Tom Roche

Seriously, this is a topic of a major article in the paper. The story is that low birth rates over the last four decades mean that fewer people will be entering the labor force and this is supposed to be really bad news.

"The declining population could create an even greater burden on China’s economy and its labor force. With fewer workers in the future, the government could struggle to pay for a population that is growing older and living longer.

"A decline in the working-age population could also slow consumer spending and thus have an impact on the economy in China and beyond.

Sedentary lifestyles are killing us – we need to build activity into our everyday lives, not just leave it for the gym • Read the text version here

Why we can’t get enough when we already eat too much • Read the text version here

How the rise of the West was a temporary exception to the predominant world order.

Questions about whether Donald Trump is an agent of a foreign power have intensified since the Washington Post reported that the president of the United States has refused to share with even his most senior aides the details of his personal meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But Trump’s supporters don’t seem to care. The president’s approval rating has hardly budged over the past year despite a seemingly endless series of disclosures about the Russia investigation. The website 538, which publishes a daily approval rating for Trump based on its formula for weighting and adjusting public polls, calculates that Trump’s approval rating on January 15, 2019 was 40.8 percent, compared with 39.3 percent exactly a year ago. Trump’s base dismisses each new revelation about Trump and Russia in the same way. They see the investigation as a McCarthyite witch hunt, a conspiracy by the so-called deep state.

There is a precedent in American history for this weird situation, in which there is evidence that a leader has acted against the interests of the United States, yet a large percentage of the American public doesn’t believe it or simply isn’t interested. Many of the same political dynamics that shaped the treason prosecution of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, seem to be at work today.

On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House effectively ended the Civil War. But there were still plenty of loose ends, and one of them was Davis, who fled Richmond, the Confederate capital, just before it was occupied by Union troops. The Confederate president was finally captured in Georgia in May 1865 and imprisoned in Virginia’s Fort Monroe.

Initially, Davis had little support. He was captured in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and many in the North were eager for vengeance. His backing had also waned in the broken South, where his abrasive personality, his wretched mismanagement of military operations and the economy, and his unrealistic, dead-ender attitude had diminished his popularity by the close of the war.

But Davis quickly regained sympathy thanks to the bungled handling of his case by President Andrew Johnson’s administration. He was imprisoned for two years, and during that time, Southerners who had scorned him in his last days as Confederate president began to rally to him, and he eventually came to be seen as a martyr to their lost cause. Before long, as Ron Chernow wrote in his 2017 biography of Grant, there were reports that “white militias, with telltale names such as the Jeff Davis Guards, were springing up across Mississippi.” Many northern whites, who increasingly wanted reconciliation with the South, also came to believe that the government’s handling of Davis was too punitive. This changing political climate provided the backdrop for Davis’s treason case.

There was no doubt that Davis had broken with the United States. He had been the leader of a government of 11 states that had seceded from the Union. (The two shadow state governments of Missouri and Kentucky, which hadn’t seceded, were also accepted into the Confederacy.) He had fought a bloody war against the United States.

But was that treason? Southern whites had supported the Confederacy and wanted Davis to be its president. Those Americans wanted slavery to continue, and they wanted white power to be undiminished. Davis gave them what they wanted. In fact, one of the concerns looming in the minds of some in the government in Washington at the time was whether Davis’s prosecution might have the unintended effect of leading the Supreme Court to rule that secession was legal.

With political support for the prosecution waning, Davis’s case came to an anti-climactic conclusion. He was freed from prison after his bail was paid by a wealthy group that included Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt. On Christmas Day in 1868, Johnson issued a pardon for treason for Confederates, and the case against Davis was dismissed in February 1869.

Trump came to power thanks to some of the same factors that fueled the rise of Jefferson Davis. Millions of Americans voted for Trump because they believed that he would protect white power and fight against the rising tide of diversity in America. (Iowa Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy were an odd place for Republican congressional leaders to draw a line in the sand on racism, given that they continue to embrace and enable Trump’s presidency.)

Many right-wing Trump supporters also have no problem with his alliance with Putin because they see both men as conservative guardians of white power. As I’ve noted before, Russia, too, is increasingly popular among Republican voters, who seem to approve of Putin’s authoritarianism. As a result, many Trump supporters may not mind his eagerness to shield his conversations with the Russian leader from scrutiny.

That leads to a provocative question: Do a significant number of Americans today want a president who defies the nation’s ideals in the name of white power, just as they wanted Jefferson Davis so many decades ago?

The post Why Doesn’t Donald Trump’s Cozy Relationship With Vladimir Putin Worry His Supporters? Jefferson Davis’s Treason Case Holds a Clue. appeared first on The Intercept.

Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot sit down with artist and musician Klaus Voormann. Klaus shares his unique vantage point to rock and roll history: he designed the cover artwork for The Beatles’ album, Revolver, lived with George and Ringo and was a session bassist on many iconic albums in the 1970s including Imagine, All Things Must Pass and Plastic Ono Band. Also in the light of the recent R. Kelly docu-series, the hosts revisit their discussion about the artist vs. the art: whether art can be evaluated separately from the artist's ethics.

For many years, U.S. immigration favored immigrants from ​​northern Europe. NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten explains how a 1965 law changed things — and led to the current debate about border security. His book is 'A Nation of Nations.'

Also, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews two new interpretations of Thelonious Monk's complete works.

Journalist Jon Ward talks about the chaos that led Ted Kennedy to challenge Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980 — and the long-lasting damage it did to the party. Ward's new book is 'Camelot's End.'

Also, critic John Powers reviews 'Brexit,' an HBO movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

There have been several pieces in recent weeks about the drop in birth rates in recent years. Birth rates declined in the recession and they have not recovered even as the economy has improved.

