One of my favorite books on the topic of mindfulness is Dr. Jan Chozen Bays’ (yes, she’s an MD) Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. In particular, I like her exploration of emptiness and our innocence of what it means to be empty. Towards the end of the book she asks two questions:

Are you willing to empty? Are you willing to do nothing?

First, she asks, are you willing to be empty? Bays writes:

The first noble truth of Buddhism is the universality of suffering. If you are a human being, you will encounter suffering in your life. Many people in industrialized countries hear this and think, “This truth of suffering doesn’t apply to me. I’m not in a war zone, I’m not being tortured or starving.” The suffering that the Buddha talked about, however, is an experience that is often much more subtle than outright pain. It is a feeling of dissatisfaction, a persistent feeling that things are not as they should be. It is an unpleasant or irritating feeling, one that impels us to move, to do something, to distract ourselves, to eat something, to binge, to vomit, to make the feeling of dis-ease go away. [Emphasis mine, JH]

Moving away and creating distractions are not long-term solutions to this feeling that something is not right. It is a feeling based in truth. It must be attended to. Eating, drinking, using drugs or alcohol, courting danger, courting a new lover—these are all over-the-counter remedies for the temporary relief of this fundamental dis-ease, the intuition that things are not as they could or even should be. The true source of this dissatisfaction is spiritual, and thus the only true cure is also spiritual.

To be willing to be empty is to align with a fundamental truth of our being.

The first time I read those paragraphs, I sat back in my chair. Earlier in the book, Bays talked about the concept of Heart Hunger, the idea of comfort food. We joke about the idea, but, as Bays points out, our cultural obsession with comfort food (to the point that there are marketing campaigns designed around these kinds of foods) is, in fact, part of our national dis-ease—I really like how she breaks the word to allow us to focus on the underlying meaning. She continues:

Let’s look at emptiness another way. We could frame the question thus: “Are you willing to do nothing?”

There is a natural rhythm that is characteristic of all life: the eternal cresting and ebbing of the ocean, the waxing and waning of the moon, the universal in-breath and out breath of all living creatures, the steady beating our hearts. Life depends upon the incessant alternation. If it were always night, or if our heart could not relax after it contracts, life would end. The out-breath is as important as the in-breath. Emptying is as important as filling. We know this in relationship to our breath, but we’ve forgotten it in relationship to our stomach. We’ve also forgotten it in relationship to our minds.

When we think all the time, our minds never get a rest. Here, too, emptying is as important as filling. Life-changing insights arise out of a quiet, open mind. [See also WALKING WILL DO MORE THAN CLEAR YOUR HEAD…, JH] So do seminal scientific discoveries. Archimedes realized the principle of displacement as he entered that bath, Newton the force of gravity as he rested under an apple tree. The equation for relativity flashed into Einstein’s mind as he idly watched a passing train. That is also how important spiritual insights arise in the receptive space of a mind that is calm and aware. This emptying is the essence of centering prayer or meditation. God [I prefer Our Genius, JH] can’t call in on a busy line.

There are some three-dozen exercises in book, many with guided imagery recorded on an accompanying. For me, the most power is Bays’ penultimate exercise: Experiencing Emptiness in the Body and Mind. Here is the fourth step:

Now bring your awareness to the mind. Imagine the mind as a large empty room. Thoughts naturally accumulate in this room like dry leaves blowing into an empty storehouse. You are interested in keeping this room clean and empty for a while.

Imagine the out-breath as a wind or quiet leaf blower. The out-breath scatters thoughts as they accumulate and blows them out of the room. The room returns to its original state, empty and quiet

Are the sensations of a mind that is empty like a great room pleasant, neutral or unpleasant? Do any impulses arise to change the awareness of an empty mind?

Blowing the leaves out of the room works for me every time.

Bonus No. 1: Notre Dame: we can’t even burn a building down without everyone carrying on like idiots any more.

Bonus No. 2: Dr. Bays has a number of mindful eating videos on YouTube.

There is no more byzantine compilation of laws in the United States than that found in the federal tax codes. Like medicine today, the general practitioner simply does not exist who can confidently state that they understand the entirety of our tax laws. So, there can be no surprise that Section 6103 could be missed. Even by Steve Mnuchin and Charles Rettig.

That someone brought Section 6103 to their attention is clear in the way that
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, at least, has begun carefully parsing his words when speaking about the tax returns of President Donald John Trump.

David Cay Johnston, writing in Here’s the Law That Requires Mnuchin to Turn Over Trump’s Taxes, or Lose His Office and Go to Prison for The Daily Beast, lays out the Nixonian peril:

Donald Trump and his top White House aide declare that the administration will not give the president’s tax returns to Congress, as required under a 1924 anti-corruption law. But both the Treasury secretary and the tax commissioner have been much more nuanced, saying that they will obey the law even as they delay actually doing so.

I know why Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner, are so cautious. They don’t want to be removed from office and sent to prison for five years just for doing Trump’s bidding.

The reason will no doubt surprise those who think Trump can thumb his nose at the law governing congressional access to anyone’s tax returns, including his. It will for sure shock Trump, who claims that “the law is 100 percent on my side.”

The exact opposite is true.

Under Section 6103 of our tax code, Treasury officials “shall” turn over the tax returns “upon written request” of the chair of either congressional tax committee or the federal employee who runs Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. No request has ever been refused, a host of former congressional tax aides tell me.

There is, however, a law requiring every federal “employee” who touches the tax system to do their duty or be removed from office.

The crystal-clear language of this law applies to Trump, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Mnuchin and Rettig, federal employees all.

Oops.

Bonus No. 1: Blocking Trump Tax Return Release Puts Treasury Sec. In Legal Jeopardy.

Bonus No. 1: Watch Bryan Cranston, Michael Keaton, Richard Kind and Michael K. Williams portray the elusive Richard Sackler.

Bonus No. 2: Scott Morrison is going to win the 2019 federal election. ARE YOU READY?

I’ve long understood the benefits of walking. When I lived in the very walkable Cleveland Heights I could walk to most places—the grocery, Coventry, Cedar-Lee, the library—and when I moved to North Royalton I had the Emerald Necklace abutting my back yard and a dog that loved to walk. Buster turned 17 this week and he’s slowing down.

Seventeen is an amazing age for a 90-pound dog, and our vet, Dr. Erin is very happy with his general health. Buster still enjoys his walks, but he gets tired much more quickly than he once did and our walks only last 20 minutes or so with a great deal of the time taken up by checking and sending peemail.

