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Trump Thinks Election Day Is November 28

by EdytheHenke Posted on October 12, 2016

Mother Jones

With only 29 days to go until Election Day, the clock is ticking for both presidential candidates to encourage their supporters to register to vote, especially because some registration deadlines are fast approaching in many states. During a rally in Panama City, Florida, on Tuesday, Donald Trump urged people in the state—which just got its registration deadline extended because of Hurricane Matthew—to register and then vote on Election Day.

Unfortunately, he got the date wrong.

“Make sure you get out and vote November 28,” he said. “We’ve gotta win.”

In case you missed it, election day is Tuesday, November 8. But for the GOP nominee, November 28 is also notable because it’s the scheduled court date for the class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University.

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Trump Thinks Election Day Is November 28

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Brexit Threatens British Ice Cream Imports

by JeanK77hdeizk Posted on October 12, 2016

Mother Jones

Tyler Cowen points to the following tidbit in the Financial Times:

The plummeting pound is threatening UK households’ supplies of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Marmite spread, as Tesco, the country’s biggest supermarket, pulled dozens of products from sale online in a row over who should bear the cost of the weakening currency.

Unilever has demanded steep price increases to offset the higher cost of imported commodities, which are priced in euros and dollars, according to executives at multiple supermarket groups. But Tesco signalled it would fight the rises, removing Unilever products from its website and warning that some of the items could disappear from shelves if the dispute dragged on.

Um, what? Tesco thinks that if the pound falls, prices on imported items shouldn’t change? How do they figure that? Then again, maybe it’s nothing:

An executive at another consumer goods manufacturer said Unilever would probably regard Tesco’s action as a negotiating tactic rather than a serious threat.

Roger that. But in the long run, there’s no getting around this. A weak currency means cheaper exports and more expensive imports. You can try to jam a finger in the dike for a little while, but eventually you have to give in.

I don’t know what the long-term impact of Brexit will be. I suspect it will be moderately negative on several levels, and in particular, will probably hurt the blue-collar workers who were suckered into voting for it. Rage-based voting rarely does anyone any good. In the short-term, however, the impact will be unambiguously bad. Prices of imports will go up before the benefits of rising exports work their way through the economy, and uncertainty over Britain’s final status will paralyze lots of decisions from foreign firms about whether they should continue to invest there. This will all shake out in the end, but there will be some pain in the meantime.

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Brexit Threatens British Ice Cream Imports

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Coca-Cola’s Relationship With Health Is Truly Bizarre

by ClayBickford Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Soda companies give big bucks to groups that promote public health—while at the same time lobbying against laws that are trying to do the same.

That’s the takeaway from a study published today in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, and Save the Children from 2011-2015. The two companies, represented by American Beverage Association, also spent millions lobbying to defeat legislation aimed at reducing soda consumption across the country. Coke gave the National Institutes of health nearly $2 million in recent years while also spending $6 million each year from 2011 to 2015 to fight efforts on implementing a soda tax in cities like Philadelphia.

Read More: Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies Illustration: Chris Buzelli

“The beverage industry is using corporate philanthropy to undermine public health measures,” Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told the New York Times.

This isn’t quite breaking news. Soda companies have been funding science of sugar for decades, but today’s study is the first to point out the method of fighting public health measures while also supporting organizations founded on the principle of improving the nation’s health.

For more on how corporate sponsorships can influence public health listen to our Bite podcast episode with Andy Bellatti, founder of Dieticians for Professional Integrity. Or check out Kiera Butler’s dive into Oakland’s deceptively named “grocery tax.”

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Coca-Cola’s Relationship With Health Is Truly Bizarre

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Mike Pence Insists He and Trump Totally Agree on Syria

by GeraldiUlz Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Sunday night, Donald Trump made headlines by saying he disagreed with Mike Pence on Syria. By Monday morning, the Trump campaign was desperately insisting there was no disagreement at all.

At last week’s vice presidential debate, Pence stunned viewers by saying that Russia is helping the Syrian government kill civilians in Aleppo—and that the United States should be ready to use force against the Syrian regime. It was a sharp turn away from Trump’s previous comments, in which the real estate mogul has praised Syria and Russia for allegedly attacking ISIS.

At Sunday’s presidential debate, it was Trump’s turn to contradict Pence. “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree. I disagree,” Trump replied icily when asked about Pence’s comments. “I think you have to knock out ISIS.”

