Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 791

Robert Reich: The rich simply can’t lose in our rigged economy

Marissa Mayer tells us a lot about why Americans are so angry, and why anti-establishment fury has become the biggest single force in American politics today.

Mayer is CEO of Yahoo. Yahoo’s stock lost about a third of its value last year, as the company went from making $7.5 billion in 2014 to losing $4.4 billion in 2015. Yet Mayer raked in $36 million in compensation.

Even if Yahoo’s board fires her, her contract stipulates she gets $54.9 million in severance. The severance package was disclosed in a regulatory filing last Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In other words, Mayer can’t lose.

It’s another example of no-lose socialism for the rich – winning big regardless of what you do.

Why do Yahoo’s shareholders put up with it? Mostly because they don’t know about it.

Most of their shares are held by big pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance funds whose managers don’t want to rock the boat because they skim the cream regardless of what happens to Yahoo.

In other words, more no-lose socialism for the rich.

I don’t want to pick on Ms. Mayer or the managers of the funds that invest in Yahoo. They’re typical of the no-lose system in which America’s corporate and financial elite now operate.

But the rest of America works in a different system.

Theirs is cutthroat hyper-capitalism – in which wages are shrinking, median household income continues to drop, workers are fired without warning, two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck, and employees are being classified as “independent contractors” without any labor protections at all.

Why is there no-lose socialism for the rich and cutthroat hyper-capitalism for everyone else?

Because the rules of the game – including labor laws, pension laws, corporate laws, and tax laws – have been crafted by those at the top, and the lawyers and lobbyists who work for them.

Does that mean we have to await Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” (or, perish the thought, Donald Trump’s authoritarian populism) before any of this is likely to change?

Before we go to the barricades, you should know about another CEO named Hamdi Ulukaya, who’s developing a third model – neither no-lose socialism for the rich nor hyper-capitalism for everyone else.

Ulukaya is the Turkish-born founder and CEO of Chobani, the upstart Greek yogurt maker recently valued at as much as $5 billion.

Last Tuesday Ulukaya announced he’s giving all his 2,000 full-time workers shares of stock worth up to 10 percent of the privately held company’s value when it’s sold or goes public, based on each employee’s tenure and role at the company.

If the company ends up being valued at $3 billion, for example, the average employee payout could be $150,000. Some long-tenured employees will get more than $1 million.

Ulukaya’s announcement raised eyebrows all over corporate America. Many are viewing it an act of charity (Forbes Magazine calls it one of “the most selfless corporate acts of the year”).

In reality, Mr. Ulukaya’s decision is just good business. Employees who are partners become even more dedicated to increasing a company’s value.

Which is why research shows that employee-owned companies – even those with workers holding only a minority stake – tend to out-perform the competition.

Mr. Ulukaya just increased the odds that Chobani will be valued at more than $5 billion when it’s sold or its shares of stock are available to the public. Which will make him, as well as his employees, far wealthier.

As Ulukaya wrote to his workers, the award isn’t a gift but “a mutual promise to work together with a shared purpose and responsibility.”

A handful of other companies are inching their way in a similar direction.

Apple decided last October it would award shares not just to executives or engineers but to hourly paid workers as well. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is giving a third of his Twitter stock (about 1 percent of the company) ”to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.“

Employee stock ownership plans, which have been around for years, are lately seeing a bit of a comeback.

But the vast majority of American companies are still locked in the old hyper-capitalist model that views workers as costs to be cut rather than as partners to share in success.

That’s largely because Wall Street still looks unfavorably on such collaboration (remember, Chobani is still privately held).

The Street remains obsessed with short-term stock performance, and its analysts don’t believe hourly workers have much to contribute to the bottom line.

But they’re prepared to lavish unprecedented rewards on CEOs who don’t deserve squat.

Let them compare Yahoo with Chobani in a few years, and see which model works best.

If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Greek yoghurt.

And I’d bet on a model of capitalism that’s neither no-lose socialism for the rich nor cruel hyper-capitalism for the rest, but share-the-gains capitalism for everyone.

5 government-sanctioned ways America still honors the Confederacy

A new survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center catalogs more than 1,500 public monuments, statues, schools, cities and military bases in southern communities and across the United States that continue to honor the Confederacy.

Tensions between those who support symbols of the Confederacy as heritage and those who view them as emblematic of racism and oppression is nothing new, but the battle has become more mainstream in recent years. While some protesters have successfully rallied to remove pro-Confederacy monuments from public spaces, one need only visit a Trump rally to find T-shirts, hats and other collectibles brandishing vestigial tokens of the racist South.

Many brand attempts at removing these representations as examples of political correctness, arguing we are trying to rewrite history. But as the SPLC points out, “this is not an attempt to erase history. It is an effort to end the government’s endorsement of a symbol that has always represented the oppression of an entire race.”

Here are five government-endorsed ways the Confederacy is still being honored.

1. Public Schools

The SPLC identified at least 109 public schools named after Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

Robert E. Lee High School, Jacksonville, Florida (image: Subwayatrain/Wikipedia)

“Of the 109 schools, 27 have student populations that are majority African American, and 10 have African American populations of over 90 percent,” the SPLC writes. The center notes many of these schools were built during the modern civil rights movement.

2. Monuments and Statues

Of the 718 monuments on public spaces throughout the Unites States,  the majority were dedicated prior to 1950, though at least 32 were dedicated or rededicated after 2000. The majority of the monuments are in Southern states, with Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina laying claim to most Confederate symbols.

General P.G.T. Beauregard Equestrian Statue in New Orleans by sculptor Alexander Doyle (image: Infrogmation/Wikipedia)

The survey notes that while most memorials “honor the heroism and valor,” some “glorify the Confederacy’s cause.” One South Carolina monument, erected in 1902, reads, “The world shall yet decide, in truth’s clear, far-off light, that the soldiers who wore the gray, and died with Lee, were in the right.”

3. Military Bases

Ten U.S. military bases in six states honor Confederate leaders, including General P.G.T. Beauregard, General Edmund Rucker and General Braxton Bragg.

Barracks of the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg (image: Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library/Wikipedia)

4. Official Holidays or Observances

Six southern states observe holidays or observances that honor the Confederacy, the SPLC reports. In Alabama and Mississippi, state employees take off work for two Confederacy-related holidays.

