Dispatches

MOST AMERICANS BELIEVE WHITE NATIONALISM POSES THREAT TO US.

A 56% majority of Americans say that white nationalism poses a somewhat or very serious threat to the US, a HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. The survey was taken in the wake of the El Paso, Texas, shooting, carried out by a gunman with white nationalist sentiments, That’s similar to the 57% who said it posed such a threat following the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., two years ago, and up from the 46% who said the same last August. Thirty-seven percent currently call white nationalism a “very” serious threat, up from 32% immediately following Charlottesville and a low of 26% last year.

There’s a significant racial gap in the level of concern: Black Americans are 27 percentage points likelier than white Americans to say it’s a very serious threat. But there’s an even broader partisan gap ― one that’s widened in the past two years, almost entirely from rising concerns among Democrats. In 2017, Democrats were 30 percentage points likelier than Republicans to call white nationalism a very serious threat. Today, that divide has grown to 49 points.

Over the same time period, the gap between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump voters has grown from 49 points to 61 points.

As in previous polling, about half the American public considers Trump to be a racist and an inciter of racial tensions, with a minority of Americans coming to his defense. In the latest poll, Americans say, 47% to 38%, that President Trump is racist, and 52% to 37% that he has inflamed racial divisions in the country. Only about a quarter say they believe Trump personally opposes white nationalism, while 44% say he personally supports it, and the rest that he doesn’t have a strong opinion either way. (Unlike other questions, this one didn’t offer respondents an explicit “unsure” option.)

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Aug. 5-6 among US adults.

SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL RISES, ONE MASS SHOOTING AT A TIME. Support for stricter gun control laws is opening up a lead over the opposition, one mass shooting at a time. Or, when they come as close together as El Paso and Dayton and Gilroy, two or three mass shootings at a time, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos.com (8/12).

Civiqs survey data shows a tie into 2016, with support for stricter laws taking the lead between the Charleston shooting in June 2015 and the San Bernadino shooting in December 2015. Orlando’s Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016 widened the gap between support and opposition. Then Las Vegas in October 2017. The Parkland shooting in February 2018 and the activism of its teen survivors created a major spike, going from 52% in favor and 41% opposed to 60% in favor and 33% opposed. While that spike eroded significantly after a few weeks, the gap between support for and opposition to stricter gun control laws has mostly stayed above that pre-Parkland level—which had already been a significant change over two years, and in particular was still elevated post-Las Vegas.

Now, in the wake of Gilroy and El Paso and Dayton, the margin of support is opening up again. It now stands at 55% in favor and 38% opposed, a 17-point margin (8/10).

Many polls show even stronger support for specific policies like universal background checks.

But how many more mass shootings will it take for the lines in this graph to get far enough apart that even Mitch McConnell can’t ignore it?

TRUMP TOPS 12,000 LIES. President Trump’s proclivity for spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods has continued at a remarkable pace, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker reported (8/12). As of Aug. 5, his 928th day in office, he had made 12,019 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president has uttered.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26, and he has been averaging about 20 fishy claims a day since then. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged about 13 such claims a day.

About one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 190 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

False or misleading claims about trade, the economy and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign each account for about 10% of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated.

Trump has falsely claimed 186 times that the US economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by the president’s trade wars.

N.H. REPUBLICAN GOV. VETOES BIPARTISAN REDISTRICTING COMMISSION. New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a bipartisan bill Friday that would have allowed an independent redistricting committee to redraw the state’s legislative and congressional district maps in 2021 and beyond.

The veto is just the latest sign that Republican Party leaders want to control the map-making process and preserve a system that allowed them to racially and politically gerrymander at historic proportions in several GOP-controlled states the last time district lines were redrawn in 2011. But supporters of the bill say the veto could actually backfire on New Hampshire Republicans, currently in the minority party in the state’s legislature. Sununu is up for re-election in 2020, Danielle McLean reported at ThinkProgress (8/11).

