Category Archives: Short & Sweet … Short & Sour

Income Inequality, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Democratic Party to do list: close the chasm separating the super-rich from the rest of us

Annie Lowrey gets the decade exactly right (“The Decade in Which Everything Was Great But Felt Terrible“):

“… when the United States grew to its wealthiest point ever—and when the middle class shrank, longevity fell, and it became clear that a whole generation was falling behind. The central economic dynamic of the 2010s was that no matter how well the market was doing, no matter how long the expansion lasted, no matter how much the economy grew, families still struggled. It was a decade that strained America’s idea of what economic growth could do, and should do, because it did so little for so many.

. . .

In household terms: The rich had it great, growing richer than they have ever been and accounting for a greater share of American wealth than at any other point since the Gilded Age. The gaps between the 10 percent, the 1 percent, and the 0.1 percent grew. The difference between doctors and hedge-fund managers widened, just as the difference between doctors and janitors did. But everybody in the top 20 percent, roughly speaking, thrived in the 2010s—most of all, the richest of the rich. The country got its first centibillionaires.

At the same time, the Great Expansion did not do much for working families. Wages are at last growing quickly at the bottom end, after years of slack demand holding down earnings. Still, it would take years and years of that kind of growth to chip away at the country’s inequality and to improve the standing of the country’s hourly employees relative to all workers. Research by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, shows that the top 1 percent of families captured half of all real income growth between 2009 and 2017. The incomes of the top 1 percent have grown nearly four times as fast as those of the bottom 99 percent since the Great Recession ended. Inequality is now a 50-year story.

Credit Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party for destroying the post-World War II economic consensus (embraced by Eisenhower and Nixon, but by no Republican President since then), and giving us an economy much nearer to the GOP ideal.

The Democratic Party has often failed to push back, but if ever there was a time for a change, this is it.

Off the Rails, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials”

“There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.”

With that, President Donald J. Trump concluded his letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for the benefit of the historical record.

On the same day, Senators Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, and Gary Peters (Ranking Members , respectively, of the Judiciary, Finance, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees) to Committee Chairmen Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, and Ron Johnson. Their letter reads in full:

You have stated your intent to investigate purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and Vice President Joe Biden – the same investigations that President Trump pressed the Ukrainian government to announce that it would pursue.

Allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election are part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Dr. Fiona Hill, the former head of Russia and Ukraine policy for the National Security Council and formerly the top analyst for Russia at the National Intelligence Council, testified to Congress, with regard to these allegations: “This is a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.” And Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified that there is no evidence “whatsoever” of wrongdoing by Vice President Biden. Consequently, we do not see a basis for an investigation by three major Senate Committees into these discredited allegations and believe that doing so could advance the Russian disinformation and election interference efforts. We should not facilitate foreign interference in our 2020 election.

Should you chose to continue this effort, we ask, consistent with Senate Rule 26, that you provide us with any evidence that you have that supports the investigation.

As Donald Trump approaches his third anniversary in the White House, polarization, dysfunction, and disinformation rule.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. And it’s not nearly over.

(Image: Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album cover.)

Democrats, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Is a Democratic Senator’s hand wringing an abdication of responsibility?

A Democratic Senator expresses concerns that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans he leads may not uphold their responsibilities to conduct a fair, objective impeachment trial. Josh Marshall, observing that Republicans have openly embraced a contrary course of action, takes the Senator to task for not stating this plainly (“Terrible, Terrible, Terrible,” Talking Points Memo):

It is grievously irresponsible to be expressing “concerns” that Republicans may not do their job and uphold their responsibility as Senators. . . .

Republicans have made their intentions crystal clear. It is an abdication of responsibility not to state this clearly. Republicans have already decided to protect a lawless President from constitutional accountability. They’ve betrayed the constitution and their oaths. This is a point to make consistently over and over and over again. Because it is true. . . .