As these pieces point out, economics plays a big role in the drop in birth rates. Young adults often are having difficulty finding and keeping jobs that provide a decent wage. This was certainly true in the downturn, but it is still often the case even now with the unemployment rate at 50-year lows.

In addition, the United States badly lags other rich countries in providing support to new parents. We are the only wealthy country that does not guarantee workers some amount of paid parental leave or sick days. While many companies offer these benefits, millions of new parents, especially those in lower paying jobs, cannot count on any paid leave. (It is important to note that many states and cities have required paid family leave and/or sick days in the last two decades, making up for the lack of action by the federal government.)

Child care is also a huge problem for young parents. Quality care is often difficult to find and very expensive. This leaves many young parents, especially mothers, struggling to provide care for their children even as they hold down a job.

These are real and important policy concerns. People should be able to have children without undue hardship. We also want to make sure that children have decent life prospects. Having parents that are not overstressed and access to good quality child care are important for getting children on a good path in school and their subsequent careers and lives.

For these reasons, leave policy and child care need to be near the top of the policy agenda. However, the fact that people are having fewer kids is not a good rationale for supporting these policies. A stagnant or even declining population is not a public policy problem.

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Training on a base in California, and later serving in Afghanistan, made me confront the reality of American empire, and the injustice that pervades society at home • Read the text version here

Beijing is buying up media outlets and training scores of foreign journalists to ‘tell China’s story well’ – as part of a worldwide propaganda campaign of astonishing scope and ambition • Read the text version here

Last week, the New York Times reported that the FBI, in 2017, launched an investigation of President Trump “to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security” and specifically “whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” The story was predictably treated as the latest in an endless line of Beginning-of-the-End disasters for the Trump presidency, though – as usual – this melodrama was accomplished by steadfastly ignoring the now-standard, always-buried paragraph pointing out the boring fact that no actual evidence of guilt has yet emerged:

The lack of any evidence of guilt has never dampened the excitement over Trump/Russia innuendo, and it certainly did not do so here. Beyond being construed as some sort of vindication for the most deranged version of Manchurian Candidate fantasies – because, after all, the FBI would never investigate anyone unless they were guilty – the FBI’s investigation of the President as a national security threat was also treated as some sort of unprecedented event in U.S. history. “This is, without exception, the worst scandal in the history of the United States,” pronounced NBC News’ resident ex-CIA operative, who – along with a large staple of former security state agents employed by that network – is now paid to “analyze” and shape the news.

The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump is far from the first time that the FBI has monitored, surveilled and investigated U.S. elected officials who the agency had decided harboerd suspect loyalties and were harming national security. The FBI specialized in such conduct for decades under J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the agency for 48 years and whose name the agency’s Washington headquarters continues to feature in its name.

Perhaps the most notable case was the Hoover-led FBI’s lengthy counterintelligence investigation of the progressive Henry Wallace, both when he served in multiple cabinet positions in the Franklin Roosevelt administration and then as FDR’s elected Vice President. The FBI long suspected that Wallace harbored allegiances to the Kremlin and used his government positions to undermine what the FBI determined were “U.S. interests” for the benefit of Moscow and, as a result, subjected Wallace to extensive investigation and surveillance.

Wallace was regarded by the FBI as having suspect loyalties because, as Vice President, he repeatedly insisted that the threat posed by Moscow was being exaggerated. He often accused the U.S. Government of disseminating propaganda about Russian leaders. He urged less belligerent and more cooperative relations with the Russian government. He opposed efforts to confront Russian influence it its own region.

And, because of these pro-peace beliefs, Wallace frequently ended up on the same side as the Kremlin when it came to foreign policy disputes. That Wallace was frequently critical of the oppression of Russian leader Josef Stalin made little difference: his dissent from prevailing U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy on how to deal with Russia made him suspect in the eyes of the FBI as a possible “national security threat,” a witting or unwitting Kremlin stooge or even as a traitor.

What particularly infuriated Hoover and other Russia hawks was a 1946 speech Wallace gave criticizing U.S. belligerence toward Moscow, while urging better relations. As the hawkish Truman ramped up hostilities toward Russia, Wallace delivered a speech in Madison Square Garden entitled “The Way to Peace,” vehemently criticizing this militaristic and aggressive approach, a speech that caused Truman to force Wallace’s resignation one week later and which intensified FBI suspicions that Wallace was a Kremlin tool (emphasis added):

Up till now peace has been negative and unexciting. War has been positive and exciting. . . . During the past year or so, the significance of peace has been increased immeasurably by the atom bomb, guided missiles, and air-planes which soon will travel as fast as sound. . . .

Make no mistake about it – the British imperialistic policy in the Near East alone, combined with Russian retaliation, would lead the United States straight to war unless we have a clearly defined and realistic policy of our own.

Neither of these two great powers wants war now, but the danger is that whatever their intentions may be, their current policies may eventually lead to war. To prevent war and insure our survival in a stable world, it is essential that we look abroad through our own American eyes and not through the eyes of either the British Foreign Office or a pro-British or anti-Russian press. . . .

We must not let our Russian policy be guided or influenced by those inside or outside the United States who want war with Russia. . . .

The real peace treaty we now need is between the United States and Russia. On our part, we should recognize that we have no more business in the political affairs of eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, western Europe, and the United States.  We may not like what Russia does in eastern Europe. Her type of land reform, industrial expropriation, and suppression of basic liberties offends the great majority of the people of the United States. . . .

But whether we like it or not the Russians will try to socialize their sphere of influence just as we try to democratize our sphere of influence. . . . Let’s get this straight, regardless of what Mr. Taft or Mr. Dewey may say, if we can overcome the imperialistic urge in the Western world, I’m convinced there’ll be no war. . . .