5. The Confederate Flag

While South Carolina and Alabama passed laws to remove the Confederate flag in the wake of last year’s mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, SPLC found six former Confederate states that still fly or represent the Confederate flag.

The survey notes that Mississippi “conspicuously incorporates the Confederate battle sign into its design.” And despite joining South Carolina in removing the Confederate flag from its capitol grounds, Alabama still adorns the uniforms of its state troopers with “a likeness of the flag.”

Alabama Highway Patrol logo (image: Wikipedia)

Honoring the Confederacy under the guise of celebrating American heritage is an unconvincing argument. As historian Juan Cole wrote days after the 2015 massacre in Charleston:

Those who fought beneath the Confederate flag were fighting to retain slavery. They wanted an economic system in which they could kidnap people from Africa and coerce them into working for no salary. Any individual found kidnapping people today and coercing their labor for no remuneration would go straight to jail. So why should the flag symbolizing these activities be retained?

The donor class that buys Chicago’s elections is overwhelmingly rich and white — unlike the city

The windy city’s political donor class is disproportionately and overwhelmingly made up of rich white men with a penchant for austerity and budget cuts, according to the first-ever municipal-level study of race, class and gender disparities in buying elections.

Sean McElwee of the public policy organization Demos found that, during the 2015 mayoral race, candidates received “more than 92% of their funds from donors giving $1,000 or more.” A stunning 88 percent of these big donors were white, in a city where white people comprise just 39 percent of the population. It is worth noting that big donors to the widely reviled Rahm Emanuel skewed white, at 94 percent. This compares with 61 percent for his unsuccessful rival Chuy García.

Not shockingly, big donors are far richer than the average city resident. “Though only 15% of Chicagoans make more than $100,000, 63% of donors did and 74% of those giving more than $1,000 did,” McElwee notes.

These disparities extend far beyond the mayoral race. “Only five overwhelmingly white wards accounted for 13 percent of Chicago’s population,” the study finds, “but 42 percent of donors to the Chicago mayoral and aldermanic races.”

Here, however, is the real catch. Surveys show that the political goals of wealthy Chicago residents diverge dramatically from those of the broader population. The 2012 Chicago-based Survey of Economically Successful Americans found that the city’s wealthy residents, two-thirds of whom are political donors, were far less likely to support a higher minimum wage or “decent standard of living for the unemployed.” They were also far less likely to agree with the statements that the federal government “should spend whatever is necessary to ensure that all children have really good public schools they could go to” and make sure “everyone who wants to go to college can do so.”

Meanwhile, separate data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies shows that Chicago’s donors are far more likely than their non-donating counterparts to back national austerity measures to reduce the debt.

“The current path Chicago is following, with cuts to mental health services, infrastructure and public schools, is responsive to the preferences of the donor class, not average Chicagoans,” writes McElwee. “Chicago has closed 49 schools, predominantly in black neighborhoods. In addition, the city has closed six of the city’s 12 mental health clinics, which was supposed to pull in $2.2 million in savings, though the city then paid $500,000 to private facilities in order to meet demand. A recent wave of spending cuts hit Chicago State University, the only state college that predominantly serves black students, particularly hard.”

These findings are relavent in the context of the 2016 presidential race. According to a recent study from the Washington Post, nearly half of the money raised for super PACs by the end of February came from “just 50 mega-donors and their relatives.” A separate study released by the New York Times last year found that only 158 families “provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House.” These families are “overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male,” the probe notes.

 

[This article first appeared on Alternet]

“Cool Girls” don’t like Hillary: What “Gone Girl” and “30 Rock” taught me about politics, feminism and smashing the dude-bro patriarchy

“I am supporting the good Secretary Clinton…” I say to the self-disclosed conservative male in the passenger seat, avoiding eye-contact and flattening my voice out of its typical shrillness. At my liberal arts college in southwest Virginia, the student body tends to be either militant Bernie supporters or Facebook Republicans — those students who are too afraid of the Bernie Bros to admit to liking Ted Cruz outside of the Internet. Hillary Clinton supporters like me tend to be pretty quiet about it. We confess our loyalty to the pantsuit brigade hesitantly, bracing ourselves for the inevitable barrage of “WHAT ABOUT BENGHAZI?!”

I usually mumble something about how incredibly qualified she is, biting back the desire to answer them truthfully: Hillary Clinton could be paying Planned Parenthood to make her custom pantsuits, and I would still vote for her.

I am so tired of adopting an apologetic tone and a lack of eye-contact when I tell people my age that I’m with her. When my body and tone radiate defensiveness, I know, deep down and guiltily, that I am not apologizing for Bill or Benghazi — I am apologizing because Hillary Clinton is not a Cool Girl, and it is not cool that I like her. Hillary is not a Cool Girl, apparently, because she is cold, disaffected, a creepy robot, a feminist, a bitch.

The idea of the “Cool Girl” originated in Gillian Flynn’s bestselling 2012 novel “Gone Girl,” which gave a name to the idea of a woman who has been socially conditioned to please men by acting in such a way that combines masculinity and femininity. The Cool Girl does not rock the boat; she is not a threat to male authority. She is pretty, funny, and even smart, but she is not a serious challenge to the patriarchy.

Pop culture is inundated with these women who have to look like they live on one grape a day while simultaneously drinking barbecue sauce through a straw and shot-gunning Busch Lite like a fifth-year frat boy. The Cool Girl boasts just the right amount of sports knowledge while knowing exactly what to wear at all times. She may be smart, but she isn’t as smart as a man, and she definitely isn’t a feminist who supports Hillary Clinton.

Like the conservative guy in the passenger seat of my Honda Civic, men my age (and probably most people) are not receptive to being angrily lectured.  Listening to a feminist rant about the patriarchy is very uncool. It is what Donald Trump would call playing the “woman card,” when what he really means is playing the “bitch card.”

So is this what I’m left with?  Embarrassed by my allegiance to feminism or shamed into trying my hand at the one-grape-a-day diet? Am I doomed to be either a bitch or a Cool Girl?  Perhaps there is a third option in this feminist vs. cool girl dynamic: tackling the absurdity of the situation with humor. No one has been quite so influential in helping me to realize this than the female comedians that I have grown up reading and watching.

