I
grew up hating America. I lived in the Soviet Union and was a child of
the cold war. That hate went away in 1989, though, when the Berlin Wall
fell and the cold war ended. By the time I left Russia in 1991, the year
the Soviet Union collapsed, America was a country that Russians looked
up to and wanted to emulate.
Twenty-three
years later, a new version of cold war is back, though we Americans
haven't realized it yet. But I am getting ahead of myself.
After
Russia invaded Crimea and staged its referendum, I thought Vladimir
Putin's foreign excursions were over. Taking back Crimea violated plenty
of international laws, but let's be honest. Though major powers like
the U.S. and Russia write the international laws, they are not really
expected to abide by those laws if they find them not to be in their
best interests. Those laws are for everyone else. I am not condoning
such behavior, but I can clearly see how Russians could justify taking
Crimea back - after all, it used to belong to Russia.
I
was perplexed by how the Russian people could possibly support and not
be outraged by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But I live in Denver, and I
read mostly U.S. and European newspapers. I wanted to see what was
going on in Russia and Ukraine from the Russian perspective, so I went
on a seven-day news diet: I watched only Russian TV - Channel One
Russia, the state-owned broadcaster, which I hadn't seen in more than 20
years - and read Pravda, the Russian newspaper whose name means
"Truth." Here is what I learned:
If
Russia did not reclaim Crimea, once the new, illegitimate government
came to power in Ukraine, the Russian navy would have been kicked out
and the U.S. navy would have started using Crimean ports as navy bases.
There
are no Russian troops in Ukraine, nor were there ever any there. If any
Russian soldiers were found there (and there were), those soldiers were
on leave. They went to Ukraine to support their Russian brothers and
sisters who are being abused by Ukrainian nationalists. (They may have
borrowed a tank or two, or a highly specialized Russian-made missile
system that is capable of shooting down planes, but for some reason
those details are not mentioned much in the Russian media.) On November
12, NATO reported that Russian tanks had entered Ukraine. The Russian
government vehemently denied it, blaming NATO for being anti-Russian.
Malaysia
Airlines Flight MH17 was not downed by Russia or separatists. It was
shot down by an air-to-air missile fired by Ukraine or a NATO plane
engaged in military exercises in Ukraine at the time. The U.S. has the
satellite imagery but is afraid of the truth and chooses not to share it
with the world.
Ukraine
was destabilized by the U.S., which spent $5 billion on this project.
As proof, TV news showed a video of Senator John McCain giving a speech
to antigovernment protesters in Kiev's Maidan Square. It was followed by
a video of Vice President Joe Biden visiting Ukraine during the tumult.
I wasn't sure what his role was, but it was implied that he had
something to do with the unrest.
Speaking
of Joe Biden, I learned that his son just joined the board of Ukraine's
largest natural gas company, which will benefit significantly from a
destabilized Ukraine.
Ukraine
is a zoo of a country, deeply corrupt and overrun by Russian-haters and
neo-Nazis (Banderovtsi - Ukrainian nationalists who were responsible
for killing Russians and Jews during World War II).
Candidates
for the recent parliamentary election in Ukraine included Darth Vader
(not kidding), as well as a gay ex-prostitute who claims to be a working
man's man but lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion.
I
have to confess, it is hard not to develop a lot of self-doubt about
your previously held views when you watch Russian TV for a week. But
then you have to remind yourself that Putin's Russia doesn't have a free
press. The free press that briefly existed after the Soviet Union
collapsed is gone - Putin killed it. The government controls most TV
channels, radio and newspapers. What Russians see on TV, read in print
and listen to on the radio is direct propaganda from the Kremlin.
Before
I go further, let's visit the definition of propaganda with the help of
the Oxford English Dictionary: "The systematic dissemination of
information, especially in a biased or misleading way, in order to
promote a political cause or point of view."
I
always thought of the Internet as an unstoppable democratic force that
would always let the truth slip out through the cracks in even the most
determined wall of propaganda. I was wrong. After watching Russian TV,
you would not want to read the Western press, because you'd be convinced
it was lying. More important, Russian TV is so potent that you would
not even want to watch anything else, because you would be convinced
that you were in possession of indisputable facts.
