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For Rural America, Medicare for All Is a Matter of Life or Death |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51584"><span class="small">Barb Kalbach, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 08:24 |
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Kalbach writes: "Insurance firms are gobbling up airtime in Iowa to attack Medicare for All. They claim it would hurt the very same hospitals their business model has spent years bleeding dry."
A corn farmer. (photo: Austin Public Library)
For Rural America, Medicare for All Is a Matter of Life or Death
By Barb Kalbach, Guardian UK
11 September 19
Insurance firms are gobbling up airtime in Iowa to attack Medicare for All. They claim it would hurt the very same hospitals their business model has spent years bleeding dry
 ural hospitals are often the economic heart of a community. Worse, when minutes mean the difference between life and death, every hospital that closes leaves patients in danger. Since 2010, 113 rural hospitals have closed their doors, leaving more than 30 million Americans an hour or more away from critical care. As many as 700 more are in danger of closing.
Meanwhile hospitals that remain open are often cutting services to survive. Since 2000, 33 of 118 rural and small-town hospitals in Iowa have closed their birthing units.
There are many reasons rural hospitals are hurting, but for-profit insurance companies are the nail in the coffin. Over decades, these multibillion-dollar companies have driven premium costs up and put profits over patients. More and more patients can’t afford insurance and can’t pay their hospital bills, leaving rural hospitals and hospitals in low-income areas left holding the bag.
The insurance companies are working hard to shift the blame and stop the movement for Medicare for All. They are gobbling up airtime in Iowa and across rural America to attack Medicare for All. They claim it would hurt the very same hospitals their business model has spent years bleeding dry.
With Medicare for All gaining steam, it’s no surprise that big pharma and multibillion-dollar for-profit insurance companies are responding with distortions and scare tactics. We have seen this before. The same industry-backed tricksters fought hard – and failed – to defeat the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In spite of their fearmongering, the ACA didn’t cause disaster. In fact, states who expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw fewer hospitals close while states who refused saw rural hospital closures spike. The greatest concentration of hospital closures has been in the south, where a number of states have not expanded Medicaid.
Now, industry front groups such as the Partnership for America’s Health Future (founded to stop Medicare for All, according to their own documents) and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) are pouring millions into deceptive advertising to scare voters about Medicare for All and attack any plan that could undermine their ability to make billions off patients.
We won’t be so easily fooled. Americans know that we deserve guaranteed, comprehensive healthcare, including hospital visits, dental, vision, mental health care and dignified long-term care. We know that no one should have to beg for help on GoFundMe to pay for life-saving care. We know that doctors and hospitals can’t keep paying the cost of care for patients who can’t afford insurance. Medicare for All means that rural hospitals would no longer be burdened by uncompensated care. A little-known provision of the Washington representative Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All bill is that it includes funding to invest directly in areas without enough health coverage, including rural and low-income urban areas.
The industry is hanging on for dear life to a business model that returns obscene profits for insurance executives at the expense of cancer patients, cardiac patients and people struggling to pay for their insulin.
We can’t let big pharma and billion-dollar insurance companies pull a bait and switch. Rural America needs Medicare for All, not more big corporations lining their own pockets and paying PR firms to hide the truth.
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RSN: The "Presidential Debates" Are Not Debates |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38303"><span class="small">Ronnie Dugger, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 12:34 |
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Dugger writes: "The presidential debates on our national TV networks fail as debates. Rather than structured debates conducted among the candidates, they are press conferences controlled by who the reporters call on when, and by their questions."
Candidates from the Democratic debates. (photo: TheWrap/Getty Images)
The "Presidential Debates" Are Not Debates
By Ronnie Dugger, Reader Supported News
10 September 19
 he presidential debates on our national TV networks fail as debates. Rather than structured debates conducted among the candidates, they are press conferences controlled by who the reporters call on when, and by their questions. The candidates, in their answers or later refutations, are strictly limited, often by aggressive interruption, to one minute or 30 seconds each, respectively. Instead of the candidates presenting what they believe and will try to do if elected, reporters tell the candidates what they should talk about in their permitted short replies. So far this summer, the overall outcomes of these disorganized events are usually chaotic and confused, with candidates often interrupting reporters’ control in place of getting called on.
