Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 148

Is the “Death Wish” remake as disgustingly right-wing as the original series?

Bruce Willis as Dr. Paul Kersey in "Death Wish" (Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

I couldn’t bring myself to hate the “Death Wish” remake, as the vast majority of critics have done. Sure, its release was poorly timed (less than three weeks after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting), but mass shootings have been ubiquitous for so long that I doubt there ever would have been an appropriate release date for a vigilante fantasy. For it to have not been released at a bad time, it would have had to not be released at all.

No, the problem with this movie’s political message — namely, that a good guy with a gun can stop the bad guys of the world — is that it isn’t confined to the “Death Wish” franchise. It exists everywhere in our culture, from movies and video games to the right-wing talking points that regularly thwart gun control legislation. The “Death Wish” movies are a little more obvious in preaching this than most blockbuster fare, to be sure, but our cineplexes are so filled with action films that indulge in this wish fulfillment that the “Death Wish” remake hardly stands out.

Perhaps their commonplace nature is what makes the politics behind this movie’s concept so disturbing, even if the execution itself is unremarkable.

In the original “Death Wish” from 1974, director Michael Winner hammered audiences over the head with his pro-gun, pro-law and order, anti-“bleeding heart liberal” brand of conservatism. It felt like the frustrated war cry of a neoconservative, the kind of person who would agree with Irving Kristol’s famous self-description as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” The streets were gritty, the criminals rubbed their malevolence in their victims’ faces and guns, though described as just a tool, were unambiguously presented as a source of salvation.

Eli Roth’s 2018 version, on the other hand, makes a conscious effort to be bipartisan. It opens by listing the high crime rate in Chicago (a favorite conservative target these days) and shows a cop berating protagonist Paul Kersey (played by Bruce Willis instead of Charles Bronson) for saving the life of a criminal whose bullets just killed a police officer. Later, though, it drops in a veiled jab at AR-15s and mocks the ease with which potential gun buyers can purchase even the deadliest of weapons. And throughout the film real-life radio personalities Sway Calloway, Mancow Muller and various “real people” offer various liberal and conservative viewpoints on Kersey’s vigilantism, just to reinforce the notion that it’s “balanced.”

The problem, though, is that you simply can’t make a movie about the Paul Kersey character without its core message being fundamentally right-wing. You must have the subtext that a “real man” is able to use violence to defend his family, protect his property and clean up his community, which the “Death Wish” remake explicitly states several times. Criminals must be everywhere, incompetent bureaucrats must be incapable of protecting the public, ordinary citizens must rally behind the vigilante as a hero and be inspired to make the world a better place through his actions.

And you must cover your hindquarters so you won’t seem like a bigot. Because law-and-order rhetoric has been used by right-wingers as a racist dogwhistle since the days of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, it’s necessary to have diversity in your criminals and your victims, your Kersey supporters and Kersey detractors. As Roger Ebert noted in his “Death Wish 3 review, “one of the hypocrisies practiced by the Death Wish movies is that they ignore racial tension in big cities. In their horrible new world, all of the gangs are integrated, so that the movies can’t be called racist. I guess it’s supposed to be heartwarming to see whites, blacks and Latinos working side by side to rape, pillage and murder.”

All of these elements of the “Death Wish” formula existed in the original film and its sequels, and they are still present here. Because the formula adds up to a right-wing political message, the “Death Wish” remake is by default a right-wing picture, but its heart clearly isn’t in it. This is mostly because, whereas the original “Death Wish” was clearly a passion project for Winner, the remake passed through several groups of creative personnel before landing in Eli Roth’s lap. Unsurprisingly, the end result cares more about being a passably entertaining action flick than a manifesto.

In that limited sense, “Death Wish” is a success, albeit one that action fans should wait to see on Netflix. I can recommend it as a competent popcorn muncher that moves at a brisk pace, is about as engaging as your average “Law and Order” episode and contains an appropriately glowering (if somewhat bored looking) Bruce Willis. What I can’t do, however, is entirely separate the moderately satisfying cinematic Big Mac on the silver screen from the toxic politics that I know coil underneath the surface.