“With his veto, the governor is throwing out a plan that would ensure Republicans are treated fairly in the next round of redistricting even if Democrats do well in next year’s elections,” said Yurij Rudensky, a counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program who advised New Hampshire legislators on the bill.

Sununu said in a statement (8/9) that he decided to veto the bill that would have established a 15-member commission — free of recent lobbyists and elected officials — to redraw district maps because it would have created a body that was “unelected and unaccountable to the voters.” He added the measure was supported by out-of-state organizations that favor Democrats during the decennial redistricting process.

“Legislators should not abrogate their responsibility to the voters and delegate authority to an unelected and unaccountable commission selected by political party bosses,” Sununu said in the statement. “We should all be proud that issues of gerrymandering are extremely rare in New Hampshire. Our current redistricting process is fair and representative of the people of our State.”

Under the vetoed bill, the 15-member commission that would include members picked from a list of applicants collected by the secretary of state, would be tasked with redrawing the state’s maps. State lawmakers need to approve the maps. Former elected officials and people that have been lobbyists within the past 10 years would be barred from joining the commission.

Rudensky called Sununu’s veto “shortsighted” and said the bill would have established a model for bipartisan redistricting reform.

“It would create a new citizens’ advisory commission to bring independence, transparency, and public input to a redistricting process formerly kept under wraps,” Rudensky said. “The commission would be charged with drawing congressional and state maps under a process split equally among Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, with the legislature giving final approval. And this new process would allow voters to participate and monitor map drawing.”

Under the current system, New Hampshire’s legislature, which is currently controlled by Democrats, is responsible for drawing up the state’s political lines. The governor has the ability to veto or approve any maps.

But under such systems during the 2012 redistricting process, a number of Republican and some Democratic-controlled states drew heavily gerrymandered district lines using state-of-the-art mapmaking tools. That allowed the Republican Party to win a disproportionate number of congressional and legislative seats in several states, sometimes imposing extreme anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ policies.

The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council is teaching state lawmakers the basics of “redistricting” for the next decade. Last year, ALEC created a model resolution that reaffirmed “the right of state legislatures to determine electoral districts” instead of the courts.

And former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — who helped usher Wisconsin’s extreme gerrymandered districts in 2011 and is now leading the GOP’s redistricting efforts in 2021 as the finance chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust — has also claimed that rural residents should be counted more than urban residents when the maps are drawn.

BIG BANK THINKS WRITING IS ON THE WALL FOR OIL INDUSTRY. Plunging prices for batteries and renewable energy are driving an electric vehicle (EV) revolution so rapidly that the economics of oil “are now in relentless and irreversible decline.”

That’s the startling conclusion of a detailed new analysis for “professional investors” of the economics of EVs versus gasoline cars produced by BNP Paribas, the world’s eighth largest bank by total assets, Joe Romm reported at ThinkProgress (8/9).

The report is good news for humanity because it means peak oil demand may be less than a decade away, which in turn means ambitious climate goals will be more affordable than previously thought.

But the bank’s analysis, “Wells, Wires and Wheels,” is devastating for Big Oil. It concludes that “the oil industry has never before in its history faced the kind of threat that renewable electricity in tandem with EVs poses to its business model.”

Within a few years, electric vehicles (EVs) will be superior to gasoline powered cars in every respect. In part, that’s because electric motors are vastly more efficient than gasoline engines. And it’s also in part because solar and wind power and batteries have seen staggering price drops in the past decade — and are projected to see equally big drops in the coming years.

But one of the most startling findings is that because the cost of running EVs on solar or wind power is dropping so rapidly, the only way gasoline cars can compete with these renewable energy-powered EVs in the 2020s is if the price of oil were to drop to $11 to $12 per barrel. The current price of oil is over $50.