In the United States an informed public opinion will be all-powerful. Our people are peace-minded. But they often express themselves too late – for events today move much faster than public opinion. The people here, as everywhere in the world, must be convinced that another war is not inevitable. And through mass meetings such as this, and through persistent pamphleteering, the people can be organized for peace – even though a large segment of our press is propagandizing our people for war in the hope of scaring Russia. And we who look on this war-with-Russia talk as criminal foolishness must carry our message direct to the people – even though we may be called communists because we dare to speak out.

I believe that peace – the kind of a peace I have outlined tonight – is the basic issue, both in the congressional campaign this fall and right on through the presidential election in 1948. How we meet this issue will determine whether we live not in “one world” or “two worlds” – but whether we live at all.

To this very day, many of the same people who accuse Trump of being a Kremlin pawn still accuse Wallace of being the same thing, often for the same reasons. In October, 2016, Vox published an accusatory article about Henry Wallace by Will Moreland of the Brookings Institution designed to compare him to Trump when it came to potentially treasonous servitude toward Russia.

Moreland claimed that Wallace “shares Trump’s fate of being too blinded by his self-messianic vision to realize he too had become a Kremlin pawn.” To justify this accusation, Moreland – citing Wallace’s 1946 pro-peace speech – explicitly compared Trump’s desire for better relations with Moscow to Wallace’s similar desire and used it to claim that both Wallace and Trump were Kremlin stooges and assets, whether “witting” or otherwise. In Vox, Moreland wrote:

In Wallace’s mind, responsibility for the acrimonious relations between the United States and the Soviet Union fell on Washington. Like Trump, Wallace saw Russia as a partner. Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s actions in Eastern Europe and his authoritarian reign at home could be patched over for common goals. . . .

As Howard Norton of the Baltimore Sun reported at the time, there emerged “a growing and spreading conviction among New Dealers and other ‘liberals’ that Wallace, wittingly or unwittingly, is playing Moscow’s game and is hurting rather than helping the cause of peace.”

Wallace was unwitting, at least vis-à-vis the larger agenda behind Stalin’s endorsement. As with Trump today, the Kremlin was adroitly manipulating Wallace. . . . It is a time for engagement, not retrenchment, and for a leader with the judgment to recognize friends from adversaries — a judgment Donald Trump, like Henry Wallace before him, clearly lacks.

That the FBI conducted an extensive counterintelligence investigation of Wallace was unknown until 1983 – eighteen years after his death. Citing reporting by the Des Moines Register, the New York Times explained that “Wallace was watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of Commerce for Harry S. Truman, and also in his 1948 run for the Presidency” and that “the bureau opened Wallace’s mail, tapped his supporters’ telephones and used informers and agents to trail him in search of ”possible Communist or pro-Soviet ties.'”

Even decades later, the FBI still refuses to release all of its investigative files on Wallace; as FOIA warrior Emma Best noted last night, the FBI “is still fighting to not release the files.” But many of the files are now declassified and online, and one can read the voluminous tracking by FBI agents of Wallace’s movements during the time he was the elected Vice President of the United States – all because his dissenting, pro-peace views on Russia made his patriotism suspect in the eyes of Hoover and his agents.

For decades, the FBI also maintained a massive dossier on long-time liberal Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern – first because he was suspected of Kremlin sympathies and then because he was a critic of the FBI. Among other things, the FBI, while relentlessly tracking his life, discovered that McGovern had fathered a child out of wedlock, and in the words of USA Today, “somehow, the material ended up with President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign – possibly leaked by the bureau’s longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover.”

It is not difficult to understand what is so ominous and even tyrannical about the FBI investigating domestic political figures whose loyalties they regard as “suspicious,” and whose political career they regard as a “national security threat,” simply because those politicians express policy positions about U.S. adversaries that the FBI dislikes or regards as insufficiently belligerent.

It’s the FBI’s job to investigate possible crimes under the law or infiltration by foreign powers, not ideological sins. If a politician adopts policy views that are “threatening” to U.S. national security or which is unduly accommodating to America’s adversaries or “enemies,” that’s not a crime and the FBI thus has no business using its vast investigative powers against a politician who does that.

That’s why it’s so easy to see that Hoover’s investigative scrutiny of Henry Wallace, and George McGovern, and an endless array of domestic dissenters, was so anti-democratic and dangerous. If a politician adopts “threatening” policy views or is too subservient toward or accommodating of a foreign adversary, it’s the job of the American voting public or Congress in its political oversight and lawmaking role to take action, not the FBI’s job to criminalize policy differences through investigations.

It should not be difficult for a rational brain free of partisan muck to see this same principle at play when it comes to the FBI’s investigation of Trump on the ground that he may be, in the eyes of FBI officials, a “national security threat.” Even if you’re someone who hates Trump’s overtures toward Russia or even believes that they are the by-product of excessive subservience to the Kremlin, the dangers of having the FBI take on the role of investigating that rather than the political wings of the U.S. political system should be obvious – as obvious as they are in the case of Henry Wallace and George McGovern.

Obviously, if there is reason to suspect that actual crimes have been committed – such as, say, Trump officials collaborating with Russia to hack into email inboxes or otherwise engaging in illegal deals with foreign powers – then it’s not just permissible but vital that the FBI investigate such allegations.

That’s why I’ve been a vigorous defender from the start of having a full-scale investigation into those allegations with the evidence publicly disclosed: so that we can know what happened rather than relying on self-serving, evidence-free, anonymous leak snippets laundered through MSNBC and the Washington Post. As I wrote in March, 2017 about Trump/Russia claims: “A formal, credible investigation into all these questions, where the evidence is publicly disclosed, is still urgently needed.”

But the FBI investigation revealed by the New York Times is separate from the Mueller investigation or even questions of collusion. It’s clearly based, at least in part, on the FBI’s disagreements with Trump’s foreign policy views and the agency’s assessment that such policies fail to safeguard “U.S. interests” as the FBI defines them. The NYT notes that among the events that prompted the investigation were that Trump “refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail,” that the GOP “softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia,” and that Trump decided to fire the FBI’s director, Jim Comey.