The contrast was obvious, but now Pence and Trump are pretending it never happened.

Pence appeared on all the major cable news networks Monday morning and claimed that ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who co-moderated Sunday’s debate, had “mischaracterized” his position on Syria. Pence said last week that “if Russia chooses to be involved…in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.” On Monday, he claimed his statement had been narrowly focused on Aleppo and that Raddatz had wrongly implied he wanted take on Syria and Russia in general. “The way Martha presented that question last night was to suggest that Russian provocation broadly and that of the Assad regime should be met with military force,” he said on MSNBC.

In fact, during Sunday’s debate, Raddatz asked both Clinton and Trump specifically about the crisis in Aleppo. “If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo?” Raddatz asked Trump. Immediately after saying that, Raddatz described Pence’s comments nearly verbatim: “And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in airstrikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.”

Trump then said twice that he and Pence disagreed. Trump went on to falsely suggest that Aleppo “basically has fallen.” He also praised the Syrian government’s alleged actions against ISIS. “Right now, Syria is fighting ISIS,” he said. That claim is also false: The Syrian government and its allies, including Russia, have overwhelmingly attacked rebel groups and civilians rather than ISIS. In fact, the Syrian regime abetted the rise of ISIS and has even struck oil deals with the terrorist group.

Pence isn’t the only member of the Trump campaign struggling to answer questions about the GOP candidate’s disagreement on Aleppo. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, a national security adviser to the Trump campaign, was asked on CNN Monday what the campaign’s policy on Syria actually is. Woolsey refused to even answer the question.

“But, wait, Mr. Director,” said Kate Bolduan, a CNN anchor who was visibly baffled by Woolsey’s attempts to dodge the issue. “You’re the former CIA director. You’re a national security adviser to the Donald Trump campaign. When it comes to a key policy position that you would assume would be a unified position of the campaign, I would also assume you would know what it is and be able to voice it.”

“I’m not telling you one way or the other,” Woolsey replied. “The candidates are the ones who are going to communicate the policy decisions to the public, not me.”

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Mike Pence Insists He and Trump Totally Agree on Syria

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Donald Trump Just Repeated One of His Most Vicious Lies

by LillieLouis Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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At Sunday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump repeated one of the more pernicious lies of his presidential campaign—that the neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters saw bombs scattered at the couple’s home and said nothing. Trump, who had been asked about his plan to ban Muslims from entering the country, was arguing that American Muslims need to change their behavior and start reporting suspicious activity they see to authorities.

But Trump’s story is false. As the Washington Post’s Glen Kessler points out, there’s no evidence that any neighbors saw anything. Nonetheless, Trump has repeated the claim over and over again over the course of his campaign. “One of the problems we have is the people in the community, the Muslim community are not turning over the sickos,” he said in an interview in June, before falsely describing the situation in San Bernardino.

But that broader premise is false too. The FBI says American Muslims regularly provide valuable tips on possible terrorist activity.

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Donald Trump Just Repeated One of His Most Vicious Lies

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White Nationalist Leader Doubles Down on Support for Donald Trump

by BeatrisParnell Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last May, William Johnson stepped down as a delegate for Donald Trump to the GOP national convention after Mother Jones revealed him to be the leader of the white nationalist American Freedom Party. Reluctant to draw negative attention to Trump, Johnson has largely receded from view since then—until yesterday, when the Los Angeles Times reported that Johnson’s white nationalist super-PAC is funding pro-Trump radio ads set to run in more than a half dozen states.

“It is certainly to help Trump,” Johnson told me. “If you look at the content of the radio ad, it promotes what Trump stands for. And every time people read these things, it helps convince them. There’s been 50 years of propaganda on the other side, so it is going to take a long process to change people’s opinion and this is just one step in that direction.”

The spot will begin running on Saturday on The Political Cesspool, a show hosted by AFP co-director James Edwards, and on Liberty RoundTable, a radio program where Edwards is listed as a “columnist.” Trump’s son Donald Jr. has appeared on Liberty Roundtable with Edwards, and this week Trump’s son Eric also appeared on the show.