Even worse for oil, this economic analysis doesn’t even factor in many of the other benefits of running cars on renewable power rather than oil. These include the vast public health benefits of not breathing air pollution from burning oil, along with the benefits of not having huge oil spills and of not destroying a livable climate.

The report is written by Mark Lewis, global head of sustainability research at the bank. Lewis formerly worked as head of European utilities research at Barclays and as global head of energy research at Deutsche Bank.

TRUMP CAN NOW BAR IMMIGRANTS FOR BEING TOO POOR. The Trump administration finalized its “public charge” rule, which will more forcefully impose a health and wealth test on people seeking green cards or temporary visas in the United States, Ryan Koronowski reported at ThinkProgress (8/12).

The 800-page final rule itself begins: “This final rule amends DHS regulations by prescribing how DHS will determine whether an alien applying for admission or adjustment of status is inadmissible to the United States … because he or she is likely at any time to become a public charge.”

US officials under the finalized rule will be required to look at immigrants’ current or likely future need for help in the form of things like Medicaid, housing vouchers, and food stamps. Currently, those officials ask people seeking green cards to prove they will not be a burden, but this new rule requires the officials to look at immigrants’ health and monetary needs for basic programs intended to help people.

This means any immigrant with a medical condition and no subsidized form of health insurance would fail the test. The rule also asks prospective immigrants to make at least 125%-250% above the federal poverty line. A report released last year from the Center for American Progress found that 100 million Americans — almost a third of the population — would not meet these criteria. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent newsroom housed within the Center for American Progress.)

Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, addressed reporters in the rarely-used White House briefing room to explain the final rule, which goes into effect for all immigrants in mid-October.

Cuccinelli began his statement with an odd defense of his own immigrant ancestors’ economic well-being as they assimilated into the country, to attempt to paint the rule in a reasonable light. He did not mention whether his family was fleeing persecution, or if they came through Ellis Island, in view of the Statue of Liberty and its “New Colossus” poem by Emma Lazarus.

The poem ends:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Cuccinelli was asked about the poem, and if it still applied in the United States during the briefing, and his reply was, “I’m certainly not prepared to take anything down off the Statue of Liberty,” and explained that America has always been a welcoming country.

“President Trump’s administration is reinforcing the ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility,” Cuccinelli said. He defined a public charge as “an individual who receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36 month period.”

Immigration advocates quickly pointed out that this policy gives an explicit advantage to wealthy immigrants over poorer ones, which can track to a preference for people from richer, often whiter countries.

TRUMP TARIFFS COST US HOUSEHOLDS $500 EACH. The US is on a pace to generate $72 billion in tariffs annually, and could well hit the $100 billion mark President Trump has touted if new 10% tariffs on $300 billion in untaxed imports take effect on Sept. 1, as threatened, the Wall Street Journal reported (8/7). Although the US had relatively low tariffs before the Trump administration’s latest actions, it still collected about $30 billion annually in pre-existing tariffs assessed against imports from China, Europe, Japan and other countries.

That’s $70 billion in new tariffs, Kevin Drum noted at MotherJones (8/7). The US has about 130 million households. So this comes to about $500 for every household in America.

“Normally Republicans would be up in arms about higher taxes, Drum noted, “but tariffs are a regressive tax so it’s OK. Anything that hits the rich more lightly than the poor is always worth a sympathetic look. And if it’s an invisible tax that screws the poor without them even knowing it? Now that’s a tax a Republican can love.”

BANKRUPTCY BILL HELPS FAMILY FARMERS. The US Senate (8/2) passed the Family Farmer Relief Act of 2019, a bill that expands family farmers’ access to relief under Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy rules by increasing the debt limit from $4.2 million to $10 million. The bill, which was approved by the House of Representatives, awaits President Trump’s signature.

