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FOCUS: The Mask I Wear on the Weekends |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51497"><span class="small">Karen Cheung, The New York Times</span></a>
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Friday, 30 August 2019 11:15 |
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Cheung writes: "In Hong Kong, I go to work and see my friends as usual. But I also spend time in a parallel universe of tear gas, barricades and anonymous allies."
Hong Kong protesters. (photo: Getty)
The Mask I Wear on the Weekends
By Karen Cheung, The New York Times
30 August 19
In Hong Kong, I go to work and see my friends as usual. But I also spend time in a parallel universe of tear gas, barricades and anonymous allies.
 n August, the air in Hong Kong takes on a life of its own. The winds weep with so much moisture that it often feels suffocating. On one of those stifling days, I welcomed a sweaty handyman into my flat. The tanned, smiling, 30-something stranger, whom I had found on a local household-repair version of “seeking arrangements,” was there to dismantle a spare bed that I was hoping to sell.
As he unscrewed the nails from the bed frame, he asked, “So you’ve been out on the streets, eh?”
I took a step back, immediately suspicious. “What gave it away?”
“There’s a yellow hard hat by your sofa,” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry, I’m out every other week too. I’m with the first aid. Just doing what I can.”
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RSN | The Primary Contradiction: Corporate Power vs. Progressive Populism |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=48990"><span class="small">Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Friday, 30 August 2019 10:57 |
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Solomon writes: "For plutocrats, this summer has gotten a bit scary. Two feared candidates are rising. Trusted candidates are underperforming. The 2020 presidential election could turn out to be a real-life horror movie: A Nightmare on Wall Street."
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Democratic Primary debate. (photo: Getty)
The Primary Contradiction: Corporate Power vs. Progressive Populism
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
30 August 19
 or plutocrats, this summer has gotten a bit scary. Two feared candidates are rising. Trusted candidates are underperforming. The 2020 presidential election could turn out to be a real-life horror movie: A Nightmare on Wall Street.
“Wall Street executives who want Trump out,” Politico reported in January, “list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California.”
But seven months later, those “appealing nominees” don’t seem appealing to a lot of voters. Biden’s frontrunner status is looking shaky, while other Wall Street favorites no longer inspire investor confidence: Harris is stuck in single digits, Booker is several points below her, and Gillibrand just dropped out of the race.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are drawing large crowds and rising in polls. In pivotal early states like Iowa and especially New Hampshire, reputable poll averages indicate that Biden is scarcely ahead.
“Bankers’ biggest fear” is that “the nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader” like Warren or Sanders, Politico reported, quoting the CEO of a “giant bank” who said: “It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders. It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.”
But the very biggest fear among corporate elites is that Warren or Sanders could win — and then use the presidency to push back against oligarchy. If Biden can’t be propped up, there’s no candidate looking strong enough to stop them.
Biden, Warren and Sanders, as The New York Times reported on Wednesday, are “a threesome that seems to have separated from the rest of the primary field.” In fourth place, national polling averages show, Harris is far behind.
Biden’s distinguished record of servicing corporate America spans five decades. He is eager to continue that work from the Oval Office, but can he get there? A week ago, a Times headline noted reasons for doubt: “Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers Mask an Enthusiasm Challenge.” Enthusiasm for Biden has been high among Democratic-aligned elites, but not among Democratic-aligned voters.
While corporate news organizations — and corporate-enmeshed “public” outlets like NPR News and the PBS NewsHour — evade primary contradictions, Sanders directly hammers at how huge corporations are propelling media bias and undermining democracy.
Even though he has inspired media onslaughts — such as the now-notorious 16 anti-Sanders articles published by The Washington Post in a pivotal 16-hour period during the 2016 primary contest — the Sanders campaign is so enormous that even overtly hostile outlets must give him some space. In an op-ed piece he wrote that the Post published seven weeks ago, Sanders confronted Biden’s wealth-fondling approach.
Under the headline “The Straightest Path to Racial Equality Is Through the One Percent,” Sanders quoted a statement from Biden: “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.” Sanders responded, “I respectfully disagree” — and he went on to say: “It is my view that any presidential candidate who claims to believe that black lives matter has to take on the institutions that have continually exploited black lives.”
Such insight about systemic exploitation is sacrilege to the secular faith of wealth accumulation that touts reaching billionaire status as a kind of divine ascension. Yet Sanders boldly challenges that kind of hollowness, shedding a fierce light on realities of corporate capitalism.
“Structural problems require structural solutions,” Sanders pointed out in his Post article, “and promises of mere ‘access’ have never guaranteed black Americans equality in this country.... ‘Access’ to health care is an empty promise when you can’t afford high premiums, co-pays or deductibles. And an ‘opportunity’ for an equal education is an opportunity in name only when you can’t afford to live in a good school district or to pay college tuition. Jobs, health care, criminal justice and education are linked, and progress will not be made unless we address the economic systems that oppress Americans at their root.”
