Category Archives: Everyone

Bernie Woulda Lost

by DonetteKoss Posted on December 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Andrew Gelman takes issue with my claim that Bernie Sanders would have been a sure loser if he’d run against Donald Trump:

My guess would be that Sanders’s ideological extremism could’ve cost the Democrats a percentage or two of the vote….But here’s the thing. Hillary Clinton won the election by 3 million votes. Her votes were just not in the right places. Sanders could’ve won a million or two votes less than Clinton, and still won the election.

….The 2016 election was just weird, and it’s reasonable to say that (a) Sanders would’ve been a weaker candidate than Clinton, but (b) in the event, he could’ve won.

I won’t deny that Sanders could have won. Gelman is right that 2016 was a weird year, and you never know what might have happened.

That said, I really don’t buy it. This sounds like special pleading to me, and it relies on a truly bizarre scenario. We know that state votes generally follow the national vote, so if Sanders had lost 1-2 percentage points compared to Clinton, he most likely would have lost 1-2 percentage points in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania too. What’s the alternative? That he somehow loses a million votes in liberal California but gains half a million votes in a bunch of swing states in the Midwest? What’s the theory behind that?

And lucky me, this gives me a chance to bring up something else: the assertion that Sanders might very well have won those Midwestern swing states that Clinton lost. The argument is that all those rural blue-collar whites who voted for Trump thanks to his populist, anti-trade views would have voted for Sanders instead. After all, he also held populist, anti-trade views.

But this is blinkered thinking. It focuses on one positive aspect of Sanders’ platform while ignoring everything else. Take all those white working-class folks who have sucked up so much of our attention lately. Sure, many of them voted for Trump. And sure, part of the reason was his populist economics. But it wasn’t just that. They also liked the fact that he was anti-abortion and pro-gun and wanted to kick some ass in the Middle East. Would they also have voted for a guy who opposed TPP but was pro-abortion and anti-gun and non-interventionist and in favor of a gigantic universal health system and promoted free college for everyone and was Jewish? A guy who is, literally, the most liberal national politician in the country?

Sure, maybe. But if that’s what you’re counting on, you might want to rethink things. It’s absolutely true that Hillary Clinton ran 5-10 points behind Obama’s 2012 numbers in the Midwest. It’s also true that Obama was the incumbent and Mitt Romney was a pro-trade stiff who was easy to caricature as a private equity plutocrat who downsized working-class people out of their jobs. Was there more to it than that? Perhaps, and that’s something for Democrats to think about.

Whatever the case, though, Sanders would have found it almost impossible to win those working-class votes. There’s no way he could have out-populisted Trump, and he had a ton of negatives to overcome. And that’s not even taking account of how Trump would have attacked him. Sanders hasn’t had to run a truly contested election for a long time, and he flipped out at the very mild attacks he got from Hillary Clinton. I can’t even imagine how he might have reacted to Trump’s viciousness.

But I will take this chance to clarify one thing. American politics is so polarized that both parties are pretty much guaranteed about 45 percent of the two-party vote. So when I say Sanders would have lost in a landslide, that’s all I mean. Instead of Clinton’s 51-49 percent victory in the popular vote, my guess is that Sanders would lost 47-53 or so. In modern presidential politics, that’s a landslide.

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Bernie Woulda Lost

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How One Homeless Couple Finds and Prepares Their Meals

by SabrinaHearn959 Posted on December 17, 2016

Mother Jones

This article is part of the SF Homeless Project, a collaboration between nearly 70 media organizations to explore the state of homelessness in San Francisco.

The sun reaches down between the steel slats of a park bridge, its light flickering as a bicyclist glides overhead. Donna Ewing, 54, and her boyfriend, Louie, 52, watch him pass from below. They spent nearly a month digging out a space under the bridge, before adding walls made of plywood and sheet metal. Their new space is an upgrade from the tent they were living in before: It has a sturdy roof and much more privacy.

Donna and Louie have lived in Union Point, a small park near a boat marina in West Oakland, California, for about a year. They’re two of the city’s estimated 6,200 homeless residents, and part of the nearly 17 percent of Americans who don’t have enough to eat on a regular basis. Because of their makeshift living quarters, finding food and preparing the next meal can take up a significant part of the day.

On a Wednesday morning in early December, Louie pushes aside the pink tent he’s hung up in lieu of a front door and hops on his bike for a morning ride. While he’s gone, Donna eats a packaged donut and a few bites of cinnamon toast—the remnants of a bag of groceries Louie brought home from a food pantry a few days before. Donna turns on a hot plate to heat water for coffee, powered by a car battery, the couple’s primary power source. Then she spends the morning cleaning up camp, even though she says she knows she should rest. Her blood pressure is high and she’s in between chemo treatments. When Louie returns, he eats some oatmeal out of a paper cup, along with his favorite toppings—”lots of butter and lots of sugar.”

Some days, Louie rides his bike to a Presbyterian church nearby to collect bagged lunches that are handed out a few times a week. Other days he rides 25 minutes to the Alameda County Food Bank for some groceries. Finding healthy options nearby isn’t easy. Donna and Louie’s setup, like many homeless camps, is near an industrial park just off the freeway, an area seen as a food desert. There’s a McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza more than a few blocks away, and a FoodMax a bit farther, where Louie can find staples like chicken, coffee, oatmeal, and vegetables. Feeding America, a hunger relief organization, estimates that more than 232,000 people in Alameda County don’t have access to enough nutritious and affordable food. The Alameda County Food Bank feeds about 116,000 people each month.