America’s decades-long epidemic of mass shootings — and the macho nonsense of the pro-gun zealots that is embodied in the “Death Wish” movies, and that weakens or prevents laws that would at least reduce their number — makes that impossible for me.

“Frontline” and “#MeToo, Now What?”: A different kind of Oscar retrospective

Harvey Weinstein (Credit: AP/Charles Sykes)

Leave it to PBS to remind us of all the ways that Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony is bound to feel . . . off.

If you’ve been paying attention, there’s no need to explain why that is. The hashtags sum it up well enough: #MeToo. #TimesUp. Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel plans to acknowledge the movements in his opening monologue. If the red carpet interviews go the way of the Golden Globes, female celebrities will warm up the audience on this front but most male celebrities won’t.

And lest we forget, it all started with a name that might as well be Hollywood’s version of Voldemort: Harvey Weinstein.

Few have forgotten him, despite the extensive coverage of all the other actors whose names have joined his on Hollywood’s unofficial but very real blacklist of sexual predators. What merits examining as we head into Hollywood’s annual night of self-congratulation are the many ways the industry putting itself on parade Sunday night enabled Weinstein’s crimes for decades.

Some of the very people swanning down the 90th Academy Awards red carpet benefited greatly from remaining silent about the disgraced mogul’s deplorable abuses. Even some who choose to skip playing the “what are you wearing” game with Ryan Seacrest, the subject of a recent a Variety story detailing a former stylist’s allegations of sexual misconduct, had their careers impacted by his behavior in some fashion.

Reminding us of all this is “Weinstein,” a special episode of “Frontline” debuting Friday at 9 p.m. ET on member stations (check your local listings). Weinstein will not be present at the Oscars on Sunday, of course. He was ousted from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) not long after the New York Times published its damning exposé in October 2017. But his specter looms large over the industry even now.

“Frontline” explains why that is by retracing the many steps of those who reported the original story as well as all the others that followed, in addition to featuring accounts from reporters who attempted to take down the mammoth in past years only to have their efforts quashed.

The similar accounts of the nearly 100 women who accused Weinstein of sexual impropriety have circulated frequently enough over the past five months for many to know them by heart — the odd invitations to private screenings, the calls to hotel rooms under the auspices of work meetings only to be blindsided by the sight of Weinstein appearing in a bathrobe and demanding a massage.

“Frontline” scores interviews with a number of Weinstein’s prominent accusers, but it also features a new accuser who worked on Weinstein’s first movie, the 1981 slasher film “The Burning,” and she speaks out for the first time. Weinstein himself declined to be interviewed — that would be the get of the year at this point — but his legal team sent point-by-point rebuttals to nearly every accuser’s account, dutifully and dispassionately read by episode narrator Will Lyman.

“Weinstein” also coaxes the first interviews from one-time members of the producer’s inner circle, including his former assistant Zelda Perkins, a former Miramax executive who worked with him before the company was sold to Disney, as well as a former Weinstein Company executive.

Presumably neither of those men has much to lose now. The women featured here and elsewhere have already been robbed of unknown amounts of work opportunities, to say nothing of their reputations and dignity. Included in that number are once-promising actresses and models viewers may never have heard of and a few famous names, notably Sean Young. “I was set to have a very big career,” she says. “But I upset a few important men, and the trajectory of my career went —” she pauses, allowing her hands to tell the rest of the story, veering up and down in imitation of a sine wave that plummets into nothingness.

Airing this “Frontline” less than 48 hours before the Oscars throws some necessary salt at the most image-conscious live telecasts on broadcast television, and such a debut could not have been better timed.

But the utility of this “Frontline” episode extends beyond placing established facts in context. Weinstein’s downfall set off a discussion that’s still evolving five months into this movement, sparking intense discussions about the nature of consent, cultural concepts of masculinity and power, and what role apology and reconciliation play in moving forward.

That last part of the debate has proven especially thorny. Long before #MeToo, there were culturewide issues with men inadequately apologizing for all kinds of misconduct, but the post-Weinstein era thrust that problem into the klieg lights.

