Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 103

From certain war to uncertain peace: Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement turns 20

AP

In 1988, one of Northern Ireland’s most divisive Protestant politicians rose to his feet and shouted at Pope John Paul II, who was addressing the European Parliament, “I denounce you as the Antichrist!”

Perhaps nothing could have more vividly symbolized the bitterness and hopelessness of the Northern Ireland conflict. A few years later, as I began my academic career studying British and Irish history, possibilities for ending the violent conflict between Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland seemed remote.

One decade later, on April 10, 1998, the Irish and British governments and the major political parties in Northern Ireland signed a breakthrough accord. Known as the Good Friday Agreement, or the Belfast Agreement, it set forth a framework for sharing power among the opposing political parties in Northern Ireland. Two years of grueling negotiations, chaired by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, appeared to put an end to a violent 30-year period known as “The Troubles.”

As the agreement turns 20, however, the future of Northern Ireland remains unclear. Several decades of certain violence, in which 3,500 were killed, have been replaced by an uncertain peace.

Northern Ireland’s government has collapsed, leaving governing power to the British Parliament at Westminster. Meanwhile, Britain’s pending departure from the European Union — known as Brexit — threatens to re-establish a formal border between Northern Ireland and its neighbor to the south, the Republic of Ireland. This could hamper the economic interactions and symbolic partnership that open borders have provided.

From partition to Troubles

The island of Ireland, situated off the west coast of the larger island of Great Britain, came under direct British rule in 1800. At that time, the Irish Parliament was dissolved and a newly formed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland governed from England.

Politics in the 19th century were unsettled, however. Ireland’s indigenous, mostly Catholic population had few political and civil rights compared to Protestant elites, many of whom were British or of British descent.

Irish nationalists of varying stripes, who opposed British rule and Protestant domination, formed political movements aimed at obtaining independence from Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1919, an Irish war for independence was underway.

By the end of the war in 1921, nationalists had won at least a partial victory: An Irish Free State was created with 26 counties — the forerunner of the current Republic of Ireland.

However, six of the most heavily Protestant counties in the northeast of Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom. These counties are what are known as Northern Ireland, geographically part of the island, but politically still united with Britain after the war.

The island was divided, and crucially, so was the society within Northern Ireland. Unionists or loyalists — those who wish to remain a part of the U.K. — are mostly Protestant and tend to identify as British. Nationalists or republicans, those who wish to see a fully united Ireland independent of British rule, are mostly Catholics who identify as Irish. Northern Ireland became divided between a Protestant and unionist majority, and a significant Catholic and nationalist minority.

“The Troubles” began in the late 1960s. A Catholic civil rights campaign sought to end discrimination by the Protestant-dominated government and police forces in Northern Ireland. Clashes between police and protesters led to charges of police brutality and eventually to further violence between the two communities.

Escalating violence led to the deployment of British troops, making many Catholics feel further alienated as the conflict worsened. Over the next 30 years, the people of Northern Ireland suffered through a sporadic but persistent war waged by nationalist and unionist paramilitary forces — armed groups that carried out assassinations, bombings and intimidation.

Given the prevalence of violence and seemingly irreconcilable political goals of unionists and nationalists, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was a major diplomatic achievement. The willingness of formerly sworn enemies to engage in negotiations paid major dividends: in 1972, the deadliest year of the Troubles, 479 people were killed.

In the 10 years following the Agreement, an average of eight people died per year in the conflict. In 2008, there were none.

Uncertainty: Brexit and beyond

The agreement’s 20th anniversary comes amid major questions about the future. Northern Ireland’s government has operated intermittently, and is currently suspended. Divisions between nationalists and unionists have been exacerbated by sharp differences over the U.K.‘s decision to leave the EU.

The decision has created questions about the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland, an enthusiastic member of the EU. Because Northern Ireland is part of the U.K., it will leave the EU too.

Border negotiations are underway, but many people living near the border fear that restoring it could undermine years of progress.

The nature of the Brexit vote also seems reason for some concern. Religious identity proved to be a stronger predictor of Brexit votes in Northern Ireland than class: 85 percent of Catholics voted to remain, compared to only 40 percent of Protestants. A majority of working-class English and Northern Irish Protestant voters chose leave, while a majority of working-class Northern Irish Catholics voted to remain.

The U.K.’s departure from the European Union appears to give Catholics and nationalists renewed incentive to favor unification with the Republic, rather than working toward a functional, regionally self-governing Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

At the same time, there are reasons to be optimistic. The Good Friday Agreement brought an impressive measure of peace to Northern Ireland and offered a democratic future. But on this anniversary, as the agreement on peace remains tenuous, I believe Northern Ireland’s present and future both deserve attention from politicians in Westminster and Dublin.

John W. Mackey, Chair and Senior Lecturer, Social Sciences, Boston University

Comey and Stormy: TV bookends to a pair of character studies

ABC

Someday, likely sooner rather than later, some actor of note will be called upon to play former FBI Director James Comey. Another will win the part of Stormy Daniels. The producers will obsess over how closely costume and make-up (and in Comey’s case, maybe a bit of forced perspective visual trickery, given his 6’8” height) capture their appearance. The talent will contort themselves in an effort to become these people, copying their speech patterns and distinguishing inflections, as well as how they move, to show us what these traits indicate about who they really are.

Those details are important, but they are not the main point. What matters as the stories of Comey and Daniels unfold will and should be how well, exactly, their central intent comes across. In the future that will be up to screenwriters. Right now that saga is being written by broadcast news departments in a way that feels like we’re watching the outline of some surreal, anxiety provoking miniseries.

Comey seems to get that, and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos was keen to play along with that script in Sunday night’s hour-long conversation.

For if his story is going to be scripted someday — an inevitability, given the existing frenzy over his book “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership” — he wants to make it plain that he’s not the bad guy, or the clear hero. Instead, as he told Stephanopoulos, this is his effort to be seen as “a deeply flawed human surrounded by other flawed humans trying to make decisions with an eye, not on politics, but on those higher values.”