The League of Women Voters, the totally non-political local-and-national civics organization, used to conduct our formal presidential debates, but when they stopped doing that the networks took their place. The event with the ten Democratic candidates in Houston, if in pattern, is not a real presidential TV debate on our publicly-owned airways, of which the networks and the press have deprived the American people now for decades. Giving the reporters and the networks the real control of “the presidential debates” abuses the citizenry and structurally destroys, probably partisanizes, and therefore weakens our national politics and elections.
Having watched these events since Adlai versus Ike, in more recent decades I have been astounded by the humiliations of our candidates for our highest office. I first realized what had happened when I saw on TV that the reporters in one of the network “debates” were permitting President George W. Bush only one minute to answer their questions. Here we are decades later with TV journalist Jake Tapper doing the same thing to Bernie Sanders and three or four other of the Democrats’ candidates now, asking him and them the same one question about “taxing middle-class Americans” for “Medicare for All,” provoking Sanders to reach through his one-minute time-cell to retort, “Jake,” that he had asked a Republican question that would cause the GOP to celebrate.
With the candidates named “the debaters” in these press conferences, in minimum honesty the first fix we might make is to call these events what they really are, not debates. But that is just calling a press conference what it is instead of what it isn’t. What we need for democracy is to restore the journalism-seized event to what it should be, a serious discussion and debate among the candidates for the most powerful job in the world, the American presidency.
I know about debating. In the two-debaters-versus-two in school and university systems, my debate partners and I won the San Antonio citywide high school debate competitions one year and won for the University of Texas two collegiate national championships, and I debated in the Oxford Union when I was there. The candidates in a real debate should agree in advance on both its subject or nature and rules. The only things the hosts or sponsors and the chair should do are preside, introduce the debaters, and enforce the rules they have agreed on.
For Thursday, the candidates being now the top ten contenders for the Democratic nomination, I suggest, for examples, that as many of them as can should meet or confer by phone ahead of time to plan the debate rules. They could decide by lot the order of speakers and demand and require, if prevailing, that in the three-hour, 180-minute debate, every one of them first get, let’s say, ten minutes to present their cases against Trump and for themselves and the Democrats, then five minutes refuting the others, and then three more minutes to close. That’s 180 minutes and a real debate among the people seeking our votes to get the powers of our president.
If such a switch back to real debating couldn’t be made for Thursday night, it could be for the next debate in October and those that follow. Depending on the future situations, such as how many candidates still satisfy the toughening rules for the Democratic Party’s controlled series of debates, a four-person debate might be done one night with the top-ranked four candidates, with a second night’s debate among the rest.
After the two major parties have their candidates for president nominated, in my opinion any new networks or other organizations sponsoring debates between the two should have to agree in advance with the candidates themselves (not their parties or reporters or presiders) on the when, the where, the order of the debaters, and the timing.
The very successful seven-hour town hall about climate change that has recently occurred suggests a method for further substantial debate among the candidates, perhaps including those knocked off TV by the Democratic Party’s rules. Quite apart from the Democrats’ schedule, for these events, candidates in groupings of their choosing could arrange their own additional debates, for broadcast on whatever networks agreed, on additional dominating issues, where logical with candidates taking either pro or con sides. Just for more examples, I have drafted seven additional such topics for the Democratic candidates.
“Resolved, that Donald Trump should be impeached by the House and convicted and ejected from the White House by the Senate, and, should he not yet have been ejected from office by the Senate, defeated for re-election.”
“Resolved, that to correct the shocking and criminal financial inequality in our country, Congress should immediately double the minimum wage, enact laws requiring workers’ secret voting on forming unions where they work in places of business larger than a specified number of employees, legalize postcard voting on establishing unions, criminalize corporations or employers who fire or discriminate against workers for seeking to organize unions, and require that half of the board members of all major corporations and financial institutions be selected by and from the workers employed by them either as employees or ‘independent workers.’”