As the industry’s predator list grew, those hollow sorry-not-sorrys flopped one on top of the other; gazing upon that mountain is a stultifying experience. “Weinstein” shows this in evidence while not explicitly calling it out; Weinstein’s former subordinates, without qualification, say that they knew these abuses and assaults were happening and turned a blind eye.  They had reasons: they wanted to hold on to power. One said, more than once, that this was part of the deal he made with the devil.

On a related note, Friday also marks the conclusion of the PBS special series “#MeToo, Now What?,” which airs in some markets at 8:30 p.m. ET (check your local schedule) but also is available to be streamed online at PBS.org.

Each of its half-hour episodes features a roundtable discussion related to the #MeToo movement, but the one that gets to the heart of the insufficient mea culpa problem is the second episode, in which host Zainab Salbi interviews Devin Faraci. Faraci is a previously prominent film critic and editor whose career with Alamo Drafthouse ended in late 2016 following sexual assault allegations lodged by a woman named Caroline. Well, it ended temporarily; the company quietly hired him back until that came out in 2017 and he offered his resignation.

In that episode Salbi speaks to Faraci’s accuser and Faraci himself, separately. What’s interesting about his part of the conversation is Faraci’s long discussion about how the accusation has impacted his life — the shame he’s felt, how hard his life has been, and how recovery has saved his life. Salbi asks Faraci how much he thought about Caroline’s pain, and he admits that he thought about the pain she had to feel and calls it a double violation.

He’s filled that hole him himself, he says in the episode. And this week, the media discovered Faraci’s attempt at a comeback to criticism via a new website. Styled a blog that examines the “points where pop culture and spiritual principles meet,” Faraci mentions his newfound embrace of Therevada Buddhism on his About page, where, until recently, he only mentioned that in 2016 he had “hit rock bottom.” He has since added the words “when a woman accused me of groping her in 2003.” Not that he did it, but that he was accused of it. He accepts this. He’s been rehabilitated by spirituality.

America is the land of the clean slate, after all. Hollywood has a thousand films anchored in that idea. Many of the people who make the town what it is have built mansions and retreats out of that rock.

The existence of the “Frontline” episode and “#MeToo, Now What?” serve as reminders of what that dream factory has long been made of, and perhaps make a person keener to see how often and well its most famous keepers acknowledge what continues to be wrong.  That said, awards ceremonies in particular have a tendency to treat the causes of the day like rented diamonds or borrowed clutches; they serve their purpose for a short time, only to be shelved again and, perhaps, forgotten.

A final image of Weinstein in “Frontline” proves that one man is counting on that fact never going out of fashion. “I gotta get help, OK?” he yells to the paparazzi camped out by a black SUV. “You know what? We all make mistakes. Second chance, I hope,” he says before jumping inside. It’s unclear whether he owns that vehicle, or if it’s merely for hire.

Huckabee blames “bullies” after he quickly resigns from charity board

Another Republican closely affiliated with President Donald Trump makes an untimely exit. About 24 hours after the Country Music Association announced singer Chris Young and politician Mike Huckabee would join the board of its charitable foundation, the former GOP presidential candidate resigned in disgrace.

“The CMA Foundation has accepted former Governor Mike Huckabee’s resignation from its board of directors, effective immediately,” a CMA spokeswoman said in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

The CMA came under fire for his appointment, and perhaps the strongest of those denunciations came from artist manager Jason Owen, who called Huckabee’s appointment “grossly offensive” and “a detrimentally poor choice by CMA and its leaders.” Owen’s management company, Sandbox Entertainment, represents country music superstars such as Faith Hill, Kacey Musgraves and Little Big Town. He also co-owns the label Monument Records, a division of Sony Music, with celebrated singer-songwriter and music producer Shane McAnally.

“It is with a heavy heart that I must let you know moving forward, Sandbox and Monument will no longer support the CMA Foundation in any way (this includes everyone we represent collectively) considering the heartbreaking news shared today regarding Mike Huckabee appointee/elected to the CMA Foundation,” he wrote in a letter to CMA CEO Sarah Trahern and Director of Community Outreach Tiffany Kerns. “Further, we find it hard to support the organization as a whole as a result.”

