Chris Hedges's Blog, page 173

Money Is Pouring Into Race for Susan Collins’ Senate Seat

PORTLAND, Maine—Democrats vowed last year to make Republican Sen. Susan Collins pay for her vote confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Republicans declared they would have her back. Neither has forgotten its promises.

Money is pouring into Maine’s high-profile Senate race, threatening to upend the state’s reputation for genteel politics and giving way to a new era of partisanship.

Observers predict the race will set a spending record in the state, with tens of millions of dollars going into the state, even though Collins has yet to officially announce that she’s seeking reelection.

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Advertising data shows Democrats plan to spend at least $1.2 million on ads through December, including a spot that aired for the first time this month that accuses Collins of failing to protect Medicare. A newly formed GOP group, meanwhile, has $800,000 already in the bank, thanks to a small group of wealthy financiers. They’ve highlighted Collins’ bipartisan credentials while calling her a “strong voice to the concerns of women across Maine and the nation.”

The spending underscores how loud, polarized politics are changing campaigns far from battleground states and threatening the political culture that allowed centrists like Collins to thrive.

But it’s unclear how Maine voters will respond to refighting her contentious vote for Kavanaugh or to the flood of outside money.

The race represents one of a handful of opportunities for Democrats to pick up seats in the Senate in the pursuit of seizing control of the chamber from the GOP.

Collins, who was first elected in 1996, has practiced a measured, moderate brand of politics that aligned with the ethos of a state where most voters don’t identify with either party. But the political climate in the state has recently developed more bite, as evidenced by former GOP Gov. Paul LePage’s bare-knuckle style. New England Republicans, meanwhile, have become an endangered species in Congress, with Collins the last one.

The Kavanaugh controversy presented an opening for Democrats. The senator lost standing with many women when she voted for Kavanaugh after questions swirled about whether he would uphold Roe v. Wade and after Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say he had sexually assaulted her decades ago, when both were teens. Kavanaugh vigorously denied assaulting her.

Critics sent coat hangers to Collins’ office, and an envelope containing white powder was sent to her home in Maine, both signs of how ugly the situation had become.

Roger Katz, a moderate Republican, attorney and former state senator in Augusta, acknowledged that vote hurt Collins. But he brushed off pundits’ suggestions that she’s become vulnerable. “Most people will look at her body of work over 24 years, not just a single issue,” he said.

Collins has at least two Democratic challengers: House Speaker Sara Gideon and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Betsy Sweet.

Gideon, who quickly received the backing of the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, touted her homegrown fundraising success. But both parties are expected to draw from outside Maine, the poorest state in New England.

The most expensive race in the state’s history was last year’s 2nd District congressional race, in which total spending topped $20 million. In the Senate race alone, spending could reach $60 million, said David Farmer, a Democratic operative in the state.

The last time Collins was on the ballot, in 2014, she spent a comparatively paltry $5.2 million and coasted to reelection with over 68% of the vote.

Democratic activists incensed by the Kavanaugh vote already raised $4 million for whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, an online effort that brought in money from across the U.S.

A new super PAC supporting Collins, meanwhile, showed how quickly money can be raised. In a snap, 1820 PAC, a reference to the year Maine gained statehood, raised nearly $800,000 from a small group of wealthy Republican donors. That includes $500,000 contributed by Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the Wall Street investment firm Blackstone and a Republican megadonor who has contributed millions to GOP causes, Federal Election Commission records show.

Maine Momentum, the group running the new anti-Collins ad, plans to spend at least $716,000 on ads geared toward the Senate race from now until the end of December, records show. Maine Momentum is a nonprofit “dark money” group that can raise unlimited sums and does not have to reveal its donors. And because it was recently founded, it won’t have to report how much it raised until next year.

Maine Momentum spokesman Chris Glynn, Gideon’s former communications director, said the group is focused on Collins’ record on “health care, taxes and the money she has been taking from special interests in Washington.”

But Collins’ campaign said it’s ironic that Democrats are embracing such tactics, noting how they have often lamented the loosened campaign finance rules that have led to a proliferation of dark money spending.

“This has more to do with (Democratic Senate leader) Chuck Schumer’s political ambitions and absolutely nothing to do with doing what’s right for the people of Maine and our country,” said Kevin Kelley, her campaign spokesman.

___

Slodysko reported from Washington.

Death and Resistance on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Along the U.S-Mexico border, temperatures in summer hit triple digits daily. The Sonoran Desert straddles the border, creating a deadly barrier to the thousands of migrants seeking a better life in “el Norte,” the North. Untold thousands of people have died in these deserts, following the path known as “el Camino del Diablo,” the Devil’s Highway. How many have died, we will never know, as the desert erases evidence of those who fall there; vultures, coyotes and insects quickly set upon the corpses, leaving only bleached bones. The remains of over 3,000 people have been found, yet experts estimate over 10,000 have died while attempting to cross. Several volunteer groups have for years been plying the hot sands of the Sonora, leaving food, water and medical supplies along known migrant trails, doing what they can to limit the lethality of the desert.