Russian's
propaganda works by forcing your right brain (the emotional one) to
overpower your left brain (the logical one), while clogging all your
logical filters. Here is an example: Russian TV shows footage of schools
in eastern Ukraine bombed by the Ukrainian army. Anyone's heart would
bleed, seeing these gruesome images. It is impossible not to feel hatred
toward people who would perpetrate such an atrocity on their own
population. It was explained to viewers that the Ukrainian army
continued its offensive despite a cease-fire agreement.
Of
course if you watched Ukrainian TV, you would have seen similar images
of death and despair on the other side. In fact, if you read Ukrainian
newspapers, you will learn that the Ukrainian army is fighting a
well-armed army, not rebels with Molotovs and handguns, but an organized
force fully armed by the Russian army.
What
viewers were not shown was that the cease-fire had been broken before
the fighting resumed. The fact that Putin helped to instigate this war
was never mentioned. Facts are not something Russian TV is concerned
about. As emotional images and a lot of disinformation pump up your
right brain, it overpowers the left, which capitulates and stops
questioning the information presented.
What
I also learned is that you don't have to lie to lie. Let me give you an
example. I could not figure out how the Russian media came up with the
$5 billion that "America spent destabilizing Ukraine." But then I found
a video of
a U.S. undersecretary of State giving an 8.5-minute speech; at the
7.5-minute mark, she said, "Since Ukrainian independence in 1991 … [the
U.S. has] invested more than $5 billion to help Ukraine." The $5 billion
figure was correct. However, it was not given to Ukraine in three
months to destabilize a democratically elected, corrupt pro-Russian
government but over the course of 23 years. Yes, you don't have to lie
to lie; you just have to omit important facts - something Russian TV is
very good at.
Another
example of a right-brain attack on the left brain is "the rise of
neo-Nazism in Ukraine." Most lies are built around kernels of truth, and
this one is no different. Ukraine was home to the Banderovtsi,
Ukrainian nationalists who were responsible for killing tens of
thousands of Jews and Russians during World War II.
Putin
justified the invasion of Crimea by claiming that he was protecting the
Russian population from neo-Nazis. Russian TV creates the impression
that the whole of Ukraine is overrun by Nazis. As my father puts it,
"Ukrainians who lived side by side with Russians did not just become
Nazis overnight."
Though
there may be some neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the current government is
liberal and pro-Western. Svoboda - the party whose members are known for
their neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic rhetoric - did not get even 5 percent
of the votes in the October election, the minimum needed to gain a
significant presence in parliament. Meanwhile the TV goes on showing
images of Nazis killing Russians and Jews during World War II and
drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Ukraine today.
What
also makes things more difficult in Russia is that, unlike Americans,
who by default don't trust their politicians - yes, even their
presidents - Russians still have the czarist mentality that idolizes its
leaders. Stalin was able to cultivate this to an enormous degree - most
Russians thought of him as a father figure. My father was 20 when
Stalin died in 1953, and he told me that he, like everyone around him,
cried.
I
keep thinking about what Lord Acton said: "Power corrupts, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely." The Putin we scorn today was not always
like this; he did a lot of good things during his first term. The two
that stand out the most are getting rid of the organized crime that was
killing Russia and instituting a pro-business flat tax system. The
amount of power Russians give their presidents, however, will, with
time, change the blood flow to anyone's head. Come to think of it, even
Mother Teresa would not have stood a chance in Russia.
A
few weeks ago Putin turned 62, and thousands of people took to the
streets to celebrate his birthday. (Most Americans, including this one,
don't even know the month of Barack Obama's birthday.)
In
my misspent youth, I took a marketing class at the University of
Colorado. I remember very little from that class except this: For your
message to be remembered, a consumer has to hear it at least six times.
Putin's propaganda folks must have taken the same class, because Russian
citizens get to hear how great their president is at least six times a
day.
We
Americans look at Putin and see an evil KGB guy who roams around the
country without a shirt on. Russians are shown a very different picture.
They see a hard-working president who cares deeply about them. Every
news program dedicates at least one fifth of its airtime to showcasing
Putin's greatness, not in your face but in subtle ways. A typical clip
would have him meeting with a cabinet minister. The minister would give
his report, and Putin, looking very serious indeed, would lecture the
minister on what needed to be done. Putin is always candid, direct and
tough with his ministers.
I've
listened to a few of Putin's speeches, and I have to admit that his
oratory skills are excellent, of a J.F.K. or Reagan caliber. He doesn't
give a speech; he talks. His language is accessible and full of zingers.
He is very calm and logical.