Like many other progressives, I continue to actively support Sanders as a candidate who bypasses euphemisms, names ultra-powerful villains — and directly challenges those in power who’ve been warping and gaming the economic systems against working-class people.
Those systems are working quite nicely for the ultra-rich, like the giant bank CEO who told Politico that “it can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders.” That’s the decision from Wall Street. The decision from Main Street is yet to be heard.
Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
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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Brace for Impact, Washington. Progressives Are Going to Win. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51495"><span class="small">Cenk Uygur, The Washington Post</span></a>
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Friday, 30 August 2019 08:32 |
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Uygur writes: "The electorate does not want a moderate or conservative Democrat, no matter how much the mainstream media tries to will it into existence."
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
Brace for Impact, Washington. Progressives Are Going to Win.
By Cenk Uygur, The Washington Post
30 August 19
n 2016, I warned that Donald Trump could win. Right after that year’s Democratic National Convention, with Hillary Clinton peaking in the polls, I made that prediction on ABC News’s “This Week.” Several other panelists, all members of the Washington establishment, laughed. But I stuck with my view, and I told our audience on “The Young Turks” on election night: Buckle up, and brace for impact. Trump is going to be president.
Now, I have another prediction for the Washington establishment. Brace for impact: Progressives are going to win.
Why did I think Trump was going to win? Because he was a populist — a fake one, yes, but at least he was savvy enough to fake it. Whereas the Democratic Party thought it was savvy to pick the most status quo, establishment candidate it had ever picked. That was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. That thirst for anti-establishment populism is the same reason I’ve been saying from Day One in this cycle that a progressive is going to win the Democratic nomination and easily defeat Trump.
In fact, at the end of Election Day 2016, I declared that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would destroy Trump in 2020. Now an Economist-YouGov poll puts Warren within one point of former vice president Joe Biden. A Monmouth University poll has Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 20 percent, one point ahead of Biden. Biden’s lead in an average of polls has already crumbled since shortly after he announced in late April. And if Biden loses his lead, does anyone think he will retake it? Not a chance.
Neither Biden nor centrist Democratic leadership will simply admit defeat. They have plenty of money and plenty of sympathetic media voices to amplify their message. But do you really expect Biden to turn things around? He has already changed his entire strategy once. He makes huge gaffes day after day. While Warren and Sanders draw thousands, his audiences are far smaller. His campaign is gasping for breath, and we’re only in August. The Biden fade has begun. I’m not sure he will even be in the race by Iowa.
Pundits keep insisting that Americans want a moderate Democrat. They will even bring on figures such as Claire McCaskill to say this, even when they lost their seats running as moderate Democrats. Your bias has to be pretty thick not to see the irony of that. Do you really think it’s an accident that two of the top three candidates are the two biggest progressives in the country? Do you think it’s a coincidence that John Hickenlooper and John Delaney peaked at 2 percent? The electorate does not want a moderate or conservative Democrat, no matter how much the mainstream media tries to will it into existence.
This race now isn’t between Warren and Biden; it’s between Warren and Sanders. And for progressives, that’s a dream come true.
Why has so much of Washington failed to take Sanders and Warren seriously? Because almost everyone in power in Washington dislikes progressives and can’t believe that anyone else would ever like them. For years now, pundits, reporters and even Democratic leaders have struggled to figure out why young voters love Sanders so much when so few in Washington support him. It’s because for 40 straight years he has been fighting for the same principles: decent health care, good wages and more equality. Washington Democrats find that annoying, unmalleable and uncooperative. The rest of us see a hero who refuses to bend to the will of the establishment.
This is why we progressives are going to win: The rest of the country doesn’t like politicians, big business or big media. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow if you’re in those crowds, but it’s true. Politicians, big media and big business all poll horribly.
TV pundits keep insisting that “the American people” want what they want. The commentators and the lobbyists want a standard, polished politician who will say one thing and do another. They find that strategic. Real Americans find it gross.
No one outside of the political and media establishments is buying what they’re selling. Look at the polls. Ninety-three percent of Americans say politicians serve their donors instead of the voters. Everyone loathes the corruption and the constant catering to the rich and powerful. Real wages for the average American worker haven’t gone up in 40 years. Americans are desperate for change.
We progressives are that change, whether Washington likes it or not. And when progressives come to clean up Washington, we actually mean it. Buckle up, and brace for impact.