“Resolved, that the Republicans’ huge recent tax cut for the rich and the corporations should be killed and a wealth tax and/or new steeply-graduated taxes on the rich enacted.”
“Resolved, that Medicare for All, at least in part funded by repeal of the recent Trump-GOP tax cuts for the super-wealthy, a new wealth tax, and other higher taxes on the rich, should be enacted,” possibly adding to this topic, “with a transitional continuing option of private insurance for those who still want it.”
“Resolved, that the United Nations should abolish the veto or else soon be superseded by the establishment, including the best UN features, of a world democratic federation in every member nation based on one person, one vote.”
“Resolved, that the United States should lead nations, instead of opposing them as it has, by voting for and ratifying the United Nations treaty already enacted by 122 nations in 2017 in the General Assembly which prohibits, outlaws, and criminalizes the manufacture, ownership, threat to use, or use of nuclear weapons.”
“Resolved, that when the head and leaders of the government of a nation declare and wage a clear and definite war of aggression, the head and war-responsible leaders of that government shall be convicted of capital mass murder and imprisoned for life without parole.”
You could come up with another seven. And any debate proposition can be reworded to favor or oppose different opinions or outcomes.
The grossest blunder in 2016 and this year has been having, last time, 17 candidates and, this time, two dozen, absurdly permitting press grilling of, then, 17, and now, ten twice. But the long-standing institutional offense of the networks’ and journalism’s takeover and destruction of the presidential debates is calling press conferences among the time-denied candidates serious debates and thereby denying those serious debates to the citizens of the United States.
If the League of Women Voters won’t come back and conduct these debates again, who can match the League’s exact qualification for that task? The ACLU? Not with the Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Not with the Democrats. Here in Austin, where I live, the League of Women Voters is now going into high school classes to educate and interest the students about their voting rights and the issues before us all. I wish they would decide nationally to take back the job they once did so well.
Ronnie Dugger, a presidential biographer and winner of the 2011 George Polk lifetime career reward, was founding editor of The Texas Observer, has also written books on Hiroshima and universities, and has published many articles in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.
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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Climate Advocates Are Nearly Unanimous: Bernie's Green New Deal Is Best |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=43875"><span class="small">Branko Marcetic, Jacobin</span></a>
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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 12:34 |
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Marcetic writes: "We asked longtime climate advocates which candidate has the best and boldest plan to halt climate change. The answer was nearly unanimous: Bernie Sanders."
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention at the SNHU Arena on September 7, 2019, in Manchester, New Hampshire. (photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Climate Advocates Are Nearly Unanimous: Bernie's Green New Deal Is Best
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
10 September 19
We asked longtime climate advocates which candidate has the best and boldest plan to halt climate change. The answer was nearly unanimous: Bernie Sanders.
 limate change is the greatest threat facing humanity, and for the past nine months, the Democratic candidates have been jostling to prove which of them is the most serious about tackling the crisis and who has the most effective and ambitious plan to do so. Voters are now weighing the various plans, but some of the country’s leading environmental and climate groups have already singled out a leader in the pack so far: Bernie Sanders and his Green New Deal plan.
In near unanimity, representatives from these organizations pointed to Sanders’s plan as standing above the rest, positioning him as a leader on an issue whose urgency is increasingly recognized by the public.
“At this point, Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal is the most comprehensive and most aggressive of the plans that have been laid out so far,” says Mitch Jones, climate and energy program director at Food & Water Watch. The organization’s national organizing co-director Mark Schlosberg wrote earlier this month that “its scope and ambition dwarf all other proposals,” that it’s a response “big enough and bold enough” to meet the challenge, and that we should “rally around this plan and make it real.”
“From our perspective, Bernie Sanders has the strongest plan when it comes to taking on the fossil fuel industry,” says Jenny Marienau, program manager at 350 Action. The organization’s director, Tamara O’Laughlin, added that Sanders was “leading the field on ambition for a just transition,” and that his legislation would be a “model” for the election season.
Sunrise Movement cofounder and political director Evan Weber said: “The Green New Deal laid out by Bernie Sanders’s campaign is the biggest and boldest and most ambitious we’ve seen yet. It seems to really grasp the scale of the challenge first and foremost, while also recognizing the opportunity we have to transform our economy and stop the climate crisis and so no one gets left behind in the economy.”