He also admits that his stubborn devotion to those values cost him more than his job. Liberals blame him for tilting the election in Donald Trump’s favor by announcing his reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server usage in the last days of October 2016. Conservatives blame him for his role in the ongoing investigation into Trump’s campaign and possible collusion with Russia.

Stephanopoulos asks, “What did it feel like to be James Comey in the last ten days of that campaign after you sent the letter?”

“It sucked,” Comey responds. “I walked around vaguely sick to my stomach, feeling beaten down . . . I felt like I was totally alone, that everybody hated me.”

Let’s be clear: Referring to the flaming circus that passes for our national politics as the season or series finale of America was funny, in a gallows humor kind of way, the day after the election. Nowadays it’s a hack move worthy of a lazy tweet that would barely garner a snort. So, too, is likening Donald Trump’s disastrous administration to “the greatest reality show ever.” Not even “Fear Factor” resulted in the loss of civilian lives in countries far away, or American citizens serving in the military, or the poorest people in our own cities simply trying stay alive.

However, we are in a midst of a crisis of national identity, and politics, that is defined and being steered by television. The medium has always played its part, mind you. For example, we accept as inevitable that our best known political figures will one day be dramatized. Every presidential administration holds within it the possibility of tens of feature films and miniseries, bursting with real life characters and impactful incidents waiting to be recreated in a screenplay.

In the majority of these characterizations the president is the imperfect sun around which historic legislation orbit or scheming antagonists flail against, or he’s a tangential figure to a story about a key person or people of significance in a defining chapter in our time; think Jeff Daniels playing late FBI agent John O’Neill in Hulu’s “The Looming Tower,” for example.

Rarely, if ever, have we encountered a president like Trump, who is so dedicated to creating his own version of reality as to become a flesh and blood version of a fictionalized entertainment figure. Only in his story, he’s the conquering hero, the stable genius, the best president ever, and anyone speaking against that script is a fake, a villain and a fraud. The media grants our ineloquent commander-in-chief so much airtime that anyone within his circle, or range of fire, gains some version of celebrity status. Or as Comey might refer to it, a “stain.”

Presently the punditocracy and a number of politicians cannot decide if Comey is a hero or a liar. But we already know how to categorize Daniels — a writer, director and actor in the adult film industry who is frequently summed up in any report that mentions her affair with Trump as a porn star.

Photos tend to feature her busting out of low-cut dresses and flashing an artificial smile, an image contradicted by the woman we saw on that “60 Minutes” telecast and in other mainstream media appearances. Her button-down shirt and clipped description of her encounters with Trump, and her refusal to play the part of victim, are evidence of her media savvy. Daniels wants to be more than merely an adult entertainment fixture.

She’s also a businesswoman, though, which is why she gave Cooper and the “60 Minutes” audience what they presumably came to see, a blow-by-blow account of sexual relations with the sitting president and reality star.

Along the way she also indicated that she may have been threatened with physical harm on top of receiving a $130,000 payment to purchase her silence. Funds, by the way, that could be interpreted legally as an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign, pairing a possible election law violation (if it's found that the payment was meant to preserve Trump’s viability as a candidate) with possible obstruction of justice.

And that is the thrust of why her story is important — not her ability to describe the president’s privates, or anything having to do with their single encounter. It’s the legal implications of everything that came afterward.

ABC’s Comey interview contained its own fleeting moments of salaciousness, although as a piece of journalism the special was a by-the-numbers enterprise, a standard profile of a subject whose main interest is as a witness to and casualty of an outrageous presidency. By reflecting the book’s narrative thread without much close critical scrutiny or rebuttal, it followed the standard prime-time hour format, pulling less than an hour’s worth of juicy bits out of a five-hour interview.

ABC made the full transcript available online, but the choicest cuts of meat already exist in headlines.

Could the meeting he testified to have had with Trump, in which he alleges the president asked him to drop his investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, be evidence of obstruction of justice? Possibly.

Does he feel Trump is unfit to hold the office of the President. Yes, Comey says, officially joining a very long list of people who share that opinion — but not for psychological or medical reasons. “I think he's morally unfit to be president,” he tells Stephanopoulos.

Does he think that the Steele dossier, the primary source of allegations about the video of Russian prostitutes urinating on a hotel bed, is legitimate?

“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey said. “It's possible, but I don't know.”

These tidbits are sandwiched in between standard profile material painting Comey as a man who paid the price of holding fast to impartiality. For example, his wife supported Hillary Clinton, he says, and she and their daughters took part in the post-inauguration women’s march. But he did not vote.

Early on, Stephanopoulos and Comey take viewers to his humble childhood home in Allendale, New Jersey. There, we see childhood photos of Comey in the 1960s. His upbringing was a version of the American ideal: he had loving, involved parents; his dad was always present; his mother cut his hair, albeit badly, he jokes.

Then his personal history takes a defining turn when he talks about a home invasion involving an armed intruder that broke in and terrified Comey, then 16 years old, and his younger brother.

“It gave me a tremendous sense of urgency and the preciousness of life,” he said. “It also gave me great, great empathy for the victims of crime.”

Combining these details made Comey look like a quiet, polite giant of a man placed in a terrible situation. A guy who cringed at Trump’s brazen display of gratitude after the election, seen in that famous clip of him grinning awkwardly as he crossed the room. As that clip ran Comey, in voiceover, described his internal horror at that moment, remembering how he attempted to disappear into the blue curtains of the room and characterizing that odd half-smile as his horrified, “oh shit” expression.

Once a person cools down from an initial and perhaps feverish viewing of Comey's interview, you may notice that he doesn’t tell Stephanopoulos much that he hasn’t stated on record, and few of the viewpoints he shared weren’t unexpected.

His comparison to Trump’s behavior to that of mob bosses he helped bring to justice must have tugged many an eyebrow closer to many a hairline, I’ll give you that. But honestly Trump has been up front about his casual brutishness since the moment he descended that escalator to declare his candidacy.

No, the aspect of Comey’s character profile he’s trying hardest to burnish is his image of a man representing an agency caught in the middle of ideologically-driven power brokers angling for dominance. He wants people to understand the sanctity of what the F.B.I. represents.