The homeless are by no means the only population struggling to put dinner on the table: Last year, more than 42 million Americans reported living in households without adequate access to food. Recently, more organizations like Food Runners and Food Recovery Network have sprung up to try to divert cities’ colossal food waste to those in need.

A small bridge in a West Oakland provides shelter for Donna and Louie, a couple who have lived in the park for about a year. Photo by Jenny Luna

Since it’s the middle of the month, money isn’t as tight for Donna and Louie as it will be in two weeks, when nearly all of Donna’s Social Security check will be spent. So for lunch, they still have some bread and cold cuts for sandwiches. Donna keeps mayonnaise, celery, apples, and pork chops cold in a small blue ice chest. She sends Louie to a nearby Motel 6 every few days for more ice. All he has to do is ask, she says. People are usually very giving when you ask.

The couple met at the Walden House, a rehab facility in San Francisco, a little over a year ago. After treatment, they decided to head east to visit Donna’s son in Utah. They’d barely made it out of town when their car broke down. They haven’t been able to get on their feet since. Donna and Louie tell me this story from outside their encampment, Louie seated on a turned-over milk crate and Donna on a worn pink ottoman. “I don’t know how we got here,” Louie says, crying. “We’re stuck and we’re trying to stay positive,” Donna says.

Donna Ewing, 54, often cooks for everyone in the encampment. “We share what we have,” she said. Photo by Jenny Luna

Toward the end of the month, Donna and Louie will eat less meat and more cereal. They’ll mostly skip lunches, and when money thins even more, they’ll both go without breakfast. On the first of the month, Donna heads to the Social Security office to pick up her check, an amount that comes out to an average of about $150 per week. Louie contributes to the larder by working under the table for an Italian restaurant in the nearby town of Alameda. He sweeps, mops, and washes dishes in exchange for a few meals at the end of the night. He’ll get to bring home a to-go box of fries, spaghetti, or Donna’s favorite: salad.

At sunset, Union Point is quiet now that boat owners in the marina have gone for the day. Donna’s two cats, Malachi and Cali, emerge from the bushes and chase each other around camp. A neighbor, Dawn, comes by with some food to share—a bag of nearly thawed chicken nuggets and a plastic container full of tomato sauce for dipping.

Just before dark, Louie heads to the parking lot of an industrial complex across the railroad tracks. He comes back with a wooden pallet and a few moon pies and soda that the warehouse employees leave out from time to time. Since it’s about to rain, Donna wishes she could make soup: celery and carrots and chicken, something they can live off of for a couple of days. But their big soup pot got crushed a few weeks ago when the city cleared out camp. “They’re supposed to store them or something,” Donna says. “But everything got crushed. That was devastating.” Government agencies often do “sweeps” through homeless camps, sometimes destroying or confiscating any property.

Since they have some meat from Louie’s grocery vouchers, they’ll barbecue tonight instead. They’re out of fuel, so Louie stomps the palette into smaller pieces while Donna gathers a few branches from the bushes. She moves slowly in her sandals and black sweatpants, her fading blonde hair slicked back in a bun. On her wrist, she wears a rubber bracelet with the word “Love” on it.

Louie takes all the wood over to the park’s barbecue grills and puts a few pieces under the metal grate. Donna puts two pork chops on the grill. As the smell wafts off the meat, their neighbors Mike and Lucy, who live in tents in the marina parking lot, gather around with a bag of chips and some soda. The temperature drops as the sun sets further. Even though it’s cold, they start up a game of dominoes. Donna boils water for hot cocoa. “It’s a beautiful place,” Donna says. “It’s about the people being here; we’re all the same people.”

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How One Homeless Couple Finds and Prepares Their Meals

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Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Isn’t Even About Two Stars That Go to War

by BenjamingBolton Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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About a year ago Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out and Mother Jones’ Edwin Rios and Ben Dreyfuss had a chat certifying that it was, in fact, wonderful. Today, we are back again to discuss the latest entry in the universe, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There are a lot of spoilers in this.

Ben Dreyfuss: Eddie! We’re doing this again. It’s becoming a tradition. We talk about the Star Wars films Friday after having seen late Thursday night showings. Maybe next year we’ll have the foresight to see an advance press screening.

Edwin Rios: Alright, let’s jump right in, because this new Star Wars flick was…something. Where do we begin?

BD: OK, Rogue One! So it’s set like right before A New Hope and some people are going to steal the plans for the Death Star so that Luke and friends can destroy it. And we start on some planet where Hannibal Lecter from the NBC show Hannibal is farming with his wife and daughter and an evil general comes to fetch him because Hannibal is the only person smart enough to build the evil general’s evil Death Star but Hannibal really doesn’t want to because Hannibal has a soul so to convince him to come they kill Hannibal’s wife, like you do, and his daughter runs away and then Hannibal goes “OK, OK, I’ll build the Death Star” and some many years later the daughter is in prison and the rebels, they need her, because of reasons, and…and…I am so bored even describing this movie.

ER: It doesn’t make sense why the rebels would capture the daughter of the guy who knows how to build the Death Star. To lure him out?

BD: Also, like why was she even in jail? Why didn’t Hannibal rescue her? Did they bother to explain any of that?

ER: No. I mean, it’s implied that he’s been holed up with a group of researchers on that one planet finalizing the plans for the Death Star. But that comes later. My question: Why didn’t Forest Whitaker just stick around and help Jyn.

