As some of you know, I have been writing an “Annex” to the Good News Roundups about 3-5 times a week over the past year or so. For those of you who don’t read Good News Roundup, I highly recommend it for a daily set of well-researched positively progressive arguments from a team of authors that changes daily for the week. Wednesday’s was here, for example:
www.dailykos.com/…
Anyway, for a variety of reasons, I felt that the number of important stories tonight was so extensive as to warrant a diary of their own. The sequence is somewhat random, merely following the idea that people who read the Roundup and my “Annex” might find them interesting.
1) Even John Yoo thinks that Trump is badly misbehaving sufficiently to be impeached.
John Yoo, of course is the fellow who approved torture for Bush.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us/politics/trump-democrats.html
NEWS ANALYSIS
Clash Between Trump and House Democrats Poses Threat to Constitutional Order
“A president who refuses to respond to congressional oversight is taking the presidency to new levels of danger,” said William P. Marshall, a law professor at the University of North Carolina. “We’re supposed to be in a system of checks and balances, and one of the biggest checks that Congress has over the executive is the power of congressional oversight.”
“Not responding to that is to literally say that you’re above the law and you’re above the Constitution,” he said. “There’s nothing in history that comes even close to that.
John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former official in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s approach was novel and dangerous. “The thing that’s unusual is the blanket refusal,” Professor Yoo said. “It would be extraordinary if the president actually were to try to stop all congressional testimony on subpoenaed issues. That would actually be unprecedented if it were a complete ban...He’s treating Congress like they’re the Chinese or a local labor union working on a Trump building,” he said.
2) From my Annex yesterday:
Thomas Friedman: We need a conservative third party candidate, and we need people to bear witness.
www.nytimes.com/...
I am not sure about the third party candidate; what about Bill Weld? (See below)
But on bearing witness, he has a good comment:
We need some dutiful people to bear witness. There is now a club of people who have served at the top of Trump’s administration in the past two years who either quit, because they would not bend, or were forced out after Trump could bend them no longer: Mattis, Don McGahn, H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions and Reince Priebus. (We also need to hear from Robert Mueller.)
We need them all to bear witness to the dishonesty, indecency and dysfunction they saw while serving Trump and to his unfitness for high office. We can’t wait for their memoirs or anonymous, ineffective leaks. They don’t have to take sides left or right. We need them to side with the truth. That is the essence of acting honorably.
On the bearing witness part, I think that Senator Burr’s willingness to go after Trump Jr. is a very big deal. Nunes standing with Adam Schiff could be as well. Could we be beginning to see some Rethugs who find it “inconvenient” to be all in on Trump? As I noted much later in the day, on GNR Annex:
Some Rethugs are approaching a crossroads. Either they stay fully in thrall to the criminal in chief (and to his criminal assistants like McConnell and Barr), or they need to prove to voters that they remain conservative patriots with brains, morals, ethics and souls in the tradition of earlier, truer conservatives. (I had to look all the way back to Bill Buckley for a model, but even the badly damaged model of Ronald Reagan is important. I expect Dems to use the Reagan model heavily in their oppo.)
I suspect that a lot of Rethugs have a moist finger in the air nearly all of the time right now. If they get a strong sense that Trump is in real trouble, politically or legally, all of a sudden they will magically turn on a dime in Trumpian fashion, and pretend they never knew the guy. “Trump? Trump who?” This is part of my “Trumpian Feedback loop.” If Trump suspects that part of the right is seeking to re-establish themselves as patriots, not Trumpite cronies, he will go batshit. Here’s hoping. The Burr turn is a good sign.
3) What about Bill Weld?
I saw an afternoon interview with Bill Weld on MSNBC. He is waaaaay too conservative fiscally for me, but he could be a Ralph Nader-like weapon against Trump in 2020. Research has shown that incumbent presidents who face in-party or third-party challenges don’t win.
Bill Weld
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/06/massachusetts-republicans-trump-2020-primary-1302875
The Weld campaign is making a play for independent voters, millennial Republicans and suburban women in the 2020 primary. As a Reagan appointee who supervised Robert Mueller at the Department of Justice in the 1980s, Weld views himself as an anti-corruption foil to Trump.
"This is my sixth presidential race, and the one thing I've learned is whatever you think is gonna happen, isn't gonna happen," said Stevens, who worked on the George W. Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004, and for Mitt Romney in 2012. "You never can predict — it might make it easier. I could foresee a situation where the Trump people try to change those rules."
