Paul Krugman | Trump Gives US Business the Ukraine Treatment

29 November 19

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Paul Krugman | Trump Gives US Business the Ukraine Treatment

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

Krugman writes: "The story that has emerged in the impeachment hearings is one of extortion and bribery."

EXCERPTS:

Cook’s incentive to play along was obvious. Apple assembles many of its products in China; it’s seeking exemptions from Trump’s China tariffs. And there’s every reason to believe that the allocation of such exemptions is driven by politics, not the national interest.

For example, in 2018 a company owned by Oleg Deripaska — an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, who is supposed to be under U.S. sanctions for activities that include interference in foreign elections — received a waiver from aluminum tariffs. The waiver was withdrawn only after Democrats in Congress noticed it, with the Commerce Department claiming that it had been granted as a result of a “clerical error.” Uh-huh.

Put it this way: By using his political power to punish businesses that don’t support him while rewarding those that do, Trump is taking us along the same path already followed by countries like Hungary, which remains a democracy on paper but has become a one-party authoritarian state in practice. And we’re already much further down that road than many people realize.

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Ambassador Sondland. (photo: Getty)

Trump's "No Quid Pro Quo" Statements Are Clear Evidence of His Ukraine Motives
William Saletan, Slate
Saletan writes: "A new report shows the president was launching his cover story, not telling the truth."
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ICE officer. (photo: AP)

ICE Arrests 90 More Students at Fake University in Michigan
Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press
Warikoo writes: "About 90 additional foreign students of a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months."
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Sen. Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. (photo: ABC News)

Billionaire-Funded Protest Is Rearing Its Head in America
Hamilton Nolan, Guardian UK
Nolan writes: "The most straightforward way to avoid this creeping problem, of course, is to have everyone personally flog a billionaire before being granted admission to a protest."

Recently a crowd of protesters disrupted a speech by Elizabeth Warren. The activists might have seemed grassroots, but they weren’t

ast week, Elizabeth Warren went to Atlanta to give a major speech about issues of concern to black women. Her speech touched on knotty, existential topics such as the legacy of slavery, institutional racism, voter suppression, mass incarceration and reparations. But the next day’s headlines overwhelmingly focused on the fact that the speech was interrupted by a loud group of pro-charter school protesters.

We were supposed to be talking about challenging centuries of institutional racism, but now we’re talking about charter schools. How did that happen? If you suspect that some sort of nefarious action that can be traced back to plutocratic billionaires is involved – well, of course.

The protesters themselves were, by all accounts and appearances, a group of concerned people who passionately oppose Warren’s plan to bolster public education and crack down on the charter school industry. But they did not all materialize in the crowd together in matching shirts by chance. Their existence was orchestrated by pro-charter school groups that are funded by an array of billionaires, including Netflix founder Reed Hastings, art and philanthropy titan Eli Broad and, most prominently, the Walton Foundation, controlled by the staggeringly wealthy family that owns Walmart. Thus we are all forced to deal with the spectacle of classic tactics of grassroots protest being coopted and fueled by a tiny group of the very sort of people that such tactics were developed to target in the first place.

Of course, astroturfing is nothing new – the suburbs of Washington DC are strewn with post office boxes that serve as the headquarters address for zillions of groups that all have names like Working Americans for Freedom and Reduced Taxation on Pass-Through Business Structures. And charter schools, in particular, have long been an issue that seems created in a lab to entice billionaires to pour money into groups that have as their public faces working parents or former union leaders. (A book could be written on why the ultrarich are so drawn to the charter school movement, but the short answer is that it combines the fiction that education rather than capitalism is responsible for our nation’s ills and the ability to privatize a longstanding public good, all in one.)

It would be a mistake, though, to think that this little propaganda incident is about a single issue. The real lesson of this is how well even transparently corrupt tactics like this work. One of the emotional backbones of Warren’s speech was the story of the 1881 Atlanta washerwomen strike – a relatively little known incident in labor history that she was no doubt inspired to cite by the union leader Sara Nelson’s recent speech on the same topic in front of the Democratic Socialists of America convention. Yet what should be a shining example of radical ideas rising to mainstream prominence in a presidential campaign has been pushed to the bottom of most news stories in favor of the charter school ruckus. This points to the fact that astroturf campaigns don’t have to be very sophisticated, or even very secret; they just need to make enough noise to weasel their way into a 30-second TV hit to get the job done.

And so we are all left to gaze in dread at our dystopian very near future, when an increasingly small and savvy pool of billionaires is responsible for not only the majority of businesses, political connections and wealth, but also protests. If you thought that misleading stories on Facebook were bad, imagine a horde of angry activists, staging classic protests around the country, whose existence is entirely facilitated by the richest and most powerful people on earth.