In January 2018, Scott Warren, of the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, was arrested and charged with harboring “aliens” and conspiracy, federal crimes for which he faced 20 years in prison. The first trial ended in a hung jury, with eight of the 12 jurors voting for acquittal. Federal prosecutors dropped the conspiracy charge and are moving ahead with his retrial, scheduled to begin in November. He still faces 10 years in prison.

We recently traveled on a “water drop” with Warren and two other No More Deaths volunteers, Geena Jackson and Paige Corich-Kleim. We left from the new humanitarian aid office that No More Deaths shares with allied groups in Ajo, Arizona, and traveled along a rough gravel road to onto the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It was still early morning, but the temperature exceeded 100 degrees. Organ Pipe runs from near Ajo all the way to the Mexican border. West of the national monument is the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the largest refuge in the lower 48 states. “I can’t set foot into the refuge right now, because of the misdemeanor charges that I face related to the provision of humanitarian aid,” Scott Warren told us.

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The Bottomless Cruelty of the U.S-Mexico Border



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The increasingly militarized enforcement at border towns like Nogales, Arizona, drives migrants deeper into the desert. “Migrants have been forced out into these remote and rugged areas … as a result of prevention through deterrence,” Warren told us as we stood outside a Customs and Border Patrol forward operating base in the Growler Valley. The Growler Valley is a vast, desolate stretch of sunbaked, cactus-studded earth, running north from the border through Cabeza Prieta and Organ Pipe, then into the Barry M. Goldwater Range, an active military bombing range that migrants must cross in order to reach Interstate 8 and their hoped-for life beyond.

The death of 14 migrants in this valley was eloquently detailed by Luis Alberto Urrea in his Pulitzer-finalist 2004 book, “The Devil’s Highway.” Urrea describes the six stages of approaching death: “The desert’s air, like you, is thirsty. It’s sucking up your sweat as fast as you can pump it, so fast you don’t even know you’re sweating … the air comes to your lips and pulls water from you. Every breath dries out your nose, your sinuses, your mouth, your throat. … Desolation drinks you first in small sips, then in deep gulps.” Urrea adds, “If you cry, you make an infinitesimal investment in your own death.”

Because of the pending trials, Warren accompanied the water drop, but did not engage in the activity personally. “Humanitarian aid is never a crime,” Geena Jackson told us. “It is a humanitarian imperative to try and ease the death and suffering in this area … regardless of government agencies trying to prosecute humanitarian aid workers.” She and Paige Corich-Kleim wrote messages on each of the gallon jugs they left in the shade of a tree, alongside a path created over the years by people making this dangerous journey.

“I usually write religious notes, like ‘Vayan con la fuerza de Dios’ or ‘Que Dios bendiga su camino,’ which means ‘Go with the strength of God’ or ‘May God bless your journey,'” Corich-Kleim told us, to let the travelers know that the water was not left as a trap by Customs and Border Patrol. They also leave cans of beans to provide calories and life-sustaining salts that people lose in the searing desert heat.

Watching his colleagues, Warren said: “I’m just noticing the energy of this moment, and I think maybe because all of us are here, and hearing here my friends describe the messages that they’re writing on the bottles. It’s so routine for us that we do this, but even I forget how important and how beautiful and sacred it is.”

* * *

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,400 stations. She is the co-author, with Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, of the New York Times best-seller “Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America.”

(c) 2019 Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Let’s Stop Trying to Predict Who Can Beat Trump

Jill Biden, wife of former Vice President Joe Biden, commented Monday that although her husband may not be good enough on certain issues, people ought to vote for him anyway. In an extraordinarily candid set of remarks, first reported by MSNBC, she said, “Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election.” She went on to say, “And maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘O.K., I sort of personally like so-and-so better,’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.” Not only did she reveal that she might be as prone to verbal gaffes as he is (a liability during a general election), she exposed her own uncertainty about her husband’s candidacy.

Jill Biden is reflecting the general agreement among many Democratic voters that Biden is not great, but he is electable. Such a claim may be nothing more than a dangerously self-fulfilling prophecy of claiming he is electable, seeing that claim reflected in the polls, and therefore asserting that the original claim holds true.

What if most of Biden’s current support in the polls is coming from Democrats who are simply hedging their bets about his ability to beat Trump? If that is even partly true, voters are setting themselves up for a con game in which they may be their own worst enemies. A recent Washington Post analysis of polls regarding Democratic candidates revealed how complicated it is to try to guess who is more electable. “Biden’s electability numbers are up—and therefore so are his poll numbers,” claims the piece, which then adds, “Or does it go the other direction?”