Likewise, Greenpeace put Sanders at the top of the heap on its 2020 climate scorecard, giving him the only “A” in the field. (Washington governor Jay Inslee had topped Greenpeace’s rankings with an A- before dropping out.) In advance of last week’s climate town hall on CNN, candidates had scrambled to improve their scores, with several moving dramatically up in the rankings, most notably Elizabeth Warren, who shot up from fifth place, with a B, to second place, with an A-. Even after this last-minute bidding war, however, Sanders stayed at number one.
What Sets Sanders Apart
Those interviewed gave a variety of reasons for scoring Sanders’s plan so highly. Jones of Food & Water Watch pointed not just to the timelines and level of investment in Sanders’s plan, but the fact that it was “economy-wide” and dealt not just with climate, but agriculture, water systems, and a fair and just transition for workers and communities.
“Given the size of the challenge ahead of us, his is the only one that measures up,” he says.
Jones added that the price tag for Sanders’s Green New Deal — $16.3 trillion over fifteen years — is “the sort of investment that needs to be made if you’re going to make the rapid transition off of fossil fuels that’s necessary,” and said it should be viewed as a benchmark going forward. Similarly, 350 Action’s Marienau pointed to Sanders’s commitment to massively raising taxes on corporate polluters, taking on fossil fuel wealth, and building renewable energy.
Weber noted that Sanders’s plan was unique in envisioning “a very robust role for the federal government to drive” the transition, and said its level of federal investment was “on a scale that far surpasses what the other candidates have got so far.” Charlie Jiang, climate campaigner with Greenpeace USA, singled out several factors, including its larger investment in clean energy transformation and helping communities transition, and the plan’s commitment to turn off the faucet of fossil fuel production, which he says “goes further than the other candidates.” Greenpeace’s scorecard notes that Sanders’s Green New Deal would “immediately end federal subsidies and leases for fossil fuel production, halt new oil, gas, and coal projects, and ban harmful fracking and mountain-top removal practices.”
Not all of those interviewed singled out Sanders’s plan. RL Miller, cofounder and political director of Climate Hawks Vote (and chair of the California Democratic Party’s environmental caucus), whose organization has scored every congressperson on their environmental and climate leadership over the years (Sanders was rated the number-one climate leader in 2015), called Jay Inslee’s plan “the gold standard,” and praised Warren for pledging to adopt parts of his plan as her own. Famed environmentalist Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org, declined to single out any one candidate and noted that climate change was now “a front burner issue for everyone,” a major change from years prior.
Good Ideas Abound
Those praising Sanders’s Green New Deal also noted that virtually every plan put out so far had at least one idea of note that was worth looking at and adopting by other candidates.
“While we think he’s the leader of the pack, there are some strong ones,” says Marienau.
Former San Antonio mayor and Obama’s Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro was singled out in particular for his plan to create a new category of climate refugees.
“It’s an interesting innovation that seems important,” she says. “We hope other candidates will borrow that from him.”
As in the Greenpeace rankings, Warren was typically cited as second best to Sanders. Brad Johnson, former executive editor of Climate Hawks Vote, who runs the news site Hill Heat and sits on the board of several environmental organizations, praised her idea to make all future trade deals not just subject to the Paris Agreement, but independently verified by a third party to ensure they satisfy its goals.
“That would be radically transformative,” he says.
One candidate who didn’t fare so well was Joe Biden, currently clinging to his front-runner status even as Sanders and Warren have tied or overtaken him in key states in polls. Owing to his self-proclaimed “middle ground” approach to tackling the crisis, Biden initially received a D- rating from Greenpeace, the second worst Democratic score after fracking fluid connoisseur John Hickenlooper. Biden’s campaign has since worked to improve his standing, shooting up to sixth place with a B+ on the Greenpeace scorecard.
Nonetheless, environmental groups are not yet sold on the former vice president.
“He’s still missing some of the key commitments we want to see, which include how are they going to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure in a responsible way,” says Jiang.