BD: Oh shit that was Forest Whitaker? I thought it might have been but he had a bunch of space makeup on. (I also have clearly not done any research for this chat).

ER: Yeah, man. I thought he was pretty good, given how poor the writing was.

BD: Yeah, he was good. I think all the actors were actually pretty good. The girl, who’s the star, and also Diego Luna who is a Rebel fighter and also her bae.

ER: Ha, right. One of the movie’s issues: I didn’t feel emotionally invested in the characters. At all. The actors were stuck with a script that A.O. Scott called “surprisingly hackish.” They didn’t get the chance to connect with the audience. Like, Riz Ahmed (The Night Of) barely said anything of substance. He handed the message to Whitaker and was like, “Believe me!” Also, I guess he came up with the movie’s title…

BD: That moment was weird, but I actually didn’t mind it. But yeah him the guy from Nightcrawler. He was fine, too. But he had nothing to do but fly the plane and come up with the title of the film and die.

ER: And for most of the film, the droid and Captain Cassian (Diego Luna) flew the ship from planet to planet. So many planets. So Riz’s moment of greatness arose at the end of the film, like everyone else.

BD: So anyway, Diego Luna and Hannibal’s daughter and the guy from Nightcrawler and a blind man all team up to steal the plans to the Death Star and they spend a very long time sort of like not finding those plans and then in the last hour of the film do in fact find them in a big climactic battle scene.

ER: As far as Star Wars battle scenes go, that was pretty epic.

BD: Totally agree. There was this minor Twitter outrage about a Vox headline that said like “Rogue One is the first Star Wars movie to acknowledge that the whole franchise is about war.” And people were like, “ha ha WAR is in the title, Vox!” But I sort of get the writer’s point. Rogue One is a war film, and not a space opera.

ER: It’s no Saving Private Ryan. But at the heart of Rogue One is the side story we tend to forget about in the rest of the Star Wars series. A ragtag group of rebels have to find a way to upend the Empire. It was refreshing to see that, but the execution overall wasn’t great.

BD: I cannot stress how much I disliked the first half of this movie. It was so boring. I didn’t give a shit at all and on a scene level it wasn’t engaging.

ER: There were moments when I would get drawn to the characters, like when Felicity Jones has to watch the message from her father. But then she gave that cliché speech in front of the rest of the rebels, and I was like, shaking my head.

BD: OK, but all of that said: I did really enjoy the second half of the film. It was a very well done war movie, when they stopped talking about dumb bullshit and just got on with it.

ER: Definitely. Really, when Darth Vader showed up, I was thinking, “I can get back into this.” But the CGI recreations of that important imperial general guy and the very last one (I won’t spoil it) threw me off.

BD: Right, but also, what was with Darth Vader’s voice? I know they can’t have James Earl Jones do the same one again but this one felt like a weird slightly off imitation.

ER: I thought it was still James?

BD: Oh maybe it was but it still sounded different to me? But maybe I just am remembering his voice differently. Let’s talk about the droid.

ER: He was the only likeable character in that movie.

BD: I hated that droid in the beginning. He was making all those dumb remarks and I was like “why don’t they just shoot the droid?” Also because in The Force Awakens the ball robot is the best part. That ball stole the show. But then in the end of this one the droid had grown on me.

ER: His final scene was the moment I knew we’d be in for something surprising. What did you think about the fact that SPOILER everyone died?

BD: So I was trying to remember the line in A New Hope that sets this story up where someone is like “a band of brave people stole the Death Star plans” and I kept wondering if the line actually was “a band of brave people gave their lives stealing the Death Star plans” so the whole time I was like they are probably going to die.

ER: See, I couldn’t remember either if there was a reference in A New Hope. But it was a fitting end to a cast of lousy characters that died valiantly to protect the rest of the Rebel Alliance. Like, once K-2SO fell, I was thinking, “It’s time for everyone else to die.” But if you took the execution from the last battle scene and spread it throughout the movie, you’d have a pretty epic part of the Star Wars universe.

BD: So you’re a Star Wars fan. I’m not a huge fan. I really loved The Force Awakens but the others I thought were dumb. But did this movie not being great put you off future one-off Star Wars Universe side stories?

ER: That’s a good question, and I had been thinking about that last night. It made me question how good the Han Solo story is going to be. Say what you want about The Force Awakens, it set the standard for what a modern-day Star Wars film should be—packed with action, filled with emotion, and fueled by nostalgia. Rogue One felt like it was trying really hard to be part of that universe, but fell flat. It’s a story that needed to be told, but it wasn’t told well.

BD: Right, except for the second half battle. The second half was so much better than the first half that it made me believe that they can get these stories right. They just didn’t this time.

ER: No offense to the director and writers, but please change the director and writers next time.

BD: Hahaha. The director, whatever his name is, made that movie about the monster, whatever it was called. The monster who lives in the ocean. From Japan. And it like is made by nuclear bombs? And then attacks Hawaii?

ER: Godzilla.

BD: Godzilla! Yeah! Godzilla!

ER: We can’t not talk about some of the choice lines in this movie. Like, when Darth Vader made a pun about choking when choking that imperial dude. I seriously wish I could remember it.

BD: “I hope you don’t choke on your aspirations.”

ER: OMFG. I threw my head in my hands, shook my head, and whispered, “Nooooo.” I felt like I was watching an episode of Bob’s Burgers. (which I love.)