National Farmers Union (NFU) endorsed the legislation when it was introduced in April, as it would help more family farmers avoid liquidation or foreclosure. NFU President Roger Johnson released the following statement in response to its passage:

“Chronic overproduction, an ongoing international trade war, and a series of extreme weather events have created a perfect storm for the farm economy. Farm debt is at a record high, and too many operations have been pushed to the brink financially. The Family Farmer Relief Act will help more family farmers access Chapter 12 relief, giving them a fighting chance to stay in business. We applaud Congress for passing this important legislation, and we urge President Trump to swiftly enact it into law.”

WHITE HOUSE VIOLATED LAW WITH PLAN TO MOVE HUNDREDS OF USDA WORKERS: INSPECTOR GENERAL. The Trump administration failed to follow budget law when it plowed ahead with a plan to uproot hundreds of Washington, D.C.-based Agriculture Department employees and require them to move to the Kansas City area, the agency’s inspector general found, Dave Jamieson reported at HuffPost (8/7).

The relocation spearheaded by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has created turmoil inside two USDA agencies, the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which produce valuable agricultural research that policymakers and the private sector rely on. Many economists and researchers have already chosen to quit rather than start new lives halfway across the country.

Now the inspector general says USDA leadership didn’t follow the letter of the law as it carried out the plan. In a report released Monday, the watchdog said that while the agency has the legal power to move the two offices, it did not obtain budgetary approval from Congress and also failed to meet a reporting deadline.

The inspector general’s findings themselves cannot stop the relocation from moving forward, but they could be used in any congressional or court battles over the USDA’s plan. Workers at the two agencies recently unionized with the American Federation of Government Employees in large part because of the upheaval of the move.

In a statement, the union said the USDA should put its plans on hold until it comes into compliance with the law: “Congress should make it clear going forward that USDA does not have the authority to carry on any similar relocation without Congressional approval, and neither does any other Department or Agency of the federal government.”

The subtext of the whole USDA battle is attrition. The Trump administration made clear from its earliest days that it wanted to shrink the government and get rid of federal employees. The federal unions have been saying that the White House is carrying out that plan by making workers miserable in hopes that they will quit.

Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, went a long way toward confirming that suspicion last week. Speaking to the South Carolina Republican Party at a gala, Mulvaney brought up the USDA move and how many workers decided to resign because of it, calling it “a wonderful way to sort of streamline government.”

Perdue had said publicly that the move from Washington to Kansas City was supposed to be about streamlining the agencies and making them more effective. Mulvaney’s comments suggest that wasn’t the motivation at all.

“Guess what happened?” Mulvaney said. “More than half the people quit. Now, it’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker. I know that because a lot of them work for me, and I’ve tried. You can’t do it. … By simply saying to people, ‘You know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the Beltway, outside this liberal haven of Washington, D.C., and move you out to the real part of the country,’ and they quit.”

CHINA TRIES TO TEACH TRUMP ECONOMICS. If you want to understand the developing trade war with China, Paul Krugman advised in his Aug. 5 column in the New York Times, “the first thing you need to realize is that nothing Donald Trump is doing makes sense. His views on trade are incoherent. His demands are incomprehensible. And he vastly overrates his ability to inflict damage on China while underrating the damage China can do in return.

“The second thing you need to realize is that China’s response so far has been fairly modest and measured, at least considering the situation. The US has implemented or announced tariffs on virtually everything China sells here, with average tariff rates not seen in generations. The Chinese, by contrast, have yet to deploy anything like the full range of tools at their disposal to offset Trump’s actions and hurt his political base.

“Why haven’t the Chinese gone all out? It looks to me as if they’re still trying to teach Trump some economics. What they’ve been saying through their actions, in effect, is: ‘You think you can bully us. But you can’t. We, on the other hand, can ruin your farmers and crash your stock market. Do you want to reconsider?’

“There is, however, no indication that this message is getting through. Instead, every time the Chinese pause and give Trump a chance to rethink, he takes it as vindication and pushes even harder. What this suggests, in turn, is that sooner or later the warning shots will turn into an all-out trade and currency war.”

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2019

Populist.com