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Essays and opinion pieces from our hosts and listeners involving American politics touching on current events, politics, history, and the like.

Pop Goes The Political Culture Week of July 2

July 7, 2018

Happy belated Independence day, MPU listeners!

via GIPHY

For those of you who didn’t spend this most American of holidays in a closed door meeting with Russian officials in Moscow like these eight US Senators, I hope you enjoyed the day. We now are in the final hours before Trump announces his pick for dismantling reproductive rights the Supreme Court, an announcement that is expected on Tuesday. And the on-going talks with North Korea seem to have hit a rough patch as the North Koreans call the latest meetings with US officials “regrettable” and suggest that they don’t intend to be the only country withdrawing nuclear programs from the peninsula. Historically, they have wanted to take over the entire region and have the US stop protecting South Korea so this is not a big surprise to anyone – except maybe to the Trump administration.

We’ll be discussing all of that when we sit down to record this weekend. Until then, here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

War Is Hella Funny: Some of you may be reading this column from from the smoking rubble that remains of our country after the short but pithy Second Civil War. Liberal forces attacked the MAGA empire on July 4th, leaving behind a wake of…well, tweets. There were tweets.

You see, Alex Jones predicted that Democrats were going to start a civil war on July 4th. This came as news to a lot of Democrats and most of us already had plans for the 4th so we weren’t sure we’d actually be able to make it to the civil war between the family BBQ and the fireworks. But we rallied and made our way to the only battlefield that matters anymore: social media.

The morning of the 4th spawned the hashtag #SecondCivilWar letters and the tweets did not disappoint:

But this one was the best:

Environmental Protection: There was some good news in the world of conservation this week. No, I don’t mean the resignation of Scott Pruitt. His resignation was indeed welcome but he’s likely to be replaced with someone just as bad for the environment and probably better at covering up his own corruption. I mean, it’s not like there’s anyone worse at covering up corruption than Scott Pruitt.

What I’m talking about this a group of vigilantes in South Africa who dispatched a gang of suspected rhinoceros poachers in a game preserve. We only have suspicions to go on because the vigilantes ate the alleged poachers. Because the heroes in question were lions.

Investigators found the remains of three people – they think. They found shoes and clothes for three people as well as guns and equipment for removing rhino horns. The human remains were pretty thoroughly savaged. Because, you know. They were mauled and eaten by lions.

Rhinos are critically endangered but their horns can fetch up to $9,000 per pound on the black market. Since 2008, more than 7,000 rhinos have been hunted illegally, with 1,028 killed in 2017, according to the South African Department of Environmental Affairs.

Fortunately for the remaining rhinos, they share territory with lions who apparently have no problem taking care of poachers in an efficient, if brutal, manner.

Lions, we thank you for your service.

O-H-I-Oh No: My Buckeye heart is a little broken to be writing about the revelation that doctor employed by the athletic department at The Ohio State University from the 1970s through the 1990s has been accused of sexually assaulting at least 5 past members of the OSU wrestling team.

Among other allegations, Politico reported this week that “[Dr.] Strauss allegedly preyed on male students during physicals, groping them to the point of making them ejaculate, according to one nurse who witnessed it and recounted the story in a video produced by alleged victims…”

Strauss left the University in 1998 and killed himself in 2005 so he will never stand trial for the crimes he’s accused of.

The athletes now claim that the entire coaching staff in the wrestling program knew about the behavior and didn’t bring it to a halt. One member of the coaching staff is a current Member of Congress. Representative Jim Jordan is a leader of the Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives in the House.

Jordan claims that he never knew any such thing and the athletes speaking up now are lying.

In the #MeToo era, it is inevitable that the spotlight would shine on assailants who prey on men as well as women. And if you think coming forward to level an accusation about your athletic program is hard for a female athlete, think of how much harder it must be for a male athlete to grapple with doing so.

I believe the wrestlers.

Porn Is Bad M’Kay: Finally, I would like to make a quick statement about these rallies Trump keeps holding and the media keeps covering.

Ahem.

STOP!

These rallies are how Trump masturbates without Viagra. They’re basically web-cam shows for hate porn. Don’t show it, don’t watch it, and for the love of god, don’t go attend the live show.

The rallies are gross and they should be discouraged in all possible ways, including media blackouts of them.

Tune in on Monday morning for the latest episode of the podcast where I will refrain from talking about Trump and masturbation in the same thought. I apologize for any images you’ll have in your head until then.

Harvard Poll CAPSizes Under Its Own Weights

July 2, 2018

by D.J. McGuire

Last week, Harvard University proved William F. Buckley right – again – about the superior intellect of the first 200 names in the Boston phone book (that might sound weird, but we still get phone books down here, so I presume they’re still around up there). The Ivy League Institution’s latest embarrassment came from its Center for American Political Studies (CAPS), which released a poll claiming President Trump had an approval rating of 47%. Strangely, the Trumpenproletariat missed its cue for a few days, but they’re all over social media and opinion columns with the numbers now.

Curious as to the reasons behind the supposed surge in Trumpularity, I do what I always do when a poll catches my eye – go for the crosstabs. They can provide interesting little nuggets of info that – well, that can make me look a lot smarter than I really am. More to the point, they also provide the “weights” that a poll used to create a “representative sample” – i.e., if fewer white women with college degrees answered then were supposed to answer the poll, they have added “weight” until they’re a share of the sample that matches with America as a whole.

At least that’s the idea. Sometimes, though, a pollster can sets weights that are thoroughly out of balance. A pollster like, for example, the Harvard CAPS.

The first problem I noticed in the Weighted Sample was the 2016 vote, which had Trump ahead of Clinton by 1%. As Clinton was 2% ahead in the actual popular vote, that was a clear tilt in Trump’s direction. There were other examples. Urban voters were 3 points lower (and rural voters 3 points higher) than the 2016 exit poll. Women were two points lower (and men two points higher). Voters over 65 were a whopping 5 points higher in CAPS than in 2016.

But the real kicker came in the education weight. In 2016, 50% of voters were college graduates or higher. CAPS? Only 35%

Given how college graduates easily preferred Clinton – and, if anything, have shifted even further away from Trump since his election – this weight crushes the poll that spawned it.