The popular among hipsters and feminists (and 14-year-old girls from Kentucky who were trying to be both) sitcom “30 Rock” is often lauded for its biting satire of current events during the show’s seven-year run from 2006 to 2013. “30 Rock” created a dynamic and wry commentary on gender and the struggles of women in the workplace, particularly in roles of authority over male coworkers.

Liz Lemon, played by (my hero since the age of 14) Tina Fey is not a Cool Girl. She is an awkward, outspoken feminist who exists under the symbolic patriarchy of her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), a conservative who worships at the metaphoric feet of Ronald Reagan. While the two maintain a profoundly platonic friendship, it is frequently made clear that Jack does not respect Liz, because she is not a Cool Girl and does not use her intelligence for the betterment of the patriarchy. During the 2012 election, Liz and Jack spar on who the best presidential candidate is, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, when they realize that one of the actors on “TGS” has the power to swing the outcome of the election using her Florida fanbase. Jack treats Liz’s political leftness with a lack of seriousness:

Jack: Good God, Lemon, enough with the histrionics.

Liz: Her-strionics.

Jack: Since you’ve known me, I’ve been right about no less than everything, always. Yet you persist in this impotent, emotional weltanschauung, and it’s not just politics. For instance, I bet you bought those hideous shoes for some emotional reason.

Liz: Every pair you buy, they give a pair to a child that was forced to work in the factory that makes these shoes.

In a Cool Girl juxtaposition to Liz’s awkward feminist, we have the conventionally beautiful and conservative Avery Jessop, Jack’s love interest. Avery manages to boast the perfect combination of traditional femininity with just a dash of masculinity, planting her firmly in the camp of patriarchal supporter. Her obedience to the patriarchy earns her a level of respect that Liz is not fortunate enough to command. Jack is both interested in and respectful of her:

Jack: So, where did you go to school?

Avery: Choate, then Yale, then two years in Africa with the Peace Corp.

Jack: The Peace Corps? That’s surprising.

Avery: Oh no, the Peace Corp, Lawrence Peace’s corporation. We drilled for oil in gorilla habitats.

Fey’s ability to point out the absurdity of the Cool Girl vs. feminist paradigm puts her in the third category: using humor as a tool to subvert the patriarchy. While Jack Donaghy may win nearly every scenario within the show, the social commentary provided by the scenes above work to undermine real-life patriarchal superiority with comedy. Absurdity is often best pointed out not with feminist rants, but with humor, with weird jokes about drilling in gorilla habitats and wearing sweatshop shoes.

Feminist scholar, poet, and all-around badass Audre Lorde tells us that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” We can try to redefine what’s cool, but sometimes the best way to do that is with a sense of humor.  The Clinton Campaign picked the third option in giving out “Woman Cards” to its donors—Clinton took Trump’s attempts to make working for the rights of women uncool and completely turned it on its head. And according to her campaign, it’s working: $2.4 million raised from the initiative, with 40 percent coming from new donors. Maybe Hillary Clinton is a bitch, and maybe I am a bitch too. But as Tina Fey once said in another spectacular subversion of the patriarchy: “Bitches get stuff done.”

The “real” war on women?: Wisconsin lawmaker pushing awful anti-trans bathroom bill supposedly to “protect our women and girls”

Everything you’ve been told about the war on women is a lie—at least, according to one Republican legislator.

Wisconsin House Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) claimed that the biggest danger facing women and girls today isn’t the right-wing attack on their reproductive rights; it’s being forced to use the restroom with transgender people. In a press release, Kremer argued that nondiscrimination laws which allow trans folks to use the restroom that correspond with their gender identity are a “safety concern.” “Progressive activists have finally blatantly, and unintentionally, unveiled their real war on women,” Kremer wrote. “In an attempt to appease a few individuals, these extremists have overplayed their hand and we, as citizens, must stand up to their intolerance and bigotry.”

That’s why Kremer plans to reintroduce a bill in the Wisconsin legislature that would force trans people to use the public facilities that match with the sex they were assigned at birth. Last year, the lawmaker drafted a proposal, known as Assembly Bill 469 (or the “Student Privacy Protection Bill”), that would have designated school bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas as specific to those assigned the same gender at birth. As Wisconsin Public Radio reports, Kremer’s prospective regulations “never made it out of a legislative committee.” 

Apparently, that earlier bill didn’t go far enough — following the passage of House Bill 2 in North Carolina, Kremer believes the time is right to introduce statewide legislation, which would ban trans people from using all public bathrooms that most closely correspond with their gender identity. North Carolina’s HB 2, signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory on March 23, struck down local nondiscrimination ordinances across the state, which provided equal access in all public accommodations, including restaurants, museums, and public facilities. Kremer commented that he is “proud” of North Carolina for “[taking] a stand for what they believe in” and believes that other lawmakers in Wisconsin will be emboldened by their courage. “This North Carolina law has taken the blinders off for a lot of people,” Kremer told WITI, Green Bay’s local Fox affiliate.

Such a law might seem unthinkable outside the South, where the lion’s share of anti-LGBT legislation has been passed. In addition to the Tar Heel State, Mississippi passed a “religious freedom” bill in April that gave businesses the green light to discriminate against customers based on their gender identity and sexual orientation. Meanwhile, Oxford, Alabama passed what many believe is the “most terrifying” law targeting transgender individuals. Under the city’s new ordinance—which was approved on April 27—a transgender woman could be fined up to $500 for using the women’s facilities.

But while former Confederate states might be leading the way in hate, anti-trans bills are in no way solely a Southern phenomenon: In April, FiveThirtyEight reported that six other states—in addition to Wisconsin—were considering their own version of the North Carolina bathroom legislation. These included Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee, only two of which are in the South. On Friday, the Kansas City Star reported that protesters gathered on steps of the Capitol building to condemn the state’s legislation. If passed, Kansas’ House Bill 2737 would allow students to file a $2,500 lawsuit against schools or universities if they catch a trans person using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. LGBT advocates say HB 2737 effectively places a bounty on trans students’ heads.