Illuminating though it was to hear his side of finding out about his firing via cable news headlines, the part that best served that narrative is his refusal to apologize for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. This allowed Stephanopoulos to kind of, sort of, gently poke holes in the righteousness of his side of the story.

“Boy, you seem to be alone in that judgment,” Stephanopoulos says in response to his defense of the investigation. “You look at previous attorney generals for President Bush, for President Ford, for President Obama, Justice Department officials for President Clinton; they all disagree with you. They say this crossed a line.”

Comey says, “Yeah, I've heard a lot of that. And in fact, all that was put together allegedly to be the reason for my firing. What I would hope is that they would, by reading the book, come with me to October 28th. Come with me, and sit there with me . . . and tell me then what you would do.”

Asked if he questions that action, now that knows it resulted in Trump's election, Comey replies, "not for a moment, because down that path lies the death of the F.B.I. as an independent force in American life. If I ever start considering whose political fortunes will be affected by a decision, we're done. We're no longer that group in America that is apart from the partisans, and that can be trusted. We're just another player in the tribal battle."

ABC’s Comey interview represents a significant score for its news department, putting it ahead of stiff competition with other news agencies angling for a piece of Comey’s media tour to support his book.

But it didn’t come close to matching the overnight viewership for the March 25 “60 Minutes” conversation between Daniels and correspondent Anderson Cooper; that interview drew 22 million, while the ABC News sit-down attracted just shy of 10 million live viewers according to Nielsen.

Nevertheless, ABC intends to wring everything it can get out of this moment. Comey’s stop at “The View” is scheduled for Wednesday. And on Tuesday, the hosts get their first crack at Daniels live and in front of a daytime TV audience.

How the women of “The View” contend with Daniels versus their talk with Comey should make for riveting television in itself, because the public’s estimation (in addition to Whoopi Goldberg’s, Meghan McCain’s and Joy Behar’s) of what each represents is quite different even if they are part of the same odd chapter.

Comey’s tale, at least, has a poetry that Daniels’ lacks. A stand-out moment in that ABC interview seemed made for a prestige cable feature: Stephanopoulos asks Comey what he did on his plane ride returning to the East Coast from California after he found out he’d been fired. He replies, “I drank red wine from a paper coffee cup, and just looked out at the lights of the country I love so much as we flew home.”

Danny Strong would do a tremendous job with that scene.

2018 Pulitzer Prizes: The #MeToo movement was front and center

AP/Chris Pizzello

The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday at Columbia University in New York, and in three separate cases, reporting on the #MeToo movement was honored.

The New York Times and the New Yorker were awarded a joint prize for public service for their bombshell exposés of Harvey Weinstein. It was this impactful journalism – and the brave women whose stories were told – that ended the career of the powerful Hollywood mogul and opened the floodgates of the #MeToo movement inside Hollywood and beyond. Poynter recognized the outlets "for their coverage of the sexual abuse of women in Hollywood and other industries around the world."

The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for its investigation uncovering then Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore's history of alleged sexual misconduct with teenage girls. Moore would go on to loose Alabama's special election to Doug Jones – the first time in nearly three decades that the state elected a Democratic candidate to the U.S. Senate.

All three of these exposés — Ronan Farrow for the New Yorker; Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for the Times; and Stephanie McCrummen, Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites for the Post — substantially shifted the conversation around sexual harassment and assault in America. Importantly, this journalism was the combination of rigorous and vigilant fact-checking with the proper care and credence for alleged sexual misconduct victims and trauma survivors.

In addition, John Archibald of Alabama Media Group was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary, in which many of his articles took aim at Moore and what he saw as hypocrisy in his home state. "What is at question here is no longer just the weird wonder of whether Moore, in his 30s, had a thing for teenaged girls. It's not a question of whether it is inappropriate for a 30-year-old prosecutor to hit on 16 and 17-year olds. It's not enough to quibble about age and intent and the nature of the Etowah County dating scene in the 1970s," Archibald wrote. "It's a question of right. And wrong. And decency."

"Moore's campaign issued a pre-emptive strike calling the accusations a political witch hunt. And that will resonate with some," he continued. "But the evidence is growing that this is not simply about politics or timing. It's about abuse of power and sexual assault of a child. So pick a side. And not just a party."

Sexual harassment remains pervasive and silencing, especially for low-income women and women of color, and there is much work to be done before the abuse of power is upended in the workplace or society at large. But it is clear that, in many ways, the tenor of the conversation has changed, which historically precedes a cultural shift.

But these Pulitzer Prize wins are also a triumph for the survivors who put their careers and lives on the line to tell their stories, who refused to accept the status quo that prefers silence to justice, whose stories ricocheted through industry after industry and ignited a movement.

 

Why Democrats shouldn’t worry about the 2018 polls — just yet

Getty/Kena Betancur

A new poll reveals that Republicans are improving in their chances against Democrats on generic ballots for the 2018 midterm elections — although that, in its own right, may not be cause for alarm.

Forty-seven percent of registered voters say they prefer the Democratic candidate in their district, while only 43 percent say they prefer the Republican candidate, according to a poll by Washington Post-ABC News. It's a considerable drop from where Democrats stood on the generic ballot in January. While there is only a 4-point difference between the two parties in April, there was a 12-point difference in January. Much of the change seems to be attributable to a slight improvement in Trump's approval rating (40 percent in April from 36 percent in January) and an improvement in Republican fortunes among white voters (the margin increased from five points in January to 14 points in April).

But, according to poll-watching experts, it seems to be too early to really worry for Democrats.

"[The results] weren't that different than Quinnipiac, but they were different than the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. So pick your poll, as usual," Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, told Salon. "And my reaction is, it's April."

Sabato pointed to the wildly inconsistent poll results about the 2018 midterms, with some polls finding that Democrats and Republicans had roughly equal enthusiasm and others saying that Democrats had a major edge over the GOP in that department.

"So which one are we to believe? And the answer is neither. It's April!" Sabato told Salon.