We have another dog, Gillighan, who is a bit of a goof, and now that the weather has finally turned nice enough, I should be walking him more, but I also realize that I ought not to using the dogs as an excuse. I should be walking more. Alone. Reading Anna Moore’s piece on Erling Kagge: One step ahead: how walking opens new horizons in The Guardian this morning reminded me of why. She writes:

“Walking on two legs,” says Kagge, “laid the foundation for everything our species has become.” It enabled Homo sapiens to travel long distances, hunt in new ways, explore, learn and grow. While we still don’t fully understand the connection between walking and intellect, we’ve always known it’s there. Countless thinkers and creative people have been avid walkers – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Darwin walked what he called his “thinking path” twice daily. Dickens walked all over London, three or four hours at a time. Beethoven… Tchaikovsky… Lin-Manuel Miranda–the Hamilton lyrics were written during Sunday walks with his dog.

In 2014, experiments at Stanford University seemed to confirm a causal relationship. People given tasks designed to measure creative thinking repeatedly increased their scores dramatically after taking a walk. “I’ve always known the effect was there, but until I wrote the book, I’ve never bothered about why,” says Kagge. “We think with our entire selves. When we move the body, we also move our thoughts, our emotions, everything frees up and circulates.”

Walking provides just enough diversion to occupy the conscious mind, but sets our subconscious free to roam. Trivial thoughts mingle with important ones, memories sharpen, ideas and insights drift to the surface.

“It’s good to think when you walk, but it’s even better not to,” says Kagge, who prefers to switch his phone off, too. “That’s when you find answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.”

That has always been my experience. I don’t think. I walk. And I’ve learned to use the record function on my flip phone to grab important ideas that float up from my unconsciousness before they drift away.

As Kagge notes, walking also slows, or at least slows our perceptions of, time.

“As every walker knows, walking helps you get things done,” he promises. “When you move fast to save time, time moves fast, too. I’m always struck by how little time you actually save by driving. When you walk, time stretches.”

It makes no sense, but somehow feels true to me. Three years ago, our family acquired a rescue dog. Until then, I’d often take 40 minutes out of the working day for a bike ride, pounding the pedals before rushing back to my desk, out of breath and empty of thought, to pick up exactly where I’d left off. These days, the dog and I go for a saunter that takes as long as it takes. I’m happier, more balanced and somehow, by the time I’ve returned to my office, no time is lost, my mind has already moved things along.

The master of the walk, of course, is Henry David Thoreau. I’ve noted before that the first hardback book that I ever bought with my own money was The Modern Library edition (1965) of Walden And Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau. In that book is his essay Walking, published in 1862, one month after Thoreau’s death. Reading that essay changed my own a la SainteTerre across the fields and through the woods of Washington County, Ohio, and later the Rocky Mountains in norther Colorado. Thoreau wrote:

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la SainteTerre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes aSainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

I know who my modern-day infidels are, who are yours?

And oh, be sure to read DeRay Mckesson’s piece in Bonus No. 1 below which includes a whole other perspective on walking.

Bonus No. 1: ‘I learned hope the hard way’: on the early days of Black Lives Matter.

It just rolls off my tongue: Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Much easier than Gund or Quicken or The Q. You probably noticed our downtown arena’s name change. What is bothersome is that the reporters who scream and yell at the city or county and quick enough with information quietly go to sleep when it comes to private interests using public facilities as they wish.

They are deaf and dumb.

Public info who cares?

Nobody seems to ask: how much did Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, pay in naming rights when he changed the name from Quicken Arena to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse?

Those who scream as if they have been blackjacked when they don’t don’t get public information go voiceless when it comes to private interests, especially the multi billionaires are involved. They never even ask.

It is no way I’ve otherwise tough reporters.

It’s time to look back again. To 1995 and 2000—Vol. 28 No. 2 and Vol. No. 32 No. 8—respectively of Point Of Viəw.

Cleveland and Cuyahoga county, which provide a place to play, do not participate in the profits of the team owners.

Just how cushy is this deal?

Best way to tell and you can read from a 1995 Point Of Viəw—Cavaliers owners George and Gordon Gund converted one of the three free loges (they got two regular and one double) into an APARTMENT!

The cost at the time: $600,000. Did they pay? Back then Gateway’s board chair didn’t know.

Greed has no bounds.

The Gunds were construction managers when The arena was being built. All the overruns are still being paid for by public funds now at $140-million with payments to continue until 2024. Then the public will begin to pay on the $140-million borrowed for the new arena update.

But the eager news hounds will remain asleep.

Where were you approximately nine years ago? I don’t remember either, but I do remember where I was when I first watched the video that made Chelsea Manning famous and put an international target on the back of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Manning went to prison and Assange went to ground in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

That was all nine years ago and the saga continues. Manning was jailed on 8 March for contempt of court because she refused to testify before a grand jury investigating Wikileaks. (President Barack Hussein Obama commuted her previous sentence on 17 January 2017.) Yesterday, Ecuador’s President, Lenin Moreno, withdrew Assange’s Asylum after seven years citing repeated violations to international conventions. Assange was taken into custody by New Scotland Yard and while his fate remain unclear, journalists around the world are focused on how his arrest will affect their day-to-day reporting in very real ways.

Matt Taibbi, writing in Why the Assange Arrest Should Scare Reporters for Rolling Stone, lays out the details:

The meatier parts of the indictment speak more to normal journalistic practices. In its press release, the Justice Department noted Assange was “actively encouraging Manning” to provide more classified information. In the indictment itself, the government noted Assange told Manning, who said she had no more secrets to divulge, “curious eyes never run dry.”

Also in the indictment: “It is part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure.”

Reporters have extremely complicated relationships with sources, especially whistleblower types like Manning, who are often under extreme stress and emotionally vulnerable.

At different times, you might counsel the same person both for and against disclosure. It’s proper to work through all the reasons for action in any direction, including weighing the public’s interest, the effect on the source’s conscience and mental health, and personal and professional consequences.

For this reason, placing criminal penalties on a prosecutor’s interpretation of such interactions will likely put a scare into anyone involved with national security reporting going forward.

As Ben Wizner of the ACLU put it: “Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.”