Kansas, where Republican Sam Brownback sits in the governor’s chair, is a Red State, but Illinois has gone Blue the previous two elections. (Its current governor, Bruce Rauner, broke the trend.) In the Prairie State, Thomas Morrison (R-Palatine) introduced a bill in January that was markedly similar to the one in Kansas—but without the threat of a fine attached. Illinois House Bill 4474, also known as the “Child Privacy Act,” would compel the state’s schools to “designate each pupil restroom, changing room, or overnight facility accessible by multiple pupils simultaneously, whether located in a public school building or located in a facility utilized by the school for a school-sponsored activity, for the exclusive use of pupils of only one sex.”

HB 4474 faces an uphill battle in the Illinois Congress, where both houses are controlled by Democrats, but Wisconsin is in a unique position to pass their anti-trans bill. Although the Badger State is solidly purple, with a 2015 Gallup poll finding Wisconsin to be one of the “most evenly balanced states politically,” its legislature is anything but balanced. Following Gov. Scott Walker’s election in 2010, the state’s Congress has become dominated by Republicans. This puts Wisconsin in a unique position to become the next North Carolina, should Kremer finally draft a bill that sneaks its way out of committee.

Another factor that separates Wisconsin from its neighbor to the south is that Illinois has nondiscrimination protections on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity. The Badger State, however, is a mixed bag on that front. In 1982, the state’s Republican governor, Lee S. Dreyfus, made the landmark decision to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in areas like housing and employment, making Wisconsin the first state to do do. “It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party,” Dreyfus argued, “that government ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love.” Unfortunately, the state has yet to extend the same courtesy to its transgender residents.

Overall, Wisconsin scores very poorly on trans issues. In 2015, the website Refinery29 ranked it among the worst U.S. states for transgender individuals, despite some notable bright spots.  Gypsy Vered Meltzer became the first openly trans politician to hold public office in Wisconsin, after being elected to serve on the Appleton City Council in 2014. That victory, however, masks an ugly blind spot when it comes to the state’s transgender population. In 2002, Wisconsin passed hate crime laws that designated lesbians, gays, and bisexuals as a protected class, and the year prior, the state took a stand against bullying students on the basis of sexual orientation. However, gender identity was not mentioned in either piece of legislation.

As trans writer and activist Parker Molloy explains, there’s more to the story. “In 2005, [Wisconsin] passed a statute that would deny hormone replacement therapy to transgender prisoners, titled the Inmate Sex Change Prevention Act,” Molloy wrote on her personal blog back in 2013. “This law was struck down in 2011 by the Seventh Circuit Appeals court on the grounds that denial of necessary medical treatment—as hormone replacement therapy is classified by most major medical organizations—is a violation of the eighth amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The state, under Scott Walker’s control, defended the law, requesting that the U.S. Supreme Court consider the case. Their request was denied.”

Since then, Wisconsin has arguably become even more hostile to transgender protections. Although cities like Appleton, Madison, and Milwaukee have passed trans-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances at the local level, the Human Rights Campaign reports that there’s been a recent wave of “bad bills” targeting the LGBT community, as the state’s legislature has shifted to the right.

Walker himself has not taken a stand on the recent bathroom bill, although there are signs he wouldn’t stand in its way. According to the Associated Press, Walker “said in October that he thought there should be clarity in the law on the issue.” Meanwhile, the governor told Newsmax TV that he thought the military’s ban on allowing trans people to serve openly is a good idea, one that the Pentagon announced last year it was in the process of lifting.

In his press release, Jesse Kremer noted that the cards are stacked in his favor in Wisconsin. “With a Republican legislature and governor, there is absolutely no reason that we should not act to protect the rights of women in this state,” Kremer said. “I, for one, will continue fighting to put a stop to this madness and legally enshrine social boundaries to protect our women and girls.” He noted that the timing for action on the issue is particularly good: In April, Target announced that it would be providing affirming restroom access for trans customers and employees at all the big box chain’s locations. Since that announcement, a reported 1.1 million have signed an American Family Association petition threatening to boycott the store.

But in attempting to make Wisconsin the next North Carolina, Kremer is ignoring many of the lessons of the HB 2 debacle. The bill has been a financial disaster for the Tar Heel State: Since the passage of North Carolina’s anti-trans bill, over 160 companies have boycotted the state. PayPal famously yanked a planned $3.6 million expansion in Charlotte, which would have added 400 jobs to the state; Deutsche Bank followed suit. Meanwhile, The New Civil Rights Movement reports that a yearly conference “representing nearly 1700 companies” chose to relocate from Durham, North Carolina, causing an estimated $1 million loss in revenue. The companies, which include Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Etsy, have pledged to rethink their decision if Gov. Pat McCrory repeals HB 2 by June 30.

Republicans like Jesse Kremer might believe that trans activists are declaring a war on women, but by tempting yet another business boycott, he’s declaring war on the people of Wisconsin.

The Jayhawks return with “Paging Mr. Proust”: “They’re gonna call me a pompous ass, it’s gonna be fantastic!”

One of the consistently great bands of the last few decades, The Jayhawks have brought country folk together with electrified British-style rock and various other strands since the mid-‘80s. On some of their work, the voices of Gary Louris and Mark Olson added an Everly Brothers-like quality to the strong playing and memorable songwriting. But like many great partnerships, this one got ugly.

Five years ago, the two came together for “Mockingbird Time,” which felt like a throwback to the group’s classic ‘90s years. The new “Paging Mr. Proust” sees Louris in charge again, leading a band that includes longtime members. The opening song, “Quiet Corners and Empty Spaces,” “Lovers of the Sun,” and “Leaving the Monsters Behind” show that the band’s gift for hooks remains strong. (R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Tucker Martine — who has worked with the Decemberists, Beth Orton, Spoon, and many others — produced the album alongside Louris in Portland.)

The album includes a handful of literary references, including one to the author of “Infinite Jest”: “David Foster Wallace said what goes on inside your head is just too complicated to describe.”

“Paging Mr. Proust” has fewer country and folk touches than usual and more influences from outside the roots world, including elements of Krautrock and electronica. But at an emotional level, it’s still a Jayhawks record, with the band’s mix of brightness and melancholy.

Louris spoke to Salon from his home in Minneapolis; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s talk about the sound of the album for a second. You produced “Paging Mr. Proust” with Peter Buck and Tucker Martine – what drew you to them and what did they bring to the album?