He added, "We've got an idea that Democrats probably have more enthusiasm. I subscribe to that. But what I don't know, and what no one can know, is whether that intensity and enthusiasm will last until November. All kinds of things happen. I've studied the history of elections and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the build-up of the Persian Gulf War for George H. W. Bush in 1990 and the lingering effects of 9/11. They all took midterms that might have cut substantially against the incumbent party and turned them into essentially a wash. You know, Bush Jr. gained a few, Bush Sr. lost a few, Kennedy lost a few, but essentially it was a status quo election."

, Vice President of Communications for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, also downplayed taking generic poll results too seriously this early.

"I think polls like that are going to bump up and down over the course of the months between now and November, but we don't really feel like this measure is particularly meaningful," Griffis told Salon. "If you look at May in 2010, about six months before Republicans won more than sixty seats, that same poll was tied 44-44."

He added, "I think we're primarily looking at two measures. The one is just most recent performance in elections, and if you look at a series of elections since Donald Trump, you see Democrats over-performing and progressives over-performing their historic performance. That's true whether you look at a race like Ralph Northam's race in Virginia [for governor], which was supposed to be tight but really turned into something of a rout, to the really unexpected victory in Alabama [between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore] to the most recent election in Pennsylvania where [Democrat] Conor Lamb won [over Republican Rick Saccone] and again health care was the single most important thing, the single most important issue in the race."

Sabato echoed Griffis's assessment of how the polls were looking at Democratic enthusiasm versus Republican enthusiasm.

"Polling is a rough measurement of public opinion, rougher than I think it used to be, and enthusiasm is a difficult quality to measure. Because, at this point especially, you're modeling the election on past turnouts," Sabato told Salon.

He added, "I do think they're underweighting the effect of Democratic enthusiasm. That would be my argument."

Griffis also expressed confidence that the actions of Trump and other Republican politicians throughout the country would inevitably help the Democratic Party's cause.

"I think part of that is the actions of the Trump administration, and in state houses really across the country, that is what is really galvanizing people. The attacks on health care and rights over time, this is what is motivating people," Griffis told Salon. "I think one of the reasons that we launched today the Win Justice electoral program with SEIU and Center for Community Change Action and Color of Change PAC is that we are seeking to continue that conversation, to make sure that we can continue to engage people in a meaningful way."

Other polls have supported Griffis' assertion about health care being the most important issue to voters. As CNBC recently explained when looking toward the 2018 midterm elections:

Recent polling has shown the importance of those issues. In an Economist/YouGov poll taken in early April, 15 percent of surveyed U.S. adults listed health care as the most important issue to them, while another 15 percent chose Social Security. Those were the most frequently chosen topics, ahead of even the economy at 11 percent.

Twenty-three percent of responding voters in a March Quinnipiac poll listed health care as the most important midterm issue for them, ahead of every other topic including the economy.

Polling suggests Trump and the GOP's efforts to reshape the American health-care system have not resonated with voters. Thirty-six percent of respondents to the Economist/YouGov poll said they strongly disapprove of how the president has handled health care, compared with only 15 percent who said they strongly approve.

Among independents, 32 percent said they strongly disapprove, while 13 percent said they strongly approve.

Another issue that may prove pivotal in the 2018 midterm elections is gun control. According to the Post/ABC poll, 52 percent of Americans identified the issue as either "extremely important" or "very important," while 47 percent of Americans said it was "somewhat important" or "not important."

Also working against Republicans in 2018 is the fact that, with rare exceptions, the party which holds the presidency tends to suffer great losses in midterm congressional elections. This was most conspicuously true for Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014, George W. Bush in 2006 and Bill Clinton in 1994.

Fox News host Sean Hannity revealed as mystery third client of Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen

AP/Getty

Fox News star Sean Hannity was revealed Monday as the mystery third client of Michael Cohen, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, according to NBC News. Hannity, who is known to often speak privately with the president, has provided unwavering on-air support to the Trump administration.

Cohen had attempted to prevent Hannity's name from being made public. He said he had two other clients: the president and Elliott Broidy, former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Cohen reportedly negotiated non-disclosure agreements with both Trump and Broidy's alleged mistresses.

During Monday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ordered Cohen’s lawyer to reveal his third client's identity. The client is Sean Hannity, Cohen's lawyer said.

Gabriel Sherman, a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, reports Sean Hannity hired Cohen to defend him last year around the time Media Matters for America called for advertiser boycotts against him.

"Sean Hannity hired Michael Cohen to help defend him against left-wing groups that were calling for boycotts in the wake of Bill O'Reilly's ouster from Fox News under pressure from advertisers and left-wing groups," Sherman said on MSNBC.

"We did not knowingly interact directly with Michael Cohen," a Media Matters spokesperson told Maxwell Tani, a media reporter at The Daily Beast. "However, we also don't know the nature of the work Cohen may have been doing on behalf of Sean Hannity."

Hannity has previously spoken on the air about how he hired current Trump attorney Jay Sekulow and almost-Trump attorney Joseph diGenova.

Earlier today, Hannity confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he had received legal advice from Cohen. “We have been friends a long time. I have sought legal advice from Michael,” Hannity said.

The Fox News host later clarified those remarks on his personal Twitter account. "Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice or paid legal fees," Hannity tweeted. "I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective."

"I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party," he continued.

Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 16, 2018

I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party.

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 16, 2018

On his radio show following the news, Hannity said, “I think it’s pretty funny. It's very strange to have my own television network have my name up on the lower third.” He later added he has eight lawyers, and never paid Michael Cohen, but occasionally sought informal legal work from Cohen, according to Tani.

As the news broke, Fox News reported Hannity received legal aid from Michael Cohen. Fox's Shepard Smith addressed Hannity, "We just spoke with his publicist here at Fox News who says that he says they've been friends for a long time, he never denied that he was his lawyer, that he did some legal work along the way, and that's the extent of that."

Hannity has been an ardent backer of Trump, both on-air and off, and has repeatedly attacked Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He has also frequently defended Cohen in the days since the FBI raided Cohen's home and office — failing to mention Cohen had represented him.

"As I have been warning, Mueller is out to get the president and it appears at any cost," Hannity said last Monday on his Fox News program, following reports of the FBI raid.