Then there is the matter of—and I was actually surprised that Taibbi (given his earlier protests) went there—Russian interference (I refuse to use anythinggate) in the 2016 national election. Taibbi writes:

Unfortunately, Assange’s case, and the very serious issues it raises, will be impacted in profound ways by things that took place long after the alleged offenses, specifically the Russiagate story. It’s why some reporters are less than concerned about the Assange case today.

About that other thing, i.e. Assange’s role in the 2016 election:

Not only did this case have nothing to do with Russiagate, but in one of the odder unreported details of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he never interviewed or attempted to interview Assange. In fact, it appears none of the 2800 subpoenas, 500 witness interviews, and 500 search warrants in the Mueller probe targeted Assange or WikiLeaks.

According to WikiLeaks, no one from Mueller’s office ever attempted to get a statement from Assange, any WikiLeaks employee, or any of Assange’s lawyers (the Office of Special Counsel declined comment for this story). A Senate committee did reach out to Assange last year about the possibility of testifying, but never followed up.

As Pollock told me in February, “[Assange] has not been contacted by the OSC or the House.” There was a Senate inquiry, he said, but “it was only an exploratory conversation and has not resulted in any agreement for Mr. Assange to be interviewed.”

Throughout the winter I asked officials and former prosecutors why officials wouldn’t be interested in at least getting a statement from a person ostensibly at the center of an all-consuming international controversy. There were many explanations offered, the least curious being that Assange’s earlier charges, assuming they existed, could pose legal and procedural obstacles.

Now that Assange’s extant case has finally been made public, the concern on that score “dissipates,” as one legal expert put it today.

Meanwhile…

Bonus No. 1: Tony Abbott? Peter Dutton? Who will lose their seat in election 2019?

Bonus No. 2: Remember the Pale Blue Dot, this is better.

Bonus No. 3: Who acknowledges that climate change is a reality and who doesn’t?

Bonus No. 4: The Assange prosecution threatens modern journalism.

When all of your existence is dependent upon a cocooning entourage of sycophants constantly doing what your father may never have done—told you what a good boy you are—then confronting any of the people you vetted to adore you is risky. When you fire people who don’t have prenups, they might tell you, and the world, what they really think.

Ralph Nader takes a look at our president’s history of relations-gone-bad with not-very-nice people. Does President Donald John Trump keep the nastiest of the nasty—Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, for instance—around because he knows that any breakup will be really ugly?

Nader, writing in Bully Donald’s Firings: Why do They Slink Away & Stay Silent?, lays out his case:

Snarling Donald Trump, after being selected as President by the Electoral College, brought one undeniable quality to the office–a lifetime of bullying people below him. During his career as a failed gambling czar and corporate welfare king, deceitful Donald bullied his employees, (many of whom are undocumented), consumers, and creditors (profitably jumping ship before he bankrupted his shareholders).

He honed his bullying skills through his television program–The Apprentice–where he dramatically kicked participants off the show each week using his catchphrase, You’re fired!

Donald has fired many of the officials he appointed. He was, however, too cowardly and discourteous to fire his appointees directly or privately. He would fire them by tweets or have someone on his staff perform the deed, while he would publicly Continue Reading »

More than any other national public radio show, I prefer American University Radio’s 1A hosted by Joshua Johnson. (Locally I’d pick WCPN’s Sound of Ideas with Mike McIntyre.) Johnson consistently hits the right notes with his topics and guests; and, because I’m usually driving when I listen, he consistently delivers driveway moments.

Long-time readers know that I am fond of suggesting that we build our communities with our conversations. Generally public radio does supports such conversations and 1A in particular does an excellent job in that respect. This particular show, however, goes to the heart of our need.

In The 2020 Race Is Reigniting The Centuries-Old Debate Over Reparations. (guest hosted by Todd Zwillich) begins to frame the conversation that we, as a nation, have avoided for more than a century-and-half. We need an intervention to deal with our denial and national shame. This is how we begin to heal.

The show brought together Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (18-Texas); NPR politics reporter Danielle Kurtzleben; Kirsten Mullen, co-author of upcoming book, From Here to Equality); Ken Woodley, author of The Road to Healing); and The American Conservative Editor James Antle.

Zwillich set the show up this way:

Senator Kamala Harris said she’s in favor of reparations for African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved. Senator Cory Booker has advocated for baby bonds to help eliminate the wealth gap between black children and white children. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro told us he supports the bonds, too.

All of those politicians are running for president. And for the first time, it seems reparations has become a significant issue in the lead-up to a presidential race.

The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates recently told New York that he “never thought reparations would be on the Democratic Party’s discussion table.”

Coates made an influential argument for reparations in a 2014 essay, The Case for Reparations.

But what might reparations for slavery, and the ensuing legacy of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, look like?

Nearly five years after Coates wrote the essay, it’s still influencing the national conversation about reparations. But his main policy recommendation–for the House of Representatives to approve a measure to study the effects of slavery–has not happened.

To those who say they’re not responsible for the acts of slave owners hundreds of years ago, Coates writes:

One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

But reparations remain broadly unpopular—two-thirds of Americans oppose them, according to a 2016 Marist poll. A recent piece in Vanity Fair suggested “the conventional wisdom holds that there’s no faster way to lose an election than to propose a massive, direct racial transfer of wealth.”

Some have raised questions about who should get reparations.

Why not reparations for the millions of human beings killed by wars waged overtly and covertly by the US government in Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Panama, and so on? —Lee Fang.

And others have pushed back because they view reparations as a new form of injustice:

Here’s Jeff Jacoby, writing for The Boston Globe:

To demand compensation for African-Americans who were never slaves is not a demand for individual justice but for racial group entitlement. To insist that white Americans in 2019, by virtue of their color, owe a debt for the slavery and repression of centuries past is to preach collective guilt.

We talk about the modern-day case for reparations.

Go, listen. Enter the conversation.

Bonus No. 1: Now We’re Talking: Paul Coates In Conversation With Wil S. Hylton.

Bonus No. 2: This Could Be the First Slavery Reparations Policy in America.

I know good people who live in Kentucky. I once asked one of them, my friend and poet Sherry Chandler—buy her latest: Talking Burly—how it was that the people of Kentucky kept reëlecting Mitch McConnell to the United States Senate and she could only shake her head in disbelief and wonder. The people of Kentucky and West Virginia have a great deal in common.

West Virginians first elected Robert Carlyle Byrd to the Senate in 1958 and he served in that house for 51 years. They kept reëlecting him because he brought home the bacon to one of our nation’s poorest states. Kentuckians first elected Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. to the Senate in 1984. I’m not sure what McConnell was bring home. Both men rose to become leaders in the Senate but their legacies will be very different.