I’d always been an R.E.M. fan and have known them from way back. I didn’t know them personally very well, but knew them in passing: I almost sold one of my guitars to Peter back in the ‘80s when he was looking for a Rickenbacker and he came into town.

But the Jayhawks played at Peter’s Todos Santos Festival, down in Mexico, a couple years ago, and Peter made it known that he’d be available if we ever wanted a producer. Because Peter likes to work, especially now that R.E.M. is no more. He likes to keep busy, and he’s always been a fan. I’ve never met anybody who’s a bigger music lover, or who has more vinyl than he does.

Our manager discussed Tucker Martine – because Peter’s not a knob-twiddler. He’s the big-picture guy. If it was up to Peter, he would have done the record in five days. While with Tucker, it would have been a couple of months. We ended up somewhere closer to Tucker. We wanted somebody who had a studio, really knew his studio, who we really respected.

So Peter was the guy who sat back, let everything happen, and say, “Okay, I think we’re done here,” or “That’s the great take,” or “I think you’re overworking it here.” Tucker was more in the trenches, running the board. And they seemed to get on well together.

You have a great line on the album from David Foster Wallace. How long have you been reading him and what attracted you to his books?

You know what? I read a quote from him, and now I’ve gone back and have been reading “Infinite Jest.” I like the density of it, the humor of it, I like that it’s off the wall. It’s got the detail I like in a lot of writers – that’s why I like Proust, that’s why I like Updike. People who go that extra mile, or 10, to get into a subject. I like smart but kind of wiseacre writing.

You’ve name-checked Marcel Proust in your album title – is that because you’re at a point in your life where you’re looking back a lot? Or have you been into him for a long time?

I’ve read him in the past but never got that far. In the last few years I decided to take the plunge. Really from reading Updike. You realize that Proust is kind of the gold standard for writers like that. I figured I’d go to the source.

I don’t know that I see Proust as dwelling in the past as much as digging into the present. If he’s walking through a forest he sees a bird or a flower, and it’s all about being in that present moment. Yeah, there are allusions to the past – like a lot of great writers, he had brilliant insights but he didn’t necessarily apply them to his own life. He spent a lot of time miserable in his bed; he didn’t have a lot of experiences.

I like the way he talked about slowing down and being where you are; I like his concept of getting past clichés – clichés are lazy and usually inaccurate. There’s a great book my friend gave me, “How Proust Can Change Your Life.” It’s contemporary, and funny, and not very long. It talks about how you can live better, love better, be more forgiving, et cetera, by taking Proust into account.

The record wasn’t going to be called that until we were looking for art, and a friend of mine – she was traveling in Europe. And her friend thought she heard Marcel Proust being paged in the Amsterdam airport. “Paging Mr. Proust” – I love that. People are gonna mispronounce it, they’re gonna call me a pompous ass, it’s gonna be fantastic! You can’t get more pretentious than Proust – so I though, This is really setting me up for some slapback from the press. But it should be fun.

And that started us looking for photos of midcentury airports, which led to the cover. If you look at the cover, there’s a guy looking up at the camera. He symbolizes someone today saying, “Help, we’ve spun out of control.” You can’t go a day without having some kind of new upgrade, and everything on TV is about how we’re getting smarter, faster! And yet suicide rates are up 25 percent over the last 15 years. So something isn’t working. I think a lot of it is that people don’t know where they’re at – they’re so busy thinking about the next link they never are really thinking about where they’re at.

I saw you guys live a year or so ago, and you played a lot of guitar. I was amazed at how good your guitar playing was, how risky it was. I don’t think your guitar playing is talked about enough when people discuss the Jayhawks –

Not enough, in my opinion!

So I’m wondering who some of your models or inspirations are on guitar, and how you see the instrument fitting into your songs.

I’d say my favorite guitar player is probably Jimmy Page. He’s got the tone, he’s got the riffs, he’s got that kind of dark, ominous vibe that I like. Because when I play guitar, I change – it’s corny. But I’m kind of this badass all of a sudden. I feel like I’m 10 feet tall. I feel this part of me come out that only comes out when I play guitar – it’s a dark power, it’s not satanic, but it comes from deep down.

Early on I was enamored of Clarence White, who invented the B-Bender [which bends the guitar’s B string to give a pedal-steel-like sound] … It was for the weirdness of his playing – it was very non-rock. I haven’t been a huge Richard Thompson fan but I like his weird, weird playing on the Nick Drake records. He has these weird fills.

I love Neil Young – he’s not a flashy player, it’s more feel and tone. That’s what I’m like. I’m sure I was influenced by Pete Townshend early on. I like the guitar playing on Wire records…. And I listened to a lot of pedal steel and tried to copy things.

At the end of the day, I like some dissonance, and some kind of ominous weight.

How important is country music to your conception of the Jayhawks? Is it essential to the band, or is it something you can some in and out of?

No, it isn’t [essential]. It’s a small part of what we do. But there is a twang, so people instantly think we’re a roots band. But at the end of the day there’s probably more influence from British music and art rock, people say psychedelia even though I don’t listen to a lot of psychedelic music. My favorite record to listen to, probably, is something like “Oar” by Skip Spence – it’s just so weird.

Country music came to me later in life. I grew up not knowing anything about country music. It was fresh at the time. I listened to a lot of old country music – ‘30s, ‘40s, ’50, ‘60s, a little bit of ‘70s. But I also listened to a lot of folk music, especially British folk.

I don’t listen to a lot of country music – I appreciate it for its soulfulness. Just like I do soul and blue and bluegrass and funk.

I guess there are elements of it in [the Jayhawks] – but not in the songwriting. Our lyrics are way too vague to be a country lyric, and the structures are certainly not country. Maybe certain elements in the instrumentation – you hear an acoustic guitar, a little twang of an electric.

You’re based in Minneapolis, I think. Did you have any contact with Prince over the years?

Not really where I talked to him or anything. But in the early ‘80s my band, Safety Last, a rockabilly band, was chosen to warm him up at First Avenue for a gigantic surprise record-release party for “Controversy.” Our bass amp blew up and our bass player had to plug into this leopard-skin bass amp of Prince’s.