Democrats should never be complacent. There will be polls that we don’t like and they won’t be this easy send to the recycle bin. This poll, on the other hand, can be safely ignored.

 

D.J. McGuire – a self-described “progressive conservative” – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015.

Trying to Square the Abortion Circle (UPDATED)

June 29, 2018

by D.J. McGuire

Updated since the retirement of Justice Kennedy.

Few issues in American politics are as divisive as abortion, largely because the two sides are driven by dramatically opposing points of view, namely…

The pre-born child is a human being deserving of rights, especially the right to live.

…and…

A woman’s right to personal autonomy must be respected.

For over forty-five years – ever since the Supreme Court determined the latter was important enough to prevent legislatures from acting only on the former – the arguments have centered on which is the more important “right” – and the argument has been winner-take-all. Any movement toward pre-born protection has been challenged as a step toward eliminate a woman’s right to choose – and indeed, just about every supporter of a “pro-life” position holds that said “right” is either a judicial or moral fabrication. I should know: I still consider myself pro-life, and I spent a quarter-century insisting that the “right to choose” was either fictional or less important than the right to life. My opponents in that long-running debate always held to the reverse. Indeed, it seemed that one could not hold both truths simultaneously (UPDATE: I would humbly submit that even in the event of a change in attitude from a post-Kennedy Supreme Court, the arguments will largely remain the same as the issue moves to the political realm). One had to trump the other, period .

I don’t hold to that false choice anymore. I realized in examining local property law (particularly easements and eminent domain), that governments and property owners don’t hold to this mutual exclusivity of views, and I don’t think we should on abortion either.

Why Pro-Life Efforts Usually Fail

From a national perspective, Americans have long been indecisive on abortion. Usually “pro-choice” holds a plurality view, but not the majority view; on occasion, “pro-life” takes the plurality, but not the majority. That said, as the status quo is largely in favor of “pro-choice,” it has been “pro-lifers” who have been pushing for changes – usually without success.

Looking beyond the constitutional issues, the political reality makes it difficult for pro-lifers. In economic terms, pro-life policies have diffuse and indirect benefits to Americans (or at least those who can speak for themselves), but the cost is concentrated among women of child-bearing age. That is not an equitable distribution of cost, and those on whom that burden falls have rightly been frustrated by it. For pro-life policies to win over Americans who currently disagree – or even those unsure of where their views land – the cost must be fairly distributed. The pro-life movement has never addressed this, and that has fueled their – our – political failure.

Why recognizing women’s rights is not a roadblock

Of course, most of my fellow pro-lifers would respond by noting the judicial branch’s assertion that a woman’s “right to privacy” includes abortion rights. They will insist that unless that is addressed, there is little that can be accomplished.

I no longer agree. This assertion is driven by the assumption that a constitutional right is absolute and can never be infringed. Any property owner near a road, or powerlines, will tell you otherwise. Local governments place easements on land for power and utilities repeatedly; local and state governments similarly take property for road construction. Yet no one insists that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments make property rights inviolable. Moreover, no government in America assumes they can simply take or use private property without compensation. Even the Kelo decision – which in my view mistakenly gave government the authority to use eminent domain to give land to a private entity – did not allow governments to avoid compensating affected property owners.

Acknowledging Infringement of Rights and How to Compensate for Them

Property rights were one of the first causes for which the Revolution was fought, and they were a large part of what drove the Framers of 1787 to replace the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. Yet they are repeatedly infringed for the greater good – so long as property owners are compensated for the infringement.

There is clearly no property as personal as one’s own person. Yet millions of American women know that pro-lifers would infringe upon their rights with no compensation. That many of those women are themselves pro-life doesn’t make this mistake any less egregious politically. Pro-lifers should instead acknowledge not just that they are proposing an infringement on women’s rights – but also that women should be compensated for that infringement.

There can – and will – be arguments about how that compensation should be measured, but in my opinion, the easement/eminent domain examples should be followed. In these cases, governments are supposed to examine the loss of income and value to the landowner. and compensate accordingly. If I may be flippant for sound bite purposes, what works for farmland should work for fallopian tubes.

So what would be included in compensation for a women whose rights have been infringed by pre-born legal protection? I have four categories in mind.

Child-rearing cost: This is the most obvious, and in theory, it’s covered by child support for single parents. Whether or not the current child-support regimes are sufficient is not something I wish to argue here. Moreover, the government itself needs to recognize that even married or cohabitating couples will face these costs – which pre-born protection would make unavoidable (and thus, in my view, worthy of compensation).

Pre-natal cost: There was a time where I thought this could be solved by simply moving the start date of child support to a point before birth (be it conception, fetal viability, or whatever point a legislature decides life begins). As one might infer from the last paragraph, I’m more open to direct government compensation in this area too.

Lost wages: In most areas of employment, late pregnancy and early childhood mean time away from work for the mother. At present, paid family leave is largely seen as a policy to help families. However, it can be more than that – -namely, a recognition of the opportunity cost of bearing and raising a child. This is especially true if said cost is effectively mandated by pre-born protection.

ADDED in UPDATE: Cost and lost income due to health impacts: Thanks to fellow MPUer Rebekah Kushmider for setting me straight on this. Pregnancy takes its toll on a women’s health – physical and mental; that toll must also be addressed and redressed.

Lost income due to career impact: This is the opportunity cost usually discussed the least, and yet it could be the greatest cost. Given the current cultural norms, the decision to bear and raise a child can have serious impact on a women’s career path (and her earnings). If pre-born protection becomes law, this cost is actually the closest to the loss of income and value a property owner suffers from an easement or from eminent domain. Any compensation plan that doesn’t take this into account does not properly compensate women for the injury to their rights.

Implications

Of course, this policy would have a cost to the government implementing it, but said cost involves what I would consider a vital function of government: redressing injuries to rights. Moreover, unlike previous pro-life policies without compensation, this policy acknowledges and respects a woman’s personal property rights. Finally, this policy would make visible the externalities inherent in our current cultural norms regarding child rearing – or, if I may again be flippant, it’s places a price tag on the patriarchy. Governments that wish to protect pre-born life and avoid the expenditure can then focus on reducing (or, I hope, eliminating) the patriarchal norms that have made child bearing and child rearing potential career and financial hazards.