Unlike robocalls that Johnson recorded during the GOP primary in support of Trump, the new radio ads do not explicitly mention race. “Do you want a strong leader who will secure our borders and stop the flow of illegal aliens and radical Islamic terrorists,” the ad says in part. The ad discloses that it is paid for by “William Johnson, a farmer and a deplorable.”

Johnson had originally wanted to call himself “a farmer and a white nationalist,” he told me, but Edwards preferred “deplorable,” a term that’s been taken up by white supremacists on social media ever since Hillary Clinton thrust it into the election. “It’s tongue-in-cheek,” Johnson says. “It’s like the term ‘gay’ used to mean something else, and now it’s positive in the homosexual community. Maybe ‘deplorable’ will become a positive term.”

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White Nationalist Leader Doubles Down on Support for Donald Trump

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Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

by AbrahamVillegas Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hurricane Matthew, which is currently menacing the United States after causing more than 800 deaths in Haiti, has focused the world’s attention on the growing threat posed by flooding and extreme storms. Here’s what you need to know about how climate change could make these natural disasters even worse.

Severe weather costs billions

So far in 2016, there have been a total of 12 floods and severe storms in the United States that have caused more than $1 billion in losses each, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The losses cover damage to property and infrastructure, interruptions to business operations such as store closings, and agricultural damage to crops and livestock.

Four of those catastrophic floods—two in Louisiana and one each in Texas and West Virginia—have occurred inland as a result of heavy rain. That’s double the previous record, which dates back to 1980. The pattern is clear: “Since 1991, the amount of rain falling in very heavy precipitation events has been significantly above average,” according to the National Climate Assessment, released in 2014.

Why the increase? As explained in the assessment, warmer temperatures enable the air to hold more water vapor. This extra vapor is then ready to be picked up and unleashed by the next storm system.

National Climate Assessment

As the Environmental Protection Agency states, however, the trend is by no means a universal one. As some parts of the country—such as the Midwest, Northeast, and Great Plains—see increased flooding, other regions, like the Southwest, have seen a decrease.

Sea levels are rising, and coasts are threatened

Global sea levels have risen 8 inches since 1880, according to a Climate Central analysis, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The culprit? Human activity. Climate Central’s report shows that along the coasts, two-thirds of flood days are now caused by human impact.

In addition to flooding from heavy rainfall, rising seas caused by melting ice sheets and warming water (which takes up more space than cooler water) are already causing coastal flooding in places such as Norfolk, Virginia—even on days without rain, as the New York Times explains. This type of flooding, termed “sunny-day flooding,” can happen at high tide and when winds are strong enough to cause the water to flow onto streets, the Times notes.

Human activity causes two-thirds of coastal flood days. Climate Central

Hurricanes could get worse

Climate models cited by the National Climate Assessment also predict an increase in the number of powerful category 4 (wind speeds above 130 miles per hour) and category 5 hurricanes (wind speeds above 155 miles per hour) by late this century. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, was upgraded to a category 5 at its most dangerous peak before striking Louisiana as a category 3 storm. It displaced more than 400,000 people, with some estimates topping 1 million. More than a decade later, the exact number of people killed by the storm is still unknown.

Matthew made landfall in Haiti as a category 4 but has been reduced to a category 3 as it pummels Florida. (UPDATE: Matthew has now been downgraded to a category 2 storm.) Yesterday, President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, warned, “This storm will kill you.” Matthew spent more time as a category 4 or 5 storm than any other hurricane on record in the eastern Caribbean, said Adam Smith, a scientist at NOAA.

The warmer surface temperature of the water in the Caribbean Sea has contributed to Matthew’s “resilience and power,” Smith added in an email to Mother Jones.

Storm surge, or the water pushed onto land by high winds, has been another contributing factor to Matthew’s danger. It reached a peak of four feet near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is predicted to reach as much as six to nine feet in parts of Florida and South Carolina if the surge coincides with high tide.

In fact, storm surge is one of the most dangerous effects of a hurricane. “Along the coast, storm surge is often the greatest threat to life and property from a hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center.

And the threat could grow. A study released in 2013 showed that warming temperatures could cause a tenfold increase in extreme storm surges in the next few decades.

“Climate change makes worse many of our weather extremes than they would have been naturally,” Smith said.