The NYT article is clear that at least some of the agents involved in this investigation, including the former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, vigorously disagreed with Trump’s view of Russia that it is less of a threat than many in Washington believed (a view which the Vox article identified as making Trump similar to Henry Wallace):

Many involved in the case viewed Russia as the chief threat to American democratic values.

“With respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life,” Ms. Page told investigators for a joint House Judiciary and Oversight Committee investigation into Moscow’s election interference.

The person elected by the U.S. electorate to make foreign policy for the United States and to determine “America’s interests” was Donald Trump, not the FBI. It’s the role of elected officials in the White House and Congress, not the unelected police agents who report to them, to decide what is and is not in “America’s interests.”

If Trump’s foreign policy is misguided or “threatening,” that’s a matter for the Congress and/or the American public, not the FBI. However “threatening” one regards Trump’s foreign policy relating to Russia, the FBI’s abuse of its powers to investigate an elected official due to disagreement with his ideology or foreign policy views is at least as dangerous, if not more so, and the fact that those policy disagreements are characterized as “national security threats” does not make those actions any less threatening or abusive – whether for Trump, Henry Wallace or George McGovern.

It’s certainly possible, as the always-smart Harvard Law Professor and former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith wrote at Lawfare, that the FBI had far more grounds that is currently known for opening this investigation. But based on what we do know, Goldsmith adeptly argues, there is a potentially disturbing incident of serious overreach of the FBI’s role and grave abuse of its vast investigative powers. While Goldsmith is clear that he is not yet adopting this view – in part because some facts are unknown and in part because the Constitutional issues are murky – he lays out what the potential dangers are (emphasis added):

The reason the FBI step might have been imprudent is that it was premised on an inversion of the normal assumptions of Article II of the Constitution. . . .

It is not unusual for a president to make controversial policy decisions that could, in some quarters, be viewed as causing harm to the national security interests of the United States. For example, many saw George W. Bush’s decisions in the war on terrorism, or Barack Obama’s rapprochement with Iran and Cuba, as harming U.S. national security. Many believe that most of Trump’s foreign policy constitutes a similar threat—his attacks on allies and international institutions, his lies and erratic behavior, and the like. But the FBI obviously would not open a counterintelligence investigation for these matters.

They would not do so because these actions—and indeed the very determination of the U.S. interest in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy—are presidential prerogatives. . . . Because the president determines the U.S. national security interest and threats against it, at least for the executive branch, there is an argument that it makes no sense for the FBI to open a counterintelligence case against the president premised on his being a threat to the national security. The president defines what a national security threat is, and thus any action by him cannot be such a threat, at least not for purposes of opening a counterintelligence investigation. . . .

The FBI cannot act in a way that is legally premised on second-guessing the president’s national security bona fides. On this view, the FBI can fully investigate Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, including matters involving the president, as it has been doing for a while now. But it cannot cross the line of taking investigative steps premised on the president’s threat to national security. The Constitution leaves crossing that line up to Congress and the American people. . . . 

First, presidents and their delegates all the time engage in controversial contacts with foreign leaders and with their intelligence agents that sharply change the direction of U.S. foreign policy concerning matters that some critics believe shows undue fealty towards a foreign power. Think of some critics’ view of Nixon’s opening with China or, again, of Obama’s with Iran and Cuba. Or imagine that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is elected in 2020 and brings controversial foreign policy views to the presidency.

One danger in the what the FBI apparently did is that it implies that the unelected domestic intelligence bureaucracy holds itself as the ultimate arbiter—over and above the elected president who is the constitutional face of U.S. intelligence and national security authority—about what actions do and don’t serve the national security interests of the United States. It further suggests that the FBI claims the authority to take this step on the basis of the president’s exercise of another clear presidential prerogative—the firing of the FBI director in connection with the Russia investigation, which the Times says was the final predicate for the FBI’s action. . . .

[A]t one time, under J. Edgar Hoover, it secretly collected intelligence information on the president and other elected officials and used that secret information to influence the behavior of those officials. This is an ever-present danger with any intelligence bureaucracy in a democracy. A second adverse effect of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the president is that it gives credence to these types of concerns about the contemporary FBI—especially if the FBI opened a counterintelligence file on the president and did not notify him, as I suspect happened in the Trump case. . . . 

As I have noted many times, one of President Trump’s most nefarious skills is to act in norm-busting ways that cause people and institutions to respond to him in norm-busting ways. If indeed the FBI took the unprecedented step of opening a counterintelligence investigation directed at the president premised on his threat to national security, I hope the bureau had much stronger evidence for doing so than the Times story provided—and I hope that something of investigative substance actually turned on it. Otherwise, the step strikes me as deeply imprudent.

This argument, and the entire affair, underscores two crucial paradoxes of the Trump era. The first is that our discourse manically shifts from the claim that only maniacal and conspiratorial losers believe that there is such a thing as a “Deep State” in the glorious democracy of the United States, to prayers that the Deep State save us from Trump, and then back again. The core attribute of a Deep State is, to use Goldsmith’s words for what may have happened here, an “unelected domestic intelligence bureaucracy holds itself as the ultimate arbiter—over and above the elected president who is the constitutional face of U.S. intelligence and national security authority—about what actions do and don’t serve the national security interests of the United States.” Such a state of affairs is at least as dangerous for U.S. democracy as anything Trump is doing with Russia.

Even former members of the Deep State themselves – such as former GCHQ agent Matt Tait – are warning of the possible dangers of what the FBI did here:

However much you dislike the status quo, you'd much rather live in a country where elected branches are a check on the national security establishment than the other way around.

