By fnord12 | June 20, 2017, 3:44 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

Bernie's definitely gonna have to run

This very long article by Franklin Foer is worth a read, but i'm very skeptical of the framing. It seems to very much want to pit the "identity politics" of Cory Booker against the economic populism of Elizabeth Warren.

One thing the article does is kind of twist around the findings of a study of a bellwether county in the suburbs of Detroit called Macomb.

Once upon a time, Macomb was a testament to the force of the New Deal, a vision of middle-class life made possible by the fruits of American industry. The county rewarded Democrats for this prosperity in overwhelming numbers. John F. Kennedy carried it with 63 percent of the vote. But over the years, Macomb grew distant from the party, and then furious with it. The state's party organization asked Greenberg to figure out the roots of voters' estrangement.

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Many political analysts who puzzled over Democratic losses described how the backlash against the civil-rights era had propelled white voters away from liberalism, but none gave racism quite the same centrality as Greenberg did. He found "a profound distaste for black Americans, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything" that Macomb residents thought about government and politics. Denizens of Macomb--the county was 97 percent white--did little to disguise their animosity. African Americans, they complained, had benefited at their expense. Their tax dollars were funding a welfare state that plowed money into black communities, while politicians showed no concern for their own plight. (That plight was real: The auto industry, which provided the undergirding for middle-class life in Michigan, had collapsed in the face of foreign competition.)

Greenberg's study of Macomb became a canonical text for Democrats attempting to recover from a decade of pummeling. Bill Clinton hired him in 1992, and in his presidential campaign he spoke directly to the racial anxieties revealed in the focus groups. Clinton distanced himself from the welfare state, which he damned as bloated and inefficient. He promised to pour money into the middle class itself, through tax cuts and spending on education and health care. "Let's forget about race and be one nation again," he told an audience in Macomb. "I'll help you build the middle class back."

Clinton's pandering to their racism won him the county, and the Democrats kept it after that. But then Trump won it back.

Not only did Trump reclaim Macomb for the Republicans--trouncing Clinton by 12 percentage points there--but he turned the Democratic establishment back to Greenberg's central question about working-class whites: Did racism put many of them beyond reach? When Greenberg traveled to Michigan in February, to conduct his first focus groups in Macomb in nearly a decade, he was genuinely unsure of what he might find. Trump's naked appeals to racism were far more intense than anything he had ever witnessed. The scenes from Trump's rallies created a plausible impression that the president had activated long-suppressed feelings of hatred. To probe their disaffection, Greenberg pulled together voters who, for the most part, had defected from Obama to Trump, who had gone from voting for the first African American president to siding with his racist successor.

...Over the years, Greenberg had heard the worst from Macomb. Back in the '80s, he knew precisely the buzzwords that could ignite a torrent of racism. The mere mention of Detroit would send people into paroxysms of rage. Decades later, Detroit didn't provoke any extreme expressions of animus, only comments marveling that the city finally picked up the garbage and cleaned the streets of snow. When the moderator mentioned Flint, the largely African American city whose drinking water had been steeped in lead, the focus groups professed sympathy for the community. The lack of angry responses seemed to shock Greenberg. "There's so much less about race," he leaned over to tell me.

Prejudice, however, remained very real. The old complaints about African Americans had affixed themselves to immigrants. Dearborn, which has a thriving Muslim immigrant community, is a short drive away. Just as Macomb's whites had once accused African Americans of prospering at their expense, members of Greenberg's focus groups spoke openly about being displaced by immigrants. "We need to take care of home first," one participant said, as if the immigrant neighbors weren't also living at home. When asked to explain their greatest hopes for Trump, many cited his promise to build a border wall.

There was a strong element of self-loathing in the hostile view of immigrants. A 60-year-old woman described her work as a cashier at Kroger. What she hated, she said, was waiting on immigrants who didn't bother to smile. "They act like they can't do that, even." Another woman described going to sign up for Medicaid: "I'm looking around at all these people that can't even say hello to me in English." Greenberg's subjects had expected to occupy a higher rung in society. That they exist on par with newcomers to the country feels like a betrayal of what they thought to be the natural order.