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Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

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Gary Johnson Thinks Barack Obama and Bashar Assad Are Morally About the Same

by Carey68Hsrqgpwm Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Gary Johnson thinks our foreign policy should be less interventionist. That’s fair enough. I agree with him. But this is ridiculous:

Attacking Hillary Clinton over what he criticized as her overly interventionist instincts, Mr. Johnson pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as civilian deaths caused by the American-backed coalition, and said Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, bore at least partial responsibility…He charged that Mrs. Clinton “bears responsibility for what’s happened, shared responsibility for what’s happened in Syria. I would not have put us in that situation from the get-go.”

This is nuts. Hillary Clinton played no role in starting the civil war in Syria, and 400,000 people have died there even though Barack Obama chose not to adopt her policy preferences. Our responsibility for what’s happened in Syria—whether you think it’s large or small—belongs to Obama, not Clinton. Then there’s this:

Johnson drew a parallel on Wednesday between the Syrian government’s targeting of noncombatants in that nation’s civil war and the accidental bombing of civilians by United States-backed forces…When pressed four times on whether he saw a moral equivalence between deaths caused by the United States, directly or indirectly, and mass killings of civilians by Mr. Assad and his allies, Mr. Johnson made clear that he did.

Words fail. Yes, the United States is far from perfect. Yes, we sometimes kill innocent civilians. Yes, we often do too little to make sure civilians are safe. All of this is worth protest until we get better.

But we do try to spare civilians. In fact, our rules of engagement are famously restrictive. Bashar Assad, by contrast, deliberately targets civilians in huge numbers. Civilian or not, if you oppose Assad he wants you dead.

Does Johnson really see no difference there? That wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman ethics class, let alone the real world. I’d like to see the United States rely less on a military approach to the Middle East, too, but I sure wouldn’t want our military in the hands of a guy who apparently sees no real moral difference between a butcher like Bashar Assad and decent but imperfect leaders like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

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Gary Johnson Thinks Barack Obama and Bashar Assad Are Morally About the Same

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2016 Is the Most Policy-Heavy Election in Decades

by AutumnSidwell69 Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s conventional wisdom that this year’s presidential campaign is one of the most policy-free of all time. The reason is obvious: Donald Trump is a policy void. He knows nothing, doesn’t want to know anything, and brags frequently about how everything you need to know to be president can be learned in an hour or two. His milieu is entertainment and insults, not policy wonkery.

I think this view is wrong, and I’d like to present a thoughtful, nuanced argument against it. Unfortunately, I don’t have that in me at the moment. Instead, here’s a quickie blog-length micro-essay making my case.

Among political junkies, “policy” means white papers. It means understanding the details of how government programs work. It means charts and tables. It means historical context. It means stuff generally written by folks with PhDs who have deep subject matter expertise.

This is my meat and drink. If this blog had a mission statement, it would be something like this: Bringing policy lite to the masses. I like reading academic papers and trying to explain them in plain English that any ordinary educated person can understand. I like historical context. I respect folks with deep subject matter expertise. I adore charts and tables. And I want to spread all this stuff to more people.

But we live in a country where a third of the population can’t name the three branches of government and something like 95 percent probably have no idea how Social Security works. Feel free to sneer if you must, but most people just aren’t interested in policy deep dives. And why should they be? Being a political junkie is basically a hobby, like collecting stamps or writing bad poetry. You probably aren’t interested in that stuff, and there’s no reason lots of people should be interested in your hobby.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t care about political issues. Many of them care more than you do. They just don’t have much a jones for white papers. Nonetheless, all of these things are policy:

Building a wall to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico.
Keeping troops in Afghanistan.
Changing our strategy for destroying ISIS.
Improving relations with Russia.
Toughening visa requirements to keep potential terrorists out of the country.
Expanding or repealing Obamacare.
Signing an agreement with Iran to halt their nuclear program.
Making college free.
Halting new trade agreements until they’re made better for American workers.
Spending more on the military.
Insisting that treaty allies pay a higher share of defense costs.
Creating a federal maternity leave and child care program.
Tackling climate change.
Whether we should make America more energy independent via more clean power or more extraction of fossil fuels.
Profiling Muslims and surveilling mosques to stay ahead of Islamic terrorism.
Appointing liberal vs. conservative Supreme Court justices.
Routine stop-and-frisk as a way of combating crime.
Raising the minimum wage.
Rebuilding infrastructure.