— Pwn All The Things (@pwnallthethings) January 12, 2019

The second paradox is the one Goldsmith so perfectly described: “one of President Trump’s most nefarious skills is to act in norm-busting ways that cause people and institutions to respond to him in norm-busting ways.”

It was a dangerous and shameful moment when J. Edgar Hoover investigated U.S. politicians as potential traitors and stooges because he believed they were too deferential and subservient to Russia, or because their advocated plans for peace with Moscow were “contrary to American interests.” It’s no better when the agency housed in the headquarters that, revealingly, still bears Hoover’s name does the same today.

The post The FBI’s Investigation of Trump as a “National Security Threat” is Itself a Serious Danger. But J. Edgar Hoover Pioneered the Tactic appeared first on The Intercept.

President Donald Trump’s December 18 announcement that he intends to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria produced some isolated support in the anti-war wings of both parties, but largely provoked bipartisan outrage among Washington’s reflexively pro-war establishment.

Both GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the country’s most reliable war supporters, and Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama for insufficient hawkishness, condemned Trump’s decision in very similar terms, invoking standard war on terror jargon.

But while official Washington united in opposition, new polling data from Morning Consult/Politico shows that a large plurality of Americans support Trump’s Syria withdrawal announcement: 49 percent support to 33 percent opposition.

That’s not surprising given that Americans by a similarly large plurality agree with the proposition that “the U.S. has been engaged in too many military conflicts in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for too long and should prioritize getting Americans out of harm’s way” far more than they agree with the pro-war view that “the U.S. needs to keep troops in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to help support our allies fight terrorism and maintain our foreign policy interests in the region.”

But what is remarkable about the new polling data on Syria is that the vast bulk of support for keeping troops there comes from Democratic Party voters, while Republicans and independents overwhelming favor their removal. The numbers are stark: Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it. Trump voters overwhelmingly support withdraw by 76 percent to 14 percent.

A similar gap is seen among those who voted Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections (28 percent support withdrawal while 54 percent oppose it), as opposed to the widespread support for withdrawal among 2018 GOP voters: 74 percent to 18 percent.

Identical trends can be seen on the question of Trump’s announced intention to withdraw half of the U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, where Democrats are far more supportive of keeping troops there than Republicans and independents.

This case is even more stark since Obama ran in 2008 on a pledge to end the war in Afghanistan and bring all troops home. Throughout the Obama years, polling data consistently showed that huge majorities of Democrats favored a withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan:

With Trump rather than Obama now advocating troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, all of this has changed. The new polling data shows far more support for troop withdrawal among Republicans and independents, while Democrats are now split or even opposed. Among 2016 Trump voters, there is massive support for withdrawal: 81 percent to 11 percent; Clinton voters, however, oppose the removal of troops from Afghanistan by a margin of 37 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed.

This latest poll is far from aberrational. As the Huffington Post’s Ariel Edwards-Levy documented early this week, separate polling shows a similar reversal by Democrats on questions of war and militarism in the Trump era.

While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining. “Those who voted for Democrat Clinton now said by a 42-point margin that the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria involving ISIS,” Edwards-Levy wrote, “while Trump voters said by a 16-point margin that the nation had no such responsibility.” (Similar trends can be seen among GOP voters, whose support for intervention in Syria has steadily declined as Trump has moved away from his posture of the last two years — escalating bombings in both Syria and Iraq and killing far more civilians, as he repeatedly vowed to do during the campaign — to his return to his other campaign pledge to remove troops from the region.)

This is, of course, not the first time that Democratic voters have wildly shifted their “beliefs” based on the party affiliation of the person occupying the Oval Office. The party’s base spent the Bush-Cheney years denouncing war on terror policies, such as assassinations, drones, and Guantánamo as moral atrocities and war crimes, only to suddenly support those policies once they became hallmarks of the Obama presidency.

But what’s happening here is far more insidious. A core ethos of the anti-Trump #Resistance has become militarism, jingoism, and neoconservatism. Trump is frequently attacked by Democrats using longstanding Cold War scripts wielded for decades against them by the far right: Trump is insufficiently belligerent with U.S. enemies; he’s willing to allow the Bad Countries to take over by bringing home U.S. soldiers; his efforts to establish less hostile relations with adversary countries is indicative of weakness or even treason.

At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives, even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that predated Trump). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and has multilevel alliances with warmongering institutions. By far the most influential liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents, while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a “national security liberal” who was “all about counterterrorism”).

All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It’s inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation — which will endure long after Trump is gone — is well under way.

The post As Democratic Elites Reunite With Neocons, the Party’s Voters Are Becoming Far More Militaristic and Pro-War Than Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez failed in her long-shot bid for a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, according to an announcement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday evening. Pelosi named a member of the New Democrat Coalition, the centrist wing of the party, to the seat instead, part of a sweeping set of wins by the Wall Street-friendly caucus.

However, Ocasio-Cortez is in line to get a solid consolation prize — a seat on the House Financial Services Committee, with jurisdiction over Wall Street. Sources close to the process said that it is also likely that Progressive Caucus member Katie Porter, D-Calif., a financial services expert, will get tapped for the committee, and that Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., are in the running. This would put a strong bloc of progressives on an important committee headed by Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

Democrats have struggled to find many members to serve on Financial Services, leading to speculation that the party would actually shrink the size of the committee. Alternatively, that quandary could result in progressives being added as a last resort.

The imminent Financial Services Committee announcement would take some sting out of several disappointments for the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s high-profile rising stars, who on Wednesday were largely shut out of new assignments to three critical committees where they sought expanded representation.

The Progressive Caucus had cut a deal with Pelosi for increased representation on the so-called money committees that handle most domestic legislation. They sought membership on the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Appropriations, and Financial Services committees equal to their roughly 40 percent membership in the Democratic caucus.