BD: Haha. I mean I think that the original movies had a lot of terrible lines as well. But I totally agree that that was terrible. Also the prequels! Remember when Anakin and Natalie Portman were like “we will make love in the field for freedom!” or something.

ER: Absolutely. No question. But, Ben, “Rebellions are built on hope.”

BD: Haha. I think that that clunker of a line is something that we can apply to this film universe. A lot of hope! This one didn’t make good on that hope though.

ER: I honestly thought K-2SO summed it up best with his quip: “I find that answer vague and unconvincing.” I found this movie, for the most part, vague and unconvincing. Like, would I watch again? Maybe once it comes up on the Apple TV queue.

BD: I’ll watch the last half again, but not the first half. But vague and unconvincing it definitely was.

ER: One more thing: How the heck did that hammer-headed ship destroy TWO imperial ships??

BD: Yeah I mean that whole thing was so hilariously stupid lol. But in conclusion we agree: not a great movie, but we’ll be back next year to watch the next Star Wars film.

ER: Shout-out to our colleague and fellow Star Wars fan, Pat Caldwell, who couldn’t make it to this chat. We asked him what he thought. What did he say?

BD: “Just know that it is the best movie ever and you are both WRONG…(actually, it is not that great, but solid popcorn viewing).” So, dear reader, we were going to have a fan who liked the movie in here for balance but even he admitted it was not very good and backed out at the last second.

ER: See you next year.

Link – 

Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" Isn’t Even About Two Stars That Go to War

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Saving for Retirement Is a Struggle—Unless You’re a CEO

by GayleClaypool Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama has called runaway income inequality the “defining issue of our time.” The disparity between exploding corporate profits and stagnating paychecks fueled Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and continues to grow. Currently, the United States has a wider gap between the very rich and everyone else than at any time since the late 1920s. And according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies, that spells disaster for Americans trying to save enough to retire.

The study, titled “A Tale of Two Retirements,” found that in 2015 just 100 CEOs had retirement funds worth $4.7 billion—equivalent to the entire retirement savings of the least wealthy 41 percent of American families, or 116 million people. That figure is even more staggering when broken down by race: Those 100 execs’ retirement funds are worth as much as the entire retirement savings of the bottom 44 percent of white working-class families, the bottom 59 percent of African American families, and the bottom 75 percent of Latino families.

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Look at it another way. Those 100 CEOs have nest eggs large enough to generate a retirement check of more than $250,000 per month for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the average American fortunate enough to have a 401(k) plan has socked away only enough to receive a monthly check of just $101. And those are the lucky ones: 37 percent of all US households have no retirement savings at all. Neither do 51 percent of African American families and 66 percent of Latino families. Things are also particularly bleak for millennials, as Americans younger than 40 have saved 7 percent less for retirement than similarly aged boomers.

The hollowing out of workers’ retirement benefits punishes female retirees, in particular: Median incomes for women 65 and older are 45 percent lower than men’s. And since women live longer than men, on average, they must stretch their retirement savings even further.

So who are these rapacious retirees? Many of them head companies that have been cutting back on worker pensions and retirement funds for years. John Hammergen, the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant McKesson, holds nearly $150 million in retirement assets. Shortly after joining the company in 1996, he closed its pension fund to all new employees. Yet Hammergen found enough money to set up a retirement account that has furnished him with assets worth more than $20,000 for every day he’s spent at the company’s helm.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon already had $67.8 million stashed in an untaxed, deferred compensation account in 2015, despite having only held his post since 2014. His predecessor, Michael Duke, retired with more than $140 million in deferred compensation. In contrast, fewer than two-thirds of Walmart’s 1.5 million employees have a company-sponsored retirement account. Those who do have an average balance of less than $24,000, enough for a monthly retirement check of $131—not even 0.04 percent of what McMillon can expect to take home every month.

Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, has more than $92 million in retirement assets. Between 1987 and 2011, the company contributed not one penny to employee pension plans, counting on rising stock prices to offset its expected contribution. After the economy crashed in 2008, Immelt froze pensions and closed them to new participants. The company has only funded 67 percent of its outstanding pension obligation to workers and its pension deficit has grown by $5 billion since 2011. During the same time, Immelt’s company-sponsored retirement assets have swelled from $53 million to $92 million.

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So how has this happened? Simply, the tax rules are structured in favor of massive executive retirement packages. Ordinary workers face strict limits on how much pre-tax income they invested in tax-deferred plans like 401(k)s. (The current limit is $18,000.) CEOs may participate in regular employee plans, but they also get Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans, which Fortune 500 companies set up with unlimited tax-deferred compensation. Since more than half of executive compensation is tied to stock price, CEOs have direct incentives to cut back on worker retirement benefits to pad their balance sheets. The money saved by those cost-cutting measures goes straight back into executives’ pockets, often tax-free: Corporations may deduct unlimited amounts of executive compensation from their federal taxes so long as it’s “performance based.”

Much of this is the result of Reagan-era policies that worked to prioritize corporate profits and undo the power of unions. Under Reagan, companies began to adopt 401(k)s over pensions, shifting investment risk from employers to workers, as these plans required workers to deduct savings from their paychecks with no guarantee of future benefits. Companies have also reduced retirement benefits by converting workers’ pension assets to cash balance plans, freezing retirement plans, closing retirement plans to new hires, or terminating retirement plans altogether.