This is a long list, and it doesn’t even include the usual evergreens (abortion, guns, tax cuts) or stuff that hasn’t broken through enough to really affect things (vets, charter schools, NSA spying). In a nutshell, then, I’d argue not only that 2016 is a policy-heavy year, but that thanks to Donald Trump’s, um, earthy approach to things, the differences in policy between the two candidates are sharper than in nearly any election during my adult life. Lack of detail is irrelevant. Nor does it matter if you don’t like Trump’s earthiness. For the average Joe and Jane, Trump’s coarse approach makes his positions more policy-centric than arguments over whether we should use chained CPI for Social Security COLAs or support a public option for Obamacare.

There is, obviously, a vast rhetorical gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but their policy gap is equally far-reaching. And my guess is that more people know about their policy differences than in any year in recent memory. If anything, 2016 has featured more policy topics making it into the spotlight than usual. It’s the year that policy truly took over an American presidential election.

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2016 Is the Most Policy-Heavy Election in Decades

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Campaign Finance Watchdog: Both Sides Are Breaking the Rules in This Election

by Rudolph8843 Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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A campaign finance watchdog has bad news: Everyone is breaking the rules in this election. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center announced Thursday that it had filed two sets of complaints with the Federal Election Commission, charging that the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are improperly coordinating with super-PACs that support them.

Under the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, super-PACs are given wide latitude when it comes to fundraising and spending money. But there are a handful of rules to ensure that the super-PACs, which can raise funds without limit, don’t coordinate with the actual candidates. The theory is that there’s nothing wrong with unlimited money, as long as the candidates aren’t involved. That’s not working, Campaign Legal Center general counsel Larry Noble says, because nobody is bothering to enforce the rules.

“We have been forced to file these complaints because a dysfunctional Federal Election Commission has been sitting idly by as the campaigns of the presidential candidate of both major parties are involved in unprecedented coordination with super PACs in violation of the law,” Noble said in a statement. “These are not minor or technical violations.”

A Republican super-PAC operative who has done work to support Trump—though not with any of the super-PACs listed in the Campaign Legal Center’s complaints—said the accusations were on the mark.

“In my opinion: no question,” he told Mother Jones when asked whether coordination is occurring. “And the FEC is really dysfunctional.”

He added that making the correct accusation is one thing, but proving it is an entirely different matter.

It is true that the FEC is barely functioning. It frequently deadlocks, and last year Ann Ravel, the then-FEC chairwoman, and another Democratic commissioner filed a complaint against their own agency, accusing it of failing to enforce laws. Ravel later told the New York Times that this election, “the likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim.” And any action, or even inaction, on these complaints is likely to take some time: It was only this spring, five years after the complaint, that FEC commissioners deadlocked over whether to investigate complaints about pro-Mitt Romney super-PACs in 2011.

On both sides, the groups being accused by the Campaign Legal Center don’t necessarily deny the close relationship with the campaigns; they simply use justifications that the watchdog group says are improper and could lead to new loopholes in campaign finance regulation.

The accusations on the Trump side are leveled at two super-PACs that are believed to have the campaign’s blessing: Rebuild America Now, founded by longtime Trump associate Tom Barrack, and Make America Number 1, a pro-Ted Cruz super-PAC that was repurposed after its primary backers, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, decided to back Trump.

In the case of Rebuild America Now, the Campaign Legal Center is arguing that close Trump aides left the campaign and joined the super-PAC while continuing to work closely with their old colleagues at Trump headquarters. The revolving door went the other way with Make America Number 1, the group says in its complaint, with the super-PAC’s former president, Kellyanne Conway, now working as Trump’s campaign manager. Further, Make America Number 1 used a data analytics firm owned by Mercer that the campaign is now using. The group also notes that the right-wing news site Breitbart.com, which was run by Stephen K. Bannon before he became Trump’s campaign chairman, is at least partially owned by the Mercers.

On the Democratic side, the Campaign Legal Center’s complaint takes aim at Correct the Record, a super-PAC led by Democratic operative David Brock, which focuses on opposition research and which has worked closely with the Clinton campaign. Correct the Record has argued that as long as it doesn’t produce paid content, it is not in violation of campaign finance laws. The Campaign Legal Center says that arrangement is intended to apply to volunteer efforts, not highly sophisticated, multimillion-dollar operations that post research online for free.

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Campaign Finance Watchdog: Both Sides Are Breaking the Rules in This Election

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