Progressive Caucus members did receive several new assignments announced Wednesday night, but only hit 40 percent on Ways and Means, on which progressives had already achieved a 40 percent threshold in the previous Congress. As of now, the total averages out to 38.3 percent across all three, but those numbers will rise to 41.8 percent if three committee members join the CPC as expected.

According to numbers provided by the Progressive Caucus, membership increased on Ways and Means from 42 percent to 54 percent. Energy and Commerce moved from 29 percent to 31 percent, and Appropriations held steady at 36 percent.

Progressives have also asked for increased representation on the Financial Services Committee, with jurisdiction over Wall Street, whose makeup is still to be determined. So far, though, the caucus’s most prominent figures have not been given new committee assignments on the three major committees. Ocasio-Cortez; Tlaib; CPC co-chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; and vice chair Ro Khanna, D-Calif., all vocally pushed for inclusion on the money committees. Justice Democrats waged an outside campaign on their behalf, and other organizations engaged in petition drives and marched on Pelosi’s office. None of that was successful, showing the limits of an outside campaign on an insider issue like committee assignments.

By custom, Ways and Means, the tax-writing committee, reserves one seat for a member who represents one of the five boroughs of New York City. The previous holder of that slot was former Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens, whom Ocasio-Cortez defeated in a primary election. Ocasio-Cortez sought to replace her predecessor, but House leaders instead chose Tom Suozzi, a New Democrat who represents the “Gold Coast” of Long Island and a few blocks of Queens.

It’s extremely rare historically for a freshman to win a seat on the committee, and indeed, none did this time around, leaving people to cite Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of seniority, rather than her politics, for the snub. But it’s also rare for a man from Long Island to claim a seat reserved for New York City. What’s more, Suozzi is just a sophomore, which drains a bit of the punch from the seniority argument. (While New York City got no representation, Philadelphia picked up two new members.)

Regional politics played a key role. “The regional structure is the heart of the committee seat distribution process. So I think what we learned on the Progressive Caucus is that it’s not about getting the leadership of the Progressive Caucus to go to Nancy Pelosi to ask for seats,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a CPC member who won a position in the lower ranks of House leadership in November, and sits on the committee that that divvies out committee seats. “Like everything else, it’s an organizing operation where you need to organize a movement within each of the regions, because that’s where the action is. Having said that, I think that progressive members did pretty well across the board, and I think are going to do increasingly well in this process,” he said, a reference to the likelihood that several of them will make it onto Financial Services.

Any major piece of legislation — whether it’s “Medicare for All,” a Green New Deal, or free public college — would involve some level of revenue, putting it squarely in the domain of Ways and Means, which makes it a key spot for a legislator looking to have an impact. The seat is also traditionally sought after for its fundraising potential, as every industry in the country is concerned with federal tax policy, meaning that members of the committee are more likely to get their fundraising calls returned. (Suozzi told The Intercept that he had no interest in the committee for that purpose and that he was attracted to it because of his prior career in accounting.)

Jayapal, co-chair of the CPC, also wanted a spot on Ways and Means, but her request for a waiver to remain on the Judiciary Committee, where she has influence given her high-profile work around the Trump administration’s family separation policy, was rejected. “Representative Jayapal had been clear from the beginning that she would only seek a Ways and Means Committee assignment if she could get a waiver to continue her service in the Judiciary Committee,” said Vedant Patel, her spokesperson. “She was notified that there would be no waivers given for the Judiciary Committee, given the desirability of the Judiciary Committee at this important time. Given that, Rep. Jayapal is excited to stay on the Judiciary Committee and continue to bring her experience on the critical issues before the committee.”

Khanna, the CPC vice chair, also failed in his bid to get a Ways and Means seat. The Intercept asked if he thought his public Twitter battle with Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill over the economics of pay-go, a fiscal austerity provision Pelosi entered into the House rules, had anything to do with the decision. “Drew wishes he had that much power here,” Khanna said. “I welcome Drew to have more debates with me and Paul Krugman about economics.”

This is not accurate and no serious progressive economist agrees with you. We could pass policies in the House without an offset, and then negotiate in conference for the appropriate tax increases on the 1%. We shouldn’t be negotiating against ourselves! https://t.co/mAbOYQN09i

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) January 2, 2019

The Progressive Caucus’s demand for 40 percent representation was stymied by the composition of the caucus itself. There are no real barriers to membership and the caucus rarely whips its members for votes, meaning that members who want to wear a progressive badge without altering their legislative record can do so. Some members of the Progressive Caucus are even also affiliated with its centrist counterpoint, the New Democrat Coalition.

Pelosi and House leadership made skillful use of those progressive/New Dem hybrids in making the committee assignments, which may be cynical from a leadership perspective, but was only possible as a result of the Progressive Caucus’s less-than-stringent membership rules — rules that are within their own control.

And adding CPC members who are not genuine progressives to positions of power on committees could actually be a net loss, argued some operatives. Indeed, it sets up a dynamic in which weak legislation could earn the imprimatur of an influential CPC member, which makes it more difficult for the CPC itself to oppose. A version of that was on display even with Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a strong progressive and a former co-chair of the CPC. He is now chair of the Natural Resources Committee, and while he ultimately endorsed the creation of a select committee to focus on a Green New Deal, it was plain that there was some hesitation related to how it would impact his own committee. (Grijalva said he “didn’t have a great deal of angst” about the new committee, not exactly a ringing endorsement.)

Instead of pushing for proportional representation for a disorganized, amorphous caucus, the CPC should have first organized itself, then pursued power, argued Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backed Ocasio-Cortez and other freshmen whose bids for the committees were rebuffed. “Numbers won’t mean much if being progressive means nothing. If everyone has their own definition and now has increased personal power through a seat on an executive committee, accountability to the progressive movement will be more difficult,” Shahid told The Intercept.