The way that the county's residents have (over generations, granted) managed to shift their racism from one target to another suggests that the racism is the symptom, not the cause. As Foer notes in only parenthetical passing, the county was in economic decline thanks to neoliberal policies, including Clinton's NAFTA (not "foreign competition") and the tax cuts he promised, coupled with his dismantling of the social services that would have cushioned the fall. And that makes people looking for answers susceptible when offered scapegoats by demagogues like Trump (and Fox news, talk radio, etc.). Maybe a 60 year old woman can get bitter because she's working a cash register in a county where people used to have good paying manufacturing jobs, not because she had some inherent views about a "natural order".

The other thing the article does is make me like the prospect of Warren running even less. One little tidbit i wasn't aware of:

Interviewing Sanders requires some fortification--and my exchange ended when he peremptorily dismissed me from his office for asking a question about his political relationship with Elizabeth Warren. (Sanders had expected Warren to endorse him in the 2016 primary, and her failure to do so sent him into a funk.)

Warren's failure to endorse Bernie has grated on me. I don't know how Foer knows that Sanders "expected" Warren to endorse him (i haven't heard that elsewhere), but if she did let him down in more than just a general way that's going to be hard for me to get over.

And then there's this:

Nor is Warren's driving obsession wealth redistribution. That's important politically, because many Americans simply don't begrudge wealth, and "inequality" as a clarion call hasn't stuck. (Indeed, Democrats have begun to shift away from inequality as a label for what ails America's economy and culture. Some fear that white voters who are predisposed to racial resentments hear the word as code for a desire to transfer wealth from whites to blacks.)

Rather, Warren is most focused on the concept of fairness. A course she taught early in her career as a law professor, on contracts, got her thinking about the subject. (Fairness, after all, is a contract's fundamental purpose.) A raw, moralistic conception of fairness--that people shouldn't get screwed--would become the basis for her crusading. Although she shares Bernie Sanders's contempt for Wall Street, she doesn't share his democratic socialism. "I love markets--I believe in markets!" she told me.

Blech to multiple items in the above quote. Blech to Dems shying away from talking about inequality. Double blech for doing so as a way to pander to whites (similar to Bill Clinton on welfare). Blech to the bland concept of "fairness". Double blech to "I believe in markets!". Blech blech blech.

min: I wasn't going to vote for Warren anyway. She's been a disappointment, in general. I hold out hope that Bernie is training disciples to take his place because i agree with Sarah Jones' article (linked 2 posts down) that a movement cannot rely entirely on single person to keep it going. We're dead if Bernie is the only thing making this work.

By fnord12 | June 20, 2017, 9:53 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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1980s shit

Ryan Cooper:

Open conflict between Russia and the United States is heating up in Syria. After American forces shot down a Syrian fighter jet, Russia suspended use of an Obama-era communications line used to prevent collisions and conflict, and threatened to shoot down American planes.

America's Syria policy was and continues to be absolutely moronic. But this alarming development is also a reminder that there is simply no alternative to diplomatic engagement with Russia, the world's only other nuclear superpower. That's something both the American military, and liberals fired up over Trump's Russia scandal, would do well to remember.

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Russia has a clear goal: prop up the Assad regime, but avoid being drawn too far into the conflict. America is, as far as anyone can tell, fighting ISIS, attempting regime change without invasion, arming some rebels but fighting others, and trying to help Kurdish militia without annoying Turkey too much. Both Trump and the foreign policy establishment... childishly refuse to admit that most of these goals are incompatible with one another.

By fnord12 | June 20, 2017, 8:17 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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June 19, 2017

Who, though?