There’s nothing to be “concerned” about. Senate Republicans have made very clear there is no level of lawless behavior from this President that they will not defend. The public needs to know that. It needs to be said over and over. To say anything else, to express hopes this or that doesn’t happen when it already has happened only signals a damaging, demoralizing and shameful weakness.

(Image: U.S. Senate chamber circa 1873 via wikipedia.)

Democrats, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Might Joe Biden be having second thoughts about working cooperatively with his GOP friends?

Understatement of the day:

“The increasingly personal and angry nature of the impeachment proceedings threatens to undercut a key message of Joe Biden’s campaign — that comity and civility can return to Washington after President Trump’s departure and that he’s the man to make that happen.” — Matt Viser, Washington Post (“Joe Biden unloads on Lindsey Graham amid signs GOP senators will target Hunter”)

(Image: screengrab of Democratic debate in Atlanta.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Can there be any doubt of Donald Trump’s unfitness to protect and defend our Constitution?

A linchpin of U.S. and Western security has been keeping Vladimir Putin’s Russia in check. Time and again Trump has acted to sabotage this goal and undermine our allies. That’s the subject of the impeachment inquiry.

“Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years, and a cyber war underway in the capital, Kiev.

It is exactly that policy that Mr. Trump appears to have been discarding when he made clear, in the haunting words attributed to Gordon D. Sondland, who parlayed political donations into the ambassadorship to the European Union, that “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about Ukraine’s confrontation with Mr. Putin’s forces.” — David E. Sanger, “Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession.”

(Image: AP Photo/Evan Vucci via 8Red Current Events.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Did Misguided Certainty of Clinton’s victory ensure her defeat? It won’t happen in 2020.

Insight of the day — on the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s election:

“Now, there’s no way to prove that people who didn’t bother to vote, or cast a protest vote for a minor-party candidate or even for Trump while assuming he could not actually be inaugurated, cost Clinton the election (there’s actually some evidence that minor-party voting hurt Trump more than his opponent). But if you add together the substantial evidence that nonvoters skewed Democratic and consider the tactical mistakes Team Clinton seemed to make due to misperceptions of the state of the race (e.g., focusing resources on Arizona rather than Wisconsin), it’s clear the element of surprise was an important — perhaps critical — asset for the 45th president.
If so, he’s lost it for good heading toward 2020, and that could be a hidden asset for his Democratic opponent, whoever it is.” — Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

There are a ton of factors that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. I haven’t any proof that the conventional wisdom that Clinton would win actually bolstered the number of third party votes or, more significantly, increased the number of prospective voters who just didn’t bother to cast a ballot (or even, as Kilgore suggests, pulled the lever for Trump knowing he wouldn’t win).

But it would be difficult to convince me that this isn’t so.

This won’t happen in 2020.

(Image: detail from cover of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.)

Donald Trump, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

GOP Congressman open to impeachment has decided not to seek reelection in a safe Republican district

Congressman Francis Rooney said on Thursday that he would not rule out impeaching President Donald Trump. Following Mick Mulvaney’s acknowledgement that there was a quid pro quo directing the hold on Ukrainian military funds, Rooney told CNN, “Whatever might have been gray and unclear before is certainly clear right now — that the actions were related to getting someone in the Ukraine to do these things. As you put on there, Senator Murkowski said it perfectly: We’re not to use political power and prestige for political gain.”

The statement was newsworthy because Rooney is a current Republican member of Congress, whose Florida district Trump carried by 22 points in 2016, and a word from the President could imperil the Congressman’s 2020 primary bid. The latter fact, of course, is why Trump has so few critics in the GOP Congressional caucus.

But now the political dissonance has disappeared: Rooney has announced that he will not seek reelection. With this decision, his future is no longer hostage to a vengeful president. Rooney is free to speak out.

While this may not be a tale of political courage, the Congressman’s decision to express his concerns and his decision to leave office are significant. Both are signs, however faint, of principled life within the GOP. And there’s hardly a surfeit of that nowadays.