As I am not a lawyer, I am unsure as to whether or not this will be enough to allow pre-born protection to pass current constitutional muster (although I am optimistic). I am certain, however, that future courts would be more respectful of a policy that acknowledges women’s rights as something to be compensated, rather than something to be overruled. Thus, even in the post-Roe world (or post-Casey world, if one prefers), this could come down to a minor judicial change or clarification. Again, however, I am no lawyer, so don’t take my word for it.

I would expect that some would read this and ask if all of this can be done without protecting pre-born children in law. Personally, I am certainly willing to try. In the end, this is about changing the incentives that still lead to hundreds of thousands of pre-born children dying in America every year. Even changing the law itself is about changing incentives (as nearly all pro-lifers would legally punish only the performer of an abortion, rather than the women themselves). Whether or not the compensation effort without a change in the law is incentive enough remains to be seen, but I’m willing to see it if a change in the law remains politically impossible.

Conclusion

As the title of this post makes clear, I am trying to find a solution where none has seemed at hand for decades. I am doing this because I still want these children saved, but I also recognize that neither of the two fundamental tenets cited in the post’s beginning will trump the other in 21st Century America – nor should they. Moreover, a society that is serious about saving these children will not be – and must not be – shortsighted enough to let nearly half of their population experience no cost for the effort.

Women have the right to control their own bodies, no less than a landowner or a homeowner has a right to their property (UPDATE: I don’t believe the aforementioned needs a court case to be valid). Those of us who wish to infringe on that right must recognize that proper and full compensation for said infringement is necessary. Otherwise, Americans will continue to talk past each other, while hundreds of thousands of children die because those who insist life is precious in words will act as if life is cheap.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described “progressive conservative” – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015.

My Political Platform

June 27, 2018

by Kevin Kelton

Now that we are heading into the midterms, every candidate should hone their issues platform so that voters know what they stand for and how they’d achieve it. But we as voters need to know what we stand for, as well. So I have developed my own political platform that I would be running on if I were a congressional candidate. I believe it would be a winning message for a wide swath of Democrats.

Kevin’s 10-point platform:

  • Universal healthcare should be a right, but there is not one single pathway to achieve it. While I do not think the nation is quite ready for a single payer or Medicare for All system, I advocate taking steps in that direction. So I support expanding Medicare to create a Medicare Buy-in for people 55 to 64 and for independent contractors and younger people who cannot find reasonably affordable health insurance in the marketplace. They would be getting Medicare coverage but paying an above Medicare premium – not at private market rates but high enough to make covering them a reasonable cost to the Medicare system. This would actually help strengthen Medicare, because it would be adding new revenue to the program and adding younger, healthier patients into the risk pool. In essence, a win-win for individuals and for Medicare itself. And it would be a powerful first step toward a future Medicare for All system that might achieve growing national acceptance as people get more comfortable with the idea.
  • Create a national infrastructure program with a $15 minimum wage would go a long way to creating more full-time jobs and helping reduce the necessity of the gig economy. This type of short-term program would be preferable to a federal job guarantee program, because an infrastructure program is tailored to the time and the economy it’s designed for, whereas a permanent job guarantee program might not be right for every economy in our future.
  • Start a national program to retrain police and redesign police hiring practices. The Thin Blue Line needs to be busted and replaced with a policing philosophy that puts citizen safety ahead of policemen’s careers and pride. When police departments stop killing innocent people and put human dignity ahead of authoritarian dogma, we will be able to afford police the respect they desire and deserve.
  • Create a consumers’ bill of rights that includes abolishing forced arbitration agreements in consumer contracts, institutes mandatory price posting in all medical providers’ offices and practices, the ability to form small cooperative workers’ unions and collectively bargain, and other pro-consumer, pro-worker regulations.
  • Create a voluntary judicial review process for workplace sexual harassment complaints so bosses and business owners are not put in the position of mediating complex interpersonal workplace disagreements.
  • Institute universal voter registration coupled with a universal voter ID program that does not disadvantage any voter group. Expand voter registration and voter participation with a goal of 75% voter turnout in national elections.
  • A return to the FCC’s old Equal Time Rule but expanded to apply to all broadcast and cable/streaming media, and a return to sensible campaign finance limits that empowers people over corporate interests.
  • It’s bad enough we have a nation of 400 million guns, so let’s do something before it’s 800 million and ever more deadly weaponry. Push for sensible gun safety laws anywhere and everywhere, including new technologies and holding gun manufacturers liable for their products (like every other industry). We will hit many roadblocks. But we will keep fighting.
  • Expand college affordability wherever possible to better compete with the rest of the world. Free community college should be the minimum goal. Retraining current workers should also be expanded and funded to make our workforce better fit the economy of the future.
  • Now that the tax code has been revised, let’s tweak it to make it fairer to working class Americans and make sure corporations and wealthy individuals never get a free ride.

You may share some of these ideals but prefer a different path to get there. Maybe there are issues I should have addressed but haven’t yet. But these are a good starting point for Democrats who lean left and those who are slightly more mainstream to come together on a set of issues we believe in and are ready to fight for.

Kevin Kelton is the co-host of The More Perfect Union podcast and founder of the Facebook discussion groups Open Fire Politics, Open Fire Food & Spirits, and Open Fire Sex.

Supreme Court Bans Union Fees on Non-Members (Except Where It Doesn’t)

June 27, 2018

by D.J. McGuire

The more one reads primary source material, the less trustworthy one becomes of media – any media.

Today’s example came in Janus v AFSCME – the Supreme Court cases regarding mandated union fees paid by non-union members in government workplaces in over 20 states (including Illinois, whose disgruntled public servant was Mark Janus). As the media reported it, public sectors unions are now barred from charging any non-union members for services rendered. As the labor movement itself reported it, the Court turned off a revenue stream that will make organized labor itself unsustainable. As the right celebrated it, the Court turned off a revenue stream, thus making organized labor a more muted voice in the political realm.

I’ve had discussions with fellow MPU-er Kevin Kelton on how unions can recoup costs from non-union members they represent, so this decision intrigued me as an economist. Moreover, I’ve seen journalists foul up the actual story more than enough times to decided it was best to peruse the decision myself. What I found was eye-opening (all cited quotations below come from the link above).