The one thing that rich people forever lust for is authenticity, that elusive quality that tends to disappear the more that your influence is bought rather than organically developed. (A huge portion of the public relations industry exists to sell rich people the illusion of authenticity, with the assumption that the rich are too insulated from reality to realize that they are being ripped off.) Nothing is perceived as more authentic than real live chanting, sign-waving demonstrators. It is a trivial matter to find people who genuinely believe in a cause. Plutocrats can supply them with organizers and resources while still maintaining plausible deniability of actually controlling them. As a side benefit, in the same way that Fox News has undermined the public’s belief in factual journalism, billionaire-funded protests will inevitably make everyone more cynical about the integrity of real protests.

There’s really no downside, from the perspective of billionaires.

The most straightforward way to avoid this creeping problem, of course, is to have everyone personally flog a billionaire before being granted admission to a protest. Until we sort out a few minor logistical problems with that system, we will have to settle for something even simpler: keeping private money out of politics, by law. The Walton family’s net worth is nearly $200bn. If they are so concerned about education, they can pick up the tab for the entire US Department of Education for the next three years and still have a few billion left over.

Perhaps ironically, getting money out of politics is one of the big ideas at the center of Warren’s campaign. But a lot of people may not have heard about it, over the shouting of all of those grassroots protesters.

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The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York has launched an opioid inquiry focusing on six companies. (photo: Carlo Allegro/Reuters)

US Prosecutors Open Criminal Probe of Opioid Makers, Distributors

Al Jazeera

Excerpt: "Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into whether pharmaceutical companies intentionally allowed opioid painkillers to flood US communities."

Opioids have contributed to more than 400,000 deaths in the US since 1997, according to government statistics.

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Egyptian police officer. (photo: Getty)

Egypt's Security Forces Raid Last Major Independent Newspaper's Office
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Egyptian security forces raided the office of Mada Masr, the country's last independent media outlet, and arrested three of its journalists this weekend."







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Recycling bins. (photo: Chris Wattie/Reuters)

Recycling Isn't Working - Here Are 15 Ways to Shrink Your Plastic Footprint
Emily Holden, Guardian UK
Holden writes: "As plastics corporations ramp up production, they are also promoting a failing recycling system. Just 9% of plastics get recycled. Traditional plastics are made from extracted oil and gas, and they contribute to the rising temperatures behind the climate crisis."

Only 9% of plastics get recycled, and significant reductions will require systemic change – but there are easy tips for individuals to cut back

s plastics corporations ramp up production, they are also promoting a failing recycling system.

Just 9% of plastics get recycled. Traditional plastics are made from extracted oil and gas, and they contribute to the rising temperatures behind the climate crisis.

Environment experts are increasingly calling for a reduction in plastic use, as the waste accumulates in the oceans, poor countries and even human bodies. Plastics are also burned, as China – which once accepted the bulk of America’s waste – has begun to refuse it. And more than a million Americans lived next to polluting incinerators.

Significant reductions will require systemic change, researchers say. But there are also some easy tips for individuals who want to cut back on plastics.

(If this list is overwhelming and you’re not sure where to start, collect your plastic waste for a month and conduct an audit. Cut back on what you find the most of.)

1. Carry a reusable bottle, fork/spoon and bag

Be sure to use these items as many times as possible so they are worth the resources they take to create.

2. Refuse the lid on your coffee cup

Take a few sips before you leave the shop so you can avoid spilling. (Some coffee shops will say they are required to give you a lid, citing possible liability for burns.)

3. Choose products in glass or cans if they are an option. Recycle those materials

Plastics recycling is largely failing, but you should still try to recycle your waste plastics if they are accepted in your community. Make sure you are recycling correctly with this guide.

Glass and aluminum cans are much more likely to be recycled. Glass is most efficient when reused (ie with returnable milk bottles).

4. When possible, eat in the restaurant instead of taking it to go

Unless you have a physical disability, let your server know in advance that you won’t need a straw.

5. If you order takeout or delivery, tell the restaurant you don’t want plastic utensils or straws

This is an option on some food delivery apps.

6. Opt for products with less packaging. Say no to bagged lemons, apples, onions and garlic, and tea that comes in plastic packets

Choose more fresh produce for snacks to avoid individual plastic wrappers.

7. Shop from the bulk section and use your own containers

Some grocery stores will let you use pretty much any container, as long as you verify the weight of the empty container in advance.

8. Use bars of soap (also available for shampoo and shaving) instead of bottles and skip the plastic loofah

Find bars that are wrapped in paper, and for an extra environmental benefit, avoid palm oil.