From what I have seen of Weld, he could be a useful foil in some states, airing TV ads that remind real conservatives as to what a criminal mess Trump is, and just annoying the heck out of him.
4) New Fed study shows how much wealth inequality has grown.
When we get to post-election, one of the key challenges is going to be to send where most needed (e.g. climate change and infrastructure), by reducing the trillion-plus deficit. That needs to include wealth taxes as well as more progressivity on the income side. The Fed just helped that on the wealth tax side with a never-before published study. See the table on page 41. The wealth share of the bottom 50% dropped from 3.7% in 1989 to 1.0% in 2016.
www.federalreserve.gov/…
5) Productivity and Unions, an important article.
theconversation.com/...
Unions do hurt profits, but not productivity, and they remain a bulwark against a widening wealth gap
Some advocates of laissez-faire capitalism argue that trade unions are bad for productivity. “With few exceptions,” according to one American economist, George Reisman, “unions openly combat the rise in the productivity of labour.” Other economists disagree. “Unionisation and high worker productivity often go hand-in-hand,” say Harley Shaiken and David Madland. “Fairness on the job and wages that reflect marketplace success contribute to more motivated workers.”
So who’s right? To answer this question, my colleagues Richard Freeman and Patrice Laroche and I surveyed the global evidence from more than 300 studies on the economic impact of unionisation. We conclude that unions do not, overall, reduce productivity, though it varies according to specific circumstances.
Unionisation does make businesses less profitable for the owners. But importantly, it also reduces income inequality, a useful social function given the problems that flow from a widening wealth gap.
6) Several more important articles linked.
Republicans openly feuding.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/republicans-are-now-openly-feuding-as-a-top-gop-senator-turns-up-the-heat-on-trumps-family/?utm_source=push_notifications.
Iran/US on collision course.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/05/08/america-and-iran-are-on-a-collision-course?cid1=cust/dailypicks/n/bl/n/2019058n/owned/n/n/dailypicks/n/n/NA/237460/n
The Subpoena and Contempt Fight Between Trump and Congress, Explained
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/politics/subpoenas-trump-congress.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Shift in Trump electoral map isn’t good news for him. (And note from me: as in 2018, these types of poll based analyses are a huge undercount for Dems, especially with Trump doomed to erode.)
www.alternet.org/…
Nick Kristof standing up to guns
www.nytimes.com/...
We Have 2 Dead Young Heroes. It’s Time to Stand Up to Guns.
It’s too late to save Kendrick Castillo and Riley Howell, but we can honor them by taking on gun violence.
The economic myth that has to die if Democrats hope to win back the White House in 2020. Basically, Rethugs have been getting away with many economic claims.
www.alternet.org/…
Simply running against Trump won’t work. Democrats have to refute the myth of a “good economy,” then talk about what they’re for, what their values are, and what they are going to do for the American people. Sadly, the party’s leadership seems loathe to advocate progressive values, and incapable of explaining why the economy isn’t so great.
There is so much more, but enough for now. I note that Trump unfavorability reached down to 9.4% yesterday, a recent low, but is back up to 10.2%. I am confident that hearings will hurt both his popularity/polls and his behavior—again, what I have been calling the Trumpian Positive Feedback Loop. Assuming that some of the key witnesses testify, and more respected people like the DOJ letter writers and McMaster come out hard against him, and a few Rethugs actually grow stronger intestines, he will inevitably move toward worse behavior—and lower poll ratings.
And one final note: just after the Barr lie letter, it was really easy to believe that the Russian “stuff” was way overblown. (The mainstream media didn’t help much.) I bought more of that than I should have, (I admit) and was really depressed and puzzled. And then came the Mueller Report and massive obstruction descriptions. And then came the Russia behavior in part I of Mueller. And now we are just beginning to see massive new hints about Russia/Trump campaign linkages that Mueller didn’t cover—e.g., counterintelligence covered by the House Intelligence subpoena, not the Justice subpoena. And then the 14 investigations we still need more information about. And then the impending NY law on Trump’s tax returns, which I am confident, include some sorts of Russia hookups as well, and some other criminal acts. And the impending banks’ responses to the “friendly subpoenas.” And the impending testimony. There is so much more yet to come, and more people who take any pride at all in their conservatism or who find him falling dangerously are going to jump ship.
And a reminder: Take a look at Good New Roundup, daily, for research and smiles. And sometimes, for my dulcet tones.