Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

U.S. Domestic Policy

The Myth of American Prisoner Rehabilitation

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The Baltimore Museum of Art recently presented a panel discussion on American prisons. It was generated by an exhibit at the Museum of photographs taken over a period of 30 years at the Louisiana state prison known as Angola. The panelists included Norris Henderson who had spent 27 years in Angola for a crime for which he has since been exonerated and it became clear from his description of prison life that prisons like Angola do not exist to provide a hand up for convicts or to prepare them for life when they are released. What Angola does provide are jobs for a significant group of undereducated whites to – as Henderson said – (“watch black prisoners as they till the fields around the prison”). There is no meaningful effort at training or education and the state actually makes money off the work of the prisoners. While it’s not exactly slavery, it’s damned close. Henderson has had an impressive career in the legal and civil rights arenas including succeeding at persuading the Louisiana government to return voting rights to those who have served their time. It is a step that at least begins to reorient released prisoners into a more normal life. He has also moved the state to ban the requirement to report past convictions on employment recruitment forms.

The discussion also considered the prison business in America as it has become increasingly privatized. One interesting note was that many operators of private prisons sign contracts with governments that include a requirement for those governments to provide enough prisoners to maintain a 90% capacity rate. The economics of the system are based on per-prisoner costs and this translates into a need for the various governments (mostly states) to seek prison time for crimes that are frequently “victimless”. The stupid – actually tragic – War on Drugs made a huge contribution to filling prisons and will continue to do so until its remnants disappear. The fact that black Americans are more than three times likelier to be in prison than whites raises a question of just how many African Americans caught with drugs does it take to keep the numbers up. The fact that the opioid crisis, which is now a largely white problem, has led to investment in recovery programs rather than increased imprisonment adds to the inherent racism in our justice system and therefore our prison problem.

But Americans have their prisons and for many they provide an outlet for their anger at people who do not live up to what they believe are community standards, irregardless of actual crime. Many seem to enjoy seeing others punished regardless of the severity or importance of the “crime”. It is almost never an intent or even interest to improve a person in trouble, help them develop in any way; it is simply a need to punish them to provide some unhealthy self-satisfaction to the pious, sanctimonious, purer-than-thou. It was striking to watch this week the outpouring of glee over Felicity Huffman being sent to prison for two weeks for having spent $15000 to get a proctor to fix her daughter’s SAT scores – a crime that cannot in any meaningful way be viewed as having hurt another individual. And yet, the Boston Globe was full of comments celebrating her getting jail time. Why? Well for some it was that their children had had to take the SAT’s without help. For others it was their false view that she had taken a place at a school away from some other more deserving child – simply and obviously not true. Still others wanted her punished because she was a rich actress. But mostly it was that Ms. Huffman had been a bad girl, used poor judgment and simply needed to be punished – beyond a fine and community service. She needed to suffer in a more personally degrading way to provide vindication for the righteous, pious and sanctimonious to be – well – so righteous, pious and sanctimonious.

A footnote to the comments is that many compared her 14 day prison term to a five year term given to a black woman who misled school officials on her address so her child could go to a better school. Where were these folk when the black woman got railroaded? They were nowhere and they are nowhere every day that American blacks get tossed in jail – or worse. While Huffman’s penalty pales in comparison to that meted out to a poor black woman, neither that poor woman nor Felicity Huffman deserve prison time. In neither case is there any rational reason for the sentences which serve no reasonable purpose.

William Barr: Arrogance of Power

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William Barr is the same man he was 40 years ago and no one should be surprised at anything he has said or done after entering the Trump Circus. A brief Bio captures the outlines of the man.

In the mid 70’s Barr’s work at the CIA included arguing for the end of the moratorium on destruction of Agency documents in the age of the Church Committee’s investigations of CIA complicity in assassinations of foreign figures. The National Security Archive reports that later, in the 80’s, while in the Department of Justice, Barr defended expanding Presidential authority while limiting notification of Congress about covert Operations during Iran-Contra Affair.

His work in the Department of Justice during the 80’s and 90’s amplified his views on presidential authority, highlighted by his advice to President Bush-1 to short-circuit the work of Lawrence Walsh, Independent Counsel charged with investigating the Iran-Contra affair. Bush pardoned Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five other participants (incl the especially unpleasant Elliott Abrams), leaving Walsh with nowhere to go with the results of his five year investigation.