First thing to remember: the decision applies to public sector unions only. Private sector unions were not directly involved in the suit. Secondly, the particular fee in question is “an ‘agency fee,’ which amounts to a percentage of the union dues.” Moreover, Illinois law…

 …does not specify in detail which expenditures are chargeable and which are not. The IPLRA provides that an agency fee may compensate a union for the costs incurred in “the collective bargaining process, contract administration[,] and pursuing matters affecting wages, hours[,] and conditions of employment.” 

In other words, there is no real rhyme or reason to the fee amount set. Mr. Janus, thinking the fee arbitrary and an effective compulsion of his financial support for the union, sued to have it dropped. The majority of the Court agreed.

From there, media and pundits go off the rails in a rather ironic fashion -namely, by standing still. Upon seeing that the percentage fee was banned, everyone now assumes that all fees for non-members were banned. That concerned me, because union services provided to non-members at a mandated price of zero runs afoul of my visceral disgust for price controls of any kind. So I read further into the decision to see if the Court majority addressed the issue – known as the “free-rider” problem, which is not the term I would have used, but…

The court began in the legal realm, flatly noting that “As we have noted, ‘free-rider arguments . . . are generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections.’ Knox 567 U. S., at 311.” Then they get into the economic landscape, and here’s where it gets interesting.

First, with collective bargaining power and duties, the Court notes that numerous benefits come with the designation as the sole negotiating entity. Moreover, discussion on cost of expanding that responsibility to include non-members was…lacking.

It is noteworthy that neither respondents nor any of the 39 amicus briefs supporting them—nor the dissent—has explained why the duty of fair representation causes public-sector unions to incur significantly greater expenses than they would otherwise bear in negotiating collective-bargaining agreements.

That’s either a terrible omission by all listed, or an admission that collective bargaining is a fixed cost that isn’t dependent upon the number of workers – member and non-member – being represented. That said, collective bargaining isn’t all a union does for its members – or non-members. The Court majority had something to say about that, too (emphasis added).

In any event, whatever unwanted burden is imposed by the representation of nonmembers in disciplinary matter scan be eliminated “through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms’ than the imposition of agency fees.” Harris, 573 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 30)(internal quotation marks omitted). Individual nonmembers could be required to pay for that service or could be denied union representation altogether.

That led to a footnote with an example (emphasis added).

There is precedent for such arrangements. Some States have lawsproviding that, if an employee with a religious objection to paying an agency fee “requests the [union] to use the grievance procedure or arbitration procedure on the employee’s behalf, the [union] is authorized to charge the employee for the reasonable cost of using such procedure.” E.g., Cal. Govt. Code Ann. §3546.3 (West 2010); cf. Ill.Comp. Stat., ch. 5, §315/6(g) (2016). This more tailored alternative, if applied to other objectors, would prevent free ridership while imposing a lesser burden on First Amendment rights.

In other words, the Court ruled the public sector unions cannot charge an undefined fee, but can charge a defined fee for services rendered – except for collective bargaining, where the services to nonmembers appear to be at no cost.

Thus the decision is far narrower than many believe. It never touched private sector unions, and contrary to what you may hear or read, it does not completely eliminate public sector unions’ ability to recoup costs.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described “progressive conservative” – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015.

Pop Goes The Political Culture Week of June 18

June 23, 2018

The prevailing sentiment among Americans in 2018.

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU Co-host

Happy weekend, folks. This week was kind of a shitshow and all of us at MPU are trying to move our pet topics to the top of the rundown so we can have our say on all the pressing issues like whether or not Michael Cohen is about to flip or how the House-passed budget and House-passed Farm Bill would cut off safety net programs for millions of poor people and what Trump and Putin will discuss at their upcoming meeting.

In meantime, here’s some of the lighter stuff and the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Why We Marched: Shit is not better at the border.We’ve had decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse coming from the White House all week but basically, they’re noise. Nothing anyone from the current administration says has any validity to me anymore. I’ve heard too many lies to give them the benefit of any more doubt.

There are still kids in custody and parents still do not have access to them. The agencies tasked with implementing the family separation policies do not have an mechanism in place for family reunification and they are floundering. The good news is that beginning in November 2016, when millions of people realized that the ascendence of Trump meant we would have to prepare for never before seen levels of civic engagement, we started to network. The Women’s March was the first of the organizing of resistance and since then cells of activists have been growing and responding as needed to each policy crisis. That’s why in the past two weeks, there has been concentrated efforts by civilians to undo some of the atrocities perpetrated on children by the Trump administration. Though social media, solid news reporting, and good old fashioned on -the-ground advocacy, concerned citizens have deployed millions of dollars and hundreds of volunteers to the camps where kids are been kept hidden from their families and are working tirelessly to make bond for people arrested for crossing the border without papers and then reunite the adults with their kids.

This is why we marched. This is why we signed up for mailing lists and text alerts. It wasn’t about a show of mass or a feeling of connection in an isolating age. It was so we would already be on the list in when the time came to step up.

If you’ve been part of the grassroots force helping with the crisis, thank you. If you haven’t been but are ready to join, here’s how you can get involved.

Catwalk to Nowhere: Noted fashionista and current First Lady Melania Trump decided what the border crisis really needed was a nice photo op where she showed she cared about the plight of the kids in government custody. It wasn’t a bad idea until she got dressed and left the house to catch her ride to Texas. She ruined everything by tossing on a lightweight jacket that said…well, you can read.

There has been far too much discussion about what was meant or not meant by this fashion statement but here’s the basic fact: there is no situation where that slogan would be appropriate for any First Lady to wear on her back. Period.

As for whether Melania knew what she was wearing or whether she just grabbed the nearest jacket when she left the house? Yeah, it was over 80 degrees in DC that day. She didn’t need a damn jacket. This wasn’t hanging by the door. It was in a closet and was part of an ensemble she or her stylist chose.