Sarah Jones makes a good case that Bernie shouldn't run again, but ultimately her caveat ("But there's an important exception here. If there is no clear progressive frontrunner--no promising campaign for him to prop up--Sanders should run regardless of age.") has the most weight. It's just a sad fact that there is no progressive bench. Elizabeth Warren kinda sucks on everything except economics and she's given the impression that she doesn't want to run. Someone suggested Jeff Merkley but i think Sanders throwing his weight behind a relative unknown would have as much effect as, say, Sanders endorsing Keith Ellison during the DNC election. And the progressive movement getting behind another white male opens up the tedious identity vs. class "debate" all over again. Looking at Sanders' top surrogates, Tulsi Gabbard has taken some positions in the past that are problematic and i don't think Nina Turner has held high enough office to be a contender (i'd get behind her in a second, though).

If Sanders himself runs, i think he can win the primary by getting all of the progressive vote while the centrist vote is split between the Bookers and Cuomos or whoever. Unless Warren also runs, and i don't think Sanders will run if Warren runs (or vice versa). Yes, Sanders will be very old if he wins, but the model here is Ronald Reagan, who was personally doddering while in office but still managed to transform the political landscape for decades. Sanders (so far) seems sharper than Reagan and the important thing is all of the policies and appointments that he brings with him.

By fnord12 | June 19, 2017, 9:44 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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June 17, 2017

We Need to Change How We Treat Undocumented Immigrants

Fnord12 and i recently attended a Board of Freeholders meeting. In a previous meeting, the Board had decided that the county sheriff's office would not arrest and detain immigrants for ICE unless ICE had an actual warrant, which is basically the very least that should be required if one wanted to follow the law and the Constitution. This apparently caused a bugaboo amongst the conservatives in the county so they tried to organize people to show up at this last meeting to lodge a protest to the Board's decision. Catching wind of this, progressive orgs put out their own call to get people to show up and support the Board. Hence, fnord12 and me actually leaving the house for once.

During the public comments portion of the meeting, so many people against the policy were just generally misinformed, with a smattering of good ol' racism. They misinterpreted the Board's decision to mean the sheriff's office was just going to let people who had committed actual crimes go free. "Would you stop them if they just came up and stabbed me?" O.o

Then there was the "My parents/grandparents/great-grandparents came to this country legally and they worked hard to make a life here", not like those lazy undocumented immigrants who just sit around all day selling drugs with their free Obama phones, collecting social security, welfare, free health insurance, and free college.

But, luckily, there were plenty of people who actually knew what the policy said and also were informed enough to know that undocumented residents a) pay taxes, b) don't get to collect any social assistance, c) and are more likely to be victims of crimes than the ones committing them.

Indeed, studies routinely show that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, and instead contribute nearly $12 billion dollars in state and local taxes. Many come to the United States to escape economic insecurity or other harsh conditions, and -- like most immigrants -- are only interested in building a better, safer life for their children in America.

Yet, federal immigration law which seeks to persecute, prosecute, and criminalize undocumented immigrants only succeeds in wasting taxpayer dollars to destabilized and break up immigrant families, to deport people who often have lived peacefully for years in America to a country they may not know, and to drive the remaining immigrant population deeper into the shadows. Whereas programs like DACA have been shown to significantly improve the wellness and outcomes for those who receive protection, immigrants deported by the United States government undergo significant personal and emotional stress -- as do their children who remain in the United States. It is unclear if deportees ever fully recover from the experience of being forcibly separated from their homes and families by the U.S. government; for example, a Korean American adoptee who was adopted at age 10 by an American family but who was deported to Korea in 2012 was found dead of suicide last month.

Link

Fun fact: while most people might picture a person from Mexico or Central America when they hear about "illegals" or "undocumented immigrants", Asians are becoming the fastest growing population of undocumented immigrants. Don't think Trump's wall will do much good now, huh?

Turns out that, since 2000, unauthorized immigration from Asia has grown at rates much faster than from Mexico and Central America. That's according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute.