“Now keep in mind, Cohen was never part of the Trump administration, or the Trump campaign,” he continued. "This is now officially an all-hand-on-deck effort to malign, and if possible, impeach the president of the United States."

The following evening, on his program, Hannity slammed the FBI's raid as "an unprecedented abuse of power." The next day, he called it "highly questionable."

Monday's hearing stemmed from a motion for a temporary restraining order under which Cohen's attorneys are challenging an FBI search last week of Cohen’s office, home and hotel room.

Cohen, who is under criminal investigation for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations, has argued that materials seized in the raid are protected by attorney-client privilege and need to be reviewed before federal prosecutors have a chance to review them.

New court filings Monday indicated that Trump wants to review the materials seized from Cohen during an FBI raid last week so he can determine which are protected by attorney-client privilege, according to NBC News.

Cohen has denied wrongdoing, and President Trump has blasted the raid,calling it "an attack on our country" while stating his view that Mueller's investigation is a "witch hunt" and a "disgrace."

In addition to Cohen, adult film star Stormy Daniels, whom Cohen secretly paid $130,000 days before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about the details of an alleged affair with Donald Trump, also attended Monday's court proceedings. Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, a claim the White House and Cohen have denied.

President Trump last week broke his silence on the Daniels case, saying he was not aware of the payment made by Cohen to the porn actress. He also said he did not know where the $130,000 came from. Cohen has said it came out of his own pocket.

Trump’s Syria attacks aren’t enough for some war hawks

AP/Getty/Photo montage by Salon

President Donald Trump's decision to attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime via U.S.-led airstrikes was not enough for Washington's war hawks, many of whom are now calling for further action and deeper Western military involvement in a seven-year civil war.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Trump's strikes were a "missed opportunity," and a "major step backwards."

"Didn’t lay a glove on Assad’s capabilities to wage war. We’re becoming the chemical weapons police. We don’t have a strategy about why Syria matters. It seems like we’re willing to give to the Russians and the Iranians without much of a contest. The ISIS people heard we’re leaving," Graham told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday. "The Kurds are in a world of hurt, because they’re very much exposed. And the military strike itself was a tactical response well short of what I thought was justified. So he’s been a good commander-in-chief in general, but this is a major step backwards."

But while Trump touted the "perfectly executed" strikes and described them as a "mission accomplished," there seems to be no sort of broader strategy in Syria, a country the president said he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from earlier this month.

Trump has provided no evidence that his decision to launch additional strikes against Syria was anything more than ceremonial. Yet perhaps that's why people like Graham, and others whispering in the president's ear, are so dangerous.

A new report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Trump bowed to advice from top Pentagon officials and "agreed on one of the most restrained of the military-strike options crafted by the Pentagon: a powerful missile attack aimed at three targets meant to hobble the Syrian regime’s ability to use chemical weapons and deter President Bashar Assad from using them again."

When the Pentagon is the voice of militaristic reason, rationale and restraint, it truly becomes difficult to overstate just how short-sighted and hawkish the Trump administration truly is.

The report continued: "While Mr. Trump pressed his team to also consider strikes on Russian and Iranian targets in Syria if necessary to get at the Assad regime’s military equipment, [Defense Secretary] Mr. Mattis pushed back, those familiar with the decision-making said."

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley also echoed Trump's calls for a "more forceful response," but Mattis was opposed to it, and warned of the possibility that a "more expansive strike" would have provoked a military response from Iran and Russia. The expansive proposal, "which might have included strikes on Russian air defenses" was three times larger than the strikes that were ultimately conducted by the U.S., Britain and France, the Journal reported.

Among the leading voices was Trump's extremely hawkish new National Security Adviser John Bolton, who "pressed for what he considered a 'ruinous' strike that would deliver a concrete blow to some part of Mr. Assad’s regime," according to the Journal. Surprisingly, Bolton did not vouch for the most aggressive military option.

But there wasn't too much holding Bolton back, besides the optics, considering he started the job just last week after facing heavy public scrutiny for his infamous bloodlust.

The WSJ elaborated:

Mr. Bolton also realized that the most robust option might drag the U.S. more deeply into the conflict and force him to take responsibility for a greater U.S. role in the civil war, according to the people familiar with the decision-making. He felt that was too much for his first week on the job, they said.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., told Salon last week that a "comprehensive" plan by the Trump administration was needed. She slammed the idea of strikes against Syria and demanded that Congress finally stand up to presidential administrations that have bypassed lawmakers for nearly two decades in order to continue "this state of perpetual war."

Lee, who is against deeper U.S. military involvement in Syria, explained that a "one-off" strike against Assad's regime would "not do anything to address the issue of chemical weapons."

 

 

The Philly Starbucks arrest as racial battle fatigue: Black people aren’t surprised at all

Getty/Mark Makela

To be black in America is to live a life where even the most mundane activities can threaten one's dignity and, in the worst cases, imperil our safety, security and sanity.

In a much-discussed incident last Thursday -- the video of which went viral online over the weekend -- a manager at the Center City Starbucks in Philadelphia called the police because two black men were allegedly trespassing. They were arrested and detained for eight hours, before being released without charge. According to an eyewitness account, there were numerous white customers who were at the same Starbucks for several hours, using the Internet and the restrooms. They customers were allowed to go about their business unmolested.

I loathe garden variety "racism chasing"; it is the low-hanging fruit of the racism beat. In post-civil rights era America its returns have and will continue to diminish in terms of shaping the narrative and speaking effective truth to power.

Yes, outrage at injustice and wrongdoing is understandable, needed, and necessary. But we should also always be sure to ask the foundational question: What is this an example of?

Last Thursday's incident at the Philadelphia Starbucks in is instructive in several ways.

Black people are hyper-visible in American society. Thus, a dualism: Historically and in the present, black bodies, black culture and black creativity are objects of white fascination, white desire and white profit. Real black people -- not as objects on a TV or computer screen, in a movie, or as athletes, singers and rappers -- are all too often viewed by white Americans as a threat.

Negrophobia is real and remains present in almost every area of American life.