I also remember getting done with the show, stepping backstage, into a covered parking garage… Prince pulled up, driving his own little yellow convertible Mustang, and he got really pissed off and drove off, kept everybody waiting for an hour and a half. Drove back, player a super late night show – a triumphant show.

You’d see him at restaurants, he came out to some shows. I saw him play a year or two ago at a small club, I was about 10 feet from him.

It’s really hit me hard. I didn’t think it would. It took a day for it to sink in. I love Bowie, and have probably listened to more Bowie. But for some reason the Prince death has hit me harder. I think it’s a combination that it was so unexpected, and he was such a presence in this town.

When we first started touring, we’d be in Europe, and people would say, “You’re from Minneapolis, that’s where Prince is from.” Later in our career it became, “You’re from Minneapolis, that’s where the Mall of America is from.” That’s a little bit depressing.

Your album and tour for “Mockingbird Time,” your reunion with Jayhawks founder Mark Olson, were so strong. Do you think you’ll ever play with him again?

No – that was then, this is now. I think we tried to do it. Be careful what you wish for. We made another go of it, and it just didn’t work. We’re just very different people. We’re different from each other and different from who we were personally. That was then – and it was beautiful then. We’re just different people now and it just doesn’t work.

Hulk Hogan suing Gawker for second time, this time for allegedly leaking audio of his racist tirade

After being awarded  $140 million in a legal battle against Gawker, Hulk Hogan is suing the news site for a second time.

According to The New York Post, the former wrestling star filed a new claim against Gawker, for allegedly leaking audio of the racists remarks to the National Enquirer, which were sealed in court documents.

In a 2007 conversation with sex-tape partner Heather Clem, Hogan unleashed ugly remarks about his daughter Brooke’s black boyfriend.

“I mean, I’d rather if she was going to f–k some n—-r, I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall n—-r worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player! I guess we’re all a little racist. F—ing n—-r,” Hogan said

The WWE immediately fired Hogan following the allegation, wiping his name from the website and his honor from the Hall of Fame.

His “income was cut off, his legacy in entertainment was severely damaged (if not completely destroyed), and his global brand was forever tarnished,” the Florida suit says, according to the Post.

Hogan, 62, apologized for the remarks, expressing regret and claiming “This is not who I am.” However, after winning the first suit, Hogan is perhaps feeling more confident in his litigious capacity and has filed a second for an undisclosed sum.

Hogan claims Gawker provided The National Enquirer with the transcript, which was part of the documents over the second sex tape with Heather Clem.

To add salt to the wound, as the Enquirer posted the transcript online, then Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio tweeted to Hogan “XOXOXO” with a link to the Enquirer posting, according to  the Post.

Gawker is still in the appeal process of the first suit.

On Monday, Gawker Media said in a statement  “This is getting ridiculous. Hulk Hogan is a litigious celebrity abusing the court system to control his public image and media coverage.”

“As we’ve said before and are happy to say again: Gawker did not leak the information,” the statement said. “It’s time for Hulk Hogan to take responsibility for his own words, because the only person who got Hulk Hogan fired from the WWE is Hulk Hogan.”

“The Biggest Loser” is a broken fairy tale: Our reality TV obsession with radical transformation needs limits

Just as surely as appearing on “The Bachelor” almost never guarantees a future of wedded bliss, a stint on “The Biggest Loser” is a pretty dicey path to long-term weight loss success. We know this. We have known this for years. Yet a new in-depth New York Times feature by Gina Kolata reveals just how bad the metabolic tyranny of rapid weight loss diets can be — even as the fairy tale of extreme transformation endures.

“The Biggest Loser” has been a part of NBC’s lineup for a dozen years now and has spawned a multimillion dollar industry of cookbooks, workout DVDs and apparel. It’s also amassed a veritable army of seriously overweight participants, and even more aspirational viewers at home, hoping to lock on to the secret of changing their bodies and changing them rapidly. It’s a formula that has produced some dramatic television moments — but for years, health experts and former contestants have been warning that a quick change is rarely the path to a safe or durable result.

Seven years ago, the New York Times warned that for contestants, “Health Can Take Back Seat” as they endure “severe caloric restriction and up to six hours a day of strenuous exercise.” And it soberingly reported that “The winners of the first four seasons of the show each have added at least 20 percent to their weight at the end of the show.” A 2010 LiveScience “Biggest Loser” feature noted that “Extreme methods of dropping pounds are less likely to work in the long run.” And in a New York Post interview just last year, former contestant Kai Hibbard said that while she was enduring the show’s intense regimen, “My hair was falling out. My period stopped. I was only sleeping three hours a night,” and that today, “My thyroid, which I never had problems with, is now crap.” She currently calls the show “a fat-shaming disaster that I’m embarrassed to have participated in.”

Yet the contestants keep coming, vying for a spot in a televised endurance test that seems all but destined to fail in the long term. As Kolata reports in the Times, during his stint on the show, contestant Danny Cahill lost a stunning 239 pounds in seven months — and then gained a hundred back. Other contestants are now even heavier than when they appeared on the show. Why? No doubt it’s easier to put pounds back on when taking them off is no longer one’s full time job. Take away the fitness trainers and the meal plans and put a person back in the world of office birthday parties, and no wonder weight can creep back up.

But what’s happened to so many former “Biggest Loser” contestants represents far more than something that can be chalked up to a return to old ways. It’s that, as Kolata explains, when a body undergoes something as radical as the show’s contestants have withstood, the system resets itself. Scientist and metabolism expert Kevin Hall followed the show’s graduates for six years, and the results were, in his words, “frightening and amazing.” Kolkata writes, “As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on.”

For example, Sean Algaier, who currently appeared on “The Biggest Loser” at 444 pounds and is currently back at that weight, now “is burning 458 fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size.” Former contestants’ hormone levels have changed; their appetites are different. The science is pretty clear — drastic, rapid weight loss is almost always a bad idea.

But who’s going to watch a TV show about somebody losing a pound a week, right? Who’s going to buy into a brand that seems to offer steady progress and nutritionally sound advice? After all, after the creation myth, what do humans gravitate toward more than the one of transformation? A man becomes a god. An ugly duckling becomes a swan. (Related: Remember “The Swan?” Yikes.) Who hasn’t ever been entranced at the idea that a little tap of a magic wand — or a radioactive spider bite — could have the power to make the ordinary heroic? Who’s never fantasized that underneath the glasses/clumsiness/weight there’s a superior “real” version ourselves waiting to be unleashed? It’s the physical equivalent of hitting the lottery, the overnight success of which dreams are made.