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At 6 million, Mexicans still represent the majority of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. But the percentage of those arriving has slowed since the recession. During that time, however, Asian unauthorized immigration has increased considerably. From 2000 to 2013, it increased 202 percent, according to the report.

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Asians now represent about a third of the foreign-born population in America--equal with the Mexican foreign-born population. They also represent 14 percent of the unauthorized population. That number, by the author's own projections, will grow in the coming decade.

Link

This country was built by immigrants and the economy continues to rely on them in order to flourish. For selfish reasons alone, we should be changing our policies on immigration. That it's also morally right doesn't hurt either.

By min | June 17, 2017, 12:44 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Our economic system is garbage

Kudos to USA Today for doing this reporting on the trucking sector.

By fnord12 | June 17, 2017, 11:23 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Why Police Officers Aren't Held Accountable

You know i'm desperate when i'm turning to Teen Vogue for answers (but Teen Vogue has actually been really good lately). The article only touches on what i think is the biggest problem, which is the way our archaic constitution is structured (see also Min's article below and how the court ruling hinged on interstate vs. intrastate).

By fnord12 | June 17, 2017, 10:55 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Why Are Prisoners Charged for Anything?

They're in prison ferchrissakes. They shouldn't be charged for anything, let alone charged extortionate prices for a phone call. If they don't want them making calls all the time, they should just give them a weekly or monthly time limit.

Link

When Mary Shields was first sent to prison, her daughter was too young to understand why their phone calls would cut off mid-conversation and why she would not hear from her mother again for days. Shields was among the many incarcerated people who had their contact with loved ones curtailed by the high rates for making prison phone calls. During her 21 years in a California state prison, she spoke with her family for 15 minutes twice a month. Each call cost $15.

And that's on top of the fact that private prisons use the inmates as slave labor. WTF?

By min | June 17, 2017, 10:36 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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I Always Thought It Was Meat

I saw the Wonder Works adaptation before i read the books so any reference to Turkish Delight being sweet was lost on me. In the adaptation, the Turkish Delight looked like cold, gray cubes. I always assumed because of magic, what we saw is what the White Witch was really feeding him while Edmund saw whatever Turkish Delight was supposed to look like. So, my brain filled in what it thought this delicious treat could be and it came up with "meat". Cause that's what i would ask for after walking in the cold woods for hours. I'd be hungry by then and who the hell wants candy and crap when they're hungry? Nope. Real food. Plus gravy.

Apparently, i was not the only one who had never heard of Turkish Delight and just made up my own thing. Link

Most Americans, though, didn't know about that when we first read the book. All we knew was that Turkish Delight was an exotic-sounding treat that would be your first request if a mysterious and elegant woman asked you, "What would you like best to eat?" And we knew that Edmund loved that Turkish Delight so much that he put his siblings and the entire land of Narnia in harm's way in exchange for more. (To be fair, it was enchanted. But still, Edmund. Still.) So we wound up imagining whatever we would have liked best. It was like looking into Harry Potter's Mirror of Erised, but for desserts: When you think of a treat worth betraying your family for, what do you see? Turkish Delight is our collective candy id.

By min | June 17, 2017, 10:19 AM | Boooooks| Link

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June 16, 2017

Socialism the easy way

My plan to let Amazon buy everything and then nationalize Amazon is continuing apace.

By fnord12 | June 16, 2017, 11:37 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Incoherence

There has been virtually no coverage of the Republican Senators' plan to repeal Obamacare, but Vox has been on it and they now have managed to interview several Senators, and the responses are downright gibberish.

By fnord12 | June 16, 2017, 11:27 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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June 13, 2017

Final Horde

It's been just about four years since i first received the horde of miniatures from the Bones Kickstarter, and i've just finally finished painting them all. Granted, other minis were added to the pile (and in fact the majority of the ones in this final batch are from other sets) but it's still taken a looooong time for me to finish painting them all. In the meantime, there have been two more Bones Kickstarters, but i have all the minis that i can ever use (or store). Thanks to friend Wanyas for donating a lot of the minis below, and to friend Andy who helped paint this batch.