Owen, who is openly gay, continued, “I have a child and two on the way. This man has made it clear that my family is not welcome in his America. And the CMA has opened their arms to him, making him feel welcome and relevant. Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country. Not to mention how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the NRA is. What a shameful choice. I will not participate in any organization that elevates people like this to positions that amplify their sick voices.”

Huckabee, who is also the father of Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, compared same-sex marriage to incest and polygamy in 2010. Recently, he blasted businesses that cut ties with the National Rifle Association after the mass shooting in Parkland, FL, calling them “cowardly.”

What did I miss? Cowardly corporations punish NRA because FBI failed to act on info re: shooter and FL Sheriff had 4 deputies who stood outside and hid during gunfire that killed 17 innocent kids. How many NRA members did mass shootings? ZERO.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) February 24, 2018

On Thursday, Huckabee published a letter addressed to the CMA Foundation Board on his website, in which he blamed “bullies” for his resignation. “I genuinely regret that some in the industry were so outraged by my appointment that they bullied the CMA and the foundation with economic threats and vowed to withhold support for the programs for students if I remained,” he wrote.

He also mentioned his support for music education – one of the core missions of the CMA Foundation. “The message here is ‘hate wins.’ Bullies succeed in making it untenable to have ‘someone like me’ involved. I would imagine however that many of the people who buy tickets and music are not that ‘unlike me.'”

Huckabee’s exit came a few hours after Owen shared his letter in Hits Daily Double, a music blog, that said, “There’s great concern and protest over [Huckabee’s] appointment, and rightfully so. Many in Nashville are sharing feelings of embarrassment for our country and industry.”

Huckabee’s interest in music might have initially made him seem like a good fit for the CMA board. Last year, Huckabee wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post titled, “A conservative plea for the National Endowment for the Arts.” His website also says he is “an avid musician since age 11, is a bass player and often joins guest artists on his weekly television show.” 

Beatty and Dunaway are back, and they’re announcing best picture again

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty present the award for best picture at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Credit: AP/Chris Pizzello)

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who were ensnared in of the most controversial scandals in Academy Award history last year, are getting a second chance. The duo, who infamously announced the wrong best picture winner, is expected to return to the Oscar stage this Sunday for a do-over.

Beatty and Dunaway have already started practicing their lines, appearing for rehearsal last night at the Dolby Theatre, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde in 2017, the stars of the classic film were invited to name a new best picture. After an envelope mix up by on-site accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the night’s top prize was initially awarded to “La La Land” over “Moonlight” by mistake.

The envelope that Dunaway read from belonged to the best actress category. “I opened the category and it said, Emma Stone, ‘La La Land.’ That’s why I looked at Faye, and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Beatty clarified on camera at the time.

PwC, which has counted the ballots for the Academy for more than 80 years, claimed full responsibility for the blunder. “The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope, and when discovered, was immediately corrected,” a PwC statement read at the time.

Several weeks later, the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced they would stick with the firm in spite of the envelope snafu.

The Academy has since revealed new safeguards to prevent a similar mistake from repeating. The protocols include the re-installment of Rick Rosas, a PwC partner who previously handled envelope duty for 14 years, and Kimberly Burton from the company’s Los Angeles office. In addition, a third accountant will be stationed in the control room, who will know the winners in advance, ensuring a more rapid response in the event of another error.

The two PwC accountants who were backstage last year, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz, will not return. In addition, the Academy announced it would be banning electronic devices backstage. Cullinan notoriously posted a celebrity photo on Twitter backstage minutes before handing Beatty the wrong envelope, which set off the disastrous chain of events. The Academy also stated it would improve the identification of categories on the awards envelopes.

MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch warns of what a “cornered” Trump might do

(Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer/KREMLL/Salon)

It has been another dizzying week for the Donald Trump administration — from the departure of communications director Hope Hicks to Jared Kushner’s loss of top security clearance and now to Trump’s controversial announcement of new tariffs — and it feels as though the White House is unraveling at its seams. But MSNBC contributor and ad executive Donny Deutsch fears that Trump’s chaotic week surpasses the president’s usual antics.

Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch, who've known Trump for years, explain why the latest White House chaos is different.