The American legal system discriminates against black and brown people, beginning with their initial encounters with the police through to incarceration and parole. The police who arrested the two black men at Starbucks have a large amount of discretionary power. They made a choice to publicly humiliate those men and then hold them in jail for eight hours, despite no indication they had committed any crime. Those same police officer also made a choice not to investigate or arrest the white (and other nonblack) customers at Starbucks who were also technically trespassing.

The white Starbucks manager initiated a series of events that could have resulted in the two men being killed or otherwise injured by the police for the "crime" of waiting for their friend and then asking to use the bathroom. The manager's intent is irrelevant. The outcome was racist. Never forget that negrophobia can be lethal.

Interpersonal racism is one of the means through which structural racism is made immediately real and present. It has been repeatedly shown by social scientists and other researchers that America's police are racist towards nonwhites, and especially toward black people. This is a power dynamic which exists independent of the skin color of any individual police officer. Richard Ross, the Philadelphia police commissioner, is a black man. He defended the actions of the officers who arrested the two black men at Starbucks.

Starbucks is a multinational corporation that sells its products in America by using language and images that extol the virtues of diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion. In practice this is often no more than empty symbolism. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson has done nothing substantive beyond issuing a bland apology and implementing "implicit bias" training and workshops in order to blunt what could have become a public relations disaster.

This is the intersection of neoliberal multiculturalism and racial capitalism. Black and brown people are featured in marketing campaigns. Starbucks continues to earn money by expanding into "urban" communities and neighborhoods. But while Starbucks touts itself as a "community partner," what happened in Philadelphia last week suggests there may be no real concern for black and brown people's immediate safety and well-being.

The arrest of two black men at Starbucks whose "crime" was doing what so many other people do in the same space on a near-daily basis resonates not because the indignity and peril are in any way surprising, but because such a horrible experience is commonplace for black people in America. It is the essence of what public intellectual and activist Cornel West described some years ago as "niggerization."

Black people are simultaneously tired and angry for good reason. Racial battle fatigue is all too real.

Ultimately, one of the greatest privileges that comes with being white in America is the freedom to ignore racism and then to repeatedly claim shock at how black and brown people are still, in the 21st century, imperiled and humiliated because of the color of their skin.

What happened last Thursday at the Center City Starbucks in Philadelphia is but one more example of that history of racial pain, racial privilege and racial astonishment.

The real IRS scandal has more to do with budget cuts than bias

AP/Susan Walsh

Conservatives have been seething since 2013 over what they say was an unfair effort by the IRS to scrutinize right-leaning organizations more closely than other groups seeking nonprofit status.

As a report from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration released in 2017 shows, the IRS did flag some conservative groups. But it also paid the same kind of extra attention to liberal organizations with words like “occupy” and “progressive” in their names between 2004 and 2013.

Those findings should have settled the question. While there was extra scrutiny, there was no liberal bias among the federal employees who determine whether new organizations that want to operate as nonprofits are legitimate — and therefore eligible for the tax-exempt status that goes with that designation. Rather than moving on, the Trump administration moved to make amends with the conservatives who believed they were wronged by partisan bureaucrats.

As a former IRS lawyer who now researches nonprofit regulation, I was relieved to see the claim that the government exclusively targeted conservative organizations officially debunked. I believe this report ought to have ushered in a serious discussion about a real problem: The IRS is too cash-strapped to conduct oversight of nonprofits of all kinds. And the tax agency remains severely underfunded, even after some modest budget boosts to implement the new 2017 tax law.

A false narrative

This so-called “scandal” over what conservatives saw as the persecution of right-leaning nonprofits erupted at a meeting of Washington tax lawyers in May of 2013.

Someone asked Lois Lerner, then the director of the IRS Exempt Organization Division, to address concerns over how it had treated conservative social welfare organizations — nonprofits that may do unlimited lobbying.

She then apologized to tea party supporters for inappropriately using names to screen their applications and said her colleagues “didn’t use good judgment.” Since I was there, I was stunned to see how The Wall Street Journal covered this exchange because it struck me as very misleading.

The paper indicated that Lerner had admitted to “targeting” the tea party movement, which she didn’t do. It quoted her saying there was no partisan rationale, but most of the article was about conservative complaints regarding political bias.

Taking the Fifth

As is clear by now, the government never exclusively gave conservative groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names more trouble than many others in a similar situation. Yet politicians and even late-night comedians like Jon Stewart bought and spread this false narrative.

Lerner made things worse by seeming to hide something when she took the Fifth when lawmakers tried to grill her. I think she did this because her attorneys believed testifying might put her at some risk of prosecution for perjury, not for “targeting” the tea party.

More investigations by congressional committees, the inspector general for tax administration and the FBI ensued, along with lawsuits against the IRS and its employees.

In fact, however, rather than proving that the IRS had picked on conservative groups, these inquiries detected managerial shortcomings. Nevertheless, Republicans proposed new laws to curb nonprofit regulation.

Congressional conservatives also tried and failed to impeach former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who had nothing to do with vetting nonprofit applications. Koskinen, who I believe did not need the job, did yeoman’s work trying to make the agency function better without adequate funding. In my view, he didn’t deserve to be treated with such scorn.

Unfortunately, the Justice Department entered into an ill-advised multimillion-dollar settlement and consent order with these conservative organizations in late 2017 to ostensibly right a wrong that was unclear at best. And in early April, a US$3.5 million settlement cleared a legal hurdle.

Yet as the 2017 report documents and plenty of earlier information indicated, the IRS paid extra attention to aspiring nonprofits that spanned the national political spectrum by zeroing in on “green energy” and “border patrol” groups alike — not just rightward-leaning ones.

Equal-opportunity mismanagement

Nonetheless, I believe the inspector general was onto something in 2013, when it issued a report that criticized how Lerner’s team handled this paperwork. The IRS was taking an average of 574 days to process applications from tea party groups and sometimes asking intrusive questions unrelated to the question of tax exemption.

The agency’s staffing shortage doesn’t excuse regularly leaving aspiring nonprofits in limbo for more than a year. Since new charities, social welfare organizations and other nonprofits depend on a nod from the IRS to gain traction, the tax agency needed to find a way to respond faster despite budget constraints.