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Joe Biden Should Spare Us All the Trouble



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Biden’s electability rests on the assumption that Democrats will rally around whomever their party’s nominee is in their desperation to beat Trump, but only the former vice president is capable of winning over most independents and peeling enough Republicans away from Trump to ensure he loses reelection. If this sounds like the same type of pandering to white, middle-aged voters that centrist Democrats love to trot out every election to justify their insipid reformist policies, it is precisely that.

The problem is that voters aren’t particularly good at guessing who is electable. “In late 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama was viewed as much less electable than Hillary Clinton,” The Washington Post reminded its readers. In 2016, voters assumed Clinton was best poised to beat Trump. In both recent cases, the assumptions of electability failed. If Trump managed to win in 2016 by beating Clinton in strategically important states, why would the Democrat most like Clinton (i.e., Biden) have a significantly better shot? Why would Democratic primary voters risk repeating a failed experiment?

Biden’s weakness will be Clinton’s weakness: an inability to express strongly what he stands for and a reliance on the fact that he is not Trump. Trump’s base picked him because they liked what he stood for—racism, anti-immigrant and anti-abortion policies, gun proliferation. He laid out his views clearly, and they picked him without a care about his electability. In fact, Trump was considered the least electable candidate in 2016, possibly even in his own view. Isn’t it fair to assume that in a general election, a nominee’s principles are going to be his or her strongest assets?

Imagine Biden facing Trump in a presidential debate ahead of the general election. Imagine the confident incumbent smirking as he says, “Even your own wife admits your policies aren’t as good on health care as some of the other candidates’ were.” Jill Biden’s tacit admission that her husband stands for nothing much beyond a vague idea of electability could hand the election to Trump.

Even Barack Obama seems to have doubts about Biden’s ability. “Mr. Obama took pains to cast his doubts about the campaign,” says a recent New York Times story detailing the relationship between the two men. The former president is not planning to endorse Biden (or any other candidate) ahead of the primary and has also “hammered away at the need for [Biden’s] campaign to expand his aging inner circle.” So worried is he about Biden’s candidacy that he is apparently warned Biden not to “embarrass himself” or “damage his legacy” during the campaign.

If Biden’s own wife and his closest former colleague are not giving him a full-throated endorsement, why should voters?

Lately, even mainstream media outlets are pooh-poohing the notion of voters pretending they are election analysts. In a New York Times op-ed titled “Does Anyone Know What Electability Is?” Jonathan Bernstein wrote, “[P]eople … try to assess whether the candidates have the best personalities and styles for swing states, but that, too, is at best an art and not a science.” As Paul Waldman opined in The Washington Post, “[T]he entire enterprise of determining ‘electability’ and then voting not for the person you prefer but the person you think other people will prefer is a terrible mistake.”

There is a reason so many voters are obsessed with the idea of electability, and that is because mainstream media outlets have long measured election races by the same yardstick. Rather than focusing on candidates’ policies and positions on issues, corporate outlets have turned elections into horse races, fixating on who could win, what they need to do in order to win, or why they are likely to lose. It’s no wonder that after years of digesting such analysis, voters now consider themselves experts on electability. We have been trained by pundits to think like pundits. But punditry should have lost credibility in 2008 and 2016.

In 2016, even though Clinton won the popular vote, enough registered Democrats sat out the election in key states to cost her the presidency. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, “Registered voters who identified as Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans to stay home.” Is it possible that the Democratic nominee just did not excite her own party’s base enough to turn out the vote and that Trump excited his party’s base disproportionately?

Here’s a novel idea: Voters in the primaries should pick a candidate they truly like, whose policies they are excited about, whose ideas they feel will best help the nation. That strategy may be more likely to result in a Democratic nominee that excites the Democratic base and Democratic-leaning independents in a general election. It is past time to set aside the failed experiment of predicting electability and instead try what has been shown to work: voters leaving punditry to the pundits and behaving like voters instead.

U.S. Deficit Set to Top $1 Trillion Next Year

WASHINGTON—The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to more than $1 trillion in the next fiscal year under the first projections taking into account the big budget deal that President Donald Trump and Congress reached this summer, the Congressional Budget Office reported Wednesday.

The return of $1 trillion annual deficits comes despite Trump’s vow when running for office that he would not just balance the budget but pay down the entire national debt.

“The nation’s fiscal outlook is challenging,” said Phillip Swagel, director of the nonpartisan CBO. “Federal debt, which is already high by historical standards, is on an unsustainable course.”

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The office upped this year’s deficit projection by $63 billion and the cumulative deficit projection for the next decade by $809 billion. The higher deficit projections come even as the CBO reduced its estimate for interest rates, which lowers borrowing costs, and as it raised projections for economic growth in the near term.

The number crunchers at CBO projected that the deficit for the current fiscal year will come to $960 billion. In the next fiscal year, which begins Oct 1, it will exceed $1 trillion.