9. Use a razor that requires replacing only the individual blades

The upfront expense may be daunting, but if you can afford it, you will save money over time. Note that TSA does not allow passengers to fly with individual blades.

10. Use a bamboo toothbrush or one with a replaceable head

The market for these products is growing rapidly. Most bristles will still have synthetic fibers, but you can at least avoid throwing away the brush’s plastic arm every few months.

11. Buy concentrated cleaners that can be mixed with water in a reusable container.

You can find these in powder, gel and liquid form.

12. Choose frozen, concentrated juice that comes in cardboard tubes instead of the plastic jugs

Some of them taste good, and they are lighter to carry home.

13. Don’t buy bottled water. Filter your own

“Bottled water is no safer than filtered tap water, but the industry doesn’t have to disclose the results of its testing,” according to the Environmental Working Group. The advocacy organization’s Tap Water Database can help you select the best filter for your local water source.

14. Buy fewer clothes, or shop secondhand. Wash your clothes less so they last longer. Hang them to dry

Most clothing contains synthetic fibers made of plastic. These fibers shed in the wash and end up in waterways. Synthetic materials may have some advantages over natural ones, however, because they may last longer.

15. When shopping online, group as many items together as possible, so you can receive fewer plastic envelopes

You can also choose slower shipping times, which could reduce the climate footprint of your purchase.