Might this get better under President-elect Donald Trump, whose economic message seemingly resonated with white-working class voters? Don’t count on it. If Trump and congressional Republicans cut the top marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, Fortune 500 CEOs would stand to save $195 million when they withdraw cash from their tax-deferred retirement accounts, according to IPS.

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Saving for Retirement Is a Struggle—Unless You’re a CEO

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Why Are Democrats So Damn Timid About James Comey and the FBI?

by JodyLondon1 Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is pissed:

The more we learn about the Russian plot to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and elect Donald Trump, and the failure of the FBI to adequately respond, the more shocking it gets….I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT “help desk.”

….Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.

FBI Director James Comey justified his handling of the email case by citing “intense public interest.” He felt so strongly that he broke long-established precedent and disregarded strong guidance from the Justice Department with his infamous letter just 11 days before the election. Yet he refused to join the rest of the intelligence community in a statement about the Russian cyberattack because he reportedly didn’t want to appear “political.” And both before and after the election, the FBI has refused to say whether it is investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.

I’m surprised that Democrats have been so muted about the FBI’s role in the election. If something like this had happened to Republicans, it would be flogged daily on Rush, Drudge, Fox News, Breitbart, the Wall Street Journal, and the Facebook pages of everyone from Sarah Palin to Alex Jones. But Democrats have been almost pathologically afraid to talk about it, apparently cowed by the possibility that Republicans will mock them for making excuses about their election loss.

That’s crazy. Here’s a quick review:

Goaded by rabid congressional Republicans, the FBI spent prodigious resources on Hillary Clinton’s email server, even though there was never a shred of evidence that national security had been compromised in any way.

In July, Comey broke precedent by calling a press conference and delivering a self-righteous speech about Clinton’s “carelessness.” Why did he do this, when FBI protocol is to decline comment on cases after investigations are finished? The answer is almost certainly that he wanted to insulate himself from Republican criticism for not recommending charges against Clinton.

Weeks later, Comey finally released the investigation’s interview notes. Only the most devoted reader of bureaucratic prose was likely to suss out their real meaning: there had never been much of a case in the first place, and contrary to Comey’s accusation, Clinton had never been careless with classified material. Like everyone else, she and her staff worked hard to exchange only unclassified material on unclassified networks (state.gov, gmail, private servers, etc.). There was a difference of opinion between State and CIA about what counted as classified, but this squabbling had been going on forever, and had driven previous Secretaries of State nuts too.

As Podesta notes, the FBI took a preposterously lackadaisical attitude toward Russia’s hacking of the DNC server. Outside of a badly-written novel, it’s hard to believe that any law enforcement organization would do as little as the FBI did against a major assault from a hostile foreign power aimed at one of America’s main political parties.

Even when plenty of evidence was amassed about Russia’s actions, Comey downplayed it in private briefings. This gave Republicans the cover they needed to insist that Obama not mention anything about it during the campaign.

Two weeks before Election Day, Comey authorized a search of Anthony Weiner’s laptop, even though there was no reason to think any of the emails it contained were new, or that any of them posed a threat to national security. Then he issued a public letter making sure that everyone knew about the new evidence, and carefully phrased the letter in the most damaging possible way.

Any one of these things could be just an accident. Put them all together, and you need to be pretty obtuse not to see the partisan pattern. In every single case, Comey and the FBI did what was best for Republicans and worst for Democrats. In. Every. Single. Case.

If you want to believe this is just a coincidence, go ahead. But nobody with a room temperature IQ credits that. The FBI has spent the entire past year doing everything it could to favor one party over the other in a presidential campaign. Democrats ought to be in a seething fury about this. Instead, they’re arguing about a few thousand white rural voters in Wisconsin and whether Hillary Clinton should have visited Michigan a few more times in October.

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Why Are Democrats So Damn Timid About James Comey and the FBI?

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Should Trump Be Investigated?

by GradySiler Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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We really should have seen this coming. On Monday, amid a whirlwind of shocking news about Russian interference with America’s election, Donald Trump had some news of his own—or rather, non-news. He canceled a press conference at which he was supposed to explain how he would disentangle the conflicts of interest posed by his far-flung business interests.

It wasn’t the first time Trump had bailed on answering questions: From the time he declared that “we’re working on” releasing his tax returns, to when he vowed to produce evidence that he hadn’t groped a woman on a plane, to the promised press conference to clear up his wife’s immigration history, this is a pattern we’re sure to see again.

But why is it only now, well past the election, that Trump is being pushed to address how he would deal with banks to which he is in debt, or foreign leaders who have a say over his company’s projects? Those questions were there for anyone to see, and investigate, the minute he announced he was running. And yet, they weren’t a focus for media, with a few notable exceptions, until far too late in the game.

Why? Simply put: Math. We’ve gone into the problems with the dominant media business model before—advertising pays fractions of a penny per click, which means that publishers have to pump out buckets of fast, cheap content to make ends meet, and that leaves little opportunity for serious investigation. Trump understands this well, and he plays that dynamic like a violin.

Grim, right? But there is an alternative to this model. Reader support has allowed MoJo reporters to go after essential stories, no matter what it takes.

In normal times, right now we’d be in the middle of the kind of routine end-of-year fundraising drive many nonprofits do in December (“We need to raise $250,000 by December 31!”). But these aren’t normal times; in the weeks since the election, we’ve seen record interest in the journalism we do, because more and more people see this work—digging for the truth and reporting it without fear—as essential for our democracy.

So enough with the tired marketing pitches. We want to make the case for your support based on the journalism itself. We want to show why it’s worth your investment. (And of course, if you already get it, you can make your tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation now!)