The CBO said the budget deal signed into law earlier this month, which took away the prospect of a government shutdown in October and the threat of deep automatic spending cuts, would boost deficits by $1.7 trillion over the coming decade. Increased spending on disaster relief and border security would add $255 billion. Downward revisions to the forecast for interest rates will help the picture, trimming $1.4 trillion.

Swagel said the federal debt will rise even higher after the coming decade because of the nation’s aging population and higher spending on health care.

To put the country on sustainable footing, Swagel said, lawmakers will have to increase taxes, cut spending or combine the two approaches.

The CBO projects that the economy will expand more slowly, from 2.3% this year to 1.8% on average in the next four years. The assumption reflects slower growth in consumer spending and government purchases, as well as the effect of trade policies on business investment.

It also projects the unemployment rate will remain close to its current level of 3.7% through the end of 2020 and then rises to 4.6% by the end of 2023.

The CBO’s estimate is the first to reflect the hard-won budget and debt deal signed into law earlier this month.

“The recent budget deal was a budget buster, and now we have further proof. Both parties took an already unsustainable situation and made it much worse,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the private Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

MacGuineas said lawmakers should ensure the legislation they enact is paid for and redouble efforts to control the growth in health care costs and restore the solvency of the Social Security program. Her organization is focused on educating the public on issues with significant fiscal policy impact.

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway pivoted to the president’s desire to fund the military and other programs when asked about the report.

“We’re always concerned about the deficit,” Conway said. “We also need to fund a lot of the projects and programs that are important to this country.”

Trump Administration Moves to End Limits on Child Detention

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is moving to end a long-standing federal agreement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept in detention. A court fight will almost certainly follow over the government’s desire to hold migrant families until their cases are decided.

The current court agreement now requires the government to keep children in the least restrictive setting and to release them as quickly as possible, generally after 20 days in detention.

Homeland Security officials say they are adopting their own regulations that reflect the court’s “Flores agreement,” which has been in effect since 1997, and there is no longer a need for court involvement, which was only meant to be temporary. But the new rules would allow the government to hold families in detention much longer than 20 days.

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It is the latest effort by the administration to tighten immigration, President Donald Trump’s signature issue, and is aimed at restricting the movement of asylum seekers in the country and deterring more migrants from crossing the border. The news immediately generated fresh outrage, following reports of dire conditions in detention facilities, and it is questionable whether courts will let the administration move forward with the policy.

Immigrant advocates decried the move and said prolonged detention would traumatize immigrant children.

“The government should not be jailing kids, and certainly shouldn’t be seeking to put more kids in jail for longer,” Madhuri Grewal, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

Peter Schey, a lawyer for the immigrant children in the Flores case and president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said if the regulations don’t match the settlement in that case, “they would be in immediate material breach, if not contempt of court.”

“I think all these things are now part of the 2020 campaign,” Schey said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday the regulations create higher standards to govern family detention facilities. The facilities will be regularly audited, and the audits made public.

The regulations are expected to be formally published Friday and go into effect in 60 days absent legal challenges.

They follow moves last week to broaden the definition of a “public charge” to include immigrants on public assistance, potentially denying green cards to more immigrants. There was also a recent effort to effectively end asylum altogether at the southern border.

The Flores agreement is a constant talking point by the president and his administration, which claims it is a loophole that encourages migrants to make a dangerous and potentially deadly journey to the U.S. The district judge overseeing the agreement has already refused government requests to increase the amount of time children can be detained, and advocates moved to block the regulations when the proposed rule was first announced last September.

There has been a drastic increase in the number of families crossing the border — about 475,000 so far this budget year, nearly three times the previous full-year record for families. Most are released into the U.S. while their asylum requests wind through the courts — a practice Trump has derided as “catch-and-release.”

The Flores agreement has been into effect since 1997 but mostly applied to children who came to the country alone. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Ghee ruled the requirements were applicable to children who crossed the border with families, after the Obama administration built family detention centers and started detaining families until their cases were completed.

Part of the issue was that children could not be kept in facilities that weren’t licensed, and no states license family detention centers. Homeland Security officials say by adopting the standards for education, healthy food and cleanliness used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detains adult immigrants, they are satisfying requirements in lieu of state licensing requirements.

Homeland Security did not say how long it expects families to be kept, but McAleenan said under the previous administration it was about 50 days.

McAleenan said there was “no intent to hold families for a long period of time. The intent is for a fair and expeditious proceeding.”

Asylum cases involving detained families move much more quickly than cases for families released, taking months instead of years to resolve, in part because there are none of the delays that result when immigrants fail to show up for hearings.

The government operates three family detention centers that can hold a total of about 3,000 people. One is being used for single adults, and the other two are at capacity.

McAleenan said he didn’t expect to need more bed space because, together with other efforts to restrict the flow of migrants, he expects fewer people to be coming.

The massive influx of Central American families to the U.S.-Mexico border has vastly strained the system and foiled Trump’s tough talk on immigration, though agreements by Mexico to clamp down on migrants heading north and a new agreement with Guatemala forcing migrants to claim asylum there instead of heading north are expected to reduce the flow.