Barr also showed up when the Bush-1 presidency was accused of helping to fund Saddam Hussein’s military buildup (yep, that guy – really) through phony agriculture credits. The timing was ironic – while the buildup was to serve as a counterbalance to Iran, Saddam pulled a fast one and used his new military strength to invade Kuwait. Barr refused to provide information to the Congress in a preview for his efforts for Trump.

In the lead-up to his appointment as the fourth Attorney General in Trump’s two year presidency (incl 2 Acting AGs) Barr wrote a lengthy paper opposing the formation of the Mueller investigation, complained about the staffing of the Mueller team (it included some Democrats!), supported the firing of FBI Director Comey, supported investigations of Hillary Clinton and then altered and misconstrued the findings of the Mueller team.

Trump got what he has paid for and for the rest of us it is back to the shack, same game. Today Barr wormed his way through a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee with the help of Chairman Lindsey Graham and then let it be known that the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee would not be blessed with his presence at tomorrow’s scheduled session.

Bully Trump Meets Speaker Pelosi

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”It’s like a manhood thing for him,. As if manhood could be associated with him. This wall thing.” Nancy Pelosi

We have gotten used to Arrested Development Teen Trump calling people silly names, claiming sexual rights without permission, bullying Republican wimps, and bragging about things that never happened. But today is a new day with the soon to be Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, setting the table for a future of the House of Representatives pushing back – at long last. Two years of a Republican Congress putting up with the most degrading presidency in my history is moving to an and Trump is not going to get his wall- boo Hoo, Boo Hoo.

Trump’s “art of the deal” has always been one of bullying people, not paying people, lying to people, and just claiming bankruptcy every time things went south for him. Well, here we are and it is now time for him to go to Mexico and get there money for his ridiculous wall or shut up. Instead he is promising to shut down the U.S. government, an act of political craziness, economic risk and – alas – a certain level of black humor.

Today’s meeting of Trump, Schumer and Pelosi (VP Pence was there in body only) was political theater bound to garner some cheeers in the beer halls of Trump’s useful idiots, but things are closing in on him and he is losing what little he ever had. Watch the video linked from the front page of the Washington Post – it is priceless.

Trump, Mueller, Tariffs: Is Push Coming to Shove?

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Lots of activity last week with Mueller going to court for cases on both Trump ‘s former lawyer Michael Cohen and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Trump has sort of responded with a tweet that says he and his lawyers are preparing a response to the Mueller report – which of course he has not seen.

Simultaneously, Trump, having declared himself in a tweet to be The Tariff Man is holding strong to his tariff war strategy that has created havoc in the stock markets, caused American farmers to lose millions on lost sales, increased costs for many small businesses relying on foreign steel, and increased the cost of much that Americans buy. There is no observable upside to his strategy and the main question seems to be whether Trump can find it in the deep recesses of his narcissism to back off his self-created crisis and admit – at least by implication – that his tariff strategy has been and remains a disaster.

The next few weeks could be critical to his presidency and to the future of the U.S. . Given his record to date I am reluctant to be optimistic.

Come on Yanks, give him the boot before it’s too late

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Okay guys, you’ve made a mistake and proven that democracy doesn’t always work. But now the proof is in the pudding and the profiteer of that foreseeable mistake, who did not even come close to winning the popular vote, has become a global farce. Isn’t there something you can do to return the USA to its designated position as the leading world power and a moral force, instead of the fantasies of a rogue farce, before the damage becomes very difficult to undo?
The US government of the moment may have already proclaimed itself to be an outsider, a non-member of the committee to act responsibly on the future of the planet. All countries, save three – Syria, Nicaragua, who thought the Paris accord didn’t go far enough, and the USA – belong to this world assembly. Russia just signed on. But don’t you have some sort of fail-safe system in place in your constitution to get the US back on the rails of common-sense, following an obviously awful political decision, before it’s too late? Please keep all us outsiders in the picture on this topic, before you sail into the obscurity reserved by history for once- revered empires, that have opted out of unified attempts to deal with a planet’s potentially lethal problems. At the same you are allowing the vacuum of power, caused by your government’s blinkers, to be filled by China, of all nations. Who would have thunk it possible even two years ago.

The Slow Death of Obamacare

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“Trumpcare isn’t a replacement of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a transfer from the sick and poor to the rich and healthy.” – Robert Reich

The near death of Obamacare, long prayed for by Tea Partiers and Republicans arrived yesterday in the House of Representatives, but once again a stupid, useless bill from the Paul Ryan Chamber of Horrors will most likely suffer a slow, painful, disappearance in the Senate. As for Potentate Trump – this victory will not satisfy him, because nothing really satisfies him other than a standing ovation, which he will not get for this atrocity.