"Cornered, Donald Trump is proving himself to be a very dangerous person." https://t.co/9nJVk3fcNu

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 2, 2018

“This week, if you were concerned about Donald Trump being our president, in certain ways, it was a good week, you really felt the noose tighten with Hope Hicks leaving and the Kushner story and the new conspiracy leading directly to Trump from [special counsel Robert] Mueller’s point of view,” Deutsch said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “You really feel it, and the bad news, though, if you’re somebody that’s concerned about Trump, is you’re really starting to see the beginning of a cornered Donald Trump, and what is he capable of doing at the expense of the world or the United States or the consumer to save himself?”

Deutsch, who has known Trump for years, continued: “I’m concerned if this is a harbinger of things to come, in that will he do with North Korea at the expense of the rest of the world? What will he do in any scenario to do this kind of shiny toy thing?”

Hicks kept the White House partially sane, according to Deutsch, but with her gone, “this is a man with his hand at the controls,” he said of Trump. “And yes, a trade war is very, very concerning, what are the other things he’s capable of doing at the expense of all of us to save or protect or deflect when it comes to his own hide?”

Former Obama official purchases The Weinstein Company

Maria Contreras-Sweet (Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)

Less than a week ago, The Weinstein Company announced it would have to declare bankruptcy – a reality the film and TV company has now avoided thanks to a deal spearheaded by Maria Contreras-Sweet, who was a senior official in former President Barack Obama’s administration. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman confirmed the sale of the company, which includes an $80 million compensation fund for Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims of sexual abuse and harassment.

My statement on the agreement to sell The Weinstein Company’s assets: pic.twitter.com/YF4XPtQGZ5

— Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) March 2, 2018

“Our office will support a deal that ensures victims will be adequately compensated, employees will be protected moving forward and those who were responsible for misconduct at TWC will not be unjustly rewarded,” Schneidermann said in a statement.

The future of The Weinstein Company seemed futile, amid the flood of sexual misconduct allegations against its co-founder, Schneiderman’s lawsuit against the company and after an earlier bid collapsed. But Contreras-Sweet, who ran the Small Business Administration during Obama’s tenure, anchored by billionaire investor Ronald Burkle, returned to the table and reached a deal with the company on Thursday.

“The deal provides a clear path for compensation for victims and protects the jobs of our employees,” The Weinstein Company board said in a statement. “We consider this to be a positive outcome under what have been incredibly difficult circumstances.”

The $500 million deal will reportedly save 150 jobs and include a recalibration of the company. Contreras-Sweet plans to rename The Weinstein Company and usher in a majority-women leadership team.

“The recent events at The Weinstein Company have put focus on how women in the entertainment industry have been treated,” Contreras-Sweet said in a proposal letter in Novemeber. “We believe that reorganizing the company as a woman-led venture will be an inspiration to the industry and a new model for how an entertainment company can be both financially successful and treat all its employees with dignity and respect.”

How to kill a prince: Jared Kushner’s enemies are trying to force him out

Jared Kushner (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

As a deeply indebted political neophyte, Jared Kushner has had no business serving in the White House. But since he’s the husband of Donald Trump’s favorite child, Ivanka, Kushner has been at the heart of Trump’s operation since he began his short political career. Now, it’s starting to look like he may soon be forced out of his role as a top-level counselor to the president.

While serving as Trump’s advisor-in-law has made his position more secure than say, Steve Bannon or Reince Priebus, Kushner’s lack of background in politics was his weak spot. Beyond the fact that his inexperience and debt make him vulnerable to manipulation by foreign governments, Kushner also does not have a political tribe to guard his back the way that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders does with Christian nationalists or budget director Mick Mulvaney does with the Freedom Caucus.

The closest thing that Kushner has had to a political group was the bevy of New York finance types and former Trump business employees who Trump brought into the White House with him.

Unfortunately for Kushner, though, this group seems to be thinning out.

Former deputy national security adviser Dina Powell has already returned to Goldman Sachs. Gary Cohn, the top White House economic adviser, has been eying the exit for some time. After getting overruled on tariffs this week, he’s even more eager Politico reported Thursday.