Jones criticized Biden’s omission of a ban on fracking and exporting oil and natural gas.
“He’s not taking seriously the supply side, which has to be the center,” he says.
Miller called out Biden for what she describes as “weaseling around” the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, attending a fundraiser hosted by Andrew Goldman, the cofounder of a liquefied natural gas firm, the day after the climate town hall. The campaign insisted that Goldman wasn’t involved day-to-day in the company, so didn’t count as a “fossil fuel executive,” as per the pledge. Marienau called his plan a “mixed bag” whose timeline is “nowhere near as ambitious” as other candidates and should be viewed as “the floor” when it comes to proposals.
“The question is where this falls on his list of priorities,” says Weber. “It’s unclear if he’ll continue the Obama-Biden ‘all-of-the-above’ approach.”
The Dividing Lines
Since the town hall, and as the Democratic bidding war over climate change proposals continues, several issues have emerged as points of contrast between the candidates. One is a proposed nationwide ban on fracking. Sanders has been virtually alone in calling for such a ban since his 2016 presidential run, continuing to do so this year even before releasing his Green New Deal proposal. Other candidates have been slow to follow. Kamala Harris officially signed on during her climate town hall segment, while Warren finally came out for the ban this past weekend.
Environmental groups say the policy is critical, as the unleashing of fracking on US soil under Obama is arguably the single biggest reason the United States has become one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters.
“Having a fracking ban as a component of your climate plan is a litmus test for how seriously you’re taking the problem of climate change,” says Jones. “Unless you target that, you have no way to seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions that we have at the rate we need to do it.”
“Banning fracking is an important indicator of whether candidates are willing to move as quickly as the crisis requires,” says Marienau.
It was a point echoed by every other environmental representative interviewed. Most noted that this was only the minimum, with the need to choke off the supply side of fossil fuels encompassing not just a fracking ban, but ending fossil fuel extraction on public land, new fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines and power plants, and exports of fossil fuels out of the United States.
“I don’t look at banning fracking so much as which steps are they willing to take to ultimately turn off the flow of oil from American land, as well as coal and natural gas,” says Miller.
“Stopping fossil fuel infrastructure is right there with banning fracking,” says Jones. “The more pipelines we build, the more import-export terminals we build, the more we lock ourselves into greenhouse gases for decades.”
While all the major candidates have committed to banning oil and gas drilling on public lands and offshore, and several are now supporting a nationwide ban on fracking, only Sanders has thus far committed to restoring the ban on crude oil and gas exports, and putting a moratorium on fossil fuel infrastructure projects. He’s also the only major candidate so far to pledge to end mountaintop removal coal mining. Even so, environmentalists say all the candidates could go further.
“We would love to see more candidates adopt Inslee’s approach to freedom from fossil fuels,” says Jiang. “That means taking concerted and coordinated steps to stop the expansion of fossil fuel production and to start to phase out existing production in a really intentional way.” Jiang points to Inslee’s proposal for tackling fossil fuel extraction from non-federal land, which involves creating a presidential commission on phasing out fossil fuel production and a proposal to buy up and decommission existing fossil fuel assets, as well as Harris’s idea of convening global negotiations over the managed decline of worldwide fossil fuel production.
Another issue dividing the field is that of democratizing electricity generation. Doing so is a major part of Sanders’s plan, which proposes the US government take a leading role in creating renewable energy infrastructure and providing power to the country, while leaving a role for private ownership of renewable power. Other candidates have not gone so far, including Warren, who said last week she wasn’t “sure that’s what gets you to the solutions.”
While they don’t see the issue as a litmus test akin to banning fracking, their views on the idea range from seeing it positively to regarding it as a crucial instrument for reaching decarbonization goals, particularly given the speed that will be necessary.
“That component is really key,” Jones says about Sanders’s plan to prioritize federal dollars for utilities that are publicly owned or demonstrate that they operate in the public interest. “The utilities operating in the country are being driven by the profit motive. That conflict is a central problem.”
“Electric utilities have made themselves very toxic political players,” says Miller. “Anything that can be done to neutralize bad faith utilities is a positive step.”