For all his faults, Byrd is remembered most for his reverence of the Senate. McConnell will be remembered as the man who burned down the house. Robert Reich, writing in Mitch McConnell is destroying the Senate–and American government for The Guardian, explains:

No person has done more in living memory to undermine the functioning of the US government than the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Yes, Donald Trump has debased and defiled the presidency. He has launched blistering attacks on Democrats, on judges he disagrees with, journalists who criticize him and the intelligence community.

But McConnell is actively and willfully destroying the Senate.

So, what has McConnell done that was so horrible? Reich recites the litany:

Last Wednesday he used his Republican majority to cut the time for debating Trump’s court appointees from 30 hours to two–thereby enabling Republicans to ram through even more Trump judges.

McConnell doesn’t give a fig about the Senate, or about democracy. He cares only about winning. On the eve of the 2010 midterm elections he famously declared that his top priority was for Barack Obama “to be a one-term president”.

Between 2009 and 2013, McConnell’s Senate Republicans blocked 79 Obama nominees. In the entire history of the United States until that point, only 68 presidential nominees had been blocked.

This unprecedented use of the filibuster finally led Senate Democrats in 2013 to change the rules on some presidential nominees (but not the supreme court), to require simple majorities.

In response, McConnell fumed that “breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American”. If so, McConnell is about as un-American as they come. Once back in control of the Senate he buried Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the supreme court by refusing even to hold hearings.

Then, in 2017, McConnell and his Republicans changed the rules again, ending the use of the filibuster even for supreme court nominees and clearing the way for Senate confirmation of Trump’s Neil Gorsuch.

Step by step, McConnell has sacrificed the Senate as an institution to partisan political victories.

For years Senate Republicans have played a long game using their most powerful mandate as defined in Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

For the average American, that power has been best understood through the mind of Allen Drury as revealed in his 1959 novel (and the 1962 movie) Advise and Consent. Neither Drury nor Byrd would recognize McConnell’s senate. Reich continues:

There is a vast difference between winning at politics by playing according to the norms of our democracy, and winning by subverting those norms.

To Abraham Lincoln, democracy was a covenant linking past and future. Political institutions, in his view, were “the legacy bequeathed to us”.

On the eve of the Senate’s final vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act in July 2017, the late John McCain returned to Washington from his home in Arizona, where he was being treated for brain cancer, to cast the deciding vote against repeal.

Knowing he would be criticized by other Republicans, McCain noted that over his career he had known senators who seriously disagreed with each other but nonetheless knew “they had an obligation to work collaboratively to ensure the Senate discharged its constitutional responsibilities effectively”.

In words that have even greater relevance today, McCain added that “it is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than ‘winning’.”

Knowing he would be criticized is putting the case mildly.

For me, this paragraph best describes what McConnell is doing and why what he is doing has profound consequences.

In any social or political system it’s always possible to extract benefits by being among the first to break widely accepted norms. In a small town where people don’t lock their doors or windows, the first thief can effortlessly get into anyone’s house. But once broken, the system is never the same. Everyone has to buy locks. Trust deteriorates.

When the people no longer trust, whether that trust was in their elected officials or in their police forces, the system suffers, breaks down and chaos triumphs.

That is the long game that McConnell and his ilk are playing.

They must be stopped or we will live in a nation that our founders would not recognize.

Bonus No. 1: PEACE AND SOLITUDE IN OKLAHOMA’S OIL FIELDS…

Bonus No. 2: CAN WE FOLLOW A JOURNEY THROUGH SUICIDE…

Bonus No. 3 WHEN DANCING IN NEW YORK WAS DANGEROUS…

I have a student who, if he could, would embed his iPhone and iPad and bliss out like a Nivenian wirehead. More than anything else he wants to famous for being famous and filthy rich like his idols: influencers. They make millions and millions by just being cool, Mr. Hess! Well, maybe not that much, but a lot. For now.

Anyone who watched the brilliant arc of Don Draper journey from shilling the curing of tobacco to teaching the world to sing understands how advertising works and the importance of celebrity endorsements. The final episode of Mad Men had Draper, sitting in meditation, realize that Coca Cola didn’t need a celebrity endorsement, Coke needed a lifestyle endorsement. Coke needed influencers.

That was the seed, but social media was the black loam. Where advertisers once sought celebrities to smoke, drink, shave, eat or wear their product, now thousands of people used the products—and touted them on social media for free—in hope of getting advertisers to fund their lifestyle. They hoped that their coolness would attract vapid members of their generation would seek to imitate them: to wear their shoes, to play their games, to eat their snacks, so that they too might be cool.

Cool is the problem. Richard Petty was once asked if STP—Petty’s major sponsor—helped his car go faster. He replied: It never seemed to hurt none. That’s cool.

Today, however, cool is so high school.

Sophie Elmhirst, writing in her Guardian long-read ‘It’s genuine, you know?’: why the online influencer industry is going ‘authentic’, dives in:

Over the last decade, influencer marketing–the business of brands paying social media celebrities [People famous for being famous, JH] to advertise their wares–has become a well-established tactic. Influencers now have their own line on a brand’s marketing-spend spreadsheet alongside TV, radio and so on … If phase one was hyperactive expansion–bump the follower count, boss the Instagram algorithm, rack up the brand deals–then insiders say that phase two is about authenticity, about “coming back to quality again,” as Dominic Smales, CEO of [Fashion influencer Victoria] Magrath’s agency Gleam Futures, told me.

Coming back to quality again? Really? So, everything before was just drek?

In this new era of authenticity, influencers must display passion, a word that fills the air at Gleam. (It is the kind of office where instead of replying “yes” to a question, everyone says “100 percent!”) Magrath is like Gleam’s head girl, a role model for others: “Victoria is really passionate about Dior, for example,” said Smales. “She’ll hang out with the people at Dior because she loves that brand, she loves what they do, for no payment or anything like that. Not everything is transactional, it’s genuine, you know?”

Of course for Victoria and her ilk, everything is transactional. When anyone in advertising uses words like authentic, passionate, love or genuine, you know that whatever they’re talking about is the antithesis of all those qualities. Elmhirst continues.