That kind of “Ta da!” turnaround can be entertaining as hell when it’s a show about a house in need of repair, or a restaurant with a “nightmare” kitchen. Put some new paint on the thing, knock down a wall. But when you’re literally messing around with the structure of a human being, the results can be devastating. And when midnight chimes and carriages go back to being pumpkins, what crueler ending to the story could there be than to worse off than at the start of the tale? As Algaier says, “It’s kind of like hearing you have a life sentence.”

Larry Wilmore didn’t “bomb”: His Washington performance was precisely what comedy should be — cutting elites down to size

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable,” goes a popular saying.

The same could be said of comedy. The best comics cut their teeth blasting the establishment, pillorying elites, satirizing the social order — from George Carlin to Dick Gregory, Bill Hicks to Margaret Cho.

Larry Wilmore did just this on Saturday night. As the featured comedian for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, he used his enormous platform to stir things up.

Wilmore attacked practically every leading political and media elite. Each joke in his performance was another notch in the list of powerful people to take down, from President Obama to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders, Wolf Blitzer to Don Lemon.

The media response to his routine was predictably antagonistic. CNN, which the comedian lambasted, reported “Larry Wilmore gets groans and grimaces at White House Correspondents gala.”

Slate wrote that “Larry Wilmore got more groans than laughs at the White House Correspondents’ dinner,” and insisted the comedian “really flopped.” The Washington Post similarly asked whether Wilmore “bombed” and “flopped.”

When comedians actually criticize people in power, elites insist they fail to be funny. Average people, however, might say they are merely doing their job, performing comedy as it should be done: comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable.

From a political perspective, Wilmore did a great service in his routine. He voiced much-needed criticism with the help of lighthearted comedy.

Herein lies the political power of jokes — they can varnish unappetizing truths and make them easier to swallow. Through comedy, Wilmore was able to jettison harsh critiques at elites that desperately need to hear them, and right in front of their very faces.

Wilmore’s provocative, and subversive, performance can be seen below in full, courtesy of C-SPAN:

From the beginning of his routine, Wilmore set a dissentious political tone. He boldly opened the set criticizing the president, taking a jab at Obama for “not closing Guantánamo,” breaking a promise he has maintained since his 2008 presidential campaign.

Both basketball player Steph Curry and President Obama “like raining down bombs on people from long distances,” Wilmore added, indirectly referencing the fact that, in 2015 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 23,144 bombs on six Muslim-majority countries, most of which the U.S. has not officially declared war in.

“I gotta be careful picking on you, though, Mr. President,” he said later. “Couple years ago during this dinner, you were like killing Osama bin Laden. Remember that? Who you killing tonight?”

Wilmore followed up with a swipe at CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. “Speaking of drones, how is Wolf Blitzer still on television?” Wilmore asked.

He later attacked CNN outright. “I’ve been watching CNN a long time,” Wilmore said. “Used to watch it back when it was a news network.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t get enough of that CNN countdown clock. Now we can see exactly when they hit zero in the ratings.”

Next on his list were Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton. Then failed GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, print journalism and white people.

Joke after joke was an attack on the establishment.

“I’m impressed with the people in this room. There are so many rich, powerful people in this room,” Wilmore said.

“You know, it’s nice to finally match the names to the faces in the Panama Papers. It’s very nice,” he added, referring to the cache of leaked documents that expose how political and economic elites from around the planet are stashing their money in secretive tax havens.

Other media juggernauts were subsequently in scope. Wilmore blasted Fox News and MSNBC alike for racism.

MSNBC “actually now stands for ‘Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents,'” he joked. “MSNBC got rid of so many black people I thought Boko Haram was running that network.”

“You know, I should say some of America’s finest black journalists are here tonight. Don Lemon’s here, too. Hey, Don, how’s it going? Alleged journalist Don Lemon, everybody,” Wilmore derisively added, in a swipe at the resident CNN hack, who returned the sentiment with a poignant raised middle finger.

Next was the Rev. Al Sharpton, then Democratic presidential candidates Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Sanders “recently had a hernia operation. His doctors say it’s his own fault for trying to lift the hopes of the disenfranchised. You gotta stretch before you do that, Senator,” Wilmore joked.

“I have to give you credit though, Bernie, you are trying hard to get the black vote. I think it’s great. Bernie’s been hanging around with rapper Killer Mike,” he added. “Or as Hillary Clinton calls him, Super Predator Mike.”

He continued with the criticisms of Clinton: “Bernie, you got in trouble for saying Hillary was unqualified? Hillary, she is extremely qualified. In fact, when you factor in all of her policy flip-flops, she is at least several of the most qualified candidates ever to run for president. You know I’m not wrong.”

A political comedy routine would not be complete without a denunciation of Donald Trump. The Republican presidential front-runner and his racist, xenophobic campaign were spared no mercy.

“Donald Trump looks like the rich dad in every episode of ‘Law & Order’ where the frat kid accidentally strangles a hooker,” Wilmore joked. “Or as they say here at the Washington Hilton, Tuesdays.”

“Everybody hates Ted Cruz,” he continued, going after the GOP runner-up. Wilmore played off of the internet joke that Cruz is secretly the Zodiac Killer.

“Recently, Ted Cruz got a string of wins and endorsements, and then everybody remembered who Ted Cruz is: the Zodiac Killer,” he joked.

Wilmore concluded his performance with a reflection on Obama’s legacy as the first black presidents — but he still managed to fit in a few more pointed jabs.

“I just got a note from the president saying that if you want another drink, you should order it now because the bar will be closing down. Of course, he said the same thing about Guantánamo, so you have at least another eight years,” Wilmore joked.

“Groans are good. Groans are good,” Wilmore said during his performance. And he’s right: groans are good, when it is elites groaning about the jokes made at their expense.

This is how comedy should always be. We should thank Wilmore for his gutsy routine.

It’s time to get real about the Obama legacy: Why his economic record is much more complicated than either party wants to admit

In a recent wide-ranging interview with New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, President Barack Obama candidly discussed the economy and his administration’s economic legacy, which, depending on who you ask, is a tremendous success story or a complete disaster.