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Trump Is Joking When He Asks People to Break the Law? Tell That to the Russians. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=46833"><span class="small">Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Thursday, 29 August 2019 12:23 |
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McQuade writes: "'I am not a crook.' 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' 'Just joking.' That last line may be the Trump administration's way of maintaining plausible deniability when dangling pardons."
Russian president Vladimir Putin. (photo: AFP)
Trump Is Joking When He Asks People to Break the Law? Tell That to the Russians.
By Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast
29 August 19
The White House says the president wasn’t serious when he told subordinates it’s OK to commit crimes to ‘build the wall.’ Recent history shows someone may take him seriously.
 am not a crook.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
“Just joking.”
That last line may be the Trump administration’s way of maintaining plausible deniability when dangling pardons.
The Washington Post reported this week that Trump has told aides that he will pardon them if they have to break laws to build a border wall.
Trump’s statement reportedly came as he pushes aides to build a border wall before the 2020 election to make good on his campaign promise, even if it requires seizing private land and disregarding environmental rules. When aides have protested that some of his orders violate the law, the Post reported that Trump told them that they should proceed anyway, and that he will pardon them of any wrongdoing if necessary.
An anonymous White House source did not deny the reporting, instead explaining that Trump is joking when he makes such statements.
Hilarious.
Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump was also joking in July 2016 when he publicly stated, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to emails deleted from the private email server that Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state. But the Russians didn’t get the joke. Less than five hours later, Russian intelligence officers attempted to hack into Clinton’s email account, according to an indictment returned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump may have been joking, but others took action that violated the law and benefited Trump.
“Pardon dangling is not a new topic when discussing Trump.”
It has been said that we should learn to take Trump seriously but not literally. But Trump is no longer just the loudmouth at the country club, spouting off about current events to hangers-on. What might have passed as edgy, off-the-cuff humor from a political candidate is something else entirely when it comes from the commander-in-chief. Words have consequences. And when words constitute orders from the nation’s top government officer, it is reasonable to expect that those words will be obeyed.
Words can even become criminal under certain circumstances. Under federal solicitation law, if someone “commands, induces or procures” the commission of a crime, he is as guilty of the offense as if he committed it himself. If two or more persons agree to commit a crime, and one of them does an act in furtherance of the agreement, both can be charged with conspiracy. In both instances, a prosecutor would have to prove that the person acted knowingly and intended the crime to be committed, and that he was not “just joking.”
Of course, we have all learned by now that a sitting president cannot, or at least will not, be indicted. Trump is likely feeling emboldened by his experience with the special counsel. Despite findings by Mueller and his team of substantial evidence that Trump engaged in multiple acts to obstruct their investigation with a corrupt purpose, no criminal charges were filed.
Imagine for a moment that Trump is not joking when he asks aides to complete the border wall by any means necessary, even if they have to break the law? The pardon power is absolute when it comes to federal offenses, and so he could make good on his promise, and pardon anyone charged with a crime for obeying his orders. What would be the recourse against Trump? If Trump cannot be charged with a crime, then the only remedy to hold him accountable would be impeachment and conviction. Even if the House of Representatives had the will to proceed to impeachment, would the Republican-controlled Senate convict? Or would they continue to enable Trump’s norm-busting behavior?
Pardon dangling is not a new topic when discussing Trump. During the Mueller investigation, some evidence suggested that Trump’s team dangled pardons to former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen, all of whom were later convicted of crimes. All three men were in positions to provide prosecutors with information damaging to Trump in exchange for reductions in their sentences. Trump could potentially buy their silence by promising them something even better than a sentence reduction in the form of a pardon.
The Mueller Report chronicled a voicemail message that Trump’s personal lawyer left for Flynn’s lawyer after Flynn withdrew from a joint defense agreement with Trump and others, signaling that he was cooperating with investigators. The message stated that the president had “warm feelings” toward Flynn. Last fall, after it was reported that Manafort was cooperating with investigators, Trump publicly stated that a pardon for Manafort was “not off the table.” CNN reported that after the FBI searched Cohen’s office in April 2018, Cohen received emails from an attorney working with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, assuring Cohen that he could “sleep well tonight” because he had “friends in high places.”
The Constitution vests the president with the pardon power. A pardon is intended to express forgiveness and mercy. It recognizes a defendant’s acceptance of responsibility for his crime and good conduct demonstrated over a significant period of time following the completion of his sentence. To instead use the pardon power as a way to enable government employees to violate the law for the president’s personal political advantage without criminal consequence is a gross deviation from the rule of law.
If Trump’s promise of pardons was just a joke, it wasn’t very funny. And there is a danger that aides will take Trump’s commands literally and obey them. If so, will Trump’s contribution to the canon of presidential lies be the “just joking” defense, a new way to falsely claim plausible deniability?
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