The move by Pelosi, to tap CPC members who are also in the New Dems, should have been anticipated, he argued. “Pelosi played by the CPC’s rules and appointed some of the least committed progressives to executive committees, including five CPC members who are also members of the centrist, corporate-friendly New Democratic caucus. Nearly all of the CPC members appointed to executive committees still receive corporate PAC donations,” he said.

“Instead of racing for numbers, the CPC should consider demanding stricter membership criteria — such as rejecting corporate PAC money, co-sponsoring priority legislation, and willingness to engage in bloc voting — otherwise progressive ideas risk being significantly watered down,” he said.

Of the 26 new members named to the Appropriations, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means committees, 13 are members of the Progressive Caucus. However, five of those members are also part of the New Democrat Coalition: Michigan’s Brenda Lawrence (Appropriations), Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester (Energy and Commerce), Florida’s Darren Soto (Energy and Commerce), Virginia’s Don Beyer (Ways and Means), and Pennsylvania’s Brendan Boyle (Ways and Means), who only recently joined the Progressive Caucus.

Blunt Rochester was one of two Progressive Caucus members who voted for last year’s bank deregulation bill, one of the few major bipartisan measures in the last Congress. Soto is part of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which pushed Pelosi to change House rules to give Republicans a larger voice in legislation, as is Suozzi.

Meanwhile, 15 of the 26 members selected are in the New Democrat Coalition, which has seen its ranks increase even as its influence over the national conversation has diminished. The coalition, like the CPC, is going through its own identity crisis, as a significant number of its own members have endorsed ideas, such as “Medicare for All,” that the coalition itself stridently rejects.

The Blue Dog Caucus, another Wall Street-friendly group, also punched slightly above its weight on the money committees. The Blue Dogs’ 24 members form only about 10 percent of the Democratic caucus. But they snapped up four of the 26 new seats given out, two of them to co-chairs Stephanie Murphy of Florida (Ways and Means) and Tom O’Halleran of Arizona (Energy and Commerce). All four Blue Dogs who were given the coveted seat assignments are also members of the New Democrats.

The only freshmen members who were chosen for any of the three key committees were those returning to Congress after having previously served. That includes Arizona’s Ann Kirkpatrick (Appropriations), a New Dem; Steven Horsford of Nevada (Ways and Means), a Progressive Caucus member; and Ed Case of Hawaii (Appropriations), who is currently unaffiliated with either caucus, but has deeply conservative politics.

Other Progressive Caucus members who secured slots on these exclusive committees were Lois Frankel of Florida and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey (Appropriations); Nanette Barragán of California (Energy and Commerce); and Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, Dan Kildee of Michigan, and Jimmy Panetta of California (Ways and Means).

Moore gave up a spot on the Financial Services Committee to take over the spot on Ways and Means. Panetta just joined the Progressive Caucus after the election, and Kildee is planning to join.

Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., are also planning to join the CPC. Engel, who sits on Energy and Commerce, represents a district that includes some of the Bronx; Kaptur, a member of Appropriations, has generally progressive politics on economic issues, but has long been one of the most strident anti-choice voices in the House, only retreating from that position recently. The additions of Kildee, Kaptur, and Engel boost the percentages of CPC members on the key committees, but it’s a stretch to connect that to the spirit of the demand made by the CPC. Engel, after all, is a New Democrat, so the CPC didn’t get a new member placed on Energy and Commerce; rather, the CPC added a new member who was already on Energy and Commerce and a New Dem.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also snubbed progressives, filling its leadership team with centrist Democrats. DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos on Wednesday announced the new chairs of recruitment and heads of the Frontline Program, which protects members in swing seats, and every single one is a New Democrat. Pete Aguilar of California, Val Demings of Florida, and Donald McEachin of Virginia, who were all named chairs of recruitment, are New Democrats. Ami Bera of California, Suzan DelBene of Washington, and Brad Schneider of Illinois, all New Democrats, were tapped to manage the Frontline Program.

The good news for progressives in the House is that nothing matters — not this congressional cycle, anyway. As long as the Senate is run by Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the White House is occupied by Donald Trump, a Green New Deal has bigger obstacles than New Dems. But the structures being put into place today will shape the terms of legislative activity in 2021, when it may start to matter if Democrats take back the White House. The onus will be on outside activists to monitor the legislative behavior of the dual-loyalty members of the committees.

Below are the new House committee members announced Wednesday night:

Appropriations Committee:

• Cheri Bustos of Illinois (NDem)
• Ed Case of Hawaii
• Charlie Crist of Florida (NDem) (Blue Dog)
• Lois Frankel of Florida (CPC)
• Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona (NDem)
• Brenda Lawrence of Michigan (CPC) (NDem)
• Norma Torres of California
• Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey (CPC)

Energy and Commerce Committee

• Nanette Barragán of California (CPC)
• Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware (CPC) (NDem)
• Robin Kelly of Illinois
• Ann Kuster of New Hampshire (NDem)
• A. Donald McEachin of Virginia (NDem)
• Tom O’Halleran of Arizona (NDem) (Blue Dog)
• Darren Soto of Florida (CPC) (NDem)
• Marc Veasey of Texas (NDem)

Ways and Means Committee

• Don Beyer of Virginia (CPC) (NDem)
• Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania (CPC) (NDem)
• Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania (CPC)
• Steven Horsford of Nevada (CPC)
• Dan Kildee of Michigan (CPC)
• Gwen Moore of Wisconsin (CPC)
• Stephanie Murphy of Florida (NDem) (Blue Dog)
• Jimmy Panetta of California (CPC)
• Brad Schneider of Illinois (NDem) (Blue Dog)
• Tom Suozzi of New York (NDem)

The post Progressives Fought for Key Committee Spots, but Centrist New Dems Came Out on Top appeared first on The Intercept.