No Soup For You: The child internment camps and the callous fashion choices of this administration are making its friends and allies uncomfortable in the DC area. Secretary of Homeland Security Kierstjen Nielsen and C-minus Santa Monica Fascist Stephen Miller were heckled at two different Mexican restaurants.  Politico did a big piece about how hard it is for Trump supporters to get a date in the city that went for Hillary by over 90 points. And last night White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia because the owner didn’t want her there.  She tweeted about the experience on her official White House account, which is a despicable thing to do. Not because whining about restaurant service on Twitter is wrong. Everyone does that. Because using your platform as the spokesperson for the president to slam a business is despicable. Also illegal.

 

I think former Rep. John Dingell had the best response to what Ms. Sanders had to say.

It ISN’T In the Enquirer: Remember how last week I was talking about AMI, the publisher of the Enquirer, buying up a bunch of other tabloids? And I was concerned because AMI is heavily biased in favor of Trump, even going so far as doing him favors like killing tell-all stories by his former mistresses?

Well, it turns out that the Enquirer is basically Trump’s personal tabloid and Michael Cohen has been vetting stories they print about the Gameshow Host in Chief for years. The Washington Post reported this:

“Since Trump’s become president and even before, [Pecker] openly just has been willing to turn the magazine and the cover over to the Trump machine,” said one of the people with knowledge of the practice.

During the campaign, “if it was a story specifically about Trump, then it was sent over to Michael, and as long as there were no objections from him, the story could be published,” this person added.

Much like wearing a coat that says “I really don’t care” is never appropriate for First Ladies, sending stories to the presidential allies for editorial approval is never appropriate for  newspaper, even a shitty tabloid newspaper. This is a mind-boggling breach of typical journalistic practices and elevates the publication to something like state-run media.

I don’t mean to sound like a tinfoil hate wearing conspiracy theorist, but now that we know this about Trump’s relationship with some print publications, we should look carefully at ANY positive press he gets. There’s a better than zero chance that he hand a hand in making it happen.

Mona Lisa Smile: Beyonce and Jay-Z have ended the long debate about the validity of hip-hop and street inspired fashion as art forms. Done. Complete. The argument is finished and the Carters have won it. They put their music and their wardrobes in the Louvre and dared the entire history of art to make something of it.

Their new video Apeshit is set in the ultimate altar where art is worshipped and it’s like they busted down the doors and let their fan base see that the art and music they love has a place in the Louvre. Not only that, they gave their fans the keys to the kingdom of classical art by showing them that all art is beautiful and social and racial barriers to access the most beautiful objects of today and yesterday are artificial. Love the art you love. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not for you or not good enough. There is not “other” when it comes to art. There are just different artists with different eyes and ears telling the story of us all.


Tune in to the More Perfect Union podcast to hear more about the world we live in and tell you friends and family to check us out as well!

The Court of Public Opinion

June 19, 2018

On episode 159 of the More Perfect Union, my co-hosts and I talked about the sexual misconduct accusations against Chris Hardwick. He stands accused of mistreating a past girlfriend who published her version events, albeit without naming him, last week. Someone put the pieces together and Mr. Hardwick suffered swift social and professional consequences.

On our podcast, Kevin remarked that the internet should not be the place where justice is meted out against sexual predators. He says – not without reason – that the place for hashing out the details and exacting punishment is in the court system. Kevin has serious misgivings this kind of phenomenon, saying that the public square isn’t the venue for discussing consequences for sexual misconduct.

As I listened to the playback of the episode, I found myself thinking “Isn’t it?”

Before I go on, let’s stipulate a few facts. First, we should stipulate the judicial system is, as I said on the podcast, often hostile to victims of sexual assault. The statistics on sex crimes that go either unreported, un-prosecuted, or un-convicted are staggering. Next, we must stipulate that rape culture exists. Finally, we must stipulate that the existence of rape culture leads to the failure of the judicial system to protect victims of assault.

If you cannot agree to those basic facts, the rest of what I’m going to say is going to piss you way off. Be forewarned.

We cannot improve judicial outcomes for sex crimes without first dismantling rape culture. It is not possible to get a fair trial for a rape if any person in the room is thinking “Well, but what was she wearing?” or “How much did they drink?” or “But he had sex with him the previous weekend.” Those thoughts are omnipresent and insidious and we are all guilty of them. Don’t lie to yourself, my fellow feminists. Even we have to slap our reptilian brains back into line when they pop off with an idea like that before our more enlightened angels remind us that VICTIM BLAMING IS WRONG.

Thank heavens many of us do have the capacity to check ourselves before we go too far down the path of judging the victim in any sex crime case. But not everyone does and that’s why known-assailant sex crimes are still rampant. There are too many people – both victims and perpetrators – who think a particular outfit is permission to grope a person or that accepting an invitation to dinner is tantamount to consenting to sex. And because the system is weighted toward believing rape culture over rape victims, the consequences of being an assailant, on whatever scale, are not as severe as they should be.

In other words, there is no incentive for the judicial system or rape culture to change.

But what if, just what if, there was an understanding that sexual crime could always become public and there was always a social consequence to committing them? What if committing a sex crime could conceivably lead to loss of job, loss of friendships, loss of romantic prospects in the future, loss of social standing in general? What if being held accountable for sexual misconduct was so common that everyone had to think to themselves “What will happen to me if I lay hands on this person right now? Will I be ruining my life?”

Would that level of consciousness be a bad outcome?

We are not a society that has ever been shy about judging the sexual actions of others, particularly the sexual actions of women. Monica Lewinsky comes to mind. The things Rudy Giuliani recently said about Stormy Daniels. Even the woman who was brutally raped by Brock Turner was judged for the amount she had to drink that night. Most women will tell you that they approach sexual situations with a voice in their head saying “What will be the consequence if anyone finds out about this?” because we know that slut-shaming is real and so are the barriers to accessing true criminal justice through the courts.

Someone reading this is now picturing a matriarchal dystopia where any woman can demand extra-judicial punishment for any man on the most spurious grounds. They probably even think I would welcome that. Would I? Well…

I kid! I’m no vigilante and I don’t want to derail the justice system. But the justice system we have isn’t stopping sex crimes and neither is the culture we’ve had up until now. Maybe…maybe this is what it’s going to take. Maybe a few men need to be toppled off the throne of privilege in order for other would-be assailants to realize that sexual assault has very real consequences.  Maybe it should be standard for everyone to take a moment to consider the possibilities before we attempt to touch another person’s body and maybe the possibility of becoming a pariah should be a valid concern.