Like many in the industry, Gleam have come to dislike the term “influencer”, finding it both misrepresentative and degrading. They describe themselves instead as a “digital-first talent agency”: if their talent have influence, that is simply a blessed byproduct of their creative abilities. Gleam pride themselves on being able to distinguish between the hollow Instagrammers in it for fame and cash, and the genuine talent who have the potential to broaden and prolong their career beyond the transient limits of a social media platform (hence digital-first: their talent might start online, but they could go anywhere, do anything). “We want to represent the absolute crème de la crème,” Lucy Loveridge, Gleam’s head of global talent, told me. “In the UK, there’s a lot of what I would call ‘influencers’. There’s less talent.”

In advertising you must first sell yourself, you can’t whore without being a whore.

You know what? I can’t finish this shit. I’m not saying that Elmhirst is a bad writer, she’s not. I’m just saying that time is too precious a commodity to waste on reading the rest of this.

Time to go do something useful like trim my toenails.

Bonus No. 1: EVEN FORMER MOSSAD AGENTS HAVE TO EAT…

Bonus No. 2: Why Israel is quietly cosying up to Gulf monarchies.

Bonus No. 3: Sometimes I fantasize about having my own apartment.

I miss Carl Stokes. Why? Because he was a real politician, who for whatever faults he had, represented what was essential in the 1960s Cleveland racial setting. Today we’re surrounded by fake politicians. Or very, very lazy ones. Are you listening Frank? Is there anyone who excites here? But the Stokes/Stanton face offs had meaning.

Cleveland City Council President James Stanton was defending the status quo of white privilege. Mayor Carl Stokes was pushing for black advancement.

They never faced off for mayor. Stanton said he was going to oppose Stokes but backed off days later. Stokes said that Stanton didn’t have to “guts” for a face-off.

At one political rally, Stokes writes in his memoir Promises of Power that Stanton was entering as he was leaving the event. Stanton, according to Stokes, asked one of the sponsors loudly why he had allowed the “nigger” to appear. Stokes hoped the Press, which had a reporter there, would have the incident in the paper the next day. It didn’t.

Stanton, of course, could have run against Stokes in 1969. He didn’t. Both left town in 1971. Stanton went to the Congress in 1971; Stokes became, again the first black anchorman in New York City at WNBC-TV. Stokes, who tried to play with the business establishment, learned they really didn’t have his interest at play.

In this look back, Vol. 1, No. 24, June, 1969 reveals one of the battles between these two Cleveland politicians.

In this final issue of the first year, we find one of the battles between the two Cleveland power politicians. Foundation money was at work with both politicians.

Stokes advanced a proposal to construct low-income housing in a moderate-income black neighborhood. It was a tough issue. However, it revived lagging interest in Stokes in time for the 1969 mayoral vote. Stokes was re-elected.

What shocked me was the subscription charge as I look back. I started at $3 a year and increased to $5 by year’s end. I know the first six months I had some 300 subscriptions and many Xeroxed readers, including at the Plain Dealer. I once had a lawyer threaten them because they copied some 12 issue every time it arrived at the paper’s library (morgue). The result: A letter from Baker-Hostetler denying the copying. And a failure to renew the subscription!

What was I thinking? Apparently, not much at all. I was offering 24 issues at less than 15 cents each and less than 25 cents at the $5 a year charge.

Not a good business plan! But I lasted 32 years.

Bonus: Happy 86th! Roldo—ROLDO RIGHTS ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR…

The most dangerous job title in the world is manager. Not to the person holding the title, but to the people buying whatever it is that the manager’s company is selling. Ask Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judy Resnik, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Michael Smith and Ellison Onizuka. Oh yeah and the 346 people flying Lion 610 and Ethiopian 302.

Except you can’t. Because managers chose to ignore the warnings of engineers: you know, the people who actually know shit?

Nader, in Boeing’s Homicides Will Give Way to Safety Reforms if Flyers Organize, writes:

To understand the enormity of the Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes (Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines 302) that took a combined total of 346 lives, it is useful to look at past events and anticipate future possible problems.

In 2011, Boeing executives wanted to start a “clean sheet” new narrow body air passenger plane to replace its old 737 design from the nineteen sixties. Shortly thereafter, Boeing’s bosses panicked when American Airlines put in a large order for the competitive Airbus A320neo. Boeing shelved the new design and rushed to put out the 737 Max that, in Business Week’s words, was “pushing an ageing design past its limits.” The company raised the 737 Max landing gear and attached larger, slightly more fuel efficient engines angled higher and more forward on the wings. Such a configuration changed Continue Reading »

As usual, I’ll check email once a day, and post submissions from Roldo as they come in.

I’ll be focusing on the first four lines from Book One, Chapter 33 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

He who knows others is clever;
He who knows himself has discernment.

He who overcomes others has force;
He who overcomes himself is strong.

Fucking Russians. Every time I think I have a handle on the shit show that the United Kingdom and Brexit, a new load of crap appears. This time the burning sack of dog shit on the front porch in bed with the Russians and Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is Aaron Banks, ground zero for Leave.EU and Brexit.

Ed Caesar, reporting in The Chaotic Triumph of Arron Banks, the “Bad Boy of Brexit” for The New Yorker, is proud of his handiwork. Caesar sat down with Banks at 5 Hertford Street—a private member’s club, in Mayfair, where male guests are required to wear a formal jacket. Nearly a page into the piece, Caesar writes:

Banks was singularly calm about Brexit, but he had to contend with some issues of his own. At the request of the Electoral Commission, which oversees voting in the U.K., he was under investigation by the National Crime Agency—Britain’s version of the F.B.I. The commission had asked the agency to investigate Banks and his chief executive, Liz Bilney, after concluding that, among other things, Banks was likely not the true source of all the political contributions made in his name, and that he and others might knowingly have concealed the provenance of those funds. It is illegal in the U.K. to use foreigners’ money in electoral campaigns. “A number of criminal offences may have been committed,” the commission declared. A spokesperson told me that Banks’s and Bilney’s stories had “changed over time,” and that what they told the commission was “not consistent” with company records. (Bilney says that this “evolvement of response” can be ascribed to the commission’s failure to understand “our business structures.”)

A sense of urgency attended the National Crime Agency’s investigation, in part because of widespread fears in the U.K. that foreign actors had meddled in the Brexit vote. Although President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia was ambivalent about the Brexit referendum, he recently pressed May to “fulfill the will” of the British people and rule out a second referendum on the U.K.’s membership in the E.U.—which, polls suggest, would lead to a narrow win for Remain. Moreover, several authorities on Russian foreign policy argue that Putin’s interests are squarely aligned with the Leave movement. Putin, they maintain, considers it strategically useful to weaken European alliances, and is happy to cause uncertainty and tumult in Britain, which has been at odds with Russia on a range of issues.