Take that Trump conflict-of-interest issue. Back in June, MoJo reporter Russ Choma and our Washington bureau chief, David Corn, broke the story of Trump’s remarkable relationship with Deutsche Bank—a huge German financial institution that has lent Trump a lot of money. About $364 million, to be exact.

That’s some serious leverage over a man who is worth, by one of the more generous estimates, about $3.7 billion. And it gets worse: Deutsche Bank manipulated interest rates before the financial crash, and the federal government wants them to pay a $14 billion settlement. Deutsche Bank doesn’t like that. As president, Russ and David pointed out, Trump “would have a strong disincentive to apply pressure on Deutsche Bank.”

Just consider that for a second: The president’s personal business interests are in direct conflict with those of America’s taxpayers.

When we first published that piece, Trump wasn’t even the nominee yet. Hillary Clinton was still fighting off Bernie Sanders’ challenge. It was, at that point, just a warning sign—a check-engine light, you might say, for democracy.

But that’s not what the rest of the media universe was concerned with at the time. The headlines were dominated by horse race polls, and in the Hollywood Reporter, veteran media writer Michael Wolff recounted chatting with Trump over a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs as the candidate gushed about media moguls. On Rupert Murdoch: “Tremendous guy and I think we have a very good relationship.” On former CBS and Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone: “He’d give me anything. Loved me.” On current CBS Chairman Les Moonves (who famously noted that Trump’s bomb-throwing “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”): “Great guy. The greatest. We’re on the same page. We think alike.” And so on.

You’ve got to discount all that for the Trump factor—nothing he says can be assumed to be true. But what we do know is that, as Wolff notes, Trump “has a long, intimate relationship with nearly every significant player in the media…He may know few people in Washington, and care about them less, but he knows his moguls and where they rank on the modern suck-up-to list.”

The Moonveses and Redstones of the world don’t issue memos directing their newsrooms to ignore the GOP nominee’s scandalous conflicts of interest. But they don’t need to. The corporations they run are built to maximize advertising revenue, which comes from maximum eyeballs at minimum cost. There are people in all of their news divisions who push back against that gravitational force, but everyone knows what the bottom line is.

Russ, for his part, kept plugging away. On August 15, he published a story headlined, “Trump Has a Huge Conflict of Interest That No One’s Talking About.” The Trump International Hotel in Washington, Russ reported, is a $200 million venture, run by Ivanka Trump, for the hospitality branch of the president-elect’s company. Its building is federal property, and to lease it Trump agreed to pay way more than any other bidder. If the hotel doesn’t turn a profit, it will have to negotiate with the federal government—run by the hotel’s owner—to pay less. If it does turn a profit, it will have to charge rates way above any other Washington hotel.

Right now, the cheapest room in January—inauguration weekend is sold out—goes for about $625 a night, though you can snag the Ivanka Suite for $1,050 and the Postmaster Suite for $4,450. And already, corporate honchos and foreign diplomats are lining up to pay. (“Spending money at Trump’s hotel is an easy, friendly gesture to the new president” for foreign dignitaries, the Washington Post reported a week after Election Day. One diplomat told the paper, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!'”) As banana-republic palm-greasing goes, it’s an incredible bargain.

Some reporters would have called it a day after that initial story. But Russ, like all great journalists, is a bit of a pit bull. He worked for a newspaper in New Hampshire before joining the watchdog Center for Responsive Politics and then making the jump to MoJo. He’s always been drawn to money and influence reporting, he says, because “if you ask enough questions, that’s where you wind up. You talk about nearly any national policy issue, it almost always leads you to campaign donations and lobbyists. And with Trump, we have this new dimension—that his own personal wealth seems to be an even more consuming passion. There’s so much we don’t know, it’s mind-boggling.”

Russ kept documenting Trump’s conflicts, reporting on his massive debt and (in a story together with our reporter Hannah Levintova) his business in Russia, including his relationship with an oligarch close to Putin—so close that Trump tweeted, “Do you think Putin will become my new best friend?”). He was the first, after the election, to really drill into a term that quickly became part of everyone’s political vocabulary: the emoluments clause, in which the Constitution forbids the president from taking gifts from foreign governments. None other than George W. Bush’s former White House ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, told Russ that an emoluments clause violation would make “Hillary’s emails look like a walk in the park.”

The day Trump announced that he was canceling the press conference focused on his business, Russ tallied up all the debt Trump owes. Take a moment to absorb the enormity of what this chart represents:

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Russ (along with a handful of others) had labored away at this issue for six months when it finally became headline material for the rest of the press. Today, outlets from the New York Times to National Public Radio are digging in, and 17 members of Congress are demanding an investigation.

And here’s the key: Russ was able to keep going because of you. No advertiser or other source of revenue would have made that work possible. With news, you get what you pay for.

Investigative reporting doesn’t always have an immediate, visible impact. Sometimes you see a dramatic event—like when the US Department of Justice announced last summer that it was no longer going to do business with private prison companies shortly after we published a big investigation. Sometimes it’s more opaque and slow-building, as with the conflict-of-interest reporting that has finally broken through. But the results always come—and that, not a stock certificate or a tote bag, is the reward for our readers. (Though if you’re in the market for a tote bag, or a Hellraiser baby onesie, we have those too!)