If anything good comes out of this latest set of allegations against a celebrity, I hope that it’s this: I hope that somewhere, a person who might otherwise try to force or coerce a partner into bed stops and thinks “What will happen if anyone finds out about this? Will I lose my job? Will I lose my friends? Would it be better to stop? Yes. It would.”

That’s the change I want to see.

 

“Zero Tolerance” on the Border: Not Just Heartless, but Also Thoughtless

June 19, 2018

by D.J. McGuire

So much ink has been spilled and bandwith used on the “zero tolerance” policy initiated at the border with Mexico that I wondered if I really could add anything of significance. It turns out I can, for there is so much (understandable) outrage at the utter heartlessness of family separation and industrial-building-size holding pens for children that very little attention has been paid to just how stupid this policy is – and how anything requiring an actual, long-term solution will require America to ditch her present isolationist funk and return to the robust interventions of her past.

First up, though, is the initial stupidity. One can only assume that those still clinging to a defense of “zero tolerance” without resorting to outright racism are concerned about security and crime. I would humbly submit that these issue (rather than racism) are likely the most pertinent and powerful reasons for people to become immigration restrictionists in the first place (after 9/11, these reasons pushed me into restrictionism for roughly a decade). Yet it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of thought to recognize that (1) asylum seekers and those escaping violence in their homelands are hardly security threats to the nation, and (2) that splitting families apart and keeping children in holding pens is a near-perfect way to encourage anger at America and her laws. If there is a better way to prime young people for MS-13, I honestly can’t come up with one at the moment.

Ending “zero tolerance” is merely a short-term answer. In the long run, the dissolution of order and peace in Central America needs to be addressed. For too long, Americans have been taught and told, repeatedly, that our historical interventions in region have caused more trouble than they were worth. To be fair, not every action America took was in the best interest of the people there (or even here). However, we are now seeing one our border (and one could argue have been seeing since 2014 at least) the effect of a quarter-century of not playing a role in the region: Guatemala and Honduras in chaos, El Salvador suffering under a left-wing ex-Communist government (where the opposition is a party whose founder is best known as a death-squad leader), and Nicaragua back under Sandinista control – and suffering under violent tyranny once more.

This is a far cry from the situation in the early 1990s, after three Administrations (Carter, Reagan, and Bush the Elder) that understood the importance of building and supporting stable, democratic governments in Central America. They also saw those who did reach our shores (or the Rio Grande) from that region as victims – and potential allies in our efforts to help those left behind.

There is no such fore-sighted vision in the current Administration, but the opposition (yes, fellow Democrats, I’m talking to you) seems to share this myopia. However much Democrats are willing to fight “zero tolerance” (and they deserve credit and support for that), they need to recognize that people don’t just start suffering when they are within reach of an American border official. Central America needs our help, and it needs our help now.

What we are seeing at the border is the wage of isolationism. Our growing refusal to engage with the rest of the world does not allow us to ignore their suffering. It simply comes to our doorstep.

The Trump Administration is doubling down on keeping its head in the sand with “zero tolerance” – and if polling is any indication, most Republicans are following suit. The Democrats need to do more than just try to reverse this policy, they need to attack the isolationism that led to it.

D.J. McGuire – a self-described “progressive conservative” – has been part of the More Perfect Union Podcast since 2015.

Pop Goes The Political Culture Week of June 11

June 16, 2018

Bald eagle judging Donald Trump for his immigration policies.

By Rebekah Kuschmider, MPU Co-host

 

Do you know how hard it is to write  a pithy and relevant pop culture round up after a week where pop culture took a determined backseat to the horrors  being committed at the southern border of the US? Every time I get online to see what’s going on the world, I’m smacked in the face with news like this:

You can’t just click away from that kind of information and start scrolling on TMZ’s feed to see what Kanye is up to.

I’m sure my compatriots and I will talk at length about what’s going on but I also know that the four of us at MPU already agree that the new policy of family separation is inhumane and can and should be stopped by the stroke of a presidential pen. We also know that it won’t be stopped that way because that’s not how things work in the age of Trump. Instead, I strongly recommend that each of you take some action to prevent the further traumatization of children and families. Slate published a good round-up of things we can all do so click on over and find a way to do you part.

Now that we’ve touched on that, here’s the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

The Bible Says Nope: Speaking of people protesting the treatment of families on the border, major religions are weighing in and they’re not echoing Jeff Sessions’ bizarre contention that establishing a legal system that’s deliberately cruel is Biblically supported. This video features representatives of numerous Christian denominations calling out the moral crisis our nation is in and imploring others stand against bigotry.

You Lie!: After months of being castigated for letting the president lie and lie and lie right to their press-pass-hungry faces, members of the White House press corps are finally starting to challenge the Liar in Chief. This week he once again tried to tell reporters that the policy of family separation at the border was the Democrats’ fault. Trump expected the usual Hannity-esque acceptane of his version of reality from the crowd of reporters so imagine his surprise when they started clapping back. Needless to say, he didn’t take kindly to it.

 

It’s like Nasty Woman 2.0.

Lawrence O’Donnell praised another reporter for calling attention to a lie and led to this Twitter exchange:

It really is astonishing that he was the only one asking the question but perhaps he won’t be alone as time goes on.

Gossip Guy: Well, maybe some reporters will start talking about lies but probably not the ones at supermarket checkout staples In Touch, Life & Style and Closer. The three tabloids were purchased this week by AMI, owners of The National Enquirer, among other publications.

This is important, first of all, because media consolidation of any kind is troubling. Think about the Sinclair Broadcasting buy up of tv stations. That’s been practically dystopian. We need a diverse and unbiased base of media outlets in order to get to the heart of important news.

Now, you might say that the exploits of the celebrities that grace glossy gossip rags hardly need unbiased coverage but let’s not forget that AMI is the company behind shutting down embarrassing stories about Trump. Remember how AMI bought exclusive publication rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her affair with Trump, then never published it? Yeah. That’s why this matters.

We want more major media companies, not fewer. This news and news of other mergers in the telecom industry plus the end to net neutrality an mean changes to the way we get information. And when you have a president who openly admires the methods of Kim Jong Un, a dictator notorious for keeping his citizens cut off form information, you should really be concerned about retaining your access to news because you can be pretty sure he’d be just as happy to take that access away.