Trump administration officials have also forced more than 30,000 people to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico. It’s not clear how this change would affect that policy.

The Flores agreement governs more than just how long children can be held in detention, it sets standards of care for children who cross the border alone as well as with families. And lawyers in the case recently spoke out about what they said were deplorable, filthy conditions for children held at border facilities not meant to hold large groups of people for very long.

A report this week by the independent monitor overseeing claims of government noncompliance with Flores rules detailed the extreme overcrowding and poor conditions that immigrant youths faced in detention.

For example, a Border Patrol station in in Clint, Texas, an El Paso suburb, had a stated capacity for 105 children. On June 1, there were 676. Lawyers who visited in June described squalid conditions. Children cared for toddlers, the lawyers said, with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

At a detention center in McAllen, Texas, there were nearly 1,800 juveniles when the entire capacity for both juveniles and adults was 1,500.

The monitor in the Flores settlement visited some facilities, finding that they were as cold as 66 degrees Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius), and “even participants in the inspection and dressed in business clothes often found the temperature uncomfortably cool.”

A federal appeals panel found last week that detained children should get edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste under the agreement, after a bid to limit what must be provided.

Flores surfaced again in the spring of 2018, when the Trump administration adopted a policy of prosecuting anyone caught crossing illegally. More than 2,900 children were separated from their parents as a result and sent to prison.

Trump eventually backed down and stopped the separation of families. A federal judge ruled children could not be separated from their parents, so immigration officials can’t send adults to immigration detention without their children, and can’t hold families longer than 20 days, which McAleenan and others have said is giving smugglers an opportunity to sell trips north.

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Amy Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California. AP Writer Astrid Galvan in Phoenix contributed.

Democrats Are Waging a Covert War on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Democratic Party establishment wants you to know that they’re not afraid of primary challenges from the Justice Democrats—a progressive political action committee that runs progressive candidates who reject campaign funding from the ultra-rich and corporations. But when the establishment Democrats tell you they aren’t afraid, they often aren’t brave enough to let reporters quote them by name.

These anonymous sources are rarely as insulting as the one quoted by Fox News’ Brooke Singman: “No one is afraid of those [Justice Democrat] nerds. They don’t have the ability to primary anyone.” But as FAIR contributor Adam Johnson and Justice Democrats communications director Waleed Shahid observed, other anonymous sources are not very different in content, because corporate media are generally granting anonymity to sources in the Democratic establishment looking to run opposition talking points against progressive lawmakers and organizations.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Sums Up the Failures of the Democratic Party



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For example, The Hill (7/11/19) carried an anonymous response to Saikat Chakrabarti, then Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, after he tweeted that centrists in the Blue Dog and New Democrat caucuses were “the new Southern Democrats” because they voted to fund Trump’s border concentration camps: “You can be someone who does not personally harbor ill will towards a race, but through your actions still enable a racist system,” Chakrabarti said. A Hill source identified as “a senior Democratic aide associated with the Blue Dog Coalition” retorted:

Let’s not forget the fact that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff called a group of members racist. This is a group of members led by an immigrant woman of color, and this group includes several other people of color, including two black men who actually experienced the segregated South.

Why grant anonymity to a partisan source making an inaccurate attack—unless giving cover for a non-returnable attack on a progressive political figure was the point?

An anonymous source in The Hill (7/12/19) charges that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a “puppet” of “elitist white liberals”—a conspiracy theory with troubling historical echoes.

Another anonymous source in The Hill(7/12/19) branded Ocasio-Cortez as “a puppet” of “elitist white liberals,” in a report on Justice Democrats’ plans to primary incumbent Democrats belonging to the Congressional Black Caucus:

She’s only a woman of color when it’s convenient. None of the things she’s fought for aligned with communities of color and her group is funded only by elitist white liberals; she’s a puppet.

The nameless aide went on to say, “It’s offensive that these elitist white liberals feel like they can undermine the foundation of our party.”

To be fair, The Hill also included an anonymous source from the Justice Democrats,  briefly denying these allegations as “absurd and more about protecting incumbency over democracy.”

The Hill didn’t offer any justification for including these statements without attribution. It also didn’t question the assertion that  “elitist white liberals” were the puppetmasters of Justice Democrats, an organization whose goals include getting “everyday, working people into Congress”—like former bartender Ocasio-Cortez, who does, in fact, regularly advocate for communities of color.

Libby Watson at Splinter News (7/12/19) articulated the problem with corporate media’s slanted use of anonymous sources by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party:

There is a big difference between political journalism that explains and contextualizes internal battles going on in the Democratic Party and Hill gossip pieces that make the media its battleground to wage those internal battles. When congressional aides give you a quote, they’re probably using you to advance their boss’ or their own interests. That’s what they’re paid to do, and it’s unavoidable. But sometimes there’s other value in printing what they’re saying; other times, like this one, it does nothing but advance their agenda.