In the next four years, we’re going to focus on one thing above all others: fighting creeping authoritarianism and the lies that advance it. We’ll fight them with truth, by digging deep and calling a spade a spade, whether anyone else is willing to or not. (Just a couple of weeks ago, CBS—”great guy” Les Moonves’ network—amplified Team Trump’s slur against democracy, that “millions” of people might have voted illegally, without so much as a qualifier.)

And we’re going to need you to join us in that fight. You can make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to support our work.

Make no mistake: Democracy’s fabric is under threat. Not by a coup d’état or an invasion from outside, but because we have allowed its critical institutions—from access to the ballot to the vigor of the press—to fray.

At a time like this, it’s important to remember that trends don’t just go one way.

Here at Mother Jones, we’ve seen that there is an enormous appetite for vigorous, fearless reporting—now more than ever. In October and November, visits to our website were 50 percent higher than usual, approaching 15 million each month. And while we don’t force you to pay to read our stories—because it’s important for this journalism to be accessible as widely as possible—a growing number of you are choosing to subscribe or donate. That is incredibly heartening, because it means you feel the same urgency we do: Right now, none of us needs to be motivated by some arbitrary fundraising goal. Covering Trump, and what he represents, will take everything we’ve got.

We know there’s a lot of competition for your tax-deductible year-end support. We hope that supporting independent journalism makes the cut. Readers, as you know, account for 70 percent of our budget. Without you, our pages would be empty save for advertising and cats.

That might be something Trump would like to see. But you—and we—are not going to let it happen.

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Should Trump Be Investigated?

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Trump’s Kids Will Always Get Insider Access, and Trump Doesn’t Care Who Knows It

by EmanuelEchevarri Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two days after promising that he will be “leaving” his businesses, which will henceforth be run by Eric and Don Jr., Donald Trump held a “private” get-together with various leaders of Silicon Valley firms, presumably to discuss his plans as president. Neither the assembled CEOs nor Trump revealed what they had talked about, but there were a couple of outside business executives who got a detailed briefing: his children.

It’s just corruption all the way down and Trump doesn’t care who knows it. Most presidents would at least do stuff like this on the sly, via telephone calls or personal visits. But Trump invites his kids to meetings and then brings in the cameras to make sure everyone knows they’re there. He knows there’s nothing we can do about it, and nothing that Republicans in Congress will do about it, so he figures he can just thumb his nose at the entire country. I guess he’s right.

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Trump’s Kids Will Always Get Insider Access, and Trump Doesn’t Care Who Knows It

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Help Grist hold Trump and his media enablers accountable

by GiuseppeYrw Posted on December 13, 2016

Remember that time Donald Trump told the New York Times he would keep an open mind about climate change? It was just a couple of weeks ago, when he met with the paper’s top reporters and editors. Their tweets sparked a slew of news reports that Trump might be “changing his tune” on climate.

Except that Trump did nothing of the sort. When Grist’s Rebecca Leber pored over the full transcript, it became clear that the president-elect was his usual climate-denying self, and the pliant news media had once again been suckered into making him look mainstream.

“Trump spun his climate denial to the New York Times and lots of people fell for it,” our headline read. “Grist expertly called out” the mainstream media’s failure to hold Trump accountable, The Huffington Post proclaimed.

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We’re going to need a lot more headlines like that in the coming years. And Grist needs your support to keep up our honest reporting and commentary — the kind you won’t hear from this administration or the bamboozled media.

I joined Grist as executive editor nine months ago with a mission: Take a publication beloved for its irreverent and unorthodox approach to environmental journalism and fuse that sensibility with a focus on deeper reporting, sharp analysis, and stories that matter.

As part of Grist’s fall fundraising drive, we’ve just spent the past couple of weeks celebrating some of those results. We sent reporters to cover injustice in Alaska and Standing Rock, told the amazing true story of the slideshow that saved the world, uncovered black-and-white evidence of a huge Trump climate flip-flop, won awards for our fun video explainers, launched a mobile-friendly daily news product, even explored what it takes to be a non-judgmental vegan.

Now we’re asking for your support so we can do more. That’s what it takes to run an independent, nonprofit media shop that doesn’t answer to deep pockets and has the freedom to take on corporate and political power.

I didn’t anticipate the election of Donald Trump, but I’m proud to say that Grist has made significant headway in building a journalistic operation capable of providing tough, fearless coverage of the president-elect and his polluter pals, who are about to have all the power they ever wanted to gut environmental laws, plunder our natural resources, ignore the warnings of climate science, and increase the environmental burdens plaguing vulnerable communities.

It’s become a cliche in the past few weeks to say that strong, honest journalism is needed now more than ever — but cliches gain power because they’re true.

Grist doesn’t have the resources of the New York Times or Washington Post, or even Mother Jones or ProPublica. Those institutions will need your support, too, to cover the range of corruption and assaults on civil liberties that the Trump administration portends.

What Grist does have, though, is a dedicated and skilled staff that’s intensely focused on a set of issues that are about to come under immediate attack from the Trump administration. We understand them — and their impact on people and communities — like no other publication.

And don’t just take my word for it. (I am the editor, after all). Bill Moyers’ website tells readers that if they want “more and better media coverage of these issues” they should “contribute to specialized nonprofit online outlets like Grist. … Robust news coverage will matter more than ever during an administration led by the purveyors of fake news and anti-science propaganda.”