Russians
look at the Putin presidency and ask themselves a very pragmatic
question: Am I better off now, with him, than I was before he came into
power? For most the answer is yes. What most Russians don't see is that
oil prices over the past 14 years went from $14 to more than $100 a
barrel. They are completely responsible for the revival of Russia's
one-trick petrochemical economy. In other words, they should consider
why their economy has done better the past decade, and why it may not do
as well going forward. Unless Putin was the one who jump-started
China's insatiable demand for oil and other commodities that drove
prices higher, he has had very little to do with Russia's recent
"prosperity."
I
place prosperity in quotes because if you take oil and gas riches away
from Russia (lower prices can do that with ease), it is in a worse place
today than it was 14 years ago. High oil prices have ruined Russia.
They have driven its currency up, making its other products less
competitive in international markets. Also, capital gravitates toward
higher returns; thus oil has sucked capital from other industries,
hollowing out the economy. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had a
chance to broaden its economy; it had one of the most educated
workforces in the world. Sadly, it squandered that opportunity. Name one
noncommodity product that is exported from Russia. There aren't many; I
can think only of vodka and military equipment.
But
most Russians don't look at things that way. For most of them, their
lives are better now: No more lines for toilet paper, and the stores are
full of food. Their personal liberties (such as freedom of speech and
freedom of the press) have been taken away from them, but many have so
much trust in their president that they don't mind, whereas others are
simply complacent.
Today
we see three factors that influence oil prices and are working against
Russia: Supply is going up with U.S. shale drilling; demand growth will
likely decline if the Chinese economy continues to cool; and the dollar
is getting stronger, not because the U.S. doing great but just because
the rest of the world is doing worse. If oil prices continue to decline,
this will expose the true state of the Russian economy.
When
I visited Russia in 2008, I sensed an anti-American sentiment. NATO -
which in Russia is perceived as a predominantly American entity - had
expanded too close to Russian borders. Georgia tried to join NATO, but
Russia put a quick end to that. Russians felt they extended a friendly
hand to the U.S. after 9/11, but in response America was arraying
missiles around its borders. (The U.S. says they are defensive, not
offensive; Russians don't see the distinction. They are probably right.)
The
true colors of this new cold war came to light recently. In August
2008, according to Henry Paulson, the U.S. Treasury secretary at the
time, "top level" Russian officials approached the Chinese during the
Olympics in Beijing and proposed "that together they might sell big
chunks of their GSE [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] holdings to force the
U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies."
This
incident took place just weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
The U.S. economy was inches from revisiting the Stone Age. The proposed
Russian-Chinese maneuver could have made such an outcome more likely.
The Federal Reserve would have had to step in and buy Fannie's and
Freddie's debt, and the dollar would have taken a dive, worsening the
plunge in the U.S. economy. Our friend Putin wanted to bring the U.S.
economy down without firing a single shot, just as he annexed Crimea
from Ukraine.
Today
anti-American sentiment is much greater in Russia. European sanctions
are seen as entirely unjustified. Here is why: Crimea had a "democratic
referendum," and the Ukrainian conflict is believed to be not of
Russia's doing but rather an American attempt to destabilize Russia and
bring Ukraine into NATO. In his annual speech at the Valdai conference
last month, Putin said America had pushed an unwilling Europe into
imposing sanctions on Russia. America is perceived as an imperialistic
bully that, because of its economic and military power, puts its own
self-interest above everyone else's, and international law.
Putin
uses anti-Americanism as a shiny object to detract attention from the
weak Russian economy and other internal problems. In the short run,
sanctions provide a convenient excuse for the weakening Russian economy
and declining ruble. They have boosted Putin's popularity (at least so
far). As the Russian economy gets worse, anti-American sentiment will
only rise.
This
new version of the cold war has little in common with the one I grew up
in. There are no ideological differences, and there is no arms race (at
least not yet, and let's be honest: Today neither country can afford
one, especially Russia). At the core of it, we don't like what Russia is
doing to its neighbors, and Russia doesn't like what we do to the rest
of the (non-EU) world.
The
criticisms of U.S. foreign policy voiced by Putin in his latest Valdai
speech are shared by many Americans: The U.S. is culpable in the
unresolved, open-ended Afghanistan adventure; the Iraq War; the
almost-bombing of Syria, which may have destabilized the region further;
and the creation of the Islamic State, which is in large part a
by-product of all of the above. Yet Putin's abominable Ukrainian
excursion and the thousands of lives lost were never mentioned.