Even so, as the report shows, groups with terms like “occupy” or “progressive” in their names, in some cases, waited three years or longer for the IRS to process their applications for nonprofit status. This slow-walking wasn’t partisan.

Regardless of the wait, most groups eventually gained nonprofit status.

This latest document still doesn’t clarify whether the IRS applied the appropriate scrutiny — and there’s no legal definition of what that might be. Nor does it say how many conservative and liberal organizations have sought tax-exempt status or whether the percentage of groups the IRS denied was consistent across ideological lines.

Underfunding the IRS

I believe these long waits have more to do with budget cuts than bias. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional agency, recognized in 2014 that the tax agency’s budget and staff were too small to handle its nonprofit oversight responsibilities.

The situation has only deteriorated since then.

The overall IRS budget fell by about 18 percent in inflation-adjusted terms from 2010 to 2017, from $14 billion to roughly $11.5 billion.

Congress recently did bump up IRS funding from $11.2 billion to $11.4 billion and provided $320 million for the agency to implement the highly complex new tax law. But the total still falls short of what the IRS needs.

Even with that new money, the agency will still employ fewer people than it did in 2010. The number of its employees dedicated to auditing and vetting the nonprofit sector fell about 5 percent from 2010 to 2013, the GAO found.

This long-term trend, which began two decades ago, has eroded oversight.

The number of aspiring nonprofits gaining tax-exempt status rose over the past decade as rejections fell. The number of denials plummeted from 1,607 in 2007 to merely 37 in 2016.

Automating exemption

The IRS had in recent years reduced its nonprofit approval backlog with its new 1023-EZ form, which lets new charities spending less than $50,000 a year automatically get tax-exempt status. However, anecdotally and sadly, I’m hearing that the processing time for even this simple form is increasing.

Furthermore, this fix has opened a new avenue for fraud and abuse. The taxpayer advocate found that 34 percent of the groups granted tax-exempt status this way in 2015 and 26 percent of those green-lighted in 2016 weren’t eligible.

As the IRS tries to recover the credibility it lost in a fabricated scandal, automatically approving all these applications may create more serious problems.

Editor’s note: This article is an updated version of an article The Conversation published on Oct. 22, 2017.

Philip Hackney, James E. & Betty M. Phillips Professor of Law, Louisiana State University

5 things we learned from Kellyanne Conway’s attacks on James Comey

Getty/Mark Wilson

Following an explosive interview in which former FBI Director James Comey warned about the dangers of President Donald Trump, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway was back to doing what she does best: spinning the truth on TV and absolving the Trump administration of any potential wrongdoing.

In two Monday morning interviews on cable news, and wasting no time for rebuttal, Conway insisted — on Trump's behalf — that Comey was "engaging in revisionist history" and that he "struggled to answer basic questions and he looked a little shaky."

FULL INTERVIEW: "I spoke to the President before the interview..." Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway one-on-one with @GStephanopoulos: https://t.co/hJAiOh1z0C pic.twitter.com/kFt1jNCwB0

— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 16, 2018

Here are five things we learned from her interviews on ABC's "Good Morning America" and CNN's "New Day."

1. Does Conway believe Comey impacted the 2016 election?

"This guy swung an election," she told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who also interviewed Comey. The stunning remark was thought of as a possible admission that Comey's announcement about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton, just days before the election, may have secured Trump's victory.

Trump must be furious with Kellyanne Conway after she implied that Comey caused Hillary to lose the election.

Wounding Trump’s fragile ego on TV will probably get her in more trouble than violating the Hatch Act on TV.

— Adam Best (@adamcbest) April 16, 2018

Whoa. Kellyanne seems to say Trump wouldn’t have won without the Comey announcement 11 days out. https://t.co/wxeLugXlYx

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 16, 2018

OOPS -- @KellyannePolls accidentally admits Comey swung 2016 for Trump.

"This guy swung an election... he thought the wrong person would win.” pic.twitter.com/cSn6un5IaE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 16, 2018

However, Conway said her comment was sarcastic and should be interpreted as such, when taking context and tone into account. "I rolled my eyes and said 'Really, this guy swung an election?' It was sarcastic," she said.

She also defended herself on Twitter.

He did not. He swung and miss. I was putting to bed that he was even capable of such a thing. Add sarcasm and stir. https://t.co/fXkoFPn3aC

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) April 16, 2018

As I said dozens of time, Hillary, not Comey, is why Hillary lost.

BEFORE Oct 28/Comey letter:

- she struggled to get 50% polls in states Pres Obama carried twice

- majority said she wasn't honest/trustworthy

-Trump better candidate/message/connector https://t.co/gUQpaRshr3

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) April 16, 2018

This misleading headline should include an eye roll and question mark. Point I made on 3 shows is that we are supposed to believe THIS guy swung an election? I don't think so. Kellyanne Conway slams Comey: 'This guy swung an election' - ABC News https://t.co/f0GdDE6Tvd

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) April 16, 2018

As she insisted, the headline of the ABC article was also changed, and even CNN's Cuomo seemed to defend her.

In our intv on @NewDay you were clearly being sarcastic about the idea comey could swing an election. https://t.co/mBUpu3kYVk

— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) April 16, 2018

But she should have a conversation with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who tweeted in 2016 that Comey did sway the election.

Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledging that the Comey letter "re-opened" the path to victory for Trump, on October 28, 2016. Now they mock the notion that the Comey letter was consequential and have the gall to claim it's Comey who is engaging in "revisionist history." https://t.co/CjpvMf2oio

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) April 16, 2018

2. Conway claimed Comey was too focused on the length of Trump's ties and the size of his hands

Ahead of the first meeting between Comey and Trump, which was a briefing in Trump Tower days before the inauguration with other top intelligence officials, Conway asserted that the former FBI head was too concerned with Trump's hands and his obnoxiously long ties, which she said was "really gutter."

She asserted that Comey instead should have focused on informing Trump about the Russian election interference. Comey did indeed write that he made mental notes about Trump's hands and his ties, but the assertion that he was more concerned with that rather than Russia's alleged election interference is dubious, at best, upon minimal scrutinization.