The New York faction of the administration has also shrunk with the forced departure of staff secretary Rob Porter amid accusations of domestic violence. Communications director Hope Hicks, Porter’s ex-girlfriend and a close Kushner ally, has announced her imminent departure. Josh Raffel, a former spokesman for Kushner when the two were in the private sector, will also be leaving.

One person who was supposed to be a reliable Kushner ally was White House chief of staff John Kelly. Both Kushner and Ivanka, commonly referred to as “Javanka” in the West Wing, gave Kelly critical support when he assumed his post in late July of last year and vowed to be a much tougher manager than his predecessor, Reince Priebus.

It became evident soon, however, that Kelly, a former four-star Marine general, couldn’t figure out just what Kushner was supposed to be doing. Under Priebus, he had essentially been allowed to do whatever he wanted: chat up CEOs, hold private meetings with Middle Eastern heads of state, negotiate policy with Mexico, and a host of other things.

By the end of September, Trump began privately asking senior White House staffers if he thought that his daughter and her husband could survive the high-pressure situation. Kushner’s situation took a significant turn for the worse after word got out that Kelly, Trump, and Priebus had allowed Kushner and a host of other White House officials to keep their jobs even after they had been unable to be granted permanent top-level security credentials. The advisor-in-law’s situation was even more embarrassing in light of the fact that he had failed to disclose hundreds of contacts with foreign investors and government heads on his security clearance request forms.

Aware that the exception granted to Kushner was making Trump look weak on national security, Kelly revoked the interim clearances that Kushner and others had been operating under for over a year, a flagrant violation of typical procedure.

Further complicating things for Kushner has been the ongoing Department of Justice investigation into Russian influence operations during the 2016 presidential election. Kushner’s willingness to meet with a Russian woman suspected of being a Kremlin intermediary who he thought was offering “dirt” on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is one of several points of interest to special prosecutor Robert Mueller. DOJ authorities have also been trying to get details on Kushner’s attempts to hold private discussions with Russia and other countries before Trump had been sworn in as president.

That prosecutorial interest has cast a pall over Kushner’s ability to operate within the West Wing, several news organizations have reported in recent days.

“Some of his administration colleagues are just more reluctant to have conversations with him or in his company because they’re not sure if he’s a witness or a target of the Mueller investigation,” a White House official told the Washington Post.

Things have gotten so bad for Kushner that even the Wall Street Journal, the mouthpiece of Trump’s top media ally, Rupert Murdoch, is calling for him to resign his position.

“The long knives are out for Mr. Kushner, and they’ll keep slashing,” the paper editorialized on Wednesday. “While Mr. Kushner has other policy portfolios, such as prison reform, his value as a formal White House adviser will be diminished. … Giving up their White House positions would be a bitter remedy, but Mr. Kushner and first daughter Ivanka could still offer advice as outsiders.”

This week’s news that Trump has already hired his 2020 campaign manager, his former social media strategist Brad Parscale, provided a possible means for Kushner to make his White House exit while saving face. During Trump’s 2016 campaign, most hiring decisions were effectively under the control of Kushner. With Parscale officially in his position, why not have Kushner move out to work with him?

However the Kushner situation gets resolved, it will need to be soon.

“This was predictable from the get-go,” Leon Panetta, former president Bill Clinton’s chief of staff told the Post. “Under the best of circumstances, these are tough jobs. But when you now add to that list family members who have no clear-cut role, no experience, no real understanding of the rules and a host of financial connections and business dealings that can obviously be used to manipulate you, then that is a prescription for the kind of chaos you’re seeing in the White House.”

According to NBC News, Trump is getting so upset with the present state of affairs that he seems to have raged himself into announcing a steel and aluminum trade war. Instead of being the product of a careful deliberation, the policy seems to have been the product of the president being “unglued” over Kushner’s scandals.

“There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross’s team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House,” the network’s Stephanie Ruhle and Peter Alexander reported today.

West Virginia teachers strike lingers with no end in sight

(Credit: AP Photo/John Raby)

The West Virginia teachers strike continues to linger on because the state legislature, despite its generosity to energy companies, is unwilling to make more than meager concessions to its educators.