But
there is also something less tangible that is influencing Russia's
behavior: a bruised ego. During the good old Soviet Union days, Russia
was a superpower. It mattered. When it spoke, the world listened. The
Russian people had a great sense of pride in their Rodina (Mother
Russia). Today, if Russia did not have nuclear weapons, we'd pay much
less attention to it than we do. Pick a developing country without oil
whose president you can name. (Okay, we Americans can't name the
president of almost any other country, but you get the point.)
Anti-Americanism
and Putin's popularity will both rise as the Russian economy weakens.
For instance, Putin took his own people hostage when he imposed
sanctions on imports of European food. The impact on Europe will not be
significant (the Russian economy is not very large in comparison to the
European Union), but Russia is very dependent on these imports. In the
U.S. consumers spend about 13 percent of their earnings on food, but in
Russia that number is almost three times larger. Therefore, food
inflation hurts Russians much more. Yet as food inflation spiked, so did
Putin's popularity and anti-Americanism. Even declining oil prices will
be explained as a anti-Russian manipulation by the U.S.
Unfortunately,
the only thing Russia has going for it today is its nuclear weapons.
Russia has started to remind us of its military recently. According to
NATO, the alliance "has conducted over 100 intercepts of Russian
aircraft in 2014 to date, which is about three times more than were
conducted in 2013."
Every
article needs a conclusion, but this one doesn't have one. I am not
sure what this new cold war means for the world. Will Russia start
invading other neighboring countries? Will it test NATO resolve by
invading Baltic countries that are part of NATO? I don't know. Economic
instability will eventually lead to political crises. We have plenty of
economic instability going on around the world.
I'll
leave you with this thought: On March 7, 1936, the German army violated
the Treaty of Versailles and entered into the Rhineland. Here is what
Hitler later said:
"The
forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most
nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the
Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our
legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly
inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
Those two days determined what Germany would do next - build out its army and start World War II.
Comparing
Putin with Hitler, as one of my Russian friends put it, is "absolutely
abominable" because it diminishes Hitler's atrocities and overstates by a
mile what Putin has accomplished to date. Yet it feels as if we are at a
Putin-of-1936 moment. Will he turn into a Putin of 1939 and invade
other countries? I don't know. But the events of the past nine months
have shown Putin's willingness to defy international law and seize the
advantage on the ground, betting - correctly so far - that the West
won't call his bluff.
As
Garry Kasparov put it, while the West is playing chess, responding
tactically to each turn of events, Putin is playing high-stakes poker.
We ignore Putin at our own peril.
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The media’s response to a crazed, disturbed racist who murdered peaceful
God-fearing people in a church was not to embark on a conversation
about the need for mental health reform. It was another national level
pressure campaign to frame Republican politicians as racists depending
on their attitude toward the Confederate battle flag flying over a
memorial. Thankfully, Nikki Haley was up to the challenge of this
moment. Her remarks yesterday about the people of South Carolina and
about the flag itself were heartfelt and came from exactly the right
place – I urge you to watch them here. http://vlt.tc/1z6p
She says a great deal here, managing to defend both the flag and those
who are offended by it, in the process reminding us what this really is
about: how a free people govern themselves.
South Carolina is a lovely state, and Charleston a wonderful port city,
full of beautiful people. I grew up there and still consider it my home
town. It is a town full of the history of war and revolution, Sumter
low-slung on the horizon, cobblestone streets made from the ballast of
ships that brought “Saxon steel and iron to her hands/and summer to her
courts.” And the way I have heard this town and its people smeared in
the past few months is astonishing to me. The reality is that the
American South has tangled more openly and more seriously with the issue
of race than any other part of the country. It has had its
conversation, and has the blood and the symbols and the graves to show
for it.
When national commentators with no connection to this place put
themselves forward as self-made arbiters of when it can be considered
civilized – they are already moving on to the question of how many
boulevards may be named after Confederates – it reminds me that it is a
good thing to know the history of where you came from and why you are
here, and a terrible thing to forget it. Knowing where you came from
helps you understand who you are. This is not always an easy thing.
Often it is easier to pretend history never happened. But in the long
run, forgetting is more dangerous to a free people.