“Nationalizing clean energy transition is a way the government can have control over the way that transition happens,” says Marienau. “It’d be wishful thinking to assume incentives and market demand will lead to a just transition.”
Another issue is nuclear power. Sanders and Warren have both pledged not only to build no new nuclear power plants, but to gradually dismantle existing ones, making them outliers in the Democratic field. (Even Inslee is pro-nuclear.) It’s a contentious stand that has drawn criticism from not just the center, but some parts of the Left, too. The conventional wisdom is that, being an almost entirely carbon-free energy source, nuclear power will be an essential part of any transition away from fossil fuels, despite the safety and ecological risks.
Those interviewed took a dim view of this argument. They point to the fact that nuclear power plants built over the past twenty years have taken an average of nearly sixteen years to build — longer than the ten-year timeline scientists have given us to transform our energy system — though South Korea has taken an average of around four and a half years. They also point to the enormous cost involved, running into the billions, which could instead be invested into renewable energy. There’s also the fact that nuclear power plants in both the United States and Europe are struggling to operate in the face of increasingly frequent and record-breaking heat waves, forcing plants to cut back their power generation or even shut down.
“We should be transitioning off nuclear power same time as we go off fossil fuels,” says Jones.
“If we’re looking to move to carbon-free power as soon as possible, it’s not the most expedient ground to get there,” says Weber. “In terms of what is shovel-ready and ready to go right now, renewable energy is a much more promising answer.”
It’s a debate that will surely continue to rage in the years ahead.
A Victory for Activism
As it stands, with Inslee out of the race, Sanders is now the leading candidate on climate, having proposed the boldest and most ambitious plans for tackling the climate crisis and setting the bar for even the most progressive candidates. By contrast, Biden is, besides Pete Buttigieg, the candidate environmental groups are most leery of, and continues to waver in signaling how seriously he takes the issue.
Whoever wins the nomination, the Democratic climate debate will remain a testament to the power of activism to transform the mainstream political terrain. Five years ago, simply acknowledging that climate change is real and caused by humans was considered the progressive litmus test. Now nothing less than trillions of dollars of investment and ending the practice of fracking, at minimum, will do.
“A great deal of credit goes to the movements that have pushed long and hard,” says McKibben. “They’ve changed the zeitgeist within the party, and also I think within the country.”
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FOCUS: Trump's Going to Manipulate the Government to Stay in Power |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51577"><span class="small">Jeff Hauser, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 10:43 |
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Hauser writes: "The president has given us ample signs that he will use the powers of the presidency in ways previously unimaginable. How come Democrats seem so relaxed about it?"
Donald Trump supporters. (photo: Damon Winter/NYT)
Trump's Going to Manipulate the Government to Stay in Power
By Jeff Hauser, The Daily Beast
10 September 19
he power of an incumbent president to aid re-election by abusing the executive branch has in the past been limited by a few powerful forces: Presidential integrity; the fear of a scandal emerging in the media; and the prospect of aggressive congressional oversight.
Due to forces outside their control, the Democratic nominee won’t be saved by the first two “norms based” options. And as a result of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s strategyof not “focusing on Trump,” the president has every reason to scoff at the prospect of aggressive congressional oversight, up to and including a genuine “go big” effort at impeachment.
Combined, these elements must force us to consider a truly horrifying series of questions: Does President Trump have the means, motive, and opportunity to tilt the 2020 election? The answer, unfortunately, is yes, yes, and yes. And it behooves Democrats to understand that now, before it is too late.
First, means. Even a normal president has some ability to manipulate government spending and contracting decisions in such a way as to goose, say, purple state economies at the expense of dark blue and red states. Think it’s bad that Trump appears to be manipulating Air Force decisions to benefit his Scottish hotel? Amid a potentially slowing economy, think about how many ways Trump could shift resources across the entire federal government to, say, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, or Tempe, Arizona, at the expense of New York City or Birmingham, Alabama.
And of course Trump can use the military as a tool to alter the national conversation, such as when he sent 5,200 troops to the border last October in order to provoke panic about the approach of a desperate caravan of Central American migrants.