So if you care about safe air and water, sustainable food, livable cities, a clean, inclusive economy, a survivable climate, and environmental justice for all, Grist is the publication you’ll need to cling to in the coming years. We’ll ferret out fake news, seek and spotlight solutions, tell you where progress continues to happen and who is standing in the way, stand up for what’s right and just, reach across ideological lines, give you the tools and advice needed to make a difference, and bring big brains together to spark ideas and innovation.

This is the Grist we need now more than ever. And it can’t happen without your support. Please give today.

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Help Grist hold Trump and his media enablers accountable

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

by BuddyWalden Posted on December 12, 2016

Christine Todd Whitman is arguably the most prominent figure ever to lead the Environmental Protection Agency under a Republican president, and she has critical words for Donald Trump’s potentially disastrous pick Scott Pruitt.

“I don’t recall ever having seen an appointment of someone who is so disdainful of the agency and the science behind what the agency does,” Whitman told Grist. The former governor of New Jersey led the EPA under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

“It doesn’t put us in a good place, in my mind,” Whitman said. “And he’s going to have trouble within the agency if he does convey that kind of disdain to the career staff.”

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Pruitt has close ties to the oil and gas industry. As Oklahoma attorney general, he sued the agency at least 13 times in five years, eight cases pending. The most high-profile case is his ongoing lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s most ambitious climate-related regulation. His career has gotten a boost from the likes of oil executive Harold Hamm, who was co-chair of Pruitt’s reelection campaign.

At times, Pruitt directly coordinated with the Oklahoma oil and gas industry to put pressure on the Obama White House in an effort to weaken clean air and water regulations or squash investigations.

REUTERS/Nick Oxford

“He obviously doesn’t care much for the agency or any of the regulations it has promulgated,” Whitman said. “He doesn’t believe in climate change; he wants to roll back the Clean Power Plan.”

Whitman foresees Pruitt clashing with the staff of the agency she once ran, which could have several consequences, she said. Staffers could stand in the way of Pruitt’s ambitions to cut back on the agency’s role, slowing the potential damage of his appointment. But at the same time, Pruitt could slow the staff’s ongoing and vital work. Remember Flint, Michigan? Superfund cleanups? Clean air?

Or, if the clashes are too severe and agency staffers either walk away or get purged under Pruitt, the EPA would lose a vast amount of expertise in a short period of time. “I worry about people retiring and losing institutional knowledge,” Whitman said. “They can slow things down, but he could too, and put a hard stop to regulations.”

In addition to suing over Clean Power Plan regulations, Pruitt has argued that climate activists should be prosecuted, and that debate over whether climate change is human-made should be encouraged in classrooms and Congress — despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the debate is settled.

Compared to where her party stands today on climate change, Whitman is considered an outlier. She has argued that the GOP should moderate itself on climate change and accept that humans play a role. Her philosophy — “Not being a scientist, I rely on the ones that are” — is quite rare these days. As extreme as Pruitt is, he’s in line with Republicans like House Science Chair Lamar Smith and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair James Inhofe — climate-denying senators who use their positions to confuse the public and block progress on climate action.

Still, Whitman pointed out the possibility for pushback to Pruitt’s anti-conservation agenda from hunters and ranchers within the GOP’s base, and possibly the more moderate Republicans she has had conversations with in Congress (Whitman declined to name those politicians).

For those still fooling themselves into thinking that Trump means it when he tells interviewers he has an “open mind” on climate science and environmental protection, his appointments should be telling.

“I never thought Trump was particularly an ideologue, but the picks have been a very conservative mindset,” Whitman said. “That will tell you he is quite serious about the anti-government pronouncements he made.”

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George W. Bush EPA chief slams Trump’s pick

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Sam Johnson Wants to Cut Your Social Security Benefits By a Third

by TonySoper22 Posted on December 11, 2016

Mother Jones

For reasons that are a little unclear, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) has decided to introduce a shiny new plan to reform Social Security when Congress meets next year. Johnson’s idea of “reform” is to slash everyone’s benefits, so this idea seems slightly suicidal—not to mention pointless, since Donald Trump campaigned very loudly on a promise not to touch anyone’s Social Security.

But Johnson is a very conservative guy, and maybe he just wants to lay down a marker. So what would his plan do? It has 15 components, all of them crammed full of Social Security’s usual alphabet soup of acronyms—AWI, PIA, AIME, MAGI, bend points, etc.—but it turns out that only six of them are big enough to be meaningful. Here is the Social Security actuary’s estimate of how much money they’d save:

Basically, there are four big proposals that would cut benefits by 5.76 percent of payroll, and two proposals that would increase benefits by 1.37 percent of payroll. I assure you that this chart is far simpler to understand than the actual analysis, but it probably still leaves you a little baffled. Whose benefits would be cut? And by how much? I’m here to help:

Roughly speaking, people with extremely low average earnings over their working lives would see their benefits rise. That’s good! Unfortunately, everyone with an average lifetime income over $22,000 would see their benefits slashed—in some cases by a lot. An income of $60,000 is not exactly a king’s ransom, but nonetheless Johnson would cut benefits for these folks by a third.

As usual with these plans, a lot of its provisions are phased in gradually over time. But unlike most of these plans, some of them start to kick in right away. This means that even people who are already retired would suffer benefit cuts. For example, Johnson’s plan reduces the annual cost-of-living increase—and eliminates it entirely for anyone earning over $85,000—beginning in 2018.

Anyway, since I tortured myself by reading this plan, I figured I should torture all the rest of you by blogging about it. Happy Holidays!

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Sam Johnson Wants to Cut Your Social Security Benefits By a Third

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