Mollie Hemingway has more. http://vlt.tc/1z6o
“A lot of the outrage over the flag seems somewhat cold, given the
horror of what last week brought. We had nine black people brutally
murdered because they were black and sitting in a church with a history
of fighting white supremacy. With all due deference to hatred for a
Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse, this seems like an almost
childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation. It’s as if
they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You oppose the flag of an army
that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all very proud of you,
journalists!” This generation seems to excel at inventing controversies,
weighing in on those invented controversies, and then patting itself on
the back for being so courageous and open-minded…
“[H]ow we manage these processes of disapproval truly is important for
civil society. To quote Heinrich Heine, a man who definitely knew of
what he spoke, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning
men.” Mobs aren’t actually the best judges of such processes, no matter
how righteous they feel or certain of their cause. Listen, it’s great
that we’re aiming to be an anti-racist society. That’s very, very good!
But it’s bad that we are slowly forgetting how to dislike something
without seeking its utter destruction. Somehow we’ve abandoned the
aesthetic of Abraham Lincoln for that of Mao Tse-Tung.”
The
U.S. Civil War was a war that never should have been fought. Some
620,000 men died because slavery, an inhumane and evil practice, was
permitted in many portions of this country. The South gets most of the
blame for that, but the north benefited from the regime as well, even
though it didn’t directly practice enslavement at the time of the war.
I used to think the war was a bit more complicated than I do now,
having had my mind changed thanks to some relatively recent guided
readings of President Abraham Lincoln. But long story short, the
Confederacy was wrong. For whatever it’s worth, I have no nostalgia for
the Confederacy and zero positive feelings for flags that reference the
Confederacy, save the one painted on the General Lee or, perhaps, the one painted on RuPaul.
For some reason, 100% of media types (give or take) dealt with their
feelings of anger and powerlessness in the aftermath of the racist
murders of 9 black members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South
Carolina, by calling in unison for a removal of a Confederate flag from
South Carolina’s capitol grounds. The flag was only put up during the
centenary of the Civil War and a modified version was moved to a less
conspicuous place about 15 years ago. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley called
for its removal on Monday, as have many other politicians. Russell Moore
of the Southern Baptist Convention called for its removal earlier.
Sure, sounds good. Go for it. Even acknowledging that the relationship
of the flag to the people of South Carolina is a bit more complicated
than outsiders can understand, I think it’s fair to argue the negative
outweighs any positive there.
A lot of the surrounding media-led outrage over the flag seems
somewhat cold, given the horror of what last week brought. We had nine
black people brutally murdered because they were black and sitting in a
church with a history of fighting white supremacy. With all due
deference to hatred for a Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse,
this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of
the situation. It’s as if they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You
oppose the flag of an army that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all
very proud of you, journalists!” This generation seems to excel at
inventing controversies, weighing in on those invented controversies,
and then patting itself on the back for being so courageous and
open-minded.
The far more frightening reality that such invented controversies
avoid is that mankind is full of sin, and that some of us show that
sinfulness in racism and murder. Or as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil
people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every
human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
The murderer of the Emanuel nine has done something particularly bad,
but he isn’t the only person capable of evil out there. And getting rid
of a flag is hardly the remedy for the racism and violence that infects
our culture. How juvenile to think otherwise.
Still, it’s routine now for the media to respond to tragic events
with a call for more government control. It’s not just shown by
responding to mass shootings with calls for gun control. Remember how,
until all the facts got in the way, the media blamed a fatal Amtrak
derailment on a lack of federal funding, of all things?
CNN actually went “heretic hunting” to call on businesses to ban any
goods sold that in any way reference a Confederate symbol (which, of
course, includes many state flags). Check out this piece headlined “First on CNN: Walmart to stop selling Confederate flag merchandise.” See, it’s first on CNN because CNN decided to trade journalism-ing for activism-ing:
I mean, OK? Even this type of “Look! Squirrel!” avoidance of the
actual tragedy of the Charleston terrorism was better than the naked
political point scoring that was hard to distinguish from this
fundraising email sent out by the Democratic Congressional Committee:
NOT
many small American towns stick in your memory 10 years after you last
drove through them. But New York’s Dannemora, site of last weekend’s
remarkable prison break, is a vivid exception.
Dannemora
is way up north — north of Albany, north of the Saratoga races, north
of Lake George and Lake Placid, barely inside the northern
border of the Adirondack Park. You drive through emptiness to get there,
and what you find when you arrive is schizophrenic. Coming down the
main street, to your left is a normal upstate town — the car dealer, the
post office, the Stewart’s market, a lot of shingled storefronts in the
shadow of mountains.