This makes perfect sense to me. When the former Soviet Union broke up, I told friends that the Baltic territories and Belarus and even Ukraine could break away, but there was no way in hell that Russia would give up Crimea and the home port of the Black Sea Fleet. Once Putin came to power, it was only a matter of time before Russia annexed Crimea. Caesar continues:

According to Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment, Russian officials believed that the West had been pursuing a “regime-change agenda” around the world, particularly in Ukraine in 2014, and worried that Putin’s regime might be targeted next. “Russia felt they needed to push back hard,” Weiss told me. “They wanted to promote cleavages in the West, and that’s where their promotion of populist and nationalist groups and—I think—their support of Brexit fits in.”

Banks’s wife, Katya, is Russian. A prominent “ambassador” for Leave.EU, Jim Mellon, whom Banks has described as a “friend and business partner,” made much of his money by investing in Russia. (A representative for Mellon denied that Mellon has had a “close business or professional relationship” with Banks.) Banks’s 2016 memoir, “The Bad Boys of Brexit,” acknowledges that before the referendum campaign he met with Russian officials, including Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Ambassador to London. Subsequent reporting has uncovered several other previously undisclosed meetings and contacts between Banks and Russian businessmen, during which opportunities with Russian firms in the mineral sector were discussed. In light of these connections, and the National Crime Agency’s investigation, many Britons have asked whether some of Banks’s political donations can be traced to Moscow. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications chief, and an ardent Remainer, told me, “There are still so many questions unanswered about Banks—where the money came from, and his role in the Brexit campaign of lies and misdemeanors.”

Americans, and the average citizens of the United Kingdom just see Russia as a bad actor causing problems. They don’t understand the history of empirical conquest, reaching back to the 17th century and Peter The Great—Russia has two greats, Peter and Catherine; England only has Alfred, that has shaped Russian politics for more than 400 years. Russia has been a land empire, stretching across 11 time zones, but it has never been a world empire because it has always lacked the naval power of first England and then the United States.

But back to Banks. I found this little tidbit enlightening:

Banks, who told me that he was expelled from both Crookham Court and a subsequent school for a “variety of offenses,” did not go to college. Instead, he worked as a door-to-door salesman near his mother’s house, in Basingstoke, southwest of London; after a while, he became a real-estate agent. He has told the New Statesman that he became “quite good at persuading people to buy things they didn’t want to buy.”

Like Brexit.

Banks wrote the election playbook for President Donald John Trump. Caesar writes:

However, even when there was an intellectual argument for Leave, there was sometimes an ugly subtext. I spent the evening of the referendum vote reporting from a pub in a poor post-industrial town in Yorkshire, in the North of England. White Leave-voting patrons complained to me that Muslims had changed their community, and that they wanted to “get my country back.” They understood that leaving the E.U. would not solve the perceived problem—the Pakistanis and Indians in their town were second- or third-generation immigrants—but they saw the referendum vote as a way to register a festering grievance.

Subsequent research has reinforced this kind of anecdotal evidence. In 2016, social psychologists from Goldsmiths, University of London, conducted a study of referendum voters, and found that support for Brexit correlated with “collective narcissism”—a belief in the unparalleled greatness of one’s country—and with a heightened fear of immigrants. One of the researchers, Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, told the Independent, “The Leave campaign gave a new, acceptable way to express xenophobia.”

Banks’ Muslims became Trump’s Mexicans and caging began. The likes of Trump and Banks—businessmen run amok—are not restricted to the U.S. and The U.K. They are a global problem, a network of conartists and grifters looking to suck all the money they can out of their nations while the Russians protects their own.

We former colonials have enough to lose sleep over given the goosestepping over the cliff that is our current presidency, to spend a great deal of time on our former royal masters’ own slow-motion disaster that is Brexit. Yet, we have some obligation—historical ties and all that—to keep at least one eye on what is happening on the other side of the pond.

Of some personal interest is that Mary Jo’s family is Irish and my own heritage is partially Welsh. In the original Brexit vote, both Wales and Northern Ireland were solidly opposed to the referendum and now, because of the Norther Ireland border with Ireland and the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement one of the major consequences of a no-deal Brexit is a the strong possibility of returning that now peaceful border to one of terrible conflict.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, writing in The Magical Thinking Around Brexit for The New Yorker, rightfully concerned about what may happen. She begins:

The lexicon of Brexit, the United Kingdom’s buffoonishly mismanaged effort to leave the European Union, includes technical terms such as “backstop” and “customs union,” as well as a fanciful but revealing one: “unicorn.” It has come to be a scornful shorthand for all that the Brexiteers promised voters in the June, 2016, referendum and cannot, now or ever, deliver. An E.U. official, referring to what he saw as the U.K.’s irrational negotiation schemes, told the Financial Times that “the unicorn industry has been very busy.” Anti-Brexit protesters have taken to wearing unicorn costumes. “A lot of the people who advocated Brexit have been chasing unicorns now for a very long time,” Leo Varadkar, the Prime Minister of Ireland, said last week in Washington, D.C., where he attended St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. His visit coincided with a series of votes in Parliament that were meant to clarify the plans for Brexit but which did nothing of the kind.

As was expected, the European Union is neither pleased nor interested in accommodations.

On Thursday, May got Parliament’s approval to ask the E.U. for an extension. (Seven of her own Cabinet members voted against her.) But all of the other twenty-seven member states must approve it, and several have said that they will not do so unless the U.K. comes up with an actual plan for what it will do with the added time. And should the extension be short, or long enough to allow a real reconsideration of whether Brexit is even worth doing? The mood of many European leaders was captured by Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who said that he didn’t see the point of just allowing the U.K. to keep “whining on for months.”

Naturally, President Donald John Trump had to have his say in all this. Sorkin writes:

Marina Hyde, of the Guardian, wrote that the story of Brexit is one of “politicians finding out in real time what the thing they had already done actually meant, then deferring the admission or even acceptance of it.”

Those words should resonate for Americans. The Brexit debate has been marked by particular British eccentricities, but the tendencies it appeals to—xenophobia, the belief in a lost, past greatness—cross many borders. The adherents of such movements may see the floundering of Brexit as a reason to rethink their assumptions—or, more dangerously, as proof that élites are conspiring against them. The populist dream subsists in an increasingly troubled sleep.