Further demonstrating Watson’s point, The Hill (1/29/19) quoted a “Democratic lawmaker, who requested anonymity,” about their desire to see Ocasio-Cortez primaried out of her seat, because other politicians have been waiting their turn longer:

What I have recommended to the New York delegation is that you find her a primary opponent and make her a one-term congressperson…. You’ve got numerous council people and state legislators who’ve been waiting 20 years for that seat. I’m sure they can find numerous people who want that seat in that district.

The Daily News (7/12/19) gives a source anonymity to make the claim that unlike Ocasio-Cortez, CBC members “don’t have the financial ability to say, ‘I don’t want that money.’”

The New York Daily News (7/12/19) featured “a Democratic leadership source, who only spoke on condition of anonymity,” making the curious argument that it’s “elitist” to criticize black lawmakers from poor districts for accepting corporate campaign contributions:

“Justice Democrats in general are trust fund kids who are funding this with their parents’ money,” the source said, blasting the progressive group as “elitist” for criticizing black lawmakers from poor districts who take corporate donations. “It’s offensive for CBC members when these elites are looking down on them when they don’t have the financial ability to say, ‘I don’t want that money.’”

The nameless “leader” accused Justice Democrats and Ocasio-Cortez of “getting some of their own medicine”:

“They have attacked, attacked, attacked and attacked. For the first time, they were attacked back and now they claim to be the victim,” the source said…. “Ocasio-Cortez kind of operates like Trump. She’s hellbent on sowing discord and spreading chaos, but if you look at it, it always traces back to one person: her.”

Again, the paper offers no justification for concealing the identity of an official source making unsubstantiated personal attacks against an ideological rival.

Axios (7/14/19) took the unusual step of granting anonymity to a poll, revealing neither who conducted the survey nor who (selectively) revealed its findings—other than “top Democrats.” Writer Mike Allen wrote that the polling group’s name was withheld “because the group has to work with all parts of the party.”

The poll reported by Axios (7/14/19) was “exclusive”—because nobody besides Axios knew who conducted it.

The poll surveyed “likely general-election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education,” described as voters who “are needed by Democrats in swing House districts.” Asking about perceptions of Justice Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, it ostensibly found that their name recognition was much higher than their favorability ratings—and also that “capitalism” was viewed more favorably than “socialism” among these voters.

HuffPost reporter Ariel Edwards-Levy (7/15/19) pointed out that all sorts of critical information was missing from the account of this anonymous poll:

Readers have no way of knowing who commissioned the poll, who conducted it, how they identified the voters they surveyed, what methodology they used to interview them or what exactly respondents were asked. That makes it basically impossible to evaluate the survey in any meaningful way.

There are a few additional hazy details in the Axios story. The headline implies that its findings reflect “swing states,” but the article doesn’t make it clear whether the poll was conducted nationally or only in battleground states. And although the article provides exact percentages on how few of the voters polled viewed Ocasio-Cortez and Omar favorably, it doesn’t include numbers on how many viewed them outright unfavorably, rather than having no opinion.

The report did, however, feature an anonymous source—a “top Democrat who is involved in 2020 congressional races”—who provided negative spin on Ocasio-Cortez and the news media attention she receives: “If all voters hear about is AOC, it could put the [House] majority at risk…. She’s getting all the news and defining everyone else’s races.”

FAIR (Extra!, 11/11; FAIR.org, 3/29/16) has long found that corporate media routinely violate their own stated guidelines for their use of anonymity, which are generally supposed to bar reporters from concealing the names of sources making personal or partisan attacks. In coverage of the Democrats’ intra-party disputes, anonymity is constantly allowed to provide cover for such attacks—whose targets just happen to be the progressive politicians whom corporate journalists themselves frequently express disdain for (FAIR.org, 8/31/18, 1/23/19).

When the perspective of anonymous sources consistently leans in one direction, it’s an sure indication of news outlets’ political slant. In this case, it’s a bias in favor of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, which is utilizing its coziness with corporate media to wage a covert war on the progressive wing.

The Fascist Premise Behind Trump’s Attacks on Jewish Democrats

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment. 

Donald Trump on Tuesday attacked American Jews who vote for the Democratic Party (as 70%-80% of them do) as demonstrating “a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

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What Trump meant has been widely debated and, in my view, misinterpreted. He wasn’t bringing up dual loyalty or accusing Jewish Democrats of being unpatriotic Americans. As Debra Sushan rightly observed, he was accusing Jewish American Democrats of being disloyal to Israel. He was simply stating the position of far right-wing Israeli parties, such as the ruling Likud of PM Binyamin Netanyahu.

