the FCC to reconsider its apparent plan to roll back net neutrality protections, in favor of enabling monopoly under the cover of "market openness."

Since the Republican-appointed commissioners on the FCC seen determined to act contrary to my urging, I also sent a message to my Congressman and Senators:

I'm writing to you concerning proposed changes to the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order.

As you know, the FCC is considering Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to reverse the 2015 order that treats broadband Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.

Such a decision would give telecommunications companies--many of which already have considerable monopoly power in markets where there is little or not consumer choice for access providers--near complete control over how we use the Internet. Expressions of voluntary compliance are not sufficient; with no enforcement means, monopoly power will be used to extract monopoly rents.

The principles of Net Neutrality--no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization--are essential to maintaining the internet as en engine of innovation and commerce, and for ensuring the benefits of a free and open internet to society.

The FCC argument that the myriad of useful services at the END of the telecommunications path makes the internet something other than a telecommunications medium is specious. The open internet is what ENABLES the innovation in services that it connects.

I urge you to defend existing net neutrality protections.

Take a break from politics

You know it'll be a short break, but doesn't that sound refreshing? The end of the world won't happen today. I promise.

End of October, my ownership of fortboise.org turned sweet 17, and the blog will be old enough to vote next spring. Reading through the headline-free rambling narrative sure takes me back... to our second stay in Palo Alto, the post dot-com bubble froth, the birth of .NET, Dave Winer whining about what-not, and a link to a Business Week article that's long-gone 404 (which annoys me for some reason, but their 404 GIF made me laugh out loud). What, is there no more Business Week? Or is/was it Businessweek, just then starting its decline? Here's the piece on Bloomberg.com, but you have to be a "Professional Service Subscriber" to see more than the first 5 sentences.

All that flows back from a look at the top of the blogroll I'm sure no one but the bots pays attention to any more. Actually, one notch down, peterme.com, Peter Merholz's once-upon-a-time blog with the slogan "from the guy who coined the word 'blog.'" His most recent word there was in January when he got a new job at Snagajob, VP of design, which means he must have overseen the use of the image of empty, plain shoes standing in for all the humdrum people you won't hire, and the orange high-tops representing the stand-out "great hourly employee" you will hire.

That's right, it's time for maintance. Should I drop Merholz for non-performance, his claim to fame notwithstanding? (And, is his claim actually valid? Wikipedia points me to Rebecca Blood's contemporary account that says it is. Blood's in the blogroll too, but most recent thing in rebecca's pocket today is dated 28.Feb.2014. Her blogging bona fides are rather awesome, and was once Goth Babe of the Week, but now it sounds like she's busy with more important work, raising a child. She's on Twitter, maybe that's where all the cool kids went.)

You see why my blogroll maintenance never gets very far. If something's flat-out gone, I'll take it off, but I'd hate to lose the roots and branches of the history of the medium.

Update: A waded down the list, M-Z, and removed the fully defunct from the last half of the alphabet, at least. A couple no longer being updated, but with good archives kept in for posterity.

The big lie (Treasury embed edition)

From Senator Elizabeth Warren's letter to Eric M. Thorson, Inspector General of the Department of the Treasury:

“Either the Treasury Department has used extensive taxpayer funds to conduct economic analyses that it refuses to release because those analyses would contradict the Treasury Secretary’s claims, or Secretary Mnuchin has grossly misled the public about the extent of the Treasury Department’s analysis. I am deeply concerned about either possibility.”

raveling

Tom von Alten