Donald Trump has called Brexit “a great victory.” Appearing last week with [Prime Minister of Ireland Leo] Varadkar, however, he denied that he had supported it; all he had done, he said, was to predict that it would win. He recalled the moment: “I was standing out on Turnberry”—his Scottish golf resort—“and we had a press conference, and people were screaming. That was the day before.” In fact, Trump arrived the day after the referendum. He might as truthfully have said that he saw a unicorn on the Turnberry fairway. He conceded that Brexit has gone badly, but he didn’t think that there should be a second referendum: “It would be very unfair to the people that won. They’d say, ‘What do you mean, you’re going to take another vote?’ ” But, as Trump will soon be reminded, that’s how democracy works: you don’t face voters just once but again and again, as they come to see what your promises amount to. And sometimes the second answer is very different.

This will not end well.

Today’s severe problems in Cleveland inner city neighborhoods are the product of yesterday’s decisions. Those decisions were primarily made by the private sector and obediently ratified by the public sector. They were glorified in the news media. As I return to Point Of Viəw‘s early years, I see the major difference between my own and “conventional” journalism.

It’s a matter of how you look at the world.

In this look back those on the examination table are the so-called “leaders” of the community.

One of the key decisions made was hidden from public view—an urban renewal program, particularly downtown’s Erieview project. In 1950 I note that the city planning commission was given $50,000 to prepare a “downtown plan.” It was a phony move. I know the details because I interviewed (with Don Sabath, the Plain Dealer urban renewal reporter) Upshur Evans, head of an elite foundation.

Evans was a former boss of Standard Oil of Ohio. He told us about giving the city $50,000 but that behind the scenes his private organization—the Cleveland Development Foundation—was doing the real plan—Erieview, which became a very costly debacle of our failed urban renewal effort.

I remember Sabath and I reported to the city editor Ted Princiotto. We told him what we learned—and how it was a dirty deal. Princiotto refused to believe the double-deal. Why he knew Evans, had lunch dates with Evans. Couldn’t be true. It was true.

The decisions made by these elites cause irreparable damage to hundreds of thousands of Clevelanders, mostly blacks, though the elites, back by foundation funding, worried that African-Americans would see them as “ambivalent Santa Clause,” as one said.

You can also note in this issue, Vol. 1, No. 21, of May 6, 1969, how a number of foundation leaders handsomely paid themselves as they rigged the system to their benefit.

Please remember the amounts foundation members took for themselves were in 50-year ago dollars.

On Monday, in MUELLER’S DONE: SKIP 1-4; GO TO ACCEPTANCE… my lede began: The time has come to ignore stories about malfeasance in office by President Donald John Trump and his minions. I stand by that assertion. A lot of Americans, however, can’t let go. Matt Taibbi, writing in a followup to his own piece, has some choice words for those in denial.

Taibbi, writing in Taibbi: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won for Rolling Stone, begins:

Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.

Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media in the end.

A day after publishing that excerpt, a Attorney General William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were rushing to judgment, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters “cowed” and likely to “back down from aggressive coverage of Trump.”

This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal, Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate “skeptics” — I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn’t normal and healthy in this job — were really secret Trump partisans, part of a “horseshoe” pact between far left and far right to focus attention on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump’s more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book about Trump called Insane Clown President.

Those names—Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal and Jordan Chariton—are the starting point for those who want to look forward to 2020 and not back to the last two year.

(I find the fact that two names on the list—Michael Tracey and Jordan Chariton) are escapees from Cenk Uygur’s The Young Turks, an operation that Tim Russo is ambivalent about, poetic.

Taibbi confesses that he saw the writing on the wall—as I did, and said so back in August of 2015—but ignored his gut. Americans need to get over their cognitive dissonance and hit the barricades in force. We can’t allow Trump to steal a march and humbug us.

Here are some takes on Trump’s campaign after he sealed up the nomination:

David Brooks: Trump will be the “biggest loser” in American politics.

The Week: “Trump is poised to lose the biggest landslide in modern American history.”

George Will: “Donald Trump may find a place in history–by losing just that badly.”

I belong on this infamous list myself. In one of the worst mistakes of my career, I ended up changing my mind about “free-falling” Trump’s chances, spending the stretch run predicting doom for Republicans. I read too many polls and ignored what I was seeing, i.e. that even the post-Access Hollywood Trump was still packing stadiums.

Every day that we spend gnashing our teeth gnawing on skulls is one day more that the Trumpians have ram their political blitzkrieg deeper and deeper into America’s consciousness.

We cannot allow that to happen.

Bonus No. 1: Pete Buttigieg—The Case For A Younger President.

Journalism is a cut-throat business. (Interestingly enough I was once promoted to executive editor because I handed off a scoop and told the publisher that the other editor should take the credit.) There aren’t a lot of team players out there, but this week Glenn Greenwald proved that he is one of the class acts out there when he gave full chops to Matt Taibbi.

Greenwald, writing in Watch: a Contentious, Constructive Debate on the Media and Political Humiliation from the Mueller Report for The Intercept, begins:

I obviously intended to write about the fallout from Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report: specifically his definitive finding that “the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” and that “the report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public.” Those two sentences alone permanently destroyed the prevailing Trump/Russia narratives – from blackmail fantasies to collusion tales – that consumed most of U.S. politics and media discourse for much of the last three years.

Just three weeks ago – three weeks ago – former CIA Director and now NBC News analyst John Brennan confidently predicted that Mueller was just weeks if not days away from arresting members “of the Trump family” on charges of conspiring with the Russians as his final act. Just watch the deceitful, propagandistic trash that MSNBC in particular fed to their viewers for two straight years, all while essentially banning any dissenters or skeptics of the narrative they peddled to the great profit of the network and its star.

But what prevented me from writing anything is that Matt Taibbi brilliantly wrote everything I wanted to say in this definitive article on the debacle, one that I urge everyone to read. It lays out in indisputable, horrific detail the media’s indescribably and relentlessly reckless behavior over the last three years, whereby they abused and exploited valid fears of Trump to sell – for their own profit and benefit – completely false and baseless conspiracy theories that have now been completely debunked by their own anointed authority. I won’t excerpt any parts of it because it should be read in full by as many people as possible.