When you look at the context, it’s pretty clear Trump is accusing American Jews of being insufficiently loyal TO ISRAEL. So not only is he accusing us of dual loyalty…he’s saying that most of us aren’t very good at it. Glad you’re cool w/ that, RJC. https://t.co/1Z2Avx0ejd https://t.co/nOY3XWv9Mp

— Debra Shushan

Trump’s Policies Are Destroying Rural America

New coal standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are threatening to permanently undermine the federal government’s power to control power plant pollution.

The new rule — which would empower states to decide how much they want to reduce their emissions, if at all — will be devastating for all Americans. Especially vulnerable are people of color and rural populations.

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Several states — California, Washington, and Iowa to name a few — have already challenged the new rule. But if the Supreme Court upholds the administration’s proposal, the federal government would be left with a greatly limited role in enforcing emission standards — a key tool in the fight against pollution and global warming.

This proposal is another attempt to protect the antiquated coal industry over the lives of vulnerable citizens.

The coal industry has been in sharp decline for decades as alternative energy sources such as natural gas and renewable energy have come onto the market — sources of energy that are much cheaper.

Even so, the Trump administration’s attempts to make coal more competitive have been largely symbolic. Initiatives like repealing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and attempts to cut the EPA’s budget do little to actually make coal attractive to investors.

However, even if the Trump administration’s proposal will do little to actually re-energize the coal industry, it will still have serious ramifications. The new EPA standard won’t cause states to use more coal, but it won’t encourage them to use renewable energy either. Transitioning to more sustainable energy sources is key to combat the worsening crisis of climate change.

Ultimately, the consequences of this proposal will disproportionately impact people of color, especially in conservative states.

Many of the states supporting this initiative — especially those in the former Confederacy — have some of the highest concentrations of black and brown people in the country. Statistically, the effects of  and pollution from non-renewable power sources disproportionately hurt people of color.

But predominantly white rural communities are also at huge risk.

For one thing, many rural communities rely on the outdoors for recreation and as a major source of income, solidifying their stake in all kinds of conservation.

For another, like many communities of color, rural areas often lack the resources to adapt to the worst effects of climate change. While rich folks can buy land away from rising sea levels and afford to live in areas with clean air, rural folk and other vulnerable people are forced to live with their increasingly polluted environments. 

While Trump tries to manipulate his supporters by pretending to revive the coal industry, real lives are at stake as global warming becomes more urgent. A shift to renewable energy — and ending America’s dependence on coal and natural gas — is key to reducing U.S. emissions and pollution.

While individual actions like recycling and riding a bike to work might coax people into thinking they’re saving the planet, much larger and more systemic shifts are key.

Policy makers should no longer get the luxury of pandering to conservative voters with lies about bringing coal back. Our planet is dying. People are dying. Anything short of an aggressive stance on climate change — the literal opposite of this EPA proposal — is nothing short of deadly.

Trump Cancels Denmark Visit Because Greenland Isn’t for Sale

WASHINGTON—Two days after he said buying Greenland wasn’t a top priority, President Donald Trump canceled an upcoming trip to Denmark, which owns the mostly frozen island, after its prime minister dismissed the idea.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had called Trump’s musing about buying the Danish territory “an absurd discussion” after the former real estate mogul-turned-president began to talk up the idea.

Trump said Sunday that he was interested in such a deal for strategic purposes, but said a purchase was not a priority at this time. “It’s not No. 1 on the burner,” he told reporters.

Trump even joked about his proposal as it came in for ridicule, tweeting a doctored photo of a glistening Trump skyscraper looming over a small village in the Arctic territory.

“I promise not to do this to Greenland,” he joked Monday.

But on Tuesday, Trump abruptly canceled the visit, also by tweet.

Just a few hours earlier, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark tweeted that it was “ready for the POTUS @realDonaldTrump visit!” using an acronym for “President of the United States” along with Trump’s Twitter handle.

Trump wrote: “Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time.”

He added: “The Prime Minister was able to save a great deal of expense and effort for both the United States and Denmark by being so direct. I thank her for that and look forward to rescheduling sometime in the future!”

White House spokesman Judd Deere said later that the visit to Denmark has been canceled.

The White House announced in late July that Trump had accepted an invitation to visit Denmark’s Queen Margrethe and participate in a series of meetings, including with Frederiksen and business leaders.

The trip, set to begin at the end of August, includes a stop in Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II.

Trump is expected to go ahead with the Warsaw visit.

Asked about Greenland on Sunday as he prepared to return to Washington after a vacation week at his central New Jersey home, Trump said “strategically … it would be nice” to own the island.

He also suggested he might not visit Denmark at all, saying he didn’t think the previously announced trip had been “absolutely set in stone yet.”

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

China Bests U.S. on the Factory Floor in Obamas’ Netflix Debut

The Obamas’ first Netflix release, “American Factory,” available beginning Wednesday on the streaming service and in select theaters, arrives at a time when most concede Chinese economic hegemony will eventually usurp that of the U.S.