The Republican members of the House of Representatives voted yesterday for a bill that will make health insurance too expensive for those with pre-existing conditions and others including those older Americans not yet on Medicare, while lying about the actualities of the bill. This is obviously a time for the American press to do its job. Report the facts and tell the truth.

The plan is a classic trump “deal”, promise and renege. Trump’s history of not paying for services is well known and well reported. Bankruptcies and simply refusing to pay for services rendered is the playbook of a petty crook and thug – well documented – joined in this instance by Paul Ryan in applying this tried and true Trumpian approach to scamming people – this time out of their health care. In joining forces with Trump, Ryan is learning from the master scammer. A recent obvious example is Trump University which had to pay out $25 Million to scammed students.  There is a useful and entertaining catalog of his scandals and scams in a recent issue of the  Atlantic, which can be found here.

Here is how this scam works – for those with pre-existing conditions – like cancer, diabetes, birth defects, (even pregnancy!) etc. , insurance companies no longer would have to accept them at normal insurance costs, but the federal government would provide some financial assistance to those states that develop high risk pools to help cover the costs associated with insuring these people. There is absolutely no question that the amount of money in the bill is inadequate to cover such costs but those mythical “moderate” Republicans felt they had sufficient cover to vote for it.

In Republican America that is all that is required – sufficient cover to allow a vote that is inexcusably dishonest and venal. And what are the chances of states like Kansas and Wisconsin providing that kind of support? How about zero.

It is no longer a reasonable expectation that Republican Representatives will vote on reason, facts or the good of the country. But as long as the Senate avoids drinking the Kool Aid it remains a meaningless vote. Ryan’s crew may think they have fulfilled their wildest dreams, might need to change their pajamas, and can go home to their districts and boast that they voted to screw several million people out of health insurance. Witness the bizarre, obscene celebration at the White House yesterday afternoon.

This really is a time for the press to step up and explain to their readers/listeners just what it all means: That the losers are: the poor, the middle class, the old, Planned Parenthood, state governments, hospitals, medical professionals, people with pre-existing conditions, and veterans.

The winners include: the rich, who get a nearly $600 billion tax break by reducing healthcare taxes that primarily affect the wealthiest 10%, insurance companies who can now charge 5X for premiums for older people, and of course, Congressmen/women, who are exempt from the rules of the bill. A good analysis of the financial aspects of the bill is provided by Robert Reich.

Pressure now lies on the Senate to prove that America has not gone totally insane. I’m not recommending anyone bet on that; save your money for your increased healthcare costs.

Don’t blame Trump – He’s just doing what he said he would, and he’s doing it with the class you expected

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Now let’s wait a second.  All  of the decisions of Donald Trump in the last two weeks that are now being met with anger and derision by hundreds of thousands of marchers in the USA, many of whom didn’t feel like voting,  were long public  and cannot be a surprise.  These proposals  were thumped home in raucous fashion by the new President all across the country for months before the election.  There is certainly good reason to  be outraged by them, and  that is at least also partly because of the brutality and the amateurishness in which they have now been delivered.  The apparently spontaneous and unorganized travel restrictions placed on Moslems of seven countries that  the president doesn’t like, and the way it was announced and commented upon by a neanderthalean Press Secretary may be beyond any pale.  And the treatment of the President of neighbour Mexico also takes some kind of cake for arrogant boorishness and non-neighbourliness.  But the actual contents were  made clear long ago.

So didn’t anybody vote  for that programme?  Well, yes,  it turns out somewhere around 60 million Americans did vote for that, even if you don’t know any of them.  That’s a lot of Yanks who are not protesting.  That’s democracy for you and as the greatest troubadour of our times, Leonard Cohen, now safely buried on the peaceful north side of the border, wrote and sang not so long ago – “Democracy is coming  to theUSA”.  So get used to it and now get your act together and make sure it can”t happen again in four years time.

 

 

And the winner is

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So what happens next?  Even CNN, the great publicizer of the complete outsider Donald Trump, will discover  that this story  has run out of steam and they will have great difficulty pushing that revved-up political locomotive onto the summer timetable.   The problem is that the main event has already been completed and there is really little  excitement to rev up on how Indiana, or any other last-minute primary state, might vote in the primaries from now on.  Bernie Sanders put in a splendid race for a very long time, but in the end he has no chance of winning this marathon against the too-well connected and experienced front runner, Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump was a newspaper person’s delight in the beginning for putting together  an  amazingly unpredictable sprint  that put him way ahead of his rivals, and left  him on track to continue to pull ahead after the  sprinting should have been history.  He will certainly cross the finish line well ahead of  a catastrophically weak field of supposed  favourites, who had no staying power for the long haul, and in fact dropped out like flies as the checkpoints passed behind them.