.
But
to your right, block after block, there’s just a prison wall — looming,
pressing, dominating, like a glacier inching down from Canada, or
something out of “Game of Thrones.”
I was there in high summer, and my first thought was “Siberia.” And “Little Siberia” turned out to be the prison’s nickname.
.
Photo
The Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.Credit
Nancie Battaglia for The New York Times
We’ve
been debating criminal justice reform in earnest ever since Ferguson
exploded last summer, with policing as the focal point. But our
archipelago of prisons, the Dannemora-like places spread around the
country, are as much the issue as any abuses by the police.
.
All
told, our prisons house around 2.2 million Americans, leaving the land
of the free with the world’s highest incarceration rate. And they house
them, often, in conditions that make a mockery of our supposed ban on
“cruel and unusual” punishment: gang-dominated, rife with rape, ruled by
disciplinary measures (particularly the use of solitary confinement)
that meet a reasonable definition of torture.
.
When
Americans debate which feature of our contemporary life will look most
morally scandalous in hindsight, the answers usually break down along
left-right lines. But there’s increasing agreement across ideological
lines — uniting conservative evangelicals and civil rights leaders, the
Koch brothers and Eric Holder — that our prison system has become a
particularly obvious moral stain.
This agreement has borne fruit: Amid a bipartisan, multistate push,
the incarceration rate has fallen since 2007. And the crime rate has
stayed low, at least till now, which has both helped the trend along
(low crime rates mean fewer new prisoners) and sustained political space
for pushing further.
The
as-yet-unanswered question, though, is how far the push can go. And if
the Siberian strangeness of Dannemora makes the case for reform, the
escape there last week is a reminder of the dilemma for reformers.
.
Richard
Matt and David Sweat, the escapees, may have imitated Andy Dufresne in
“The Shawshank Redemption.” But no sane person would root for them —
both murderers, Matt a charismatic psychopath — to end up free and clear in Zihuatanejo.
.
.
And while evil geniuses are pretty rare in our prisons, murderers are not.
What is it about Marco Rubio that so inflames the left? If you go by the
measure of how much the ire rises around a candidate’s fairly
conventional defects, Rubio is the leader by far among the 2016
candidates. For the other Republicans, the flaws alleged by the left are
more significant and meaningful, at least in the “raises questions
about whether they should be president” way – indictments or pending
indictments, allegations of corruption and donor favoritism, questions
about how they have governed or voted. These are meaningful questions
for any politician in either party. But this week’s potshots at Rubio
have been so overblown, so ludicrous, not even Jon Stewart can pretend
they matter. http://vlt.tc/1yme
“Suddenly the man who paid off his student loans and got a boat is
printing counterfeit hundreds in his basement!” Give me a break.
It’s not even the initial reporting that bothers me. At some point you
ought to report things like this, obviously – if only we had such a lens
pointed toward the purchasing decisions of the Clintons, I think we can
guarantee they’ve spent eighty grand (or, as they refer to it, “not
quite half a speech”) on things that are a lot more interesting than a
boat. http://vlt.tc/1ymf
But it’s pretending that these items indicate some sort of troubling
aspect that render the candidate unfit for office. My gosh, he paid off
his law school debts and bought a house with “oversized windows”, can
you believe? He got upside down on a house – heavens! He bought a
fishing boat that looks like the type designed to house shirtless
dadbods propping cold beers on their tummies – unthinkable! Careful,
it’ll be your third monocle this week. http://vlt.tc/1kf4
Thankfully, some corners are recognizing what this is for Rubio – not a
mark of questions about his judgment, but something that’s a lot more
politically advantageous than Democrats might like. http://vlt.tc/1ymg
“While the Clintons' personal wealth has drawn heavy scrutiny, and
Republicans see it as a major weakness in Hillary Clinton's campaign, it
could be tougher to exploit with a Republican millionaire landing the
shots. But a candidate like Rubio could both be a credible messenger for
attacks on the Clinton's earnings and an appealing figure for average
Americans looking for a candidate who understands their financial and
legal struggles. Diaz joked that, in particular, the idea that Rubio's
four traffic tickets over 18 years could be damaging for him was
laughable. "In Florida, that makes you a very good driver," he said.”