Good on you, Glenn. He continues:

In lieu of trying to add to anything Taibbi wrote, I will instead post the video debate I had with Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and Trump/Russia believer David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now this morning. Though this debate was often contentious, I think it was quite substantive and illuminates all of the points I believe need to be made right now about the implications of this utter political and media failure of historic proportions

Go. Watch. Get Angry. Get Angrier. Act. Now.

Bonus No. 1: Immigrants in the Military.

Bonus No. 2: Good to hear One Nation doesn’t want our gun laws relaxed – it certainly sounded like it did.

Now, here’s an idea I could get behind: Never mind impeachment, millions of Trump’s victims, regardless of how they voted in 2016, should demand his resignation. A million-people march should surround the White House and peacefully make this demand repeatedly. Ralph Nader quickly moves past the Mueller Report distraction and jumps on the real threats.

Nader, in Look How the Real Trump is Endangering America, writes:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent almost two years to produce a $25 million report that is a flat tire. Still unreleased in full to the American people, Trump’s acolyte, Attorney General William Barr, a longtime friend of Republican Mueller, gave us what Trump long craved—by stating that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” during the 2016 election. As for obstruction of justice by Trump, Attorney General Barr cryptically burped, that “The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”—whatever that means. Give people the whole report now, as the House of Representatives voted 420 to 0 to do.

What a farce and distraction this whole exercise turned out to be! Mueller’s assigned subject was Trump. So, does this prosecutor demand to interview Trump, to subpoena Trump? No. Does this special investigator conclude with any legal recommendations at all? No. He just wants to be forgotten as he slinks away into deliberate silence (unless he is made to testify before the House Judiciary Committee).

Really, what should we have expected from someone who, as FBI Continue Reading »

This morning I conclude my look at Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent examination of our disappearing state—see Part I and Part II—and follow Kolbert as she writes about the Atchafalaya River and the fantastically named Old River Control Auxiliary Structure near Fort Adams, Mississippi. All to save the wealth of shareholders in the carbon-extraction industry.

The Corps’ fantasy, writes, Kolbert, was to prevent the Atchafalaya from doing what rivers want to do–get deeper, wider and find a faster way to the sea. She continues:

This would have left New Orleans low and dry and rendered the industries that had grown up along the river—the refineries, the grain elevators, the container ports, and the petrochemical plants—essentially worthless. Such an eventuality was thought to be unthinkable, and so, in the nineteen-fifties, the Corps stepped in. It dammed the former meander, known as Old River, and dug two huge, gated channels. The river’s choice would now be dictated for it, its flow maintained as if it were forever the Eisenhower era.

Remember, President Eisenhower also gave us the Interstate Defense Highway System which facilitated the death of many urban areas and the destruction of American farm land as urban sprawl gave us first Levitowns and then great swaths of McMansions. Kolbert continues:

Long before I caught sight of the Auxiliary Structure, I’d read about it in John McPhee’s classic piece “Atchafalaya,” a morality tale of a darkly comic cast that appeared in this magazine, in 1987. In McPhee’s telling, the Corps throws its heart—and millions of tons of concrete—into forestalling the Mississippi’s avulsion, and believes that it has succeeded. “The Corps of Engineers can make the Mississippi River go anywhere the Corps directs it to go,” one general avers, after a narrow brush with disaster, in 1973, when control of Old River Control was nearly lost. McPhee writes admiringly of the Corps’ grit, determination, even genius, but running through the essay is a strong countercurrent. Is the Corps just kidding itself? Are we all?

Of course.

Here at the upper end of the Mississippi, we are dealing with another man-made problem: Asian Carp. Fishing in both Lake Erie and the Ohio River, where I grew up, are bracing for the invasion that engineers, again, tell us we have nothing to worry about.

Two people were fishing on the outflow channel, from a little motorboat, and I asked Harvey what they might catch. “Oh, we have everything that’s in the Mississippi,” he said. “Of course, now there’s a whole lot of carp, and that’s not so good.” He was referring to Asian carp, which were brought over from China in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. The fish, which had been imported to provide algae control, escaped from hatcheries during flood season and found their way into the Mississippi, and from there into virtually all of the river’s major tributaries. In some stretches of the Illinois River, Asian carp now make up ninety per cent of the fish stock by weight. Like the dissolution of the Louisiana coast, the carpification of the Mississippi basin is a man-made natural disaster.

Kolbert concludes:

Atmospheric warming, ocean warming, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, deglaciation, desertification, eutrophication—these are just some of the byproducts of our species’ success. Such is the pace of what is blandly labelled “global change” that there are only a handful of comparable examples in Earth’s history, the most recent being the asteroid impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, sixty-six million years ago. Humans are producing no-analogue climates, no-analogue ecosystems, a whole no-analogue future. At this point, it might be prudent to scale back our commitments and reduce our impacts. But there are so many of us—nearly eight billion—and we are stepped in so far, return seems impracticable.

And so we face a no-analogue predicament. If there is to be an answer to the problem of control, it’s going to be more control. Only now what’s to be managed is not a nature that exists—or is imagined to exist—apart from the human. Instead, the new effort begins with a planet remade, and spirals back on itself—not so much the control of nature as the control of (the control of) nature. A Mississippi that’s been harnessed, straightened, regularized, and shackled can still exert a godlike force; it’s no longer exactly a river, though. It’s hard to say who, these days, occupies Mt. Olympus, if anyone.

Nature tops all and Ol’ Man River keeps rollin’ along.

[Update on 5 April @ 1942: John M. Barry of New Orleans sent this letter—published in the 8 April issue of The New Yorker—on Kolbert’s piece:

Elizabeth Kolbert, in her article about rising sea levels, ascribes much of Louisiana’s disappearing coastline to the levee system (“Under Water,” April 1st). The levees are indeed a significant cause of the problem, but they aren’t the only one. Scientists employed by oil and gas companies have conceded that their industry is responsible for at least thirty-six per cent of the land loss. River dams are also a problem: on the Missouri, which empties into the Mississippi, just six dams retain roughly a hundred million tons of sediment—a quarter of the entire sediment load that the Mississippi once carried to the Gulf. At the mouth of the Mississippi, two-mile-long shipping-channel jetties divert a substantial amount of sediment into deep water, where it can’t contribute to building land. These and other engineering interventions have catastrophically disrupted the coastal ecosystem, destroying communities, industries, and lives.

Yes, the carbon-extraction industry had Lousiana coming and going.]