(Of course, this means that the truth is somewhere in the middle, although most economists and historians will undoubtedly lean towards the former.)

One cannot begin to discuss “Obama’s economy” without addressing the economic crisis that he inherited from his predecessor, and the actions his administration took to stave-off disaster. The first months of his presidency very much determined the following seven years. And on the various measures taken to prevent a depression (e.g. bailouts, the stimulus), Obama is clearly disappointed with his administrations failure to properly sell the policies to a wary public (which very much helped Republicans).

“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps,” explained Obama. “We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market… If we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter, then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate.”

Today, the overwhelming majority of economists agree that the stimulus rescued the nosediving economy and prevented another great depression — and most believe that an even bigger package would have hastened the recovery.

Of course, expert consensus is not something that Republicans usually hold in high regard, as the climate change debate frequently reminds us. And while the Obama administration took necessary steps to save the economy, the GOP — which was thought to be on the brink of extinction in 2009 — took advantage of a Democratic majority government during a time of extreme crisis, and obstinately refused to give the popular new president any kind of bi-partisan legitimacy. (People tend to forget that Obama ran as a post-partisan reformer.)

The GOP adopted a kind of militant political nihilism, and was ready to throw the economy over a cliff before working with the president and congressional Democrats (some Republicans have shown less outrage over their former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s child molestation accusations than when one of their own shows a willingness to compromise with Democrats).

Selling the stimulus was never going to be easy for Obama. As Michael Grunwald explains in his book, “The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era”:

“The stimulus had one overriding public relations problem: The administration marketed it as a measure to prevent rampant unemployment — and then rampant unemployment happened anyway. Americans understood that Obama inherited a mess, but they didn’t understand how horrible a mess, and the stimulus was touted as a job creator at a time when jobs were disappearing at record speed.”

Republicans recognized this, and ultimately won the PR battle. Even Democratic politicians became heedful of the word “stimulus,” which did not help their cause politically. The Tea Party movement was partly a reaction to the Wall Street bailouts and the very real cronyism in Washington (as well as the election of a perceived Muslim socialist). But with Democrats in charge of government, GOP leaders managed to exploit this angry reaction and direct it at “big government,” instead of the real culprits — e.g. corrupt government, fraudulent banks, an unregulated financial market, monopolistic corporations, job-killing free trade deals, etc.

Today, even as unemployment and the budget deficit fall to eight-year lows (Obama has cut the deficit by about two-thirds), many Americans continue to believe that the Obama economy has been a failure. “If you ask the average person on the streets, ‘Have deficits gone down or up under Obama?’ probably 70 percent would say they’ve gone up,” said Obama. “And if you have a political party — in this case, the Republicans — that denies any progress and is constantly channeling to their base, which is sizable, say, 40 percent of the population, that things are terrible all the time, then people will start absorbing that.”

While the Obama years have not been the economic disaster that Republicans love to claim, neither have they been years of far-reaching progressive reform that some Democrats like to imagine. Obama has ultimately governed as a finance-friendly centrist — and, considering that his initial economic team was full of Clinton administration veterans like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, this is not surprising. The president’s policies have been more neoliberal than progressive — as most recently evinced by his unwavering support of the TPP.

In his new polemic, “Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People,” Thomas Frank explores how the Obama administration could have done much more in terms of economic reform, and how it essentially squandered the once-in-a-century opportunity with the economic crisis:

“It would have been massively popular had Obama swung the wheel of the ocean liner and reacted to the financial crisis in a more aggressive and appropriate way. Everyone admits this at least tacitly, even the architects of Obama’s bailout policies, who like to think of themselves as having resisted the public’s mindless baying for banker blood. Acting aggressively might also have countered the sham populism of the Tea Party movement and prevented Republican reconquista of Congress…Obama could have questioned or even unwound Bush’s bailouts; he could have fired the bad regulators who let it all happen; he could have stopped the AIG bonuses instead of having his team go on television to defend them; he could have bushed to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages; he could have put the “zombie banks” into receivership; he could have shifted FBI agents back to white-collar crime; and so on. Obama did none of it.”

Has he been better than a Republican? Of course… but is that really something worth bragging about? As Obama said in the same interview, the economic platforms of current Republican presidential candidates “don’t simply defy logic and any known economic theories, they are fantasy.”

According to various analyses, Donald Trump’s tax plan — which slashes taxes for the very wealthy — would add about $10-12 trillion to the debt over the next decade. And yet, the blowhard billionaire has claimed that the plan is revenue neutral (a fantasy) and that he could eliminate the debt in eight years — which is not only economically impossible, but economically idiotic. Trump appears to have very little understanding of macroeconomics — or is he simply bullshitting? Either way, a large chunk of Americans can’t tell, and are enamored by his so-called authenticity.

Eight years after Obama was elected, we have seen anti-establishment candidates take over both party primaries, which begs the question: What if Obama had taken a more populist approach in governing? As Frank points out, it would have extremely popular and politically beneficial for Obama to have been tougher on the abhorred financial institutions and to have fought harder for the millions of American families that were losing their homes.

Unfortunately, the president has always been a centrist at heart (his favorite columnists are the neoliberal caricature Tom Friedman and the chief defender of the establishment, David Brooks, for crying out loud!); as if the middle of the road is the morally superior path. But this way of thinking assumes that both sides are equally in the wrong — that the left and right are both too politically radical, and their policies too extreme. After dealing with Republican nihilists for seven years, I should hope the president has abandoned this faulty reasoning.

Conceivably the most revealing fact about Obama’s economy is that both income and wealth inequality have continued to increase rapidly, and are now at historic levels. Could Obama have better addressed this “defining challenge of our time” if the Democrats had a majority in Congress? Perhaps. But the first two years of the Obama administration had a Democratic majority, and the president took a non-disruptive centrist approach. Why should we think that this would have changed with a more favorable Congress?

There have been economic triumphs and failures under Obama, and — truth be told — presidents tend to get more credit or blame than they deserve when it comes to the economy. But had the president taken bolder measures in 2009 and emulated the rhetoric of FDR, circa 1936, things may very well have turned out differently.