Senator Rubio is not my favorite 2016 candidate by far. But he’s quick
on his feet, charming and relatable. He can absolutely turn this little
kerfuffle to his benefit if he ends up standing across the stage from
Hillary Clinton. And the fact that this is being rolled out against him
so early indicates that both Democrats and his Republican opponents
recognize how formidable he could be as a candidate of a new generation,
one that has not turned celebrity and power into wealth, but has
struggled through the past decade of financial challenge, just as most
Americans have.
--- Have you subscribed to the feed for our new daily radio show in iTunes? It’s already in the Top 50 politics shows. http://vlt.tc/1vko Listen live at 4 PM here. http://fdrl.st/radio
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THE ECONOMY:
Left and right line up against fast tracking trade agreements. http://vlt.tc/1ymd
“The Stop Fast Track coalition, backed by unions and groups such as the
Sierra Club and the American Civil Liberties Union, is asking the
public to call members of Congress and tell them the legislation is
“undemocratic”—a message that appeals to voters on both sides of the
aisle. “There are some areas where the guys on the left—unions and
others—get it right, and this is one of those issues,” said Judson
Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, one of the main tea party
organizations… Leaders of left-leaning and conservative groups aren’t
working hand in hand—an approach that would likely backfire in today’s
polarized Washington—but their combined message is forcing Mr. Obama and
Republican leaders who back the fast-track bill to fight a war on two
fronts as they seek to corral the final votes.”
How the next financial crisis will happen. http://vlt.tc/1ykb
“After the financial crisis, a focus on safety and soundness was good
medicine for the financial system. New bank liquidity and capital
policies, among other initiatives, strengthened a debilitated patient.
The banking system is now stronger, with more liquid assets and better
underwriting standards. Despite good intentions, however, politicians
and regulators constructed an expansive and untested regulatory
framework that will have unintended consequences for liquidity in our
financial system. Taken together, these regulatory changes may well fuel
the next financial crisis as well as slow U.S. economic growth.”
Growth concentrated in most suburbanized cities. http://vlt.tc/1yku
“More than 50% of the growth between 2010 and 2014 has been in core
municipalities that are more than 90% post World War II suburban or
exurban (0 to 10% urban core). This growth share is nearly one-half
higher than their population share of 35%... These most suburban of core
cities grew the fastest, up 6.8% from 2010 to 2014. These
municipalities had less than 10% of their population in urban core
neighborhods, and include core cities that annexed substantial suburban
or rural territory, such as Phoenix, San Jose, Charlotte, Tampa, Orlando
and San Antonio.”
Rules for regulators. http://vlt.tc/1yky
“CMS has a history of pushing out massive regulations with only the
slightest wisp of thoughtful analysis. A recent Mercatus Center analysis
found the agency routinely fails to conduct thorough cost-benefit
analyses. One of the more outrageous recent examples of poor rulemaking
on the part of the agency is last year's Medicare Part D rule. CMS
grossly underestimated the regulatory costs, completely ignored major
provisions in the proposal that would have driven up Part D spending,
and focused its estimates almost exclusively on provisions it claimed
would save money. Though the rule was ultimately withdrawn, a rarity and
an embarrassment in the regulatory world, the damage to the agency's
credibility was done, and that's where our proposal fits. Regulated
entities operate under the penalty of fines, or in some cases jail time,
for failure to follow federal regulations. Regulators, on the other
hand, play by a different set of rules. They can ignore or willfully
disregard guidance from the White House on conducting thorough
cost-benefit analyses. Agencies also routinely violate the Paperwork
Reduction Act, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and the Congressional
Review Act. The penalties for agencies are normally non-existent, aside
from an occasional call before Congress to account for these mistakes
and violations.”
RELATED: Fast-track holdouts play ‘let’s make a deal.’ http://vlt.tc/1ykx Trader Joe’s ex-president opens store with aging food and cheap meals. http://vlt.tc/1yjb The 3 trillion bond trade Citigroup says investors should fear. http://vlt.tc/1ykh In ‘another life,’ Jack Ma says he’d forgo Alibaba’s IPO. http://vlt.tc/1yk8 Let America fix the highways Washington broke. http://vlt.tc/1yl5
KING V. BURWELL AND THE RULE OF LAW:
John Davidson. http://vlt.tc/1ym6
“The details of Burwell reveal the degree to which the Obama
administration’s handling of the ACA is ultimately at odds with ideals
and aspirations that really are woven into the fabric of America: the
rule of law and the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution.