Until the day Donald Trump actually finds a way to shut us down, all of us at MPU will continue talking about the hard hitting news and the news that doesn’t hit very hard at all. Tune in to the podcast to hear more!

Pop Goes The Political Culture Week of June 4

June 8, 2018

Actual photo of Rebekah preparing to defend Samantha Bee.

It’s been a busy week in politics with Donald Trump destroying our relationships with our allies and trying to replace them  with with relationships with regimes that aren’t welcome in polite society. He’s also been busy not preparing for the summit with Kim Jong Un. Melania reappeared to a select audience of Gold Star families but no press was present so we know very little about the event. And Samantha Bee apologized to everyone except men.

I’m sure we at the More Perfect Union will have a robust argument about whether Sam Bee needs to worry about the feelings of men. Until then, here’s all the news that’s not fit to ‘cast!

Fox & Friends With Benefits: Here in my state of Maryland, gubernatorial candidate Rich Madaleno may be having more fun than anyone else in his campaign ads. This week, the State Senator and progressive leader released an ad that talks about all the ways in which he has countered the Trump agenda in Maryland. He cites his work on funding for Planned Parenthood, school funding, and gun control.  The end is a shot of Madaleno with his family, where he says “The biggest way I’m pissing off Trump?” He then leans over and kisses his husband Mark Hodge on the mouth. And did I mention their kids are African-American but Madaleno and Hodge are not? Yeah.

To say the ad is pandering to a liberal base would be an understatement but that’s not why it’s so much fun. No, Madaleno isn’t running it as a web ad on the MoveOn site and ginning up left-wing support. He’s bought space during Fox & Friends so he can troll Trump directly.

Well played, sir. Well played.

Depression Lies: The fashion world is mourning designer Kate Spade, who died as the result of an apparently suicide this week. her husband Andy released a statement explaining that she has long struggled with severe depression. In a second shocking suicide, we learned of the death of Anthony Bourdain, the iconic chef and television host who took his life just a few days after Spade.

Depression in a common condition and many people will face it in their lifetime. Therapy and medications can be very effective in treating depression. If you or someone you know is suffering form depression, please reach out for help. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and you can get help from them at any time. Or talk to your doctor – even if your doctor is just a clinician at an urgent care facility or someplace like Planned Parenthood. Any medical professional you see will help refer you for treatment that you can access and afford. You aren’t alone and you matter too much not to ask for help.

Go Team Go: The Caps are freakin’ awesome and this has nothing to do with politics at all. I’m sticking it in here because I’m in the DC area and we are #ALLCAPS about our Stanely Cup champs and if Kevin, Greg and D.J. don’t like it, they can take it up with Alex Ovechkin.

Pardon Me?: Donald Trump quipped to reporters that he may pardon Muhammed Ali. The Greatest was convicted of draft dodging in 1967. In the years since the Viet Nam war we’ve come to understand the Ali’s position was a moral one, so pardoning him would be an honorable thing to do, right?

Yeah, the Supreme Court agreed in 1971 when they overturned his conviction. See, the DoJ at the time hadn’t mentioned that his refusal to serve was a contentious objection based on his Muslim faith. The American government was bad at Islam even back then.

To add to the justice for the boxer, President Jimmy Carter pardoned all draft dodgers in 1977.

So, this potential pardon of Trump’s is redundant. But what can you expect from a guy who thought Canada burned down the White House in the war of 1812?

No Girls Allowed: While Trump might be all about pardoning great male athletes, whether they need pardons or not, he’s forgotten about some amazing female athletes this spring. The White House has not issued an invitation to the WNBA champs the Minnesota Lynx. The players have been invited to the White House after previous championships but this administration is apparently not fans of women’s basketball.

But no worries. The team will show their championship colors in another way: by spending a day doing community service. In advance of a game against the Washington Mystics, they connected with a DC area charity called Samaritan’s Feet to distribute shoes to kids in a need.

The White House hasn’t commented about the Lynx’s actions or why they haven’t gotten a call but the Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr had some choice words about the situation.

Patriotism as good deeds. I like it. I like it a lot.

So, stay well out there, listeners, and have a nice weekend.

A Handmaid’s Double-Standard

May 31, 2018

by Kevin Kelton

Yesterday I joined the national chorus applauding ABC and Disney for firing Roseanne Barr after her tweets about Valerie Jarrett and George Soros. Today I am reconsidering my stand.

I think I was wrong, and I think ABC was, too.

In light of the Samantha Bee’s controversial c**t comment about Ivanka Trump, and considering other recent controversial jokes in the news, we need to decide on one national standard. Either we have freedom of expression or we don’t.

Thirty-eight years ago comedian Charles Rocket was summarily fired from Saturday Night Live for ad-libbing the word “fuck” in the goodbyes segment. Sixteen years ago Bill Maher lost his ABC late night show, Politically Correct, after suggesting the 9/11 attackers were “not cowardly.” Last year, Kathy Griffin was fired from CNN’s New Years Eve coverage (and lost millions of dollars in bookings) for a photo of her holding the dismembered head of the president. SNL writer Katie Rich was suspended for tweeting a joke about Barron Trump. And ‘lest we forget, Sen. Al Franken was hounded out of office over a joking photo (and some unverified allegations of mild misogyny). 

I was opposed to all those forms of politically correct censorship, so I have to be in Roseanne’s case, too, as awful as her tweets were. 

Though I give ABC and Disney executives great credit for trying to do the right thing under very difficult circumstances, I now think in the light of another day that maybe there was a more appropriate punishment for Roseanne Barr – one that didn’t unfairly punish her fellow cast members, crew and fans. 

Maybe ABC should have instead insisted on the first episode of season two of “Roseanne” addressing the tweet controversy in some positive light. What if Roseanne Connor were shown taking to Twitter for the first time and sending that exact same tweet about Valerie Jarret or Michelle Obama or Oprah or another high-profile woman of color. And suppose that person were somehow brought face to face with the TV Roseanne to explain why the comment was hurtful to all black people and especially young black girls. What if Roseanne’s character actually learned and grew from the experience, much as was done with Archie Bunker when he met Sammy Davis Jr.