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Talking Turkey About Impeachment Hearings by Dorothee Benz Congratulations, you made it through the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry, one eye on the livestream and one eye on your work email, and somehow you met your deadlines even as you followed along blow by blow. So what are you going to say about it around the Thanksgiving dinner table? There were certainly some moments designed to stoke feelings of patriotism as we head into the heavily mythologized, uniquely American holiday this week. Alexander Vindman (New York Times, 11/19/19): “The uniform I wear today is that of the United States Army. We do not serve any particular political party; we serve the nation.” Fiona Hill (New York Times, 11/21/19): “I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth.” Perhaps you faithfully read every New York Times piece on the hearings (131 by my count as of November 22, 2019, based on their impeachment landing page). So you’re ready, maybe, to go toe-to-toe with Trump-supporting Uncle Joe about how Sondland’s story has changed and why his public testimony is the one Uncle Joe should believe. You’re revved up by the descriptions of the “bombshell” revelations (11/20/19), “extraordinary” testimony (11/20/19) and “riveting” witnesses (11/21/19). Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, you are itching to pronounce no later than your first piece of pumpkin pie, are clearly, documentably a quid pro quo and an impeachable offense. You’re right about that, but let me suggest a different approach to your anticipated intra-familial political discussion. Burying the lead To the New York Times (11/19/19), the interesting news is that Trump was tweeting against White House staffers—not that the Army was considering moving an officer's family onto a military base because his criticisms of the president may have put them in danger. On November 19, in a news analysis piece titled “A White House Now ‘Cannibalizing Itself,’” the Times  (11/19/19) went on at length (1,600 words) about the novelty of a sitting president publicly attacking members of his own staff. What the Times deemed “remarkable” was not Trump’s “attacks on his enemies real or perceived,” which “have become so routine that they now often pass unnoticed,” but rather that the “rhetorical howitzer” was now aimed at people who “still work for the very same White House that was publicly assailing them.” Halfway through this article, there is this spartan description of threats to one such person, Col. Vindman: The Army has been assessing potential security threats to Colonel Vindman and his brother Yevgeny, who also works at the National Security Council. There have also been discussions about moving the Vindmans and their families onto a military base for their protection. But in contrast to the adjective-rich astonishment the Times expressed at Trump’s attacks on his own staff, this tidbit is unworthy of further comment for the paper of record. Sadly, threats of violence to anti-Trump witnesses are not new (think Christine Blasey Ford), but they are much more important to the story of the impeachment proceedings—and the survival of what is left of US democracy—than the new but unsurprising fact that Trump’s Twitter vomit has now landed on people inside the White House as well as outside. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, the presiding officer at the impeachment hearings, had admonished Trump about witness intimidation four days earlier, when Trump assailed Marie Yovanovitch in a tweet during the former ambassador’s testimony.  The Times article (11/15/19) on that incident reported: Mr. Trump has a history of using his platform to excoriate people who are in a position to serve as witnesses to his own potential wrongdoing, using Twitter and statements at his political rallies to criticize less well-known people by name, in humiliating and sometimes threatening ways…. The tactic functions not just as an attempt to discredit his critics, but as a warning to deter others from coming forward. This is solid and appropriate context in the story but, once again, the article stays on the surface and avoids even hinting at the consequences of this kind of political behavior, opting instead to dive into legal definitions of witness-tampering. At the risk of stating the incredibly obvious, I’m going to say that a society in which witnesses have to fear for their safety when they expose government corruption or other wrongdoing is a society distinctly titling more towards authoritarianism than democracy. That the New York Times hasn’t raised the alarm about that is… alarming. It is more Nazi-normalizing barf journalism. I might also suggest that phrases like “rhetorical howitzer” are better avoided under these circumstances. Missing the point  A New York Times headline (11/18/19) combines politics as theater review with election coverage as fundraising horse race. The larger problem with the Times’ coverage of the impeachment hearings is also exemplified in the “cannibalizing itself” article. Yes, Trump is an equal-opportunity bully and liar who is willing to attack his own staff. But the first half of that sentence is more important than the second. The Times’ emphasis in this piece reminds me of the time our son got drunk, went skateboarding, and ended up in the ER. What did he learn? we asked him afterwards. “I shouldn’t ollie a full flight of stairs while drunk,” he replied. The bigger and more important story is that Trump and the GOP are assaulting the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry itself—it’s not that they are using one particular tactic or another. Everything—from refusing to turn over documents, to pressuring witnesses not to testify, to intimidating and smearing them when they do—is about a claim to unlimited executive power that is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. The New York Times’ voluminous coverage of the hearings details many of the pieces that make up the overall strategy, but the vast majority of it boils down to the predictable formula of covering the whole process like a partisan horse race. A sampling of Times headlines: “An Ideal Witness for the Democrats” (11/13/19)  “A ‘Circus’ or an ‘Education’: How Impeachment Is Playing on the Radio” (11/14/19) “How Swing State Voters Feel About Impeachment” (11/15/19) “Jordan Brings Pugnacious Style to Impeachment Defense of Trump” (11/15/19) “In Prime Time, Two Versions of Impeachment for a Divided Nation” (11/16/19) “Republicans Shift Defense of Trump While He Attacks Another Witness” (11/17/19) “A GOP Star Emerges in Impeachment Hearings. Democratic Donors Notice.” (11/18/19) “House Democrats Adopt a Sharper, Simpler Vocabulary” (11/18/19) “Partisan Lawyers Seize Leading Roles in Impeachment Hearings” (11/19/19) “A Republican Strategy Revealed” (11/19/19) It sounds alternately like an NFL halftime report and a review of a Broadway show. Even the five pieces described as “news analyses” that ran during the phase of the public hearings fall short of deserving that label, and none go any deeper than the rest of the coverage. “The Impeachment Witnesses Not Heard” (11/21/19), for instance, rehashes the relevant details of the administration’s refusal to cooperate  with the investigation, and analyses the partisan considerations in GOP stonewalling and the Democrats’ decision not to go to court over it. “But it leaves some frustrated about the missing pieces,” the article says, and, folks, that’s as deep as it gets. Less than the sum of the parts Masha Gessen (New Yorker, 11/14/19): "To upset the equilibrium, the Democrats would have to devise a strategy that would penetrate the Republicans’ reality bubble...like an attack on all fronts." Masha Gessen (New Yorker, 11/14/19) provided a framing analysis in a single column that the New York Times could not manage to do in its 131 articles. The impeachment hearings, they said, consist of two simultaneous realities: one where Trump “is guilty of abusing power in many ways and on many occasions, and one such occasion is being dissected and laid out in great detail,” and the other where “Democrats are out to get Trump at any cost, have latched onto a muddled and inconsequential incident, and are laying it out in great detail.” “These two realities do not overlap,” they note. What euphoric Reality One acolytes see as damning testimony and obvious evidence of Trump’s guilt, Reality Two adherents dismiss out of hand as further proof that Democrats/the liberal establishment/the deep state/the media are out to get Trump. Critically, what the Reality One camp doesn’t understand is that for the Reality Two camp the incoherence of Republican attacks on the evidence doesn’t matter. Gessen gets to the heart of it: Republicans are not actually defending the president against accusations of abuse of power; instead, they are mounting an offense against the Democrats, whose very enterprise they consider illegitimate. Gessen’s point is that the Republicans are playing a whole different game than the Democrats, and the Democrats don’t realize it and will lose as a result: The impeachment hearings ought to lay down a record of abuses that will make future historians blush, rather than a protocol of the time that the Democrats tried to get Trump on the one obscure smoking gun they had—and failed. Agreed. 🤦 But that the Democrats have, true to form, opted to make the whole less than the sum of its parts, is no excuse for the media to do the same. Why exactly the New York Times is studiously keeping its impeachment coverage so superficial I don’t know. My hunch is that it has to do with the Times’ longstanding affinity for legitimizing power and, as I’ve said elsewhere, the belief that the stability of US institutions is more important than their integrity. Naming and scrutinizing the extent of the assault on democratic norms revealed in the impeachment proceedings would lay bare the fragility of those institutions. But honestly, I don’t know, and that is a speculation. But that this approach to covering the Trump administration is deliberate is quite clear.  On Sunday, former Times copy editor Carlos Cunha (Salon, 11/24/19) exposed what he called the  “project of Trump-dignification” at the paper (and I call, following Bess Kalb, Nazi-normalizing barf journalism), detailing not only how he was fired for a single edit seen as unfair to the Trumpists, but also how the Times’ upper brass has sought to placate Trump (including the refusal to call him a racist). The myth of objective journalism  While I can’t answer the big question of why the Times’ coverage is content to stay lost in the trees and avoid looking at the forest, I want to highlight two factors that clearly contribute to the phenomenon. In the New York Times (11/15/19), Trump attacking a witness testifying against him isn't witness intimidation; it just "raises charges of witness intimidation." The first is the use of false equivalencies in the name of “not taking sides” (a well-documented problem that FAIR readers are familiar with). This takes the form of he-said-she-said reporting, for instance in the pairing (11/15/19) of Adam Schiff’s statement that Trump’s tweet about Yovanovitch was witness intimidation with the White House’s statement that it was not; and also the presentation of both true and false statements as ‘so-and-so claims…’ “Democrats argued that Sondland’s testimony bolstered their case for impeaching Trump” (11/20/19), for example, could more accurately be rendered, “Sondland’s testimony bolstered the Democratic case for impeaching Trump.” The larger problem with this approach to reporting is that it severely inhibits the ability to offer any analysis of political processes, a fact that itself reinforces the status quo and thus belies the idea that this approach is somehow objective. The second factor clearly contributing to the Times’ narrow lens on the impeachment process is that your Uncle Joe is in fact right: The “liberal media” do hate Trump. (You say liberal, I say neoliberal… basically corporate media; not all of it, but most of it.) Mainstream media disdain for Trump is obvious in thousands of details every day, but precisely because of the myth of objective journalism, reporters’ and editors’ views of how Trump is a bad president or a terrible human being have no legitimized expression. Rather than being clearly stated, where they can be debated, they are passive aggressively inserted in nuggets like the Times’ comment (11/20/19) on the note Trump read to reporters—“scrawled out in large block letters.” I believe it is that same anti-Trump perspective that has led the New York Times to follow the Beltway impeachment crowd over the cliff in their pursuit of that “one obscure smoking gun,” as Gessen put it. Rather than explore the full extent of the Trumpist lurch towards authoritarianism, much of which is palpable and documentable but not necessarily “provable” in the way the Ukrainian extortion scheme is, they’ve gone all in on the obsession with the smoking gun. It’s a bitter irony that the Times’ bias against Trump has contributed to the downplaying of the danger he poses to the US. But it might give you and Uncle Joe something to agree on, from which, who knows, maybe you’ll convince him to start watching Democracy Now! with you. You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