The subject of the film, which won the best director award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, is a former General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio, purchased and refitted by the Chinese company Fuyao Glass, one of the largest auto glassmakers in the world.

“There are two crisscrossing entities: One is the rise and stability of middle-income wealth in China and the decline of the very same thing in the Midwest” United States, said co-director , who again teams with longtime partner, . Their work includes the 2008 Oscar nominee “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” an HBO short that documents the closing of the factory that is now reopened and the subject of their latest film.

“American Factory” is the first film by Higher Ground, the production entity formed by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, who met with the filmmakers.

“I think they’re great believers in the importance of storytelling, and they’re great believers in telling the story of everyday Americans,” Reichert said. “They’re both from humble beginnings and so are we. So, the perspective we bring as working-class people, they appreciated that.”

Bognar and Reichert have lived in Dayton for decades and can recall when a blue-collar middle class thrived there. Under GM, factory workers were earning $29 to $32 per hour. “But that’s gone now. And Fuyao, at $14 per hour, that’s still one of the best jobs you can get in Dayton,” said Reichert, as wages have lagged behind cost-of-living increases for decades.

The movie begins at the opening of the Fuyao Glass factory in 2015. Goodwill abounds though it is slow going at first, as many of the workers have to learn the delicate technique behind glassmaking to often shattering effect and both Chinese and American employees must navigate language and cultural differences. On off days, some go fishing together, and others share a Thanksgiving meal.

As the factory falls behind on its quota, company founder and Chairman Cao Dewang arrives from China to get a firsthand look at the operation. The son of a successful salesman who was sent down during the Cultural Revolution, Cao was raised mostly in poverty, selling cigarettes as a child. But after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, Cao took advantage of the country’s new open policies and became a successful entrepreneur; today he has factories in 15 countries.

At the Dayton factory, cracks begin to emerge between Chinese and American workers and, in a meeting of Chinese employees only, bosses assure staff that in dealing with Americans, “Donkeys like being petted in the direction of their coat.” Later we are told the reason the newly trained American workers can’t perform as quickly as their experienced Chinese counterparts is because “they are slow. They have fat fingers.”

Co-director Reichert said she “couldn’t cite something more specific” about the level of racism at play. “There was nationalism, definitely, and that rallied the workers to work harder and put in more hours. We experience nationalism here, too. It keeps working people apart—‘The American workers aren’t as good, these Chinese workers are kind of weird’—you appeal to nationalism on both sides.”

As a way to improve matters, American workers are invited to the Fuyao factory in Fujian, China—an example of what is expected from those in Dayton. In addition to touring the plant, the U.S. workers are treated to a bizarre performance as Chinese factory employees sing songs written by their boss Cao, as well as a group wedding of younger workers. In a conversation with his American counterpart, one Chinese supervisor scoffs, “Only eight hours a day, that’s an easy life.” The workers in China, we’re told, work 12-hour days with two days off per month.

Chinese factories usually turn a profit in their first year and with the Dayton factory falling short, heads begin to roll, starting with top brass like Vice President Dave Burrows. According to the filmmakers, turnover has been close to 6,000 to date at the factory in its five years of operation.

“People are fired not just for being pro union, but because management feels they’re not doing a good enough job and they’re not working fast enough,” Bognar said. “There were periods where people were getting fired every day and they were hiring a lot of people.”

A significant portion of the movie covers an effort to unionize the factory, a move Cao vehemently opposes. In response, management hires a union avoidance consultant, which sets up mandatory anti-union lectures for employees.

“Chinese management had to be taught how to fight the union; that was not something they brought over here,” said Reichert about union busters. “They intimidate people, confuse people. There were a lot of firings of people who showed activism for the union. That is illegal. That kind of thing also happens in American factories. I hope it doesn’t come across as the Chinese trying to keep the workers down. They learned that from the Americans.”

Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor announced nearly $725,000 in OSHA penalties against Fuyao. “Everyone says they believe in safety, but safe doesn’t pay the bills,” says company safety manager John Crane, who later resigns in the film. In December 2017, an employee was crushed to death after cutting an attached strap from a pallet of glass sheets that weighed nearly 2,000 pounds.

“The Chinese management folks weren’t really that aware of U.S. labor laws or OSHA or EPA,” Reichert said. “In China, one of the skills of being a great manager, or owner, is getting around laws like this. And by the way, that’s true here. A lot of big companies accept OSHA fines because they really aren’t that much.

In “American Factory,” we learn the Fuyao plant in Dayton has been turning a profit since last year. But in the film’s final scenes, we see Cao touring the factory floor, reviewing new equipment, automation that will relieve the stress of repetitive motion and, in some cases, workers of their jobs. A recent Brookings Institution study showed that 25% of U.S. jobs will soon succumb to automation.

“The working class of America needs to be at the table, and that would be through their spokespeople,” Reichert said. “They should be at the table with the owners and the government.”