Behind the News, 1/10/19 - guest: Quinn Slobodian on neoliberalism - Doug Henwood

In Ep. 34: 'What The Hell Is Wrong With MSNBC', we discussed with our anonymous MSNBC informant, well, what the hell was wrong with MSNBC? Why do they routinely focused on inane horserace and RussiaGate fear-mongering over objectively important topics like climate change, the destruction of Yemen, and worker strikes?

One listener, former MSNBC host and current MSNBC contributor, Touré thought our episode was lacking in significant context and, in many ways, unfair. So we invited him on to discuss his issue with our critique and explore the broader, evergreen media criticism problem of trying to distinguish between a need for ratings and the more subtle influence of ideology and partisan cheerleading.

A businessman struggling to recruit employees opened the school despite objections from the local school board.

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: The two corporate parties, the Democrats and Republicans, monopolize electoral politics in the United States. But the Black Is Back Coalition says there is still reason to pursue independent Black politics. And, after 37 years behind bars, Mumia Abu Jamal has won the right to another appeal, and a possible new trial – or freedom.

But first -- President Trump’s “trade war” with China sometimes seems destined to escalate into a military confrontation. We spoke with Dr Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Some in the Trump administration have expressed pleasure at reports that China’s economy is slowing down, even though many economists believe that it was only a strong Chinese economy that kept the whole world from being plunged into a depression, following the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Dr. Horne says the U.S. is shooting itself in the foot with its China policy.

The Democrats are flexing their congressional muscle, having taken over leadership of the U.S. House, this month. But the Democratic Party seems divided into three factions. One faction believes that all they have to do to become a majority party is to run against Donald Trump. Another faction looks forward to collaborating with Trump as much as possible. And the third, more progressive faction believes the only way to win is by putting forward the kind of big programs, like Medicare for All, that large majorities of the public supports. Omali Yeshitela is no Democrat. He’s chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition, which will hold another in its series of electoral politics schools, in St. Louis, in April.

Supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal are ecstatic over a Philadelphia judge’s decision that could allow the nation’s best known political prisoner another chance to appeal his conviction in the death of a police officer, 37 years ago. We asked Prof. Johanna Fernandez, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, if there’s finally a real pathway to freedom for Abu Jamal.

Former federal public defender Alexandra Natapoff says 13 million misdemeanors are filed each year in the U.S., trapping the innocent, punishing the poor and making society more unequal. Her book is 'Punishment Without Crime.'

Also, classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a recording of Stravinsky's 'The Soldier's Tale' by Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters.

The number of black faculty on college campuses has gone down during the last decade.

Placing more nutritious food on a more visible shelf, informing lagging taxpayers that their neighbors have already paid up, or asking job seekers what they plan to do next week (instead of what they did – or didn’t – do last week) – these are all well-known examples of behavioral spurs known as ‘nudges.’ Much of the reason such examples are known is because they emanate from the work of the Behavioural Insights Team – the so-called nudge unit. The United Kingdom’s government set up the unit in 2010 (two years after Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler’s Nudge was published) to address “everyday” policy challenges where human behavior was a key component.

Experimental psychologist David Halpern, the unit’s chief executive, has led the team since its inception and through its limited privatization in 2014. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Halpern offers interviewer David Edmonds a quick primer on nudging, examples of nudges that worked (and one that didn’t), how nudging differs between the UK and the United States, and the interface of applied nudging and academic behavioral science.  

“We tend to use mental shortcuts,” Halpern explains, “to figure out what’s going on. Now most of the time those mental shortcuts get us to where we want to go, it looks like, but they are subject to systematic error.” This can matter, he continues, because humans don’t always act in their best long-term interests, even as many policies are built on the assumption that they will.

Enter the nudge, “A gentle instrument that is not a financial incentive or a legal mandate or a requirement – a much gentler prompt or intervention.” Looking at the tax-payment nudge, he notes, “It doesn’t infringe on your basic human rights; it just reminds you that other people are more virtuous than you thought they were.” And as a result, more people pay up than would if they received a more-traditional scolding letter.

While the prompt may be low-key, the applications – and results — often are not.

“These are actually big social policy issues,” says Halpern. “My own view is you try and create almost collective mechanisms to set up. You can inject into that process an understanding of behavioral science and how people make decisions, and then we can collectively choose rather than just a few clever folks out in Whitehall or in Washington.”

He spends some time discussing the difference in nudging between those two hubs. What he terms the “North American view” the focus is on “choice enhancing, while in the UK “we take a slightly broader perspective, which is trying to introduce a more realistic model of human behavior.” This is further demonstrated by the enactment process on each side of the Atlantic. In the U.S. version of the Nudge Unit, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, executive orders were used to enact nudging policies that had worked in experiments. In the UK, “We went down the route of “God, we don’t actually know if this stuff works, so why don’t we run – wherever we could – randomized controlled trials.”

“Our work,” Halpern concludes, “is very hard-edged empirical. In fact, history may judge that the most important thing the Behavioural Insights Team brought was actually a very, very strong form of empiricism.”

Before leading the Nudge Unit, Halpern was the founding director of the Institute for Government and between 2001 and 2007 was the chief analyst at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. In 2013, he was appointed  as the national adviser to What Works Network, which focuses improving the use of evidence in government decision making.

Describing himself as a “recovering academic” (although he does have a visiting professorship at King’s College London), before entering government, Halpern held tenure at Cambridge and taught at Oxford and Harvard. A fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2016, Halpern has written or co-authored four books, including 2005’s Social Capital and 2010’s The Hidden Wealth of Nations.

To download an MP3 of this podcast, right-click HERE and save.

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For a complete listing of past Social Science Bites podcasts, click HERE. You can follow Bites on Twitter @socialscibites and David Edmonds @DavidEdmonds100.