Obviously, this consequence would not have hit home with Roseanne the way cancelling her highly profitable series did. And it could have been written off as a cheap publicity stunt. But it also might have had more lasting social impact to show an avowed Trump supporter coming face to face with her own ingrained racism. Wouldn’t that have potentially made a more positive cultural shift than simply firing their right-wing icon?

If there needed to be a harsher consequence for Roseanne’s actions, it should be handed out by the market place of advertisers and ratings. If Americans want to punish her for her actions, they can do it with their remote controls. That is the jury that should be making these decisions, not a C-suite of entertainment executives trying to impose morality on all of us. They are TV programmers, not ministers or ethicists. I like Bob Iger, and I’d probably like ABC President Channing Dungey, but beyond the bounds of what they put on their airwaves, I’m not sure I want them determining what’s acceptable public conversation and what’s not. We don’t give the power of public censorship to elected officials. Let’s not give it to corporate bosses.

If we give private citizens that power, they will take it and they will use it. If Roseanne can be summarily fired for one misstep of poor judgment, so can you. Anything your employer deems inappropriate can be brought back to haunt you, and maybe derail your career forever. I know we have “at will” employment already, but this current trend will only magnify it. Yesterday it was Roseanne. Today it is Samantha Bee. Tomorrow it may be your spouse, your child, your parent, or you. If you think you are so infallible that you are immune from such a fate, guess again. So did Barr, Bee, Griffin, Franken, and the others.

The steps between our world today and the world of A Handmaid’s Tale are incremental and often imperceptible in the moment. Little individual rights that get taken away. Little individual injustices that no one else stands up against. Until we ask, how did we get here? We got here because we allowed it.

I’m not ready to turn a generation of comedians and other celebrities into handmaidens.

Valerie Jarrett and Ivanka Trump will be fine in the morning. But our culture is on life support. Let’s not keep tugging on the plug.

Kevin Kelton is a former Saturday Night Live writer. He is currently a cohost of The More Perfect Union podcast and founder of Open Fire Politics on Facebook.

The Mueller Report NOT To Expect

May 30, 2018


                                                     
           

September 1, 2018

 

The Honorable Rod J. Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General
United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

 

          Re:  Final Report from the Office of Special Counsel

 

Dear Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Members of Congress,

          It is with great regret that I must issue this Final Report from the Office of Special Counsel announcing that we hereby close our investigation into Russian Interference with the 2016 Presidential Election with no finding of wrongdoing in this matter. I am sorry to say that after fifteen months of rigorous investigation by the nation’s premier team of criminal investigators and prosecutors, and at a cost of millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers, our efforts were all for naught. Quite simply, we were stymied by the superior intelligence and cunning of Donald J. Trump and his campaign cohorts. In short, we failed.

          Specifically, while my team was successful at chasing down thousands of leads and obtaining some 19 indictments and five guilty pleas from individuals and companies who worked together to elect Mr. Trump, we were helpless to build a case proving their illicit actions really happened. Even with bank records, wire-tapped conversations, thousands of emails, and other incontrovertible evidence of their web of conspiracy to affect the 2016 election, we have decided to hang it up and call it quits without attempting to make a case to the American people, the task we were specifically assigned and sworn to carry out.

          While there is ample evidence that campaign staffers Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page met with Russian operatives to discuss publishing materials meant to discredit candidate Hillary Clinton in exchange for a more favorable foreign policy toward Russia once the election was over (including changes to the RNC platform made at the behest of campaign manager Paul Manafort to benefit Russia in the Ukraine), we are stymied about how to prove said quid-pro-quo conspiracy so that rural voters and GOP Senators might comprehend it.

          Further, despite thousands of documents showing unreported illicit financial transactions and favors of influence between Russian oligarchs and Mr. Trump’s family, we were unable to connect the dots of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, even though the President himself is on public record asking for their help to smear Mrs. Clinton with illegally hacked emails, and even though the President’s son, son-in-law and campaign associates met and spoke repeatedly with Russian operatives in furtherance of their efforts to illegally obtain and release her emails, and even though Mr. Trump and family would have been the sole beneficiaries of said collusion to affect the outcome of the election.

          Moreover, while we have documented proof through emails, tweets and sworn witness testimony that Trump confidant Roger Stone personally engaged Julian Assange and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2, who went on to procure and release DNC and John Podesta emails to damage Clinton’s campaign only days after Stone predicted those events on multiple media outlets, we felt we had no choice but to accept his explanation that he was merely joking and the timing and specificity of his “jokes” was a coincidence. True, we could have called Mr. Stone to testify under oath and catch him in multiple changes in his story, but why bother? He said it was a misunderstanding and we have to take an upstanding man like him at his word. To have done less would have been a perjury trap.

          Similarly, the fact that the President attempted to obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and through other documented efforts to derail our investigation is simply beyond our capacity to prove in court. As you know, the President claims it was all a misunderstanding, and the American people would surely believe a sitting U.S. president with a 13% “honest and trustworthy” rating over contemporaneous FBI memos, the sworn testimony of multiple eye witnesses, and every single officer of the U.S. Department of Justice.

          I know you and the American people were hoping to find closure through our investigation. But frankly, the only way to do that would have been to put the key witness on the stand. And any effort to subpoena the President to testify under oath, as was done in Clinton v. Jones and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, would have been an unconscionable perjury trap and may have insulted the President’s feelings as well. No president of the United States can be expected to testify truthfully and get his multiple different stories straight under that kind of pressure.

          In all candor, it appears that Mr. Trump and his team of neophyte political amateurs were just too cagey and sinister for us. For that, and for all the negative press generated by the President’s disinformation campaign while we professionally and meticulously investigated this case out of the public eye as we were constitutionally charged to do, I humbly apologize. And if you’ll authorize it, I would like to testify in front of Congress so I may publicly clear the President’s good name and admit the folly of our partisan attempt to reverse his magnificent electoral mandate.

          Oh wait!… No, I take that all back. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was 2 in the morning and I was Ambien writing.

          We are still investigating. Further criminal indictments and referral for impeachment forthcoming.

Sincerely,

 

 

Robert S. Mueller III

(As dictated to Kevin Kelton, cohost, The More Perfect Union podcast)

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