“The ACA says plainly that subsidies may only be administered “through
an Exchange established by the State.” But when it became clear that
dozens of states were not going to create exchanges, the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS), at the behest of the White House, simply issued a
rule saying that subsidies could flow through exchanges created and
operated by the federal government.
“In other words, the challengers in King v. Burwell contend that the
White House illegally authorized billions of dollars of taxes and
spending, circumventing Congress and flouting the statutory text of the
ACA by administrative decree. The accusation isn’t a stretch. After all,
governing by decree has become commonplace in the Obama era—from the
ACA’s many unauthorized delays, to the president’s executive order on
immigration last year, to the State Department’s recent gun speech gag
order.”
THE DOJ V. REASON COMMENTERS:
Reason Magazine subpoena stomps on free speech. http://vlt.tc/1ykk
“Whatever you think of Ulbricht or Silk Road, you can see why
libertarians might be upset. A federal judge has just made the belief
that it’s good for people to have “the freedom to make their own
choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw
fit” part of her justification for the most punitive sentence short of
the death penalty. Her rationale offends libertarians on two grounds: It
punishes political views and it punishes their particular political
views…
“Puerile they undoubtedly are, but Reason commenters are also harmless
(unless you care about reasoned political discourse or the image of
libertarians). In this case, they were furious and, in their fury, some
of them got nasty. “Its judges like these that should be taken out back
and shot,” wrote Agammamon. “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the
message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first,”
responded croaker. “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for
that horrible woman,” commented Rhywun. “I'd prefer a hellish place on
Earth be reserved for her as well,” chimed in ProductPlacement. (Reason
has since removed the offending comments.)
“No one in their right mind would take this hyperbolic venting seriously
as threatening Judge Forrest, who back in the fall had personal
information published on an underground site, along with talk of
stealing her identity or calling in tips to send SWAT teams to her
house. The Reason commenters, by contrast, included nothing so specific.
“As White notes in his post, which offers a detailed legal analysis of
the situation, the comments “do not specify who is going to use
violence, or when. http://vlt.tc/1yma
They do not offer a plan, other than juvenile mouth-breathing about
‘wood chippers’ and revolutionary firing squads. They do not contain any
indication that any of the mouthy commenters has the ability to carry
out a threat. Nobody in the thread reacts to them as if they are
serious.” Nobody even assumes the judge will see their comments. Why
would she?
“Venting anger about injustice is not a crime. Neither is being
obnoxious on the Internet. The chances of one of these commenters being
convicted of threatening the judge are essentially nil. Conviction isn’t
the point. Crying “threats” just makes a handy pretext for harassing
Reason and its commenters.”
JURASSIC WORLD IS SEXIST BECAUSE OF COURSE:
Mollie Hemingway critiques Marlow Stern’s review. http://vlt.tc/1ymb
“Stern’s real problem, though, is what we might call “serious mommy
issues.” As in, he seems to think being maternal is some kind of
negative. He’s not the only one with fecundophobia — the fear of
children and mothers. I guess it’s because feminism means valuing
yourself in terms of how much money you make and how many hours you put
in at the office instead of, you know, the quality of your relationships
with people in your care… Yes, there’s nothing women hate more than
being sweet-talked by ridiculously hot guys who teach us to laugh and
enjoy the higher things in life. NAILED IT, Stern.”
“[D]espite the media’s rush (particularly pronounced in recent weeks) to
believe that think-feelings are more definitive than biological
reality, femininity is not, in fact, a social construct. The phrase
“social construct” is a social construct, but femininity is not.
Femininity, the qualities of womanliness, is inextricably tied to our
chromosomes and the fact that we have wombs and breasts. The reality of
these things mean that women — in general, not always, and not in a
“have to” way but more like a “get to” way — are very good at nurturing
other humans and being responsible for a lot of those social bonds that
help societies thrive, including conceiving, gestating, birthing and
breastfeeding babies. But even women who aren’t directly engaged in such
maternal activities also can participate in the nurturing of humans.
This is a feature, not a bug. It’s awesome. I love being a woman and so
do many of the women I know who don’t identify as feminists. And while
feminism may wish to devolve away from that, it’s completely untrue that
Stern has a good handle on whether women even want to trade meaningful
human relationships and the propagation of humanity for lots of time at
the office.”
--- The Transom recommends Ledbury shirts. Receive a credit for your first purchase here. http://vlt.tc/16w6 ---
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common
and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain
increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to
say “My heart is broken.” ― C.S. Lewis