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AMERICAN PATRIOTS! They told the TRUTH!

FOCUS: Frank Rich | Republicans Are Excusing a Criminal Conspiracy

22 November 19 Can a Reader Supported News Agency Survive? The commercialists say no, it cannot happen, that's not the way our system works, nothing survives outside the corporate mainstream. What say you? Donating only takes a few clicks. Thanks to all in advance, Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

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NOVEMBER IS A SHORT MONTH AND WE ARE WAY BEHIND - We have a real problem with donations this month. With Thanksgiving coming up and only 30 days in November we have very little time to make up ground. There is a lot of ground to make up. We need a boost as soon as we can get it. In earnest. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Frank Rich | Republicans Are Excusing a Criminal Conspiracy

Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "How damaging is Sondland's testimony for the Republicans' defense of Trump? If the Republicans cared about the facts or the gravity of the crime being investigated, the answer would be apocalyptically damaging."

RE: JEFFREY EPSTEIN:
I’m much more interested in the repercussions for the various see-no-evil, hear-no-evil American Establishment figures who hung out with Epstein, in some cases took his money and favors or gave him money and favors, and are skating away (or trying to): Alan Dershowitz, Leslie Wexner, and Leon Black most of all in terms of documented interaction with Epstein, but also such hangers-on as Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, not to mention the Harvard retinue led by Larry Summers and Steven Pinker. Go to YouTube, watch the roughly 50-minute Prince Andrew interview in its entirety, and imagine all these American Establishment men being subjected to a similarly rigorous inquiry. It will chill the blood.

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