So the US is still a democracy and the voters have spoken.  It will be Donald against Hillary for the winner-take all runoff, and already the pundits who were wrong from the start about the Trump candidacy, are  confidently predicting it will be a rout  for Hillary.  Here’s my advice.  Look out for the underdog once again.  Big Donald did not get into this runoff by being a man without a lot of public support,  Au contraire.  He is turning out to have plenty of friends  in a population tired of an overstuffed establishment, and willing to ignore the  fact that Billionaire Don is an obvious high flyer in that group.  His great advantage is, however, that he has never been a politician, like all the other candidates, and made his fortune by other means.   Donald could be gathering his second wind, and some pundits are already suggesting it – that there may still be a long-distance runner out on the streets and the outcome might be much closer than  seems to be the conclusion that the experts,  who were wrong in the beginning, might be predicting once again.

 

 

Vikings in Panama

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So – just about everybody you think of as overpaid – from soccer players to petty politicians to tough-guy dictators – have something in common. They invest in Panama Virgin Islands Co-operation companies. And it’s all legal – sort of – and moral – less sort of, but hey what do you expect in the modern world. Non-diving soccer players, truth-telling politicians, people-oriented  dictators? Okay okay, Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn, where you’ve got to tell the truth or you know what! So he’s an exception. Maybe. And let’s hope he wins, so there is an exception that counts!

In the meantime, as expected from all serious history buffs, only one  society has demanded the consequences. Just as they did in Egil’s or Hrafnkls Saga or the Saga of Grettir the Strong, (until he was exiled to an isolated uninhabited Arctic island), the Vikings of Iceland know how to handle tax avoiders.  Sigmundur David Gunlaugsson (can’t match those Icelandic names), the PM, was caught with  his fingers in the Panama pot, presented himself with the *eatingest grin in photographic history as he entered parliament (the kid was caught with his fingers in the cookie jar as well) and only left it after he had been kicked out of his office, which had been pelted with  eggs and bananas by an angry mob, and joined the ranks of the unemployed – a contemporary mild version of medieval punishments.  No if only the US presidential candidates (pace Sanders)could be convinced after being pelted by eggs and bananas to get the hell out before it’s too late, we would all breathe easier.

America or is it North America the Beautiful?

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Well, let’s see now. First there were several Republican candidates in the United States of America’s primary drama, led by the indomitable Donald Trump, who suggested that it would be a bright idea to build a Berlin-type wall along the US border. It seemed likely at the time that they had meant the border to Mexico, and perhaps forgotten or did not know that there was also a border in the north with Canada. When it was pointed out that that wall would present mighty challenges in the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia  and  Yukon, not to mention Newfoundland, ST. Pierre and Miquelon, some reconsidered after looking at a map. But some candidates stuck to their guns.

As more information about these candidates dribbles out, Canadians became more and more interested in the proposal for a wall, not because it would keep terrorists from travelling south, but rather because it might hinder  unwanted aliens from travelling north. As it turned out, one of the leading lights, Ted Cruz, was actually born and bred in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with a Cuban father and an Amurcan mother, and was a Canadian citizen when he announced  his candidacy for President of the United States. . Hmm. Now, the third in the trio of favourites, Marco Rubio, has begun showing an ad for his candidacy on tv in his new series “Morning in America” that makes you wonder just what he means when he uses the word “America”. Does he mean the United States or does he mean all of North America, perhaps excluding Mexico? Who knows?

What most who see this ad will know  is that the scene he opens with is not in the United States. It shows a tugboat sailing out of a very dynamic-looking harbour, obviously recognizable as Vancouver harbour to lots of folks, but for anyone who isn’t familiar with the  scene, there is a Canadian flag flying on the tug just to make it clear. Doesn’t Rubio or his advisors know that on the other side of that northern wall there is an independent country with a different flag than his, which does not call itself America, and that what his ad shows is “Morning in Canada” as the most spectacular and busy harbour city on the west coast of North America  comes to life? Anyhow Ted Cruz is probably thanking the unpredictable primary gods for this intervention in the Canadian irritation in the Republican primary. But Canadians are just wondering what the hell is going on.