Although Gov. Jim Justice agreed with the union leaders to provide teachers with a 5 percent pay raise in their first year, that deal stalled when Republicans in control of the State Senate balked at the concept of needing to pay it, according to CNN.

Even if the bill had passed, however, it would not have necessarily quelled the teachers union’s discontent. One of their biggest complaints was that the state health insurance plan, the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA), required teachers to pay more than they could afford.

“They told us that essentially if you weren’t a single person, if you had a family plan, your health insurance was going to rise substantially,” Katie Endicott, a high school English teacher, told The New York Times regarding the origins of the strike. “As a West Virginia teacher — and I’ve been teaching 10 years — I only clear right under $1,300 every two weeks, and they’re wanting to take $300 more away for me. But they tell me it’s O.K., because we’re going to give you a 1 percent pay raise. That equals out to 88 cents every two days.”

Gov. Justice did not seem sympathetic to the teachers’ situation as he spoke to striking teachers from the back of his SUV earlier this week.

“I’m trying. What else can I do? I’m not king. I’m doing what all I can possibly do,” Justice told the strikers.

Part of the problem with Justice’s argument, though, is that it would be possible to give the teachers a reasonable income — that is, if West Virginia decided to stop giving preferential treatment to energy companies. That has been the argument of one of the state’s rising stars, Democratic State Senator Richard Ojeda.

Then, this January, he stood on the Senate floor and argued in fiery speeches that energy companies should pony up more taxes so teachers could get better benefits and pay. A strike, he warned, was not out of the question. A month later, teachers from all 55 counties walked off the job—a first in the history of the state—instantly making Ojeda the father of one of the region’s largest labor actions of the past 30 years.

For the time being, however, it seems that West Virginia’s deep red politics — the state overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election — are going to keep teachers either underpaid or striking. As a result, the state’s schools can be expected to remain closed for the foreseeable future.

What Trump’s tweet on new tariffs gets wrong about trade

(Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

On Friday morning President Donald Trump made it clear that he wasn’t backing away from an idea that has earned him considerable backlash from conservatives shortly after it was announced. He’s dead set on a trade war, charging full speed ahead with plans to increase tariffs on steel and aluminum.

When a country Taxes our products coming in at, say, 50%, and we Tax the same product coming into our country at ZERO, not fair or smart. We will soon be starting RECIPROCAL TAXES so that we will charge the same thing as they charge us. $800 Billion Trade Deficit-have no choice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018

The problem with this tweet is that, regardless of how one feels about tariff policy, its basic premises are detached from economic reality.

“The proclamation contained within a Tweet that trade wars are good and easy to win shows a stunning lack of appreciation for history, including the lessons of the Great Depression,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com in Washington, told Salon.

“I don’t know anybody that has a 50 percent across the board tax on imports,” said Robert E. Scott, the senior economic at the Economic Policy Institute. “The only across the board taxes that I know of are value-added taxes, like sales taxes, and the highest ones that I know of in the world are mostly in Western Europe. The highest one is 27 percent in Hungary, followed by 25 percent in Denmark, and a number of other countries in the range of 23 to 25 percent (Norway, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden).”

In fact, the concept of jacking up tariff rates to such extreme highs is one that would seem to benefit virtually no one invested in America’s success.

“I can imagine anyone who wants to disrupt the global financial system and sow chaos in the United States economy would be a fan of that,” Hamrick told Salon. “If you want to rein in the third-longest economic expansion since the end of WWII, crimp profits at a time when stock market valuations have been called into question by rising interest rates, force consumers to withstand price increases and put millions of metals-reliant and other jobs at risk, the president’s stated intention of placing costly tariffs on imported steel and aluminum is an effective way to start.”

“And at first glance,” Hamrick explained, “you could imagine that steel industry executives, investors and workers are pleased, but this could come back and hurt all of those stakeholders because of the risk that widens and hurts broader US economic activity.”

Unfortunately, as Hamrick noted, some of that broader harm is already being felt.

“Clearly just his utterances do damage to our alliances. For example, our already strained relationships with the US and Canada,” Hamrick told Salon. “And who would have imagined a couple years ago that we’d be in a situation where relations with Canada and Mexico were in trouble?”