According to Comey, Trump and those with him were informed of Russia's alleged efforts to meddle in the election, but they seemed hardly concerned about the potential gravity of the situation.

"The conversation, to my surprise, moved into a PR conversation about how the Trump team would position this and what they could say about this," Comey said in the interview. "I don’t remember any questions about, 'So what are they going to do next; how might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.' There was none of that."

3. Conway is quick to toss stones, but forgets she resides in a glass house

Conway told Stephanopoulos that Comey "gave a free political commercial" at the end of his interview, something she has done herself on two separate occasions. Conway was found to have violated the Hatch Act twice, "by advocating for and against candidates" in the Alabama special election in December. But Conway's opinions on Comey have changed since December 2016.

Astonished by the all-out assault on Comey by Team Clinton. Suggesting he is a partisan interfering with the election is dangerous & unfair.

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) October 29, 2016

As for Comey's "free political commercial," here's what he told Stephanopoulos:

I think most likely, in a very important presidential election — the next presidential election, where I do hope people of all political stripes will realize what unites us is actually more important than what divides us. And that we have to choose a leader -- I don't care what party a leader's from. We have to choose a leader who will embody the . . . values of this country. That's how I hope it ends.

4. Conway muddies the waters over Michael Flynn

When asked if the president has any evidence to disprove Comey's claim that Trump had asked him to stop investigating Flynn, the then-national security adviser, Conway asserted that in his testimony to Congress, Comey said no one had asked him to do so. This assertion is indeed not factual.

"The president has made very clear that he never asked anyone to interfere in an investigation," Conway said. "And Jim Comey admitted that in testimony that nobody here had ever asked him to drop an investigation for political reasons, he admitted that before he was fired."

She was quickly interrupted by Stephanopoulos for the second time, who said, "That is not correct either."

5. "Revisionist history"

On CNN, Conway told Cuomo that the president believed the former FBI chief was "engaging in revisionist history" in his book. She added, "He loves to divert the spotlight to himself and be the center of power." The assertion, regardless of the authenticity, was laughable, coming from the Trump administration of all places.

If there's anyone that loves to engage in revisionist history, it's the man who has repeatedly insisted the crowd size at his inauguration was larger than that of his predecessors — which math disproved. Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer has still refused to admit it was a lie.

Further, there is perhaps not a single person on the planet who enjoys basking in the spotlight and being the center of power and attention more than the former reality TV star who became the president.

But Kellyanne Conway was speaking to an audience of one — just as she always has.

Why you may be paying more income tax than you should

Getty/gawriloff

Springtime brings many things, from proverbial showers to birds chirping and warmer weather. It also signals tax season is upon us once more.

Every year 140 million U.S. taxpayers spend countless hours gathering receipts and statements, filling out a variety of schedules and forms and submitting their 1040s and various other supporting documents to the Internal Revenue Service. This year the deadline is April 17.

As an economist, I wondered whether this tax filing burden results in us paying more taxes than we should. What I found is quite surprising and should be especially disturbing for those of you who still haven’t filed.

A choice of deductions

Income taxes represent the government’s largest source of tax revenue and involve about US$1.54 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP, being transferred from our wallets to the federal Treasury every year.

Research into the transaction costs of saving shows that people frequently leave money on the table, such as in saving for retirement and claiming government benefits. I wanted to know if the same thing was happening when we file our taxes.

Individual tax filers can choose whether to itemize deductions, such as for charitable giving or mortgage interest, or claim a standard deduction. Itemizing requires some effort but can provide large tax savings. Opting for the standard deduction saves time but may result in a larger tax tab.

I exploited this choice to estimate the costs of filing taxes. That is, if compliance costs don’t exist, taxpayers would presumably itemize if the benefit of doing so is greater than zero. If there are costs, then itemizing is beneficial only if it reduces the tax bill by more than the cost of itemizing.

What’s left on the table

When people pick the standard deduction, we don’t actually know how much they could have saved had they itemized.

To get around this problem, I examined data from two years in which there were large increases in the standard deduction: 1971 and 1988. To understand why, imagine that the standard deduction last year was $10,000 and increased this year to $15,000. Now taxpayers with total deductions just above $15,000 will have to decide whether to bear the pain of itemizing or just go with the standard deduction.

By comparing the percentage of taxpayers just above the standard deduction before and after the large increase in the standard deduction, I was able to reconstruct the distribution of foregone benefits. Long story short, it showed me that some taxpayers choose the standard deduction even though itemizing would have saved them money, resulting in an average of $644 being left on the table.

After breaking the results down by income levels, I found that wealthier individuals are more likely to sacrifice the tax savings from itemization to avoid the time it would take to do it. Further calculations led me to estimate that itemizing deductions is perceived on average to take 19 hours of pain and effort.

Altogether, I use this analysis to estimate the burden of filing our taxes. It turns out it amounts to about $200 billion, or about 1.2 percent of GDP, which is two to three times larger than previously estimated.

This is where it gets worse for procrastinators, who pay a price for delaying the inevitable. By waiting until the deadline to do their taxes, I found that people are more likely to forgo those itemized deductions. Perhaps it’s because they lack the time. Or it may be because the perceived time cost of rummaging for all the receipts and papers and doing all the calculations just doesn’t seems worth the effort — even if might be.

Why don’t we fix this?

While several countries have solved this problem, the U.S. is trailing behind. The solution to drastically reducing compliance costs is pretty simple and benign, and it’s what countries from Denmark to Chile have done.

It turns out that the Internal Revenue Service knows most of the information that we are required to enter in our return — such as wages, mortgage interest, state taxes, etc. — and could send us prepopulated returns that we could verify for accuracy and sign. The whole ordeal could take less than an hour.

Why are we not there yet? Some suggest that the tax preparation industry may have something to do with it, since anything that makes it substantially easier could cost it potentially hundreds of million of dollars in revenue.

While the IRS’ free file program has made it a bit simpler, it still requires a lot of record-keeping, and the percentage of taxpayers who actually file for free remains very low, at fewer than 3 percent as of 2014.

Youssef Benzarti, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles