Category: Trump effect

January 29, 2019

 

As federal workers streamed backed into their offices yesterday, on the first Monday after the entirely avoidable disaster of a 35 day government shutdown, people everywhere were busily trying to quantify the damage.  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the shutdown led to $11 billion dollars in economic losses, $3 billion of which would never be recovered, (Source:  “CBO:  Shutdown cost economy $3 billion,” by Niv Ellis, TheHill.com, 1/28/19).

Elsewhere, pundits and pollsters were calculating the loss in terms of the drop in Trump and the Republican Congressional members’ poll numbers.  A Politico/Morning Consult poll found the shutdown had driven Trump’s disapproval ratings to an all time high, at 57%, and that nearly the same percentage blamed Congressional Republicans rather than Democrats.  A CBS poll found that 70% of voters did not think a wall was worth shutting down the government.  Most importantly, Trump has lost ground with key components of his base:   suburban men, white evangelicals and men without a college degree, (Source:  “The Shutdown Leaves Trump’s Base Cracked,” by David Graham, TheAtlantic.com, 1/26/19).  We may have finally reached the point at which people’s economic self-interest outweighs their racism. Continue reading “The price of everything”

January 23, 2019

     Now that our federal government has been shuttered for 33 days, the impact is being felt beyond the 800,000 federal workers (and countless federal contractors) going without pay.  Yesterday, the Commandant of the Coast Guard released an unprecedented video decrying the fact that service members had rely on food pantries while protecting our nation’s coasts without pay, (Source:  ‘Unacceptable’:  Coast Guard’s top officer criticizes lack of payment in government shutdown”, by Dan LaMothe, The Washington Post, 1/22/19).  The FBI Agents Association released an anonymous report depicting an agency  whose investigative capabilities had been crippled by lack of funds.  In the Southern District of New York, the district executive said that if the shutdown was not resolved by this Friday, it would activate the pandemic emergency plan developed in 2005 in the wake of the “bird flu” outbreak, (Source:  “City’s Federal Courts Brace for Full Force of Shutdown By Beth Fertig, WNYC.com, 1/22/19). Continue reading “America Held Hostage (h/t David Frum)”

January 21, 2019

    Today, we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in what would have been his 90th year, had he not been assassinated at the young age of 39.  Around the country there will be commemorative programs where children dutifully recite excerpts from his speeches and politicians spout empty rhetorical references to Dr. King’s “dream” of a society where Black people would be judged on the “content of their character,” rather than demonized for the color of their skin.

    The version of Dr. king celebrated by America is a bowdlerized, denatured one that upholds the status quo, rather than challenges it.  It casts Dr. King as a supplicant petitioning America to recognize the humanity of Black Americans, rather than a radical pacifist demanding the long overdue payment of the debt America owed to its Black citizens. Continue reading “Chaos or community?”

January 19, 2019

      Against the backdrop of a shuttered federal government, where federal works stand on bread lines and the Coast Guard cannot afford to deploy new recruits, there have been a dizzying array of developments that make the extent of Trump’s complicity with Putin increasingly undeniable.

    Earlier this week, we learned that Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to withdraw from NATO, the 70 year old alliance among the U.S., Canada and Europe formed in the wake of World War II to contain Soviet (later Russian) expansion.  Putin has made no secret of the fact that he would like nothing better than to destabilize NATO (Source: “Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia,” by Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, The New York Times, 1/14/19).  While there is no question that the U.S. spends too much on defense, Trump’s antipathy to NATO has nothing to do with any pacifist leanings, and everything to do with appeasing his paymaster, Putin. Continue reading “Who will save us?”

January 16, 2019

    As we lurch into the 26th day of our country being held hostage by hatred, all that’s missing is the sound of Sonny and Cher belting out “I Got You, Babe,” from an analog clock radio. In a vain effort to distract from the shutdown’s effect on his poll numbers, the Creamsicle colored rodeo clown in The White House enlisted the championship Clemson football team in a ridiculous stunt. He invited them to The White House for a dinner of fast food burgers and lukewarm fries. The spectacle of the hapless felon grinning like a hyena while standing in his overcoat in front of the “spread” he had arranged was so risible that even one of the players was caught on camera admitting that he thought it was a joke.
    While we were enjoying a bit of gallows humor, Trump’s Republican enablers were embarking on a stealth image reclamation project. First, the House Republicans belatedly stripped Rep. Steve King of his Committee positions, after literally years of his making overtly racist statements. Apparently, openly asking what’s wrong with white supremacy was a bridge too far for his Republican colleagues, (Source: “Republican’s Racism is Punished. Some Ask Why It Took So Long,” by Jonathan Martin, The New York Times, 1/16/19). Continue reading “Window dressing”

January 12, 2019

    We awaken each day to our government playing out the same depressingly familiar scene, as if we are trapped in a horror movie version of “Groundhog Day.”  The shutdown is now the longest in history, as the bloated reprobate, who conned his way into the presidency, holds our government hostage over its refusal to erect a monument to his racism.  Trump is aided and abetted by the amoral fossil in charge of the Republican Senate majority, who cunningly manipulates the arcane rules of the chamber to throttle democracy.

    It isn’t clear how this shutdown will end, given the combination of Trump’s truculence and McConnell’s willingness to hold his own chamber hostage.  The damage is mounting, as 800,000 federal workers and countless federal contractors enter their fourth week without pay. Twitter is awash in #ShutdownStories of the hardships they are facing.   Vandals are trashing Joshua Tree National Park and the FDA is curtailing food inspections, endangering our food supply. Continue reading “Our #Shutdownstory”

January 8, 2019

 

Yesterday, Trump cowed the compliant television networks into ceding 8 minutes in prime time to broadcast his lies to the American public from the Oval Office.  Trump tweeted that he would address the “humanitarian and national security crisis” at the southern border.   Although there is zero national security threat, there is no question that Trump will use the platform willingly given to him by the television networks to shamelessly fearmonger.  We know this because his minions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen, have been making the rounds echoing these lies.  Sanders’ lies were so egregious that she was fact checked in real time by Chris Wallace (no doubt haunted by the ghost of his father, the estimable Mike Wallace) who said that only six suspected terrorists had been apprehended at the border, not 4000.  In fact, the most common way that foreign terrorists enter the country is via our airports, a problem actually being exacerbated by the Trump created government shutdown. Continue reading “State of emergency”

January 6, 2019

     In the 72 hours since the 116th Congress was sworn in, a Google search reveals at least sixteen stories covering freshman Representative Rashida Tlaib’s declaration that the House was going to “impeach that motherf—ker,” compared to a mere three covering the much more consequential news that the Trump administration was set to overturn disparate impact regulations, (Source:  “Trump administration considers rollback of anti-discrimination rules,” by Laura Meckler and Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post, 1/3/19).  That decision, which was barely covered, has the potential to have a devastating effect on the ability to fight systemic discrimination in housing, banking and insurance.

     Meanwhile, on social media, everyone from David Axelrod to Richard Painter decried Rep. Tlaib’s use of an expletive, pearl clutching at a rate completely out of proportion to its impact or import.  The reaction suggests that this was a serious transgression, a viewpoint made all the more absurd in light of Trump’s profanity laced tirade in his meeting with legislative leaders the very next day. Continue reading “Impeach the motherf—-er!”

January 3, 2019

 

News of the horrific execution of 7-year-old Black girl, Jazmine Barnes, by an unknown and, as yet uncaptured, white assailant, has finally broken through to the national news.  As The Washington Post details, LaPorsha Washington was driving her four daughters to pick up coffee and juice when a white man in a red pickup truck pulled up next to her car and began firing at point blank range, killing Jazmine and shooting her mother in the arm.  Although the murder occurred on December 30th and a hefty reward has been offered, the gunman remains at large, (Source:  “A black 7-year-old’s slaying has Houston on edge.  The family thinks it was racially motivated.” by Eli Rosenberg, The Washington Post, 1/2/19).

A mere twenty four hours after Jazmine’s brutal murder, across the country in St. Petersburg, Florida, a 40 year old white man attacked a young Black woman working in a McDonald’s restaurant, completely without provocation.  Thanks to a bystander video, we have evidence of how the assault unfolded and can see that none of the young woman’s co-workers came to her aid until after it was clear that she could defend herself and was getting the better of her assailant, (Source:  “A man attacked a McDonald’s employee.  Video of her fighting back went viral,” by Amy Wang, The Washington Post, 1/2/19). Continue reading “The greatest threat to democracy”

January 1, 2019

     As we mark the passage of another year, we struggle to find the clarity we need to reflect on the recent past and plan for the future, thanks to the pervasive toxicity of Trump’s presence, which crowds every space and forces us into a state of heightened watchfulness.  We live in continual “fight or flight” mode, wondering precisely when Trump’s combination of uninformed impulsivity and hate-filled combativeness is going to plunge us into a crisis that we can’t readily escape.

     The truth is that an honest reckoning of 2018 gives us cause for hope and alarm in equal measure.  In 2018, Trump and his administration plumbed new depths of depravity, thoroughly unchecked by an an amoral Congressional majority too invested in  confirming rabidly right wing judges to scrutinize Trump’s blatant lawlessness. Continue reading “The only resolution we need”