He added, “The immediate risk is that his threats to renegotiate NAFTA are severely hampered.”

It also doesn’t help that Trump’s trade proclamations raise doubts as to his own understanding of these complex economic issues.

“I think he has a basic understanding of some of the issues involved,” Scott told Salon. “My impression is that he does not have the ability to think strategically about how to address our manufacturing and trade problems.”

 

Trump’s recent mental health pledge should have us all worried

(Credit: AP/Jorge Silva/Sara-Megan Valverde)

Nearly every single time there is a mass shooting in the United States (an estimated 34 have already happened in 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive), American politicians perform an almost rehearsed and mind-numbing script of condemnations, calls-to-action, and rhetorical squabbles for and against gun control legislation in the country. One of those points, from the pro-gun school of thought, is a flawed one that blames mental health issues for mass shootings. The same contention emerged after the recent Parkland, Florida, shooting when Donald Trump’s administration said that it was “actively” considering the expansion of mental health care initiatives to curb similar violence. But Trump’s mental health care pledge against gun violenceis deeply riddled with hypocrisy.

On Monday, the president said he was looking at Medicaid funds to do the difficult job of addressing mental health needs in the country — but his 2018 budget heavily slashes funding to Medicaid. The mental health treatment system in the United States is already poorly funded and systematically neglected, to say the least. According to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, Medicaid is the main (and struggling) provider of behavioral health programs in the country, especially for poor people. With Trump’s consistent attacks on Medicaid, it’s hard to believe the president when he says he wants to address the “difficult” issue of mental health in the country.

In his first year in office, Trump has already taken harmful measures that have made it easier for people with mental illnesses and criminal records to obtain guns. For instance, in February 2017, the president signed a bill that rolled back a critical regulation stipulated under Barack Obama’s presidency that restricted gun access for people with mental health issues. Not only that, but Trump also lowered the bar for “fugitives” seeking access to firearms and from the federal background check database. Plus, Trump also proposed the idea to deprive the National Criminal Records History Improvement Program of funding worth millions of dollars, which would help with background checks in the United States.

If Trump is indeed so concerned about the well-being of people with mental health problems, the question has to be asked: Why did his federal budget slash an estimated 26 percent of federal funds to behavioral programs? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities studied Trump’s 2018 budget and wrote that Trump’s budget “would cut another five of the grants, including a 40 percent reduction in core funding for job training and a 26 percent cut for community mental health services.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also pointed to the budgetary cuts inevitably harming social services that help at least six million poor Americans with mental illnesses integrate into society. Trump’s budget eliminates grants like the Social Services Block Grant and the Community Development Block Grant that help poor Americans with mental health issues find better social care, housing, and job opportunities.

His call for increased mental health programs, however insincere, almost sounds like a noble pursuit until one recalls that Trump’s hyper-focus on mental health is neither new nor well-intended. It’s merely a rehashed and regurgitated conservative position that says people kill others because they are ‘crazy’ and mentally ill — not because lax laws in the United States offer extremely convenient access to semiautomatic firearms. While speaking in front of governors about potential funding, Trump also suggested that the country could return to the arcane days when mentally unfit patients were thrown into clinics. (Think of the 1950s and films like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”) “In the old days, you would put him into a mental institution,” Trump said, presumably speaking of the Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz. “We’re going to have to start talking about mental institutions . . . we have nothing between a prison and leaving him at his house, which we can’t do anymore.”

In a country where mental health problems are debilitatingly stigmatized and people with mental health issues are regularly discriminated against, Trump’s comments on the subject are not only duplicitous but dangerous. They’re so baseless that the American Psychological Association has already warned against blaming mental health for mass shootings. If Trump wants to take advantage of the conservative position that uses mental health as a scapegoat and ignores the fact that accessibility — not ‘crazy’ people — is an issue, his budget should reflect that concern through robust Medicaid funding, better social programs that help patients with mental health problems, and more wholesome communal initiatives that don’t confine troubled individuals to the isolating margins of society. Otherwise it’s simply hypocritical, spineless talk.