How much Trump can use “authoritative” voices of the federal government to misinform voters is unclear. However it is not safe to assume that all Cabinet secretaries are as ham-handed as Wilbur Ross, who has been caught doing just that with respect to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Impeach the Biggest Liar in Trump’s Cabinet
Trump might also scare corporations into supporting his re-election. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Mercedes-Benz’ failure to participate in talks with California about vehicle-emission standards was due to fear of reprisal from Trump. For every report of a corporation bent to the will of Trump, how many corporations are complying without any reporting?
And as House Democrats are, to their credit, beginning to appreciate the extent to which the president’s team will use the levers of foreign policy to achieve domestic political ends, Trump still has enormous leeway to operate in this murky domain. It’s not hard to imagine the president privately pressuring foreign countries such as Ukraine to assist his effort in 2020 as Russia and perhaps Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates did in 2016.
But more alarming scenarios must also be contemplated. Would China grease the wheels of trade negotiations with the Trump Administration by throwing in a little hacking of the Democratic nominee or social media manipulation in the way NBA teams complete teams by throwing in a future second-round draft pick? It’s far from inconceivable in the context of, well, everything we know about the transactional way Trump views the presidency.
Next, motive. Remember “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing’” was a Trump statement at a 2016 press conference. Also recall the Trump team’s willingness to sit down with Russian assets offering dirt on Clinton. That was in the service of winning an election. Now he has the added motive of not losing one. Trump, lest we forget, has ample reason to fear that indictments could well await him should he not prevail in 2020.
It’s hardly speculative to think that Trump and his team would think along these lines. His administration was caught manipulating the 2020 census. And they only dropped the charade because a narrow majority on the Supreme Court simply couldn’t dismiss their lies about it. That was to affect a process that would govern elections from 2021 to 2030. Think what they will do when Trump is actually on the ballot.
So means and motive have been established. What about opportunity? Well, it’s best to commit a crime if you control law enforcement. With Bill Barr as attorney general, it’s fair to surmise that Trump’s fear of federal law enforcement is not especially high.
“It’s optimal for a president seeking to act underhandedly if the mainstream media’s reach and influence have been under assault—as, of course, they are.”
Top Dem Think Tank Scraps Talk Of Killing Russia Project
It’s also optimal for a president seeking to act underhandedly if the mainstream media’s reach and influence have been under assault—as, of course, they are.
And so that leaves as the last line of defense… House Democrats. Speaker Pelosi has been trying to do the minimal amount of oversight necessary to avoid a revolt within her caucus and among the grassroots. Outside of efforts to supplement the public parts of the Mueller Report and the belated effort to obtain Trump’s taxes, Democrats have filed almost no lawsuits to enforce their oversight requests for documents and testimony. That’s despite unprecedented and intentionally complete stonewalling. Don’t take my word on it. Trump told reporters that “we are fighting all the subpoenas.”
Even though Pelosi’s situation is historically unprecedented, she does have options. For one, she could act like impeachment is a real option rather than visibly gritting her teeth and informing all within range of her voice that she thinks impeachment would be bad for Democrats. No matter Trump’s braggadocio, it is unlikely that he wants to be the third president ever impeached—and the first to run for re-election under such a cloud. Pelosi strongly desiring to take the option off the table, alternately, empowers Trump to think he is above the law so long as he occupies the White House.
Secondly, the government is not yet funded for fiscal year 2020 starting in October. Trump badly needs economic stability amid rising uncertainty, and as a president whose re-election is premised in no small part on the economy, he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell need a deal more than House Democrats do. Pelosi can use “must pass legislation” to preempt as many shenanigans as possible, starting with banning the repurposing of previously appropriated funds such as the money Trump pulled from the Department of Defense to pay for his border wall.
Big picture, House Democrats must signal to Trump that they are up to the task of being the last line of defense against a federal government being organized as a partisan tool. Otherwise, their “let the voters decide in 2020” plan might have a fatal flaw.
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t has been nearly 20 years since that fateful day we now call simply 9/11. We are still living with its consequences.