I made a big push to get all of these finished, so there are a lot more here than usual and i didn't take close-ups of them all. The first shot is therefore embiggenable.

By fnord12 | June 13, 2017, 10:10 PM | D&D| Link

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Five Men Own As Much As 50% of the World

It just keeps getting better and better. Link

Last year it was 8 men, then down to 6, and now almost 5.

While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of 06/08/17, the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

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Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that all is OK, because, after all, America is a 'meritocracy' in which the super-wealthy have 'earned' all they have. They heed the words of Warren Buffett: "The genius of the American economy, our emphasis on a meritocracy and a market system and a rule of law has enabled generation after generation to live better than their parents did."

But it's not a meritocracy. Children are no longer living better than their parents did. In the eight years since the recession the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. The great majority of it has gone to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation's poorest 90%--the middle and lower classes. That's over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.

A meritocracy? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have done little that wouldn't have happened anyway. ALL modern U.S. technology started with--and to a great extent continues with--our tax dollars and our research institutes and our subsidies to corporations.

By min | June 13, 2017, 6:23 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Whoops: one more Corbyn

Always gotta make room for Bernie.

By fnord12 | June 13, 2017, 6:21 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Rotten Tomatoes

Good trend on how the success of a movie now depends on getting good reviews. Which you'd think should have always been the case, but...

By fnord12 | June 13, 2017, 3:53 PM | Movies| Link

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One more on Corbyn

This one focuses on terrorism and foreign policy.

By fnord12 | June 13, 2017, 3:51 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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June 9, 2017

What Corbyn's performance means

Jeff Spross:

The old order has failed. To win voters over, the political class must emulate Corbyn's boldness: Unapologetic faith in the public sector to deliver jobs, benefits, and resources, and to tame markets and raise wages. No more hiding meliorist economic policies in the tax code: Say what you'll do for the people and then do it, directly and right out in the open.

More from Sarah Jones, Sam Kriss, Adam H. Johnson, Paul Blest, Carl Beijer, Jacobin.

By fnord12 | June 9, 2017, 12:40 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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Playing different games

DDay:

Trump has nominated 22 judges to fill vacancies across the federal bench... Judicial nominations are the one area where the Trump administration is "running like a fine-tuned machine," as the president boasted in February. In fact, Trump's team has far outstripped the efforts of his predecessor. By this date eight years ago, President Obama had made just four judicial nominations...

...like other Democratic presidents since Carter, Obama set a tougher bar for himself: He interpreted the Senate confirmation rules to mean that he had to achieve widespread support for all of his nominees. Responding to criticism about the slow pace of nominations (criticism which was persistent throughout the first term), Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt insisted in 2009 that "this process has been bipartisan and we have made every effort to make confirmation wars a thing of the past."

That gets to the real difference between Democrats and Republicans on the judiciary. Republicans see appointing rigidly conservative judges as a central part of their policy strategy. Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, used judicial nominations as an opportunity for bipartisan comity.

It's worth noting that the point above is just about nominations, which means that the obstruction that Obama faced from Republicans isn't an excuse. But Republicans are also better at getting their nominations confirmed. Refresh yourself with my post about Blue Slips and then read DDay's whole article.

By fnord12 | June 9, 2017, 10:37 AM | Liberal Outrage| Link

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June 8, 2017

This Monkey Is Neutral

I'm in the 50th percentile when it comes to guessing monkey moods. That's honestly much better than my track record on understanding humans.

By fnord12 | June 8, 2017, 10:52 AM | Science & Ummm... Other?| Link

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June 1, 2017

Recap 78

Historic Battles

By fnord12 | June 1, 2017, 9:41 AM | D&D| Link

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